As widely reported at other places, Lee Samantha Chang will be Frank Conroy’s replacement as the director of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Maud links to an interview with Robert Birnbaum, whereby Chang revealed that she found her calling as a writer almost entirely by accident.
And back in February, the erstwhile Max provided some inside details on Chang’s “audition.”
Andrea Dworkin has died. She was 59 years old. The cause of her death was unknown.
Dworkin was one of the more vocal and radical of feminists. In 1983, she drafted a law that set up pornography as a civil rights violation against women. And while it was easy to caricature her, as this Michael Moorcock interview with her notes, her positions were often more nuanced than her most gave her credit for.
Personally, I’ll miss Dworkin. Even if I didn’t always agree with her, there was a determination and a tenacity within Dworkin that I admired. While everyone else was retreating from the gender divide in a post-ERA world, Dworkin kept fighting without abandoning the points she wanted to make, even when she was ridiculed, sometimes unfairly, in the process.
The news that Paris Hilton is going to play Daisy Buchanan in an upcoming film version of The Great Gatsby might seem horrifying to some — until we remember the fact that Daisy Buchanan was rich, ditsy and superficial. And so is Paris Hilton.
Even if Paris Hilton simply shows up to the set, this is nothing less than perfect casting.
Here are a few reasons why Paris Hilton will succeed in the role of Daisy Buchanan:
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise–she leaned slightly
forward with a conscientious expression–then she laughed, an absurd,
charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the
room.
“I’m p-paralyzed with happiness.” She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my
face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted
to see. That was a way she had.
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
“Why CANDLES?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.”
She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all–and yet there’s something in that voice of hers. . . .
Then from the living-room I heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh, followed by Daisy’s voice on a clear artificial note: “I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”
He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued
everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew
from her well-loved eyes.
One of the things I accomplished over the weekend was returning to bowling after a two-year absence.
It wasn’t easy. You see, I hadn’t entirely come to terms with Japantown Bowl’s demise.
In San Francisco, there seems to be an unspoken stigma against casual bowling. You’d be surprised at the paucity of bowling alleys in this town. Is it the City’s purported sophistication that keeps out bowling? Is bowling somehow declasse? Back in November, when I made the list of red state things and blue state things, bowling never really quite fit. It seemed one of those things that cut across party lines. Whether you were a league player or an incompetent bowler drunk off your ass, the common goal of striking down ten pens was what united people. That and the squeals of teenage girls after a strike and the echoes of balls striking pins. Who can say no to this?
My hometown. That’s who.
If you open a bowling alley in San Francisco, it’s almost destined for conversion or desuetude. Before Ameoba on the Haight became Ameoba on the Haight, it was a bowling alley called Park Bowl. And the aforementioned Japantown Bowl, the last of the City’s great bowling alleys, bit the dust a few years ago. This is really pathetic when you consider that even Manhattan has Bowlmor Lanes.
What’s left these days? Yerba Buena Gardens, which has a small bowling alley and nifty Glow-in-the-Dark lighting, might satisfy in a pinch. But a real bowling alley needs to have at least twenty lanes and a few veteran bowlers dispensing advice while practicing lane courtesy. And Yerba Buena doesn’t cut it. There’s also Presidio Bowling Center, but it’s as squeaky-clean and unsullied as Yerba Buena.
So I pretty much lost it when Japantown closed shop. If Yerba Buena was the best that my City could do, then, dammit, I would BOWL NO MORE!
The good news, however, is that a grand bowling experience can be had beyond Serramonte Lanes — just off the coast, no less, at Sea Bowl in Pacifica, a 32-lane affair with beach paintings stretching across the whole alley just above the pins. The people here are real bowlers. They mean business and they want you to bowl well too. You can hear the sounds of the Pacific right off the beach. One suspects that the bowlers who were forced to leave the City somehow ended up in Pacifica.
But if we are to bring back bowling to the Bay Area (real 20+ lane alley bowling!), Pacifica, with its mighty ocean winds and its cool climate, is a good place to start.
Salon: “[D]ealt a weak hand in the Schiavo case, bloggers all went in on a bluff. And now they refuse to pay up. In fact, they’re actually congratulating themselves for helping “get to the bottom” of the story. But the meltdown has exposed their often mindless naiveté.”