Not Hugely Annoying, But Huge and Annoying

I have to admit. I like to buy things. I am an all-consuming lemming who'll likely jump off a cliff for a nice pair of leather boots or a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress (what I wouldn't give). At least I'll look good when I'm dead; the undertaker can "vogue" me in my coffin. So I was secretly excited about the new Urban Outfitters branch being installed in one of those perpetually vacant spots that are scattered about Northampton.

I wasn't excited that such an historic behemoth of a building (the Northampton Institute for Savings) flanked by two other historic behemoths, the Hampshire Council of Governments and First Churches, was to be the newest home for the huge clothing retailer. Nor was I excited about such steep competition for the smaller local businesses that appeal to the same demographic, like Faces or 25 Central in Thornes (rumor has it Thornes was to be the home of UO, but the owners of the mall's existing businesses were so up in arms that the project was scratched). So down the street to a building that probably has an ungodly monthly rent (this is another rumor: apparently someone looked in to putting a business in the building some years ago, and the proposed monthly rent then was upwards of 10 grand). Certainly Urban Outfitters Inc., who own five brands and have stores all over the world, will have no trouble making the monthly payment, whatever it may be.

Continue reading "Not Hugely Annoying, But Huge and Annoying":

Attention: Aspiring Ladies

In perhaps one of the most hilarious performances of one of the silliest songs of all time, this goofball manages to say some stuff that isn't really okay. Like why does he get to decide that a certain "kind" of woman that he'd "like to flaunt and take to dinner" is a lady. Like because he wants to dress her up and take her out and sleep with her, that somehow makes her dignified. Oh, and don't forget this gem: "she always knows her place." Harumph. And then commences the talk-about-her-like-she's-a show-pony part: "she's got style, she's got grace, she's a winner." And that's just the first verse!

Continue reading "Attention: Aspiring Ladies":

Grrrls Rock

When thinking of great rock guitarists, I'm generally awash with images of thin men in tight pants through which they exude some sort of super-sexual musk that increases in intensity when they shred. I lament not maturing in an era past, perhaps the sixties, seventies, or eighties. I would certainly have entertained the thought of becoming a groupie. I may have even been successful in consummating my adoration with a rock god, though I doubt it (I have a condition that doesn't allow me to speak to or approach famous people). It's not often that I hear a shredding guitar solo and feel sisterly adoration, instead of feeling kind of turned-on. There are tons of lady singers with strong throaty rock voices to idolize, but there’s something about the technicality of a guitar that makes it just a little bit more badass. I mean, maybe Nancy Wilson from Heart has a little bit of that, but she was just the rhythm guitarist. I'm talking behind the back, finger-tapping, teeth-using, reverb-y guitar playing. Licks.

Continue reading "Grrrls Rock"

Mystery Smell

I don't what my boyfriend (well, I guess he's my fiance now) cooked for breakfast, but it smelled like hot library book in my apartment when I woke up this morning.

I'm Not Gone

I have been maintaining this blog at a different site. You can read it here. I think I shall start simultaneously posting my posts to both sites. But if you go to the other page, I get mo' money.

For some reason, this seems to me like a very very good thing.

Sarah Palin, Feminist

Hrmph.

Make Go Get Do Be See Barf

This is the most nauseating website I have ever visited. What is going on?! And how does one nourish an aspect?

Ew, Belgium.

Et Septembre, là-haut,
Avec son ciel de nacre et d’or voyage,
Et suspend sur les prés, les champs et les hameaux
Les blocs étincelants de ses plus beaux nuages.
-Emile Verhaeren

This is an ad for Ché magazine, Belgium's equivalent to Maxim or FHM, presumably. The biggest problem that I have with this ad campaign, besides the fact that the rag has co-opted Ernesto Guevara's beloved nickname, is that they have hijacked his message as well for their tagline: "Let us keep on dreaming of a better world." Really, Ché? Or perhaps I should rather question the men of Belgium, who apparatly buy this shit. Is your utopian dream one where women walk around with their tanned and tumulous buttocks barely hidden under paper, in fact stridently advertized with an arrow aimed at their tooters? Could this be a better utopia than, say, living in a country that helped found and hosts perhaps the most progressive and unionizing international monetary and financial intutution ever? A country that is about 97% urban (a must for a futuristic utopian society is people living on top of people a la Huxley or Dick)? A society from which came Jean Claude Van Damme, moules frites, René Magritte, the Gilles of Binche, Audrey Hepburn, waffles, The Singing Nun, Emile Verhaeren (as far as publications go, Ché is certainly a departure from La Jeune Belgique), and the most kinds of beer anywhere?! Can it get much "better" than officially sanctioned laïcité?

What is especially disturbing to me, Walloons and Flemings, is that you are already pretty accustomed to seeing sexually explicit advertising and PSAs, which is great, don't get me wrong. The thing I'm attacking here is taste, not the right to express one's taste. So lovely lady lump imagery is nothing new, and is probably more than little passé.

If anything, the element of this ad probably most subliminally interesting to the men of Belgium is not the female ass itself, but the treatment of the ass and the woman it belongs to like a homemade flier advertising guitar lessons. In this case ass=guitar lessons. Please, come have sex with my ass (please, come take guitar lessons from me). I'm hot enough to be a supermodel, but I'd rather have sex with you (I used to jam with Jerry Jeff Walker, but I found my true calling, and it's teaching 13-year-olds how to play "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple). It reeks of desperation. Is this what will make the world a better place? A bunch of super sexy, faceless, desperate women running around on train platforms with paper covering their asses? Paper complete with hanging chads, of all things? Sounds like a utopia gone awry, more like the dystopias of Heinlein, except instead of having Protestants in charge, there'd be frat boys. Quelle horreur!

I guess I just had a more romantic picture in my head of what the typical Belgian man would look like/be interested in. I imagined something like this:

But now I'm thinking the dystopia-fated, cobblestoned streets of Antwerp are crowded with a different breed, one that looks more like this:
Let's hope they die out soon enough due to lack of sex. I can't imagine this Belgian, or any like her, giving them any play.

Pit Bulls Have Lipstick, Too!

I can't believe no one has said anything about this yet. Seriously, John Stewart. Really, Stephen Colbert? Did you not realize that Palin opened it up for you to make a very clever and lewd joke about a canine erection? It was the first thing I thought of. When I heard her announce, in her nasally, tight-lipped, quasi-Canadian burr, that soccer moms were like pit bulls except with lipstick (teehee!), I thought, "Oh shit. Here we go." I was so excited she said something so stupid and that no one in her camp had picked up on it.

But then no one in anyone else's camp picked up on it. Not that I would want Michelle making dog boner jokes. That would be out of line. But c'mon, Rob Riggle. Show some balls.

My Mother is Going to Kill Me

I recently had a conversation with my mother that I expected to devolve into a competition in how many more facts one she party could recite than I could. I would say something negative about John McCain, and she would counter by defending that negative quality and explaining how I was misunderstanding it, blah, blah. And then she would do the same thing about Obama. However, I was swiftly stalemated, facing a brick wall mortared with stubborn repetition and dropped g's (I don't know where this tick came from, but she said "I'm not votin' for..." about twelve times). She might as well have put her fingers in her ears and started humming. What I found out is that she really didn't know much about Obama except that, according to her, he "panders to crazies." I'm not sure if that means my mother thinks half the country is insane, or that she just refuses to listen to the man because (despite her claims that she is an independent) she has voted Republican since I've been alive.

I decided to write her an email outlining the educations and early careers of both candidates (she claimed Obama was a "career pol." Uh, okay). I didn't end up sending the email, because I again came to face a fact about my mother and the way she votes and thinks about politics. The major issue for her, in fact the only issue for her is abortion.

It doesn't matter that health care is an issue that Obama is trying to do something about and is making one of his primary objectives. Health care that would save the lives of thousands of people and would make the life of her own daughter easier, not to mention her three other children, all young, all about to enter or are just entering the work force, the highest demographic of uninsured Americans. But none of this will convince her. In fact, she even said (and I'm paraphrasing here) something along the lines of "It doesn't matter who becomes president, it's not going to effect me." Well, Mom, it sure as shit is going to effect me. I am terrified of these people. I am terrified because my mother lives in Massachusetts and still doesn't seem to know or even have to desire to learn what Obama is about (he's not perfect, by the way). And now I'm even more scared because McCain picked a pretty lady who wears glasses and has a shitload of kids to make him look less mean and roboty. The Grand Ol' Party full of good ol' boys let a skirt into their smoke filled room. And I bet my mother loves her.

The choice of Palin for VP has made this election about abortion. Or it has at least prompted the press to slap the issue around for a little while. Ironically, it is distracting voters from Obama's global agenda that has avoided making the campaign about some of these divisive issues (he called them small in his acceptance speech, which I thought was a poorly chosen word) despite his supposed lack of foreign policy experience.

I have been lucky enough to have never had an accidental pregnancy (I've also never had an intentional one). I have used birth control in some form responsibly and regularly since I have become sexually active, and once used plan B when a condom broke. But if I had gotten pregnant while in high school or college I would have aborted the pregnancy. I hope in my lifetime I never see Roe v. Wade overturned. If it were, I would readily expatriate myself, as I would see it as a discriminatory step in the wrong direction (if the sexual dynamics of this country were identical in every way except that men bore children, I'm certain that abortion would have been legal around the same time as the Industrial Revolution). I don't think Palin's parenting choices should be questioned, and I admire Obama for saying they are "off-limits" for the rest of the election (he's really doing a great job of undermining nasty political tactics and leaving the Republicans with nothing left to say). What should be questioned are her qualifications and her policies. And why, until she had one of her own, Palin didn't very much care for unwed teen mothers.

p.s. I love you, Mom.

Cup O' Joe

Jeremy and I have developed little bit of a tradition. On Sunday evenings we have taken to walking a block and a half to Joe's Cafe where they serve crunchy pizzas, mountains of spaghetti and meatballs, and the best mussels in red sauce around. Joe's is haven for the rotund and red-faced locals of Northampton who take over the bar for the entire evening and laugh loudly at their own jokes. Last night I witnessed one of these creatures order something for his equally rotund wife that she insisted she did not want. Chivalry, I bet he would claim. Assholery, I say. But what could I do? I could do nothing because I want to go back next week and get my mussels. (They also put pepperoni on salad! Incroyable!)

Silly Folks

Look at these silly old guys! They are Jerry Garcia, who is now dead, and David Grisman, whose mandolin sounds pretty. They look really happy in this picture, and they have matching beards. Look at Jerry's leatha' sleeves! He's silly! I like that!

Lately I've been listening to their album Shady Grove every time I'm in the car. It is a compilation of folk standards. My favorite song is "Stealin'," which is about being low-down, it seems. I like when Jerry says, "a married girl comes to see me sometimes." I sing along energetically, making up a third line of harmony sometimes, and imagine being a salty, Janis-Jopliny, one-of-the-boys folk singer.

But what I like most about how these guys play these songs is that they capture exactly what I think folk music is intended to do. Earlier, I called them silly, and I think that's a perfect word to describe this intention, especially considering the word's connotations of plainness and humility. Folk songs, even ones that deal with serious issues, capture something childish and imperfect. It's music that's meant to be sung along to as opposed to just listened to. The lyrics are meant to be changed in the great oral tradition. An example of this silliness and how these guys appreciate it is probably more obviously illustrated with the other folk album they recorded together. It's called The Pizza Tapes and was recorded in a couple of evenings with another gentleman named Tony Rice (who doesn't have a matching beard, but his mustache is pretty kick-ass). A pizza delivery boy stole Jerry's master copy and soon after it was bootlegged. Hence The Pizza Tapes! HaHa!

Great musicianship requires that musicians don't take themselves too seriously. So does folk music. These guys are perfect at both.

A Different Kind of Artist

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!
—Mark Twain

Ever wake up with that delightful feeling of spongebrain after drinking a bottle of red wine? It's not quite as painful as a full-fledged whiskey hangover (though those can sometimes result in a tunnel of contemplative giddy). No, this means you can't sleep in, your stomach feels hollow, and you love yourself. Eggs are the only thing that matter, and the steak and eggs breakfast at Jake's could most likely be the only thing on earth to make you humble again (besides 24 hours and a good night's sleep, but I have the night off, so that probably won't happen.) Soon I will go there alone with a paper.

Anywho, hangovers always get me thinking about Bonnie, who you see here. She lives in my building and Jeremy once saw her half-naked (the bottom half). I can hear her now, sorting bottles, clinking their stinky and hollow shapes against each other. Once she gave us a grocery sack full of giant plastic jugs of vodka, accompanied with a note explaining why she could not keep them. She left them on our doorstep like a baby at a nunnery. I think she might have again picked up the habit of keeping and emptying similar jugs (which I totally understand), but I have no proof.

Bonnie lives in my building. Sometimes she can be mean, but most of the time she is in her own world. From what I understand, she is kind of a danger to herself, but she isn't dead yet, so good for her. She used to be institutionalized(?). She screams things like "Life is a horror story," and "I'm a fat cow," though she hasn't been doing that with as much frequency as when I first met her. Her family is affluent(?). Her main goals in life are to collect and redeem bottles, and to bitch about people parking in her parking space, even though she can't drive and doesn't own a car.

Bonnie is a reminder of what I (or anyone) could possibly become, though I seriously doubt that I would have the resolve to regularly sweep the street with a whispy broom and tell people to "fuck off, I'm working" when they ask me to get out of the middle of the road so they can drive by in their cars. I'm not saying I'm on the verge of flipping out or submitting to life-consuming addiction, but if I just stopped trying, it wouldn't take long for me to be homeless and crazy (Bonnie isn't homeless, but I think someone helps her, perhaps her aforementioned affluent (?) family). She understands no reality but her own. Neither do I, frankly.

Déclaration de Mission

In a recent bout of not so uncommon laziness, Cherchez La Femme could not be sought, and I neglected to attend to this blog. I did not, however, neglect to think about this blog, and in doing so, think what this blog should be about. I have not yet found an identity, a niche under which to tightly huddle the subject matter that will be written about here. The two posts thus far have been similar, though. They are about people, profiles of interesting things those people have done, and how those things have come to fruit for me. In an unrelated bout of inspiration, I named the blog "Cherchez La Femme" in an attempt to rebut the term's assholey intentions and take it at face value, which is, in plain English, "seek the woman." So I guess I'll seek them out, women that is.

I know, I know, some of you are saying "But your last post was about Heath Ledger, and Heath Ledger is not a woman." To which I respond, "I know. And I don't care." If we're going to get really semantic about this, I would suggest, Matt McConaughey-from-A Time to Kill-style, "Imagine a blog called 'Seek the Woman.' Imagine that blog, defiantly making grand and sometimes erroneous generalizations about people and gender. Now imagine it called 'Seek the Man.'" When talking in generalities, referring to both genders of humankind, we tend to default to the male designation. The term "man" is often used instead of "human", and sometimes connotes a metaphysical notion of a collective soul (as in "man cannot live on bread alone" or "man is the cruelest animal"). So I will write about people. I think most of the time they will be women. I also think sometimes I will make things up about them.

Rest assured I will deviate from this frequently.

The Ordinary Death of an Extraordinary Person

I'm not so sorry to say that the passing of Heath Ledger was the first death of a public figure in my lifetime that I did not meet, at least partially, with somewhat feigned and dutiful grief. (I am a little sorry to be just another contributor to Ledger's "still-unfurling eulogy.") My sadness in this instance was, and is, plain and genuine. I am not devastated. I cannot and probably shouldn't be. Ledger was not even an acquaintance of mine. But I know who he was and I was impressed with his rise from the teen-themed margins from which he came to the role in Brokeback Mountain that (ironically) made him a house hold name. His portrayal of Ennis Del Mar (a name the meaning of which still baffles me with its pelagic foot, as the character remains in the middle part of this country throughout the movie) was lovely and distressing.

The same can be said of his portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Night. The character is typically limned with an angular grin full of teeth, narcissistic and quaffed. Though this new version of the Joker presumably cares about his appearance (we are told when he is finally arrested that his clothing is "custom" and has no labels), he is greasy and sweaty, reveling in his madness like a pig in its own shit. His makeup, referred to as "warpaint" at one point by an extra, creeps and drips into the creases of his face; his voice would sound sniveling if he wasn't so mean. But Ledger's Joker does not necessarily cause recoil. He is slim and ageless and slightly effeminate. These qualities, mixed with the character's spryness and unwavering commitment, supplies him with a dark sexuality akin to that of, say, Dracula.

But the finality of this role is what makes it so compelling. The movie, of course, was shot with a sequel in mind, and surely with a continuance of the rivalry set up between the batman and his new found foil. That would now be an impossibility unless Ledger was replaced. The franchise has done it before, replacing Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes with Maggie Gyllenhaall. But Holmes, though possibly brainwashed, is not dead. The change was also an improvement; both actresses have tiny, smirking mouths, but that is where their similarities end. It will be interesting to see what Warner Brothers decides to do. There has been speculation that Ledger's death had as much to do with the movie's opening weekend success as anything else, but if he hadn't died, I suspect it might have done just as well.

I eagerly await The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Ledger's for-real last movie. He looks extra good in it, and his mask reminds me of a penis.

You are missed, handsome.

Belles of Bellevue

Besides looking like a brunette Kim Catrall and a young Melanie Griffith, dressing brilliantly, and looking all around like they should be my heroes, the women in this picture happen to be sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson of the band Heart. Sometimes I lie awake at night, wondering if I should have been a rock and roll star. Not at all a habitual video game player, I tried Guitar Hero recently at a friend's house. My meanderings were confirmed. Heart's galloping face-melter "Barracuda" jumped from the options list like a lean and toothy fish at my face. The Zepplinish single from their third album Little Queen is rumored to be a frustrated retort to a suggestion that the sisters' relationship was a bit more Sapphic in nature. (The ladies were also accused of being witches. How very retro.) Because of this, I like knowing that a Heart tune made it into Guitar Hero, particularly this song. It's refreshing to know that a generation of shy teenagers who dwell in the game's private and fantastic glory have no memory of the sexist inventions intended, thirty years ago, to drum up publicity. Instead, they accompany Ann's crystaly voice and feel justly insolent, which is something everyone deserves to feel once in a while.