Category — books: we read them

I decided to pick up “The Road” because it sounded gory, unique, and quick to read. I then foolishly boarded a plane, cracked open the book, and quickly found myself choking on delicious existentialist sludge. That motherfucker Cormac knows what the abyss is and he will straight up fist fuck you with it. I know I’m two years too late on this book. But sweet christ, this thing is unbelievable. Am I right, people? Who agrees? Raise your charred, candle skin-colored, apocalypse-ravaged hands!

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Ashcroft Knows Best

She’s back with a smart article in The Los Angeles Times about the state of women today. Wurtzel points out some troubling realities: there are few females in positions of power, wage inequality persists, women are expected to be either well-paid whores or passive housewives, and people still watch Entourage.

What is responsible for all of this? According to Wurtzel, it’s the women’s movement! We totes failed! We done screwed up our little lady liberation party, and after burning all of those expensive satin bras! (Well, not exactly).

Wurtzel is concerned that third wave “Do Me” feminism, (marked by “lipstick glamour, a joyous embrace of femininity, and an affectionate embrace of men”) has inadvertently morphed into a full-fledged, Girls Gone Wild panty-dropping raunch culture. Columnist Meghan Daum agrees.

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Created by super-genius/swishing cocktail swiller Atossa!

American Psycho hits theaters for the first time in New Zeland this week. Behold their creative and precise print ad:

It’s no secret that Matty and I are card-carrying business card enthusiasts. I blame this movie for our obsession with raised black ink and crisp watermarks. We hope the Kiwis enjoy the hearty American mergers and acquisitions — lord knows we’ve put up with enough their insufferably gay Mordor crap.

Fun fact! Did you the movie was directed by a kick ass LADY who directed a David Simon written Teevee Show?

Best exchange:

Patrick Bateman: He was into that whole Yale thing.
Donald Kimball: Yale thing?
Patrick Bateman: Yeah, Yale thing.
Donald Kimball: What whole Yale thing?
Patrick Bateman: Well, he was probably a closet homosexual who did a lot of cocaine. That whole Yale thing.

If you need to find me tonight I’ll be at Dorsia.

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In the immortal and poignant words of Young Jeezey “Ev-ev-ev-everyday I’m hustlin’” Step aside Sir Jeezey and meet ultimate the hustler: Misha Defonseca.

During World War II, she was a Jew. She trekked 1,900 miles across Europe for four years in search of her deported parents. All alone except for the friendly pack of wolves that adopted and raised her, Misha single-handedly killed a Nazi soldier and escaped the Warsaw ghetto.

If this tale sounds like the incoherent and slightly delusional babblings of your geriatric relative during Passover, you may be surprised to learn that Defonseca’s best-selling memoir of her experiences was translated into eighteen languages and made into a feature film in France.

But according to a recent statement released by her lawyers, nothing in the book actually happened. In fact, Belgian historian Maxime Steinberg searched the archives, and found no evidence that Defonseca’s family was even Jewish. OMG busted!!! Misha – whose real name is Monique - hopes that “those who feel betrayed” will forgive her, and notes that, while the story was not “true reality” it was her reality. The holocaust memoirist only “felt” Jewish. Is that kind of like lying about your age/sexual orientation on MySpace?

I haven’t read Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, but I imagine it’s Eli Weisel’s Night meets Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. If Defonseca gets a movie deal with Disney – and she totally should – I recommend Nathan Lane for the voice of the spunky, kind-hearted wolf, and James Woods for the menacing yet playfully sarcastic Nazi.

This scandal may be one of the few known instances of a shiksa wanting to be a Jewish girl, but it isn’t the only literary hoax making headlines these days. When the well of original tropes runs dry – which it probably did after Shakespeare wrote his 38^th play – writers know they gotta get a gimmick. Gangs! Junkies! Precocious HIV-positive gender-confused teenage hucksters! Anything to convince you that I didn’t grow up in a San Fernando Valley cul-de-sac and go to private school!

Perhaps these con-artists are modern incarnations of Oscar Wilde characters, proving once and for all that sincerity is fatal, details are vulgar, life is mimicry, and illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Or maybe anyone in a bad creative writing workshop with a cursory knowledge of a given subculture can whip out a memoir and be taken seriously. The tricky part must be running from one end of the restaurant to the other, changing out of your normal clothes in the bathroom and affixing the wig/syringe scars/concentration camp tattoo/penis before the publicist sees you.