What I Read: Play It As It Lays

Just one more book left in my TIME Top 100 novels list, now! Too bad it's The Man Who Loved Children and too bad I just can't get into it. Even with a ringing endorsement from Adam at Memento Mori. Ughhhhh~~

Didion takes us on a brief tour of Maria Wyeth's crumbling marriage and mental breakdown in the arid landscape of Los Angeles. Many of the reviews I've read for Play It as It Lays call it "depressing," even "terrifying," but I largely suspect that response has to do with how squeamish you are about abortion (and how squeamish you are about women feeling, at worst, vague and ambiguous about getting abortions, rather than eternally regretful and emotionally destroyed). Of course, there is other heavy stuff going on here, too: heavy substance abuse, off-screen (off-page?) domestic violence, an overdose, and other Hollywood indulgences. I liked Didion's writing and was happy to hitch a ride with Maria Wyeth for a while to visit her gilded cage of a world, but nothing about it shook me to my core. (Maybe that's how you know you're depressed? Hm.)

A comparison to Day of the Locust is maybe apt, since both books are about the dysfunction of Hollywood, but Didion pulls it off way better. Play It As It Lays could also possibly fall into the Dysfunctional Rich White People category on the TIME Top 100 Novels list, up there with Rabbit, Run and Revolutionary Road, but Didon does it better as well. Even if I'm not particularly haunted by the book, I enjoyed reading it. Her prose is light and direct, and I'm going to have to find more from her in the future.

Talky Tuesday: What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part 1: Copenhagen and NYC/NJ

You may have noticed that things were quiet around these parts—that's because I was on vacation! I had a fantastic three-week whirlwind tour of the US, from Austin all the way up to Maine, and much as truly vile shit went down while I was there, I saw a lot of my favorite people. So swings and roundabouts? I'll be unloading my travelogues in digestible chunks over the next couple weeks. Part 1 starts off with my unusually long layovers in Copenhagen and NYC/New Jersey!

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It takes forever to get out of the Copenhagen airport, or at least it feels like forever. My flight was supposed to arrive at 12:30; when I check the time on the surprisingly dingy subway, it's already 13:40. Fuck. I had grand, if brief, plans for my layover in Copenhagen: see The Little Mermaid statue, grab a smorbrod at Aarman's, and top it off with a beer at Cafe Malmo. I chop the list down to Cafe Malmo (beer above all else).

It pours down intermittently during my walk there, but by the time I find the basement bar (Cafe Malmo is emphatically NOT a cafe), the weather has broken for the better.

I take a seat right opposite the open door, enjoying the cool breeze and the blue-gray patch of sky projecting into the dark wood paneling. The fresh air is good because there are ashtrays everywhere, and the unmistakable smell of cigarette smoke—smoking in restaurants, a memory of a bygone era.

At the bar I struggle with whether to use English or Swedish. I switch uncomfortably between both, if finally skewing more towards the Swedish end of the spectrum. The bartender understands me just fine and truthfully I can't tell if he uses Swedish or very slow and deliberate Danish with me in return. I know that I can read Danish okay, but trying to listen to snatches of overheard conversation is impossible. It's all gargling.

Is it extra appropriate for a dive bar to have a nautical theme? I can't decide. In one window, a copper(?) bathysphere is surrounded by potted cactuses. The duality of man, or nature. The wall opposite me features a collage of faded photos and the title "BUGISSTREET SINGAPORE" in that font used exclusively for saloons in the Wild West on crayon-bright yellow paper. The photos are of women, glamour shots and candids alike, and many feature exposed breasts.

The sign outside the bar promises live music, but I'm skeptical that you could comfortably fit the accouterments necessary for even your basic guitar-strumming singer-songwriter. There would be floor space between my seat and the door, but it's dominated by a heavy five-pin billiards table. Or maybe the billiards table doubles as a stage as necessary?

While I sip my beer, the thought strikes me of "third places," or maybe it's called "third spaces." The idea is that we crave places that are neither work (obviously stressful for most, or at least oversaturated, even if you like your job) and home (often its own brand of oppressive), so we go to places like bars, parks, and cafes. I suppose my third place of preference is bars; I'd like them even without drinks. Even the cutest, quirkiest cafe can feel performative and formal. But everyone relaxes in bars. Especially during off-peak hours, it's a place to relax and be around-but-not-with other people. They have no expectations of me (except to, say, pay for my drink, not to leave a mess, etc.) and likewise I have no expectations of them. I have space to think.

That said, I don't think about much. I just let the weird mix of classic American top 40 and European schlager I don't know and Danish covers of American songs wash over me. There is a surprising amount of country music. Selections include:

• A Danish cover of James Taylor
• "Fly By Night"
• "Don't Worry, Be Happy"
• "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree"
• A loungey version of "Revolution"
• A country version of "O Holy Night"

Eventually other patrons appear, or maybe friends of the young busboy. They set up the five-pin billiards game. The box with the pins and the chalk for the scoreboard had been sitting on a shelf behind me the whole time and the thought had earlier occurred to me that one of the small, finely carved pins would have made a nice souvenir. Now I'm glad I didn't pinch one. I watch a game play through, not understanding any of the rules, and then return to the airport for the most important flight: from Copenhagen to New York.

That flight itself is uneventful. I read a lot and sleep a lot. The real fun begins when I land at JFK and try to get to my lodgings for the night: King Sauna in Palisades Park, NJ. In the process I wrangle a cheap burner sim card and some allergy medicine (my hosts in Austin have cats), but getting to the sauna is more of an adventure than I would have bargained for. I get there nonetheless.

King Sauna is a Korean-American version of a jjimjilbang, a particular kind of sauna. There's not really anything that's different between one in Korea and one in the US except, maybe, context: in the US they're a luxury and a reward; in Korea they are (or were for me) as a reliable part of travel as highway rest stops or Motel 6. In some neighborhoods they're a place to spend a few hours with the family; in others they're a cheap place to crash if you missed the last subway home.

In retrospect, my view of jjimjilbangs as the latter is maybe incompatible with the semi-luxurious status they enjoy in the US (would a hostel or AirBnB for the night be cheaper?), but there's something to be said for 24-hour entry, saunas, and hot tubs when you trudge out of JFK at 10 in the evening.

Yours truly, sweatin' it out.

Unfortunately, the "lagom" pool—not boiling hot, not tepid or ice cold—is drained to just a few inches, I guess for cleaning? So I can't indulge in my favorite warm-cold-warm ritual, but I enjoy having a luxurious hot shower and sweating it out in the steam saunas.

The other nice thing about jjimjilbangs generally, and this one in particular, is the freely available computer access. Without that, it would have been impossible to get my budget sim card started. I could have flown into Austin semi-blind, relying on the crapshoot that is free wifi, but that would be cutting it a little close, even for me. I also take the time to order online NJ transit and airport shuttle tickets. Phone tickets. The future is now!

There were other intangible benefits to staying at the sauna, mostly related to sense memories. There's a smell to jjimjilbangs—is it damp bamboo mats? tea?—that I will eternally associate with relief, safety, and relaxation. And the second it hits my nose, all the tension from traveling leaves my body.

Truthfully, my favorite jjimjilbangs in Korea were much more budget and much less luxurious than this one; basically places for drunk patrons to sleep it off. But I like the touches here: the delicate white-and-pink upholstered fancy chairs and matching tables, with intricate leaves and curves carved into the arms and legs; the overwhelming presence of flowers, real and artificial; vases, geodes, and crystals set in decorative tableaus (maybe for obscure feng shui benefits?). The net effect is one of repose in a fairy forest bower, and it's surprisingly calming.

My original sleeping plan was to avoid the coed fairy bower area, to minimize the risk of encountering a pervert, but when I get exiled out of the private rest/sleep area in the women's-only side for wearing the jjimjilbang uniform ("clothes outside!" the attendant tells me and the other woman in there), I notice that in the co-ed corner devoted to sleeping has little wooden barriers to cordon off "private" space—random dudes won't be able to comfortably roll over and try to spoon with me. Satisfied, I put my glasses on a nearby shelf and set a series of alarms on my phone to make sure I don't miss my flight to Austin.

As it turns out, I don't need the complex series of wake-up calls. Whether it's jet lag or anticipation, I only sleep for a couple of hours and wake up at around 4 am. I peek in the saunas to see if the lagom pool has been refilled yet, but no dice. I relax in a few of the different infrared saunas in the coed fairy bower section, then leave a little before 7 so I can get the NJ transit bus into the Port Authority Bus Terminal in good time. The round-trip flight from Newark to Austin is courtesy of my friend Noah, and it's poor form to miss a flight that someone else has paid for.

Friday 5: Off-Balance

I'm back from vacation and I have a TON I want to write about here, which is good because it'll make up for my relative silence during my absence! Bad news is that it might take a while to construct proper blog entries out of my travel notes (a habit I've picked up in recent trips: taking notes during my vacations so that later I can actually remember what I did), and the longer something takes the less likely I am to do it. So until then, a Friday 5!



What most recently made you giddy?

Two things: dancing at a really good wedding, and watching the bats emerge at Natural Bridge Caverns. Those two memories alone are worth every penny I spent for this trip.

The groom and I (center), crashing a Lunar New Year party in 2010.

Mexican free-tail bats outside Natural Bridge Caverns.

What most recently left you agog?

Sometimes the Friday 5 teaches me new words. I always took "agog" to mean "shocked" or "surprised"; I double-checked just now and instead it's "full of intense interest or excitement."

Pretty much my whole trip to the US had most recently left me agog, I suppose. I packed a lot into just three weeks of visiting!



What most recently left you aghast?

Despite all of the good vibes and good friends in my trip, there's no denying I picked a tumultuous time to visit (which, welcome to the next three years). Neo-nazis demonstrating publicly, counter-protesters being injured or even murdered . . . and the worst part is I'm not even surprised.

A close friend of mine and his girlfriend are great admirers of James Tiptree, Jr. They saw me off from Boston with a copy of Her Smoke Rises Up Forever (though I think I left it in Albany, or possibly Old Orchard Beach), and one of the stories in there seemed all the creepier in light of contemporary goings-on: "The Screwfly Solution."



What in your life is the most higgledy-piggledy?

Landing the next student or project is always higgledy-piggledy. Freelance life!



 What was your week a mish-mash of?

Maine, Massachusetts, Copenhagen, Stockholm. I was all over the place this week!

Friday 5: Let's Get Physical

How confidently could you turn a cartwheel right now?

Not at all. I'm writing this ahead of schedule with a bum ankle, but that doesn't change anything at the moment of you reading this, wherever and whenever you are. Gymnastics is not my thing.


How (physically) flexible are you?

Not my cat or my mat, but you get the idea.

I'm not a human pretzel, but yoga keeps me relatively limber. So I'd like to think, anyway. That said, I've let yoga fall by the wayside and that's maybe a bad idea. The hardest part is always getting started again.


How are your Frisbee-throwing skills?

Pretty bad.


Which carnival game do you have the best shot at winning?

I actually won one of those "toss the rings on a bottle" games at Six Flags? or Busch Gardens? when I was maybe 13 or so? And I won a HUGE stuffed orangutan. I won on my first or second throw, at that. Everyone involved was surprised: the attendant awkwardly asked me to hand back the rest of my rings, I probably lost my shit, and it took my parents a while to decide what we should do with this oversized prize (I think Teacher Dad took him back to the rental car?).

Tang (that's his name) is still in a closet somewhere, one of the handful of stuffed animals that I'm just too sentimental to get rid of. But since he's much bigger than your run-of-the-mill teddy bear, it's a little harder to take him with you to college, or across the ocean. His fate is thus undecided.


How good are you at toss-the-paper-in-the-wastebasket?

A champ. Why aren't there Olympic Office Sports?

Friday 5: Mornings Are for Coffee and Contemplation

Why are waffles better than pancakes?

Are they, though? I'll sit down to a stack of chocolate chip silver dollar pancakes anytime—plenty of fond childhood memories there. Of course, I also have fond memories of 3 AM Waffle House runs, but those aren't the same kind of fond memory.

I admit, however, to liking Swedish pancakes better than American pancakes.

American pancakes // Photo by Brigitte Tohm on Unsplash

Swedish pancakes are essentially crepes, and an excuse to have dessert for breakfast (or lunch, or dinner...I don't think they're a solid breakfast food here?).

Swedish pancakes, basically. // Photo by andreeautza on MorgueFile.com

Swedish waffles are materially identical to American waffles, except in shape.

Swedish waffle // Photo by Pietro De Grandi on Unsplash

American waffle // Photo by Joseph Gonzalez on Unsplash

What’s something you remember about being 11?

Middle school? Sixth grade? Lockers? It's a blur, truthfully.


What experience do you have with role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons?

Middle school is when I got started, though not with Dungeons and Dragons. Online play-by-post RPGs were kind of my thing; I didn't play D&D proper until college, with a weird mix of people who were really into getting into character and people (like me) who were more meta-gamer about it. Player groups shuffled and changed and settled as social groups shuffled and changed and settled, and now when I spend time with the final line-up (so to speak), it's not unusual to go for a casual one-shot, just for funsies.


How do you feel about carnival rides that make you go upside-down?

Not great? I don't like carnival rides in general. They feel so pointless.


You’ve seen Matthew Modine in more films than you realize (which he famously admitted during his opening monologue when he hosted Saturday Night Live in 1988) (filmography here). Which have you seen, and which was the best?

I might have seen him in more films than I realize, but that doesn't mean I've seen him in a lot. The only movies I've seen in that list are Full Metal Jacket, The Dark Knight Rises, and Stranger Things (not a movie, but still). Those are all really good, but I think Stranger Things might be the best? And I'm not just saying that because these questions are very obviously based on Stranger Things.

What I Read: Karen Memory

I mentioned having reading to do for Feminist Sci-Fi Book Club during my vacation in Austin, and how I finally tackled The Dispossessed maybe a decade after I first tried to read it. The other book on the docket for book club was Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory. I finished it in July, but you're reading this in August, after feminist science fiction book club, because book club gets first dibs on my thoughts!

Image courtesy Tor

Karen Memory is a steampunk Wild West version of Jack the Ripper, kind of. It says that on the back of the book, and I habitually re-read the backs of books as I read, and even still I was waiting for this to turn into a feminist steampunk version of Johnny Mnemonic. Should I have expected that? Obviously not. Was I letting myself get tripped up by the title? Yes, probably. Still, I have to admit to being just slightly disappointed in the book not delivering what I had promised myself it would be.

In a nutshell: prostitutes take on a serial killer and espionage in an steampunk alternate universe version of late 19th century Seattle.

Elizabeth Bear's writing is fantastic. Karen has a distinct voice that's just a lot of fun to read, and the book is worth it for that. This is the first book I've read by Bear and I'll have to find more in the future.

BUT!

Small things bugged me.

1. Insta-love!
2. The amazing-and-brilliant-and-perfect-at-everything love interest
3. Habitual asides about how life is hard/unfair for women. I'm here for feminist sci-fi in the biggest possible way, but I hate when authors don't have faith in the world they're building, or in the sensibilities of their readers, to just show-don't-tell that life is hard/unfair for women but instead have really awkward, add-nothing asides or commentary by characters or the narrator. The same goes for minorities. The Fifth Season handled that particular nuance much better.
4. A perfectly needless dialogue aside about radium watch dial-painting, an industry that wasn't in full swing until around 1917, which is years after the book ostensibly takes place. Sure, I could write this off as "it's an alternate universe that found radium a little earlier," but what bugs me is that it's not an essential plot point; it's tossed in as an aside, I guess as a world-building thing? or Bear wanting to show off research thing? IT WAS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY. Like, nuclear-powered steampunk mechas would be fine with me, because you'll probably explicitly fold your universe around the "here we discovered nuclear power a little earlier and took it and ran with it" wrinkle and it'll work. But asides that are historical allusions in a universe with other real-world events and figures that are more or less contemporaneous with each other (the gold rush, Bass Reeves, Mary Ann Conklin, Orange Jacobs) better not be anachronisms because otherwise it just looks like a mistake.
5. I still kind of wish it had been feminist steampunk Johnny Mnemonic.

Other people might complain that it's not especially steampunk-y enough, but I thought it was just right. (I also appreciate that the gadgets don't always work. Sometimes engineers get it wrong!)

Friday 5: Grabby

There’s a convenience store nearby and you have a small case of the munchies. What do you grab?

A chocolate protein shake and then a croissant or a piece of fruit. Maybe both!

Scott Webb

You’re about to get on a plane and someone just stole all your reading material, but there’s a newsstand nearby. What magazine (of likely available titles) do you grab? 

Matthew Smith

Why am I so chill about someone stealing my stuff? Because if they've stolen my airplane reading material, that means they have my phone!

But I'll answer this question in the spirit in which it's intended, which is: what would I grab from Hudson News (or whatever) if I didn't have any of my own reading material for a flight. The answer is: anything without an airbrushed model or celebrity that isn't also about business or sports.


On a regular work day, where do you grab lunch and what do you get if you don’t bring a lunch from home?

Since I have the luxury of working from phone, I grab lunch in my own kitchen (which is also my office). After putting in a couple hours in the comma mines (I use the Pomodoro Method, but I tend to work for entire hours instead of 25-minute bursts), I take a leisurely lunch: usually a sandwich or a bowl of muesli, sometimes leftovers.

Naomi Hébert

Instead of a lunch, you decide you need a quick nap during your workday. Where can you grab 40 winks?

Elena Cordery

In my own damn bed!


How close to your head is your cell phone when you’re asleep in bed?

Image courtesy DodgertonSkillhause

Not at all. I leave it to charge in the kitchen partially because there's not enough outlet space by the bed, and partially because having to get up and walk to the opposite end of the apartment to shut off the alarm helps me wake up.

What I Read: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

I borrowed this book from a friend. She thought to recommend it to me on the basis of the footnotes (long story), not knowing that I'm also a huge nerd for Ada Lovelace. I mean, I'm pretty obviously a huge nerd generally and she knew that much when she let me borrow it; I mean for Lovelace and the Analytical Engine specifically.

Image courtesy Sydney Padua and Pantheon

I LOVED THIS SO MUCH. This is the rare instance where a book is popular on GoodReads and I LOVE IT. Bullet points:

• Padua did so much research, and it shows. I love research. More research!
• It is so meticulously well researched that Padua makes a point of clearly demarcating where the fictional licenses occur, not only by explicitly creating a "pocket universe" where the fanciful adventures take place, but even the poetic licenses she takes within that pocket universe, e.g. when she fudges the timelines for people like Jane Austen or Lord Nelson. When people don't acknowledge small goofs like that in their historical fiction/alternative fiction universe, IT BUGS ME. (More on this in a forthcoming review of another book.)
• The art is adorable.
• Padua also endeavors to actually illustrate how the Analytical Engine might have actually looked, which is so cool!
• She also includes lots of original correspondence from Babbage and Lovelace as well as their contemporaries in the appendices, if you're into that.
• Yes, did I mention just how well this web comic-turned-graphic novel is researched?
• I love the way that fictional Lovelace and fictional Babbage pal around and have adventures together and are clearly good friends and there's no weird romance shoehorned in. 
• Padua also uses direct or almost-direct quotations from other historical figures in people's dialogue, which I love.
• Also Lovelace's pipe!
• So much research, y'all.

Travel Announcement

I'm on vacation! I'll be bouncing around the US to visit friends, attend a wedding, and (belatedly) celebrate a PhD! I have some posts scheduled to go up in my absence, but I won't really be "here."

Image courtesy Art.Science.Gallery.

Most pertinent for this blog, I'll be in Austin for a few days, and hopefully I can convince my hosts to visit the Art.Science.Gallery with me. I've been staring longingly at it from a distance for a while now; I'd love to see it up close and in person! But will I make it? Stay tuned!