The Week: Old People Like Sex, Too
Just got back from The Week's panel on "Love" at Grand Central Terminal and I think the lesson for the day is this: It must be very difficult living life as Farrah Fawcett.

I was seated at the token "under 40" table with a lot of other bloggers and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one creeped out by the tone of the whole panel. Imagine if you're home from college and your parents come to the breakfast table and start talking about the great sex they had the night before. I mean, it's nice to know your parents are still having good sex but you certainly don't need them telling you and you really don't want that visual. That's kind of what it was like watching Sir Harold Evans moderate a discussion with Farrah Fawcett, Erica Jong and Edmund White -- all panelists known for their sexual persona cultivated, what - three decades ago??

Erica Jong (author of "Fear of Flying," which I read at least 10 years ago when I was a bit out of college) came off like she's been living off the "zipless fuck" line for free lunches and cocktail party invites all this time. They all seemed to be people who have been living on a stage for way too long and are in need of new material.

I really wanted to like Fawcett once she got up on the stage, but instead I found myself feeling sorry for her. She seems a woman uncomfortable in her own skin (insert your own plastic surgery joke here.) The paparazzi were definitely there to see her. About 50 of them mobbed her when she arrived and refused to leave the stage even though the thing was already starting late. Mind you, these aren't reporters trying to get a story; they are bad photographers who shoved everyone in sight - including the cops trying to keep them more than 10 inches from Fawcett's face. All but one video guy left by an hour into the program when Fawcett removed her jacket and revealed some very buff, tanned arms. How do you lead a normal life when crazy people still make that much of a fuss over you?

Evan's first question to Fawcett was basically if she's every had a lesbian relationship. She just looked back at him with her jaw open, sputtered a few seconds and finally got out "I mean, uh, no." It looked like she felt ambushed. And they did finally get her to say the word "fuck" after the other panelists had been discussing the "zipless fuck" for some time. All very weird. They would have done better throwing at least one NYU co-ed on the panel for a little pizzaz. Instead White, ("The Joy of Gay Sex") I think, was supposed to be the token wild man. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's a big man maybe older than my parents. (And when I saw "big" I don't mean in a "big hands" kind of way.)

That's probably enough of my ranting, so here's some of the highlights (or in this case, lowlights) from my notebook in random order:

"The last time I checked, at least 12 million people were in love with you. At least 12 million people had that poster," Evans to Fawcett.

"My dad had your poster." - Fawcett on the line she now hears from men.

The fame of the poster was both "a blessing and a curse." - Fawcett launching into a description of how conversations with otherwise normal people are always weird with her if it becomes obvious the guy used to have sexual fantasies over the poster. She says she sometimes wishes she'd no longer be recognized "so I could remember what it's like" to have normal conversations.

"I've sowed so many wild oats, I'm actually bored with wild oats," - Erica Jong

"The artists have to take back desire." - Jong at the end of a tirade about how the sexual revolution of the '70s has been hijacked by pornographers putting college girls' labia on the Internet.

Jackie Collins calls in to take part in the panel and says: "I thought this was supposed to be all about love, but it turns out to be all about sex." And Jong retorts: "Just like your books."

Jackie Collins, clearly not afraid of exaggeration: "Everybody knows that everyman has a mistress and every woman has a lover."

"I've been with the same person for nine years, and we have sort of a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy - Edmund White explaining that he and his partner sleep around because "we want each other to be happy" He goes on to boldly speak on behalf of all homosexual men and explain that the lack of monogamy is why gay relationships are better than straight ones.

"We do try because we're Americans." - Jong explaining why we seek to find lovers with whom we share both passion and a partnership. Sir Evans pipes in that even Brits might do this, too. Harrumph.

There was also a call from Bernardo Bertolucci in Rome -- Evans also asked him about a homosexual relationship -- though there was so much noise on the line and in the terminal I couldn't really follow the conversation. And the director of "The Hours" called, if you care. But the Jack Valenti surreal moment probably came when Fawcett and Jong got into a one-upsman debate over what happened in each of three version of "Lady Chatterly's Lover". At that point I think I just gazed back up at the ceiling of Grand Central and stared at the stars.
- posted by Amy @ 2/12/2004 04:25:00 PM

 

More Whole Foods
Whole Foods is coming to Union Square in 2004, according to this big billboard on 14th Street.

Update: Indeed it's true. The Whole Foods site says it will be 50,000 square feet.

And more: OK, Now I see Howard Sherman was onto this more than a week ago, when he asked if Whole Foods will lower the doom on the spectacular Union Square farmers market? I think the Greenmarket will do just fine. One of my girlfriends in California refers to her local outlet as "Whole Paycheck." The quality's there, but you pay a price for it.
- posted by Amy @ 2/12/2004 04:06:00 PM

 

Power of Alt
I went to the book talk last night given by Christopher and Robert Scheer on their book "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq." (it's co-written with Lakshmi Chaudhry.) Christopher and I worked together at our college paper, the Daily Nexus, and later at Prognosis in Prague. The book was published in December, is now on its second printing and has sold 30,000 copies, Bob Scheer told the audience at the Housing Works bookshop in SoHo. And it's done all that without receiving a single book review in any newspaper. All the publicity for the book has come through alt-media, basically the Internet and outlets such as Pacifica radio. I'm pretty amazed they're not getting better coverage, especially given the latest "oops" from the Bush camp over the accuracy of their pre-war WMD information.

The book is based on an article Christopher wrote last summer for Alternet. In discussing the first lie (Al Qaeda's Ties to Iraq,) Christopher talked about the opinion polls asking Americans if they thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Despite evidence to the contrary, as many as 70 percent believed Saddam and al Qaeda were the same enemy though that percentage is slowly slipping as the haze of war dissipates. Chris said he hopes the book helps show that Bush's motives for the war were not merely misguided, but wrong and based on intentional lies. "I don't see the moderates getting that, and that's our goal," he said.

You can buy the book directly from the publisher for less than a ten spot.
- posted by Amy @ 2/10/2004 10:56:00 AM

 

Linking the Competition
For at least a year, The New York Times has been putting out a free e-mail newsletter every morning with links to the top business stories. What's impressive is that they link to loads of sources, including their competitors. Some days the top story is even from the New York Post. Just this morning I clicked on a link from the e-mail that took me to a story at Investment Dealers' Digest and was impressed to find this note atop the story: "Welcome New York Times DealBook readers. This IDD exclusive is free for a limited time. SUBSCRIBE to IDD in full, one rate for both print and online. For a FREE two-week trial to IDD, click here. ..." Very smart way to acquire readers.
- posted by Amy @ 2/10/2004 10:14:00 AM

 

Street Light People
Guess who's a talk of the town this week? Kevin of Forgotten NY makes it into the pages of the New Yorker due to his feature on the city's old street lights.

here are more than three hundred thousand street lights in operation in the city today, and this will be news even to most locals -- some thirty-five to forty models, with names like Bishop's Crook, Lyre, Reverse Scroll, and Davit Pole. (During the Depression, there were nearly eighty different types, fewer than twenty of which have been preserved.) It's a thrilling time, in any event, to be a street-light enthusiast: last week, an international competition to design a new, citywide lighting standard, fit for the twenty-first century, began in earnest. It marks the first major call for original street-light design in New York in almost fifty years. ...

- posted by Amy @ 2/10/2004 09:51:00 AM

 

Bond Girls
My Bond Girl name: Prissy Goodenplenty. Find out yours at Moviefone (link via Paul Frankenstein.)
- posted by Amy @ 2/10/2004 09:41:00 AM

 

Forced Attribution
From the New Scientist Q&A with Alexandra Aikhenvald on disappearing languages:

Q. What's your favourite example of a big difference between languages?

A. In English I can tell my son: "Today I talked to Adrian", and he won't ask: "How do you know you talked to Adrian?" But in some languages, including Tariana, you always have to put a little suffix onto your verb saying how you know something -- we call it "evidentiality". I would have to say: "I talked to Adrian, non-visual," if we had talked on the phone. And if my son told someone else, he would say: "She talked to Adrian, visual, reported." In that language, if you don't say how you know things, they think you are a liar.
This is a very nice and useful tool. Imagine if, in the argument about weapons of mass destruction, people had to say how they knew about whatever they said. That would have saved us quite a lot of breath.

My husband said it would be the perfect language for all those journalists with attribution problems.
- posted by Amy @ 2/09/2004 06:27:00 PM