this is the stuff of susie(’s)

A few days ago I added a ton of new feeds to my reader, one of which was Grist. I used to browse Grist for SuperVegan story ideas and the like, and it’s pretty informative and well-written and etc. but I always found their submissions guidelines page to be far wittier than any of the copy they pump out each day. They self-identify as “gloom and doom with a sense of humor.” I mean… I guess it’s true (kind of sometimes). There’s just no bite.

I mentioned Adrian Grenier’s upcoming project, The Green Life, back in January, but the latest scoop is that the show — billed as a makeover series wherein Grenier and “his entourage” help everyday folk go green — has been renamed Alter Eco and will premiere in June.According to LAist, one of the first renovations on the show will be the Tokio Lounge, which is being transformed into Ecco, “Hollywood’s first ecofriendly lounge.”

Expected to open in July, the new lounge will feature an organic menu, eco-friendly cement (waste materials added to pack cement), an LED lighting system, waterless urinals and air pressure toilets. Power for the club will be supplied by the LA DWP’s Green Power resources.

The first full Alter Eco episode will premiere on Planet Green Monday, June 9, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT). But you can catch a sneak peek on Planet Green’s launch night June 4 at 10 p.m.

I understand the need for celebrity coverage and page views… But the blogger can’t even crack one little joke about Grenier being famous for playing an empty-headed symbol of bicoastal excess — and that this show will copy that structure, following Adrian and his three friends around L.A.? This guy made out with Paris Hilton for Christ’s sake!

Is there no refuge from this greenwashed reblogged press release crap? Or is everyone genuinely this excited about Adrian Grenier introducing denim insulation and LED lighting to good, dumb cable-watching Americans? Is this the inescapable price we pay for trying to make people care about things: must use pretty faces and familiar names? But do we also have to take them seriously??

This clearly raises many terrible rhetorical questions. And I was having such a nice afternoon!

My dad on IM:

you wouldn’t do well, there isn’t much respect for vegans here
I learned that China has a national pork reserve
in deep frozen caves, like our national oil reserve
they keep adding to it, doomsday pork
they love their pork
the students all rush up and ask me to draw pigs for them
I ask why always pigs?
They say, we think pigs are funny.
(and tasty)

Apparently the FBI is currently looking for paid informants to infiltrate that hot bed of political action… the vegan potluck! This actually sounds like a dream job, except for the whole “only getting paid upon someone’s arrest” thing. (But I’m wondering how the freaking feds are finding these potlucks when I’m stuck home, cupcake-less.)

Anyway, I really think this plan needs some reworking. I guess the Bush administration isn’t (yet) tracking SuperVegan — those guys really aren’t kidding when they say all they do is eat and gossip.

My father is on a U.S. State Department-arranged speaking/democracy propaganda tour of universities in China right now. This is what the Q&A was like:

Do your cartoons hurt your personal relationships with the politicians you draw?
No, I don’t have personal relationships with the people I draw.

Do you worry that your drawings will hurt the reputation of someone you have drawn?
No, if one of my cartoons hurts the reputation of a politician that I am criticizing, then I am pleased. (Sometimes the crowd murmurs when I say this. It doesn’t seem to be what they expect me to say.)

Do you ever draw cartoons that are supportive of China?
No, I don’t draw cartoons that support anything. I just criticize. Supportive cartoons are lousy cartoons.

Now that you have visited China, and have learned more about China, will you be drawing cartoons that support China?
Probably not.

He and my mom were supposed to head to Chengdu today but of course, post-quake, they were re-routed. Now they’re spending some extra time in Harbin, “the Moscow of China,” where they still have ample Internet access for IMing while I Google child prodigies — that is, until sight-seeing resumes after breakfast. “We’re going to the tiger sanctuary today, where visitors throw live chickens to the tigers.”

So I guess they’re having fun.

On his process: “Sometimes I just sit on the couch, and if I look out the window and see a fat guy with bloody knuckles and curlers in his hair spitting, I start to think, ‘Wow, what does that guy do for a living? What do his kids look like?’ It just happens like that.”

You’ve gotta appreciate the service journalism from the New York Times. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want a president who has neither lips nor skin pigment, and who is being referred to as “lonely” (and appears to be on the verge of man-tears..?).

If only there were a… Oh, well, would you look at that.

If you know me, you probably know I now have consistent access to cable television programming for the first time in about six years and that this means I’ve been introduced to the Food Network in all of its bloody glory. As Amy Sedaris says, “when you’re alone and high in the night,” you can switch back and forth between the Food Network and the medical shows with the box on mute and everything looks just about the same. (But I’m also kind of convinced that watching has improved my seriously sub-par vegetable chopping time significantly.)

This also, of course, means I’ve been introduced to RayRay, that ever-grinning reminder of our continued march as a culture toward the lowest common denominator. (Not to mention those recipes take at least an hour.)

Now, I find Anthony Bourdain as repugnant as any of y’all, but I just had to block quote this for posterity…

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”

That is all.

Nick: You’d protest capitalism — if you weren’t working.

Susie: I’d bite that hand that feeds me til it bled, if I weren’t so damn hungry.

I’m blogging daily for those crazy kids at CollegeOTR. Fair warning: tomorrow I’m writing about Brooke Hogan. Sorry, guys, but I want the page views!!

I archived the radio documentaries I worked on at Columbia in this handy hip muxtape format in hopes of landing a job at KQED. Please only leave very positive comments about my comedic timing and ability to write short declarative sentences on the off chance that they see this blog post.