� Julia Glass, quoted in "Cinderella Story" by Meryl Gordon (New York magazine, 13 Jan 2003)

I have heard Coldplay! Until this morning, you may not believe me, I truly don�t think I had, and even if it was in the background some time or other, my ears did not pick it out and distinguish it. But this morning I was driving down 23rd listening to the radio and I realized that what I was listening to sounded more like it should be playing on the local alterna-corporate station than on KEXP, and this irritated me because the downside to my nice non-highway commute is that I�m only in the car for a few songs and it stinks when one of them stinks, so I was paying more attention than usual and then John ITM came on and I found out I�d been Coldplayed. And, all right, maybe "stinks" is an exaggeration, though I�m sure I don�t know what all the fuss and hoo-ha are about. They sound like a cross between U2 in stadium-anthem mode and the Barenaked Ladies, minus sincerity and humor, and the lead singer makes his voice do that unctuous plaintive yearning thing that also contains a proud check-out-the-way-I-yearn-so-plaintively (e.g., Adam Duritz, Dave Matthews, and � heresy alert � sometimes Damien Jurado), the disgraceful second tear of modern pop. If Ben Affleck sang he'd do it too. About a year ago at the Crocodile I saw an Irish pop band called the Frames who, musically speaking, bitch-slap Coldplay and make them wet their pants and cry like little girls � they were amazing, such beautiful textured sound and pretty songwriting that did not demand your acknowledgment of it, and the lead singer was suspended in what felt like mathematically precise balance between playing to the audience and forgetting we were even there, and the band was like an organic substance � shutup, no I was not stoned � and oh oh oh it was perfect, it was transcendent, they were the reason it�s important to go out and see bands, because an experience like that is possible. In an ideal world, Coldplay want to be just like the Frames. But � and this is also the reason it�s important to go out and see bands, because the experience is fleeting on many levels � it is probably the other way around. And it is funny that today is the day I finally heard them, because yesterday was the day I finally got off the fence and reserved my place in what will later this month be the Young Englishmen�s caravan to the Sasquatch Festival. About which, oh oh oh again, I have some mixed feelings, I have always dismissed invitations to go to stuff like that with an apologetic but firm not-my-scene, and I do feel this way because, fuck, tell me it�s not going to look like a low-rent Abercrombie and Fitch spread, tell me the campgrounds are not going to reek of patchouli and reefer and cheap beer and overflowing porta-potties and hibachi-broiling Garden Burgers and frat-boy b.o., tell me there will not be a great deal of hacky-sack going on. Tell me I�m too old for this (but please add that I�ve still got it going on in the skimpy blue halter top or whatever I end up wearing). And you are right about everything. I reassure myself by pointing out that my interest in social anthropology is longstanding and well documented so I should consider the weekend fieldwork, also that it�s not cool to have opinions about things with which I have not actually engaged, the same way � so there � I resisted passing judgment on Coldplay until this morning. But Saturday night in Port Townsend, we were hanging out in a local bar watching the locals bump and grind to the songs they�d requested out of the dj�s immaculately maintained three-ring binder, which contained printed pages of a list that was alphabetical by artist and title (we all thought there was something ingenuous and one-tear-only endearing about this), and Stephen T. and I got to talking about Capitol Hill, how a mysterious substance in the atmosphere there robs you of your aesthetic naivete � naivete in the sense not of something unformed but something that is artless and that is yours � so that you get self-conscious about having an unmediated experience, and you must bedizen your responses to stimuli with ironic trills and learn to toe the line of self-referentiality; now is the part where I get classicist on your ass and note that etymologically, the word "innocent" means that to which or to whom no harm has been done, something that has been unaffected by literal or figurative violence, and, think about it, there�s a sense in which being Cap-Hill critical is an act of violence upon that which is na�ve: "It�s hard to be innocent anymore," Stephen said. I have a certain amount invested in the idea of myself as a critic, or, fine, one who is capable of slinging criticism (she typed from her desk in the poop doctor�s office), but I have felt what Stephen was describing and I have felt his sadness over it, and when I came back to Seattle I moved to the Queen Anne apartment basically because I did not want to be a part of that and what I wanted instead, I would have said in my defense, was simply to exist. So in the same sense, I�m going to the Sasquatch festival because despite how the headlining act�s program of authenticity engineering makes me depressed, in the midst of the soybean smoke but among a friendly posse whose members are not judging me and are not judging themselves either, I might have fun.

The Port Townsend trip was the definition of spontaneous. Steve and I were talking on Saturday morning about what we had to do and what errands we wanted to run before Monday, a haircut for him and a trip to the optician�s for me to get my orange glasses fixed and a screw replaced in my sunglasses, and he said, Hmm, should we go to Port Townsend this afternoon? Road trip *hell* yes, so we ran around fast and went to feed my cat and got Stephen and hit the road. It�s not a long drive if you take the ferry. The hotel rooms looked right out on the water. As we walked home from the bar that night, a presumably local youth sneered, "Go home, yuppies" and we all busted up laughing. The next day at brunch is where I read that article on Julia Glass, in one of the magazines in a rack at the restaurant. I guess I like her even though one of the people she beat out for the NBA was Mark Costello. Maybe I will see if "Three Junes" is out in paperback. This issue of New York magazine had a cover story about casual sex, internet dating, etc. and then a companion piece called "Generation Sexless," both of which ring so false that I couldn�t help thinking about the line from "Metropolitan" where Nick refuses to acknowledge that he�s made up bogus gossip about a non-existent person and instead insists, "She�s a composite � like New York magazine does." In the latter story, an "Upper West Side wife and mother" is quoted as having said, "Because of [my unemployed husband], we do it quarterly. We�re like the IBM dividend at this point." That doesn�t sound fabricated at all, now, does it? That story�s writer assigned her and her husband the pseudonyms Wendy and Peter. On the other hand, though, New York magazine has for-all-his-faults Michael Wolff, and on another thumbless hand is what we rubes get, Seattle magazine, which I swear has as its editiorial mission that shiny things are good; you can pretty much translate the "articles" into grunted and whistled expressions of approval. Then on Sunday afternoon we went and hiked around at Fort Flagler, where Steve played naturalist and botanist, telling us about all the plant life � I love that � and Stephen took some pictures of garter snakes. It is also important, every so often, just to get out of town. I enjoyed myself. I had fun.

Christopher Caldwell on Jane Smiley. Yeah, "The Age of Grief," that�s the one with the dentists in it. Some interesting observations here but I am leery of Caldwell�s dismissive tone and I completely disagree with his characterization of "The Age of Grief" even where he doesn�t get facts wrong (the couple is not middle-aged; the narrator, who was never a biker � is Caldwell misremembering his memories of riding his bike around town when he was in college? � would be the first to tell you he was never dashing either, and "watching his wife slowly fall out of love with him" is inaccurate: it�s almost like Caldwell wants to make the story seem as clich�d as possible). I mean, isn�t there some snottiness operative in the the sentence "Smiley also once wrote�and is still capable of writing�not-a-dry-eye-in-the-house tales of what modern critics like to call �interiority� and what more retrograde ones would call character." Not-a-dry-eye-in-the-house tales � what�s up with that, Chris? Vanessa, you�ve read some Smiley: is there any of it that you think fits that description? Blah. Also, word up to Katha Pollitt for this essay I just found. I was going to write more about it but now I don�t have time. I want to read what Pam is reading. The scene near the end of "Moo" where Ivar proposes to Helen: for no reason that has anything to do with my real life � I assure you, Dear Readers � I have been thinking about that.

My sister was getting on a plane a few days ago and the baggage screener said, "Have a blessed day." I told her she should have turned around, smiling big, and replied, "All hail Satan!" Wouldn�t that have been funny?