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Gyllenhaal! Spader! From a short story by Mary Gaitskill.

A long time ago we read Nothing But You, a collection of love stories from the New Yorker. The anthology includes some emotionally-charged work by V.S. Pritchett, William Trevor, Mavis Gallant and other masters of the story. Our favorites are the Laurie Colwin story A Country Wedding, which became part of the Frank and Billy stories (much like Salinger’s A Slight Rebellion Off Madison became part of The Catcher in the Rye); The Nice Restaurant by Mary Gaitskill, with its memorable closing line (“..the bright beauty of the massive flower arrangement fairly hit her in the eye.”), Woody Allen’s The Kugelmass Episode, which we’d memorized before it was anthologized, and How To Give The Wrong Impression by Katherine Heiny, whom we were reading for the first time.

That story stood out from the rest because it had a feeling of giddiness, the kind rom-coms aim for but hardly ever manage. We looked forward to reading more from Katherine Heiny.

Just as we were about to forget, she released her first collection of stories, Single, Carefree, Mellow. Bookstores, please stock up. Yes, we can get the e-book right now, but we want that fresh ink on paper smell.

The audiobook publisher put out an excerpt:

Remember: Not every thought that crosses your head is for public consumption.

Photo illustration by Andrew B. Myers. Prop stylist: Sonia Rentsch.

As she made the long journey from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013, Justine Sacco, 30 years old and the senior director of corporate communications at IAC, began tweeting acerbic little jokes about the indignities of travel. There was one about a fellow passenger on the flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport:

“?‘Weird German Dude: You’re in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.’ — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals.”

Continue reading How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Sacco’s Life in the NYT.

This is the old pillory.

John Waller in pillory. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Photo from the National Geographic

From Closer by Patrick Marber

Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist, wrapped in blood! Go fuck yourself!

Admittedly, I saw the movie because I expected it to be awful. In fact I wanted it to be terrible, because it’s fun to write reviews of bad movies, especially if they have legions of clueless, sensitive defenders. Now I wish it were awful, not just because it’s deathly boring, but because its core audience will probably agree with me. I am united with the 50 Shades fandom, Noooooo!

Even before the movie opened, media outlets had noted the lack of chemistry between the leads, Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. Dakota, daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, looks very much like her dad, so if you have a Miami Vice fetish, the movie might work for you. However, she has none of her parents’ rude vitality. Okay, she’s a bit of a clod—Don Johnson as a manang—but that is the point of the book, that a plain-seeming, ordinary girl would have something that a hot billionaire cannot find elsewhere. Don’t ask me what it is, I skipped entire chapters.

Read our review at InterAksyon.com.

“Anastasia” made us think of the Prince song “Anna Stesia”, which is sexier than the entire movie we just saw. (We took out the thing that doesn’t stop playing, but you can listen to it here.)

Mat may be nearsighted. He also pretends to be afraid of heights. Sometimes we catch him prowling the tops of the shelves.

We’re myopic, so when printed signs are not near enough for us to read, our brain notes the shape of the letters and makes a guess. Today we saw a Valentine event poster that said “A Calibration of Love”. This struck us as admirably unsentimental for our gooey culture. It sounds like something our druid might say while wielding her slide rule to club stupid people unconscious. Then we realized that the text was “A Celebration of Love” haha. Nearsightedness has its advantages.