Once upon a time, in Quentin Tarantino’s universe

Gather round, boys and girls, and listen to your Auntie Gena tell you a story about my origins as a film snob.  Being that I was a lonely, introverted only child, I spent a lot of time alone, either reading or watching TV.  Luckily, my parents got cable when it was still considered a luxury, which made my TV watching experience that much better.  We rarely paid the phone bill on time, but dammit, we had HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Prism, the works.  Mostly I watched horror movies, but occasionally, because my parents rarely monitored what I watched to make sure it was age appropriate, I saw stuff like A Clockwork Orange, Taxi Driver and Looking for Mr. Goodbar as well, all of which could be considered horror movies of a different kind.  I didn’t claim to understand any of them very well, but I found them deeply fascinating, mainly because they were just so different than much of the other stuff that was on TV and in the theaters, where everything was bright and happy, and everybody always got what they wanted at the end.

I particularly embraced the “different” aspect of it once I entered high school, when I convinced myself that my problem wasn’t that I was a socially maladjusted geek, but that I was simply living in a place that didn’t appreciate my “eccentricities.”  It certainly didn’t appreciate film snobs–I lived in an area where there were exactly two movie theaters within a forty mile radius, and their idea of an “art film” was Fatal Attraction.  Instead I haunted the local video store near my grandparents’ house, one of those dying breed tiny mom and pop run places that rented porn in an area curtained off in the back, slowly but methodically working my way through the horror section, but also trying to educate myself in other areas as well.  I was on a big Martin Scorsese trip for a while, followed by Francis Ford Coppola, followed by Stanley Kubrick, followed by Brian DePalma.  I read magazines like Premiere and Movieline, before they both gave in and went the fluff route, plus the harder to find stuff like Film Threat and Cinemafantastique.  I worshiped Joe Queenan’s ability to dissect such sacred cows as Woody Allen with a sense of humor as sharp and cutting as an X-acto blade fresh out of the package.  I actually aspired to be a film critic myself, that’s how pretentious I became, until it occurred to me that, being I also liked movies like the Naked Gun series and stood in line with the other plebes to watch Tim Burton’s Batman on opening night, I should probably get over myself a tad.

I do have a point here, somewhere.  I’ve watched a lot of movies, particularly during my teens and into my early twenties.  Many of those movies I’ve seen numerous times, but only twice did I ever watch a movie on video, get to the end, then immediately rewind it and watch it again.  One of those movies was Heathers.  The other was Reservoir Dogs.

It’s a cliche to describe a movie as “like nothing I’d ever seen before,” but Reservoir Dogs was like nothing I’d ever seen before.  The dialogue buzzed and crackled, the plot was deceptively simple yet dizzyingly sharp.  To this day I can watch it and still find something I missed before.  The most amazing thing was that the writer/director, Quentin Tarantino, was a high school dropout who worked in a video store while working on the script.  He wasn’t a Hollywood insider, he wasn’t related to anyone in the business, he got his first big break through sheer perserverance and talent.  He was an inspiration for all of us underdogs who thought we could do a better job of making movies, or at least, talking about them, than those who were signing the contracts and rolling in profits.

Cut to seventeen years later, and Quentin Tarantino is a millionaire filmmaker, while I’m a blogger who has started several screenplays, even finished one, yet has done nothing with any of them, either because I discover that my idea isn’t as original as I initially thought, or because, well, it probably sucks.  I have no hard feelings towards Quentin Tarantino, though, as success stories like his are such a rarity in the film industry that the chances of it happening a second time, at the same level are almost negligible.  It also helps that he hasn’t gotten lazy and boring.  He hasn’t taken a $20 million contract to direct a film adaptation of The Six Million Dollar Man.  He hasn’t resorted to cliched plots involving split personalities or evil twins no one knows about until the script calls for it to be discovered.  Thankfully, blessedly, he hasn’t discussed a great desire to write and direct a conventional romantic comedy.  Even his weaker movies in his near-twenty year career are still pretty darn good, and they get better upon repeated viewings.  Yes, I even liked Death Proof, his segment in Grindhouse, a whole lot, and I’m not at all averse to saying that if you didn’t like it, you pretty much missed the entire point of Grindhouse and the genre of film it was emulating.  But I digress.  In fact, this entire article up to this point has been one long digression, so let’s get to the real meat and potatoes: my thoughts on Tarantino’s latest Inglourious Basterds, his first period piece, a WWII saga that is one of his funniest, exciting, most gripping films yet.

Inglourious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, though he’s not in it as much as the trailers would have you believe, nor is the movie about him specifically.  He plays Lt. Aldo Raine, the Tennessee-born leader of a group of renegade Jewish soldiers, the “Basterds” of the title, who kidnap, torture and murder Nazi soldiers, often scalping them for souvenirs.  They’re a fearsome group, with such particularly notorious members as Sgt. Stieglitz (Til Schweiger) and the baseball bat wielding Sgt. Donowitz (Eli Roth), known as “the Bear Jew.” While Raine and his Basterds are weaving a path of destruction through the French countryside, on their way to meeting a German spy, we also make the acquaintance of Sgt. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a high-ranking Nazi officer whose speciality is finding Jews in hiding, mostly with just his master detective skills and smooth, oddly charming interrogation tactics.  The film opens with Landa questioning a French farmer, wearing him down until he admits to hiding a Jewish family in his basement, all without a single threat, or even raising his voice.  He prefers using charm, gentle but persistent persuasion and mind games to get the answers he wants; in fact it seems that the answers themselves are mostly arbitrary.

Landa’s soldiers murder the family, save for one member who escapes: oldest daughter Shoshana (Melanie Laurent), who flees to Paris, changes her name and becomes the proprietor of a movie theater, with her romantic partner Marcel (Jacky Ido) as the sole employee.  Shoshana meets a German war hero (Daniel Brühl), who is immediately so smitten with her that he requests that a film made about his exploits, directed by Joseph Goebbels himself, be premiered at her theater.  Shoshana and Marcel then come up with a plan to set fire to the theater during the premiere, using highly flammable silver nitrate film, killing everyone from Goebbels to  Heinrich Müller all the way up to Hitler himself.  Though they never cross paths with Shoshana, the Basterds have their own plan to destroy the theater and kill Hitler, et. al. themselves, infiltrating it with the help of Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), a beautiful actress working as a spy.

Now, obviously Inglourious Basterds isn’t going for historical accuracy, nor has Tarantino ever claimed that it was.  I don’t even know that you could classify it as “alternative history,” since we’re given no indicator of what kind of far-reaching change would have occurred if the events in the film had actually taken place.  It’s more like history as Quentin Tarantino, and probably a lot of people, would have liked it.  I’ll be frank, it’s kind of amusing to imagine a bunch of tough Jews causing Nazis to quake in their jackboots over stories of fellow soldiers being beaten to death, the survivors set free but not before swastikas are carved into their foreheads with a very big knife (the one pictured in the photo above, to be exact).  It’s not minimizing or making light of the true horror of World War II, specifically the Holocaust, as some of Tarantino’s critics have suggested.  People still like watching John Wayne’s The Green Berets, even though only the most jingoistic, gullible fools would still insist we won in Vietnam.  It’s all just escapism, enjoying what could have been rather than what actually was.

This has become the longest film review of all time, so let me try to at least begin wrapping it up.  It’s impossible, really, to say in just a few sentences what I most enjoyed about Inglourious Basterds, and yet I’ll try: few films have you both laughing and literally wringing your hands in nervousness, and this is one of them.  A scene that takes place in a tavern unexpectedly overrun with Nazis, where some of the Basterds and their spy contact try to keep their cover from blowing, is like watching a lit fuse move slowly but steadily towards a pile of dynamite.  They know they’re going to get caught, you know they’re going to get caught, it’s only a matter of when and how, and it’s deliciously torturous.  It’s a smart film made by a smart writer who respects his audience and knows that they’ll understand what’s happening without his having to spell everything out for them.  It’s one of the things I like best about Quentin Tarantino, besides the fact that he writes excellent roles for women and he rarely resorts to gratuitious sex and nudity to pad an empty script.

The acting is uniformly strong, though, and I realize I’m probably the sixtieth or so self-professed “critic” to say this, the real star of the show is Christoph Waltz as Col. Landa.  In his American film debut (though he’s been an actor for nearly thirty years), he’s nothing short of marvelous, quietly intimidating, droll yet a little silly at times, particularly his delight in discovering American slang.  You buy from the minute he appears on screen that despite his smile and impeccable manners, he is not someone to be crossed, not one little bit.  May he enjoy a career in competing with Jeremy Irons for roles, since they share that similar reptilian, chilly charm, one where even the most seemingly benign interactions are tinged with quiet menace.  You can easily see how someone would be drawn into conversation with him, despite there being something just not right about it, the sense that he is a cat carefully working a mouse into a corner, doing God only knows what when it gets there.  I don’t know any other actor, particularly one who was already well known, who would have been able to do the role without lapsing into Oscar pandering showboating.

So yeah, Tarantino, to use a bit of Hollywood hyperbole, has done it again.  He may come off as a bit douchey in real life, but if I had the brains and creativity to make the kinds of movies he does, I would too.  Hell, I come off as a bit douchey here, and I don’t have a single film credit to my name.

Babies: Katie Roiphe’s anti-drug

Found through Pandagon, author and noted anti-feminist Katie Roiphe, a first-time mother of a six week old infant, wonders why feminists, particularly those of the childfree variety, just refuse to admit how wonderful babies are.  After all, motherhood for her so far is a hippie, touchy-feely wonderland where every waking moment of her life is consumed in her child, and she loves it.

There is an opium-den quality to maternity leave. The high of a love that obliterates everything. A need so consuming that it is threatening to everything you are and care about. Where did your day go? Did you stare blankly at the baby for hours? And was that staring blankly more fiercely pleasurable, more compelling than nearly anything you have ever done? One of the minor dishonesties of the feminist movement has been to underestimate the passion of this time, to try for a rational, politically expedient assessment. Historically, feminists have emphasized the difficulty, the drudgery of new motherhood. They have tried to analogize childcare to the work of men; and so for a long time, women have called motherhood a “vocation.” The act of caring for a baby is demanding, and arduous, of course, but it is wilder and more narcotic than any kind of work I have ever done.

Some of the pressing tasks I do—say, running to the drugstore to buy more pacifiers—are just excuses to think about the baby, to obsess and dwell upon every little thing about him. Here again is the singular fixation that characterizes addiction rather than calm productivity.

Ah yes, spoken like a new mother who has not yet had to deal with teething, tantrums and bodily effluvia in a variety of fascinating colors and textures.  There is something charmingly irritating about a woman who has just very recently given birth and is already convinced that she has this motherhood thing down, that every moment she spends with her child is spiritual and poetic, that she has all the answers and can’t understand why other mothers can’t get it together.  These are the women who claim that as their children grow they will make every outing with them a “learning experience,” that they’ll never resort to fast food or frozen chicken nuggets even for a quick meal, that they’ll never lie to them, that they’ll always make time for them no matter what.  They have not yet discovered that the first six weeks of parenthood is the easiest time you’ll ever experience, because your child does little more than sleep, poop and cry.  After that, it gets a lot harder.  It becomes more rewarding and entertaining too, but make no mistake, it gets harder.

Katie Roiphe has long been a thorn in the side of feminism, mostly because she says stupid things like claiming that the fact that she’s never met anyone who was date raped must mean that date rape is an overexaggerated problem, not to mention that she seems to be one of those women who thinks we’re just better off being soft and feminine and letting men be in control.  I’m not surprised that she would have a similar, overly romanticized view of motherhood, to the point where she implies that anyone who doesn’t share her opinion on it couldn’t possibly know what they’re talking about, they just don’t know what they’re missing.  I am, however, surprised that she mentions going back to work soon (although I suspect Roiphe’s definition of “going back to work” differs from average, lower middle to middle class mothers), as I pegged her to be the type to immediately quit her job upon giving birth, declaring that she’s found her calling, there is no more to her life, at least for the next ten years or so, than to be a mother.  Considering she later states in the article that she can’t imagine choosing to write award winning novels over having children, as Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf did, clearly she believes that a woman who gives birth is worth more to the world than one who contributes to culture and the arts.  You’ll note that Roiphe has done both, so there’s a smugness to her essay that makes it damn near insufferable by the time it gets to the end.  It’s reminiscent of pretty much everything Caitlin Flanagan writes, especially on the subject of the “choice” we make to be working parents or stay at home mothers, a “choice” the majority of American women don’t actually have.

I wouldn’t wish colic or ear infections on an innocent baby, but it will be interesting to see what it will take to pop Katie Roiphe’s little bubble of self-satisfaction.  Once the hormones wear off and reality sets in, and she realizes that there isn’t anything all that poetic about discovering that you haven’t brushed your hair in two days because you’ve been chasing a growing toddler around the house, one that seems to grow extra arms and legs when you try to pick them up, as well as the ability to scream at a decibel equivalent to a 747 jet engine, she’ll get off this “feminists just need a whiff of new baby smell and they’ll see what’s really important in life” trip.  Motherhood is an incredibly important task, and it’s a choice I never once regret making for my own life.  However, I’m not going to kid myself and others by claiming that it’s the end-all, be-all for every woman, especially since I’m not naive enough to believe that parenting is a breeze for everyone.  The “I could just stare at his bitty little eyelashes for hours” phase doesn’t last long.  After that, it involves a lot of cleaning, a lot of soothing of tears, a lot of putting off either things you really need or at least want to do to watch Veggietales for the fifth time in a row.  Motherhood ain’t always pretty, and you’re in for a big disappointment if you’re picturing it through some hazy, Victorian-era lens, where you sit beatifically in a wicker chair with a pink-faced, perfectly dressed infant dozing adorably in your lap.  I’m fairly certain that the decision to not have children is not made lightly by most women, and I doubt Katie Roiphe’s holier-than-thou insistence that feminism is preventing women from experiencing the unending, incomparable joy of motherhood will change most minds.

PETA: Nothing but class

“Jacksonville, Fla. — A new PETA billboard campaign that was just launched in Jacksonville reminds people who are struggling to lose weight — and who want to have enough energy to chase a beach ball — that going vegetarian can be an effective way to shed those extra pounds that keep them from looking good in a bikini. The ad shows a woman whose “blubber” is spilling over the sides of her swimsuit bottom and features the tagline “Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian. PETA.”

Anyone wishing to achieve a hot “beach bod” is reminded that studies show that vegetarians are, on average, about 10 to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters.

“Trying to hide your thunder thighs and balloon belly is no day at the beach,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman.”~~PETA press release, earlier this month.

I don’t think this really warrants much comment from me, except to remind readers that PETA has still yet to produce any real scientific evidence that vegans and vegetarians are invariably healthier and thinner than meat eaters. After all, chocolate bars and onion rings don’t have meat in them either. I could stand to lose about fifteen to twenty pounds myself, but it ain’t meat that’s the problem, it’s starches and carbohydrates. Ergo, PETA as always scores a coup in both offering misinformation and being offensive about it at the same time. If they could somehow join forces with Fox News, they could take over the world in a veritable tsunami of fail.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

As seen at pretty much every news outlet everywhere, a study commissioned by the Pentagon and the Department of Veteran Affairs is pushing to ban both the sale and use of tobacco on military bases and even by officers serving in active combat.

According to the study, tobacco use impairs military readiness in the short term. Over the long term, it can cause serious health problems, including lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. The study also says smokeless tobacco use can lead to oral and pancreatic cancer.

My first question after reading this is “How much of our tax dollars went towards a study that results in information we already knew at least thirty years ago?” My second is “Really? Really?” Not surprisingly, follow-up articles suggest that this would not be a popular decision with many of those serving our country.

McCarter echoed the sentiments of many active-duty and retired military personnel when they learned of the proposed ban this week. Message boards on popular military forums like military.com, armchairgeneral.com and officer.com were burning up with reactions like “what a CROCK” and “If they really do ban tobacco in the military there are going to be some ****ed off troops.”

Do people actually censor the word “pissed” when they type it out? That’s actually kind of cute.  But I digress.  I don’t smoke, I think I’ve mentioned that before.  Growing up in a family where nearly everyone smoked like chimneys at some point, I made it a point never to pick up the habit myself.  I’ve also mentioned before that my father died earlier this year from complications of emphysema, an illness that could have only come from a forty year long addiction to cigarettes.  Despite all that, I find the notion of banning smoking in the military, even for soldiers risking their lives in some godforsaken desert in the middle of Iraq, to be rather ludicrous.  Considering the suicide rate for military personnel is already distressingly high, not to mention the fact that quitting cigarettes can have the same effect on a person emotionally and physically as quitting harder drugs such as heroin and crystal meth, I shudder to think what sort of effect a widespread ban on tobacco use would have.  I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want our troops even more aggressive and temperamental than they already are.  Considering the sobering statistics of rape and violence in the military, that appears to be quite enough of a problem as is.

I’m going to guess that, particularly for soldiers serving in active duty, asthma and the possibility of heart disease are low on their list of things to worry about, when they’re faced every day with the chance of stepping on a landmine or getting their heads turned to jelly by sniper rifles.  It seems to me that the real issue here isn’t about military personnel who smoke and the effect it has on their health, but the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses by VA hospitals.  It’s a reasonable concern, considering that in many cases the government funded medical services provided to veterans are woefully inadequate, but eliminating smoking entirely, particularly when it may be the only thing that keeps someone’s shit together when faced with the very real horror of combat, seems rather cruel.  What are they supposed to use as an alternative, chewing gum? Carrot sticks?

It’s also ironic when you take into account that, barely a generation ago, the military was where many young men first took up smoking in the first place.  My father served in the Army in the early 60s and recalled being given cigarettes as a reward for completing assignments at his base.  My ex-father-in-law did a tour of duty in Vietnam and was given cigarettes as part of his rations.  Originally plying their servicemen and women with cigarettes as incentive for being good little soldiers, now they want to take them away, mostly because it costs too much money to take care of them if those cigarettes make them sick.  Will there be funds and facilities available to help them through the agony of nicotine withdrawal? Not likely, if the piss-poor state of mental health support is any indicator.  I’ve never been the flag-waving, yellow ribbon sporting “support our troops” type, but I gotta say: let these people have their damn smokes.  It may be literally the only thing they rely on for comfort.  They know it may make them sick down the line, all people who smoke know it’s bad for them, but last I checked it’s still legal for a person to take that chance.

Admin note

Due to my impending trip to Phoenix, AZ, where Earth is currently just six inches away from the sun, Deadly Stealth Frogs will be on hiatus until next week.  Unless I am reduced to a pile of ash during my stay, I’ll see you then.

Stay deadly! Stay stealthy!

Yr. Pal,

Gena

Happy Fourth!

I’m lazy and it’s a holiday weekend, so I’ll just leave you with this, and my wish for a safe and happy Fourth of July.  God Bless America, even the parts that piss me off.

In defense of introverts

Found through Jezebel, the UK’s The Guardian runs an article by Rachel Denton on her choice to live a life of solitude, with little contact from the outside world.

I moved here in January 2002 and started my life as a hermit, naming my house after St Cuthbert, the patron saint of hermitage. On a typical day, I pray between 6am and 8am. After breakfast, I work on my calligraphy business, perhaps on card designs or wedding invitations, until midday. I eat, nap and read until two, then work in the house or garden until five. Over supper, I listen to the radio for an hour, followed by more prayer. In the evenings I may sit and watch the fire, sew and wander around the garden.

I try to live a simple life. I grow my own fruit and vegetables and, on an income of around £8,000, I have to be careful what I spend. I don’t have a television and I allow myself only an hour of radio each day.

I made an official commitment to be a hermit in November 2006, at a special mass. Before you can take your vows in the Catholic church, you have to put together a “rule of life” agreed by the bishop. My vows were poverty, chastity and obedience, which I have interpreted as simplicity, solitude and silence.

Though the word is never used, it’s clear from Ms. Denton’s oft-mentioned desire to be alone that she’s a classic introvert, which seems to be a dying breed in today’s culture, particularly in Western countries.  I know, because I’m one too, and while reading the comments at the Jezebel article I was genuinely surprised to see how many readers envied Ms. Denton’s quiet, solitary life, where she has no suitors and only sees friends and family a couple times a year.  I was surprised because introverts tend to get a bad rap as being unsociable malcontents.  As someone who has spent most of my life being told by extroverts that I’d be much happier if I just stopped being a wallflower, I’ve come to accept that we’re a largely misunderstood lot, alternately categorized as shy and insecure yet somehow arrogant and snobbish at the same time.

Most introverts aren’t actually shy; in fact they tend to be excellent conversationalists, once they’re comfortable with someone.  They also don’t dislike people in general, but don’t necessarily feel the need to befriend everyone they meet either.  Socializing, particularly on a superficial, going to a party and meeting a bunch of new people at once level, is more stressful to introverts than extroverts, but it doesn’t mean they look to avoid any situation in which they’re forced to make conversation.  We just like our space and our alone time, and people who are constantly on the go from one social event to the other, often while complaining that they have very little time for themselves, baffle us as much as we baffle them.

We’re at a strange impasse, a thoroughly 21st century conundrum, in which, due to the nature of communicating on the internet, it’s not unusual for a person’s closest friends to live hundreds, even thousands of miles away, yet people, particularly women, who spend a lot of time at home with mostly themselves to keep them company, even if that’s their preference, are considered weird and a little sad. While the strong, silent man who doesn’t speak until he has something important to say is a much beloved cliche that will never go away, women are expected to be social butterflies, with an ever-growing circle of friends and acquaintances and a limitless supply of energy to dedicate to every one of them.  Quiet, aloof men are deemed “mysterious” and “sexy,” while quiet women are “mousy” and “timid.”  Though lots of people find shy men appealing, believing them to just need the right partner to open them up, you’d be hard-pressed to find “shy” high on the list of desirable female traits.  Most of the time, we just have to go through the motions of being gregarious and sociable, whether we want to be or not.

Rachel Denton has achieved the introvert’s dream: a quiet, unassuming life where she has total control over how social she chooses to be, seemingly without guilt and without her friends and family giving her a hard time or making assumptions about it.  I love living in New York City, both the worst and best place for an introvert to reside, yet I often fantasize about moving to a farm somewhere and raising goats, not just because I think goats are awesome, but because sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the need to just get away, closing my circle to just a select few friends and family members.  It is, however, at this point at least, a pipe dream, one, because I don’t know the first thing about raising goats, and two, because I’m not sure it’s a decision I could make without worrying about what people would think of it.  A move like that is generally perceived as rejecting the world, removing yourself from the big picture as if to suggest that you might be a little too good for it, and people don’t tend to like that.  All introverts have someone in our lives, a mother, a sibling, a friend, a co-worker who always want to tell us what we’re missing, who want to draw us out, who perceive our distance as a rejection of sorts.  Most of us are continually expected to give in to society’s expectations of what’s “normal,” no matter how exhausting and against our nature it might be.

The monster in the refrigerator

The New York Times, in their all-too-frequent feature I’ve come to call ‘This Week in Wealthy White People,’ profiles MeMe Roth, an uncertified “health counselor,” and her crusade against unhealthy food served in elementary schools.  It’s a noble cause, no doubt, until it’s revealed that Roth’s “crusading” mostly consists of demanding that her kids never eat anything in school other than what’s served for lunch and inundating school personnel and other parents with belligerent, harassing e-mails.

Both parents left feeling they were being pushed out of P.S. 9, which they perceive as exhausted by Ms. Roth’s intense lobbying for, among other things, permission slips for any food not on the official lunch menu. It would not be the first time: The Roths previously lived in Millburn, N.J., where, after Ms. Roth waged war on the bagels and Pringles meal served to kids at lunch, received e-mail from one member of the P.T.A. that said, “Please, consider moving.” That was in 2006, and P.S. 9 has been hearing about its transgressions against healthy eating pretty much ever since.

“The community is very concerned,” the principal, Diane Brady, wrote in an e-mail message. At the meeting with Ms. Moffatt, Ms. Brady said that Ms. Roth “was hostile” and “threw candy onto the table and cursed.” It was not the first time, she added, that Ms. Roth had “displayed this hostile behavior.”

It’s war, you see? War! Because America doesn’t have enough shit to worry about besides kids eating a bagel every now and then.  This isn’t the first time MeMe Roth has been featured in the news.  As president and founder of National Action Against Obesity, an organization in which she appears to be the only member, Roth rather famously spoke out against Jordin Sparks being chosen as a winner of American Idol in 2007, claiming that the size 14 or so Sparks was too heavy for such an honor.  She really hates fat people.  Eating in general, too, but mostly fat people.  She’s claimed that parents of overweight children are abusive, Santa Claus needs to lose weight and that if the Girl Scouts really cared about young women, they’d stop selling cookies.  Most recently, she compared eating to rape, making some sort of bizarre, offensive correlation between the sexual pleasure victims of rape supposedly feel during their attack to the pleasure we feel eating food we know is bad for us.  Bitch is crazy, but she also has occasional periods of lucidity in which she’s been able to turn that crazy into a profitable, publicity garnering career, so good for her, I guess.

In the same “eating is just like rape, no, really, it totally is” article, Roth insists that she doesn’t have an eating disorder, yet later admits that she rarely eats more than one meal a day, and often puts that off as long as possible.  While that may not be full-blown anorexia, it’s definitely an indicator that she has some serious issues with food, and she’s happily pushing those issues onto other people, particularly her own and, if at all possible, other people’s children.  No real nutritionist would be encouraging people to eat just one meal a day, and yet someone who has no training in diet and nutrition is continually given a public platform to express how she thinks people should be feeding their children, when really what she needs is a therapist’s couch to work out her mommy issues.

If childfree people hate people like MeMe Roth, parents hate her more, because she is exactly the type of person that gives other parents a bad name.  She is the archetypal upper class yuppie parent who, out of concern “for the children,” constantly pokes their noses into everyone else’s business, because they don’t have anything else going on in their lives and don’t feel complete if they don’t get to be smug and judgmental.  There’s one of her in every school district, at every PTA meeting, on every parenting message board online, in every town.  They’re constantly “declaring war” on something or other, peanuts, soda, high fructose corn syrup, vaccinations, some book or movie that doesn’t portray the world as a perfect place where nothing bad ever happens, and their favorite tactic to get other parents to see it their way is to insist that if we really cared about our children, we’d fight the good fight with them.  These are people who insist that it’s perfectly reasonable to take the word of Jenny McCarthy when it comes to the now debunked link between vaccinations and autism over that of doctors and scientists, simply because she’s a mother, and mothers have some sort of psychic knowledge about everything.

I’m not disagreeing that there’s an obesity epidemic in this country, although to call it an “epidemic” suggests that it’s somehow contagious, like you can sneeze your fat onto someone else.  I’m also not disagreeing that schools don’t really need soda machines or candy sales.  However, I’m here to tell you that it’s a damn dirty lie that kids eating crappy, overly processed food, both in and out of school, is something new.  Teachers rewarding students with sugary treats, dooming them to a lifetime of wearing nothing but size XXXL jogging pants and tooling around on a motorized scooter isn’t new either.  I started first grade in 1978, and I clearly remember my teacher rewarding students for good behavior with tickets to buy ice cream sandwiches in the cafeteria.  There were also plenty of occasions over the years when we were given candy and other treats for Halloween, Valentine’s Day, someone’s birthday, whatever.  This is hardly a new and troubling phenomenon.  I grew up in the era when the words “organic” and “all natural” were associated only with hippies who didn’t work or send their kids to school.  Regular kids such as myself ate shit like Spaghetti-Os, with its toxic orange sauce.  We drank Tang, which had enough chemicals in it to embalm a squirrel.  We snacked on wax soda bottles, candy that was literally made out of wax and filled with a viscous, colored fluid.  We didn’t know what the fuck was in those things, just that it was sweet and delicious.  I’d hazard a guess that my own child eats considerably better than I did at her age.

So why are kids fatter now than they were a generation ago? Why are people in general fatter now? Undoubtedly it’s because convenience has allowed us to maintain a more sedentary lifestyle–let’s face it, Wall-E’s cynical portrayal of humans devolving into helpless infants who can only get around in hoverchairs might not be too far off the mark.  As for kids, I’m more inclined to believe that it’s because they simply don’t get enough exercise.  Parents have been discouraged from letting their kids go too far from home, playgrounds are now considered potential deathtraps unless every surface is covered in padding, more and more children are mysteriously diagnosed with asthma each year, which further cuts back on physical activity.  Granted, sugary sodas and cupcakes at school aren’t helping, but I doubt that’s the sole reason.  I’m really uncomfortable with people like MeMe Roth, or any other supposedly well-meaning parent, attempting to control what other people’s children eat.  Force your own kids to be neurotic about what they put in their bodies all you want, but don’t assume that you’re the designated “Food Police” for your fellow parents.  In the end, it’s their responsibility to tell their kids not to drink soda or eat chocolate or whatever food you think is the Devil and should be forbidden.  We already don’t mind enough of our own business as it is.

Dreaming the impossible dream

Double X, Slate’s new “feminist” blog, reinforces its curiously anti-woman tone with Sara Mosle’s blistering screed against Etsy, the wildly popular online marketplace where users can both buy and sell handmade crafts.

For buyers, it’s an easy way to purchase beautiful, one-of-a-kind pieces. And for Etsy investors, who get a cut of every transaction, it’s a user-generated (read: low investment, potentially high revenue) business that still projects a green, anti-corporate image. There’s just one fly in the decoupage: There are virtually no male sellers on Etsy. If the site is such a great way for anyone to market handmade goods online, then why is it such a female ghetto?

After all, the site was founded by three men in Brooklyn, a haven for macho DIY-dom, and was never conceived as female-only. The home page has a minimal, modern look. The colors are not cutesy pink. “They’re orange and blue,” says Adam Brown, the site’s spokesman. “You can’t get more neutral than that.”

As evidenced by her baffling use of the phrase “female ghetto,” Mosle’s first issue with Etsy seems to be that its users are predominantly female, even though the website isn’t pink and sparkly and there aren’t a bunch of cute boys to talk to and send winky emoticons.  How odd that women would be drawn to a website that doesn’t clearly spell out in puffy letters and Hello Kitty gifs that it’s female friendly!

However, a couple paragraphs down, Mosle’s real problem with Etsy becomes clear: it has the nerve to encourage its users to embrace the ridiculous notion that they might stand to make a real profit from their crafting talent.

I think for many women the site holds out the hope of successfully combining meaningful work with motherhood in a way that more high-powered careers in the law, business, or sciences seldom allow. In other words, what Etsy is really peddling isn’t only handicrafts, but also the feminist promise that you can have a family and create hip arts and crafts from home during flexible, reasonable hours while still having a respectable, fulfilling, and remunerative career. The problem is that on Etsy, as in much of life, the promise is a fantasy. There’s little evidence that most sellers on the site make much money. This, I suspect, explains the absence of men. They are immune to the allure of this fantasy. They have evaluated the site on purely economic terms and found it wanting.

Ah, yes, of course! Men, always ambitious and logical, would never waste time on such a frivolous activity as making stuff by hand if they didn’t stand to earn lots of money by doing it.  Naive, impressionable women, on the other hand, have bought into this cruel lie.  Etsy has deceived them into believing that their talent is worth anything more than imaginary money, ladydollars if you will, that dissolve into a puff of glitter and rose-scented air if they actually try to spend it.  They should stick to peddling their wares at church bazaars and school fundraisers, where they belong.

I have to give her credit, Sara Mosle achieves a real coup in managing to insult both women, men and Etsy (and Brooklyn, though it may be just insulting to me, being that I live in Brooklyn and have no idea what she means by describing it as a “haven for macho DIY-dom”).  Men don’t do such ridiculous things as placing hopes and dreams for financial success on an internet-based marketplace?  Who does she think is selling baseball cards and old comic books on eBay? Disguising it as a well-meaning desire to protect other women from the bullshit fantasy Etsy’s male founders have created, Mosle suggests that they’re better off just forgetting any pie in the sky notions of staying home and doing something that brings them joy and getting themselves a real job outside the home instead.  Jeez, Sara, who pissed on your daydreams? I’m not sure there are many women, even those unmarried and without children, who wouldn’t prefer to stay home and make a little money doing something they enjoy, whether that’s making crafts, baking, writing, or here’s a crazy idea, blogging, as opposed to dragging their asses every day to a job they hate.

I make cupcakes.  I’m pretty good at it, and I enjoy doing it.  If I was slightly less lazy (all right, significantly less lazy), it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to me to start a small business selling them.  Would I seriously believe that the next natural step after that would be my own show on the Food Network, with wacky employees to go with it? No, but it’d be making some money doing something I enjoy, which is something most of us don’t get to experience.  Our jobs are our jobs and our hobbies are our hobbies, and rarely do the two intersect.  According to Sara Mosle, this is a pipe dream anyway, and shame on places like Etsy for profiting from it.  Her conclusion that they deal in false hopes and empty promises comes from the fact that despite Etsy’s cheerful claims that you can quit your job and live comfortably on the money you’ll earn from selling handmade bottle cap earrings and macrame plant holders, most of the users admit their revenue to cost ratio is very low, if not negligible.  That doesn’t mean that none of Etsy’s artisans are making real money from their work, just that most of them aren’t.

So here lies the question: so fucking what? Is Etsy being dishonest in claiming you can earn a good living by selling your handicrafts through their website? Not really, even if only one in every one thousand sellers or so is making the equivalent of a standard office job salary, while the rest, if making anything at all, are putting it right back into supplies at the local Michael’s or Hobby Lobby, they’re not being deceitful.  You can make a living, but saying you can doesn’t mean that you will, and it’s rather insulting that Mosle believes other women don’t recognize the difference.  Pity the poor widdle jewelry makers and knitting ladies who got conned by the big mean men into thinking they’ll get fat paychecks for their work? Please.  Let’s give a little credit to our own gender, shall we, Sara? I’m fairly certain the majority of Etsy artisans are there because they enjoy what they do, they like getting recognition for their work, even if that recognition comes as a compliment as opposed to a purchase, and they network with other crafters.  Making money probably comes a distant second or third.  This article isn’t championing those who have bought into a lie, it’s a condescending, cynical hatchet job on a website that brings a lot of people joy.  Thanks, but no thanks, Sara, I don’t think they need your “help.”

Interesting note: while doing a bit of my own research, I noticed that today’s featured seller on Etsy’s front page was named Julien Jaborska, who, given the beard and mustache, appears to be a male.  In his interview, when asked what made him want to become an artist, he mentions enjoying the feeling of making things and the sense of accomplishment when he’s completed a project.  He further claims that he believes he could make a living off of his hobby, but hasn’t quit his job yet.  So much for the theory of men not being interested in doing things that won’t make them money, huh?

The sanctity of marriage

This just in: plans are in the works for yet another reality series to stink up American television waves, this one called I Married a Stranger.

The premise of the show is that a woman frustrated by the dating scene agrees to wed a man she’s never met. While she prepares for her blind wedding, friends and family select a spouse from a pool of six eligible suitors offered by the show’s producers. The men are eliminated one by one until only two candidates remain. Both finalists walk down the aisle, but only one makes it to the altar to reveal himself to his new wife.

“She never meets him until the actual moment when they say ‘I do,’” a source close to the project said. “It’s like the big scene that comes after an entire season of ‘The Bachelor,’ only this is in every episode.”

It shouldn’t be at all surprising that the show is produced by FOX, which brought you such other great moments in humanity as Temptation Island, Joe Millionaire, Paradise Hotel, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, Married by America, Love Cruise and, of course, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, in which we discovered that the millionaire in question was not only not a millionaire, but also had a restraining order out against him from a former girlfriend.  It’s not surprising, but it is infuriating in its blatant hypocrisy, being that FOX is affiliated with Fox News, home of conservative blowhards and minions of Satan Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.  While one Fox network offers appalling filth that mocks marriage and relationships, the other network offers appalling filth of a different kind, that which declares that same sex marriage poses a grave danger to the sacredness of traditional heterosexual marriage.

Do you see the irony here? Let me clarify this: FOX runs shows like Joe Millionaire, in which a group of conniving women competed to marry a total douchebag simply because they were led to believe that he was rich (surprise, he was an out of work actor!), while Fox News supports organizations like NOM.  You remember NOM, of course, they ran the ‘Coming Storm’ ads, in which they claimed to be “frightened” of what effect same sex marriage would have on their personal freedom.  They also talk a lot about how gays being allowed to marry would destroy the “sanctity of marriage.”

Dictionary.com defines “sanctity” as “holiness, saintliness, or godliness.”  Applying that word to “marriage” seems to suggest that heterosexuals place a great deal of value on our wedding vows, taking the idea of being married very seriously and treating it with the maturity and respect it deserves.  Let’s review some examples of how us straight folks are acknowledging the sanctity of marriage.

~~Keeping the divorce rate at a solid 45 to 50% over the past forty years.  The more times you get married, the less likely each subsequent marriage will last.  More than half of married men and nearly half of married women will engage in some sort of infidelity, ranging from unconsummated internet relationships to an emotional affair to actual sexual contact with someone else, at some point during their marriages.  And lo and behold, couples who identify themselves as churchgoing Christians have a much higher divorce rate than agnostic or atheist couples.  Whodathunkit?

~~Marrying someone on a whim while drunk and partying in Vegas, reasoning that it’s just as easy to get out of it later.

~~Giving failed first marriages the cutesy nickname “starter marriages.”

~~Encouraging women who are planning to marry to place more importance on the wedding than what happens afterward.

~~Watching shows like The Bachelor, in which someone’s marriageability is determined by hot tub makeout sessions, and insisting that it’s wildly romantic.

~~Following the exploits of Spencer and Heidi Pratt, a fake couple from a fake reality show who apparently really got married in what’s been one long, drawn out publicity stunt.

~~Pulling for people like Pamela Anderson (married three times), Liza Minnelli (married four times), Tony Curtis (married six times) and Elizabeth Taylor (married eight times) to find true love, because they’re “hopeless romantics” who “just haven’t found the right one yet.”  And then there’s this waste of space here.  Yes, you’re reading correctly, she’s been married twenty-three times, yet there are loving, devoted couples who aren’t allowed to marry at all.

~~For the Catholics in the audience, splitting up with your spouse, then having the marriage annulled by the Church, rendering it non-existent.  This not only allows you to pretend you were never married in the first place, but you can get married in a Catholic Church again.  A member of the Kennedy Family somehow managed to get an annulment for his first marriage, even though it lasted for eleven years and produced children! Awesome!

~~Getting married, then immediately declaring yourself to be in an “open marriage,” where you can enjoy all the benefits of married life (love, companionship, part of your spouse’s income) along with the benefits of singlehood (flirting, feeling attractive to people other than your spouse, sex with no attachments), while smugly declaring that monogamy is unnatural for humans and that you’ve “evolved” past such negative emotions as jealousy and possessiveness.

Now, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to divorce, obviously, as that would be absurd.  There are a million different reasons why a marriage may not work out, and nobody should stay in a situation that makes them unhappy.  We also have the freedom to marry someone for whatever reason we want to, whether for love, money or because we like their last name, and that’s fine.  I’m not saying that polyamory, or “open relationships” or whatever you want to call it is wrong either.  If you have the energy and the time management skills required to maintain a full-time relationship with one partner while juggling one or more “secondaries,” good for you, rock on with your bad self.  But let’s not kid ourselves, we straight people are doing a lousy job at this “sanctity of marriage” thing, and we have been for a very long time.  We don’t pay attention to the idea that when we marry someone we make promises to them.  We refuse to acknowledge that it’s supposed to be a life-changing event that you’re not supposed to go into for shits and giggles.  You can’t get a tattoo if you’re visibly intoxicated, yet you can bet you can find someone in a chapel off of Fremont Street who will perform a marriage ceremony for you, just as long as you have the faculties available to sign your name on a piece of paper and take money out of your wallet.  Allowing gays to marry will destroy the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman? We’ve already done a fine job of that ourselves.

I’m likely preaching to the choir here, but it’s time conservatives and same sex marriage opponents got a long, hard look at the state of marriage today.  It seems that gay couples, after such a long, ugly battle to obtain the right to marry, would certainly take it more seriously than the average straight couple.  The majority of those who are currently able to get legally married have been together for many years, and have thus already weathered a great deal of the storms that drive other couples apart.  If anyone can preserve the sanctity of marriage, it would be them.