On Some Options for Officiating a Wedding
@charlesbois We had a magistrate, who just happened to be my former Driver's Ed teacher. We went by on a Friday afternoon. He charged us $37.50 and even put on his black robe. When it was over, a guy who looked like he'd been sobering up in the vestibule, came in, shook our hands, and wished us the very best.
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On Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Marlene Dietrich, Femme Fatale
@Nicole Cliffe I know! It's worth noting that, as anecdotes from that article go, the viaigrette one is only moderately interesting.
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On Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Marlene Dietrich, Femme Fatale
Ok, I just have to share this bit from a Vanity Fair article about Marlene and Joe Kennedy:
"Once she discovered diaphragms, she called them “the greatest invention since Pan-Cake makeup.” Until then, she had sworn by her secret weapon against pregnancy: douching with ice-cold water and wine vinegar, which she carried with her by the case everywhere she went. (Decades later another of her co-stars and grand amours, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., warmly recalled their “lovely liaison,” adding, “You know, sometimes when I am in a restaurant and a waiter walks by with a salad vinaigrette, I’ll find myself thinking fond thoughts of Marlene.”)"
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On The League of Ordinary Ladies: Short Dates
@Grace Anne Boucher@facebook I told the vice principal at my high school that I was Amish because I wanted to get out of being in a yearbook photo. Despite its utter implausibility, it worked, I suppose, because public school administrators are very sensitive to religious issues of any kind.
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On Never-Complainers, Workaholics, and the Balding-and-Manly
@karion I'm nodding my head at every paragraph you just wrote.
The one other thing I'd add is that the letter writer should also consider the fact that there are men out there who will happily spend the kind of time with her that she desires. And there are women out there who will happily marry a man like this lawyer.
I know of two couples who are very happily married in spite of the fact that, in one case, the husband is gone for 9 months at a stretch (military) and, in the other, the partners live on opposite coasts and see each other only on weekends.
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On Naked Came the Stranger
@sudden but inevitable betrayal Harrowing is a good word for it. Harrowing and quite graphic. It probably didn't help that I was introduced to Linda Lovelace via Nora Ephron's book "Crazy Salad." In that interview, I guess Linda must have still been under Chuck Traynor's influence because she sounded almost ridiculously enthusiastic about the film. I picked up her memoir in a used book store and had no idea that it represented her repudiation of her previous life.
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On Never-Complainers, Workaholics, and the Balding-and-Manly
@noReally I totally agree. My perspective is heavily influenced by the fact that I've known a few workaholics who were a bit older (in their 40s and 50s). The point is some people have periods of intensive working (graduate school, medical school, starting a new business) but then settle into a mode that includes time for a spouse and kids and friends. And some people are really and truly workaholics. If they are in a relationship, they make promises to try to appease their partner, but they're really fighting against their nature. Things can work if they're paired up with someone who has similar expectations (I kind of get the feel that Mark Zuckerberg and wife might be this way). For the older workaholics that I knew, it seemed that one of two things happened. Either their spouse finally grew tired of them never being around and they got a divorce or the couple was still locked in a depressing pattern of promises and disappointment that left both dissatisfied.
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On Naked Came the Stranger
Nicole, you are so right about Linda Lovelace's memoir. I read it years ago and still kind of clench whenever anyone mentions "Deep Throat." In a non-Watergate sense, of course, because I will talk happily about Mark Felt and Hal Holbrook all day long.
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On Absolute Transparency, or Love in the Time of Google
Reading this, I wondered about the pros / cons of sharing preemptively. I had a major illness in my 20s that left me physically much altered for about a year. During that period, I tried to spread the word as much as possible via e-mail and word-of-mouth because I found it so painful to see people's faces as they registered how I'd changed. Carla's approach seems to me to require much more fortitude than I had. To open yourself up, even in the context of a casual first date, to other people's scrutiny demands a very real kind of bravery.
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On Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Marlene Dietrich, Femme Fatale
@Speaking of cake, I have cake Yes!