« Things to like about DC | Main | Today in Interesting Numbers »

August 18, 2006

What the... ?

I leave for a week and stop obsessively reading the weblogs I usually check, and look what happens...

You may recognize Heather Havrilesky from Salon Magazine where she is on staff as their television columnist.

What made her famous, however, was when she was the woman behind Polly Esther, the author of the (now defunct) suck.com's feature Filler. suck.com, and Filler especially, was one of those pieces of writing that really expressed so clearly my snarky, sarcastic take on what I saw around me while at the same time directing some of the snide sarcasm right back at me. It's hard to forget her riff on "How to act all superior without acting all superior" (warning: late 90s hipster pop-culture references abound), her explanation of why 95% of people who claimed to be "unpopular" in high school are totally lying, the time she mocked my urban hipster mantras, and when she reminded us how to be pretentious ("You've heard of The Flaming Lips, right? They're My Favorite Band!™"). While I became a lot happier and a lot less cranky and cynical in my mid-20s*, I always determined to maintain my wry edginess, and the sucksters really maintained a lot of that in the pop-culture universe.

Later on, as the proprietor of the rabbitblog, she declared herself a childless whore and entreated her fans to embrace it (and sold t-shirts).

Yeah, well.

Polly Esther is pregnant. With a child. And getting married. And she just wrote a heartwarming story about rescuing a 2-week-old kitten and nursing it back to health and ends her essay with:

Well, being dumb and happy is definitely just as great as you've always imagined.

What the hell is going on? On the other hand, good for her. I'd like to complain that she's going to become boring, but then I was reminded with this conversation with someone I'll call LawyerFriend (details changed to protect identities, and dialog paraphrased, since I didn't record the conversation):

LawyerFriend: I mean, one of my friends here has become totally boring. She has a kid now, and she's become one of those boring people who has nothing interesting to talk about anymore.

Me: Well, yes, that does happen sometimes when you spend all your time with your kids. It reminds me of this essay by Steve Martin that was a set of lessons written to teenagers that said, "Your parents were not always as boring as they are now. They got that way because they spent all their time raising you."

LawyerFriend: She's become this total housefrau [or is it hausfrau?] !

Me: How did you know her?

LawyerFriend: We knew each other from New York [when LawyerFriend worked in investment banking]. She actually survived the World Trade Center attack.

Me: What?

LawyerFriend: Yes, she was on the ** floor.

Me [now somewhat agitated]: How did she get out?

LawyerFriend: I guess she escaped through a stairway that was still intact.

Me: Uh, honestly, I think that if you survive the attack on the World Trade Center, you earn the right to decide that being a hip urban professional isn't that important and concentrate on raising a family, without worrying about whether you become boring.

LawyerFriend: Good point.

And good for you, Polly.

* this sort of misplaced optimism back in 2000 caused me to say things like "well, even if Bush beats Gore, things won't be that bad." Events sure proved me wrong, there.

Posted by Dean at August 18, 2006 10:15 PM