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Top Chef: Just Desserts Finale Thread
[Image from last night's episode: Finalists Yigit, Morgan and Danielle stand at judges' table.]
Last night's episode will be whipped and folded, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, including who won, pack your fudge and go...
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
RIP Mary Quinn
My friend Mary Quinn died this past Saturday, although I only found out last night. She was a brilliant, breathtakingly funny woman who was one of the most talented writers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.
You knew her as Maud.
Maud died of complications from uterine cancer, which wasn't diagnosed until it had already reached stage 4. The cancer had metastasized and moved into her lungs, the scans of which she described to me as looking "like the floor of a textile factory," so dotted were they with nodules of cancer. It all happened very fast.
The thing about cancer is that it doesn't give a fuck that I wanted to know Maud for a very long time to come.
I'm not sure when Maud first found Shakesville; she lurked for quite some time before commenting, and commented for quite some time before writing her first guest post, which was, fittingly, about amazing women. She became a prolific guest poster, and was the only person whom I've ever invited to become a contributor who turned me down, only to change her mind after one of her epic comments became so epic, she realized it was time to make the leap to the front page.
In her first post as a contributor, "Hello Out There," she wrote:
I have lived largely apart from other people for a long time, by circumstance rather than by choice, but isolation has nevertheless become my accustomed habitat. I tend to look at the "world of the humans", as I sometimes think of it, as a place very far away. The internet has become my telescope for peering into that world, and has served to draw me back in, in thought if not as an actual, physical presence. I have wandered around the tubes for nearly eight years now, and this is where I have pulled up a chair and made myself comfortable. I have done so because this is the place whose raison d'être makes the most sense to me, and whose company I enjoy keeping, and because Liss has been so welcoming.Maud's participation here was, of course, extraordinary. She was a gifted writer, and a spectacular moderator, who had a way of conveying the principles of the space, and defending its boundaries, with fierceness, eloquence, and wit. Maud's comments routinely made me weep with laughter, or invigorated me with their reverberating insight; long before Maud became a contributor, I told Iain that she was the sort of commenter who inspired me to always do better, to deserve her esteem. Her participation in this space flattered me, because I admired her so much.
I have hesitated somewhat about taking the additional step of becoming an official Shakesville contributor, wondering whether I'm really fit for it. Like many hermits, I'm cranky. Unlike many hermits, I'm also very lethargic. I am not your hardy, wilderness-dwelling hermit, chopping her own firewood and cultivating her own sustenance. I am the less-celebrated mattress-dwelling hermit; on a good day I may manage a little onion-chopping in the pursuit of sustenance before succumbing to fatigue. Both doing and expecting have become foreign to me. I do, however, in my more alert moments, still talk - or type - a good game. The fatigued part of me doesn't want to do more. The cranky part of me doesn't want to expect more. I've done some mild to moderate expecting in my time, and it hasn't gone well.
But doing more and expecting more are contagious, it turns out. Hang around long enough, even virtually, with folks who do that, and you may find yourself doing rather more of whatever it is you can do. Like I said, I intermittently type a good game. So I am doing more of that here at Shakesville, and to save the length of the comment threads, Liss has invited me to start writing my own posts. (Liss didn't actually say, "You know, as long as those comments of yours are, you may as well write your own damn posts." Liss is very polite. But you've seen my comments, right?) So while the idea of being anyone's ally is still strange to me, the idea that neither I nor anyone else has the right to expect better treatment from others than we are willing to extend to them remains the basis for my understanding of all human relationships. I will endeavor to keep that understanding at the fore, and the crankiness aft, in all my participation here.
I looked up to Maud, who taught me some important things about how to live, and about how to die.
Maud and I became friends, exchanging impossibly long emails about all sorts of things. Family. Books. How to best catch a mouse. She had a great sense of humor, the uncompromising wit of a real goddamn broad, and when she started feeling the illness that would eventually kill her, our discussions were peppered with the sort of gallows humor that only two real goddamn broads can have about uterine cancer.
It began with a prolapsed uterus, which she told me about in an email which began: "So I found my cervix at my vaginal opening Saturday morning. That is NOT where I left it, nor where I prefer it to be." I began my reply: "Personally, I blame the Obama administration. Your uterus is obviously so disgusted with their failure to defend reproductive rights that she's trying to emigrate."
Naturally, Maud agreed: "I think maybe she wanted to go to the Oct. 2nd march on Washington, and since I wasn't planning to go, she just decided to head on out without me. I believe I've reconciled her to remaining with me and plotting some less itinerant form of protest. Everybody knows the Obama administration don't listen to no uteri, anyway."
This would become an ongoing joke, even as the worst was confirmed. "The pathology report came back positive on the endometrial biopsy; I have uterine cancer. … This is a stage 4, metastatic cancer and is not going away. (Although, to be fair to my uterus, she did try to take her malignancy and go, just not as soon as would have been helpful.)"
Between all of that were serious discussions about treatment plans devised by gynecological oncologists and sorting out transportation to medical appointments and other minutiae of navigating illness. And we had very frank discussions of how much our friendship meant to one another, because the reality was that Maud was dying, and it was really only a matter of when.
But these are not things Maud would want me to talk about. She would tell me I'm being boring and burdensome.
And then she would tell me: "No, you're a grown woman. Talk about whatever you want to talk about." Because that's how Maud rolled.
She asked me to tell the other contributors a few weeks ago. No—I offered, and she accepted. I knew she didn't want to do it, and I was eminently willing to do it for her. She was relieved. I wrote a draft and sent it to her for approval. It was the most difficult thing I'd written in six years. Our friend is dying.
Once she was in hospice, she wanted to write about the experience of living in a nursing home, and the business of dying. She didn't want to just disappear from Shakesville. And she wanted to leave a record of her experience, this most important and horrible and universal experience, in the space that meant so much to her. They would have been amazing posts. But those posts would never get written.
Last week, her emails, always fastidiously correct in every way, began to arrive with misspellings and odd spacing. Maud was slipping away.
Needing desperately to express my grief at losing her in inches, I wrote "I'll Run at Your Side." I didn't think she was even able to read the blog anymore at that point. But she was still reading. And she knew what I was really writing about. Her last comment is in that thread, and the last thing she ever wrote to me, which I will keep private, was about that post.
The next day, Maud was taken to the hospital, where she died.
Fucking selfish, ruthless cancer. Now there's just a Maud-shaped hole where Maud should be. I'm really angry about that. And I'm so goddamn sad. My heart is aching, and my entire head is dehydrated from crying.
That last line would have made Maud laugh.
During a conversation on a Friday night many years ago, my friend Lance Mannion argued, very persuasively, that calling someone "neat" is so hopelessly antiquated that it defies irony, and is thus one of the most honest compliments one can give.
I thought Mary Quinn was just the neatest person.
I was lucky to know her. I loved her dearly, and I will miss her so much.
RIP Maud.
Question of the Day
What's a common activity in your culture which you've never participated?
I've never had a manicure or a pedicure.
On TSA Security and Survivors
[Trigger warning for TSA enhanced pat-downs discussion.]
Newsweek's Kate Dailey: For Survivors of Sexual Assault, New TSA Screenings Represent a Threat.
That's a beautifully uncompromising headline, and it's an excellent piece, which has the potential to be a conversation-changer.
(Note: Kate interviewed me for this piece yesterday. I'm quoted and our discussion here is also linked.)
In Things That Shouldn't Need to Be Said...
...but evidently do: [TW for sexual violence] Sexually assaulting Transportation Security Administration screeners who are just carrying out orders, and may themselves be triggered by having to execute enhanced pat-downs, is not the way to protest their employer's invasive security guidelines.
Frankly, it's not the way to protest their employer's invasive security guidelines even if the employee is hirself using the opportunity to grope passengers.
It's just not the way to protest anything at all.
P.S. Jeffrey Goldberg: Kilts aren't yours to appropriate as a device to easily sexually assault people, asshole. I've seen a lot of gross appropriation of Scottish culture in my lifetime (I'm looking at you, Mike Myers), but suggesting that USian men wear kilts specifically for the purpose of sexually assaulting people is absolutely breathtaking.
[H/T to Shaker Hornet Queen.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
What a Great Idea!
Image Description: A screenshot of People's website, featuring a "Daily Dose of Cute" section.
On Last Night's The Fashion Show
Did anyone else happen to catch last night's episode of The Fashion Show: Ultimate Collection? Because it may well have been the most absurd contest in all of reality TVdom. It was more ridiculous than the Lucent Dossier emo clown boners episode of Top Chef: Just Desserts. Nothing could be worse, right?
It hardly seemed a possiblity. Until they revealed what the designers were supposed to use as inspiration for this challenge:
The human body. That sort of sounds nice. Except they meant the inside of the human body. Hence the trip to ogle plastinated corpses at Bodies... The Exhibition.
I've seen some ridiculous shit on TV, but come on. Evening wear influenced by the graceful curves of the spleen? The lower GI tract pant? A gall bladder-kini? Do, shut up, The Fashion Show: Ultimate Collection.
Oh, and the winner? This piece, an apparent homage to the foreskin:
Discuss.
Take that, Antiques Roadshow!
As part of his bizarre neo-conservative five four-year plan for New Jersey, yesterday Governor Christie laid off the state's public broadcasters, all of them, in order to save money for tunnel building not government.
I'm a leftist and also blah, blah, blah, public radio, blah, blah, blah, I <3 government and soft-spoken nutmeg peddlers, blah, blah, blah. Okay, we've gotten that out of the way.
To continue, I definitely see Christie's move as a cynical strike against what conservatives perceive as one of America's greatest examples of state-sponsored liberalism. Here's the thing: there is no such thing as unbiased media. Even if you're broadcasting the feed from an open mic, someone's got to make an editorial decision about where to place it.
And yes, state-run media is no exception. There was no truth in Izvestia and no news in Pravda*, no?
It's possible to exert influence over the media, even the public media. Remember when some dudes convinced PBS to air the The George Shultz Experience? Me neither, but the concept is that were conservatives to put their minds to it, they could (continue to) make public broadcasting more trickle-down-tacular and Cold Wargasmic.
But that's not what these layoffs are about. I suspect they're also not just about distrust of the state, but about distrust of information itself.
Charity isn't going to be enough to broadcast boring speeches from politicians. Press conferences aren't exactly thrilling either. Have you heard one of Obama's pressers lately? I dare you to make money off that (in that I don't).
Broadcasting the nuts and bolts of government isn't necessarily popular**, which is why it's the state's job. Hell, even Izvestia went halfway and printed the government policies and speeches the totalitarian Soviet regime wanted the citizenry to read. Apparently New Jersey residents can no longer even expect that.
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*A favorite Russian witticism of mine. The names of the largest Soviet newspapers, Izvestia and Pravda roughly translate as news and truth respectively. There's the joke. It's more of an lolsob, really.
**As a young adult, I spent the period after Christmas with a massive tin of cheese, butter, and caramel popcorn watching back-to-back-to-back State of the State addresses, but I suppose YMMV. Also, that reminds me, Gov. Christie? You can't hold a candle to Gov. Whitman, and that's not saying much in my book.
US House News
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has retained her leadership position. Because the Democrats will now be the minority party in the House, she will be the House Minority Leader.
Meanwhile, Rep. John Boehner has, as expected and unanimously, won his party's leadership position, which will make him Speaker Boehner come January.
Number of the Day
Zero. The number of Senate Republicans who voted in favor of considering the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have helped end discriminatory pay practices against women.
The legislation, which had already passed the House, is now dead in the Senate, because it garnered only 58 votes instead of the 60 it needed to move forward.
Echidne finds this hilarious line in a Wall Street Journal piece: "Let's not embark upon a journey that leads us to gender warfare."
Got that? Wage discrimination isn't gender warfare, but fixing it is.
