Read all about it! New York’s comfortably employed, middle-aged writers start trend of publishing queasy, painful-to-read, subtextually hostile ” way too much information” scenes from their own lives. Younger writers who read this prose are reported to spend subsequent days in blue funk, fearing that their own lives will turn out the same way.
Katha Pollitt’s tale of Web-stalking her ex-“lover’s” girlfriend ( The New Yorker , an ongoing series)
David Denby’s chronicle of being addicted to Internet porn ( American Sucker, Little Brown and Company)
Neil Strauss’ account of why chicks don’t dig his skinny white ass ( New York Times Styles section, Jan. 25)
Joyce Wadler’s saga of a weekend spent ordering in luxury meals, flowers, chocolates, books-David Denby’s book!-and a masseur to her apartment. ( New York Times Sunday Styles section, Feb. 1).
Who will be next?
Stuff I Hate
Subwoofers; computer speak (e.g., “cookies”); conferences; birthday parties; Thoreau; Kentucky Derby; getting buried alive in Mexico; “sneakers”; breakfast cereal; the left of center; “my boyfriend”; “my girlfriend”; “schnizzle”; Rhodes scholars; “Hey Ya”; cupcakes; toe rings; Jay Mohr; thong underwear; Chase Bank; Chicago soundtrack; slurping noises; people who hold their fork like they’re playing the banjo; the word “gift”; The American President , The West Wing and Sports Night ; “bow wow wow yippie yo yippie yay”; grown men wearing Yankees caps and Lakers get-ups; last Sunday’s Times City section article about the electrocuted lady in which the writer-some film shithead named Jerome-managed to work in Reservoir Dogs ‘ Mr. Blonde, “the best marzipan on the planet” and his Greenwich Village neighbor, James Gandolfini; if I ever die in a freak accident I don’t want some film ass to use that as a pretext to write some pretentious crap; office small talk ‘n’ giggling; not having a servant to go into public places; trying to buy a newspaper or Chapstick at this tiny newsstand when the place is fulloflottery-ticket-buying schmucks; gerund movie/TV-show titles; people who say “the store”-what store?; people who punctuate everything they say with knowing, self-congratulatory laughter like Jon Stewart; MTV’s Jackass and Wildboyz ; that movie Helen Hunt was in with Jack Nicholson; all new music; white people working Spanish into their party talk, like el fuego , hola and nada ; running out of bubble bath; monster kids living above me and their mother, who stomps across the floor in her barbarian high heels; The Truman Show , Pleasantville , Far From Heaven , Mr. and Mrs. Bridge , etc.; Phish; “Happy Jack” Hummer ad; when Muslim cabbies talk to their terrorist friends; when everyone goes “ohhhh!” at the same time in a sports bar; the media; movies about the media being totally out of control; George Soros; Samantha on Sex and the City , even more so now with the cancer; E.M. Cioran; Howard Dean’s head; guys named Ashton, or Schuyler; having to hear about the specials from the waiter; Martin Scorsese’s next five movies; “Are you O.K.? Are you happy? You seem down-are you depressed?”; magazine photographers who shoot their subjects barefoot; the expression “chop-chop”; SNL sketches that parody TV shows; Lost in Translation -rather watch two hours of beer and whiskey commercials; Kevin Smith’s next 15 movies; Pennsylvania; when my computer CD player can’t read a CD; the Russian dry-hump girl I met on the Jitney years ago who said she was a real-estate agent but was in fact a stripper, did dance for me but that was it, spent the night but I couldn’t sleep, afraid she’d stab me or the cat.
-George Gurley
