Disquiet, Please!

by David Remnick

  Mr. Rogers Mr. Shawn

  Mr. T

  Mr. Tambourine Man

  Mr. Tibbs

  The sections that people who are not operating a printing press will consult most often are the two devoted to Documentation. But Documentation is where the Manual’s ecumenism starts to shade into anarchism (the condition, not the party). Consider the subsection on Series (that is, books published in a series with, usually, a general editor). The editor of the series, the Manual says, is “usually omitted, but see 17.92–93.” Abbreviations for volume and number “may be omitted.” The series title “may be omitted to save space.” Some works “may be treated bibliographically either as multivolume works or as a series of volumes,” depending on “the emphasis.” And when a series has gone on so long that the editors re-start the numbering as “new series” or “second series,” we learn that “books in the old series are identified by o.s., 1st ser., or whatever fits.” At which point the sleep-deprived might decide that, on due and balanced consideration, nothing is what fits, and move on.

  Some people will complain that the new Chicago Manual is too long. These people do not understand the nature of style. There is, if not a right way, a best way to do every single thing, down to the proverbial dotting of the i. Relativism is fine for the big moral questions, where we can never know for sure; but in arbitrary realms like form and usage even small doses of relativism are lethal. The Manual is not too long. It is not long enough. It will never be long enough. The perfect manual of style would be like the perfect map of the world: exactly coterminous with its subject, containing a rule for every word of every sentence. We would need an extra universe to accommodate it. It would be worth it.

  2003

  MIKE ALBO AND VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

  THE UNDERMINER

  MY FRIEND

  My friend must be a bird

  Because it flies.

  Mortal, my friend must be

  Because it dies!

  Barbs has it, like a bee.

  Ah, curious friend.

  Thou puzzlest me.

  —Emily Dickinson

  GRADUATION DAY

  Hey, there. Whew, what a day. First I did the Ellipticycle for an hour and then I had to run to the dean’s small cocktail party for honors students and then I had to hurry up and turn in that Green Form so I could graduate.

  You know, the Green Form.

  The Green Form? You didn’t turn it in?! No, it’s that green form that we got at orientation when we first came here, four years ago. Yeah, sorry, but it kind of is important. It’s the Green Form. They told us never to lose it, remember? No, not the blue registration card, the green form! Maybe you just put it in your wallet and you didn’t even know or something. Check it.

  Wow … your wallet. You actually keep everything all crammed in together like that? No, it’s just kind of amazing. I would freak out if I couldn’t streamline my wallet. Oh—I think you dropped this twenty-dollar bill. Oh, no, wait, it’s actually mine. Sorry.

  You are so funny, you. Man, am I going to miss college and all your crazy flakiness. Ha-ha! You’ve always been the funny, crazy one in our gang. With all your plans and your spilling wallet and your poetry writing and music and acting and whatever you have going on at the time! You’re like the outsider of the gang. Not outsider outsider. But I mean, like, like outsider art. You know, like cute, sweet, drunk, weird. Like those artists who build towers in their back yards out of, like, TV-dinner trays, or who scratch the entire Bible into a bar of soap with their fingernails and end up in mental institutions. I mean, like not obviously insane but more like all your efforts may not be fully embraced by the public, but you’re gonna just do it anyway, no matter what. And that’s just great.

  Well, anyway. You majored in Kurdish folklore, right? Wow. I was so surprised you didn’t get honors, since you tried so hard to be schmoozy with your adviser—I mean, I’m sure that’s probably a good strategy. That’s the way you get ahead in this dog-eat-dog world.

  So what are you doing this summer? You got a job as an intern? Cool beans! Where? An art gallery in New York! Bonwyck Gallery? Weird! Did they expand their program? I thought it was just for teens. No, I’m sure I’m wrong.

  And after that—any life plan? Nothing yet? Yeah, I know. It’s so hard to choose the right path. It’s, like, one false move and you may end up leading an entirely different life, full of flaws and mishaps. Huh.

  OPEN-MIKE NIGHT, KAFKA-FÉ COFFEE HOUSE

  Oh, my God, I am so glad I got a chance to see your band perform. Wow, that was fun! That was just fun! Really fun! I got here right at the end, but I pretty much caught enough to understand your whole deal. Sorry the crowd was so small.… But they were all clapping. You really got a lot of applause. Did you have a lot of family and friends in the audience? It just seemed like everyone knew you or something. Oh, you wait tables here, too? I guess that internship ended, huh? Well, cool for you. At least the staff here is supportive. The way they clapped for you. Wow, that was fun!

  Look at you and your outfit! That is a super pair of retro moon boots. They’re the trend right now, I know. Trends are so interesting to follow, especially for someone cutting-edge like you who’s so hyper-attuned to the whole “appearance industry.” The way you keep up with things, and spend your money on magazines. Like, I know that, for you, you need to be really good about skin care.

  Unbelievable. Your singing voice is so different from your appearance. It’s, like, when I close my eyes I would imagine the person singing was a sultry, sexy vocalist from prewar Berlin, and then I open my eyes and there you are! You and your big shiny American face!

  So are you still with Carl from college? That is so sweet that you guys are trying to work things out. Long-distance, right? Yeah. Sometimes those actually work. No, really! Sometimes they really do! Sometimes! How fun! Really fun!

  Well, anyway, what are you doing later? Oh, yeah, I guess you have to clean up here. Send steamed water through the cappuccino machines and wipe out the coffee thermoses and stuff. Wow, I totally remember having to do that in my job after high school! It was better since I did it in Rome, but still.

  Me? I’m going to Crish Crash, probably. Crish Crash? You know, the huge, huge warehouse party that’s happening tonight. It’s probably why there wasn’t much of a crowd here—like, everyone in the city under twenty-five is going. This artist friend is meeting me. He’s scouting for models for his photo series. I know you sort of have contempt for institutions, but RISD was good to him.

  No, I mean, you said that once. Like, when you didn’t get in. Whatever.

  Crish Crash. You haven’t heard about it? Weird. Yeah, you kind of have to know how to find it. And sort of know the right way to ask. Wait. Here’s the address. If someone stops you at the door, just act like you know someone—that’s what a lot of people who show up uninvited do.

  AT A FRENCH BISTRO

  You’re here early! Wait. Are you sick? You look sort of tired. Oh, you went out drinking last night? It’s so great how you can still do those college things. You’re so crazy!

  Did you throw up? No, no, I just smelled throw-up for a second.

  You’re having a Bloody Mary? No. I’m not drinking anymore. I’ll just have a peppermint tea. No, go ahead and go for it. Don’t let me stop you. I’ve just realized there’s a little more to life. But go ahead, have fun. You’re so crazy!

  So I have some huge news. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else, but guess what? I just made two million dollars from my book deal. Yeah, yeah. I’m pretty happy about it, and my agent’s pretty happy about it, and I can’t talk about the details of the deal, but if you could just do me a huge, huge favor and just don’t mention it to anyone? I know how you kind of have a problem keeping secrets! No, just joking. I’m joking, I’m joking. You do, though!

  OUTSIDE A NIGHT CLUB CALLED HUSH

  Excuse me? I’m sorry, but this is a private party and—

  Oh, my God. Hi! I didn’t recogni
ze you. Jeez, you look so different! Jesus Christ! This is insane! I can’t believe how different you look! Did you get a haircut? No? It just seems fluffier or something. Hmm? No, I don’t wash my hair anymore. I just rinse it. At first it was dirty, but then it became cleaner than if you use shampoo, because, if you think that shampoo cleans your hair, it doesn’t. It’s full of chemicals and detergents that permanently strip your hair of important oils and then in a few years you experience aggressive balding.

  So you came all dressed up for the movie-première party! That’s so cute, because if you knew this scene you’d always really dress down. But we’re probably just jaded.

  Are you here alone? Trawling around the film scene, huh? Right, right. Trolling around the film scene. Yeah, everyone is still clamoring for a part of the indie-film pie. This is sort of a weird party for that, but … you know, maybe you’ll get a chance to show off a script to some hungry producer, or at least sleep with one! Ha! You crazy, funny weirdo!

  … So you’re still here. I would have thought you’d left by now. I mean the party, not the city. Were you invited to the screening, or just the after-party? Oh. Well. By the way, how is Carl?

  You did?

  Oh, wow. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. I sort of saw that coming. Anyway, sweetie, really? That must be such a world of hurt for you. Who are you hanging out with now? Do you still see that girl who is my friend Amy’s assistant?

  You’re taking a trip? Trajanja? Yes, of course I’ve heard of it! The small communal hard-to-get- to island off the coast of Belize? I went there last spring. It’ll be good for you. I’m sure you got your shots. Oh. You didn’t? Wow, I wish we’d talked before. I’m sorry, but, yes, those shots are kind of important. Without them you have a really high risk of developing a lot of long-term stomach problems and you don’t really get to leave your room. Yeah, you could try to get them today, I guess. I mean, apparently they don’t really “kick in” for, like, a week, but … yeah, you could try. Maybe they’ve made some medical advances since last spring.

  Hey, it looks like they’re opening the party to the general public. You could check it out! It’ll be crowded, but, you know, you may as well just check out the whole deal.

  Listen, I’m doing a ten-mile bike ride in the morning and I have to get to bed, but you take care of yourself, okay? Maybe you shouldn’t go in. Save your energy for your trip. Don’t go slutting around all night. Go home and take care of yourself. I worry about you, you crazy thing.

  2004

  NANCY FRANKLIN

  MODEL CITIZENS

  IF you watched the first episode of the fourth installment of UPN’s America’s Next Top Model last week, you may have noticed that I was not one of the contestants competing for the hundred-thousand-dollar contract with Cover Girl cosmetics, the model-management contract with Ford Models, and the spread in Elle, even though I fulfilled many of the show’s stated eligibility requirements: I am not currently a candidate for public office; I am not shorter than five feet seven; my age is between eighteen and twenty-seven if you divide it by any number between 1.778 and 2.667; and, to the best of my recollection, I have not had previous experience as a model in a national campaign within the past five years. As for the stipulation that applicants must “exhibit … a willingness to share their most private thoughts in an open forum of strangers,” is there anyone left on the planet who doesn’t fit into this category? Also, I can totally work it, bring it, feel it, slam it, serve it, and own it—to use the terms that the fashion photographers, advisers, and judges fall back on when coaching the contestants or explaining their decision to keep them on the show or boot them.

  The reason I’m not on the show is that I didn’t want a tarantula crawling on my face; I’m funny that way. In a photo shoot for a jewelry ad in the third installment of ANTM, last fall, the models had to pose with a tarantula, either on or near their face. In one shot, the huge beast adjusts itself so that one leg is on the girl’s eyelid and another is in the corner of her mouth. Another girl—the one with the most assertive personality—freaks out and cries, because she’s terrified of spiders and so much rides on her being able to act like a pro. The contestants all regularly comment on one another to the camera, and one of them says during this scene, “Eva’s really stressing. She’s worried that her inability to perform with the spider on her face is going to send her home, so I don’t think that she really is cut out to be America’s Next Top Model.” Since I, too, have an inability to perform with spiders on my face, I thought I wasn’t cut out for it, either. But Eva was able to pull herself together, and she looked gorgeous in her picture with Spidey—and she went on to win the entire competition. So I guess I should have gone ahead and sent in an application, arachnophobia be damned.

  The supermodel Tyra Banks created America’s Next Top Model, and she is also the host and one of the show’s executive producers. The aspiring models view her both as the bearer of a magic ticket out of poverty, obscurity, stripping, or waitressing and as a comforting, maternal, Oprah-like figure. Even while she is pondering which chick will be thrown out of the nest each week, Banks dispenses plentiful hugs to her charges, at one point getting down on a bathroom floor to console a distressed girl. During each episode, she makes sure the contestants understand the hardships of the modeling life—facing rejection, working in countries where they don’t speak the language, putting makeup on in a moving limousine—and gives them the kind of challenges they would face as pros, such as wearing stiletto heels while posing in a bikini on volcanic rock along the coast of Jamaica. Oh, my God—now I’m crying.

  One refreshing aspect of ANTM is that there is more diversity among the contestants than one usually sees in reality shows. In the last series, or “cycle,” there was an Indian woman, and all the cycles have featured several black semifinalists, as well as a couple of plus-size hopefuls. (The show has not, however, stepped up—to use another of its recurring exhortatory phrases—when it comes to Asian and Latino women. Not that United Nations–style casting guarantees loftiness or anything. The Indian woman believed that she was “setting a goal for Indians: They’re either engineers or doctors. But we can go outside of that. We can use our intelligence in this industry.”) Banks, who has healthy, womanly curves, has included cautionary tales relating to the body-image problems that occur in the modeling business; the last cycle had a finalist who was a half inch under six feet tall and weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds, and another confessed to having problems with food, though she balked at the label “bulimic,” because she didn’t throw up after every single meal. Comments about the tall drink of water were left to the girls, who all live together for eight weeks and have the usual fights and dish the usual dirt on one another; for the model who was avowedly obsessed with thinness, Banks brought in a nutritionist, but the young woman resisted help—an accurate illustration of the difficulty that even experts often have in treating such disorders. It’s hard not to think, though, that it was a little unfair to the extreme cases to let them get so far along in the competition, since they didn’t have the remotest chance of winning; they’re there, it seems, mainly to short-circuit potential complaints from viewers who may consider the modeling profession itself partly responsible for the fact that so many young women hate their bodies.

  Much as Banks wants to come across as a hey-girlfriend confidante to the contestants, she in fact heightens the atmosphere of anxiety, by drawing out the elimination at the end of each episode for as long as possible, and by emphasizing that the loser will have to leave “immediately.” For some contestants, immediately may not be soon enough. One girl from Oklahoma, after living in a gigantic suite at the Waldorf-Astoria for a while, had simply had it. “In Oklahoma, people look at me,” she said. “I don’t feel like people are looking at me here. I’m not having that much fun.” While the opportunity these women are angling for is real, and even has benefits for the losers—two of whom appeared on UPN sitcoms last week—you can’t help wondering why they
want it so much, when success in the world they’re trying to enter seems to hinge on how much of themselves they can make disappear. In this week’s episode, Banks says to the girls, “Part of being a top model is about being a blank palette.” And the stylist for the photo shoots, Jay Manuel, says after a session, “My concern with Toccara is that she allows too much of her personality to get in the way.” At one point during a shoot, when a model strikes a less than erect pose, she is rewarded with this evaluation: “I love the broken-down-doll look.” In the third cycle, the girls have to walk into a room wearing high heels that are two sizes too small and a dress that is too tight—the point being that a model has to smile through all kinds of discomfort. Nolé Marin, the fashion director of a magazine for gay men, and one of the arbiters of style who sit in judgment at the end of each episode—the others are Banks, a photographer named Nigel Barker, and the former supermodel Janice Dickinson—says to one of the less graceful girls, “You look like the broken Tin Man. You needed a major oil job.” Sometimes looking broken is good; sometimes it’s not. It’s all so confusing! This is actually among the most humane comments heard during the series from Marin, who is—and let’s ourselves be fashion judges for a moment here—a chubby little bespectacled bald man with an unattractive soul patch. None of the judges offer much in the way of constructive criticism; it’s always either “I’m loving the look, honey. I’m loving the look” or “Lose the pearls! Ugh! This is a model contest, not a secretary contest.” (And yet—one more schmatte in the bundle of contradictions that is the fashion world—Mikimoto pearls are given out as a reward to a couple of the models.) Dickinson is a stun gun in human form, zealously zapping the girls as they parade before her. Referring to a picture of the bulimic woman, who is five feet ten, weighs a hundred and thirty pounds, and has a flat stomach, she says, “You look about two months pregnant there.”