accidental feminist

the big easy= i’ll have a muffalata w/ dennis quaid filling July 30, 2007

Wow. This movie did for Dennis Quaid in my mind what the combination of “Chicago” did for Richard Gere, and “Evita” did for Antonio Banderas. I’m sure that makes perfect sense. Of course you understand that I mean that, like seeing Richard Gere in “Chicago”, watching Quaid in “The Big Easy” actually made me respect an actor who I had previously thought was just a two-bit romantic comedy hack. Not to say that “The Big Easy” wasn’t a two-bit (okay, maybe three-bit) romantic comedy, but, man, his Creole accent really rocked it! He had that perfect can’t-put-your-finger-on-it, sort-of-Southern, sort-of-French thing going, and he was working it. Was he born with that? If not, wow. If so, how that he was able to ditch it for every other movie he made? Oh, yes, Antonio Banderas. Well, before I saw “Evita”, I didn’t understand why everyone thought he was so sexy. Now I do. And I now, too, understand why Dennis Quaid has that reputation for women about a decade older than me. I mean, the movie pretty much was just a vehicle for him to prance around naked, or, better, in nothing but lightly washed jeans (so 80s!).

I would like to stop here to comment on what a dearth of pictures there are of both james spader having his hair caressed from behind and dennis quaid shirtless on the Internets. Well, rent the movie (either one) if you want to know what I’m talking about.

So between this and “In Good Company” (I love me some Topher Grace), I’m almost ready to forgive Mr. Quaid for the debacle that was “Innerspace”. And for allowing Dane Cook to sort of look like him (toggle between these two until they merge into one).

tiny classified ads… July 26, 2007

This book stinks of the worst kind of financial self-help dung. I refuse to read it, based on the following assumptions that it makes:
* Anyone can get rich if they follow it.
* Work sucks and is only a means to an end (read: leisure, which in Ferriss’s case, involves riding motorcycles and dancing the tango); work can never be productive, fulfilling, or meaningful in its own right, while at the same time providing you income.
* Any business paradigm that can be made into an acronym must work!

As for his call to read Thoreau’s “Walden”, Thoreau would actually be disgusted by Ferriss’s disconnect between his preferred activities and the unsavory labor he avoids. Yes, Thoreau called for minimalism, and not to be a slave to your “work”, but he also lived on about $50 for an entire year and built his house with his bare hands.

This excerpt of a review on amazon sums it up: “This is an easy read. Althought I am a slooooow and easily distracted reader, I finished the book from cover-to-cover in a few sittings. I even spent some time researching the weblinks but didn’t do all the challenges because I was eager to absorb all the ideas first.”

Ooh…I just got another idea for making passive income: write a crappy-ass, over-simplified get-rich-quick book and watch it go on the bestseller list. I’m tossing around this one: “Mommy Millions: How To Exploit Your Bundle of Joy”. I’ve already raked in free churros at Taste of Chicago, extra lollipops at the dry cleaners, and child-sized hipster bracelets at craft fairs using my fool-proof method, which simply involves having cute children.

sex, lies, and videotape July 23, 2007

This is what I have learned about James Spader* so far this summer:
1. He can cure any woman of any type of sexual dysfunction.
2. He looks incredibly sexy when he lets a woman come up behind him and run her fingers through his beautiful blond hair while he succumbs to the intense, erotic sensuality of such a simple yet intimate act.

*Again, and for the record: all references to James Spader’s sexiness are pre-Boston Legal, in which he rides on the laurels of his previous sexiness that has been embedded in our collective cultural consciousness. And good for him! I can only aspire to embed anything about me into our collective cultural consciousness.

why smart women make perfectly normal money decisions July 19, 2007

That’s going to be the follow-up title to this little gem that is currently in my bathroom. It will include such case studies as:

1. You get a shirt from anthropologie as a birthday gift. It is too big, so you go to return it. You only have a $50 credit, but when you get there, you see a $118 skirt that is perfect! You figure that since the $50 for the shirt is like “free money”, and you’d buy the skirt anyway if it were $50, you can spend $50 + $50 now. That only comes to $100, but since you would definitely pay $18 for such an awesome skirt, you are willing to pay $18 (the amount over the original investment as you have now calculated it) and buy the skirt. Good for you!

2. You buy a pair of shoes that are slightly uncomfortable but totally cute for $100. You wear them out four times, and they’re just not working, but you’ve already scuffed them and you’ve lost the receipt, so you’re sure the store won’t take them back. You justify the purchase retroactively by considering that they cost $25 each time you wore them, which was less than you spent on dinner and drinks every time you went out, which isn’t bad. And, since you only spent $25 on them, you figure you owe it to yourself to buy a new pair of shoes that fits better. You find a perfect pair of shoes for $125, and figure that since you already spent $100 on bad shoes, you should spend at least that on good shoes, and accept the extra $25 as the price you will have to pay for quality. Nice move!

3. You always keep a $50 return waiting in a UPS package in your trunk so that if you ever find something you really like that’s around $50 when you happen to be at the mall, you can justify the purchase by promising that today is the day you will make it over to the UPS drop box, thereby claiming your $50 of free money. Sounds sensible to me!

If any of the above scenarios sound familiar, you need my book, in which I justify all of the above behaviors and more as completely rational and normal, and totally go off on anyone who says they’re not by claiming that such people are unhealthily frugal or simply don’t want you to enjoy life.

old news: colbert on o’reilly July 10, 2007

I know this is old, but I happened to stumble across it just now (I had seen O’Reilly on Colbert when it aired), and I was absolutely blown away by the morbidity of the lack of studio audience. That said, listen for the uncontrolled laughter that intermittently emanates from, who, the interns? The key grip? Someone out there behind the cameras cannot keep it together. For more interesting musing on laugh tracks, check this out, or just watch “Arrested Development” and ask yourself if it would have been canceled if they had just prostituted themselves and thrown in a couple of guffaws.

I also liked the comment on one website I found in my research that suggested that we be conscious of the fact that, in many cases, the laughs we are hearing on laugh tracks are those of dead people. Hee hee!

big night on “big love” July 9, 2007

Edited version:Yosef says this needs a “spoiler alert”. This is because he is less self-centered and generally less of a d-bag than me…

(more…)

prove that you’re opinions are right because they are prevalent… July 1, 2007

here…or, conversely, verify your suspicion that you are too brilliant for anyone to understand your complicated tastes. A suggestion: Write down your list of top ten movies (or tv shows, or albums) of all time before you look them up; then look them up and find out your average score. Refer to this score at parties to sound like a dick.

And, as an aside, according to the reviews, you are a complete dick if you don’t love “Ratatouille”.

**Addendum: I just checked: “Ratatouille” has a higher score, by two, than both “Taxi Driver” and “Schindler’s List”. An animated rat beat out DeNiro and the entire Jewish people (of which, by the way, DeNiro may be a subset, although the only websites I can find to verify this are white supremacist ones; can anyone provide a more reliable source?)

af summer movie festival entry #2: talladega nights June 30, 2007

This one was for all of my male high school students who just couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it already! Now, I understand why they love it, and I don’t want to take that away from them. I mean, they also think “Crash” is, like, the deepest movie ever made (”OMG! It’s like, all of their lives are intertwined!”). But, uh, come on. Okay, the baby Jesus grace thing was chuckle-funny; I generally like John C. Reilly. And, uh, that’s about it. Sacha Baron Cohen was blah. Will Ferrell is one fat blah for me in general, and this did nothing in the area of changing that. It felt like a really long, decently funny youtube video that some guys in a sketch comedy group put together, but then somehow they got a $72.5 million budget to do all the cool crash scenes and get real racecar (palindrome) drivers to make cameos.

The thing is, I like Judd Apatow and his merry band of geeksters, but he’s gotta have a heavier hand than just producing to provide that satisfying apa-taste. And no Will Ferrell. I can’t help it; he rubs me every wrong way*. Blah.

af summer movie festival entry #1: secretary June 24, 2007

Well, we all know my affinity for the hot version of James Spader (not the “purposely-let-himself-go-to-prove-that-sex-appeal-is-about-attitude-not-physique” James Spader from Boston Legal), so this was quite a treat in that regard. Regarding the obvious selling point of the film, a supposedly honest and quirky look at the world of dominant/submissive sexuality, I felt mixed. It definitely had more humanity than “The Piano Teacher”, but there were just a few spots that seemed overwrought, to wit: 1) the scene in the “spanking” montage where Spader puts a saddle on Gyllenhaal’s back and a carrot in her mouth…really? No, I mean, really? Um…okay…, and 2) The end of the film, where, for example, Gyllenhaal’s slightly too eloquent manifesto on S&M that somehow makes it into the newspaper that Spader reads (”I finally found someone who would play with me”? I’m sure that’s a term from the dominant/submissive lexicon, but “play” was not what she was after; release was, which she got, and bravo to her, but let’s let the real character speak and not make her a mouthpiece, a mere plaything, if you will.). Here the movie makes a strange turn as it merges with the ending of “Never Been Kissed”, which, for me, is significantly more disturbing than any of the aberrant sexuality presented in the film.

It is, as many critics note, rather sexy, if you allow yourself to accept the givens of the relationship at hand. But it might do a bit too much advocating for some psychological states that should probably be addressed by means other than sexual bondage, even if the two character’s do love each other have reached a mutually agreed upon state for their sexual relationship; a girl who has been self-mutilating since 7th grade doesn’t just need a good hard smack on the bottom from, an albeit alluring, James Spader; she needs some therapy, and possibly a good hard butt smack.

knocked up= wait? you mean I’m not supposed to think that seth rogen is the kind of guy i’d consider dating? June 18, 2007

I mean, call me crazy, but I think he’s got it going on! Jewfro, 80s movie references, super-sweetness. I think that all girls wish they were “too pretty” and “too sophisticated” for “that dude”, but they should really thank their lucky stars if they end up with him, and not some gelled-hair, ascot-wearing, cheating-at-his-bachelor-party prick. She’s the one who got the good deal in the end. And, hello? “Who’s Doc?” I’d be all up in there with the 1.21 gigawatts on that one! “Who’s Doc?” Seriously, lame! Oh, did I mention that I have a supercrush on Paul Rudd, and have since “Clueless”, but got an even bigger one when I realized that he’s actually not a straight man, hunky guy actor like they tried to pass him off as in that flick at all. He’s, like, super funny! And oh, that perky nose (ignore the other people in that picture, except for Roger Ebert- he looks so healthy and happy there- and look at that freaking adorable nose!)! You slay me, Paul. (Is that too many links? You scour through imdb and try to pick only one!) I wish you had picked me to dance with at the first Champagne Snowball of your Bar Mitzvah. I would have appreciated it, unlike the pretty, skinny, popular girl who the nerdy guy always picks, because it’s his one chance to touch her where she can’t say no. I’m that girl who always listened to you talk about that other girl and secretly loved you, but who you always told what an awesome friend I was, and how my personality totally made me pretty. Oh, Paul. You never knew how much it hurt…Wait? What? I didn’t go to Jr. High with Paul Rudd? Why, just because he’s eight years older than me? Shut up!

Okay, I’ll divert your criticisms with a cute picture, lest you think I am whistling Dixie about my affinity for cute noses:

Just look at that. You don’t get a nose that cute on your kid without a nose that cute on your spouse. And that, my friends, is natural selection. (Did I just channel Dwight?)