Happy Halloween (must I use titles now?)

In a nod to the holiday, I picked up a copy of "Boy Eats Girl" at Tesco for evening entertainment.

Zombies in Dublin!

Can't wait.

Mr. M came home from a conference with his legs shaved.
Although I was prepared for this, I couldn't help staring.
And staring.
It just looks so strange.
At least he left all the fuzz in the hotel's pipes.

After his last race, where all the dudes clearly had smooth legs I told him he should shave.
In North America they wear those leg warmer things so you can't always tell who's down with the hair removal.
He informed me that he hadn't conformed to the standard for cyclists because I preferred his legs au naturale. With guilt, I said I didn't want him to be the weirdo on my account.
If everyone else shaves, then by all means.

Aesthetics are such a bitch.
It's the same sticking point as when I'm challenged on why I'm complicit with the patriarchal doctrine calling for compulsory femininity. As if I should prove my feminist politics by shunning makeup and fashion in exchange for some stab at dowdy superiority in a shapeless bowling shirt, oversized jeans and flip flops.
Why should I make my life more difficult?
We're all conformists to some degree.
I will of course get over the silly belief that my husband should have hairy legs.
Plus at some level there's amusement over the option to engage in more personal maintenance with which we ladies are so well acquainted.

Blogger Has Eaten Four Posts and Can Suck IT

"City by the Sea" registers an allusion to Jonathan Wintrop's speech in 1630 given to rouse the white folks coming to conquer the new world. "City upon a Hill" was a foundational ideal in the dudely project to exterminate first nations and keep women in line lest they be prosecuted for witchcraft. Winthrop (and later Ronnie Raygun) argued that god gave white dudes the authority to pretty much do as they please under the cover of divine right. The parallel to the Puritans comes about from the opening reel footage capturing the post-war promise of Long Beach, NY as a suburban haven for the nuclear family where a man was king of his castle, safe from all those freaks in Manhattan. Now, however, Long Beach looks like a ramshackle pit full of junkies and drug dealers. DeNiro's cop Vince LaMarca levels that it looks like the Serbian army had been through. Vince had to leave after a messy divorce.

Early on, Vince's character fleshes out the Men's Rights Activism by the menz who blame women, children or fate for their problems. An alternate title for the film could be "MRA Dude Eventually Snaps Out of It." Not until the last ten minutes did the film redeem itself. For most of it, Vince operates as an emotionally closed man who insists he never had a choice with how things turned out in his family. When his ex-wife (Patti LuPone) snipes that he's a wife beater, Vince counters that she was just as responsible. You know, the old refrain "you made me hit you" as if she smashed her own face into his fists. Dudes "lose control" and cannot be held accountable. The way he tells it later to his girlfriend Michelle (Frances McDormand in the thankless role), the court then declared that visits with his son Joey (James Franco) had to be supervised by a social worker. He felt like a criminal, so he stopped visiting his son many years ago. He didn't like how the consequences of what he did made him feel. His comfort takes primary concern over his relationships. Walking away keeps him from having to own up to being a wife beater and emotionally absent father. What's best for him matters, not what's best for the boy.

Joey's a junkie who "accidentally" killed a drug dealer. Someone from media relations for the police department asks officer Vince about the history of violence in his family. Vince insists his father wasn't guilty of violence. Pops decided to kidnap a rich couple's baby for ransom when the baby "accidentally" suffocated in the blankets while it was stashed in the backseat. His father got the electric chair in Sing Sing. For the MRA menz set, it's always about mitigating circumstances or plain bad luck which explains their behaviour or mistakes. Vince insists to Michelle that he never had a choice with what happened in his family and ignores her call for him to do the right thing now. When family services are brought in to take away the grandson he didn't know he had (mom took a powder like the dads in the family), Vince watches the boy screaming. Michelle gives him his key back. Fair play to her not settling for the doormat role.

The plot around Joey killing the dealer comes to a head. Franco's character bears a close resemblance to Dustin Hoffman's Ratzo Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy," with the nasally accent, lack of personal hygiene, weird gait and dream of finding paradise in Florida. Honestly, is anyone dim enough to locate the potential for bliss in Key West or any other place in that depressing state? At last, Vince reaches out to his son. ("Tawk? Whaddaya on fuckin' Owh-pra?" comes the intial reponse from sonny boy). DeNiro does more work in this scene than he has in years. He performance was moving. He tells Joey that they have to stop the cycle of fathers abandoning their sons and to think of little Angelo. They can all have a second chance. The last scene positions Vince with Angelo on the beach chirping about the trip to Key West the three of them will soon take. Finally, the film gets around to demonstrating that men can find happiness when they open up and own their choices. Florida has fuck-all to do with it.

Penne with spinach, basil, oregano, minced shallot, parmigiano reggiano, olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt & black pepper is one of my favourite dishes when it has been chilled for several hours.
Somehow I'm thinking after we go to Rome next month that I will be disappointed with my own pasta.
Three days of pasta and pizza will have primed the carb shame spiral, for sure.

This trailer for "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" looks like a straight to dvd disaster. Nic Cage has been a cheap parody of himself for years, only now he's doing a cheesier version of that film from 1992 celebrating unchecked dudely power and desire as realized by Abel Ferrara and Harvey Kietel.
This confirms the creepy vibe I've associated with Werner Herzog.

"His soul's still dancing" is beyond cringe worthy.

Mr. M once calculated that he consumed 1,000 granola bars per annum.

As part of my "issues" I try not to think in those terms.

Then today I thought: How many eggs have I fried thus far?

It has to be a staggering number.

I set about the post-beach treat for the pair of maniacs.

Yet I have never before pulled out an egg with a feather nestled in the bottom.

I actually yelled out in surprise and put it back.

What a testament to my complete removal from the reality of food production.

Blee.

"The Hills Have Eyes" rates more as camp than horror, what with the tatty fur shrug the bald dude sports and the Oedipal plot line. There are some serious daddy issues afoot.

One daddy leads his family out into the desert to look for a silver mine to rummage up a gift for his wife on their 25th wedding anniversary, not paying any attention to the fact that it's on a nuclear testing site. When he crashes the car thus putting everyone in peril, he complains that even all those years as a cop in Cleveland (he drops the *N* bomb) getting shot at and such did nowhere near almost kill him as much as his wife with her bad directions and screaming.

Yep. Blame the wife.

Daddy and the New Yorker son-in-law set out for help leaving the smug Bobby in charge.

The blonde dude's clad in a skin tight Ohio State t-shirt so you know he's a douchebag.

Nevermind the mother and older sister.

The wimmenz can't be left in charge.

When Daddy finally makes it back to the gas station we get the big backstory about the wild child who came out sideways in a twenty pound hairy blob who later burnt up the house with the wife inside. Wes Craven remembers that the Greeks often left unwanted babies on the hillside, a convenient form of infanticide which shifts the blame on the gods if the kid dies. The belief was you left it up to the Titans to decide if the babe should survive. Oedipus' daddy Laius heard wind of the prophecy and stapled the kid by the ankles to a hillside. The Greeks had a fetish about that part of the body if you think about Eddie and also Achilles.

There's a great shot of Pluto (baldy dude) getting chewbered by the stalwart German Shepherd named Beast at one point where he rips the ankle open to the bone.

All the feral dudes bear the names of the Roman gods with Jupiter (formerly demon child) in charge. He finally gets to kill his daddy (the gas station dude) and then crucifies and eats the ex-cop patriarch. Since everyone's covered in ketchup as a blood stand-in, the violence seems more comic than truly gory.

These horror mavens must have all been Psych majors.

What the fuck do fireworks have to do with Halloween?

Bartleby prefers not to comply with the evening walk until the bottle rocket craze ceases to exist.

He'd rather hold the poo until it quiets down at 3am.

For nearly a year after the car wreck when I was 17 ( one of seven in a van on the way to New Hampshire from Philly) I saw a psychologist every week. The lawyer pushed me into it because "it would look good for the case." Never mind getting a decent plastic surgeon to minimize the scar on my face or something more readily useful.

The first dude talked at me for the first forty minutes of each session. Botany, biology, music.
Whatever topic took his fancy.
Then rapid-fire questions about my guilt over not having died in the accident unlike the dude enrolled in law school. 17 year-olds are pretty stupid.
His office was out in a posh suburb without access to public transit, so he had another of his patients pick me up. She was also recovering from a car accident, doped to the gills on valium in order to get behind the wheel. Way to add to my sense of personal safety, Dr. Dude.
I had enough of him after a few months and complained to the lawyer.
He hooked me up with a lady shrink in the city.
I went twice a week after school.
She said virtually nothing while I cried and cried about being burned and mangled.
I wasn't getting anywhere.
She suggested I see a psychiatrist for a mild anti-depressant.
After a 45 minute session with a smug prick, he decided I should go on lithium.
I'd already read "The Looney Bin Trip" and knew how dangerous lithium was.
Dude gave me a wake up call to snap the fuck out of my fugue.
I still have the script as a token of how fucked up the brain doctors are in thinking that all women are organically nuts and that pills cure.

A few years ago I was taking a seminar in American lit where we were weighing the merits of psychotherapy when I found this case against the talking cure in the NYT. Repression can be a good thing, a healthy response to moving beyond the ugly shit life throws your way. I'm not advocating this for everyone or every situation, but it'll do for now.

For the fabulous Ms. Cat.

15 miles earns a bow.

This paragraph had me screeching so I thought I'd share:

"All of her life, Lily has fled intimacy and kept others at a distance, but here she absorbs another, as the imagery suggests, into her womb. When Lily sleeps that final time, the child she cradles is herself. Through a painful process of establishing limits, by saying no to Gus Trenor, no to Mrs. Hatch, no to George Dorset, no to Sim Rosedale, no to blackmail, and no even to the well-intentioned Gerty Farish and Lawrence Selden, Lily gives birth to herself."

This pile of critical poo may be found in Susan Goodman's "Edith Wharton's Women: Friends & Rivals." Skip the redundancy in the middle clause of the first sentence and notice instead that she's arguing that Lily Bart gives birth to herself by dying.
Come again?
What kind of bullshit is that on top of the womb nonsense?
This reeks of new agey essentialism about women's bodies, identity and inner children.
Folks usually approach the ending to "House of Mirth" by discussing whether they think the overdose was accidental or intentional. (Wharton gives plenty of foreshadowing to suggest the drug was dangerous enough to make an accidental death plausible).
Lily was despondent and broke at any rate.
She wasn't giving fucking birth to herself.
What rubbish.

One of Hollywood's most steadfast plotlines boils down to a dude who pops his cherry in a sense and becomes a man through acts of violence. Consider it a master narrative which tells us that masculinity is only ever realized through physical assault. The more reluctant the dude is to enact a wrathful response, the more you can bet your ass there will be a shower of blood on the way. This dates back at least to "Shane" (1953) and "The Violent Men" (1955). Alan Ladd and Glenn Ford starred in macho melodramas bent of the Cold War masculine anxieties over the pissing contest with Russia. The point pressed is that they can "man up," fight and prevail when the time comes. Like it or not, these films tell us, real menz are violent predators by nature. We're groomed to admire the thugs onscreen. For example, in "Straw Dogs" Dustin Hoffman's nerdy math professor has to prove that he has a pair to his wife and the townies by grabbing his dick-I-mean-shotgun and going on a killing spree. Jason Patric's sensitive Michael has to prove that he's as vicious as the rest of the gang. "The Lost Boys" simply renders the vampire myth as a stand-in for patriarchy in the family Edward Herrmann's character envisions. Then there's "Fight Club" where a pussy-dude becomes a man through maiming others to a bloody pulp. Every third film made resorts to this script twinning masculinity and violence.

"Kalifornia" (1992) serves up more of the same plot frame (Duchovny's brainy Brian feels good shooting a gun) but with a teeny twist that made it worth watching. First, the fabulous Michelle Forbes (Mary Anne in "True Blood") plays Carrie, a woman who doesn't fall for the knuckle dragging brand of manhood that Brad Pitt's Early exhibits. Often enough we watch a smart woman secretly pine for the uncooth monster in a nod to the rigours of gender mythology which counsel that all dudes are animals and all women desperately crave them in their natural essence. Sylvia Plath wondered in terms of if women longed for the "boot in the face." In other words, tradition has it that women are masochists. What Freudian horseshit. Carrie doesn't think he's anything other than repulsive. Sweat stained shirts and picking his dirty feet at the dinner table would not make any woman swoon. Next, Juliette Lewis' Adele confides about having been brutally gang raped at 13. It's okay if Early whips her now and again since he otherwise protects her from being assaulted by men. The film shows pretty clearly how well that strategy works for women when Early shoots her when she stands up to him and asserts her own will for the first time. There's no real protection with a savage dude.

Yet even with the bestseller and the big house on the beach, Brian sits listening to the sound of Early's voice caught on tape. The lunatic might be vanquished but he still gets the last word.

Boo hiss.

I'm hoping the trip to the Garda station and this post will help me sleep.

"You're being paranoid," I told myself over the reservations for going north of the Liffey after dark. Sure, what could happen to you just after 8pm?


8:20, walking south on O'Connell Street.

People everywhere.

There's a dude walking towards me.

Hood pulled over.

Arms extended at his side away from his massive shoulders.

He's not tall, but he's a brick shithouse.

He's staring.

He transmits white-hot rage.

I move away from him.

He puts his forearm up to my chin and slams me by the face into Clery's window.

He gives an extra push into my jaw once I'm pinned.

"No, please."

Whimper.

He stomped on.

Crying and checking for blood.

I continue walking south to jump in a cab at the corner.

An old man stops in front of me.

"What's wrong with him? He's been hitting women all the way up the street!"

As soon as I got home the right thing to do was clear.

If he's knocking women against walls at that hour, I shudder to imagine what he does by midnight.

The garda took my report and said he would call with an update.

"It was random" he explained.

"No, it wasn't random. He was looking to hurt women."

That sounds pretty fucking specific.

This American commercial featuring a "gromance" framed with the tag line "Challenge Someone to Live Well" peddles base sexism in the form of a public service campaign for improved dietary habits. At the centre is a dude sporting a visible gut and moobs. He flirts with a seriously petite woman who probably weighs just over 100 pounds. When he catches her picking up a box of cupcakes, he registers clear disapproval. Then he hones in on another hottie holding up whole grain bread. "A little competition never hurts" says the lady voice over. Where in the world are two pretty women competing for this chubster? Why is it that their food choices are scrutinized when he's the one who has swallowed too many sugary treats?
Patriarchy fools men with the fantasy that hot chicks will always compete for him, no matter what he looks like.
And dudes can dismiss a woman for any petty reason, such as eating cupcakes or eating her peas one at a time.
Yack.

Three years seems like a long interval for us between road trips.

Our first was only a month after we met in 1991.
A dude I worked with invited us to his cabin in the Poconos.
Mr. M took him out for a mountain bike ride.
Poor guy puked up his breakfast.
Maybe that explains why we weren't invited back.
A few months later we drove down to Florida.
Two road trips a year were a minimum.

Most of my memories of each trip connect back to the food.
For instance, you can find amazing bagels in Laramie, Wyoming, of all places.
The dive in Mountain Home, Idaho shared one half of the place with mormons, the other to bar flies and served the best lake trout I've tasted. Maybe I was grateful I didn't have Mr. M's plate of egg noodles and ketchup posing as marinara.
You will not find one decent meal along the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. Everything is geared towards bland dudes in Dockers.
Deadwood, South Dakota does not believe in featuring produce on the menu. Meat, meat and more meat. This seems counter-intuitive to me because Vegas has earned its reputation for culinary achievement (we ate our faces off there). Obviously not all casino towns are invested in restaurant service. The town was also like heaven's waiting room.
The rooftop restaurant in Traverse City, Michigan boasted a steak Diane that had us both pull a Homer-drool. (I enjoyed a brief stint as a meat-eater).
Most of the fare in Celebration, Florida (the Disney-owned town) offers as much cloying excess as the rest of the big rodent's empire for enculturation.
Chefs in Boston can make a stellar crabcake in their sleep.
Most folks carry an aversion to chain restaurants, for sure. Yet the "Oceanaire" franchise serves immaculate seafood. We've been to their place in Minneapolis, Atlanta and D.C. for delightful fish fests.
Nothing could beat the salmon that Mr. M cooked for me (yes! he cooked!) on Gold Beach in California (no shit, you pitch on the beach with the Redwoods behind you) as well as later, on a trip to Crater Lake in Oregon.
The nightmare hotel of contagion in Falcon Lake, Manitoba could not manage more than velveeta and white bread. Constipation, thy name is Kraft.
Emilio's Tapas in Chicago always served a pleasant meal.
Avoid any place around the Ashland Shakespeare festival offering set menus for theatre patrons. Over-priced and underwhelming dishes.
China Town in San Francisco will disappoint. Go to North Beach instead.
All the restaurants in Oxford, Ohio are staffed by privileged students who only need to work for beer money. Pink chicken is not their problem.

We were chatting about road trips this weekend. Turns out we each selected the same one as personal favourite: the trip in '98 to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The elevation and the hippie vibe would put me off ever consenting to stay, but the food and landscape made it a cheerful surprise for a week.

This weekend, Mr. M had the pleasure of being far faster than many dudes half his age.
They gave the old man his props.
Trouble was, we drove up North with less than an hour to spare.
I'm thinking a Ford Mondeo is too freaking big for the roads.
Inside the car was a veritable pan loaf from all the sliced tension.
Google maps can suck it.
Then there was a cinematic moment when we walked into a pub before dinner in Antrim.
Everyone turned, went silent and stared.
Hard.
I wanted to dissolve.
(the whole time we were in Antrim I felt utterly conspicuous).
Later though, the Indian food at Zara's made the night worthwhile.
The key again, rests in light sauces and fresh ingredients.

We'll return to Lough Neagh at another spot populated with folks who don't look so crabbed and gloomy.

Jon Stewart drives me nuts.
He's so close to getting it and then just when you think maybe the feminist epiphany dawned, he falls back on his dudely privilege to be utterly dense about gender politics.

Last night's episode started off strong with a sharp lampooning of the 38 republican dickheads who voted against Franken's bill to pull government contracts from companies who make employees sign clauses where they won't sue if raped. Or gang raped. Old white dudes the lot of them who effectively said women should expect to get raped on the job.
Nice.

But then during his interview with Barbara Ehrenreich for the release of her new book "Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America" he came off as an ignorant prick. The author explained how when she was diagnosed with breast cancer she was overwhelmed with folks telling her how she had to stay positive, destroy negative thoughts, and use the experience to become a better person. When she expressed a rational rejection, he interjected to insist that he was sure folks were trying to show empathy and support. I wished she had held her ground with him.
What, it's not bad enough that breast cancer patients have to deal with the diagnosis and treatment, they also have to endure all manner of fatherfuckers bullying them with how they should attempt to beat the disease. The same folks who are telling her to be positive and turn to god are the same who tell women to smile all the time or who want to lecture pregnant women on how they live, eat, work, etc.
That's not empathy or support.
They're just brow-beating vulnerable women because they feel they have the right.
We're public property to these folks.

The frequent charges laid against Chick Lit as a genre include accusations of gross materialism, shallow man hunting and mindless navel gazing. I haven't tried any of the lady novels because the explosion came just at the time when I was a student with no opportunity for undirected reading. However, I can understand the appeal of paging through plots about plucky career gals.
Rather than try to defend Chick Lit, I thought it more to the point to discuss critically acclaimed novels in the Dick Lit or Lad Lit group and see how they fare to the popular objections against the "low-brow" sister version.
I won't even stack the deck by including the shit stain that is Tucker Max.

First up, Gautum Malkani's "Londonstani." Sweet jeebus if this dude wasn't being fellated by CBC radio and the newspapers in Canada when his book came out. Folks were creaming their jeans to praise this novel about immigrant boys.
From Amazon:
"Malkani's debut novel is set among the South Asian rudeboys of London's Houndslow section. Aimless, middle-class 19-year-old Jas is adopted by a small gang headed by Hardjit, a Sikh bodybuilder, that includes sexual braggart Ravi and Hindu nationalist Amit. The crew, with Jas in the backseat, ride around a lot in a Beamer and say things like, "Dat bitch b trouble, u get me?" To make money, they unblock stolen cell "fones." This attracts Sanjay, a Desi entrepreneur who hires them and organizes their activities. Briefly, the money rolls in, and Jas, taken under Sanjay's wing, makes the more hazardous move of courting the beauteous but Muslim Samira Ahmed."
I recall the author explaining how all of the boys obsessively compete to have the flashiest mobile. Sounds like lots of consumerism alongside violence and chasing women.

How about Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity"? Slacker dude buys way too many records while he also reduces complex human relationships and emotions to pithy lists of 5. Talk about arrested development. The Peter Pan syndrome has had way too much longevity for such a skimpy psychological crisis. How about women expect men to be grown ups when the relationship commences. I'm such a radical, I know.

Both Ellis' "American Psycho" and Palahniuk's "Fight Club" feature protagonists who are dedicated shoppers and consumers who ultimately embark on a violent spree. The orgy of consumer goods gets replaced with a blood frenzy. That ain't deep or symbolic, neither.
Oh, and let's not forget the women-as-cum dumpsters element to their work.

The Dick Lit novel which I find most disturbing and undeserving of praise--without question--is Nick Laird's "Utterly Monkey." The title comes from a private joke among the dudes from a scene in the past when one of the Protestant dudes in Belfast gets ready to shag a Catholic girl on a side street. The girl says she needs a minute. She walks off a few feet, pulls down her pants and then takes a shit. If I remember correctly, she was pooping under a street lamp so the dudes saw the whole thing. The dude thought she was a savage but fucked her anyway. They characterize the scenario as "utterly monkey." You know, because women are absolutely disgusting cunts, but never miss an opportunity to fuck them. Additionally, there's a really weird fetishization of a black woman the lead dude dates. Laird's wife is Zadie Smith. I don't get it. Creepy as fuck.

The dudes featured in these books buy too much stuff, they only want to get laid, and they do a considerable amount of navel gazing. F. Scott Fitzgerald, progenitor of Dick Lit set the tone for his writerly offspring, only he managed to sell lots of books along with getting critical acclaim. Zelda quipped that her husband believed that "plagiarism begins at home," so it's difficult to even determine how much of his work was his own. In "The Great Gatsby" (you could switch in "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" as a modern update) as in everything else he wrote, his main theme was the acquisition of wealth and goods. He bought and spent with more excess than most others and then celebrated it in fiction. His shallow, silly books rank at the top of the canon held dear by so-called experts on no true merit.

The big difference of course is the peen part of the evaluations.
It gives you that third leg up to get closer to garnering the laurel leaves.

Liev Schrieber's character Carl from "Daytrippers" pops in my head whenever I'm dealing with a snob. What an insufferable prick. He's jizzing over the captive audience he commands as he bleats on and on about his shitty, pedestrian novel. He spins some bullshit philosophy about how the world needs an aristocracy to decide matters of art and taste. Everyone else should be a grateful drone. How could Parker Posey's character waste her fabulous green eyeliner on the likes of him?

Maybe it's inevitable and we're all doomed to a snob stage as part of our individual growing pains. We all love basking in the glow of our own brilliance and expert taste. Had you poured a cup of coffee for me when I was 25, my voice would have punctured your ear drum about my personal fucking taste in books and why a certain one was better than another. (Why do I feel I should write a letter of apology to Mr. Stephen King for all the unkind words in my youth?) The bestseller section of the bookstore where I clerked was cordoned off with a miasma consisting of the staff's collective derision, same went for any cover slapped with an Oprah seal of approval. What's behind all this? What's the payoff or motivation for snobs?

A snob essentially moves through life with Carl's point of view, which revolves around the belief that he's singled out in some form of aristocracy, the small privileged few who are forced to endure the unimaginative, dull masses. You know, Ayn Rand's outlook on life. Snobs believe they're special, part of an exclusive set. Snobs cultivate their self-worth or sense of self on being better than other folks, even if it's only in matters of taste. Snobs frame their identity and interactions on elitism and faith in an fixed hierarchy. Where questions of taste are concerned, the snob's opinion pulls the rhetorical move amounting to "I'm better than you." Snobs are undemocratic, grasping folks.
They're also usually deeply insecure or anxious to prove that they are educated with a taste of distinction.

The cognition for snobbery began with Aristotle and his social mechanics based on hierarchy. Dude was not a people person and he was a champion misogynist. He argued that you needed rank and order to keep the ragged masses in check, a feat you could manage by relying upon hierarchies to structure human relationships. Our culture was built upon the principle of hierarchy; it's patriarchy's bread and butter. You could arrange and classify everyone according to their worth. Women and slaves were of little value to Aristotle outside of oiling the wheels of social reproduction. His philosophy set the conditions for folks to class people, art and ideas in terms of "this is better/worse than that." One of the easiest ways to arrive at such a determination is to select something that's popular. Like shooting fish in a barrel, really. Any book, blog, film that lots of folks like instantly opens itself for critique. Snobbish tastes never admit to admiring what's popular, that stuff is for saps. You can also tell what's better/worse by the folks who enjoy a particular thing. Anything women enjoy becomes open for derision and dismissal. Chick Lit and Chick Flicks are two obvious examples.

Your personal taste doesn't make you better than anyone else, nor does it make you special. When you insist it does, you appear like a jackass braggart, a vulgar show off. An ideal education, whether you get it on your own or in a univeristy, should above all things be catholic. Read widely, open yourself up to experience a broad education for the short time that you have here, for fuck's sake.
The part about Dick Lit will have to wait.

I'm trying to write a coherent post about snobbery and personal taste.
I'm all over the place, from Aristotle, "Female Quixotism," and F. Scott Fitzgerald as the father of Dick Lit.

In the meantime: confession.

Mr. M asked the other day "miss Jack yet?"
A-fucking-men.
The pair were a two-headed cerberus on the beach loop.
Kima jumps straight up pogo style, lunges at anything on wheels (that means all the kids on scooters are criminal and must be stopped). Omar cowers at the traffic (cars do make more noise here) and snarls at passing dogs. Cats and squirrels induce epic shit-fits.
I've managed to avoid becoming a slave to children but instead the pair take up many thankless hours of the day.
And then yesterday they were model citizens.
Why?
We split them up.
I took Kima to the beach; the husband had Omar off leash in the park.
Eureka.

Worst Nickname Ever.

Checked out Hermione Lee's biography of Edith Wharton for that book I'm writing.

From an early age, Wharton was affectionately referred to as "Pussy."

Where's my fainting couch?

Oh, brother.

GQ can suck it.

Not only do they go out of their way to present November cover girl January Jones as a completely *nonthreatening* woman in the interview who likes the beer and football, they have to render her as road kill to amp up the sexy.

Dead chicks are so hot!

They make less noise that way.

He looks like a smashy faced Charlie Bronson type on the dvd cover, when really, Mickey Rourke's aiming for one of his "sensitive" portrayals in Coppola's "Rumble Fish," another tribute to dude culture. Rourke telegraphs the soul of "The Motorcycle Boy" (duhn-duhn-duhn) by cupping the palm of his hand around his chin (just like the arm shelf shots caught on the awkward family photo blog) and whispering. Dude cannot emote. Too sensitive. As the black dude in the pool hall says, "He's a prince you know. He's like royalty in exile." We couldn't question his cool factor after this sort of authentication. Black folks only exist to reassure white kids afterall.

Also, I had forgotten what sausage fests S.E. Hinton produced.

In all of her novels, young men are The Stuff of Legend who get to do cool shit and resemble full moral agents. You know, real human beings. Young women, on the contrary, get to take a back seat, watch, and wait for the dudes to come around and give them attention. Poor Diane Lane languished as Hinton's token skirt on parade to pout and look pretty. Hinton's stories are all for the boys. Even when I was devouring her novels at 10, it was clear that she didn't think much of girls.

After turning off the rubbish film after an hour,(really, I had bloody anal leakage just like South Park's "Chipotle" episode after hearing "Rusty James" called out for the thousandth time), I remembered the interview she gave last April where she had addressed my beef with her books that snubbed girls:

"Known for her predominantly male characters, Hinton explained that while growing up she was a tomboy. 'I had no identity in the female culture,' she said candidly. 'I didn’t think like a girl, so it’s always been easier to write from a male point of view.' Underlying everything Hinton writes, though, is her belief that 'self-realization can help you get your act together,' regardless of gender."

Hinton understands "self-realization" as aligning herself with patriarchy.

You hear this business from more than a few women regarding how they don't think like women, or don't identify with them. No shit, sherlock. Cuntgratulations as Christie Brown once offered (as played by Daniel Day Lewis). We get it. You've internalized the message that women are already less than, silly, frivolous, empty-headed twits and have made the decision not to be one. Tell the dude-centric stories and get a book deal. Boys matter; girls don't.

Loud and clear.

Thing is none of her books ring true. The hackneyed metaphors about rumble fish and staying gold fail to hold water once the memory of your menarche or your first wet dream fades.

This is kid's stuff. Who needs to shove all the gender mythology about balling and brawling as the mark of true manhood or blinking passivity for girls on our unsuspecting youth?

I call bullshit.

By the mid 1930s, Mae West drew the highest salary of any woman in the U.S. from a string of Hollywood hits. Lillian Schlissel explains in her introduction that before West rose to fame in tinseltown, she wrote a dozen plays for the New York theatre district. West's larger-than-life bawdy persona grew out of the vaudeville circuit and then the stage through her productions featuring themes such as sex, prostitution, homosexuality, drug addiction. The comedy-dramas packed houses and drew the attention of the vice squad. West served eight days in prison under a charge of moral corruption for the play "Sex" which she wrote and headlined in 1926. "Sex" concerns a sex worker who decides to go "straight." The play boasts a happy ending for the protagonist Margy, a move that must have pissed off the pearl clutchers as well as johnny law because the bitchez must be punished when they transgress social codes that determined women should only fuck a husband. "The Drag" and "The Pleasure Man" were most likely popular with audiences who wanted to laugh at all the mincing gay dudes onstage, although she does write in a level defence for tolerance in an era which defined gay dudes as deviants. West enjoyed casting gay actors and gave Cary Grant his first hit film.

The genius of West's collection resides in the rapid-fire banter steeped in colloquialisms of the underground. Schlissel is right to point out that this tough-talking badinage usually gets attributed first to Dashiell Hammett's novel "The Maltese Falcon," published in 1930. Mae West had her ear to the streets before Sam Spade ever made an appearance.
Cue the eyeroll over the dudes getting all the credit for a watershed turn in pop culture.
West had an amazing ear for dialogue.
For example, when Margy tells her pimp Rocky that she's going to leave him and the life, they have the following exchange:

Rocky: Now don't pull that stuff on me, because you aren't going to get away from me so easy. You're mine and you belong to me. You try to get away from me and I'll plant you under the daisies.
Margy: What are you trying to do? Scare someone? Just because you croaked a guy and got away with it don't think I'm afraid of you. You know if I start talking, I can put a rope around that lily white neck of yours.
Rocky: You wouldn't dare squawk on a fellow for that. Besides, I know you too well. You haven't the heart to turn anyone up. If I thought you had, I'd finish you now. I won't get anymore for killing two than I will for killing one.

"The Drag" (1927) boasts lots of blue jokes:
Taxi-Driver: Do you boys want me to wait?
Clem: You better wait, you great, big, beautiful baby.
Taxi-Driver: I don't get you guys.
Clem: If you don't you're the first taxi-driver that didn't.
Taxi-Driver: What do you want me to do?
Clem: Ride me around a while, dearie, and then come back for her, if you're so inclined.

Schlissel's project of recovery to get this into print took twenty years.
My hat is off.

Library etiquette came to me slowly.

In the Linen Hall library years ago, I was pulling volumes from the shelves until a staff member explained how the system worked.
I was baffled.
Patrons could only sign out three books at a time for a limited viewing?
They expected a letter of introduction?

When folks were drowning after Katrina, I was on Dame Street looking to have a passport photo taken to fulfill the guidelines for using the National Library's archives. With letter of introduction in hand.
Today I dug out the extra photo I brought over for the university's library.

This all seemed extreme to me initially.
Then google "university library theft" and you'll get more than a half million hits.
People steal rare books and maps to sell on ebay or they destroy stuff for shits and giggles.
The rules make sense.

Pat Shortt gives one of the best performances captured on film in Lenny Abrahamson's and Mark O'Halloran's "Garage."

When he speaks completely out of character, it brings to mind the arguments used by anti-porn activists such as Robert Jensen: pornography debases the men who watch it, just as it dehumanizes the women onscreen. The porno Shortt's Josie shows David (Conor Ryan) prompts him to launch into a cruel and ugly manner.

David mirrors the shock and disappointment we feel in the audience.

"Garage" is a gem.

"This is England" delivers a fairly derivative interpretation of "American History X" set to the Thatcher era and 80s nostalgia. Baldy racists are not my idea of entertainment.

The film does offer an important life lesson.

Always buy your own smoke.

Don't hang out with angry, boring losers just for the weed.

You have to endure all manner of nonsense for a minimum return.

Plus, they can decide to snap and beat you within an inch of your life.

This item from the Irish Times is one for the books:

"A DENTIST has admitted fully opening the tunic of a trainee dental nurse but he denied that it constituted a sexual assault or that there was any sexual element to his actions.
The dentist said that he opened all five buttons on the young woman’s tunic, exposing her bra, because another dental nurse at the surgery had previously had problems with the buttons falling off and he wanted to check if these buttons were properly sewn on.
“I said I would check the buttons and I undid five buttons on her tunic and I recall turning over the last button to check the lapel,” he said. “She didn’t make any attempt to say stop . . . I was just looking at the tunic, there was was no attempt at sexual assault or sexual contact.
“I was just checking the uniform, there was no other intent . . . I felt at the time I was just checking the buttons. Now in hindsight I can see how inappropriate it was . . . hugely regrettable,” said the dentist, who cannot be named on foot of a court order."

This despicable miscreant put his hands on a woman, undressed her and then he has the audacity to claim that he was checking to see if the buttons were functional. Instead of pulling out one of the standard refrains "bitch was asking for it/had it coming" or "the boobies were made for my pleasure" the dude tries to get off on a technicality. He's not a slavering pervert--au contraire-his noble intentions were misunderstood. The integrity of the dental smock design was his sole motivation for denuding a human being in the workplace.
Got that?
His right to inspection takes precedence over a woman's right to keep her clothes on.
Un-fucking-real.

Twenty-five years before Bram Stoker published "Dracula" J. Sheridan Le Fanu wrote "Carmilla" a novella featuring the titular female vampire. The narrator recalls first being bitten by the beautiful blood-sucker when she was around six years old. The vamp climbed in bed for a cuddle and then bit into her chest! You can read the whole thing here. I picked up a copy of his "Uncle Silas" yesterday and learned of the vampire tale. It's fab.

I'm overdue in getting to Le Fanu, born in Dublin in 1814 and great nephew of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Yeah, yeah, I know Polidori published the story "The Vampyre" in 1819, but his work isn't really on par with the rest of the romantics such as Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

My guess would be that if I did the same route everyday, you could bounce a quarter off my ass in no time. Started at the beach next to the Killiney DART station, walked up the wall-flanked stone passage to the *gasp* obelisk and then back over to the Dalkey station, with quite a few wrong turns taken for the whole afternoon since we did it mapless.

Do folks here recognize the incredibly gorgeous views?

You can be certain that a dude who admired Bill Gates would never need to approach a clerk in a bookstore and ask for a copy of "How to be King of the Dweebs" because the customer failed to find one on his own in the biography section or in new releases. Not only does William J. Mann offer a condescending overview of an actor who carries one of the most impressive list of credits from the twentieth century screen, he also stamps the book with a ridiculous title, "How to be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood" which any adult rightly feels foolish requesting. (The book snob clerk recoiled as if I was planning to really use her life as blueprint). Mann's tone throughout the biography maintains that Taylor was a brilliant strategist or tinseltown player; she knew how to manipulate herself and others to get what she wanted. She was, however, only a movie star, not a great artist or actor.

Mann takes the same tabloid approach to Taylor's life that every other biographer has assumed. The degree of detail on Taylor's affections and afflictions gains precedence over performances. I care little for further information on what men she fucked/married or when she checked into the hospital, and whether or not she was really ill. Readers repeatedly get treated to such prattle when it comes to the life of Elizabeth Taylor, which shows that Mann misses the point entirely. Taylor never allowed the press to measure the scope of her life, so why should they hold so much sway in a twenty first century account? There's no reason to give a petty scold such as Hedda Hopper all that print today. Taylor's legacy gets demoted to sex and sickness because she's a woman who carried considerable power. You would never encounter a biography of Marlon Brando (who bore many similarities in appetite and acclaim to Ms. Taylor) that reserved more pages for what he had for breakfast than his efforts for the stage or camera. Mann's book bursts with backhanded compliments and a smug paternalism.

If you can wade past the patriarchal winking of "yeah, she was pretty good for a girl" effrontery, Mann eventually delivers interesting reports from Taylor's film sets. The lakeside scene with Monty Clift in "A Place in the Sun" was only able to be shot once the snow was hosed away. The actors huddled under blankets in between takes. Contrary to popular legend, Taylor was not tight with James Dean (one of those Method Man pricks unlike Clift) on the set of "Giant." They used molasses to simulate crude oil in the production. The mystery of her attraction to Eddie Fisher gets cleared up. He has a big dick. Mann quotes Carrie Fisher's version of events as going something along the lines that her father consoled Elizabeth after Mike Todd's death "with his penis." Mann inexplicably devotes two pages to the rumour of Debbie Reynold's being a lesbian. Who gives a fuck? And isn't that a smidge retrograde for our day?

On a summer evening when I was ten years old, I watched Taylor for the first time in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and felt utterly entranced. Taylor's explosive performance did not rest on her corporeal perfection. I sensed what I could only articulate many years later, that she was giving the command reckoning of female rage.
Elizabeth Taylor managed more than just following the mandate to look fuckable onscreen. She bore so much ambition and hunger for life and experience. She didn't shrivel up and die just as Marilyn Monroe or Sylvia Plath and so many other women of the era did.
She's more than a movie star.
She's a fucking survivor.

Folks who slobber on about how "Citizen Kane" stands as the best film ever and what a marvellous cinematic achievement it was are usually buffoons trying to sound important. It pales in comparison to "Touch of Evil" as the film that marks the zenith of Orson Welles' celluloid career. At any rate, I'm pretty sure he would be rolling in his dusty grave to have his legacy connected to Zac Efron, tweenybopper extraordinaire. And the dude playing Welles sounds nothing like him.
Lame.

Verily, you could sell me a ticket to watch Stephen Rea clip his toenails onstage.
He would infuse the mundane routine with a wealth of empathy, more so than one thousand other actors. What a treat to catch him in the lead for the Abbey's production of "Tales of Ballycumber." He eclipses everyone else.
After the first and strongest scene, I noticed that the woman next to me was engaged in a serious chew-fest on top of emanating ale-key-hol from every pore. I could hear her jaws clicking, popping, saliva swirling as her cheeks puffed in and out during her rabbity mastication.
She could have eaten every daffodil on the set by the end of it.
There wasn't a comestible to be found save a lone candy she pulled out early on.
And yet still she chomp-chomp-chewy-chomped the entire play without completing the process and swallowing.
I was nearly in Mr. M's lap I was so far over in my seat.
The only way to get through it was to position my hair as a peripheral shield.
Why must folks foist their disgusting foibles on the unsuspecting public?

I know everyone's already seen this feature.

I finally got around to making my Mad Men self.

The tea sloshed all over during the sixth episode.

Jesus Christ, that's brilliant television.

Random thoughts on the first three stellar episodes of the third season of "Mad Men."

That Mr. Hooker dude ("this place is a gynocracy") needs to be glassed.

"I look like an open umbrella." Betty is even more ravishing while pregnant.

Peggy is a hoot on the mary jane. And I loved how she nails Ann Margaret's talent as "the ability to be 25 and act 14." Wow, "Bye, Bye Birdie" makes me want to hurl.

Roger in blackface? As bad as watching the turd that won't flush.

I'm so glad Mr. M never used me as a tool to titillate his boss in order to advance in his profession. Joan's husband needs a smack in the head, the creepy fuck.

Why do I have the feeling that Grandpa Gene is going to molest Sally?

I can see it coming.

The ensembles the ladies wore to the Kentucky Derby party were divine.

Pete and Trudy looked adorable on the dance floor.

"I don't understand why she didn't leave."
"Why didn't she try to get away or get help?"

A dude said that to me without any trace of cognisance that he was sounding like the man choked on privilege.
As always, the first question which presents itself in cases of sexual slavery when girls are victimized by adult men is what's wrong with them. We live in a culture where even highly educated dudes are unaware of the pitfalls of blaming the victim. I was going to stroke out while marshalling all of my energy to stay soft-spoken and calm. Because when my voice register goes up, I know that men stop listening. How dare a woman get angry afterall. Women are told from the womb to be sweet, accomodating, pleasing, agreeable, compliant, "lady-like."
Why then dare wonder when they think systemised abuse and rape is the fucking norm, what they should expect from life? Why do we assume that children should have the capacity to know how to extricate themselves from hell?


The thing is (I tell him in an even tone) many women do go to the authorities for help and are left without proper intervention and protection. A man is king of his castle and can do what he likes with his own family. That's been the standard line of every police force in the world. Our culture is full of folks who launch into hand-wringing over cruelty towards animals and who could care fuck-all about what women routinely endure the world over.

Meanwhile the predators and the culture which fosters them gets a free fucking pass.