It's My Dog's World: I Just Live In It

Elena Ferrante is Elena Ferrante. Period.

 

Nope, I am not going to link to the loathsome article that "outs" Elena Ferrante. I am not going to read it, either. She asked for privacy and anonymity. She committed no crime. She wrote, I hope will write, spectacular books. That is enough for me. That was the contract she created, and her readers agreed to it.

There is so much I could say about this: how irresponsible the New York Review of Books for pursuing this, how gendered this feels to me. Doxxing comes to an august literary publication. I have used a pseudonym on occasion. I have used my first initial when submitting a sci-fi screenplay to companies and competitions. I am sure you can talk to many many writers, particularly women, gender non-conforming who have made similar choices. We have many reasons for it. Ask us!

This is a bad business.

I Think I Knew This Already...

You Are Ani Difranco!

Honest, real, and well liked. You're not limited by any boundaries. "And you can call me crazy But I think you're as lazy as white paint on the wall"

Who's Your Inner Rock Chick?

NY magazine "discovers" more Pale Males

Oh, New York Magazine, how can you break my heart this way: your cover story, The Return of the New York Auteur, which focuses on the dominance of New York-based film directors in the latest New York Film festival, manages to cover not one, not two, but FIVE middle-aged white guys (Coen Bros., Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, and Julian Schnabel)...without a single editorial acknowledgement of the unbearable pale maleness in our midst?  (And no, shoehorning Baumbach's ferociously talented wife, actress/writer/director Jennifer Jason Leigh, into the ungainly "how do couples work together?" article formula doesn't make it all better--she deserved her own damned article.)

NewYorkette has the right idea

Link: newyorkette � Blog Archive � The bride as a rock star.

Happy anniversary--oh, and don't forget to fight the patriarchy

Today is my seventh wedding anniversary.

Freaky.

I never expected to get married, actually.  But I never expected NOT to.  I'm glad I did it.  I like sharing my life with someone.  I like having, to use a term an old friend used for his wife, a partner in crime.

But when I read stories like this, about a trend of women trashing their wedding dresses and documenting it with some snazzy photography, I am filled with mixed emotions. 

I once trashed a wedding dress...it was my doll's.  I was five.  And off and on, I have indulged in performance art, which has included reciting random bits of "A Doll's House" while wearing a garment bag.  So I can't get really judgy about this.  I planned my wedding in three weeks, my dress was off the rack from Eileen Fisher, my young niece and nephews took all our wedding photos (which, since they traveled on the Staten Island ferry, included a LOT of pictures of a single shoe floating in the murky water). We got married at Staten Island City Hall by a woman who could have served as an extra in nearly any "big family" scene in "The Sopranos."  We didn't honeymoon until months later--part of that time spent at a chimp habitat in Ellensburg, Washington.  We were both over 40 when we married, and we didn't actually move in together until 14 months of wedded bliss.

So:  I'm a smidge out of the mainstream. 

I didn't get the big bride memo, and I've read too much history not to understand that what we call "marriage" is a bizarre Frankenstein's monster of custom, privilege, sexism, property law, biology, and capitalism.  Middle class marriage got invented about the same time people began to really, really overbreed their dogs.  Coincidence? 

Here's what I know from my years in theater, film, and true crime movies:  Most good modern marriages I see are wild acts of improvisation, or else, to quote "Knocked Up," they become like endless episodes of "Everybody Loves Raymond" without the funny parts.

So when I hear about trash the dress, I don't think: wasteful, or indulgent. I think:  Not Far Enough.  Why not take a hundred dresses, burn them, and use them as biofuel?  Why not mail your dress to your favorite person of the non-heterosexual persuasion who would like to get married, and see what he/she does with it?

Save the Cheerleader: Include More Girls

I have managed NOT to blog about Heroes, even though I am a rock-solid fan.  As a girl who dated her first boy (at the age of 7) because he owned more comic books than she did, how could I not love love love Heroes?  Between the shout-outs to Marvel, the Stan Lee cameo, and MR. FREAKING SULU as a spooky industrialist who has probably genetically engineered his son, how could I not feel the Heroes love?

Here's why: because so far, we have only two continuing Girl Heroes, and one's a cheerleader, and one's a stripper.  I wouldn't mind this quite so much if some of the men on the show had bimbo jobs, too, but the  softest core we've seen is EmoPeter being a nurse...and we know in the future, he turns into a bleak,  badass Keanu coat wearing owner of...oh yeah, a strip club.  Meanwhile, FutureClaire is a...waitress.  Unless this is some subtle critique of the the Hero-Hating Patriarchy, I'm not buying it.

So Tim Kring, I do adore  you.  You've made me fall in love with  Masi Oka, present and future, a veritable Geek Sundae. 

But it's time to unleash Mama Petrelli, the only recurring female character who hasn't revealed her power.  (And, come to think of it, the only female over 40 on the show right now--come back, Mrs. Bennet! Mr. Muggles, all is forgiven.)

And make her power a freaky one.   Nothing seeress-y or soft.   I wouldn't even mind if she were the  bomb. Blow our minds. Think  Xena, not  Ally McBeal.