Sunday funday

Oh did I ever have one.  Great Dupont Circle pool party hosted by some lovely friends!  But somehow I lost my "it's a schoolnight" meter and strayed from my normal "let's get our 1.5 drinks on" behavior.  So I started off my work week this Monday morning by...

Waking up completely naked on my couch, blinds fully open, clutching a smashed Kashi cereal bar for dear life in my left hand.

Still short of waking up with my purse still on my shoulder (which has happened y'all), but I'd say it was a good night.  I paid for it this morning and it took a while to feel normal (still not 100% but come hell or highwater I'm going to run tonight). 

Don't try that one at home kids. 

Book Review: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

It's important that we all know exactly what winning a Pulitzer Prize means; it means more than just writing a really good book.  According to the Pulitzer Prize Board, Olive Kitteridge was 2009's most "distinguished fiction by an American author dealing with American life."  I could probably end my review there as I can't think of a better description of this book. 

This is a collection of 13 (sometimes tangentially) connected stories about a woman named Olive and her friends, family and neighbors in the coastal town of Crosby, Maine.  Olive is a retired school teacher whose abrasive, sometimes crass, personality is often misunderstood.  But her gruff carriage is her charm:

"Oh, for God's sake."  Olive stopped walking, looked at him through her sunglasses.  "I didn't say moron.  You mean because we have a cowboy for a president?  Or before that an actor who played a cowboy?  Let me tell you, that idiot ex-cocaine-addict was never a cowboy.  He can wear all the cowboy hats he wants.  He's a  spoiled brat to the manor born.  And he makes me puke."
She was really riled, and it took her a moment to see that he was looking away, his expression closed off, as though inside his head he had backed away, just waiting for her to finish.
"God," she said finally.  "You didn't."
"Didn't what?"
"You voted for him."
Jack Kennison looked tired.
"You voted for him.  You, Mr. Harvard, Mr. Brains.  You voted for that stinker."
He gave a small bark of a laugh.  "My God, you do have the passions and the prejudices of a peasant."
"That's it," said Olive.  She began walking, at her pace now.  She said over her shoulder, "At least I'm not prejudiced against homosexuals."
"No," he called.  "Just white men with money."
Damn right, she thought.

The fictional snapshots of Olive's American life are never cliche, they are always shrewd, and by and large subtly heartbreaking.  It's beautiful, this American life.

Not so leading ladies

Happy Thursday, all!  Which is technically my Friday because I have tomorrow off, but I'll sadly probably end up working anyway because there are energy bills out the woozah and someone's got to keep 'em straight around here.  Mkay?

A few observations worth mentioning:

1.  It was over 90 degrees when I ran this morning (at 5:45am!) and after my four miles of speedwork on the national mall, it took an ice cold shower + two hours in the air conditioning before my face no longer felt (and looked) ON FIRE.  My God.  I love oppressive heat but it was nuts y'all!  I looked like I was fresh out of labor and delivery the entire morning.

2.  I finished an intriguing podcast this morning on Lillie Langtry, a British actress from the 20s who was once renowned as the "most beautiful woman in the world."  Her beauty inspired a number of literary characters at the time, and she was even mistress to the future king of England, Edward VII.  So you can imagine how desperate I was to google image search this broad the minute I walked into my office this morning.  (drum roll) After the historical buildup and anticipation, I feast my eyes upon our English beauty:

Ummm...am I missing something?  Lillie Langtry looks like a DUDE y'all.  I mean, she's no serious eyesore, but I certainly question the judgment of whomever named her the world's elusive beauty du jour.  What in the sam hill?









3.  An even more scathingly b*tchy reaction, I'm aware, but I am SICK and TIRED of hearing about Farah Fawcett and seeing her ex-boyfriend Ryan O'Neal's ugly mug all over my television screen when I'm trying to watch the news in the morning.  Hey Farah, want to know why nobody sensationalized your death like Michael Jackson's?  Why oh why was it not nearly as interesting?  Maybe it has something to do with the documentary you made of yourself, couched in the terms of some philanthropic cause, when really it was your last hoorah of self-serving exhibitionism.  It wasn't even news because we'd all watched it (by we I of course don't mean me) on HBO reruns for the past six months!  I don't want to watch any more footage of Farah and Ryan reuniting with their drug loser convict son and I don't want to see any more of them crying over each other when their private lives were a complete disaster because they were both self-obsessed narcissists.  You lived a glamorous, fabulous life and you chose to be a terrible parent, wife, friend, and overall public personality. Your number is up honey and I'm sick of seeing and hearing your long-lasting encores via your good friend Alana Stewart and your pathetic ex boyfriend Ryan O'Neal.

Boy do I feel better (assuming lightning isn't going to strike me dead for talking trash about the dearly departed).

xoxo

Les Nouvelles

That's "the news" in French, y'all.  My last week has been tumultuous to say the least, but I'm optimistic and really looking forward to the future and what it has in store.  This weekend, in particular!  I already have dinner with Miss Frazier on Friday, a long run and brunch with Biscuit on Saturday, and hopefully a serious bike excursion (maybe even all the way to Mount Vernon, depending on my bike's condition and the weather) on Sunday.  All of that mixed in with some heavy weekend reading, including (which seriously- I am still embarrassed to admit) finally beginning Harry Potter.  I've always been a typical objector, but seeing the opening of the Harry Potter park in Florida sparked my interest and now I'd love to read the series and visit that place with my mom.  Not to mention we're all on the market for some easy summer readin' these days, and I need to even out the heavy hitters I've already got planned. 

xx

"She drank, with one hand, all the Irish coffee.  And then she played all sorts of songs.  She didn't know what she played, couldn't have said, but she was inside the music, and the lights on the Christmas tree were bright and seemed far away.  Inside the music like this, she understood many things.  She understood that Simon was a disappointed man if he needed, at this age, to tell her he had pitied her for years.  She understood that as he drove his car back down the cost toward Boston, toward his wife with whom he had raised three children, that something in him would be satisfied to have witnessed her the way he had tonight, and she understood that this form of comfort was true for many people, as it made Malcolm feel better to call Walter Dalton a pathetic fairy, but it was a thin milk, this form of nourishment; it could not change that you had wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a real estate lawyer, that you had married a woman and stayed married to her for thirty years, when she did not ever find you lovely in bed." 

~Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

Book Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

So there's this guy at work - Ken - and he's one of my favorite people in the building.  He's the absolute sweetest and was (and continues to be) one of the few people around who are interested in mentoring the younger folks.  He's in his late 50s (I think?), happily married to what sounds like a Diva of sorts (in a good way), and of late he's beside himself as his son, who lived in the French Riviera for years, is finally headed home with French wife and kids in tow.  Ken is just an all-around great guy, and he also happens to be very into reading, particularly mystery novels.  Which is another reason why we hit it off- we love getting our lit chat on.  So after tons of book pushing (love it!), I finally gave in to Ken's mystery lobbying and picked up the Larsson trilogy.

For those of you who don't already know (which is hard to believe considering how these books have saturated the book market and pop culture in general), Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist and writer who died at the age of 50 of a massive heart attack.  At his death, Larsson left the manuscripts of three completed but unpublished novels in a series.  They were gradually translated into English, and now we have (1) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (which I read pre-blog); (2) The Girl Who Played with Fire; and (3) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. 

I'm convinced that the fact that these books were published posthumously has sensationalized them a bit, because they really aren't spectacular and worth their popularity.  Still, even yours truly craves some pop culture every now and again, and weird, pointless mystery novels feel somehow superior to TV brain drain.  There really isn't much to review here:  these are very plot-heavy reads, with twists and turns at ever chapter's end.  To Larsson's defense, they're usually unpredictable.  So if you're at the beach for the weekend and don't feel like sharpening your late 18th century brit lit repertoire, this series would serve as a juicy interlude.  Best of all, the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, is a woman who "hates men who hate women."  Can I get a witness?!

However, I do think the storylines are a little extreme at points.  Larsson, along with some of his Nordic expats, seem to be (still) completely obsessed with neo-Nazi extremists (to be fair, this was the subject of much of his journalism before he passed).  Let's just say I'll have met my quota of blonde, racist, sexually repressed antagonists after I'm done with the trilogy.  And I'm no homophobe, but the girl on girl love in this book was a little much for me.  It wasn't too graphic, but it did seem like a phony attempt to make Salander even more emotionally complex than she already was.

Oh, and seriously what is with everyone buying gourmet food at the 7-11 in Sweden?

So I'll read on and complete the trilogy for sweet Ken (and for my sanity- I can't just go reading two-thirds of a trilogy y'all).  But I won't be searching for more of Larsson's gems after I've retired these three...

xo

Google Baby

I'm not just sweet-talking Google here, y'all, I'm referring to a documentary that will be airing on HBO2 this week (which I'll obviously miss as we all know I am indefinitely sans cable TV).  I listened to a great NPR podcast on "Google Baby" this morning on my walk to work.  Israeli Documentarian Zippi Brand Frank was chatting and taking calls about her glimpse into the outsourcing of surrogacy to India.  Sounds cliche, but apparently tons of westerners are doing it these days.  According to her interview, having a child through a surrogate mother in the US can cost parents $150,000+, while outsourcing the entire process to India (keep in mind, we're talking about American eggs, American sperm, via an Indian hoo-ha) costs somewhere around $25,000.  (Here's a great WSJ piece on it if you're interested).

Dr. Navna Patel was also on NPR chatting about her clinic in India, which employs hundreds of women as surrogates for strangers' babies.  Despite the complete lack of ethical regulations in India, it seems to be a booming business and, according to Patel, a real "win-win" situation, giving the Indian surrogates tons of cash (equaling around $5,000) to send their kids to school, build a house, or whatevs.

Maybe this was what my professors were talking about when they said there were easier ways to get rich than being a lawyer?  Yikes.