October 2008 Archives

Cole, Erin, Connie and I attended the Cat Show at MSG today, and I'm considering buying an exotic / hybrid domestic-wild cat. Servals are cute and freaky looking with their painterly ears, but I'm obsessed with how baby Caracals sound like birds when they are kittens (as heard below). A caracal is a wild cat native to Africa and the Middle East and is not illegal to keep as a domestic pet in some states. I am afraid of the baby bird caracals growing up and subsequently viewing our other cats as walking hot-dogs-on-a-stick, though, so I should probably let my pet wish go unfulfilled.

I cannot stop watching the Beyonce "Single Ladies" video. I think it is brilliant they used Bob Fosse choreography and put her in a weird A Chorus Line leotard with a robocop hand. I wore that exact outfit in soho yesterday but then I had to buy a coat. because it was cold, jerks.

I clearly don't have to tell you how thrilled we should all be that Colin Powell endorsed The Senator. Saw Oliver Stone's W. this weekend and it wasn't funny. Brolin is obviously getting the Oscar. Thandie Newton as Condi should get Best Supporting--she had like four lines but it was all in her eyes. Still cannot get over the fact that we have an oedipal bio / historical faction/farce about a sitting president. Even if it is Georgie. Still shocking. I find it very telling, wholly indicative of how much dignity was stripped from the office in the last eight years. Even Bill Clinton's errant weiner couldn't have dreamed this far down the rabbit hole. (Also, our country during Bill's cigar-a-thon could have taken a cue from lusty-ass President Sarkozy and his polyamourous wife Carla Bruni--i.e. PEOPLE HAVE SEX AND SOME PEOPLE ARE FREAKS, EVEN THE PRESIDENT, BIG FUCKING DEAL. Or to use an example closer to home, look at New York's awesome New York governor D. Patterson who, after Elliott Spitzer stupidly decided to have an affair with A PROSTITUTE, immediately admitted every single thing he'd ever done before he signed himself into office after Spitzer got sent away to a batcave in Westchester--affairs, weed, then cocaine when he thought weed was too boring, insanely gymnastic dances to overcompensate for his blindness at discos, etc. Whatever, it was the 1970s in New York! Get over it! Then again, we have Edwards, who was pretty stupid but mostly tacky considering his wife's whole FIGHTING CANCER. Like, people, if you are going to step out, at least wait until your spouse is in sighting distance of remission. It's a whole other level of common decency. I DIGRESS!)

I have not updated for awhile. Normally I would like to have one specific topic to yammer on about but there's too much going on. First off, we are completing our December issue, five weeks in the making. Terribly busy. It's always a process to put out a magazine and every once in awhile you ram your little forehead up against the fence like a goat looking for a clover patch, but every issue, it drops, and you feel pumped. No matter what crapitude you go through to get there, somehow it always feels better once it's in layout: like your ideas have come to fruition and yo, it's kind of VERY awesome that you get to do this. Kind of like a dream job? Yes. My first fanzine was when I was ten. I made it on my commodore 64 from PrintShop (old heads know). It was called the Daily Bugle and I distinctly recall one of the pages had a giant tooth graphic and the admonition, in Lucinda font: "DONT FORGET TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH." (NEW FADER COLUMN!) I meant to sell it to our neighbors for ten cents but I only made one copy. I probably threw it away, embarrassed, once I got older, but let's just say I've been making magazines for a long time. Magazines of sorts. Or wanted to anyway. Moving on.

We put out a new magazine, which I am terribly proud of. The America issue/photo special: It is seeable / downloadable for free on the internet in PDF form here, though I recommend at least flipping through the book in a bookstore... the photos are too phenomenal not to touch on glossy paper. We are having a tiny tiny tiny celebratory party with super secret special guest DJs on Wednesday in Manhattan from 7-10 pm, if you want to come email julianne@thefader.com with the subject header "MY PRESIDENT IS BLACK" in all caps and write me three sentences about why you are voting Obama.

I have been twittering my face off. If you are not familiar, get familiar.

I have become obsessed with /enamored of Mad Men, the only zeitgeistical television show I did not watch until Pete, trying to reference it, said, "That is the only zeitgeistical television show I watch but you don't." Hence: I watch it now. The writing is excellent and every episode, I thank god I was not alive and a woman before the woman's movement. Betty Draper, with her wistful, suicidal appeasing, reminds me so much of a character from a book: April Wheeler, the tragutante from the apocalyptic marriage in Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. It's a book that will send you to the floor in agony. It's also being made into a movie so read it fast so the characters can be fully formed in your mind before the snipes hit the streets with the real actors who shall not be named here.

I have finished reading graphic novels: American Widow, the heartbreaking memoir of a woman whose husband died in 9/11, when she was eight months pregnant.

And the new Love and Rockets by, as ever, Los Bros Hernandez, the most important graphic novelists of all time at least to me. The new stories have grandmas who are superheroes, which speaks to me culturally and feministically, if that is a word. Los Bros are male feminists from the olden days for real.

Bout to go in on David Heatley's My Brain is Hanging Upside Down. Kinda feeling like that as I write this--shipping the magazine! long day!--so if the prose is not massaging your brain-face like you'd like it, that is why.

I have been watching this video that Shane sent me about a prehistoric shark discovered off the coast of Japan in 2007, and thinking about how its weird tiered teeth basically wants to rip off all our faces.

And just when the pundits think she did okay, the New York Times has to go and transcribe what she actually said. You thought it wasn't possible but yes, it is true: it looks far emptier on paper.

The debates were, as predicted, infuriating. Senator Biden held it down (nay, killed it with his knowledge) and at times he and Gwen Ifill (and the viewers) seemed to be having an entirely different conversation than the cue-card-reading Palin. It was as though, for each answer, a trigger word scanned her brain's memory card and spat out whatever related answer had said word in a sentence. Further, her folksy appeals to middle America were actually condescending, as though by talking like "a regular gal" she could distract us from the fact that she has no idea what she is talking about, no clue as to the scope of what the second highest office in the land actually entails and, apparently, no real respect for the nuts-and-bolts work of it. I also found her cutesy winking degrading, both to women--do we truly have to resort to flirting in the middle of the sole VP debate? --and to the importance of the position she, oh so ridiculously, finds herself in: debating one of the most accomplished and compelling Senators in office. Not to mention her disrespect when Biden became emotional discussing his wife and children. "I am afraid my son won't come back from Iraq." Response: "JOHN MCCAIN IS A MAVERICK!" Unbelievable.

That said, Biden was direct, concise and awesome on many, many points: his directness about global warming, his directness about gay marriage, his directness about Cheney being Darth Vader, his directness about the Iraq war and the economy. I trust this dude; he was extra-knowledgable about senate specifics and minutiae, but at no point did I feel like I was about to be led into a psychedelic mind-spiral of policy details. He just gets it. His approach contrasted with Palin's platitudinous greeting cards of answers, with her insincerity and, eventually, with her anger; his greatness kept me from hurling a glass at Brendan's tv screen. I did manage to make up a totally offensive new word to describe her, starting in the word that results from the anagram "See You Next Tuesday" and ending in the suffix "Zilla."

Didn't it seem as though, every time she looked into that camera and reassured the American people she was on our side, that she actually holds the utmost contempt for the American people? As though, if we do not elect her, she is going to, I don't know, order one of her advisers to fire us all from our jobs? Pre-emptive vengeance is a terrible quality in a VP candidate.

You know who I feel for? Hillary Clinton. To watch Palin be "the woman" (ha) in this election and to see her fumble and degrade the opportunity so colossally must be murder.

You know who I lost EVEN MORE respect for? Geraldine Ferraro. She was up on the NBC post-debate talking about how great it will be when her granddaughters can watch this and see a woman do so well... as though she buys into the idea that "any woman will do." If I ever have granddaughters I'm stashing any and all Palin-related materials in the off-limits pantry with the pornos and the "prescription" weed. This woman is not a role model just because she happened to possess the most politically strategic qualities to revitalize McCain's limp ass. Ferraro's comments further illustrate the generation gap between second-wave feminists and fourth-wave feminists, the one this primary process has made so apparent: we can't really relate to you all, sorry. Visibility is important, but not if "the woman" is gonna be such a maje trainwreck, lowering the role-model standards and looking like a retardinous puppet on a national stage, I'd rather just watch a bunch of old haggardy dudes duke it out like usual.

SI SE PUEDE. YES WE CAN. Go to Barack Obama to see what there's left to do--register voters in your family while you still can, canvass, etc. I'm going to Pennsylvania in a couple of weeks to help with the campaign. I expect it will be difficult but I feel like we have to do everything we can. We cannot afford otherwise. As Senator Biden said more than once last night, this is the most important election we will have ever voted in. The future of our country is at stake.