Ambienttraffic

(I actually wrote this back in December but only now am publishing it.)

I am currently in the land of Martha. I don't really pay much attention to her when I'm in Brooklyn, but spending time in the 'burbs for the holidays made me realize that you can't escape. She's everywhere - on TV, magazines, the radio, the grocery stores, the mall. The past few days have been a barrage of decorating tips, makeovers, recipes, and craft ideas. And damn is it alluring. I totally got sucked into reading the past two issues of Martha Stewart Living from cover to cover, and thinking, wow, these are such great ideas! I should totally do that! Why haven't I thought about making little velvet Christmas trees? Why haven't I invited people over for a dignified brunch with poached eggs and croissants? Why don't I have a nicely painted pegboard of craft supplies? And I could make so many awesome labels!!! I couldn't get enough of it.

But after a couple of days Martha started bugging me. I couldn't figure out why at first, it was just this sense of uneasiness that I couldn't pin down. As the parade of decorating experts came through on her radio show, I realized that I disliked the way it made me feel. It gave me this sense of inadequacy - if only I was a crafting wizard and expert chef and the perfect hostess could I be happy. Because it's all about impressing other people. She's tapped into this desire that women have to be seen as the perfect homemaker - beautiful, classy, practical, ingenious. Even I can't escape from feeling like I want that when I flip through her magazine - who wouldn't drool over those shots of her home and all of the beautiful things she has and makes?

My militant feminist side starts screaming, "What the hell?!! Didn't women's lib happen already? How could you even get sucked into this crap?!! You're already beating your own drum, why feel like you need to even care about this?" But it's still there, no matter how hard you fight it. Martha's just a manifestation of what our culture values. How else could someone go to jail for like two years and get back on TV like nothing happened? If anything she's tightened her hold on her empire. If you wanted to, you could live in a Martha fantasyland 24-7. And that's what makes me feel uneasy more than anything else.

I could see how easily I could get totally submerged in yearning after a proscribed Martha Stewart life. If only I had xyz it would make me happy. If only I had a bigger house to hold my Martha crafts and to cook my Martha recipes and to throw my Martha parties. Instead, I'm going to resist dropping one of the five million subscription postcards that fell out of the magazine into the mail and look forward to returning to my non-crafty home in Brooklyn.

So why hadn't anyone told me to watch Firefly earlier? Ever since I finished watching Lost (can we just pretend like that series finale never happened?), there was a big hole in my life. OK, maybe that's overstating it, but I was totally caught up in the characters. So along comes Firefly in my Netflix queue and I start watching it. And I couldn't stop.


Captain Malcolm Reynolds

It's got lots of bits that I love - smart, witty dialogue, good special effects, some sweet action scenes, a brooding captain, strong female characters, spaceships, sexual tension. Even after a few episodes I felt like I knew them. I got totally obsessed with their world - I think because the show did such a good job of creating this universe and populating it with such interesting characters. If anything, I wanted most to find out more about Shepherd Book, a man who appeared to be a preacher but evidence pointed to something else.

It's the kind of show where you feel like there are worlds beyond the edges of the camera frame. It's so tangible that you could poke it. It's all in the details - the dialogue is sprinkled with Chinese phrases and alternate slang words, the costumes look like a cross between Young Guns and Oliver Twist, and the scenes on the ship have this grungy, lived in feel. And there is no wooshing sound when the ship passes by BECAUSE THERE IS NO SOUND IN A VACUUM.

It's also billed as a Western, which in the past I haven't been fond of, but the genre's really grown on me. In the past I sort of assumed that Westerns were just hokey period action films with very little substance and ridiculous stereotypes. But recently I watched the Big Country, Stagecoach, Jeremiah Johnson and the Magnificent Seven and they really got me asking why I've been so against watching them. They're so much more nuanced than I thought, with main characters facing Big Moral Dilemmas while traversing the hinterlands. They also have that "larger than the camera frame" feel that I love so much. And you can totally see the influence that those movies have had on shows like Firefly.


Gregory Peck in The Big Country

Firefly was canceled barely after a season on the air back in 2002, and now I'm left with a big fat hole in my life again. I'll never find out Shepherd Book's past nor if Mal and Inara ever get together. I'm a loser for letting eight years pass before I actually got to watch it but a nerd for liking it so much.

And just because I'm admitting that I enjoy Westerns, please do not tell me under any circumstances to fill it with Walker, Texas Ranger.

I was tired of sugar cookies and decided to try something different this year for the holidays. They came out pretty well, I wish I had been able to find regular molasses rather than blackstrap molasses - then I think the flavor of the spices would have come out a little more. They're not that difficult to make - just a lot of waiting. I suggest making the dough the night before and baking them in the morning, or vice versa.



The recipe from the Gourmet (R.I.P.) Cookbook after the jump!