My first exposure to the writer known as Lauren Bans was on This Recording, a culture blog I discovered when they sorta-reviewed my chapbook several years ago. They called the cover "cute as a button" and me "alluring" or some shit and now, natch, I love them. I think I would love them anyway, since they read and support indie lit and have good taste in music and hate on popular movies and post a lot of gratuitous pics of half-naked celebrities. They also have an undeniable bias toward writers with attractive headshots.
Lauren Bans wrote a review of 500 Days of Summer that I found to be dead on (despite not having bothered to see the movie). I shared it in my GOOG Reader and it partially inspired my post on pseudo-intellectual cliches. I can't remember what happened next; I think probably I followed her on Twitter and subsequently discovered that she also writes for the Double X blog.
Further readings have revealed that Lauren Bans' sense of humor and general writing style/tone (snarky yet essentially good-natured) are altogether too similar to mine for me to merely admire her. So, I have decided, she must be my rival. Take this response to the BoingBoing video on the reclamation of the word "douchebag." So many of my hallmarks are here: an admittance that a Venn diagram is in order coupled with a refusal to supply one; an overly finicky focus on semantics; an interest specifically in the semantics of the word "douchebag."
I mean, seriously, I could have written this. In fact someone sent me that video a day or two before I read the article and I remember having a similar reaction. Then, a couple of days after that, my ex sent me a link to the post and was like, Whoa: Venn diagrams and douchebags? And I was like, I KNOW. Then he said her Facebook pic looks like ScarJo.
ScarJo is my nemesis. Lauren Bans is my rival.
I think Heather Christle might also kind of be my rival. Usually when I read her poems, I think at least one line sounds like something I might have written, plus the same people seem to tend to like us. But she is more "famous" than me. She gets a whole week at HTML Giant. I don't think James Joyce and David Foster Wallace even got weeks. Hence! A mighty rivalry! It's problematic, though, because, aside from the fact that I think she's a good poet, she seems like a total sweetheart. The system is breaking down.
Maybe one day we can all have lunch or something.
the fight
3 hours ago
13 comments:
You know there's intellectual resonance when you find a review of a movie you haven't seen to be "dead on."
dude, elisa, you're totally gay. and that's cool. :)
I am?! Do you read "rival" as "bitter crush"? :)
in my experience. i remember thinking, way back when: who is this damn Amy King who's in all the journals that i'm trying to get into? haha.
Ha! What a love story! Reminds me of Katie Holmes telling some magazine she wanted to marry Tom Cruise when she was like, 5.
except tom cruise really IS gay. sigh.
but anyway there was a good article in Bitch magazine called "Envy, a Love Story: Queering Female Jealousy" about how women's rivalries are often bitter crushes, as you call them. nothing to generalize based on, of course, but totally fun to think about.
Very interesting. I figured my post was (at least) a thinly veiled announcement that I wanted to be their friend.
Is that article online?
yes, i know! i think you should be like the three musketeers. i don't really think you're gay.:) facetious is my middle name. no, that article's not online -- i have it in a book (BITCHfest, like a compendium of articles from BITCH over the years) -- if you really wanna read it i'll scan it for you.
Maybe if you go on a scanning rampage one day. Don't put yourself out!
this has taught me never to praise anyone's chapbook
and this has taught me never to write one.
:( i take it all back! y'all, please keep reviewing, and i will behave myself
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