You know you are in for a memorable evening when the waitress at the sushi restaurant requests that you move to a bigger table, because you have ordered more sushi than will fit on the table for two that you were originally seated at.
And then she adds, “Nobody has every ordered this much sushi before. We are going to have to serve it on a special platter.”
Aw, yeah. That’s us.
Akie and I discussed the state of the female musician in this week’s Perpetual Post.
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There’s something missing from the women of mainstream American music today. I don’t want to generalize and say ALL of American music, because I know that’s not true. But among those females whom fate or luck or talent has elevated to the heights of fame and fortune, I feel that there is a distinct lack of a certain je ne se quoi that for simplicity’s sake I’m going to refer to as SWAGGER.
Where are you, crazy rock goddesses? Where is your cheerful destructiveness, your wild and devil may care ‘go fuck yourself’ attitude? Your MOXIE?! Why, when I want to live vicariously through a rough and ready rock musician, does it STILL always have to be a man—and one who is usually over fifty, to boot? Who is going to step up and take the torch of the ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners rock star away from Keith Richards, before he smokes it down to nothing? And why can’t it that person be a woman?
I’ve endured so many disappointments during my search for a smart, self-assured female musician with flinty eyes, awesome hair and staggering talent who doesn’t take shit from anybody. In the beginning I had high hopes for Amy Winehouse, but then she started losing weight and doing drugs and that went nowhere fast. Pink piqued my interest for a little while, but there’s still something kind of manufactured and by-the-numbers about her. Britney Spears is a puppet; Christina Aguilera is a ghoul. Lady Gaga is a pretentious twit. Katy Perry is like the Hello Kitty of pop music. Fergie can be kind of a bad-ass in her own right, and there’s something a little crazy and half-baked about her; she might be the closest thing I can find to what I’m looking for, but I’m still unsatisfied. She’s no Pat Benatar.
And don’t come at me talking about Beyonce or Miley Cyrus. I’m not looking for a diva, or a child. Rihanna either; the kind of icon I crave would have eaten Chris Brown for breakfast. Bjork is borderline; she’s half out of this world, although she doesn’t seem to give a shit what anyone things of her, which I appreciate. Modern female pop stars on the whole, though, lack the charisma and charm of Cyndi Lauper; the poise of Stevie Nicks—not to mention the steely, hungry ambition that has made Madonna a force to reckon with for going on thirty years.
So-called ‘girl groups’ are also a whole lot of nothing. You could replace each member of the Pussycat Dolls or Danity Kane with a different person, and I’d bet you 75% of their fans wouldn’t notice right away. Each member of those bands is carefully crafted and coiffed and insultingly counterfeit. At least bands like the Spice Girls knew they were a fluffy, manufactured joke—and they were in on it.
Hugely successful all-female bands didn’t used to be cotton-candy assemblages. The Go-Go’s, the Bangles—these were bands whose members played their own instruments and even wrote some of their own songs. Instead of being cobbled together from soul-shriveling auditions filled with aspiring models and actresses, they sprang organically from hard-working and talented female singers and musicians. Somehow we managed to go from, “Hi, I’m Kathy Valentine, and I’m out of my fucking mind and having the best time ever.” to “Hi, I’m the Blond Pussycat Doll, and these are my tits.” Is the genre de-evolving?!
Maybe it’s the times we live in. Maybe it’s difficult for celebrities of any kind to be reckless and raw and learn lessons the hard way anymore. Maybe by the time you attain a certain level of fame in the music business these days, you’ve already got publicists and stylists and handlers and an image to uphold. Or maybe I’m wrong! Am I forgetting someone? I’m throwing down a gauntlet here, but I’d be ever so pleased to be schooled in the world of female musicians who are actually inspiring to either females or musicians. Please, PLEASE, give me some hope. Hit me with your best shot.
Howard and I wrote about the Baby Einstein recall in this week’s Perpetual Post.
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When did television become ‘educational’? When I was a child in the 80s, it was pretty much understood that TV was a free babysitter. It was not how you taught your kids how to read. It was how you taught them how to stay out of your damn way while you made dinner.
These days, programs like Baby Einstein encourage parents to teach their infants about the world through the magic of passively watching television. After all, is there a better way to learn about shapes and colors than by watching shapes and colors on a TV screen? Why explore the world around you when you can watch a DVD in which someone else shows it to you? The ‘Baby’s First Impressions Head to Toe’ video, found on brainybaby.com, even claims that “your child will enjoy watching other children on screen demonstrate how a hand can do many things, like hold, touch or clap.” Now, why didn’t I have a video to teach me how to do things with my hands when I was a baby? How did I even make it this far in life? (Also, since when can a hand clap by itself? Maybe these DVDs are a little philosophically advanced for the zero to three month age group).
It gets better. There’s another program called “Your Baby Can Read”, which teaches frighteningly tiny infants to memorize flashcards. Flashcards! They’re not just for older students with motor skills anymore! Somehow the idea that you should be forced to memorize a flashcard when your first instinct is still to put it directly in your mouth is unsettling. A video on the website, YourBabyCanRead.com, shows 9 month old Andy raising his arms in the air after being shown a flashcard that says ‘ARMS UP’. This is exactly the sort of young overachiever they look for at Yale. (As long as Andy doesn’t burn himself out by the time he is eighteen months old.)
Baby Einstein videos are now receiving negative publicity because studies have shown that infants who watch television early in life end up with a shorter attention span than those who have limited or no screen time before the age of two. They also have smaller vocabularies and are less verbal — although this fits nicely with the irony that as a baby, Einstein himself was a little slow on the uptake. Perhaps this was intentional on the part of the creators of Baby Einstein.
Across the board, baby DVD websites also tout the idea that watching a video fosters ‘interactions’ between parent and child, and encourages them to spend quality time together. Somehow I doubt this. Let’s face it, television is not ‘interactive’. Watching television together does not encourage socializing and intimacy. If it did, my boyfriend and I would know each other a lot better than we do. Television encourages staring, mouth-breathing, and drooling—all of which babies instinctively know how to do. No $15.99 DVD necessary.
Even though I hate the idea of a baby watching television (after all, she’s got her whole life ahead of her to spend staring a screen, especially if she ends up with a desk job!), if they’re going to have educational DVDs, they may as well encourage our children to develop useful skills. Instead of teaching your baby about shapes and animals, teach them how to play Scrabulous, or help them create a profile on Facebook. You’ll be building skills they’ll be improving upon for their entire lives. They’re not really social skills, but by the time those kids are in grade school, they’ll be the only skills anybody has.
Today I ran 7.5 miles on the treadmill in 70 minutes.
WHAT.
Granted, I was watching VH1’s “Best Songs of the 80s” during that time (and got through approximately songs 45-28, to be exact). So that helped the time go by. But still. That was a lot of miles to run (the most I’ve run ever!) and a lot of minutes to keep running during. Now my legs really hurt. I am worried that I am turning into one of those people who runs a lot and trains to run more and is always saying things like, ‘I am training to run a half marathon’ because I sort of am. Maybe. I might do that.
The dog has a cone on his head right now from a minor surgery he had last week, and he’s bashing it into everything in our apartment multiple times a day, especially my legs. There is nothing quite so irritating as having a cone bashed into your legs every thirty-seven seconds that you are at home. Even though it’s by the dog, so it’s being done with love.
Sad Coneheaded Dog.
Oh, and Happy Halloween everyone! Can you guess who I went as?
It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.
No fair if I already told you. =)
So, we watched Transformers 2: More Big Explodey Robots last night. Seeing as it arrived from Netflix at the same time as The Madness of King George, I wondered aloud whether Netflix had any misgivings that they had sent us the wrong movies.
Brian said, “Maybe they just figure we have children.” Touche.
In any event, I’m pretty sure the running time of Transformers 2 was approximately 398 minutes. As Brian noted, Megan Fox, who was cute in the first Transformers, kind of looked like a weird tranny muppet in this one. And I know it is ridiculous to even point this out, but the dialogue was TERRIBLE. Seriously. I think it would be a huge improvement for the film to be dubbed over thusly:
The spectacle and the sound effects would remain the same (Bang boom explode crash shrieking metal bang boom BOOM BOOM smash scream), since they are really the point. But instead of the dialogue, every time each character opened its mouth, you would hear me say, ‘Meh’. I would say it in slightly different tones and durations for the different characters. But it would be all you’d hear instead of any of the speaking parts.
I would have enjoyed that version of Transformers 2: Tranny Muppet Continues to Date Wussy Emo Boy For No Justifiable Reason, much more!
At least tonight we are going to watch MY movies: The Murder of King George and Labyrinth. YESSS.
It’s a Saturday morning in October. The sky is an amalgam of grey and white, the trees are yellow and red and brown. The wind is blowing and it is raining steadily.
In other words, life is good! I LOVE this weather. I have finally given up pretending that I prefer clear blue skies and puffy white clouds. Give me ominous dark thunderheads and pouring rain any day. I could say that this is due to my inherently grim yet poetical nature, but really it is most likely due to my inherently lazy nature and my love of curling up on the couch with a book.
It is also due to my inherently neurotic nature, meaning: when it is nice out, I feel guilty for staying inside. I should be outside, enjoying the nice weather! It’s October! How many more nice days are we really going to have? (A: In North Carolina, probably a buttload. But anyway. My neurotic inner critic is still stuck on Northeastern seasonal temperatures). Molly! The voice says. Shouldn’t you be enjoying this nice day? Go to the park and play Frisbee or just grab a book and sit under a tree! It doesn’t matter that there are bugs underneath trees and the ground is usually wet or feels like it might be wet, whereas the futon in my livingroom is deliciously warm and next to a table where I can rest a steaming mug of tea with Bailey’s in it. My inner critic endlessly urges me outside to play, when the weather is nice. When the weather is bad, it disappears, and I am free, on a lovely cold and wet Saturday like today (and every one knows Saturday is the Best Day), to curl up on the couch and listen to “Wait Wait—Don’t Tell Me” on NPR and make and eat blueberry muffins and surf the internet for hours.
Not to mention that there is something so cozy and comforting about a sky that is blanketed with clouds. It feels like the world has pulled the covers up over its head and refuses to acknowledge the vast blue void of the sky. I like this kind of denial. I can relate.
So there you have it. Give me rain any day.
I went through an impromptu spring cleaning a few weekends ago, and fell into that same quandary I always do with my books.
What do you do with your books after you read them? And I’m not talking about the cream of the crop favorite books that you absolutely have to own or else. I’m talking about books like ‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow”, by Peter Hoeg.
I read that book a few years ago, and I enjoyed it; it was a good read and memorable, even though it fell into the category of ‘books that are murder mysteries that I never really get a handle on what is happening in them even though I enjoy them’. So, there was that. Would I read it again? Probably not. Would I lend it to someone and say, ‘You have to read this’ ? Again, probably not. But still! It was a good book! Maybe someday I’ll see the movie and it will make me want to read the book again! Who knows?
In this fashion, ‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow’ has followed me to three different apartments in two different states. Every time I try to clear through my bookshelves and get rid of some books, I pick it up, the above monologue goes through my head, and I end up keeping it. This is the case for many other books I own. The problem might be that I can’t decide what kind of book owner I want to be. There are two warring sides to me on this issue: On the one hand, I yearn to be Spartan and keep only what I need. I want uncluttered spaces and minimalism. On the other hand, it’s kind of nice to have a big ol’ bookshelf full of books in your house. Books are important to me, and I like the idea of having a respectable collection of them. Maybe I won’t need to re-read ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer a third time, but it’s nice to know that it’s there if I want to.
I have books my parents gave me, books that were gifts from dear friends, books I bought for college courses that I loved and courses that I hated. Even if I never read them again, they remind me of people and places and times in my life. It’s hard to get rid of them.
Also, I’ve realized that weighing the possibility that I will read a certain book again, leads me down a morbid path. How much time do I really have left in my life? Enough to read ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ yet again? It’s one of my favorite books, but there are so many OTHER great books I have yet to read! Do I dare take the time to read that one over again? But if I don’t, how sad is it to think that I’ll never read it again? See, there’s no reason to think like that. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.
So at this point, even though it makes moving even less fun (although moving is terrible no matter what) I think I’ll stick to keeping my books, if that’s what my inner monologue encourages. There’s something very comforting about searching through a big friendly shelf of familiar books.
I had a learning experience a few weeks back. I managed to get invited to a dinner party at a new friend’s house. There were several girls there whom I have just begun hanging out with, and I was very excited to be meeting new people. While I had plenty of opportunities to socialize in Boston, my dance card has not been particularly full since moving to Raleigh.
I was invited to bring Charlie to this dinner party, which was also exciting, because he is the best dog ever. I met these girls at a dog park, so they’re all dog people, and dogs are fun to have around. Unfortunately, nobody else had brought their dog, to this dinner party; they’d all brought their husbands. So I was the weirdo who brought her dog. Also, the one resident dog of the house was a cute scrappy puppy that delighted in chasing Charlie around endlessly. Charlie is 7 years old, and as far as jumpy little puppies are concerned, he’s pretty much over them. Also he’s a big pansy. So I guess you could say he was a little stressed out when we arrived.
In any event, there I was, leaning against the counter in the kitchen enjoying a rustic Fall beer, buzzed from socializing and spinach dip, and telling my hosts how Charlie was pretty much the best dog ever and has never done anything wrong in his life, and I happen to look down, and Charlie is at my feet, balefully pooping on the kitchen floor.
It was one of those moments where you suddenly wonder if you are dreaming, or if what is happening before your eyes is real. Charlie really has never done anything like that before, but clearly the combination of new setting and frisky puppy had set him off. Plus, I guess he had to go.
I immediately had this lightning flash of what it must feel like to be a parent sometimes. Here is this tiny creature who is your ward. You love them to bits; you are responsible for keeping them out of trouble. Like it or not, their behavior is a reflection of you, and although they are close to you, they are not you, they are their own separate individual. This means that they are going to go off and do what they want a lot of the time, leaving you powerless to stop them and obligated to clean up the destruction (and poop) they leave in their wake. Yow.
In any event, it was a good thing I was in house full of dog people. Charlie’s kitchen shenanigans unleashed a flood of ‘oh don’t worry about it, one time MY dog pooped at this awkward time or in this horrible place’ stories, which were comforting, although my face remained red for awhile.
I remain on the fence about having children. Right now a dog is the perfect amount of love, trouble and energy for me. Plus I can curse in front of him.
Pants, you’ve been great. But I just feel like I am moving in a different directly lately. Actually, several different directions. I…I’ve outgrown you, pants. It hurts me to say this. But not as much as it hurts me to zip you. I’ve changed, pants. And the problem is, you haven’t.
Stumble It!
