(no subject)

[cleolinda]

I burned my mouth on frozen pizza (well, previously-frozen now-substantially-unfrozen pizza), and now I am a sad panda.

Print images directly onto flower petals?

Hidden Passageway will build--you guessed it--into your house. "That's amazing, you say! But I bet it costs a fortune! ...Nay, say I. They sell DIY kits you can put together yourself starting at $1500." Everyone agrees that it would be much cooler to keep this on the downlow, even as they post it to their blogs. I'm just saying.

(Personally, I would love one. But there's a slight problem: yeah, building the mechanism and passageway is the difficult part. But once you've got it... where does it go to? What I'm saying is, this is only really useful if you've already got a secret room somewhere, or a room you can now close off and hide. Otherwise it's just, "Oh look, this bookcase in the hall! This happens to be the only way to get into my bedroom now.")

Sheryl Crow Treated for Breast Cancer.

The Katrina New Yorker cover that got pushed off by the "more topical" Cheney/Brokeback Mountain cover. Via A Bear in the City.

Sex Pistols Flip Off Rock Hall of Fame ("Next to the sex Pistols, rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. We're not coming. Were [sic] not your monkey and so what?"). And wouldn't you be disappointed if they didn't?

How Salon has changed, and why Charles Taylor was fired.

Winona Ryder and Asia Argento knew from the start that J.T. Leroy was a fake. The NY Post link's time-sensitive, so the text is reposted below:

February 24, 2006 -- WINONA Ryder and other celebrity "intimates" of fictitious writer JT Leroy were part of the conspiracy that pulled off the biggest literary hoax this side of James Frey.

Courtney Love, Rosario Dawson, Tatum O'Neal and Susan Dey all claimed they were friends of the made-up teen hooker-turned-bard. And Italian actress Asia Argento even once told PAGE SIX that she was having Leroy's baby.

It seems clear now that at least Ryder and Argento always knew that "JT Leroy" was actually Savannah Knoop, a California woman who posed as the imaginary writer under wigs and oversize sunglasses at book readings, and that Leroy's prose was actually written by Laura Albert.

Argento had reason to play along. She was hyping her movie "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things," which is based on the Leroy short-story collection and which hits theaters March 10.

The film's red-faced producers recently had to rewrite their press releases once the hoax was exposed. Variety reports the pitch now describes the meandering mess of a movie - which stars Peter Fonda, Marilyn Manson and Michael Pitt - as "the back story of one character who rocked the world of literature, fashion, music and film without ever existing."

No celeb was more complicit in the scheme than Ryder, who spun a tall tale to Steve Garbarino for his 2003 Vanity Fair piece, "The Divine JT Sisterhood," about how she befriended Leroy when he was a teenage street urchin right after her breakup with Johnny Depp.

"I had two tickets to the opera, and I was, like, 'I don't want to go alone,' " Ryder said. "And then I saw this kid standing near the doors to the opera house, and he was trying to listen in. He was a total ragamuffin. So I said, 'Hey, I have this extra ticket. Do you want to go see the opera?' He was too young to be creepy. He said, 'Oh, my God! I really wanted to see this!' I think it was 'La Boheme.'

"And he was crying throughout it. And I started crying for my own reasons, watching this beautiful kid so affected, someone his age grasping it. We went to this diner afterward and talked. I wanted to take care of him, have him move in, but he said he was heading back south. I fell in love with him. And I've been in love with him ever since."

Ryder's rep declined to comment about her Oscar-worthy performance.

Comments

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been steadily hating Winona Ryder more and more over the last five years or so, but that just seals it. I hope she never makes another movie again.

[edda.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU.

*is vindicated*

[scornedsaint.livejournal.com]

Sheryl Crow Treated for Breast Cancer.

Dammit, now I have to feel guilty about hating her.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Dammit, now I have to feel guilty about hating her.

Hmmm...*ponders*...nah. Hate away!

Also, sweet icon.

[elyim.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't the Build-Your-Own-Secret-Passage kit just need to consist of a crowbar, a spade, a rug and the instructions: "1) Rip up the floorboads 2) Start digging 3) Cover hole with rug"?

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, those are also the components to the Build Your Own Big Game Trap too.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Round here they've been the components to the Build Your Own Fireman Trap. A group of arsonists would damage floorboards and recover them with carpet before starting the fire.

I wish I was making this up.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Re: secret passages

When I sent that link to my mother yesterday, she had the same comment. You really need to have a room. Or get a room. Or something like that.

They do, however, suggest a secret wall-niche, so I guess you work with what you have. ("And this random indentation in our hall wall, which in no way matches the rest of our house, is certainly not a tip-off to our seekrit munitions stash. It is, rather, a place to display our kindergartner's pottery efforts in the grandiose style we wish her to become accustomed to.")

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

"It's a festive nook. Clearly."

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Hee! And friended.

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

Friended back!

[livinthegoodlfe.livejournal.com]

I havent gotten an answer from LJ, so Ill kindly ask you. How the heck do you use the new LJ cuts with the little scissory icon?

Other than that, I don't have anything. Except those flower petals are pretty cool.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Huh... I just hit ctrl-K in Semagic. Have you tried the FAQ?

[livinthegoodlfe.livejournal.com]

Semagic? Yes, the FAQ is for the old system. I did some odd 'ask everybody on LJ' a question, to which I got one response saying something about they are trying to update/teach/fix the error with it. I shall try doing Ctrl-K, hope it works!

Thanks

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Semagic is actually a program you have to download--it's kind of like a very light, simple Word editor for LJ, but it's so easy to use and it makes linking soooo easy. If you go to the FAQ, there's more about it there.

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

well, but couldn't you build a secret passage from say, the linen closet to your bedroom? Or between two rooms, so that there was an extra route between them? That could come in handy.

[missmp.livejournal.com]

Winona Ryder really is three sandwiches short of a picnic, isn't she?

[kismeteve.livejournal.com]

Wow, Winona really has lost her marbles, hasn't she.

[eruvadhril.livejournal.com]

The SciFi channel have their Doctor Who page up! (http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/) Squee! It's only 22 days until the premiere!

That secret passage thing seems a bit short-sighted. They should come with a Build Your Own Top Secret Room Kit as well.

[sualocin.livejournal.com]

That Katrina New Yorker cover is beautiful.

Don't know if you'd be interested, but it is interesting Tower of London cages its ravens (http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/02/21/birdflu.london/) so they won't get the bird flu.

[ladykatiewench.livejournal.com]

With your love of ice skating, and the current interest in all things at least slightly gay and cowboy, you will probably love this: Cowboys On Ice (http://bailunrui.livejournal.com/325230.html).

[suitcasegnome.livejournal.com]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! THANK. YOU.

[ladykatiewench.livejournal.com]

It really is fabulous, isn't it?!

[suitcasegnome.livejournal.com]

Completely, totally, and utterly. ;)

[keever.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that Charles Taylor link. I'd noticed he'd disappeared from the site and always wondered what happened there. It's a good reminder of why I just can't seem to make myself pony up for Salon Premium, even though I read it regularly.

I saw the Heart is Deceitful... trailer at the theater the other day. Unsurprisingly, it began with a disclaimer about the Leroy business. Kind of puts a damper on the rest of the thing.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Dude, are these people *serious*? It's a *pseudonym*. I mean, okay, it's a little more than that, it's a pseudo-history, but J.T. Leroy has a right to represent him/herself as anyone s/he wants to. J.T. Leroy writes fiction. Fiction writers do not have some kind of moral duty to spill their entire personal histories to the press; they don't have any duties at all except to write good books, and Leroy did that. There's no "hoax". There's a woman who wrote books under a pseudonym and who, for her own reasons, decided to create a persona to go with the 'nym.

I have no idea why I'm soapboxing at you; you didn't write the Post story. I guess it just frustrates me, and the comment link was right there... feel free to ignore me, really. :)

[katytowell.livejournal.com]

Man, I totally agree with you. I don't get Winona's need to be in on the weirdness, but - that aside - how many great writers in classic fiction were actually women writing under a man's name? Lots. This isn't that different.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I linked to this previously, and I'd have to dig it up again, but my understanding is that there was a degree of deception with other people as well. I think it was Susie Bright who wrote the piece I'm thinking of? And Michael Chabon's wife, I forget her name, wrote a piece for Salon. Basically, they both knew Leroy as a young man, possibly transgender now (which was to explain the Savannah Knoop stand-in), who had had a hard life, etc., who would frequently call them up and confide "his" life to them, and they felt betrayed to realize it was a 40-year-old woman--a woman that Susie Bright said she already knew from years ago. I mean, I don't know. So many writers and publishers feel used and betrayed that I have to think it was more than just a pseudonym.

Fiction writers do not have some kind of moral duty to spill their entire personal histories to the press; they don't have any duties at all except to write good books, and Leroy did that.

I agree, except that Leroy *did* spill "his" entire personal history to the press, and not only that, but dined out on it a good bit; it just wasn't true. At the same time, Laura Albert (is that her name? It's early in the morning, I can't remember) is legitimately a good writer in a way that James Frey is not (that is, he was neither telling the truth in a nonfiction venue nor a very good writer, IMO), and wasn't she writing novels, not memoirs, anyway? It'll be interesting to see if she can salvage something from this.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, true enough. My problem is that the public has somehow taken from this a sense that they ought to feel betrayed, as in the Post article - I'm sure the concurrence of this whole thing with the Frey debate, in which Oprah gave us all the impression that Frey had done *us* a disservice¹, hasn't helped people to understand that as readers of his novels, none of this has anything to do with us.

A lot of people have taken away the mistaken impression that Leroy was writing memoirs, because his novels hewed close to his invented life. They were definitely always presented as fiction, though, which, to me, brings the betrayed parties down to the people s/he actually spoke with.

In the end, I sort of feel bad for anyone who has a need to create that kind of false life for themselves. It happens on the Internet a lot, people creating invented personas to get away from their real lives, and people who have befriended the invented persona always do feel betrayed. I don't know what Laura Albert's reasons were for making up a young trans sex worker, but it's got to be more than just selling books - she wouldn't have had to go to the trouble of confiding in all those people if that had been all she was trying to do. I don't know, as someone who's had the impulse to run away from life and hide in a shiny new fake!me at times in the past, I feel bad for everyone in the J.T. Leroy situation.

¹That case *is* easier to make, since Frey wrote a memoir and not novels - and something of a preachy memoir, at that.

[temima.livejournal.com]

"I don't know what Laura Albert's reasons were for making up a young trans sex worker"

Because it's a pain in the butt to get published if you're Jane Schmo with the Great American Novel in your hand? Just guessing.

But--I'd agree with you, but wonder how could anyone put some much work in that an elaborate a facade. Then again, maybe I just answered my own question.

[conuly]

Can I metaquote you?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Sure.

[bacardibreezer7.livejournal.com]

Secret passageways! Didn't Mary-Anne and Dawn have one of those things in their house in the Babysitters Club books?? It went from their bedroom to the garden, and it used to be part of the Underground Railway that helped slaves escape to the North, or something like that.

[shesnotallthere.livejournal.com]

Oh, good Lord. They did. And I haven't thought about those books in YEARS.

[tabbyclaw.livejournal.com]

Yep. And there were weird noises in it (that I think ended up being a cat) and they thought the house was haqunted and I threw the book across the room because I was an easily frightened child.

[bacardibreezer7.livejournal.com]

Ooh I remember the noises! It was in like book 5, and it was the hugest OMGTEHDRAMA. But then by the end of the series it was so 5 minutes ago, it was just, "I went through the secret passageway as it was the quicker way...oh yeah, btw, I have a secret passageway in my house" and no-one gave a shit anymore.

[kookaburra1701.livejournal.com]

One of my friends had the BEST SECRET PASSAGE EVER in her house- it went from the back of her closet and opened into the celing of the downstairs bathroom. It came in very, very handy when we were being obnoxious brats and our babysitters/parents would shut us in her room to get some peace and quiet. I don't think we ever told anyone about it.

[anonymisty.livejournal.com]

...she befriended Leroy when he was a teenage street urchin right after her breakup with Johnny Depp.


Gee, Winona, didn't your mama tell you not to play with strange boys just because the hottest man on the planet dumped you?

[bardintraining.livejournal.com]

I want a secret passageway, but the only place that would be remotely suitable for a new secret room would be under the deck in the backyard. Which...you can already access if you're short and not afraid of massive rats. Huh.

Is it just me, or would Winona and Tom Cruise make such a perfect couple of crazy? The insanity would never, ever end. Instead of Cruise slowly but surely sucking the normal out of Katie Holmes, he and Winona would just feed off each other's neuroses and eventually the paparazzi would be too scared to try following them anywhere because if you get within twenty feet of them you risk sudden homicidal urges.

[farasha.livejournal.com]

But then we'd all have their mad Rider-Cruise scientologist babies inflicted on us. No, no, I think that we should root for Holmes-Cruise in hopes that their kid's Holmes genes will one day kick in and clue them in to how fucking crazy their parents are.

[bardintraining.livejournal.com]

But wasn't Winona herself raised on a commune of sorts? Wouldn't that attest to the fact that no matter what, any baby raised in the Scientology-celebrity circuit would turn out a little half-baked?
That and Ryder/Cruise have eerie similarities in terms of being names related to driving. At least in sound, if not in spelling. Holmes is too normal. Or was.

[shesnotallthere.livejournal.com]

A secret passage that went from one's carport/garage to one's bedroom could come in handy, particularly if one is trying to avoid visiting friends/relatives that are hanging about in the rest of the house.

[somewhatmoot.livejournal.com]

What's good in having a secret passage way if you have someone build it for you?

Do these contractors know that I'm going to have to kill them and hide their bodies in the foundation when they're done?

[adjectivegirl.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the Taylor link, I hate with a fury the decline of Salon, particularly with Zachereck essentially being their main film reviewer (O'Heir, who is tolerable at best is rarely there) and Charles Taylor is still pretty much my hero, for sticking up for what turned him in the face of flaccid snark. *bookmarks to digest fully later, and uh, rant over :)*

[soleta-nf.livejournal.com]

The hidden passageway thing - wow. As a kid I totally had recurring dreams about a house that you could only travel through on a series of slides and ladders and such. I had other dreams about mini-houses just for kids. No adults allowed. *sigh* If I were rich, I'd totally make those dreams come true.

[slash-puppy.livejournal.com]

I burned my mouth on frozen pizza (well, previously-frozen now-substantially-unfrozen pizza), and now I am a sad panda.

0_0 Omigod, you use the "sad panda" thing too?

I seriously thought my friends and I were the only ones that did that. I must live under a rock or something. XD

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee! I wish I could remember where I picked it up.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

I burned my mouth on frozen pizza (well, previously-frozen now-substantially-unfrozen pizza), and now I am a sad panda.

Pandas mainly eat bamboo. Perhaps you should consider switching to bamboo pizza? It might be harder to burn one's mouth, though the risk of pizza cuts goes up considerably.

Yarha, New Word: Bampizza or Boopizza?