Category Archives: CLAIRE THE CRITIC

Another small, unqualified, obnoxious voice in the crowd.

Your Salsa is from New York City? My New Yorker Comes from Boone, Iowa.

Posted on 02/03/2013 by wedgeblog

The first letter came without a threat last May, in a plain white envelope. It was from the subscription department at the New Yorker with a return address in Boone, Iowa. I felt like one of those cowboys around … Continue reading →

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | Tagged conde nast, consumer advocacy, corporate responsibility, distribution, hearst publishing, jim pattison co., magazine distribution, magazine renewal, magazine renewal scams, new yorker magazine, publishing | 1 Comment

Posted on 01/26/2013 by wedgeblog

Movie Tickets as Tacit Endorsements or How to Review a Movie You’ve Never Seen Check out my hubpages blog for a commentary on Zero Dark Thirty. www.http://baizblogger.hubpages.com/hub/To-See-or-Not-to-See-Movie-Tickets-as-Endorsements-Zero-Dark-Thirty

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | Tagged dick cheney, hollywood exploitation, manipulative films, movie review zero dark thirty, movies, osama bin laden, torture, zero dark thirty | Leave a comment

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Katharine Hepburn!

Posted on 01/26/2012 by wedgeblog

When I set the table for that woman in the mirror, she wasn’t the guest of honor. She was (gulp) somebody’s mother. My husband and I recently watched the 1965 classic Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn/Sidney Poitier classic Guess Who’s Coming to … Continue reading →

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | Tagged accepting aging, aging, aging actresses, aging women, betty white, goldie hawn, guess who's coming to dinner, helen mirren, hollywood, katherine hepburn, sexism in hollywood, starlets | 1 Comment

FlatBrain

Posted on 01/02/2012 by wedgeblog

Reference skills? They’re dead. The desire to find anything beyond a couple of clicks? If it doesn’t pop up on the first page of Google, Bing or Wikipedia, well, uh…never mind. I haven’t checked Facebook in the last few hours. … Continue reading →

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | Tagged brain drain, flatbrain, flatscreen, limited attention span, television | 2 Comments

MATH SUCKS and Spits me Out: Pttoey!

Posted on 06/24/2011 by wedgeblog

As lousy as I am at the subject, I admit it: everything is math. Great battles of brains and brawn involve occupied territories as small as an office cubicle or as large as The Middle East. The language of conquest? … Continue reading →

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | Tagged education, higher education, math, math anxiety, math is everything, number the language of man, Public Education, tobias dantzig | Leave a comment

Claire Baiz’s Ten ‘No Brainer’ Blog Traffic Drivers–in under 200 words

Posted on 06/06/2011 by wedgeblog

JUMPSTART / REV UP YOUR BLOG! (a post with no literary, social or political merit) 1. Get a bitly URL shortener and tracker. http://bit.ly/a/sign_up This is an easy way to allow you to track the number and location of visitors … Continue reading →

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | Tagged beginning blogging, bit.ly, blogging, facebook, feedage, help for bloggers, help for writers, linked in, new blogger, teaching, technorati, twitter, viperbar, viperchill, wise stamp, wordpress, Zoomerang | Leave a comment

Lessons from a Real (Estate) Loser, Part I

Posted on 04/28/2011 by wedgeblog

Happy property owners. How insipid. After months of dissecting listings, catching open houses and getting outbid, I was tired of opening the Sunday New York Times Real Estate section to see those fairy tale grins. Back home in Montana we … Continue reading →

Posted in Surreal Estate: Adventures in NYC | Tagged Chelsea, Claire Baiz, Freelance Writer for hire, Manhattan, New York Times, Real Estate, Real Property, Realtors | 1 Comment

Pick up your PEN for Free Expression (and Free Seminars)

Posted on 04/25/2011 by wedgeblog

Sometimes I’m tempted to lay my pen on the table and demand that it do tricks. That’s me, the crazy lady at Cafe Grumpy’s berating my writing instrument out loud. “How tough can this be? There are only 26 letters, … Continue reading →

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | Tagged Claire Baiz, gioconda belli, hanif kureishi, iva bittova, literary festival new york city, malcom gladwell, mircea cartarescu, new york book event, pen festival, salman rushdie, wallace shawn, wei wei | Leave a comment

Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Posted on 04/16/2011 by wedgeblog

I weaseled my way past a marginally rude usher into a fourth row seat at this afternoon’s performance of Love, Loss, and What I Wore. Most of the audience wore raincoats. Straight males checked their dicks at the door. I wore … Continue reading →

Posted in CLAIRE THE CRITIC | 1 Comment

Her Story vs. History: Elizabeth Winthrop is ‘Counting on Grace’

Posted on 04/12/2011 by wedgeblog

It’s all a lie. Whether its history or her story, Elizabeth Winthrop made it clear last night in an intimate writer’s forum that whether stories are shouted or whispered, written or told, inaccuracy is inevitable. It’s the quest for a … Continue reading →