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A blisteringly great story by Roxane Gay: “Break All the Way Down.”
How do you feel about jeans at the opera? We were debating this at a barbecue last night. My friend S. said that people should dress up at the opera — to celebrate the occasion and as a sign of respect for the singers. They didn’t have to be wearing Prada or anything, she said, just something a little more formal than regular daywear. I said that I liked jeans at the opera because the opera isn’t about you — the audience — it’s about what’s onstage. Also because I love high-low mash-ups. (Though S. pointed out that jeans at the opera are so common that it’s not exactly subversive nowadays, which: true enough.)
When it comes to cakes, I like to mix and match. For a recent loved one’s birthday, I was inspired by Smitten Kitchen’s almond raspberry cake. But I wanted a yellow almond cake instead of a white one, and fresh raspberries instead of jam. So I took David Lebovitz’s recipe for almond layer cake:
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/almond-layer-cake-with-lemon-frosting
filled the cake with halved raspberries and whipped mascarpone (8 oz mascarpone, 1/2 c heavy cream, 2 tbsp sugar: whip)
and iced it with Smitten Kitchen’s recommended bittersweet ganache:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/05/almond-raspberry-layer-cake/
Y’ALL. This cake was mega-tasty. All flavors coordinated with one another like a well-oiled crew team, the almond cake was light and fluffy and moist, and the raspberries lent the cake a summery feel. I’ll be making this again soon. But next time I will have parchment paper, because there was a fair amount of behind-the-scenes cake piece puzzling happening on this round.
Two old friends
One Highline on a perfect late-spring day
One Hellenic salad in a stone garden
One gelato
All the book-ogling you can cram into The Strand in a half-hour (plus two books)
A train ride back with The Fallback Plan
For the most part, the Greendale Seven don’t have the things Americans are supposed to aspire to: perfect nuclear families, stable jobs, dream houses and multiple cars, steady incomes and 401(k)s. Shirley has a husband and children, and Pierce has a lot of cash, but for the most part the group is unmoored. Everybody in it has messed up in one way or another; everyone’s felt like a failure; everyone’s really, really weird. But Harmon invented a place where misfits, drop-outs, losers, oddballs, liars, slackers, and rebels could belong. In Community, nothing really matters as long as the study group stays together. They’re each other’s safe harbors, and they’re far more dependable than a nice house in the suburbs could ever be.
I’m way more annoyed by The Virgin Suicides (book, not movie) than I was expecting. I’m only 50 pages in so far, but here’s my problem. I get that the book’s about the fantasies constructed around teenage girls. But if you (Eugenides) don’t let us see the actual girls behind the fantasies, there’s not much difference between this and any other book that doesn’t bother to investigate the internal lives of female characters. Just because The Virgin Suicides has a premise that allows it to get away with keeping female characters at an idealized, fetishized, sometimes cruel distance doesn’t make it brilliant; maybe it’s just found an excuse to not have to try.
The woman looking for love is a beautiful robot with the mannerisms of a game show hostess, and the show expects us to believe that the words “luxury brand consultant,” strung together, can reasonably be understood as a “job.” That is not a job, show! That is a made-up thing that people put on their business cards so they can pretend like they’re doing something with their lives besides paying too much money for hair products and belts and macaroons.
In all the hubbub about The Avengers, I haven’t yet seen an article addressing one very important, age-old question. Who would you date, who would you marry, and who would you toss in the garbage can? Let us consider together.
Join the debate at Date, Marry, Dump: The Avengers Edition
I’m not sure why food programs are playing out this way. But the fact remains that chefs with visibly non-white and non-black identities are being pigeon-holed—perhaps because network executives believe it will be easier to market them that way. (At least, until they have been safely commoditized.) Clearly, this kind of oversimplification is unfair to the talented chefs who come to the Food Network – and unfair to viewers of all backgrounds on the other side of the screen: if Aarti can make such a fantastic saag paneer (and she can, I’ve tried it), imagine what she might be able to do with pasta! I want to find out. Her talent lies in her brain and her heart and her fingertips, not (only) in her ethnic, national, or racial identity.
Caroline, meanwhile, is almost always tortured by an older male character. Sometimes those scenes are intended to titillate as well as horrify viewers, as violence against women is all-too-frequently eroticized in our culture. (“It’s gonna be a long night, sweet pea,” the werewolf says, clearly taking pleasure in watching Caroline suffer.) And sometimes, as in the scenes with her father and Alaric, the torture functions as a metaphor for the rage and cruelty that a powerful woman can evoke in people who hate blindly.
Post-“Dance Academy”: Reflections on Teaching from a Former Gymnast
An appreciation of Miss Raine on “Dance Academy” and the tough teachers who help their students discover new possibilities.
It’s so weird when everyone gathers around to sing and then the group spends the whole evening trying to coax each other into singing. The poor guitarist bounces between tunes, trying to land on one that will inspire someone to take the vocal lead. No dice.
I mean, I get why stepping into the spotlight to take on “Crazy” is embarrassing. That’s a lot of pressure and focused attention. But at the same time, this is an ancient, honored pastime! For thousands of years, humans have gathered around the hearth to sing our songs and remember our past and solidify our bonds as a community and stumble through half-forgotten lyrics. I am pretty sure our ancestors weren’t all, “Oh, I don’t sing, you sing, Joanne.” “Noo my voice is terrible, it’s Leland who should take the mic.”
Is self-consciousness modern?
Probably not, right?
