mellysblog

This is it! The picture that inspired me to make my edible nativity scene. Actually, maxi pad bedroom slippers made me think about what else I could fashion out of feminine hygiene products, and naturally, I thought of the birthplace of our Lord and Saviour, created out of a variety of tampons and maxi pads, (see Thanksgiving Tampon Turkey here.)


My Mother refused to take me to the store to buy the necessary items for my "blasphemous" creation, thus an edible nativity scene was born.....


However, I discovered today that the maxi slipper pic is from a Flickr collection entitled the Not So Fresh Feeling. Take a gander if you dare......

New Episode of the Midwest Teen Sex Show is up. If you haven't seen an episode yet, Melly HIGHLY recommends it.

Episode 13 Porn

On my third viewing..... still laughing.....

There comes a time in every musicians life when you sit down and ask yourself, "Self, do you really enjoy doing this?"


To say I've asked this question of myself one time would be an outright lie. I ask it daily, sometimes twice a day, sometimes five to ten times in the span of a rehearsal....

So I'm singing this gig this week at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie. I'm peforming Sesto's aria from Graun's Guilio Cesare... It's kind of German influenced French Baroque music....but in Italian. In layman's terms, it sounds like Handel's French period, but not NEARLY as harmonically interesting. It's a lot of high singing with wiggles and squiggles in the right place.

My aria is pretty, it's slow and not to range-y. It's about pity and your Mom,(not kidding) and it's kinda sad. So I go in to the orchestral run through last night with a good understanding of the text, and enough subtle ornaments to pass off the B section with a -hey-just-you-wait- sense of forboding for the return to the A. Nice, pretty, claps all around, Melly goes home.


Today we run the three opera choruses and arias in between. Right before my aria is a flashy little number for Cleopatra, sung by a wonderful soprano in the ensemble. I love this girl, and she is a PHENOMENAL singer, more control than anyone I know. She works her ass off, has a great teacher, never parties, wraps her head in scarves as she exits bars so the smoke doesn't damage her chords, etc. She's always inspiring to watch, but to say she's intense is an understatement. Today right before her aria, she was drinking soup out of one of those take-out containers.

I thought I would make casual conversation and so asked her what kind of soup it was. It wasn't soup, it was Chinese Herbs, and it kinda smelled like shit. She then proceeded to stand up and sing her face off in this aria...it was amazing. Not one, not two, but THREE cadenzas. Cadenzas for everyone!! The more the merrier, I always say.

I admit, the thought of getting a review for this concert did come across my mind.... However, with Suzie-Q singing high Q-flats every two seconds, my lack-luster pathetique lament was not going to bring anything home..... So I totally caved, and improvised a different cadenza on the spot and worked a high A into a lament....let me say that again, a high A into a LAMENT... I mean, that's just trashy. And of course, everyone oooh'd and aaaaah'd, and violin bows were tapped on stands, etc. Score one for Sesto, and still like, a zillion points for Cleopatra.

It made me laugh, because what I had done was so HIP, as in the delivery of a Historically Informed Practice, that of being a bitch. See, back in Graun's day it was totally acceptable to take a cadenza that you liked and stick it in wherever you wanted it, even if it was from a different aria, or written by someone else, and let me tell you, that didn't always go over so well.

In my Yale studies in Performance Practice I came across this 18th Century set of instructions for singers on How to be a Diva. It entailed that during performances it was highly encouraged to take breaks for snuff, or brandy, to primp and preen with a mirror decorated with exotic ostrich feathers, and there was something about a dancing bear. A singer always wore scarves and drank tea, and carried their own set of cadenzas in a special locked wooden box that was carried with their other fine costumes.

So, when Handel was in his operatic heya-day, he wrote for two sopranos.
Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni. They hated each other, and fought, literally clawing at each other on one occasion, pulling off wigs and calling each other Bitch and Whore on stage. It was this cat fight that closed Handel's theater early, in mid-season, and contributed to the final curtain falling in 1728. Cuzzoni and Bordoni's voices were quite different, but Handel knew their strengths and wrote specifically for them. You'll notice in his operatic writings that there are usually two soprano roles, one higher with lighter more agile coloratura, (I call it chirpy-shit, that's Cuzzoni) and one in lower tessatura with the more pathetic airs, and the occassional rage aria.....that's more my fac, I'm a Bordoni soprano.

When Handel's opera house folded Cuzzoni went back to England, Bordoni went to find more operatic work in Venice, and married and had children. Cuzzoni died penny-less making buttons in prison. Waa-Waa.

My long-winded point is coming, I promise. I'm not writing this because I'm totally Bordoni, and the other soprano today is Cuzzoni. My point is that we both fell victim to the Early Music Chop show-off. If you follow Handel's Oratorio writing, you'll know that his Messiah was his first time writing for English singers. The tenor vocal writing in the opening aria, Comfort Ye, which segues into Every Valley sings like an ornamented aria.... ummmmm, that's because it IS an ornamented aria. All the wiggles and squiggles are already in there because he was working with singers who were not trained in improvising cadenzas on the spot.

The point! Here's my big beef with the early music scene lately: it's a total ME-mi-mi show. Early Music geeks take so many classes in what is appropriate that when one gets up to sing, it's like vocal diarrhea, everything's just gotta come out.

You have five minutes to convey an emotional idea through the musical vehicle provided for you....well, usually two emotional ideas and one revisited in Da Capo form, as in:
A. I hate him
B. God damn he's good in the sack
A. Alas, sigh, I hate him

The emotional idea is what is supposed to prevail, that's why it's an ARIA and not a violin solo. We have an articulator, aka, the tongue, that allows for the expression of text. Everything else, wiggles and squiggles is in addition to, not excluding, THE TEXT. Five minutes to get an idea across, not arrpegiate a triad from your lowest possible note to your high Q flat, stop on it, rearticulate it ten times, trill on it, gliss down from it, and land (hopefully) back on tonic. In most cases, you don't need to do anything to the aria to make it beautiful, the composer already did it for you.

The secret's in the sauce, if you will.

That is all.

Do you ever have a moment where you look at someone, and you suddenly get them? Like what they are doing in that precise moment is exactly what they have been put on this earth to do... and the qwirks and ticks make sense all of a sudden, and all you want to do is enable them in every way you can to continue doing the things that they do, because you can see what a beautiful person they are, and it blinds you like a fucking white light??????


perhaps not.


In other news, I ate a fried twinkie yesterday. It was amAAAAAAAing.


Oh yeah, and I'm singing a big ass solo in Weill Hall this Thursday night, 8pm. If you aren't there, I'll assume it's because the fourth season of LOST begins at 9pm.

WNYC radio broadcast of the Wordless Cocnert from Wednesday night, also known as, the concert without the feedback issue, is available here.

Sounds really good..... my friend told me he wanted to take morphine, sink into a hot bath and listen to it on repeat..... that means he likes it.


And, you can click on the track you want to listen to, without wading through the entire concert, so all you Greenwood fans out there can get your fill.

Previously on Mellysblog:
Wordless Music Review from Last Night

Enjoy, TimberBrit calls.

Westboro Baptist Church will protest Heath Ledger's funeral.....


"God hates the sordid, tacky bucket of slime seasoned with vomit....." Now that's writing!!! Seasoned with vomit, very elegant word selection there. Someone in the PR department is a skilled Would-You-Rather player.

In Marina Warner’s book Alone of all her Sex, each chapter is dedicated to one of the numerous roles that Mary assumes in Christian theology, including her symbolic function as the Second Eve. Mary, a virgin, was sanctified through her motherhood. There was no such glorification of woman’s creative power for women in the Old Testament. For them, as for Eve, childbirth, menstruation, and nursing were a duty, not a privilege. Motherhood was identified with nature, with the imperfect world of the flesh that keeps the human soul from attaining spiritual perfection. The feces and urine of childbirth epitomized the closeness of woman to all that is vile, lowly, corruptible and material; in the “curse” of her menstruation, she was likened to the beasts. Even the lure of her beauty was nothing but an aspect of death brought about by her seduction of Adam in the garden. St. John Chrysostom warned: “the whole of her bodily beauty is nothing less than phlegm, blood, bile, rheum, and the fluid of digested food… If you consider what is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and cheeks you will agree that the well-proportioned body is merely a whitened sepulcher.” Chrysostom’s writings, which of all the works of the Ascetics had a particularly sallow view of women, were later used as support for priestly celibacy, but his condemnation extended to the universal human body.
The voice of God is the voice of man, a potent tool for social control. Religion does not only embody human belief, it reflects the attitudes, the moral and social codes of its adherents, and of the priests and scribes who interpret it. Those in power can reshape religious stories and societal myths in a way that preserves the existing social order. The early Catholic Church carefully cultivated a dual image of Eve as both mother and temptress. The evidence of this association is quite apparent in early iconography, in which the serpent is often depicted as a woman. This connection extends even to later artistic works: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling portrays Eve receiving fruit from a very muscular but feminine serpent.





An anonymous painting of the Immaculate Conception for the Burgundian Emperor Maximilien highlights Mary’s role as the Second Eve. In this painting both the serpent and Mary are given Eve’s likeness, reinforcing Mary’s ability to “reverse the curse” of Eve. The stigma of the evil that has been attributed to the female sexual organs is most striking in Paul Klee’s 1926 drawing Die Busche der Pandora als Stilleben. There is no doubt to the eye that the “jar” holding the flowers resembles a vagina, and the menacing vapors pouring from its mouth only reinforce the element of shameful darkness that has been used to justify the repression of women for millennia.
In comparing Eve to Pandora, it seems logical to begin with the motivation behind their respective creations. Pandora, the first human woman of Greek mythology, was created as a punishment for the wise and cunning Prometheus, who skillfully stole fire from Zeus with his phallic fennel stalk. In Hesiod’s Works and Days Zeus says: “Son of Japetos, there is none craftier than you, and you rejoice at tricking my wits and stealing the fire which will be a curse to you and to the generations that follow. The price for the stolen fire will be a gift of evil to charm the hearts of all men as they hug their own doom.” Pandora is thus an instrument of divine retribution, yet possesses the beguiling charm of a youthful virgin. Each god bequeaths to her a small gift; among the first are the voice , the power to move, and the face of an immortal goddess. Athena gives her the belt of a bride, and dresses her with robes of silver and a crown that rivals the shield of Achilles. Aphrodite gives her grace, desire and passion, but Hermes bestows the mind of a bitch and a thievish nature. The gods call her Pandora, which literally means “bitter gift of the gods”, or as Hesiod defines her, ‘a scourge for toiling men.’ This paradoxical combination of godlike and bestial traits is described in Greek with a playful turn of words, kalon kakon, or beautiful-evil.
Unlike Pandora, Eve was not created as a punishment for Adam, but was made to be a helper, a wife. Pandora is made from elemental Earth and Water, in obvious reference to Gaia and Uranus, but Eve is derived from Adam’s rib, an image of inferiority that feminists ironically embraced through the magazine entitled Spare Rib. This almost comical creation story echoed in the heads of ancient rabbis who sniggering equated women’s ‘foul smell’ with their origin in ‘putrefying bone’. Another interesting commentary on Eve’s creation is the 1106 Duomo carving of Wiligelmo’s Creation of Adam and Eve , in which Adam is depicted with a bulging pregnant stomach, genitals conveniently tucked out of sight.

Going through old audio files to submit for apps..... and came across this.




Why does my harpsichord sound like a steeldrum???? Audio Geeks?? Anyone?? Bueller??

Not so much posting these days, as I struggle on with my journey to be better at my job, better at life, better at being a Mom, what have you..... and failing at all of them....


I had such a strange dream this morning. A woman told me that it was absolutely necessary for me to come in early this morning to take care of car arrangements for my boss. My boss (who I refer to as my dude), travels constantly, so my main job is booking and keeping up with his travels, and then making sense out of the piles of receipts that he hands me after and converting yen into USD and all that crap.....and booking appointments, and ordering bagels and cheesesteaks, etc. It's kind of like being a Mom all over again....

Anyway, he changed his mind about his flight home and stayed an extra day for personal reasons. I changed his flight with no problems, but was unable to extend the rental car for an extra day because I didn't have the contract code, which is located on the key. I e-mailed him immediately and told him that he would have to take care of that as I didn't have the code. He called back and said he needed me to take care of it, and that he would call me back. He never did. I waited all day for that phone call, and sent e-mail reminders.

So, back to the dream in which the mythical woman told me I needed to come in to work early to take care of this car thing..... I sighed and agreed to leave Brooklyn at 5 AM, and then thought for a second.... and then I said, "Hey lady, no way. I'm happy to take care of work stuff during work hours, but I'm not coming in early to arrange something that would have easily taken maybe a minute, tops, to type into his blackberry and e-mail me. Oh yeah, and tomorrow's MLK day, so, yeah, no!"

See, the lady was my subconscious telling me something wasn't right. I then sat straight up in bed and realized that I had not changed his car service HOME from the airport. In a sense I had taken care of what he had asked me to take care of... airport and car rental. But the poor guy was most likely standing outside JFK for God knows how long waiting for a limo that NEVER came. Well, that's not true actually, it came the day before and waited.



So stay tuned tomorrow when I get fired. Awesome.

I've been meaning to post about this concert I'm in.......But a lot of you are in it.....

Sunday I started rehearsals for the Wordless Music Series concert featuring music of Gavin Bryars, John Adams, and Johnny Greenwood, of Radiohead and more recently film scoring fame. Obviously, Greenwood is the name that's going to attract some attention. Let me say first off, this is a BAD-ASS ensemble. You gotta love rehearsals where you run something once, say to yourselves, "Alright, that's how that goes" and go home. Everyone is super prepared, and very chill. I can literally look around at any given moment and see my collagues playing, smiling and having a great time.

I don't play in the Greenwood or the Adams, so I'm gonna talk about the Bryars, cuz it's MY blog... and I'm kind of obsessed with the piece. The Sinking of the Titanic was premiered in 1972 on the same program as Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet, another slow meditative work of Bryars' genius. Fittingly, it's American premiere was conducted by John Adams, don't know about the UK one from '72, perhaps Bryars even. The piece centers around the story of the band that played on the ship's deck until it sank. From various interviews with survivors, and minute by minute accounts from inside the ship's communication center, it seems that the band played on so to speak. We have timegrids of the piece. Each group of musicians is given a stopwatch, and various pages of material to be played at specified intervals. The percussionists have a great deal to improvise, from the realistic sound of a breached hull and morse codes on a woodblock, to the more imaginative "sloppy landing of a plane in Zurich" and, my personal favorite, "a dog with a kitten in its jaws...."

There are two tapes containing samples of interviews with survivors, crowd noises, crickets, the hymn tune, and other random samples. Matt's in charge of one of the tapes, and is also doing some fat horn looping. I'm real proud. He looks really hot in headphones. In a sense it's quite free, but with some containment. Just the way I like it.

The glue holding it together is the hymn Autumn, which is played probably 20 something times in the 40 minute piece by variuous instrumental groupings, including myself. Here's what Bryars said about Autumn:

This Episcopal hymn, then, becomes a basic element of the music and is subject to a variety of treatments. Bride did not hear the band stop playing and it would appear that the musicians continued to play even as the water enveloped them. My initial speculations centred, therefore, on what happens to music as it is played in water. On a purely physical level, of course, it simply stops, since the strings would fail to produce much of a sound (it was a string sextet that played at the end, since the two pianists with the band had no instruments available on the boat deck). On a poetic level, however, the music, once generated in water, would continue to reverberate for long periods of time in the more sound-efficient medium of water, and the music would descend with the ship to the ocean bed and remain there, repeating over and over until the ship returns to the surface and the sounds re-emerge. The rediscovery of the ship by Taurus International at 1:04 on September 1, 1985 renders this a possibility. This hymn tune forms a base over which other material is superimposed. This includes fragments of interviews with survivors, sequences of Morse signals played on woodblocks, other arrangements of the hymn, other possible tunes for the hymn on other instruments, references to the different bagpipe players on the ship (one Irish, one Scottish), miscellaneous sound effects relating to descriptions given by survivors of the sound of the iceberg’s impact, and so on.

And here's the quote from the Village Voice:

Our program this evening, performed by the black-clad Wordless Music Orchestra, begins with Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic, which as you perhaps recall is very specifically about the sinking, not the crashing or the blowing up or what have you: It’s a long, slow, gorgeous underwater descent, the orchestra bathed in calmly pulsating aquamarine light, waves of lilting violin passages adorned with found-sound tapes of bells, banging pots & pans, crickets, chattering survivors (one breaks into “Nearer, My God, to Thee”), and, in the respectfully silent church, clicking camera shutters and groaning pews. Three ethereal vocalists occasionally rise above the gentle din. Fabulous. “That was 8,000 times better than Sigur Rós,” my associate proclaims. Yes.

I would be the ethereal voice on the right in the pic above.

Full review here And I'm kind of in that pic too....

Iw as wrong about the date. It opens selectively on January 18th, I've now found three different release dates, but I trust IFC's site.


Here is an interview with Director Michael Lichtenstein. Incidentally, this is his film directorial debut.

Teeth opened this weekend. I posted the trailer and reviews from various film festivals back in November.

Yay for VAGINA DENTATA!!! My hope is that Teeth will be a new Carrie, but a bit more flattering for the feminsts. And speaking of Carrie , this weekend I watched another episode of Garth Merenghi's DARKPLACE, which is HILARIOUS. (Full episode can be viewed here.) This particular episode centers around Liz, the female character chanelling her anger into telekenesis which she then unleashes onto her male colleagues, and then the entire hospital. If you have no exposure to this show, I HIGHLY recommend it. I haven't really figured it out, but I've loved everything I've watched so far.

Also, since I posted last Monday on my own sensitivity to genital bashing, I've revisited my Freud paper I wrote at Yale. It's good stuff, in fact probably my best writing. I've decided to post bits of it time and time again here if you're interested on where my point of departure is on this subject.

I haven't been posting much and I guess it's partially because I'm getting used to this new job and also kind of struggling a bit in general. I've been feeling pulled in too many directions lately, and when that starts to happen I begin to feel off balanced, and then it's just a hop skip and a jump to cray-crazyland..I've been living there all week.

Anyways, I found myself at a bar on Tuesday night engaged in conversation about the C word, and I talked at length about the depiction of female genatalia in art-form blah blah blah this paper I wrote, blah blah blah, and instead of being bored, or looking for the nearest exit, the guy I was talking too expressed an interest in reading it. So in some vague attempt to re-ground myself, I'm posting installments of my thesis under the heading "Beautiful- Evil"

Werd. Happy Monday.

A young woman reclines in a suggestive pose, one elbow cradling a skull, while the other rests comfortably on the lid of a decorative but non-specific jar. The painter has depicted this young woman with fair creamy skin, breasts small but firm, and hips and limbs with supple muscle tone. Her gaze is modestly to the side, exposing a lean elegantly seductive neck. Resting on luxurious fabric that wraps around her arms and her hips, she lounges beneath the shade of a tree in a sumptuous garden while a stream murmurs in the distance. This feminine beauty could be the likeness of Venus or any other goddess, but a plaque placed above her head proclaims EVA PRIMA PANDORA, or EVE, THE FIRST PANDORA. Under this title her gaze takes on a slightly different affect. While not looking the viewer straight on, her coy sideways glance suggests a sexuality and sensuality of which she is unaware. The skull, while morbidly out of place, now seems a clear reference to our human mortality. Similarly, the presence of the jar carries more significance. This is no ordinary wine jar; it is meant to suggest the jar of Pandora, and the casual manner in which her hand rests on its lid is symbolic of Eve’s congenital curiosity, and of that curiosity’s consequences for mankind.

For centuries, Eve and Pandora have been placed alongside one another. Scholars have scrutinized the narratives of their creation and the motivation thereof, their legendary ‘dangerous beauty’, and their epistomophelia, or drive to curiosity. These two mythical women, who both lay claim to the title First Mother, were likewise both blamed for the downfall of humanity within moments of first meeting their beloveds’ eyes. Their seductive charms and illicit curiosity have profoundly impacted social attitudes towards women, just as their original disobedience has served as a blueprint for characterizing and vilifying Woman.

The female sexual organs have long been a subject of morbid fascination among Christian scholars. This is largely attributable to the early writings of Church fathers like Augustine, John of Chrysostom, Aquinas, Tertullian and Justin the Martyr, who, as part of the 4th century ascetic movement, which consisted of rejecting worldly pleasures, contributed much to the glorification of virginity. By praising virginity for its individual holiness, these powerful men were acting as both heirs and agents of the Roman Empire, which likewise promoted virginity as the primary vehicle for refusing carnal temptations. These scholars wielded their pens in slander against women as they continued to wage a cultural war between the flesh and the spirit. To reinforce the Church’s patriarchal morality, it was essential for the Church to link the origins of evil, sin and sex with the female gender and its reproductive role. If childbirth was the woman’s postlapsarian duty, and the pains associated with labor her curse, it was a logical step to extend the shameful darkness of her womb to the whole person, a concealing of the feminine in a secretive darkness like that imposed by veiling: “Veiling implies secrecy. Women’s bodies, and, by extension, female attributes, cannot be treated as fully public, something dangerous might happen, secrets be let out, if they were open to view….. The secrecy associated with female bodies is sexual and linked to the multiple associations between women and privacy.”1 Only in 1854, with the acceptance of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, did Christian theology revise its views on the sinfulness of childbearing itself, but many of these attitudes have nonetheless endured.

Beginning with Augustine, who was particularly entrenched in questions of the origin of sin, the fathers of the Church have viewed woman as the cause of the Fall. She is, by her nature, an evil seductress, the collaborator of Satan, and the ruin of the human race. The wrath released by Christian thinkers against Eve and all women can seem almost flattering, so embellished is their picture of a creature so supremely charming, so deadly, that man cannot resist her. Tertilliun declared with Latin spitefulness that echoed the early chronicler Tacitus: “Do you not realize, Eve, that it is you? The curse God pronounced on your sex weighs still on the world. Guilty, you must bear its hardships. You are the devil’s gateway, you desecrated the fatal tree, you first betrayed the law of God, you softened up with your cajoling words the man against who the devil could not prevail by force. The image of God, Adam, you broke him as if he were a plaything. You deserved death, and it was the Son of God who had to die!”2 Woman, thus held responsible not only for the Fall, but also for Christ’s suffering and sacrifice, is at once derided and yet seemingly empowered by her crucial role in shaping human existence.

[1] Jordanova, Ludmilla. Sexual Visions. London: Harvester Press, 1989.

[2] Tertullian, Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works (New York, 1959), trans. Rudolf Arbessman, Sister Emily Joseph Daly, and Edwin A. Quain; quoted in France Quere- Jaulmes, ed., La Femme. Les Grands Textes des Peres de l’Eglise (Paris, 1968), p.138.

That's me looking all skanky and busted.... for the mug-shot bottom right, I rubbed a chopped onion on my fingers, then proceeded to vigorously rub my eyes, and smeared my scarlet harlot lipstick... the effect worked, I think.

Here's a link to our myspace page, including "Your Candy", which is a "mixdown" of Toxic. Jacob Cooper stretched samples of Brit and JT's songs, and then re-orchestrated them for live band. We imitated the inaccuracies of pitch and rhythm and superimposed a tragic text and voila...

Previously on Mellysblog

I've posted before on my love for Sesame Street......

Came across this video via Gawker today. Kinda scary, but this video is so fresh in my mind, I swear I could dictate the score, which is, incidentally, by Philip Glass...Watching it, I was completely transfixed... it was like I was five all over again.



Sometimes things don't need to be summed up, or follow some logical sequence of learning, learning to appreciate something that is beautiful just because it is beautiful,even if it doesn't make sense is HUGE. Andwhen better than at that young age, when "WHY?" is like, every other word out of the mouth.....

they're marching soon.....

Matt posted this video on his blog of a man and woman (couple?) debating the aesthetic value of the movie Superbad, which I thought kinda super-sucked.... Ok, actually, it wasn't that bad. When I viewed it from the "American Pie" lens, it was a nice cute story told from the perspective of coming of age horny highschool boys....But, some things just irked me. I didn't find the movie vulgar, or stupid, the language didn't bother me, except one thing.....


What was it?

take a guess......


The drawings of the penises, peni? Nope, didn't bug me, in general, I'm quite fond. Jokes about cum, asses, jobs of the hand, tits, facials, I laughed...Har-har.

I personally don't think I'm easily offended, although others would disagree, however, utter these words near me, not even TO me, just near me, and I might hurt you

"Stop being such a pussy"


Does the word pussy bug me? Not.In.The.Slightest.Big fan at times. But not when it's used to demonstrate a frailty in a man.

Melly's mounting her soap box here, but there were MULTIPLE references to female genitalia hurled in dialogue in order to infer some sort of weakness. "Don't be a pussy, stop being such a vag, way to bitch out' are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

"But Melly", you wine, "how many times have you called a guy a dick or a cock..." Yup. when I'm really pissed at you, and you ARE a guy, I'll call you a dick, maybe, but probably not. In my entire life, maybe 3 times. If you really want to make my eyes turn back in my head and watch me foam at the mouth, just drop the c word casually in convo, and I'll rip you a new one. It's just something I feel, shall we say, passionate about.

I should also say that when my bf downs his 7th cosmo, I've been known to call him a pussy drinker, and that's wrong. By labeling him as a pussy, I'm inferring that there's something weak about my own pussy, and my sex in general..... and there's not. There's just not.

Dare I broach the subject of censorship?? Should those words have been avoided? No, they're an unfortunate and accurate reflection of our language, and to censor the language would have made the movie weaker but I still don't like it, and if you were sharing a drink with me at the bar and used one of those expressions, I just might call you out on it, and hope that you have a really good answer.

I'm anti certain words losing their significance and meaning because the general population is pulling them into the everyday lexicon. I am of the opinion that because I choose my words incredibly carefully, they automatically carry more weight. I also think that words have power, and that makes me part of the minority here, but they do. The line wouldn't have been as effective if it read "stop being such a nosehair" or whatever.... and that's because there's power and significance in the labeling.

If I ever call you a c word, it's because I think you're Satan's fucking concubine, and you should probably never speak to me again. Incidentally, I don't think I'd ever use it, but if I did, it'd be kinda like hearing your grandma swear. There's something to be said for reserving some words for those moments where you want to be at your most poignant, no?


ps, Prince Fucking Rocks....

Kinda blows my mind sometimes
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

My parents were up tight Southern Baptists, so I didn't watch this as a child, however, Free to be You and Me was given to me/Jack for his first Christmas, and I played it out....... Marlo Thomas, Alan Alda, Mel Brooks, Michael Jackson, Roberta Flack, Diana Ross, it's awesome.

I haven't been posting as much lately because of the new job. I had a great week, but it was pretty challenging getting started at DC Comics, and I totally need glasses. I had two pairs last year, one of which broke in half at the Death Proof premiere (and were held together by a green gummy bear) and the other I recently left in a hotel in Maryland. So the whole staring at a computer all day thing, and watching movies (three this week) kind of sucks.

Here's Rosey Girer singing "It's alright to Cry", cuz sometimes it is, like those cries where you're not even sad, but your body and mind are so wrecked your face just starts leaking...... or your eyes are falling out of their sockets because you need new glasses, but whatevs.

Fabulous groovy bass line- did I mention I'm learning how to play bass???
Best line from song- Sad and grumpy, down in the dumpy. Right on. So, Happy Saturday, we're off to the park.

You may want to watch it with the sound of. The film score may induce nausea. This is the kind of shit that fuels victim culture.... seriously, when you've been told your entire life that sex and love are a package deal, it can be pretty fucking destructive to find yourself in the situation where they are not... as in incest or rape, or even one night stands.

I'm anti-victim mentality if it means that one is expected to live out the rest of their life in fear, or their soul's fiber is irreparably damaged or some shit only solved by second virginity. Fuck that. Abstinence Education is for Suckers. And they lie, and like, not even well.




Via Feministing

New year, new job. I officially started yesterday.... Long day with no computer access. I did just hack into my voicemail though, and I'm kind of ridiculously proud of myself....and I managed to change my password and greeting, and I haven't even had my coffee yet.

K, just a short one... Check back for snark when I have a computer with access in front of me. I have a very detailed color coded sticky note system on my monitor right now....

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