Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Apparently I suck at hiatuses

Well, also, I do take requests, and fastlad, my dearest friend who I haven't talked to in way too long, has asked me to snark about this stupid article, which I will because I love him and also because it's a really stupid article and I feel like being bitchy on a topic that a) merits it b) but isn't important enough to make my brain explode.

It should be short. I mean, here's the title:

Brooklyn Virgin Discovers Naked Dancing"

Here's how it starts:

Somehow it happened that in all the years I’ve lived in New York City, I’d never been to Brooklyn. But when I heard that choreographer Noémie Lafrance had a new show opening in Williamsburg, I decided it was as good an occasion as any to venture beyond Manhattan for the first time. I loved the music video she choreographed for Feist’s “1234” in 2007, and “Rapture”—her piece for aerialists staged on the side of a Frank Gehry building at Bard College—was undeniably awesome. So on Tuesday night, I boarded the L train (heading away from the West Village) and made my way to hipsterville. I’d heard from my more global friends that Brooklyn is a charming borough inhabited by cool young families, gourmet cheese shops, and creative intellectuals. It has parks! And trees! And slow walkers aren’t mowed down on the sidewalk! But I’m what you might call a bona fide Manhattanite. Or, to be more precise, a bona fide Upper East Sider. I’ve traveled the world, I said to myself—how exotic could Brooklyn really be?

Perhaps my tweed J. Crew jacket and Tory Burch ballet flats weren’t the best wardrobe choice for that day, but I overcame the fact that I was a total Williamsburg misfit and hoped my foreigner status wouldn’t be glaringly obvious to the natives. (It was)..


It gets more annoying from there. Apparently girlfriend was shocked, shocked, at the realities of downtown* theatre, from lack of proper accomodations to nekkid performers to I can't even read all that shit to be honest. Short version:

"I'm a total pointless snob with nothing remotely interesting to say and particularly not about this show I'm supposed to cover, (I don't know much about Art, but I know what I -don't- like, even if I feel totally insecure about it); but if I write this piece in an archly kidding-on-the-square 'ironic' tone (see, I AM hip, I know 'irony' is what all the cool kids do these days...maybe) people will think I'm ever so charming and clever and amusing."

Not.

-plonk-

The first comment sums it up really:

good riddance and don't come back. we don't need you.


just sorry I never invited her up to my former digs in Queens, and don't I feel DARING for saying that. or, um, not? i did and do consider myself damn lucky to have a (nice, at that) place to live in the city (or anywhere for that matter, look around you you stupid toff) at all?

Oh yeah, and yes, it is depressing that this is a (presumably paid) piece for Vanity Fair and not someone's livejournal, as another commenter noted. Indeed.

(*Williamsburg is often considered an extension or 'new'(er) "downtown," i.e. the East Village moving East. Yes Virginia, that certainly DOES include, nay, is probably by now OVERWHELMED by, a fuckload of privileged gentrifiers and/or other annoying UES twits faux-"slumming" it for the length of the nearly-as-inflated-as-Manhattan-by-now-lease or the evening, respectively, so girlfriend there shouldn't have felt remotely out of place unless she's really so damn insecure that a couple of equally-pretentious hipsters glaring over their black-rimmed glasses gives her the vapors)

19 comments:

Renee said...

I find myself often mourning for the trees that we destroy to publish absolute nonsense. Don't our resources deserve better than to be wasted on the rantings of an over privileged twit?

belledame222 said...

hell, I feel sorry for the bandwidth.

T. R Xands said...

What Renee said

also

Damn those commentators are eating her alive. I almost feel bad. Just a little.

...ehhh.

belledame222 said...

oh I don't. but then I am a certified Bad Person.

click her name and take a look at the rest of the articles. and the bio. go on. -waits-

"Orwell's newly discovered letters sold for 84,000 quid, guess that means uh -something- about the economy! Oh, and he had a 'saucy' affair. Orwell, you know, he was that guy, he wrote, umm, uhhhh...Did I mention the handbag the auctioneer was carrying?"

shut UP shut UP shut UP

jesus, I used to thinK VF was...well, more -substantial-, at least some of the time...

belledame222 said...

and, THIS.

It pains me that while talented young writers cannot find jobs, and seasoned writers are losing theirs, work like this is still getting published. If all you could get out of this show was that, "Ew, it was weird" you do not belong in New York City. Not just Brooklyn, lady.

Posted 4/7/2009 by ecn225

queen emily said...

Please won't someone think of the bandwidth?!!!1

lankydancer said...

Ye gods. That hurts the brain and the soul, especially once I think about the fact that this woman got paid to write this, which is (a) a criminal waste of bandwidth and money and (b) a rather horrifying indication that there is demand, at least in mainstream publishing, for this kind of shite.

Is it too much to hope that getting flamed in the comments might actually raise her level of self-awareness just a titch? Probably, actually. I'm expecting "You weird people with your wierd poverty and/or social conscience are meeeeean!"

On an unrelated note: belledame, your inability to go on proper hiatus is really sweet. I'm pretty sure that this is the most posts I've seen from you in such a short span in a while.

belledame222 said...

I know, right? damn perverse is what I am. I should've made a vow to blog every day for the next two weeks, is what. then I might've actually shut the damn thing off.

finals, I has them. and, -swats irritably at everyone- just, sick of...people.

How're you?

belledame222 said...

and yeah, she'll probably just be all

a) they were MEEEEEN to MEEEEE!!! that just proves I was right.

b) hay, I stirred up attention! that just proves I was right!!

bar the odd tearstorm or so.

belledame222 said...

the person who really needs to get a damn clue from that is the one who approved that drivel to be published in the first place, and/or the one who hired her.

Donna said...

I think it's important to mention that Queen Emily is meeeeeeean!

lankydancer said...

How're you?Thesis, I has it. I've been giggling at your failed hiatus largely because I've recently ended mine and started blogging again--in the middle of term paper/exam/thesis season.

Like you said, it's perverse.

I hand in the thesis next tuesday (and then graduate, wheeeee!), which means I'll probably end up blogging less after that. snrk.

Sorry to hear you're sick of people, I definintely know the feeling. Good luck with the finals.

lankydancer said...

uh, there should be a space somewhere in the first line of that comment

belledame222 said...

hey, congratulations!!

Alon Levy said...

Don't hate on the UES too much. Its eastern parts are pretty nice - the upper-class twits stay near Park and Fifth, so the rents are actually way more reasonable than in most of Manhattan. East of Lex, it's way better than most of the Upper West Side, which is flush with people who think the literature that comes out of Park Slope is good.

belledame222 said...

yeah, it could've been any number of 'hoods really. just that's where this one came from, so.

I'm just sad that all the Hungarian shops and restaurants are gone from Yorkville now.

Alon Levy said...

True. But in my experience the biggest assholes are from the suburbs. If you live on the UES and are not extremely rich, you've at least made peace with sending your kids to NYC public schools, where they might *gasp* be in the same classes as free lunch kids (=minorities, in Politically Correct English).

belledame222 said...

if it makes you feel any better, a number of commenters noted that her bio suggests she couldn't have been living in NYC for more than two years tops.

Alon Levy said...

Meh. There are people who's cocooned on Fifth Avenue and Central Park West for generations.