Saturday, March 8, 2014
The Arranged Marriage
“That point doesn’t count,” Andy shouted as I jumped around the ping-pong table doing my victory dance. “You leaned over the table to hit the smash and that’s an illegal move. We have to redo the point.”
I looked up at him making my puppy dog eyes, knowing they would work as usual.
“You know I can’t reach if I don’t lean over it. I’m short and little,” I said.
“Oh no, your cuteness isn’t going to work on me this time. I’m not losing to a little girl.”
His words angered me to no point. I had been practicing over the last year with my brothers so I would be a real challenge and he still saw me as a little girl. “I’m six, I can’t not be cute,” I shouted as I threw my paddle at him and stomped up the stairs out of his basement – and my favorite place in the world.
Even though I hadn’t seen him for five years, I had been thinking about Andy Khan since moving to Philadelphia for school. Our dads were best friends since the second grade and our families would get together at either our home in Alexandria or his in the Philly suburbs. We were best friends until it became inappropriate for us to be. I was 13 when my mom subtly hinted that I should hang out upstairs with the moms instead of following the boys out to play. I had been expecting her to say something any day now as I remembered Andy’s big sister was about my age when she stopped hanging with the boys. From the way he refused to look at me, I was fairly certain his mom had a similar conversation with him, too. Philadelphia lost its appeal without him and I stopped visiting with my parents. Eventually, I went abroad to boarding school and he went away for college. We both forgot we ever knew each other.
I heard about him over the years. He remained close friends with my brother, and my mom would gush about what a man he had become. I heard when he tied for the highest MCAT score in the country. I heard he had been accepted into the MD/PhD dual degree, a prestigious program that would earn him doctorates from both Harvard Medical School and MIT. I wondered what he had heard about me over the years, if anything at all. Did he know about my freak-out at Cornell and that I transferred to Drexel University’s accelerated law program instead? Did he think I was an under-achiever? Did he think about me at all?
A few months into my first term at Drexel, my parents came down to visit. They were invited to the Khans’ for dinner and dragged me along. I took longer than usual getting ready, though I knew Andy would probably be in Boston doing some groundbreaking research. As we entered, his mom, whom I call Aunty, enveloped me in a teary-eyed hug as she scolded me for not visiting in years. I was right about him not being home and as I let myself relax, I felt horrible about staying away for so long. I even hit it off with his big sister now that our six-year age difference didn’t seem as much. Soon the Khan residence became my home away from home and I visited Aunty whenever I missed my mom or her cooking, which turned out to be almost every weekend.
On one of my visits, I was cleaning up the mess in the kitchen; it was the least I could do after Aunty had cooked me that delicious biryani. I was loading the dishwasher with my back to the kitchen when I heard someone open the refrigerator. I turned around, shocked to see him in his own home. We openly stared at each other for a few seconds, taking in how each of us had grown and matured over the years, until I realized I wasn’t wearing a scarf. I awkwardly put it on thinking what’s the point – he had already seen me – but also feeling the need to cover in front of him more than anyone else.
Slowly, his shocked expression turned into a smug smile at my awkwardness and he asked, “Are you the maid? I heard we got a new one.” I chose not to answer and went back to doing the dishes hiding my smile from him; he knew damn well who I was.
Soon after, my parents called and said they were coming down to talk to me about something important. I knew what it was going to be about. My mom had been hinting at the fact that she was already married by my age for months. It was my time to enter the arranged marriage hunt. Now that I was 19, and soon turning 20, I needed to get hitched or at least engaged before my pickings dwindled to creepy, bald, old men. I was fine with an arranged marriage. I had seen hundreds of successful ones and being the good Muslim girl my parents raised me to be, there was no other way. I had my own list of demands, though. I wanted someone educated and between three and five years older than me. I didn’t want more than two children and would not get married until I received my JD. He would be solely in charge of supporting me and the family, as I only wanted to do pro-bono human rights work. In return, I would raise his kids, be a good wife, and never soil his name. I didn’t care what he looked like, but he had to be a practicing Muslim who valued his faith. Let the search begin.
I looked up at him making my puppy dog eyes, knowing they would work as usual.
“You know I can’t reach if I don’t lean over it. I’m short and little,” I said.“Oh no, your cuteness isn’t going to work on me this time. I’m not losing to a little girl.”
His words angered me to no point. I had been practicing over the last year with my brothers so I would be a real challenge and he still saw me as a little girl. “I’m six, I can’t not be cute,” I shouted as I threw my paddle at him and stomped up the stairs out of his basement – and my favorite place in the world.
Even though I hadn’t seen him for five years, I had been thinking about Andy Khan since moving to Philadelphia for school. Our dads were best friends since the second grade and our families would get together at either our home in Alexandria or his in the Philly suburbs. We were best friends until it became inappropriate for us to be. I was 13 when my mom subtly hinted that I should hang out upstairs with the moms instead of following the boys out to play. I had been expecting her to say something any day now as I remembered Andy’s big sister was about my age when she stopped hanging with the boys. From the way he refused to look at me, I was fairly certain his mom had a similar conversation with him, too. Philadelphia lost its appeal without him and I stopped visiting with my parents. Eventually, I went abroad to boarding school and he went away for college. We both forgot we ever knew each other.
I heard about him over the years. He remained close friends with my brother, and my mom would gush about what a man he had become. I heard when he tied for the highest MCAT score in the country. I heard he had been accepted into the MD/PhD dual degree, a prestigious program that would earn him doctorates from both Harvard Medical School and MIT. I wondered what he had heard about me over the years, if anything at all. Did he know about my freak-out at Cornell and that I transferred to Drexel University’s accelerated law program instead? Did he think I was an under-achiever? Did he think about me at all?
A few months into my first term at Drexel, my parents came down to visit. They were invited to the Khans’ for dinner and dragged me along. I took longer than usual getting ready, though I knew Andy would probably be in Boston doing some groundbreaking research. As we entered, his mom, whom I call Aunty, enveloped me in a teary-eyed hug as she scolded me for not visiting in years. I was right about him not being home and as I let myself relax, I felt horrible about staying away for so long. I even hit it off with his big sister now that our six-year age difference didn’t seem as much. Soon the Khan residence became my home away from home and I visited Aunty whenever I missed my mom or her cooking, which turned out to be almost every weekend.
On one of my visits, I was cleaning up the mess in the kitchen; it was the least I could do after Aunty had cooked me that delicious biryani. I was loading the dishwasher with my back to the kitchen when I heard someone open the refrigerator. I turned around, shocked to see him in his own home. We openly stared at each other for a few seconds, taking in how each of us had grown and matured over the years, until I realized I wasn’t wearing a scarf. I awkwardly put it on thinking what’s the point – he had already seen me – but also feeling the need to cover in front of him more than anyone else.
Slowly, his shocked expression turned into a smug smile at my awkwardness and he asked, “Are you the maid? I heard we got a new one.” I chose not to answer and went back to doing the dishes hiding my smile from him; he knew damn well who I was.
Soon after, my parents called and said they were coming down to talk to me about something important. I knew what it was going to be about. My mom had been hinting at the fact that she was already married by my age for months. It was my time to enter the arranged marriage hunt. Now that I was 19, and soon turning 20, I needed to get hitched or at least engaged before my pickings dwindled to creepy, bald, old men. I was fine with an arranged marriage. I had seen hundreds of successful ones and being the good Muslim girl my parents raised me to be, there was no other way. I had my own list of demands, though. I wanted someone educated and between three and five years older than me. I didn’t want more than two children and would not get married until I received my JD. He would be solely in charge of supporting me and the family, as I only wanted to do pro-bono human rights work. In return, I would raise his kids, be a good wife, and never soil his name. I didn’t care what he looked like, but he had to be a practicing Muslim who valued his faith. Let the search begin.
by Sarah Hassan, The Smart Set | Read more:
Image: Andy Mabbett/CC BY-SA 3.0
Diary: Get Off the Bus
The young woman at the blockade was worried about the banner the Oaklanders brought, she told me, because she and her co-organisers had tried to be careful about messaging. But the words FUCK OFF GOOGLE in giant letters on a purple sheet held up in front of a blockaded Google bus gladdened the hearts of other San Franciscans. That morning – it was Tuesday, 21 January – about fifty locals were also holding up a Facebook bus: a gleaming luxury coach transporting Facebook employees down the peninsula to Silicon Valley. A tall young black man held one corner of the banner; he was wearing a Ulysses T-shirt, as if analogue itself had come to protest against digital. The Brass Liberation Orchestra played Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ as the television cameras rolled.
The white buses took up most of the four lanes of Eighth Street at Market, and their passengers were barely visible behind the tinted windows, scowling or texting or looking at their laptops for the half-hour they were delayed by the blockade. GET OFF THE BUS! JOIN US, another banner said, and the official-looking signs from the 9 December blockade were put up at either end of the Facebook bus: WARNING: INCOME GAP AHEAD the one at the front said. STOP DISPLACEMENT NOW, read the one at the back. One protester shook a sign on a stick in front of the Google bus; a young Google employee decided to dance with it, as though we were all at the same party.
We weren’t. One of the curious things about the crisis in San Francisco – precipitated by a huge influx of well-paid tech workers driving up housing costs and causing evictions, gentrification and cultural change – is that they seem unable to understand why many locals don’t love them. They’re convinced that they are members of the tribe. Their confusion may issue from Silicon Valley’s own favourite stories about itself. These days in TED talks and tech-world conversation, commerce is described as art and as revolution and huge corporations are portrayed as agents of the counterculture.
That may actually have been the case, briefly, in the popular tech Genesis story according to which Apple emerged from a garage somewhere at the south end of the San Francisco Peninsula, not yet known as Silicon Valley. But Google set itself up with the help of a $4.5 million dollar government subsidy, and Apple became a giant corporation that begat multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns and overseas sweatshops and the rest that you already know. Facebook, Google, eBay and Yahoo (though not Apple) belong to the conservative anti-environmental political action committee Alec (the American Legislative Exchange Council).
The story Silicon Valley less often tells about itself has to do with dollar signs and weapons systems. The industry came out of military contracting, and its alliance with the Pentagon has never ended. The valley’s first major firm, Hewlett-Packard, was a military contractor. One of its co-founders, David Packard, was an undersecretary of defence in the Nixon administration; his signal contribution as a civil servant was a paper about overriding the laws preventing the imposition of martial law. Many defence contractors have flourished in Silicon Valley in the decades since: weapons contractors United Technologies and Lockheed Martin, as well as sundry makers of drone, satellite and spying equipment and military robotics. Silicon Valley made technology for the military, and the military sponsored research that benefited Silicon Valley. The first supercomputer, made by New York’s Remington Rand, was for nuclear weapons research at the Bay Area’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (...)
So there’s a disconnect in values and goals: Silicon Valley workers seem to want to inhabit the anti-war, social-justice, mutual-aid heart of San Francisco (and the Bay Area). To do so they often displace San Franciscans from their homes. One often hears objections: it isn’t the tech workers coming here who are carrying out the evictions. But they are moving into homes from which people have been evicted. Ivory collectors in China aren’t shooting elephants in Africa, but the elephants are being shot for them. Native sons and daughters also work in the industry, and many of the newcomers may be compassionate, progressive people, but I have seen few signs of resistance, refusal to participate, or even chagrin about their impact from within their ranks.
2013 may be the year San Francisco turned on Silicon Valley and may be the year the world did too. Edward Snowden’s revelations began to flow in June: Silicon Valley was sharing our private data with the National Security Agency. Many statements were made about how reluctantly it was done, how outraged the executives were, but all the relevant companies – Yahoo, Google, Facebook – complied without telling us. These days it appears that the NSA is not their enemy so much as their rival; Facebook and Google are themselves apparently harvesting far more data from us than the US government. Last year, Facebook’s chief security officer went to work for the NSA, and the New York Times said the move
The white buses took up most of the four lanes of Eighth Street at Market, and their passengers were barely visible behind the tinted windows, scowling or texting or looking at their laptops for the half-hour they were delayed by the blockade. GET OFF THE BUS! JOIN US, another banner said, and the official-looking signs from the 9 December blockade were put up at either end of the Facebook bus: WARNING: INCOME GAP AHEAD the one at the front said. STOP DISPLACEMENT NOW, read the one at the back. One protester shook a sign on a stick in front of the Google bus; a young Google employee decided to dance with it, as though we were all at the same party.We weren’t. One of the curious things about the crisis in San Francisco – precipitated by a huge influx of well-paid tech workers driving up housing costs and causing evictions, gentrification and cultural change – is that they seem unable to understand why many locals don’t love them. They’re convinced that they are members of the tribe. Their confusion may issue from Silicon Valley’s own favourite stories about itself. These days in TED talks and tech-world conversation, commerce is described as art and as revolution and huge corporations are portrayed as agents of the counterculture.
That may actually have been the case, briefly, in the popular tech Genesis story according to which Apple emerged from a garage somewhere at the south end of the San Francisco Peninsula, not yet known as Silicon Valley. But Google set itself up with the help of a $4.5 million dollar government subsidy, and Apple became a giant corporation that begat multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns and overseas sweatshops and the rest that you already know. Facebook, Google, eBay and Yahoo (though not Apple) belong to the conservative anti-environmental political action committee Alec (the American Legislative Exchange Council).
The story Silicon Valley less often tells about itself has to do with dollar signs and weapons systems. The industry came out of military contracting, and its alliance with the Pentagon has never ended. The valley’s first major firm, Hewlett-Packard, was a military contractor. One of its co-founders, David Packard, was an undersecretary of defence in the Nixon administration; his signal contribution as a civil servant was a paper about overriding the laws preventing the imposition of martial law. Many defence contractors have flourished in Silicon Valley in the decades since: weapons contractors United Technologies and Lockheed Martin, as well as sundry makers of drone, satellite and spying equipment and military robotics. Silicon Valley made technology for the military, and the military sponsored research that benefited Silicon Valley. The first supercomputer, made by New York’s Remington Rand, was for nuclear weapons research at the Bay Area’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (...)
So there’s a disconnect in values and goals: Silicon Valley workers seem to want to inhabit the anti-war, social-justice, mutual-aid heart of San Francisco (and the Bay Area). To do so they often displace San Franciscans from their homes. One often hears objections: it isn’t the tech workers coming here who are carrying out the evictions. But they are moving into homes from which people have been evicted. Ivory collectors in China aren’t shooting elephants in Africa, but the elephants are being shot for them. Native sons and daughters also work in the industry, and many of the newcomers may be compassionate, progressive people, but I have seen few signs of resistance, refusal to participate, or even chagrin about their impact from within their ranks.
2013 may be the year San Francisco turned on Silicon Valley and may be the year the world did too. Edward Snowden’s revelations began to flow in June: Silicon Valley was sharing our private data with the National Security Agency. Many statements were made about how reluctantly it was done, how outraged the executives were, but all the relevant companies – Yahoo, Google, Facebook – complied without telling us. These days it appears that the NSA is not their enemy so much as their rival; Facebook and Google are themselves apparently harvesting far more data from us than the US government. Last year, Facebook’s chief security officer went to work for the NSA, and the New York Times said the move
underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyse and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans. The only difference is that the NSA does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.The corporations doing this are not the counterculture, or the underground or bohemia, only the avant-garde of an Orwellian future.
by Rebecca Solnit, LRB | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Richard Sherman being Richard Sherman. Still can't get over the Seahawks season and SB win (and neither can anyone else in Washington state).]
via:
Friday, March 7, 2014
Jennifer Lawrence And The History Of Cool Girls
What’s your favorite Jennifer Lawrence moment? When she tripped on the way to accept her Academy Award, or when the paparazzi snapped photos of her drinking Veuve Cliquot straight out of the bottle? Or maybe it was the ease with which she regaled Conan O’Brien with a tale of butt plugs, or the Vine of her spilling mints in the middle of press conference? My personal moment happened backstage at the Oscars, when, with the help of a mildly lecherous Jack Nicholson, she turned the normally banal post-win interview into a master class in charm. He sneaks up on her, she freaks and fangirls out, they do some weird flirting, and when Nicholson leaves, Lawrence just loses it: “OH MY GOD,” she gasps, her face in her hands.
And there it was, my moment: I loved her. I had admired her acting years before, in Winter’s Bone, but this was something different. From that point forward, I was powerless before her charm. But what made that exact moment — and others like it — so effective? Stars are charming all the time. Anne Hathaway, who also won an Oscar that night for Best Supporting Actress, is a veritable charm machine. But that’s just it: Hathaway seems like a very talented, very well-programmed machine, while Lawrence seems like a weird, idiosyncratic, charismatic human. She’s never polished; she’s always fucking up. On the red carpet, in paparazzi photos, and in acceptance speeches, she seems to just “be herself,” which means anything from flipping off the camera to reacting with horror when someone spoils Season 3 of Homeland on the red carpet. She is the living, breathing embodiment of Us Weekly’s “Stars: They’re Just Like Us.”
But is Jennifer Lawrence really just like us? (...)
But, no, she’s not like us. She’s like a perfect character out of a book. Specifically, a book by Gillian Flynn called Gone Girl (currently being developed into a David Fincher movie), in which a main character describes a very particular yet familiar archetype:
The Cool Girl never nags, or “just wants one” of your chili fries, because she orders a giant order for herself. She’s an ideal that matches the times — a mix of feminism and passivity, of confidence and femininity. She knows what she wants, and what she wants is to hang out with the guys.
Cool Girls don’t have the hang-ups of normal girls: They don’t get bogged down by the patriarchy, or worrying about their weight. They’re basically dudes masquerading in beautiful women’s bodies, reaping the privileges of both. But let’s be clear: It’s a performance. It might not be a conscious one, but it’s the way our society implicitly instructs young women on how to be awesome: Be chill and don’t be a downer, act like a dude but look like a supermodel.
And there it was, my moment: I loved her. I had admired her acting years before, in Winter’s Bone, but this was something different. From that point forward, I was powerless before her charm. But what made that exact moment — and others like it — so effective? Stars are charming all the time. Anne Hathaway, who also won an Oscar that night for Best Supporting Actress, is a veritable charm machine. But that’s just it: Hathaway seems like a very talented, very well-programmed machine, while Lawrence seems like a weird, idiosyncratic, charismatic human. She’s never polished; she’s always fucking up. On the red carpet, in paparazzi photos, and in acceptance speeches, she seems to just “be herself,” which means anything from flipping off the camera to reacting with horror when someone spoils Season 3 of Homeland on the red carpet. She is the living, breathing embodiment of Us Weekly’s “Stars: They’re Just Like Us.”But is Jennifer Lawrence really just like us? (...)
But, no, she’s not like us. She’s like a perfect character out of a book. Specifically, a book by Gillian Flynn called Gone Girl (currently being developed into a David Fincher movie), in which a main character describes a very particular yet familiar archetype:
“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”The Cool Girl has many variations: She can have tattoos, she can be into comics, she might be really into climbing or pickling vegetables. She’s always down to party, or do something spontaneous like drive all night to go to a secret concert. Her body, skin, face, and hair all look effortless and natural — the Cool Girl doesn’t even know what an elliptical machine would look like — and wears a uniform of jeans and tank tops, because trying hard isn’t Cool. The Cool Girl has a super-sexy ponytail.
The Cool Girl never nags, or “just wants one” of your chili fries, because she orders a giant order for herself. She’s an ideal that matches the times — a mix of feminism and passivity, of confidence and femininity. She knows what she wants, and what she wants is to hang out with the guys.
Cool Girls don’t have the hang-ups of normal girls: They don’t get bogged down by the patriarchy, or worrying about their weight. They’re basically dudes masquerading in beautiful women’s bodies, reaping the privileges of both. But let’s be clear: It’s a performance. It might not be a conscious one, but it’s the way our society implicitly instructs young women on how to be awesome: Be chill and don’t be a downer, act like a dude but look like a supermodel.
by Anne Helen Petersen, BuzzFeed | Read more:
Image: Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images
Who Killed the Romantic Comedy?
Once, she'd been worth a fortune — at least $100 million, according to her friends, who sat at home and rewatched tapes of her at her prime. Every woman had wanted to be her: Julia, Meg, Sandra, Reese. Not anymore.
The romantic comedy is dead.
In 1997, there were two romantic comedies among the top twenty box-office performers. In 1998 and 1999, there were three. Each cracked $100 million in sales. Even as recently as 2005, five romantic comedies topped $100 million at the box office.
Contrast that with 2013: There's not one romantic comedy in the top 50 films. Not even in the top 100.
Men and women are still falling in love, of course. They're just not doing it onscreen — and if they do, it's no laughing matter. In today's comedies, they're either casually hooking up or already married. These are comedies of exasperation, not infatuation.
It's not only that audiences are refusing to see romantic comedies. It's that romantic comedies aren't getting made, at least not by the major studios. The Big Wedding, 2013's sole boy-meets-girl-meets-matrimony comedy, was unceremoniously dumped into theaters by big indie Lionsgate and limped to No. 101 on the chart.
What happened?
As in an Agatha Christie novel, there are many suspects. Some observers blame men who think they'll lose testosterone if they buy tickets to any movie with a whiff of chick flick about it. Still others argue that as a culture we've simply stopped believing in love.
But when we set out sleuthing for the smoking gun, the plot thickened: Those usual suspects have airtight alibis. As with any good murder mystery, the truth is both more complicated than you might have assumed — and a whole lot simpler.
The romantic comedy is dead.In 1997, there were two romantic comedies among the top twenty box-office performers. In 1998 and 1999, there were three. Each cracked $100 million in sales. Even as recently as 2005, five romantic comedies topped $100 million at the box office.
Contrast that with 2013: There's not one romantic comedy in the top 50 films. Not even in the top 100.
Men and women are still falling in love, of course. They're just not doing it onscreen — and if they do, it's no laughing matter. In today's comedies, they're either casually hooking up or already married. These are comedies of exasperation, not infatuation.
It's not only that audiences are refusing to see romantic comedies. It's that romantic comedies aren't getting made, at least not by the major studios. The Big Wedding, 2013's sole boy-meets-girl-meets-matrimony comedy, was unceremoniously dumped into theaters by big indie Lionsgate and limped to No. 101 on the chart.
What happened?
As in an Agatha Christie novel, there are many suspects. Some observers blame men who think they'll lose testosterone if they buy tickets to any movie with a whiff of chick flick about it. Still others argue that as a culture we've simply stopped believing in love.
But when we set out sleuthing for the smoking gun, the plot thickened: Those usual suspects have airtight alibis. As with any good murder mystery, the truth is both more complicated than you might have assumed — and a whole lot simpler.
by Amy Nicholson, Riverfront Times | Read more:
Image: Tim Gabor
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Seniors
My friends and I are turning fifty-nine this year. I know—unbelievable, right? Seems like just yesterday we were fifty and trying to figure out how to dress, what car to drive, what sort of laptop to use. Now we’re like, fifty-nine. It’s so cool. I went into the Minetta Tavern the other night with no reservation and they looked at me and you could tell they were all like, better get a booth for this guy. I don’t make a big thing out of it but, of course, I enjoy it.
The only bad part, I have to admit, is that there is a certain type of person… How can I put this? A certain type of younger person who doesn’t always totally get that when you’re fifty-nine you expect things to go a certain way—not because you’re snobby or think you’re super cool but just because that’s the way things are. And the type of person I’m talking about—I don’t really know a polite way to say this—is a particular kind of fifty-six-year-old.
I’m not saying this about all fifty-six-year-olds by any means. My sister is fifty-six and she’s great. She and her friends are into their things and they don’t try to push it on me and my friends. They care about whose daughter is getting married to whom and my friends and I talk about prostate exams—and there’s no us trying to get into their bridal discussions or them wanting to know if Cialis really makes you puke. They respect the boundaries.
But not all fifty-six-year-olds get it. Like, the other night my friends and I went to the Knicks game and then we all went to Monkey Bar and got a big table. There were seven of us at a table for eight. So we’re sitting there talking about whether Mannix was a better detective than Ironside and up comes this fifty-six-year-old I know from work and he says, “Hey! Is this seat taken?” Nobody says anything. I’m embarrassed because I know him sort of and he just plops down in the empty chair and tries to jump into the conversation. But he can’t because he really doesn’t know anything about Ironside and Mannix so he starts trying to turn the discussion to “Starsky and Hutch.” Everybody gets quiet while this kid just talks himself into a corner and finally Hornoff leans across the table and says, “Look, we all got our drivers licenses in 1971. Nobody here ever watched ‘Starsky and Hutch.’ ” And the kid just acts like, oh no big deal and asks me if I’m going to finish my French fries.
This sort of thing happens more than you’d think.
by Bill Flanagan, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Colin Hawkins/Getty
The only bad part, I have to admit, is that there is a certain type of person… How can I put this? A certain type of younger person who doesn’t always totally get that when you’re fifty-nine you expect things to go a certain way—not because you’re snobby or think you’re super cool but just because that’s the way things are. And the type of person I’m talking about—I don’t really know a polite way to say this—is a particular kind of fifty-six-year-old.I’m not saying this about all fifty-six-year-olds by any means. My sister is fifty-six and she’s great. She and her friends are into their things and they don’t try to push it on me and my friends. They care about whose daughter is getting married to whom and my friends and I talk about prostate exams—and there’s no us trying to get into their bridal discussions or them wanting to know if Cialis really makes you puke. They respect the boundaries.
But not all fifty-six-year-olds get it. Like, the other night my friends and I went to the Knicks game and then we all went to Monkey Bar and got a big table. There were seven of us at a table for eight. So we’re sitting there talking about whether Mannix was a better detective than Ironside and up comes this fifty-six-year-old I know from work and he says, “Hey! Is this seat taken?” Nobody says anything. I’m embarrassed because I know him sort of and he just plops down in the empty chair and tries to jump into the conversation. But he can’t because he really doesn’t know anything about Ironside and Mannix so he starts trying to turn the discussion to “Starsky and Hutch.” Everybody gets quiet while this kid just talks himself into a corner and finally Hornoff leans across the table and says, “Look, we all got our drivers licenses in 1971. Nobody here ever watched ‘Starsky and Hutch.’ ” And the kid just acts like, oh no big deal and asks me if I’m going to finish my French fries.
This sort of thing happens more than you’d think.
by Bill Flanagan, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Colin Hawkins/Getty
Confessions Of A Nail-Biter
My mom suspended her college education in order to have kids, and so I was five years old when she finally received her bachelor's degree. We drove down to her school for a tasteful graduation luncheon. I remember they had free soda. At some point, while my mom was mingling with her classmates, I took a bite of the side of my thumbnail and began to tear it away, but I bit too close to the cuticle and so, to my horror, about half the nail began to rip off. I couldn't alter the path of the tear. There is, at times, a point in ripping off a nail where pain ensues, and I had reached it.
I tried to pull the nail upward but that only made things worse. Blood began spurting out. I got it on my shirt and soaked the little cocktail napkin they give you whenever you go somewhere classy. I couldn't stop the bleeding and my thumb hurt like a bitch, so eventually I did the sensible thing and dunked my thumb in my Coke and kept it there for the rest of the afternoon. And yes, I kept drinking the Coke, because I was a little fat kid and a little blood ain't gonna stop a fat kid from drinking Coke. By the end of day, I had a wrinkled, puffy thumb that wouldn't stop bleeding. It looked like a corpse thumb.
I have many bad habits: booze, swearing, overeating, excessive onanism, etc. But biting my nails is the bad habit I have had the longest and the one that causes me the greatest amount of shame. It's a repulsive, disgusting habit. There's nothing good about it. At least when you smoke, you look kinda cool. No one looks cool biting their nails. No one's hands are improved by nibbling on their fingertips. There's no buzz. There's no high. You don't lose inhibitions when you bite your nails. There are no wild biting orgies to reminisce about with your friends. It's just you abusing yourself for reasons you have long since forgotten. (...)
There are ways of quitting this habit. You can buy that stuff to put on your nails that makes them taste nasty. You can cover your bitten nails with acrylic nails. You can get hypnotized. But as with any other addiction, you have to truly WANT to quit in order to succeed, and there is a terminal laziness in me that keeps that desire at bay. If you bite your nails long enough, you develop a form of OCD in which you begin to go stir crazy if you just leave your nails be, especially if you think there's an uneven part that needs to be edged out or a piece of loose skin that needs to be addressed.
This will sound like bullshit, but I often bite my nails in the hopes of IMPROVING them. Like, if I just strip that little part off, it'll look okay! And then it tears wrong and I realize I've eaten myself into a corner. Either I keep ripping or I leave the nail alone and I can NEVER leave it alone. I can't leave it hanging off my finger and I cant clip it so that it looks like my nail has a cliff face. Those are not options in my world.
I tried to pull the nail upward but that only made things worse. Blood began spurting out. I got it on my shirt and soaked the little cocktail napkin they give you whenever you go somewhere classy. I couldn't stop the bleeding and my thumb hurt like a bitch, so eventually I did the sensible thing and dunked my thumb in my Coke and kept it there for the rest of the afternoon. And yes, I kept drinking the Coke, because I was a little fat kid and a little blood ain't gonna stop a fat kid from drinking Coke. By the end of day, I had a wrinkled, puffy thumb that wouldn't stop bleeding. It looked like a corpse thumb.I have many bad habits: booze, swearing, overeating, excessive onanism, etc. But biting my nails is the bad habit I have had the longest and the one that causes me the greatest amount of shame. It's a repulsive, disgusting habit. There's nothing good about it. At least when you smoke, you look kinda cool. No one looks cool biting their nails. No one's hands are improved by nibbling on their fingertips. There's no buzz. There's no high. You don't lose inhibitions when you bite your nails. There are no wild biting orgies to reminisce about with your friends. It's just you abusing yourself for reasons you have long since forgotten. (...)
There are ways of quitting this habit. You can buy that stuff to put on your nails that makes them taste nasty. You can cover your bitten nails with acrylic nails. You can get hypnotized. But as with any other addiction, you have to truly WANT to quit in order to succeed, and there is a terminal laziness in me that keeps that desire at bay. If you bite your nails long enough, you develop a form of OCD in which you begin to go stir crazy if you just leave your nails be, especially if you think there's an uneven part that needs to be edged out or a piece of loose skin that needs to be addressed.
This will sound like bullshit, but I often bite my nails in the hopes of IMPROVING them. Like, if I just strip that little part off, it'll look okay! And then it tears wrong and I realize I've eaten myself into a corner. Either I keep ripping or I leave the nail alone and I can NEVER leave it alone. I can't leave it hanging off my finger and I cant clip it so that it looks like my nail has a cliff face. Those are not options in my world.
by Drew Magary, Deadspin | Read more:
Image: Jim Cooke
Wearable Tech Gets Fashionable
Wearable electronics have been stuck in a design rut. Bulky watches, bright wristbands and Roman-gladiator-meets-the-Jetsons arm straps have been the go-to look for manufacturers like Nike and Jawbone.
But these wearable gadgets — often a dull representation of function over form — are finally getting a fashion-industry makeover.
Fitbit, the maker of the Fitbit One and Flex, has teamed with the designer Tory Burch to make new trackers that look like stylish jewelry. In January, Intel started a wearable design competition that will award a total of $1.25 million in prize money. (Intel also signaled its seriousness about wearable tech this week by purchasing the fitness tracker company Basis for a reported $100 million, so look for new design ideas in future Basis products).
And a handful of companies are already shipping wearable electronics that look less like athletic gear and more like well-chosen accessories.
I’ve spent the last two weeks wearing the Shine tracker by Misfit Wearables. It’s a small, tough, aluminum disc that can be worn several ways. The standard kit includes the tracker (in black, blue, gold or silver), a magnetic clip for attaching it to clothing or shoes, and a black rubber athletic wristband.
You can also buy accessories like a leather wristband and a necklace. You simply pop the magnetized disc into the various accessories to change the look. The Shine is highly water-resistant, so it’s a good option for use while swimming. And it doesn’t need to be charged because it runs on a coin cell battery for up to six months — you can change the battery when it runs out.
Sonny Vu, Misfit’s chief executive, said his team spent months researching wearable tech to figure out the right design and found a wide range of results. For example, he said, neither men nor women wanted to clip devices to their shoes when they weren’t cycling or running because, Mr. Vu said, “your shoes are the foundation of your fashion.”
In another surprising discovery, he said that in one survey of 2,000 women, a large percentage said they wouldn’t wear a wristband because it created tan lines.
“If we only think about the wrist, we will definitely be limiting our imagination,” Mr. Vu said. “You can do a heck of a lot at the wrist, but you will be limiting the people who will use it. The body is such a sacred place that you really have to think this through.”
But these wearable gadgets — often a dull representation of function over form — are finally getting a fashion-industry makeover.Fitbit, the maker of the Fitbit One and Flex, has teamed with the designer Tory Burch to make new trackers that look like stylish jewelry. In January, Intel started a wearable design competition that will award a total of $1.25 million in prize money. (Intel also signaled its seriousness about wearable tech this week by purchasing the fitness tracker company Basis for a reported $100 million, so look for new design ideas in future Basis products).
And a handful of companies are already shipping wearable electronics that look less like athletic gear and more like well-chosen accessories.
I’ve spent the last two weeks wearing the Shine tracker by Misfit Wearables. It’s a small, tough, aluminum disc that can be worn several ways. The standard kit includes the tracker (in black, blue, gold or silver), a magnetic clip for attaching it to clothing or shoes, and a black rubber athletic wristband.
You can also buy accessories like a leather wristband and a necklace. You simply pop the magnetized disc into the various accessories to change the look. The Shine is highly water-resistant, so it’s a good option for use while swimming. And it doesn’t need to be charged because it runs on a coin cell battery for up to six months — you can change the battery when it runs out.
Sonny Vu, Misfit’s chief executive, said his team spent months researching wearable tech to figure out the right design and found a wide range of results. For example, he said, neither men nor women wanted to clip devices to their shoes when they weren’t cycling or running because, Mr. Vu said, “your shoes are the foundation of your fashion.”
In another surprising discovery, he said that in one survey of 2,000 women, a large percentage said they wouldn’t wear a wristband because it created tan lines.
“If we only think about the wrist, we will definitely be limiting our imagination,” Mr. Vu said. “You can do a heck of a lot at the wrist, but you will be limiting the people who will use it. The body is such a sacred place that you really have to think this through.”
by Molly Wood, NY Times | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Disenfranchised
Bhupinder “Bob” Baber bought two Quiznos franchises in Long Beach, California, in 1998 and 1999. His investment totaled $500,000, and Baber’s wife, Ratty, quit her job to work at the restaurants for no pay. The Babers did this because, as Bob would later recall, he “trusted in Quiznos.” But, as he soon found out, being a franchisee can be a very swift and painful way to lose a lot of money.
Over the past year, thousands of fast-food workers have staged protests and rallies for a higher hourly wage. As they see it, big corporations like McDonald’s and Domino’s can well afford to pay workers more. But the vast majority of these workers don’t work for these giants. They work for people like Bob Baber. Franchisees don’t enjoy the market powers and economies of scale of their parent companies. Rather, they run small businesses with narrow profit margins, high failure rates, and plenty of anti-corporate grievances of their own. Anyone who wants to help immiserated fast-food workers, in other words, also needs to spare a few thoughts for their immiserated bosses. That means reforming the deeply troublesome franchise system. (...)In the 20th century, businesses began to see the value of franchising in the service sector. Howard Johnson used franchising in the 1930s, and Ray Kroc built an empire on McDonald’s franchises in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Today, fast food is sold almost entirely through franchises. Worldwide, franchises represent about 80 percent of McDonald’s restaurants, 95 percent of Burger King restaurants, and 100 percent of Subway restaurants. (The rest are usually company-owned flagship restaurants in high-profile locations or restaurants relinquished by one franchisee and not yet assigned to another.)
The positioning of franchisees between fast-food workers and large fast-food companies is part of a larger trend within the economy that might be termed (with apologies to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) “the devolution of the proletariat.” As the Boston College law professor Kent Greenfield observes, corporations and even the federal government have learned to use “suppliers, subsidiaries, franchisees, contractors, to avoid responsibility” for the welfare of those at the bottom of what business schools call the “value chain.” The low- wage jobs are offloaded onto smaller entities. Making things worse for workers is a lack of opportunities to move up the corporate ladder, since a burger-flipper doesn’t actually work for the company whose logo decorates his uniform. (...)
Despite such stories, people still buy into the franchise dream. For many Americans, owning a franchise seems like a starter kit for being your own boss as a small-business owner. You have the benefit of riding on a well-established national brand, and all you have to do is manage the shop. But a 1997 study by Timothy Bates, an economist at Wayne State University, concluded that “entering self-employment by purchasing an ongoing franchise operation is riskier than alternative routes.” A 2007 study commissioned by franchisors found that franchisees had higher failure rates on Small Business Administration loans than non-franchisees. If everything goes right for a fast-food franchisee, he might enjoy a profit margin of about 10 to 12 percent, but a profit margin in the single digits is far more common. By contrast, at the corporate level, McDonald’s enjoys a profit margin around 20 percent.
by Timothy Noah, Pacific Standard | Read more:
Image: Quiznos Public Domain
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