The news is not all bad. I’ve built a new personal site at www.reeveswiedeman.net (personal branding!). As you’ll see, it has every Meanderings post EVER already set up there, along with the ability to change the color scheme, which I thought was cool. There’s also an RSS feed. At this point, I have no idea how often it will be updated, but whatever blogging is done by yours truly will be done there.

So, hope you’ll head over.

Now on the California pavement, we struggled to maintain consciousness. As if fueled by our ruin, the partying intensified. We observed as near nuclear tanning spells erupted, accompanied by fierce freaking and what seemed like an endless session of putting hands up. We heard the obstructed bellow of the queen as she released her horrible, unmentionable shrieking: “Aoaoaoao oh aoaoaoao!”

More anthropological field analysis of the California Gurl, here.

Sam Anderson’s New York magazine profile of James Franco is fantastic:

The show’s most prominent piece is a big barnlike structure made of plywood, the kind of playhouse a perfect father might build for his 9-year-old son. I step inside to find a small room lined with plywood benches. It’s sweltering. On the far wall, a video is being projected: footage of a plywood house burning to the ground. One of the other visitors walks out, and suddenly there are only two of us, here in the house that contains an image of its own destruction, and the other person is James Franco.

I stand very still, like a hiker who’s just seen a bear. Franco’s publicist has recently informed me that—after all these months of e-mailing (he always responds immediately, and likes to sign off with “Peace”) and brief conversations—Franco and I are no longer allowed to talk. He’s signed an exclusivity agreement with another magazine. Under no circumstances am I to speak to him, I’m told, not even to say hello. I can see him now in my peripheral vision: He looks not like a grad student or a hipster but like an international golden boy, a corporate spokesman—unmasked and cleanly shaven, dressed in a gray Gucci suit and pointy black Gucci shoes. His hair is sculptural, bushy but managed. Surely, I think, if someone sees us together, I will be thrown out. On the opposite wall, the flames have stripped the house to its frame, reducing it to some kind of glowing black non-substance, half-wood, half-ash.

A few seconds pass.

“Hi, Sam,” James Franco says.

Franco’s career is source of constant fascination in these parts, and Anderson’s article does nothing but add to it – though, we’d like to know more, seriously,  about the logistics of it all.

But the more important point here is to launch my first personal salvo against what I will call the Mystery First Sentence Lede of Omission. In this case:

James Franco will not stop bouncing around.

Where is Franco? On a trampoline? Hopped up on drugs? Yes, what Anderson means is that “I have a found a moment where Franco is bouncing around, and the act of bouncing around is a very important metaphor here.” But every time an article starts with this faux-mystery (See: Every Esquire profile from the past six months; almost any newspaper column about an individual), I feel just a little insulted. Tell us where he is, and what he’s doing, then, later – like Anderson did, again, in the second paragraph! – make your point. Don’t tease us.

AQUAMAN, KING OF THE SEVEN SEAS, HAS FUCKING HAD IT WITH YOU, MAN.

And:

THE SLOW AND PAINFUL COLLAPSE OF A RELATIONSHIP OVER THE COURSE OF A WEEKLONG VACATION AS EXPRESSED BY THE NAMES EACH PARTNER GAVE THEIR DIGITAL PHOTOS TAKEN DURING SAID VACATION.

Haveagoodweek.jpg

July 19, 2010, 5 p.m.
MBTA Green Line, B branch, Boston College to Government Center

I saw them crossing Commonwealth Avenue, walking inexorably toward the train stop. The signs were as unmistakable as they were terrifying: sensible cargo shorts, white Capri pants, pastel-hued polos, summery floral prints, and dollar bills clenched tight in fists. These were parents who were heading back to their hotels after Boston College orientation, and not only were they undoubtedly heading all the way to Copley Square, but they were Green Line rookies.

While Boston is technically in a temperate climate zone, there are only ever around 20 days a year that aren’t unbearably hot or bitterly cold. Consequently, when you get to the platform at the Boston College stop, it’s imperative that you get out in front of anyone that’s paying with cash. You see, at the above-ground stops on the B line (and there are 18 of them), you have to enter in the front door of the trolley car and pay there. If you’re a savvy urban mover and an earnest participant in the social contract, you have a Charlie Ticket or a Charlie Card, and you’re in the train in a jiff. If you’re a parent in town for a few days to accompany your kid while she goes through college orientation, you’ve only got two dollar bills, which you will fumble for, put into the machine backwards, and generally hold up the long line of people trying to get into the train behind you. Consequently, it’s imperative that you get in front of these folks and get on the train first.

My parents and I went through BC’s orientation. They tell you a lot of things. One of the nifty things they don’t tell you is that if you can stand a pleasant, 12-minute walk to Cleveland Circle, you can reach two other subway lines that will get you downtown much quicker than the plodding B line. (And make no mistake, these folks are going downtown, at least to the hotels at Copley Square. I can tell.) The walk is much more pleasant if you’re wearing sensible cargo shorts or Capri pants, but much less pleasant if you’re stuck in khaki pants and a long sleeved shirt.

Going inbound, the B line lets passengers off after the intersection of Commonwealth and Chestnut Hill Avenues, but there’s a traffic light that the train often stops at first. I’m a compassionate guy, but I’m not above laughing when half a dozen rooks stand up and hurry toward the door when the trolley stops at the light, only to sheepishly sit back down. Especially when said rooks have crowded in the front of the train, instead of spreading out toward the back. Of course, the fact that half the orientation contingent kiboshes my assumption that they weren’t savvy enough to pick up the C or D lines at Cleveland Circle. Then again, none of them were savvy enough to have Charlie Cards. Good riddance!

June 15, 9:55 a.m.
Q Train – 7th Avenue to Times Square

There’s a baby being changed: orange diaper, pink pants, green blouse. Let’s call her Sally. She’s producing a horrifying sound – like the screeching of the subway brakes disharmonizing with a dying animal.

The deed done, she bounces Sally on her lap, then holds her over her left shoulder, patting her back all along. The crying finally stops; a pacifier is the solution. Now that the child has calmed, down the mother cannot take her eyes off Sally. For a few moments, the faintest of smiles crosses her lips.

In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, the two lovers wake
and sip from the leftover Franzia box wine.

She asks, “Do you love me or yourself more?
Please, tell the absolute truth.”

He says, “Me.
But only because I have no clue who you are.”

More debaucherous quatrains here.

Basically, Instapaper has eliminated any possibility of boredom in my life. In The Atlantic’s latest issue, all about “Ideas,” Walter Kirn writes about the extinction of boredom:

Thanks to Twitter, iPads, BlackBerrys, voice-activated in-dash navigation systems, and a hundred other technologies that offer distraction anywhere, anytime, boredom has loosened its grip on us at last—that once-crushing “weight” has become, for the most part, a memory. Even the worst blind dates don’t bore us now; we’re never more than a click away from freedom, from an instantaneous change of conversation partners.

He goes on to lament a potential loss in creativity, owing to a lack of daydreaming, or something. And it might be true. But this is one crutch I’m quite happy to have.

June 17, 6:52 p.m.
2 Train, Nevins St. to Grand Army Plaza

There’s something nice about Google Dropcloth. More here.