My mom gave me today’s interviewee’s book, Cleopatra: A Life, for Christmas and I’m reading it right now. As I read, the book got me thinking so much that I couldn’t help but jot down questions I would ask the author if I spoke with her. Then I just decided to actually ask her. It’s a fascinating book written with dry wit and an eye for tantalizing detail which is especially admirable when you think about how little concrete information many of us actually have about its subject. Schiff is also the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d'Amérique.
The Stacy Schiff interview
Sep. 23, 2011Enough with the beer lists, restaurants
Sep. 21, 2011
I enjoy beer. In fact, I’m not particularly picky about beer. Sometimes a simple Miller High Life can be as satisfying to me as a Belgian import made by special monks. It was fun when beers suddenly became the new wines, with waiters and waitresses helping you make exactly the right choice when it came to color, taste, style, what your mood was and what the weather was like outside. I like sampling and savoring my beer as I would a wine. And now that it's fall, I look forward to those tasty pumpkin-flavored brews that come out this time of year.
But enough’s enough, Chicago restaurateurs. I would like to call a moratorium on further restaurants opening up with beer lists that are several pages long that are impossible to read because the print is so tiny so as to fit all the beers on there. Ordering your drink shouldn’t be more complicated than ordering your food.
Forms of contraception and abortion available to Cleopatra
Sep. 20, 2011Jump up and down, neatly touching your heels to your buttocks seven times to induce miscarriage
A spider's egg, attached to the body with deer hide before sunrise (prevents contraception for twelve months)
Attaching a cat liver to one's left foot
Sneezing during sex
Crocodile dung (for contraception)
Mule's kidney + eunuch's urine (for contraception)
Salt, mouse excrement, honey and resin (as a "morning-after pill")
The smell of a freshly extinguished lamp to induce miscarriage
White poplar, juniper berries and giant fennel (for contraception)
Vinegar, alum and olive oil (for contraception)
Wool moistened with honey and oil (used as a diaphram)
The September Issue of Zulkey.com
Sep. 19, 2011Splashy cover featuring actress who is now modeling!!!!!!! Lots of headlines!! Our biggest issue yet!!
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Ad that looks like an article but is just an ad
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Letter from the editor that nobody reads
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Some tiny piece on some new designer who you’ve never heard of and will never be able to afford.
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"Health" article that is about expensive semi-invasive skin care treatments
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Brief reviews of books and movies you’ve already read everything about online
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FASHION!!!!!!!!!!!!
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FASHION!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Story about an actress
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FASHION!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Cheap ads
Horoscopes
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Back cover ad.
Save the date for the next Funny Ha-Ha!
Sep. 16, 2011
H8ing on the famous and non-famous, on and offline
Sep. 15, 2011Several years ago I learned an important lesson: don’t write anything about a person online that you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying to his or her face. I was typing up a review of Dancing with the Stars for a newspaper and criticized the show’s co-host, Samantha Harris, whom I considered inept. I wanted to compare her to another TV host who people seemed to loathe yet embrace at the same time. Originally, I went with Ryan Seacrest, but my editor said, “People seem to like Ryan Seacrest. How about somebody else?” I can’t remember if she suggested Seacrest’s replacement or if I came up with his name, but I subbed in the name of another good-looking TV host, one who is related to a former President or two.
So how do you enjoy liquor from a blue Delft house? Answer: You don't.
Sep. 14, 2011Thanks to all of you who weighed in earlier this week on what exactly is in my tiny blue and white ceramic house, how I can access it and how to best enjoy it. I actually heard from the horse's mouth (the mouth being the KLM airlines Twitter account) on what's up with those houses. Unfortunately the news wasn't what I wanted to hear:
The liquor is a traditional Dutch Gin called Jenever and it is produced by Bols. It is quite taboo among collectors to drink this. However if extreme circumstances require that the contents must be consumed they can be accessed by breaking the top of the chimney. Jenever (Genever is also correct) has a special way that it's drank by the Dutch:
On the one hand, I was happy to finally have this clarified, but I'm sad that I cannot access my special house-booze. Thanks to other bottles of liquor in the house (some of which are also mysterious and may require reader input), I cannot in good faith say that I am in 'extreme circumstances,' plus I don't want to break off the little chimney of my adorable little house. At least the mystery has been laid to rest.
