Last Week on Survivor: The tribe exchanged their strongest members, and Peih Gei orchestrated and executed a plan to throw the immunity challenge and get rid of one of their interlopers.

ZHAN HU: James is up early and working hard. The only thing he can think of, to save himself from going out the way Aaron went out, is to keep the tribe rested and fed. This makes no sense to me. From the way Peih Gei is talking, it seems like all it would take to change the plan would be for James to sit her down and say, “If you keep me in the game, I'll be your best friend.” He’s sticking to the “fill the water jugs” plan though.

FEI LONG: Todd reveals to Amber that he's been getting clues to a hidden immunity idol in their camp. This shall henceforth be known as Todd's Big Gay Mistake #1. He says he needs her help to find it. Why? He says that if they win the reward challenge and get a chance to kidnap one of Zhan Hu, they will bring over Aaron or James, whoever is left, and get the next clue from them. Great plan, guys! I’m sure it will work perfectly. Actually, that part of the plan does work perfectly, but it was still stupid for Todd to tell Amber about it.

REWARD CHALLENGE: It’s another wardrobe mystery! Jaime and James show up to the challenge wearing battered old charcoal gray suit jackets. Apparently on their way to the challenge set they accosted and undressed those aging hobos who live down by my church. Again, no one addresses or explains the change in wardrobe. Did China get cold? Did visiting CBS executives go through sort of hazing ritual with the Survivors, leaving their material possessions at the camp site?

The challenge: Retrieve puzzle pieces from an abandoned Chinese house and solve a puzzle. The reward: a trip to a Chinese tea house including a bath, shower, “ultrastrong” Charmin toilet paper and real toilets (described as “Western toilets” by ultrasensitive Jeff Probst), and food.

Inside the "Abandoned Chinese House," Peih Gei takes a private moment with Sherea to say, “Now we’re all good. We’re still with you guys. We’re here for you guys. Tell Frosty that, okay?” Those are her exact words. Sherea responds with… nothing. No response. Even though they’re standing there together, untying their puzzle pieces for several more minutes, Sherea does not respond. Odd, no?

Fei Long wins the challenge, motivated by Jean Robert alternately shouting, “Western toilets, baby!” and “Put the heat on!” In contrast, the answer to the puzzle was “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Fei Long kidnaps James and goes galloping off to the tea house, all ready to put the heat on the western toilets. When they get there, the sign on the door says, “Charmin Tea House.” I’m not kidding. Amber and Courtney take a bath in the same tub while Jean Robert leers. James showers naked and Denise fails to notice.

ZHAN HU: Peih Gei tells her tribe that Sherea ignored her advances during the challenge, reporting that she said, “You know we threw that for you guys,” which she did not actually say. However, the point is still valid. They don’t know if Frosty and Sherea are still on their team. They decide that this immunity challenge must be won. They will not throw it to attempt to get out James.

FEI LONG: Todd, looking like someone's emaciated grandmother in a blue silk bathrobe, asks James to gie him the clue to the immunity idol, and promises to save his life.

Back at their own camp, clean and shiny, James gives Todd the clue and he figures out that the carving on the gate is the immunity idol. He and Amber pretend to be knocking shingles off the top of the gate, while secretly trying to pry the carving loose. Oh NO! Frosty turns up to help knock the shingles down and things get kooky-crazy! Little gay boys with adrenalin highs are running around, leaping on and off the ornamental gate, and dopey girls in camo bikinis are cantering back and forth! Amber ends up standing on the immunity idol, while Frosty tries to pry it out from under her feet. Todd interviews, “All I could think was Frosty, Frosty, NO! NO!” For the record, the decision to go after the immunity idol in full view of the entire tribe is Todd's Big Gay Mistake #2. But you knew that, right?

Now that we've been to the Charmin Tea House, the commercials starring brightly colored bears and their brightly colored bottoms are starting to make sense.

Todd continues the weird behavior which the immunity idol seems to inspire. He says to Frosty, “If I can’t trust you right now, I will kill you,” and “You stop right there!” and “It’s okay, it’s okay, we have to trust you.” Why can’t Todd and Amber just say, “We found the immunity idol, neener!” and move on? Frosty interviews retardedly that this cements his place in their group, but Todd turns around and gives the idol to James. That's right: Todd's Big Gay Mistake #3.

Now, ironically, James finds himself in the position of having to throw the immunity challenge. Todd explains all: James should go back to Zhan Hu, lose the challenge, go to tribal council, vote for Jaime while the rest vote for him, then reveal the hidden idol, and Jaime will go home. James is so happy he breaks Todd’s arm off at the shoulder. Of course he's happy -- he was just given the immunity idol, for absolutely no reason!

Todd shares his plan with Denise and Courtney, proving his ability to plan one tiny, pointless step into the future, while completely ignoring the end game. Todd is now officially retarded. Who gives away the hidden immunity idol EVER let alone for such a ridiculous scheme? I'm tired of even counting his strategic mistakes. Keep your mouth shut, tiny man!

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE: Hello. It’s the gross food challenge.

Round one is Frosty vs. Peih Gei on chicken hearts. Frosty wins and licks the plate. Frosty has a tongue the size of a surfboard. How he has been storing that giant fleshy plank in his regular size mouth is a miracle beyond my comprehension.
Round two is Courtney vs. Jaime on eel. Jaime wins for Zhan Hu and Courtney regurgitates an entire eel.
Round three is Amber vs. Erik on baby turtles. Erik wins for Zhan Hu.

Oh NO – Zhan Hu is winning! This is not going according to Todd’s incredibly short sighted and ridiculous plan!

Round four is James vs. Denise on chicken fetuses. James, you will recall, must not eat his chicken fetus, if he wants to win/lose, all according to the lunatic plan of Tiny Todd.

Denise shouts at her chicken fetus to “GET IN MY MOUTH! RIGHT NOW!” but she can’t make the feathers and beak go down her throat. It just keeps coming back up. James is doing everything he can to not eat his chicken fetus, including turning around, looking away, bringing Denise a coke, reading the paper, and eating other random chicken fetuses which may be lying around on the ground, but in the end he has to put Denise out of her misery and eat that chicken fetus. Winning the challenge for Zhan Hu.

Now if I’m Zhan Hu and I’m sitting there watching James obviously attempt to throw the challenge and let Denise win, and then eat his fetus in two seconds once he determines she can’t, I would be thinking something is rotten in the land of the thousand year old eggs. But, then, I’m not Zhan Hu.

Round five: Erik vs. Frosty on thousand year old eggs. Erik and Frosty open their empty mouths simultaneously (it looks like to me, anyway) but Erik taps Jeff Probst on the arm and is announced the winner. ZHAN HU WINS IMMUNITY! And there sits James with his hidden immunity idol, all dressed up in a hobo’s Sunday suit, and nowhere to go. The face of irony, today, is a chicken fetus. Allow me to say, Bawk.

FEI LONG: Back at camp, they realize all is not lost. They are actually in a win-win situation, because now they can vote off one of the old Zhan Hu. They decide on Sherea. Courtney waffles, wants to vote out Jean Robert instead. She tells Sherea the plan of the group, but says that it is “completely whack.” Whoever wrote the subtitles spelled "whack" with an H -- is that right? Jean Robert picks up a vibe and is uneasy. Todd and Amanda debate it. Their guts are saying different things – Amanda’s gut voting to get Sherea out and Todd’s gut raising its tiny paw for Jean Robert. If only their guts could jump out of their bodies, wrestle in the mud, and decide things once and for all.

TRIBAL COUNCIL: Sherea and Jean Robert fight. Jean Robert says he is a “bad boy” and Courtney snits, “What are you, Luke Perry?” Hahaha!!

They vote out Sherea, which Jean Robert spells “Chechnya,” and no one is surprised. She was a pouty, belligerent, lazy, bitchy mess and nobody liked her.

Next week on Survivor: The merge!

Read all of my Survivor recaps here.

Labels: episode 6, recap, survivor, survivor china

Last week on Survivor, I was in Boston and did not write my recap. I am now recapping the show from the magical future world of this week, having seen episodes 5 and 6 already, so maybe I will bring special insights to today’s post. Or maybe “special insights” and “survivor recap” are antithetical elements.

Let’s refresh our memories: Jean Robert and Courtney wanted to get rid of each other. Everybody wanted to get rid of Dave. Sherea won’t work around camp, but Dave got voted out for being a big meanyhead.

ZHAN HU: Sherea has developed a strange pink stain on her bra. Nobody here wants to spend any more time looking at Sherea’s bra. Nor do we want to look at her gloriously hirsute armpits. I wish someone would toss the girl a red unitard, already. Zhan Hu whine about bored they are. You’re on freakin’ Survivor – why don’t you write a sonnet. Put your feet in a river and rhapsodize about chocolate chip cookies. See how long you last in the game.

Jaime and Erica flirt in the water. I can tell you from my position here in magic futureland that this is going nowhere. Eric likes her, but she does not like him. It doesn’t help that he is a virgin. This is the romance the commercials promised us, but it is not the romance the show delivers.

FEI LONG: Miraculously, incredibly, beautifully, James the grave digger confesses his attraction to Denise the lunch lady. Allow me to say, "WHAT?!!?!" The dead-eyed mullet-wearing lunch lady has cast her spell on giant James. He says she’s a "strong good" woman. She’s there to compliment you and work with you, he says, and that’s attractive. Then he says, in all seriousness, "If Denise was ten years younger, or I was older, whichever way, Denise would be in trouble." Denise interviews that she can trust James and ride his coattail. Is she oblivious or a lesbian? Something tells me that this is not the first time this question has been asked about Denise. Oblivious or a lesbian? Tonight on CBS!

A Chinese person brings a message: Fei Long much choose two members from Zhan Hu to capture and make part of their tribe. They immediately grasp that Zhan Hu has received a similar message. They decide to kidnap Frosty and Sherea, and hope that Zhan Hu will not take away James.

ZHAN HU: When these turkey-snoggers get their note, they begin celebrating! Now they will have seven members! And Fei Long will have five! They are being given an amazing gift! It’s crazy! A huge power shift! What beautiful world is this! They choose Aaron and James from the list on their message, like kids on Santa’s lap, and then embarrassingly continue their gloating. When the next boat arrives, they figure out that life isn’t made out of candy canes and unicorns, and they lose Sherea and Frosty. Sad music plays and Sherea manages to squeeze out a lazy tear.

FEI LONG: A boat arrives and Aaron and James go off to Zhan Hu. Jean Robert’s blurred buttcrack mutely mourns. Lunch lady predicts that Jean Robert will now have to work. Jean Robert lopes toward irrelevance by talking about himself in the third person.

Both tribes strategize that they will vote off their new captured members first.

ZHAN HU: James awesomely complains that everyone at Zhan Hu is happy. “My people over at Fei Long are miserable. I like misery.” Pei Geih interviews, “We have control of the two strongest players in the game right now. It’s just a matter of what we choose to do with them."

FEI LONG: Sherea plans to be a better, stronger, nicer Sherea now that she has a chance to start over at Fei Long. Jean Robert has the same plan. They are going to try and out-useful each other to stay alive. When he rises early to make nobly make a self-sacrificing pot of rice and then rouses everyone else to do the rest of the work, Denise accuses Jean Robert of being bossy and corrects his manners.

ZHAN HU: This tribe is always in the damn lake.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE: Now to the important part of the show!

Pei Geih has devised a plan that is more complex and diabolical than the Six Finger Plan, which Nakomis devised on Big Brother, causing us all to say, “Who here has six fingers? This is America!” Here is the plan: Zhan Hu will throw the challenge, getting rid of the Fei Long members at their camp and protecting the Zhan Hu members at the other camp. They will go to tribal council and vote out James or Aaron, guaranteeing that Frosty and Sherea will survive. They plan to make it to the merge with 5 on each tribe, evening out the inequity that now exists.

The most important aspect of this challenge, however, is not the strategy. It is the glorious fact that the merciful producers have, without comment or fanfare, given all of the survivors the swimming suits they packed from home. Thank you, kind producers. One more round of Sherea and Denise in their underwear with the awful bits blurred, and I was going to have to put forks in my eyes and die. Apparently it only takes a couple weeks of filming to realize that denying them their suits was hurting us more than it was hurting them.

Zhan Hu throws the challenge while giggling. Jeff Probst does his usual pious, snotty thing that he does when people throw challenges. James and Aaron are extremely frustrated, but figure out which way the wind is blowing. Fei Long wins immunity! Jeff reveals that Jaime actually went so far as to throw one of the puzzle pieces onto the other tribe’s pile.

ZHAN HU: Back at camp, James berates the girls while they giggle. He is completely disgusted and interviews that he can’t support people like this. Erik doesn’t like it, but has to stick with the girls.

TRIBAL COUNCIL: James rants sensibly about how foul it was for the girls to throw the challenge. All around me, I can feel America loving James. Zhan Hu loves James too, whether he likes it or not, and they vote off Aaron, whose lack of a personality makes it impossible to joke about his demise.

NEXT WEEK ON SURVIVOR: The tribes get ball gowns!

Labels: episode 5, recap, survivor, survivor china

I read this book when I was in college and then reread it in graduate school. I love it. Love Phoebe, love Hepzibah, love weird old Clifford, love enigmatic young Holgrave. Love daguerrotyping, whatever it was. I embrace the sentiment, the examination of the weight of human history and the awfulness of the soul and the impossibility of light in a populated room. I even love Thomas Pynchon, on whose ancestors these characters are based. I am, you might say, a fan. This is me with Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Yes, he looks kind of two dimensional and like he's not paying attention to me enough, and yes, that is my child there, my child with my husband, who lives here with me in the 21st century, but... Hawthorne and I have a special bond. I'm the only one in my American Lit class in high school who actually *liked* Young Goodman Brown, actually read My Kinsman Major Molineaux, who didn't buy the "good vs. evil" explanation that was being spooned out by Miss Cardimone to the rest of the class.

By the way if you're reading this and I knew you in high school, assume you weren't in that class. I'm looking at you, Ann. Any disparaging remarks do not apply.

I loved Hawthorne, and Melville, and Poe, and the way Melville loved Hawthorne, and the way Poe hated everyone, and how they wrote to and about each other, and how they all spat on Emerson, and his ilk, and pooped in Walden Pond, and dug around in their dark hearts and and wrote about what they found.

Last week I was in Boston. My husband suggested we go up to Salem to see Nathaniel Hawthorne's birthplace and the House of the Seven Gables. I was, of course, panting with excitement. Wouldn't you be? Except that I'm serious.

This is the House of the Seven Gables. It is the house on which Hawthorne based the house in his book. The house that represents original sin. This is it. He visited it as a child; it was owned by relatives of his. It's been restored, in fact restored to be more like the one in the book than the original house actually was (Hepzibah's store was there, and there is also a secret and terrifying passageway up through the chimney).

On the day we went to Salem, it was foggy and chill, although the rest of our week in Massachusetts was sunny and breezy. We walked all over the place and then down to the harbor where the Custom House is, where Hawthorne did some writing:

Here's the USS Friendship, across the street. And my son:

The house was neat, interesting, educational. So was the house in which Hawthorne was born, which is also on the property, having been drug there from five blocks down the street in order to add it to the museum. It was a historical site, well-preserved, well presented, valuable.

Now, I hesitate before exposing my soft underbelly like this, but I must say that beyond the interestingness and the educationability of it all, I got a little misty thinking about the history of the house. Considering Hawthorne sitting there in the parlor, about the book he wrote, about the period of time he wrote about, I found myself swallowing hard and wiping my eye.

They had only recently rid themselves of the British, and they were living in a brand new country. It would have been so vital, so fascinating, so *patriotic* and so important, to create this new national identity in literature. I know, I know, I had read about this before too, and I knew it in my brain. About how James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving drew dark lines around a colonial asthetic. But until I was standing there in Massachusetts, having walked through the South Meeting Hall in Boston, where they had the rabble-rabble meeting before the Boston Tea Party, having looked at Paul Revere's Grave, having stood on Bunker Hill, I did not get what they were doing, those people up at Brooks Farm and in Concord and what it meant while my boys were pissing on transcendentalism -- it was more than just ideas, it was identity. I get that now.

I have two reactions to that: one is that I need to think more about what I'm writing and why. What are we doing here? Do we still take up a black marker and make bold outlines around American literature any more? Are we all just happy to be citizens of the world? The other is that I wish more urgently that I could have been there when Melville walked out of that Emerson lecture, when Poe wrote that criticism of Hawthorne, when Hawthorne was sexually rejecting Melville.

At least I got to go to the house. I knocked on the front door, climbed around under the rafters, put my hand on the original bricks in the fireplace. I wouldn't have thought someone mean and cynical like me could be moved by such an experience, but I was. Next time, we're going to Concord.

Labels: book reviews, books, hawthorne, house of the seven gables, nathaniel hawthorne

Who wants to take a ride with me on Cinderella's Golden Carousel? Now put your hand down if you're not made out of literature. I’m going to take ten books to Disney World. Books that deserve it. Books that need it.

I have been trying to read Doctor Zhivago for several months, and between the lengthy surnames and all the railroads going this way and that, I am ready to conclude that what this book needs is to get out of Russia for a while. To ride the spinning teacups. To meet Donald Duck.

I can think of lots of books that need a trip to Disney World. Heart of Darkness. Bleak House. How about As I Lay Dying?

My books spend most of their time spread open, lying upside down. Periodically they get shoved into the diaper bag, where they get drowned in apple juice, squashed with M & Ms, and have to babysit Barbies. When I’m finished reading them, I publicly criticize their authors, make fun of their movie versions, and snicker at their cover art. What kind of life is this?

I’ll tell you another book I’m going to take to Disney World: Anxious Pleasures. Lance Olson’s publisher sent me a review copy months ago and I’ve been belligerently sitting on it, waiting to reread The Metamorphosis before I read this rewrite. A few rides on Space Mountain should put things right.

I’m going, I’m really going, in the middle of November. I might even take my children. But will I be able to get Ariel to pose with Moby Dick? Will they fine me for littering if The Bell Jar throws itself off the ferry railing? Will The Sun Also Rises get kicked off Small World for shouting at the animatronic children?

Do you have a book you think needs a trip to Disney World?

Labels: books, disney world, literature

Survivor China Episode 4

Last week on Survivor: Sherea’s blurred butt won Zhan Hu their first challenge in the boat wrestle, and then her blurred nipple won them the immunity challenge. This week, I’m expecting big things from Jean Robert’s blurred crotch. Leslie was voted out because of religious persecution.

FEI LONG: Remember the poker player’s brilliant strategy of appearing to be lazy at first, and then impressing everyone by his big improvement? Jean Robert has decided to incrementally raise his contribution around camp. His first foray into usefulness is to try to save Courtney from being burned by a hot pot. She gets mad and wants to be burned in peace. Lunch lady looks on mutely.

As I’m watching them rig up some kind of ingenious plumbing with bamboo, I’m struck by the really upscale technology these survivors can access. They have those mysterious mud bricks, which seem to be lying around in piles. They have those pretty decorative gates with the immunity idols embedded in them. And who can’t build a shelter with bamboo? It’s like having a Home Depot next door to camp. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more product placement. Remember the season we had to watch them eat Doritos all the time?

ZHAN HU: Frosty notices the rice is moldy. Sherea picks through it to try and salvage some, and then Dave and Sherea fight over whether she should have moved the moldy rice. The vein in Dave’s head interviews that he is trying to be a good leader. Later in the day, Dave asks Sherea not to throw away some empty shells, but she tells him repeatedly to back up off her. She says that nobody is going to talk to her “any kinda way.” Dave has a hideous boil on his shoulder. Frosty tells Dave he’s an asshole, in the kindest words possible. An asshole with boils. The worst kind of asshole.

FEI LONG: Tribal council. Lunch lady says, “Oh boy.” I’m starting to feel sorry for lunch lady. Either she truly has nothing to say or they’re saving her for later. Tree mail says they will both go to tribal council for agility and the winner will be eating. Jean Robert announces that he needs to eat. This is confirmed by his blurred crotch.

REWARD CHALLENGE: Pairs of survivors use giant chopsticks to carry a fireball across a sand pit, then place it in a chute where it rolls into a wok and lights fireworks. Winner gets a visit from a local family who will give them a fishing lesson with spices and vegetables.

Todd and Denise beat Peih Gee and Sherea. Aaron and Amanda beat Jaime and Frosty. James and Jean Robert beat Dave and Eric. Who is Eric again? Fei Long wins and they kidnap Dave.

Will “The Nightmare Before Christmas” in 3D come anywhere near my house? No.

FEI LONG: Dave likes being kidnapped. In fact, as soon as he gets to Fei Long, he transforms from a dour, harassed, patronizing jerkimer into a carefree lad who likes to show his butt and dance with the wind. Also, he turns into a hugger.

Upon receipt of a key lime from James, he comes after James for a hug, and James says, awesomely and with no facial expression, “Oh, man, you be alright. I told you about the hugging.”

Dave finds a quiet bamboo grove to open his immunity idol info packet, and ponders which member of Fei Long should get the clue? He calls pondering “chewing my noodle.” He rejoins his adopted tribe and immediately tries to hug Courtney when she reveals she is from New York City. “I love that place! Oh, man, you make me miss New York so much!” He signals he’s about to hug by doing that sort of staggering, crippled approach, you know, like, when the person is maybe going to tackle you, or hug you, or have an epileptic seizure on you. Disconcerting. Dave then pretends to have plumber’s butt. Is this the same guy who’s been terrorizing his own tribe?

Todd and Dave bond over a kiwi search. Dave puts his arm around Todd and asks if Todd believes turnabout is fair play. How uncomfortable! Todd, baffled, says yes, and Dave gives him the clue. Todd already had clue #1 from Leslie, remember? Now he has clue #2 and #3. How does this clue make sense? “When creatures of night take flight as they may, the treasure they carry allows one to stay.” So, bat crap is apparently the immunity idol.

ZHAN HU: Everyone is happier without Dave, until they realize they have to do all Dave’s work now. They all get to working except Sherea, who says, “Why even worry about something that’s just going to drain you. I’m going to ride the work horse until the tail falls off, because I’m not doing anything unless I have to.”

FEI LONG: The fishing lesson has arrived in the form of a Chinese family in a couple of boats, a vast array of vegetables, and half a dozen black birds. Lunch lady expresses joy about the visitors, commenting that “The children are so pretty.” Turns out, Jean Robert can speak some Mandarin! He translates for everyone while Denise and Aaron go out on the boat and use fishing birds to catch some fish. Fishing birds are cool but I’m sure you’ve already read about them elsewhere. I’m not here to educate you.

Denise the lunch lady is finally getting some lines. She interviews that she feels lucky to be here having this meal with this family. She says that back at the cafeteria, they mostly just take chicken nuggets out of the freezer, put them into the oven, then feed them to the kids. This food, cooked by the native family is “the delicatest thing” she’s ever put in her mouth. I can’t make fun of Denise, but I can understand now that if all she’s doing is expressing reverence and gratefulness for the cool experiences she’s having, they naturally can’t give her any screen time. If she wants to become America’s sweetheart, she’s going to have to start bitching about Dave.

The fishing people leave with their birds.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE: The survivors enter via the Bridge to Terabithia. The challenge set is supposed to be some kind of warrior pit, and the survivors are going to dress in traditional warrior gear for their own protection. Wow, they’re actually going to put on more clothes in this episode, rather than roll around in their underwear. The warrior gear is full metal armor. They look very, very tough, right up until we learn that they’re going to be throwing rocks at vases full of powder to win the challenge. They dressed in full warrior gear to throw rocks at vases. Vases!

People throw and miss and block and score. Fei Long wins immunity. The whole challenge was over too quickly, and I found myself missing the old days like last week, when the survivors were pushed to exhaustion, and the asses had to be modestly blurred.

ZHAN HU: Dave gets right back to his own camp and starts pissing on people. He’s feeling precarious and threatened. He should be. The decision is between Sherea and Dave. Lazy vs. Annoying. In stock photography, a mantis bites off a grasshopper’s head. Eric would like to get rid of both Dave and Sherea.

TRIBAL COUNCIL: Dave says that leadership has been a burden, but he just has more experience and more practical experience than everyone else, so he has to lead. Sherea says she has been trying to do more around camp, but claims that she lives for the challenges. This would be a stronger argument if they hadn’t just lost two in a row.

Is there really a little man named Frosty on the show? Frosty and Todd, final two!!! People vote for Dave and Sherea, and then Dave and his lordly manner are voted out. Jeff says the tribe has spoken, but does not say it’s time for Dave to go. Yet, still Dave manages to figure out that it’s time for him to go!

Next Week on Survivor: Eric likes Jaime a lot. Eric is a virgin. A twist turns the game on its head, and James says, “Oh the humanity.” Dave interviews that there are pieces of him that are worth a lot, maybe priceless. Having seen all of his pieces at the boat wrestling challenge, I think his fellow survivors would beg to disagree.

Labels: episode 4, recap, survivor, survivor china

At least, she will be, as soon as she adds me on myspace, which I'm sure she will like any second now. Probably this will be a big day for her, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and all, but as soon as she's done with whatever phone calls she has to make, she'll be logging on to see how many people congratulated her with sparkly graphics: U WON! NOBEL HEARTS!

Doris Lessing is 87 years old and famously a postfeminist. Find out more here.

Oh NO. Someone named Poppy, with a red face, eye sacks, and one of those long arm self portrait profile pictures is the first to comment on her winning! Phooey! Yes, Poppy, winning the Nobel Prize is "quite a happy moment" indeed. But Doris doesn't really appreciate people clotting up her comment box with stuff that doesn't sparkle, yo. Damn, Poppy is also friends with Jean Cocteau.

What kind of cyberbling is appropriate for a Nobel Laureate? This?

Or this?



Hmm. That one could give an octagenarian Nobel Laureate a headache. There is no "Nobel Prize Winners" category for Care Bear graphics on 123glitter.com. Beware visiting those sites, by the way. They're likely to show you modestly clad women, shot from above, holding up cell phones.

How about this?

I deeply recommend jellymuffin.com for generating sparkling headlines to congratulate Doris Lessing on her myspace. I'm sure she will appreciate it!

Labels: doris lessing, myspace, nobel prize

Literary magazines, the time has come that we all knew was coming. It’s over. It’s done. The lady in the Viking corset has belted out the final high C sharp. Please exit quietly at the rear door, but leave your plastic 3D glasses in the bins provided. You will no longer be hosting the revolutionary planning sessions. The revolution already happened, and at someone else’s house.

You had a good run. Well, not really, but for the sake of politeness, we’ll say that you did. I have no ill will. I have no desire to wound you in these, your final hours. You once served a purpose, but the purpose is extinct, and so are you. No more glossy coverstock. No more precious author bios. No more black and white photography opposite poems about rain on the window pane and how it’s like roads. No more “This page purposefully left blank.”


I’m with you, and we can go through this together, but let’s face the facts. Literary magazines used to exist for two reasons. The first was immediacy. Rather than waiting for the long, grinding, seasonal cycle of big traditional publishers to get new books on the shelves, readers could find fresher fare in literary magazines, published quarterly, or even monthly. The second reason was for content, as literary magazines reached farther out of the mainstream, farther into the margin, to pull new writers, strange writers, uncommercial writers, into the world of print and out to the world of readers.

Now we have the internet. Do I need to explain, or would it be too painful?

With web sites enjoying daily updates, the old publishing schedule of even an ambitious quarterly magazine now seems yawning and slow. My attention span stretches approximately to the update cycle of The Onion, and then shatters into a thousand pieces. Are you publishing your literary magazine twice a year? Are you kidding?

Then there’s the content and readership. Any brilliant, strange, new, marginalized writer with a Blogger account and a willingness to network can gain far more readers than any literary magazine was able to reach in the history of time. In fact, any jackass with a LiveJournal can reach more of an audience than most literary magazines have ever boasted, even the big ones. I’ve been published in respectable, established literary magazines that I bet fewer than a hundred people actually read. And that is true. Hold me. It is true.

Then there’s the subject of money. The internet is, mostly, free. And well, you know the rest.

So, really, do we need another literary magazine? Just one last really special one? Do we need to hear about how this publication is different, this one is going to be a “really beautiful object,” this one is going to change publishing forever? Do we need to hear from another self-congratulatory editor-in-chief, lovingly stroking his in-jokes, musing fondly on how many subscribers he’ll need to break even, figuring out how to woo in another bored midlist author to showcase in the autumn issue? How about one more magazine named “BRICK” or “PHYLACTIC TUNA”?

Let’s admit it, we were all there at one time. Graduate school can make you feel like that. I freely admit that I, with milk-white hope in my shiny heart, at one time published a collection of short stories written by a friend of mine, and got it placed in local bookstores. I think I was twenty-two. It was fun to play pretend that way. But for the love of Kinko’s, as grim as it may sound, you have to grow up.

Enough is enough. You cannot change the world with really expensive paper, you cannot revolutionize literature by being “more ironic than McSweeneys” (is that even possible?), and you cannot sell a literary magazine. Literary magazines are not books, no matter how you try to fetishize them, they will never be on the shelf with the novels. They never have and they never will. Literary magazines are the cousins of newspapers. Novels are the cousins of history.

What can we do? I would call for a boycott, I guess, but boycotting literary magazines would be like boycotting sandpaper pants. Nobody’s rushing out to the stores to grab them up anyway. The sad fact is that nature will take its course, and these beautiful, exotic creatures will be eaten by literary evolution. But will anyone survive?

The lumbering giants will survive: The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Triquarterly, etc. These are the litmags you have to get in because they put a big gold star on your resume, and they will survive because of their prestige and tradition. People still want to break their heads open on the editorial boards that published Jack Kerouac, Flannery O’Connor, Samuel Beckett. We’ll eventually be using The Paris Review to line the fork drawer, but not yet.


Which brings us to blogs. Remember zines? Blogs are the new zines. People used to staple together mimeographed pieces of crap in their grandmother’s basement and distribute it via copy machine, coffee shop counter, and word of mouth. They were subversive, populist, and updated instantly on the whim of the publisher. Blogs are the zines of the new millennium – now instantaneous, with open access for all. With all of this magic at the other end of a short wire, is it really worth our time to go around trying to sell paper and glue for ten dollars a glob?

It’s time to stop the presses. I know it’s not easy to pull that plug. Litmags are icons of intellectual privilege. You have to fight against a lifetime of programming that’s telling you literary magazines are good, therefore more literary magazines must be better. You respond out of habit, and assume it’s good news, like when a baby is born. It’s not. Magazines aren’t babies. In the world we live in, we need literary contraceptives. So stop. Put down the telephone. Put down the really nice pen. We don’t need another literary magazine. Literary magazines are dead.

Labels: books, literary magazines, literature, publishing

I spent all of my free time today editing seven chapters of a children's novel that I wrote two years ago. Now all thirteen chapters have been edited and I'm ready to write the final three.

In editing all of this material very quickly, I learned that I must have been channeling P.G. Wodehouse throughout, because I had to change all the things that sounded like "a bit of breakfast" to things that sounded like "some breakfast." Another problem with the draft: I had a very weak grasp on what similes might be appropriate for my intended audience. You can't write "like whores descending on a harbor" and expect a ten year old reader not to raise an eyebrow. I took out many repetitions of the word "urgent" and also rewrote many places where I had said "It was clear that..." I found myself still struggling with the point of view issue, should I stay strictly within my male main character's head, or is it all right and even necessary to stray into the female main character's head a little. Then there were the sections where I wrote notes to myself. "Describe the interior here, I dare you, you coward."

If I can get through the last three chapters without falling headlong back into British slang, I will have a respectable draft of this novel that's been hanging unfinished, with the two young main characters literally stuck in a stone hole 20 feet down in the ground, for two years.

I watched the movie version of "Bridge to Terabithia" yesterday with my kids. The movie was better than the book.

Labels: editing, writing

Last week on Survivor, Ashley wore a headband on her butt and called it macaroni. And then got voted out. This week, TIVO rebelled against recording the show, and had to be beaten with a pillar candle, until it repented its supercilious attitudes towards reality television.

With our TIVO firmly in line, we join the show at 5 minutes in, plenty of time to find out that Drew Carey is going to be hosting the Price is Right, starting on October something. Apparently this Drew Carey is a man who wears a certain kind of glasses? Or something?

FEI LONG: Jean Baptiste Robert Defontaine is out in the water scrubbing his teeth dejectedly with a bamboo shoot while James and the brunette discover that they have caught a crab in a crab pot.

The whole tribe fights over what to do with the crab. Suggestions vary between James eating the whole thing, boiling it into a “crab stock,” and using the crab shell to fashion a mercy outfit for Sherea. In the end, no one wins, and the crab gets hacked in half. Ambiguous.

Leslie reveals that her husband gets crabby (Get it? Crabby?) when hungry, and that these boys fighting over the crab are like “my husband times infinity.” I ponder for a moment what my husband times infinity would be like, and I conclude it would not be like a bunch of dreary men standing around on the banks of a muddy lake, absently scratching their nipples and whining about who gets two bites of crab and who gets to sniff the empty shell. Pretty sure not.

During the argument, the lunch lady nods sagely. That’s the closest thing she gets to a line of dialogue in the whole show. That’ll teach her to come on Survivor with a mullet ponytail.

James the grave digger is frustrated. He whines that is the only one who went and read a survivor handbook before the game, even though he doesn’t like to do things outside and doesn’t even like plastic cups. Four hours at B&N and he feels like Crocodile Dundee out here. Congratulations. I liked you better when you were mutely knocking over bamboo trees.

ZHAN HU: Dave continues to work tirelessly on his barbecue pit. Even though he bonked on the last challenge, he is working constantly and refuses to comply with Peih Gee’s insane plan to maybe rest sometimes so he doesn’t stagger through the challenges like an old maid aunt. He will rest during the challenges. He will rest when he damn well feels like it.

I have to say: Dave is starting to get crazy eyes. As the tribe mildly ponders different ways to maximize the heat of the fire, he gets up from where he is sprawled in the shelter, sighs drastically, marches off to the brick pile, brings them a brick, and then gives a lecture on how lazy they are that they didn’t get a brick for themselves, rather than sitting their arguing about whether they needed one or not. When Frosty points out that they already had a brick, right there, Dave stomps and pouts. I’m telling you, the cataclysmic meltdown is coming, and I can’t wait. Peih Gee interviews that she has faith in their tribe and they need to look out for each other. Judging from the amount of whites we’re observing around Dave’s eyes, they really do need to look out. And hide the machete.

REWARD CHALLENGE: The challenge: throw your opponent off a catwalk between two boats, and into the lake water, using hand-to-hand combat. Reward is blankets pillows and a tarp.

Round one: Women vs Women. I’m putting my money on the lunch lady, but she goes in the water first. Sherea is wearing her standard competition uniform: Bra and purple panties. Zhan Hu scores.

Round two: Men vs Men. Dave complicates matters by getting completely naked and then prowling around on all fours like a cat. I am not even making that up. James throws everyone in the water and Fei Long gets a point.

Round three: Women vs Women. Zhan Hu scores again. At one point they rolled the lunch lady like a log into the water.

Round four: Men vs Men. Dave is still naked. WHY? He nakedly leaps on James the grave digger, who flings him into the water. He splashes in, flailing and giggling. James flings everyone else off too. Fei Long scores.

It is two and two and they are playing to three.

Round five: Women vs. Women. Lunch Lady has now taken off her clothes as well, and reveals giant red underpants. Once again she does her impersonation of a rolling log. Zhan Hu wins a point, and the tribe wins its first challenge. They kidnap Leslie until the next immunity challenge.

ZHAN HU: Leslie observes that the Zhan Hu morale is good, even though they have lost two people. Apparently she hasn’t picked up on Dave’s impending killing spree. She also feels like she can share her faith with the Zhan Hu people like she can’t at Fei Long. The women take her swimming and pick her brains. There they find a fair amount of dog hair there and smugly examine it. Peih Gee interviews that you can get more dog hair out of a person’s brain by being nice to them than you can by demanding it forthrightly. Words to live by.

FEI LONG: James and Jean Robert sit in the lake, and discuss Todd and Courtney, while Todd and Courtney listen from behind a nearby stand of bamboo. The eavesdroppers learn that Courtney will be the first to go. The large men continue to loudly discuss “getting ass” and how Courtney doesn’t do work. One of them pronounces, “The only thing better than a million dollars is a million dollars and some ass.” Now why wasn’t that the episode title? Hmm? Then they form the “Getting Ass” alliance and Courtney, behind the bamboo, tells Todd she is never sleeping near “any of them” again. Todd swears revenge.

ZHAN HU: Leslie now has a clue to the immunity idol in Zhan Hu’s camp, just like Jaime had one in the first episode. She returns the favor that Jaime did, by sharing the clue with Jaime. The clues and camera tell us that the hidden immunity idol is a carving on the gate that marked their campsite. This whole “who to trust with the clues” plotline is more boring than watching Jean Robert squeeze mud in the lake. Because at least watching that makes you wonder, “Why is he doing that?”

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE: Cut through beams to release slotted disks, solve a puzzle with the disks, drag the puzzle to the finish line.

Courtney machetes like her arms are made of rubber and the machete is a small car. That is to say, badly. Frosty machetes like an old lady killing a bee with a broom. That is to say, briskly. All of the Zhan Hu people machete their disks loose before Courtney finishes hacking through the first set of beams. Even though the puzzle people make up a lot of time, Fei Long cannot recover from Courtney’s slow ass, and Zhan Hu wins.

Stock footage reveals there is a big wall in China. Are the survivors anywhere near that?

FEI LONG: Courtney hurt her shoulder and gave herself massive blisters by taking so long on the challenge. Maybe they should vote off Courtney? Leslie told Zhan Hu that Aaron is the leader of the tribe and he gets mad about that betrayal. Maybe they should get rid of Leslie? Todd confers with all the women on the tribe and they agree that Jean Robert is unpleasant. Maybe they should vote off Todd? I mean, he’s so tiny, would anyone really notice? I mean, wait, they should vote off Jean Robert. Oh, who knows.

Jean Robert walks around in a black skirt, low slung enough that they have to blur his crotch. Wow, I wish they would vote him off.

TRIBAL COUNCIL: Jean Robert “keeps it real” by complaining about how weak Courtney and Leslie are. Courtney cries that she feels like her team sees her as a liability, and it doesn’t help that all the challenges have been physical – mud wrestling, pushing people off planks, chopping beams. She has a point.

They vote out Leslie.

Next week on Survivor: Courtney and Jean Robert fight. Dave and Sherea fight. And everyone gets to dress up in samurai outfits and throw bollocks or boluses or baudrillards or whatever those things are that you throw that look like rocks hanging from ropes. Bolas! See you then.

Labels: episode 3, recap, survivor, survivor china