Life is Disappointing, No?

Goddammit you guys. Everything is the worst. Picture it: A nice girl lives in Brooklyn off the G train. The G train goes out of commission for the entire month of August. This girl has to take three trains to work. She has to be patient with extra wait times and crowded trains and getting up early and getting home late. It’s fine, she tells herself. Come September, all will be resolved. The girl takes the G through its full route on September 2nd to find MTA workers handing out fliers promising the girl that the G train was new and improved, never to return to its previous inefficiency.

“The G is Back”. Hah.

Trouble is, the girl is me. And me waited for the fucking G train for 25 minutes this morning. No explanations, no excuses. The conductor just kept yelling at us to stand clear of the closing doors. Some of us were clear, sir. Some of us were clear.

But, unlike the G train, there were several opportunities to quickly jump on disappointment today. Guys, Nev from MTV’s Catfish is a piece of shit. Who could have imagined that someone who makes a living following the emotionally delicate journeys of people who are willingly fooled on the Internet would turn out to be a total craphole? Who could have foreseen that someone on reality TV wasn’t as genuine as he appeared. Nev, second cutest host in a set of two, posted a hilarious and/or poignant photo of himself in an “abuse free” elevator onto the Twitter today. Fun fact about Nev, he punched a girl in the face in college. At Sarah Lawrence University. She was trying to get him to stop taking photos of her kissing her partner. Fuuuucckkkkk. Next thing you’ll tell me Roger Goodell had plenty of opportunities to see that video.

But all of this is just disappointment Funfetti on a disappointment cupcake. Guys, Taylor Swift is fighting with Katy Perry. And Taylor promised us it wasn’t even about a guy! And I, sucker for the ages, believed her. I figured they had professional beef, which I totally understand. There was this bitch at my old restaurant who never mise en place-d properly and I would have loved the opportunity to shade her in Rolling Stone. Women fighting over business in the media is the next step in kicking through the glass ceiling, right? Nope, wrong.

Tense cheekbones of rage.

Not only are Taylor Swift and Katy Perry* fighting over a guy, they are fighting over human wet sneeze, John Mayer. Of all the men in all the corners unnecessarily playing guitar in the world, they are fighting over John “David Duke dick” Mayer. Taylor, it wasn’t supposed to be about a guy, and it’s about the guy.

G train, Nev, Katy and Taylor most of all, I can’t with you, so I’ll hand the mic to Tyra:

*My mom mentioned Katy Perry three times this weekend. This cannot be a coincidence.

I Love Lamp

Not to brag, but I own a lot of objects. At this moment, my apartment floor is covered with them. I have feelings about these objects. My Papa Smurf plush action figure is special to me because my dad bought him before I was born. My copy of Shakespeare’s works (Riverside, duh) reminds me of a time in life when I exclusively pursued art. My yoga mat makes me feel guilty for never doing yoga. If something happened to those things, I would be the person most immediately affected.

This week, President Obama, a hero for his work on healthcare and women’s rights, released an anti-rape PSA which puts the onus on men to not sexually assault rather than on women not be sexually assaulted. Great. But the PSA missteps in falling back on the old trope, “You shouldn’t rape someone because that woman could be someone’s mother/daughter/sister/cousin/barista/dream-girl-next-door.”

Just….goddammit.

Until society stops seeing women only as supporting players, characters who exist through the lives of the men who love them, women will always be victims. Who fucking cares if a woman is someone’s daughter? Women are raped because we’re seen as objects that someone has a right to take. We can’t not be raped because we’re objects that just happen to belong to someone else. We shouldn’t be raped because it’s wrong to rape, because raping a person is a terrible thing to do to that person.

This same week, someone I only know professionally couldn’t stop talking about this “hot girl who used to be his subordinate” he was going to lunch with. This man is married and ostensibly not interested in cheating on his wife. It wasn’t about going on a date with a hot girl, a situation where physical attractiveness is relevant. It was about reducing a human being with feelings and intelligence and a career to a status symbol. He diminished a woman to an expensive bottle of wine; a way to impress other people in public. It also implied that no way in hell would this guy be interested dining with a woman who’d been his subordinate if she wasn’t hot, which is the same shit women in the workplace have dealt with since we dared to enter it. After all, if a toy isn’t shiny, who would ever want to play with it?

I keep researching other relevant current events to try and find a way to tie this post together, but there are too few and too many all at once: How when a female celebrity is photographed in yoga pants, the media depicts her as “flaunting her body”. Websites dedicated to “hot” up-skirt shots taken unbeknownst to the skirt owner. Half of Howard Stern’s show. Joe Francis.

When you rob a woman of her individuality as an autonomous human, it diminishes that woman and is hurtful to human rights, no matter what your intentions.

It’s a Party

Guys, though my frail human form has been hobbled by an illness I fondly refer to as Head Cold: The Reckoning, it was a mere week ago I found myself in a Body Pump class. Body Pump is an awesome weightlifting class designed by human muscle Les Mills where people scream out things like “Plyometrics!” and “JUST EIGHT MORE!!!!”.  It’s way fun all on its own, but on this particular Saturday class, one of my fellow pumpers brought in something a little extra whimsical: rape culture.

My fun friend brought society’s ice cream cake to the aerobic party in a simple way. His t-shirt, well worn, clearly much beloved, read, “I Traded My Girlfriend for a Coors Light. It Was The Best Deal I Ever Made.” Whoop! What’s great about that shirt, aside from how sweet a worn in tee looks on anyone, is that it reminded me, as well as all the other women in the class, and in the gym, and all the other places where I hope this guy shares his hilarity and indelible taste for puns, that we ladies are the lesser item in a barter consisting of a beer which costs a max of four dollars in a New York City bar all the way down to perhaps thirty cents if we’re talking about a beer that’s been pumped from a keg. It’s also so fun because one could assume given even a moment’s thought (FYI, during the squats track in a Body Pump class, one takes all available mental vacations) that a traded girlfriend would be expected to perform sexual favors. So, this guy, like a travelling minstrel from the days of Arthur’s court, told a tale, sponsored by a major corporation, of human sex trafficking for the sweet, delicious taste of the Rockies at a robust 4.2% ABV. I won’t lie and say it didn’t add a little something extra special to my Saturday morning.

Though I was too shy to talk to the human embodiment of a party after my class, he gave me a lot of food for thought. He was not only a hoot but also helpful because in America in 2014, women can do anything men can do. We are CEOs, doctors, lawyers, teachers, vets, Vets, directors, parents, partners, comedians, and grifters. Sometimes we’re so busy doing all of these things that we forget that a significant percentage of the population still sees us as just orifices only just slightly below the delicious mouth of a freshly cracked Coors Light.

I Feel The Same Way As You Feel About Botox. Painful And Unnecessary.

Gang? Hey guys, everybody grab a piece of floor or sit backwards in a chair in a cool way; it’s time to rap. How was everyone’s day? Good? Good, me too. I bought new bras (Semi-Annual Sale! Run don’t walk!) so everything is good here.

I just wanted to check in and make sure we’re all on the same page about how we feel about Sarah Jessica Parker’s comment that there could possibly be a third Sex and the City movie. Did someone ask for this? Don’t hide in the back if you did. It’s ok. Someone let Russell Crowe be in Les Miserables; some people like Kelly better than Brenda. Sometimes people are wrong, but no one is mad, ok? So you can tell us if you said you wanted it.

Ok, so no one is going to speak up. That’s fine. Maybe no one did ask for this. I certainly didn’t. What the fuck could another Sex and the City movie do other than reinforce how vapid and unsubstantial the characters have become? How much harder can I wish every cast member of The Golden Girls was still alive and making magic together while watching four shadows of the legacy they left behind? Is there something getting privileged white women down in New York City in a way with which we are as yet unfamiliar? Is there a story about this not sufficiently being told but The Real Housewives of New York?

I have seen Sarah Jessica Parker play everything from the hot witch sister of Bette Midler to the hot social climber who stole Bette Midler’s husband but I have never seen her play any character other than Carrie Bradshaw. Maybe she could just keep doing that in other movies that aren’t Sex in the City and just leave the charred ashes of a once great show long ago destroyed by the flames of hubris to slowly recede into the sea?

Or maybe they’ll go back to Dubai or explore a whole other culture’s most superficial stereotypes! Life is crazy and even empty stories have more chapters!

I’m Never Eating At A Benihana Again. I Don’t Care Whose Birthday It Is.

Yesterday, I saw The Wolf of Wall Street. And while it was no Frozen (Best Film of All Time, Forever), it was really, really good. I’ve seen a lot of articles about how the movie glorifies Jordan Belfort’s lifestyle and glamorizes everything he did. That was definitely my criticism of the preview, but the movie itself was more of a behind the monster’s mask, like watching how Hannibal Lector a complete sociopath even while making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. There are people who will think what Jordan Belfort did is awesome, but those people are terrible and don’t only work in finance.

Like the people who cancelled Pan Am

The cast was phenomenal. Margot Robbie should be in all the things all the time. Rob Reiner was scary and funny like your favorite of your friends’ dads. Sexy Sean from The Walking Dead (Jon Bernthal) was simultaneously the smarmiest and most likeable character in the film. Ugh, even Jonah Hill was perfect in his weirdness, which I’m sure he’ll agree with by yelling at an interviewer soon, though watching him party on a yacht with Leonardo DiCaprio and a bunch of beautiful women was something I’ve seen somewhere before…. Even the Mother from How I Met Your Mother (and Tony Nominated actress from the musical Once), Cristin Milioti, was amazing as the flimsy lightening rod of morality and the only character to mention the fates of the victims of Belfort’s fraud.

And Leo….our first boyfriend from Titanic, Romeo + Juliet, who stayed together with us after we left for college when he made Catch Me If You Can, and grew up with us during Revolutionary Road…he was great. Leonardo DiCaprio gave the performance of his almost-exclusively-done-with-a-generic-Urban-New-York-Accent career.

And that is good guys, because he….looks old.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t still love him. He’s still got it. But, dear God and Martin Scorsese, please do not let me see another movie that opens with Leonardo DiCaprio playing a twenty-two year old. Please. Puh-LEASE. If we lived in a world where the best person for every role was cast, regardless of whether or not they were a little long in the tooth and were used to suspending our disbelief, that might be one thing. Or if Leo’s boyishly good looks were playing a wide-eyed ingénue on stage, far from the clear focus of a close-up, that might be another.

By the end of the movie, when Belfort is in his mid-thirties as a hard-partying drug addict that felt honest. But at the start, it was asking a lot to portray Leonardo DiCaprio as the Peggy Sawyer of Prime Brokerages, especially by casting him opposite the agelessly sexy Matthew McConaughey who was thirty-five a score ago and will be thirty-five a score from now. I’m sure there are plenty of roles for a man Leo’s age to play (certainly a fuckload more than for his female contemporaries, as is evidenced by movies like The Wolf of Wall Street). Let’s let him do those now. It’s time.

A Christmas Carol: Anger Management Style

 

Chris*, if nothing else in your life can scare you straight, please watch this video. Josh Brolin has also been convicted of domestic violence.  Josh Brolin also continues to get to work with people at the top of his field. Josh Brolin also is considered handsome. When you watch this video, know that you look like just as much of an asshole as Josh Brolin.

Josh*, like, all of this stuff, but switch your name and Chris’.

 

*I obviously personally know Josh Brolin and Chris Brown who are both huge fans of my blog. Obviously.

Hide Every Trace of Sadness

At a time like this, it’s important not to dwell on the love that’s been lost but to be grateful for the time that we had. Sometimes a flame burns too hot and too fast to endure the length of the candle. I wish that everything hadn’t ended so close to the holidays, as that’s a tough time to deal with heartbreak, but that’s how these things go sometimes. Guys, Friday, November 1^st 2013, Courtney Stodden and Doug Hutchinson ended their two and a half year marriage. You may remember Doug from Lost or the X-Files. You may remember Courtney from being Doug’s child bride or from Big Brother 12 UK. I remember them from the lessons they’ve taught me, like, true love doesn’t last forever. True love knows no societal boundaries. True love is creepy.True love yields fruit, like Doug and Courtney’s dog, Dourtney. I am so grateful for Doug and Courtney for sharing their love and though I’m devastated I’m focusing on the good times not on what has been lost.

 

Giving New Meaning to GOOP

 

I’m not proud of that title guys*.

I really don’t care if Gwenyth Paltrow did or did not have an affair. She is a grown woman with her own relationship with her husband and I don’t give a shit what goes on between them. However if she had an affair, she owes it to her readers to tell us how she had the most organic, gluten-free affair of all time.

 

 

 

*Yes I am.

K, Thanks.

 

There are so many things wrong with the tweet, “Today is ‘NATIONAL SHUT THE HELL UP DAY FOR WOMEN’….Ladies u r not allowed to talk to your man while football is on!!!” that I don’t know quite where to begin. Something like, “Some women like football too”, or “Hey Kevin Hart, thanks for the misogyny, but really only I decide when I will and won’t talk and that hopefully goes for most women but unfortunately not all of them because of domestic violence and verbal abuse and women always being told to shut the hell up so thank you for perpetuating that and also fuck you, seriously, fuck you so much,” doesn’t really seem to cover it.

Also, seriously, seriously guys, if I ever use “u” or “r” for “you” or “are”, know that I have been kidnapped and/or hacked. Call someone. I hate that shit.

Happy Labor Day

Sorry to Debbie Downer all over this holiday. Living standards have gone way up for a lot of people. We have maternity leave, child labor laws, weekends, paid sick leave, minimum wage. But not everyone gets these benefits. And minimum wage is not a living wage. This can’t be fixed overnight, but we could all do a little better at supporting businesses that take better care of their employees (shop Costco over Walmart; anywhere over McDonald’s).

Full disclosure: I shopped at Target today. It’s better, but not by a lot.

If you’re like me and hiding inside watching Breaking Bad reruns (I just started the first season so NO SPOILERS!) and surfing the internet on Labor Day, here’s Mike Duke’s rebuttal and here’s further wage discrepancy data from the Huffington Post.