hot legs

if i can actually see my intentions through to the end, i have a new video project in the works!

here is installment numero uno:

a little backstory:

todd is a regular customer at the cafe. he has been for a long time. he comes in, orders "a small house coffee", sometimes makes small talk with the barista, then makes himself comfortable at a table. he listens to a portable CD player and reads something Bibley. he has a tattoo on his arm that says GOD and he goes outside often to smoke cigarettes. he has subtle-yet-flashy style -- he's big on accessories. this is all we knew about him for a long time.

then the art started appearing. todd would, without a word, hang a piece or two every couple days. sometimes on the bulletin board often used to promote plays, concerts and music lessons. then he started hanging his xeroxed collages in the bathroom. we all went wild over them!

i approached him and told him how much we were all enjoying his secret art and then it really started to pour in.

anyway, that's the background. enjoy. he's great. he's agreed to let me make a series of videos featuring him.

find a way

i used to do this thing in high school. i had a notebook (in the end there were a few) with my favorite quotes encountered in books and song lyrics.

i remember the quote that started it all belonged to jack kerouac from "the dharma bums" and it was about not letting things that are out of your control get to you.

here are some from a book i just finished reading, "geek love" by katherine dunn:

I like Miss Lick. Arty always said that was important.

"Find a way to like them," he said. "Like them every minute that you're with them. If you can like them they'll be helpless against you."

*****

"I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique."

*****

What's the point of being loved in return, I'd ask myself. To warm my spine in the dark? To change the face in my mirror every morning? It was none of Arty's business that I loved him. It was my secret ace, like a bluebird tattooed under pubic hair or a ruby tucked up my ass.

lots of things are inspiring me lately, and dunn's way of weaving words is just a small part of it. anyone else love this book? have another favorite quote? does the mention of a bluebird also instantly cue this song in your brain?

so much for early sleep

i think i'm fairly funny (for a girl). i also think i have a tendency to over-think certain things. i've thought long and hard, out loud and internally, about the funniness of female humans.

female author!

today i found a reference to this essay on women and humor (linked to by a totally crush-worthy blogger who uses the term "Vagina-American" in her blog post about the essay). so that got the ol' wheels spinning again.

my conclusion: you can't be funny if you aren't confident and women are less confident than men. it's a subconscious socially constructed evil, and there are exceptions, but by and large that is the reality i've seen. Ladd's article asserts that "funny" professional comediennes are often considered "bitchy" and/or "skanky". aren't these characteristics (add to the list "masculine") also bestowed upon confident women?

if you don't buy the message you're trying to deliver, your audience won't be convinced. this is true in comedy, dating, business deals, writing, court cases, everything. you gotta believe!

it makes me think of how i used to purposely get math problems wrong or pretend to not know how to spell certain words in elementary school. i didn't want my classmates to feel bad if i knew something they didn't. i was afraid of being smart. sounds silly now, but i remember this so clearly. whether it was a reaction to my gender or my birth order or my brother harassing me, i'm not sure. but i do know it was a direct effect of low confidence.

there are a few men i encounter on a regular basis who, for the most part, are not funny. but do i laugh when they spew their cocksure pop-culture referencing puns/one-liners/badges-of-being-music/film-nerds? yes. to be polite.

there are a few women i know who are funny. smart and funny. i think Ladd's essay misses the mark on that. he notes that women tend to pick up on nuanced, anecdotal humor. but he doesn't note that that takes smarts!

dumb men are "funny" (ie: larry the cable guy -- arch nemesis of my one-and-only david cross). dumb women are pathetic. smart men are funny. smart women are funny.

i think in that regard, we are one step ahead of the boys. no one should be rewarded for their ignorance.

i don't really care about the world cup either

is anyone else out there uninterested in cheating celebrities?

the girls on slate's xx blog have been gabbing about gore's affair for as long as it has been public. i don't care about that. i didn't care about john edwards' affair. i don't care about how much money tiger woods' gold-diggin' wife is getting. is that wrong? and are we all really so shocked when we learn that a politician was less than honest? even someone as seemingly sexless as al gore?

(the spitzer scandal was pretty juicy. i was interested in that.)

monogamy is awesome; i can't imagine being in a non-monogamous relationship. i also think privacy is pretty rad. leave these people alone. yes, the men messed up. but guess what? women cheat too. just ask certain members of my family.

it seems we don't really hear much about famous men being cuckolded. do they just not cry to the media about it? are women better at sneaking around? are famous women more faithful than the average jill?

someone tell me! have i missed big tabloid-y stories about cheating ladies??