Very important article in this week's New Yorker by John Cassidy

About finance reform...

"Our system failed in basic fundamental ways," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledged earlier this year. "To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game."

Despite this radical statement of intent, serious doubts remain over whether the Obama Administration’s proposed regulatory overhaul goes far enough in dealing with the problem of rational irrationality. Much of what the Administration has proposed is welcome. It would force issuers of mortgage securities to keep some of the bonds on their own books, and it would impose new capital requirements on any financial firm "whose combination of size, leverage, and interconnectedness could pose a threat to financial stability if it failed." None of these terms have been defined explicitly, however, and it isn’t clear what the new rules will mean for big hedge funds, private-equity firms, and the finance arms of industrial companies. If there is any wiggle room, excessive risk-taking and other damaging behavior will simply migrate to the unregulated sector.

A proposed central clearinghouse for derivatives transactions is another good idea that perhaps doesn’t go far enough. The clearinghouse plan applies only to "standardized" derivatives. Firms like JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley would still be allowed to trade “customized” derivatives with limited public disclosure and no central clearing mechanism. Given the creativity of the Wall Street financial engineers, it wouldn’t take them long to exploit this loophole.

The Administration has also proposed setting up a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, to guard individuals against predatory behavior on the part of banks and other financial firms, but its remit won't extend to vetting complex securities—like those notorious collateralized debt obligations—that Wall Street firms trade among themselves. Limiting the development of those securities would stifle innovation, the financial industry contends. But that's precisely the point. "The goal is not to have the most advanced financial system, but a financial system that is reasonably advanced but robust," Viral V. Acharya and Matthew Richardson, two economists at N.Y.U.'s Stern School of Business, wrote in a recent paper. “That’s no different from what we seek in other areas of human activity. We don’t use the most advanced aircraft to move millions of people around the world. We use reasonably advanced aircrafts whose designs have proved to be reliable."

more...

Self-esteem

The most perfect songs written (incomplete list)

Bob Marley: Buffalo Solidier



Martha and the Vandellas (Holland Dozier Holland): Heatwave



Dave Brubeck: Take Five



Beatles: And Your Bird Can Sing



John Lennon: Oh Yoko



Pretenders: Mystery Achievement



Bruce Springsteen: Kitty's Back



Dar Williams: As Cool as I Am



Steely Dan: My Old School



Stevie Wonder: If You Really Love Me



The Kinks: Waterloo Sunset



Bow Wow Wow: I Want Candy



Patti Smith: Free Money



Fleetwood Mac: Tusk




Video embeds unavailable for Joni Mitchell: Conversation, Aimee Mann: That's Just What You Are, Joan Osborne: Lumina

back from poetry boot camp

That Emily Dickinson can really wear you out!

Poetry clubhouse

I never thought of Bill Murray as a poetry kind of guy, so I was amazed to see this:

“Poets need a refuge — they need a hideout, a clubhouse,” said the actor Bill Murray, who gave the lead gift to create a catalog for Poetry House and participates in its annual Poetry Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. (Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” is among the poems read aloud.)

Some people may never recognize the literary treasure trove in their midst, Mr. Murray added, just as most people walk by St. Patrick’s Cathedral “or use it as a place to light a cigarette or make a phone call.”

But those who find themselves in the vicinity of Poets House will “be right next to this sort of human church,” he added. “There’s a possibility. That’s all you can do is create a possibility.”

And conveniently this new poetry center is on my commute route.

And speaking of poetry - I'm off to Emilypalooza!

Emily Dickinson Marathon baby - tomorrow

info in the Amherst Bulletin

It took Amherst poet Emily Dickinson a lifetime to write her 1,789 published poems. It will take Dickinson enthusiasts just a few hours to read them Saturday - one by one - during the 5th Annual Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst.

The reading that will begin at 7 a.m. and continue into the night, with a few breaks, is a fun and social way to bask in the essence of Dickinson's poems, says Jane Wald, executive director of the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, where the readings will take place.

Hello? The reading is 7am to 10pm - that's more than "a few" hours!

Apparently there's a copy-cat marathon outside of Amherst

Time for my sonnet about Emily Dickinson and web statistics again. Although Dickinson didn't write sonnets, I did a kind of echo her style a bit with this piece.

Are you thinking of me on this spring morn,
In Emily's neck of the woods? By trees
And meadows that she loved, where she was born,
Where she spent much time thinking about bees,
Apparently, and eccentricity
While decked out in white. But why are you there
Again? I ponder the felicity
Of technology, I marvel you care
What I have to say, almost every day,
When you won't hear it from my living lips,
When you know that I long to hear you say
Anything. So reflect when on your trips:
Communication takes more than just me,
Such work needs two, in close proximity.

---

Speaking of poetry - is anybody but me annoyed by the New Yorker style of poetry? It's probably not JUST the New Yorker, but that's where I really noticed - apparently the thing to do now is to write a poem that is virtually indistinguishable from a short essay - or a long twitter-tweet - as long as your lines are cut off, seemingly at random. Here's the beginning of a piece, "Fathers and Sons" by David Mason that demonstrates perfectly:

Some things, they say,
one should not write about. I tried
to help my father comprehend
the toilet, how one needs
to undo one’s belt, to slide
one’s trousers down and sit,
but he stubbornly stood
and would not bend his knees.
I tried again
to bend him toward the seat,

OK, first things first though - dude, WHO says "some things... one should not write about"? Certainly not the New York Times, which has a blog The New Old Age devoted to stories of people dealing with their senile parents. Do you really think this poem is subversive somehow?

But enough of the content - onto the style. Let's reformat it:

Some things, they say, one should not write about. I tried to help my father comprehend the toilet, how one needs to undo one’s belt, to slide one’s trousers down and sit, but he stubbornly stood and would not bend his knees. I tried again to bend him toward the seat

Except for the opening self-declaration of what a big iconoclast the poet is, this would not be out of place at all in any blog posting in "The New Old Age"

Katha Pollitt, whose politics and essays I love, does the same thing in her What I Understood - here is the first seven lines :

When I was a child I understood everything
about, for example, futility. Standing for hours
on the hot asphalt outfield, trudging for balls
I'd ask myself, how many times will I have to perform
this pointless task, and all the others? I knew
about snobbery, too, and cruelty—for children
are snobbish and cruel—and loneliness: in restaurants

I just don't see the point in saying it's poetry when it could just as easily be an essay. You might as well have someone get up and recite a poem and call it a short play.

NYCP shout-out

Former NYCPlaywrights member Mark Rose gives us a shout-out.

Freemasonry & Dan Brown

Well the Masons don't seem nearly as annoyed at Dan Brown's book about their group as the Catholic Church was about "The DaVinci Code" - nevertheless, the National Geographic felt the need to debunk Masonic myths in its latest issue.

The most fun thing about Masonry, from what I know, is the role it played in "Die Zauberflote." I was first introduced to that opera through "Amadeus" one of my favorite movies. Speaking of which - it's a good excuse to show a bit from that movie - and this exerpt includes my Facebook friend Christine Ebersole.

Although I always found it odd that they disparage Mozart's appearance in this movie: "looks and talent don't always go together" - I think Tom Hulce is extremely cute here - especially in those cute little jackets they wore back then.



And everybody loves the Papageno/Papagena duet! Birds of a feather...




And speaking of roughly that time period...

hurray for Krugman

He came out in favor of a federal jobs program at the Spitzer lecture last night.

Then he gave a shout-out to Elliot Spitzer, who was in the audience.

This isn't as good as being there but here's some Krugman fun:

Harshing on Alan Greenspan:



on debt



debunking the "Chinese curse"! Among other things - this clip is one hour long!



How did I miss this for the past few days? Atlantic Mag Names Paul Krugman Most Influential Commentator - he's sure influential with ME!

Autumn equinox

Today is the first day of autumn, the most soulful and yet the most sensual season. And it's Krugman day. And on top of that, this Saturday is the Emily Dickinson reading marathon in Amherst and I'm on the reading team. Wow, too much excitement.

Plus the playwriting and fiction writing.

It's the Heavens to Mergatroyd sing-along!

That lion is such a ham!

tomorrow is Krugman Day

whoohoo

It’s not just that taking a populist stance on bankers’ pay is good politics — although it is: the administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it’s giving taxpayers’ hard-earned money away to Wall Street, and it should welcome the chance to portray the G.O.P. as the party of obscene bonuses.

Equally important, in this case populism is good economics. Indeed, you can make the case that reforming bankers’ compensation is the single best thing we can do to prevent another financial crisis a few years down the road.

It’s time for the president to realize that sometimes populism, especially populism that makes bankers angry, is exactly what the economy needs.

More at the NYTimes

Watch out for Nurse Badass Nick!

Nick Fondulis is not a doctor - but he plays one on TV. It seems like just yesterday he was Huck Finn and STRESSed IN THE CITY - now he's dodging Nurse Badass and her deadly Nose Pincer Move. Watch below - Nick says "I feel terrible, what do you want?"

bright star, big city

Ooh, the NYTimes really likes "Bright Star".

I have no qualms whatsoever about watching a movie solely for the fun of seeing guys in Regency period costumes (see "Becoming Jane"), but this is a bonus: "That Fanny and Keats must sublimate their longings in letters, poems and conversations seems cruel, but they make the best of it. As does Ms. Campion: a sequence in which, fully clothed, the couple trades stanzas of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” in a half-darkened bedroom must surely count as one of the hottest sex scenes in recent cinema."

And boy if anybody knows about sublimation, it's me. Speaking of which...

Only 5 more days until Krugman Day!

I'm going to see Krugman at the 92nd St. Y on September 22 - Krugman Day is almost here!

Krugman is my birthday twin! (Month-date, not year!)

This guy loves the Mighty Krug-Man even more than me! Although it looks like his web site needs a little updating. But not as much as Krugman's old web site which he apparently hasn't updated since 2000.

Ooh! Krugman & Rachel Maddow - two great tastes that taste great together!

hot young poet in Regency period clothing - oh yes

NYCPlaywrights starts up again

My new NYCPlaywrights resolutions:

1. I will make sure all playwrights understand what the deal is with feedback when they join

2. No matter how much I hate a play, I will remain calm and unemotional

3. This doesn't mean I will give dishonest feedback

4. I will work harder to get good actors showing up on a regular basis - especially attractive younger male actors

5. Find out what the deal is with all the Jesus plays

6. Find out what the deal is with all the plays about prostitutes

Love & lucid dreaming

A lucid dream is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that he or she is dreaming. I find this a very interesting phenomenon. I've never been able to pull one off for more that an instant before waking up, but there are supposedly techniques you can use to prolong your dream while you are aware you are dreaming. But what if you are in a lucid dream and you feel like you will never wake up - what if you are trapped in a lucid dream?

A lucid dream is the best metaphor I can think of for what I've experienced over the past couple of years. I fell in love with someone with whom I intuited would probably not return my feelings, in spite of getting along well and having many things in common and having a happy facility for creating beauty together. This last part especially caused me to develop a feeling - a beautiful dream - of what it would be like to have a romantic relationship with the man. And the dream is so beautiful that even when I was ex-communicated by the one I loved - I can't seem to fully wake up from the dream. I know it's a dream - and yet I keep dreaming. I do occasionally get glimmers of hope for the attainment of full consciousness - sometimes I hear the alarm clock in the distance, sometimes I feel my cat hitting me in the face, sometimes I can smell the coffee, but I just can't quite attain full consciousness.

And while the struggle continues I pour the dream into art - poetry, fiction, plays, even music. Because I find it diverting and therapuetic, but also because it would be good if something besides anguish could come from this freakish grey netherworld. And perhaps I may even one day realize with my full emotions as well as my brain, that in fact it did turn out for the best - the art I derived from the experience was far more worthwhile, much more real, than any sure-to-be-fleeting happiness I might have had from an actual relationship with such a person. And so the process continues.

Great time with Woodstein and Redford Saturday night

First we watched "All the President's Men"

Then we hung out with Robert Redford, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to discuss the movie, the future of journalism, Jason Robard's drinking problem, etc.

It all happened at BAM

Then she placed a hand on each side of my face

very gently and brought her lips to mine, but not quite touching.

Happy Dirt Farm

My old friend Matt Suhr, from the hippie commune days of the late 70s has a farm - e-i-e-i-o.

I'm writing a play about those hippie days. We had a garden back then, in Palmyra NJ, but my ex-husband decided to grow marijuana in between the rows of corn, so when we were busted it all got torn down.

But now Matt has Happy Dirt

Amelia Earhardt

Earhardt was quite an interesting character, judging by this recent New Yorker article

Video of Joni Mitchell doing her song "Amelia" interspersed with newsreel clips of Earhardt

Go me

Well I already have the beginnings of a web site for my production of THE GOOD WOMEN OF MORNINGSIDE. It feels so satisfying to get a work of art out of the ugliness of nasty mediocrities.

Good women live on stage

Well who said evil people are useless? Without the nasty women who inspired me with their petty mean-spiritedness, I would never have written The Good Women of Morningside - now it's going to be performed at the Chatterton playlab September 26 & 27 - I wonder if they'll come and see it? But now I know who they are and what they look like, probably not. And of course they are also inspirations for a couple of characters in my ongoing saga, although not in this latest installment.

NYCPlaywrights redesign

Well it was a ton of work, and I'm still not done (I have to finish learning PHP scripting) but at least I have something to show people now.

12 years later...

Today marks the twelfth anniversary of the death of my dear Earl Rich.

His family must have decided to maintain his web site as a tribute to him. And he's even listed online. You can find his house on Google maps, although Google maps weren't around when he was alive.

*sigh*

The return of Mother Lode

MOTHER LODE will get on its feet for the first time at John Chatterton's Short Play Lab September 26 & 27.

And speaking of Mother Lode's feet, I happen to have a pair of boots that I think will be perfect for the character:



Read the script here.

ahead of the curve...

New York Times editorial yesterday:

The question, then, is how bad does it have to get before the Obama administration and Congress make job creation a priority.

Thank you New York Times editorial - I believe I made a case for a jobs program in July 2008:

The US government will have to do two things to fix the coming world-wide economic crisis - create a jobs program, as it did during the Great Depression, and put a cap on the interest rates charged by credit card companies.

You can really see the Krugman influence in that post.

cry me a river

Internet celebrity deathmatches

The Internet - especially Facebook, brings you into text-level contact with celebrities. Some of the arguments I've had with celebrities
(I realize that most of these are not celebrities by many people's standards - only Ann Magnuson has been in a TV series or a Hollywood movie):

Me vs. Steven Pinker over whether or not Stephen Jay Gould's scientific opinions are discountable because Gould was a Marxist (I've heard from other sources that Gould, while a leftist, was not a Marxist.) I was pro-Gould, Pinker was anti-Gould

Me vs. Ann Magnuson (she's my Facebook friend) over whether or not Keith Olberman is just as bad as Bill O'Reilly - I said certainly not in a million years.

Me vs. Richard Dawkins over whether Helena Cronin, author of "The Ant and the Peacock" is obnoxious and whether or not Christopher Hitchens is a gigantic douchebag. Really, it's me and most of the civilized world vs. Dawkins on the Hitchens issue.

Me vs. Katha Pollitt on whether or not I was too harsh against a right-winger woman posing as a feminist. I agree with Pollitt on almost everything, so that was surprising.

And if my FB friend Christine Ebersole says one more word about how much she loves Ron Paul - it's ON!

Stay tuned for more celebrity arguments.

D9

When I next saw Betsy, I informed her of this strange fight.

Mongoose vs. Cobra

Pretty eerie music for that. Here's more eerieness.

Angels live

Yay! ANGELS IN AMERICA returns to the New York stage.

I've only seen the HBO version, which is great, but I am looking forward to seeing this show live - it's one of the best contemporary play(s) - maybe THE best.

DC7

Soon our "get acquainted session" as Lady Hilliard called it came to an end and I prepared to depart

Monty Python Argument Clinic

Tips for drinkers

from Marcus Porcius Cato c. 200BC

If you wish to drink deep at a banquet and to enjoy your dinner, eat as much raw cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half a dozen leaves; it will make you feel as if you had not dined, and you can drink as much as you please.

fiction set c. 1800 AD

Dulcissime

DC5

another monologue in the can

D4

time for tea

Who are the "New Atheists"?

While I wasn't paying attention, it has been decided that the "New Atheists" would now represent atheism. The "New Atheists" as far as I have been able to discern, are not in the least different from old-school atheists on the question of gods. So in general, I am certainly on the side of any atheists, New or not. Unfortunately, the "New Atheists" are a bunch of douchebags, and it annoys me that they are the go-to guys - and of course this group of careerist public intellectuals are a gang of guys - on the issue of atheism.

The biggest douchebag of all is Christopher Hitchens. Even if he hadn't been a Bush/Iraq supporter, he would have achieved the Congressional Medal of Douchebag (the first of these was bestowed by Jon Stewart on Robert Novak) through this piece of misogyny in Vanity Fair: Why Women Aren't Funny. Read this and then consider - he was actually paid to publish this addle-brained piece of useless shit.

The next biggest douchebag is probably Sam Harris, the one I knew the least about before he was declared New Atheist. He argued in the Huffington Post that Islam is more likely to create terrorism than any other religion. This is just plain wrong. It isn't any religion that creates terrorism - it's the infrastructure - religion is just an excuse and it just so happened that the region currently producing terrorists is primarily populated by Muslims. Christianity, with its "Prince of Peace" is no less likely to produce violence.

The other two official New Atheists are Evolutionary Psychologists - Richard Dawkins and Daniel C. Dennett, which is a completely bankrupt approach to human culture - but I've blogged about that extensively at cultural-materialism.org

But since these are all famous public intellectuals, forming a kewl boys club of atheist mavericks of course they're going to get all the attention, and all the religious folk will start to think of them as the four popes of atheism.

I don't want to be represented by douchebags and evolutionary psychologists. And if the commenter on Pharyngula is actually Dawkins, as claimed, [comment #120] well Dawkins is kind of a douchebag too.

Darlington Curse 3

Mr. Oliver Acton?" I said, extending my hand. He shook it and reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a small leaf of paper on which he wrote in pencil: "Do you believe me?"

"I have not made up my mind." I said, truthfully. "It does strain credulity."

He beckoned me follow him down the lane on the west side of the grounds.

D3

Yay Beatles

Any time is a good time for a Lennon-McCartney interview

latest NYCP monologue

This one is my most ambitious piece yet, cinematography-wise. It took only 40 minutes to record - but then Laurence Cantor is a consummate pro. More at the NYCPlaywrights Monologue project

The Darlington Curse part 2

I did not see the Cornings very often - they had moved into a small estate down the road in 1811 and we never had much cause to socialize - the Cornings were homebodies and I did all my socializing at the neighborhood pub and the Literary Society."

The reader, I hope, will have patience with me for stopping the narrative here - I said I would reprint the letter in its entirety and so I shall. However, I wanted to give a little background about Mrs. Corning at this point...
more...

video mania

Another monologue from the NYCPlaywrights Monologue Project - Sara Vize performs.

Nome on the trapeze again

Nome is getting really good at the trapeze...

Followed by hoes

I have a Twitter account that I hardly ever bother with - I have enough to do to post to this blog on a daily basis. But even so I've accumulated quite a few followers - for those who are not familiar with Twitter, a follower is somebody who has signed up to read your tweets - your brief Twitter messagers.

I would have even more followers, but I always end up blocking the hoes. I've had about five so far, counting the one today, "Nelson491" who has only one tweet herself, which is a link to a porn site.

Sorry Nelson491, no hoes for me, thank you.

That reminds me of a Margaret Cho bit:

The Darlington Curse

by N. G. McClernan

The first in a multi-part serialization...



more...

GO BARNEY FRANK!!!!

they never listen

Well another ex-member of NYCPlaywrights who ignored my opinion about his lousy play found out maybe I wasn't in the minority after all. A certain percentage of playwright wanna-bes show up at NYCPlaywrights meetings asking for feedback about their play, fully expecting to be praised. So if you are honest and tell them that their play is not the greatest thing since HAMLET they will assume you're just an idiot who doesn't know what you're talking about.

The worst offenders are young men, in my experience. One guy wrote a nasty "parody" of OUR TOWN that was about three hours long and played the rape of a little girl (not staged thank god, but told in a reminiscence) for laughs - it was justifiably slammed in a review.

Another guy wrote a play about a bunch of sociopathic losers sitting around being cruel to each other and making prank phone calls to a senile grandmother - also slammed in a review, although not nearly as harshly as I felt it deserved.

Another young man wrote a play in which a gay man requests a friend of his to falsely accuse him of molesting her son so that he can go to jail and be somebody's bitch - I am NOT kidding - but finds out that jail sex is not nearly as exciting as he had believed. Let that be a lesson to any of you out there who are planning to request someone falsely accuse you of molesting.

The latest self-indulgent young guy wrote a play that had a less offensive premise than the other three mentioned, but made up for that with incredibly trite dialog, and a slow-moving, weak plot. However, I don't think any of the reviews pointed out the noxiousness of the white-man-as-the-protagonist-in-a-country-of-black-people scenario, but maybe because movies have inured them to the concept of white men being the protagonist of every situation. In any case, the play was rightly roundly criticized.

But hey, why should they listen to ME? I've only been running a weekly playscript-reading group for nine years and have heard thousands of plays, in addition to being a playwright myself. Clearly I have no idea what works in a script, and if I don't like their play it's because I'm just a stupid woman, or a mean bitchy woman. And yes, I do think that sexism has something to do with their disregard of my opinions. Empirical studies have shown that women's opinions are accorded less respect than men's by almost everybody, including liberals. But most of the critics who slammed these plays were male - maybe NOW they'll pay attention and either learn how to write a play, or go find something else to do.

Emilyfest 09

Whoohoo - I'm gonna be a reader in the Emily Dickinson poetry marathon in Amherst on September 26. I hope I get to read one of the bee poems!

Like this one:


His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for the bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!


although I think technically a worker insect is female, like all hive insects - but I guess Em wasn't up on her apiology.

or this one:


Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.


or this one:

A sepal, petal, and a thorn
Upon a common summer's morn —
A flask of Dew — A Bee or two —
A Breeze — a caper in the trees —
And I'm a Rose!


My mother is also a poet - she won a contest with this poem about my late father We have rather different styles.

It's a jungle out there

Another episode of MONK tonight but I have to wait until tomorrow to watch it on hulu.com. I discovered MONK through the New Yorker - great article by Nancy Franklin:

I think the reason that people don’t talk more about "Monk," despite its popularity, is that watching it is an intensely personal, even interactive, experience. Adrian Monk is a kind of private investigator of our own flaws and sadnesses, and no doubt many viewers identify with the myriad intrapsychic obstacles that make it hard for him to get through the day. They don’t need to talk to their friends about "Monk," because simply watching the show serves the same function—as sharp as its dialogue is, "Monk" is often touching beyond words.

At least I can watch every other episode of Monk on hulu.com

Monk is great TV - speaking of which, thanks to youtube I can watch the famous hash brownies episode of Barney Miller.

Oh Rachel Maddow, you are a diamond

because you rock so hard.

Emily & me - BFF

Yay! My Facebook friend Emily Dickinson likes my Communication Sonnet #4 - but she SHOULD, it mentions her.

Check it out - but you'll have to be her Facebook friend before you can see my shout-out... and if you happened to have blocked me on Facebook, you might not see my shout-out even then... I'm not sure how that works.

Putting in the Seed

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

Huck Finn Chapter 11

Read it here

Listen here - I recorded the entire novel while I was preparing to do an adaptation.

back to normal blogging

finally...

Sodini - the consummate creepy middle-aged man

It turns out that mass-murderer George Sodini is one of these guys who was into the "How to Get a Women" lifestyle - but specifically, how to date younger women. Apparently quite a few unattractive middle-aged men think that they are too good for women their own age and so try all kinds of wacky techniques to get younger women. Since, although proponents of evolutionary psychology would try to have you believe otherwise, women are not "naturally" interested in older men, they develop special pick up techniques, body language analysis, hypnosis - they'll try anything it seems, except trying to meet someone they share common interests with, and actually getting to know a woman as a person. But let's face it - they don't want a woman as a person - they want a female body to evacuate in. But it has to be a high-status body. I guess that's why they aren't satisfied with lap dances and other forms of prostitution - it's a status thing.

But the primary belief of these men is that the reason that they can't get any hot young thing in the world is NOT because they are old and unattractive and have a lousy personality, it's because they are TOO NICE. The Village Voice has a video clip of Sodini at one of these classes in which the dating guru R. Don Steele tells them "nice guy must die."

More Sodini videos at the blog Jezebel.

Men believing that they are entitled to much younger hotter women is nothing new - I gave up on online dating sites because the number of 40-something men who wouldn't consider dating a woman older than five years younger than himself just made me start to despise 40-something men.

Dan Savage however, probably says it best:

Sodini clearly felt that he was entitled not just to sex and a romantic relationship, but to sex and a romantic relationship with a much younger woman. And he was following the advice of a love-and-romance guru who encouraged him to hold on to that belief and filled him with false hopes. Not normally a problem, I supposed. But Sodini wasn't just another socially maladapted schlub furious with the world - and with women - for denying him all the 22-year-old ass he felt he deserved. He was a nut. And he couldn't understand why, if he was doing everything right, he wasn't finding the success that was Steele guaranteed him. He was employed, dressed nicely, in good shape - he even bought a matching sofa set. ("Couch and chair - they match, the woman will really be impressed.") But none of it worked - and his failure couldn't have been his own fault, since he was doing everything right, doing it all by the book. Unfortunately the book was Date Young Women: For Men Over 35. Someone needed to get Sodini a book that explained that settling down requires settling for and that young women are usually interested in young men and that we can't always have what we want and that there were probably women out there who would date him - maybe women closer to his own age - but only if he got his shit together and stopped obsessing about college-age women.

I am, of course, not suggesting that R. Don Steele's book made Sodini go shoot up that aerobics class. But it's clear that Steele was not the guru Sodini needed.

One particularly chilling detail from Sodini's online diary was his seething resentment for a neighbor. He had seen an attractive young woman leaving his neighbor's house and was absolutely furious that his neighbor was sleeping with the kind of hot young girl that Sodini himself wanted but could never get. The girl was his neighbor's daughter.

Last season of Monk

MONK, one of the best TV shows ever, is doing its eighth and last season now - the first episode of the season aired Friday night - but since I don't have a TV now I have to wait until it's online to watch.

One of the saddest aspects of the show is the death last year of
veteran TV actor Stanley Kamel, who had a heart attack. He was 65. His portrayal of Monk's therapist, Charles Kroger, was just so wonderful. Unfortunately there are no clips available on Youtube, but this scene is available from the USA Network site:



He was on Barney Miller...

This would explain quite a lot actually...

The MC1R gene belongs to a family of receptors that include pain receptors in the brain, and as a result, a mutation in the gene appears to influence the body's sensitivity to pain. A 2004 study showed that redheads require, on average, about 20 percent more general anesthesia than people with dark hair or blond coloring. And in 2005, researchers found that redheads are more resistant to the effects of local anesthesia, such as the numbing drugs used by dentists. more at the NYTimes