Words Seem Out Of Place

Author, essayist, journalist, and Gen X icon Elizabeth Wurtzel died earlier this week, after several years of living with cancer and its recurrence. She was only 52. For an intimate look at her life, I would encourage you to seek out any number of heartfelt and honest remembrances to this iconoclastic writer, this fierce and uncompromising woman, which are being written this week by friends and colleagues who knew her better than most . Even for those of us who never knew her, Wurtzel's influence was everywhere, especially during my college years in the epic decade of the nineties , thanks to her first memoir, Prozac Nation , from 1994. I can remember standing against the shelves in some Borders or other, lost in the rawness of her confessional tale of depression. It was raw at a time when raw was not socially acceptable. When it came out, establishment critics at places like the New York Times were ripping her and the book to shreds with reviews that couldn't have been...

I recently had the distinct pleasure of being nominated for a Sunshine Blogger Award by blogging pal Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews . This made my month! So, the way it works is I answer the following eleven questions asked of me, then nominate somewhere between five and eleven bloggers for the award while providing them with a new set of eleven questions to answer. Here goes nothing! Your perfect romantic movie stars you opposite which actor/actress as your love interest? Do I really need to spell this one out for you? If you've been paying attention, you know the answer: Michelle Pfreaking Pfeiffer. Image courtesy of GorgeousPfeiffer.com What movie always makes you cry? Frankie and Johnny . Are you sensing a theme? What film do you think didn’t need a sequel? I think a sequel should have worked, but I'll choose The Matrix because in my opinion the sequels really only diluted the impact of the excellent first film. Whats your favourit...

This week marks a sad anniversary for fans of popular culture: the death of Marilyn Monroe,  né  Norma Jeane Baker. Marilyn left us far too soon, on August 4, 1962. Countless books and movies and articles and first-hand accounts have tried to capture the essence of a woman who will forever be known as  the blonde bombshell, the sexiest sex symbol to ever walk the earth, and the greatest pop culture icon of the American twentieth century. Much of Marilyn's sex goddess appeal first bloomed during her early modeling days, like when she squeezed herself into a too-small sweater and barely-there skirt for a 1940s photoshoot. As noted in a 2012 Daily Mail article , Norma Jeane eliminated  the blouse as well as the bra and camisole worn under it. She then took a red cardigan, turned it around, and buttoned it up the back. The sweater clung to her breasts; she called it her ‘magic sweater’.  She wore the sweater backwards! Ingenious. The rest, as they s...

Spring has sprung, and as we emerge from our winter slumbers, let's take a breather and luxuriate in some beautiful poetry, in honor of April being National Poetry Month. Because I'm currently reading Ada  Limón,  here's a seasonally appropriate poem from The Carrying . More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open pa...

I always understand and try not to judge people who don't do horror. Usually they avoid the genre because it just doesn't appeal to them, or it does but they're so deeply affected by it that they can barely function after. What I have no tolerance for is people who simply refuse, out of stubborn snobbery, to grasp the importance of horror and how it can help us process trauma and grief. Those people usually turn their noses up at Stephen King's work, often after reading only a book or two of his, or in certain cases, none at all. I immediately distrust those people. Like many kids, King was my gateway into reading—and also writing—horror, just like Elvira turned me on to horror movies (and turned me on to her, but that's a whole other story). Then, like a lot of adults, I stopped reading King for one reason or another, mostly just because I drifted towards other influences and various genres, but also because I believed I'd outgrown him. About ten year...

In which our narrator tries to read his way through the endless stacks of books that are slowly overtaking both his bookshelves and his life. Recently, I had the great fortunate to spend some time hanging out in an actual, honest-to-goodness bookstore. Now, I used to do that all the time, but not so much in recent years. Again, I blame my kids—are you sensing a theme around here? It was delightful, lazily browsing, from aisle to aisle. Letting the wanderlust of a book lover's soul guide me from one end of the store and back, over and over again. And, of course, I walked out with a new book. I had to! A quick note on the header image: When Harry Met Sally opened twenty-nine years ago this month. In the summer of 1989, right before my freshman year of high school, a friend scored preview tickets, and invited me along. I've seen it countless times since, and it's as lovely and funny and touching now as it was then. And Billy Crystal creeping in the self-h...

In which our narrator tries to read his way through the endless stacks of books that are slowly overtaking both his bookshelves and his life. There she is again, the unofficial patron saint of this column. Who am I kidding with "unofficial"? It's official: she's the patron saint of this column. While I've long been fascinated with Marilyn Monroe's celebrity, it's really how that celebrity negatively affected her sense of self that interests me most. She was always the mythical unicorn, the long-gone starlet from decades past whose impact has only grown in popular culture since her death in 1962. When Madonna went platinum blonde in the 1980s even adolescent me could feel Marilyn's influence, or at least a commentary on her influence, at play. Yet, until recently, and beyond various magazine articles, I hadn't read many sustained works about her. Then serendipity struck and, within a few short months, I found myself the owner...

It's been almost a year since I wrote about reading Stephen King's It , which had been one of the biggest omissions in my decades-long love affair with King's work.  It  always loomed large in the background of my life because, well, it's a  big  book. Last month, I finally saw the recent film version, directed by Andy Muschietti and released last fall. Thinking about the book and the film, I realized I still have more to say about It , so here we are, with a coda of sorts. Watching the film reinforced something I felt while reading the novel: had I read It (or paid closer attention to the 1990 television miniseries) as an adolescent, there's no doubt the Losers' Club would have strongly resonated with me. Even today, as a so-called adult (I have my doubts), it's still all too easy for me to identify with these kids. Although my parents were wonderful, as an only child I understood loneliness and isolation better than most. Now I can see I yearned for...

For a little over one legendary year, Marilyn Monroe called New York City home. From late 1954 through 1955, Marilyn reveled in all the city had to offer. It was the most creatively rejuvenating time in the life of the world's then-biggest movie star. It was a period of great artistic self-discovery and inspiring personal growth. Fed up with the blonde bombshell roles forced on her by the studio, she fled to New York to take acting classes, to soak up the magic and wonder of the city that never sleeps, and to find a truer version of herself. In Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy , newly available in paperback, Elizabeth Winder paints an exquisite portrait of that time. Using meticulous research and an abundance of revealing quotes from those who knew Marilyn, Winder pieces together an intimate and novelistic narrative of one amazing year in the life of a popular culture icon. One of the most fascinating and enlightening aspects to emerge from Winder's book is just how m...

In which our narrator tries to read his way through the endless stacks of books that are slowly overtaking both his bookshelves and his life. Between the winter blues, the kids keeping me busy, and work just kicking my arse lately, I've had very little time—or attention span—to read as much as I'd like. Still, somehow, I've managed to read several books in the last few months, but I've spent more of my (rare) downtime watching movies. My book nerdery is only equaled by my film nerdery—and both are nearly equaled by my art and music nerdery. In other words, I have more than enough nerdery to spare, at all times. Anyway, I recently rewatched one of my favorite comfort food films, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang . When I'm tired, or down, or just in need of some cinema therapy, this film never fails to deliver. It also happens to be one of my very favorite Christmas films . Robert Downey Jr., and Val Kilmer, and Michelle Monaghan are simply magnificent together in Shan...