DOORR

Recently, I’ve found myself considering women’s rights issues more than usual.  In my colloquium on the constitution and society, I read articles examining transitional justice forums and whether local level courts would be more apt to address war crimes, such as rape.  In school,  I helped coordinate the women’s law group’s participation in SlutWalk, a global campaign against victim-blaming in sexual assault and rape cases, and organized a bake sale to raise money for the Advocacy Center, a local domestic violence nonprofit.  And just yesterday, a good girl friend emailed me an uplifting New York Times article about readers’ Mother’s Day donations which help to found the Kibera School for Girls in Kenya.  Today, I’m seeing Catherine MacKinnon speak at my school.  Heart women’s rights.

Espresso, oysters, pistachios, hunger.  I think I’ve tried all of these snacks before writing and have found that pistachios are definitely my favorite to munch on.  Hunger and espresso are a close second for that Parisian-author-chic feel.  Oysters are too celebratory for me. 

Walt Whitman began the day with oysters and meat, while Gustave Flaubert started off with what passed for a light breakfast in his day: eggs, vegetables, cheese or fruit, and a cup of cold chocolate. The novelist Vendela Vida told me she swears by pistachios, and Mark Kurlansky, the author of “Salt” and “Cod,” likes to write under the influence of espresso, “as black as possible.” For some writers, less is more. Lord Byron, a pioneer in fad diets as well as poetry, sipped vinegar to keep his weight down. Julia Scheeres, the author of the memoir “Jesus Land,” aims for more temporary deprivation. “When in the thick of writing I minimize food intake as much as possible,” she told me. “I find I work better when I’m a little starved.”

Source: NYTimes

I have officially completed my first year of graduate school and am finally ready to enjoy the summer.  The only problem is I seem to have forgotten how to do that.  Therefore, to get myself back into the summer fun zone, I am making a short checklist.  The first item on my list is to make sure I enjoy some wholesome, less-expensive-than-drinking-and-eating-out fun.  Enter: Summer Movies 2011.  Editor’s note: my movie fixation is actually not that wholesome because I entered a summer movie pool and so it’s still competitive, but that’s neither here nor there.

At the beginning of May, one of my good girlfriends forwarded me an invitation to participate in a summer movie pool.  To enter I had to pick the top six grossing films, the two lowest grossing films, and my prediction for the box office amount of the highest grossing film this summer.  I rounded up my savviest movie-going friends, grabbed some gummy candy and Coronas, and started watching previews.  The movies that made my top six:

My number one draft and pick for top grossing film of the summer is the final installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II.  Harry Potter, baby, don’t steer me wrong, and show me $300,000,000 in U.S. theaters.  As Vanity Fair says: “The eighth and final chapter of the Potter saga will undoubtedly draw crowds that make the royal wedding look like a North Dakota tea party…”

The preview for Kung Fu Panda 2 has over 8 million views even though half of the preview is a staring contest.  ???  How will it not be a huge hit for the kids?  Sidenote: I watched the first Kung Fu Panda on TV this Memorial Day Weekend and thought it was so adorable and uplifting.

I honestly have not seen many previews for Super 8, but it’s gotten a lot of buzz and it’s produced by Steven Spielberg.  I’m hoping for word of mouth with this one.

Transformers 3: 30 million views on YouTube.  Teenagers these days.

Rated R movies tend to underperform when it comes to pulling in blockbuster movie figures, but I’m hoping The Hangover 2 will prove me wrong.

Say what you will, people, but my roommate is convinced Cowboys & Aliens is going to be the hit of the summer.  Also, isn’t Daniel Craig the most graceful action hero ever?

I’ve already seen Something Borrowed (skip it) and Bridesmaids (loved it).  Other movies that I am eager to see include: Midnight in Paris (the NYTimes gave it a glowing review), The Help, X-Men, and 30 Minutes or Less (I’m addicted to Aziz Ansari).

Some good links to get you up to speed on the anticipated summer movies: Vanity Fair and NYMag

“ ‘Anything great in this world has come from neurotics,’ Marcel Proust wrote.

. . .

To the annals of aesthetic pathology we can also add the slightly milder case of the 18th-century German sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, who is the subject of a small but potent retrospective at the Neue Galerie. As was not necessarily true of the artists mentioned above, his mental disturbance manifested itself in his art, specifically in a series of bizarrely conceived busts known as character heads.

Among the more outlandish artifacts of the Age of Reason, 19 of these sculptures have been brought together for the show “Franz Xaver Messerschmidt 1736-1783: From Neoclassicism to Expressionism,” which has been organized in collaboration with the Louvre and travels to Paris from New York.”

Source: NYTimes

A great afternoon spent with my mom at the Neue staring at character heads.

The New York Times T Magazine

Aug-Sept Lonny Magazine

Children of the Storm Revisited, NYTimes – 7 minute video about the lingering effect of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast.

The New York Times has an interesting article up on how women might not reap the same benefits after ingesting high amounts of protein post-workout or carb-loading before a marathon as men.  The findings are interesting, yes, but what’s more shocking  is that these effects were not studied on women until now.   Sort of disturbing once you realize most magazines that you’ve read have probably advised you to eat a high protein meal for your muscles after a work-out, or when you remember most of your girlfriends who run marathons  have probably carb-loaded before the big race – all because a sports study that only tested men said that both men and women alike should do this.   Hmm.   Didn’t they teach those people running the studies that men and women were different creatures, and that their bodies behaved differently, and would probably require different training tactics?

The findings show that while men who had ingested high amounts of protein after a hard workout showed a 4% gain in overall performance, the women who participated in the study ”showed no clear benefit” from it and even claimed that “their legs felt more tired and sore.”  And why doesn’t protein have the same effects on both genders?  Though the results are still a mystery, The New York Times suggests the hormone estrogen is at work here. 

Why women respond differently seems obvious. Women are, after all, awash in the hormone estrogen, which, some new science suggests, has greater effects on metabolism and muscle health than was once imagined. Some studies have found that postmenopausal women who take estrogen replacement have healthier muscles than postmenopausal women who do not. Even more striking, in several experiments, researchers from McMaster University in Canada gave estrogen to male athletes and then had them complete strenuous bicycling sessions. The men seemed to have developed entirely new metabolisms. They burned more fat and a smaller percentage of protein or carbohydrates to fuel their exertions, just as women do.

The whole article is worth a read, and ladies, as it aptly concludes: 

In the meantime, female athletes should view with skepticism the results from exercise studies that use only male subjects. As Dr. Rowlands says — echoing a chorus of men before him — when it comes to women, there’s a great deal that sports scientists “just don’t understand.”

I knew Conde Nast would come to regret their decision to fold Gourmet and Domino during the recession.  Both magazines are attempting a come back right now.  Well, sort of.  To clarify: Domino’s archives have been acquired Brides.com and Gourmet magazine is attempting to rebrand and relaunch the magazine via the iPad.

Domino:

Forget those grainy scans off of Flickr and dog-earred mags stuffed on the bookcase — the blogworld’s favorite decorating magazine has finally (finally!) found a new home online thanks to the relaunch of brides.com. Julie Raimondi, Editor-in-Chief of the site and the accompanying local magazines says:

I’m also thrilled to announce that brides.com has been granted access to all of the stories from the late, great Domino magazine. It was my favorite magazine, and I feel so incredibly lucky to be able to turn its pages into a digital archive for our users. We have a number of Domino stories now, but will be adding more and more in the weeks and months to come, so keep checking back.

Gourmet:

Gourmet Live, which the company said would be made available free, is slated to be released in the fourth quarter of this year. The application will largely draw from the magazine’s staggering collection of recipes, food essays and photographs but will also include some new content.

Oh, Thank Goodness.

How incredible does this recipe sound?  Perhaps like something that you whip up for a hungry guest and say, “Oh this old dish?  It was nothing.”  You know?  Also, I’m really intimidated by artichokes.  They’re sharp and they hurt your hand and sometimes the ones that I buy from the jar or from the Whole Foods antipasto bar turns my stomach a little bit.  But.   Sometimes, garlic and lemon and pecorino speaks to me.  As it is doing now.  Recipe below the jump. 

Read the rest of this entry »

 It didn’t take but one short conversation and an email later for me to make a date to see ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop,’ the Banksy documentary about street art, last night.  I’m a little embarrassed to say that I was completely ignorant of the movement of street art.  I had no idea who Banksy was; I’d only heard of Shepard Fairey through his iconic Obama image; and I certainly had never heard of Thierry Guetta before the film (though I’m now obsessed with the name Thierry – pronounced Terry).   The film is essentially two storylines which run simultanous to each other: the main story follows the big guns of the street art movement and the second follows Banksy’s accidental overnight sensation, Thierry Guetta a.k.a. Mr. Brainwash.  It is fascinating, entertaining, funny and quite possibly a hoax, or rather, a piece of art (Mr. Brainwash included) created entirely by Banksy himself–or so suggests The New York Times and NYMag.   Regardless of the intention of the film, I highly, highly recommend it. 

I am so intruigued.  Are you?  Vegetarian French Onion soup:

Miso French Onion Soup

Yield 4 servings  Time 1 hour

Adapted from John Schenk, Executive Chef, Strip House Restaurants

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 1/2 pounds large Spanish onions, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced (about 4 cups)
• 8 diagonal slices of baguette, about 1/4 inch thick.
• 1/3 cup miso
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme, optional
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 large slices Swiss cheese

Method

• 1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place a large sauté pan over medium-high heat for 1 minute. Add 1/4 cup olive oil, and heat until shimmering. Add the onions and cook, stirring constantly and adjusting heat as needed, until the onions are soft and deep golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. Remove pan from heat and allow onions to cool in the pan.
• 2. Brush both sides of the bread slices with the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and place on a baking sheet. Bake, turning once, until just crisp, about 4 minutes a side. Remove from oven and set aside.
• 3. Pour 3 cups of water into a 2 quart saucepan. Cover and bring to a boil. Add miso, thyme, and cooked onions; mix well. Simmer and season with salt and pepper as needed.
• 4. Preheat a broiler. Place a large oven-proof serving bowl or four small oven-proof bowls on a broiling pan or small baking sheet. Pour the hot soup into the large bowl or divide among the small bowls. Place the croutons on top of the soup, and top with Swiss cheese slices. Place the pan holding the soup directly under the broiler until the cheese is melted, and the soup is bubbling. Serve immediately.