Dick sticks it to the MPAA

The documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated has been out on DVD for some time. It's really quite remiss of me to have waited for so long to see it. And so, please consider this post to be an unapologetic plug for this film. Add it to your NetFlix queue IMMEDIATELY. And, it has to be NetFlix because Blockbuster doesn't carry it. Why? Because Blockbuster doesn't carry NC-17 films. Yes, this is an NC-17 documentary!!! And it was, undoubtedly, granted such a rating because it's a scathing indictment of the very organization that hands down those ratings-- the Motion Picture Association of America, or, as I like to think of them, The Uptight Soulless Suburban Los Angeleno Housewifely Sellout Association of America. The USSLAHSAA--- that's not a difficult-to-remember acronym at all, is it?

In any case, this documentary tackles a number of topics near and dear to this blog-- everything from why sex is perceived as scarier than senseless violence out there in the wilds of America to why the fact that those with lots of money are in a position to silence voices saying important things is actually a whole lot scarier than any sex act could ever be.

Also, I highly recommend watching all the bonus materials on the DVD. In the deleted scenes section, there's an extended interview with Baltimore's own, John Waters. I've said it before and I'll say it now: thank god for John Waters. In his discussion of how most movie ratings are predicated on the fears and anxieties of the nameless, faceless, Republican scaredy cats on the ratings boards of the MPAA, he says (I wrote it down, so I think this is a pretty accurate quotation) "Hollywood would show spread eagle pink if they could. We all would!" and then, extending the thought a minute later, "One of the main reasons people go to the movies is to see people naked!" And I don't know about you guys but that's sure why I go to the movies! Well, that and to understand the psychology and sociology behind why people like getting naked, of course...

And then there's a little short with director Kirby Dick taking Qs and making As in a Q&A session that's also well worth watching. At the end of it, he discusses how there are studies that show how depictions of graphic yet consequenceless violence are proving to be detrimental to our psyches and yet there hasn't been a single study that shows how depictions of graphic, pleasurable sex have similar effects. He speculates that maybe teenagers could perhaps stand learn about humanity through the viewing of sex. The last thing he says in the Q&A is, "You know, more sex, I think is... (and here, he kinda shrugs and smirks (and he's cute and articulate and has nice dimples)) ...better!"

From his mouth to the gods' ears.

This just about sums it up.

(photo by Paul Sarkis)


For my friends in the GBC. I'll try not to bleed in the batter.

Is it strange that this woman reminds me of my sister-in-law?

Because she wants it, does it make it ok?

This from debauchette:

"Over dinner, he said, “It’s kind of weird that we met at a fivesome. I didn’t even know your name.” He didn’t even know my name, and yet he’d explored nearly every part of my body. I really like meeting people this way, sex first. No games. No small talk."


If she can post so openly about such things, why am I still mired in conflicted feelings about such anonymity? And about the immediacy of trusting the first flush of pheromonal response?

Am I Isadora Wing at the end of Fear of Flying? Clinging tenaciously to the vestiges of anxiety regarding the psychic ramifications of that proverbial "zipless fuck"?

Would that I were as evolved as I purport to be. As I hope to be.

WTF? A moment of self-doubt? Me? This never happens.

Never mind. I concur with debauchette. No small talk, please. Real talk is OK, though. Preferable, even. Real and expository and plentiful and plumbed up from the deepest recesses of your soul, please. Please. We can be naked, if that would make you more comfortable.

NB: The wikipedia entry about Fear of Flying and the zipless fuck doesn't really acknowledge that, at the end of the novel, Isadora finally gets her zipless fuck and she feels violated! She hates it and it makes her feel victimized. Isn't it funny how Third-Wave Feminism has co-opted this phrase to denote female ownership over our own sexuality and yet, in its source, it's as deeply enmeshed with internal conflict as any of us. Oh, it's a complicated study, it is.

I DO care enough to hit send!

This is SO much better than Hallmark. God bless all that is snarkilicious in the world.


Here are some favorites (or, rather, ones for whom I can think of exceedingly appropriate recipients):














The internet is so good to me.


And an extra-special thanks to Laura for cluing me into this delicious resource for (in)appropriate cards for every occasion. So, Laura is also so good to me.

the tragic physiognomies of the g-spot-less

On the car ride to Cleveland this last Christmas, with me and my screamingly injured hip wedged amidst suitcases and wrapped gifts in the back seat and my parents arguing about a banana peel in the front seat, I read Laura Kipnis' new book The Female Thing. Actually, I have a lot to say about all the issues upon which she touches in that book, but I'm going to save a lot of that for some other posts.

I bring up that book today, however, because she cites statistics about how hetersexual vaginal intercourse creates a pleasure deficit on the female side of the equation. Apparently, somewhere between 60% and 75% of women are unable to come via the ol' in-out-in-out method. Now, as I find myself among the blessed 25-40%, I kinda always figured it was something that could be taught and/or learned. I mean, it was certainly something that I didn't know I could do until I had some help learning how (more on that...maybe... if you're lucky... in future posts as well). Kipnis doesn't ever come out and say that she doesn't think that it's possible for women to learn to come that way, but her assertions that some women just "can't" suggests that she either hasn't considered whether it's a learned physiological response or an innate one or that she just plain thinks it's a matter of anatomy and that, no, some of us just aren't built for it.

And then along comes this article. Please excuse the ridiculously inappropriate and trite photo of Meg Ryan faking one in When Harry Met Sally. God, that's such a tired movie reference. I mean, surely women have faked it on screen better than that by now. Let's take, for instance, my own former classmate, l'il Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon in an atrocious movie called Fear. Who didn't know she was Oscar-bound when she quietly faked her little death on a roller coaster? Yeah, it's a bad movie, but so what? I can't say, however, that I anticipated her Oscar win when she was shooting me in the boob with a water gun out in front of our high school library building, but, you know-- shooting stuff onto boobs-- maybe it was anticipatorily symbolic of faking orgasms instead. Hmph. It appears I've digressed.

Anyway, I find the article interesting because it suggests that some of us are physiologically predisposed to being capable of g-spot orgasms and some (most) of us are not. And that explains a lot. But it's real sad, ain't it? Perhaps there is no teaching or learning to be had! Kipnis talks about how acts that perpetuate the species are, due to anatomical considerations alone, just plain more pleasurable for men-- and how fucking unfair that is. But while she acknowledges the ongoing debate about the existence of the g-spot, she never said one way or the other whether she personally believes in its existence, choosing instead to focus on the pleasure deficit. Now, all-in-all, Kipnis does a pretty good job of not presenting the female as a victim of a culture that privileges maleness... but she does give in to a little bit of frustrated teeth-gnashing that so many of our bodies are so unrelenting in their refusal to grant us internal orgasms. And that's fair, I guess.

I, too, am sorry about those bodies that lack thicker tissue between their vaginae and their urethrae.

I know what you're thinking. And yes. I do spend all day trolling the internet for crap like this. Why? What do YOU do all day?

So you have a problem with men?

Earlier this week, writer Tayari Jones posted a blogpost with the same title as this one over on the Kore Press blog, Persephone Speaks. In her essay, she speaks wondrously eloquently not only of the some of the conflicts that one encounters when one identifies as both a writer and a feminist, but of some of the conflicts one encounters when one identifies as as a writer, a feminist and a black woman. In fact, her topic, as illustrated with the example of Clinton vs. Obama, spins around the notion that "black women are pressured to decide if [they] are 'women' before [they] are 'black,'" She relates a story of sitting next to a black man on a plane who, upon her telling him that she's a writer and that, no, she does not write romance novels, he asked her this very question. (On a side note, is anyone else getting annoyed that we all (myself included, unless I catch myself and stop) constantly refer to the democratic race as one between Hillary and Obama? Given, I see the logic in calling her "Hillary" as opposed to "Clinton" so as to differentiate her from her husband in a shorthand sort of way. But dear lord. Haven't the media picked up on the notion that it's incredibly condescending to call a woman by her first name, especially when she is constantly being compared to a man-- who we all know primarily by his last name? ...and now, back on track!)

It occurs to me that I, too, am often asked this question and so I figured I'd better write about it. Often enough, I guess, it comes up in conversation with relative strangers and new acquaintances that I write this blog about gender issues and feminism and film and/or that I hope to go back to school for an interdisciplinary gender studies/critical film studies degree at some point in the near future. My confession that I write about sexuality and female-ness alone unfailingly prompts the question-- or some paraphrase of it. So, now, I kinda wonder why.

Shortly after reading Jones' post, I mentioned it to a friend of mine, saying that, yeah, guys ask me all the time if I like men when I say I write about gender issues. (Ironically, they hardly EVER asked the question during the 5 years in which I was in a monogamous relationship with a woman-- I dunno... maybe they could scent the hunger-for-cock on me then in a way that they can't now that the hunger is satisfied more often. Who knows?) My friend scoffed, saying something about how she didn't see how one so heterosexually charged as myself could ever be accused of man-hating. This particularly friend is one of the few women I know who professes a taste for sex with a frequency and an intensity that approaches my own predilections. So, I see why she scoffed. She was making the assumption that liking sex with men roughly equals actually liking men.

I, however, do not think these two things are analogous.

I would venture to say that there are few women who've had the pleasure of navigating the killing fields of the American dating scene who haven't spotted one of these not-rare-enough specimens that make my point for me. That specimen would be the dude to loves to fuck women but doesn't actually like women themselves. This is the specimen to whom we alternately refer to as "predator" and "asshole." And the truth is, I'm sure there's a female equivalent-- a man-hating sex-fiend who goes home at the end of the night and hates herself because she just can't get enough of these little vermin who just happen to have pleasure-causing equipment. Didn't Hall and Oates write a really shitty song about her (that one's for you, Jon!)?

And conversely, aren't there those among us who can genuinely enjoy the company of the opposite gender but just aren't blessed with kickin' libidos and therefore feel minimal pull to the more fleshly arts? Though, I don't figure too many people beyond Andrea Dworkin actually HATE sex... and even SHE felt conflicted enough about it to spend her whole life writing about it. My point here is just that me projecting a readily appreciable fuck-me vibe isn't what makes the question, "So you have a problem with men?" completely inappropriate-- when posed to me in particular.

It's true. I feel every bit as conflicted about my stance with regard to the opposite gender as pretty much every one else does. It bugs the piss out of me that I know I make a considerable percentage less money than several guys with whom I work-- who have fewer degrees than I have and have less experience (and who, frankly, aren't quite as good at their jobs as I am). I've spoken with some frequency about how I don't want to use my gender to assume a position of cultural victimhood-- there is nothing more disempowering that the self-disempowerment of identifying with the underdog. But honestly, the wage differential? Yeah, it makes me feel good 'n' helpless. Does it make me angry at men for establishing a system in which such unfairness is possible? Sure. Yeah. A little bit. But more than that, it makes me angry at all the women out there, just like me, who don't raise enough of a stink about it on a daily basis. I fucking HATE my own complicity. And why do we shrug our shoulders and say, "oh, it's just the way of the world?" Because it IS.

On a more interpersonal level, though, I'm troubled by the notion that, because I invest a significant quota of my consciousness into issues related to inter-gender relations, I might hate men. Have I been hurt by men? You betcha. Was it all their fault? Not even once (you know what they say about tangos). Do I have trouble trusting men as a result of my having been hurt by a couple of them? Well, no, honestly, not so much. Do I approach my interactions with them with caution? Well, sure, I'm not stupid, but it's an optimistic caution. The truth is that men are just people. Some of them are smart and sensitive and really do want real connection with women that includes but is not limited to sex. Some of them are retarded, sure, but hey-- mean-spiritedness and insensitivity and, well, even social retardation are certainly not specific to one gender.

And this brings me to an unpopular belief that I hold dear. I don't really believe in gendered behavior. Or gender difference in anything beyond anatomy. Men aren't men and women aren't women if men and women are all just humans. We're all pretty similarly motivated and, given allowances for differing (individual!) temperaments, backgrounds and chemical make-ups, one humanoid figure ain't so different from any other humanoid figure. Most people I know balk when I say such things, but I honestly think it's a lack of empathy that prevents us all from being on the proverbial same page, rather than something inherent in our chromosomes, hormonal differentials and erogenous zones. And the fact that I hold THAT belief is, actually, what I think makes me a feminist. Because not only do I believe men and women should be treated equally-- I actually believe that we ARE equal in pretty much every quantifiable way of which I can think. Incidentally, I think this belief is also when allows me to not only feel sexual attractions for men, but actually like them-- as people, not as providers or potential baby-daddies or whatever it is that our culture tells me I'm supposed to be seeking in my male companions. Is it a little solipsistic? This thinking that, because they're not so different from me, because I can, perhaps, see some of myself in them from time to time, I like them a little more than I might if I perceived men as wholly alien beings? Well, maybe it is. But if it fosters a more genuine effort towards connection, is that so bad?

So, this whole post boils down to the idea that feminism and heterosexuality (or, more accurately, the desire for heterosexual relationships, regardless of actual convoluted and un-label-able orientation) are not mutually exclusive. A deep and abiding interest in subjects related to gender and inter-gender negotiations and appreciating men as people worthy of my time are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, you who most recently asked me the question, I was offended. And I should have done as Tayari Jones admonished herself for not doing-- taken the moment as a teaching opportunity. But I did not. And, ultimately, it's hopelessly superior of me to assume that the offender actually needs teaching. Doubtlessly, the question was meant as a joke.

But, for future reference, please be advised: feminist sex is hotter. (Hit the label below for other information as might pertain to THAT idea.)

Getting to know your favorite neighborhood blogger

OK, confession: I love personality tests. They're way fun. I like them for the same reasons I dabble in astrology. It's a fun game-- I'm often surprised in the ways in which I find myself pegged and yet I'm able to maintain enough distance from them to understand that I am defined neither by my Myers-Briggs type, nor the alignment of the cosmos at the moment at which I wriggled free of my mother's body.


And on a similar note, I love those email questionnaires that you send to your friends full of random questions, in hopes that they'll email you back with all the intimate details of their lives. For the most part, I could give a crap about the mundanities of a lot of my friends' lives-- the favorite color, where they were born, what they wanted to be when they were kids-- that kind of stuff. But the more random and/or intimate questions I find fascinating. So, this morning, I found one such questionnaire posted on a blog (one of little interest, or I'd have linked it) and I figured I'd fill it out and post it. That way, my reader(s) can get a bite of me and respond in like fashion without me imposing the email request upon them. Though, friends, I hope to see a response on a couple key blogs in the near future.

Here we go:

1. Do you like blue cheese?
BLEU cheese! It's spelled "BLEU cheese"! And yes, I heart it. Even though crumbling it over salads makes my fingers smell gross.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
Please. I've never so much as smoked a cigarette. Honest!

3. Do you own a gun?
For what would I possibly need one of those?

4. What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic?
Ew. Sonic.

5. Do you get nervous before doctors appointments?
The last sonogram I had on my right breast made me fairly queasy. It seems my (benign) lump has grown and now has a diameter of an inch and a half-- and it's brought friends-- and though I KNOW it's harmless, seeing its shadowy vacancy slump across the sonogram monitor, I couldn't help but be quite aware of the contents of my stomach.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
As a symbol, I enjoy them quite a lot. As an actual food, well, I don't feel so great about ingesting something composed of 80% fat and spare pig parts.

7. Favorite Christmas song?
Sarah MacLachlan's "Song for a Winter Night"-- it's so ethereal and lovely.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
My one blessed cup of Misha's Rt. 66 Blend dark roast, followed by umpteen cups of green tea.

9. Can you do push ups?
I can do about a million of the girly on-your-knees kind (ha! surprised?) and a handful of the full-out kind. But when you can balance your body weight on the backs of your arms, push-ups seem rather superfluous.

10. What do you order at Starbucks?
In general, I boycott Starbucks and other big-chain coffee shops. The smaller local roasters typically have better coffee and cooler people, plus I like my money to support indie business anyway. But, in a pinch, if Starbuck's is all I've got, I'll get a Venti hot tea of some variety.


11. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry?
About the only two pieces I wear every day are a pair of diamond stud earrings my dad gave me and this terrific DKNY pave rhinestone watch. I heart that watch.

12. Favorite hobby?
This damn blog. Though, I wish it was my full-time occupation, and not so much a hobby.

13. How do you eat your eggs?
Hard-boiled, yolks only. Or in an omelet with sharp cheddar, spinach, mushrooms and the hottest damn salsa I can find.

14. Do you have A.D.D.?
I think I have Attention Surplus Disorder. There's a hamster who lives in my brain. He obsesses over little nodes of mono-focus and, like most hamsters, he's nocturnal. So, no.

15. What’s one trait you hate about yourself?
That I can't feel as independent as I want to be without, ultimately, getting lonely.

16. Your eye color?
Changeable blue. Sometimes grayer, sometimes greener.

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?
a) I'm so glad I'm not in Columbus. b) I really need to start my yoga practice and not waste so much time in the internet this morning (uh, afternoon). c) I'm dehydrated ...should maybe procrastinate from doing yoga for another half-hour while I drink water.

18. Name 3 things you bought yesterday?
A Venti hot tea at the Columbus airport Starbucks (yes, I felt pinched), 1/30th of a month's worth of living space even though I did not actually set foot in said living space until after midnight, and room service (shitty) coffee b/c housekeeping forgot to refill my (even shittier) coffee supply in my hotel room.

19. Three drinks you regularly drink?
Water, green tea and red wine

20. Current worry right now?
Dread about having to spend a large portion of my summer back in Columbus.

21. Current hate right now?
Columbus.

22. Favorite place to be?
Tie between home and Tucson. In comparison to Columbus, my god! I love DC!

23. How did you bring in the New Years?
After having spent the lion's share of December with either a buzz or a hangover, I boycotted NYE. And I slept and slept and slept. It was a really good choice.

24. Where would you like to go?
Tucson. I need to bake the Columbus out of me!

25. Name three people who will complete this?
Not tagging anyone, but I hope some friendly fellow bloggers will pick up the cue. C'mon, guys...

26. Do you own slippers?
They are a necessity. I'd prefer to go barefoot but my floors are too cold. I have a falling-apart beige pair, an insane pair with big pink and purple polka dots that my mom gave me and the ones I have on at the moment are fur-lined and kinda pinkish colored.

27. What shirt are you wearing?
A turquoise tank top. Sans bra.

28. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?
No-- they don't retain body heat the way cotton does.

29. Can you whistle?
Yeah, but only weakly and tunelessly. As though I am half-heartedly calling my dog.

30. Favorite color?
That deep pendulous blue the Tucson sky acquires during the hottest months.

31. Would you be a pirate?
Only if you added "wench" to my title.

32. What songs do you sing in the shower?
I can't hold music in my head. I probably talk to myself in the shower, though. Fuck. I must talk to myself a lot. I get busted by fellow drivers all the time when I'm doing it alone in my car.

33. Favorite girl’s name?
Mejelia. This is the name of the plant that sits on my desk in my office. The "j" is pronounced with an "h" sound. Cuz it's Spanish.

34. Favorite boy’s name?
Peanutio P. That would be my favorite nickname for my dog, Noah and he's a boy so that works, right? The "t" in "Peanutio" is pronounced like "sh." Cuz it's a made-up Marjorieism and I said so.

35. What’s in your pocket right now?
They don't put pockets in girls' underwear. And now you know I write blog posts in my underwear.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
Me calling myself a wench up there in Question #31.

37. Most frequently dialed phone number?
Jon's

38. Worst injury you’ve ever had?
One Thanksgiving morning when I was in high school, I was walking and reading (a thing I have not yet learned better than to do) and I walked straight into the door jamb between my bedroom and my bathroom. Four of my toes went on one side of the door jamb and my pinky toe went on the other side. I broke the SHIT out of that pinky toe. One whole side of my foot turned black and I got out of PE for, like, 6 weeks! Wow, that's lame. Given the walking-while-reading predilection, I guess I'm remarkably non-accident prone...though, my parents do tell a story about me, at about 18 months, putting my palm flat upside a Weber grill. That can't have been pretty, but fortunately, I seem to have blocked it out.


39. Do you love where you live?
I do. I do! Thank Jimmy in heaven that I don't live in Columbus. Oh. Have I mentioned that I hate Columbus?

40. How many televisions do you have?
Three-- though, one of them is in my storage closet.

41. Who is your loudest friend?
I don't think any of my friends are inordinately loud. Does that mean I'm the loud one? I don't really think that's the case... though, I will sometimes say something borderline inappropriate just a little TOO loudly-- but that's only because it's funny when strangers look at you like you're a freak or a pervert.

42. How many dogs do you have?
One-ish. El Senor Peanutio P. (aka Noah) is currently living with his Granmom and Grandad. They love him, I know, but I continue to pine for his little mushface ever so much.

43. What are you thrilled about right now?
And here we find the line at which I draw the privacy curtain over this blog. Just not quite willing to share right now. This is my best Mona Lisa smile.

44. Do you have a crush on someone?
A life without a constant stream of crushes could only be made more miserable if one was both without a crush and living in Columbus. So, yes.

45. What is your favorite book?
Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things has held the honors for the last few years. Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter has come close to dethroning her.

46. What is your favorite candy?
Those hardcore spicy ginger chewy things. Or crystallized tamarind.

47. Favorite Sports Team?
Not applicable. Though, some boys I knew in college had an intramural basketball team called The Yiddish Ponies. As most of them were short Jewish guys, they were the worst in the league. I guess I can root for them because that name STILL makes me laugh. Yay, Yiddish Ponies.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
"You Sexy Thing" by Hot Chocolate.

49. What were you doing at 12 AM last night?
Checking my email after having been dolefully sans internet access for several hours. Oh, and opening a box of shoes that had arrived at my doorstep while I was in Columbus. They're hot.

50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
DC beds are SOOOOOO much better than Columbus beds. And rapidly on the heels of that one came, Oh my effin' god! It's effin' freezing in here! I shoulda left the heat on last night!

This one's for Jen

Maybe I really only love strippers when they're good and angry. It's not that I don't *like* them at other moments-- but there's something truly heady about catching a (former) stripper in a delicious moment of righteous indignation. Case in point.


Once again, Chelsea G. has hit the nail on the head about why I-- and others-- find the insipid euphemism "va-jay-jay" truly repugnant. Really, ladies. There are just better words! Hell, I've even got one of the best right up there in that shimmeringly punny Eleni Sikelianos quotation in this blog's title banner. In fact, here's a colorful list! Yes, the offensive moniker is included in this list, along with several other cheesy, annoying ones, but there's also a healthy mix of sexier ones. Knock yourselves out. Profane on, my sisters!

Now, it should come as no surprise that I'm incredibly comfortable with the word "vagina." But really, what gives about this impulse to dumb down, demystify and sanitize female genitalia? Especially with a word that has rapidly become such a favorite amidst my own gender? Honestly, no self-respecting MAN would ever call one (especially one he was desirous of penetrating) by such an effacing nickname. And if some guy ever tells me I have a pretty va-jay-jay, you can bet he ain't ever seeing it...ever...again! (Yes, that's both advice and a threat.)

Jen had a great post on this very topic on her old, now-defunct blog... and I'd link to it because she's every bit as pissed off and resplendent as Chelsea G. is... but alas, it seems to have disappeared into the great information ether. Sad.

Jen, mon cheri, care to reprise your wise and witty assertions?

Goddamn it. It's really no wonder why I get so damn many hits from people looking for porn. I'm sure I'm a sad, sad, SAD disappointment!





NB: I did not mean to suggest that Jen is like Chelsea G. in that she is a former stripper, but rather, only that she is equally effulgent when feeling incendiary. Not that she couldn't be a stripper if she felt like it... and not that she feels like it... Shit. I'm digging myself a huge hole. (Ha! I didn't really intend that pun, but now that it's here, I'm happy to see it.) Ugh. Sorry.

Let me just call myself the prodigal daughter, as I'll be returning.

It's official.

I've booked my tickets. I've gotten leave from my supervisor. I've warned my parents that I'll be camping out in their spare room. I've secured the company of Jon, my usual sparring partner in all things film-related.

Be forewarned: 2008 Nashville Film Festival, here come the brown rabbits, half-rabid and prepared to consume you whole! I still can't afford Sundance, but as this thing's grown to be the 4th biggest film festival in the country and attracts scads of truly fine filmic works, you can color me excited! Pinkly so!

If I see anything near as good as last year's Milk in the Land, I'll consider it worth the trip.


Oooh, I'm all a-tremble!

uh-huh

Here. Yes.

This is probably Part II of my "excerpt on the topic of loneliness" post. Probably.

NB: The best dating tip ever for men (who date women who like to wear sexy shoes) is to be found here.

The video made flesh

Jon, was it on your recommendation that I watched Videodrome? I think it was. While you were doubtlessly watching some well-padded, helmeted, heavily ritualized homoerotica this evening, I plugged this little bit of weirdness into my DVD player. I can see why you liked it, as it seems so much like an outcropping of Shivers and a herald of eXistenZ, two other oddities from the mind of David Cronenberg that have seemed to interest you. As usual, I can't so much give a thumbs up/thumbs down, but I will say that Cronenberg's recurring images seem worth discussing.

So tell me: what exactly is the deal with James Woods having a vagina on his stomach? And isn't it just so interesting that it's the place where he keeps his gun? And isn't it interesting when that which is phallic is associated with that which brings death-- violent death, even?! And isn't it also interesting that the gun which so often penetrates his belly-vagina is the instrument of his own death? And does Debbie Harry not have the sexiest speaking voice under the sun?

OK, I should back up. For my readers who aren't Jon, (who are probably limited to my mom... and one funny little Republican) I suppose I should assume that Videodrome isn't high on too many peoples' must-see lists. Certainly not my mother's and I would hedge my bets that it's not on Joe's either. And therefore I should explain it and those other aforementioned Cronenberg ventures. Let's see: Shivers is about an invasion of little alien parasites that look like a cross between giant slugs and bloody severed penises. And once one of those little fuckers (yeah, entendre intended) gets in you, you suddenly become a sex-zombie and are, basically, a walking orgy unto yourself. The high point of this film is when all the imagistic implications of the parasites are fulfilled: one of them assaults a woman in the bathtub, crawling along the bottom of the tub between her spread legs, unbeknownst to her, until, hey! Surprise! It finds a logical point of entry.

And then eXistenZ, a much more recent endeavor ('99), stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law as players of this funky bio-gaming device, into which they literally plug their bodies. On a conceptual level, this reminds me of a piece by the artist Nicole Eisenman, in which she cut a hole in a pinball machine and if you won, your prize was that you got to fuck the machine. Assuming you had the proper penetrative parts, that is. (On a side note, I got to visit her studio in NYC shortly after her huge success in the 1995 Whitney Biennial. She was, at the time, working on a series of little drawings of Jesus fucking Christ-- in the most literal sense you can imagine. I can't help it-- I thought they were really funny.) Anyway, it's been a while since I've seen this movie, but as I recall, it's one of those stories that loops back and around on itself and you're never entirely sure when the characters are "in the game" or living their real lives. It's one of those Matrix-y questioning-your-existence, you-just-might-be-a-brain-in-a-jar-being-prodded-by-electrodes-for-all- you-know kind of things. But, the game unit is super fleshy-looking and a little slimy and draws a clear analogy to other slimy, fleshy, ominous bodily orifices we all know and love.

OK, so: Videodrome. This one stars James Woods as a guy in charge of procuring illicit videos for a kinky cable network, specializing in porn, torture, and, as it turns out, snuff films. And Debbie Harry, who is mainly there just to be luscious. She is just so effin' cool. Anyway, he stumbled upon a weird pirated broadcast of people being tortured and killed. Soon thereafter, he begins to hallucinate-- or so we think. He delves even further into an underworld of which he, given his job, was always destined to be part. And we learn that the transmissions are supposedly causing a brain tumor, which causes the hallucinations. And a bunch of stuff happens that I didn't quite follow, during the course of which, I guess, he takes on the responsibility of eradicating the syndicate behind the transmissions. However, he's also in the process of bodily transforming into some human/VCR hybrid (either he really is, or his hallucinations make him think so--- it's hard to tell). And this is how he gets a vagina in his stomach. It's the port for these hilarious-looking things that are basically video cassettes that are pinkish and pulse with life-- a little fetus-like, one might say. One bad guy shoves one of these cassettes into the James Woods character and the belly-vagina actually eats the guy's hand. Vagina dentata myth, anyone? But, also, Woods' character puts his gun inside the slit in his stomach for safe-keeping. And when he pulls it out-- god! It drips with what looks like a mixture that would be familiar to even the most casual of porn viewers-- KY jelly and feminine excretions, instead of the blood one might expect to find inside a chest cavity. Really, the image couldn't be more obvious. And it is with this gun that he kills a bunch of people and then himself. Because cocks are big, scary instruments of death and violence. Particularly if you happen to have a vagina. In your belly. Get it?

So, I know my overall tone in this post is hopelessly glib, but I guess I feel like I'm quite removed from the sexual anxieties as played out in this film. And in Cronenberg's other forays into horror and science fiction. Hello, penises of the world! I'm not scared of you! And I really kinda hope you're not scared of me either.

So, Jon, as usual, I can't seem to produce an actual opinion about this movie. Certainly, I found it interesting. But I don't think I was supposed to find it funny, was I? Please don't be mean to me in my comments thread. I'd put a hopefully, expectantly, innocently grinning emoticon here, but emoticons are beneath me. And I don't think there's a please-don't-hurt-me emoticon anyway.

And wouldn't you have rather been here watching movies with me than watching dumb ol' football anyway?

so high and mighty am I!

This past weekend, my delectable friend, Mathina, and I held a little dinner party. We cooked our li'l tushies off and it was worth it. Well, in particular, Mathina's Persian love cake was worth it. Even though it's full of stuff I try real hard not to eat (dairy, sugar, wheat... puh!), I have no doubt that it'll visit me in my dreams for some nights to come. And it will probably replenish the previously cooked-off tushy. Ah, well.

As is wont to happen, a discussion arose over said LUUUUV cake about the film Crash. The prevailing attitudes about said movie were primarily positive, with a few pip-squeak-y disavowals of such favor from a couple of us. I, for example, am not crazy about that film, and yet I think I was less than articulate when given the floor to extemporaneously explain why. Fortunately for me, I have my very own forum in which I can more thoughtfully elucidate my concerns about this movie and its behemoth-proportioned acclaim and popularity. Dear fellow party guests, please forgive me for the spouting off I am about to do:

First and foremost among my concerns about this film is that it's not much more than a bunch of easily digested, difficult-to-disagree-with moralizing. It's message is so monolithic that it verges on propaganda. I mean, who's really going to argue with the stance that making assumptions about people based on their skin color, religion, and/or ethnic heritage is wrong? And this is the stance with which the film unremittingly bashes us over the head. It's the sort of film that we good little liberals go see and congratulate ourselves for our choice in movie-viewing as it affirms all our best intentions toward social consciousness. We can watch all of its goings on from a safe distance of our stadium seating and judge the characters' respective levels of nobility and deplorability exactly as the filmmakers would have us judge them.

But the thing is, I don't much care for an aesthetic experience in which I'm coached to think one thing over another. But more on this later.

In our discussion, Matt Dillon's racist cop character was cited as a multi-dimensional man who defied judgment. With this notion, I could not disagree more. This character is nothing more than King Kong. He's less than Frankenstein's monster. And his monstrosity is handily established early in the film so that we in the audience are able to, simultaneously, establish our psychological safe distance from him. He's a racist. He's a molester and a sexual predator. He is a bad man. We do not like him. We think, Oh, I would NEVER behave like that. He is the opposite of me. And then, of course, because he is King Kong, we learn that there's a little gold in his heart. He can be heroic when the moment so calls for it. And yet, because we've already safely distanced ourselves from him, we can acknowledge that he's just a human without really forgiving him for being the asshole he was in the beginning. He's so trope-ic that he's quite possibly the least interesting character in the film.

For my money, however, his foil, Ryan Phillipe's rookie-with-a-conscience character is the one to watch. He is aware of the pervasive racism around him. It niggles him and he protests, a little whinily, against it. He thinks racism blows, man, and he wants to do something about it. The audience identifies with him. At last! Here's a man we can like. Here's a man who shares our liberal guilt. And he is posited so clearly in relief against Dillon's character that, really, we are given little choice but to noddingly adore him. With his little blond curls and big blue eyes and smoothly protruding lower lip, has Ryan Phillipe ever been convincing in any role other than that of an over-grown cherub?

But here's the one thing the film really does almost right: it uses this character to implicate the audience. Though this film is, by and large, earnestly committed to force-feeding its willing audience, with all its heavily-shouldered weight of ethical responsibility with regard to race relations in America, a very straight-forward message about how much racism sucks, it kinda sticks it to us in the end by reminding us that even the guiltiest among us can still cave to the basest of fears. Because we've identified with Phillipe's character's goodness throughout, how can we not feel as though we, too, just might submit to our sub-surface race-sourced fears when faced with a honest-to-god stressful moment? When in the car, alone with a black kid digging in his pocket (for a stick of gum? for a gun? for a religious fetish? ), Phillippe's Officer Tom Hansen doubts his convictions just long enough to shoot an innocent man to death. And what would we, good little liberal audience that we are, do in a similar situation? Oh, right. The film's message: we're all a little racist deep down. I'd forgotten. Also, just for a second, I'd gotten fairly numb from the head-bashing obviousness of it all.

So, that's my argument against the particulars of that movie. I think it's heavy-handed. I think it leaves no room to for profound questioning and deeper engagement. And I think other films have done it better. And here, I'd cite Grand Canyon, maybe. Grand Canyon isn't a perfect movie, either. It's a little overly optimistic and perhaps a smidge sentimental. And it's not even a perfect comparison, as Grand Canyon has more on its mind than bigotry alone. But it's an ensemble film about how, in spite of racially-tinged anxiety, we're still a community! And while gaps in need of bridging abound, the bridging can--and does--happen. Mushfest though it may be, that damn movie still warms me ol' heart cockles.

And now, allow me to move on to some bigger issues. During the course of the discussion about Crash, while I was being interrogated about why I don't think it's just the greatest effin' movie since Titanic (cue laugh-track, please!), I think I heard someone say something about how I didn't like it just because I'm a snob (read: elitist). To be fair, I believe that person was quoting me, and not being an ass. True enough, in a convolutedly self-deprecating way, I will sometimes refer to myself as a snob. I do not actually think I'm a snob, but really more a seeker. A hungry, insatiable seeker who recognizes that minimal nutritional value is to be got from the likes of most Hollywood schlock. I have no stomach for watching kid's movies or romantic comedies. I think I've written, a few times probably, about how that which is supposed to entertain simply does not entertain me. I want more out of a film-going experience than entertainment. I want to be both stirred and shaken. I want my assumptions questioned. I like the age-old sparring match between artist and audience and, if I'm going to commit my $10.50 to being an audience member, you better believe I feel as though I owe the experience the deepest engagement I can muster. And so, what's so wrong with asking that the filmmakers hold up their end of the bargain?

Does the fact that I'm a demanding audience make me an elitist? I go 'round and 'round about this in my head. It just so happens that, this weekend, I happened to pluck Jeanette Winterson's book, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, from the shelf on which I'd set it when I first bought it a couple months ago. And this was a providential reading selection, indeed, as she has much to say about the artist/audience relationship and elitism. Here's a little pithy something she says in the essay, "Art Objects":

"The media ransacks the arts, in its images, in its adverts, in its copy, in its jingles [I almost transcribed this word as "jungles." How funny!], in its tunes and journalist's jargon, it continually offers up faint shadows of the form and invention of real music, real paintings, real words. All of us are subject to this bombardment, which both deadens our sensibilities and makes us fear what is not instant, approachable, consumable [!!!!]. The solid presence of art demands from us significant effort, an effort anathema to popular culture. Effort of time, effort of money, effort of study, effort of humility, effort of imagination have each been packed by the artist into the art. Is it so unreasonable to expect a percentage of that from us in return? I worry that to ask for effort is to imply elitism, and the charge against art, that it is elitist, is too often the accuser's defence against his or her own bafflement. It is quite close to the remark, 'Why can't they all speak English?', which may be why elitist is the favourite insult of the British and the Americans."

Even ignoring the ingenious association she makes between an audience's desire to have art conform to their expectations and the racist notion that all other culture should assimilate into the predominate one, I can't help but feel she lets me off the hook a little for my perceived elitism. And then, a little more pointedly, she writes in another essay, "Writer, Reader Words":

"As a member of the proletariat myself, I can confirm that there is nothing drearier than the embrace of a bunch of Oxbridge intellectuals who want to tell you that art (theirs) is for you. the express view of the highbrow Moderns was cleaner: take it or leave it. What they knew, and what the eager young men of the Thirties reluctantly came to know was that is is not possible to produce a living literature that includes everyone unless everyone wants to be included. Art leaves nobody out, but it cannot condescend, we have to climb up if we want the extraordinary view."

So, here's the thing: it's not that accessibility makes art bad. Or that inaccessibility makes art good. It's just that propaganda isn't art any more than the pop culture Winterson describes is. If it takes a stance, rather than forcing its audience to think through its own stance, I question the artistic integrity of the work. Although art is democratic and open to all, art requires attention, engagement and EFFORT from its audience, as Winterson admonishes us. Because I not only seek out art that is difficult (the more difficult, the greater the reward for the effort, I find), but also strive to meet the more stringent work on its own plateau, I'm an elitist? This disheartens me. I don't want it to be easy. I don't get anything out of easy. And I want something. I heartily yearn for...something. Something incisive and shivering. Something that throws me for a loop. Hence I keep this blog-- this journal of my trial-and-error engagements with the world outside of myself. And hence, I am unimpressed with the likes of Crash, that did little more than applaud me for thinking racism one of the world's greater evils.

And on a side note, my reading of Winterson actually made my day yesterday. Art Objects contains an essay about one of my top five favorite novels of all time: Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Heaven help me, I heart that book. It's bizarre and subversive and galvanically taut and funny. Good god, is it ever funny. In this essay, she describes assorted historical depictions of the persona of Virginia Woolf before eschewing such descriptions, claiming authorial personality should have minimal effect on one's reading of any given text. But she makes a lovely little economic assessment of one such persona: "To some, [Woolf's] madness was a weakness, to others, it has been a confirmation of her genius and a sign of her spiritual health (to be ill-adjusted to a deranged world is not breakdown)."

I am sheepish to admit I might have identified with this sentiment just a touch. Oh, my sweet sister Virginia! I, too, feel ill-adjusted to a deranged world! If only I could write a line that could balance on dental floss like she could. If only I, too, could be so exact. But don't worry, fair reader(s)--- you shan't find pebbles in my pockets just yet.

So, thank you, dear friends, for inspiring the first real exercise in critical writing I've mustered in some weeks! I should have thought to have fed you all ages ago!

An Excerpt on the Topic of Loneliness

From Peter Trachtenberg's book, 7 Tattoos: A Memoir in the Flesh (parentheticals mine):

"Here are the benefits of being alone and celibate:

"You can read all night long and no one will nag you to turn off the light. (This one is particularly handy when your loneliness generates a savage bout with insomnia.)

"You can go off to Borneo on the spur of the moment without anyone wanting to know when you'll be back. (...assuming you have buttloads of superfluous income and a job that does not require your actual, physical presence.)

"You can prepare meals so disgusting you'd be ashamed to eat them in company: grill a slice of bologna till it curls up at the edges; fill the cup with baked beans; then top with a slice of Kraft American cheese and broil till melted. Serve with dill pickle and sliced tomato. (Or, eat nothing but lentils, raw, unsalted cashews and whole cartons of cherry tomatoes for a week at a time, if that bologna thing makes your nose wrinkle a little.)

"You can fart to your heart's content without having to say 'Excuse me,' though you may grow so accustomed to this that you find yourself doing it in public places -- on the line at your savings bank, for instance -- and getting nasty looks from strangers. (This one must be a guy thing. I'm not knocking farting... I just don't think it's a reason to be glad you're lonely and celibate. Nor is it something I really spend time considering one way or the other.)

"You can entertain religious delusions. (I'm pretty sure I can tell the future now via tarot cards and my pendulum.)

"You can spend your fury at the world by playing Einsturzende Neubauten and Nine Inch Nails at bone-splintering volumes and dancing along, vaulting and twitching and torquing as though electrocuted while shouting the lyrics you've improvised because you can't make out the real ones: 'I gave you no permission!/I give you no remission!/Newt Gingrich, burn in Hell!/Jesse Helms, burn in Hell!/Larry Wildmon, burn in Hell!/I'll know where to find you when I come callin'/In the row next to Hitler and old Joe Stalin.' (Yeah, I don't do this either. Though, Nina Simone winding up on my iPod's shuffle mix with the same damn song -- "The Other Woman," of course!-- twice in one day was enough to make me feel fairly dismayed with ol' Nina for a while.)

"You can fall asleep with a stack of books next to you on the bed, and if you're a heavy sleeper, you won't even wake up when you knock them to the floor. (I'm not a heavy sleeper. As much as I think books make reasonable bedfellows, that slushy paper crush in the middle of the night does nothing to help the insomnia issues. It only makes you feel guilty that you've injured your only friends.)

"You may come to know freedom from the tyranny of your penis, which thus dethroned becomes only a benign little tube for the expulsion of urine. (OK, I really can't relate here. Not on any level. Not with any analogous body parts. The ache in the throat. The ache in the heart. The ache behind the eyes. The ache in the lady parts. It all becomes one big seeping blister. One that even your sheets abrade. One that incites not a small measure of panic when you think you see the little red halo of infection developing around its outskirts. If crazy was infectious, that is.)

"In time you will know yourself so thoroughly that you finally realize what all those people had against you. (Yep. Yep. Pretty damn sick of what the inside of my head sounds like. This rather reminds me of how sick of myself I got when I was trying to write my grad school manuscript. God, I'm insufferable.)

"You will pray wholeheartedly to be changed. 'Make me good,' you'll call at night, down on your knees in a bedroom that is used only for sleeping, that smells of nothing but your cigarettes and the dust baking beneath the radiator. 'Please, God, just make me good.' (When you decide that being good is a lost cause, you just pray to be less stupid. Please, God. I like brains. I thought I had one. Maybe you can help me locate it? It appears misplaced!)

"On bad nights you can scoop up your cats and cuddle them shamelessly, even kissing them on the nose, though they usually dislike this and will try to shove you away with their paws. If worse comes to worst, you can press your face against their bodies and weep copiously into their fur." (I might consider it. If I had a cat. Wonder if my stuffed wombats would be amenable to becoming cat substitutes?)

Thank you, Mr. Trachtenberg.

Quite possibly the best blog title in the history of blog titles

So. My fantastic, witty, beautiful and deliciously snarky friend Jen has changed the name of her blog. She's been over there in my blog roll for most of the lifespan of this blog, but her old blog, Princess Sarcasma (which is also a good title, but I mostly think so because I take credit for coining this particular nickname for Jen) is now defunct.


Please welcome (grand fanfare, if you please) Bloodypickle to my new and updated blogroll.

If Jen so desires, she can reveal the source of this completely genius-rific title. But in the meantime, please allow me to bask in its glorious suggestiveness, its coy filthiness, and, well, the fact that she says I'm the first one to think it meant something dirty.