Wait, is this another body part about which to feel self-conscious?
Archive for March, 2011
The pits
Thursday, March 31st, 2011No Hungarian Appalachians wanted
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011Why yes, these are two groups that appear on New York real-estate brokers’ “fair housing lists,” informal collections of words and phrases to be avoided, lest one raise charges of bias. The lists grew out of the 1968 federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination against buyers and renters based on race and religion. And, thank god brokers have been so thorough in trying to weed out such partiality — I’m ever-grateful as someone who is one-eighth Hungarian and an honourary West Virginian (thank you, Senator Byrd).
Some other (often inexplicably) verboten words, per realtors:
- Traditional neighborhood
- Mormon Temple
- Country club
- Family
- Newlyweds
- Employed
- Retarded, no
- Shrine
- Healthy only
- Sophisticated
- Fisherman’s retreat
Mad about…
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011The football strike doesn’t faze me. But no Mad Men? That’s another matter!
Apparently, show creator Matthew Weiner and AMC are in a deadlock over a number of issues, including product placement and advertising (no small irony for a show about advertising). Also, the cable network wants Weiner to axe two characters to save money. Clearly, Weiner could do that with aplomb (see the dearly departed Miss Blankenship), but the question is, who to cut? Both Vanity Fair and the LA Times have some suggestions.
I have to say I’m not of the “Betty’s mean, so 86 her” camp. Bitchy, blonde, and stylish — what’s not to like?! Really, it’s hard to advocate for any character to go, but I guess I could deal as long as it isn’t Roger. Or Pete. Or Trudy. Or Sally Draper. Or Roger, really, it can’t be Roger.
Brat Pack — or just brats?
Monday, March 28th, 2011Ah, yes, this is why I loathe Washington.
Paris la belle
Sunday, March 27th, 2011Paris always makes me feel sort of melancholy. So, I kind of wish I could adopt her lighter City of Lights…
It ain’t always easy
Sunday, March 27th, 2011I spotted the best sign around Mile Eleven of the National Marathon yesterday, held by a random guy in a trench coat on H Street. It said, “If it was easy, I’d be doing it.”
At the time, it made me chuckle. But in retrospect, I think it’s about the niceest compliment an unknown spectator could pay. And it’s a good resolution to keep in mind, too: to tackle the tough, to attempt the difficult, to not shy away from adversity.
Department of no duh
Friday, March 25th, 2011Yeah, that.
From New York:
A new study from the Journal of Applied Psychology found that people who deal with work-life conflicts by becoming busier and asking friends for help got more stressed out than people who avoided their problems and took a nap instead.
Don’t go back to Rockville
Thursday, March 24th, 2011They say you can never go home again. But if you can’t go back to mother, can you return to alma mater?
I’m not so sure. I’m back at my college today, for the first time in…ever. And while I know early spring is not an especially lovely time in New England, with trees stripped bare and a dust of road salt coating every surface, I’ve got to say that the place seems diminished somehow. The town is more down-at-its-heels than I recall; the campus seems smaller, worn. Is it that I’ve changed, or has it?
I look to catch glimpses of my former self in the faces of the passing students. I don’t spot myself — I never wore sweatpants, for one, unless I was heading to the pool — but if I did, what would I tell her? About disappointments and heartbreaks, that she’ll need to be braver and stronger than she knows, even though she thinks she knows brave and strong? That things won’t work out the way she wants or expects, that the things she knows she can believe in turn out to be the most ephemeral of all?
But on the plus side, there’ll be better weather, a better wardrobe, and boys….
Dating dumb
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011So, there’s some new study about how men like dumb women. So, The Gloss bothered to ask some actual men about why they prefer the mentally-challenged. Which amounted to a big, fat pile of rationalisation: If I date an equally driven woman, we’re both working 18 hours days, when do we even have time to see each other? We don’t. It’s about conquest. The daft bimbos of this world are usually a sure thing and require but a smidgen of well-timed charm.
Seriously, do we need to bother? Men date stupid women for two reasons: Inadequacy. Or they’re idiots themselves.
Roughing it
Monday, March 21st, 2011Covering the unrest in the Middle East and natural disasters in Japan have really taken their toll on television-news correspondents. The BBC’s foreign editor weighed in on the “rough places” reporters are having to bunk down:
“These are pretty punishing conditions. There’s not a Ritz Carlton in Benghazi.”