Thursday, January 11, 2007

why does this make me laugh so hard?

Colleen Saidman and Rodney Yee - New York Times

do you read the wedding announcements in the times?
i do. (why i torture myself, i don't know. maybe i'm waiting for the one wedding announcement that won't make me barf.) anyway, this announcement struck me as particularly ridiculous - and it doesn't help that the bride looks like she's in drag.

and i know i vaguely promised a post on men's pain...i'm working on it! this has been a tough week: i dumped the boy, once and for all (that lasted all of a month) and work has been wretched, to say the least. plus, i have two writing deadlines coming up (one is next week for a reading i'm doing) and as a result i'm sort of frazzled.

complain complain complain. my life is good. i should relax, be thankful, and enjoy it.

but as a kind of preview of the thing i'm thinking about posting later, here's a piece from norah vincent's 'self-made man' (about her year plus spent dressed as a man, in order to access exclusively male circles and observe male behavior) which i just finished reading sunday:
"Being a guy was like that much of the time, a series of unrealistic,
limiting, infuriating and depressing expectations constantly coming over the
wire, and you just dummy trying to act on the instructions. White manhood
in America isn't the standard anymore by which women and all other minorities
are being measured and found wanting, or at least it doesn't feel that way from
the inside. It's just another set of marching orders, another stereotype
to inhabit."

there are trenchant observations throughout this book (especially the chapter on her time dating as a man). so, look for a post on this and some other thoughts i have about the MRM and the model of manhood i grew up with sometime over the weekend.

6 comments:

Molly Malone said...

that wedding announcement is hysterical! yes, she looks like a drag queen, but the whole including the details of the breakups of their prior marriages is just hilariously tacky! i particularly love how they quote the 16 year old son as if he's cool with the whole setup. HA!
highlights:

“'She put her thumb on my forehead, right on the third eye, and literally I felt something I’d never felt before,' Mr. Yee remembered."
... or maybe it was his foreskin.

"...That made me a lot happier than the cashmere sweater I bought that day."
- how great that she does good works just to make herself happy!

“We’re all about balance. We need some chaos and artifice in our lives.”
- whatever helps you sleep at night, girlfriend

I'm totally going to have to start reading these announcements. Thanks for the new dirty indulgence, Ding!!

Delia Christina said...

the feature writer clearly hated them. don't you think?

Delia Christina said...

i think this is my favorite part:
"They’re spontaneous and loud, but they can really sit with silence."

i sort of wish this whole wedding announcement was silent.

Molly Malone said...

i agree, the writer must've hated them. you read this and feel nothing but embarassment for them! maybe he/she never got over the local scandal they launched over the new york yoga community.

Unknown said...

Holy S..t! Rod Yee and his (first) wife Donna were in the same Lamaze class as my wife and I when we (and they) were having our first child. I took my daughter over to their house for play dates after our kids were born. Thank you for providing one of the weirdest "small world" experiences of my life. Six degrees of seperation and all that. And we thought they had the perfect relationship, perfect job, perfect kid (Evan was actually getting paid to model baby clothes when he was like 6 months old. He was that cute). Well, we're still married (20 years in May). Maybe it's just a lack of imagination on our part, but I'm thinking NOT. Weird.

Delia Christina said...

maybe it's that you guys didn't touch anyone's third eye when you weren't supposed to. i'd say kudos to you and your wife, greg. that's a really long time to be married and it ain't to be sniffed at.

(this, coming from the girl who STILL can't manage to date for longer than 4 months without losing all patience.)

but this world is totally small; i've had two experiences lately where completely disparate worlds have collided in weirdly coincidental and freakish ways. amazing. we all may be islands, but there's apparently an awesome transportation channel at work between us.