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“Desperate to be famous, she yearned for delivery from the ordinary world, a chance to impress and to intrigue.”
Review
Stacey Grenrock Woods is a comic writer and actress from the San Fernando Valley, the expansive suburban region north of Los Angeles well-known for its distinct female culture — think Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl" and the film of the same name. Of her early childhood spent in Hollywood's backyard, Grenrock Woods offers simply: "I wanted only to entertain."
Desperate to be famous, she yearned for delivery from the ordinary world, a chance to impress and to intrigue. Her memoir, I, California, describes her quest, from repeated attempts at child stardom to her breakthrough gig in cable television. The
book also playfully veers
into the seedy, chronicling how she lived off Twinkies and cigarettes as the booker for the Viper Room, suited up as a dubiously sexy fräulein for Playboy, and pondered her own amorality under scratchy sheets before a Daily Show gig.
While I, California is, at times, marred by Grenrock Woods' superficial brand-name dropping and petty squabbles with peers and superiors, the
book redeems itself as a history of girlhood vis-à-vis pop culture. Grenrock Woods has a strong nose for the absurd, and she
stuffs these pages with sardonic riffs on everything from sixth-grade teachers to swing-dance revivalists. The downside is
the book's relentless pacing of jokes. A collection of back-to-back sketches may annoy more than enlighten, depending on how
you like your memoirs. But those who can hack it will appreciate her combination of sharp wit and goofiness.
Grenrock Woods currently writes Esquire's sex column (with varying degrees of earnestness), and is known for her roles as a Daily Show correspondent and the Arrested Development character Trisha Thoon. As women like Sarah Silverman, Amy Sedaris, and Tina Fey continue to shine, Stacey Grenrock Woods'
star may seem more faint, but it's well worth watching.
- Cortney Rock
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“Perhaps because of our collectively idealized vision of our own government, Shambroom's portraits of civic life are, at first,
almost shockingly banal.”
Review
While democracy's glorious ideals are bandied about with patriotic reverence, its actual implementation is a remarkably mundane affair. Paul Shambroom, in his photographic series
Meetings, takes an in-depth look at the officiators — mayors, councilmen (councilpersons, in some communities), aldermen, and selectmen
— at the most local level of our own political system. From 1999 to 2003, Shambroom traveled across the country photographing
more than 150 town meetings, most in localities of fewer than 2,000 people. Shot with a large-format, panoramic camera, Shambroom's
photographs from 40 of those meetings are collected in a handsome volume that includes the minutes from every one he attended. Each photograph is neatly annotated with the essential facts: the names and functions of the
individuals, the date of the meeting, the town's population, etc. Democracy, in Shambroom's take, is synonymous with civility
and order.
Perhaps because of our collectively idealized vision of our own government, Shambroom's portraits of civic life are, at first,
almost shockingly banal. Though his compositions of citizen leaders seated around tables recall great European paintings like Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, the subjects' glazed expressions often portray boredom and weariness — though occasionally intense contemplation is visible.
Their tables are strewn with legal pads, piles of paper, soda cans, styrofoam coffee cups, and name-bearing placards. No two
interiors look the same, but together, they share a spartan aesthetic.
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- H.G. Masters
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