SHARON STEEL

Cry babies

SHARON STEEL — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:05:50 GMT

Teen talent wails on High School Musical: Get in the Picture
The top brass at Disney knew full well what they were about to unleash when the original High School Musical premiered on the Disney Channel two years ago.

DESPERATE FOR DISNEY: But for how long?

The top brass at Disney knew full well what they were about to unleash when the original High School Musical premiered on the Disney Channel two years ago. Acting on their instincts — and in the process giving life to a number of insidiously successful million-dollar cottage industries — they modernized a timeless formula into something today’s young things would obsess over to the point of distraction. Boy meets girl; they’re different, but they both love to sing; drama unfolds; lifetime friendships are formed; repeat. One sequel and a gazillion licensing deals later, High School Musical 3: Senior Year is almost upon us. And pending that film’s theatrical release, Disney is hard at work pumping every last bit of commercialized fairy dust it has into the HSM brand.

Its most recent venture is the reality show High School Musical: Get in the Picture (ABC, Mondays at 8 pm), and this one embraces the wholesome antagonism that has surrounded HSM from the very beginning. The original movie, though squeaky-clean, stars actors who have since gone on to have their naked post-shower pictures circulate on the Internet, obtain nose jobs, and leak quotes about wanting to cross over into other, non-Disney projects as soon as HSM is dunzo. It’s safe to assume that at first the veterans — much like the new kids who are competing to Get in the Picture — just desperately wanted to be a part of the Disney family. But once your fantasies are dangled in front of you like a pair of freakish, glittery mouse ears, naked desire tends to trump playing nice.

The initial four episodes of Get in the Picture called to mind the sort of boring train wreck that characterizes every new American Idol season. Thousands of teens attended open castings on both East and West Coasts, and the show assembled a “faculty” of vocal, acting, and dance instructors to judge their trials. Nick Lachey served as the objective host and requisite “Guys, I’ve so been there” pep-talker. Once the top 12 were chosen, the battle could get under way. At stake is a lead role in a music video that will run during the HSM 3 end credits — not to mention an exclusive talent agreement with ABC and a recording contract with Walt Disney Records.

High-school confidential

SHARON STEEL — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:10:31 GMT

American Teen is no wasteland
For many, senior year is your last chance to do what you really want without worrying about snap judgments or lasting repercussions.

VIDEO: The trailer for American Teen

American Teen | Written and Directed by Nannette Burstein | With Hannah Bailey, Colin Clemens, Geoff Haase, Megan Krizmanich, Jake Tusing, and Mitch Reinholt | Paramount Vantage | 101 minutes

Interview: Nanette Burstein on American Teen. By Sharon Steel.

For many, senior year is your last chance to do what you really want without worrying about snap judgments, lasting repercussions, and whether you’ll be branded as The Kid Who Said That Weird Thing for the next four years — because those four years are finally up. The risks don’t seem as daunting when they’re tempered by the knowledge that everyone is finally moving on. Of course, the end result rarely synchs up to one’s own fantasies. In the case of director Nanette Burstein’s American Teen, a documentary that followed five teenagers from a conservative Indiana town during their last year of high school, there were more than a few curveballs thrown. Burstein — whose previous documentary experience includes The Kid Stays in the Picture and On the Ropes — nimbly captures the build-up in a way that balances the clichés of high school against the trials of five very different young adults.

Burstein’s main subjects come from five different cliques. There’s the sweet jock (Colin Clemens), the pretty misfit (Hannah Bailey), the powerful prom queen (Megan Krizmanich), the clever outcast (Jake Tusing), and the sensitive heartthrob (Mitch Reinhold). They don’t stay in separate worlds for long, though. Midway through filming, the stars align. Sitting in the audience at the Warsaw Community High School talent show, watching the artsy Hannah rock out on her guitar, Mitch comes to a realization. He doesn’t want to graduate without ever talking to that girl. He develops a full-blown crush, and he and Hannah launch a when-social-hierarchies-collide story line that John Hughes would approve of. “There are so many girls who would give their left boob to be with him,” Hannah tells the cameras. Five or ten years into the future, Hannah and Mitch might have had a chance. But this is high school; even when you succeed in shocking people with your happiness, they don’t always let you get away with it.

With all her charms and idiosyncrasies, Hannah is American Teen’s unofficial star, and through her keen eyes we watch the lives of the others unravel. Burstein nonetheless switches perspectives with a light, non-judgmental touch. It’s easy to sympathize with Hannah’s heartbreaks, her city-rebel-stuck-in-a-small-town personality, and her battle with depression, or with the way Jake uses a caustic, self-depreciating wit to deal with his insecurity. But mean girl Megan is portrayed as neither a witch nor a martyr, and popular Colin struggles to find peace with his family’s expectations. He and Megan may have peaked early, but nobody is all bad or all good in American Teen.

The way it is

SHARON STEEL — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:18:43 GMT

Interview: Talking about American Teen
Nanette Burstein admits that “through the pain and torture” of high school, she was able to come to terms with who she was.

VIDEO: Interview with Nanette Burstein

High-school confidential: American Teen is no wasteland. By Sharon Steel.

Nanette Burstein admits that “through the pain and torture” of high school, she was able to come to terms with who she was. The director of the Sundance award-winning documentary American Teen (opening August 1) sat down with me at the Nine Zero Hotel to reflect on fiction-film archetypes, the social fluidity of senior year, and the circumstances through which an artsy girl with a complicated heart and a sweet yet immensely popular jock can briefly transcend their own pre-determined roles.

Before you began filming American Teen, what made you decide to chronicle the lives of teenagers culled from various places on the high-school food chain: a jock, a princess, a nerd, a misfit?
If you watch teen fiction films, you see the same stories told over and over again. There’s basically four of them. The Romeo and Juliet story across class or race of clique lines, like the forbidden love. Triumph over adversity, which often involves sports, but not necessarily. The underdog looking for acceptance, which is the nerd, usually. And the mean girl’s power struggle. And all of those stories, I found, existed in reality.

What prompted you to try to create another narrative of the high-school experience, a period that’s been defined and redefined ad nauseam?
I hadn’t seen a really complicated high-school movie that took a lot of the experiences that I felt or saw around me. High school was a really formative time in my life — I think for a lot of people in both a good and bad way. Through the pain and torture, I realized who I was.

Tell me about your selection and screening process. Why did you choose the town of Warsaw, Indiana, as the setting?
I looked in the Midwest because I think there’s a timelessness and more of an innocence about that part of the country than the rest of America. And I wanted to be in a town that only had one high school because I think that there’s more social pressure that way. You can’t escape — or you’re super-powerful. I wanted it to be economically mixed; I was hoping for it to be racially mixed, but that was hard to find in the Midwest, in small towns, at least. We called, you know, just hundreds of schools that sort of fit this demographic . . . and out of that found the best stories all in one place.

Facebook phobia

SHARON STEEL — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:53:15 GMT

Thought high school was bad? Social-networking sites jack up Web-era insecurities
It’s safe to say that Facebook is now an omniscient, all-powerful tool that, in some way, traffics in dirt on nearly everyone you know.

Not long ago, I spent almost as much time in agony over how to change my Relationship Status on Facebook as I did over the actual “We’re on a break” conversation that led to it. I couldn’t just leave that defining tag alone: it tormented me when I saw it in the mornings after logging in. I blamed Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, for not having the forethought to create a Relationship Status alternative that suited my needs. (How come “I Don’t Know and I’m a Mess” isn’t an option?) “Single” was too finite for what we were now. “It’s Complicated” sounded ruthlessly unaffected. And “In a Relationship” made me feel terrible, like I was lying to myself.

I sat in my puddle of sad, imagining how each person in my network of real friends, faux friends, and legitimate frenemies would check their daily News Feeds and find a tiny picture of a broken heart, with the words “Sharon is no longer in a relationship” and then — dagger! — the nausea-inducing “Sharon is single.” It added a whole other level of complication and hurt to something that already felt like the worst thing in the world. After several hours-long nail-biting sessions at my laptop, I set my privacy level to “high” and took down my Relationship Status altogether. There was immediate relief, followed by a paralyzing fear that someone I hadn’t spoken with since high school would message me, boldly inquiring what prompted my sudden take-back of information.

Nobody did. Still, over the past few months, that dulled sense of social-networking-related panic has bled out and manifested itself offline in countless ways, both in my own life and in what I’ve observed in others. I’ve found myself discussing things I’ve discovered about people on Facebook the way the characters of TV’s Gossip Girl talk about the anonymous webmistress, whose rumor-spreading site chronicles the details of their social lives.

Facebook, like that show’s own gossip vortex, is an insidious, addictive force. To an extent, that’s always been the case. It’s just that now, it’s worse than ever before. Since it was created in 2004 by Harvard drop-out Zuckerberg, Facebook has played second-fiddle to MySpace, its elder by five years. This past May, that changed: Facebook drew 125 million unique visitors, versus MySpace’s 115 million. In 2007, it grew by 162 percent, compared with MySpace’s paltry 5 percent. Everyone from your emo little sister to your straight-laced boss has crafted profiles and mass-added hundreds of friends on the site, even if they never had joined a social-networking site before.

Sigur Rós

SHARON STEEL — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:45:04 GMT

Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust| EMI
Here, as on 2005’s Takk, Sigur Rós have chosen to distill their rapture epics into shorter, more accessible bursts of swelling beauty.

License this!

SHARON STEEL — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:22:41 GMT

There’s some Feist album left if anyone wants it
The living, breathing Holy Grail of contemporary music success stories has impeccably styled Birkin bangs and a floaty angel voice.

SHILL BE BACK: Feist has somehow managed to maintain her cred while making corporate bank.

The living, breathing Holy Grail of contemporary music success stories has impeccably styled Birkin bangs and a floaty angel voice. Leslie Feist — a 32-year-old singer-songwriter of charming low-fi guitar pop — has managed to maintain her cred as a Canadian indie superstar while making corporate bank off her universally specific songs about water, boys, and broken hearts. Her résumé is padded with underground gigs, from a stint fronting a punk-rock band in her teens to a tour with Peaches as a Spanish-rapping sock-puppet performer (for which she called herself Bitch Lap Lap). Membership in the Canadian collective Broken Social Scene predated the inevitable solo career, which has led to a string of lucrative licensing deals.

Lacoste picked up “Mushaboom,” the standout track on 2004’s Let It Die, and used it to score a cologne spot. In 2007, when The Reminder was released, Verizon snagged the first few bars of “My Moon My Man” for an LG Chocolate ad. And the mother of all deals arrived with a contract from Apple, which featured “1234” in its debut iPod Nano commercial. The Reminder finished out 2007 as the most purchased album of the year via iTunes, and Feist’s still touring the damn thing — get ready to soft-rock at the Bank of America Pavilion on July 8. But before she hunkers down to record her third disc, why not finish feeding the last scraps of The Reminder to the promotional lions?

“SO SORRY” | Hallmark would be too obvious. The true potential of “So Sorry” would be best realized in a key scene of Gossip Girl’s Season 2 fall premiere. This is the only song genuine — yet perfectly emasculating! — enough to accompany Dan Humphrey’s tail-between-legs apology to ex-dreamgirl Serena van der Woodsen.

“I FEEL IT ALL” | All the makers of Trojan Ultra Thins need is that bouncy, laced-with-expectation hook and they’ll be moving some serious units.

“MY MOON MY MAN” | If Verizon is all set with “My Moon My Man,” it would do well to lend the chorus to NASA. Perfect for recruitment videos geared toward aspiring female astronauts too busy to date. Tag line: “The Moon Won’t Ever Dump You.”

“THE PARK” | Curious: have you ever heard of the National Cage Bird Show? With a Feist-attributed snippet of the birdsong that opens this track, perhaps more people would catch on to this avian fancy. The 2008 Scannell Trophy for Best in Show (yawn!) could be upgraded into a more exciting opportunity for a lucky finch to record an intro for yet another Feist joint with flying metaphors. This is synergistic marketing, people.

Where’s Lindsay?

SHARON STEEL — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:43:59 GMT

Dina and Ali work the Lohan brand
Dina Lohan and her 14-year-old daughter, Ali, made the rounds on the talk-show circuit last week to promote their new reality series, Living Lohan .

LION AND CUBS: Dina is pushing her “normal” family hard to propel Ali to insta-fame.

Dina Lohan and her 14-year-old daughter, Ali, made the rounds on the talk-show circuit last week to promote their new reality series, Living Lohan (E! Sundays at 10:30 pm), which debuted Memorial Day. On The View, both mother and teenager were visibly nervous. “Don’t worry, it’s just us girls!” the View vultures repeated, smiling, before picking apart everything from Dina’s decision to put her private life on camera to Ali’s fixation with mirroring sister Lindsay’s career choices. When the interview was over, Dina and Ali exchanged a glance of complete and utter relief. Somehow, they’d survived; there wasn’t even a follow-up to Ali’s denial that she’d ever had a nose job. It might have been different had Barbara Walters filled her place on the couch — but, fortunately for the Lohans, she was away on her book tour.

Working double duty as mother and manager to Ali and Lindsay, Dina claims Living Lohan is her chance to set the record straight about her clan. She and Ali want people to see that they’re a normal family, just like any other occupying a plush home in Merrick, Long Island. But do normal moms have an assistant to help them comb through the tabloids and gossip pages every day for mentions of coke snorting and cootchie flashing? Or say things to confessionals like “A lion’s got to protect her cubs” in reference to situations that have nothing to do with typical middle-school bullying? The most normal individuals in the Lohan home are the ones who shun the Hollywood hierarchy: little bro Cody, who would rather play soccer than groom himself for stardom, and grandma Nana, a former radio actress who now functions as the family’s thoughtful matriarch.

So, no surprise, the archetype roles that Dina and Ali play in Living Lohan make it clear that their goal in agreeing to film a show for E! is not about putting their average lifestyle on view — it’s about exposure, exposure, exposure. There are endless references to Lindsay and her exploits, even though she doesn’t appear on camera. Dina is constantly trying to keep her elder daughter’s image clean, even as she prepares to thrust her younger one under some very unforgiving fluorescent lights. Ali, in her tight jeans and Uggs, applies make-up whenever she leaves the house, and she’s delighted when a young girl close to her age asks for her autograph. “I’ve been following Lindsay’s footsteps since I was very young,” she tells us, and her eyes light up with a sad little fire. “Lindsay’s my role model, I look up to her. I try to look like her, dress like her, and everything.” Moments like these might keep people from judging Ali too harshly. There are many girls who believe they want these things, though they’re not likely to get very far without a mother like Dina to ensure they achieve their goal of insta-fame — whatever sacrifices that takes.

Steam dream

SHARON STEEL — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:58:14 GMT

Steampunk bursts through its subculture roots to challenge our musical, fashion, design, and even political sensibilities
The All-in-One Victorian PC is the perfect little black dress of computer modifications.

The All-in-One Victorian PC is the perfect little black dress of computer modifications. It’s classic and timeless, but has a modern edge that makes it impossible to escape wolf whistles and elevator eyes. Like any good designer, Jake von Slatt knew he had to start with strong raw material. He purchased a 24-inch flat-panel Soyo monitor from OfficeMax for $299, and fabricated a shell to hide the rest of the computer — including a Pentium IV motherboard, disk drives, and a 350-watt PSU — behind and inside of it. Most DIY-ers, even some hardcore tech-geeks, would have stopped there, but von Slatt had barely begun.

He poked around his town dump until he found a knick-knack rack that reminded him of a Victorian-era stage set. Framing the monitor with the rack lent it the air of an antique pixel picture frame. Then, he added aluminum and pop rivets, followed by two long pieces of angle iron as “curtains,” to give the monitor-stage a trompe l’oeil effect. Gold-painted flower scrollwork arches across the top like a crown, and tiny brass feet — miniaturized versions of the ones you’d see on a vintage bathtub — prop the utilitarian objet d’art a few centimeters off the table. A tightly coiled wire leads to an elegant, fully functional keyboard, the keys of which have been taken from a 1955 Royal Portable typewriter. The completed PC is a sexy, ebony-lacquered beauty trimmed in high-polished brass accents. Von Slatt, who is wearing a bowling shirt and a formal top hat, watches me admire his work with an affable smile. He looks, for all the world, like a man caught between two centuries. For that matter, so does his computer.

Up close, the PC is a tactile wonder, far more extravagant than the pictures I and thousands of others — it had been featured on Boing Boing, Engadget, and digg.com — had gawked at online. I’m itching to press the typewriter keys and, when von Slatt unleashes the DVD drive with a ping and a flourish, I’m tormented that I don’t have the luxury of loading in a movie, say, The Wizard of Oz, so that I can steer this gothic tech-fantasy to a whole other place. But there’s so much else to stare at in von Slatt’s Littleton, Massachusetts, Steampunk Workshop — itself a big, pleasant jumble of anachronisms — that it becomes difficult to focus on any one thing.

Fashion gamut

SHARON STEEL — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:09:14 GMT

SFD students strut their stuff
Near the end of the first act of the School of Fashion Design–run Collection 2008 show, I tensed in my seat, waiting for an emaciated little man in an unbelievably angular haircut to materialize from one of the wings of the stage and shriek, “Oh, no you didn’t!”

Seven should-be habits of highly effective T-riding people

SHARON STEEL — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:11:24 GMT

Keep your hands on the pole and not on your neighbor’s ass, bucko.
One person’s peaceful commute on the T is another person’s journey to the gaping maw of Hell.

Smells like T spirit!
Boston’s mass-transit system dates back to 1631, when sailboats ferried passengers from Chelsea to Charlestown. In the subsequent 377 years, service has become a teeny bit faster — but at a price that has put the MBTA in debt to a tune of more than $8 billion. With transportation issues getting renewed scrutiny under the Patrick administration, Phoenix staffers fanned out to kick the T’s tires.

• The trolley Svengali: Why Dan Grabauskas might actually fix the T — if he can keep his job. By Adam Reilly.
• Trouble 'round the bend? MBTA workers have been without a contract for two years. Arbitration will settle the matter soon, but could stir an angry hornets’ nest for 2010. By David S. Bernstein
• Seven habits of highly effective T-riders: Keep your hands on the pole and not on your neighbor’s ass, bucko. By Sharon Steel.
• The T and the Tube: London’s Underground is seething with danger. Boston’s T has cuckoo juice. By James Parker.
• Underground art: Reviewing the MBTA’s subterranean aesthetic. By Mike Miliard.
• A sinking feeling: Leaky MBTA tunnels have been seeping Boston’s groundwater for years. Can a new plan prevent potential catastrophe? By David S. Bernstein
• State of hock: If the MBTA wasn't in debt, these items would be at the top of its new wish list. By Jason Notte.
• The Phoenix editorial: Is the MBTA on track?

Charlie — that button-eyed, lopsided-grinning, porkpie-hat-wearing mascot of the MBTA — isn’t exactly an accurate pictorial representation of the majority of T riders. In fact, we’ve long thought one of the reasons Charlie looks so damn delighted (there’s something diabolical in that pointed wink) is because he pumps himself full of sedatives prior to a punishing day spent inside our subway tunnels.

There are times when we wish we could do the same. Lumbering delays, a stop on every corner on the B trains and none in Inman Square, and an infuriating inability to handle bad weather are among our many complaints about our ancient mass-transport system. But we’ve long resigned ourselves to that. What really puts us over the edge is the conduct of our fellow riders, and it’s recently gone beyond a run-of-the-mill ignorance of common courtesy. Because of several T assaults, flashings, and molestations, the MBTA just launched a public-service campaign to warn people that they’re being “watched,” and to encourage potential victims to file reports.

Bad news?

SHARON STEEL — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:52:50 GMT

MTV puts out The Paper
“Basically, the state of the paper is that we’re screwed,” says a wry Alex, sounding for a moment less like an adolescent hack than someone who may well be defining the future of the industry.

NEWS FLASH: High-school journalists are just like real ones!

Most of the time, when the folks at MTV claim to portray “real” teenagers in their “natural” environs, they’re simultaneously pulling their puppetmaster strings behind the scenes, negotiating overblown opportunities for their subjects that are anything but realistic. This allows the network to have it all: “reality,” in all its faux authentic trappings, plus, for MTV’s own sake, an affected, larger-than-life payoff that seems even more urgent scored to a grandiose emo soundtrack. But with its latest docudrama series, The Paper (MTV, Mondays at 10:30 pm), the cable behemoth has taken something of a risk. The show allows the young Florida journalists on Cypress Bay High’s the Circuit to expose to the world the business of running a student newspaper, thereby chronicling a year’s worth of literary achievements and disappointments. And that’s it. Nobody gets voted off Editorial Island (“Please pack your tape recorder and your red pen and leave immediately!”), or has his or her pitches trashed by an scary-serious panel of media experts (“Your ideas reek of banality”). None of the movers-and-shakers on the Circuit’s masthead wins a cushy fellowship for correctly quoting Marshall McLuhan. No one even gets a free New Yorker subscription.

The staff doesn’t require a fancy reward system in order to behave in a cutthroat, competitive, borderline-unhinged manner — because, as it turns out, high-school journalists are just like real ones! The first two episodes of The Paper focus on the ladder climbing and the insider gossip that swirls around an all-important question: who will be the next editor-in-chief? A bunch of people want it, but few of them reveal the desire — no, the need — for the position that current copy editor Amanda does. While the rest of the editors are partying and procrastinating, Amanda is hard at work on her application till 2 am, brainstorming ideas and doling out pithy soundbites about the state of contemporary journalism to her dog. Her meticulousness goes beyond punctuation and grammar: she pre-selects her outfits a week in advance and analyzes the meaning behind each one. (“This says I’m approachable, because I wear T-shirts, just like everyone else.”) The New York Observer’s Matt Haber likened her personality to that of Election’s Tracy Flick, and the comparison couldn’t be more apt.

Drawing a bead on misery

SHARON STEEL — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:13:31 GMT

Mission to Uganda
It’s not uncommon for documentary photographer Karen Sparacio to get phone calls from Uganda at 3 am.

It’s not uncommon for documentary photographer Karen Sparacio to get phone calls from Uganda at 3 am. It’s inevitable, actually, considering that there are 100 women living there who depend on her for survival. Sparacio is the one-woman force behind Project Have Hope (projecthavehope.org), a local foundation she created after her first trip to Uganda — on assignment to shoot pictures for relief organizations.

During that visit, the Malden resident was invited to the Acholi Quarter, just outside Kampala, the country’s capital, and home to refugees displaced from the war-torn north. “I spent two and a half weeks photographing in the community,” says Sparacio. “I heard their stories — the horror stories of being beaten, raped; family members killed; their homes, land burned and taken away from them. When it came time for me to hop on the plane, I couldn’t just leave and say, ‘Bye, have a nice life!’ ”

Sparacio befriended a group of women and decided to bring the colorful necklaces and bracelets they made using beads from recycled paper back to the States to sell — raising money that would empower the women, as well as educate them and their children. What began with a group of 55 women quickly swelled to 100. In addition to selling the jewelry at local craft fairs, such as the Mayfair (May 4, Harvard Square), the Cultural Survival Bazaar (May 31 and June 1, Amherst), and the Cambridge River Festival (June 14, Memorial Drive, Cambridge), Sparacio took inspiration from the women themselves and launched a small-loans program akin to the micro-lending organization kiva.org.

“One of my focuses for Project Have Hope is to create something that’s more sustainable for the women,” says Sparacio. The nonprofit has enrolled 18 women in vocational training programs, and 22 have participated in an adult literacy program. In January, Sparacio added what she calls a “high-risk jumbo loans” plan to jump-start bigger business ventures, such as opening a water kiosk or a second-hand clothing business.

In the two years since she began Project Have Hope, Sparacio has also sponsored 73 Ugandan children in school, and she points to education as one of the main goals of her multifold mission. Sparacio, who still shoots weddings to make her living, in between selling the paper-bead jewelry and running Project Have Hope (“Yeah. Want to help me?” she jokes, when asked whether she does it all single-handedly), returns to Uganda in early May. She’ll continue to record on a blog (projecthavehope.org/blog) journal entries that chronicle her experience there. Some past entries are hopeful. Others reveal how helping others can, despite the rewards, never feel good enough.

M83: Saturdays = Youth

SHARON STEEL — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:41:50 GMT

Mute
Saturdays = Youth is M83’s version of a high-school yearbook — aural snapshots documenting gilded angsty awkwardness in all its glory.

Told right

SHARON STEEL — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:08:53 GMT

Sloane Crosley gets her cake
One thing is certain in publishing: your chances of survival in the industry are much better if you have a good sense of humor.

One thing is certain in publishing: your chances of survival in the industry are much better if you have a good sense of humor. Sloane Crosley — associate director of publicity for Vintage and the author of a new collection of essays — does. The stories in her book I Was Told There’d Be Cake revolve around the Larry David–like theme of comic disappointment. When I reach Crosley by phone in New York, she reveals, among other things, the title to her first novel, which she has guaranteed will never be published.

“Fuck You, Columbus,” your essay about getting locked out of two apartments while moving, was first published in the Village Voice after you’d e-mailed Ed Park at the Voice and some other friends a version of the day’s events. Was this when you first began writing?
I actually had been writing for years, as most people have, but I think it takes a lot of gall to walk around and call yourself a writer before you have anything published — “I’m working on my ‘novel,’ but what I really want to do is direct.” Once I started writing for the Voice, I realized that people might actually want to listen to me — a couple of them.

What did you think when you saw the New York Observer piece that ran last november dubbing you “the most popular publicist in the world” — both as a person and as a book publicist?
As a person, I was both thrilled and embarrassed. And as a book publicist, I was like, “This ran too early.”

In “The Ursula Cookie,” you chronicle an absurd chain of events leading up to being fired from your first job in publishing. Just before the story’s dénouement, you give your boss a cookie you baked in the shape of her head. Did you think, at the time, it was something you would write about?
I didn’t really think I was going to write about it. Mostly because it was so upsetting at the time. That story just recycled itself just in terms of general cocktail-party fodder. So I knew it was a story. I realized that once I contextualized that one part of the story, it could be an essay. I’m actually partial to that essay too. Maybe because I think one of the most thoroughly ridiculous things I’ve ever done was bake that cookie.

Yael Naim

SHARON STEEL — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:41:09 GMT

Atlantic
I can’t understand half of what Yael Naim is singing on her homonymous sophomore release, and her inscrutability only adds to her charm.

Confessional record

SHARON STEEL — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:30:37 GMT

Let’s talk about sex, baby?
You don’t have to be best friends with Giulia Rozzi to find out that she hooked up in her Jersey Shore beach house with a guy who stole her fake ID.

Crafty retailing

SHARON STEEL — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:06:53 GMT

Making it by making stuff
Keara Sexton was born to make stuff.

Bring the drama

SHARON STEEL — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:14:06 GMT

High School Confidential ’s missed opportunity
In the current œuvre of celluloid adolescent misadventures, it’s difficult to find a show that stands apart.

UNREAL High School Confidential takes teen problems seriously — too bad it’s not better.

I loathed the four years I spent participating in suburban high-school dramas. Years later, like many of my kind, I’ve become both deeply attached to and emotionally consumed with watching televised portrayals of them. I think of it as a strange and masochistic hobby. For example, I like to torture myself with what never happened to me. I have seen the “Self-Esteem” (a/k/a “The Boiler Room”) episode of My So-Called Life more times than I can count. I also have a lasting attachment to stories that allow me a nostalgic identification with a set of characters — Freaks & Geeks and Degrassi have been delicious comfort, and I’m still obsessed with R.J. Cutler’s award-winning PBS documentary series American High.

But these programs are long gone. In the current œuvre of celluloid adolescent misadventures, it’s difficult to find a show that stands apart. High School Confidential (WE, Mondays at 10 pm), a multi-part documentary by first-time filmmaker Sharon Liese, has attempted to do so, as others have, by choosing a specific niche. In this case, it’s girls, and only girls. High School chronicles 12 young women navigating grades 9-12 in Overland Park, Kansas. It’s a worthy goal on Liese’s part, this desire to depict an actual, smallish-town high-school experience for girls about to go through it, girls in the thick of it, grown women still reflecting on what the hell happened, and parents about to embark upon it with their daughters. Each episode focuses on the story of one or two girls as it unfolded over the course of the four-year filming. If there weren’t so many issues with the execution — it really isn’t the girls’ fault! — High School could have been great.

Teenage girls derive a marked satisfaction from the gory, escapist thorns of faux glamor. (See the ratings for The O.C., Gossip Girl, The Hills.) This doesn’t mean they don’t simultaneously seek out the stripped, identifiable realism that American High and now High School embody. Given Liese’s intention to record the specific-yet-universal coming-of-age struggle, she would have been wise to pinpoint it as it happens. The girls are given cameras, but two episodes in, the scenes they shot have barely made it through or, worse, serve as visual filler. It’s heartbreaking to think of what was edited out. Instead, we get stagy interviews taped in what looks like a private confessional room. Except that it’s packed with people — parents, or the awkward profile of another subject peeking into the frame, waiting for her chance to talk. Just about everything we learn about the girls’ lives comes from those talking-head interviews.

Minimal man

SHARON STEEL — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:39:12 GMT

José González at the Paradise Rock Club, March 13, 2008
The notes José González coaxes out of his nylon-stringed guitar are bright and dry.

Same to you, fella

SHARON STEEL — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:23:24 GMT

Find your vituperative voice
Snarking back at self-righteous, passive-aggressive, thick-skulled dimwits isn’t as easy as you might think.