Preggo-RAMA

“Drama. Drama for your mama. Drama for your pregnant teen, soon to be a mama, daughter of opponent to Osama, o-rama with a llama.”

The above quote was pulled from a recent New York Times article surrounding the underage-pussy debacle of 2008. Ahem. Just kidding. But seriously, folks, can SOMEONE ask a candidate about their policies, one of these times? That is instead of, say, about how old their mother was when she gave birth to them or what types of various maladies, retardations and deaths their children have gone through? I guess it is kind of pointless to ask a politician about their policies, because all they’re going to do is lie about that shit anyway. Or something. But I don’t think it is as advanced as all that… like some kind of ellaborate attempt to predict a candidate’s abilities based on an entirely unproven equation between natural likeability plus charisma, multiplied by personal suffering, minus any history of cocaine use, all over pi. I think that Americans just like their stories, and what better way to add drama to the story than to have our nation’s future leader hang in the balance?

But back to Sara What’s-Her-Face (what’s the name? O’Tool? Sarah Toolerton? Sarah McStepford-Robot Flannagan McGee?) and her poor knocked-up daughter. This whole thing is such a mess it makes me want to throw stuffed animals soaked with menstrual blood at John McCain and all his king’s horses and men. Where to begin? First of all, does McCain think women are RETARDED? Homeboy sure ain’t the most pro-female force on the block. But apparently he’s changed his tune. He was recently quoted as saying that Hilary Clinton has now proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a woman could lead in the White House. Reeeeeeally? And here I am, thinking that they don’t know how to command respect, and will send the country to war when it’s, you know, that time of the month, wink wink.

So now, War-Hero McGillicutty has got himself a female running mate just to prove to all of us that Right-Wing propaganda is for everyone, not just the white men who invented it. Well whoop de shit. ALSO: How long has Sarah Palin even been in politics? It seems to me that inexperience only makes you unqualified for office if you are a man, but if you are a woman then hooray for you ’cause it mean your titties don’t sag quite so bad just yet.

Now maybe it is unfair and dehumanizing to call Cindy McCain a “trophy wife” just because John-o was almost of legal voting age when she was born. (Actually, that all was so long ago I think the voting age might have been different, and some kind of rules about being a landowner? Get it? McCain is OLD.) Indeed, the idea of a “Trophy Wife” is up there with “slut” and “bitch” and “man-hater” in terms of language used to control women’s actions through fear. No one wants to be called these things, so they’ll keep their legs closed or refuse to defend their needs, rather than acting with the kind of autonomy freely awarded to McCain and his little cohorts. (Who is doing the awarding, you ask? Themselves. Doy.)

BUT…speaking of sluts. 17-year-old unmarried daughters of governors are not supposed to run around getting pregnant. It’s such bad form, wouldn’t you say? And it is also bad form to accept a nomination when you know that is what your daughter is going through, am I right?

Sorry, that last one was a trick question. The real answer is, who cares? Like, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, brass tacks and friggin the bottom of the barrel, who honestly gives a shit? Prego Tina here is not our concern. I am a little more worried that Mama Palin (sorry, now it is Grandma Palin) can’t seem to be convinced that global warming is, wait for it, caused by humans. What the fuck. Even McCain, who is likely to keel over and die before his old farty white ass has to endure the risk of any more climate-change-related sunburn, admits that we have to do something about this. What a silly ninny this woman is that she cannot recognize the obvious.

But in the meantime, somebody’s freaked-out teenage daughter has fallen into the spotlight and become the trainwreck that everyone can’t seem to tear their eyes away from. But guess what? An unplanned pregnancy is scary enough at any age, even worse as a teenager, even worse if your mother is some pro-life psychopath who has volunteered to the press that she would want you to have the baby if you were raped, and the only permissable circumstances for abortion are if your life were at stake.

Notwithstanding the pointlessness of this kind of hypothetical debate, what kind of fucked-up question is that? “What if your daughter were raped?” You people, you press people with your little games, you’re sick, is what you are! Guess what: Sarah Palin’s daughter’s body belongs to one person, and it ain’t Sarah goddamn Palin. If you are old enough to become pregnant, you are old enough to decide what to do about it. Cruel but true. This cultural malaise, in which we don’t consider girls to become women until they are, what, 25? Is a load of shit. There is such a severe disconnect between the reality that bleeding once a month means your body can do other things, too. Like make another human. Your sex life doesn’t start when you are married, it starts when you are born. Babies masturbate, 10-year-olds fantasize, teens have sex. It happens. Not all teens have sex, and that’s fine. But some of them do, and it is not all bad. Give them information, for pete’s sake, not condemnation! They need to know what’s up. I bet if New Mama Palin had been told about the CondomNation down in the pharmacy section at Longs (as opposed to the, you know, Condemnation of the Lord) then this whole thing would have been avoided in the first place. But as it is, this great male tradition has fallen to the old stand-by of sacrificing women’s bodies on a pike, out there in front of everyone, for all to see. There is more than one way to lose your innocence, and getting smeared all over the front page of you-name-it paper seems a pretty surefire way to do it.

Shhhhhhhhhh…

I have returned to the civilized world: the no farm-animals, yes shower every day, no naked skinny-dipping* in the moonlight world. But while I was away, I abused my voice and did not give it a chance to heal. (Talking and yelling and singing, oh my.) I consulted Dr. Wikipedia and he thinks I may have vocal nodes. So then I got a second opinion from my dear friend Google, and my decision is this: total voice rest for three weeks.

Not using your voice is a more difficult and complicated thing than you may realize. Some of the more obvious ways to not use the ol’ vox box include:

-not talking. doy.

-not singing. again, doy.

-not yelling. see above.

BUT. There are a few vocal traps, lying in wait to ensnare me and compromise my healing process. These include:

-Not clearing my throat. That may seem easy enough to avoid if I am never actually talking, but when you got that tickle goin’…oh man. It feels like the world is going to end without a little “Ahem.”

-Not talking when I am alone (por ejemplo, in the car.). Again, maybe it seems obvious but some part of my brain has a hard time conceptualizing that no talking also means “no cursing at the turkey in the beamer who just cut me off.”

-Not talking after a long period of silence. When I wake up, I kind of forget that I am being silent only partly because I am feeling surly but mostly because I won’t be talking for the rest of the day, either. Also, I slipped after yoga class and muttered a quick “namaste” before I realized my error. (I realize I am a douchebag. Mainly because I know how to spell “namaste.”)

But what about the greater lessons, you ask? What about the wisdom of learning to truly listen, and all that kind of hogwash? Well, you are partly right. I think that a chronic blabbermouth like me has a lot to learn from not being able to blurt out every little thing that comes to my head. I have found that when you are silent, you have to filter everything so much more because it is just too much of a pain in the ass to try to make yourself understood. If it is important, then you will make it clear somehow, writing it down or whatnot. But the little side comments, meant only to criticize a situation or to try to sound intelligent…those ones fall by the wayside.

I have also found, as a self-confessed know-it-all, that other people know things too. Sometimes everyone is sitting around trying to remember how the song went or what movie that guy was also in where he wore the little hat, or what Carla said, and did she mean that thing about the pineapple? Well I have an uncanny (and potentially irritating) memory, so I pretty much know the answer. BUt if I can’t talk, and the pad of paper is too far away, then that leaves just enough time for someone else to have a go at it, too. And probably be wrong.

It’s also kind of about deprivation, and self-discipline. I love to talk and sing and swear and hum. But I can’t do any of that right now. Self-discipline is one of those things that is always within your grasp, but unless you have a pretty compelling reason to grasp it, you’re really not going to bother. Right? Because you’re human. And humans like to feed our own hungers, but we don’t generally relish the experience of resisting our impulses just for the sake of resisting. Look at dieting, look at a few religions sometime. Look at “should.” Should isn’t that powerful a motivator, in the long run. Maybe part of maturity is letting “should” be a greater deciding factor than “could.” Maybe not. “Should” is kind of a threat, actually. If I don’t do what I should, then something bad will happen. Why didn’t you wear your seatbelt? You should have. Now look at yourself, you’re dead. Tsk tsk.

But really, folks, the silence thing is just a lens through which I can more clearly see some things I already knew. I already knew that one of my coping mechanisms in a stressful situation is to try to control it. But there is only so much control you can exert over a group of hyperactive 14-year-old girls too high on birthday cake and their own hormones to be even within a mile of reason…sorry that made no sense. The point is, my little sister had a birthday party tonight, and it was still stressful for me (oh my god. these little squacks are the living definition of global warming. If you have to ask what that means, you’ll never know.) But, to a certain extent, I just had to let go. I couldn’t yell at them to shut the hell up, I couldn’t try to force them to be polite to my mother. Losing battles on all fronts.

I am not sure if the no-voice thing is really that revealing or enlightening. Probably not, actually. But anyway, I am always excited to discover a new way to experience the world, and not talking is a pretty simple way to do that. Kind of makes me appreciate what I do have. And you can rest assured that once I get the ol’ pipes back in line, you’ll hear plenty from me.

*yes I know that’s redundant. shut up.

Goodnight moon

It was the last late-night drive home from Oakland. I did not have bridge toll because I am the type of procrastinator who can spend 2 months commuting from Marin to (pick a city that needs bridge toll to get there from here) without ever buying a Fastrak. It’s ok.

I sniffed out a good place to exit the freeway and find an ATM so I could get some cash. The U and the O were missing from the neon sign shouting “Liquor” underneath a canopy of some kind of Point Richmond greenery. My edges were feeling a bit fuzzy. I floated through the two aisles of packaged foods and alcohol, unnerved by some combination of the ending of my play, the ending of the day, and an unsettling cell phone conversation. One $2.00 ATM fee and a bag of Salt-and-Pepper chips later, I was back on the road, trailing some hopelessly lost old dude in a white coupe who had pulled over to ask for directions. Lucky for  him, this li’l midnight Subaru cowgirl was on her way to Marin, too. (He told me I was at risk for getting a merit badge in return for the kindness of letting him follow me, so watch out.) I turned the music up full blast and let Senor Iron and Wine gently rocka-my-soul all the way over the Richmond-San Rafael bridge and on home again.

There is something about saying goodbye at the end of the show. It is usually so disjointed, so anticlimactic. You are surrounded by the guts of the play you just breathed life into, the cables and wires and shirts and chairs and lights that somehow (we hope) had piled themselves all into a big twisted but organized mess of something that was Your Art.  Everyone seems so keen to Get The Fuck Outta Here, to pay tribute to the infamous gods of Go Home, for I must work in the morning, spoon with my already-sleeping boyfriend, make the long drive back tonight. Eat Salt-and-Pepper chips. (Because Salt-and Vinegar was just a little too intense for tonight and Mesquite BBQ seems like a daytime flavor.)

I cherish the goodbyes, though. There are so many of them in this life, and that pang of endings will die sad and alone behind your eyes if you don’t take an extra second to hug and kiss this moment goodbye. To try to imagine when we will see each other next. It is a big world out here, it isn’t college, which is one of the reasons this play was so fucking hard to pull off. And it is a lonely world too, because we will split off in our own directions and there is no all-governing University matrix to gently encase us and promise us a chance encounter. 

Part of the sadness I feel is because I will leave in 3 days to go off to my next adventure, and I will be isolated out there for a good 7 weeks, no email or whatnot.  And it has taken me until now to feel like I wasn’t just spinning my wheels here, not just biding my time and living rent-free with the parentals, but just Living, plain old regular.  I have people here who will miss me when I am gone, people whose walls I have just begun to crumble, and who have just started to be able to see me on the other side.  I kind of feel like this appreciation is impossible without leaving, but I don’t want to make this a habit.  People become addicted to this bittersweet feeling I have, the one right before you go, when nothing shitty seems important and all the good stuff rushes up and hugs you sweetly around the throat. 

I can’t leave just so I can enjoy goodbye, but I also can’t stay just because this make me sad.  When the next chapter wants a chance to begin, you just have let it.  New chapters only show up at the end of old ones, and if the old one didn’t seem quite finished yet, so be it.  God, it seems, is a modern novelist, somewhat unconcerned with continuity and more concerned with making this shit interesting. 

Beginnings hold such promise. Endings just hold you. There isn’t really a way to separate the two but sometimes we try anyway. Timing can play funny games with us, but I am past the point of resisting this.  I am grateful to Have Had, and I guess I am just going to have to put a little trust in the next thing, whatever that is. 

As I coasted over the last hill coming home, I saw a perfect storybook crescent moon, brighter than decency and gorgeous as can be.  The moon is so patient with us, never preaching, always just showing us by example that whatever it was (good or bad, half or whole or none at all) will come around again. 

Green Monster and all

This was a slow San Francisco morning; the kind of morning when 2PM seems like an absurdly early end to the farmer’s market, because it’s already 1PM and I just got out of the shower and by the time we get down to the ferry building they”ll be packing up anyway and all the good stuff will be gone. So never mind. But it was a very productive morning for Conversation, which is a fine activity when the sky is grey (just ask the Irish.) And we got to talking about envy, in one of its most insidious forms. 

 

Now I know all about envy, and I know it can surface in different ways. There is Apple Juice Envy, which is envy of the enjoyment of a thing but not the thing itself. (The origins of this term date back to daycare, when all the kids were served apple juice, and I was thirsty as hell, but I hated apple juice. I envied the enjoyment of the apple juice but I didn’t actually want any.)

 

There is Personality Envy, in which you look at someone else’s “determination” or “discipline” or “ability to have casual sex without feeling dirty, used, or regretful.”  Some of this stuff is just a matter of choices one makes, and perhaps one should quit one’s bitching and go after what one wants, rather than just wishing for some magical God-given personality trait. But some of this stuff is just in us, and it will never change, and you can alter your behavior all you want but you will never be able to fundamentally alter your emotional response to a given set of circumstances. 

 

There is Career/Life Path Envy. This one is becoming increasingly more popular in the grown-up world, and it looks like it is here to stay. How much does your job pay? Where is your apartment and how awesome is it on the inside? Pretty soon it is going to be…married? How many kids? How well do they do in school? Square footage of the house you just bought? Blah blah blah. 

 

An obvious place for envy to surface is Relationships, not just the SExy kind but the friendy ones too. Are all your best stories about her? And you talk about her all the time and hang up on me in the middle of our conversation when she calls? 

 

One hopes that in a romantic relationship, the level of trust will keep growing over time, so that the tendency towards feeling jealous will just go away. But both parties have to agree to this. You have to agree to look at yourself and really figure out what is making you feel fearful or threatened, but the person you are with also has to earn your trust, both by being fully present with you while you are together, and not compromising that trust when you are apart. 

 

BUT. There is another kind of envy that can be a little harder to shake, and that is Envy of the Past. Someone once told me that when you are starting something new with someone, mentioning an ex is just a bad idea because it plants a tree of questions in the other person’s mind. So true, right? Because we all now that the people we meet have stories and scars, because we have stories and scars. And these are good, because to be with someone whose life experience is much more limited than one’s own is not really a desirable prospect (for a number of reasons.)

 

So ok, we understand that they have stories, and that those stories are part of who they are, and we have come to love who they are, and so we love those stories too, in a way. But it is still pretty painful to admit that someone came before. It is this inexplicble envy of the past, that no matter what we do from today forward, no matter how many bullshit in-jokes and intimate moments and loud screaming dirty orgasms we share with this person, we will never have had what they had with..um. The Predecessor. Yes. 

 

But there is nothing you can do. You can’t go back in time and meet the person and intervene in the Scheme of the Universe and prevent them having what they had. Right? (Everybody remember that Simpson’s episode when they time-travel? And Homer steps on a prehistoric butterfly and changes the course of history?) And even if you could, it wouldn’t matter because the person they have become, this real-life person that you now know and love, is different from who they were before. Moot. Point. 

BUt envy is a destructive thing. It is cousins with Anger, for one thing, but it is so consuming! Or it can be. (If we don’t stop now, we will become those parents sitting at the edge of the sandbox, comparing the sifting skills of our respective two-year-olds. How sad. Life is too short.)

 

So, aside from just doing our best to figure out what we want, and then just doing our damndest to make that happen, there is something to remember, and watch out cause if you’re cynical this is going to read as cheesy: No one else is you. That is not to say that no one else is sexier than you, or richer, or smarter or stronger or more talented or any of that. Maybe they are. But no one else is you. And no matter what the ex did or said or was (gave great head, that thing about parents and pets that is inarguably true, taller than you), the ex was not, and will never be, you. Even if the person you are with ends up making some bullshit unadvised decision to dump you, let’s say, or just not appreciate you, it kinda doesn’t matter because you are a unique fucking human being and no one else could possibly be you better than you could. 

 

So, in the meantime, figure out who the hell that “you” person is and what he or she wants, and then start taking action to get that. Here’s hoping that gives the ol’ green-eyed monster a swift kick in the pants, cause lord knows we don’t need that noise around here. 

 

 

The Laws of Attraction

Alright, people. This one is going to get a bit autobiographical, but hang in there. I am going to make it worth your while.

Back when I was but a young, pimply, angst-filled youth of about fifteen, I felt like breaking the rules was pretty much the way to go. Almost any rule, for almost any reason. One of the rules to which I responded with particular distaste was the rules of dating. Primp yourself to death and be naturally endowed with the kinds of hormones than make your tits big (not the kinds that compromise your skin tone, let’s say…or make you burst out in tears during math class.) Then, let the whole affair unfold bit by bit, as he notices you, he decides to make a move, you flirt a little bit but not too much, and then eventually, you get the privilege of allowing him to pressure you into sex, preferably in the back of a car. (Your mother’s or his, doesn’t matter.)

I thought to myself, Hey! What a waste of time and energy! Life’s too short! So I developed a crush on a boy whose identity shall be protected (except to say that his name was Ray Martinez) and promptly told him, outright, that i liked him, no bullshit. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey, ahh, Ray…could I talk to you for a minute?

Ray: (takes a swig from his bottle of Mountain Dew) uh, sure..

Me: I just wanted to let you know that I think you’re pretty cool, and anyway I am attracted to you and..yeah, I guess that’s it.

Ray: uh.

Me: Ok, well, seeya later!

Ray: (silence.)

Now, I have no desire to blame Ray for the fact that a romance did not blossom from that exchange. I have since gone to the opposite extreme in my thinking, telling my (equally vocal, though perhaps not as forward) friends, ” The most attractive thing you can show a man is your back, as you walk away. Nothing is a more powerful aphrodisiac than rejection. Treat ‘em like shit. They LOVE it.” This method, let’s call it the “Mean” Method (as opposed to the above “Open Method”) developed from the repeated experience that the ones I like never like me, and vice versa. I realized: it is not because I am only worthy of people to whom I am not attracted, but because everyone (not just men, now) is wired to want what they can’t have. This is one of the most trusted pop-psychology principles, but it is also simple economics.

So where does this leave us? Do we merely settle for those we don’t really like, because we know they like us? OR…Do We Play Games.

You may have guessed from my punctuation that I am leaning towards the second one. But Playing Games is NOT the same as “mind-fucking.” Mind-fucking is sadistically toying with someone because of the pleasure you gain from watching them writhe in desire. Games, on the other hand, are actually kind of fun. Games allow you to gain a better understanding of who the person is, and they allow you to develop a rapport, maybe even…a relationship? Games are a gentle way to build something, and to give it the time and space it needs to grow on its own. I would be the first to admit that it is a bit safer than just sticking your neck out there, or your cock out there or whatever but maybe that’s ok. Cause anyway, nothing worth having comes too easily (or quickly. heh. double-entendre that one all you want, baby.)

Friend-o-tainment

So when did friendships become an internet roleplaying game? It seems to me that social networking is not just another mode of communicating with people you know, or people who know the people you know, or people you would like to know. It is an outlet for boredom, and a weird points-system that is way freaking out of control.

Now, it is a tough call about all this, because there is no official rule-book and the rules keep changing. Remember when people used to write on their own facebook walls? Not anymore, Bucko, that would make you a type-1 LOSER and egomaniac, and plus it means you (sigh) kind of don’t know how it works.

What about friend numbers? This is also tricky, because if you have millions and millions of so-called “friends” on there, but most of the pictures on there are of you taking pictures of yourself on your macbook wearing lipgloss and trying to look cool, then it is just painful and you are trying too hard. On the other hand, if you have very few friends and very few pictures of yourself, but the ones on there are high quality good-time/drunken or artsy pictures (preferrably posted by someone else) then that means you are too cool to spend most of your time trying to use the internet to prove how cool you are. (This type of profile is becoming increasingly rare. Because even if you never post a picture of yourself–you dinosaur, get with the times–then everyone else still will, trust me.)

And Facebook is a really cool way to stay in touch with people you meet when you travel, or friends who you rarely get to see. But often this “keeping in touch” only surfaces in extremely shallow ways, like commenting on a PARTICULARLY hot picture, or writing “happy birthday” on somebody’s wall when the internet tells you it’s their birthday. (And, also, falling out of touch is kind of ok. Let’s leave something up to mystery, something up to chance sometime…can we? no?)

Which brings me to the phenomenon of The Wall. Remember when you would only write something on someone’s wall if you really didn’t mind if everyone else read it? Like, maybe a stupid in-joke, or the occasional gut-churning “i wuv you” from one end of the siamese-couple to the other. Writing on the wall was the equivalent of talking loudly, perhaps rudely, in a crowded room.

But now, everyone writes EVERYTHING on the wall. (for example: What time are we meeting? Friday? 3pm? At Dusty’s Pleasure Warehouse? Seeya then! ) Everything goes on the wall, because otherwise nobody will know how many people care to contact you. TRagic. Now, it seems, writnig a private message is like whispering conspiratorily to someone after pulling them aside…whatever is being said not is REALLY very private, not for anyone else to know.

I realize it is a bit hypocritical for me to use the internet to criticize…the internet. (Kinda like when they forst invented writing, and all these philosophers started writing essays about why writing was so bad.) I am not AGIN it, you understand. I do it too. But it scares me the extent to which these internet outlets are having more and more of an influence on the activities to which they are ostensibly separate. Some vapid tart in this magazine I was wasting my time reading said something about how if you are not on the internet, you do not exist. Vapid tartliness aside, the truth of that statement freaks me out.

If a tree falls in the forest with no one to digitally recapture it and put it on the internet, does it make a sound?

UC Santa-francisco

Did you know that the neighborhoods of San Francisco are based off the residential colleges at UCSC? Well they are. Read on and prepare to BE AMAZED.

Stevenson=The Richmond
Cowell=The Presidio
Kresge=The Haight
Porter=The Mission
Merill=Potrero/Potrero Hill
College 8=The Marina
College 9/10=The Financial District
Crown=meh
Oakes=Oakes

I have already experienced some ish with this flawless analogy. I think that anyone who questions this brilliance has been swilling down the hater-ade, and should please stop. Thank you.

It’s ok if she’s sexy

Well it was a long day of sanding things and painting them and sanding them again…or something. I took a well-earned shower and ate some well-earned raisinets. (Delicious.) And today, in the throes of physical labor, I may have been listening to “107.7 THE BONE.” Ok, yeah, yes i was. Someone else chose it, of course, but I let that happen. I agreed to it. We all have some hand in our destiny, am I right?

Now it really wasn’t all that bad…they played tons of Creedence Clearwater Revival, which is really conducive to sloppin it on there and gettin a blister. They even had this thing called “drive-by stand-up” where they would play these snippets of stand-up shows, and some it was kinda good. I am all for exlporing, or re-discovering, the possibilities radion has to offer, and I think it is a bold and original move. BUT.

Then, this song came on, by a band called “Buck Cherry.” Now, that is a band name that already makes me feel just a teeeny bit violated (not that I am one to run around finding band names that make me feel violated) but then this song came on, and the actual lyrics to the chorus go like this:

“You’re a crazy bitch/
but you fuck so good, I’m on top of it.”

Oh. Kay. Now, I am not offended because this chorus is dehumanizing and misogynist and in poor taste, not to mention bloody unoriginal. I am offended because “bitch” DOES NOT rhyme with “it.”

Just kidding, I AM offended because it is misogynist! Although, “offended” is kind of the wrong word here. I think being offended takes a little more energy than I am willing to dedicate to a band called Buck Cherry, whose band-naming skills and rhyming skills and music playing skills are sub-par in the first place.

But, you guys, I mean COME ON. It’s just lazy. Please PLEASE can we do something new? Like, let’s think of a more ORIGINAL way to demean the people we desire.

A few suggestions:
1) Some new words. “Bitch” is SOOOOO done. How about cunt-horse? Meat-pie? Poo-nah-nee BONANZA? Hmmm? Just a few thoughts to get the ball rollin for ya there…

2) Some better ways to describe the act itself. Again, “fuck” is so COLLEGE, so frat-boy, so spectacularly undescriptive. I would suggest “riding the banana train to kingdom Cum” or “Taking a sweet swoop down the ol’ Vag-tastic Slip’n’slide.” Again, just brainstorming here.

3) Write a song that is about something besides shock-value and selling records, at the expense of an entire half of the population, which is then reduced to a mere hole, just there for gratification, and, hey, it’s ok if you are WHATEVER you are, as long as it enhances my sexual experience.

Oops, sorry lads, that last one was kinda serious. I may sound like a bit of a crazy bitch. But no worries, everyone, I know how to fuck real good.

Chorus Line

So last night I went to see my little sister’s highschool musical, A Chorus Line. For those of you who may not know, this is the musical that takes place in the casting…of a musical. Wow. Way to comment on the medium, guys. I kind of think that maybe it was an exciting idea at the time, but…

Ok, first of all, the show is (sort of) calling into question the de-humanizing reality of auditions, like we all walk in there and dance our little dance and show them who we think they want us to be, and either they like it or they don’t, and we are either chosen or we are not. Ok, so far so good. But in this show, the director wants to see “the real you…who you REALLY are…” and so we get all these soul-searching, deep monologues and songs about Life and Performance. But then, at the end of the show, the director still makes his selection, and 8 people get cut (right in front of everyone) anyway. Now. This whole concept just pisses me off. I mean, it’s one thing to be rejected because you botched a dance step or they don’t think you are right for the part or whatever. But to show who you REALLY are and then have that person be rejected? How fucked up is that?

Because here’s the thing: I have been on both sides of that director’s table during auditions. I knew how it felt to walk into a cold room, with tiny judging faces looking at you, trying not to get too distracted by what you think they are thinking, and then doing a monologue-trying to “act,” and then leaving, having no idea whay they want or what they saw, then looking at a paper list of dreams being either broken or made true. Or something. (Sidenote: monologues are ridiculous. Acting happens between people, in a context. Doing a monologue in an audition is like trying to clap with one hand, in outer space.)

And, I have sat as a director, watching as one by one my peers became weakened by their desire to join in the club I was the self-named president of, and feeling uncomfortable with that power imbalance (but obviously I still agreed to it, so I couldn’t have been that uncomfortable with it. Power structures exist whether we like them or not…right?) I hated that they walked in there and had to perform for me like little wind-up toys, and then be manipulated into doing embarassing things (in the name of gauging their “directability”) alone in front of a group of people. (I was with some other directors. I wasn’t the one telling people to roll around on the ground or pretend a cardboard column was a beautiful woman, but someone was, and people did.)

But I don’t really have a solution. First of all, auditions are such an institutionalized form of a selection for this form, and there is a reason for this: they do serve a purpose. they are useful in a way. You do get a taste of the actor’s abilities, you know some little sliver of who they are and what they do, and you can cast or filter them accordingly. I am not saying I know a better way, I am just asking about this one.

Actually another way to cast is called “favoritism.” That one is basically you can cast your friends and people you know.  You may even choose a show with someone in mind. Of course this happens all the time, even if ostensibly you are “holding auditions.” I would be the first person to decry this favoritism if it had never served me. But of course it has. I have gotten roles because I knew someone or they had seen me or whatnot. And that is actually not necessarily bad, really. Developing working relationships is useful, for one thing.

My sister had a negative experience with this show because she wasn’t part of the main ”line.” She was pissed off to have to do a smattering of shitty background scenes, plus the opening and closing part and then that was it. She is an amazing singer but she doesn’t have dance training so, she says, that’s why she wasn’t on the line. The way they do things at her school is that everyone who auditions gets a part. So then in that case the audition process is intended to be softened, and less scary and dehumanizing. But because of the nature of this particular show, the result ended up being worse than if they had just cut people in the first place. She spent weeks working on something she was barely in. Now, of course there was the politics about who got what role and so and so has been dancing since she was in utero but she cant sing worth a damn or whatever. She was mad because she thought she could have done a better job, which sucs of course.

But I guess my overall feeling is this: auditions are brutal. And they are imperfect. But that is how it is. To try to make it into something else by either using people’s real personalities to measure their value (as in the show) or to just include them for the sake of including them, is not fixing anything essential about the problem. Don’t try to fix just one little easy part of a broken whole, because you can easily make it worse. Plus it is a cop out. (kind of like the end of this post..ehm…)

Women and Comedy

So I was enjoying my current unemployed status (read: i am lame) and i went to the ol’ public library to do some very important cultural research on, you know, THIS CULTURAL MOMENT. as i thumbed through the pages of Vanity Fair (shut up.) i stumbled upon an article called “Hey, women ARE actually funny! after all! and they are pretty!” (note: not really the title of the article.)

The article was all about how women have historically not been thought of as funny, but hello! Now they are! And we got Tina Fey and Sara Silverman and Amy Poehler and hoo-boy, they are so funny and not only that but they are hot! I would totally do them! drunk. or something. And while it is nice to have the rising tide of female comics acknowledged and discussed, I would also like to point something out, just real quick, before we get ahead of ourselves: women make each other laugh. hello. women know how to be funny to each OTHER, we have just never (until recently) been acknowledged in this capacity on the mainstream stage.

Now I know nobody likes a Pouting Pamela, or a Feminist Fiona, or least of all a Screaming Shirley…or whatever. But can it possibly be a coincidence that this article, which is (on some level, at least) intended to applaud the success of female comics, also focuses on the beauty of the women it describes? There is  this “new” female comic, one who is not “confined” to tampon and high-heel jokes, one whose material has more wide-reaching appeal, and one whose face could also be used to sell..um. i was going to say dishwashing gloves. but how about herself? sell herself? because apparently, in the comedy world, cuteness  and hotness are seen (by the sexually-frustrated males in charge of the whole affair) as a detriment. Ginger, you gotta do everything fred astaire does, backwards and in silicone. i mean heels.

So, because cute women are harassed in comedy clubs, and any success they gain is attributed to who they fucked to get there (as opposed to…whatever, i dunno…personal merit?) now we are all supposed to throw a fuckin parade that they are meeting with success. or.

or? this is just another avenue in which the “good looks” monster has descended, casting its youth-worshipping, binge-and-purge, plastic or plastic rules about who gets the spotlight where interesting-looking people once dared to tread.

this is turning into a rant.

I am not saying that pretty women are not funny. jesus. who cares. one of the cool things about comedy is that it doesnt matter what the fuck you look like as long as you can make people laugh. that is supposed to be inclusive, and hey, inclusive includes pretty. i am just not ready to throw a party just because women comics are “allowed” to be pretty. Oh thank you, thank you, thank you kind media! i now have the freedom to spend a large chunk of my income on ways to enhance my appearance! i was so afraid before, i was wasting away in my roseanne flannel shirts and my ellen dykey haircut! now i am free to be cute! once was lost but now am found!

i was pretty stoked that the article recognized that women have been panned as unfunny in the past. i guess jerry lewis or some other famous important old dude is quoted as saying he thought women sucked at comedy, and years later larry king asked him about it and he was like “oh, yeah, i said that…yeah…” some other person said women do not want to take the risk of looking ugly, which narrows down a whole shit-ton of comedic material (the main thing thats left, i think, is “pretty girl with a pottymouth.” sara silverman, anyone?) Of course there is some truth to this, but here’s the thing: if you spend your whole life getting the message that your inherent human value stems from your attractiveness, are you really going to throw that all away for a joke? (oh what a pretty baby girl! oh what a big strong boy! what lovely handwriting, molly! good idea, jake!)

I am just not really ready to blame women for wanting to look hot, even if that means that their mainstream perception as “funny” has to suffer. and if you are ready to criticize women for spending excessive amounts of money and time on their appearance, you better also be ready to shut the hell up when you see a woman with muffin tops, or a unibrow, or any of these other buzzwords everyone likes to toss around to break people’s bones.

oh yeah, also…regarding tampon humor or whatnot. here’s the thing: first of all, of course it is silly for women to have to talk only about *women things* when they get on stage, same way Black comics should not have to just talk about “Black People Things” or Asian people About “Asian Things” and so and so and so on. But part of what makes comedy good is if it is honest, and part of honesty is about taking somewhing real from one’s own experience. what makes you different? what makes you tick? what did they tease you for in school? make a joke about that, it will be HILARIOUS. Women should not be forced to use “lady jokes” or something, but it is bullshit to think that they should shy away from them for fear of alienating a male and male-dominated audience. You know what alienates me? Hamlet! Because that shit is about male psycho-sexual anxieties, oedipus complex and fuckin castration fears and the lot. but i read that shit. and i ignored the part of me that said that what I was reading had NOTHING to do with me, and you know what? that part was wrong. it did have something to do with me…just not everything. but since when is the pleasure of the spectator entirely reliant on identification? how lame. there is something i can gain by reading Hamlet (or, by playing Hamlet, cause I did. ha.) but there is also something to be gained by some dude sitting through a few jokes about me, a heterosexual woman, having sex with a man. deal with it, bro. it’s good for you.