| January 14, 2004 | Not a Day Older Than Dorothy Parker |
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"Alright Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up." -Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950) I have the best friends in the world. Jeff flew from New York to spend Saturday night partying in San Francisco with me and my crew. With feathers, champagne, and karaoke -- my celebration was most decidedly the opposite of his low-key style. "It's weird having our 30th birthdays so close together," Jeff said, as I marched through the Piedmont Boutique on Haight Street snatching up ostrich boas, flower hair clips, and sparkly tiaras. "It's so interesting to see how differently we celebrate." Picture us like Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis. I'm wildly gesticulating and prancing around the store, and Jeff is calmly appraising my choices in tiaras. "You do have a tendency to be theatrical," a new friend told me recently. I, of course, was like, "Whatever, do you mean, darling?!" Birthday party pictures will be available shortly if anyone's interested in gawking at someone who is no longer in her twenties. (Luckily I've been drinking plenty of anti-aging beer, so I've retained my youthful visage.) In the meantime, you can just accept that the evening began something like this. Daniel has completely kicked my ass at the novel writing contest. Today, on deadline, he sent me his completed 189-page manuscript, as a birthday gift along with the message: "Very best on your thirtieth...you don't look a day older than Dorothy Parker." (And I immediately thought, wait a second -- are you talking about the early 30-something Dorothy Parker who presided over the Algonguin round Table in the 1920s OR the 50-year-old Dorothy Parker who George Platt Lynes photographed in 1943 when she lived in Hollywood? Of course, the woman did marry a man 11 years her junior...) And before you ask -- no, I'm not finished with my novel; I'm barely on page 60. I find it impossible to wean myself from my Outer Mission socialite lifestyle. I vow to find more time in the days (and nights) ahead. I will finish -- I have a decent track record for accomplishing everything I set out to do. Seriously. Labels: age, birthday, jeff, writing posted by Jess Barron @ 9:58 AM 
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| August 6, 2001 | Nostalgia for the Present |
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It's been a while since I've been here (and I suppose "right here, right now" used to exist over there over a year ago). I was going to create yet another new place to put immediate stray thoughts, but then I realized that I already had a container for immediate stray thoughts that had been abandoned almost a year-and-a-half ago. And the container wasn't too shabby either. And it's name is ever-appropriate for me. "Nostalgia for the Present" was what I called the weekly pop culture column I wrote for my college newspaper. Since I'm already doing some kind of electronic recycling by revitalizing this section on my site, I decided to dig a bit deeper and unearth some (fairly dated and embarassing) pieces I wrote for Vassar's Miscellany News back in 1995 and 1996 which no one has ever seen before (because I have purposely kept them off of my website). Pieces like Countdown to the Void, Thirteen Things to Do When You're Wired at Vassar, and then my oddball exit from the column when I became Editor-in-chief of the paper. There are letters to the editor like this one inspired by this column of mine and this odd one inspired by my presence (or lack thereof). It freaks me out that that stuff is still out there floating around. Labels: journalism, nostalgia, vassar, writing posted by Jess Barron @ 12:22 PM
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| June 1, 1999 | Did Pynchon Prophesize Cyberspace? |
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The other day, I read an academic paper that presents the idea that Thomas Pynchon prophesized cyberspace and The Web with "Gravity's Rainbow." Of course, this is an idea that I, of all people, enjoy latching on to. In my re-reading of the book, I happened upon a passage (which the author of the paper points to) that, to me, really supports his hypothesis. It is a dialogue between Tyrone Slothrop and his father that occurs toward the end of the book when Slothrop's consciousness has pretty much dissolved. The fragment begins with the father saying: "Son, been wondering about this, ah, 'screwing in' you kids are doing. This matter of the, shooting electricity into head - ha-ha?" The son replies: "Waves, Pop. Not just raw electricity. That's fer drips!" They talk about "keying waves" and comparing it to dope and "vacations" away from "Realityland." Then the father says: "Listen Tyrone, you just don't know how dangerous this stuff is. Suppose someday you just plug in and go away and never come back? Eh?" This sounds exactly like any paranoid technophobe's argument in the 1990s about limiting kids' use of computers, video games, and the Internet. The best part is Tyrone's final response in this fragment: "Ho, ho! Don't I wish! What do you think every electrofreak dreams about? ... Maybe there is a Machine to take us away, take us completely, suck us out through the electrodes out of the skull 'n' into the Machine and live there forever with all the other souls it's got stored there... Dope never gave you immortality. You hadda come back, every time, into a dying hunk of smelly meat! But we can live forever, in a clean, honest purified Electroworld -" Perhaps plugging into "electrofreak dreams" and is what I'm looking for in my projecting of pieces of myself into cyber/hyperspace via the Web. Labels: book, internet, web, writing posted by Jess Barron @ 8:01 PM
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