Wednesday, February 18, 2009

insular media trend watch: twitter!

LA Times

NY Times

British People

Also, last week my paper offered a "webinar" so the middle-aged set could learn about writing snarky things in 140 characters. The Cut is tweeting from the Fashion Week tents. Seriously folks, the service is over two years old, and tech-savvy trendsters (I'm a latter-day Luddite and I beat the trend explosion by a solid week) have long been updating their Twitter feeds from their iphones and are sick of it.

Rachel Maddow FTW.

UPDATE: First few sentences of a Times article about Fashion Week posted this afternoon:

“HEY, this is my Twitter!” one journalist scolded another backstage Monday at the Marc Jacobs show.

Thumbs cocked, the two were having a backstage showdown, a BlackBerry quick draw. Everybody, from makeup artists to publicists to hairdressers, was similarly squaring off. Who would be first to record the very latest and most supercrucial bit of subtrivia to transmit to “friends” in the cybersphere?

Can we agree that most Twitter posts are about little beyond the fact of their own occurrence? Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that something existential is afoot?

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

tired metaphors

Last night, the woman practicing beside me at yoga asked how long it took before I could do a headstand. A bit less than a year, I told her. She asked if I'd done the whole year here, and I said I had. I told her that the trick was core control, and it wasn't too difficult, but headstands still actually terrify me (which is why I am determined to continue doing them). It requires courage and confidence to balance upside down, especially because the perfect position, which feels weightless and liberating, is just a tick mark or two from falling - a tired metaphor. I suggested she begin by practicing near a wall.

I swiveled to return my mat (I don't bring my own when I leave work for yoga; my editors don't need to know exactly why I come and go when I do), and I saw that the teacher, who is petite and was wearing all-black and can be silent, overheard the exchange as she tidied. I felt like I explained math homework shortcuts to my babysitting girls before realizing a parent was listening. She is more about legs and muscle wrapping than core, which seems remiss to me, but what do rookies know?

Our eyes connected. "Don't think I haven't noticed that you've been stealing my color scheme lately," I deadpanned. My urban monochrome. She laughed, the silence shell shattered and vanished and I turned away. Almost a year is long enough to learn how to manage people.

I'm starting to fear that I will be trapped here forever.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009