stevereed is a friend and long-time AF-er. He also just became a Daddy! Looks like someone needs to register the url “accidentalmisogynist.com” and start blogging about his precocious daughter! I’ll totally link you, dude!
I’m not exactly sure what the point of this article is, because I’m distracted by the amusing little bits of British idiom sprinkled throughout. “The National Scruples and Lies Survey 2004 also found plenty of porkies were told over the Christmas period.” My Lord, really!? Porkies!? Good heavens! “A quarter (23%) would “sneak a bottle or two” home if they were invited to a party by a well-off friend.” I dare say! What a scandal!
I’m pretty sure the conclusion is as I have indicated: British women lie; 47% more than their American counterparts. And they’re constantly “getting off with someone they don’t fancy”! Bloody disgraceful!
(thanks to yb for the link!)
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!
This will either prove or disprove my theory that I am just as normal and/or outlandish whether or not I have imbibed. I had a fun night tonight, if not surreal. I went to a benefit for an artists colony, and there were two distinct types there: the twenty-something artist set, and the 40 to 50 something parents and/or patrons of the arts. Because I was with one of the later (albeit a very hip one), I ended up chilling with people close to twice my age, and, for the first time, feeling like I probably had more fun with them than I would have with the 20-somethings. There was something unpretentious about this group, something warm and genuine (not to mention that I got the best of both worlds by being able to talk about stretch marks and get told that I must have gotten married at 14, I look so young). And I looked around at the “kids” who were probably a couple of years younger than me and just thought “That’s so sweet; good for them!” Well, if I can figure out a way to feel grown up without feeling like a grownup, I may just be able to accept my impending 30s after all (reference #2, if you’re counting…).
I’d put Ellen Barkin up there with Lauren Bacall on my list of inspiring Jewish Women of Hollywood. They’ve both aged with dignity and beauty (and neither with plastic surgery); both bring to the screen a truly sensual and strong womanly sensibility– but they won’t let that strength force them to play the virgin-whore that, oh, for example, Angelina Jolie was willing to play in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. No, they won’t let the frightened little men clip their wings. I am reminded of the stupid, stupid boys in my dorm at UofC who once told me that I’d be more attractive if I were less opinionated. Bacall and Barkin, for me, represent the women who is attractive precisely because of her strength; and they give me hope that there are men out there, the kind of men the kind of girl like me would consider worth his salt, who actually want a women who’s a little hard to handle (and not in a fake, I’ll-tell-you-I-hate-you-but-then-crumble-under-your-intense-and-manly-gaze way).
And I love this quote from a recent Barkin interview: “Would I rather look the way I looked when I was 43? Yes. 33? No. I always thought women peaked between 36 and 43. Something happens to your face and everything just settles in.” Here’s to that as I approach my 30s. (The first reference in what is sure to be a summer-long veritable tour-de-force of references to my upcoming monumental birthday).
Yes, it’s a touching show with spot-on comedic writing about aging, male friendship, the politics of compassion, and the internal struggle between moral integrity and monetary success. It also places me squarely in an age bracket that I continue to resist. Some examples:
Why have two shows, “The Girls Next Door” and “Big Love“, both about polyamorousness, taken off this past year? And, really, they couldn’t be more different:
Reality Show vs. Complete Fabrication
Hot Playboy Chicks vs. Stuffy (if hot) Mormon Ladies
Absence of Sexual Taboos vs. Presence of a Myriad of Taboos (all except being married to more than one woman).
Is it because they reflect a 21st century feminist attempt to suggest that, as long as a woman is an equal actor in a consentual sexual relationship, it doesn’t matter what form it takes? I’ve had many a conversation about the problematic nature of the term “exploitation”. If a woman consents to something that others would be seen as demeaning, is it still “exploitation”? What if she has a emotional or psychological history that might explain the abberation in her moral judgement? Do we than say that she lacks the presence of mind to recognize her own exploitation? Don’t we all?
Interestingly, however, in both shows, there is a clear “Wife #1″, the premise being that, all things taken into account, the man is still uncapable of (or unwilling to) provide equal emotional support to all three lady-friends. Or perhaps he is simply, despite himself, is affected by our society’s conventions of monagamous love between a man and a woman, and thus must relegate the others to a status of second-tier in order to maintain some semblance of emotional normalcy for himself.
I should also remember that “he”, in this case, is Hugh Hefner, the man who all but invented post-modern sexuality, especially with respect to the woman’s role in it. And yet, is he not a man? If you prick him does he not bleed? If he walks into a restaurant with 8 playboy centerfolds and 3 hot girlfriends, is he not the mack? (oh, rule of three; you are so cheap and yet so compelling…)
In an attempt to stop spam, I have added mandatory CAPTCHAs to the comment form. Any problems let me know. Enjoy.
