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Culturally Speaking #9

By Sarah Stodola

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So sorry this is so short this week. I'm too stressed to think straight and I just got out of a lecture where I learned that according to UN projections, in 30 years 2 billion people will be living in urban slums, and I'm feeling like I just want to find a nice little bungalow on a remote stretch of land in Idaho and forget about all of this "trying to understand the world" stuff and instead just read my books and lay around in the pretty wilderness and not think too much. I've been in this mood before, though. It'll pass.

So anyway...

The Williamsburg of London -- Just replace "Hoxton" with "Williamsburg," "Notting Hill" with "Upper West Side," and "Clapham" with"Jersey," and you've got an article about New York City.

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"The Revolution Will Not be Televised." I don't know where this phrase came from. The first time I heard it, Kiki of the downtown Manhattan act Kiki and Herb was screaming it over and over to an adoring crowd of drunken revelers in the basement of Fez near the end of one of their radiantly raucous shows. I thought it brilliant then. The phrase is also the title of a documentary on Venezuela. I don't know where it came from, but no matter, every time I hear it I get chills, in a good way.

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So zero didn't always exist?

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- I'm a little confused by the meritocracy part, but I like anything and anyone who is just as baffled by the whole institution of marriage as I am. Maybe I should marry the guy who wrote this article...

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Gore Vidal is applauded by a notoriously stuffy, cliquish publication. Maybe the academics will warm up to him, after all.

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I can't remember where I read about this, but somewhere in London there is a public toilet made of a two-way mirror.  So while you are in there doing your thing no one can see you, but you can see all of them and you feel like you are squatting there in the wide open for everyone to watch.  I don't think I'd trust what I'd know is true if I were in there, but instead I'd be completely embarrassed and would decide to hold it for another hour until I could find a much preferred grimy, stopped up, paper towel-lacking bathroom.  They have those kinds in England too, right?

Click here for the last Culturally Speaking.

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Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted at [email protected].

© 2003 Me Three