Monday linkage, with Joe Pye weed

Some random linkage, starting (of course!) with my own radio show: Thursday, Friday and today.

We were a bit off our game today, since Gregg and I had to soldier on without Double A. Next week, I am going to Texas, and they will have to soldier on without ME... so I am not complaining.

I just get nervous when we change anything.

~*~

Just back from Atlanta, where I caught a very personal story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (unfortunately, behind a pesky paywall, or I would link it) about the former Miss Georgia, beautiful Leighton Jordan. In the AJC account, Jordan's eating disorder is presented in stark, primary colors. It was harrowing; the unending treadmill of ballet, pageants and thinness seemed less like the life of a princess (the fairy tale we all hear about) and more like being caught in a trap.

In her work as Miss Georgia, Jordan describes a personal appearance wherein she spies a 13-year-old girl, very thin and obviously "jittery" as she is confronted with a table full of food. Jordan takes the girl aside and tells her that she needs to hear her story.

It was an amazing moment of sisterhood, self-sacrifice and love.

I promise never again to be mean to the pageant-participants. Jordan has redeemed you all.

Namaste.

~*~

At left: Joe Pye weed, from Linky Stone park. Ain't it just so purty?!?

I used this photo as the background for my new Tumblr, which you should all check out.


~*~





Other stuff--

6th big cat dies at Texas animal sanctuary (USA Today) -- I did not know that big cats caught feline distemper, as domestic cats do. :(

~*~

Also covered on our show today, CNN doctor-on-call Sanjay Gupta reversed himself on the weed. And yes, we are now waiting on the rest of you 'experts' who have said stupid things in the past; you too may be regarded as respectable once again! SAVE YOUR REPUTATIONS NOW! FREE THE WEED!

~*~

[Attorney General Eric] Holder seeks to avert mandatory minimum sentences for some low-level drug offenders (Washington Post) Better late than never.

~*~

Speaking of marijuana (doing radio has taught me the importance of a good segue!), Erin Tatum's feminist review of "We're the Millers" at Bitch Flicks accurately articulates my concerns about the movie, which I haven't yet seen (but I have been subjected to oodles of trailers):

Really, you are lying to yourself if you thought the powers that be would waste any opportunity to showcase Jennifer Aniston's legs. The ensuing montage is pure wet, slow-motion fan service. The dance ends with Rose releasing a steam valve, disorienting their captors enough to let their "family" escape. I'm torn about this scene because although it's trying almost too hard to show that strippers can be smart and intuitive, Rose’s most valuable asset is still her body and her ability to be objectified. I take issue not so much the objectification itself so much as the fact that the definitive aspect of Rose’s character seems to be “LOL WHAT 40+ and still hot?!?”. Certainly Aniston's boldness and athleticism are praiseworthy, but given the amount that the actors talk about it in interviews, you would think the strip routine was her sole appearance.

~*~

I am greatly looking forward to Elysium, a new film containing one of my very favorite scifi plots ever: Earth evacuated by the rich as a festering shithole, while only the poor, sick and unlucky are left behind. This was a favorite theme of my beloved Philip K Dick, as in his great masterpiece Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which became the film Blade Runner. (It is also the scenario in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, a novel of obsessive importance to your humble narrator.) Elysium was directed by Neill Blomkamp, the director of DISTRICT 9.

Unfortunately, Elysium is getting rather mixed reviews, even though it easily won the weekend box office. I still intend to see it, so stay tuned.

The Conjuring got on my nerves, because I really wanted to like it.

~*~

And for you musically oriented folks: I finally "cleaned up" my infamous three-year-old instrumentals post... I profusely apologize to the people who Googled "instrumentals" (which are notoriously VERY HARD to find, since there are no lyrics to look up) and came upon my post with so many songs missing. I blame YouTube! (Again, time to plug the invaluable YouTomb, a fascinating website that chronicles the whys and wherefores of various videos getting the plug pulled.)

I especially got a chock full of searches after MAD MEN used "Love is Blue" over their closing credits in one of this past year's shows.

And so, here it is.

Love is blue (L'amour est bleu) - Paul Mauriat (1968)

Haley Watch and assorted linkage

Governor Haley campaigns for her new BFF, Governor Scott Walker, in Wisconsin. Love Nikki's new frames... but I don't think they would have fit very well into her RECENT VOGUE SPREAD.





Last year I made a joke about Haley and the media-fawning that accompanies her everywhere; I said, what's next, Italian Vogue?

Astonishingly, she just settled on regular American Vogue. But I wasn't far off, was I?

I can assure you, as South Carolinians deal with seemingly-endless economic woes, what we all want to see is our Governor all decked out in designer duds that the rest of us could not even afford to LOOK AT. And neither could she, before she started (allegedly) cooking mom and dad's Sikh temple books. But that's another story, still quite unresolved. (I quickly added the "allegedly"--since the Sikh temple just filed a lawsuit against blogger Logan Smith of the Palmetto Public Record for his faulty reporting on the issue.)

It is unbelievable how much outright SLEAZE follows this woman.

Currently, oodles of fur flying in Wisconsin, over the Governor Scott Walker recall vote. The election is tomorrow and the place is stoked to a fever pitch. Our Governor, who obviously has nothing to do here at home except pose for fashion magazines, was up in Wisconsin throwing her designer-clothes-clad weight behind Walker (You can hear the chatter inside the governor's mansion now: If she's good enough for Vogue and Scott Walker, surely she is good enough to be Romney's VP?) A liberal group sent out mailers publishing voter histories, actually naming people who did not vote in various neighborhoods. (US News) I think that may be a first.

Meanwhile, fascinating quotes are being unearthed. The right-wing anti-union people seem to have forgotten that their patron saint, Ronald Reagan, was the president of a union. He once said, "where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost." Yes, he really did, and you can watch the whole speech on YouTube HERE.

~*~

Assorted linkage, as promised:

[] The gay-hating android from Bob Jones University who has been dogging me this weekend (see comments here) should really enjoy this link. This one's for you, Gregory A. Easton of Pensacola, Florida!: Matt Barber: My Family Member Dying Of AIDS Got What Was Coming To Him (Joe. My. God.)

This is the kind of thing they love to read.

[] Local preacher busted in prostitution sting! (WYFF) All the "loiterers" busted were male. You don't suppose this preacher was preaching the usual anti-gay crap whilst trolling Augusta Road after dark looking for male companionship, do you? (shock) I do not know what the Methodists, in particular, teach about homosexuality. I had believed they were fairly liberal, but then I found this:

While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church

Uh oh, looks like somebody will have to get another job.

[] Who was all upset by MAD MEN last night? (Bitch Magazine) I was! It also started a rather long conversation in my domicile, about whether you would have fired Lane, too? (More from USA Today on the departure of Lane, who was played by gifted Jared Harris, son of veteran actor/singer Richard Harris.)

[] Romney's likely chief of staff is reaping profit from Obamacare while Romney pledges to repeal it (Think Progress)

[] During Birther Rant at NC GOP Convention, Trump Claims He Can't Be Racist After Hiring Arsenio Hall (Crooks and Liars) Yes, and the hits just keep on coming.

[] This has not been reported on any of the major news outlets, that I have seen. From Glenn Greenwald writing on Salon:

In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that after the U.S. kills people with drones in Pakistan, it then targets for death those who show up at the scene to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies, as well as those who gather to mourn the dead at funerals: “the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.” As The New York Times summarized those findings: “at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile” while “the bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals.”

This repellent practice continues. Over the last three days, the U.S. has launched three separate drone strikes in Pakistan: one on each day. As The Guardian reports, the U.S. has killed between 20 and 30 people in these strikes, the last of which, early this morning, killed between 8 and 15. It was the second strike, on Sunday, that targeted mourners gathered to grieve those killed in the first strike:

At the time of the attack, suspected militants had gathered to offer condolences to the brother of a militant commander killed during another US unmanned drone attack on Saturday. The brother was one of those who died in the Sunday morning attack. The Pakistani officials said two of the dead were foreigners and the rest were Pakistani.

Note that there is no suggestion, even from the “officials” on which these media reports (as usual) rely, that the dead man was a Terrorist or even a “militant.” He was simply receiving condolences for his dead brother.

Please read the whole thing.

And how was YOUR weekend?

Roger gets his space ticket

MAD MEN gets it right again.

As I have written here before, LSD was originally the (legal) property of the drawing room and the elite types who visited psychiatrists, such as Henry and Claire Booth Luce, Cary Grant, RD Laing... and Roger Sterling and his wife Jane. Hippies did not widely partake until the Merry Pranksters decided to go cross-country, playing Johnny Appleseed and distributing it throughout the heartland. And THEN it was made illegal (in 1966), in response to their nefarious scheme to Enlighten the Masses.

In fact, where do you think the first hippies came from? Guys like Roger, transformed. I am curious what will happen to Roger now; the show closed with Roger informing the ever-beleaguered Don Draper, "It's a beautiful day!"

At this point in the show, it is likely Roger will tell Don about his acid-experience and 1) try to get Don to take it, or 2) Don will be sufficiently curious (after hearing Roger's description) to try it himself. And all of that childhood-trauma of Don's? Wow, that will be hairy. Because yes, those traumas really do come back in technicolor, they weren't joking about that. I would compare it to one of those 180-degree photographs, everything momentarily frozen so that you can go back and have a full-look at it, maybe start a conversation with someone else in the frame.

From Entertainment Weekly:

I could write 3,000 words just about what happened after Roger let a sugar cube of psychedelic chemicals dissolve on his tongue. So many of Roger's hallucinations fed right back into his horn-dog Peter Pan syndrome: The half-grey-half-black hair dye ad; the Beach Boys' "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" playing overtop a far older song I couldn't quite place; Roger cackling in the bathtub as the 1919 World Series unfolded in his head. It was a telling detail that Roger imagined Don to be his spiritual guide, but I ad0red so many of the small, silly details, too: The bombastic (possibly Russian?) opera that played after Roger uncorked a bottle of vodka; the cigarette that collapsed like an accordion the moment Roger began smoking it; the five dollar bill with Bert Cooper's face on it...

Although it never happened to me personally, paper-dollars with various faces on them was a pretty common LSD-hallucination. Also, the faces on the bills suddenly talking to you. George Washington talks! (I once got out a dollar-bill, hoping George would say something to me, but I guess money only talks to some people.)

And Roger and Jane finally get real:

Really, though, the long, strange trip was all about stripping away Roger's defenses -- his glib charm, his fragile ego -- and building up Jane's self-assurance and confidence so they could both admit to each other that their marriage was over. As Roger and Jane stared at the ceiling, the truth came gently tumbling out of them: "It's over." Their hostess wasn't Jane's friend, she was her therapist, who thinks Jane has been waiting for Roger to tell her their marriage is over so she won't have to. And although Jane's thought about having an affair, her love for Roger was real. But, Jane added, "I just know for a fact that you did not fall in love."

"So what was wrong again?" asked Roger.

"You don't like me."

"I did. I really did."

And their marriage is done.

~*~

As a lone six-year-old who had somehow blundered into the wrong place and time, I was once cornered in the doorway of an empty house by a cluster of (white female) teenage bullies. They had backed me into the proverbial corner and were slapping me, grabbing hair, kicking... all while laughing and laughing. I knew it was just the warm-up, because they were having too much fun. I was sick with fear.

I tried to say something cute, be charming or polite, all the things that had ever worked in the past; like a dog that rolls over and suddenly shows its underbelly in a fight, I was hollering uncle in a hundred ways. They correctly read my body-language of surrender and were emboldened and maliciously overjoyed by it, like a pack of wolves, circling. Exactly like that.

I turned, cupped my hand and peered through the small window on the door. "There's nobody in there," one said, threateningly. The words echoed and echoed through my psyche, and I could never remember what happened directly after. My mother said they had beaten me, but I could not remember it. Approaching that moment in my memory had always frightened me, more than the threat of nuclear weapons, more than drowning, more than snakes. I shut it down, pushed it back, thought of something else.

We all do this, and so do you.

But LSD goes straight for the house that has nobody inside (when it should have), straight for that thing you have repressed. And it can go several ways, from what I am told. But for me?

I was transported back to the sidewalk in front of the house (which I had passed many times) and saw the girls on the porch, who suddenly seemed so young. My goodness, I thought, they are only 14 or 15, aren't they? They aren't giants. They aren't adults. And as I ascended the porch stairs, one by one, they disappeared. I could never remember their faces anyway, but this made it official: they really did not exist any more. They were phantoms that had chased me. I realized, these girls had since grown up. I turned to one, just as she vanished, and asked her if she remembered. "Do you remember this?" I asked her.

She wrinkled her brow and shook her head, no. She was the blonde one, and she was the last to vanish.

I then saw my little six-year-old self, who had been beaten. I was wearing the same clothes I always remembered wearing. They had ripped my favorite shirt, with multicolored pockets on the front. I knew my grandmother (who had bought it for me) would be mad. I hoped she wouldn't be mad at me for straying too far from home, but of course, beaten or not, I thought she would be.

And then, the adult me embraced the six-year-old me. The little-me wept, while I soothed and comforted this little girl (me and not-me, all at once) and told her how strong she was for enduring this. I told her it would make her tough from this point onward, and as I said this, I realized: it had.

I told her everything would be okay, and she would grow up and the girls would vanish. Look, I said, they are gone already. I gestured, and showed her/me, that they were gone.

"They ARE gone!" the six-year-old me said, smiling through tears. Yes, they are.

And they were.

They never came back.

Here's hoping Roger fares as well. And Don, with his ghosts. They might vanish or they might return and kick his ass. It's all up to him.

Be nice to your old self; be charitable and kind to the younger-you. After all, you did the best you could.

Monday Music: The Story in Your Eyes

Extremely busy this weekend...I barely got home in time for the Mad Men season finale, which I found disappointing. In fact, I can't remember the last season finale (or any other finale) that I've enjoyed. The worst in history was Battlestar Galactica, which was so upsetting in it's overall badness that I didn't even blog about it.

Hope to get to a longer blog post tomorrow. In the meantime, I heard this on the indispensable radio show FLASHBACK as I dozed off to dreamland last night. And I was reminded of how much I love it.

Enjoy!

~*~

The Story in Your Eyes - The Moody Blues

How we've changed, continued

Karen Carpenter with her beloved drum kit. She was capable and confident while playing, but when she was forced to come out from behind the drums, front the band and wear dresses, that's when trouble really began. Photo from LeadSister.com.


~*~


Yes, I'm here to weigh in, once again, as an official old-timer chronicling How things have changed (belated-birthday edition).

Posts on this Feministe thread talked about weight gain:

College does not make it easy for people who struggle with issues with food. Eating disorders are rampant, but rarely discussed. We’re all familiar with the glance to a friend’s plate, to see whether she is eating macaroni and cheese or salad, and the implicit self-judgment that follows

We are? No, we aren't... and then I realized this is another age (class?) difference.

I don't remember growing up with this dynamic at all.

We didn't monitor each other. Even those of us trying to get thinner in dangerous ways, totally personalized this endeavor as our own private failure, and I don't remember paying any attention to what other girls ate, except to be jealous that they could "eat anything they wanted"--while I never could. I remember all of their ice-cream sundaes, but little else. (We didn't even know about healthy vs. unhealthy fats in those days.) Was this my working-class environment or the era I grew up in?

Back in the day, I recall eating disorders as way under the radar, and consequently, very easy to get by with. As a teenager, I starved myself repeatedly, and nobody noticed anything but the end result, for which I was widely praised. (Nowadays? They'd be onto me in 10 minutes.)

Karen Carpenter's increasingly-alarming, wispy frame was not remarked upon, except to say "Wow!"; people would say she was "dieting" too much. Because she was such a well-known, perfect, archetypal "good girl"--her death had an enormous impact on everyone.

Carpenter's death took recognition of anorexia into the mainstream, just as her music had been so accessible and mainstream.

~*~

MAD MEN continues to do a fabulous job in contrasting NOW with THEN. In the recent episode, we learn that a man who lost his foot to a riding mower (hilarious gallows humor) will also lose his job, all because of his disability: "He'll never golf again!"--may be the best line I ever heard. But anyone startled by that should remember, that is indeed the way it was in 1962. If they didn't like your disability, they could legally get rid of you for that reason alone.

Betty Draper's nightmarish birth experience (after smoking and drinking like a Rat Pack-member throughout her pregnancy), was another historically-accurate and thoroughly instructive exercise in How Things Have Changed. My mother, aunts, cousins and millions of other American women gave birth under such cruel, punishing circumstances during this era.

And remember: feminists radically changed the birth-experience for women, not pro-life fundies.

~*~

The ease and omnipresence of cell phones has made decades of phone-jokes and comedy routines (in vintage movies and television shows), truly incomprehensible to the kids. They don't quite understand how it was to get calls from people you don't know. They also don't understand that once upon a time, talking on the phone all the time was regarded as rude as hell, as well as socially inept and backward (like a teenybopper). Old movies such as Woody Allen's Play it Again Sam, in which Tony Roberts (movie-still at left) is constantly calling his answering service to leave his call-back number, was riotously funny back in the 70s... while also simultaneously communicating the idea that Roberts was unbelievably self-centered and narcissistic. But now? What, the kids wonder, is wrong with Roberts' behavior? OMG, the man must track down his unreturned calls!!!!

((sigh))

I am reminded of the social mores of the past that I regret losing...and phones in their proper place is one of these.

Not everything from the past was bad, you know. ;)

~*~

I got both a rainy day and a Monday...

Re: this video. Nobody could look good in that dress, why didn't somebody put her in some DECENT CLOTHES?! Always tried to make her look like some damn choirgirl. growf!

Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters

Why I love Colin Wilcox

Watched a bit of the Twilight Zone marathon yesterday on the SciFi network, waiting for my favorite "Number 12 looks just like you"--which never gets shown, or at least, I invariably miss it every time. (On YouTube, I discover a band has named itself that, which is pretty neat!)

Ironically, me and Mr Daisy were also watching DVDs of MAD MEN, also set in the early 60s, which mentioned the beautiful model of the era, Suzy Parker, who plays Number 12. (The original story was by Charles Beaumont, titled "The Beautiful People"--also a song title by Marilyn Manson--and I've always wondered if he read the story.)

The story is about an "unattractive" girl in the year 2000 (!) who refuses to have "the operation"--which will make her look like everyone else. Doesn't she want to look like everyone else? What the hell is wrong with her?

She gets a choice of Number 12 or Number 8, the popular models of the day, and why doesn't she want to be one of them? Look how pretty they are. But Marilyn (interesting first name, considering the time-period) isn't having it. "Being like everybody is the same as being nobody!" she protests. They send her to shrinks and hospitals, since she is obviously insane.

I won't tell you the ending, but this being the Twilight Zone, I'll bet you know it already. The final wind-up by the chain-smoking (even on TV, good God) Rod Serling:

Portrait of a young lady in love--with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These and other strange blessings may be waiting in the future--which after all, is the Twilight Zone.

Oh, holy shit! The future is here! How did that happen? (As Michael Stipe once warbled, the insurgency began and you missed it.)

The completely amazing Colin Wilcox, who plays Marilyn, is just great. Which leads me to her most fabulous role of all time, and what we can learn from it.

~*~

At about 10-12 seconds into this very short clip, check out the expression on Colin Wilcox's face, as she embodies Mayella Ewell. Really something else--giving me infinite respect for what actors do. One expression, just one, and she seals it.

When I first saw it, it made my blood run cold, even as a child. I didn't know what I was seeing. But the scene has held me riveted from the first time I saw it, until now, watching it again and again. I realize, it has a message for women, for feminists... and it is possibly the greatest white-trash moment ever delivered on screen. (Wilcox, not surprisingly, was originally from North Carolina.)

Until this moment in To Kill A Mockingbird, the audience has felt pity for possible rape/violence-victim Mayella, daughter of an abusive alcoholic. We know what's going on. But then, Harper Lee surprises us... this won't be a story where the wrong-doer is apprehended in the courtroom, ala Erle Stanley Gardner. Mayella suddenly squints, fully of steely resolve. She is white, goddammit, and that is what she is really saying: Are you going to be white, and stand with me as white, or aren't you? Suddenly, we are frightened of Mayella: "Your ma'am-in, and your Miss Mayellas don't come to nothin, Mr Finch!" She has decided to exercise the only power she has, and that is the power of a young white woman, trash or not. She can say that this black man raped her, and what are you MEN going to do about it?

When people are powerless, this is what happens. They learn to seize what they have, and use it as a bludgeon, as it has been used against them. Remember, this is a rape trial... Mayella knows what power is.

The whole clip is only 46 seconds, but check out that squint, when Mayella makes the decision. And remember, it comes down to that: the moment cannot be undone.

~*~

Unfortunately the embedding for this clip is gone, like, as of last night. Yeesh! But you can watch it on YouTube, linked here.

And, sorry about that. As I wrote HERE, this aggravates the hell out of me and I wish I knew why it happens. The embedding for other clips from the movie, is still intact. ((((sigh)))

Odds and Sods - last debate edition

A self-defined radical lesbian feminist writer named Julie Bindel has been nominated for a Stonewall award. The problem with this person is her hateful writing against transgendered people. Why has she been nominated? Did they even READ her work first?

I won't link her nastiness here, but Lisa at Questioning Transphobia (previous link) has chronicled it well. She proclaims "a world inhabited just by transsexuals" would look like the set of GREASE. Not sure I get that, but hey, that rhetoric reminds me of various offensive shit I heard growing up. Is the whole world clamoring to transition? We must POLICE the gender-borders to insure people aren't illegally crossing over! She sounds like she believes trans people are a GATEWAY DRUG! Or maybe it's the Domino Theory as applied to gender: First you let them transition and .... the whole world will want to do it!!! And then the whole world will look like GREASE!!!!!!

It's the Cold War all over again.

A Facebook group has been formed expressly for the purpose of protesting Bindel's nomination, and Bindel herself has joined it to "monitor" the "harassment" being directed at her persecuted personage. Yes, she has even barged into the group formed to talk about her, taking it over to defend herself! Some people really do amaze me in their abject cluelessness. A good lesson in how NOT to behave, is yours for free, so go over to Lisa's and read.

Momentary digression: I find Facebook distracting in a way I don't find regular blogs. Maybe it's because my eye is "trained" to read blogs, while Facebook seems like a free-for-all with too much going on. It's like when I used to have penpals and exchange "slam books" by mail in my youth--did anyone else do that, waaaaay before the advent of computers? It was terribly distracting, since I would end up writing book-length letters to people I barely knew...it was a lot like blogging!

And so, my attention is majorly diverted, particularly when there are lots of attractive people around of varying genders, all looking fabulous, as if they are dressed up to go see Iggy Pop. (I'd name names, but that would be rude.) Suffice to say, I end up going over to their blogs, Flickr accounts and suchlike, to see more pics and read about their interesting activities. FUN! But yes, as I said, distracting.

~*~

Christina Hendricks heats up the office on MAD MEN, photo from The Way of the Future.


And speaking of bisexuality (nice segue, yes?), my new celebrity crush is Christina Hendricks of MAD MEN, whom some of my fellow Scifi geeks will recall from the cult-series Firefly. I first saw her in one of those Lifetime TV-movies about anorexia, titled Hunger Point. Admittedly, I really enjoyed the movie, in a daytime-soapsuds sort of way... and then I see her on MAD MEN looking exceedingly VOLUPTUOUS, and I wondered if the movie had any influence on that fact, or was she cast in Hunger Point primarily for that reason?

Christina Hendricks' character is the fabulous Joan Holloway, who sizzles even (especially?) when she is firing some poor, hapless, weeping secretary... I don't mind telling you: I would LOVE to be fired by Joan! ("Hey, no problem, girlfriend, this job sucks. Can we get together for coffee later?") Interestingly and predictably, there is a lot of talk about her weight. Googling her name and the word "weight"--however, I see that there are lots of folks who feel just like I do, starved for a woman with real CURVES on TV. Since MAD MEN is set in 1962, it is completely historically accurate and realistic that a Marilyn-Monroesque woman would be the office diva. (In one episode, Joan and her typing pool sob after learning of Marilyn's death.)

Nonetheless, Christina's ample form has attracted attention from many quarters:

Christina Hendricks as Joan on "Mad Men" could single-handedly bring back hips. Real hips. The kind that will send a skinny man skittering across a dance floor. And I must admit that my jaw still drops when she sashays on screen with a rump as big as a holiday ham. My first reaction is always: She's huge! What a silly reaction to a woman who is probably a size 8 or 10.

Then I realize that most leading women on TV, such as Holly Hunter and Teri Hatcher, are pipe cleaners, and so I never expect to see prime-time zaftig. It's as odd to me as a virgin martini. Frankly, I am so accustomed to seeing protruding hipbones that I have to adjust my own visual definition of what is womanly. That's pretty screwed up, in fact.

Yes, I'd say so.

Well, not me, people! MORE CHRISTINA, MORE CHRISTINA! Christina, 24/7!

~*~

And finally, as everyone knows, the last presidential debate between the two candidates, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, was last night. Working my ass off and preparing for retail inventory, I scurried in only towards the last half, and found myself staying up late to watch the debate rerun on MSNBC.

(When it comes to politics, some of us are just plain junkies.)

I gotta ask: Is there STILL any question who should win? Who isn't ready to bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb Iran? Which person is more thoughtful, careful, cautious? I don't want someone in the Oval Office who is eager to nuke other countries at the drop of a hat, you know? McCain's vengeful, angry, warmongering vibe radiated off the screen, in countless ways.

Barack Obama deserves major credit for not rising to the trash-Sarah-Palin bait...at first I thought he should let her have it, but after various commentators congratulated him on his cool and restraint, I realized, no, his instincts were perfect. (That's just what I would have done.) He is too smooth and smart to cave in to that pettiness.

Just think how EXCELLENT he will be on the world stage.

Novenas in triplicate for my favorite Chicago politician, ascending to heaven as we speak.

More:

Debate III: Edgy McCain sheds no new light (Politico)

Put McCain out of his Misery (Huffington Post)

John McCain: Openly scoffing at your Health (Feministe)

Thank You, Right Wing Pundits (Daily Kos)

So much for McCain's outreach to women voters (Crooks and Liars)

Obama Three for Three: Short Takes on the Final Presidential Debate (AlterNet)

And McCain's "regular American"--Joe the Plumber--presented to us for our ongoing edification? Turns out to be an unlicensed plumber and tax evader.

Well, what did we expect? John McCain has had problems choosing his friends ever since the Keating Five scandal.

Sarah Palin's tan lines

I thought it was understood that tanning (as in: baking under the sun's rays, or in a tanning bed) is a dangerous, carcinogenic activity. But there is a whole industry of UV apologists I never knew about until I started Googling graphics for this post.

I've been watching the first season of MAD MEN on DVD, which dramatizes the early-60s advertising counter-attack on critics of tobacco: SMOKING IS FINE, EVERYONE DOES IT. (One amazing thing on MAD MEN is the constant puff, puff, puffing on high-tar cigarettes like LUCKY STRIKES; we baby-boomers grew up with that, and I'm surprised we aren't all dead.)

And now, they are telling us that searing the skin with ultraviolet rays is safe! Well, of course it is!

And guess who?!?

Palin’s Private Tanning Bed in the Alaska Governor’s Mansion

One of Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin’s First Actions as Alaska Governor Was to Equip the State Building with a Tanning Bed

By Al Giordano and Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
September 15, 2008

“The governor did have a tanning bed put in the Governor’s Mansion,” Roger Wetherell, chief communications officer of Alaska’s Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, confirmed to this newspaper. “It was done shortly after she took office [in early 2007] and moved into the mansion.”

The home tanning bed in the Governor’s Mansion in Juneau adds a trivial fact among the many, big and small, coming to light about the right-wing’s latest celebrity, McCain’s gamble to try and wrestle the election away from Democrat Barack Obama, but one that – tug the thread – leads to other questions about elitism, ethics, public health and the insufferable phoniness that plagues politics and politicians.

Indeed, John McCain claims that he is always careful to use sunscreen, as well as wearing hats, caps and long sleeves. John McCain has had four melanomas, removed in 1993 and 2000.

An expensive, specialized machine, unaffordable and out of reach to most American homes, utilized to artificially enhance one’s appearance, provides an apt metaphor for political image-making in campaigns. In fact, such an energy-hungry appliance, in most cases, requires a dedicated circuit, a voltage regulator and 220 volt wiring (and for some deluxe models, a hardwire connection to the power source) — a set-up not found in 96-year-old homes.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain recently said, of Palin, “she knows more about energy than probably anybody in the United States of America.” That kind of hyperbole can be expected from the guy who picked her out of relative obscurity, but so far both McCain and Palin have claimed that Alaska supplies “20 percent” of the United States’ energy, when, according to factcheck.org, that figure is “not even close… Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent,” and just 2.4 percent of total domestic energy consumption. Okay, so Palin may not know more about energy than other national leaders, but the revelation that her newly re-wired Governor’s Mansion includes a tanning bed may indicate that in this time of high oil prices forcing most Americans to conserve energy, Palin consumes more energy than the others.

Tanning beds of the kind used by tanning salons can cost upwards of $35,000 each.
Asked whether taxpayer funds were used to equip the Alaska Governor’s Mansion for Palin’s tanning bed, Public Facilities spokesman Wetherell confirmed that the mansion’s electrical system had been upgraded early in Palin’s term. He insisted that the electrical work was not prompted by the extra needs of a tanning bed, but, rather was part of a project undertaken to bring the historic mansion’s wiring up to current building standards.

Since governors (and vice presidents) are generally expected to be healthy role models for the nation’s youth, Governor Palin’s darkening secret raises Edwardsian questions about her habit, which medical professionals and organizations have identified as a threat to public health, a cause of skin cancer, and a problem of abuse and addiction among teenagers and others through a condition that they call “tanorexia.”

Who Paid for the Governor’s Tanning Bed?

Alaska has a very strict ethics law governing public officials. In the case of the governor, the Alaska attorney general, who oversees the state’s Department of Law, enforces the ethics laws.

Judy Bockman, an Alaskan assistant attorney general who administers the states ethics act, says the governor is mandated to disclose any gift exceeding $150 in value if that gift is in anyway connected to her official position or if it is intended to influence the performance of her public duties. And a gift is defined, she says, “as the transfer of property to a public official at less than full value.”

Bockman says she was not aware of Palin’s tanning bed. That fact would seem to indicate that the governor did not list it as a gift, since such disclosures are to be filed with “a designated supervisor,” which in the case of the governor is the state’s attorney general.

Wetherell of the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities confirms that fact as well, indicating that he was informed by the Governor’s Office that Palin purchased the tanning bed “with her own money, so there was no need for an ethics disclosure.”

Wetherell says that Palin bought the tanning bed from a health club, adding that it was not a brand new machine. The fact that the tanning bed was acquired from a business also seems to indicate that it was a commercial model — which can command a hefty price tag as Wiese and Mensik point out.

Wetherell was not able to provide the name of the health club, the model of the tanning bed, nor the price Palin paid for the machine, which means there is no way of verifying, at this point, if Palin did, in fact, purchase it with her own money, and if so, whether she received a discount off market value exceeding $150 in deference to her position as governor.

If, in fact, the tanning bed was donated to Palin or her family, or provided at discount exceeding $150 as a favor due to her position, based on Bockman’s explanation of the state’s ethics law, it would have legally had to appear on her state ethics disclosure filings.

Bockman also explained that it is incumbent on a public official to disclose a gift in any case where that official suspects he or she received special treatment.

“There is an absolute bar against taking any gift that is inappropriate,” she says.

In any event, the examination of a potential ethics violation is handled on a case-by-case basis based on the particular circumstances of the event, Bockman adds.

“We don’t judge the appearance of impropriety,” Bockman says. “We look at the facts.”

The name of the health club that allegedly sold the tanning bed to Palin, its model and cost, form of payment, and that of the state contractor who did the electrical upgrade work at the Governor’s Mansion, are subject of continuing reporting by this newspaper. (Have a lead or a tip? Send it along to narconews@gmail.com)

I guess we need a tanned Vice President, though, don't we? Seems a small price to pay!

(((rolls eyes)))

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Listening to: Patti Smith Group - Till Victory
via FoxyTunes

Odds and Sods: Leave the driving to us edition

In 1981, I ran away from home (haha, joke, I was 23 years old) and rode a Greyhound bus for three solid days, from Columbus, Ohio to San Francisco, CA (approx 2500 miles). It was one of the major turning points of my life.

The AA part of the story is that I promised myself: not a single sip of alcohol, NONE. NADA. ZIP.

I lasted until Cheyenne, Wyoming.

At this point in my journey, some nice ex-Vegas showgirl (obviously recognizing my increasing agitation for what it was) sympathetically and politely passed me some vodka in a Mountain Dew can. I remember that she was listening to Kenny Rogers' THE GAMBLER on her boombox, and I thought the song was just so apt as my accompaniment for falling off the wagon, yet again: I was gambling. I gambled frequently in those days. AA people would later compare it to playing with a loaded gun: just one sip. And yes, there I was on that Greyhound, unable to stop spinning the cylinder.

But I loved the trip, as only a young person could.

I also took long Greyhound bus trips in 1999 (1000 miles) and 2003 (700 miles), and the last one nearly did me in. Sitting on buses for long, long periods is actually painful after you develop arthritis and other aging issues. (Have you ever tried to SLEEP on one of those things?)

And so, I swore off the Greyhound, after I limped off the last one.

And now, Bamboo Blitz finalizes the decision for me, by reporting the following incident. Good Lord in HEAVEN!

40-year-old suspect held in gruesome Manitoba bus killing

Passenger decapitated, witnesses say; story contains graphic details

A 40-year-old man is in custody in Manitoba after a young man was stabbed — and, witnesses said, decapitated — aboard a Greyhound bus travelling through the province overnight.

...

[Passenger Garnet] Caton, the driver and a trucker who had stopped at the scene later boarded the vehicle to see if the victim was still alive.

"When we came back on the bus, it was visible at the end of the bus he was cutting the guy's head off and pretty much gutting him up," said Caton.

The attacker ran at them, Caton said, and they ran out of the bus, holding the door shut as he tried to slash at the trio.

When the attacker tried to drive the bus away, the driver disabled the vehicle, Caton said.

"While we were watching the door, he calmly walks up to the front with the head in his hand and the knife and just calmly stares at us and drops the head right in front of us," said Caton.

"They did an awesome thing, holding him in there, because if not, what would have happened?" said [Passenger Cody] Olmstead.

I can't believe this happened in Canada and not the USA. The next time the Canadians sneer at us for being trigger-happy, uncivilized brutes, we can sneer back and say "Does the word GREYHOUND mean anything to you?"

~*~


(Graphic at left from Radical Women.)


Winter writes a fabulous post titled What do I want? on TEXT AND THE WORLD:

A de-centring of the word “feminist” from actions/campaigns/events etc. in favour of re-formulation in terms of women’s rights/liberation. This should be rooted in an appreciation of the fact that a feminist identification is not possible (and perhaps not even desirable) for many women, but this does not mean that they are any less concerned about their rights.

A move away from protecting the identity and towards protecting the work -- whatever we call it. Feminism is not a religion and we shouldn’t be thinking in terms of conversion. If we do the work and we do it well, people will be inspired to join us. If people are not inspired to join us, then we need to work harder.

A general rejection of “I can’t work with anyone who disagrees with me on such-and-such an issue” or “”I don’t want to work with anyone who isn’t the right kind of feminist” type thinking. How privileged do you think you are if you can choose who you work with? Ok, there may be a few cases in which certain individuals working together would be impossible, but most people on the planet struggling against oppression do not have such luxury and in general I think we should get over ourselves.

Rigorous effort to ensure that no one type of person’s experience/positionality is being constantly centred, along with awareness that this will be hard and will require a heck of a lot more than lip service to achieve.

Actions/events/campaigns/discussions that result in something concrete. I don’t care whether it’s a zine, newsletter, leaflet, getting chained to some railings, invading your MPs office, just as long as it’s something tangible that has some kind of impact. Sitting around talking is enjoyable but what does it really achieve?

READ IT ALL, right now. (Winter also writes astutely about recent "feminist" attacks on Madonna, which you must also read immediately!)

~*~

OPEN LEFT educates us about DEAD ZONES worldwide. Yes, it's a depressing and scary phenomenon, as befits anything named after a Stephen King novel:

[Fertilizer] runoff from industrial agriculture and fossil-fuel use are causing catastrophic "dead zones" in our oceans, "killing large swaths of sea life and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage," according to Scientific American.

It's Agribiz vs. Aquabiz, and at the moment, the farmers are beating the waders off of the fishermen. Scientific American notes that "there are now 405 identified dead zones worldwide, up from 49 in the 1960s." And once a marine habitat falls victim to hypoxia, i.e. oxygen deficiency, the outlook is grim [...]

You are hereby ordered to read all of this, too. And you are also ordered to STOP EATING FISH and DEPLETING THE OCEANS, which I know you carnivores WON'T DO, but I will issue this executive order anyway.

But before I get too righteous in that direction, The Partial Muse provides us with the pertinent reminder of how goofy, obnoxious and even violent, some animal rights activists can be.

Existential note: The Middle Path, people, the Middle Path. Extremes will eat you up and spit you out! AVOID!

~*~

Left: Fired Up Creative Lounge, Asheville, NC.



And finally, an article titled Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization (which is of course why I saved it for last) has garnered an astounding 1560 (!) comments, over at the Adbusters site. The comments are as good as the article. I love to see people seriously engaging this topic. The article by Douglas Haddow is deliberately provocative:

[After] punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

...

With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.

...

The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.

Speaking of decapitation, several of the comments seem to be unapologetically demanding the head of Douglas Haddow:

Again the disdain for anysort of "movement" or "anti-movement" is shat upon by a fool who denies being apart of the very thing he wishes to be.

...

No, they don't have the solutions, the answers, but at least they don't pretend they do. Hipsters, then, are the great barricade, the strikers that will not be moved. No, we're not making specific demands for employee benifits (we know that doesn't get us as far as we really wanna go). So, call it the forming of an army via blog, an international coke-disco V.I.P. list for future e-mails to be sent.

Call it what you want, but please don't waste another tank of natural gas insulting another harmless part of culture where the real criminals go un-blamed.

...

One of his points was, hipsters are harmful BECAUSE they're harmless. Every other subculture in history has had something to say - even emo kids!

My favorite part of your post was where you tell him to stop insulting your culture because you have no voice. Even better, if you distrust the revolutionaries so much and their worldview is so 'skewed' - why not do it yourself instead of being a slave to whatever mass media tells you?

Conformity is not a culture. Ignorance is not strength. Slavery is not freedom, despite what you see on TV.

This is some great conversation, highly recommended!

~*~

*For non-baby-boomers, the title of this post is from the famous Greyhound bus advertising slogan of the 50s and 60s (possibly even through the 70s?). My newest TV addiction, MAD MEN, has me remembering all the innovative advertising of the era. (See #54 here.)

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Listening to: The Breeders - We're Gonna Rise
via FoxyTunes

Old fashioned gals

Left: Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show

Today's question: How can we make art that is truthful to the past, without being obnoxious? We need to tell the truth about the role of women with sympathy and awareness, without being anachronistic.

I am particularly interested in the AMC series MAD MEN, which I assume was inspired in part by Tom Wolfe's dead-on essay about the advertising world, The Mid-Atlantic Man, also written in the 60s.

Plain(s) Feminist commented briefly on MAD MEN:

And while we're on the topic, I don't really care that the gender "issues" brought to the fore on Mad Men are true to the era. They make me damn angry to watch. What is the point? Yes, television is supposed to make one think, but it's not supposed to make me pissed-off for no reason. I have enough sexism to deal with in daily life without needing to reach back into the sixties for a fix, thank you very much.

The New York Times recently reviewed several TV shows about domesticity in an article rather cutely titled Say, Darling, Is it Frigid in Here? Here is Alessandra Stanley's description of MAD MEN:

This Madison Avenue drama, set in the advertising business at the dawn of the 1960s, recreates middle-class life in the pre-Friedan era, when graduates of Wellesley and Bryn Mawr wore girdles and aprons as they raised the children and waited for their husbands, who stayed in town late, drinking and smoking and carousing with compliant secretaries. “Mad Men” has a satiric edge, but it is a stark reminder of what the battle of the sexes looked like before women’s lib, civil rights, the Pill and legalized abortion.

The series also serves as a taunting rebuke to modern wedlock: Careful what you wish for.

One couple on “Tell Me You Love Me” has a happy, vigorous sex life that is undermined by the wife’s inability to get pregnant. Another has two children and no sex at all, which is undermining the family bliss. Both end up slowly and guardedly confiding in an older sex therapist, played by Jane Alexander. She has an uninhibited sex life with her loving husband, Arthur (David Selby), but even her time-weathered marriage has a few cobwebs.

Katie (Ally Walker) and David (Tim DeKay) haven’t had sex in a year, but nothing appears to be wrong. They are a loving if repressed couple deeply and equally involved in raising their children, from grocery shopping to Little League practice. David is not impotent; he masturbates with furtive relish when his wife leaves the room. Yet neither seems able to summon desire for intercourse or take the initiative. A clue to their problem spills out during a therapy session, when the mild, buttoned-up David unleashes a rant about the lust-numbing domesticity of his life.

“I guess, yeah, I should be in the mood every time I clean out the gecko cage,” he hollers, his sarcasm turning to rage. “Everybody else is, it seems. I’ll tell you what turns me on: Buying Cheerios is really hot, and then of course getting shoelaces or fantasizing about minivans, that’s sexy too.”

Those intimations of emasculation stand as a cautionary tale next to Don Draper (Jon Hamm) of “Mad Men.” Don has a wife, two kids and a freethinking mistress in Greenwich Village. He doesn’t buy Cheerios or mop the floor. He’s barely ever home. But he has enough libido to sleep with two women and chase a third.

Dump that pesky equality, guys, and get back to basics! Wink, wink, nudge nudge.

As I commented on Plain(s) Feminist's blog, one drama that succeeds in being sympathetic to women, yet totally realistic for its time (the 50s), was THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, which--not coincidentally--stars several (all?) self-identified feminists. Was it the strength of their performances and/or interpretations of their characters that made the difference? Or the stellar writing of Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich?

Which old movie makes you cringe regarding the role of women, yet you like it anyway?

And like Plain(s) Feminist, which one is impossible for you to watch without getting pissed off?