The Sheila Variations

I wondered

why this old post of mine was suddenly receiving 90% of all of my traffic today. I knew something must be going on in that world - another parole board hearing perhaps - and yes, that's why: Leslie van Houten was just denied parole, yet again.

Good.

She can cry all she wants now. I have another interpretation of her tears (unlike Patricia Krenwinkle - who I believe has true remorse - and not just remorse - but terror at what she had done. I don't think that because Krenwinkle has remorse that she should be let out - but I do have a different feeling about her than about Leslie. Leslie scares me. She's vacant. She would "follow the leader" even now. She's got that vacant stare. ) -I think van Houten is a sociopath who needs to rehearse how to be a human being.

Any time I have seen her in interviews crying about the remorse she feels about the LaBiancas - I remember this:

And I remember this photo which has always made my blood run cold:

She's a monster. She's always reminded me of Steinbeck's Cathy - a point I made in that post that's getting so much traffic today. Crocodile tears. There is something MISSING there. And what is missing is capacity for fellow human feeling. She doesn't "get it". At all. So she can say platitudes, like "I don't know how to make it okay" - but to that I would say: Make it okay? Do you have any sense of what you have done? Of how horrible you really are? Of how beyond the pale your behavior really was? How dare you pretend to be a human being and expect us to swallow it whole? You do NOT make such a horrible murder "okay". The only recourse we have is to keep you in prison forever. But still: even that does not undo your actions. If we executed you it would not undo your actions. Keeping you in prison for life does not give the LaBiancas breath in their lungs again. But it does deprive you of your freedom, because you abdicated your human rights when you chose to act like a monster.

That's the deal.

Throw away the key.

Backrub Boy confirmation

Okay - so awhile ago - somehow I mentioned my disdain for what I call "backrub boys". I think it was in the comments section to some post ... and a huge discussion ensued about "backrub boys" and what they are, and who they are, and why girls hate them so much.

And now - Patrick Hughes - funniest writer on the Web - has come out with his latest - basically describing the trauma of seeing Burnt Offerings as a kid ... but within his essay - he PERFECTLY DESCRIBES the NASTINESS of the "backrub boy".

He gets it! He knows EXACTLY what I am talking about!! And a couple of readers here got a bit defensive during MY talking about "backrub boys" ... which just tells me that they are, themselves, "backrub boys" ... So I read Patrick's latest and just laughed out loud in triumph and glee!!

Here's the pertinent excerpt - but please: go read the whole thing!!!

Anyway, the movie Burnt Offerings was invented in 1976 in order to traumatize sensitive young innocent children such as myself. I was seven years old that year, an age that, like the Puerto Rican incident and her marriage to my pop, also fell into Mom’s pre-sapphic era. This isn’t really significant for any specifically lesbionic reasons or anything, but Mom’s lifestyle was pretty different before the switcheroo, so in those days I would get stuck with babysitters a lot while Mom did her single thing, working and partying it up all weekend with terrible Doug Henning-type righteous ‘70s dudes.

I suspect it was my early exposure to these dudes that resulted in a lifelong aversion to Doug Henning, whole wheat bread, mustaches, mellow vibes, magic tricks, jam sessions, rainbow suspenders, natural fibers, music with flutes, turquoise jewelry, Steely Dan albums and sandals, although I must admit for a brief period (the 1980s) I did enjoy their marijuana a great deal.

God damn, come to think of it, fuck Doug Henning-type mellow ‘70s dudes. Fuck their Dan Fogelberg 8-tracks, fuck earth tones, fuck tasty guitar licks, fuck that Jonathan Livingston Seagull book and fuck all that running free with the wind on the beach at sunset jive. Ladies, don’t be taken in by the friendly relaxing backrubs of the Doug Henning-type dude. These backrubs are not really meant to relax you as much as just relax your pussy armor, ugh.

AMEN.

But can we also just take a moment to revel in how funny his writing is. The "jam sessions" being included ... it's just perfect. I love him.

Warning: Huge creepy photo of Doug Henning in that post. I can barely look at it without shivering in the shame that only a child who grew up in the 1970s can feel.

Go read the whole thing

I ... I ...

I have no words.

via Steve Silver ...

Uhm ... wow ... I just read all 4 pages of that demented document. I feel ... I have no words ... I ... I ... There's SO MUCH to comment on ... but ... I guess total insanity makes my mind go blank or something. It was the shaving section that really made me go blank. I ... I ... But also his ... obsessive scoring and grading system ... like if you really look closely at the system, you begin to see the swirling crazy going on here. wow ...

wow ....

Forgive me, Lord

For I am about to sin.

I am about to commit what some people seem to feel is blasphemy.

But I can no longer help myself.

I can no longer keep quiet.

I have reached the end of my endurance, and I must speak out. Please forgive me. Please please forgive me for what I am about to say:

I AM SO SICK OF MICHELLE KWAN.

I AM SICK TO DEATH OF MICHELLE KWAN.

I NEVER WANT TO SEE MICHELLE KWAN'S FACE AGAIN.

I love the Winter Olympics, but I HATE MICHELLE KWAN.

Little Miss "Ooh, I have a cold, Oooh, I don't have an Olympic medal, Ooh, let me fire my coach, Oooh, let me do the SAME ROUTINE TWO OLYMPICS IN A ROW ... Oooh, let me swoop around with my leg in the air so the crowd goes wild ..."

I AM SICK OF SEEING MICHELLE KWAN DO HER BIG FIGURE EIGHT LOOPS WITH HER LEG IN THE AIR AND A HUGE SMILE ON HER STUPID FACE AS THOUGH THAT'S ALL SHE NEEDS TO DO TO WIN A GOLD MEDAL.

I AM SO SICK OF THE DRAMA OF MICHELLE KWAN

Sorry, Kwan. You lose. Back down. Give it up. Retire. I am sick of you dominating the airwaves. You think we don't all know it's deliberate? As though hemming and hawing about "oooh, I have a cold" will mean, somehow, that you will get a Gold medal? "Ooooh, will she compete? Will she not?"

I AM SICK OF IT.

I love ice skating, but I have one message for the Kwan-ster:

STEP AWAY FROM THE ICE.

Sasha Cohen blew you out of the water at the last Olympics, skating with more fire and more courage than you did - and you should be very very frightened of your competition, and stop trying to create some emotional melodrama so that you win as some kind of emotional favorite. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN.

I AM SICK OF THE GOLDEN-LIT MELODRAMATIC PERSONAL-INTEREST PIECES ... I AM SICK OF THE SAPPY MUSIC ... I AM SICK OF SEEING YOU IN YOUR STUPID BLACK LEGGINGS STARING AT THE CAMERA WITH A PENSIVE FACE ...

I want someone ELSE to compete for the gold medal. It's not yours to win anymore.

I AM SICK OF YOU, MICHELLE KWAN.

I AM SICK TO DEATH OF YOUR PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE BULL CRAP.

STEP AWAY FROM THE ICE.

Dear Lord in heaven: forgive me.

So come on now, God. Let me have it. Strike me down with lightningbolts. I know I deserve it. I know when I speak to mere mortals, down here on earth, and I say something like, "I am so SICK of Michelle Kwan" I am stared at with shock, and revulsion. I have spoken blasphemy.

Which is part of the problem.

Because - er - she's just Michelle Feckin' Kwan. She hasn't won a Gold Medal. Big whup. Neither have I. Her time is up. She has received every other Medal known to man, but waaah waah wah she wants the Gold Medal!!!

MICHELLE:

STEP AWAY FROM THE ICE.

Sasha Cohen is going to KICK YOUR ASS - at least this is my deepest prayer - and it's time for you to step back, join the cast of Skating with Celebrities and SET US FREE FROM YOUR WINTRY GRIP OF DOOM!

Remember my plea from months ago?

You know, the one that went: "Please, Tara Reid: Don't ever change"? I couldn't bear to have her change, or calm down, or sober up ... because her antics are far too entertaining, and also rather harmless, in a drunk slut shenanigans kind of way.

Well. Over the last couple months - my plea has been MORE than answered.

I think Tara might be the kind of chick who REALLY goes crazy in the summer - it's all one long Spring Break to her - and so that means there are just more embarrassing photos of drunken Tara staggering through St. Tropez to keep me entertained.

She's such a train wreck and I absolutely adore her.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C Awesome!! As long as I don't have to be there in person, or hang out with her EVER ... I LOVE that she pulls stuff like this!

Exhibit C1 (Scroll way down. The photos are from the same par-tee as in Exhibit C - only in this one, we get to see a picture of Tara wiped out on the floor. Awesome!)

Keep it up, Tara!

I don't know how to say this ...

... in a gentle way.

I cannot be gentle.

I just watched an hour of Being Bobby Brown.

And ...

Okay. I am just gonna give up my manners here:

Those two are the RUDEST most CLASSLESS most OBNOXIOUS people I have ever seen IN MY LIFE. They have NO CLASS. They may have a lot of money but they have NO CLASS. A beggar crouching in the dirt in Sierra Leone has more class than those two.

I am SHOCKED. What exactly did they think this reality TV show would give them? A boost to their careers?

Well ... Whitney has a career. Her voice is a God-given gift. Doesn't mean she's not a CLASSLESS LUNATIC ... but she's got a voice.

I love Bobby Brown's song "My Prerogative". It's been on the running tape I make for myself for almost 20 years. That is a damn fine song.

But ... uhm ... that was 20 years ago.

Does he think he comes off looking good in this? Is he aware how disgusting he is? He's all about farts and taking shits, and being a big fat BABY expecting his wife to mother him. He's the most disgusting mamma's boy. He gets a knot in his shoelaces and throws a FIT expecting Whitney to deal with it. Dude: do you realize how PATHETIC YOU ARE????? He throws tantrums, he mugs to the camera ... And she's not any better. She is a lunatic. It seems like she is always stoned. Her eyes never open all the way. Watching this show makes me ACHE for their daughter. I want to do an intervention. She HID in the department store because she saw her father start to take apart a mannequin because he basically CANNOT DEAL WITH LIFE if he is not the center of attention. Whitney took her daughter to the Young Miss section to buy clothes ... and Bobby stalked through the aisles, exclaiming, "NONE OF THESE CLOTHES WOULD FIT ME. WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?"

Oh. What a bore.

He should be locked up.

Whitney should be medicated.

Their daughter should be taken away from them.

It doesn't take much to shock me, but these two are a freak show. And more than anything else - I am baffled as to why they agreed to do this show. This is evidence that they are complete lunatics because I am sure that they probably think that their antics are kind of hilarious and charming and irreverent ... when really they are just disgusting and classless.

Get some feckin' MANNERS, you idiots. I have seen Whitney's mother in interviews. Whitney's mother is an amazing singer in her own right. She is a classy dignified spiritual woman. Whitney should be ashamed of herself.

And Bobby is beyond disgusting. He gets up from the table at a chic Japanese restaurant and announces that he's taking a cigarette to the bathroom because: "I'ma gonna dropa big one, y'all." Dude: WE ALL POOP. What - do you want a medal? Why do you assault me with your bowel movements? He obviously had incomplete potty training or something.

I feel assaulted. I didn't MEAN to watch it for an hour but ... once it started ... i could not look away. It was like a disgusting operation or something.

Those two are PIGS. Just PIGS.

More crazy!!

More crazy! More crazy!! This is so much crazy for a 48 hour period, I don't even know what to do!!

Watch the video. I absolutely love the guy interviewing him. Great job, dude.

A couple of things I need you to notice:

-- the absolute aggression of the laugh. If you weren't paying attention, you might really think that it was real. But it is not. Watch. The. Laugh.

-- look at the dimwitted expression on Katie Holmes' face. The girl appears to be on some kind of psychotropic drug although we know that is not possible.

-- he refers to her as his "soulmate". Well. Yippee for them. I, however, have skepticism about the very word "soulmate" (here, here, and here) and think it's often a smokescreen for other emotions. Say: TERROR??? SELF-LOATHING??? INABILITY TO BE CLOSE TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING??? People like THAT break out the "soulmate" word. Sigh. I need to calm down. I need my Xanax. Don't tell Tom.

-- and now: watch the shift when he starts to talk about Ritalin. Just watch the transformation. I am now getting used to that shift, but I still find it alarming to watch. He goes into Defcon One mode.

I called it.

Back when James Frey's first book came out, there was a fascinating interview with him in the NY Observer ... sadly, the link doesn't work anymore ... but it pissed me off so much that I wrote a rant about it on my old blog when I was much angrier with much more frequency. Posted below. Just want everyone to know I called it. Oprah may have been duped, but I wasn't.

Oh, and let me just say this before we begin: some of James Frey's annoyances with today's literary stars I share. Some of his frustration with the cleverness, and coyness is stuff I also share. I just don't think, as he obviously does, that HE is the solution.

March 2003

I don't think I've ever read an interview with a greater moron than this man. I do not even know where to begin.

Does James Frey (whose first book, A Million Little Pieces, will be published in April by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) actually talk like this? Reading the interview in the New York Observer reminds me of the experiences I have had, usually at parties, where I meet someone, who is so intent on impressing me, and so intent on not seeming like he is trying to impress me, that the obviousness of the behavior is stunning. Vulnerability such as that is almost painful to witness. Like: "Ouch ... do you really want to show me that much at this early juncture in our non-existent relationship?" And the lack of self-awareness, the lack of realizing what exactly it is that he is doing, is astonishing. Cringe-worthy.

Is his book any good?

Let me pick out some quotes from the Observer profile:

"The Eggers book pissed me off. [A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius] Because a book that I thought was mediocre was being hailed as the best book written by the best writer of my generation. F*** that. And f*** him and f*** anybody that says that. I don't give a f*** what they think of me. I'm going to try to write the best book of my generation and I'm going to try to be the best writer. And maybe I'll fall flat on my f***ing face, I'll fall flat on my f***ing face trying to do it."

You might fall flat on your face, but at least you'll flat on your face while trying to fall flat on your face? Is your book as articulate as that?

The following quote shows Mr. Frey's humility:

"[This one agent] went ballistic over [my manuscript], called and said, 'We're going to turn you into an industry.' I said, 'What are you talking about?' 'You know who Deepak Chopra is?' I was like, 'Yeah.' 'You're going to be the Deepak Chopra of recovery. We're going to start a whole line of self-help books with your name on it. We're going to publish your own version of the Tao. We're going to send you out on speaking tours. We're going to build a religion around you.' I was like, 'You must be f***ing kidding me!' I very much admired the enthusiasm, but it was bizarre."

There's something off here. I don't trust this guy. He's got too much to prove. He exudes fragility ... there's something "off".

It gets more obnoxious as the piece goes on, if that is possible. H

"I guess I'm the poster boy for unconventional addiction thought. They were trying to lead me into saying certain things. They kept trying to get me to swear. Stossel was like, 'I heard you swear a lot. I heard you're feisty. Why won't you swear for me?' Because my mom and my wife asked me not to. 'Well forget about them, I need you to swear!' So I was like, 'O.K., f*** you!' I'm terrified of what they're going to do to me now. They're going to cut me up."

Dude, do you hear yourself? Your years of therapy and 12-stepping have not helped you see what you actually are doing. You are NOT terrified of what "they" are going to do to you now. You love it. You love being notorious, you love all the attention, you love being criticized, you love being the wild-card of the literature world ... So just admit it! I find him to be extremely disingenuous. I realize I have never been in his presence, so I can't say for sure, but what the hell. It's my blog and I'll judge if I want to.

The tone continues:

"My wife calls me a savage. Because I eat with my hands. Because my best friends are my dogs. And I like pit bulls. And N.W.A. And I love boxing. I think boxing is beautiful. The purity of fighting is a beautiful thing. Writers aren't like that anymore.all these guys who have f***ing masters' degrees and are so 'sophisticated' and 'educated' and ... well, I'm not a guy with a master's degree. I think I'm sophisticated. I can write big fat books. But I'm not an effete little guy."

What a complete and utter jackass. I like NWA. I don't have a chip on my shoulder about it, though. There's something adolescent here, about how he lists what a pig he is ... it's like a teenage boy choosing to wear smelly socks ... but he's only doing it to thumb his nose at his mother. Like, you might THINK you're being rebellious - but a TRUE rebel isn't always glancing around at authority figures to see how "outraged" everyone is. A true rebel just does his thing and doesn't care. James Frey cares. Oh my God, he cares. I don't believe a word he's saying.

While he was in L.A., Mr. Frey acquired a number of tattoos, his own personal footnotes. "I've seen you glance at this one," he said, displaying a row of letters on the inside of his left wrist: S.P.C.D.H.C. "Simplicity, Patience, Compassion, Discipline, Honesty, Courage," he said. "Words to live by. When I see that, it reminds me that these things embody the person I want to be."

He pulled back his shirt to reveal others. "That's a symbol of birth and rebirth," he said, pointing to a small phoenix. "That is a Taoist symbol of life. I have my wife's initials on my chest. I very deliberately scar myself so that I remember these things. However twisted my logic may be, by scarring myself, I'm making a commitment to myself. I'm committed to the things on my wrist."

WHAT? What the hell are you talking about? "I very deliberately scar myself so that I remember these things." (As opposed to "sort of deliberately scarring yourself"?) "By scarring myself, I'm making a commitment to myself. I'm committed to the things on my wrist."

Euuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! I guess my feeling is: you can FEEL things like that, but don't SAY IT OUT LOUD. You just sound ridiculous. I have a tattoo, bro. Lots of people do for lots of reasons. You are not inventing the wheel. People who think they are inventing the wheel by, rebelling, having sex, getting drunk - whatever - are immature. Besides. Lots of people have tattooes. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is thinking, "Oooooohhhhhh that James Frey ..... he's such a BADASS ... he likes NWA and he has tattooes!" And the fact that I sense he NEEDS that response from me makes me go even colder.

He's not being real. If this was really who he was, fine - go for it. But it's affected.

Then he trashes the literary stars of the day (Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace), always a good ploy right before your first book comes out:

"I think they're full of bells and whistles and tricks and being cute and being ironic and being all this shit. To be honest, I don't understand it. It's not how I think or how I feel...Eggers and I are exactly the same age. If there's a guy out there who is 'The Guy' of my generation, it's Eggers. In that sense, I was honored by the comparison."

Ah, now that sounds a bit like truth. You bitch and moan about Eggers, which seems transparently envious to me, yet you should be "honored by the comparison". Phony. Nothing worse than a big fat phony.

Give me a raging asshole any day of the goddamn week, but spare me from the phonies.

"All that matters is what the feelings are and what the events are. It's not about all this trickery. When I think about writing, I have a very simple formula: Where was I? Who was I with? What happened? And how did it make me feel? Those are the only important things. It doesn't matter if I can write a sentence that's a page long or if I have 30 pages of footnotes in the back or people chuckle at the introduction page. I want to move people and have them understand what I felt, what I went through and what I felt other people were feeling and going through."

And ... let me get this straight ... you are the first person to write in this manner? You are the first writer to ever "want to move people and have them understand"? No other writer has ever done this before? Ever? You sure?

Lastly:

"I don't give a f*** what Jonathan Safran whatever-his-name does or what David Foster Wallace does. I don't give a f*** what any of these people do. I don't hang out with them, I'm not friends with them, I'm not part of the literati. I think of myself as outside of this publishing culture. Kirkus called me pretentious. Am I pretentious in my self-regard because I'm serious about what I do? Because I'm moving against the trend of irony? I don't know. I hope I'm a bullet in the heart of that bullshit."

Frey, you are not a bullet through the heart of anything. You are a tiresome bore.

I am sure ...

... we are all well aware of a certain celebrity engagement that has just been announced.

His comment? ""Today is a magnificent day for me, I'm engaged to a magnificent woman.... The Eiffel Tower is magnificent, her new movie is magnificent, and the poop I took this morning was beyond magnificent. Magnifcent magnificent day!"

My comment?

FINALLY they're engaged. Damn, I thought he would NEVER pop the question.

Sheesh!

They were so back-and-forth and up-and-down for so long ... I was getting frustrated. It was like J-Lo and Ben Affleck all over again. Like: PLEASE. MAKE UP YOUR MINDS ALREADY. ENOUGH with the WAFFLING.

No but seriously: the whole thing is creepy and ultimately very entertaining to watch. Because it's not happening to me personally.

Also, I love this comment from him:

"We haven't discussed that — one step at a time," he said. "Let's see. We're not sure."

One step at a time??? bwhahahahahahaha There were STEPS involved here?

1st step. Call the publicists of 5 upcoming starlets.
2nd step. Set up meeting with 5 upcoming starlets.
3rd step. Make a choice. FAST. I've got a movie coming out.
4th step. Gross everybody out with red-carpet make-outs.
5th step. Immediately enroll her in Scientology classes so she can clear out her BTs.
6th step. Attack Oprah.
7th step. Go all psycho on Access Hollywood.
8th step. Steal Christian Bale's spotlight.
9th step. Discover the word "magnificent".

So ridiculous to talk about "one step at a time" as though it's a normal romance as opposed to an 8-week crash course in brainwashing, getting "clear", and publicity hogging.

My relationships in the past ...

... were wonderful. But there was always something missing. Sometimes it was obvious what the missing piece was, other times it only became apparent in retrospect. Some relationships I STILL can't put my finger on what it was I lacked.

But now I know REALLY what I was missing in all those old relationships in the past. Every. Single. One of them.

Was it emotional support? Nah, the boyfriends had that covered.

Was it a sense of fun and excitement? Nah, my boyfriends were always really fun people who kept me laughing.

Was it open cmmunication? No, I like guys who are straight-up with that.

No.

What I was REALLY missing was a Scientology baby-sitter to "keep me on the path" and fight off any "suppressers".

Of course! No relationship is complete without a baby-sitter like that.

And all along I thought there might be something wrong with ME!!

(thanks, Noggie, for the heads up)

The Books: "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn"

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:

The next book on my culture bookshelf is:

The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, by Diane Ravitch.

This book made me so angry I had a hard time finishing it. Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, worked in the US Dept. of Education under the first George Bush, and then was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by Clinton. This is not a book with a particular political axe to grind, but oh - there are many many axes here to grind. Mainly against special interest groups, minority groups, and the religious right (all of them working together - huh? This book describes a looking glass world) ... who insist that school text books and nationalized tests are edited so that the language is inoffensive.

Of course what is offensive to you might not be offensive to me, and vice versa - so text book publishers have just found it simpler to leave out anything that might cause them problems.

And so ... things are out of control now. Language is in a deadlock, as more and more things are seen as potentially offensive. Not even just plain old-fashioned offensive, but POTENTIALLY offensive. Questions on national tests shouldn't mention "mountains", for instance ... because some kids don't live near mountains, and that might be potentially upsetting for them to learn this fact. I am not exaggerating. That is one of her actual examples.

Ravitch, as she began her work in the Clinton administration, began to realize the extent to which there was a problem - and decided to research it more. What she uncovered is a WORLD of self-censorship ... The ridiculousness of some of these censored texts are enough to make you want to cry. The lunatics are running the asylum. We are letting the MOST sensitive on the planet, a small percentage, control the rest of us. If ONE person, one reaaallllly sensitive person, could be offended ... could be offended ... then the text book has to be modified. Hence: languages in text books are, first of all, dull. Dumbed down, flattened out, homogenized.

Anyway, I was absolutely enraged by this book.

I highly recommend it. It's very important. I saw Ravitch on The Daily Show, and she said something like: "This is something that is going on without the consent of the parents ... Nobody even knows how much censorship is going on ... I felt it was really important to shine a light on this."

In this weird world of oh-so-easily-offended people - the religious right and the politically-correct left merge. There is no difference. They are the Language Police.

It's a travesty. This is a very important book.

This excerpt has to do with Ravitch's first encounter with Riverside Publishing (a big text book publisher). Ravitch was part of a team to evaluate a proposed voluntary test, and they had met with Riverside to hear about their selection process of reading materials for the national test.

I wanted to interject screaming comments throughout that excerpt - it makes me so nuts. But I am grateful to Ravitch, for reporting a story that was pretty much invisible - and yet affects millions. I hope hope hope that this kind of censorship, and dread of "controversy" is an educational "phase", one that will pass eventually. Also -uhm - rock and roll is controversial??? On what planet? People, I hate to break it to you, but we live in the United States. We do not live in Iran. Rock and roll is not controversial, and if you think it is?? Maybe you need to be home schooling your kids or living on a deserted island where you won't have any contact with such an UPSETTING world.

Breathe ... breathe ...

I have never before read a book where I actually shouted at the pages.

EXCERPT FROM The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, by Diane Ravitch.

As I tried to understand the reasoning of the reviewers, I remembered that in 1998 the president of Riverside Publishing had met with our committee to explain how reading passages for the voluntary national test would be selected. We expressed our hope that the test would be of high quality, that it would be more than just a basic skills test. We wanted the publisher to include passages based on good literature. We thought that children should read something worthwhile when they took the test, not just banal selections. We asked whether his company would choose some readings drawn from myths and fables and other classic literature. He said they would try, but we had to bear in mind that "everything written before 1970 was either gender biased or racially biased." He said this very casually, as though he was uttering a truth too weall known to need explanation or defense. This belief provided the backdrop for the document that he gave us that day, titled "Bias and Sensitivity Concerns in Testing."

When I first read this document, I was astonished by the list of topics that the test publishers considered out-of-bounds, and I filed it away. Two years later, in 2000, when I saw the results of the bias and sensitivity review, I retrieved this document and found that it held the key to the reviewers' assumptions. "Bias and Sensitivity Concerns in Testing" explained how the concept of bias had been redefined. It contained rules for self-censorship that most Americans, I believe, would find deeply disturbing.

The Riverside guidelines are a mixture of sensible general reminders about the unacceptability of bias, as well as detailed lists of words and topics that must be avoided on tests. "Bias", it declares, is anything in a test item that might cause any student to be distracted or upset. Bias is the presence of something in a test item that would result in different performance "for two individuals of the same ability but from different subgroups." So, for example, a test question that is upsetting to a member of group A (for instance, a girl) would prevent her from doing as well as someone who was from a different group (for instance, a boy). Bias, says the publisher, can cause inaccurate scores and measurement errors. It seems to be a settled principle that tests should not contain anything that is so upsetting to certain students that they cannot demonstrate what they know and can do. Presumably a very graphic description of violence, for example, would be so disturbing to some students that they would not be able to answer test questions. Presumably students would be upset by a test question that contained language that demeaned their race, gender, or religion. Riverside says that its tests "are designed to avoid language, symbols, gestures, words, phrases, or examples that are generally regarded as sexist, racist, otherwise offensive, inappropriate, or negative towards any group." In addition, tests should not contain any subject matter that anyone might consider "controversial or emotionally charged." Such things would distract test takers and prevent them from showing their true ability. It would be unfair, certainly, and the goal of a bias and sensitivity review is supposed to be fairness.

But then look at where the logic of fairness leads...

In addition to the list of banned controversial topics, there is an exhaustive description of "negative" and "sensitive" material that cannot appear on a test. Negative material includes (but is not limited to) parents quarreling, children mistreating each other, children acting disobediently toward their parents, and children showing disrespect for authority. Sensitive material includes paganism, satanism, parapsychology, magic, ghosts, extraterrestrials, Halloween, witches, or anything that might conjure up such subjects, even in the context of fantasy. Anything related to Halloween, such as pumpkins and masks, must be avoided. Gambling must be avoided, as must references to nudity, pregnancy, or giving birth, whether to animals or people. "Controversial" styles of music like rap and rock and roll are out.

But that is not all. Religious and political issues must be avoided. Reading passages must not contain even an "incidental reference" to anyone's religion. There must not be any mention of birthdays or religious holidays (including Thanksgiving), because some children do not have birthday parties and do not share the same religion. In any material about Native Americans, care must be exercised to steer clear of religious traditions.

There must be no reference in any test passage to evolution or the origins of the universe. Writers must avoid any mention of fossils or dinosaurs. Their very existence suggests the banned topic of evolution. However, it is acceptable to refer to "animals of long ago" if there is no mention of how old they are and no suggestion that the existence of these animals implies evolution...

The bias guidelines require that test questions "model healthful personal habits." Any references to smoking, drinking, or junk food must be eliminated. Writers must be cautious when depicting someone drinking coffee or tea and must take care not to mention even aspirin. Children must never be shown doing dangerous things, "no matter how good the moral of the story is."

The test passages must avoid beliefs, attitudes, or values that are not embraced by just about everybody. Fables are a particular concern, because they often conclude on a cynical note or have "a pragmatic moral" that someone may find offensive. Particularly taboo, the guidelines warn, is anything that suggests secular humanism, situation ethics, or New Age religion.

The people who select reading passages for tests are directed to seek out "uplifting topics". Anything depressing, disgusting, or scary should be eliminated.

Many topics are prohibited because testing experts agree that any less than ideal context will be so upsetting to some children that they will not be able to do their best on a test. But would children really be distracted if they read a story in which someone was fired or unemployed? Would they be disoriented if they read a story in which someone was seriously ill or parents were divorced? No educational research literature supports these prohibitions. There are no studies that show that children were unable to finish a test or do their best because they were asked to read a story in which the characters were rich or poor. Farewell then to Great Expectations, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and "The Little Match Girl", with their unacceptable images of wealth and poverty.

The prohibitions are there not because of research findings, but because the topics upset some adults, who assume that they will upset children in the same way. Some adults sincerely believe that children will project themselves into everything they read and that they will be deeply disturbed to read that someone else is taller than they, or that other children had a birthday party or live in a big house when perhaps they are not similarly privileged. It is hard to imagine that a fourth-grade student would be paralyzed by dread by reading a story that included descriptions of mice. Clearly forbidden by such a prohibition is any excerpt from books like EB White's Stuart Little or Robert Lawson's Ben and Me, not to mention stories of Mickey Mouse and Mighty Mouse, and other fictional mice beloved by generations of children.

Most of the prohibitions are a direct response to long-standing complaints from the religious right. Many of the banned topics are intended to avert the controversy that might erupt if the test referred to evolution or witchcraft or religion. Spokesmen for the religious right consider any description of behavior they do not like as an endowment of that behavior. They reject depictions of magic, witchcraft, and the supernatural; they don't want education materials to show people engaging in bad behavior, like children disobeying their parents. They have gone to court in several jurisdictions to protest against "secular humanism", "situation ethics", and "New Age" religion, because such ideas conflict with the moral code that is fixed in the Bible.

Test publishers have found that the best way to avoid controversy is to eliminate anything that might cause controversy. As the bias guidelines of Riverside Publishing show, quite a large number of topics are avoided (ie: censored) because fear of complaints by the religious right. But the bias guidelines try to mollify not only conservatives, but also feminists, and advocates for multiculturalism, the handicapped, and the aged. The publishers want everything to be happy, or at least not to be unhappy. Whereas the right gets topic control, the left gets control of language and images. To see how this works, we must consider what the test publisher describes as three types of fairness: representational fairness, language usage, and stereotyping.

I'm sorry.

I know it's cruel.

But who on earth is encouraging Pauly Shore to resurrect his "acting" career?

Like ... I know it's tough, buu-uuddy ... but your heyday is in the past, it is long LONG gone, and your original success was a strange one-time thing anyway, and had to do with the early chaos of MTV and now those days are gone, that entire world is gone ... so ... stop. Stop it with the comedy specials, and the little movies ... please. It's painful.

My advice is: suck it up, face reality, give up the ghost, stop trying to "resurrect" your career, and join the next cast of The Surreal Life like any self-respecting washed-up celebrity would do.

"Those are not just words. It's a promise."

Woah. Judging from this video, the situation is far more dire than I thought.

It's terrifying. Truly TERRIFYING. Like ... he's feckin' NUTS. Like ... OPENLY.

uhm ... Wow. He has no idea how INSANE he seems. And that's the scariest part. I've watched it 3 or 4 times through. Trying to find a SMIDGEON of irony, or self-awareness. But alas. There is none.

Dude's nuts.

A must-read piece ...

... on Ward Churchill. It's long, but so worth it. Matt Labash hangs out with Churchill for two days, observes him, has conversations with his supporters (and the lone guy protesting), and ends up in a bar with Churchill, drinking, smoking, arguing. Read it. Ward Churchill is obviously an idiot - not even an intelligent human being. Note to Churchill: No, Easter is not the day they crucified Jesus. Mkay?

Matt Labash is such a funny writer. He somehow is able to describe the entire experience with a mounting sense of absurdity. The whole cow-puppet section made me laugh out loud, and I pretty much laughed until the end.

Favorite quotes from the article:

Daniel Burton-Rose, a guy with hoop earrings and an AK Press T-shirt, is sitting in a nearby chair, reading a book on Chinese medicine. He is himself the author of Confronting Capitalism, and when I carelessly identify him as an anarchist, he corrects me, saying he's an "anarcho-daoist." Clearly I've reached the rarefied strata where even people's shorthand IDs contain dialectical disputes.

And:

All this anarchism has made me thirsty

And this one:

But after reading his Indigenist platform, I'm yearning for the carefree kegger that was Das Kapital.

"the carefree kegger that was Das Kapital". hahahaha Genius.

But you have to go read the whole thing. It's a great piece.

(Thanks, Steve, for pointing to it.)

I love the Internet

Why? Because someone always comes along and makes a joke out of something that NEEDS to be made fun of. Member our conversation earlier this week about the too-hot-for-you marriage of Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon and her obnoxious "I have so much more sex than all the other mommies in my playgroup and because of that I am basically a better human being than all of them" essay in the New York Times? Well someone who was also obviously annoyed by Ayelet's piece has written down what is a "day in the life of Ayelet". You've got to read it.

One snippet to get the party started:

1:00 P.M. Drag the kids along to Toys in Babeland. The owners called last night to let me know that there's a whole new section of stuff my husband can stick into me. I'm so excited. Eldest daughter somewhat disturbed when I explain the purpose of the double-headed dildo to her.

1:30 P.M. Compare prices on three-pronged rubber truncheon at Good Vibrations. It's slightly more expensive than at Babeland, but they split the difference since I'm in so often. Youngest boy goes crazy with spray-on lube while I'm at the counter. So embarrassing… I never thought I'd be one of those moms who has “difficult” children. Depression returns.

But oh, there's so much more. Funny funny. Mean-funny, which is sometimes the best kind of humor.

I especially like this detail:

2:45 P.M. Begin writing column for Salon.

2:46 P.M. File column with Salon.

BWAHAHAHA

(via Book Slut)

Please Tara: Don't ever change

Mean Humor. By Red.

Tara Reid's entire existence has struck me as supremely amusing for about ... 3 years now? Maybe 4? Since the Lizzie Grubman debacle? I know that my humor-meter went through the roof when she (and her apartment) was featured in In Style, and the whole apartment was beige and conservative and really subdued-looking, with photos of Tara, in a cashmere sweater and nice conservative slacks, smiling soberly at the camera. The whole thing was HILARIOUS - in contrast to her boozy reputation. And the QUOTES. It's an article about how she decorated her apartment, but all the quotes were like:

"Everyone thinks I'm always wasted. But I really like to stay home and read."

"I have a reputation of being such a party-girl. Sure, I partied a bit, but I really would rather stay home and cook with my Wok."

"I'm really not trashed all the time. I love chai tea."

I mean, every single quote had to do with: "I was once a huge party-whore. Now I'm actually a quiet shy homebody."

I found the entire thing hysterical. It sounded like her publicist, after seeing YET ANOTHER photo of a drunken way-too-fake-tanned Tara dancing on a table in the Hamptons, said, "Look. We need to redecorate your apartment in a conservative way, and have it featured in In Style ... I can't do damage control anymore."

I'm not saying that she's NOT a quiet shy homebody. Maybe she is! But her reputation has taken on a delightful life of its own. And no matter WHAT she does, it will follow her. Even when she wears slacks and cooks with her Wok.

Her latest catastrophe fills me with a deep and almost spiritual joy. Especially the QUOTES from her lawyers and herself. Delicious.

I swear, if this girl ever gets her act together I will be so bummed out.

The message is:

Some bloggers out there just need to chill OUT.

I am sure a lot of you have heard, by now, the sad (and, to me, INFURIATING) tale of Austin - the 13 year old boy who had the TEMERITY to "steal" an Instalanche from Blogs for Bush. He took an animated image from that site, put it on his own, and Mr. Insta-Man linked to AUSTIN, not Blogs for Bush guys. So then, this poor kid was roundly reprimanded by some random blogger named Jordan. I know, I know, this Jordan person had the tsunami videos ... he's not some random blogger ... but none of that matters to me. He's a jackass.

Poor Austin. His mom made him take his blog down because of all of this.

Here's the full story.

Everyone and their mother is linking to it right now, but it illustrates one of my own pet peeves about some bloggers, and I say this realizing completely that I am a part of this community, I'm a blogger, blah blah blah.

But Jesus. Some people take themselves just a leeeeeetle bit too seriously, don't you think, mmmmm?

First of all: how can one steal an "Instalanche"? Steal? When ... basically we're all stealing from one another anyway? Linking to each other, pulling quotes from newspapers, pulling photos, photo-shopping them ... and ... Instalanche? I know it's real. I've had an Instalanche myself. Sure, it's nice. It's nice to have him link to you. But it's not REALLY real. If you say to your great-aunt, "Hey, I got an Instalanche today!" she will not know what the hell you are talking about. Neither will 98% of the population.

GET OVER YOURSELVES.

Who is this Jordan? Sorry. I don't give a crap, and I'm sure he's feeling really badly right now, but I think he has behaved appallingly, and I think people who take this blogging thing (and Instalanches, and all of it) sooooooo seriously need to take a Xanax. Take two. Get drunk. Get laid. Don't write to a 13 year old boy calling him a "little bastard". Jordan, you were "hot under the collar"? Uhm - yeah. I'll say.

Grow up.

I guess I shouldn't be shocked at how stupid and petty and awful people can be - but I guess I still am. It still takes me aback.

I'm with Michele on her assessment on the situation. Yup. That pretty much says it all.

Please say it ain't so

No. No. I can't take it.

My main response to that announcement is one of stunned silence. (And you have to read the article in order to understand what I'm about to discuss.)

The next thing that comes into my mind, after the stunned silence has passed, is: "Uhm ... world-class, Paula? Really? You were a world-class choreographer?? Ya ever heard of Balanchine? Mark Morris? No? You were obviously successful, hon, I'll give you that ... but world-class?" Also: I wince when I hear someone describe THEMSELVES as 'world-class'.

Only people who AREN'T world-class at a craft would ever describe their OWN ART as "world-class". If you know what I mean.

It's kind of like one of the rules of online dating (a rule I stumbled over myself, after some disastrous experiments): If some guy describes himself in his profile as "laidback", "mellow", or "easygoing", you can bet that the dude has a corn cob up his ass. The same is probably true on the female side. Like, any chick who goes out of her way to describe herself as "mellow" is most assuredly a raging Type-A nightmare. It happened to me TIME AND TIME AGAIN. Some "laidback" guy would show up on the date, and I would find him to be uptight, controlling, and no fun at all. Invariably, he would be rude to the waitstaff (I think I've described my pet peeve about that in some detail), and reveal himself as a bonehead. So I learned quickly. I would scan the profile beforehand. "Hm. Laidback? Oh, he's probably a dick. Next."

Don't get me wrong. I love "laidback". I love other things, too, but I like someone who is relaxing to be around. The problem is with those people who describe THEMSELVES that way ... Maybe it's a problem of self-perception. They truly BELIEVE themselves to be "mellow" ... and yet ... huh? I'm a pretty good judge of character ... and these people were not "mellow". Their senses of their personalities, and how they came across, was ... off. Shall we say.

What I'm really trying to get at here is - there has NEVER been a time when Paula Abdul would be ranked among "world-class choreographers". Her name wouldn't even be on the list. Again: successful? YES. Hip with the latest dance moves? PERHAPS. But come on. World-class?

Anyone who point-blank says, "I am a world-class sculptor" is probably an idiot. And a bad sculptor.

My sisters and I watched some starry-eyed retrospective about the gleaming career of Paula Abdul (ehm ... a Laker girl? Not that there's anything wrong with being a Laker girl, but the sepia-toned quality of the special made it seem like being a Laker girl was on the same level of accomplishment as being Bobby Fischer or something). And the special took a completely uncritical view of Abdul. It was very fawning, which confused all of us. I mean, not that she's heinous or anything, but the special made it seem like she literally had changed the face of pop music, it made it seem like after Paula Abdul appeared on the scene, nothing ever was the same again. But ... huh? Paula Abdul? What? And she said something like, "My choreography is what I am best at. I am truly a great choreographer." And then they cut to some BOGUS shot of the Laker girls dancing, doing choreography that looked like it came out of the first 5 minutes of "Zoom" or something. Like ... they were all in a line, and one by one each of them jumped up and down That was it. My sisters and I were howling. Like ... couldn't they find some better choreography than THAT in order to prove how amazing Paula Abdul is as an artiste?

So the lesson is: even if you THINK you're "world-class" ... don't feckin' SAY it. Cause ... I don't know. Basically, cause it's ikky, that's why. And ... if you're Paula Abdul, you should NEVER say it.

I think about the Founding Fathers a lot

I think about "those guys". I think about those guys when the going gets rough, when I wonder which way we are headed, when I need strength to carry on. They inspire me.

But do they inspire me as much as this?

Absolutely not.

And then.

There are times when the frenzy stops.

When the mania dies down.

When you come across something which leaves a blankness within you ... something for which you cannot find the words ...

And now?

Well. Excuse me. As I go vomit up and down 7th Avenue.

Because I must.

(Is it too much of a broken record if I keep screaming about the lack of irony?? Now imagine Jim Carrey taking this pose ... imagine Robin Williams in this pose ... or Jack Nicholson ... It would be DRIPPING with irony. A sense of irony could save Western civilization. You cannot pose with cute little puppies and NOT do it ironically. At least if you don't want to be completely disgusting.)

All right I need to drop the pose

LOOK AT THIS FECKIN' PICTURE.

I mean, Jesus H. Christ. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON WITH THAT???

And again I shout:

WHERE IS THE IRONY? All would be FINE if there were just a smidgeon of irony ... but no. THERE IS NONE.

You know, I love John Wayne and all ...

True Grit. The Quiet Man. Oh sure.

John Wayne's great.

But he's missing that extra special somethin', I think ...

Not sure what to call it, or how to describe it ...

Only an image will do.

Okay, folks, okay

I know it's been crazy around here ... with the whole no irony thing ... and the pirate shirts ... and the tire swings ... and the general awfulness ...

but I would just like to take things down a minute, mmkay?

Just slow things down ...

take a moment ...

slow ...

sh ...

Ouch.

My soul hurts. It literally HURTS.

Because of ...

A pirate shirt. A guitar. And NO SENSE OF IRONY ABOUT ANY OF IT.

I'm sorry to keep hurting everybody

... but when one is in pain, sometimes it feels GOOD to just inflict it on others.

And so I give to you:

Woah. I think I need to kill someone.

I have something else to impart ...

... that is going to hurt even more.

Do not say I didn't warn you.

Once again. Please note the utter lack of irony.

Not to mention the slippers.

All right, people, listen up

I'm going to post something, and I warn you. It might hurt.

I really need you to be ready for it. I need you to do whatever it is you must do to prepare yourselves. I will not be held responsible for what might happen if you do not.

Are you ready?

Okay. Here it is.

David Hasselhoff. On a tire swing.

Uhm ... what????

The thing that I find MOST disturbing and MOST amusing about this image is its utter lack of irony. There is NO IRONY there. NONE.

How can one pose like that with NO IRONY???

Ignoring Germaine Greer and Loving Judy Davis

Still working on a couple more posts about this whole soulmate thing ... but in the meantime, Norm has a compilation of great links, and I'm bummed that I can't get in to read the whole article on Germaine Greer (getting a Sign In thing) because woah, nelly, it looks like a doozy. I've ranted about her before, even though I pretty much do my best to IGNORE HER. Ignoring Germaine Greer feels like a full-time job. (Side note: I will always be grateful to Germaine Greer, on one level, because Emily - back when she was "Hawk Girl" - wrote one of the bitchiest funniest rants about Germaine Greer that I have ever read in my life ... and that was the first post I read of our Ms. Jones. Someone else linked to Emily, and I read the piece, laughing out loud ... and now, 2 years later, I consider Emily a friend. So Germaine? THANKS for being the inspiration for an Emily rant. I owe ya one.)

Judy Davis told a very funny story about Germaine Greer. When My Brilliant Career came out, the movie which pretty much introduced Davis to the world, (wonderful flick by the way) - Judy Davis, because of the role she played, suddenly found herself thrust into "feminist-icon" land. Something she wasn't interested in AT ALL.

She describes being at some reception, and suddenly being ATTACKED by this overly enthusiastic woman, who would not let Judy Davis get a word in edgewise, who crowded Judy Davis' personal space, and, in general, behaved like a bonehead. Judy Davis had no idea who she was, but found out later that it was Germaine Greer. Greer pounced on the young actress Davis, took her by the arm, and led her around ... parading her about to meet all her friends ... blabbing in her ear ... talking about feminism, and what the film meant in the feminist canon ... etc.

Later, in some interview, when Davis was explaining what it was like to be in a movie which inadvertently turned you into some kind of SYMBOL, Davis related that tale. Of Germaine Greer pretty much trying to OWN Judy Davis' success. "She's ours, girls, she's OURS."

And Davis said that the entire time this was going on, she was thinking helplessly, "Would someone please save me from this shrieking troll latched onto my arm?"

Yes. Davis called Germaine Greer a "shrieking troll". Reason # 382 why I love Judy Davis.

God, I hate it when the patriarchy straps me to my treadmill

A fantastic post by Ann Althouse which pretty much describes my problems with current-day feminism.

Huh.

I wasn't aware that when I put on lipstick, it was because I am a slave to the beauty myth. Poor me. Now I'm enlightened.

I wasn't aware that when I curled my hair, I was actually a pathetic little female, who is only doing such things to attract men. (Sidenote: Er ... okay ... got one question though: WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH WANTING TO ATTRACT MEN?)

I wasn't aware that wanting to lose weight and be fit meant that I was actually brainwashed about body image by the patriarchal structures.

Feminism of the kind skewered by Ann A. is - well, it's always struck me as rather silly, but obviously that kind of thinking has dominated any feminist discourse for ... oh ... 30 years ... despite its increasing irrelevance. Thank God for Camille Paglia. For years, she was the only one shrieking (yes, shrieking) about how idiotic (and destructive) these views actually were. The main thing I feel from such stuff is condescension. They STILL are trying to tell women who to be, how to behave, what to wanthow to think ... Jesus. Do they EVER listen to themselves??

And so tonight, in honor of the feminist losers, I am going to paint my nails, take a bubble bath, and afterwards I will shave my legs, and then I will break out all the girlie products I can find (the moisturizer, the sea salt body scrub, the facial mask, the eye cream) ... and as I do all this, stuff that I actually enjoy, I will wonder: Huh, am I doing all this stuff because I really enjoy it, or am I just fooling myself, and am I really doing it all out of pathetic ignorance, unaware that all of this stuff is actually IMPOSED on me from above by the PATRIARCHY.

Yawn.

Where's my lipstick.

I am evil

I literally laughed out loud when I read this news.

Oh so what, you might think, that's not evil ... (and please, spare me any comments along the lines of: "Why do you think that's evil? That's not evil ... you're not evil ..." I'M KIDDING. Okay? I enjoy hyperbole, so don't try to talk me out of it, cause it totally kills the joke. I hate to even say this, because even THIS much is killing the joke!)

So anyway. I read the news, and I guffawed with laughter. Immediately. Loudly.

And then I felt a prick of shame. Because of my evil-ness.

Here's the deal:

I didn't laugh out loud because it was FUNNY. I laughed out loud because I was GLAD.

And I am STILL laughing. This is so AWESOME!!! I am so GLAD this has happened. I cannot tell you how funny I think this is. And tragic ... in a truly delicious way. But still. Laughing! I glory in my own evil. Please glory in evil with me.

Just because I'm in a bitchy mood

I am going to pull all of the Jewel-esque poems written in the comments sections below and post them here. (If you have no idea what I am up to here, and missed yesterday's madness, scroll down and all will become clear.) These poems need to be shared, out in the open.

The authoresses of these bitchy parodies? Emily. Alex. And myself.

Feel free to add more. As a matter of fact, PLEASE add more.

Here's one by Alex:

Alone
is a reminder
of how far
your acceptance is from
understanding
exactly how
alone you really are.
Therefore,if you are
Alone
then you cannot
understand
nor accept
your own alone-ness.
Thus
you are reminded
constantly
that you are
Alone.
You alone ass-wipe, loser, muther f*cker you

One by Emily

I have brown hair
I like pie
and grilled cheese sandwiches
with ham
but I don't like to eat
with
dirty
hands

(I have to admit, that one made me laugh out loud.)

Here's another one, by Emily

I am tough
and have street credibility
because I
lived in my car
Sure it was at my mom's house and I had amenities and I was really only doing it because I was at that stupid age where I thought doing stuff like that was cool
but I still know mean streets
when I see them
from
my
limo

And here's my contribution

I
I have freckles
I have grey eyes
But they are blind.
Nearly.
I'm not pretty
And my nose is goofy in profile
But I love the Wonder Twins
Form of ...
An ice-bitch.
I have terrible eyesight
I love to kiss
My room is a cave
The light hurts my terrible blind eyes
But I still have freckles
I still have grey eyes
And I'm a pretentious twat with dirty hands

You knew it was coming, didn't you?

For those of you who missed the Freebies post (190 comments and counting!!) - I will just say that it began with a discussion of "freebies" and ended in a diatribe against Jewel.

That is why I am posting her poetry.

Because I hate Jewel so much. I gleefully hate Jewel.

" 'Freak' is not a cop-out, it's a Noun." - quote from Alex in the comments

One of the things that I choose to believe, as I make my way through the wandering rocks of life, is that God doesn't make mistakes. This, obviously, is a matter of faith, and very often - when things are tough, or when terrible things happen like Beslan, like every other horrible cataclysmic event on this planet etc. - this belief of mine is challenged. I believe in God. But Beslan? God??? GOD? HELLOOOOOO?

This is part of life, I believe. At least a part of my life, where I believe in God, and I believe in connections, patterns being revealed ... that there is an underlying sense. I also believe that this faith of mine is MEANT to be challenged. It's not easy, or black and white. It is faith that is of this world, and meant to be shattered, and crashed ... so that I am constantly examining it and not hiding from reality.

Something like Beslan shatters the faith. The Holocaust shatters the faith. Andrea Yates shatters the faith. Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy shatter the faith.

Then along comes something like this story.

And I think to myself: There are mistakes in humanity. There are freaks of nature, embodied in one human being. People beyond the pale. People who are aberrations. Mistakes. Something went wrong in the factory or something. I believe that certain people are born "missing" certain things. Like - er - a conscience. Or compassion. The sense that other people are actually REAL, and not just extensions of your own ego. This is controversial, I know, but I believe certain people are born missing those things.

I don't care what horrible thing was done to you. I don't care what "rubber-ducky" explanation is given for why you are such a big fucking evil mistake. I don't give a shit. I don't care that Mommy didn't love you enough, and Daddy beat you upside the head. I've got plenty of friends who weren't loved by their mothers, who were abandoned by their fathers, who were sexually molested, who were basically born into a shitty fucking world - I'm sure we all do - and you know what? My friends didn't chop up their neighbors, didn't travel through the country dismembering random women, didn't shoot up their schools. They got through it.

Look at that freak. I do not care what pain she went through or what "happened to her". She's a freak of nature, she is beyond the pale, and what she did wasn't just bad and wrong, it was evil. That smile, that goopy-eyed smile, is one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life.

I know a lot of people think that calling people like her a "freak" is a cop-out. It means I do not want to deal with the larger societal issues, that it's easier to call names, etc.

Bah. I don't believe that.

I think the tougher thing to contemplate, the scarier thing, is that there are those out there who just are born bad. (John Steinbeck NAILED this in East of Eden with the chilling character of Cathy.) Such people are rare, thank goodness. But I do believe they exist.

Scott Peck, in his terrifying book, People of the Lie tackles this issue, too. Very controversial, because he's a psychiatrist! But he takes as his thesis the premise that - We don't know that pure evil exists. We can't know it for a fact. But ... let's just consider the possibility ... what is wrong with considering the possibility?

Peck defines evil as being unwilling, literally, unwilling to change, grow, move, transform - people who absolutely REFUSE to look inward, and see: Huh, this is why I'm acting this way. I know people like that and I'm sure you do, too.

Anyway. That's what I think of when I look at that freak-ass bitch's crazy smile.

A confession

Prompted by an email conversation with Curly (and I apologize to anyone I offend, beforehand):

I have a confession to make about mimes.

Mimes make me so angry that if I talk about them for longer than 30 seconds, I might start to shout. I might get all in your face, shouting about mimes (a la "Don't even TRY, CHiPs!")

There was one infamous evening, strolling along the shores of Lake Michigan with dear friends, when I started to rant and rave about mimes and it got so bad that I actually got a little bit upset about mimes. I don't even have to SEE a mime to get steamed. The mere THOUGHT of them drive me insane. It is irrational. It is not based on a bad experience I had. I was not mugged by a mime once. I didn't have a bad experience dating a violent mime.

But for some reason, they make me NUTS.

My friends like to prompt me: "So Sheila, how do you feel about mimes?" just to watch me work myself into a frenzy.

This is akin to my friend Mitchell's irrational hatred of Renaissance Fairs. He doesn't just hate them. The thought of them makes him NUTS. He said to me once, in a blast of contempt and hatred, "Renaissance Fairs make my teeth itch."

Uhm ... can I puke now?

It feels kind of mean to make fun of such well-meaning people ... but ... stuff like this makes me sick. I mean, hey, if you want to go to a "cuddle party" and that works for you, then good for you. Just do not invite me. Because if anyone tried to 'cuddle" me, if anyone tried to "respect my boundaries", and if anyone ever EVER FECKIN called me a "Cuddle Monster" ... I might have to punch that person in the nose. Twice.

Sheila to Obnoxious Person Trying to Cuddle Her: "Excuse me, but did you just call me a 'Cuddle Monster'?"

Cuddler: "Uhm ... yes ... but I want to make sure I respect your boundar---"

POW. Smack in the nose.

Don't you DARE insult me by respecting my boundaries!!

(via Andrea Harris)

My obsession with WHY THE HELL RENEE ZELLWEGER IS A SUCCESS

I find Renee Zellwegger ikky. There is something about her that makes me nuts. Like, she makes my scalp itch. I have moments where I think: If I ever see her puckered-up apple-doll smile again, I feel like my head is going to explode.

I am truly baffled by her success. Her success seems to be an industry-creation, rather than something organic.

By that I mean: The industry anointed her as "she will be the big star for the next couple of years and will get nominated for Oscards left and right" ... as opposed to the PUBLIC deciding: "I love that girl - who is SHE? Let's see more of her!"

To me, it's almost like a scent - the difference in those two kinds of success. The "industry" hopes that we will be fooled. Like: Let's put Gretchen Mol on the cover of "Vanity Fair" ... and see if it takes off! (Does anyone remember Gretchen Mol being on the cover of "Vanity Fair"? It was years ago, 10 years ago or something? The title was: "GRETCHEN MOL. HOLLYWOOD'S NEW 'IT' GIRL". She had done 2 semi-successful indie movies, or something ... and yet - there was the title - she's the new thing!! Gretchen Mol is still working - but in that case, the spin didn't work. Nobody bought the lie.)

This is obviously a matter of personal taste, but I can list a bunch of people that I think have that artificial kind of success. The studios decide to push them to the foreground, or they have excellent publicists, or whatever. Renee Zellweger has always struck me as that kind of success. Not that she is completely talent-less, but ... to get the kinds of roles she's getting? To be pretty much above criticism over the last couple of years? I don't get it. Is there anyone who is an actual Renee Zellweger FAN, who can explain it to me? I've never met one. I've never met someone who said, "My favorite actress is Renee Zellweger" - so I have no idea.

Now somebody like Julia Roberts - whether or not you like her acting - undeniably had the kind of organic success I described originally. Nobody was planning on "Pretty Woman" being a huge hit. She didn't even do publicity for it. She had already moved on to her next job. She wasn't being pampered for stardom, or primed, or pushed into the limelight (the way Gwyneth was with the Miramax boys. Again, I'm not saying that Gwyneth is without talent. But with the power of Miramax behind her, her burst of stardom felt more like an industry coronation rather than a spontaneous brush-fire.)

Julia Roberts' success was a spontaneous brush-fire. People went NUTS over this girl. THEY decided she was a star, and then the studios had to play catch-up. ("Oh yeah, oh yeah, isn't she great? Yeah ... we always knew she'd be a big star ... yeah, we meant to do this ... we knew it all along.") But in the end - the studios had nothing to do with what happened there. She was just a young working actress, and the public went APESHIT, and demanded: MORE OF HER, MORE OF HER.

(Very very rare, that kind of success. Marilyn Monroe had it, a couple others.)

Julia Roberts, busy filming Sleeping with the Enemy, down in North Carolina or somewhere like that, was unaware of how much money Pretty Woman made in its opening weekend, and also was unaware of the kind of manic insanely positive press she was getting. She was just trying to do her next movie, trying to do a good job - unaware that her fortunes had just changed, and the one in a million event had just happened to her: she had become a massive movie star pretty much overnight.

I don't care if you put Renee Zellweger on 20 Vanity Fair covers - I don't care how much the industry tells me how great she is - I don't care how many reviewers seem to unquestioningly believe that she is a great actress - I don't see it. I DON'T GET IT.

I feel like they've just read her press packet and bought the spin.

It's not like I thrash about in bed at night, wondering at this phenomenon ... but it does occur to me sometimes when I walk by a magazine stand and see her smirking apple-doll face on the cover of 5 magazines.

I'm sick of her, frankly.

I have liked her performances before. I love "Jerry Maguire" - but it's really the performances AROUND her that I love (especially the sublime Bonnie Hunt, who plays her sister). I liked "Chicago" (sort of) - but I have to be honest: I truly do not know what the fucking big deal was about that movie. The response to it was as though Rob Marshall had ... made another "Citizen Kane" or something - I thought the "OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU SEEN CHICAGO" response was baffling. "Yeah, man, I saw it ... and ... so?" I thought Catherine Zeta-Jones alone deserved the hoop-la. I didn't think Renee, or Queen Latifah, or Richard Gere did.

I don't talk much about my own experiences with acting here - It's hard to write about my own acting and not feel self-conscious about it - but I'll just say this:

Renee Zellweger reminds me of the chick in EVERY class - who has a bunch of bad acting habits - but who plays the game so well that she fools even the teacher. And so the bad habits become applauded, engrained, and solidified. And you just keep hoping that someday, someday, someone will tell the TRUTH to this person.

There was a chick like that in my graduate program (I'm telling you - there's a chick like that in every acting class. She skates by on some facile ability - but it's all on the surface. She is deeply dishonest on some level, and she can't bear criticism because it will crash the house of cards she has erected for herself) ... it wasn't until the third year when someone FINALLY had the guts to try to crack the edifice with this girl in my class, and try to actually say, "Listen, sweetheart, your acting isn't perfect, okay? You have a lot of work to do ..."

By this point, though, this girl I refer to had been coddled and lied to so much about her talent that she was literally unable to hear criticism. She literally did not understand what was being said to her. The ego had calcified. Nothing could get in there. (And of course, when something hardens like that, it becomes 100 times more fragile. This is what I saw on this girl's face: a hardness and also a fragility. The truth was terrifying to her.) She had been breathing rarified air of no-criticism for 2 years. Meanwhile, the rest of us - in the trenches - having to deal with tough truths about ourselves, willing to do the damn work - had hardened up so much through the graduate program that I feel like someone could say, right to my face, "You completely suck", and I flat out would not believe them. It's a subtle difference, and maybe I'm not describing it well.

You MUST believe in yourself. You MUST believe in yourself in the face of 1000 "No, thank you"s. You MUST believe harder than anyone else that YOU CAN DO THIS.

But that's not what I'm talking about here.

To be blunt: I think reviewers have been blowing smoke up Renee Zellweger's ass for the past 5 years, and over-praising work that is merely adequate.

And I also think that Renee KNOWS THIS HERSELF. She never seems to be really smiling, she never seems to really inhabit her own body, she never seems to be having all that much fun ... I think she's hoping that nobody will eventually guess what she already knows: that her acting is kind of shallow, and that she's scared to death. That's what her smile says to me, the same smile she gives in every photograph. You know the one. No teeth showing, chin lowered, a kind of knowing close-lipped smirk. It's not the smile of a woman who really gets a bang out of what she's doing, or who knows who she is.

I admit, I'm a bit obsessed with her. She comes up for me a lot, but only because ... I have watched her rise to the top and have been utterly baffled by it. Is it the Bridget Jones thing?

I can see the appeal of that movie, but again I would say that for me the real appeal of that movie is the performances of the MEN in it.

Same with Down with Love. I was baffled at the free pass she was given with that film. Her acting was bad, her understanding of the style of the movie was bad and shallow (unlike McGregor, who totally got it) - and yet - the reviewers gave her a free pass. Didn't call her on her shit.

I watched her sashaying around in that movie, basically just a clothes-horse, doing some weird thing with her walk (I think she was imitating Audrey Hepburn - but she was doing so very badly) and I thought: Damn, if I were teaching a class, I would stop her immediately, 2 lines into the scene, and say, "Okay. Breathe. Take a couple minutes. Get your act together. Ask yourself: What do I want in this scene? What is my objective? And THEN start the scene."

I mean, it was basic acting 101 shit in that movie. She sucked.

Oh, and lastly: I don't think gaining and losing weight for a role is indicative of anything. I was so sick of hearing about "Renee eating donuts" and "Renee eating pizza" that I wanted to fly across the Atlantic and punch her in her puckered-up mouth. That whole thing was vanity. Not dedication to the craft, or to her part. "Oooh, look at me, I'm so dedicated that I am going to gain 25 pounds ..."

The second Bridget Jones just came out - and I actually felt a thrill of excitement when I read the great James Berardinelli's review:

The Bridget of Bridget Jones' Diary seemed like a real person; this one is a caricature. The performance is lazy; this may be the least appealing work Zellweger has exhibited in a major role. And, although she gained back the pounds, she lost the knack of the accent. This time around, it would be charitable to call Zellweger's accent "uneven."

I thought when I read this: Jeez, thank God. At last. And not only is it a bad review, but it zeroes in on her acting. "The performance is lazy." I have thought all along that Zellweger was lazy - she doesn't seem to come across the screen at me - she plays it safe, and coy.

Good for Berardinelli. More truthful observations:

The only time the movie gains a pulse is when Hugh Grant is on screen. Grant reprises the part of Daniel with the perfect mix of charm and oiliness. It's a delightful mix, and Grant plays the role to the hilt. Unfortunately, his screen time is no more than 25 minutes, and the running length of the movie is quadruple that. Character actors like Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones (as Bridget's dad and mum) are short-changed - they have glorified cameos.

I know I probably sound petty and jealous. I suppose I am. But I have also always disliked this actress, and do not understand the appeal. At all.

"This performance is lazy".

I'm allowing myself a moment of schaudenfraude. It's been a long time coming.

Assignment: Run Naked Through a Public Place

Fascinating post over on Critical Mass about a professor [Correction: he is not a professor] at the University of Oregon who appears to have confused the concept of "teaching" with "group therapy". Really interesting points brought up.

It's a bad idea to mix consciousness-raising and classroom teaching. It's a particularly bad idea for a teacher to tell students that they have to expose themselves emotionally in order to earn a good grade. Wieden may have had the best of intentions, but he crossed the line between teacher and therapist with this one, and the fallout was predictably ugly.

For example: they were supposed to confront their fears. One student was told to object at a wedding. (Or, there is some confusion as to whether or not she was actually told to do so - but that was the message she got, and she was agonized about it.)

Anyway - it's a very interesting post, so go check it out.

Long sort-of-relevant personal monologue below

There's a group-think aspect to all of this which is very familiar to me. People who put limits on themselves, or people who are hesitant to behave like a total raving bonehead are somehow seen as "repressed", and the "therapy" needs to get them to bring their fears out into the light.

But ... some things you SHOULD be afraid of!! Fear is sometimes a sign of rationality.

I had an acting teacher who compared acting to skydiving. "If you're not scared when you're on stage, you're an asshole. And if you're not terrified before you leap out of an airplane, you're a fool."

Another thing this University of Oregon brou-haha reminded me of is a certain vibe in acting classes which I have found to be almost universally ... universal.

At least in my brand of training, which is Method acting.

Method acting is based primarily on relaxation and concentration. 85% of the attention of the Method is devoted to relaxation - and rightly so. A tense throat can't produce sound, a tense body can't express itself. If you're all tensed up, your hand gestures will suck - you will do what Hamlet warned against, you will "saw the air" ... Your voice will be hard and flat, you will, in effect, be a terrible actor.

Of course, actors have ALWAYS known this, and it didn't take the very recent Method-training to create good actors. It's just a method - a training tool to help actors do what great actors have done naturally for centuries.

It is assumed that an actor will inevitably tense up, once an audience is present - and so relaxation can never be assumed. Amateur actors never get this. They want to immediately play King Lear. They don't realize that relaxation exercises are the same thing as doing scales for a concert pianist, or doing barre work for a ballet dancer. A concert pianist NEVER stops doing scales. You never get a point where you can say: "Okay. Never have to do THAT again." Actors have to WORK at relaxation, consciously, because once you're live, once you have 800 eyeballs on you ... tension and fear is inevitable. But if relaxation is a practice, you can work to combat that tension, you can give yourself reminders: "Okay ... relax the throat ... that's it ... that's it ... breathe ... breathe ... remember to breathe ..." But that takes practice. Especially when you're under the gun, and you're live, and an audience is there. It may sound simple, but trust me. Trust me. It isn't.

Anyway - most acting classes begin with a period of relaxation. Every teacher works differently, and every actor is different.

But here's an example of the acting-class vibe I am talking about - which I kind of despise:

There was one teacher I had whose method of relaxation was to have us all lie down on the floor on yoga mats - turn the lights down - turn on Pachelbel's Canon in D - and have us MENTALLY relax. You go through your entire body, mentally, giving commands. "Foot. Relax. Jaw. Relax." But you don't move anything. You don't flex your foot, you don't massage your jaw - it all has to be done mentally. It's amazing how effective this can be- actors need, at times, to be able to relax INVISIBLY. Let's say you're in the middle of a scene, and an audience is there, and you suddenly realize that you are totally tense in your shoulders ... You can't turn to the audience and say, "Hey there ... hang on a sec ... Let me do a little bit of stretching ... my shoulders are killing me! I'll be right with you." Mental commands, once you practice them, are enough.

Shoulders. Relax. Boom.

So I found that very effective.

Some people found it had a very soporific effect and you could hear snores begin to emanate from all corners of the room.

Like I said: every actor is different.

Now another effect of these relaxation exercises - which I have felt, and which most actors feel - is that once you begin to truly relax - once you begin to truly let go - emotions start popping up.

I mean - that's not just true for actors, obviously. I've seen people start to weep silently in yoga classes, for example. The mind-body connection. All that tension that you hold in your shoulders, or in your jaw - is actually EMOTION. Once the area is relaxed, a flood of stuff can come out.

Not always sadness. I have erupted into laughter during these relaxation exercises. It's just the sensation of letting go, of releasing - laughing, crying, some people go into rages - it's very intense. Love it.

However: actors do place a high (way too high) premium on tears.

I have fallen into the trap myself. I think that if I have a damn tear rolling down my cheek, then I am doing some good acting.

I've been an actress long enough now to know that that is BULL MALARKEY.

Tears have nothing to do with anything. Gena Rowlands, my favorite actress ever, says bluntly, "I don't cry. I just don't." She doesn't fucking need to.

This one acting class I was in (the one where we lay on yoga mats interminably) was filled with actors who were extremely competitive about tears. I would find myself getting sucked into that mentality and then have to FORCE myself out of it.

The problem, too, was that if you cried - you got attention from the teacher.

Your tears, however false, however phonily gotten, got you attention.

"Good work, good work."

I now believe that this teacher was a charlatan. I want to give credit where credit is due - and say that I do like a lot of her relaxation techniques - and I still use them - but there were times, in her class, when it felt like a lunatic asylum. Where the craziest of us, the LOUDest of us - got all of her attention.

Everyone weeping and wailing and carrying on. There was one chick in the class who was always the first to start crying. She would begin to SOB - from the first second of relaxation. Oh GOD, it was annoying.

I lay there, grimly concentrating on RELAXING - not CRYING - ignoring the Elektra moans from over in the corner.

Thinking to myself, "Is the purpose of this exercise - to bring forth tears? Or is to learn how to relax? This is bull shit." This crying actress chick, too, was not overwhelmingly talented and actually had some huge problems with relaxation. But she got all the attention, because every single day in class she had a nervous breakdown.

Perhaps it was her way of diverting the class' attention from her lack of talent. I've seen it happen before. Like I said: actors place too high a premium on tears. If I can cry - I'm good. So THERE.

But the teacher was an emotion addict. She LOVED crying. She thought that tears were the ultimate truth. The ultimate expression. This is only one of the reasons why I think she's a charlatan - but it's a good one. I saw pretty good actors RUINED by her teaching. They too became obsessed with tears - and their acting went down the toilet.

This woman directed The Glass Menagerie at the Actors Studio and I went to see it and I thought it was the biggest piece of lachrymose shit I had ever seen in my life. Every actor was filled with tears. But they weren't crying because of the PLOT, or because of the CIRCUMSTANCES ... They just thought that crying well was what actors were supposed to do. (This is just my interpretation, obviously. I didn't go up and interview any of them afterwards.)

These were all professional actors too ... some of whom I admire.

But they were all about the tears. It was the weepiest damn Glass Menagerie I had ever seen.

If there's ANYTHING Tennessee Williams does NOT write - it's self-pitying characters. I don't think he has ever written a self-pitying character. He has written tragic characters - but they are tragic because they strive to rise above, and they fail in that pursuit. Like Blanche DuBois. Like Miss Alma. They do not sit around and moan: "Oh woe is me..."

We may find Laura in Glass Menagerie as tragic - but the actress playing her must NEVER think to herself, "Oh my goodness, Laura is so tragic, her life is so sad". Acting 101, folks. Laura knows who she is. She tries to explain herself to her mother. She knows she can't go to typing school, she knows she probably won't ever get married - she knows herself WAY better than her mother does. It is her mother's imposition of her own dreams onto her daughter which brings Laura to tragedy. But Laura is the opposite of self-pitying. She actually could be heroic if her meddling mother would stop trying to turn her into something she is not!

However: in this charlatan teacher's version, EVERYONE sat around pitying themselves. Ick. Tom wept openly during his last "blow out the candles, Laura" monologue which I thought was comPLETEly inappropriate.

He was crying so much that he left ME out of it.

That's another Acting 101 rule:

If YOU cry, the audience won't. But if you FEEL like crying and you try to SUPRESS it (like you would in real life) - then the audience will weep.

The audience will experience that necessary catharsis - that community-building catharsis - which is the point of theatre.

But if an actor is so busy crying for HIMSELF, and so busy crying about how tragic the play is ... the audience will be distinctly un-moved.

Think about any of the scenes in films or plays which have moved you - and half the time it is because the character is holding back his emotions.

Think of Ben Kingsley saying to Liam Neeson in Schindler's List, with utter simplicity, and with this ... grin on his face ... and one solitary tear rolling down his cheek: "I think I'd better have that drink now."

Jesus - I just typed those words and felt my eyes fill with tears at the memory of the scene. Now THAT is some good acting.

Underplayed. His character is feeling SO MUCH - but he is holding it back ... and so we the audience get the gift of feeling it all. I've seen that movie probably 10 times - and it catches me at my throat every single time. It is not just the topic. It is the power and subtlety of the acting. It just works.

I have pretty much conquered the "oh my God, I don't cry easily" mindset. My great acting teacher (Sam - the one I've studied with for years) said to me pointedly:

"The job is called ACTor. Not FEELer."

Love that.

I just have to say...

-- in a fit of utter triviality on this serious day:

that this woman has a SERIOUS problem.

STOP. GETTING MARRIED.

What, sweetheart - you can't f*** someone without getting married to that person? Is that it?

Then either stop f***ing people or STOP. GETTING. MARRIED.

Serious psychological problems.

And her "unidentified friend" has a serious issue with double negatives.

Somehow I have managed to get as far as I am in life without getting married and divorced 5,000 times. How is that possible??? I don't know.

I repeat: there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with this woman. And when you add Gigli on top of it, you just want to weep.

The Kabbalah

You've got to read this. An exhaustive and fascinating and infuriating look at the Kabbalah craze sweeping Hollywood.

If you're interested in cults, brainwashing, etc. (as I am) you won't be able to put it down. (In a cyber sense, I mean.)

Madonna has become one of the world's most annoying women. A big fat PHONY. For those of you who always found her annoying, this will not be a surprise, but I have been a Madonna fan since I was in high school, and continue to buy all her albums. I can't stop. I stuck with her during her "Sex Book" debacle, and all of her TERRIBLE movies. "Ray of Light" is one of my favorite CDs in my entire collection - but her public persona, of late, is one of the most annoying things I have ever seen. It ENRAGES me. I am ENRAGED by phonies. Phonies have a scent, you know. I don't even need to be in her phony presence to smell her phoniness. Who does she think she's fooling? The phony British accent (sweetheart, you're from Detroit), the fake humility ... I say fake because I saw her in an interview once, and she said, "I have been enlightened. I want to share that." A truly humble person would never say such an assholically egotistical thing. Can you imagine Gandhi saying something like that?

She's a phony. She thinks she's better than the rest of us poor slobs - she has been given the secret elixir of life - through Kabbalah - of COURSE! That's what all cults have in common. Only through submission to THEM, can you figure out the secret of life.

She's bought it, hook line and sinker.

I kind of want to go to a Kabbalah meeting, just to see for myself what it's like. Talk to the cult members, ask them questions.

This article is a great investigative piece of journalism, looking at the rituals of the Kabbalah Centre in Hollywood (which is, necessarily, extremely secret - like all cults) - and comparing it to the actual study of Kabbalah (not sure if that's the correct way to say it - if it should be the Kabbalah) It appears to be a bit of a travesty. Opportunistic. And promising healing and wealth and ever-heightening moments of self-awareness - but only if you drink their sacred water, and wear the red thread around your wrist, etc. etc. etc. All cults have these secret-entranceways.

I got the piece from Allison. Here's a link to it again, if you're interested.

Rick Ross, who is one of the world's leading experts on cults, has compiled an enormous "cult database" on his website. Be warned: If you have any fascination at all for this stuff, hours of your life could be lost surfing through his website.

Here is his "Kabbalah" page.

And Ross' biography, if you're interested:

Rick Ross is the founder and Executive Director of the Ross A. Institute. He is an internationally known expert regarding destructive cults, controversial groups and movements. Since 1982 he has been studying, researching and responding to the problems often posed by such groups or movements.

He has personally assisted thousands of families in an effort to help the victims of destructive cults, groups and movements.

Ross has been qualified and accepted as an expert witness and testified in court cases across the United States. He has also frequently assisted local and national law enforcement and government agencies.

Rick Ross is one of the most readily recognized experts offering analysis about destructive cults, controversial groups and movements in the world today.

He has been a paid consultant for the television networks CBS, CBC and Nippon of Japan. And also was retained as a technical consultant by Miramax/Disney.

Ross' commentary has been quoted within publications such as Time, Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.

His appearances on national television have included a wide range of venues from news programs such as the "Today" show, "CNN World News," "Dateline," "Nightline" and "48 Hours" to popular interview shows such as "Oprah," "Donahue," "Extra" and "Inside Edition."

Ross has lectured at such prestigious institutions as Dickinson College, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, Baylor University, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Ross' analysis has been sought on virtually every major cult story for more than a decade.

Recovered Memories

This is a long article, but it is very worth it.

From the New York Review of Books, an in-depth reveiw of a couple different books on the hot topic of "recovered memories".

"False Memory Syndrome" has interested me for a very long time. I am not sure why, but I think it has to do with my fascination with the human mind, and my interest in brainwashing techniques, cults, mind-control, group-think, etc. etc. The interest may come from my acting training, and my interest in human psychology ... not sure.

Rick Ross, a very controversial figure who breaks people out of cults, has an INCREDIBLE web site, which is THE web site to go to if you have a concern about a certain group's practices. Needless to say, I could get completely lost on this site.

There are too many groups catalogued to even get into. Even tiny cults of 5 or 6 people get mentions. He is tireless.

He has, of course, a section on "false memories". This is not so much a cult, as in Jonestown or anything like that - but a cult of psychology.

"Memory recovery" had its vogue, and is now on the way out, thank God. If any of you saw the film Capturing the Friedmans (which was chilling, damn!!) you can see the effect this type of bogus therapy can have. Someone makes a claim that children have been sexually abused in the house of a man who teaches an after-school computer class. What is supposed to have happened is sexual abuse on a massive scale, involving group sex, orgies, etc. Only problem is: none of the kids really remember anything like that. They aren't saying what the prosecutors obviously WANT them to say. If there is no memory of massive orgies, then the prosecutors have no case.

And so each child is sent to therapy, to try to "recover" the memory.

And whaddya know, a bunch of children come out of therapy having "recovered" the memory of the trauma, in excruciating detail ...

"Recovered memory" theory has pretty much been debunked, and many judges will not allow such testimony in the courtroom.

(Dave J - Any comments? I read some article where a judge called it "junk science", but I don't know if that's the opinion of the Bar itself, or if it's up to the judge to decide...)

But back to the book reviews:

What has happened, in many cases, is that these "recovered memories" get more and more fantastical and bizarre ... involving a group delusion of trauma or Satanic rituals where there were none...The human mind is so suggestive, so fragile in some ways.

Frederick C. Crews starts his review with:

Every now and then a book appears that can be instantly recognized as essential for its field--a work that must become standard reading if that field is to be purged of needless confusion and fortified against future errors of the same general kind. Such a book is Remembering Trauma, by the Harvard psychology professor Richard J. McNally. To be sure, the author's intention is not revolutionary but only consolidating; he wants to show what has already been learned, through well-designed experiments and analyses of records, about the effects that psychological trauma typically exerts on our memory. But what has been learned is not what is widely believed, and McNally is obliged to clear away a heap of junk theory. In doing so, he provides a brilliant object lesson in the exercise of rational standards that are common to every science deserving of the name.

McNally's title Remembering Trauma neatly encapsulates the opposing views that, for a whole generation now, have made the study of trauma into psychology's most fiercely contested ground. Are scarring experiences well remembered in the usual sense of the term, or can some of them be remembered only much later, after the grip of a self-protective psychological mechanism has been relaxed? This is the pivotal issue that McNally decisively resolves. In the process, he also sheds light on a number of related questions. Does memory of trauma stand apart neurologically from normal memory? Does a certain kind of traumatic experience leave recognizable long-term effects that can vouch for its historical reality? What memory problems typify post-traumatic stress disorder, and does the disorder itself "occur in nature" or is it a cultural construct? And is memory retrieval a well-tested and effective means of helping adults to shed depression, anxiety, and other psychological afflictions?

McNally's book provides examples of these runaway traumas:

In the 1980s, as McNally relates, day care workers risked prosecution and imprisonment on the coerced testimony of bewildered and intimidated three-year-olds who were prodded to "remember" nonexistent molestations. Meanwhile, poorly trained social workers, reasoning that signs of sexual curiosity in children must be "behavioral memories" of rape, were charging parents with incest and consigning their stunned offspring to foster homes. And most remarkably, whole communities were frantically attempting to expose envisioned covens of Satan worshipers who were said, largely on the basis of hypnotically unlocked "memories," to be raising babies for sexual torture, ritual murder, and cannibal feasts around the patio grill.

In the same period many psychotherapists, employing hypnosis, dream analysis, "guided imagery," "age regression," and other suggestion-amplifying devices, persuaded their mostly female patients to "remember" having been molested by their fathers or stepfathers through much of their childhood, in some cases with the active participation of their mothers. The "perpetrators" thus fingered were devastated, embittered, and often publicly shamed, and only a minority of their accusers eventually recanted. Many, in fact, fell in with their therapists' belief that young victims of sexual trauma, instead of consciously recalling what was done to them, are likely to develop multiple personalities. Disintegrating further, those unfortunates were then sent off to costly "dissociative identity" wards, where their fantasies of containing five, a dozen, or even hundreds of inner selves were humored until their insurance coverage expired and they were abandoned in a crazed condition. At the height of the scare, influential traumatologists were opining that "between twenty and fifty percent of psychiatric patients suffer from dissociative disorders" - disorders whose reported incidence plummeted toward zero as soon as some of the quacks who had promoted them began to be sued for malpractice.

Think I'm gonna have to pick up Remembering Trauma. Crews describes the essential problem as:

"how much damage can be done when mistaken ideas about the mind get infused with ideological zeal"

Encroachment upon The Beauty Myth

More on the Naomi Wolf 20-years-too-late sexual misconduct (or "encroachment") allegation.

In the article, Wolf describes Harold Bloom's encroachment - and - who knows, I was not there ... but the wording of the story smacks of elaboration to me. Like prosecutors interviewing witnesses report - as the witness tells the story over and over, more and more details come out. The story takes shape. Make of that what you will.

Wolf says:

"I set [the manuscript] between us. He did not open it. He did not look at it. He leaned toward me and put his face inches from mine. 'You have the aura of election upon you,' he breathed...The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh. I lurched away. 'This is not what I meant,' I stammered. The whole thing had suddenly taken on the quality of a bad horror film. The floor spun. By now my back was against the sink, which was as far away as I could get. He came at me. I turned away from him toward the sink and found myself vomiting, in shock. Bloom disappeared. When he re-emerged -- from the bedroom with his coat -- a moment later, I was still frozen against the sink. He said: 'You are a deeply troubled girl.'"

Uh ... I would have to agree with Bloom's end assessment there.

However, it is not hard, either, to imagine Bloom whispering, "You have the aura of election around you". Sounds just like his blow-hard self.

This is just a sense I have but ... details like "heavy boneless hand" ring wrong, for me. It rings as ... a writer's voice. She is going into description, invention. I have no proof of this, obviously. It just doesn't "sound right". I am not saying she made it up, or made up that something occurred - but I think she is elaborating, and embellishing. Embellishing details, to sway people to her side.

If it was just a hand on the thigh and an inappropriate comment that sent her into an abyss and made her "soul" stop being "fine" ... then, sorry Naomi, but ... you're a bit too fragile to get by in this world.

Update:
Thanks so much to Noggie, (a faithful reader who always sends me the coolest links), for this additional article in the Globe and Mail: A prof, a pass and a co-ed.

Great piece. If the Wolf/Bloom thing interests you at all, I suggest you give it a read.

Margaret Wente writes about campus sex in the 1970s as opposed to the 1980s. Wente knows of what she speaks, she was an English major in the 70s.

I majored in English during the early dawn of feminism. It was a glorious time on campus. The professors had traded in their ties for love beads. The most popular ones offered courses where you could grade yourself, and fraternized shamelessly with their students. We smoked dope with them. Sometimes we slept with them, or hoped to. Two of my best friends wound up marrying their professors. I spent my last semester futilely trying to seduce my thesis supervisor. In fact, my failure to have a single erotic encounter with a faculty member was a source of great disappointment to me.

By 1983, times had changed. Talk of gender inequity, sexual harassment, and power imbalances filled the air on campus, and sexual relations had become distinctly problematic. That's when Harold Bloom made the mistake of putting his hand on Naomi Wolf's 20-year-old thigh at Yale.

I am not saying that there are not improprieties, or even sexual assault. Of course not. But I have always believed that you just have to stand up for yourself, take care of yourself, and not victimize YOURSELF every time something unpleasant happens.

Wolf talks about an unwelcome pass from her mentor. Okay. Fine. Yes, if it happened, it probably was unpleasant. But - why should something like that shatter your soul? Making such an overblown deal out of an "unpleasant" experience diminishes the REAL trauma suffered by actual victims of violent rape. I suppose that she was more upset because she had put Harold Bloom up on a pedestal, he was probably, because of his intellect, supposed to be "different" from other men ... and so her fantasies were crushed when it turns out he just wanted to get laid like every other man.

But Naomi - why should Harold be blamed because you put him up on a pedestal?

It seems like a rather small incident to me - a guy putting his hand on your thigh, even if he is a mentor.

I've had guys come on to me, and I haven't wanted them to. I mean, God, of course. And so I've had to be my own Red Army, patrolling my own borders. I was a late-bloomer, not ready for much in terms of sex until pretty late (at least compared to many of my friends). And so I had to negotiate the wilds of college sex on my own, and keep myself out of harm's way.

There were some uncomfortable moments. Guys, for the most part, backed off when I told them to.

I've had unpleasant experiences. I consider that to be part and parcel of being a free and liberated woman, (or, forget that: a free and liberated PERSON), free to make my own choices, my own mistakes, my own misjudgments of someone's character. Everyone is not there to take care of ME.

An unpleasant sexual experience is not rape.

This simple statement alone is enough for me to get thrown out of the local NOW office. But it's a matter-of-fact take-responsibility-for-yourself attitude that I find completely sensible.

Naomi Wolf wants revenge.

Read the Globe and Mail piece.

Mercifully, Ms. Wolf's version of victim feminism is out of date. Most people would agree that her 20-year-old effort to get even (and her extravagant claims for the trauma she suffered at the time) are a bit bizarre. But they are no more bizarre than campus sexual-harassment policies, where victim feminism still reigns supreme. These policies treat every case of boorish, drunk behaviour as sexual predation, and they define sex between faculty and students as essentially illicit. Consensual sex across the lines is deemed to be impossible because of built-in power imbalances.

It's ironic that not so long ago, female students were objecting that the university administration had no business being sex police. My girlfriends would have been insulted by the notion that they couldn't make such decisions for themselves. And they were well aware of the special power they possessed.

Again, Camille Paglia has the last word:

"It really grates on me that Naomi Wolf for her entire life has been batting her eyes and bobbing her boobs in the face of men and made a profession out of courting male attention by flirting and offering her sexual allure."

Update # 2
Thanks to one of the comments below, I just read Anne Applebaum's great piece in the Washington Post today on the Naomi Wolf accusation called "I am Victim".

She presents in a coherent, clear-headed way, the ludicrous-ness of Naomi Wolf's stance. Applebaum starts out by saying:

Sometimes in the course of a great American debate there comes a moment when the big battle guns fall silent, the pundits run out of breath, and -- unexpectedly -- the long, bitter argument suddenly turns into farce.

The serious-ness of such issues as not taking women seriously when they claim they have been raped, the true problem of blaming the victim, the problem of how to handle in an adult way such allegations - blah blah blah - has now turned into a big attention-getting farce.

But Applebaum gets to the crux of the matter, the crux of my issue with Naomi Wolf and her way-after-the-fact allegation that she has been permanently damaged by SOMEONE PUTTING HIS HAND ON HER THIGH:

Indeed, Wolf not only never mentions any of this, she seems to want us to believe that none of it matters -- and that deep down inside she is still a quivering 19-year-old whose single experience with a man she describes as a "vortex of power and intellectual charisma," had "devastated my sense of being valuable to Yale as a student, rather than as a pawn of powerful men." She was not exactly emotionally traumatized, she writes (and seems sorry that this avenue of legal argument isn't open to her) but her "educational experience was corrupted." And, somehow, that allows her to equate her experience with that of children harassed by Catholic priests or female cadets raped by fellow soldiers. She, and they, are all victims of "systemic corruption."

Oh, gimme a break.

Wolf also re-writes the past in her description of what happened. She was supposedly in a "tailspin", she could not recover, she was an academic mess ...

Er ... Rhodes scholarship?

Er ... writing your first major best-seller (and not just a best-seller but a hit-the-freakin'-jackpost bestseller) WHILE you are a Rhodes scholar?

Sorry, babe. It doesn't wash.

Applebaum, in the end, bemoans what women like Wolf do to the REAL issue of sexual harassment, the REAL issue of women's equality. By not wanting to take responsibility for themselves, by turning themselves willingly into a "victim", by exaggerating an event to make their victimhood seem even more severe - they strip other very real and pressing issues of their power.

But in the end, what is most extraordinary about Wolf is the way in which she has voluntarily stripped herself of her achievements and her status, and reduced herself to a victim, nothing more. The implication here is that women are psychologically weak: One hand on the thigh, and they never get over it. The implication is also that women are naive, and powerless as well: Even Yale undergraduates are not savvy enough to avoid late-night encounters with male professors whose romantic intentions don't interest them.

If I fell apart psychically every time some guy put his hand on my thigh, I'd be locked up in a mental institution.

Toughen up, girls. Get a thick skin. Grow up.

To those of you with a knee-jerk response to all of this, I will remind you:

I am not talking about real issues of rape and violent attack. These issues are no joke.

I'm talking about turning an unwelcome pass into a symbol of sexual degradation and psychological humiliation ... something so deep and so horrifying that you can never ever recover.

Gimme a break.

Update # 3:

From the desk of Jane Galt, a post entitled "I am woman, hear me whine."

She asks:

What would we think of a man who said that, after a female professor (or a male one, for that matter) put a hand on his knee, he was so unutterably wounded that his grades declined? That he's been carrying the "wound" around with him for twenty years? We'd think he was a hysterical fool, that's what. Naomi Wolf does the cause of equality no favours by implying that for women, such hysteria is only natural.

I love it when Camille goes on a rampage

Check this out.

Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, adviser to Al Gore (as in Ms. "Wear Earth Tones" Wolf), has, 20 years after the fact, accused Harold Bloom, her adviser at Yale, of sexual harassment.

This is patently ridiculous on 5,678,923 levels.

It's stupid, it's hypocritical, it's wrong. 20 years? Ms. Feminist Stand-up-for-myself? Some guy put his hand down your pants, and you can't seem to ever ever ever get over it? You are haunted years later??

Harold Bloom was responsible for your Rhodes scholarship, having written you a glowing recommendation ...

This is why I also scorned the feminist establishment's lifting up Anita Hill into some kind of idol. If the woman were sexually harassed, she did not speak up, she did not come forward - and she benefitted fully from Clarence Thomas' attentions - moving up the ranks. And NOW? Now she comes forward?

Sorry. There are PLENTY of women who REALLY fight sexual harassment, who lose their damn jobs because of it ... who put their reputations, their futures on the line, in order to stand up for what is right. THOSE are the women we should admire. Not Anita Hill, for God's sake.

Naomi Wolf has always bugged me and I am always happy when someone comes forward and calls her on her shit. I could not have been happier when she was lambasted for her "be an Alpha Male, wear earth tones" advice to the floundering Vice-President.

THIS is what feminism has amounted to?

I have one thing to say: Ick.

Camille Paglia, who never loses an opportunity to bash Naomi Wolf, has come forward and raged about this latest incident (Wolf has demanded that Yale University apologize to her). God, that is just so STUPID. 20 freakin' years later?? Grow the fuck up.

Camille Paglia, who traded blows with Ms. Wolf in the early 1990’s over their radically different views on female sexual power, said she was no longer at war with Ms. Wolf, but was "shocked" to learn of Ms. Wolf’s accusations against Mr. Bloom, who is a long-time mentor of Ms. Paglia’s.

"I just feel it’s indecent that if Naomi Wolf did not have the courage to pursue the matter at the time, or in the 1990’s, and put her own reputation on the line, then to bring all of this down on a man who is in his 70’s and has health problems—who has become a culture hero to readers in the humanities around the world—to drag him into a ‘he said/she said’ scenario so late in the game, to me demonstrates a lack of proportion and a basic sense of fair play," said Ms. Paglia, who is professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she said she helped institute that university’s sexual-harassment policies in the 1980s.

"At the beginning of the 90’s, people said, ‘Oh, Naomi Wolf, this great thinker,’" said Ms. Paglia. "But what she’s managed to do in 10 years is marginalize herself as a chronicler of teenage angst. She doesn’t want to leave that magic island when she was the ripening teenager. How many times do we have to relive Naomi Wolf’s growing up? How many books, how many articles, Naomi, are you going to impose on us so we have to be dragged back to your teenage-heartbreak years? This is regressive! It’s childish! Move on! Move on! Get on to menopause next!"

Er ... but how do you really feel, Camille?

You go, Camille. You go.

The Problem of Over-Praise

Something about this article reminds me of the thesis put out in this article.

So, the two girls who hit it huge with The Nanny Diaries - (that is a complete understatement - they didn't just hit it huge - they hit the jackpot) have had their second book turned down. Or - not turned down - but returned to them with suggestions for major changes. Our two now-celebrated authors, completely over-praised for their thin accomplishment in their first book, have refused to make the changes.

Life's a bitch, ain't it girls? It's so HARD when you don't hit the jackpot EVERY TIME, isn't it?? Life is so UNFAIR! It must be the fault of the stupid EDITORS!! Don't they know that you've been on the national best-seller list for a year now?? WHAT IS THEIR PROBLEM??

Join the club, morons. You've got to EARN some praise now. You got a lucky break with that first book. The critics gave you pretty much a free pass.

Time to actually WORK now, girls.

To people who have never encountered tough criticism before - because they have been coddled - or over-praised - or straight-out lied to - are MORTIFIED when criticism comes along. It does not fit with their world-view that their finger-painting blobs are like Picassos. A world-view given to them in one unending chorus from Day One. They cannot handle dissension, they cannot handle a ripple in the mirror of any kind. They freak. They blame the judges, they blame the teachers, they blame the editors, the publishers, they blame the public, they blame Simon Cowell (the sharp-tongued American Idol judge who is ruthless in his criticism), they end up blaming their parents who blew the smoke up their asses in the first place.

They refuse to look inward. They refuse to reflect on how they might be able to grow, what they might be able to learn from failure, from criticism.

An excerpt from the second article:

TMPR [Too Much Positive Reinforcement] has now officially reached epidemic proportions. How else to explain the legions of the talent-free who wait in line for days for a chance to show their stuff to Mr. Cowell and company—then are stunned to be told they don’t make the grade? After decades of upper-middle-class parenting designed to shield Junior from all possible failure, and from any honest judgement of his talents, it’s no wonder we need television shows like American Idol and its fellow showcase for TMPR victims, The Apprentice. These shows are delivering the spanking—sorry, the time-out—that our culture of bloated self-evaluation is subconsciously craving. Their success signals that we may be reaching the end of a long national delusion. There is simply not room enough at the top these days for everyone raised to believe they belong there—and, deep down, we all know it.

Leave it to Jon Stewart to sum it all up nicely for us, speaking to Howard Dean:

"When did our elections become the Special Olympics? You’re not all winners. Not everybody gets a hug. You guys got crushed."

A quick personal story:
I was in a production of Golden Boy years ago in Chicago, directed by a brilliant man named Bobby Ellerman. (Read his comment to this post, and you will see what I mean). This man knew his stuff, in terms of acting, and in terms of working with actors. He was fierce, he was tough on all of us, he asked the hard questions, and we all worked our asses off to get the play right.

And one of the actors - can't remember which one - argued with Bobby about one of his directions. He refused to take the criticism, and instead defended his choice. He backed up his case. He explained himself. He would not concede.

Bobby spent some time defending his case - saying, "I see what you're saying - but no - I think it should be this way..."

The actor arguing with Bobby (and every single actor in this production was phenomenal - we are not talking about second-rate amateurs here - these people were, and still are, amazing) - was determined to not let Bobby win. He wanted Bobby to let him do it "his way".

Bobby finally had had enough and BOOMED (nobody could "boom" like Bobby): "LET ME BE RIGHT SO YOU CAN BE BETTER."

I have never ever forgotten those words. There have been so many times, with teachers, or directors, where I want to fight for my way - I want to defend my position. After all, nobody loves to be criticised. Well, masochists do, but normal people don't look forward to another person saying, "That's no good, do it again." But a lot of times, the best thing to do is shut up, take the criticism, and actually GROW, actually LEARN something - actually realize that you don't know everything. (Horrors!!)

And as a quick point: a lot of people out there actually do NOT know what they are doing, and you would be RIGHT to refuse their direction. You must learn to differentiate between criticism that is useless, and criticism that can help you grow. Because theatre is full of bone-heads.

Bobby was not a bone-head.

I have often thought of the lesson I learned on that day during a Golden Boy rehearsal: "Let me be right, so you can be better."

What I have learned is this:

If a piece of criticism comes from someone, and I immediately feel like fighting it - and lashing out - and defending my position - I usually know that that is the very moment when I need to "let them be right so I can be better." Such kneejerk distaste to a critique is your biggest clue that the critic is probably onto something, and you need to shut up and LISTEN.

Larry Flynt - scumbag

Fantastic post over on Cold Fury about the Jessica Lynch "nude photos" thing. Mike is merciless on Flynt, and rightly so.

Lynch might have made a big mistake in choosing her sexual partners (obviously), but that neither reflects particularly poorly on her personally (lots of otherwise honorable women make those same mistakes) nor diminishes the historical fact of her capture and subsequent rescue. This is purely about a dishonest, hypocritical, bottom-feeding piece of subhuman garbage making money off of something he has no business even knowing about while boosting his chosen political party - and nothing else. Flynt is scum - always was, always will be.

Oh, and one additional comment:

Everyone keeps saying she "posed" for pictures.

From the description, at least in the articles out there right now, she did not "pose" - in that: she did not have a date with a professional photographer, like Coco from "Fame" - who asked her to disrobe, and then she posed about like a little model.

Obviously - I haven't seen the photos - and I'm not saying posing nude makes you immoral, or a slut, or worthy of whatever bad things happen to you - NO.

Here's how the photos are described:

A skin mag claimed yesterday it has pictures of Iraqi POW Jessica Lynch frolicking topless with male soldiers before she went off to war.

Without having seen them, I can't judge what exactly that means.

But "posing" may be incorrect - in actuality, she may have been drunk and dancing about, and someone took candid shots of the partying Jessica - There's a world of difference between the two.

But Mike pretty much says what I wanted to say.

Thinking about Michael Moore makes me tired

So I try not to pay him any mind - but he's just so damn loud, I can't tune him out.

I'll let Michael Totten take it from here though - he has some great things to say about Michael Moore's most recent America-bashing moment (a rant in Germany's Die Zeit.)

First of all, here is a preposterous quote from Michael Moore: "Ok, come on, you Germans, you really know better! You are well-read. Your media also reports on things south of the Alps. You travel. You value education. And in the past year you took over the moral leadership in the question of war or peace."

Uh.

WHAT? You Germans "know better"??

The Germans started two goddamned World Wars in the last century. The Germans are single-handedly responsible for killing 6 million fucking Jews. The Germans know better??

But again. Michael TOTTEN finds a much more articulate way to deal with Moore's nonsense. Here's an excerpt:

America leads the world because it is the only world power left standing at the end of the 20th Century. Germany (which supposedly “knows better” and is where his article is published) turned Europe into a smouldering crater. It’s hard to lead the world from beneath a pile of wreckage. Japan was a world power, too, but it went on one wicked rampage too many. Belgium and France had power, but their vicious imperialism in Asia and Africa led to a long-overdue ass-whooping. The last world power, the Soviet Union, imploded in a spasm of idiocy and evil of its own making.

America did none of that. We skipped the whole communist/fascist/imperialist thing. So here we are. The only world power, aside from Britain, that didn’t chew off its own leg.

Oh, whatever. Like I said, Michael Moore makes me tired. So go and check out Totten's words.

Ignorance, hatred...

That Phelps guy scares me. He really does. I know he's a wacko, I know he is choking on his own hatred, and why do I give him the time of day ... well, I don't give him the time of day, but too many people believe his brand of hatred. It's evil. HE'S the one who is evil, and who is missing the entire POINT of being a human being.

Michele says it all better than I could.

Something I forgot...

During the family vaca in August - I noticed a small sign by the side of the main drag in Yarmouth, a fantastically busy thru-way, with motels, beach shops, bike rental shops ... We would drive down this road to go grocery shopping, or get ice coffees.

And every day I noticed a small yellow billboard, placed on two poles in the grass.

The sign said:

Tell your Mom you need a tutor!

(Okay, so the first thing I thought immediately was the wrong-ness behind the entire idea. Not in having a tutor, but in targeting CHILDREN with the sign. Isn't it a parent's job to recognize: "My kid has no idea what he is doing. He cannot read. I should get him a tutor." Is it really the responsibility of a child to realize: "Huh. If I don't pick up on this whole fractions thing, I will be left way behind, and will never get a decent job, and my whole life will spiral downwards into a pit of hell ... Mom! I need a tutor!")

But this is just a tangent for the real problem.

They listed their phone number.

1-Tutors-Is-Us

Tutors IS us?

So ... you guys must just be MATH tutors then, cause I ain't sure that "is" be the correct word ...

Update: Must give credit where credit is due. The memory of the billboard advertising tutors who clearly need tutors themselves was sparked because of this post. I mean, it's almost too good to be true.

AN UNEXPECTED RANT ...

From Nov. 1, 2002

There is nothing new under the sun. There is no grand and perfect utopia out there. Everything has been tried. Some things have worked, others have led to complete and utter disaster. There is nothing to "go back" to, no perfect world ANYWHERE. All we can do is stay in the moment and work with what we PRESENTLY have. Sort of like what I was saying yesterday about the love story in Punch Drunk Love. At a certain point in life, bad things happen to you, and bad things leave their mark on you (unless you live in complete and utter denial) . Some people give up. They yearn to go back to when they were 5 and everything was perfect. I can think of a number of politicians, in both parties, who fall in this category. Their eyes are in the rear-view mirror, they are not watching the road.

I got Alanis Morrisette's new CD a while back. Here is my experience of listening to it: The first song is a song called "21 Things", or something like that. It is a hard-rock shrieking GREAT song. I could not ((and still can not) stop listening to it. My room became my own personal music-video set. It's that kind of song. The first couple of bars are, as my friend Mitchell would say, "sheer liquid joy". Fantastic. Makes you want to throw yourself about and bang some heads. The rest of the CD is ... tepid. Pale. Boring. Her counterintuitive syntax and wording finally get on my damn nerves. But why I am bringing up Alanis is that the final song on the CD is called "Utopia". I suppose if it had a hard-edged sound, and some wailing electric guitars, I might overlook the nonsense of the lyrics, but since it is a slow ballad, it is clear that Ms. Morrissette wants it be ABOUT the lyrics.

Anyway, cannot list the lyrics right now (CD not with me), but the title says it all. "Utopia".

Alanis, here is a little history lesson. Any leader who comes along promising Utopia if only you follow him (it's always a Him), RUN. RUN FOR THE HILLS. DON'T LOOK BACK. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.

It's all about (and because it is Alanis, you will know that her lyrics actually often read like this):

I dream of a world where there is no more hatred and where conflict is resolved by sitting down and starting a dialogue
I dream of listening, of sharing, of validating, of honoring
I dream of a world where every single person will feel loved and important and beautiful
I dream of loving, of laughing, of peace
I dream that we all will join hands and there will be no more war, no more hunger, no more anger, no more hatred

Okay, you know what??? I've had enough. I mean, all of these things are great. It's not like I would write a song with lyrics like:

I dream of a world where nobody listens to each other
I dream of anger, of darkness, of pride, of rage
I dream of a world where wars are fought every year, and only the strongest and best organized wins
I dream of a world where the hawks outnumber the doves

You get my point. I am sick to death of people, Alanis included, calling for a "dialogue". I want to know what exactly that word means to people. I am not sure what they are referring to when they keep saying that at least they want to have a dialogue. Do these people read the Op-Ed columns I read? Do these people watch the news? Flipping back and forth between Fox, CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN? No dialogue? Are you crazy?? I wish the dialogue would STOP, quite frankly, and we'd start seeing some action. Some bold moves, some risks taken. Stop talking. Start acting.