The Petite Sophisticate

2009-11-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

Super-manic lately! I wouldn't mind except that you know a crash is coming. For me, it's just like amphetamines: restlessness, tingling hands and feet, racing thoughts, inability to sleep and loss of appetite. (During these periods I stock up on Ronnybrook yogurt drinks, the thinking manic's Ensure.) It starts with wild bouts of cooking and baking, segues into weird sassiness to strangers and then settles into a week or so of furious activity. This morning when the alarm went off, I popped up grinning like a jack o' lantern. "Oh, no, The Mania!" said Slim.

I call the mania Rolly Quicklegs, after a small lizard Charlie and I cornered in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1988.

Strong Words

2009-11-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Here's an exchange between me and a reader:

Sadie,
What an interesting article from an interesting website - taking on psychologically rich and complex material like Project Runway! Chelsea Handler! wow, the depth gives one pause. So, reading your armchair therapist moment about Joyce Maynard was especially powerful in its earnest critique of one mother's self-disclosing style and her daughter having a feelings about it.

Clearly, you have strong feelings. About something... Mad Men plotlines? A line skirts? I do hope you continue your cutting edge journalism. What a talent! Your mother must be so proud!

Thanks for sharing!

I responded,

Hi,

I don't know what you've gained by such a personal criticism of me. If you have some more specific issue to discuss, I'd be interested to hear it, but this seems nothing but nasty and unpleasant. I'm sorry if I or the site has offended you, but I don't know what you hope to achieve by being abusive. Again, if you'd really like to address anything, I'd be more than glad.

As ever,

Sadie

She didn't respond! So I wrote again:

Happy Halloween. I must confess, I'm surprised not to have heard from you again. Just as I understand that by writing in a public forum I leave myself open to criticism, I think you probably recognize that in writing me as you did you welcomed further dialogue. I thought about your letter a lot today - not because it was thought-provoking (cruelty rarely is) but because it amazed me that you would feel angry enough to send it. When one receives a note such as yours, there's a sort of Kubler-Ross process. At first it's just a punch in the gut, a physical hurt. Then there is sadness, and you'll be glad to know that you made me cry. Then anger and the urge to lash out. People say to ignore emails like yours, the thinking being that they're not worth dignifying. I can't do that; for one thing, I think anyone who takes the time to write me deserves the courtesy of a personal response. And more than that: it's so important that you realize that when you write like that, diminish a person's livelihood, make cracks about their talent, their parents, diminish them in every way you know how - there are consequences. Even if having a bad day, week, or year, you simply don't, even in this age of the internet, have the right to write cruel and personal things to another person, at her personal email address, and think there's not an actual, feeling person on the other end. I just can't wrap my mind around why an obviously intelligent and thoughtful woman would do so. I hope if ever you have that impulse again, you'll remember that there's a real person out there. And sometimes, we're a little crazy.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Sadie

She responded:

Dear Sadie,

I guess we both are standing in wonder. Mainly, I am amazed by your language. Did you know what article I was commenting on? I’m cruel and abusive? Your letters sound like they couldn’t have been written by someone as insensitive as the writer of “Holy underlying tension Batman!” and “an act of veiled aggression”. I wrote to you because I found your article so typical of what I don’t like about the internet media spinning around right now. I , unlike you, didn’t choose to make my grumbling public. You wrote what I found to be a snarky, condescending critique about a writer. Not her work, but her. My reaction is to this type of trashing which seems to be on the rise. Ms. Maynard has her way of writing that some will love and some will hate. Our opinions about that are fair game, as you say, because we choose to put it in the public forum. But you didn’t comment on a writer’s work other than multiple snide references to “oversharing”. You passed judgment on a person, and made your own interpretations about a mother and a daughter. Did you ever consider that they were real people?

You may be shocked that your presumption that I wanted you to cry is not true. Like the subjects of your article, you don’t actually know me. I’m not cruel, and I don’t want to make you cry. I did presume you’d have a thicker skin if you’re wielding the kind of pen you seem very comfortable with on your website. I didn’t notice any concern for your subjects feelings, any concern for consequences to real people you write about publicly. Since you seem game for a dialogue, instead of telling me how sadistic I am, where is your moral compass when you pick apart and read into other people? Not their work, but the people themselves. The only thought I had was that you feel they are fair game for anything you want to say, consequences be damned. You said it best :

It's so important that you realize that when you write like that, diminish a person's livelihood, make cracks about their talent, their parents, diminish them in every way you know how - there are consequences.

I’d like more honesty in these cute little articles, not the bee-bee shots from a high horse. Your letters made clear to me that I inadvertently sent you a dose of what I saw you distributing, mean-spirited commentary. In equal amounts of sincerity, I apologize for offending you.

Here is the so-offensive post.

Warsaw-Inspired

2009-10-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

Designed By Stacy

2009-10-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

Fun Fun Fun

2009-09-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

Going to Poland on Friday so I got The Street of Crocodiles. Also, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Also, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman. Also, A Concise History of Poland. Also, The Journey (the H.G. Adler one.) And a Lonely Planet.

Starting to wish I had something lighter for the plane, also a striped tee shirt.

I have a lot to relate. Too exhausted, just now.

2009-09-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

When I was in college I was in a writing group with a very smart young woman whose work I liked and who was, besides, considerably more conscientious than I. But there was something in her writing that bothered me: she had written this one character who was supposed to be "quirky." And to indicate that she was quirky, she had a cute quirk: she ate peanut butter out of the jar all the time. And this was a source of bemusement and hilarity to other, less-quirky characters. After a few weeks, I could take it no more.

"Here's the problem, B ----" I said. "This eating peanut butter thing? It's not interesting. It's not quirky. It's not unconventional. Make it Miracle Wip. Make it fluff. Make it tomato paste (my vice -ed.) If you wanna be cute, make it Gentleman's Relish. But this simply isn't working."

Of course, aggressive quirks are lazy anyway. But when they're not even quirky, it's deeply embarrassing for all involved. And this was my biggest problem with 500 Days of Summer, which I finally forced myself to see last night at Cobble Hill Cinema's cheap(ish) night. Yes, it was precious and sophomoric and loaded with the brand of Amazing Girl only Deschanel can sing. Maybe because I was braced for this, it didn't bother me as much as I'd feared. But. Here are the "quirky," "weird" smart-sensitive things they bond over and I kid you not, kid:

1. The Smiths, specifically "There is a Light that Never Goes Out." I actually scrawled on the fly-leaf of my book "ONLY like their biggest radio hit!!!" (Yes, I was alone.)

2. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

3. Magritte. And Hopper.

Look, people can have the tastes of high school freshmen for all I care - and who doesn't love The Queen is Dead? - but to hold these things up as obscure indicators of a cultured sensibility had me blushing with shame in my seat.

I had, obviously, other quibbles: the hackneyed "we sell a lie!" tell-off of all the unenlightened suits at the greeting card co. (which, sorry, looked like the best job ever); the straw-man premise that, in fact, cheeky and ironic greeting cards don't make up a big hunk of the business plus about a village's worth of small-press cottage industries; the wise/precocious kid sister; the fact that this flick did for "Sugartown" what Lost in Translation did for "More Than This", that is, instantly removed them from karaoke acceptability forever.

But, I was at least entertained, and not even in a Last Kiss 3-car-pileup way. Deschanel had some good getups, the dude reminded me of my boyfriend, and I laughed once. I'd even go so far as to call it "inoffensive," which I never would have anticipated.

In other news: the bike ride to the theatre was pleasant, and I bought the niftiest, goofiest pair of (maybe 1990) high-waist plaid wool trousers. The shop's owner told me that they were a recent acquisition; she'd bought up the closet of an older lady who was going into a nursing home, the widow of a Madison Avenue advertising executive whose Park Avenue wardrobe was an impeccable archive of 60's-90s UES chic. The lady must have been quite the social X-Ray, as they'll need a deal of hemming. But I hope she knows, somewhere, that her absurd trousers will be treasured. My joy was somewhat punctured when I saw that A) Zooey was wearing similar trousers in the film and B) I'd inadvertently shoplifted a velvet beret from the store. After debating the merits of having Slim plant it, I bit the bullet and sent off a somewhat incoherent email confessing to the unintentional crime. Now I'm wondering if I was framed. But by whom?!

Compare/Contrast

2009-08-29T18:09:00.001-07:00

September Issue was disappointing and rather lazy. Breakfast at Shopsin's, wasn't.

I was debating...

2009-08-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

having a crush on the re-enactor from this week's "Public Eye." But Slim isn't convinced.

There Is A Reason My Mother Accuses Me Of "Frittering Away" My Money

2009-08-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

...ah, but she should see what I don't buy! (Her name is "Claudine.")

The Sum Total Of My Highly Productive Evening's Accomplishments:

2009-08-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

2009-08-24T17:31:00.001-07:00

There are occasions, it must be admitted, when I wear nothing but a leotard. Indeed, some would say I'm doing so right now.

2009-08-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

When I got back from California, Slim asked me what my cousin's wedding was like, and I could do no better than to say, "think the exact opposite of your cousin's wedding" which we attended in Buffalo last month.

"Meaning?"

"It was during the day, in the woods, very small, not religious, vegetarian food that the groom's mother prepared. Oh, and no booze."

In short, it was very very very lovely. (Not to say that the Buffalo one wasn't.)

My cousin, E., had a Princess cake wedding cake: for those of us mired in the northeast, a Princess cake is of Swedish extraction and can't be begged, borrowed or stolen outside of California. It's genoise, brushed with syrup, layered with jam and Bavarian cream, topped with a mountain of whipped cream, and iced with marzipan. As if it needs saying, it was a revelation. After the wedding everyone went to Nepenthe, in Big Sur.

It was funny being back. I don’t like to read a catalogue of smells. It’s an exercise in futility. But there’s no other way to talk about that house, my grandparents' house which is, now, I guess, my uncle's. The smells were always easy to remember. The outside was dust and nasturtiums. By the door, you were assaulted by generic detergent and the greenhouse smell of many house plants. The addition was the smell of plumbing, from home-installed pipes, and years of damp, and the never-cleaned deep freeze. The kitchen was rot and mildew and ancient sponges and the filthy dishpan and a dirty refrigerator, fetid meat on a rotisserie, baked-on food in a microwave, decaying paper, old deep frying, and rotten potatoes – all of it overlaid by a thick later of Comet.

It wasn’t just the house, it was the people, who’d been allowed, or forced, to develop their distinctive human smells in a way few people do nowadays. I won’t try to describe the individual smells – which were very different from body odor and not at all bad – save that they permeated everything, blankets and pillows and the walls of whole rooms, and they continued to long after my grandparents had died.

Well, I don’t know about “long;” my grandfather died four years ago. Some of the smells are the same – the dust and the decay of the yard, and the old bath mat, and parts of the kitchen. I don’t know about the bad pipes or the damp addition because now there’s a lodger who occupies the back bedroom for $200 a month. He’s supposed to spend time with my uncle, but he doesn’t. Since he doesn’t ask questions or make demands or use the washing machine, though, everyone’s decided not to make an issue of it. I've never seen him but his truck says "Yoda" instead of "Toyota" and he plays the bongos.

This trip, I stayed in my grandmother’s room, which I’d never done, and where I’d say she died except that they restarted her heart and she actually lost brain function in the hospital two days later. (As opposed to the room next door, where my grandfather actually died. For a house built in 1950, it’s managed to acquire an anachronistically Gothic history.)

The room is as she left it, except where it’s not: they threw out her clothes and her smell – which was always the faintest, since she managed a bath every week or so, and wore talcum powder – is gone. I hung up my dress on the outside of the closet door so it wouldn’t pick up the smell of the house. In New York, the dress’s print looked deliberately vintage and bold; here, it looked like a part of things. And then I tried to read the book I’d bought – a modern piece of literary fiction with the usual ration of gratuitous simile and suggestions of incest, short on storytelling and pleasure. It made no sense in a house full of the genuinely Gothic.

And yes, there were donuts, lots of them: 2 maple bars and a glazed old-fashioned. I took a red-eye back. Brought back loads of bronze animals - sure, a Brass Menagerie - which were a particular obsession of my grandfather's (he was a human magpie.) We brought back Siamese cats, a mouse, a whale, two birds, a bear, and a crab. Left a set of three herons, or cranes, because who has room for three even if they're graceful; and someone took the scorpion.

To Combat Depression...

2009-08-21T10:46:00.001-07:00

I have crafted a playlist that, Red Shoes-style, will force me to dance at even the lowest moments.

What I'm Listening To, Since No One Asked

2009-08-21T08:11:00.001-07:00

Occasionally, no one will ask what I listen to while I work. Here's their answer!

I Gotta Give My Brother This...

2009-08-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

"Living Thing" by ELO is a truly rad tune.

There's a new horseman of the gentrification apolocalypse in the hood: this artisanal pizzeria with seemingly imported staff. Yes, I have been three times.

I am absolutely loathing The Golden Notebook. Reads like bad Murdoch; so glad we're past the time when women had to prove their objectivity at every turn.

A friend thought he was having a heart attack this weekend. Wasn't, but I still visited him and we took a boat out and sang.

I have a new bike: Excelsior, the Sophisticate. She's purple. George who sold her said she's a honey also that the "helmet-wearing orthodoxy" is "self-undermining" the bike community by marginalizing the Euro-style cruiser. I couldn't say, really, but I'm inclined to agree.

In fact, this is a good blog altogether.

Let's see: music, lit...so far as art goes, I'm in phili-stein territory, as my mom would have had it. And, yes, it always got old.

Favorite Movies

2009-08-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

I like lists. In no particular order:

I Know Where I'm Going!

Black Narcissus

Don't Look Now

Best Years of Our Lives

Stolen Kisses

Bonjour, Tristesse

Manhattan

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Grey Gardens

Rebecca

Rear Window

2009-07-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

Several neat friends mentioned in this write-up. I love the aesthetic! (Slim, alas, is a beatnik, so by necessity we cleave to a bit more minimalism.)

2009-06-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Slim and I just looked at an old convent that's for sale in our area. We can't afford it, and realistically, when it takes us six months to get up bookshelves, there's no way we're remodeling a 20-room mansion, much as I like the fantasy. But, wow! I guess the order didn't have the money to remodel, so the place still has a ton of detailing, albeit with some depresssingly crummy fixtures etc. to say nothing of the tons of debris scattered all over the back yard and the basement where the two elderly caretakers lived. Oh, and the water damage. But. Parquet, stained glass, tile work, moldings galore...to say nothing of the general wonderful haunted air and the sheer embarrassment of rooms. By the fourth floor I'd long since run out of imaginary uses for all of them and had decided to run a boarding house, instead. Dream, a girl can do it.

2009-06-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

Our local library is not good. Yes, they have Jim McGreevey's The Confession, and for some reason a lot of the Criterion Collection, but of the paltry selection of books (half in Spanish, although at this point there aren't many Spanish-speakers in the area) there's next to nothing one would want to read. Certainly not the biography of Richard Wagner I foolishly hoped to find on my first visit. By chance, though, they had one book I've always wanted to read: the recent book of a certain beauty editor who's long been a bete noir of mine on grounds of smug preciousness.

Well, I read it. I expected to be filled with self-righteous, enjoyable rage the whole time, but in the end I was just depressed and bored. It's a memoir of working as a beauty editor, with tips and such interspersed throughout. And I guess I should have known what I was getting. But the unthinking veneration of skinny as god, of youth, of conventional beauty, was for some reason surprising to me; this woman works for a magazine that's known for having a bit more of a "common touch" than the average fashion-mag, and I guess working where I do sometimes you forget that it's supposed to be tacitly understood that everyone wants to drop ten pounds and look like a model, which attitudes I'd understood to be so hopelessly recherche that no thinking lady would ever admit to them, even if her thoughts tended in that direction. This writer's column always bothered me because I found it tone-deaf; reading the book, that didn't make me mad anymore, just sort of depressed. And what was I doing getting worked up over such silliness, anyway? I now understand that she and I are such wholly different people with such a wholly different set of values and assumptions that there's really no point wasting the equilibrium. Probably should have realized this some twenty years ago, but narcissism runs deeper than we like to admit! (Mine, anyway - I don't want to fall into that pernicious "we all feel this way but I'm honest enough to say it" brand of irrefutable smugness than so bedevils first-person essays.)

On Clothes etc.

2009-06-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

After a few bad experiences, it's occurred to me that the best reason to get one's hair "done" is the wealth of hairpins that results. I was going to have to buy some, and now I have at least two packages' worth in the tray on my dresser. The other night, I went to a fashion event. As I was getting my hair cut, I figured I'd have them put it up for me too, as I have no skill in these matters and I figured having groomed hair would make me feel a bit more confident. Fool me once: both times, the hairdresser has ended up making me look like either Kate Winslet in Titanic or some kind of pre-Raphaelite trailing romantic ringlets. I always smile through my horror so as not to dent their evident delight, and then, as soon as I go, end up trying to pin up the various curlicues and strands, and looking slightly worse than usual.

I've long since determined, since no one asked, that in dressing for a fashion event there's no point trying to be really chic: you can't compete and you'll only feel self-conscious. Unless you're some sort of wildly creative exhibitionist. much better in my opinion to try to get away with as little as possible. No knockoffs, no carefully hoarded splurges: vintage is the name of the game. Or, in this case, fake vintage: a 30's secretary dress from "Stop Staring" purchased at a shop in Richmond, and so odd and nifty as to confound all. (Indeed, Lynn Yaeger admired it.) I wrote about the party here, so I won't say too much except that, fun as the people-watching was, at the end of the day you're at a party where you know no one and, more to the point, no one is interested in getting to know you. I learned quickly, too, that it's apparently not comme il faut to compliment another lady's dress, as I received a very cold snubbing. I asked the security guard if he wanted me to bring him some water or an hors d'oeuvre and he looked at me like I was crazy. After that, there was nothing for it but to stand around looking alternately insolent and roguish.

Fruits of Victory

2009-06-08T18:09:00.001-07:00

Just went, (in full business costume) to that library on the alley in SoHo across from Old Saint Patrick's to hear a talk on the Woman's Land Army by author Elaine Weiss, who besides giving a very fascinating presentation, was one of the nicest people I've ever met. As inquiring minds know, and thanks to Ms. Weiss, the WLA was a highly progressive institution and involved some of the most prominent suffrage and temperance activists of the day. Then too, it was highly fashionable among a certain subset of society girls to slum it patriotically for a summer or so, and it's no coincidence that their uniforms were designed by the finest couturiers of the day - and were they ever spiffy! Bloomer overalls, no less! They were the subject of any number of songs and poems - both light and serious - including one with lyrics by P.G. Wodehouse and music by Victor Herbert. (Ended up expressing my devotion to MacDonald-Eddy scores to a woman from the Victor Herbert foundation, but then of course I did.)

Here is a sample menu from the Wellesley Training Camp:

Sunday

Breakfast:

Boiled rice with dates
Top milk
Buttered toast
Coffee with cream

Dinner:

Roast Beef, brown gravy
Pittsburgh potatoes
Buttered green beans
Grape tapioca
Lace Cookies

Supper:

Creamed corn
Graham bread
Cheese
Prune ginger bread
Russian tea

(On the 'way home, a guy was playing some kung-fu handheld game so loudly that I switched seats. And then my new seat-mate was playing some game loudly too. The blood, it boiled.)

A Couple Months Ago

2009-06-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

...a guy on the street took my pic. for a Williamsburg street blog. I ran across his card recently, and here I am! I think I was buying Slim some undershirts (what we used to call wife-beaters before Cosmo eradicated the term from the lexicon. Kowalskis, then. Or did he wear a tee-shirt?)

2009-06-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Have you spent much time in the garden at MoMA lately? Some friends and I had an (exorbitant!) iced coffee there this afternoon, and it was really lovely...Physically pretty, well laid-out, all that stuff, but more to the point filled with a neato range of New Yorkers, many of whom seem to have come, mit reading matter, just to take the air and spend time with themselves. I speak, as if it needs saying, of an older generation of art patrons, whom one imagines live somewhere nearby, itself unthinkable.

(Along similar lines, the class of '49 was the highlight of last night's ten-year high school reunion. Gowns by Yumi Kim, since you didn't ask.)

El. hit town for the occasion, among other things, and I celebrated with a taste of Tangier Island - yeast rolls and potato salad from the Hilda Crockett Chesapeake Inn recipe pamphlet, plus Cook's Illustrated extremely labor-intensive and frankly ludicrous oven spare ribs. I'd rate the meal a 6.

We hit the "Renegade Craft Fair" in Williamsburg, which was not remotely renegade but did involve hundreds of whimsical items with "villain mustachio" motifs.

Then today we saw GK4 Former Fiance for brunch and he had villain mustachios.

Ended last night at the home of some bohemian acquaintances. There was a lot of dancing to African music and some whiskey drink with muddled orange and a delightful upstairs neighbor and Waugh enthusiast with whom I hit it off, but then it was high time we left, so that's just what we did.

As ever,

SS

Recipes

2009-06-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

As of this writing, I have found my favorite versions of chocolate chip cookies,* lemon squares, and bran muffins **, but pound cake still eludes me. And obsesses me. Because the pernicious thing about pound cake is it's a lot of work, and ingredients, and cake if you're not happy with the results. I have an inkling that cream cheese pound cake, while far from classic, may be the horizon I've been looking for. Unlike Cook's, I make no pretense towards objective perfection - I like things too moist and creamy for many tastes - but like everyone I am seeking my personal grails.

Other things I seek to replicate pre-death:
Orange syrup sponge from Le Loir Dans La Theiere (a moist orange cake soaked in fresh orange syrup, with a butter icing)
Date-walnut brownie from Murray's cheese (even if it does require a convection)
Applesauce cake from 2nd Floor Coffee Shop, U of C, actually made by the maddeningly expensive and closed-mouth S&S Dessert Bakery. (Impossibly moist appleasuce bundt - no nuts or raisins - with a hardish penuche glaze, which component I've actually sort of replicated.)

If you have any leads, you know where to find me.

*Double the salt and halve baking time for my idea of perfection.
**I like the ones from Beat This!

Mixology

2009-06-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

Drink-mixing, like free jazz (counterintuitively) and the prose of Henry Greene, is something that eludes me. I like Lillet. And I like to be given something based on the specifications "gin, strawberries and cucumber" at a fancy bar, if I must go to one. An email I received claims this drink is "the Megan Fox" of cocktails.

First Class Punch:

1 1/4 oz Three-O Vodka

1 oz Domaine Canton Liquor

1/2 oz agave nectar

1/2 oz fresh lime juice

1 strawberry

4 basil leaves

In a mixing tin, muddle the strawberry, basil, and Agave nectar. Add the rest of the ingredients, shake very well with ice and strain into a glass. Garnish with a strawberry

Make of this what you will.