Paperblog A Brie Grows in Brooklyn

A Brie Grows in Brooklyn

"Mabel's not crazy... she's unusual."

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Caleb heart a spot on NPR about “The Outs,” a web series about a cast of characters, many of them gay, who live in Brooklyn. Apparently, NPR said it was going to change TV. I was skeptical, but last night, I watched the first three episodes, and I am converted.

The Outs is basically everything I wish that Girls could have been. I just wrote a long whiney explanation why, but erased it so you don’t even have to attempt to suffer through it. I think it’s enough to just put it that simply.

Check it out for yourself. The first episode is above, and the rest are available for free here. I’m excited that cultural trends get distilled by projects like these. 

The Outs Adam Goldman Sasha Winters Girls Reviews
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My idea of a party! (at Influenzapocolypse)

My idea of a party! (at Influenzapocolypse)

My Life Bubblicious Girls
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On the Kardashians, Big Rich Atlanta, The Americans, and Somehow, As Always, Girls

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I’ve recently come to truly abhor winter. For a while, I loved it, because everyone stayed indoors and left me alone. I could go for runs in Prospect Park and not see another living soul. Then, I started working from home, and now I’m alone all of the time. One obstacle — other people — was removed, leaving behind an even greater obstacle — myself — and lately I find myself even more unhappy than I’ve ever been before. 

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In the summer, at least, I could spend large swaths of time outdoors. In Valentino Park in Red Hook, reading. Or at the Brooklyn Bridge Pool. Now, the waterfront of Red Hook smells like open sewage, and the Brooklyn Bridge pool has been dismantled.

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The weather has been so fucking wacko that I’m afraid to leave the house, because I’m never dressed properly. I thought it was supposed to be 50 degrees yesterday so I wore a dress and a leather jacket. WRONG. It was 50 degrees with 40 mph winds, and I was almost stripped of the skin off my bones.

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Last week, it was literally too cold to go outside. And this upcoming week promises only to be slightly warmer. Without any reason to leave, I am trapped here. Which is why I feel justified watching as much television as I can find on Project Free TV, my new illegal download site.

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Kourtney and Kim Take Miami The Americans Big Rich Atlanta Girls Kim Kardashian social commentary
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Some Lazy Thoughts on the Season 2 Premiere of Girls

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This morning, I’m all riled up about Girls, the season premiere of which I watched last night. In the break between seasons, I chalked up the furor I feel over the show to jealousy. But what I realized last night was that I’m not jealous at all—in fact, a large part of me wants to root for Lena Dunham, who is a young, talented woman who made a good film named Tiny Furniture.

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I hopefully will have something more articulate to say about the matter in the future, but all I can post now is what I just wrote to a friend on GChat:

me:  it’s just so mediocre
and it’s infuriating
it is such bad messaging for girls
i think
in terms of sex
and the way that guys treat these girls
sex is completely joyless and awful
not only for lena dunahm
but also for allison williams, all of them
they’re bad people
they don’t do anything good for the world, or for anyone else
there’s no kindness or love or joy
it’s like more soulless than the real housewives, seriously
i almost can’t articulate it
the show is not particularly well written
it’s funny like once in a while
mostly because of zosia mamet and the gay dude
the thing is, it’s not like Lena’s PURPOSEFULLY writing a selfish brat
that’s really what she is
that’s the character
no introspection
no commentary 
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To which my friend responded that people want, and need to like the show, because everyone is looking for a weathervane to understand young people. But the show’s not a weathervane, or even anything noteworthy. The marketing people driving that message home are fooling us all into thinking that, however. Especially me, given that I get so worked up about it.
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GIRLS Season 1: A Review

By Bianca Ozeri

When Brie asked me to write a post on GIRLS, I got nervous because she hates the show and I love the show and sometimes I mistake disagreeing with Brie for cultural ineptitude. Which, she tells me, really is a mistake given that she still listens to Lana Del Rey. So, yes, I love GIRLS. Lena Dunham has, to me, hit the proverbial nail right on the head.

More than a voluntary choice, this adoration feels the only option in order to maintain my dignity. For every Sunday, during HBO’s shit slot, I watch a simulation of my life. I have three primary girlfriends who compositely exhibit qualities of comical ignorance, serious priggishness, and chic wisdom (myself included). We’ve had dance parties to Robyn. We’ve lived together when we shouldn’t. Virginity still looms for one of us. We’ve dealt with death together (not that of an unborn fetus, but still). And now that I’ve written out what I thought an uncanny likeness, I realize that it’s pretty cookie-cutter, and you, if you’re a girl, probably (hopefully!) draw the same parallels. 

(Clara, absent, takes a brilliant photo) 

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Girls: The Last Episode

It was posed to me, last week, that the reason why I don’t like Girls is because I’m jealous of Lena Dunham, who, unlike me, is a successful writer who makes real money. “That is definitely part of it,” I admitted outright.

But it’s not the only reason, I tried to argue, to a chorus of people proclaiming that it directly mirrors their own lives. “I can relate to it,” they intoned. “I am LenaDunham. Her best friends. I know the dudes they date. I live in her apartment in Greenpoint. I have HPV. Do you like my tattoos? My generation.”

“Does no one else watch this tv show?” I asked them. “Because it’s really not that good.”

But my protests fell on deaf ears. After the backlash that ensued after the first episode, which was as ridiculous as the florid praise that came before it, anyone who watches it is weary of having an individual opinion. If you hate it, you might disagree with real cultural critics. And if you love it, then you encounter people like me, who want to argue with you about it until you cry.

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As I’ve gotten more used to this blogging game, I’ve learned to censor my output. For instance, I wanted to write a blog post today about how awesome Pretzel M&M’s are, because not only do they taste delicious, but they also are only 150 calories per pack. Amazing, right? Oh wait, no one gives a shit. Then I was going to write a review of Prometheus, which I saw this weekend with Silky Wilky (whose nickname I recently shortened to “Silks”). He made it abundantly clear that I understood nothing about the movie when leaving the theater, I began complaining about the unimaginative architecture inside of the Dome of Alien Death. “You’d think that they would throw in some intricate carvings, or a room full of space jewels,” I said. “Given how far we’ve come with technology.” “You really choose the most irrelevant things to comment on,” he told me. “Stop talking.” I still might write a review, for those of you out there who would have enjoyed a few costume changes, or at least a fucking ancient female character. Either that, or a good screenplay. Which brings me to two other random thoughts I had while sitting here, thinking about what to write today. The first is that the science fiction issue of the New Yorker is unreadably bad. I did not finish a single personal essay, and also, aren’t all of the people who wrote them dead? If Junot Diaz writes another storia en espanol sin italics about his homeboy maracon, I’m going to shoot myself in the head. And Jennifer Egan, your robot was lame. The second was that Richard Brody referenced Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinéma in his review of Episode 9 of Girls.  Whatever he has to say about Girls is completely irrelevant, so it’s hilarious that he wrote the recap. Even if it’s not true, I imagine Richard Brody to be like 75, sitting in a sagging chair in his hoarder style library, like a John Updike character only without the blow jobs. At first, I was pissed that he tied in the beginning shot in the episode to Godard, because come on, those bitches are not referencing Godard, they are referencing themselves, and they are no fucking Anna Karina(s?). Also, Histoire(s) du Cinema is MY pretentious reference to make. But then I realized Brody just wrote a book on Godard, and also, he is adorable, so I forgave him. The above paragraph makes no sense. My bad! That’s basically all that I thought about today besides what I was going to eat, and how I could avoid leaving the house. Hey, at least you learned something about nutrition (see: Pretzel M&Ms).

As I’ve gotten more used to this blogging game, I’ve learned to censor my output. For instance, I wanted to write a blog post today about how awesome Pretzel M&M’s are, because not only do they taste delicious, but they also are only 150 calories per pack. Amazing, right? Oh wait, no one gives a shit.

Then I was going to write a review of Prometheus, which I saw this weekend with Silky Wilky (whose nickname I recently shortened to “Silks”). He made it abundantly clear that I understood nothing about the movie when leaving the theater, I began complaining about the unimaginative architecture inside of the Dome of Alien Death. “You’d think that they would throw in some intricate carvings, or a room full of space jewels,” I said. “Given how far we’ve come with technology.”

“You really choose the most irrelevant things to comment on,” he told me. “Stop talking.”

I still might write a review, for those of you out there who would have enjoyed a few costume changes, or at least a fucking ancient female character. Either that, or a good screenplay.

Which brings me to two other random thoughts I had while sitting here, thinking about what to write today.

The first is that the science fiction issue of the New Yorker is unreadably bad. I did not finish a single personal essay, and also, aren’t all of the people who wrote them dead? If Junot Diaz writes another storia en espanol sin italics about his homeboy maracon, I’m going to shoot myself in the head. And Jennifer Egan, your robot was lame.

The second was that Richard Brody referenced Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinéma in his review of Episode 9 of Girls.  Whatever he has to say about Girls is completely irrelevant, so it’s hilarious that he wrote the recap. Even if it’s not true, I imagine Richard Brody to be like 75, sitting in a sagging chair in his hoarder style library, like a John Updike character only without the blow jobs. At first, I was pissed that he tied in the beginning shot in the episode to Godard, because come on, those bitches are not referencing Godard, they are referencing themselves, and they are no fucking Anna Karina(s?). Also, Histoire(s) du Cinema is MY pretentious reference to make. But then I realized Brody just wrote a book on Godard, and also, he is adorable, so I forgave him.

The above paragraph makes no sense. My bad!

That’s basically all that I thought about today besides what I was going to eat, and how I could avoid leaving the house. Hey, at least you learned something about nutrition (see: Pretzel M&Ms).

GIRLS Inanity Peanut M&Ms Prometheus my life
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Where’s The Masturbation At? Girls, Episode 2: A Review

I don’t have very much to say about the second episode of Girls, because I didn’t hate it as much as I did the first one, and I also am having trouble remembering what even happened. These are the notes that I wrote to myself while watching the episode:

Jobs that are boring

Happy with these lives??

Take abuse

Whatever they want!

50 Shades of Gray

So cute at interviews. Oh my god!!

Which basically just reads like a summary of any given New York Magazine cover article.

My main take-away was that the way sex is portrayed is irritating, because the show makes it seem like “girls” don’t enjoy it. They just have it because they know they’re supposed to be sexually active, in the same way they know that they should probably get jobs. Having sex seems like nothing more than a penance for being fucking alive. 

(Please don’t continue to read this post if you’re related to me.)

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GIRLS: A Review

I was wondering why Lena Dunham’s new show on HBO, “GIRLS,” got the bitch slot (10:30pm) on the Sunday night line-up, despite all of the glowing reviews in the media. Or at least the New York-centric, witty pop culture media that defines my worldview. 

After watching it last night, I think I know why. Despite the fact that New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum describes herself as “a goner, a convert” for the show, and even though writers like Frank Bruni seem to think that it defines the way that the rising generation of women feel about sex, the network executives aren’t sure it’s that good. 

And, if the first episode is any indication, it’s not. I say this with a twinge of envy-relief—and also with disappointment, because I find Lena Dunham to be really endearing, the kind of girl you’d immediately want to be friends with—but the show was dull, confusing, and myopic. “This is what middle-aged well-educated white people WANT to think 24-year-olds are like today!” I thought, as I continually checked the clock from 10:33pm until 11:04pm, waiting for the minute when I could, with good conscious, turn off the television and go to sleep.

Because from the moment that Lena appeared on the screen as Hannah, a young woman from the Midwest who has been living on her parent’s dime in New York for the past two years, to the first time she referenced how hard it is to get a job in this economy—in the publishing industry, no less, which doesn’t even pay living wages for its executives, thereby rendering a quest for a salary almost superfluous— to the awkward, uninspired sex between Hannah and her worm bellied loser of a lover, to the final scene in which Hannah, on her own, walks bravely past a TAXI CAB, Carrie-style, towards the subway, I was fucking bored.

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Girls Lena Dunham HBO Television Reviews
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An example of why flat-chested girls should not wear padded bras with low cut shirts.

An example of why flat-chested girls should not wear padded bras with low cut shirts.

Flat-chested Girls Sunset Williamsburg Waterfront my life
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