Joan always kept orchid plants, and liked to linger in the greenhouse of a grower in Malibu, Amado Vazquez, who would name a pink-and-white-striped orchid Phal. Joan Didion Dunne. When everything looked as she wished, Joan, John and I went to get dressed and then gathered in her study. Wearing a rose-print batiste dress (one of a matching pair she’d bought for Quintana and herself in the children’s department at Bonwit’s), Joan lit a Pall Mall. “We’re ready for the party,” she said, adding that she was always nervous before dinner was served. Hired help arrived to tend bar and set up the buffet, and I remember Joan and I discussing what we might wear under the filmy see-through clothes that were becoming popular in L.A.

— Oh my. $2.99, for iPad, Kindle single, whatever, that kind of thing!

Here’s John Lanchester reviewing the new Michael Lewis collection. As is always the case with Lanchester’s writing about the financial crisis (and usually with Lewis as well), you will find yourself quite entertained throughout, and then you will finish it and think, oh God, we’re SO SCREWED.

by Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Mary HK Choi

Natasha: Did you love Breaking Dawn? Did you die during it? I DID.

Mary: I mean… CAN YOU EVEN? Because I maybe cannot. I went to a midnight showing on Court Street in Brooklyn with all of the Eighties babies. And we all DIED.

Natasha: !!!!!!!

Mary: We were STARING at each other like we weren’t COMPLETE strangers.

Mary: Let’s begin with the wedding as this movie does… QUE CELLO.

Natasha: This is the wedding every young girl pictures, right?

Mary: Yes. Outside. With all those plants I can’t name.

Natasha: Let me just say, I SWOONED.

Mary: OH IDK what this swoonage refers to because ME TOO 360.

Natasha: The dress??

Mary: WELL. There are TWO dresses.

Natasha: Right. Important!

Mary: One was the nightmare monster shitshow fake-out dress.

Natasha: The Korean Karaoke video wedding dress.

Mary: It basically made her look like a naked virgin child bride.

Natasha: And all those rose petals a la American Beauty Horror Story.

Mary: And the enormo skirt.

Natasha: The wonky ass hair.

Mary: All that stiff-ass boning. With all those fucking duchess satin GATHERS. VOM.

Natasha: What about freakshow Edward?

Mary: A 100% white satin tux and tails? GARBAGE.

Natasha: I thought we had lost the whole movie when the rose petals showed up. Because the Cullens have taste, you know (minus Peter Facinelli’s wig)? You can tell by their bone chillingly austere hyper Modern Danish Pacific Northwest MANSION OF DEATH.

Mary: Uh huh. #nofuckingway #nuhuh #banjeeshit Of course it was a fakeout. Now, the REAL dress.

Natasha: THEEEEE DRESSSSS. You mean the one I have been sketching in my dreams since I could menstruate?

Mary: ME TOO and you know I can haz menses since from the way back machine.

Mary: Did your theater lose their goddamned minds?

Natasha: YES, OF COURSE. I never wanted it to end. Seriously it could have been 3 hours of ‘FOUND FOOTAGE’ of the Swan/Cullen wedding.

Mary: It was a super elegant dress. The lace panel in the back with hundreds of covered satin buttons.

Natasha: The lace panel almost down to her flat ass killed me! I want a back that long : (

Mary: It was coccyx cleavage.

Natasha: Soft shoulder.

Mary: FUCK a strong shoulder on a wedding dress. It’s so cokey Wall Street eighties.

Natasha: She looked lovely.

Mary: I feel like even Bella haters can’t even front.

Natasha: I have become a total Kristen Stewart partisan. Like, I support her.

Mary: Oh, go on.

Natasha: I think this bitch is trying her HARDDDDDESSST to give Bella Swan some depth, hesitation, anxiety. She’s up there acting her 90-pound body up into something semi-substantial, So respect.

Mary: I’ve always loved her in interviews, even if they are a fair bit palsied at times.

Natasha: And I am not sexually threatened by her because her face is kind of lopsided? Because FUCK A SYMMETRICAL STATUE FACE.

Mary: Yes, golden ratios can go fist themselves.

Natasha: And so when she cries and sniffles, half of her face goes off to another movie screen in a theater across the street to another screening.

Mary: A theater with no stadium seating.

Natasha: You know who the hottest person at the wedding was though? CHARLIE SWAN.

Mary: SO HOT IN A TUX. OMG. With an old fashioned bowtie.

Natasha: WITH HIS MOOOOSTACHE AND COP HANDS!!!

Mary: Total cop hands: calloused, intuitive yet still warm.

Natasha: STOP IT, IM GOING TO BREAK THE BED.

Mary: You could light a match off of them jawns.

Natasha: We need to address how HYSTERICALLY pale they made Edward Sparkles McDead look for this installment.

Mary: He was POWDERED. He looked like funnel cake.

Natasha: Undead funnel cake.

Mary: BUT. He looked so happy. He was waiting a HUNDRED years to be with her!

Natasha: I cried?

Mary: I’m so glad you told me that because ME TOO! I was ALL by myself and I wept!

Natasha: This is Twilight at its best: no irony, pure girl fantasy. The wedding was pitch perfect.

Mary: There’s so much wrong with it but pitch weren’t it.

Natasha: NOW. THE HONEYMOON. BREAKING DAWN = BREAKING HYMEN.

Mary: BREAKING HEADBOARD.

Natasha: UNNFFFF.

Mary: BUSTING PILLOWS AND WOMBS INTO SMITHEREEEEEEENS.

Natasha: FINALLY.

Mary: The TERROR SEX.

Natasha: Can we talk about it FOREVER?

Mary: HAWT like Judy Blume Forever #teamralph.

Natasha: ALTHOUGH those bruises that Edward freaks out about giving Bella were pretty junior varsity! That’s like any Wednesday, not a HONEYMOON.

Mary: HA! Remember when we just learned SO MUCH about you?

Natasha: It ain’t love unless there’s traction.

Mary: Do you have a rolling pin and a scythe in your bedside table?

Natasha: No comment. I’m upset that I have been waiting five long years to see those alabaster abs flex on top of virgo Bella AND YET….

Mary: He was just wading into the ocean. It was just hella English.

Natasha: I found his whole “NEVER AGAIN” post first bonage PERPLEXING.

Mary: He’s a prude. If I was Bella I would have pitched an ill fit. Like COME ON. “GIVE IT.”

Natasha: Side question: can you even menstruate around a vampire? Should she have brought a Hannibal Lecter mask with her Tampax?

Mary: I totally wondered when we cut to her Tampax Pearl if Edward even knew what tampons were, cause he’s Ol’ Timey.

Natasha: You know that bro collected menstrual belts all during the 19th Century.

Mary: Then Bella gets pregnant which NO. I am not on board. AT ALL.

Natasha: TELL ME WHY.

Mary: I mean, seriously, it’s so punishment that she’d have a blood sucker in the baby cave after THOSE TWO TIMES and then Jesus motherfucking Christ that entire half of the movie where she’s like Karen Carpenter’s THINSPO? GTFOH.

Natasha: I’m usually down with WW2 iconography (see Harry Potter 6 review) in my young adult books to movie franchise BUT THIS WAS TOOOOOOOOOO.

Mary: SO TOOOO. It was SO goddamned gnarly. Drinking blood out of polystyrene cups like so much Orange Julius, Bella.

Natasha: TOO.

Natasha: OK, DON’T THINK ABOUT THIS TOO HARD but why do you think Bella wanted to keep the damn parasite?

Mary: Uh, because Stephenie Meyer is a nightmare? Because it has finger nails? IDK. The propaganda shit was a little out of control. I mean who the fuck knows why she was SO willing to die for the space alien?

Natasha: Is this where Twi-haters have a point about the weird conservatism? Absolute bio-determinism? The baby over fetus vibe Stephenie puts out?

Mary: FUCK YES. The pregnancy looked too costly for her to be down with. Personally, I have never been at that place where you’re so over yourself that you’re down with that but like, Bella, she didn’t never even skipped a beat and I think that’s fucking irresponsible.

Natasha: Edward was not down with it though, even if it was for selfish reasons. His protests were ~*sEexXy*~*.

Mary: No doubt but still I wish some of the hesitation came from Bella.

Natasha: It’s at this point in the movie where we lose Edward and Jacob totes steals the show.

Mary: Holy shit, Bella keeps playing the threesome with Edward and Jacob like a maestro.

Natasha: The female fantasy thrives! You can stomp all over these bros and they will just be like I WILL DIE 4 U/LEAVE MY PACK 4 U/MOVE FROM HAWAII FOR U.

Mary: How can she act SO happy? And SO relieved when Jacob shows up? SO manipulative.

Natasha: Strongly agree.

Mary: It’s UNPOSSIBLE. Seriously you’re going to make your dudes in cahoots to make you happy. Holy fuck it’s STILL the crazy G move. ODALISQUE.

Natasha: I think Tay-Tay Lautner’s acting lessons have paid off the most. “HERE TO KEEP U WARM, GUUUUUURL.”

Mary: Bella was like “bbbbrrrr I’m cold” because she’s so rexi with her eight-inch circumference inner thigh! Tay was definitely toasty.

Natasha: So. THE BIRTHING OF ‘RENESMEE.’

Mary: Portmanteau FAIL! Holy fucking Christ. I can’t EVEN. Not even by a spine shattering stretch.

Natasha: Can I just say…..well done?

Mary: Definitely, regardless of the motivation, BULLY. This is the first movie in the franchise where I felt it was a horror flick

Natasha: YES, EXACTLY, and motivation aside, I DO kinda dig the parasite, killing you from inside, leaving you looking like a spoon with your big ass head and nothing body, all bone and blood wasted on the table.

Mary: Oh absolutely. “Real talk.”

Natasha: Cause this shit is like “Teen Mom” times six.

Natasha: Like, ok, well, I get there’s concern about the conservative overtones but I loved that the pregnancy was portrayed as something terrifying that baffles you and the people around you and is a high stakes affair.

Mary: SOMETHING THAT COULD KILL YOU.

Natasha: EXACTLY.

Mary: That would just EAT your insides.

Natasha: THAT LITERALLY TAKES YOUR LIFE.

Mary: And BREAK you.

Natasha: Because after you have a kid and LIFE BELONGS TO SOMETHING ELSE.

Mary: Something that KEEPS trying to kill itself!

Natasha: You are no longer Bella Swan running a Thinspo blog about Fangbanging down by that reservation….

Mary: You’re a husk of loose skin and lank hair.

Natasha: Yes.

Mary: Fetus vs. Baby.

Natasha: So I don’t know if it was meant to be meta4orical, or it was by accident (likely) but I did appreaysh the notion that LIFE AS YOU KNOW IT ENDS NOW (for better or for worse). So I dug the Cullen’s anti-life stance.

Natasha: I have a logistical question, though. Why did Edward have blood across his mouth after the vampire baby popped out?

Mary: Oh honey, really?

Natasha: 🙁

Mary: HE BIT THROUGH THE UMBILICAL CHORD.

Natasha: AHHH!! I LOVE THIS FRANCHISE SOOOOO MUCH.

Mary: And then bit her a big ass C section.

Natasha: WHAT A MAN!

Mary: A mighty good man. #YESHEIS

Natasha: How were you feeling after the birth of the Mini Pale One?

Mary: Panic. I was SO upset. He kept biting her like a feral animal trying to get some shit pumping and he was so freaked and he just kept gnawing at a bitch and cryin’.

Natasha: This was when we finally felt that full throttle Cullen love.

Mary: When Jacob flops outside and bawls in front of Seth and Leah? With ragged sobs and Edward CHOMPING on her shins?

Natasha: It was so sad and intense and amazing because THATS WHAT IT SHOULD ALWAYS FEEL LIKE RIGHT?

Mary: As much as I want the thre of them to bone. Watching Edward and Jacob think she was dying, I mean…. Isn’t that better than fucking?

Natasha: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Natasha: God, what are we going to do when this series ends?

Mary: Duh. #HUNGERGAMES.

Mary HK Choi and Natasha Vargas-Cooper will see you on November 16, 2012 for Part 2, but first also on March 23, 2012, when we find out how hungry the games really are.

A small liberal arts college was recently rocked to discover that a visiting lecture series was funded by the Koch Foundation. Whitman College, in rural Washington, hosts “The Classical Liberalism Lecture Series” each year, which is supposed to bring “more conservative ideas to campus.” It was formerly funded by a private donor and then last year, it was funded by the Kochs, after the school applied for a grant from one of their foundations. But the story, as the student paper tells it, is confusing. It’s all put together as “liberal college worried about conservatives on campus,” basically, but that’s not the real story at all. The story, from what we can tell, really goes like this: “There were no undesirable strings attached” to the grant money, says one professor — but then the faculty “perceived the [Charles G.] Koch foundation as overstepping its bounds.” (Perceived!) Apparently, to be vaguely specific, that particular Koch Foundation “started wanting all sorts of other things, like student emails.” Like what else? Oy, student newspapers! Love you, and here’s some tips: demand a copy of the correspondence between the school and the Koch Foundation! Demand a copy of the school’s grant paperwork! Ask the trustees and the school president to lay it out! This sort of vagueness is untenable.

“Douching, I would argue, is a lot like dial-up. Uncool. On the wane. Never coming back, and with good reason. Yet, for the moment, still profitable.”

Jon Methven is the author of This Is Your Captain Speaking, due out in 2012 by Simon & Schuster. He can be reached here, or follow him on Twitter @jonmethven.

“Graffiti daubed on the walls of a flat by the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten could be as important as the discovery of early Beatles recordings — or even the prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings. The wild scrawls in the property once occupied by the punk pioneers give a unique insight into the origins of the 1970s musical movement.”

“With Sanskrit, you are relieved of every bit of concentration except where it counts: on the music and the singing — and, if you’re interested in the story, on the surtitles. Even librettos in English need surtitles, since distended vowels, vocal counterpoint and the over-trained diction of many performers make it difficult to understand. Every librettist should have a smattering of Sanskrit. It will save them, and their audiences, a huge amount of work.”
 — Stephen Sondheim on Satyagraha.

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After menopause, I discovered the joy of drinking wine, and of sinking deeply into writing and time alone. These things replaced the sex drive I had thoroughly cruised down as a youth, exploring one dead end, detour, and unpaved dirty road after another. I have refused to take the libido-restoring male hormones constantly proffered me by this culture and Suzanne Somers and her hordes of apologists and postmenopausal cougars…. I am old now: gray, wrinkled, tired, and bloated, and my joints ache, too. But I am ready to come into my full destiny — as my childhood dreams predicted — as a Neo-Amazonian Pirate Queen of my own vessel: firing cannonballs at the worldwide culture of patriarchy in the name of all that does not suck. I no longer fear moving on to a better existence than this one, which is, of course, no existence at all.

— HOLY MACKEREL.