How humiliating.

Why does Vogue have that dude shoving his dick in SJP's skull?

So it's formal wear for blow jobs then?

I'll make a note of it.

It's the season for fiddleheads again, a vegetable which I find both strangely repellant and yet still curious.

I've never prepared them.

What do you do?

Blanch them like asparagus or sautee with olive oil?

Does it taste as though you are eating a house plant?

I stumbled across Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 production "The Shop Around the Corner" after reading that it was recently remade as "You've Got Mail" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. You'd have to force me into the old eye-vice treatment from "A Clockwork Orange" to get me to watch that film, but I was eager to see the original.

The romantic comedy genre has become a morass of gender stereotypes while punishing women who have a brain or any ambition so much so that I hate to even include this stellar film in such a tainted category. Tom Hanks isn't worthy enough to clean the shit from Jimmy Stewart's shoes and you'd never mistake Meg Ryan's petulant whine with the sharp verve of Margaret Sullavan.

Do I sound like a snob to observe that Hollywood doesn't make gems like this anymore?

It's true at any rate.

Hollywood was much kinder to women before the second-wave of feminism. After we bitches got all uppity and asked for civil rights, we haven't fared as well at the cinema.

One of the most striking differences between this and its contemporary romcom incarnation is that the leading romantic figures are smart, well-read, curious and devoted to learning about life and culture. They're not reduced to being sexless repressives because they're intelligent. Alfred Kralik (Stewart) speaks his mind as a shop clerk in Budapest. He is impeccably groomed and has discriminating tastes in all things aesthetic, from attire to the false utility of a cigarette case which also doubles as a music box. Arriving at work one day at Matuschek's shop selling mostly outer wear and luggage, he shares a letter with a co-worker from a young woman who wants to exchange letters with a young man about ideas. Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) enters later, desperate for work. She gets hired by using her wits to coax a customer to buy one of the hotly debated cigarette music boxes. She's a voracious reader and also speaks her mind. We get the contrast between their personalities with the boxes which Kralik discerns as poorly made as well as a likely irritant everytime a man reaches for a smoke and hears the saccharine tune. Novak defends them as romantic, conjuring images of moonlight, smoking and music. Their verbal sparring goes on throughout the film, each giving as good as they get.

A singular chemistry develops between the leading man and woman.

Jimmy Stewart has such corporeal integrity along with a civilized masculinity that's nearly without a match onscreen.

He doesn't need the blustery macho bullshit to command our attention.

There's a range of emotional notes to the film, but it's terribly funny overall.

It does a humorous turn of politics in the workplace with getting ahead and even the predictable but enjoyable plot about mistaken identity develops without missing a beat. William Tracy as Pepi Katona is a riot as the resourceful errand boy who gets promoted to a position on the sales staff. You have to overlook all the American accents in the Budapest setting, yet otherwise this film is virtually flawless.

They look inordinately stern here but they're actually happy and sweet.

May is chock full of anniversaries.
This is a two-for-one post.
First, today is my 2nd blogiversary.
Has it really been two years already?
Thanks for reading, folks.

Second, in two days we celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary.
And how will we mark the ocassion?
We're taking the pups to the next level of obedience training that evening.
The trainer said she would be honored to have them in her class.
Sniff.
They grow up so fast.
I'll have to snap some pics when they wake up.

When I bought my SPF 50 last week at Sephora, they tossed a sample of the Bliss cream "The Youth as We Know It." My skin seems to like it.
Then I looked at the box it came in I groaned to read "Youth As Directed" on the side.
Lame.
Who gets paid for that drivel?

I woke up in a shitty mood today and really needed a good laugh.
Thanks to K8 for recommending "Grandma's Boy."
The dealer Dante with the little pony tails was my favorite.
I think I caught a contact high from watching them smoke so much dope.
Too funny.

NO.
Oh, FUCK NO.
Listen closely, you piece of fucking shit.
I meditate upon the image of your guts blackening into a pile of sludge.
Oh yes, you will suffer the consequences for putting your hands on me while I slept as a guest in your house.
I was not able to summon the response which I thought fitting, that is, to lay a pair of scissors in your face, but my blog can become a weapon.
You, Sexual Predator, have been warned.
If you try to keep reading my blog, I'm going to start publishing your IP addresses in Belfast and in Colorado.
And then?
And then your fucking name, you sorry sack of fucking shit.
You should already consider yourself lucky that I didn't avail myself of an offer to beat your fucking ass into the dirt.
Don't fucking tempt me.
I may be easy prey in your eyes, but don't think I've forgotten for a fucking minute.
I will publish your name if I see that you continue to be a fucking voyeur by reading my blog.
Go on.
Try me, Dan.
I will have your fucking head.

Breasts are used to sell or promote just about anything, but this has got to be one of the most disturbing representations I've seen in recent memory.

Put together by a firm in Bangalore, this PSA ad reads:

"Women who smoke feed more than just milk to their children. Research indicates that chemicals from tobacco smoke are transmitted via breast milk. So, stop smoking."

It's such a violent image of a cigarette butt extinguised on a woman's tender nipples.

The heavy makeup on the model to make her appear such a ghostly pale hue is also unsettling.

It's not often that films fill me with a longing to commit violence, but "PIGS" made me want to take a shovel to each actor's face onscreen.

This steaming pile of dogshit is full of men who make Ms. Solanas' argument seem valid.

It's hard to believe that such raw sewage filmed here in Hamilton, Ontario could be any more offensive to women.

Miles (Jefferson Brown) is a "player" who catalogues his prolific whoring in a series of journals. In reality, he would be blogging about it. About to graduate university, his friend Cleaver (Danny Lucio) notices that he's had sex with women with names beginning with "K" and "Q" in one month. This develops into a full-on contest to see if he can bang a woman from every letter of the alphabet. Bets are taken. He has to take a picture for proof. The pot grows to $30,000 by the time he gets to the last letter "X."

At best the women are reduced to a letter without identity or humanity. At worst, they are "pieces of tail" to be conquered, fucked and tossed aside.

Gabrielle X (Melanie Marden) has porn star eyebrows that freak me out. Miles supposedly falls for her and reforms his attitudes towards women.

It's a predictable plot point which we've seen a million times with the lothario who only needs to meet the right woman to settle down. As if men who hate women suddenly stop because one changes their minds that we really are human afterall.

"PIGS" turns that formula around by showing us that it's all just part of Miles' plan to fuck the "X" and win the contest. It attempts to redeem all the endless misogyny in the final scene by having Gabby snap a picture of his dick right before they have sex. Oh, isn't it funny, she's on to him! After shitting on women for more than an hour and a half it tries to say that women come out on top?

Give me a motherfucking break.

Everyone associated with this film needs a sound thrashing.

I'm turning a bit nauseous from reading young women sing the praises of older men.
There's something more going on here than simple fandom.

First, there's Scarlett Johansson gushing about her 5 dads in Paste magazine.
The subtitle to her story reads "Scarlett Johansson is one of Hollywood's most accomplished young women. And she'd like to take this moment to honor a few good men."
Bleurgh.
We can't have any young woman thinking that she's too talented, now can we?
Instead, let's make it all about the men. Specifically, Bill Murray, Woody Allen, Tom Waits, Barack Obama, and Bob Dylan.
I would feel safe in laying a large wager that you would never read a magazine feature by a young male actor where he praised his 5 moms and then recounted everything he's learned from older women. Shit, you won't even find a cover story about a woman praising her 5 moms.

Then there's the other media darling, Diablo Cody, in her recent installment on the back page of Entertainment Weekly where she crows about the fossilized rockers The Rolling Stones and the Scorsese documentary on his favorite soundtrack band.

There's something sad about authenticating how cool old dudes are through two women in their twenties. It's a way of saying "gee, I'm so non-threatening because I think old men are just fabulous." Open your eyes wide, look adoringly at the patriarchy and you'll get a job, at least while you're fuckable.

Wow, who knew that I was really a dude?

According to this reading list, most of which I've read, anyway, I am essentially a man.
Shit, if all you have to do is read 100 books from white men and three token women, we can surmise that every English major has a peen.

Oh, and Teddy Roosevelt was a feminist, btw.

Here's an ad which underscores the significant difference between religious groups in America versus those in Europe.

In the U.S., any group deemed "evangelical" is shorthand for a retrograde understanding of gender wherein men are superior and women are infantilized servants.

Yet here, this ad for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland carries the tagline, ""Room for the Faith You Consider Yours."

Oh really?

Is the Lutheran Church announcing that they're down with a woman messiah? Could it be?

Or are they just availing themselves of some skillful marketing to corral the feminist-minded women into their fold?

Whichever it is, at least they make the radical suggestion that women are divine.