Blame the Woman

Again, advice columnists butter their bread with a host of Mars and Venus stereotypes and blatant sexism. It didn't take long for one of them to crawl from under a rock and say some stupid shit about how Sandra Bullock is to blame for her husband's errant penis.
In a mean-spirited take on the marriage, Drew Pinsky (doctor my ass) shorthands the two popular cases of marital infidelity by saying that Tiger and Elin should stay together, but that Bullock has no hope to salvage the relationship because she's is a "love addict" and James is a sex addict:

"In Bullock's case, Pinksy says, "If I were treating Sandra, I would advise her to leave Jesse James. They don't have a long life together, it's been a relatively short-term relationship. There is no doubt to me that this relationship is over. Jesse is a sex addict and Sandra is a love addict. Sex addicts go for power and intensity, and that intensity is probably what attracted Sandra to Jesse. However, that intensity is not love, it's addiction. Sandra probably didn't give Jesse that level of intensity that he got with the mistresses."

Nevermind the fact that Tiger and Elin were married just one year longer in 2004 than Bullock and James in 2005. A woman who waited until she was 40 to get married is a "love addict" somehow overnight. Yep. Do what society says, marry the man who says he loves you and that makes you a "love addict." Since Bullock "didn't give Jesse that level of intensity that he got with his mistresses" she's to blame. Her job is to make his balls explode in orgasmic delirium every single night. If not, expect a hubby to go elsewhere. A wife is responsible for what the husband does with his penis. What fucking year is this again?

Who pays this cocksucker to spew such scurrilous invective about this woman and women in general?

Has Badu Lost Her Mind?

Look, I get the symbolism of stripping, taking off the modern trappings to get to a base layer of identity which we can easily lose touch with. Sure, start with the body as a blank canvas, the human form unmoored from society and history. Except the nude female form is already everywhere, isn't it? What with the pornification of culture, you really can't go a whole day without seeing an abundance of naked female flesh.
What purpose does seeing a naked black woman gunned down serve?
How is that an example of "evolving" or progress of the self?
My first response was to grope for some arch comparison with Kennedy, as if Badu was saying this violence happens to women everyday and no one raises an eyebrow.
But that doesn't sit well with the emphasis she places on recovering her true self at the end, the smile under the long braided hair.
The image of prettifying a bloody crime scene with a rainbow doesn't gloss over the carnage reeked upon a woman's body.
There has to be a day when we stop regarding violence against women as "art."

Look at the Dog, Not the Floppy Peen

When I spy chubbed out cattle dogs such as the one running with Luke Wilson, I wonder if the maniac twins will ever settle down and gain some weight.
Even Kima has turned the tide on her burgeoning bloat.
Omar's all bones.
You can't feed him more than he gets now or else he'll just shit 15 times a day.
In canine terms, Wilson's dog looks like a plus-sized model compared to Omar.

Release the Kracken

This has to be the most promising remake ever.
Gone are an oily Harry Hamlin, that creepy mechanical owl creature and all the lame claymation special effects.

Can. Not. Wait.

Dickface Cinema

In an issue of “Bitch” magazine more than a year ago, a woman interviewed referred to Sarah Silverman’s career as bent upon a longstanding performance in dickface, because she dresses and acts just like a 14 year-old boy. True enough. Dickface probably works as the most fitting description of Diablo Cody’s script “Jennifer’s Body.” The film’s not concerned about the titular character beyond her surface appearance as the smokin’ high school hotty. You know you’re in for a dickface extravaganza when the opening line is “Hell is a teenaged girl.” The rest of the film assembles a string of nasty jibes and stereotypes designed to underscore just how awful girls and women are lest the viewer forget for one second. I could not escape the impression that Cody fired up a joint and channeled her estimation of what the 16-34 male demographic thinks about the vagina-bearers.

How else can we explain Amanda Seyfried’s character called Needy? It’s a wonder she didn’t follow up by calling Megan Fox’s character Bitchy just to keep the stereotypes simple. Housed in a mental hospital, Needy claims she’s “as normal as any girl under the influence of teenage hormones.” That’s right folks, less than five minutes in and we’re getting the “bitches be crazy” explanation. Needy attacks a black woman on staff, giving her a bloody mouth and a knocked out tooth for no other reason than to show us she’s a tough chick, when really, the scene plays out like another example of the woman-hating on display to appease the male audience.

The wacky lingo falls flat here, as the viewer becomes hyper-sensitized to the fact that no one actually sounds like Cody’s characters. When Jennifer enters Needy’s house, she looks at the pair of young lovers and quips “It smells like Thai food in here. Have you two been fucking?” Tell me that doesn’t sound like something a teenage boy would write under cannabis-induced guffaws. Jennifer goes on to mouth the male point of view when she grabs her own boobs and tells Needy that they have “all the power,” that their breasts “are like smart bombs” which they need only point to cause destruction or mayhem. Even when Cody’s not trying to craft her “authentic” teen verbiage, the script feels forced and rings hollow. Needy looks at the lead singer of some shitty indie band and notes “He was skinny and evil and twisted like some petrified tree I saw when I was a kid.” Come again? That’s so bad it’s not even laughable, it’s just cringeworthy. As is the line “You know what this is for. It’s for cutting boxes.” Get it? Women are just boxes, bro.

In addition, the soundtrack was so ghastly that I continued to hold the mute button during all the “interlude-let’s-play-a-song” scenes that try my patience as a film viewer. I’m not interested in hearing Cody’s record collection while we brush each other’s hair and talk about boys. This film isn’t written for me or other women. This was made for dudes who want to see Fox half naked, covered in blood and then get destroyed.

Free Love, My Ass

The Daily Hate Mail has a story up about the newly discovered memoir of Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley's step-sister. Clairmont figured out that "free love" was a sham and a raw deal for women in patriarchy. She likens Byron and Percy Shelley to monsters, which they no doubt were to her. Emily Sunstein's wonderful biography "Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality" explains that Claire begged Mary to take her along when she was running off with Percy, and that Mary relented more or less only to piss off her stepmother Mary Jane Vial. This all came back to bite Mary on the ass, however, when Claire succumbed to the free love bullshit Percy and the other Romantics peddled. In their understanding of "love," all the consequences fell on women who had no legal standing or rights.
Anyhoo, can't wait to read it.

Ugly Sure is Pricey #2

Manuel was kind enough to snap this picture for me with his iphone when I was shrieking in front of the shop in Galway at this hideous ensemble. Most of the get-ups looked to be styled for mother-of-the-bride ladies.

But look closely at this puke green affair. It looks far more yellow-ish or citrine than the pea soup it appeared in person.

The material is a flimsy and unforgiving chiffon, cut into a shutter frame that makes all but the slimmest of ladies look like they are upholstered sausages. The cloak on top won't disguise that it erases any hint of a waist.

Then what to make of the hat? What purpose, aesthetic or otherwise does a miniature top hat serve but to make a lady into a giant jackass? Who would really adorn this with a straight face?

And lo, the pricetag at the bottom.

735 euro.

That's right 735 euro for this monster of the bride look.

The horror; the horror.

Galway Pics

Even though I've been to Galway on 4 separate trips, the city's street map refuses to stick in my head to the point that I'm left with little more than a guesstimate about where something is or how to get there. Go figure.
One of the highlights yesterday afternoon was watching this heron wait ever-so-patiently for someone to open the door and offer food. The bird was convinced she or he was getting a treat. You know a kindly soul feeds the poor bugger. I'd like to see what our pair of maniacs would do if this bird took to calling round daily for a crust. They'd crash through like Sharkey's Machine.

The evening for the Irish Blog Awards was just brilliant.
My face still hurts from laughing so much.
I had a major case of guna envy at every turn.
Fabulous folks, no question.
Now I must go back to curling up in a ball.

Oh, Eric. Sigh.

"Who sent you?!"

Bad Experiment

There was a can of Red Bull leftover from the TrueBlood party we had months ago.

Instead of running out for a cup of writer-friendly coffee love juice, I figured, what the fuck, try the Bull.

I flinched at the colour, a hue which can only recall a vitamin dehydrated piss the likes of which I hope never to pass from my body.

Who thought the brackish, tobacco yellow shade would entice anyone to lift the glass?

Or are you meant to drink it straight from the can in order to avoid seeing what you are about to sip?

The smell reminds me of those powdery sugar treats sold in long straws steeped in dirty socks. This kind of sweet smells like straight-up diabetic coma mixed with a sports injury.

It doesn't taste in any way familiar.

It's cloying and syrupy thick.

So saccharine and yet there's a burnt, bitter undertaste.

Awful.

So awful.

This is Where I Stop Saying Dude

When men such as John DeVore, former editor of Maxim and enthusiast of Mars and Venus gender mythology starts referring to himself as a "dude," then that little colloquilism has jumped the shark for feminist writers. The dudes have appropriated our pejorative and thus killed its idiomatic relevance in de-romanticizing the gender narratives.
You can't find garbage more base or reductive than attributing gender connotations to menu items. It's beyond wacky.
DeVore does this, in the stale old rhetoric about how the real men don't eat salad.
Or his supposed twist on this spore-ridden tripe is that, wait-a-minute: real dudes do eat salad.
This is the kind of lifestyle piece over at CNN that makes me feel like I've been sniffing glue at the finish, by wondering how many brain cells I wasted reading such a bad composition.
DeVore wants to assure us that man should not live by the dead flesh of animals alone and that he will not in fact become de-sacked if he orders a salad for lunch. He even casts himself as a gender renegade because he still does it even though his friends mercilessly mock him for it. The problem could not be the men he chooses to hang out with, of course. Or the derivative rehashing of a Seinfeld episode from the mid-90s.
Even worse, he glosses over the work his girlfriend puts forth in order to get him to eat a reasonable diet:
"Luckily, the woman I was dating at that time didn't like any of those things. Being able to sit in a bathtub full of buffalo wings is every dude's birthright, but I eventually learned that being attractive for your significant other is also pretty manly.
My girlfriend was a smart woman and didn't bring up my devolving into a human biscuit. What she did was announce that we were going to save money so that Saturday nights, we could go to the local barbecue joint and destroy some cow with our faces.
Obviously, my first thought was, "Aww, she wants me to help her lose weight." So I humored her. She came home from the supermarket with a stack of plastic disposable containers. In each, she put one potential salad ingredient. Not only the ones that would become my favorite but kidney beans, green peppers, corn and pepperoni slices.
She created a mini-salad bar in our fridge. It was easy, and I was told I could eat as much as I wanted. This became my lunch and occasional dinner."

No, asshole. It wasn't "easy." Your girlfriend went to the market, purchased all the containers and ingredients, washed them, chopped them, separated them for your fucking benefit. This is just one of the many examples of how women's work gets erased because it just seems to magically appear out of thin air for these witless fucks.
If your identity is so fragile that it depends on what you eat, you have a problem.
And if you think you're a rebel for just discovering that you can eat what you like without being de-sexed, you are dimmer than you know.
This shit was tongue-in-cheek in the 80s when it was "real men don't eat quiche."
Now, it's just embarrassing.

More Book Vandalism

More than a decade ago I read "The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel" edited by George Levine and U.C. Knoepflmacher. Since all my notes and sources are buried in the basement back in Toronto, I checked out a copy with particular interest in Ellen Moers' essay "Female Gothic"as well as Kate Ellis' "Monsters in the Garden: Mary Shelley and the Bourgeois Family." After I crossed the 20,000 word milestone (holla!) I sat down to read it. Lordy.

Only the last three pages of Moers' work is left in the book.

When I stopped flipping the pages looking for #77, I noticed the graffiti on page 85.

At the bottom of the page next to the shred remaining, someone drew an arrow and wrote "What Bollox ripped this out"

Another student wrote two comments in the side margins:

"She is not totally responsible St [sic] takes two to tango"

In the same hand:

"What how can you says this"

While I applaud the student for not wanting to lay blame on Mary for Percy leaving his wife Harriet, the decision to deface the page in protest can't be condoned. Nor the bad spelling.

There are also four pages in the first chapter riddled with doodles of faces, including several of Frankenstein the monster, which does not even demonstrate that students read the book because Frankenstein is the surname of Victor, the grad student from hell who decides to reanimate dead flesh, not his Creature. Jeebus wept.

The book's also riddled with highlighting, underlining and potential (bad) thesis statements.

All together now!

Do not leave marks of any kind in library books.

And you sure as shit don't tear the pages out.

How funny, because that move was going to be a plot point in the book and now it's going in, for sure.

Noir Madhouse

Anatole Litvak’s “The Snake Pit” (1948) has been on my need-to-see list for too many years since it’s referenced in “All About Eve,” both of which feature Celeste Holm, funny enough. I’m always interested in watching a depiction of mentally ill women onscreen. Most often, they’re not really suffering from anything other than the temerity to have a backbone or a voice when society says they should be compliant doormats. For example, Elizabeth Taylor’s Catherine in “Suddenly Last Summer”(1959) gets thrown into the state asylum because she knows that Aunt Violet (played by an icy and wooden Katherine Hepburn) sent her off with her gay son to procure young boys for him. Monty Clift plays the kindly healer dude who refuses to administer a lobotomy and gets the secret out. In “Marnie,” (1964) one of Hitchcock’s many exercises in torturing blonde ladies, Tippi Hedren loses her shit whenever the colour red appears and can’t stand a man’s touch. Sean Connery plays the dude who figures out what’s wrong with her but only after he rapes her first as his own property after they marry. You wouldn’t need a degree in analysis to know that she’s reacting against a traumatic childhood where she killed one of the men that was paying to rape her mother. Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer rots away in an asylum because she won’t massage the ego or the peen of the doctor with a god complex. Winona Ryder’s Susanna in “Girl, Interrupted” isn’t exactly unmoored from reality when she enters the same institution that housed Sylvia Plath. She just has a case of the sads that only privileged white girls get to have. The women in these films are angry, frustrated or an inconvenience to those around them which leads to them getting slapped with the crazytown labels, but none of them demonstrate a significant psychological break.

Olivia de Havilland’s Virginia, however, does experience a complete nervous breakdown, complete with the inability to recognize people, even her own husband. She has no sense of time and has stamped down most of her memory. de Havilland’s performance has to be one of the most riveting as it’s infused with an abundance of empathy for those who struggle to hold their sanity. The benevolent doctor dude (there’s always one) has a framed picture of Siggie hanging in his office, so we know he’s going to take her all the way back to her own Oedipal Complex. There’s an insightful parallel between the patients and the staff in a scene where a nurse chides the patients against walking on the rug and then later when Virginia meets the former head nurse who’s now an inmate. Mental collapse can happen to anyone. The horrors of ECT, strait jackets and unchecked lunacy are on display without any effort at reaching the tawdry or exploitative tone. It also appeared as if the same actor played Virginia’s daddy and a former boyfriend, although I couldn’t verify that in the credits at imbd.

Resistance is Futile

Lady Gaga has said plenty of ignorant shit that ticked the boxes in my head for a performer who cares more about getting the right kind of press than in having navigational command of her own moral compass. All the interviews she's given saying how feminism was no longer necessary now that ladies could strip naked or buy their own stuff or something as equally muddled had me rolling my eyes.
But you know what?
I finally broke down and watched "Telephone."
The lady is a pop music visionary.
This isn't the stuff I'd seek out or have on my Ipod (my new one sounds like a tinny, hollow piece of shit, by the way, with too much treble and not enough bass).
Yet I can recognize her talent and widespread appeal.
Gaga has style out the ya-ya.

Brontë Bonanza

Page 3 in today's "The Ticket" from the Irish Times has a blurb about film productions of Charlotte and Emily Brontë's classic novels.

I started writing a book based on a reference to "Jane Eyre," if you can keep up with all of my lame projects.

It's either 6 or 7 times I've read it.

News that Michael Fassbender has been cast to play Rochester had me spraying tea on the supplement. No! I thought. Rochester is a rogue who locked his wife up in the attic for ten long years rather than place her in one of the country's many private care facilities, just so he could keep her huge dowry. He's a cad and unworthy of little Jane. The dude who pops up in my mind's eye in relation to the character is Orson Welles, who appeared in the role in 1944. Brontë tells us that Rochester is not handsome; he's really rather ugly if anything. Now how much makeup will that take for Fassbender, for fuck's sake? On the other hand, the man deserves any role he wants and I'll hold my tongue.

Also in promising news, Andrea Arnold is directing a version of Emily's "Wuthering Heights."

No mention of the cast yet.

St. Patrick's Day Parade Pics

Is There Something in the Water?

There are many things I love about living here in Dublin.

The majority of folks are smart, funny, warm and gracious.

A few days ago I caught sight of this elderly dapper gent in Hodges Figgis and remembered that I had seen him in the audience at "La Dolce Vita." For some strange reason, it made me smile.

Far too many cities are cold and anonymous, but Dublin ain't one of them.

Access to the beach makes life easier so that the pair of psycho dogs can run the crazy out.

You can switch landscapes fast and move from the city centre to the beach or mountains in a few minutes.

The dairy, produce and seafood are all pure, wholesome and yummy.

The weather isn't nearly as bad as folks make out.

All the bookshops, cafes, theatres, restaurants, pubs means you can always find something to do when you want to get out of the house.

Folks know how to pronounce and spell my surname.

My husband has taken to doing uncharacteristic things.

For example, he went into a shop and bought me a present!

And now, dare I worry, he has decreed that we must attend the St. Patrick's Day parade in town.

"It would be like living in New Orleans and missing Mardi Gras," he said.

So I will turn off the mechanism in my head that warns "Greenface!" and "Cultural Stereotypes!" and "Horror!" and just go with it.

Red Road

Andrea Arnold's "Red Road" offers a meditation upon grief of the same caliber as "The Accidental Tourist." Jackie (Katie Dickie), a CCTV operator exists in a hollow and somnambulant state of bereavement when she spots the dude who was responsible for killing her husband and daughter on camera. She follows him to work up the courage for a confrontation.
In a powerful scene, Jackie takes out some of her daughter's clothes that had been packed away. She stuffs them to make a poppet to cradle and weep over. The moment plays out so raw and real in the hungry ache of maternal love.
Brilliant.

Will PETA Protest?

What's PETA's stand on wearing a wedding dress made from the pelts of middle management and the banking set?

Just as ridiculous as yelling at old ladies in fur, I imagine.

Sincere or a Smirk?

“Blue Eyelids” (“Párpados Azules”) could be viewed as an extremely maudlin romance. One could also dismiss it as suggesting that folks should find a spouse to avoid dying alone no matter what, or perhaps it’s a clever deconstruction of the otherwise saccharine and insincere genre. From at least Jane Austen to the contemporary yack-inducing romantic comedy, the idea that life leads to the altar and ensuing happy ever-after bliss has been our cultural default setting. Only the truly deluded could regard marriage as a wise decision for the couple in this film. The ending seems like an update of the conclusion to “The Graduate,” with that moment when Elaine and Benjamin sit in the back of the bus, finish their Orphean glance cast out the window behind them, and then look at each other through the register of dread that they are now really stuck together. The somber tone offsets the glare of witless sentiment connected to coupledom. We are invited to pause over what happens after the white dress.

The awkward scenes in “The Graduate” shrink in comparison to what’s assembled by Mexican director Ernesto Contreras in his film from 2007. Alternative titles could be “Awkward Couple” or “Lonely Introverts Date” or something similar. Marina (Cecilia Suarez) and Victor (Enrique Arreola) are forlorn on their own, but this condition gets further underscored when they go out on a series of clumsy dates punctuated with cringe-inducing moments of lumbering advances. Marina wins an all-expenses paid trip to a beach resort at work. Trouble is she has no one to invite along, except for her manipulative sister, a woman who tries to claim the prize for her own attempt to reignite her flailing marriage. Marina’s so meek that you half expect her to relinquish it to the sister who calls her an old maid. The audience wonders why the doe-eyed heroine is so luckless in love, until she runs into former school chum Victor and they go on their first date. Marina concentrates on pulling threads from the picnic blanket with more fascination than Victor’s chit-chat. They have the same conversation twice that afternoon, a sure sign they’re struggling to forge a connection in the absence of fireworks or social skills. Each time they meet, something occurs to sour the bid for romance. The prosaic downturns such as losing a table when they go out dancing deflates the potential for pleasure, especially for Marina, who cannot shake a keen sense of permanent disappointment.

There’s the rub. Both characters are lonely. Yet they don’t get the Hollywood treatment. There are no makeovers, remarkable gestures of fate, sure signs of their shared destiny. Still, I can’t decide whether this offers an unvarnished, honest appraisal of the desire for love free from the usual elements of celluloid hokum present in the genre, or whether Contreras has just served up a winking ironic hipster take on romance. Built of small exchanges based upon lowered expectations, the film is either inspired or one giant smirk.

Crab Cake Obsession

So I've posted about crab cakes before.
Those heavenly patties.
I've had them in so many places.
Philadelphia and suburban area.
South New Jersey.
Manhattan, NYC.
Boston.
Washington, D.C.
San Francisco.
Atlanta.
Minneapolis.
Portland.
Seattle.
Manhattan, Kansas.
And at Peploe's and Gotham here in Dublin.
Then Fat Mammy Cat emailed that her Paramour was making my favourite dish.
I asked Mr. M what he thought that was.
"Duh, crab cakes."
And so it was.
Honey-browned hue from the pan.
Moist and flavourful.
Spicy chili sauce for dipping.
The dead crustaceans had their swan song, if I can use that mixed metaphor.
It was Truth and Beauty on a plate.
Mine are always dry and this side of turgid.
*Sniff*

You're Welcome, AIB

Yesterday I was in the AIB branch on Grafton Street exchanging some dollars that came in the post for euros. The woman was giving me a hard time about how I had to do it at our local branch but that she'd make an exception for the hundred dollar bill this time. She counts out two fifty euro notes, lays them in front of me saying "now, that's one-oh-four" and reaches for two of the 2 euro coins.
I could have grabbed the money and legged it.

"No, that's not right. Better check it again."

The dollar is damn near worthless compared with the euro.
Doesn't everyone know that?
Was I thanked for saving her the 35 euros?
I was not.

The Girl with the Gender Makeover

My 20 year-old self might have found “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” a compelling film. My 40 year old self, however, sneers at the film as contrived, trite and a high-brow brand of torture porn.
*Spoilers*
Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) has been hailed as a dynamic female character, but I found her to be a two-dimensional rendering of dudely spank-bank fantasy land. She’s transformed from a pierced, gothy, androgynous lesbian to inexplicably bedding a pocked and pouchy middle aged dude (Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist), and then walking away in the final scene wearing fuck-me-pumps, a short skirt and a blonde wig. Because really, she was a babe all along who only needed a good dicking to set her on the path to femme-hood. Salander has no inner life other than hating (most) men. She makes Blomkvist’s agenda her own, takes up his obsession and dedicates her time to saving his ass, for no apparent reason. The two scenes where she is graphically raped are beyond gratuitous. There’s even the obligatory shot of her walking in a jerking, pain-induced hobble afterwards, just in case we didn’t get the point that being raped is horrible.
This is just yet another serial killer extravaganza, where the audience is treated to male predation and female victimhood. I have no need to watch one more film in this genre, ever.

Tell Mama All

La Liz turned 78 a few weeks ago.

She has balls, brains, beauty and talent in spades.

Save the Consolation Prizes

International Women's Day feels like an insult.

What, we get a measly 24 hour allotment to talk about our issues?
The annual demarcation seems like a patronizing pat on the head to me, a grim reminder that we live in patriarchy, and every other day of the year is The Man's day so shut the fuck up already.
You can keep your banners, platitudes and empty talk about equality.
This day is just one more opportunity for some dickhead dude to step up and wail about the males, how discriminated and maligned they are in a culture which they created, profit from and govern.

No thanks.

Sure Feels Like Spring

In order to get a few hours writing in, I have to take the terror twins to run themselves stupid.

No birds allowed on the beach.

Shellfish left behind is always a bonus.

I am always amazed when we are out there alone.

What Not to Say

Don't walk up behind your husband while he's sitting with the laptop open on the desk, peer at the title of the article he's reading and say "gosh, that looks boring, sorry" until you've checked to see whether he's the author of said dry material.

Ooops.

The pics are from his bike ride in the Wicklow mountains today.

Ugly Sure is Pricey

Folks, had I known that Nordstroms now ships to Ireland, I would have ordered my dress for the blog awards from them. Shipping seems to be 40 euro with import taxes depending on how much you spend. They have an amazing selection for a special occasion, when you want to be sure of something that no one else will be wearing, go Nordstroms.

Except for this jacket by Marc Jacobs.
The horror!
Check out the description:



"Colorful braided tassels charmingly trim the front placket of a tweedy jacket with a sheer mesh overlay. Smooth silk lining patterned with a whimsical collection of jungle creatures is exposed at the folded collar, while tulle-backed sequins accent the cuffs. "


There's so much going on here I have a scary pounding in my stomach.
Tassels?
Mesh?
Jungle creatures?
Sequins?
I'd sooner don one of those teacher-lady vests with embroidered cats to semaphore how much crazy I was carrying than this eyesore.
And the kicker?
1,524.14 euro pricetag.
I shit you not.

My Oscar Ballot Always Loses

Best Film: The Hurt Locker

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Best Actress: Carey Mulligan

Best Actor: Jeremy Renner

Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz

No doubt none of these folks are actually going to win the golden phallus.

Sharks and Vampires on Spanish Television

One sleepless night in Madrid (thank you dude who banged on all the rubbish bins for 15 minutes) I dragged my ass to the sitting room in hopes that watching television would help me to drift back to durmiendo. James Woods' legal show "Shark" was on, although I can't remember if they were calling him Senor Tiburon, but let's assume so. Joan Holloway's rapist husband Greg is in the cast as well. I've caught maybe four episodes of this show and now realize that they use a fixed plotline just like they do on "House," a narrative device that we will no doubt see much more of now that the crabby doctor draws so many viewers around the globe.
Shark's plot goes like this:
The maneater gets a case. He fucks it up somehow with questionable ethics that could potentially lead to a jail term or getting dis-barred. He has insider or personal knowledge about folks involved in the case. Jeri Ryan's lady lawyer has to step in and clean up Shark's mess with a flawless turn in court where she gets the dude to confess because he cannot stop staring at her décolleté. This is the Erin Brockovich brand of feminism, an approach which holds that you can render men insensate if you show enough cleavage. She's there to fix his ham-fisted blunder, cover up the illegal activity and take the pat on the head from the big powerful man
There are also at least two scenes with Tiburon's daughter designed to show us that he's not a cut throat bastard, even though he's often yelling at her or not listening to her.
Woods has always been an oily dude. Now that his frown lines begin at his hair line from the multiple facelifts or what have you, he looks even more shady. All the arm-folding and expensive suits in the world won't disguise that.

"Sangre Fresca" however, had me glued to the screen.
The Spanish actors took such care with their dubbing that they were even inflecting a Southern accent into their lines when applicable. It was an episode from the second season, the one where Sookie gets locked in the church basement. Eric is even hotter in Spanish.

The Boy Ain't Right

Omar went on hunger strike while we were gone.

The nice dude from the kennel said he also had nervous poo.

I had handed over two 3kg. bags of kibble with them and received more than half of it when they were returned.

You can feel all of his ribs poking out.

Between when they came home at 4pm on Tuesday and when I went to bed after midnight, Omar pooped 5 times and vomited 3 times.
He's a fucking nut case.

With his morning beach runs and the bacon I've been sneaking to him, he'll recover in no time.

Alert the Gender Police! Lady Mag Goes Rogue!

The conclusion to the series "Single, Actually" in latest edition of Grazia magazine offers a complete departure from the standard gender normative script for the genre.
Frankie refused the Vet's marriage proposal.
This must be some brand of heresy in the Mars and Venus mythology.
Not only did Frankie say no to the "holy grail" engagement ring, she says she's happy and prefers to be single. Here's how she ends the column:
"All in all, I know I'm in the right place. And even though I have a twinge of regret, sometimes, I haven't once thought, 'Should I have settled for The Vet, in case he was as good as it gets?' Because, honestly, who thinks like that, apart from women who are dead from the neck down and obsessed with having the right kitchen equipment? No one I know."

Frankie's summation makes her sound like a gender renegade in a culture saturated by advice guides telling women to settle, to just land that man already, despite whether he rocks your world. Yes, ladies, you can be single and happy no matter what our culture tells you.
Now Grazia will probably ruin this by publishing a counter-attack from a woman who married a total stranger out of fear of dying alone and lived happily-ever-after.
There is a glimmer of hope nonetheless.

Yet Another False Dichotomy

Standing in front of Dali's "El Gran Masturbador" in the Reina Sofia a few days ago, I recalled how much "Little Ashes" rankled my spine by serving up such a simplistic interpretation of the artist.
Lo and behold, however, the Sparkly Vampire that is Robert Pattinson was actually convincing in the role, maybe because he can pull the bug eyes in the same manner as Dali.
The film sets up a failed romance between Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran) while they were enrolled in university. Dali comes off as a repressed closet case, as if that were not the same struggle for so many men of that era. Was there really such a thing as a viable gay identity for Spanish men to claim under Franco's boot? The film wants to project our own expectations back to their relationship. Then it builds a conflict between the two as a split between idealism and personal ambition. "Little Ashes" paints Lorca as a saint who devotes himself to the Independence movement writing nationalist poetry. He's made a cardboard cut-out of holy idealism for civil rights. Meanwhile, we're invited to dismiss Dali because he chooses to go to Paris in order to expand his craft and drink plenty of champagne in the bargain. Their mutual friend Luis Bunuel (Matthew McNulty) scoffs to Lorca that Dali only cares about money when he returns from a visit. That's right, any pursuit of success or financial reward casts you as an unethical opportunist or base materialist. Better to be poor, executed and exalted as a patron saint of the people. Dali's industry, genius and vision deserve far better than this simplistic rendering.

My Feet Still Hurt

If there's a street in central Barcelona that we didn't walk on at least once, I'll eat those red boots. This shot and the one below are from the castle up on the *gasp* hill overlooking the city.

The playa was immaculate. Mr. M enjoyed the sun while I had a scarf wrapped around my head.

Gaudi's bold imprint is all over the city. We didn't need to go to an art museum in Barcelona. All you have to do is walk down the streets to see amazing art.

Conan Drum's place, no doubt.

That's Venus holding court in the centre of the fountain in the park.

Mr. M went gaga over La Sagrada Familia. There's nothing else quite like it. Looking at the staircases to the right, it looks like Frank Gehry plagiarized Gaudi in many of his own buildings.

The ladies in the traditional dress walked by our hotel Sunday morning. Mr. M suggested it was a wedding but I'm going with a debutante ball.

The Hotel Regina was incredible. Not only was it stylish with a yummy breakfast buffet, the staff were accomodating above and beyond the stiff treatment you so often get. They put us into a room before noon when we showed up hoping to just be able to get rid of our bags.

Great place.

We'll go back to Spain, for sure.