Feeding

We have the story of two women, both adrift. One arrives in postwar Paris the wife of a mid-level embassy official, unable to bear children, with nothing to do. One works as a mid-level bureaucrat in post-9/11 Manhattan and has awakened to find her life somehow less than she had imagined, back in college, it would be. Both women aspire to control events, but both feel instead that events are controlling them. How does such a woman save her soul, save herself?

On the surface, the answer Julie and Julia serves up would appear to be cooking. Julia Child studies at Le Cordon Bleu and reinvents herself by learning to cook; Julie Powell decides to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking and invents a life for herself far away from the cubicle she inhabits eight hours each day. Ephron's film is in many ways a celebration of the preparation and consumption of food, of excess. Julie and Julia are both perpetually hungry, and both set about sating that hunger. Be sure to eat before you see the movie, because it's filled with food porn. Julie and Julia's hunger is also carnal, and both enjoy sex as much as lobster thermidor. It's easy to leave the theater believing that satisfaction of one's primal, physical needs leads to spiritual fulfillment.

It wasn't cooking or eating or even sex that gave definition and direction to either life, though. Julia Child became Julia Child not because she learned how to cook but because she learned how to write about it, and Julie Powell became the subject of a movie not because she spent a year cooking her way through Child but because she wrote about it. Neither of these women became chefs; both became writers.

The act of writing is a very literal way to control events. To author something is to be its god, its originator. Think of the etymology of "author" and this becomes evident: authority, authoritarian, authoritative. Child didn't write just any text but a book of recipes, of instructions. A cookbook is, very simply, a way of controlling and shaping experience; a recipe is a set of specific instructions that tames the chaos of the kitchen, that turns alchemy into procedure. A cookbook is a structure. Deciding to cook every recipe in a book in 365 days is also a structure, and by taking on that project and writing about it Powell was, powerfully, authoring her own life. This was Child's penultimate recipe: words will set you free, wield words and you can invent yourself.

Writing is a large part of the movie, but of course it's much less visual than food, and because it's not a communal activity but is instead solitary it's not the stuff of either comedy or drama. But if you see the film look carefully and you'll see the way writing is central. Child is continually at her typewriter, composing letters and then her book; Powell is continually either at her computer or reading from Child's letters. In the end, words are more powerful than even aspic, and in the end this is not a story about some people who like to eat but instead a story of two women who hunger for so much more than a properly prepared meal.

Plastics

The last time I watched The Graduate I was around the same age that Dustin Hoffman was during filming (29, for those of you interested in trivia). I watched it again last night at around the same age as Mrs. Robinson (mid-40s, although Anne Bancroft was only 35 during filming, and that's it for trivia). All those years ago I experienced the film as the comedy/satire it's marketed to be, but age tempered my reaction. Yes, it is, in places, a very funny film, but it's ultimately an extremely sad, if not bitter, statement about post-war American bourgeois culture.

The film was released, and set, in 1967. Benjamin Braddock has just graduated from college and returned to his ancestral Pasadena home. From the establishing shots through the first half of the film he is portrayed as isolated, alone, and adrift. He walks zombie-like through LAX, attempts to disengage from the graduation party filled with his parents' friends, in fact appears to have no friends or social circle of his own. He is cut off from his parents' generation, the scuba suit in the suburban swimming pool just a literalization of his ennui. With the exception of Elaine, no one in his life even has a first name; not even a summer of sex with Mrs. Robinson personalizes her to the point where she can be named.

The affair itself does nothing to ground Benjamin, offering as it does only sex without real human contact. When he and Mrs. Robinson finally, at Ben's insistence, spend a few minutes talking, it only serves to show how cut off all human beings are from one another in this particular plastic-worshiping culture, rather than how they might engage. Benjamin's elders have nothing to offer him, and he can't imagine finding a home in their world.

On the other hand, although critics have interpreted the film as a statement on the "generation gap," Benjamin is equally estranged from his peer group. This is evidenced not only by the fact that he appears to have no peer group, but also in his character itself. He is clean-cut, polite, obedient. His disaffections are never turned outward. Unlike his contemporaries, he does not protest, demonstrate, grow out his hair, experiment with drugs. Before Mrs. Robinson he's even a virgin. His generation's preoccuations - free speech, free love, civil rights, Vietnam - are neither mentioned nor alluded to. His generation provides him no more succor than that of his parents.

His one act of rebellion, one moment of engagement, is his single-minded pursuit of Elaine, a pursuit that borders on the monomaniacal. He and Elaine in fact hardly know each other, and the fact that he feels so connected to her speaks more about the lack of connections in his life than it does about their relationship. The film appears to end in truimph, as Elaine flees the church with Benjamin to get on that bus and escape the marriage her parents have forced her into.

Look again at that final shot, though, and you see that this is as much a moment of confusion as it is of triumph. We see them looking out the back window, laughing as they are driven away. We then cut to the other passengers, turning in their seats to stare at the couple. They are isolated, cut off from the family at the church behind them and from the adults on the bus in front of them. This echoes the opening shot of the film, where a close-up of Benjamin's face pulls away to reveal the other passengers on the plane taking him home to LA, each in separate seats, each in separate worlds. The film dissolves to black with a shot of the couple sitting, staring ahead, blank looks on their faces. They don't know what to say, they don't know what to do, they don't know where the bus is heading. They may be "free," but they are also lost.

We end exactly where we began. Benjamin has achieved his quest only to find not the holy grail but instead a long road to nowhere on a bus filled with strangers. The greatness of this film lies not in the moments of pure comedy for which it is remembered but instead in the fact that pure comedy can be found even in this vast, desolate, uniquely American wasteland.

Scary Women

It's not hard to find disturbing content on TV. The nightly news, Bush speaking about anything, Gray's Anatomy, disturbing, all. Perhaps the most disturbing thing on TV right now, though, is a show that previously had been a guilty pleasure, a show that I used to watch because it made me laugh, a show that was once seemingly innocuous. That show is The Real Housewives of Orange County, and if you want to see how vapid, how cruel, how stupid a bunch of adult women can be, you must tune in Tuesdays at 10 on Bravo (although you can catch "marathons" of the show almost any day of the week, so don't worry if you have other plans Tuesday nights).

The five featured women are supposed to be rich, and it's supposed to be a glimpse into the Botoxed and carefree lives of people who live in a gated community in the Republican capitol of the West. Naturally they're all slaves to plastic surgery, shopping, and chardonnay. Nothing disturbing there. What's become clear this season, though, is that they're slaves to their own basest instincts. These women hate each other, and enact their hatred in front of the camera week after week. Watch this show to learn how not to be.

Last night Tamra, who believes she is the "hottest" housewife, held a formal dinner party in her backyard. Said party involved many courses, but also a lot, a lot, of alcohol. There's a new "housewife" this season, Gretchen. Gretchen is 30, well-groomed, and has a millionaire fiancee who happens to be dying of cancer. Tamra hates Gretchen. She's jealous. So, she spends the whole dinner party plying Gretchen with shots of tequila. After all, what's a formal dinner without shots of tequila? Tamra's husband and 22 year-old son help in the plot to get Gretchen drunk. Tamra tells the camera it's her intent to get Gretchen "naked drunk" so that everyone can see her "dark side."

Gretchen, meanwhile, has just spent the day in the hospital with her dying fiancee. I know what it's like to watch someone die. Sometimes getting drunk is the only way to help yourself forget that particular painful reality. Gretchen gets drunk. Tamra's son sits next to Gretchen, leers, eggs her on. Tamra makes sexual innuendo about Gretchen to the other guests. The other guests try to take alcohol away from Gretchen, but Tamra's husband and son keep slipping her more. Finally, Gretchen is so drunk she's slurring and out of control. Tamra won't let anyone give her a ride home, insisting she stay the night. The episode ends with Tamra's son following Gretchen into the bathroom, asking for a hug. Gretchen rebuffs him, saying she's engaged. Her persists nonetheless. It's all "to be continued."

Last week, the group all went to the racetrack, where Tamra and her co-conspirator Vicky shunned the other housewives, acting like eighth graders in the junior high cafeteria. Two weeks ago, the "gang" all went to Havasu, got drunk while their young children watched, and spent the episode talking trash about one another. I know I'm not making the show sound fun. It's no longer fun; it's simply the most disturbing thing on TV.

It's a trainwreck. You want to turn away, but you can't.

On the Road

Spend a weekend on your college campus, act 18 again. It happens every time. I'm still recuperating. The main way I felt 18 again was being completely cut off from the rest of the world for over 48 hours: no internet, no TV, no newspapers. I didn't see the debate, nor hear any of the incessant recaps of it. Paul Newman died? What do you know. The Northeast was drenched? Huh. It's hard, now, to believe I spent four years living in such a bubble.

An interesting offshoot of my trip was that I drove smack through the middle of Virginia, the last leg on back roads filled with campaign signs. I'm not sure what yard signs tell you, not sure how effective an indicator they are as to what will happen in November. However, the placement of a yard sign does indicate effort and dedication on the part of the person who placed the sign, and in that sense display the sentiments of at least one voter.

Rural Central Virginia must trend Republican these days. However, I feel comfortable predicting that Mark Warner will win his Senate race. Based on yard signs, the guy doesn't even have an opponent. Warner signs proliferated, yet I didn't see a single indication that there is a Republican nominee running against him. Some properties even featured both McCain and Warner signs, which was to me the real indicator that this particular race is over.

Based on signage, the Presidential race is harder to call. Crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains on Routes 151 and 6, through Afton, Rockfish Gap, and Nelson County, McCain/Palin definitely dominated. On the other hand, it would appear that the Obama campaign lacks an office in this part of the state, because I passed a number of hand-made Obama signs. Yes, hand-made, a true indicator of dedication. One sign, ok, but on the trip back I counted: 15 such signs on a 35-mile stretch of road.

Once I got to Route 29, a major north/south state highway, Obama took the lead in signage. McCain still had supporters, but the majority of yards sported signs promoting the entire Democratic ticket for that part of the state: Obama, Warner, and the Congressional candidate whose last name begins with a "P" (sorry, I was driving, I couldn't write it down).

Conclusions? It could be that the Obama campaign is correct in believing that Virginia is in play. It could also be that, in the end, yard signs along state highways only mean that a couple of crazy partisans went driving around in a pick-up one night, drinking beer and illegally posting. My main conclusion is that this remains perhaps the most interesting Presidential race in recent memory. And that it's a bad idea for an early middle-aged woman to party like an 18 year-old.

No Men In Sight

The young go off in search of love and find only sex. The middle-aged, having found love, search for a way to still have sex. Your friends, though, are constant. As best I can tell that is the meaning of SATC, the movie. The action begins three years after the series ended, with all four of our heroines coupled-up. How they will or will not sustain coupled happiness is the plot that shakes the cosmopolitans.

I attended a crowded matinee screening. Out of the hundred or so in the audience, I believe two were men. Whether you liked or didn't like the series, whether you do or don't think the movie was necessary or is any good, what's clear is that these characters speak loudly to a large population of women, and in this case, in a theater in suburban Pennsylvania, to a large population of women whose lives don't resemble the lives depicted on-screen. The women in the audience applauded when the previews ended and the opening bars of the theme music blared. They yelled at the screen at various points in the film. They applauded again at the end. Maybe they'd all had one or five too many cosmos before going to the theater, but either way my critical opinion matters little in the face of such adoration.

Here's what I liked best about the series, and liked best about the film: the women are allowed to grow older. They struggle a bit at first, but ultimately accept and celebrate their own middle-age. The characters are pretty much exactly my age, and they act it. I'm incredibly glad that all involved understand that no one wants to watch a 43 year-old wandering around in a tu-tu. I'm incredibly glad that the movie's triumphal close was a celebration of Sam's 50th birthday. I'm incredibly glad that these women do get what they want sometimes, but not all the time, and that their journey has been to acceptance of that realistic fact.

Here's what I didn't like about the film: because it felt like two seasons of the TV show condensed into 2.5 hours, little room remained for the male characters to be anything other than plot devices. The film also felt too long. Maybe Michael Patrick King is just so used to the pacing of the half-hour show that he didn't know what to do with the feature length, but it definitely felt too long.

It can never be 1998 again; we've all moved on. Understand that, have a pink drink or two, and you'll be happy to be reunited with Carrie and company.

I Was So Much Older Then, I'm Younger Than That Now

I managed to make the holiday weekend last five days, but I'm back to my life. It's been a relatively cool and soggy spring, so the recent summer-like weather caused me to spend every minute I wasn't working in my yard or moving my office lying on my porch, watching what I now know are orioles, thrushes, blue jays, blue birds, hummingbirds, and cardinals flitter around. And also to quickly consume a couple of books.

When I was 14 I read and loved Sara Davidson's Loose Change. I'm not sure why, but I was fascinated with the 60s. I'm still not sure why, but I still am. The best thing to come of it was my discovery of Joan Didion, but that's another story. In 1977 I wanted to be a writer, go to Columbia Journalism School, write for the New York Times. I may have loved the book in part because Davidson went to CJS. I may have loved it because it told a story that took place nearly entirely within my short lifetime, although I was too young to have been a part of that story. I may have loved it because it is a piece of creative nonfiction, and although I didn't know such a genre existed such works were my favorite things to read.

I was disappointed to find that I didn't love the book this time out. In my current state of mind, sometimes I really enjoy memoirs and sometimes I just find them self-serving, solipsistic. Sometimes I want to shake the author and scream, "What makes you think you're so different?" This was my reaction to Davidson.

If you've never read the book (although the jacket claims that "over a million" copies have been sold, so maybe you have read it), Davidson describes the journeys taken by her and two of her sorority sisters from Berkeley from 1961 until the mid-1970s. She switches among points of view, weaving together three memoirs in one. "Tasha" moves to New York, becomes a gallerist, gets involved with a much older man. "Susie" marries an SDS leader, has a child, leaves her husband, becomes a nomadic hippie for a while, decides to become a doctor. Sara becomes a journalist, marries poorly, travels around the country writing about the changing times.

It's all very interesting, certainly, in a time-capsule kind of way. Davidson's thesis, though, seems to be that these women, and the 60s themselves, have somehow failed. The world hasn't been changed, and everyone's moved inward. After all the struggle for freedom the ending is newfangled domesticity; after all the moves toward feminism these women continue to define themselves through their relationships with men. After all the protests everyone has gone home to roost, in other words. It was this aspect of the book that made me want to shake Davidson.

You don't have to come of age in the middle of the Free Speech Movement to be full of youthful energy and ideas. Plenty of us graduated college feeling we could make a difference, take on the world. Plenty of us woke up to find ourselves 35 and settled into a life very different than the one we imagined as 21 year-olds. Plenty of us then feel disaffected and disconnected from our youth and need to look back and evaluate. For anyone prone to self-examination the discovery that we aren't special but normal is itself normal rather than special. We get over it and move on.

The book's subtitle is "Three Women of the 1960s," but ultimately the book felt much more like the story of three women of the 1970s, reconciling their young adulthoods with the settled adulthoods of their present. I finished Loose Change wishing Davidson had revisited these women and her own past ten or twenty years later, not only to finish telling the stories of their lives but also to finish telling the stories of their acceptance of their lives. Because Sara Davidson, here's a secret: you did change the culture. The America in which I came of age was very different, and those differences are attributable to your generation's agitation for change. You just didn't know that yet, when you were 35.

Time's Not on My Side (or yours)

Have you ever completely lost a day of your life? I lost yesterday. The entirety of it, from 9:30 in the morning until after 7 PM, was spent in a discussion/argument over something I'm not even going to explain because I'm sick of thinking about the subject. The point isn't what made me lose a day, but the fact that it was lost. Time just goes; I wake up in the morning, have some coffee, run my dog, blink and suddenly it's the middle of the afternoon.

I vividly remember childhood weeks spent in anticipation of something: Christmas, a vacation, the end of the school year. Time felt so excruciatingly slow. The days just dragged on. What I anticipated would never arrive. Now I book a vacation a couple of months in advance and suddenly find myself needing to pack my bag the night before, out of travel-sized toothpaste and shampoo. I understand that some of this might be due to the fact that I've had years of vacations, of holidays, of birthdays, and that the thrill is gone, that I'm jaded. I think there's something more at work than just the loss of the new, though.

I read once that we experience time opposite our metabolic rate. This means that when we are young, with a high metabolic rate, time appears slow to us. As we age and our metabolism slows, time is experienced as passing more and more quickly. This certainly makes as much sense as anything else. Time, after all, is a consistently measured quantity. If time itself doesn't change it must be something in us that's different.

I used to make fun of my mother for all sorts of reasons, but one reason was that if I asked her what she was up to, she'd frequently say, "Oh my, I have such a busy week. I go to the doctor Monday, and I play cards Tuesday, and on Wednesday I go to Walgreen's." What was unimaginable to me a few years ago is today a reality: I understand where she was coming from. I understand how having one thing to do can feel like a day's worth of activity, when days disappear so quickly. I understand what time really is. I understand my (and our) mortality.

Employment Journal, Part IV

It was time to call in the professionals. In order to get some perspective on my job quest, I decided to talk to someone who provides staffing services. Fortunately, my next-door office neighbor runs a such a firm, so I sat down yesterday with Elaine Patti of Track Staffing Services to see what she thought my chances would be on the open market.

I went over my education and resume, and asked her if she thought I could find a professional job in the Lehigh Valley. Here's the good news: "Definitely. You have a higher degree. As far as I can see, there's jobs at the high end and jobs at the low end. If you don't have at least a college degree, you're out of luck. If you don't have a college degree, you need to go to CIT and at least have a trade."

What sort of job could I expect to find, I asked. Of course, she told me that depends on what I'm looking for. However, "With your experience, you could be an executive director of a non-profit," Patti stated. "In this area there are a lot of non-profits and human service agencies. I would think all of those organizations would be avenues I'd pursue." Could she help place me as an executive director? "No, sorry, I don't work with non-profits, but I could try to match your skill sets with companies I do work with."

I asked how long a professional job search would take, and what kind of salary I could expect. She felt I could find a job in 30 to 90 days as long as I was flexible, but that if I had specific requirements I could be looking a long time. The salary range she felt would be $38-$60K for communications professionals. Obviously I'd look at the higher end of the range.

What if I'd been looking for months, had applied to all the non-profits and hospitals and come up short? Could she place me in a temp job? "My temp positions are more in the book-keeping field," she explained, "so without accounts payable or receivable experience, no, I wouldn't have anything for you." I told her the tale of my travails at the department stores and asked if I could hope to be hired by any sort of retailer. She felt that I could probably be hired at one of the big-box retailers for around $12 an hour, but that I could only expect to be hired part-time because it would be clear that I wouldn't be looking to make a career in retail. That, she felt, was the problem in department stores. Plus, she said that she "didn't see me behind a counter at Bon-Ton." I concur.

Finally, we talked about what the market is like for recent college graduates (not that recent grads necessarily flock to the Lehigh Valley). It doesn't sound pretty, at least not for those working in my field. Patti explained, "I see kids out of college who couldn't find a job in marketing, so they're wait staff or tending bar at a higher-end restaurant, and they find it hard to leave because they're making more there than entry-level marketing jobs would pay."

In short, I'm locked out of mall-type retailing positions because no one will believe I want a career in retail, and I'm locked out of high paying restaurant positions because recent college grads have cornered that market. Can I be a greeter at Wal-Mart? Stay tuned...

What Not to Wear

Liz Smith, Leslie Stahl, Mary Wells, and some friends including Lily Tomlin and Candace Bergen are starting a website for women over 40, wowowow.com. It launches Saturday. Apparently it will feature items they believe will be of interest to their demographic such as horoscopes, posts about love and marriage, health and fashion, political commentary. Oh, and conversations among the site's famous principles on such burning topics as their personal memories of Halston.

I'm over 40, but I'm clearly not in whatever their demographic might be. Wowowow will be competing with other popular sites for women heading towards menopause such as iVillage and More. I decided to visit these sites to see what women my age are thinking about. Turns out they're thinking about horoscopes, love and marriage, and how not to dress "old." Both sites look and read like a cross between Cosmo and Better Homes and Gardens. Neither site contains anything that I find to be remotely of interest.

I know myself well enough to know that I'm not a typical woman in her 40s. I'm not married, I don't have kids, home and gardening tips put me to sleep. I'm never on a diet. I don't care what my horoscope says, or about what's new in handbags for spring. I don't expect these kinds of sites to carry the sort of content found on Slate, for example. What I find disturbing is the fact that demographic research has evidently led to the determination that this sort of fluff is what women my age and older crave. This isn't just true on the web; spend a few minutes watching Lifetime, or Oxygen, or even the Hallmark Channel, and you'll see that women in their 40s are believed to care above all about their skin, shop at Chico's, and diet relentlessly. At least that's according to the advertisers. According to the programmers, women over 40 are either in constant peril due to evil men or are about to lose their daughters to evil men. And they're all played by Tracy Gold.

The women behind Wowowow are extremely successful businesspeople who shattered gender barriers in their respective fields. I was just hoping for more from this particular brain trust than horoscopes and gossip.

With that rant, I leave you for a few days. I'll be in LA, the land of women who never turn 40. Have a good weekend, and I'll be back Tuesday morning, undoubtedly with plenty to say.