Friday, I was coming home off the Metro. The sidewalk is narrow on Park Road, and made narrower from the construction signs. A short, round woman in a sweatshirt is walking towards me. She has the look in her eye that most homeless people have – not crazed, but forever hurt by whomever forgot them along the way.
I notice this, but I am zoning out. On this part of Park, I always gaze up at the gate for the apartment building that never seems to have anyone going in or out of it. The name, Wisteria, is cut out of the wrought iron in jagged notches.
We pass, around the pole for the bus stop that has since moved. We almost rub up against one of another. “Hey!” she says.
I turn.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” She has one tooth jutting upward from her lower jaw, a cube of burnt sugar. “I just would like you to pray – hey, you’re really handsome, I’m not trying to flirt with you but I just felt like I needed to say that – and I’d just like you to pray for me. And, if you had just a dollar you could spare, I’m trying to get something to eat…”
The strangeness of her delivery, her approach – to wait until I was almost past and then startle me into talking with her – and then the odd comment about my looks, totally apropos – it made me feel supremely sad for her.
Later, when I told GF about my encounter with the lady, she told me her own experience with her, a little closer to the Target.
***
It is Sunday afternoon. I am walking up 16th St., back from Adams Morgan Day in time for Giants kickoff. With me is GF, a girl I work with, and her roommate. A tall man wearing a cargo vest is selling single roses on the corner of Irving. The light is red and we wait. “Well, hello,” he says to me. “What is your secret? Wait, don’t tell me. You gots to keep that to yourself.”
For a moment, I have no idea what he is talking about.
“I know what they call you,” he says. The light has changed and he is following us across 16th St. “Cee. Ell. Arr. It means…” He pauses. “Chance. Chance Lance Romance.”
The girls are laughing.
“How do you do it?” he asks. “What about you gets you three such fine chaperones?”
“I’m writing a book,” I tell him. “You can read it then.”
“I might want to know, but don’t tell me your secret,” he says.
We cross by the bus stop and cross 15th Street, too. Now, he is still behind us but in the middle of Irving St.
“Hey, Chance!” he yells.
“Yessir!”
“What’s the time?”
“About 4:15!”
“Ooh,” he says. “Game time, I better get me a TV!” Of course, he is rooting for the Redskins. He doesn’t ask whether I am, or ask if I would like to buy a rose.
***
About these, strange is the only word I can give.
Iglesia La Luz Del Mundo: 14th St. NW
Jezebel Says His Mouth Looks Like an Asshole. I agree.
This week’s episode was, I thought, one of the series’ best – I don’t think anything will beat “The Wheel” from the end of Season 1, but this comes close. It definitely was the funniest episode the series has seen, for sure.
The main theme for this episode was performances. In a plot more obviously structured than other Mad Men episodes, several events take place over a weekend: Roger and Jane throw a coming-out, retrogressively terrible party at a country club, Kinsey, Smitty, and Peggy smoke pot at the Sterling Cooper offices while trying to come up with an ad campaign for Bacardi, Sally is at home with her grandfather and steals money from him for attention, and Joan hosts a dinner for her husband’s coworkers. In each, characters literally perform, as a metaphor for the daily performances they put on, trying to make space in a world in which they are constantly struggling for approval.
1. Trudy and Pete’s Charleston
At Roger and Jane’s party, Trudy and Pete blow everybody off the dance floor with their old-school, well-executed (and obviously well-practiced) Charleston. This performance should be expected from Pete, who, despite his WASP-y background (which keeps him from being fired in the first season) has struggled throughout the series to gain recognition. Think – his attempts to impress Don, his attempt to write a short story to rival Ken’s, his feeling of success at being named account manager, but then having it taken away when he is forced to compete with Ken. And Trudy – except for a few walk-ins at the Sterling Cooper office where she only ever interacts with her husband and his secretary – she is performing here, too, trying desperately to impress amongst Pete’s work friends, and make herself seem just as worthy as all the other wives, though she is wracked by the knowledge that she cannot conceive.
Contrast this with (ugh) Roger’s blackface routine – more on that later.
2. Kinsey’s Song
Kinsey and Smitty smoke pot. Peggy gets baked, and she is hilarious. Kinsey’s dealer challenges Kinsey on his Jersey upbringing and his inability to sing and his pretentiousness. So Kinsey sings, and all is well. Kinsey briefly had a moment in the sun on the show when he dated an African American girl and took time off to go on the Freedom Rides – and began to distinguish himself (besides the beard) as a lonely progressive in a room full of Nixon supporters. But of all the main attractions in the Sterling Cooper offices, only Kinsey has not really been distinguished. Peggy has earned her own office, Pete is co-head of accounts and has seemed to finally earn the respect and admiration of Don, Ken had his story in the Atlantic and is co-head of accounts, Harry is head of an expanding television division. And where is Kinsey? The most Village-like, and archetypal, creative has never exactly received credit for a good, creative idea. If he’s Princeton ‘55, assuming he’s been at SC since graduation, it’s been 8 years for Kinsey without a promotion. Not only is he a Jersey boy and a scholarship kid, he is watching all his friends advance beyond him.
His performance is a reminder that, however stoned and despite the pedigree he does not possess, he is talented, too. He constantly believes he has to live up to a certain standard on Madison Ave.
Contrast this with Peggy. She had her performance last week, with a horridly awkward rendition of “Bye, Bye, Birdie.” Then, she went out and got some random tail. This week, she declared, “I am Peggy Olsen, and I would like to smoke marijuana.” Peggy is the opposite of Kinsey. Despite their similar middle-class roots, Peggy continues to feel that she must play down to meet the office standard: that means treating her secretary like crap, and partaking in smoking, drinking, and casual sex. She, however, is self-assured in her transformation, where Kinsey always seems to be trying too hard.
3. Sally’s Petty Theft
Sally is an incredibly sad character to me. She just wants attention, and as a neglected child, she keeps going about it through negative performances: destroying her father’s luggage, stealing her grandfather’s money. But look at her performance this week, as she pretends to find the five dollars on the floor. She isn’t fooling anybody, not least her senile grandfather. I get the feeling that he knew all along where that money was. And so here, her conscience overcomes her, though not totally. She can’t come clean to her grandfather, so she goes from one performance – stealing the money – to another – pretending to find it – just as her father goes from Don to Dick to whomever he was pretending to be when he bagged the fight attendant in Episode 1.
4. Joan’s Squeezebox
Joan hosts a party for her husband’s medical coworkers, in which their wives give little pieces of advice – “don’t get pregnant” and “don’t worry, it [the apartment] gets better” – that seem a bit condescending. In so many aspects of her life, Joan is in control. Even after her husband rapes her, she seems to have gained some control on the house, telling her husband to stop talking, reaching a compromise, then reeling him in for a kiss. But during dinner, you can tell she feels completely overwhelmed and out of her league, in her tiny apartment with her husband who may or may not have screwed something up big time at work. The status of the other women is what she wants to attain, and what she has, until then, felt she was on the brink of. But is cornered into playing her accordion and must perform, realizing that whatever happened at the hospital, which her husband has kept from her, she will have to go back to Sterling Cooper for the time being, and fill her role as the sexpot, and nothing more.
A Brief interlude for Race
Roger in blackface? What?! Did Mad Men just go there?
One of the main criticisms of Mad Men has been that it has only treated race in passing. Sheila, Kinsey’s black girlfriend, is only a passing character, and she breaks up with him off-stage, after the Freedom Rides. She’s also the closest the show has come to addressing race, other than the pilot, in which Don questions a black busboy about his cigarette habit, and a few token lines between Betty and her housekeeper. Mad Men, however, puts its laser focus on how the people at Sterling Cooper act, though, so if the show is going to start a dialog on race, it would have had to be through an act like Roger’s. Don is obviously disgusted (see below for the reasoning behind that). Contrasting this with Pete’s dance routine: Roger is a boor, without a doubt. His performance in blackface is, to him, being “conspicuously happy” with his new bride. Don tells him, however, he’s just foolish. For Roger, who cares only of satisfying himself and his own desires, he doesn’t care who he hurts. At Sterling Cooper, Pete sometimes gives off this impression – that he will do anything to get ahead, even if it means betraying his friends. But for Pete, when he sees such unapologetic boorishness, he is as unentertained as Don is.
While the party at the country club is happening, the Draper’s housekeeper, Carla, waits around, expecting a racist outburst from Betty’s father accusing her of stealing the five dollars that Sally, in fact, has. Why does she wait? Of course, she’s heard it before. See, also: she speaks dotingly and patiently when Gene calls her Viola, his old housekeeper, and asks if they know each other. “We don’t all know each other,” Carla says.
Two events in this episode deal explicitly with race. Roger’s serenade seems played for shock value as much as anything else, but Matthew Wiener doesn’t do anything lackadaisically. Martin Luther King is set to give his “I have a dream” speech on August 28.
Who’s not performing?
Funnily enough, in this episode, Don. He doesn’t play along when Roger goes into blackface, he doesn’t make nice when Roger perceives a pass Don didn’t make at Jane, and for the first time, he really does seem uncomfortable in this business situation, asking Betty multiple times when they can leave.
At one point in the party, Don does sneak away and meets a man, Connie, in the bar. Don vaults over the bar and fixes two old-fashioneds with Rye, with impeccable skill. Connie and Don share stories of their youth and how they feel out of place. Don tells about pissing in the trunks of cars when he worked at a country club like the one they’re at. It’s an instance of Don opening up about his humble past, and it’s telling that he can only do it with a stranger.
But during this party, we’re beginning to see yet another side of the mysterious Dick Whitman. For his entire post-Korea life, he’s been playing Don Draper, the dashing, lady-killing, high-rolling ad-man. But faced with something as obscene as Roger’s greased routine of “My Old Kentucky Home”, Don can no longer pretend to go along, as he was so easily dispassionate during the Nixon/Kennedy election or his speech, last week, to the people behind Madison Square Garden. Don may be getting tired of performing, of the masquerade.
And that’s what’s so great about the last scene of this episode – maybe the first time that there’s been any sort of definite closure to an episode. In a beautiful shot, Don and Betty embrace and kiss, far away from the winding down of the party. At heart, or at least for the moment, Don loves Betty, and isn’t afraid to show Roger what “conspicuous happiness” really means.
What do you mean, all I do is pout!?
I didn’t write a recap last week for two reasons:
- I started a new job on Monday, and
- Despite the plot advancement of last week’s episode, I really was kind of disappointed by the execution, and was therefore less motivated.
But fear not! A new episode is tonight at 10, and I look forward to watching and having more motivation to write about it!
The commentary over at Slate is, as always, excellent and entertaining, and so is the weekly recap at NY Magazine, though they thought last week’s episode was one of the best. I’m not saying I wasn’t a fan, I just wasn’t floored.
Betty Draper has always had a somewhat childlike quality to her. She pouts, she has that weird thing with the son of the divorcee, but she was just frigging annoying and in the last episode. It’s almost like she’s lost some depth, and that upsets me because she seemed like one of the characters, on the brink of Season Three, poised for the most growth and awakening. It’s only two episodes in, though, so that might still happen. Whining and pouting about her brother’s angling to get the family house, she had to again rely on Don to tell her brother off. I hope this week, Betty gets more face time. (And it’s not just because January Jones is beautiful.)
And Don – he becomes more and more unsympathetic, especially in this episode. One of the great tensions for Don was how he was such a smooth operator at Sterling Cooper, and how he seemed to have no conscience when he was out chasing tail, but that there was a fundamental tenderness in his relationship with his children and with Betty, when he was with them, even if sometimes he got drunk or otherwise showed himself to be a man of his time.
But in the last episode, until his outburst against Betty’s brother, he seems especially cold and detached, with almost nothing approaching a love for his family. Don, too, seems to have regressed. I guess if he had really reached some sort of understanding at the end of Season Two, there wouldn’t be many places to go with Season Three. But here Don is, having a cheap affair with a stewardess, dreaming of banging a schoolteacher (to which both my roommates and I groaned loudly), and acting more gruff than usual to Betty.
I guess, in both of the characters, they’re either becoming more unpredictable as they become unmoored, or the writers aren’t being as careful in making sure the characters are acting in character…
The same goes for Peggy, though I understand it more. She has moments of complete command, and moments when she still aspires to be something below her – to be normal, and fit in. Singing “Bye Bye Birdie” in front of her mirror is one of the most painful things I’ve ever seen on television, and it reminded me of another mirror scene: in Season One, when Peggy looks at her profile after trying the weight loss/vibrator gadget, and you think that there are glimmerings in her head that she might be pregnant.
My roommate points out to me that Mad Men is generally slow going, and that I am not used to it, since I watched each of the first two seasons in less than a week and a half. I will concede this point. I am, perhaps, just adjusting to only watching the show once weekly. But this can’t be denied: things are getting darker. Did anybody notice one striking change in the Draper household? Don’s children no longer get excited when he comes home from work.
not even in full bloom when this picture was taken
I came home last night to find that my Chinese 5-Color Pepper Plant was no longer on my front porch.
My roommate told me she thought I had taken it inside.
But there’s no sign of it.
It’s been stolen.
I bought it back in June at the 14th and U Farmers’ Market, and it was the only example of my ever being able to cultivate a plant. Until I got my Chinese 5-Color Pepper Plant, I’d killed everything I’d ever touched. I’d watched the tiny peppers start green, then purple, then yellow, orange, then fiery red, all the peppers on their branches at different stages and looking like a fireworks display, or a Christmas tree with oversize bulbs.
And now its… Seriously? Who steals a pepper plant? The thing must have weighed about twenty pounds between the pot and the soil and the plant itself. And the plant was tall! I was keeping it from tipping over with a broken pair of trainer chopsticks.
Bike seats are one type of useless, but a pepper plant? I hope whoever did it eats one of the red ones whole and can’t taste anything for a week.
.gif "From the State to the Avenue to the Express")
My post on storefront churches in DC made the Express blog log this morning. Check out the other featured posts:
The Blog at 16th and Q about Inglorious Basterds as a Jewish revenge fantasy.
Howard Kurtz’s Twitter about the uncouth Teddy commenters on the WaPo.
JunkSketches finds an anti-Twitter. (Do I sense a trend – does Express feel guilty about including a Twitter feed in the Blog Log and then feel it has to defend itself?)
And if you have a lot of time on your hands, sift through the comments about the WaPo article about the resiliency of cupcake sales during the recession. (Hardly a blog, but still entertaining)
A while back, I stopped into the Building Museum to see the exhibit of photographs by Camilo Jose Vergara. His photographs, of storefront churches, explore the connections between poverty and faith. Vergara has said:
In poor neighborhoods, houses of worship are plentiful and each has a unique identity. But certain phenomena recur. For example, the churches speak to resilience, for often they are the last survivors on an old commercial block. Former stores (storefront churches) are ideal structures in which to start houses of worship: they are cheap to buy or rent; they have adequate floor space; and they are located near parking lots. The same is true of churches in former garages, factories, warehouses, domestic dwellings, or public institutions. Although traces of a building’s secular origins often endure, its religious purpose is proclaimed through the addition of symbols and architectural motifs associated with traditional sanctuaries to the façade and interior.
DC was not represented in the Vergara exhibit, but storefront churches in some DC neighborhoods are abundant. I find it especially striking to see them in places like Shaw and Columbia Heights, as these neighborhoods continue to gentrify, as they are overcome by shiny new buildings.
I’ll take pictures and post sporadically about churches I find in different neighborhoods. The one at the top of this post is from Columbia Heights, at Otis St. NW and Holmead Pl. NW.
Last night at about 11:30, my former coworker called me and began reading Oh, The Places You’ll Go.
It sounds trite, she said, to be reading this. It sounds like something everybody does at a high school graduation. But Dr. Seuss is plain awesome.
I, for one, did not read Oh, The Places You’ll Go at my high school graduation. My RA in my Junior year of college used photocopies from pages of the book as door tags. I might be the only person in the world who had not read the book. I had always figured I got the sentiment and didn’t need to hear the words.
She called because today, DCPS, and all the charters, went back to school. And for the first time in 19 years, I wasn’t headed back to school. And neither was my she. And it felt weird, as I stood on the Orange line platform at L’Enfant in a sea of uniform polo shirts, to think, none of you are my students.
And a somewhat sadder part of me heard the hurried, curse-laden squawking of two fourteen-year old girls telling a story and thought, thank God.
Before the thunderstorms came, the 3400 block of 11th St NW was closed off for a block party – there wasn’t any community announcement about it, but I’m pretty sure it was a kickoff for the upcoming school year at Harriet Tubman. There was a kiddie pool, a dunk tank, a delicious smelling barbecue, tabling, MPD’s KidsOne car, and a drums set up, though I think the rain came before there could be any live music. Pictures below (click on them to enlarge):
Chicago's Walmart - not for public transportation.
Could a Walmart be built in the District of Columbia? That’s the question raised today by the Washington Business Journal.
Well, hold your horses. According to The Washington City Paper, Sean Madigan, a mayoral spokesperson said that DC government isn’t entertaining any notions of giving Walmart subsidies to move anywhere in the District. (They want to move to Poplar Point, at Howard Rd. SE.)
Walmart wants these subsidies because of the foot traffic and tax revenue they’ll bring to the area. The Business Journal’s article shares a quote from Walmart CEO Lee Scott in 2006: “Wal-Mart has never been afraid to invest in communities that are overlooked by other retailers.” Walmart wants to move in to underserved communities.
Three things:
1. If Walmart were to move in there, they would (potentially) bring a grocery store to a food desert.
2. Didn’t DC USA get funds from the District of Columbia when it was being built? This document (PDF) says,
The District of Columbia proposes to borrow $56 million to invest in Columbia
Heights. The District will grant the developer $43.5 million to construct an underground parking facility, available to retailers and the community, and for related costs at DC USA. The District will maintain a controlling interest in the parking facility. The District will invest $6 million in a fund to establish an
inspiring public realm, minimize displacement and support local small businesses in Columbia Heights. The District will repay the loan from the new tax revenues that DC USA will generate under the proposed Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District.
More details are here. Could an arrangement, similar to that of DC USA, work in building the Walmart?
3. I would hope, if this project were to go forward, that it would look something like DC USA. Instead of spreading out like the average big box store, Target built upwards. Walmart could adapt their model similarly and bring in other stores to the complex, making the project transit-based, instead of car-based. That doesn’t seem to be something Walmart did when building their Chicago store in 2006.
Walmart has gotten a pretty bad rap. They, even more so than Target, represent suburban sprawl, capitalist excess, and a chintzy, redneck aesthetic to a lot of people. Growing up in New Hampshire, there were Walmarts in five directions within fifteen minutes of my house, and as a teenager I waged personal protest against them, imploring my mom to stop going and refusing to go myself. And yet, I’d have no problem with Target, which has a similar business model but a more stylish sheen. Many people in DC with similar backgrounds probably feel or felt the same distaste for Walmart. (You wonder why Merona has never made anything in camouflage.)
The bottom line is, Walmart should come. But they can’t just plop a big box store and a huge parking lot in the middle of Poplar Point. They need to adapt their plan to an urban model, and any deal the District makes with Walmart should provide for a grocery store.
