another ms. taylor

look at this pretty lady: maria taylor.  i first discovered her on KCRW, a great local station in Los Angeles and her song Leap Year sort of moved me in a way.  i was in a relationship where i was really just waiting around.  part of me knew i should stop and walk away, but another part of me knew i just wasn’t going to do that.  i recall talking to a friend who said, look you can fight it and fight it, but you are going to find yourself back in the same place over and over again.  so you can hang in there and fight it or you can go with it.  well that’s what i did.  maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong, who knows.  taylor’s lyric: “i will wait for you, but please come soon” got me through my hour commute each day.  she will be in my town in a couple of weeks at a very small venue-perhaps i should go and give her thanks for getting me through that moment in my life.  give her listen, she was at KCRW last week.  she also has a new album coming out.

Make love? But no one’s done that for hundreds of centuries!

oh making love…it’s been on my mind, what can i say? it’s nice.  and just when you feel like it will never happen again- there it is! i’m going to avoid any details, so let’s just pay tribute to beautiful women.  women we’ve loved, women we’ve lost, women we want, women we cannot forget.  and one that has become immortal.  an oldy, but a goody- perhaps a cliche, but seriously, the woman was beautiful and believe it- the woman was smart.

“I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
— Marilyn Monroe

holy vermolly!

and i mean you vermont!  this is floating around facebook and i got a little sarcastic chuckle out of it:

10 reasons why gay marriage is “wrong”

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Brittany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans

okay it’s all fun and games, but let’s keep in mind that real gay marriage is adorable- case in point:

he-she and all that sexist language

I was listening to Morning Edition the other day and they ran this piece called, Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong. Essentially, it’s about how some languages use feminine and masculine nouns- in a way it’s a descriptive noun.  For example die brucke is bridge in German.  It is a feminine noun and elicits other “feminine” descriptive terms like slender, elegant, and beautiful.  Whereas in Spanish the word for bridge is el puente, which is a masculine noun so when spoken immediately it elicits other typically “masculine” words, like strong, big and sturdy.  We don’t have this type of grammar in English, although we do often assign a sex to an object- like cars or electronics, we name them and we treat them accordingly.  It’s fascinating really how different cultures assign different meanings to different words. (phew! lots of differences in that sentence).  And then here’s something really different!  Some languages don’t even have pronouns.  For example, Estonian- there is no he or she.  That’s right in Estonian you don’t say “her car” or “his house” you would say “tema” or “he/she/it’s” car.  It’s kind of nice because it certainly simplifies things and also it demystifies objects.  Now the program really didn’t get into this, but I couldn’t help but think about language in terms of sexuality.  I can only speak from an American perspective, but we are constantly objectifying things and defining things in terms of sex, both masculine and feminine even without the “descriptive” noun affiliation.  i am a woman that questions my sexuality, not my sex or my gender, but i know many people that do and sometimes language can be so damaging. it brings up a lot of quetions about the language we use even within the gay community, like “gender queer”, transgender, bisexual- these words and others carry a lot of meaning.  we are constantly trying to define things, label them, organize, compartmentalize and so on.  what if the bridge is not a girl? what if the bridge is not a boy? what if the bridge just IS? what if? well maybe it’s not about bridges, maybe it’s about flowers.

TANGENT ALERT:  biologically speaking, if i can remember back to my undergrad years, some flowers are bisexual and sometimes “bisexual flowers” are referred to as perfect flowers meaning they have both female and male reproductive systems, like a lily or a rose. hmmm…..maybe shakespeare really did have roses all wrong!

hello, pretty pretty

so there is all this buzz about Virgil Griffith’s so called study relating IQ to music preference. it’s sort of ridiculous in a lot of ways and in some other ways even a bit racist (willing to bet Virgil is a Beethoven listening white guy). basically his study indicates that people with high IQ’s listen to classical music and indie music.  people with low IQ’s listen to beyonce and lil wayne. well being that i listen to radiohead and beyonce- what does that say about me? really virgil, i’d like to know.  but seriously if beyonce makes you dumb, then sign me up because i am stupid crazy over this video. like slobbering stupid. enjoy!

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming

good god iowa!  this mama is proud of you!  thank you middle america.  and really thank you to those who fought for this.  you know how much i love people who fight for social justice.  you walk the walk and talk the talk and now you are married.  according to the New York Times article:

“The legal case here began in 2005, when the six same-sex couples filed suit against the county recorder here in Polk County because he would not accept their marriage license applications.”

this is a huge victory and from someone who was in L.A. on november 5th and experienced the solemn, the utter shock and sadness of H8 and then being in Salt Lake City 4 days later experiencing this surreal combination of both disgust and responsibility, well…let’s just say this, iowa, this feels damn good.

no one will hear you if you aren’t saying anything and sometimes you just have to scream to be heard.

poster by shepard fairey

sisters

let’s be honest- i love my sister. and also sometimes not, but most of the time.  and i sure love a sisters movie- oh yes i do more then any other genre (because sister movies is a genre and i can provide a list) or a movie about really close girlfriends (more on that later).  so tonight i was by myself, my plans had fallen through, so i decided to put on a bra and head on out to the city on my own! well…really just to the movies.  this is what i saw:

and i loved it so very much. it’s about sisters. and being a sister is oftentimes a complex, weird sort of relationship and for me the reason for this is simply because i am so much like my sister in so many ways.  we literally grew up together.  she talks the same as me, we have the same nose, we love the same books and movies. and then we are so different. she is married…to a man, she has a baby (whom i adore), she has NO freckles, she goes to church and really doesn’t share my affinity for beagles.  i love our relationship because i feel like it’s always changing in some ways and yet it will ALWAYS be there, in fact, i can’t escape it.  which gives me this sort of comfort or sense of stability that i don’t find in other places in my life. we fight. we agree to disagree.  we laugh. we cry. and we often sing- (well she sings, i just make up words which really annoys the shit out of her).

now back to the movie.  allow me to give a shout out to women director’s and writers.  god bless them everyone.  thank you Christine Jeffs (director) and Megan Holley (writer)- well done you two! i was touched by the seemingly normalcy of the character’s lives which really is not so simple, but full of memories, loss, survival and love.  Amy Adams, who in my mind is always adorable and fabulous and Emily Blunt play two sisters whose lives are drastically different and yet unified by the fact that they are and always will be…sisters.

and because barbarella is bi i wanted to mention the small lesbian moment in the movie- it made my heart flutter in a way that  lesbian moments often do.  Emily Blunt’s character is a bit tormented and she seems to be trying to figure things out, one of those things is this:that’s Mary Lynn Rajskub, with Blunt and here’s just a little screen shot of blunt that i loved.  please notice her sweet sparrow tattoos.

looking real good lady.

another funny lady

anna faris:

i love this woman and i often think she is not seen for how funny she really is because of all those blond locks.  so here are a few pics that i found, where she looks super hot and is a brunette (just how i like ’em)

but she’s funny and i mean really, she’s funny.  i’m not saying she has been in the best movies.  okay i’m actually going to say she has been in some of the worst movies, but that is not her fault because the woman is a comedic genius.  watch her and note how well she does physical comedy, how well she makes fun of herself and never, ever in a self depreciating, despicable way. this is how you might often remember her: god her face is so funny in that bottom shot.there is this scene from Hot Chick, that i love, oh so much.  she is at the prom with rob schneider (who is really her best friend jessica trapped in rob schneider’s body) and she essentially professes her love for jessica, indicating that maybe this twist of fate- jessica becoming a man- was meant to be, so that they could be together.  it is a touching moment that i believe many a girl has had with her girlfriends- wishing, hoping, wanting and sadly…not getting. this is what she said in an interview with advocate.com:

Though many dismiss it as body-switching teen fluff, couldn’t 2002’s The Hot Chick actually be a cleverly disguised celebration of transgenderism?
I love that you asked me that. My parents and I were just talking about that. I don’t think anything about The Hot Chick should be overanalyzed, but I do think that it was about a girl’s love for her best friend, and the lines get blurred there sexually. I think that’s something that everyone sort of experiences, especially young women.

anna i’ll keep hoping.