A Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend (review: 4/5)

The subtitle says it all, really: For Every Guy Who Wants to Be One/For Every Girl Who Wants to Build One. If you've ever been confused or frustrated by a female, you'll probably find some help here. I was surprised by how much I liked this one. Felicity Huffman and Patricia Wolff managed to put together a book that's both informative and legitimately hilarious. I can't think of very many books that I've dog-eared more than this one. There are great lines throughout. For example...

  • A woman's emotional checklist reads more like a Russian novel.
  • Love up her body the way you find it, or find a body that you can love up.
  • Any flat surface where people might perch, she will want to 'pillowize'.
  • Can we please discuss that apr?®s-pee shaking?
  • The thing you do isn't only the thing you do; it represents something else.
  • Guys seems able to carry a bigger load of irritants than we can... The BF shrugs, shakes his head, and files it under 'Oh Well,' that big category made up of a lot of manila folders, all of which are bulging and ripping at the seams.

The whole thing is written in this conversational tone, and it's all pretty straightforward. I daresay females could learn a good bit as well. The authors don't claim to have all the answers, and they don't make a lot of apologies either. The whole book seems to square with real life. I had plenty of head-nodding, plenty of Aha! moments, and quite a bit of fun. Read this!

March 7, 2007

Some intriguing design-writ-large ideas about cities qua applications. Cities, like other things we come upon in daily life, should just work:

Given any new city, there are certain things that should be easy for tourists to comprehend without assistance. These things might include: how and when to use the subway or bus, how and where to buy fares for public transportation, how to make a call at a public telephone, how and where to flag a taxi, what to expect upon entering and leaving the airport, how and where to find postal services, how and where to find a police station, et cetera.

March 7, 2007

Interesting article in the New Yorker about movies that chop up and mix the chronology, which has been called hypertext film. And it has this line, which I just loved: "'Babel' feels like the first example of a new genre—the highbrow globalist tearjerker." I suppose you could add "The Constant Gardener" to that category, too.

March 7, 2007

Whose art is it? Interesting essay in Newsweek about museum acquisition and returning artworks to their countries of origin:

Why should objects from ancient civilizations go back to modern nations that didn't exist when the art was created? Yes, the law "must be obeyed," he said, but antiquities "are the patrimony of all mankind." In other words, who really owns the past?