Bluebird

"good enough to slap your Mama..."

REX REED

CAT AT A HOT TIN STOVE

 

 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED GOURMET NOVEMBER 2001

America's celebrated playwright was an accomplished cook with a penchant for anything "fattening, illegal, or on fire."

The excesses of Tennessee Williams, America's most prolific and famously tortured playwright, have been well documented. But in addition to sex, drugs, alcohol, and writing, food was also high on his list of passions. Dining well was an acquired taste he negotiated with no help from home, however. He once described his mother, Edwina, a faded steel magnolia immortalized as the cloying Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, as "an old trout terminally allergic to the kitchen, with the uncanny ability to make tinned soup taste like dishwasher detergent." So he learned, at an early age, to eat out. During the years I knew him, his two favorite words were "room service."

The first time I interviewed Tennessee was at Antoine's, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a city that was, quite naturally by way of its own decadence, his favorite. The meal that night seemed dedicated to his preferred dishes ("Anything fattening, illegal, or on fire!" he yelped in a voice like a lazy alligator's) but began, as always, with a dozen oysters on the half shell ("Better than mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for a disintegratin' libido!"), washed down with a rye Old Fashioned, a crème de menthe frappé, a vodka Stinger, and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. "I'm not as young as I used to be," he sighed with a hiccup. The next day at breakfast, at Brennan's, he requested a pitcher of Martinis. "I'd like to order a Waldorf salad but my doctor won't allow me to eat nuts." Pause. "He didn't say anything about cannibalism, though." He settled for eggs Sardou, and grits and grillades with Creole tomato sauce, topped off with a bowl of flaming Bananas Foster.

In a city where fried okra is considered a green vegetable, he was perfectly at home indulging his appetite for the kind of food best self-described as a remedy for depression. Despite the culinary adventures he experienced during his restless travels (the year he was unwisely invited to be president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, for instance, when he never rose before noon, seldom saw the films, and announced to me, "I'm just here because I was told you could get really good absinthe"), his tastes were, in fact, relatively simple. No pomegranate-nasturtium sorbet for him. His favorite memory was of the summer he and his friend Carson McCullers rented a shack on Nantucket, where they survived on Jack Daniel's, canned green pea soup with wienies in it, and an innovation dubbed "spuds Carson"—mashed potatoes mixed with olives.

In Key West, he lived in a small Art Nouveau candy box on Duval Street with a Boston terrier named Gigi, who looked like a canine Colette; an orange tabby cat named Gentleman Caller; and Mr. Ava Gardner, a ferocious iguana chained to the front porch to scare off marauders. Here, on hot mornings, he combed the waterfront for a rare catch of pompano and the shrimp and crabs that made their way into one of the elaborate gumbos he prepared for an illustrious guest list ranging from defrocked bishops to Anna Magnani. His favorite cookbooks were those compiled by junior chambers of commerce in every southern town from Baton Rouge to Boca, along with a treasured, dog-eared thing called White Trash Cooking. He once prepared for me a memorable dinner of smothered roast beef and a Girl Scout recipe for lemon icebox pie with a vanilla wafer crust ("None of that Key lime mush with graham crackers that taste like shirt boards from a Chinese laundry"). When a new play tanked on Broadway, or some critic published a punishing premature obituary, he would sigh, "Baby, I'll soon be forced, through penury, to resort to usin' Caviar Helper."

I think his happy hedonism, his zest for food and life, and his wicked sense of humor saw him through every crisis. He told Gore Vidal he slept through the '60s. Maybe so, but he didn't miss a meal.

Tennessee Williams's
Lemon Icebox Pie
In a food processor, finely crush 1/2 box of vanilla wafers. Melt 1 stick of lightly salted butter for flavor (not sweet butter). Pour vanilla wafers and melted butter into a pie plate and shape into a pie shell with your fingers. In a large bowl, mix 1/2 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1 can of Eagle Brand condensed milk, and 1 egg yolk. Pour mixture into pie plate. In another bowl, beat 6 egg whites* with 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 3/4 cup sugar until stiff white peaks form. Pour over pie and top with freshly grated lemon rind. Bake in oven at moderate heat just long enough for meringue to brown, about 20 minutes. Cool to room temperature and put in the refrigerator until ice-cold. The result, as Tennessee Williams always said, "is good enough to slap your Mama." —R.R.

 

Sexting as the new American past time

Digital Flirting — Easy to Do and Easy to Get Caught

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Stuart Bradford

Representative Anthony Weiner may have taken it to an extreme. But the online flirtations and provocative photos that got him into so much trouble are far from unusual among adults these days, experts say.

Room for Debate

What’s Wrong With Adult Sexting?

Experts discuss the ins and outs of adult sexting.

What with Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Skype video chats, it is now all too easy to flirt with strangers and engage in sexual fantasy without (technically) breaking a marriage vow. Digital dalliance has entered the mainstream.

For instance, sexting — sending sexually suggestive text messages or photos, as Mr. Weiner did — is usually thought of as a teenage pastime. But according to a report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project based on a representative sample of 2,252 adults, it is far more common among people aged 18 to 29.

Nearly one-third of that group say they have received sexually suggestive or nude photos of someone they know, and 13 percent say they have sent them, the report said. Even among 30-to-49-year-olds, 17 percent say they have received such photos and 5 percent admit sending them. Similar Pew research finds that the comparable figures among adolescents are 15 percent and 4 percent.

“Given the alchemy of sex and lust and love and technology, it’s not that surprising that the numbers are where they are,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew. “Anecdotally, those of us who know single younger adults know people who do this.”

Nancy Baym, a University of Kansas professor of communication studies and author of the new book “Personal Connections in the Digital Age,” agreed. “I think we tend to blame teenagers for behaviors that we’re quite guilty of ourselves,” she said. “Grown-ups are certainly capable of doing really stupid stuff online.”

The data reflect the new rules of digital romance, in which flirtatious texts have replaced phone calls, and Web sites like Facebook have replaced high school reunions as a way to reconnect with an old flame.

“We use new technologies in romantic relationships all the time,” said Dr. Baym. “When two people meet and they’re interested in developing the relationship, they go to text messages really fast as a way to safely negotiate the relationship.”

Therapists debate whether the Internet has facilitated more infidelity — after all, men and women have been betraying their vows since marriage began. Still, slight shifts in infidelity rates among young people and women suggest that digital media may be playing a role. Anecdotally, therapists report that electronic contact via Facebook, e-mail and text messages has allowed women in particular to form more intimate relationships.

“There’s no question that the Internet has increased the availability of alternative romantic partners, whether it’s flirtation, reuniting with old lovers or having texting sexual relationships,” Dr. Baym said. “The Internet dramatically expands the scope of potential people that we can meet.”

But while online communication may make it easier to cheat, it also leaves a digital trail that makes it more likely you’ll be caught.

“I don’t think the Internet is increasing transgressions, but it’s leaving a trail that is very accessible,” said Lois Braverman, president of the Ackerman Institute for the Family. “In the 19th century there were letters; in the ’60s and ’70s there might be private detective photos or credit card receipts. What’s different is that back then a transgression might have been discovered, but it didn’t go viral.”

Some researchers believe that the widespread availability of pornography via the Internet has also led to an insidious change in attitudes about sex.

One study found that more than a third of Americans had visited an online porn site at least once a month, according to a 2009 report in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. That study analyzed subscriptions to one major provider of adult entertainment, finding a relatively even distribution of subscriptions across the country.

“By all indications it’s pretty common,” said the author of the paper, Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School. “Just about anywhere you look, people are subscribing to online adult entertainment. It’s something people do in every state, every county.”

Tom Hymes, a senior editor at AVN Media Network, a trade publication that follows the adult entertainment industry, said online sexual behavior had been part of the mainstream for years.

“My perspective is that Rep. Weiner was behaving well within certain online norms, as far as what we see happening on a regular basis,” he said in an e-mail. “But his huge mistake was thinking he could maintain his anonymity (if indeed he did) when he seemed to be doing everything he could to use his prestige as a congressman in his online flirtations.”

Erick Janssen, senior scientist at the Kinsey Institute, said more study was needed to learn how the Internet and digital media are shaping adult behavior and relationships.

“People who engage in behaviors like erotic chats, seduction, exhibition, it’s probably indeed very widespread,” he said. “That the behaviors are there is hard to dispute. To connect that information with people’s relationship status, their values, what their partner might think of it — that sort of thing we don’t know a whole lot about.”

Le rocher de Sisyphe

Op-Ed Columnist

Non Means Non

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: May 31, 2011

PARIS In Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” an American writer clambers into a yellow vintage Peugeot every night and is transported back to hobnob with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, Dali, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gertrude Stein in the shimmering movable feast. The star-struck aspiring novelist from Pasadena, played by Owen Wilson, gets to escape his tiresome fiancée and instead talk war and sex with Papa Hemingway, who barks “Have you ever shot a charging lion?” “Who wants to fight?” and “You box?” 

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

 

Many Frenchmen — not to mention foundering neighbor, the crepuscular Casanova Silvio Berlusconi — may be longing to see that Peugeot time machine come around a cobblestone corner.  Some may yearn to return to a time when manly aggression was celebrated rather than suspected, especially after waking up Tuesday to see the remarkable front page of Libération — photos of six prominent French women in politics with the headline “Marre des machos” or “Sick of machos.” 

“Is this the end of the ordinary misogyny that weighs on French political life?” the paper asked, adding: “Tongues have become untied.” 

In the wake of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, as more Frenchwomen venture sexual harassment charges against elite men, the capital of seduction is reeling at the abrupt shift from can-can to can’t-can’t. Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical weekly, still argues that  “News always stops at the bedroom door,” but many French seem ready to bid adieu to the maxim.

  As Libération editor Nicolas Demorand wrote in an editorial: “Now that voices have been freed, and the ceiling of glass and shame has been bashed in, other scandals may now arise.” 

After long scorning American Puritanism and political correctness on gender issues, the French are shocked to find themselves in a very American debate about the male exploitation/seduction of women, and the nature of consent. 

Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to reverse his spiraling fortunes by shaking off his old reputation as a jumpy and flashy Hot Rabbit and recasting himself as a sober and quiet family man. One newspaper noted that the enduring image from the G-8 summit meeting in Deauville was Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, in white smock, showing the other leaders’ wives her baby bump. 

The French president wasted no time jettisoning a junior minister — also the mayor of Draveil — who was accused of sexual assault by two former employees. Georges Tron resigned on Sunday after the two women in their mid-30s said they had gotten the courage to come forward after the Strauss-Kahn arrest. 

Tron, it seems, liked to give foot massages and sometimes more.  It got to the point where some women would wear boots if they knew Monsieur Masseur was coming to a meeting. 

“Yes, my client is a reflexologist,” riposted Tron’s lawyer, Olivier Schnerb. “He’s never hidden it. He has given conferences at the Lion’s Club. It’s a healing treatment.” 

In Le Journal du Dimanche, Valérie Toranian, the editor of Elle, wrote about the puncturing of France’s “Latin culture of seduction:” “We laugh about our Italian neighbors, but the stone today is in our garden.” (She probably didn’t want to use a shoe-on-the-other-foot metaphor given the foot fetishist on the loose.) 

On Tuesday, Libération presented interviews with a parade of women who poured out long-stifled grievances about their paternalistic culture: How they feel they must wear pants to work to fend off leering; how they’re tired of men tu-ing instead of vous-ing and making comments like “O.K., but just because you have pretty eyes;” how they’re fed up with married pols who come to Paris three days a week and sleep with their assistants; how, as Aurélie Filipetti, a socialist representative, complained, male pols and journalists squat on  80 percent of the political space.

Filipetti remembers hearing a male representative say during a ceremony, in front of three female representatives, “Hunting is like women. You always regret the shots you didn’t take.” 

Corinne Lepage, a former environment minister, talked about the de trop dirty jokes, recalling how once, when a female representative mentioned a rape, a male colleague called out: “With her face, it’s not going to happen to her.” 

Nicole Guedj, a lawyer and former minister, said wistfully of  male colleagues: “One thinks, ‘I wish you wouldn’t just look at me. I wish you would listen to me.’ ” 

Roselyne Bachelot, a government minister, warned about lechers: “Something important has happened in these last few days. The lifting of a very real omerta, which had been reinforced by a legal arsenal that protected private life. I think that public men have understood that the respect of privacy now has some limits.” 

Getting French men to change will still, she said, be pushing up “le rocher de Sisyphe.”

Wisco tainted by the Palin

Political Memo

Palin Speaks at Tea Party Rally in Madison

By MONICA DAVEY

Published: April 16, 2011

MADISON, Wis. — At first, the prospect drew mildly worried looks from people on both sides of this state’s giant political divide: Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, was to appear on the steps of this state’s Capitol, the very place that has become a stage for demonstration after demonstration against Wisconsin’s Republican-led efforts to cut collective bargaining rights.

Narayan Mahon for The New York Times

Sarah Palin, cheered on by Tea Party supporters, spoke at a rally at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Saturday.

Narayan Mahon for The New York Times

Protesters also turned out to show their backing for public union members. More Photos »

What sort of tumult might this bring?

But there she was on Saturday afternoon, a throng of Tea Party supporters cheering her on and a throng of union supporters trying to shout them (and her) down. And in a way, it looked like just another day in Madison, a place already so polarized that even with the presence of Ms. Palin, a figure beloved and detested, people here seemed to go right on with the debate they had been having for months.

That was one more reminder of all the ways that the division over public workers, union rights and budget cuts has pervaded life here since February — splitting friendships, affecting a nonpartisan Supreme Court race, setting off an unprecedented flurry of legislative recall efforts of both Democrats and Republicans, and even seeping into discussions about a local bratwurst festival.

Still, Ms. Palin’s appearance offered one early hint at Wisconsin’s rising significance in the presidential race ahead. The place has long been a battleground, politically divided, but what seems clear here now is that voters are especially energized, and that offers tantalizing prospects — on both sides.

“Madison, these are the front lines in the battle for the future of our country,” Ms. Palin told the crowd. “This is where the line has been drawn in the sand, and I am proud to stand with you today in solidarity.”

Later she added, “The 2012 election begins here.”

Ms. Palin weighed in on the particulars of the collective bargaining rights legislation, which was passed by the State Legislature last month but has yet to go into effect because it is tied up by legal challenges. She slammed demonstrators who had occupied the Capitol in protest, and praised Gov. Scott Walker, the Republican who championed the collective bargaining rights cuts, as ultimately trying to preserve workers’ pensions.

“He understands that states must be solvent in order to keep their promises, and that’s what he’s trying to do,” she said of Mr. Walker. “He’s not trying to hurt union members. Hey folks, he’s trying to save your jobs and your pensions.”

Though his office sits a short distance from where Ms. Palin stood and although he has received strong support from Tea Party groups, Mr. Walker did not appear at Saturday’s rally. A spokesman from his office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Away from the stage, the passionate arguments went right on, each side claiming the upper hand, the larger crowd, the right side of history. The police estimated a crowd — at its highest point — of about 6,500 people, though it was uncertain how many of those were Tea Party supporters and how many were there to protest. Either way, the figure was far smaller than the tens of thousands of demonstrators that had been reported around the Capitol on several days in recent months.

Tea Party supporters carried signs praising Mr. Walker, some even suggesting a Palin-Walker ticket for the White House in 2012. They collected signatures to try to recall a local Senate Democrat, one of 14 who had disappeared to Illinois for weeks in order to try to prevent a vote.

“I was frustrated at all that’s gone on in this town, and this is a chance to see a different side,” said Doug Willoughby, who said he works three jobs to make ends meet but still feels financially strained. He waited several hours as snow fell to see Ms. Palin.

Farther from the stage, union supporters shouted chants calling for Mr. Walker’s recall. As Tea Party supporters walked past, they called out: “Shame! Shame! Shame!” People on both sides argued, in small one-on-one clusters, as they had at another rally weeks ago attended by both sides.

“The thing is, Wisconsin people are hardheaded, and whether Sarah Palin comes out for their side or not, we’ll come here week after week.” said Patrick Doyle, a university custodian who found himself in a heated debate with a Tea Party supporter. As if this battle were part of the usual scenery around the Capitol’s periphery, a farmer’s market proceeded; going quick: pansies, cheese curds, rainbow trout.

Compromising Positions: how the media enables Charlie Sheen's tiger syndrome

 

Op-Ed Contributor

The Disposable Woman

By ANNA HOLMES

Published: March 3, 2011

FORTY-THREE minutes into his “special live edition” with Charlie Sheen on Monday night, Piers Morgan finally got around to asking his guest a real question. Before that, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Sheen had mostly traded chuckles and anecdotes about multiday benders, inflated network salaries and meet-ups in Aspen, Colo. But then, after three commercial breaks, Mr. Morgan inquired, “Have you ever hit a woman?”

Enlarge This Image

Ruth Gwily

 

Two minutes later, with Mr. Morgan apparently satisfied with the actor’s answer that no, women should be “hugged and caressed,” that line of questioning was over.

That Mr. Morgan didn’t press the issue of domestic violence shouldn’t have come as any surprise. CBS executives, not to mention the millions of viewers of his “family” sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” have consistently turned a blind eye toward Mr. Sheen’s history of abusing women. Part of this, of course, is about money. The actor’s F-18 of an id — to borrow a metaphor from Mr. Sheen himself — had long provided the show a steady stream of free publicity. It also helped make Mr. Sheen the highest-paid actor on television, at $1.2 million an episode.

But it’s also about apathy. Even now — after Mr. Sheen began carpet-bombing his bosses in radio rants, prompting CBS to shut down production on the show — observers still seem more entertained than outraged, tuning in to see him appear on every talk show on the planet and coming up with creative Internet memes based on his most colorful statements. And while his self-abuses are endlessly discussed, his abuse of women is barely broached.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/opinion/04holmes.html

Damn, and I almost went to this school!

 

Since it's after hours, I must admit I'd like to know what the device exactly was. Anybody?

 

Extracurricular Sex Toy Lesson Draws Rebuke at Northwestern

By JACQUES STEINBERG

Published: March 3, 2011

• The president of Northwestern University said Thursday that he was “troubled and disappointed” by a psychology professor’s decision to present his students last week with a demonstration outside class that featured a couple engaging in a live sex act using a prop.

The demonstration had been arranged by J. Michael Bailey, whose Human Sexuality class has an enrollment of nearly 600. On Feb. 21, after concluding a lecture at a university auditorium about sexual arousal, Professor Bailey brought onto the stage a man whom he had invited to participate in a discussion of “kinky people,” according to an e-mail the professor later sent to his students that was reprinted by The Daily Northwestern.

On the way to the stage, Professor Bailey wrote, the man, Ken Melvoin-Berg, the co-owner of a business called Weird Chicago Tours, “asked me whether it would be O.K. if one of the women with him demonstrated female ejaculation using equipment they had brought with them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/education/04northwestern.html

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