Toy Story 3: More Like Horror Story

A combination of unceasing advertising, nostalgia from watching Toy Story and Toy Story 2 with my son when he was a tot, and needing something to do with said son and his pal for her birthday led me to the megaplex to see Toy Story 3. Skipping the 3D option was probably the only good thing about the afternoon's screening.

SPOILERS HO!

My biggest complaint about the film was the horror. The baby doll was utterly creepy. The monkey was terrifying. The bear was ghastly. And the adventure was one frightening peril after another. There were way too many unhappy under-10 year-olds in the theater, either bored or clinging, and I was amazed that there was so little good feeling throughout.

Repeating the horrors of Sid the bad kid from the first flick and the adventure and hiding under stuff to escape being crushed or captured from the second flick didn't help much either.

Did Ken help? The tiniest bit perhaps.
Did Latin-lover Buzz help? Not me.

And the worst of all for me, I think, was the message that toys don't have adventures so much as hope not to be thrown away, abused by tots at daycares who receive no adult supervision, bullied by other toys, or tossed into attics. Where I actually cried when I watched the scene with Jessie and the song "When She Loved Me," I just felt like there was no hope at all in Toy Story 3. People suffer, but toys suffer more. How much guilt do I need to lose all pleasure in toys' adventures? This movie tested my limits and gave far too little back.

Despoiling Shrek 4

THIS POST IS FULL OF SPOILERS AND DESPOILING.  SO THERE.

You wanna tangle with me, whitebread?  Do ya, ogre?  Want me to feel sorry because boo-hoo your life is boring while your mindless wife loves the monotonous routine and never complains?  So you wish it all away and then you're sorry? It's a Wonderful Life without the excuse of financial woes?  The Incredibles with better fart jokes?  Well, bring it, Dreamworks, bring it.  Oh wait, you did.

I enjoy twisted and fractured fairy tales with the best of them. I like that Fiona's happiest when fat and gassy and living in a swamp (too bad you give her voice to blonder-and-skinnier-than-thou Cameron Diaz, though).  There have been some wonderful moments along the way with the Shrek franchise, and I will always have a soft spot for Mike Myers.  I even enjoyed this new one…but it should not have had to use a stupid rehashed lame-ass sexist plot about the poor middle-class man with midlife crisis who wishes he was single and a slob while his wife is entirely oblivious.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand he has to figure out that he had it good before and wah wah wah boo hoo hoo it's all about ME ME ME.

What put this over the top,  though, compounding the offense, is what happened at the end, after we've gotten to meet the tougher, hotter Fiona who is the leader of the ogre rebellion and rescued her own damn self from the tower (go white girl go white girl go!).  She has no memory of that angry but/and amazing alternate self and goes right back to contented clueless housewife.  The writing makes that a necessity.  Damn, people, I don't object to contentedness, I object to mindlessness, and Fiona has it.

It kills me that this mess would have been so easy to fix!  First, use simple misunderstanding instead of malcontentedness:  Fiona seems unhappy, Shrek decides he can fix it but oops fixes it by getting suckered and then the same middle of the film.  Or let their be trickery when neither Fiona nor Shrek is looking.  Then: at the end of the film, the magical "exit clause" can have an exit glitch and Fiona somehow remembers her old self! She decides heck yeah, she'd like to do a little more axe-wielding now and then and less drippy Ye Olde Chuck E. Cheese birthday party nonsense.  Is that so hard?!?!?!

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy some of the twists and turns and laughs.  But this tired old plot about the tired old Dad who dreams of tired old adventures while the oblivious wife just wants normalcy?  I'm over it, like fairy dust. 

And don't go telling me Fiona wants normalcy because her childhood was hell.  For one, whose wasn't?  And for two, this is Shrek, where we turn fairy tales upside down.  Let Fiona need wildness now more than ever given her upbringing.  She couldn't save herself so she starts a women's self-defense class.  Or she has occasional need for friends who aren't her husband's dumbass donkey sidekick and Puss-in-Boots.  Ya know, a little sisterhood.  I know!  Maybe the mom from The Incredibles who prefers laundry to adventures and the wife from UP who never got adventures can team up with Fiona to star in a twisted 3D remake of Xena: Warrior Princess.  After all, these CGI women need something, even if it's make-believe.

Two Ads I Would Pay Not to Have Seen

Am housebound for a few days, and am watching a marathon of Cake Boss on TLC, but this post isn't about that.  (Ok, I'll say Buddy and crew are more talented than the Ace of Cakes clan but the production values of the show suck ~ way too much fake scripting.  Now on to the ads...)

TLC has a very small number of ads, repeating endlessly.  In addition to the summer show promotions for the channel, there are two that are really on my damn nerves, hence, you're reading about it (unless you've had enough with this warning).

1. Shark Nicorette Ad: Dude on a dock is so obsessed with his cig habit that he doesn't notice when a shark leaps from the water to eat his arm.  Now there's no blood pouring from his gnawed limb, and I get the joke, but he's flipping out when he finally realizes the shark is eating him and starts screaming and punching it and I hate it.  Apparently others don't, hence my ability to provide you the link to the ad on youtube.

2. Pertussis Vaccine Ad:  Young, thin, maybe Hispanic mom and her baby in an ad telling moms to get the pertussis vaccine so their babies don't get sick and maybe die.  Now if your baby is already vaccinated, I don't get the point in the first place, but also the sound of a hacking, pitiful coughing baby in the background is more than I want to watch.  It's just excessive and I loathe that kind of emotional manipulation and scare tactic.

Now back to Cake Boss and the Sesame Street cake!  (Mmmmmm, I want cake and not bad ads.)

CATMAN

I'm totally hooked on CATMAN.  Join me!  Check him out here at CrunchyRoll.  CATMAN comes in little five-minute episode nuggets with hints of Ralph Bakshi or Heavy Metal, some of the BS machismo and sexism of HM, too.  But it's less grotesque and oversexualized and goes more for the fxxked-up desire for a kind of aimlessness the CATMAN wants to call "freedom" when it's mostly about being hopelessly lost with no sense of self, meaning, purpose, or concept of love or happiness.  CATMAN's a lanky hip-looking 3-fingered cat dude who leaps from building to building, smokes, drinks, bowls, and has primary dialogue consisting of "Whaaaaa?" and "Fxxx" (those letters used in the subtitles from original Japanese, but there's no voiceover for dialogue, so I imagine it's subbed in the original, too.  I saw the word "kudaranee" in hiragana translated as "Fxxxd" in the preview for the third "season," and kudaranai is like "fuck up."  So the Japanese spell it out it seems, but it's all xxx'd up in the subtitles.]  It's compelling viewing, especially in episodes like #1 where he shoots down the sun, or those where he doesn't kill a canary or wakes up on the top of a fast-moving train.

Gordon Ramsay: Orly?

I'm picky about my reality tv pleasures.  In a truly nonsensical, random way.  In past, some I have loved for a season (Project Runway) and some I have never watched and, I daresay, never will (Survivor) or perhaps just one episode every few years (American Idol).   About three years or so ago, I injured my back, and was flat on it for a few weeks.  I watched every single episode of the Danny Bonaduce trainwreck and the one about the guy who played Peter Brady.  They passed the time, as did reading two whole Harry Potter novels in a few days each.  And I've always been a big fan of reality-like tv in The Dog Whisperer and Mythbusters.

But now, with time on my hands again while off work, I'm sampling tv reality pleasures at all times of day (and in my usual haphazard fashion).  In addition to RuPaul's Drag Race, the new favorite around my house is Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.  It's definitely got the trainwreck element, but I also feel like everyone in the show knows what's going down, who Ramsay is and how he talks to people--even those he respects get peppered with abusive language--so there's a consensual feature I like my reality tv to have.  Some of the waitstaff definitely get deer in the headlights from the abuse, but I guess it's one of those job hazards, and there are more than a few chefs, sous chefs, hosts, and managers who deserve every F bomb aimed at them by the never-charming Gordon.

When I get most riled up is when I close the gap between reality tv and reality as such programming seeks to do as a main directive.  I get angry with Gordon at liars.  I get flabbergasted by the disgusting sight of rotten food or thieving managers.  And I get excited when kind people have good things happen.  But I can also generally keep a distance, not falling entirely into the pit of reality tv provocations.  So even as I want to babble about "Did you see the one where the Italian restaurant in NY has that big son who thinks he's in the mafia?" and cringe that the episode fulfilled every stereotype of NY Italians I can think of, I simultaneously am quite aware of how the structure of the program and Ramsay's tv persona are entirely aimed at provocation and manipulation to get the biggest reaction (good or bad) and make the "best" reality tv.  Explosive with happiness or, mostly, conflict, the show is just another blatant example of how to make pseudo-events (see theorists Daniel Boorstin and or Jean Baudrillard's hyper-reality) happen.

So, on I watch, along with my son and sometimes my husband, to learn far more than we wanted to know about how filthy most restaurant kitchens truly are, even when they get good marks on inspections.  I wait for idiots to admit their concept for a restaurant sucks or their dining room manager is dringing them into debt.  I watch to see the makeovers and the refitted menus and the on-the-street pitches.  I see through to how people fill the restaurant only because Ramsay is there, that giving someone advice rarely helps beyond the first week (too easy to go back to old habits), and that Ramsay is a font of foul language in the most childish of ways.  All manner of fun stuff.

The only thing so far that truly irked me?  His gratuitous bashing of vegetarians as not having a clue in the world.  Yeah, go eat some more lamb, asshole, and see if you get into that Heaven I don't believe in. 

LOL @ self.

So... About RuPaul's Drag Race...

The single most interesting fact about the second season of RuPaul's Drag Race was that my son absolutely adored it.  My kiddo is mildly gender-bendy because his hair is below his shoulders, but in most other ways, he's very boy.  He has been primped, primed, and preened to understand that gender and sexuality are choices and his parents respect more diversity than he can probably imagine.  However, though he's vegetarian, athiest, and long-haired, he is also a soccer and videoplaying BOY.  Straight up gym shoes and t-shirts with nothing flowery or even androgynous except the occasional elegant dragon on it.  He watches Naruto and ignores all female characters unless important for plot and getting to all the evil villains, several of whom -- including his favorite Deidara -- look entirely like girls to me.  Anyway, I digress.  Maybe.

We watched most of season two, or maybe from about midpoint on, and he was entirely into the cut-throat competition and picking which ones he thought were best and questioning judges and not boggling or baffled after the first episode we watched where it was clear these were men dressing not even as women but in High Drag.   He loved every minute of the tension and trials and contests and dishing.

The rest was just another reality show, I suppose, though we all did kinda love Raven (which, I hasten to digress, is my son's nickname for himself).  The man is gorgeous and the drag she does is WOW.  Wouldn't wanna meet him, but did love looking at her.  And in a less reality-TV way, I adored Pandora Boxx.  My favorite, hands down.  Witty, wild, wonderful. Great costuming and characterization.  Talented in ways so many weren't.  OMG Tatiana. Buy a brain. Purchase one, please.  Then the ending came though, and Tyra won and ok, he gets to have an apartment so his son can stay with him.  What more happy ending is there?

Last, let me say that RuPaul is so into his/her own media self I can't watch/listen without cringing.  The surgery, make-up, and fuzzy lighting are nothing compared to what seems like delusions of grandeur that I found painful to witness or perhaps just not performed with enough panache.  "Don't fuck it up" became just...embarrassing.  She is gorgeous.  He is talented.  He and she have paid more than their dues.  But the Big Gay Sketch Show did a spoof where the contestants were fawning insanely and wondering why RuPaul looks blurry all the time when no one else does. And I laughed.

And ok. I'll watch the Drag U show I bet anyway.

Shatner's Raw Nerve: Who Knew?

I'm baaaaack! Some time off work and in bed means MEDIA OVERLOAD! So it's time to dish. I hope in the coming weeks to vent my spleen and bounce happily over such televisual delights I've been enjoying over the past few months as Doctor Who, Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, Dragonball Z, and Ru Paul's Drag Race. I might even share my recent affection for Japanese rap group Midicronica, the Coffee Party, and the pleasure of making origami cranes. But first on the slate has to be my morning with William Shatner.

I hadn't heard of or seen Shatner's Raw Nerve until a random channel surf this morning. Forsaking such televisual pleasures as Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple and Paula Deen grilling oysters with fresh dill (bleah), I tuned in to see Shatner in an S-shaped loveseat type arrangment interviewing Fran Drescher. I admit I entered the fray because I didn't know she had been raped or gone through cancer, but what I discovered as I watched was two people really talking. Their body language of leaning int toward one another was powerful, as was Shatner's amazing ability to draw out information without seeming like a tabloid reporter or pompous ass. He shared a story of his own apparent near-rape, he pressed her for details but did not laugh or poke. He seemed genuinely interested and genuinely insightful and intelligent. I can't say strongly enough that I've never seen this side of William Shatner.

My husband's theory is that he's simply dealt with all his macho nonsense and is enjoying his buffoonery but has more than that inside. He actually seems interested. I was fascinated.

Partly, it's Drescher, who I love (though I hated The Nanny). I loved her in Spinal Tap and for being a loud-mouthed beautiful Jewish woman. Shatner seems to appreciate that too.

Less satisfying was his interview with Tim Allen, but I blame Allen. His body posture in the loveseat was less comfortable, and he kept this distance that Shatner tagged spot on: stand-up comedians keep a wall between them and others, even from acting. Allen talked about his jail time as a teen, his alcoholism, etc., but Shatner was more available than Allen was for any of the interview, I thought.

Jason Alexander was somewhere between the two: genuine and open, but I guess just less interesting to me than Drescher, or perhaps it was because my husband was watching too and we talked more than we watched. Shatner just amazed me with asking great questions and giving powerful prompts without being prurient. Or not seeming to be anyhow.

If anyone is out there reading, I'd be interested in knowing what you think of this Shatner. Not the Priceline guy, not Kirk, but this interviewer with intelligence and poise--at least as I see it.

Adventures in Manga

My experiences with Japanese anime and manga (comics) have happened in distinct stages. I remember watching Akira with friends (ok, geeky friends into Dungeons and Dragons, but Chad was there too) and enjoying the artwork and bizarre fixation on mutation (perhaps what a culture fixates on when it has faced the atomic bomb – it enters into the cultural un/consciousness, to be sure – just ask Godzilla). I even remember playing a drinking game, where you had to drink anytime someone said “Tetsuo,” the main character’s name. (That was that game that led Chad and I to kiss for the first time! How romantic!)

With a few exceptions along the way, largely based on Chad bringing home the occasional rental tape, Akira stayed a unique experience. I categorized it more with the postmodern/cyberpunk texts I was studying in graduate school than with anime or manga. Though that same group of friends boasted of Ghost in the Shell and Vampire Hunter D and some were reading the manga that had been translated and was available in the States, I wasn’t really into it. Like D&D, I enjoyed that kind of thing for the social aspects, because it brought with it a fun group of pals to keep me connected to the world while I was taking a long break from dating (and heartbreak) and working on my dissertation. And eventually it brought Chad.

A few years ago, another text brought me back to Japanese anime and manga: Inuyasha. I loved the creatively conceived demons (Yura, the hair demon! Naraku, the megademon consolidated from the broken body of one man and thousands of minor demons! Sesshomaru, the dog demon of elfin good looks and icy but engaging demeanor!) and the incredible cuteness of the drawings. The Japanese fascination with schoolgirls in micromini skirts left me cold, but the show as a whole was fun, and Chad liked it too, so we began watching it regularly on Adult Swim, then found ourselves renting and eventually buying whole seasons. We now own the first four seasons in boxed set plus the four feature films, in Japanese editions. We watch the show in Japanese with English subtitles, preferring the Japanese voices. (It’s also led us to begin, on our own, studying basic Japanese over the past few weeks – fun and challenging!)

When I saw the original manga that inspired the television series of Inuyasha, I was daunted by the ridiculous number of ongoing issues there were. Back then, I did not realize the series was practically interminable (I honestly don’t know whether it’s still in production or not, but we’re waiting for the season five box set of the show, which I know will come out sometime soon). Each comic (the shape and thickness of a paperback but a bit larger) was $9.99 at the time, and I scoffed at the ultimate cost of all those books for a show I was enjoying well enough on TV. I looked at other titles, but I did not know the quality or interest level (for me) of one from another, and the whole concept of manga just did not interest me. (I’m not a fan of American comics either, though I have enjoyed a few over time, including a specific year or two of Animal Man – around the Coyote Gospel and deus-ex-machina issues … can’t remember the artist’s name). And I like some (classic) graphic novels very much, such as Maus and Watchmen. Then there was a bout with Gloom Cookie and more recently Death Jr., but those were short-lived and catch-as-catch can experiences, and I like the omnibus or collected issues not single magazines (too short and too expensive and require me to keep up with when they’re published – hate that and lose interest fast).

But now we come to the present day. Though we don’t play D&D anymore and I don’t spend any time at comic book stores, Chad still does (plays Warhammer – little painted men and dice rolling -- at a local comics store). One afternoon, I was hanging out there for a bit (which is all I can handle) and watching the boys play (Chad and Lane and a bunch of happy geeks), and I discovered the store’s sale bins. I rummaged through the “everything for $1” boxes and came across something called From Eroica With Love, a very unusual manga (to me anyway) with a very campy gay man on the cover. I flipped through it briefly, bought it for a buck, and put it on a shelf at home. I did not read it for about a year.

When I did read it, I was astonished. Written by a woman (as is Inuyasha) in the 1970s (though only translated from the Japanese since 2000), it was full of effeminate beautiful men and decadent intrigue. It made me smile and I loved the very-70s art style, with super-slim men and disco fashions. The plots weren’t even bad (after the first story, full of supporting characters that were quickly abandoned), in a spoof of James Bond adventure in the world of art thievery and NATO. I hopped onto Amazon and bought books 2-4. An intense love-hate relationship was building between the main character (Earl Dorian Red, Lord Gloria – aka Eroica the art thief) and his ramrod of a nemesis and adored object of desire (Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, aka Iron Klaus). Of course, Klaus is as pretty as Dorian in the way he’s drawn, if nowhere near as florid, and their relationship is ripe with sexual tension in deliciously camp fashion. I’ve now read 1-8, am waiting for 9-11 to arrive in the mail, and 12 will soon be translated and available for purchase.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that there must be fan fiction on this series. I’m an old fan of slash fiction, in which media fans take characters they love who should have been intimate but never were (especially male-male pairings) and write stories where they have opportunity to consummate the connection (via every thing from amnesia or date drugs to hurt-comfort scenarios like torture or isolation). I was especially a fan of K/S (or Kirk/Spock stories), where I came to find it impossible to watch old Trek episodes without assuming Kirk and Spock were getting it on in supply cabinets and on shore leave. (Slash stories are the most popular kind of fan fiction on Trek there was/is, I might add, and almost exclusively written by white, middle-class, heterosexual women!) Before the internet, these stories came out in plastic spiral bound xerox packets, costing $20 or more, and I have a few of these treasures stored away. Now, the internet is full of fan fiction of all sorts, from the G and PG variety to the NC-17 type, on megasites, such as fanfiction.net, and those specifically geared to individual fandoms, like fried-potatoes.com (an all-Eroica site named for Iron Klaus’ favorite food). What fun to find free access to texts that mean one never has to get over one’s obsession with a specific manga or TV show or film, even though the writing quality may vary and stories aren’t the same as comics or other visual media, with their “a picture paints a thousand words” approach.

The fun I’ve had reading Eroica has since led me to seek new titles I might enjoy. Contemporary artistic standards for manga have definitely come a ways since Eroica (though I do love the stylized 70s excess and do not critique its simplicity vs. other manga I’ve seen more recently – it’s certainly not the only manga to date to put wit and plot and character above high artistic standards). Recently, and from bookstores like Barnes and Noble and a local Hastings (because manga is not just for comic book stores anymore!), Chad and I have bought such titles as Korean-produced Chunchu (a violent tale of warlords, twins, and demonic possession with a goth/cyberpunk aesthetic for its young lanky main characters) and From Far Away (doe-eyed icky bimbo schoolgirl protected by total-babe warrior in another world where her coming will somehow bring forth some sky demon to help one warring tribe to take over the world!). I’m not drawn to the non-fantasy texts, and there are plenty of high school romance titles (thank you Tokyo Pop) and straight action-adventure. But I like the other-world, fantasy feudal era stuff best, especially with a healthy dose of romantic tension.

Did I say best? No, let’s save the best for last! Eroica has characters that are, in the manga world, called “bishonen,” meaning, basically, “pretty boy.” And I absolutely love those lush images in manga, particularly the ones that are very androgynous and of an unearthly beauty. I know everyone has their type, but that David Bowie-style attractiveness has always drawn me. (Several of my boyfriends in college were tall, lanky, and dark-haired, with long bangs and short cuts in the back. Several dumped me, and the others eventually discovered they were gay.) I was surprised to find out, through a bit of internet research, that many characters in “straight” manga are considered bishonen, including some of the less provocative texts, such as Naruto (my son loves it and so do some teen girl family friends of ours). I guess I just prefer adult fiction, and that takes me to the manga genre I’ve just discovered that is blowing me away. Drawn/written mostly by women and very adult (in that NC-17 way), there is a genre called “yaoi” that is gay male erotic manga, and some of the artists are amazingly talented at invoking the god/dess of Desire.

I’ve only read a few of these, and the intimacy they depict is softcore to be sure (though there is also a hardcore genre, I understand, called “hentai” – a dirty word in Japanese but meaning more just hardcore sex manga in English). (You can google this stuff yourself, of course.) I just finished the omnibus edition of Saihôshi, which actually has a solid beginning, middle, and endpoint and simply has the most gorgeous bishonen dudes I’ve ever seen in a tale as lurid as the best romance novel and as creative as the best pulp fantasy. It’s drawn by Kôsen, the penname of two Spanish women (Aurora Garcia and Diana Fernandez) who, for my money, have cornered the market on depicting the irresistibility of beautiful adult male youth. As a woman with whom I went to graduate school once noted (and I regret now that I cannot remember her name!): a beautiful man is more beautiful than any beautiful woman because it is not expected of men and they capitalize culturally on both feminine desirability and male power. Kôsen definitely pounce on this and play it for all it’s worth. I can just imagine them thinking about what outfits to put their creations in, how best to milk every ounce of tension and release out of the plots. I think of them sitting at the drawing table, laughing with each other about what will turn on their largely (hetero, married) female audience—though Chad found Saihôshi in the gay/lesbian literature section of the store! It’s all a fascinating phenomenon, a complex part of what determines desire and desirability in our culture, straight women’s fascination with fantasies of gay men, and youth obsession. My relationship with it is a complex one too: a delicious pastime and subject of critical scrutiny simultaneously. I guess that’s my favorite flavor.

I LOVED Sweeney Todd!

The mixed reviews I’ve read and heard of Sweeney Todd do not echo my experience. It’s a wonderful film and I loved it. End of story.

Well, ok, not “end of story” or there’d be no blog entry and it wouldn't be me. Anyone who’s read anything I’ve ever written or spent more than a half an hour talking to me KNOWS I am given to critique and I do not praise uncritically.

SPOILER ALERT!
(I hate having to write that. It’s so nerdy. But I know, people want it.)

No, Johnny Depp did not have the power in his voice that one desires from someone playing Sweeney Todd and singing that dark yet witty Sondheim music. Yes, Helena Bonham Carter was too delightfully corseted and costumed to play a character that Sweeney is repelled by because she’s not one of the “pretty women” he and his nemesis and mirror Judge Turpin sing of. And Alan Rickman was arguably wasted here; the role demanded little and gave little back. Ok, the supporting cast (Johanna, Anthony, and especially Toby) outsang all the lead characters. And golly no, I did NOT need to see the heads bounce and smash on the floor over and over when they slid down out of Sweeney’s barber chair of doom nor Mrs. Lovett burning to death in close-up.

But then, the gore was mitigated by the blood looking nothing like real blood and how well it fit into the black-white-red color scheme that Tim Burton uses so well. Helena Bonham Carter’s pretty high notes offered a gorgeous contrast to her grotesque behavior and she had the character of Mrs. Lovett down perfectly. Sacha Baron Cohen is an astonishingly brilliant comedian and his ability to do voices and accents is a wonder to behold (as was his wig and costume). I can watch Alan Rickman do anything, anytime. And Johnny Depp is…well…Johnny Depp. Who could look away for a moment, regardless of how talk-singy or weak rock-operaish his voice was at times. He was still a spectacle unto himself.

I bought the whole package, from gorgeous sets and Burton’s unmistakable style (that turned humans into living stop-animation) to the opportunity to hear the glorious Sondheim music on screen.

Go see it. And enjoy.

Wicked

We saw Wicked at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood Sunday night as part of our holiday extravaganza. After a first-class flight and stay at a wonderful hotel right on the ocean (with non-stop sea lion "singing" day and night), seeing Wicked was icing on our amazing vacation cake.

I'll talk about the show in a minute, but I want to describe background details first that made the show extra special. First, the Pantages is this amazing theater that was remodeled some few years back to its original art deco splendor. Out in front were some of the celebrity stars that line the Hollywood "Walk of Fame," including my mom's octogenarian hero Carol Channing.

To this coolness was added extra spectacle when we learned that Carol Kane was starring in Wicked as "Madame Morrible"! It was great to see her do her stuff live, and to hear her unmistakable voice and comedic timing.

But an additional star moment was still in store. As I looked across the aisle and up two rows from our eighth row center seats (!), I saw Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen (and son?) out for the evening! His legs were stretched into the aisle (he is incredibly tall) and she looked gorgeous. Most audience members didn't seem to recognize them, though one woman ran up for autographs. I decided not to bother them with another request. (I've always loved Steenburgen since 1979's Time After Time with ex-husband Malcolm McDowell!)

Then, of course, was the show itself. The sets were an ornate and gorgeous spectacle. The giant dragon with his red lighted eyes and movement at crucial powerful moments was amazing, though did not seem to have any relationship to anything going on in the show. I don't think Oz was mentioned as actually having dragons or mythical creatures, really. Just talking, humanlike animals that were being increasingly oppressed and silenced. Hmm.

The costumes throughout were also gorgeous and spectacular. The ensemble had many wonderful changes of character and costume, from the Les Miz-ish street ensemble at the beginning to the Rocky Horrorish Emerald City denizens and their green spectacles. I imagine it was great fun to design all this for the costumer and set designer.

The acting (including leads that had already done the roles on Broadway) was strongest when comedic, but the singing was glorious. The two leads, Eden Espinosa and Megan Hilty, could belt like nobody's business, and I do adore Broadway belters. Kristoffer Cusick as Fiyero was, to me, the weak link, with a weak boyband singing style and cockiness his talents did not merit.

The music itself was a bit less enthralling than the set and ambiance of the show. Stephen Schwartz (of Pippin and Godspell fame) is not one of my favorite composers. You could feel the Pippin-esque quality of several songs, and this didn't move me. "Popular" is incredibly cute, "I'm Not That Girl" is sweet, and "Defying Gravity" has a catchy hook. (Chad liked "No Good Deed," though I cannot remember the melody being strong, just the message of the words. Suffice it to say: the concept of the show (based on a novel) is compellingly theatrical and familiar--yet with the new message that wickedness is about the perspective from which you view it. I definitely see why it is so successful, and even a few memorable tunes is more than many composers can give us. And he wrote "Colors of the Wind," which is cheesy Disney, I know, but I do love the melody. A nice Jewish boy made good (but why a Jew wrote Godspell is something I guess I'll have to research if I really want to know).

I will add that the show definitely felt like it could only have been staged in a post-Harry Potter world, with images, characters, setting, and mood that really felt Potterish (both novels and films). The many echoes (of Potter, Pippin, Rocky Horror, and even Les Miserables) did bother me a bit, left me feeling the show was leaning on too much else too obviously. But it was still a wonderful night and I'm glad I got the chance to see such a strong production.

My favorite Christmas Season Miracle Picture

Hey Kids!

The Catholic Church (NY Archdiocese)

has released a new coloring book

that will miraculously solve

all the predatory priest problems,

just in time for Christmas!

But is it just me...

or does that priest

look rather perverse?

like he's just done something naughty

with that angel in the doorway

to make her smile extra brightly?*

* Wow, I actually think this image shows the Church's true plan. It's not breaking your priestly vows if you shag an angel! A perfect solution for all, from mentally ill priests to innocent little boys to the hardest hit of all, those embarrassed archbishops and their boss!

Good to Be Understood: Happy Hannukah!

Enchanted? Not so much.

Well, what can I say. It’s the kind of movie that triggers lots of superficial conflict and cultural anxieties for me. When I like it, I know I’m slipping down that slope to hegemonic sell-out land. Where it annoys me, I know I’ve made the argument a million times before (to myself and anyone who will listen, take my courses, or read my blog). And I can’t change the world to be more analytical except by one willing, sympathetic soul at a time.

So. Enchanted: This Disneyfied almost-Princess finds herself tossed into NYC 2007 and must survive til she can be rescued by her Prince and return home. She’s entirely ill-equipped, of course, to navigate our world. And so there’s superficial pseudo-post-feminist critique there momentarily. The classic western fairytales all involve ill-equipped lovely maidens being rescued. I prefer Sondheim.

That our heroine manages to get NYC pigeons, rats, and roaches to clean her rescuer's apartment is fascinating, especially as what passes, then, for “clean” is roach/rat/pigeon-cleaned clean. Which I enjoy. All animals are new “friends” to our heroine, and I do love her holding up and singing to a CGI roach at one point.

At the same time, I’m groaning from my absolute knowledge that this film will end “happily ever after,” and the odds are that the soft-spoken NYC hero won’t end up with his careerist “professional” (a.k.a. pseudo-post-feminist) girlfriend.

Along the way, I’m enjoying the song and dance numbers and the absolutely irresistible message that we all need a little magic in our lives. Heaven knows, these sorts of films beg us to acknowledge how dull and painful our lives are. And sometimes in some ways they certainly are. But then they offer us a few minutes in the dark of a fantasy we cannot possibly achieve as our “reward” for our acknowledgment. I say the payoff is woefully inadequate and just leads to further depression or unrealistic expectations of what "happily ever after" is truly about: a lot of luck and a lot of relationship work.

(I’m also NOT enjoying the little girl in the film. Lousy actress and annoying to watch. What producer's kid is this that she got the part?)

Anyhow. Back to the fantasy. I predicted at the beginning that the princess would become the magical catalyst for the main fella, helping him and his girlfriend to live happily ever after. I kept saying, “Well, at least it won’t be him ending up with her! She needs to go back to fairyland with her incredible childlike naïveté that men with midlife crises often want and divorce their wives for then go, ‘Oops, I seem to be married to someone without maturity, self-insight, or adult goals.’ Guess I'll cheat on her now."

Halfway through the flick, though, I look at my son and say, “Yep, they’re going to end up together” as I push away my over-salted popcorn. I also predict at this point that the workaholic girlfriend (who really we don’t see developed at all as a character, resting so fully as she does on stereotypes of “Today’s Woman” that she doesn’t need development) will end up with the clueless Prince, which she does. That she has to go all the way to Disney fairytaleland to achieve happiness is really sad and, I think, a message the writers feel oh-so proud of. Aren't we clever? We acknowledge that careerist women are as unhappy as men! That the writers believe that this woman would truly want to live the rest of her life with a braindead prince, of course, tells me they’re either all men in midlife crisis wanting to excuse their own sexism by pretending women are just the same as men, or they're women who’ve bought into this mythology, too.

But yeah, ok, corporate life does suck mightily, and I understand why the girlfriend wants out. It’s just that presenting these fantasy extremes just doesn’t help us out, either as real solution or as truly pleasant diversion.

The price we pay for each moment of laughter in a film like this does trouble me.

I will say this, though: I noticed the wrinkles around the super-skinny lead actress’s eyes as she played her bimbo-voiced, wide-eyed wonderfantasygirl and fashion designer. And I thought: Susan Sarandon looks better. And I’d rather be the Wicked Queen than the Bimbo Princess, every time. Am sure Sarandon agrees.

Tell me: Are there truly no new stories to tell?

The Quality of Attentiveness

Part of the pleasure of doing Streetcar was reading scholarship on it. I realize this is not everyone's cup of tea, but it helped me grasp possible ways to play the role and is also just part of my pleasure in reading literature. One early article I discovered online, by George Toles, dealt with studying drama and also doing drama. This isn't an area of scholarship I've investigated much, oddly. I often keep my acting separate from my studies. But reading this Toles article impacted my studies and my portrayal of Blanche and my understanding of A Streetcar Named Desire as a play. One quotation in particular has stuck with me beyond its ramifications for being Blanche, and I've put it in my signature line in my email and thought about it a lot. Here it is:

"Sometimes another person can arrest my sense of absence from life by remembering that I exist, and making that memory tangible through their quality of attentiveness. I come to believe once more (through another's belief) that I am situated, openly, within my life, that I belong to a world that actually contains me. I am sustained by finding myself at home in another's gaze. And once revealed in this other being's sight, where there is room for me to remember myself, I can turn back to my separateness and not be annihilated by it."

Specifically, Toles is discussing the final scene of the play, in which Blanche rises from having been pinned to the bed by a nurse when a doctor holds out his hand, calls her name, and brings her back, arguably, to a sense of herself. There are many ways to play this moment: is the doctor manipulating her to keep her calm and out of the need for a straightjacket or does he truly care? Is Blanche regaining a bit of sanity and personal power or slipping back into her Southern belle role, attempting to flirt with the doctor to earn the privilege of leaving the room in a relatively dignified manner? Toles describes what may be happening to Blanche at this moment of eye contact with the doctor in the quotation above. But I think he's also describing an important interpersonal moment for all of us who seek approval in the gaze of another.

In film theory, the concept of the gaze, particularly as the "male gaze" discusses the way looking can be political, especially when it is the camera or male protagonist looking at a more passive female subject. The hero rescuing the damsel in distress, the teen boy looking through a peephole at the showering co-ed, the femme fatale caught in the sights of the detective's gun, or a million other similar scenarios with male as active and female as passive. The oversimplicity of this model has, of course, been considered. From issues of race and class and how they modify gender to historical specificity in impacting meaning and from the lesbian gaze to parodic use of the gaze, we understand that this formula may not always apply or apply the same way.

This quotation at first troubled me because of its talk about being sustained in the "other's" gaze. The language of woman-as-other, and how many women may seek validation for their existence through male attention, was problematic for me. And so it is for Blanche, who walks off stage -- whether she is proudly walking on the arm of the rescuing doctor or falling prey to a foolish self-delusion (again) that some man is going to rescue her from herself and from death -- still the same woman obsessed with men.

And the actor is also desperate for the gaze, the insecure "look at me" aspect of theater for the performer. And I am definitely an exhibitionist, not a voyeur. I'd rather act than direct, rather sing than be sung to, though I do not consider myself pathological or abnormal here. I also enjoy seeing good theater, listening to good music, watching films, etc. But that's not really the depth of what this quotation does for and to me.

I also seek validation for my insecurities based on other aspects of my life choices and personality. I feel alien and "other" sometimes, based on my political views and worldview (Left, vegetarian, feminist, pacifist, Jewish American, athiest, outspoken, bisexual, etc.). And so yes, sometimes someone just meets my gaze, literally and, more importantly, symbolically, and I feel at ease, at home, and safe -- for at least a moment. It can come in very differing forms, such as a comment to me that lets me know I've truly been heard or reading a perspective I share and need to hear in Mark Morford's SF Gate column or a negative film review of some hideously popular film that I hated but almost everyone else on the planet seems to have loved. It gives me a moment of feeling safe in the "gaze" of the person or the writer or whomever, and, as Toles says, I can safely "remember" myself, be myself wholly and know I'm not alone. And then, fortified by this reflection, I can continue to be my pessimistic idealistic self, my nervous dominant with the heart of gold self, my wild thing meets doting mom self, and many other selves that aren't always met with praise or understanding in this "my way or the highway" culture.

Tennessee Williams and DESIRE

I’ve gained new (or perhaps renewed) respect for Tennessee Williams of late, as I enmesh myself with his worldview in A Streetcar Named Desire. He is so right on when he argues, through Blanche and really the whole play, that Desire is the opposite of Death. I know for certain that various forms and manifestations of desire motivate much of my life, from the more obvious to the more implicit. Sex, theater, teaching, writing, activism, parenting: so much in life is so much about Desire. And the more Death you see, the more Desire you need to muster to keep feeling alive -- and as safe as a very unsafe existence can allow. The distinction helps me understand a lot about myself, the risks I take – wise and unwise, the multitasking I do, the constant need to fulfill a drive that seems inexhaustible: no amount of publications, no number of shows, no high enough teaching evaluations, no ample enough times of saying or hearing “I love you”… I just need more more more to feel good about myself, to feel safe, to feel alive. So, bravo Tennessee Williams: your words and being Blanche have helped me uncover another layer of myself and this crazy species we are.

Death and Friendship

For whatever reason – chance, the Fates, karma, bad luck, just life – death of various sorts has been resonating in my life this past year, leaving me hurt, thoughtful, and struggling to accept myself as I am.

The true manifestation of death closest to me is, of course, my Dad, almost a year ago. As my mother put it, life feels unreal after my Dad’s death. Something askew. Which really means that mortality has never felt so real. And who wants to know that. Knowledge of mortality inspires so very much of what human beings do and how we do it. It doesn’t seem to traumatize the elephants, but it does us. In this culture, it motivates everything from youth obsession and conspicuous consumption to poetry and daredevils.

But I’ve also been dealing with rejection-as-death this year, having unintentionally chosen to invest myself in several friendships that ended badly and with complete severance of contact. I am the type to always maintain a friendship at some level, disliking any sort of permanent ending and feeling there is always something positive to come from two people who care for one another, even if there is great distance between them of some kind (physical, emotional, intellectual, etc.). Friendship closeness can just be the knowledge that we care, even if we talk rarely and just think good things about and for each other. Or it can be frequent contact and sharing life narratives and emotional needs. And anything in between. But I don’t sever contact, and I loathe rejection. It’s death. This is not to say I’ve never rejected anyone. But if there’s been emotional closeness shared, I do my best to keep good energy between us always.

This past year, I’ve had friendships wax and wane, and I’ve had several go bad in painful ways. And all with men. Hmm. On the positive side, I remain deeply bonded to my wonderful and loving husband, and plan always to do so. In addition, I have several close male friends who are not freaking out or severing ties. I also have strong and close female friends, from longterm childhood friends to more recent theater pals.

But the rejection from male friends really has me hurting. That ability to compartmentalize that some (many?) men grow into from childhoods in which they’re told to toughen up for the big hard world (or however they come by it) is so alien to me that when I come face to face with it, I feel shocked, astonished, and helpless. I can explain some of this to myself sociologically and psychologically, and that’s fine for the intellectual end of the “dealing with symbolic death” equation. But what about my gut, my heart?

Yes, I invest myself deeply in friendships with men and women, and I know many people do not. They “reserve” deep caring for their partner or family only. But I don’t. If I care about someone, then I just do. And the men I’ve been hurt by this year did care, did show strong signs of valuing my friendship. But they were able to distance themselves, sever ties, and do it absolutely. I just plain don’t get it. Yes, I know one of them is having marital issues and is not very effective in communication, and I do not want to be in the middle of that. One has never had a successful long-term relationship, and I don’t even know if he has any close friends. He’s a loner and I was wrong to think he’d be able to maintain a friendship with me. (Ah, the temptation to link friendship with therapy is strong in me.) And the friend I’d had for 3+ years decided he needed only friends who have no critical thinking skills. At least that’s how I read it from a distance of a year of no contact.

And it’s the no-contact thing that I’m complaining about here. Yes, friendships come and go – just the nature of them. But a need to never talk again? I just loathe feeling forced to remove a cell phone number from my phone and knowing I cannot call to ask a question or share a success. It hits me very deeply, and moreso since my father's death.

All I can do is ask: Why invoke that kind of death when death is all around us already?

Religious Harassment: Can I Get a Witness?

In completing an online educational “module” related to sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, I began to think about the importance of having sexual harassment addressed, legally and morally, in the workplace and, simultaneously, about how other kinds of harassment in the workplace are left entirely ignored. The major gap I’d like to preach about and decry here is religious harassment.

When Christians preach directly at me in a workplace situation, I consider this a form of harassment. I’ve had students proselytize in my direction, for example, telling me I need to find my way to Jesus, that I’m in danger if I don’t, that they can get me literature to read or a church to attend, etc. One young man kept it up until I finally stopped dead in my tracks as he followed me to my office (for the third time in a row after class), faced him down, and told him, as politely as I could, that I was tired of assuming and reflecting back to him that he meant well. I told him he was not only wasting his time but actively and overtly insulting me, condescending to me, and alienating me – from his beliefs and from him as a person. He seemed thoroughly shocked to hear this, as if it had never in his wildest dreams occurred to him that his behavior could be seen as inappropriate, much less insulting and alienating, or worse, let me hasten to add, harassing.

In the online lesson on sexual harassment, I read this quotation: “An example of third party harassment may include direct (or telephone) conversations about sex in the hearing range of others to whom it is unwelcome. Such behavior must be stopped if others request it or if management becomes aware of the behavior.”

It makes perfect sense in some ways. Listening to someone talk in insulting or objectifying manner about their sexual conquests while I’m trying to work or in order to distract or disturb me could easily become harassment. Yet, the idea that just being overheard talking about sex at all could lead to a harassment suit made me think about our prudishness as a society. Still, in a gracious society where we err on the side of caution, I respect the concern.

That said, I resent that I could say “Please stop talking about sex in front of me and keep your ‘Pornstar’ or ‘Don’t Assume I’m Not Into Cheap, Meaningless Sex’ t-shirt covered” but could not say “Please stop talking about Christianity in front of me and keep your ‘Denial Won’t Help When You Stand Before Christ’ or ‘The Rapture is Coming: Are You Ready?’ t-shirt covered.”

The truth is that we have no “religious harassment in the workplace” protection or training courses anywhere that I know of. And I want some.

Streetcar Named Desire: Being Blanche

Going against type and what the director was kind enough to praise as my large "toolbox" of acting skills, I have been cast as Blanche in a local theater production of A Streetcar Named Desire (get ongoing show info at the Center for the Arts website). I am honored and thrilled (and no little dose awed by the number of lines to memorize). I also had to wrap my head around how I fit Blanche. It is certainly easiest to cast Blanche as a willowy woman with a shake in her voice, looking like a kitten in the rain. But my director and I share the perspective that Blanche can be most compelling if she begins the show as a woman who has mustered all of her strength for a last shot at convincing others she is not the fallen, broken woman she feels herself to be deep down. Then, the show progresses and shows her fall apart completely. The movement from stronger to entirely broken could be so heartbreaking to watch compared to a more weak woman losing her last shred of hope. And that's how we're going to play it, though the rehearsal process should help us try out many subtleties along the way.

This will be my second lead in a Tennessee Williams show. I did Maxine in Night of the Iguana ten years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. Blanche is a much more challenging part in terms of her volatility. Maxine was confident and comfortable as a sexually predatory lush. And what fun to play. I hope to learn new things about myself, Williams, and acting through this experience. What does not kill us makes us stronger -- and this is going to be a LOT of work!

So far, my best motivator has been the director's confidence in me as well as her husband's, the man who will be playing Stanley. He and I have awesome onstage chemistry, and that should help a great deal to allay any last fears I have. In addition, I saw Ann Margaret's made-for-TV 1984 rendition, and she definitely plays the part similarly to what I will. Here she is:



I won't look like her (ha!) but she played it very strong, low-voiced, and sultry rather than flighty. It should be an interesting ride!

Insomnia Cure

Like anorexia, obesity, addiction to Warcraft, and fundamentalism, I think insomnia is a product of our culture. Rather than interpreting these various phenomena as "purely" psychological or physiological, a social view of U.S. culture as having certain toxic effects helps one not to blame oneself for various dysfunctions and addictions.

I am somewhat of a light sleeper to begin with, and stress means that if I wake during the night (to pee, because the dog needs to go out, because my son wakes and calls to me, etc.) it can be hard to fall back asleep. When I had Lane, I also had baby-related insomnia in a big way: by the time he slept through the night, I couldn't. A therapist recommended an excellent book, Say Goodnight to Insomnia and I recommend it heartily for the clear, calming, book full of good sense that it is. Really helped me to know I would not die of insomnia and that I could be ok in time. I also took benadryl, which had the lovely effect of giving me a solid 6 hours a night but dried up my milk so I stopped breastfeeding much sooner than I'd planned. (My OB should have warned me, but did not, dang it.) Some folks can't do the Benadryl/Tylenol PM type route because it makes them wonky for too many hours (or days), but at least it's not addictive and doesn't give you short-term amnesia and cause you to crash your car like Ambien! (I have friends who have experienced both!)

But I've found myself a new cure that works best of all: books-on-tape and my iPod. I have a bunch of books of light and frivolous nature (most by P.G. Wodehouse) on my iPod, and I simply turn them on very softly and listen when I wake in the middle of the night. Except for the harsh nightlight that is the iPod screen, it doesn't disturb my spouse beside me, doesn't involve altering my body chemistry, and can be used over and over. Between free downloads from the public library and iTunes, I've got wonderful radio plays and classic literature, silly comedies and mindless mysteries. I have new books that I haven't listened to for when I first lie down to relax me if I need it (instead of TV) and old favorites (especially Wodehouse's Blandings Castle tales) that I know almost by heart.

I find myself wondering if I'm the only one who does this. In any case, it really works for me.

Holocaust Imagery in Recent Films

There was a huge mound of discarded children's shoes in Pan's Labyrinth and another of peasants' shoes early in Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Mountains made of the shoes of the slaughtered (whether by a horrible Freudian monster or a monstrous government) is an easy invocation of horror and an obvious allusion to the Holocaust (one of the easiest horrors to summon for our twenty-first-century western consciousness).

These two films were so very different in focus and tone, yet both use this stock Holocaust image to magnify/simplify our awareness of Evil in the deaths of "chosen" people: children--the ultimate innocents--in Pan's Labyrinth and those who resist the government in Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

Pan's Labyrinth arguably earns its usage: the Holocaust is part of our consciousness and unconcious fears as viewers, plus the filmmaker wishes to draw connections between the Spanish fascists of the Spanish Civil War era and the Nazis. By comparison. Pirates 3 is all about shortcuts that maximize pathos with the least amount of filmic space (so we can get to the action-adventure scenes, the special effects, and the Johnny Depp scenes).

Yet I am surprised to have found this image in both films. Has anyone noticed similar imagery in other films recently?