Monday, September 1, 2003
So, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a picture of Britney and Madonna kissing at the VMAs on their front page. Some readers freaked out. (I'm sure these are the same Georgians who voted for Newt, but I may be reaching.) The AJC then APOLOGIZED, claiming that the photo was not news, offended community sensibilities, and should have run inside. Of course, the pic was news. Everyone and their mother was talking about it, and that alone makes it news. No, the reason the phot was "bad" was that it was lesbionic. The fucks. So, I wrote the paper the following letter: Dear Editor, In your unfortunate apology to AJC readers for printing the photo of Madonna and Britney Spears on the front page, you declare that the kiss was not news, and thus shouldn't have been put on the cover of the paper. Does that means you will no longer run photos of football tackles on the front page, or images of the Nicole Kidman winning an Oscar, of heterosexuals kissing at either event? But of course you will. "News" has nothing to do with it. By comparing the picture of the the kiss to pictures of the war--and declaring that printing difficult image of the war was fine, while a provocative image of women kissing was offensive--you make it very clear what the issue is: Lesbianism, even faux, is digusting, violent, and against all community standards. How do you think your gay and lesbian staffers, readers, and advertisers feel about that? Now you owe them an apology. Sincerely, Ted Gideonse

Monday, March 24, 2003
I know, I know. My kitty blog was a tease. It's been too long since I've actually said something. I've been busy, which is sad, because I've had a lot to say. Mostly I've wanted to talk about the war--about the ignorant "patriots" who support it and the fascists who wage it. (Please notice the lack of ironic quotes around fascists.) I've been appalled by the media's refusal to question Bush's absurdist rhetoric, by their desire for jingoistic headlines, for jingoistic readers and viewers. I used to work for the corporations that run these outlets and I hope to make my living off of them in the future; nevertheless, I have to call them on their profit motives. All of this has radicalized me like nothing in the past has. I shouldn't put my actual views (or my proposed solutions) on a website because Ashcroft will try to have me jailed. But in his Oscar acceptance speach last night, Michael Moore summed up my feelings: "We live in fictitious times," Moore said. "We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons." The Academy members who booed this man should be ashamed of themselves. I'd like to know their names, put them on a list, tack the list to telephone polls. Let them know how it feels to be called a traitor, to be called such a name for valuing life over war.

Tuesday, March 11, 2003
I know it's been a long time. I apologize. I work too much. In fact, I work so hard, I don't ever have time to waste at work (where I'd normally blog the day away). To tide y'all over, I've put together a little montage about my cats. Here's the address: gideonse.com/jack. Cut and paste and enjoy.

Tuesday, September 24, 2002
An addendum: There was a happy ending to my dating woes. I got a boyfriend in April. Soon enough I'll scan in a picture of us and you can see how cute he is. And in the spring, you'll be able to see how good a writer he is. He's been anthologized!

Tuesday, September 24, 2002
So, I was on the subway this morning reading BKNY (Beth Kwon's 'zine) and listening to Dolly Parton's version of "Stairway to Heaven" (which I downloaded on Grokster) and I had one of those I-haven't-eaten-or-slept-enough-and-I'm-a-little-woozy-but-I-want-to-cry-I'm-so-amused-and-moved moments. First, the song: While Led Zep's version is arguably the greatest hard rock song ever recorded (varied, bombastic, intricate), Dolly's exposes both the pathos of the lyrics and the gospel of the final harmonies, both of which are muted in the original recording. And she rooo-awwwcks. Second, BKNY: In Part 2 of this issue (it's the first since, um, that thing that happened, so it's long--in a good way) Beth describes how she met a cute stranger in front of his apartment house, wrote a "Please call me!" note on a Club Monaco bag and hung it on his door knob, and then ended up going on a boring date with him. Ah, dating in New York. This winter, recently single, I rubbed up against anything that gave me a second look. I made some errors in judgment, the most notable at the Cedar Tavern in February. While waiting for my roommate and a friend to join me one night, I sat alone in a booth on the second floor and eavesdropped on three guys next to me. Okay, I wasn't really paying attention to their conversation; I was cruising one of them, a really cute bald guy with a goatee. He was looking back. I was giving him the eye. It was fun. When my friends showed up, I told them what was going on. They giggled. Suddenly, the really cute bald guy got up and left. I was waiting ten second too long--when I ran down to the street he was nowhere to be found! Unemployed, bored, and depressed, I instantly became obsessed with the guy. I heard him talking about the Manhattan Film Academy, and somehow I got it in my head that he was the school's executive director. I'm not sure why I thought this. But I found the school's website and emailed the info account about a bald guy who seemed to be the executive director of the school and how I had overheard him talking about the school and how he left the bar before I could ask him any questions. (Pretty sneaky, sis!) The actual executive director wrote me back with a big "hunh?" But I guess she figured out who I was talking about. Soon after her email, I got one from the ONE OF THE TWO GUYS WHO WERE SITTING WITH THE CUTE BALD GUY. I guess I'd said something about how after bald guy left, his friends stayed and talked about time travel for an hour and a half. This guy was pissed that I made fun of him. I didn't mean to, and I apologized. He wrote back and made more fun of me. (Dickhead.) Needless to say, I was mortified. Then the cute bald guy emailed me! And I told him the whole, true story. And he wrote back, "I'm flattered, but I'm straight." And this time I was mortified times ten. I guess that would be "humiliated." The moral of the story? All that glitters is not gold.

Thursday, July 11, 2002
Okay, here's Sign of the Apocalypse #11: Joey Fatone from 'N Sync is going to be Mark in "Rent" until December. Uh. Yeah. No other comment is necessary.

Thursday, July 11, 2002
Here's an update of the soap opera that is my employment: After some soul searching, career counseling, and successful networking, I've taken a job working for a literary agent. She's going to teach me the business, and with luck, I'll soon be making my most brilliant friends rich and famous and then taking 15% of their income. So, my new work info is as follows: Ted Gideonse, Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency, 1201 Broadway, Suite 708, New York, New York, 10001. The phone numbers are 212-684-6936 (voice) and 212-684-6929 (fax). Use my regular email account. And yes, in case you're wondering, I'm back in the Garment District, where I worked when I was at Guinness World Records. What a, um, lively area! A little Peruvian man makes knock-off Burberry bags in the office next door. If you want, I'll see if I can get few wholesale.

Thursday, June 20, 2002
Someone in Williamsburg found my blog and commented on it. (Check out her blog at www.saranwarp.com.) She said that I didn't even need to purchase the lovely mid-century modern furniture I was raving about being so cheap in our 'hood; I could find it on the street. Well, yes, that's true, but the selection is better at the stores. Finding a really good couch on the sidewalk is rather difficult. But when I do find a good piece in the garbage, I'm quite excited. Except when I realize it smells--like the rug I just re-trashed. Ick.

Thursday, June 20, 2002
My roommate and I are trying to stop smoking. Matthew's much more of a smoker than I am; he’s been smoking nearly a pack a day for 10 years and I've been smoking three or four cigarettes a day for five months--which is about how long we've been living together. (Ahem.) To satisfy his obsessive-compulsive oral fixation, Matthew has been devouring lollipops. In support of his journey to happy lung-ness (and due to my lack of defense from by-the-counter products at Staples), I bought him an enormous bag of Dum-Dums. Wow! These things are amazing. There are 14 flavors in the bag, 13 with food-ish names and one with “mystery” written across the wrapper (though it’s clearly root beer). The flavors are so exact it’s creepy. The buttered popcorn lollipop tastes so much like buttered popcorn that almost immediately after sticking it in my mouth, I started tonguing my gums looking for stuck kernels. I’m not kidding. Really. Anyway, I know that this fake flavor thing is ultimately a sign of the coming Apocalypse, but it’s hard to complain. I probably would complain if I had read Fast Food Nation and learned about how the chemical companies on the New Jersey Turnpike are fabricating the taste of hamburger so that hamburgers taste more like hamburgers and that this will eventually lead us to death by cancer and malaise by torporific taste buds. But I’ve been avoiding reading Fast Food Nation so I can continue to eat at McDonald’s. Without fast food, I’d be a different person. And besides, where would I stop if I cut out all the evil things? I’m not going to stop taking Celexa, Sudafed, Allegra, Tylenol, Advil, or my multi-vitamins; I’m not gonna stop drinking liquor or tap water; and I’ll cut down on the cigs, but I’m not gonna stop; and if I only wore American-made clothes, I’d be poor or in rags; and then there’s Coca-Cola! Okay, I’ll stop. But, really, you should try these buttered popcorn lollipops. So tasty.

Monday, April 22, 2002
After twenty years of desperately, pathetically, constantly wanting a puppy, I've changed my tune--from "How much is that doggy in the window?" to "It was only puppy love." I had always refused to believe anyone who told me how much work, how much responsibility, how full of pooh dogs are. Then over the weekend I took care of my friend Jason's bull dog, Humbert. I didn't turn on dogs because Humbert is smelly, slobbery, or slow, which he is. Rather it was his incredible neediness; he's got to be fed three times a day, walked four times, and then petted, patted, and paid attention all the rest of the time. He's like small child. Actually, he's more like a small, mute, immensely stupid child: He doesn't have anything to say. He doesn't know his name. He's not affectionate. When he doesn't get his way, he digs in his paws and refuses to move. When he gets angry, he bites. And when he takes a crap, his daddy has to pick up the shit in a plastic bag. My realization has made me sad. All my life, I've felt deprived. All my life, I've wanted to have an apartment big enough, a life free enough, to have a dog. Now that desire is gone; it's sort of like discovering that you no longer want to be a doctor, or a believer, or a heterosexual. It's a strange feeling to figure out that such a strongly felt desire was superficial.

Tuesday, February 26, 2002
I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last ‘blog-in. As many of you know, after a (personally) traumatic January, I moved to Williamsburg. (For those of you out of the NYC loop, W-burg is a hipster, Hasidic, and Puerto Rican ghetto in Brooklyn, directly across the East River from the East Village.) The move itself was awful, mostly due to the pathetic battery in my U-Haul and the shocking volume of my belongings. But as I’ve slowly settled into my loft, I’ve come to believe what I hoped I would when I signed the lease: Williamsburg is fabulous. So, for this ‘blog, I’ll list my Top 10 Reasons Why Williamsburg Is The Bomb. 10. Industrial wastelands that are slowly finding their way to pseudo-gentrified residential neighborhoods have more edge, and are ultimately cooler, than their Strokes-loving, Pahulnik-reading inhabitants. I like our artsy neighbors, but I like even better what my friend Jason said while helping me unload the U-Haul: “You know, if I was going to dump a body, I’d do it right here.” 9. Three blocks from my apartment is a restaurant called Diner. Decorated by the love child of David Fincher and Norman Rockwell, populated by the best-looking freaks in W-burg, and serving tasty and complex neuveau bistro cuisine, the most expensive restaurant in the neighborhood (that isn’t Peter Lugar) is still cheaper than anything within a mile of my old place in the Village. 8. Sure, after having apartments in the West Village and the Upper West Side for the last five years, it’s nice to live in a neighborhood with some diversity. But really, the folk I most enjoy seeing on the sidewalk and hanging out in the café down the street are the uber-trendoids with shaggy hair, interestingly placed piercings, and tattoos of all designs and denotations. Partly, I want to be like them. Partly, I want to them to like me. Partly, I want to have sex with them. Well, just the boys. 7. I love that it’s okay to be arrogant about where I live. Long live the cultural tyranny of the underclass! 6. You can buy the coolest shit here. Second-hand stores abound, and most of them don’t mark up their goods 3000% like the “vintage” furniture “galleries” in Manhattan. You can get gorgeous, crafted, and sturdy 60s and 70s furniture for the same amount you’d pay for the new, badly constructed equivalents at Ikea. 5. I live in 1500-square-foot loft with 12-foot ceilings and windows, windows everywhere. 4. All politics is local: My congresswoman’s office is under the JMZ on the corner of Roebling and Broadway, and from the street I can see the painting of Che Guevara hanging in the reception area. I repeat: Long live the cultural tyranny of the underclass! 3. Each bodega in my neighborhood is smaller and stranger than the next. My favorite is on S. 6th, near Berry. The attached junkyard is populated by chickens, pheasants, a rooster, a grouse, and several cats, who strangely leave the birds alone. In the store, I can buy bright orange peanut-butter-and-cracker snacks, some potato chips, and a Coke for $1.25 while listening to a dozen men play craps in the back room. 2. I live about 150 feet from the Williamsburg bridge, just high enough to look down on the slow traffic and look into the yellow-lit JMZ as it makes its way across the East River. The passing of the train is strangely, wonderfully soothing; it’s as regular as the tide and rumbles like the heartbeat of a giant. 1. On the side of my building is a large sign that says “Dandy Zipper Factory.” ‘Nuff said.

Friday, February 22, 2002
I sent out the following during the first week of February: After dealing with a 21-hour U-Haul nightmare, two previous tenants who keep not "vacating" when they say they will, and too many hours dealing with Verizon, I'm finally done moving. But it was worth it. Both Williamsburg and the loft are fabu--and so are my new roommates, Matthew Fox and Michael Willoughby. Below you'll find my new address and new phone number. I hope y'all will visit soon. Ted Gideonse 808 Driggs Ave. #402 Brooklyn, New York 11211 718.782.7748 (immobile) 917.734.9774 (mobile) 413.403.0745 (facsimile) www.gideonse.com

Tuesday, January 29, 2002
Sign of the Apocalypse #32R: "...for people who tire of Winter Olympics competition on NBC, Fox has a special in the works for late February. Called 'The Glutton Bowl,' the two-hour show will feature people competing to eat large amounts of foods like hamburgers and eggs." This sentence was found of the AP Wire, Jan. 29, 2002.

Tuesday, January 22, 2002
Sign of the Apocalypse #4B: For those of who thought it couldn't get worse in Africa, there's that gosh-darn volcano in the Congo. Let's just quote Reuters. "Congo Volcano Ravages Town, Kills Dozens...A river of molten rock poured from a volcano in Congo on Friday, a day after it erupted, killing dozens, swallowing buildings whole and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee the city of Goma." At least now they can't watch "The Chamber."

Tuesday, January 22, 2002
Sign of the Apocalypse #14R.99: That Bush-chokes-on-a-pretzel thing.

Tuesday, January 22, 2002
Sign of the Apocalypse #72B: On January 13, 2001, Universal Pictures announced that Ang Lee had been hired to direct The Incredible Hulk.

Tuesday, January 22, 2002
Sign of the Apocalypse #8: It was last year around this time that Jodie Foster was seen canoodling all over LA with Russell Crowe. Eventually, we discovered it was just a silly ruse to get our attention. Still, it was a sign. Of what, I'm not sure.

Tuesday, January 22, 2002
Sign of the Apocalypse #27364Z: I identified this sign on March 07, 2001. It was the press release announcing the first official cast photo of the live action Scooby Doo film, starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Matthew Lillard. But while it's still online, that release has nothing on the official website. Ugh. Click the date above.

Tuesday, January 22, 2002
As many of my friends know, I am keen on predicting the coming Apocalypse by tracking the various signs appearing regularly in our culture. Today, we saw a major event, which I have classified as Sign #2GF67. (Don't worry about the classification system; it's too complex and archaic for most mortal minds.) The latest sign, if you haven't already guessed it, is the headline now found on many news sites: "Amazon Posts First Quarterly Profit." Check this space for more information. Oh, and I'll post a few older "events" soon...just to make you nervous.

Wednesday, December 19, 2001
Lord of the Rings was perfect. I haven't been so awed and moved by film since...well, I have no idea. It took the irony right out of me, and I cried.

Tuesday, December 18, 2001
I saw Vanilla Sky on Friday afternoon and was underwhelmed. It wasn't excrutiatingly bad, like some people have said (though there's some excrutiatingly bad dialogue). But while watching the film, I had a nagging feeling that everything shoulda, coulda been better. I'd say a good 90% of the problem was Cameron Crowe, who just isn't enough of a filmmaker to create a successful avante-garde thriller. Give him light comedy and he's okay--sort of like Nora Ephron if she liked rock and roll instead of big band. He probably knows he's not a genius; otherwise he wouldn't have done a shot-for-shot remake of "Open Your Eyes." But he still had to translate and transmogrify the text, tell his actors what to do and feel, edit the film into something exciting. And here's where he went wrong: 1) There's no reason to care about Tom Cruise; the script doesn't make him sympathetic and therefore we don't have reason to fear for him. 2) Well-directed acting and well-written dialogue should do the work of broadcasting tone and emotion--not well-chosen music. 3) You should feel menace when you watch a thriller; you shouldn't be depressed. 4) After "The Wizard of Oz," it hasn't been okay to end a film with the protagonist telling a character line-up "And you were there! And you! And you, too!" M. Night Shyamalan would have made a much more interesting film, probably. And he would have probably elicited a better performance from Tom Cruise, who seemed to be just reapplying his I'm-so-confused-and-angry face that was so ineffective in "Eyes Wide Shit" (which was still a more interesting film despite its more excessive failures). Penelope Cruz, who I think is rather sweet in this, would have been the same: bubbly, sweet, and cute as a button. And Cameron Diaz would just have been shot better; it's hard to imagine her acting could improve. But that's all neither here nor there. Just wishful thinking. Oh, if only it had been better.

Thursday, December 13, 2001
Black olives should be banned. I'm eating an otherwise fine tortellini salad and the little edible washers have given everything the taste of bloody gums. Blech.

Thursday, December 13, 2001
MY TOP 12: A CHRISTMAS LIST . . . 12. $10 billion 11. perfect, plaque-resistant teeth and gums 10. a really cool tattoo--not too scary, not too whimsical 9. ten pairs of shoes that fit BOTH FEET; some should be hip, some practical, all comfortable 8. a 27-hour-day; I promise to use the extra three hours for sleeping 7. computer equipment that always functions properly, never becomes obsolete, and is light enought to carry on long walks through airport terminals 6. discipline: to write, to exercise, to behave properly in awkward and/or tempting situations 5. relativistic understanding between people of different cultures (Can't we all just get along?) 4. the ability to time travel--so I can go back and correct all my mistakes, prevent 9/11, and spend more time with my Uncle Marty before he died 3. to stop worrying and learn to love my life 2. an argument that would convince the city to create more services for the drunk, smelly, and crazy people who make me want to cry (after scaring me mute) 1. the ability to reason with the rats who treat my building's garbage cans like their own personal Gristedes

Tuesday, December 4, 2001
I was walking home down 2nd Avenue yesterday afternoon and a crumpled little old lady, dressed in a red shawl, her blue hat pinned carefully, stopped me between 8th and 9th Streets. I thought she was going to ask me directions, which I love, because it means I look friendly, trustworthy, and wise. But no. Her word were: "These stores all used to be run by Italians. Now they're full of Arabs. You never know what you're going to get." Dumbfounded, I kept walking, only to blurt out a few yards later, "Jesus Christ!" I was five blocks away before I was able to compose the correct response, something like, "You know, a century ago, a lady just like you stood on this street and said, 'These stores used to be run by Americans. Now they're full of dirty Eye-ties.'" (A little while later I thought I saw her again, and I was dying to give her what-for, but I was mistaken--it was an even older Purto Rican woman wearing the same hat.) A similar situation occurred a few weeks ago when my boyfriend and I were in a coffee shop in Union Square. Everyone was watching CNN on the TV hanging from the ceiling, and at the next table a little old lady was telling her little old lady friend "they should just get rid of Israel." David said, "Excuse me?" and I fled. After hiding in the bathroom for a few minutes, I returned and my boyfriend said, "I told that bitch how stupid she was." He's a better man than I. I hope I see the 2nd Avenue racist again soon. I want to tell her she's stupid.

Tuesday, November 27, 2001
I'm thrilled with this service. But I'm also nervous. If the server space and software are both free and all that is asked of me is a link to pitas.com, then I fear there's a catch: Am I part of a viral marketing tool? Am I unwittingly broadcasting subliminal messages of support for the AOL Time Warner monopoly? Is the site secretly downloading CIA-manufactured bugs into my readers' computers? Or worse, is this just some over-funded dot-com with a great product but no viable business plan? Please, don't let these guys go the way of Kozmo. I can html this blog myself (just like I could walk to the corner to buy contact lens solution myself), but why should I if someone will do it for me--and for nothing? Just writing that last sentence made me feel guilty for being lazy. Damn that Protestant Work Ethic! I wish they'd bundled it with Discipline and Energy.