I used to read Vanity Fair occasionally, and I didn't particularly relate to it all that much, but I thought a lot of the writing was good. I couldn't put my finger on it, though, about why I read it and I always felt like I ate something bitter afterwards. And then Christopher Hitchens wrote his "Why Women Aren't Funny" article (which I didn't realize was him until years later, which kind of broke my heart because I loved his writing) and then I was so mad I stopped buying it for years.

I was mildly interested when Graydon Carter left and then there was a bit of fluffy controversy over the new editor's fox tights. And then Anna Wintour, fashion boss, just ended it by gifting everyone at the party fox tights. 

Anyway, I read the NYT interview with Graydon Carter, and he just comes off as so condescending about Vanity Fair's current direction that II decided to check out the current front page. 

The lead article is the Jeffrey Epstein private island story, and 6 of the 7 articles on the front page are written by women. Also surprised to see further down that they covered the knife attack on Simon Yam-Tat-Wah, a famous and prolific Hong Kong actor. I'd only read stories about him in the FB subtle asian traits group. 

Anyway, it's worth reading the Vanity Fair interview with Queer Eye's Karamo Brown, as he does go into detail on one of the most intense scenes in the series, where a black man, paralyzed by bullets, confronts the person who attacked him, and they both come out the better for it. 

Just read:

Roger Ebert's I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie - I adore Ebert, but I really do not need him to tell me what he finds erotic. There's a reason why MOST movie critics don't talk about it, Ebert. Anyway, overall, the book was really funny, and mostly well-written. He gets so hung up on logic sometimes, though, that I think he forgets to actually talk about the movie. Who cares what the alien bugs do or don't eat?

Marc Romano's Crossworld: One Man's Journey into America's Crossword Obsession. This book is not about all crosswords, but about one reporter's attendance of a crossword tournament run by Will Shortz, the guy who edits the New York Times puzzles. This is a fluffy and dorky book. I finished it over two train rides, and thought it was okay but not great. At least I found out why I couldn't finish any of the crossword puzzles in one particular book I bought my last year of college. It was probably edited by Eugene Maleska, who was apparently this puzzle editor who didn't like people putting in clues that are relevant after 1960.

Independent Publishing Deathwatch:
My magazine holders are starting to hold a lot of dead magazines. I have the following: Budget Living, Kitchen Sink, Arthur Frommer's Smart Shopping, and now Punk Planet. However, not everything is dead. I would totally subscribe to Monocle, if only it weren't so damn expensive.

Just watched:

John From Cincinnati - I didn't like this first episode much at all; this whole "mysterious stranger changes the lives of a family" felt like it was just trying way too hard to be weird and mysterious. I wasn't buying it.

Top Chef - The first episode seemed promising. I hated Hung, the guy who's friends with Marcel from Season 2. I know they're angling that guy as "person you love to hate", but I just hate him not only for being smug, but for trying too hard to be smug.

Mark playing Nintendo games. So I guess the patents on the games expired? He bought this console thingamajig and bought some games like Zelda to return to his childhood. He has a PS2 and he hasn't touched that in 2 years. But he brought this home last night and it's like he can't stop. It's so cute.

Online:
Virtual China's blog post on child slave labor in China.
Global Voices post on slave labor in Shanxi.

MediaShift interview with Samir Husni, aka Mr. Magazine.  Mr. Magazine's blog.

I am so spoiled. Mark is making me dinner, and I got home-made cupcakes from one of my co-workers. I have the lazy:

• As a small present to myself, I bought Missbehave magazine. (Warning: website has music.) It is so adorable. It's like Sassy, but with hip hop self-confidence instead of indie insecurity. It's even published right out of Brooklyn, and the editor-in-chief's last name is Choi! So nice.
• I typically implement a news ban around my birthday. I have no desire to re-live the horrors of past years, but I couldn't avoid seeing the news about the Virginia Tech gunman. I read some article (I forget where) which naively described the feeling of relief that each ethnic group found out it "wasn't us". Which is such bullshit, if people actually think most Americans give a shit about the difference between Korean and Chinese or Vietnamese. It's all the same to them.
  
• Really good post on the suck that is American immigration.

A Whiter Shade of Guile - Joe Queenan writes about the whole white-people-save-black-people-from-themselves movies, and in a really funny way. "If there is anything black people the world over have learned from Hollywood - and there isn't a whole lot - it's that no matter how bleak the situation seems, they can always rely on some resourceful, charismatic and, in some instances, shapely white person to bail them out."

It's been a long time since I've read Queenan, who was snark-incarnate before "snark" became the most overused word on the Internet. I remember him because he used to write for Movieline - the well-written, funny, honest magazine before it got bought out and turned into a worse version of Premiere. Before it got bought out, Movieline was (in)famous for its annual sex issues, and the Jennifer Lopez interview where she insulted almost everyone in Hollywood before she broke out.

Dammit, now I'm on a total nostalgia trip. Salon did a short profile of the magazine some years back. Some of my other favorite writers from that era of magazine-goodness were Stephen Rebello - see interview with Steven Soderbergh, and Martha Frankel - see interview with Christopher Walken, who I also remembered for her interview of Leonardo DiCaprio before he hit it big, and for her rant about how Hollywood portrays pregnancy in movies. I can't find that article, but I remember her revealing that she and her best friend started taking birth control pills before they even really knew what sex was because they were so freaked out by the consequences of Hollywood-depicted sex. There's one part where she describes a movie where the protagonist has to decide whether to save the baby, which means the mother will die, or save the mother and the baby will die and the lead of course decides to save the baby because killing the baby would be a sin and she writes something like "These are my choices? No thanks!"

And there was also Edward Margulies, the former editor, who also co-wrote a feature with Stephen Rebello called "Bad Movies We Love".

Good stuff.

1. Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton - I was going to read Bill Clinton's, but do you know how heavy that thing is? I didn't think much of the implications on reading it until I got to the part where they hold the International Women's Forum in Beijing and the Chinese government censors her speech. It made for some interesting reading, and while I don't exactly believe that she's telling the whole truth in the book, some of the things she said were very apt. Some of her choices, though - how in hell did she think she wouldn't piss anyone off by being involved in health-care and having closed-door sessions? I read the health-care sections very carefully, but I could never figure out what she was actually trying to accomplish with her project. And I can't get over how she goes on and on about free speech and doesn't see the irony of trying to censor video games.
2. 2001 Best American Magazine Writing - The best articles were the profiles - of Ron Popeil, the guy who sells stuff on QVC, of Robert Parker, wine expert, although I thought the Rolling Stone profile of John McCain as a maverick presidential candidate was a bit overrated. The best and most comprehensive story was Time's exposure of campaign financing and how innocent people get shafted by credit-card companies, small businesses get obliterated because banana companies contribute extraordinary amounts to both parties, legalized sports gambling in Nevada contributes to illegal activities everywhere else. It was a very engaging and entertaining collection. Maybe I'll be able to pick up more of the series later.
3. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - Also engaging and entertaining fantasy about the apocalypse, or the rush to prevent it. It's funny, in a very British way. I am, however, starting to be a little sick of all the stories reinventing Christian apocalyptic themes. There's only so many times I can read about Beezlebub and Metatron and how angels do stuff. I haven't even finished Angel Sanctuary yet! Anyway - this is a note to avoid novels for the next year with apocalyptic themes.

Currently I'm just stressed out. I may be the only full-time employee in my department soon. We'll see how fast my boss can hire someone else, but I am so wary of training someone else on this stuff...

Anyway - I have some thoughts that are eating my brain but I am too hungry to link to anything:

1. Some people pointed me to the stupid Forbes article advising men not to marry "career women". Salon had a decent rebuttal.
2. There's a picture floating around of George Bush rubbing some black guy's head for luck. No, it's not photoshopped.
3. East Bay Express continues to investigate the coming merger of several newspapers under one company. I forget whose it is, but the latest development is that the Bill Gates foundation has contributed significantly to it, although the details are confidential. I find this ironic because currently the San Francisco Bay Guardian - the East Bay Express' competitor, is suing their owner, New Times Media, for selling their ads at a ridiculously low price and undercutting the competition. Anyway, SFBG has been making the same complaints about New Times Media ever since it bought up East Bay Express, SFWeekly, and the Village Voice that East Bay Express is making about the new, mainstream merger.
4. Speaking of East Bay Express, this week's cover story ticked me off. It was ostensibly about the new class of wine buyer (young, cheap, and unpretentious) and how no one caters to them. And then at the end it turned into a shill for the launch of their new wine review column. Bleh.
5. I'm media-obsessed, always. I just read today that the editor of Dwell magazine stepped down, because of her personal conflicts with the direction the magazine is going. I have a one year supply of the magazine, which I got because of my membership in MOCA, and I loved it. It was about people expressing their passion for a topic that they championed and loved, and was all about finding practical solutions for average homeowners, not just upscale millionaires. Dwell itself, right after the editor quit, announced a "re-organization". I haven't picked up Dwell in a while, but I believe it's gotten bigger, and their circulation has actually grown, which is highly unusual in the volatile magazine market.
6. Another interesting development was that Marie Claire changed editors and hired a former journalist for editor-in-chief. I bought the latest issue, and it had Maggie Gyllenhaal on the cover. The big deal, it seemed, was the editor ripping into Ashley Simpson for talking about being proud of how you look and then after the interview went to print, she went and got a nose job. The direction's supposed to be more political, "smarter", and more informed, while still being about fashion. It would be a relief from the Bonnie Fuller makeovers, that's for sure, but I was really disappointed in the fashion spread with different political figures like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, etc. Ok, I get that it's about fashion, but you couldn't have asked them any political questions?
7. Project Runway - the judges' comments about Michael Knight are driving me up the wall. "I love that he thinks!" "He's SO smart!" I'm just waiting for them to say, "He's so articulate!" I hate the Cardassian even more after watching the latest episode.
8. It's going to be the last season of Scrubs! Grr...
9. Currently making creme brulee for tomorrow. It's such a finicky dish to make, but I love cracking the burnt sugar.

Embarrassment - finding your junior high yearbook and looking at the picture of you when you were thirteen and your mom still cut your hair and gave you crooked bangs that still covered your eyes anyway. God, that's so painful. Why oh why didn't I just fix the damn bangs?

I've reneged on my no new magazines promise to myself and bought the latest issue of GiantRobot. Holy shit, one of them got married? They opened a gallery in San Francisco? (The newest one is on Shrader.) How much more could they possibly take on?

I should just get a subscription already. The highlight of this issue for me was Daniel Wu's article talking how he decided to form his own boy band with friends and document the process. I've been downloading the Quicktime links from their band website, and the article answers some questions, but not all. Like, the press boycott of the group is mentioned in one sentence. And you can find out here why Daniel hates the press over there so much. If you think the paparazzi are soulless pricks here, the Hong Kong version is a million times worse - they have no compunction about going through garbage, staking out people's homes - they probably don't even need long-lens cameras for their work.

The music sucks, even by Canto-pop boy band standards. Terence Yin is the only one who can sing, and every time they go off-key, they jokingly blame Daniel for it. They can't dance, either. Oh, and they covered Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time. In English. They probably didn't get permission, either.

Daniel's Cantonese got a lot better. His accent used to bug me, reminding me of my own increasingly Americanized Cantonese. I think he should come back to the States to do movies, but that's just me. :P

I first saw him in Purple Storm, in which he plays a Cambodian terrorist who loses his memory and some Hong Kong psychologist decides to implant memories in his subconscious so that he will be a good person. It's a decent action movie, with a little bit of incredulous sci-fi thrown into the mix.

I have to get my hands on Bishonen.