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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| My new blog
I'm officially abandoning Xanga in favor of a way cooler host, Typepad.
My new blog can be found by clicking here. Bookmark it!!
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| Cartman and friends
My friend Carol made this for me. It's me if I were a Southpark character.
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| Movin' on up
So I'm working on a new blog, and as soon as its ready for consumption
I'll post a link to it on this site, and ya'll can read it. It's going
to be new and improved, I promise.
In the meantime, I've started a Flickr page and am mildly obsessed with it. You can view my online photo album here. (If the link doesn't work, it's www.flickr.com/photos/staceydebra.
Enjoy. More to come later.
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| The view from inside my head
1. ENDINGS
I just finished the "History of Love" by Nicole Krauss. What a let
down. Totally bullshit ending. I mean, you fall in love with the
texture and depth of her characters, you read 200-plus pages, and the
conflicts that took that long to build are resolved in like 3 pages,
certainly not enough time to satiate a reader's sensibilities.
2. ELITISM
I attended a daylong seminar on international reporting at UC Berkeley
on Saturday. Several observations on this event. One, I never want nor
do I need a graduate degree in journalism. There's totally an elitist
attitude surrounding that grad school program, which while perhaps
legitimate, is utterly frustrating, especially because journalists are
supposed to be humble and empathetic and graceful listeners for whom
preconceived notions evaporate during said listening. Also, I realized
upon hearing from these incredible journalists who have reported from
Tunisia and Iraq and Uruguay and Mexico and China that what I don't
know about journalism can only be learned by doing, not by sitting in a
classroom for hundreds of dollars per credit hour.
3. THE WORLD IN MEGAPIXELS AND HTML CODE
International reporting is a very cool thing to learn about from the
reporters who've been kicked out of countries or jailed in Libya or
snuck across the border from Guatemala to Mexico. It's also interesting
because the Internet -- a high-tech creation, no doubt -- has made it
possible for people around the world to learn about countries that are
underdeveloped, or developing, or in crisis. So much innovation, and so
much room to continue to explore how the Internet will help human
beings understand their brethren in other hemispheres. I think if the
Internet could figure out how to be less schizophrenic (like
momentarily you could click on this link, my favorite site I learned of
this weekend, and bye-bye blog, hello something else). And then that
site will link to something else, and you'll go there, and so on and so
forth. It's unfortunately harder to be absorbed by something online,
unless it's really mind-blowingly compelling. I think this is a problem.
Some people probably love the interactivity of it all. I do, sometimes.
But usually I don't.
4. CREAKING FLOORBOARDS
I love it when my roommates aren't home. Love, as in: I am gloriously,
radiantly overjoyed when I have the place to myself for an evening. Or
two. Yes folks, for two evenings in a row I've had the whole place to
myself. This is because Jon's worked last night and tonight, Emilie's
out of town, and Jason has been at his girlfriend's. I wish I could
have this experience more often (though don't get me wrong, I love my roommates). Last night and tonight I just enjoyed
the sounds of the wind and the creakiness of our wood floors. I didn't
even play music until I sat down to write this.
5. SOMEONE ELSE
I have a new TV show on which I've almost instantly become hooked. It's
called "The Riches" and it's on FX. I read about it, then I told
the DVR to record it. I hardly ever watch TV, so if I'm hooked on
something, that says a lot about the quality of the show. It's
delightfully creepy, funny and irreverent, but also psychologically
twisted and entertaining. The concept sounds a bit crazy, but
essentially, this white trash family happens upon a fatal car accident,
discover the couple were on their way to a new home in a Florida cul de
sac and then assume the dead people's lives. Wayne and Dahlia become
Charlene and Doug Rich. That was the pilot episode. I think I missed
the second episode, but the third, I caught, and it focused a lot on
the emotional complications of their new life. Recommended.
6. GUNS
A week and a half ago our street filled with police cars, ambulances,
fire trucks, and then the dreaded County Coroner's van. We stared out
our bay window for like 3 hours, watching, and wondering what crime
could have occurred that the victim wasn't rushed to the hospital. The
10 o'clock news told us that a 14-year-old girl had allegedly and
accidentally shot herself in the face. Then, today, I learn that 33
people died in the deadliest random shooting spree in U.S. history.
Tragic. So so sad. So senseless. That's the worst part, really. There's
simply no way to reason or rationalize the Virginia shooting. You get
up, you get your coffee, you walk across campus and sit down at the
wooden desk and get out your notebook and Bic and then. Bam. Gunshots.
This is why civilians should never have been allowed to have guns in
the first place. Since it's completely unrealistic to change the second
amendment and illegalize guns, we should at least have tougher gun
laws. The fact is, crazy people and children get their hands on guns.
You should have to pass through strict channels before you can get a
gun.
7. PRESIDENT
I hate George W. Bush.
8. NEW THINGS TO SHAKE UP MY ROUTINE
My new goal is to do at least one new thing each week. So far, since
making this goal, I have done the following: Museum of the African
Diaspora, American Conservatory Theater's "After the War," checked out
Modern Times bookstore, saw a movie at the famed Red Vic theater, went
to the journalism conference at Berkeley and ran from my house to Ocean
Beach (about 6 miles).
9. SLEEP
I don't get enough of this. I'm ending this entry now so I can try to get more.
10. LINKS
Since I need to go to sleep I'll make links for this entry at a later time. Promise.
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| The view from here
I wonder what it’s like to be really rich. Really, really rich.
Wealthy. Having a home in Hawaii and Napa and San Francisco, the latter
of which has a view of the Bay and Marin and Alcatraz. To drive a
Mercedes, to collect art from around the world, to have a Deborah Butterfield sculpture placed in the courtyard garden behind your home courtesy of a construction crane.
I imagine I'm one of millions of non-rich people who wonder what it
would be like to have more money than ways to spend it. Therefore, do
rich people ever wonder what it’s like to not have all that money? To
not be always comfortable, and warm, and able to do anything they want
to do because they can throw greenbacks in the face of most of their
problems?
I ask because I spend Friday morning in the home of a
very, very rich couple (who fits the description in the first
paragraph). I went there to interview a woman who next month will be
presented with an award for volunteerism. I think it should actually be
called the "thanks for donating" award. So I walk into her home, and
saw this:
This is the view from her family room window. Alcatraz is the island in
the center, and behind that is Marin. Their house was actually quite
comfortable for being so grand, not at all like the house I went to
last month, which, um, was located across the street from Sen. Barbara
Boxer's house. That house was so showy and weird and traditional and I
was afraid to sneeze. It was massive.
I've never been poor. I've always had food, nice clothes, a warm bed,
the ability to buy stuff I think I need but don't really. Still, I've
never known what it's like to have a lifestyle saturated with money.
When I go into a home just bursting at the seams with wealth, I can't
help but be in awe.
The woman had an errand near my office, so she drove me back to work.
In a sporty Mercedes convertible. A bum sat on the corner where I was
dropped off. And that's San Francisco. The ultra rich and the dirt
poor, sharing space in this 7-by-7-square-mile city.
Sometimes I just want to spend an evening lost in my head, reading a
book, lounging around in my underwear in my bedroom. That's what I
wanted to do last night. Except I had to work. Finding time to be alone
other than when you're sleeping is perhaps the biggest challenge of
living in a vibrant city with 3 roommates who you enjoy being with.
I grudgingly got on the bus to go to Bruno's, to cover a panel
discussion and concert. My editors would expect a story, and the
event's planners knew I would be there, so flaking wasn't an option.
When I arrived, my friend Isaac was there, who I adore, and my bad
attitude evaporated.
Just in time, too, because the panel discussion was incredible. It was
about the intersection of art, culture, consciousness, music, hip hop
and Judaism. The most interesting panelist was a man named Y-Love,
who's black, from Baltimore, and at the age of 22 moved to Israel,
studied at Yeshiva, became ultra-orthodox, and then moved to Brooklyn.
In general, I think Jewish converts are fascinating, because they chose
what I was simply given, but this guy was exceptional. You look at him,
and you see the typical Hasidic Jew -- a black suit, white collared
shirt, scraggly beard, tsit-tsit hanging down from underneath his
shirt, peyos dangling from underneath his hat (in which probably a
kippah rested underneath). But he's black, and talks with black
vernacular, and knows how to rap. In fact, he told me afterward, he
fell in love with hip hop when he was at yeshiva in Israel. He and his
friend used freestyle and rap as a way to learn Torah and Talmud. He
also told me that his Judaism, blackness and hop hop are "the braided
challah in my life." Definitely using that quote.
So I stayed for his set. Odd, but fun. He raps in English, Hebrew and Yiddish.
I also gave some serious thought yesterday to whether or not I want to
date non-Jews. It's a long story how this thought invaded my brain
yesterday.... But it started when I went on Date No. 2 with a
craigslister (not Jewish). And I got to thinking. I'm almost 26. At
this point, anyone I date is a potential life-long partner. Is it worth
getting involved with someone who's not Jewish, if that is a
requirement for my future mate? Is it a deal-breaker? I used to think
it was narrow-minded to say that I'd only date or marry a Jew, but I'm
starting to have a change of heart... I mean, is it narrow-minded to
say that I want to be with someone who loves books as much as I do?
Someone who cares about the news, the world around us? No, it's simply
knowing myself, and knowing that I need to be with someone who can
engage me in a conversation of things that matter, to us both. And
Judaism matters to me. I'm realizing I do want to end up
with someone Jewish, who can share with me all the values and memories
derived from this faith and culture. It's hard for me to admit, since
it eliminates a huge number of people in the world. But maybe that's
just the way it is.
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