March 2005 Archives
We totally did the thing where you go to the Pike Place Market and watch them throw fish around. They even threw dungeoness crabs. Also, we went to the Experience Music Project and saw a real Devo suit, you know the yellow suit with the funny red hat, that they actually wore and stuff. Everywhere you go in Seattle you can see the Space Needle, which is really pretty and futuristic and glows, and the Sound sends little fingers into the city so there are boats nestled in with the houses and swank apartments. Sometimes it is OK to be a tourist.
Last week I watched "Bride and Prejudice," the new Indian musical adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." It was SO GOOD! Indian musicals are great because they are all about being lush and showy and melodramatic, so you can't even fault them for cheesiness because it's what makes it good. Also, it is really cool how Indian movies take inspiration from Western influences. I know imperialism sucks and everything, but I think it's really interesting to see how Indian culture takes things like American music and language and adopts them and makes them its own, interpreting these influences in specifically Indian ways. It's as if by incorporating Western influences into an Indian cultural context and sensibility, instead of just trying to be like England or the U.S. in all ways, India manages to maintain a strong, independent cultural identity. The U.S. co-opts "exotic" Indian culture, but India co-opts American stuff too. I think it's really important to acknowledge the communication and exchange between cultures and not just simplify it into a colonizer/victim equation.
As "Bride and Prejudice" includes both Indian and Western influences in its execution, the film also addresses issues of imperialism directly: In Austen's novel, the culture clash between Elizabeth and Darcy is mostly a matter of class, but the movie's Elizabeth (Lalita) and Darcy (Darcy) are Indian and U.S. American, respectively. Darcy is interested in investing in India in the form of swanky hotels for Westerners, and Lalita, well aware of national politics, thinks that's bullshit. Overall, though, the movie seems to be commenting on the existence of complicated social issues without taking a preachy stand on them, and, like the original novel, strikes a good balance between entertainment and social awareness.
After the least fluffy pancakes of my entire life challenged my beliefs about the limits of toughness and established permanent residence in my digestive tract, Kevin drove us up to Lake Padden. The seemingly remote mountain haven was only about five minutes out of downtown. We read and I ran around the lake with all the other athletic, outdoorsy women and their dogs. I refueled from my workout with a refreshing White Russian at the Black Cat, and we talked about the benefits of moderate drinking while watching the sun set over the bay.
Following some deliberation we checked into the Fairhaven Village Inn, which, though two or three times more expensive than the Aloha, was about 10 times more comfortable. It was all, "We've arrived." There was all of that nice hotel stuff: a big, clean, room, a nice bathroom with all kinds of tiny bottles of lotion and stuff, terry cloth bathrobes, and a continental breakfast with fresh waffles and fruit and all that. The hotel was new, but many of its decorative fixtures had been recovered from the building that previously stood on the site that was all old and stuff, maybe Victorian era, like much of Bellingham and especially the Fairhaven area.
To make up for the swankness of the hotel, we went out for burritos at Casa Que Pasa, the total gringo hippie burrito restaurant, which was actually damn good, and followed up with a drink at the Triple B, where Bellingham's 12 hipsters drank to '80s music and showed off their style. I drunkenly ranted to Kevin about everything I learned from being a hipster, then after one drink we returned to the hotel and watched cable.
We drove up to Kevin's college town for spring break. Western Washington University is a beautiful, idyllic hippie haven, devoid of students during spring break except for a bunch of hot girls doing a dance seminar or something. Bellingham is right next to the water and we could see the Canadian Rockies from the campus, but we can't go there as we lack documentation. Yesterday we checked into the Aloha motel for $46 including tax. We watched HBO and ate fried takeout Chinese food from the Haggen supermarket. Kevin had General Tso's chicken, the one that is unusually orange, and I had sweet and sour chicken, the one that is unusually fried with the neon pinkish orange sauce. It also came with fried rice or chow mein and eggrolls and we had Snapple with it. This morning we perused the amazing Newsstand, which had whole sections devoted to French interior design magazines or souped-up economy car mags or like, different magazines for workouts for each part of your body ("Abs" magazine, etc.). They also had funny European candy like Coffee Crunch and the coconut flake hairy balls that we had on New Year's Eve. We found the one place in town with free wireless internet, the super shady Horseshoe Cafe and Ranch Room that Kevin pointed out to me on the way into town, saying the people who worked there looked like Elvis on heroin and someone got beat up and stuff. It's maybe not as scary now but the fake woodgrain panelling and western-themed murals are pretty sweet. We're waiting for breakfast with our computers and a big plate of butter and syrup.
Last night we watched the best movie ever, The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as the Pharaoh of Egypt. Well, we didn't watch the whole thing since it's like 10 hours long, so we caught the ten plagues part and then I paraphrased the rest for Kevin. Accuracy and religion issues aside, the Torah is a bunch of really cool stories. I mean, the parting of the Red Sea, the Angel of Death, sticks turning into snakes - it's all so dramatic! My atheist English teacher last term kept telling us that a good English scholar of any religious persuasion has to be familiar with the bible because there are so many allusions to it throughout Western literature. I totally want to take a Bible as Literature class - I used to think that was suspect and wack, but I get why people take it now.
We also had a pasta dinner that easily could have been a'ight but instead was totally amazingly delicious. It involved combining leftover fake sausage/onion/mushroom spaghetti sauce with sauteed gimme lean, bell peppers, garlic, and more onions, and serving the sauce over multicolored cheese tortellini, and eating it while watching Robocop. I'd never seen Robocop before. It has the dad from That '70s Show and a really cute evil robot that's charmingly awkward and kicks its legs in the air while squealing like a pig.
I just had one of those sudden moments of aesthetic revelation. I was long overdue. Every so often, like once a year or so, I'll be plodding around dressing how I always dress, wearing what I know looks good, with certain ideas about what's pretty and what I want to strive toward, then suddenly I'll see someone or go someplace and it'll hit me like a lipgloss paintball: "Wow. I want to look like THAT! What have I been thinking?" So just as I'm getting into a total style rut, some force of fresh inspiration will come along and shake things up.
One of the best ones came at the apex of an intense radical guilt punk rock phase. I'd been wearing all blue and black, thermals, leg warmers and hoodies, dressing to feel tough, ride bikes and stick it to the patriarchy. Then me and my friend Kirstin were like, wait a minute, we don't have to torture ourselves by looking frumpy... what happened to glamour? A trip to San Francisco and its mod bars cemented the determination that we must start dressing all fancy and have cocktail parties and wear makeup and do the twist. I started feeling so much better about life.
So, um, yeah, I guess I'd kind of gotten into a rut again lately. This year I'd totally been pursuing this mainstream aesthetic, which is weird for me. I think it was touched off by the tongue-in-cheek trendiness that I was rocking last summer that slowly stopped being ironic, and by my job in the mall. I've been looking like a girly-girl wearing low-rise jeans with high heel boots, long hair, fake diamond studs and acrylic nails. I'd gotten to that point where I'd streamlined my look and there wasn't anything I needed to change and style was kind of a non-issue, something I just didn't think about much. Then, all of a sudden, I was looking at all these pictures of punk rock girls with short messy black hair, pale skin, tattoos, and major attitudes, and they looked so cool! And I was like, wait, I totally used to look like that! I was gripped by the urge to cut my hair into a black bob (which for years was my signature) and overdose on black eyeliner and trashy pink blush, and dust off my combat boots, and get a bunch of one-dollar fake tattoo books from Finnegan's. I was reminded of the way I used to dress and the way I used to listen to music like it meant something, and the joy of smearing lots of sticky hair product in short, damp hair. Suddenly the mall style I've been doing seems SO LAME. I can't believe I was thinking about waxing my eyebrows! I mean I wasn't seriously considering it, but still! And the fake tan thing was totally going to be a joke, but still. Now style seems fresh and exciting again, and I have all these ideas, and I want to get dolled up. I don't care if it is the man keeping us down - fashion is important. If something makes you feel inspired to be alive I don't see how that's a bad thing, unless it makes you not want to eat. Eating is rad.
Dear nice people who left me comments,
Sorry, I erased them because I don't know how to use technology. They were really nice though. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Shoshanna
It's nice to subscribe. It's nice to have a routine. It's nice to feel a small sense of ownership of things like magazines and cafés. Oh, and blogs. Every day when my boyfriend grabs his computer, he checks out Slashdot (his homepage), Cycling News, and the weather (probably the No. 1 most popular blog ever). I read some personal blogs and dabble in the techy stuff, but there isn't anything I've been able to become addicted to reading on a daily basis. Many of my favorite blogs aren't updated regularly enough for me to keep checking back all the time. It occurred to me that I haven't been that regular with mine, either, and that maybe my daily blogging activity should involve writing rather than reading one.
For so long, blogging seemed like something to be embarrassed about. Antisocial indie rock dorks did it. I did it because after years of making zines I realized they would never be financially viable, and my aesthetic grew up — it's easier to get the design feel I want with computers than with xerox machines. Um, especially when someone else designs your blog for you. Now blogging is totally this cultural hot topic that everyone is talking about, which is cool, but sometimes I'm like, what's the big deal? It's just a bunch of self-centered losers blabbing about nothing with bad grammar. But it is a big deal. I get that.
I can connect to my university's library and access all the academic databases you could ever want, while having a dialogue with my best friend in Japan, from the cigarette-smelling back patio of a café in southeast Portland, in the sunshine, for the price of a hot chocolate. Meanwhile, the government is paying the interest on the loan I used to buy my computer.
1. delicious plain or adorned
2. simple to prepare
3. butt cheap
4. horchata
5. jasmine rice
6. tones down overly spicy foods
7. burritos
8. the sound dry rice makes when you pour it
9. it grows in weird places called rice paddies, and rice paddy sounds like something good to eat
10. the edible rice paper wrappers of white rabbit candy
How To Make A Rice Omelette
1. beat an egg or some eggs
2. mix in some leftover rice
3. fry
4. eat with ketchup
No but seriously, my absolutely favorite thing right now is any type of steamed white rice, plain or with butter. It's so good. I don't know why.
On Saturday, after doing homework for a couple hours at Crema, Elsbeth and I went to screw off at Lloyd Center. My shopping style is to identify a specific item and to search relentlessly and fruitlessly for this one particular thing. This time I was looking for this certain style of slip-on Vans. They are the same style as the classic white Beach Boys slip-ons (which I had in high school, and which gave me relentless blisters because I hadn't discovered the magic of tiny socks yet) but they are all black with pink accents and soles. I know they exist because I saw them in a magazine and I saw somebody wearing them. That no store in the entire mall has them doesn't prove anything.
Luckily, we found other things to spend our money on. At Pac Sun, Elsbeth paid 50 cents for two brown fake flowers with sequins to wear in her hair. At Icing, which is like Claire's but for 16-year-olds instead of 12-year-olds, I found a trendy necklace that looks like lots of different necklaces made out of fake pearls and metal chains. It satisfies my ex-punk-turned-mainstream-clone sensibility and makes me feel very fancy.
For lunch we experienced the food court's latest "concept" venture, Steamers. After reading about it in Digest, my interest had been piqued, although not enough to go out of my way to eat there. Calling itself an "Asian street bistro," the food counter specializes in dumplings and steamed buns, both of which sound vaguely dirty when you say their names out loud. When we were trying to figure out what to order, a Steamers employee approached us with a tray of bubble tea samples, which was funny because we were in the mall, but mostly because the overwhelming majority of all interaction between Elsbeth and I takes place at Chit Chat Café, the bubble tea place near PSU. We split a kid's meal which, in keeping with mall culture, was enormous. The pulverized texture of the dumpling fillings was a little disappointing, although it was sort of a thrill eating spinach in the mall. The coconut custard bun was yummy and satisfying in a trashy way, and the jasmine rice that came with the meal was really exciting, not because it was extraordinary in any way, but just because I've been obsessed with white rice lately.
We passed by Ann Taylor Loft so I had to go in and do the obligatory catching up with former coworkers. It was sort of nice but also sort of uncomfortable. Then we went into Made In Oregon and ate all the candy samples and left.
"expansion urbaine tentaculaire" — urban sprawl
