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Wednesday, June 26, 2002 ( 11:23 PM ) Girl Detective Icons through the Ages, part deux. The first Madonna video I watched was Holiday. This was Madonna on her way, prior to the huge break that she would find with the Like a Virgin album. Nonetheless, the bottle blond with the tight dress and multiple crosses caught my attention and I was not surprised at her subsequent quick rise to fame. I bought her first LP and Like a Virgin. I dressed in pink, grey and that pale, turquoise-y blue. I wore lace tank tops and anklets. I cut my hair off on one side (which was actually Cyndi Lauper, not Madonna) and frequented the mall and specifically the Limited. I wore bustiers to augment my A-cup chest. Madonna emerged at about the same time as my hormones did. Looking back at photos it was not a winning combination. Over the years my appreciation waned but never died. I skipped an album or two along the way, but caught up with the Immaculate Collection. I watched Nightline for the first time when they showed the video for "Justify my Love" that MTV had banned. I found nothing that interesting about her album or the book Sex and for several years I forgot about her. Ray of Light brought her back into my world. Suddenly there was a honey-blond icon, singing about yoga and spirituality, with a cute, younger boyfriend. These were things that were part of my life, too. Colleagues at the bookstore where I worked would play Ray of Light before we opened. At first we sang along embarrassed, but it wasn't long before we were belting out songs at the top of our lungs. Madonna had a second kid and then a chic wedding in Scotland. It was then that I realized the truth. She was an icon for me when I was young--a woman open and unapologetic about her sexual power. And she's an icon for me as an adult--a woman who doesn't conform to outmoded ideas of marriage and motherhood. I worry that by the time I'm ready (IF I'm ready) to have a kid that it will be too late. And according to the media (even the latest issue of BUST magazine) it might already be too late. Time's a wastin', apparently. Yet I look to Madonna and take some comfort. She's not perfect. But she's a good example to me of a woman who's made some mistakes over the years but changed over the long haul for the better. And since bringing a kid into the world is serious business, I don't want to be pressured into it by guilt or fear. What kind of emotional environment is that? Instead, I'll wait till I'm ready (or not). I'll wait to see what the next several decades will hold for Madonna. And for me. | Tuesday, June 25, 2002 ( 9:41 PM ) Girl Detective Adventures in Service, part deux Why is a bird in the hand not worth two in the bush? And why is it that when there are three good sushi restaurants within walking distance and one excellent one a short drive away, that I was unable to resist the urge to try the new sushi place? I knew nothing at all about it other than its location. I could have waited for it to be reviewed, so I would know what to expect. But a girl detective's mission is to explore unknown mysteries, and that seemed as good a reason as any to try the new place. My husband G. Grod and I were joined by friends M. Giant and his wife Trash. Japanese is a strange choice for them since M. Giant doesn't like sushi and Trash, though fond of veggie rolls, doesn't eat fish. But Trash had leapt on my suggestion to try the new place like [insert desperation metaphor of your choice here]. Apparently she really is fond of veggie rolls, and as M. is really fond of her, he is a good sport about occasional Japanese dinners. Not-really-that-early on a Friday night, we threaded our way to the back corner though a sea of deserted tables. Oh, you may think, nobody sits at tables at a Japanese restaurant, what about the bar. No one was at the bar. Once seated, we had a brief moment to ourselves, and didn't know yet how we should have treasured it. The decor of the restaurant was black, blond wood and metal, with variations in the lighting. We agreed that it looked pretty cool and then resumed the saucy conversation we'd begun outside about one of those sexual practices that no one admits to but that most people can somehow still maintain a conversation about. No sooner had we resumed our discussion than a very young woman appeared tableside. "What were you talking about?" she demanded eagerly. "Please tell me. I'm so bored." I checked to make sure that someone else's little sister was not masquerading as our server, but no, she had on an outfit and a name tag. A moment of uncomfortable silence ensued. Rather than asking us what we wanted to drink, she pressed on. "Come on. I'll tell you a story if you tell me." Again, silence as we noticed that we were seated next to an alcove to the kitchen, where the waitstaff presumably lurked, ready to pounce upon unwary, saucy-talking tables such as our own. She waved a bandaged finger in front of our faces. "Don't you want to know what happened to me today?" Uncomfortable shifting in seats and raising of eyebrows. Oblivious, she forged on. "I cut it shredding vegetables today." Finally, M. Giant spoke up to save us all. "I guess we shouldn't order the vegetables, then, right?" She waved the bandaged hand again. "Oh, no, we threw those out. There was blood everywhere. It was really gross. So, do you have any questions about the menu?" In retrospect, this would have been a perfect time for us to realize that we weren't that hungry, but unfortunately we stayed. Our server stayed close, waiting for that topic to resurface. It never did. Giving up, she brought out soup, but forgot the spoon and then could not be located. She did eventually produce a spoon and resumed surveillance, bringing out a stream of mediocre dishes, sushi and rolls. When it was finally time for the bill, she hovered even more fiercely, not giving us time to figure it out, so eventually we just threw down payment and far too large a tip to make her go away. As we trudged away, not very full, not very happy and having paid too much for the lack of those things, I think we did get the last laugh. We resumed our conversation. And boy, was it naughty. | Monday, June 24, 2002 ( 5:35 PM ) Girl Detective Icons through the Ages, part one. I was on the verge of adolescence when I went to see Tom Cruise in Risky Business. That movie made a lasting impression and from it was born my first adolescent, hormonal crush. Later that year I went to see Tom in All the Right Moves, then nursed my crush over the years by watching Taps, the Outsiders, Endless Love and even the dreadful Losin’ It (in which Shelly Long was his love interest) on cable movie channels. With Top Gun, though, the crush began to fade. I’m not sure if it was the super-slick look, the wretched plot, the contrived death, the homo-erotic undercurrent, or the obsessive focus on Tom’s wolfish grin (my, what big teeth he had). In any case, I put the crush to rest. As my friends flocked to see Cocktail, Rain Man and A Few Good Men, I remained unmoved. I was impressed by his turn as Lestat, but nonplussed by Mission Impossible. Additionally, I think I may be the only person in the world who did not like Jerry Maguire. It was after that movie that I later joked, "Can you believe I used to find him attractive?" In 2000, after watching Mission Impossible II, I regretted my words. I was glued to my seat in disbelief as I once again felt the stirrings of lust for this man. "That’s ridiculous" I thought to myself. "The rumors says he’s gay, plus he just had that ugly breakup with Nicole. And he’s not even as good an actor as she is." It didn’t matter. My crush hadn’t died, it had merely lain dormant for fifteen years, much as Lestat did through the ages. Before MI2 I’d recently seen him in two quite good movies: Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut. Yet it took the cheesy action picture with a bad plot to bring my crush back to life. This past weekend, I found the crush alive and well during Minority Report. I didn’t care that the character was flat or that the ending was contrived (though overall it was a very good movie). I can’t explain the crush and I’m not sure I should try. Perhaps he simply got imprinted on me at an impressionable time. While I denied the pull for fifteen years it’s come back with a vengeance like a bad movie sequel. Perhaps this is the revenge of my adolescent self, who is amused that I thought I could leave her behind. If so, her revenge is sweet. My husband and my feminist friends all find this attraction quite laughable. And really, so do I. | Sunday, June 23, 2002 ( 10:49 PM ) Girl Detective My crazy weekend. Our department had a half day at work on Friday. I went to yoga, then shopping, then home to write and out to a local bar that has these amazing burgers. They press two patties together with the cheese in the middle, which forms a molten pool that can scar the unwary or inexperienced. From there we went to see Movie #1: Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Sad, but lovely and with some redemptive hope at the end. Highly recommended. Saturday I woke up and dragged my butt out of bed to go swimming for the first time this season. From there we went for breakfast: double short latte and a mini-eclair. Next was grocery shopping then home and more writing. Balanced checkbook, paid bills and wrote some emails. Made soup for dinner, then out to see Movie #2: The Player. Funny and multi-layered, but lacking compassion. Highly recommend anyway. From there to a party. As we parked, we scraped the valve off the tire, which promptly went flat. We went into the party for a bit and enjoyed some of those deli-meat rolled up around some herbed cream cheese and pickle slices. We stayed for a bit, then went to replace the tire. Our friend Queenie helped G. Grod and we soon had the spare on and were driving her home when the car began to shake. We pulled over and found that the spare was going flat fast. We made a quick trip to the nearby gas stations but they were all closed. We made it back to Queenie's house, then she took us first to several other closed gas stations, past several closed tire service centers, to a 24 hour grocery that was no help and finally to an open service station where the clerk denied that they had anything to help but G. Grod, disbelieving, persevered and found the canned flat-fixer stuff. We returned to Queenie's, where she and G. Grod attended to the spare. As they did, the other tenant in Queenie's building exited. He was accompanied by a tall, striking woman with long hair, tight jeans and high heels. As I was wondering if she was in fact a woman, Queenie noted that she definitely was not his wife, who was out of town. He asked if we needed help but we waved him on. The flat-fixer seemed to work, so we slowly made our way home, exhausted. Within blocks of our home, we found ourselves in the midst of horrible people and car traffic as the bars let out and our night extended even further. Sunday, I woke up and rushed off to yoga while G. Grod headed out to buy some proper tires and returned, $400 the poorer to fix brunch. Barely had I finished when we headed out for Movie #3: Minority Report. Excellent effects, a good genre movie and some nice Kubrickian flourishes. Highly recommend. Next was a trip for ice cream. We each had single, but then tossed restraint out the window. I got an iced coffee and he got another cone . Home then, for dishes and to cook. I checked my email account, did some writing and then it was soup again and out the door to Movie #4: Thieves Like Us. Unromantic but sweet and not overly stylized like Bonnie and Clyde. Again, Highly Recommend. (Which seems like I recommend everything, but I don't. I just try not to see bad things. I usually succeed.) Which brings us home and here I am, madly typing before bed. Sadly, I can still think of about a dozen more things I'd like to do, but they'll all have to wait. Basta, as they say emphatically in Rome. All in all a good weekend: good burgers, good movies, and good ice cream, in spite of having not one but two flat tires. Thank heavens for that canned fixit stuff. And our friend Queenie. | Saturday, June 22, 2002 ( 12:16 PM ) Girl Detective Adventures in Service, part 1: Early on a Friday evening, my husband G. Grod and I decided to try a new restaurant that we'd learned about through our city's free weekly. A little off the beaten path of downtown, we found the restaurant empty and the bar slightly less so. The server, who looked barely old enough to drink at the bar, eagerly greeted us, asked us how we'd heard about it, complained about how hard it was to find, then, unprompted, regaled us with the details of the grand opening for the press. I told her I had a food I had to avoid and she said that the chef could make whatever I requested. "That's what he wants to do: your food fantasy." I told her my food fantasy simply involved not becoming ill, so could she check to make sure the items I ordered didn't contain anything that had wheat. She assured me that this would be no problem, but midway through my appetizer of dinosaur kale love letters, which are clever mini-bricks topped with mozzarella and crushed hazelnuts, I heard another server tell the table next to me that they contained flour. I let my husband finish them off. I also tried the appetizer of squid and shrimp over polenta with arugula and tomato, and the entree of snapper with frizzled leeks and raisins. Both were well presented and tasty. For dessert, our server recommended the tangerine sorbet with panna cotta. "It's like the best dreamsicle EVER!" she enthused. It was a quite impressive dessert, nicely pairing the sweet and juicy tangerine with the creamy and slightly sour panna cotta. Unfortunately, the food, which was was good and well prepared, was served amidst a gray, red and black decor eerily reminiscent of bad 80's style icons such as Duran Duran and Patrick Nagel. The service was prompt, though intrusive and inexact. We've not yet been back, since the bill ran on the expensive side and it's a pricey gamble to hope that the service and decor have improved. I think I'll wait for others to do that investigation for me. | Friday, June 21, 2002 ( 5:21 PM ) Girl Detective Epilogue to shaving: My husband and I were snogging fiercely when he pulled back and looked at me oddly. "Did you shave your upper lip?" he asked. Embarrassed, I couldn't bring myself to verbalize an answer. "Mm-hmm." He wrinkled his brow in consternation. "You have stubble!" Happily, this did not dampen his ardor. I did, however, resume plucking at my first opportunity. I'm relieved to be back on familiar ground. | Tuesday, June 18, 2002 ( 9:13 PM ) Girl Detective I shaved today. So what, you ask. People shave all the time. Yes, but I shaved my face. And I'm a girl. I'll wait while you gasp. During my last visit to the dermatologist, after he had checked for any nefarious-looking moles, he paused as he examined my face. "Do you pluck your eyebrows?" I responded affirmatively. I'm strangely pleased by the notion of saving $15 each month by ripping my own hair out by the roots and still being asked by others if I get them waxed. Yet I have my own mirror from Brookstone, and Laura Mercier Tweezerman tweezers, so I'm hardly Little Miss Home Economist. "How about your chin?" he asked. I hesitated. He had broken an unspoken rule of existence: people do not speak of chin hair on women. And yet, clues are out there. The advertisements for Vaniqa. The new Biore Beyond Smooth facial moisturizer that promises that hair will grow in thinner and finer. Perhaps the taboo is ready to be broken. Reluctantly, I admitted to plucking. "Have you thought about shaving?" he asked, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. I admitted that it had never occurred to me. He nodded, then went on to relate that when you pluck, you pull a hair violently out by its root, which can damage the shaft and cause hair to grow back in thicker and faster. This is not the case with waxing, which somehow goes below the surface yet avoids the root. Waxing, however, is more expensive and inconvenient than shaving because another person is involved. But shaving, he noted, works very well. It takes off the hair at the skin, but it does nothing to the root, so the growth rate remains slow. People think that shaving causes hair to grow back thicker and faster, but that's because it's just cut off at the surface and it's growing in with a blunt edge, which can seem thicker when the hair itself is the same. He noticed my polite skepticism. "Most women won't consider it. They think it's too weird, or too masculine. I don't know why. You shave your arms and your legs; why not your chin?" I grudgingly conceded that he had a point. So this morning, I glommed some shaving cream on my chin and above my lip, borrowed my husband's Gillette Mach 3 rather than my own Venus, which has a razor head the size of a plate, then did the deed. All day I've wondered if people can tell I've crossed a gender line. My chin and upper lip felt bare and sensitive, and at the end of the day I can feel the stubble rising up. I worry that this is this bad for my skin and that I will develop that crater-y, just-been-shaved look. Also, if I have to do this every day is it worth it? To maintain my eyebrows, I have to pluck almost every day. If I don't, an army of stray hairs begins brazenly marching beyond the carefully drawn perimeter to reassert its former territorial rights. If I'm doing everyday maintenance, what difference does it make if I shave or pluck; shouldn't I go with the easier one, which also happens to be the one that doesn't make me feel like a traitor to my sex? | Sunday, June 16, 2002 ( 8:51 PM ) Girl Detective I've discovered something new. In the sock department at Marshall Field's, no less. They're called foot tubes. Last week I didn't know they existed. This week, I refuse to envision a life without them. Let me explain. While it's hardly a catchy name, "foot tubes" sums things up pretty well. Sold in pairs, foot tubes are three-inch, stretchy tubes of unnatural fiber that slip over the end of the feet. They cover the base of the toes to the middle of the arch and protect both areas from the rubbing and blisters that can result from wearing slides or mules. They come in various colors, including black, white, tan and even neon, depending on whether you'd like the tubes to blend with your shoes or your feet or brazenly stand out from them. Foot tubes appeared in my life just when things, or at least things having to do with my feet, seemed most dire. My feet were marked raw and covered in blisters after two days of two new pairs of shoes. Over time, I've come to recognize the sneaky nature of footwear. Too often it looks charming in the store, feels good as I stride to and fro across the department, and even has an alluring price to complete the picture that these shoes will be a treasured part of my life for years to come. But it's just an illusion; the shoes have a dark side. I bring them home, take them out of the box, walk out of my building and BAM. Once I've worn them outside, they're not returnable. They're free to show their true nature because they know I won't be taking them back. They're like Cinderella's coach at midnight. It was with great sorrow that I admitted that my new shoes were in league with the footwear alliance of evil. Despairing, I wondered what to do. Goodwill? Sister or friend? Ebay? As I unhappily pondered these options, none of which felt right, I happened to pass the display of foot tubes. Hardly daring to hope that these bits of nylon might mean the salvation of two great bargains, I threw down a five and grabbed the tubes and my change. The next day I pulled on the foot tubes and my shoes, walked to work, walked home, then out to dinner with friends and back without incident. I felt like cheering. Then the shadow appeared on my happiness. In the Midwestern U.S.A town where I live, most people remove their shoes upon entering someone's home. As my friends, my husband and I removed our shoes, I looked with horror upon the black bands around my feet, but the three of them were blithely chatting, unaware of my sudden panic. Quickly, I peeled them off, then realized I had no pockets in which to stash them. I darted across our apartment and flung them into the bedroom. My husband shot me a strange look but the guests did not seem to notice, and I smoothly returned to the living room. The crisis was averted and we had a lovely evening, made all the more lovely for me by its utter lack of foot pain. Once I get the hang of donning and doffing them privately, I see a long, happy future with shoes that I never thought I'd wear again. | |
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