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‘Broad City’ and ‘Girls’ on Their Own Terms

My friend Hopie has an acronym that I love: “TMTM.” It stands for “The More, The Merrier,” and back in our twenties we used it when assembling invitation lists for club outings and dinner parties. These days, I’ve found a different application for the term: to nip female competition in the bud. Which woman is prettiest, funniest, smartest? Why choose? TMTM! 

I mention this because, with the season premieres last week of both “Broad City” and “Girls,” comparisons between the two shows are flying fast and furious. In a way, it’s inevitable. Both are half-hour TV comedies about young women stumbling through New York City. But strike the “women” from that premise, and we’ve got the description of many of TV’s most successful sitcoms over the last fifty years, from “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” and “Will and Grace” to “Taxi” and even “I Love Lucy.” So rather than pitting them against each other, “Broad City” and Girls” deserve to be lauded for their individual merits. An either/or binary is a scarcity model that assumes only a limited number of females should be allowed to shine. And if there’s one thing these two shows do have in common, it’s that both deserve their moment in the sun. Continue Reading →

Space Crone at the Movies

All week I’ve been in a low-grade bad mood about my upcoming birthday. Normally I don’t mind aging; I consider my age a badge of honor in that way that 18-year-olds lord their senior status over freshmen in high school, and I’ve happily anticipated the stylistic and intellectual freedom of the self-realized space crone. But this has been a challenging year full of problems I’d hoped to have outgrown by now, and it’s given me a case of the What’s-It-All-About-Alfies. Anyway, last night I had to pay to see a movie whose press screenings I’d missed–a movie I was ambivalent about reviewing even when seeing it for free–and I decided to take back the whole situation. So I requested a senior citizen discount from the snotty-looking 19-year-old in the ticket booth, and, without blinking, he gave it to me. I know, I know. Members of the AARP would justifiably bludgeon me for such deceit but in that moment I needed a tangible payoff for getting older. The universe, g-d love it, gave me one.

Moon Void of Course, Of Course

Right now, we’re in the middle of a 21-hour period in which the moon is void of course. This means everything is spacy and off-kilter and totally nonlinear–so much so that even as I write this I wonder if I am making any sense and then realize with some delight that I don’t care. Void-of-course events rarely have long-term consequences, and, besides, sparkly tesseracts are right up my alley.

After finishing this morning’s Ruby Intuition readings I took off for a very long, very cold walk through the city. I was ecstatic for the opportunity to live inside my own private children’s book–a welcome reprieve from the grownup worries I’d not been able to shake for the rest of the week. My only rule: no major financial expenditures. Our tastes are so different during VOC that buyers’ regret is inevitable.

Here is what happened on my walk: I talked to an East Village girl selling candles in ironic overalls and unironic pink lipstick about the importance of sunshine noir in the ides of winter. I found a pair of fluffy platform beige clog boots that I desperately craved but managed to refrain from purchasing. (I promised myself I’d buy them as an auto-birthday present if I still longed for them in a week.) I went to the hardware store to thank the owner for his good advice about my radiators and in return got a $2 vise-grip, which is only slightly less sexual than it sounds. I trailed an arguing couple for seven blocks to decide who I thought was right. (Neither, as it turned out.) I saw a friend I’d not seen for six years, and, bitter wind blowing all around us, we tackled the brilliance of Vivian Maier and the unplugged power of post-reproductive women as if it were a balmy July afternoon and we’d last talked five minutes ago. I went to the Strand Book Store and bought a thick anthology of time travel essays (because you never know when you might manage a quick chrono-jaunt) and a dog-eared Pippi Longstocking paperback (because you can always use an extra copy of Pippi). I came up with a style trend for Spring 2025 and a catchphrase that I decided to give to the next superhero I met. I tried on a collarless camel tweed coat practically embroidered with my name and whispered to her that we’d meet again. I listened to an 85-year-old surrealist painter reminisce in a coffee shop about dancing naked with Anaïs Nin dance at a party. I spent an inordinately long time talking to a jewelry vendor on Bedford Avenue because his copper rings were stunning and so was he.

By the time I got home I was laden with lemon-pepper soap and and leather-rose perfume and green-gold eyeshadow and lavender honey and coffee beans and phone numbers and hand-painted stationary given to me by people who’d enjoyed our conversations. I was so frozen I couldn’t feel my feet but my cheeks were pink and my eyes were bright and I was wrapped glamorously in two soft scarves and a big fur hat and a soundtrack of late-’50s jazz and a certainty that I’d earned a quiet, cozy night at home. When the moon goes void of course it’s like Hilary Knight drew the whole world. Ooooh, I just love it.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy