Saturday roundup and ramble

Apparently, a Derecho hit DC last night. It was scary as hell, but I was lucky enough to lose power only momentarily. The lightning went on for ages. It was crazy.

Even before Adam Gopnik managed to piss me off again with another inane, rambling column--here's a fun game: come up with some obvious counterexamples to this statement--"Sports are about human character inasmuch, and only inasmuch, as they show that you can master anything with enough effort." Anyway, even before I read that, I was thinking about the man whose writing makes me cringe, because I was thinking about his appraisal of the late J.D. Salinger, which I commented on at the time:

In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: “Huckleberry Finn,” “The Great Gatsby,” and “The Catcher in the Rye.” Of the three, only “Catcher” defines an entire region of human experience: it is—in French and Dutch as much as in English—the handbook of the adolescent heart.

No, Mr. Gopnik: they speak to every (white) male reader, and define an entire region of the (white) male experience. Guy bonding, guy adolescence, guy coming of age. And there's a lot to be said for that, but don't try to pass it off as universal.

This came to mind as I was thinking about Nora Ephron, whose work spoke to me far more.

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Great quote from another (non-Gopnik) part of "Talk of the Town". Disclaimer--I'm not taking a position on the first clause; I just love the second one (and believe that it applies universally): "Since doctors, on the whole, are more arrogant than other people, it’s important to do things that you suck at pretty frequently, just to be humbled.” --Med student Kate Benham

Why are American kids spoiled?

Last night I went out with a douchebag. The kind you read about on Date Lab--not all that himself, but takes it upon himself to talk condescendingly and disrespectfully of women ("I thought she would be taller/blonder/thinner/hotter"). The funny thing about this date was that it was a lot of fun; my last two dates were not douchebags, but those dates were not fun. This one ended with the guy talking asking me about which "Sex and the City" character I identified with, and upon my saying Miranda, his describing her as a frigid headcase and declaring that men universally like Charlotte (which I'd heard before). Yes, I know: men love Charlotte. She's so... proper, put together, feminine. Which is, as my mother has been happy to point out lately, not me. For one thing, I sure-as-hell leave the house without make-up, most of the time.