A Sad Day

For those of you who don't know, I have been nursing a massive teensy-weensy crush on Michael Buble. But I have to let him go. *sniff* I found out today that he has a girlfriend. So I bid him adieu, until such time as he becomes available for fantasy again. (I don't poach. Not even for pretend.) And if this (stunningly beautiful) woman turns out to be The One, I'll be happy for them both. And on the hunt for a new celebrity crush. Have fun, Michael!*sigh* Until we meet again....y'know...for the first time.

Here she is. The lucky girl. Her name, I think, is Luzana. She's from somewhere in South America. Argentina, I think. Anyway, she's lovely. I wish them all the best. Someday, I'll find my own.

Collective Sigh of Relief Causes Windstorm in Canada

So, I'm going to make this my fun blog. All political posts have been moved to my new political blog, where they will find a happy, albeit likely unviewed, life. So, I will no longer pester you with these thoughts. I'll pester total strangers and harass my family to read them, even though they're the ones who usually give me the ideas to begin with. I need love, people! Show me some love!

Call Off the Sharks

So I have MSN Messenger, right? And when you sign in it gives you this little window of news, entertainment, e-mail, etc. with all the top stories and searched items of the moment. One of these was an article about Kristen Stewart's Bad Attitude. It's all about how Ms. Stewart is not behaving with due grace and gratitude in her newfound spotlight. One of the people quoted in the article was a young lady who apparently had nothing better to do with her time than start an "I Hate Kristen Stewart" group. She has all this animosity toward a virtual stranger because she doesn't feel that Ms. Stewart is exhibiting the proper amount of reverence for the story. Does anyone else out there find this to be ridiculous?! Yet despite the violence of her dislike for the girl who is going to be in essentially every scene, this young lady is still going to see "New Moon". She even says that she'll just sit there getting angrier and angrier during the film . My question then becomes WHY?! Why go pay good money to become ANGRY for two hours?! In what parallel universe does that make sense?


Now, I am not a fan of Ms. Stewart, by any means. I find her method of delivery to be consistently comparable to uncontrollablly fired verbal bullets. Words burst out her mouth as though they're deperate to escape and feel safer going in groups. But I feel sorry for her! I can hear you out there thinking, "Oh, yeah! I feel sorry for the poor kid. Rich and famous overnight. Oh, the humanity!" I know. But seriously, think about it for a second. People expect her to be as big a fan of the Twilight universe as they are. And she's not. She's never made any secret of it. She hadn't even read any of the books when she read for the role. By all indications, she never intended to be a big star. She was strictly indie. I imagine she thought this was just another indie film. And for someone who didn't know what Twilight was, the film had a lot of those earmarks. A low budget, an relatively unknown director, virtual unknowns for the leads, and a story that was different than the commonly accepted lexicon for the Fantastical. Her mistake was an innocent one.


Frankly, people have an entirely different set of expectations for Indie actors, and they were expectations that suited her and she could and did meet. With Indies, you expect them to read Sartre and quote obscure poets, listen to deep, dark music from bands no one else has ever heard of and wear clothes that are a little...odd. Their social skills are also not of the average variety. You expect them to be somewhat biting, sarcastic and derisive toward the mainstream. You don't think twice about it, 'cause that's just the deal with them. There's a reason the Paps don't follow them. And you gotta admit, Stewart fits in that world. The drawback to this Indie-ness is that in sticking to the shadowy corners of society, they are pretty much unaware of what goes on in the brightly lit center of society. This out of touch-ness led Ms. Stewart to commit the fatal faux pas of accepting a role in a pop culture phenomenon, which, I would imagine, goes against everything she believes in, and everything she had chosen for her life up to that point. But she's stuck now. And she is completely unprepared for the life she now leads. All of the skills, habits, and preferences that worked so smoothly on the Shadowy Edges, are causing her to be crucified in the brightly lit center. She is now in the unenviable position of having to, if not embrace, at least tolerate with good grace, the nightmare of learning an entirely new set of skills while under highly critical attention of a microscopic degree. Not fun. In fact, I'll bet she feels pretty dang betrayed right about now. Not to mention bereft. The life she planned for, worked for, is gone forever now. And in its place is this monstrosity that she never wanted to have anything to do with. That's a lot for an 18 year old to deal with. That's a lot for a 45 year old to deal with! Oh, did you forget that? How well would you have handled having all your comfort zones and all your goals publicly stripped away from you at the age of 18, leaving you all but naked in the spotlight, raw and exposed, while you tried desperately to scramble for some semblance of what you used to call normal?

All in all, I think it's time for the generous spirit of America to kick in and cut this kid a little slack while she's on this rather steep and brutal learning curve.

I am Woman! Hear me...whine?

So I was watching a little GMA clip today, and it was the segment with Kathy Lee Gifford and the lady whose odd name I can never remember, except that it's odd. The question they were asking was "Why don't men listen?" Or, specifically , why don't they listen TO WOMEN? Well, first of all, I don't think that's really what they're asking. I think the more accurate question would be "Why don't men listen WHEN and HOW we women want them to?" And the answer would be "Because they're not women."

But what really piqued my interest was when Kathy Lee cited a study saying that the U.S.A. had ranked 31st in the Global Gender Gap (2007) study. And I thought, "WHAT?! Thirty first?! Well, this needs context." So I went hunting.(Sweden came in first, if you're curious, but not curious enough to follow the link.)Who DOES these studies?! And more importantly, what's their agenda?

Okay, first of all, I'd like to point out that we are 31st out of 128 countries. Shouldn't that be mentioned?! But we came after Moldova, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Seriously?! Did they count the black women in South Africa? I mean, I know they've come a long way since Apartheid ended, but really?!

I didn't think this study had the right kind of criteria for a true gender equality study. They said it was based on four "pillars": economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. And of course, there are a number of subcategories under each pillar. So the main pillars sound great, but then they had things like birth rates, and contraceptive use. What does that have to do with equality? It's not exactly something that can be compared. What, we're only equal when we give birth as often as men do? I could see contraceptive availablility being relevent, but not use. They counted how many women had trained medical professionals on hand while giving birth, but they didn't define professionals. And frankly, women have been giving birth for a long time now. Doctors aren't the only way to go. In fact, from a historical perspective, they're pretty new. I think it's great if these things are available, but I don't think it should count against anything if you don't use it.

Let me share an exerpt from the study:
Gaps vs. levels
The Index is designed to measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities in individual countries rather than the actual levels of the available resources and opportunities in those countries. We do this in order to make the Global Gender Gap Index independent of the level of development. In other words, the Index is constructed to rank countries on their gender gaps, not on their development level. Rich countries have more education and health opportunities for all members of society and measures of levels thus mainly reflect this well-known fact, although it is quite independent of the gender-related issues faced by each country at their own level of income. The Gender Gap Index, however rewards countries for smaller gaps in access to these resources, regardless of the overall level of resources. For example, the Index penalizes or rewards countries based on the size of the gap between male and female enrollment rates, but not for the overall levels of education in the country.(emphasis added)

Okay, as far as I'm concerned, this study just tanked their right to have their results taken seriously with that one paragraph. They divorced the results from the criteria of development in a country. You kind of can't do that and expect to get any really accurate kind of answer, because the gender gap isn't independent of the development of a country! So this all becomes a massive, paper-wasting game of "What If?". "What if everybody had the same amount of stuff. Would the girls get as much as the boys?" Oh, come on! That is not science! This study seems to completely disregard the element of personal choice. Just because people don't avail themselves of opportunities, doesn't mean the opportunities aren't available to them.

I don't think this study creates an accurate picture of accessibility to resources. But people will just hear that the U.S. was 31st in the gender gap ranking, leaving everyone with the highly erroneous impression that America is somehow lacking in equal rights between genders. This happens a lot! Some study that has totally whacked out criteria comes out and says that America sucks in a ranking, and everyone just runs with it without putting it into any context. We gotta stop doin' that!

I, for one, am tired of people trying to make us look like we're some mysogynistic, oppressive, patriarchal regime. Women in western civilization have it better than any other women in the history of the world. In some ways we have it better than the men. Stop whining already.

The "D" Word

You know how all those skinny people claim that they've fallen off the wagon so many times? Yeah. Well, I have not just fallen off the wagon, I have set it on fire and pushed it off of a cliff. Then I rolled down to the flames(because hiking down would have been exercise) and proceeded to roast marshmallows coated in peanut butter M&M's on the conflagration of my failure.

So, I'm still fat. I hate it, but apparently not enough to, y'know, exercise and eat things that aren't saturated in sugar. *sigh* I love sugar. I have made some small progress in self-awareness in that I have realized that eating is an anxiety response, as opposed to a depression response. It is a truly horrifying testament to my state of mind when I realize I am wishing almost desperately for depression so I can stop eating like like someone who's shortly going to require power tools, heavy machinery and police clearance to leave the house.

I can't seem to find any motivation. In some small defense, I am in my senior year of accounting (all online) and it's sucking my brain dry and scaring the daylights out of me. I've been a student for so long (6 years), I'm not entirely sure what a normal adult me will look like. So many changes coming. Good changes. But I'm pretty nearly scared witless. Which would contribute to the school difficulties. Hard to do well in school when lacking wits.

So, maybe I'm hoping for some encouraging words from the people out there. All one or two of you that read this.

Out of Time

"Even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit." Orson Welles

I was born in the wrong time. At least as far as Hollywood goes. Now I know that there are plenty of gorgeous and talented people in Hollywood right now, but I'm sorry. My heart pretty much belongs to the eras of the 30's and 40's in Hollywood. The performers of that era were pretty consistently a triple threat. SO talented. And they weren't physically perfect. Some of them had goofy ears, or weird teeth or were just plain odd-looking (Jimmy Durante, anyone?). The fashions were so rich and elegant, the lines so pure. Perhaps that would have changed if the films had been in color, but I don't think so. I read once that black and white is an actor's best friend because it keeps the focus on the acting, as opposed to the colors. But the glamour was.....stronger, I guess, because Hollywood was PART of the illusion. Now everyone's into realism. But I miss the fantasy. And the STORIES they told! I get all swoony just thinking about it.

I learned to love this era because of my mother. Now my mother is not that old, lest you make the mistake my daughter did. No, she learned it from her mother. It was something they shared when she was a child, just the two of them. She passed it on to me, and I am pleased to be passing it on to my progeny. I have many, many favorites, but I'll just share a few.

Naughty Marietta (1935)-Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy

Nelson and MacDonald were America's Singing Sweethearts. She plays the disguised French princess on the run, whose ship is attacked by pirates. He plays the dashing, if somewhat full-headed, Captain of the mercenary band who rescues her. She knocks him down a peg or two, he returns the favor (and they're both the better for it), so naturally, they fall in love. The fact that Nelson Eddy is as stiff as a board is completely irrelevant to me. The fact is, he wasn't really an actor, but his voice totally makes up for that. I love this movie, and I love the music and I love to listen to them sing it. My favorite moment is when he's trying to "woo" her by alternately insulting her and singing with the Italian band playing in the street outside her window (being female and possessing a pulse, she is spellbound by his singing voice). Then SHE starts to sing and blows them all away. Fantastic! (Note- If you aren't fond of an operatic style, this may not be as enjoyable for you, but the sheer verve of the moment ought to get you through it.)




Captain Blood (1935)and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)- Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone


These are my two favorite Errol Flynn movies. Interestingly, in both films he shares the same co-stars. Something about their chemistry is electrifying to me. He's the hero, she's the fair maiden and Basil is the menacing rival. Classic!These are the films they invented the phrase "in grand style" for. The sweeping music, the adventure, the romance, it's all there.


Errol Flynn was a man who broke the mold, in my humble opinion. He was dashing, good-looking, athletic, something of a ladies man (not to mention a really good actor)and completely unapologetic about any of it. His charm seemed to make up for that lack. We live in an era too ashamed of itself for someone so unabashedly masculine. Captain Blood is the story of a soldier turned doctor who treats the wrong patient during a time of political unrest in England. As a result, he is tried for treason. His sentence is slavery in the Carribbean. Olivia de Havilland buys him. Eventually he escapes (through brain power, no less)and, disillusioned by the cruelty of his King and country, becomes a pirate. Oh, what will happen? How is our hero ever to become a part of law-abiding citizenry again?! I'm sure there's a girl and sword-fight along the road to redemption. And everyone knows the story of Robin Hood. In fact, in pertinent story points, I think I just described it.



Olivia De Havilland, another of my favorites from this era, plays the Governor's neice, Arabella, in Captain Blood and Maid Marian in Robin Hood. She gives her ladies spunk and intelligence and courage. You have to love them. All told, she starred in eight films with Flynn, and they had some serious on-screen mojo. She is an amazing actor, especially for someone who never particularly wanted to be one.


Basil Rathbone, who is perhaps best known for playing Sherlock Holmes, plays Guy of Gisbourne in Robin Hood and rival/friend French pirate Captain Levasseur in Captain Blood. Though he's not classically handsome, he's incredibly compelling and magnetic. He's just so deliciously sinister and his eyes are so intense, he makes me lean back a little in my seat, just in case. Both films boast impressive sword-fighting duels between Basil and Errol (can you even SAY those names without a British accent?! I think not!)



While there is romance and intrigue to spare, the action is awesome. Both of these actors were masterful fencers, and it totally shows.




This one was actually filmed on Laguna Beach in California, and all the little stumbles and slips are real. (Though I can't help slipping out of my willing suspension to wonder if Basil got water up his nose at the end, there.)





Jane Eyre (1944)- Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine

I have always loved this film. Though I only recently read the book, and fell in love with it, too, (I'm now an official member of the Edward Faifax Rochester Stalker's Club) I have seen other versions of this story, and while they have many merits and are certainly more faithful adaptations of the novel, Mr. Welles will always be my Mr. Rochester. Those dark eyes! That deep voice! Or was that deep eyes and dark voice? It's both. Either one would have shivers running down my spine (and I mean the good ones), but you put them together and I cannot take my eyes off that screen. I just sit there and stare like a mouse at a snake. And I drool.


Joan Fonataine plays Jane with such quiet security and SPINE, it's fantastic. Even if the hairdo did make her lose her chin. Observe a normal 'do. See, she's pretty, right? But her Jane 'do definitely hampered that.(See the video.) Amazing how an unattractive 'do can seriously damage a person's beauty.





This is one of my favorite parts of the movie. I apologize for the length, but it has a lot of those eye/voice parts[insert sheepish grin here]. The parts I like the best you can find at 0:50-1:40 (the hottest handshake EVER) and 5:30-6:10 (a declaration I WILL hear before I die!). (*swoon*)




Trivia- Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland are sisters. Elizabeth Taylor plays a small part in this film as Helen Burns, Jane's only childhood friend. She dies.


Summer Stock (1950)- Gene Kelly, Judy Garland

Okay, so it's technically out of the 40's now, but this is just cute. It's a musical (if you couldn't guess that by the stars), and one of Judy Garland's last films. She's Jane, a farmer (willing suspension of disbelief! Work with me!)who's hit a hard time. Her self-centered younger sister Abigail comes home with a theatre company in tow, intending to use the barn to stage their show. This doesn't settle well with Jane or the locals, particularly Jane's fiance Orville and his autocratic father. Jane is headed for some serious heart wrangling when she and Joe(Gene Kelly), the guy who owns the show (and is engaged to her sister), start sparking. There are some truly hysterical characters in this movie played by the inimitable Marjorie Main and Phil Silver. And Eddie Bracken as the nebbish, slightly spineless Orville. But it's the chemistry of Kelly and Garland and the song and dance numbers that are where it's at for me. Go to 3:33 to see my favorite funny song with Gene Kelly and Phil Silver.




And then prepare to get blown away by Garland at her best.




So, these are a few of my favorite things. But a small offering from that particular era of Hollywood. I could go on and on, but I'll save it for another post. I know we hear it all the time, but they just don't make them like they used to. What about you, bloggers? Any oldies you heart?

"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." -Orson Welles

Is Grief Allowed?

I was reading PostSecret today and I came across one that made me very sad. This young lady said that her Mormon mother was too busy crying because she wasn't getting married in the temple to help her get ready on her wedding day. I can see how she might feel that was selfish on the part of her mother. I could see how a she would hope that her mother would focus on making it a good day for her on her wedding day, of all days. I can even see that her mother's sense of timing sucked. She could have held off until the day was over. That certainly would have been more socially acceptable. But I couldn't help feeling more sorry for her mother than for her. I couldn't help feeling that it was the daughter who was unforgivably selfish. Perhaps it's a sign of maturity, but I ached for that mother. Of course, as a Mormon (and a mother)myself, I understand exactly what this young lady is giving up and the depth of her mother's grief.

For those unfamiliar with our beliefs, we hold that there are many degrees of heavenly reward, and that the highest degree can only be attained by those who have entered the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. We do not believe that marriage ends at death, as all other faiths do. Our ceremony does not contain any phrases like "Until death do us part" or "As long as you both shall live". We believe that marriage is a bond that is intended to continue throughout eternity, and that those who are sealed on this earth will be sealed in heaven, along with their children. Other faiths believe that all familial bonds perish with mortal death, nor do they believe that their eternal reward is directly connected to the covenants they make here.

So, keeping that belief in mind, that by not marrying in the temple this girl has chosen to not only cut herself off from the highest degree of heavenly rewards, but to cut off her potential children as well, I think that daughter should have been more sensitive to her mother's feelings. Yes, she's getting married. Yes, it's her day. And yes, it's a good thing, but it's not the best that she could have had. And her mother, like all good mothers, wanted the best for her child. To this young lady I say, have patience with your mother's grief. She's not just losing you. She's losing your children. They won't be a part of her family on the other side, no matter how completely she loves them on this one. Your choice to reject everything that she believes in is a devastating blow. Let her feel the loss of it. Someday in the not-too-distant future, you may have a child who chooses to reject everything that you believe in and have spent so much of your blood, sweat, tears and years to imbue in that child. Perhaps then your mother's tears will suddenly become something other than an inconvenience on a day that you think is supposed to be all about you. Respect that, regardless of whether or not you share her beliefs, they are still her beliefs and her loss is real. You may take exception to the timing, but be forgiving of the fact that we mortals are not alwways able to restrain our grief to socially appropriate moments.