Monica has written about bicycling, film and pop culture since 2000 when Bitch Magazine published her piece about American Beauty’s winning an Oscar for best picture. Below are selected recent articles, as well as some old favorites.

"2-Wheel divide: Compromise brings compatibility"
San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 2010

"On Archetypes: Daydreams and Nightmares"
Bitch Magazine, Winter, 2009
A comparison of Sex and the City: The Movie with a couple Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford vehicles from the fifties, followed by some ruminations on women onscreen and the unsurprising conclusion that we have not come a long way, baby.

"Bike polo: Play on a hardcourt or on grass"
San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 2009

Kids and biking
San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 2009

"From Low Brow to High Art: Making the most of selling out"
Release Print, May/June, 2006
This was inspired in equal parts by Roger Corman's autobiography and my observations of a trend towards "citizen" (aka unpaid) video making, particulary in the news and advertising worlds. Release Print, one of my favorite venues, folded along with its parent organization (Film Arts Foundation) a couple of years ago.

"Dystechtopia: media technology and its discontents"
Release Print, January/February, 2006
Another jaundiced look at modern media making, into which I somehow managed to work Jacques Pepin.

"The Accidental Jock"
Bitch Magazine, Fall, 2005

"Silence Is Golden: Some complaints about sound in contemporary cinema"
Release Print, July/August, 2005
Yet more complaining! Really this was a love-letter to Jean-Luc Godard, whose film Masculin Féminin I had just seen.

"Unmarried...With Children: The Trials of the Silver-screen Single Mom"
Bitch Magazine, Fall, 2003
This was reprinted in the anthology BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2006) as "Mother Inferior: How Hollywood Keeps Single Moms in Their Place." Alas, they cut my quite trenchant (if I do say so) reading of Terminator II.