(that is not a reference to any sexual details that may or may not be in that article, and if there are sexual details in that article, i don't want to know.)
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:21 (fourteen years ago) link
I couldn't even be bothered to start it. Summarize it in the most nauseating way possible.
― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:23 (fourteen years ago) link
i can summarize the first page:
hi me and my husband are smart, attractive people (did i mention he's on a fitness program to give himself the body of a Marine?) with interesting backgrounds who got married because we were madly in love and now we have two lovely children and a house we renovated ourselves with money from a book advance and we're both successful writers so what with being fabulously happy and successful and all i thought i should write a memoir about trying to make our already-really-swell marriage EVEN MORE FANTASTIC by REALLY THINKING about what kind of relationship we really want to have and being really honest and open with each other. and now i'm going to spend 4,000 words telling you the candid details. (if you like it, you can buy my book!)
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:26 (fourteen years ago) link
top of page 10
The following weekend: jealousy again (or was it an attempt to fuel our eroticism with tension?). I said yes a bit too forcefully when Dan asked if I’d noticed a well-muscled young man at the pool. Dan was allowing for my sexual free agency, granting me my full humanity. We lived, raised children, worked and slept together. Now we needed to gouge out a gap to bridge, an erotic synapse to cross. It was exhausting. “That guy did the epitome of bad-values hypertrophy training” — vanity weight lifting, in Dan’s estimation, just to get buff. “You’re like a guy admitting he likes fake boobs. And he had chicken legs. Did you notice that, too?”
― omar little, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:28 (fourteen years ago) link
her husband is a surfer who is the child of hippies. he cooks so much delicious food they haven't even saved for their retirement!!! can you believe that? he really loves to cook, he's like a chef
― harbl, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:29 (fourteen years ago) link
and later
Still, night after night, I’d slide into bed next to Dan. He often slept in a white T-shirt and white boxer briefs, a white-cased pillow wrapped over his head to block out my reading light, his toppled stacks of cookbooks and workout manuals strewn on the floor.
But as I watched Dan sleep — his beef-heart recipe earmarked, his power lift planned — I felt more committed than ever. I also felt our project could begin in earnest: we could demand of ourselves, and each other, the courage and patience to grow.
― omar little, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:29 (fourteen years ago) link
whitewhitewhite
lol
― harbl, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:30 (fourteen years ago) link
"our project"??
― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:39 (fourteen years ago) link
I scrolled very quickly through it and caught something about "top 10 orgiastic tao sex maneuvers"
― 囧 (dyao), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:40 (fourteen years ago) link
wowwwwwwwwwww
― being being kiss-ass fake nice (gbx), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:41 (fourteen years ago) link
New York Times I love you but you're bringing me down
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:43 (fourteen years ago) link
sorry but i see the photo and all i can think is dude can maybe power lift a bagel if he's feeling up to it
― omar little, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 02:52 (fourteen years ago) link
I was wondering when someone would post the link this.
― tokyo rosemary, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:02 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm going to get a bit challopsy here, because I actually read that entire article, and in spite of wanting to punch both people in the face at multiple moments, I liked parts of it. I mean still, yeah, it definitely was made for this thread.
― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:15 (fourteen years ago) link
i can believe there are some actual relationship insights here and there in it. or i'd hope so. i'm just not going to read the whole thing to find them.
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:17 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah, I too started to read it and then after about a page was just like, oh barf, gimme a fuggin break with your fake ass yuppie narcissism "problemz"-which-are-really-new-modes-of-self-love
― twice boiled cabbage is death, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:21 (fourteen years ago) link
God knows I don't begrudge anyone happiness, which is why I blame the reporters, not the subjects: as usual with the NYT, the story's framed as if it was about beehives on the moon or some shit.
― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:21 (fourteen years ago) link
Um, it's a memoir.
― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:25 (fourteen years ago) link
And? It's still published in the NYT mag as a main story, complete with photos and headlines. Framing matters.
― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:26 (fourteen years ago) link
The things she says "drive her crazy" about her husband are all actually braggin.
― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:27 (fourteen years ago) link
xpost yeah but you said you blame the reporters, not the subjects. The reporter is one of the subjects.
― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:28 (fourteen years ago) link
I guess as a married dude I enjoyed some of the "What is it we're actually supposed to be looking for (if anything) in a marriage" stuff. I also found it interesting to read between the lines to the narcissism and distance in their relationship.
― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:30 (fourteen years ago) link
from reading this thread only, im hoping it goes totally tiger woods on them
― bitter about emo (Hunt3r), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 03:35 (fourteen years ago) link
one thing is i'm just very tired of this whole stunt-memoir thing: i'll do or try to do XYZ thing to change or improve my life, and write a book or a big magazine feature about it. and in a case like this, you're bringing other people into it too. she writes at the beginning how her husband is kind of resistant to the whole thing, and i mean, no kidding. "honey, i want us to work on our relationship, and by the way i'm going to write about everything you do or say."
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 05:45 (fourteen years ago) link
his n hers lamps :\
― Astronaut Mike Dexter (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 05:48 (fourteen years ago) link
lol modern marrieds
― Feingold/Kaptur 2012 (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 05:48 (fourteen years ago) link
(and then if doing the stunt-memoir puts a strain on your relationship, you can do like julie powell and write a second memoir about the stress caused by the first memoir. it's a perpetual bullshit machine.)
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 05:49 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah julie powell needs to go away
― werner herzog eats a cookie (get bent), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 05:54 (fourteen years ago) link
I need to write a stunt memoir about being stressed out by trying to come up with my own stunt memoir.
― joygoat, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 05:55 (fourteen years ago) link
RFI: is Julie Powell worse than Elizabeth Gilbert?
― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 06:01 (fourteen years ago) link
o man my sister on her blog said she was lookin forward to reading that article cause she knows the guy - and her post has got a bunch of comments from ladies being all omg it was so great - smh
― ice cr?m, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 06:08 (fourteen years ago) link
this is the couple where the husband wrote (and published) an epic "sexual bildungsroman" about all his past lovers right
― they aren't werewolves until they hit werewolf puberty (reddening), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 07:10 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah here's the Publishers Weekly summary of the husband's book:
Duane tracks the emotional meanderings of Berkeley grad student Cassius Harper in this meticulous study of the ambivalence and romantic bewilderment of privileged American 20-somethings...his occasionally claustrophobic first-person narration offers a second-by-second account of his affair with this "most exquisitely sexual and vulnerable girl-woman."
i declare a new rule, if your husband writes a book containing the phrase "exquisitely sexual and vulnerable girl-woman" you're allowed to go all sorts of Julie Powell on his ass.
― they aren't werewolves until they hit werewolf puberty (reddening), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 07:22 (fourteen years ago) link
argh. i want to know less about both of these people.
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 07:48 (fourteen years ago) link
despite many reservations and twitches, made it through the article on good faith. The last two years have seen so much writing on modern divorce as a generation of 35-45ers discover it all over again for themselves, and so much of it is gung-ho marriage-is-an-inherently-fucked-institution / I-got-divorced-and-YOU-SHOULD-TOO that I was actually willing to suspend all snarkiness for the sake of a hilariously overamped article suggesting that even a ludicrously picture-perfect marriage takes work
so in the middle of what seems to me like a tidal wave of female bloggers who are loudly & proudly giving up on marriage, I had time for this article, even if I thought the couple were pretty shamelessly ridiculous. almost woke up mothra's divorce thread the post about it but figured that'd be a lonely thing to do
― Milton Parker, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 08:52 (fourteen years ago) link
i loved how it turned out their marriage was never even the silver mylar balloon, it was "hiding" in the basement
― bitter about emo (Hunt3r), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:13 (fourteen years ago) link
how could you MARRY someone who wrote the phrase "exquisitely sexual and vulnerable girl-woman"?
― Maria, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:14 (fourteen years ago) link
that article made me against gay marriage, and also straight marriage, and against humanity
― max, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:20 (fourteen years ago) link
I was actually willing to suspend all snarkiness for the sake of a hilariously overamped article suggesting that even a ludicrously picture-perfect marriage takes work
i guess, but that seems like such an obvious point, and i'm sure in any case it could be made by less annoying people. i have read some good things over the years about the unique pressures on the modern western marriage to provide not only stability and security but also self-fulfillment and transcendence, and how can anything ever live up to that, etc., i think it's a fine topic for discussion. but it doesn't have to be done in such a self-involved and off-puttingly self-aggrandizing way.
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:22 (fourteen years ago) link
^^^
― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:23 (fourteen years ago) link
x infinity
― ô_o (Nicole), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:26 (fourteen years ago) link
i read the whole thing and yes, it was horrible
― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:27 (fourteen years ago) link
I salute anyone who makes it past page 2.
― ô_o (Nicole), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:29 (fourteen years ago) link
I read the whole thing and somehow it didn't make me hate everyone in it. Maybe my sensors just weren't on yesterday.
― WHY DON'T YOU JUST LICK THE BUS DIRECTLY (Laurel), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:32 (fourteen years ago) link
the unique pressures on the modern western marriage to provide not only stability and security but also self-fulfillment and transcendence, and how can anything ever live up to that, etc.
I want to read more about this, actually.
I know the marriage industry is as busy as it ever was, and as a result couples confuse the formality with lifelong commitment, but, really, does anyone look for "transcendence" in marriage? They can just eat hash brownies if they're looking for that.
― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:34 (fourteen years ago) link
jokes aside this is about as good an article as i think you can hope from this kind of personal-essay crap
― max, Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:34 (fourteen years ago) link
wait for my memoir!
― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:35 (fourteen years ago) link
Alfred, I'm pretty sure there are smart, well-meaning people who think they're going to get all of that out of their married relationship. I don't really understand, that's not my world, but I think I would eventually have trouble with the same thing.
― WHY DON'T YOU JUST LICK THE BUS DIRECTLY (Laurel), Tuesday, 8 December 2009 14:38 (fourteen years ago) link