Alizah Salario

the amazing Dita Von Teese

For a long time I’ve wanted to do something thrilling and just a little bit saucy with my life. Today, I finally did: I danced burlesque. Well, sort of. I’m just getting the basic bumps, grinds and shimmies down. I’ve wanted to pursue burlesque since I tried a one-hour class nearly three years ago. Of all the dance forms I’ve tried, burlesque, ironically, feels the most natural. Chicago burlesque, according to Frenchie Kiss, my teacher, is the most classic, in comparison with the rock’n'roll style of LA and the arty vibe in New York. Little did I know there are three walk that involve different ways of swaying the hips: elegant, cutesy, and the bump and grind. Don’t get too excited; there’s no feathers, boas or pasties involved – yet. The emphasis of this slow striptease is on the tease. What remains a mystery is always more exciting.

This afternoon I watched base jumpers glide down from the Trump Towers from the vantage point of my nearby 18th floor office.  I looked down onto Michigan Avenue, and it was bumper to bumper for blocks. I watched taxis flip illegal u-turns on Wacker after being stuck in the same spot for five minutes.  The scene was accompanied by a soundtrack of what sounded like fake machine guns blasting. It was a city under a siege. Even it was only make-believe chaos, the drama in Chicago this weekend was most certainly real.

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I discovered the year-old Anastasia Chatzka boutique on a Saturday morning stroll through Wicker Park, and I’m thanking the gods of fashion for this frilly find. The cookie-cutter designs I see everywhere from Forever 21 to Bloomingdales are blander than rice cakes. Can’t we come up with a better image for this season of bad 80’s/90’s remakes than a Courtney Love-Rhianna hybrid?

I’m particularly sensitive to the nuances of fashion in Chicago (of all places).  I see hordes of young women wearing outfits straight off the pages of Marie Claire and Seventeen. Attention to fashion, yes, personal style, no. Absolutely nothing that distinguishes one individual from her clones/friends, all with their streaky blond highlights fresh for summer, their Mac makeup caked on thick, their assembly-line spiky heels squeezing their pedicured feet. Who are all these young women? Why do they think it’s way cooler to fit in than stand out? Read the rest of this entry »

Once again I am humbled by/jealous of someone else’s summer reading list. Doug Bruns read 27 books in 12 months (while critiquing for a literary site, of course) all of which are hefty tomes that exemplify what Robert Nozick called the unreadable – and therefore intriguing- book. That’s it. This is my I’m not going to the gym excuse for the night.  I need to catch up on my read!

Read more at The Millions:

“I am a reader first. If I were an addict, I would get high and while high, presumably, worry about where I was to get my next fix. Reading is not all that different, I think. As a reader, I am always looking over the binding thinking about the next read, in some instances, longing for it. Some books, like some highs, are better than others. But even with not-so-good books–and there where two this past year I did not see to completion–I will come back to the drug, seeking the next high. I will always be a reader. Of this I am certain.”

On Sunday, the New York Times reviewed three cancer memoirs, none of which, at least by critic Dana Jenning’s assessment,  did the emotional heavy lifting that a grief memoir should do. I’m particularly intrigued by If You Knew Suzy by Katherine Rosman, as well as her tart response to the review over at Gawker.

From what I read, I was struck by the brutal honesty and often contradictory messages we receive when dealing with the dying. From Suzy:

“I was forced to lay fallow. I took off the trappings of contemporary life — vanity, ambition, pretense — and entered into a sort of parallel time where I was compelled to do things the Bible envisions. Be needy. Be a stranger. Be uplifted by those around me. Be reunited with the ones I love.”

Going into the realm of terminal illness – and the otherworldly sense it brings  – feels antithetical to our noisy digital age. Having lost my own father to cancer, I couldn’t help but wonder about Rosman’s motivations for writing this book: perhaps there is a growing need to explain, to confess, to make clear, precisely how death alters life in a way that feels honest for our time. I’ll let you know what I think of the book.

Chicago may have its fair share of frosted delights, but now that

Sprinkles is headed our way, sub-par imitations simply won’t do. I can attest

to  the scrumptuousness of this Beverly Hills-based bake shop – and I’m not

even a cupcake person (my personal favorite is mocha).

Slated to open @ 50 East Walton Street July 26th. Don’t delay!

The Printer’s Ball is Chicago’s biggest event for the literary inclined – this year in print and digital.

“Lots of magazines. Books. Posters. Galore.
Broadsides & busy beavers. Newspapers & weeklies.
Zines. Poetry, fiction & all that. Buttons, stickers
& more. Reading & performing, or something like it.
Red carpet. Screenings, Web things & digital
writing — electrified in general; because PRINT <3 DIGITAL .
Making, inking, stamping. Getting hands dirty.
Dancing, music, DJs. Playing. All free.”

Read a great interview with members of Chicago’s Pinter’s Ball at Knee Jerk magazine

The books range from thrillers to literary novels, but the setting is the same. Check out the top 40 novels based in the Windy City over at Chicago Magazine.

I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read the vast majority of them, but this Sinclair classic is of course a keeper.

The last thing Jonathan Saffron Foer needs is for The New Yorker to stroke his ego.

Many of you (I’m addressing all two of you who follow my blog) know that The New Yorker is coming out with a list of the top 20 fiction writers under 40. Here are the golden boys and girls:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Chris Adrian
• Daniel Alarcón
• David Bezmozgis
• Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
• Joshua Ferris
• Jonathan Safran Foer
• Nell Freudenberger
• Rivka Galchen
• Nicole Krauss
• Yiyun Li
• Dinaw Mengestu
• Philipp Meyer
• C. E. Morgan
• Téa Obreht
• Z Z Packer
• Karen Russell
• Salvatore Scibona
• Gary Shteyngart
• Wells Tower

In accordance with Gawker’s stringent guidelines for complaining about the list, I’ll keep this pithy and brief.

For what it’s worth, I admire and enjoy the works of many writers on this list. Kudos to all the literary superstars, especially my potential soul mate, Gary.  But the fact that something as calibrated and crafted as a “best of” list seems oddly incongruous with the spirit of the writers chosen. This is literature, not Letterman.

When I saw the list, it felt like rushing to see my name on the cast list in high school only to realize I didn’t make the cut.  Of course, I wasn’t in the running, but lists draw lines in the sand between the good and the not up to snuff, the winners, and ostensibly, the losers. That would be me. (cue the violins and self-deprecating inner monologue).

Oh well. I still have another 11 years tighten my prose. It’s not like that novella and the countless short stories growing stale on many misplaced USB drives really mean anything to me anymore. Every other young journalism school grad seems to have a half-baked novel hidden in his or her back pocket.

Maybe I should write about how I immigrated from a communist/fascist/third world country and write a scathing, sardonic critique of Americans. Oh wait, that never happened.

Do you suffer from Facebook anxiety disorder?

Do you often log in, glance at your newsfeed and think, “Where did I go wrong?”

Do you obsessively check the info pages of people you couldn’t care less about only to make sure their successes are meager compared to your own? Do you find yourself looking at attractive photos of others and snarking, “Has she had work done? I don’t think she had that nose in high school.”

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