NY Resolution: Be Tom Wolfe, etc.

As last quarter ground to an end, my life defaulted into middle-class white person mode--study, run, watch The Wire, repeat.  One of my favorite quotes from the last season of the show is from a hardscrabble Baltimore Sun editor who is reviewing the work of an apprentice reporter.  He mumbles underneath his breath: "Tom Wolfe wannabe, think you're gonna get a phrase like that past me? No effing way, mother$#*&;@!" (video)

Fast forward to why I like Vogue--for a magazine that is devoted to superficiality*, they hire remarkably talented writers.  Or at least talented interviewers.  Imagine coaxing this quote out of a shy, "fat" (size 4, gasp!), Dutch model: "People think I am angry because of my face, or that I'm a sex bomb, I'm neither."  This author thinks she can slip a phrase like that past me!?

The only connection between these two elements, besides the random connections my mind makes, is that they frame my 2010 resolutions:

1. Meet a squinty, gap-toothed, 5'10" Dutch alcoholic, preferably a woman, with severe cheekbones.
2. Write affected blog posts in a Wolfian style.
3. Finish Bonfire of Vanities.
4. Use the "people think I'm angry and a sex bomb" phrase in a serious conversation.

That's a good year.


* Superficial, that is, unless you believe Nigel's defense of the magazine in The Devil Wears Prada. He berates the pouting, size 6 (gasp!) Anne Hathaway: "Andy, be serious. You are not trying. You are whining. What is it that you want me to say to you, huh? Do you want me to say, 'Poor you. Miranda's picking on you. Poor you. Poor Andy'? Hmm? Wake up, six. She's just doing her job. Don't you know that you are working at the place that published some of the greatest artists of the century? Halston, Lagerfeld, de la Renta. And what they did, what they created was greater than art because you live your life in it. Well, not you, obviously, but some people. You think this is just a magazine, hmm? This is not just a magazine. This is a shining beacon of hope for... oh, I don't know... let's say a young boy growing up in Rhode Island with six brothers pretending to go to soccer practice when he was really going to sewing class and reading Runway under the covers at night with a flashlight. You have no idea how many legends have walked these halls. And what's worse, you don't care. Because this place, where so many people would die to work you only deign to work. And you want to know why she doesn't kiss you on the forehead and give you a gold star on your homework at the end of the day. Wake up, sweetheart."