Best Blog
The Bazima Chronicles

Published September 30, 2002

Doin' It in the Name of Social Science. The Bazima Chronicles comprises the about-thrice-weekly Web entries of a single Brooklyn woman who conducts her active sex life with a half-opened eye toward fulfillment of the monogamous kind, i.e., a boyfriend who meets her standards. Sound like every Sex and the City episode ever aired? You betcha. Only this is nonfiction and noncommercial. And to the extent that it covers sex and relationships in these times, better than a lot of what we've seen in print lately (and definitely more titillating than the stuff that shows up on the likes of Nerve.com).

As much as it hurts, a nod should probably be given to the medium itself. Lacking the need to manipulate her essays so that they conform to some bankable single-clause aperçu (read: contrived bullshit theory), the author is free to simply tell her story, modulating in intensity as reality dictates, offering up insight at her own pace. However, for any of that to work, the goods've gotta be there. They are. In evocative, self-effacing and often gut-bustingly funny detail. And Bazima makes it easy on us too. Wanna cut through the fluff and get straight to the muff? She provides a sub-index entitled "Selected Hayrolls" that chronicles recent dates that've gone the distance.

What we know about the author of the Bazima Chronicles is that she is black and Jewish and, as she puts it, "in love with boys, sex and the good rock music." It was around February when a friend with a weblog first tipped us to her. We didn't pay much attention at the time, feeling that too much of blogging is just solipsism without the payoff. We were also turned off by what appears to be a tendency on the part of Web diarists to anguish over the topsy-turvy mess that their blogger lifestyles have made of the rest of their world. "Monday, June 5th: I guess I just never realized that naming names and posting the sordid details of my personal life online would create so much awkwardness and tension with my best friend Suzy and Mom and Frank Smith, the premature ejaculator I'm dating..." Disingenuous or stupid: pick one. Thankfully, Bazima knows all this and is unapologetic when it comes to what and about whom she writes. Be it a disaster date, mediocre one-night stand or that once-in-a-blue fantasy coupling, she gives good story. For that, we follow her like a soap.

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