Letters to the Editor
Lou
Published Letters: 54 Editor's Choice: 6
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The question isn't child free, but brat free
[Read the article: Should cafes be kid-free?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a childless adult and I have absolutely no problem with children visiting cafes and restaurants I frequent. I even live next to a school and love listening to the kids squealing and screaming and laughing as I work on my computer or in my garden. But it's a school and that's the appropriate behavior on a playground.
What I don't like are the misbehaving children at a cafe, a place where you can reasonably expect to be able to converse with another adult or read a book or paper.
As a side note, I've been to Spain a few times and entire families go out to restaurants and cafes -- even at 10 or 11 at night, but the children behave themselves, even toddlers. So it's possible to have three children and have them all behave and "talk in their indoor voice," a request which some of these parents found so objectionable.
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Jessica, dear
[Read the article: Religious conservatives: All women should be pregnant! Oh, except you]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]More Americans live in blue states than red states. So we're definitely not the ones living in a fantasyland.
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Meta-irony
[Read the article: Pride and pathetic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've read Pride and Prejudice once a year for probably 15 years now. I read Emma every other year and others fairly regularly as well. And I loved the 95 miniseries.
But I also loved this movie. In many ways, it de-romanticized Austen by making people grubbier, showing the road apples in the streets, etc. It gave the work a humanity lacking in so many other adaptations by moving it out of the airless parlors. What's wrong with that?
It also gave a couple of characters usually portrayed as caricatures some pathos (Mrs Bennet and Mr Collins). It sharply illustrated the desperate bind women were in to find husbands.
And it was laugh aloud funny.
About the brontefication, yes, there is a bit of that. But hello, Colin Firth's Darcy was brontefied too, with those bath and lake scenes, the long, serious gazes, the fencing.
And as someone on another discussion board observed, isn't there a meta-irony here that people are being so snobbish about Jane Austen when she loved to puncture snobbery?
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What fun
[Read the article: The sexiest man living!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm so glad to know I'm not insane to drool over Alan Rickman. Just the voice alone is worth the price of admission.
Also, my SO already knows I will run away with Stephen Colbert at first opportunity. The frosting on the cake as far as I'm concerned is his LOTR geekdom.
Other nominees. I, like others, was disappointed by the vanilla color of Salon's choices:
-- Laurence Fishburne. Forget Keanu Reeves. Fishburne's the reason to watch the Matrix (though not necessarily its sequels).
-- Neveen Adams. his was the performance of English Patient.
-- Fareed Zakaria. am I the only person to find him kind of hot? he's the only reason to watch the tiresome cliched Sunday morning shows. everyone else is cocooned in their beltway world and attitude.
-- Benicio del Toro.
-- Andre Braugher. I wish someone would offer him a role that equaled Det. Pembleton of Homicide.
Well, here's my vanilla.
-- Viggo Mortensen, the renaissance man. Actor, artist, poet, athlete, took on the role of a lifetime at the behest of his son. and formerly married to a punk goddess!
-- Tim Gunn. forget Doogie Houser. this is the man to make a straight woman wish she were a gay man.
-- Neil Gaiman. the writing. the hair. the accent. but mostly the writing.
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Molly Ivins
[Read the article: Why women aren't funny]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd rather read Molly Ivins than Hitchens any day. She's funnier -- and more perceptive.
Hell, even Maureen Dowd has more wit.
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Top Chef
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Heather,
I gotta disagree wholeheartedly with you here. If Marcel had been friends with Cliff, yeah, those would have all in good fun hijinks. But the other chefs have repeatedly bullied and snubbed him all season. Yeah, he's a bit of a twerp, but nothing he has done has deserved this "Lord of the Flies" treatment. Tom Colicchio in his blog says he would have sent all four of the culprits home and I think he was right. Cliff might have been the muscle but Ilan was trying to goad the others into hateful activities. And as others have pointed out, if you look carefully at the scene, Elia is laughing away with a full head of hair.
Even the producer in her blog and Lee Ann from the previous season say they never saw anything from Marcel that could fuel such intense hatred. It was a classic example of groupthink and it's a shame that you bought it.
So does this mean were you one of the Heathers or Mean Girls when you were in high school? or a wannabe?
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Dear NNG
[Read the article: Pack your long knives and go!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's obvious you didn't watch the entire show because then you'd understand the context of Marcel's remarks. Ilan yelled at Marcel in one of the episodes, telling him to go to Spain and learn how to use paprika. And Ilan also used saffron just about any opportunity he could. So I don't understand how you could read anything racist into it, given those circumstances. Plus Ilan is not Spanish or Hispanic at all. His father is Scottish and his mother Israeli. He only worked at a Spanish restaurant.
I've already written a letter once to Heather about her perspective on the show and her disregard for the bullying groupthink, so I'm not going to repeat anything I said before. Only thing I'll add is she really lives up to the name Heather.
The only other thing I can say is Season 3 better compare in quality with Season 1 rather than this past one. Next time, I want a top chef, or even a final four, that compares to the quality of Harold, Tiffani, Dave and Lee Anne.