I Just Learned . . .

. . . from a two-year-old episode of The West Wing, that a pregnant woman is not allowed to have soft cheeses. Like, say, Brie, or Camembert. No sushi, no fish of any kind, no soft cheeses . . . I'm not sure I'm willing to have children, after all.

A Plea to Aaron Sorkin

I should be doing homework right now (and didn't I tell you I'd start out posts like this?) but I just want to pause for a moment to discuss Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Apparently, NBC has put in a full-season order. I find myself relieved, but, admittedly, a bit confused. If the basis for ordering more episodes is the quality of the last eight, NBC must be seeing something I'm not. (I realize that the basis for such a decision is not usually quality but ratings, but from what I understood of the ratings, that wouldn't be the reason, either.)

I say this as someone who really, really wants to like this show. I love Aaron Sorkin's past work. I love shows-about-show-business. Comedy is my favorite sub-section of show business, and sketch comedy my favorite sub-section of comedy. I love Matthew Perry, Sarah Paulson, Bradley Whitford, D.L. Hughley, Steven Weber, any and all Corddrys and Timothy Busfield. I watch this show because I am desperately in love with its potential. I'm sure that its potential is why NBC ordered the first thirteen episodes. But that doesn't explain why they ordered the second thirteen (if, in fact, a full year is twenty-six episodes. I have no idea if that's true).

In the spirit of belief in the potential of this show, I herewith offer the following suggestions for having it live up to its potential.

1. Hire some sketch comedy writers. If you already have them, hire new ones. The sketches aren't that funny. Admittedly, the same complaint could be made about actual professional sketch comedy writers. SNL is widely considered to be not funny anymore. I just saw a show at Second City in Chicago and it was probably only about 30% hilarious. But it was over an hour and a half of material. You only need a couple of minutes or so per show. And the whole problem with most mediocre sketches in sketch comedy is that they go on too damn long, because they need to fill time. The structure of this show is that you can basically present the premise and one or two punchlines within it and you're out! It shouldn't be that hard.
And no whining that comedy is subjective, or anything. You set it up. You a) chose to show the viewers sketches, which you didn't have to do, and b) convinced us that Matt Albie and Harriet Hayes were so funny that they could overlook character traits and beliefs in each other that would have otherwise been reprehensible because they were so dazzled by the other's talent. Not only that, but the rest of the world is apparently similarly dazzled, handing Matthew awards and flailing television shows, etc. If you didn't set the bar so high, we'd expect sketches at the level of mediocre SNL. But you did, so now you have to jump over it.

2. Stay away from Matt-and-Harriet-sitting-in-a-tree plotlines until, at minimum, May sweeps. Seriously, they're irritating. When I saw the pilot, I thought that their love would be treated by the love plotlines in The West Wing, i.e., minimally. Entire episodes - months, really - could go on with nothing happening between C.J. and Danny, Josh and Donna, Sam and Mallory. Not nothing like no kissing. Nothing like absolutely no indication in the show that a romance was brewing at all.
Now, I get that Matt and Harriet are different from those couples on The West Wing. (And I'm not using The West Wing in a way that implies that you should be doing the same beloved show over again. I just mean that you've done this before and you know why it works, so why not do it again?) For one, C.J. and Danny and Mallory and Sam didn't work together in the same way. Yes, C.J. probably saw Danny every day, as part of the press gaggle, but had other stuff to do besides interact with him one-on-one all the time. And Mallory rarely had a reason to be around Sam without planning for it. Josh and Donna are the closest to Matt and Harriet, in that they did work together all the time, and one of them was the other's boss. But Josh had stuff to do that did not directly involve mooning over Donna, stuff that was more interesting than writing to film. And if we focused on the other stuff Harriet was doing all day, we'd need more sketches, which, see above.
So maybe Matt and Harriet will need more screen time together.
One thing that could really mitigate the irritating factor is if the rest of the characters did not treat their love with such respect. If they could roll their eyes with us, it might help. Another thing would be to actively engage them in entirely separate storylines. Harriet could be shown to be more involved with the cast. Matt could be more tied to an NBS plotline, or something more directly with Danny. For all the chemistry Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford had together in the pilot, we barely ever see them together for long stretches anymore. Do that. Do whatever. Just keep them from staring wistfully at each other for a while. I mean, it's a damn comedy show, not a melodramatic romance.

3. Get off the damn soapbox before someone pushes you off of it. When the show began, I was willing to give it a pass for being very self-important about TV. TV is important. Stories shape the way people think. Stories are culture. Stories are society. And people get their stories these days overwhelmingly from TV. This is not the beginning of an anti-TV rant. There's nothing inherently better or worse about TV as a media than novels or fireside storytelling. But it is important to understand the forces that shape the stories that are so pervasive and influential in our culture. Sure, it's not White-House-level important. But it's important.
But that should not translate to every single episode being about "the culture wars." It should especially not translate to every episode being a smashing of the Christian right. I thought you made Harriet Hayes a Christian to humanize the other side (because apparently I wasn't watching your other shows that closely) but all you do every week is show how wrong she is, and how not particularly articulate she is about defending her side. Aaron, baby, no one watching your show is on that side. But if you keep showing our side to be such arrogant, hypocritical dickwads, we may rethink things.
And also, the importance of TV as a medium should not be the sole focus of every single show. It can always be there, humming in the backdrop, or it can take up major story time for one episode, but not the next, but it can't always be the only thing front and center. Show us some cast plotlines. Show us some Matt-and-Danny-working-together plotlines. Maybe show some writing-sketch-comedy-is-hard plotlines.

4. Straw men are not acceptable characters. Middle-aged people from Columbus, Ohio, know the "Who's on First?" routine. It'd be more likely that someone Tom's age, who was very smart and very liberal but didn't happen to be in on the comedy scene, wouldn't know the routine, than it would that Tom's conservative, midwestern parents didn't know the routine. That's just ridiculous.
Also ridiculous is ridiculing the audience for thinking that, when a rural Nevadan judge who has been called off a fishing boat strolls into a scene, he'll be a racist, ignorant hick who doesn't even know what NBS is, when just last week you had a middle-aged man from Ohio not know what "Who's on First?" is. Again, you set the bar (this time, very low). No fair making us responsible for it.

5. Figure out Harriet's deal. At this point, she's coming across as one of the straw men; just a very confused one. Why does she get to have a debate about the sinful nature of gay marriage one week, when only a few weeks before she said something to the effect of premarital sex being the only kind she's likely to have? It feels like she has whichever Christian beliefs are convenient to the plot. I'm not saying all people are logical and coherent in her beliefs. But it feels like the incoherence is coming from the writing, not the character. Fix that. And also, she's been on the show for six years? I think that's your timeline. So she doesn't get to get pissy about material that conflicts with her personal beliefs anymore. Especially since she's got a burgeoning Christian music career and could walk away from the show if she wanted to.

(Actually, there's a plotline for you that, if done right, could be interesting. Have Harriet threaten to walk. But here's what you have to do. 1) It should be over a particular sketch. 2) She should not be bitchy or hysterical about it (which she is all too often for a woman you want us to like). It could come out of some thinking about her faith, which we need to see to sort out her many sides, and could also come out of practicality - she doesn't need to do this to get work anymore. 3) Matt and Danny should be a team in confronting this, and they should be confronting this as head writer and executive producer, to circumvent Matt using this as another "But I looooove her" moment. 4) Obviously, she should decide in the end that doing comedy (not Matt!) means more to her, but that she wants a bigger role developing sketches that are not based on bashing the right wing. This serves as character development and a means not to allow bashing the religious right to be the center of every goddamn episode.)

6. Use D.L. Hughley. Why isn't this man being used as a comedic actor in a show about comedy? He's really funny! I heart him! Yes, I can see he has potential as a dramatic actor, and that's great. But let's see him in more sketches, or maybe helping to write some! He's great! And he's sitting right there!

7. Get over whatever your deal is with women. You have this very particular variety of misogyny common in left-wing wealthy white males. It's hard to describe. You go out of your way to show us powerful women - the network head, one of the Big Three cast members - but then you undermine them by making them hysterical or drunk or what have you. And then you treat that hysteria as a form of feminine power or something. It's not as blatant as the way the Sex and the City leads were written, but it's close. Cut it out.

8. Leave your personal life out of it. So apparently you had a tumultuous relationship with Kristen Chenoweth, who is Christian and right-wing? And you've had trouble getting your oh-so-smart shows on TV because network execs want to put on shameful reality shows instead? And the internet, that monolithic source of all bad things, says mean things about your shows? You know why I know all of this? Because you put it in your show. Stop doing that. Unless you're going to mine your life for some decent plotlines, just cut it out. I am not your therapist.
That last bit is good advice for all show creators, by the way. Know why I stopped watching Desperate Housewives, Mr. Cherry? Because all of Bree's storylines started to feel like you working out your anger with your mom.

I think I've said my piece. I'm sure I'd have more suggestions if I could sort them all out. But just keep in mind, Mr. Sorkin, that some of the things you're getting criticism for on this show are things you've gotten away with before. Misogyny? Check. Pedanticism? Check. Over-inflated self-importance? Check. You just have to do them better and we'll love you again.

As Long as I'm Here

I thought I'd share a funny story I heard last week from one of my classmates. He was getting a haircut, and the hair person was I guess a fairly intense Christian. She was asking about his classes, and he told her he was in Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (which I am in as well). The hair person asked if the class was mixed faith and he said yes, mentioning he had a friend in the class (me) who was Jewish. She asked if I had ever taken a class on the New Testament.* When he confirmed that I had, she said, eyes wide with wonder, "And she wasn't converted? How could that be?"


*Do we still call it the New Testament if we don't call it the Old Testament anymore? Do we call it the Latin Bible? Or the Christian Bible? I don't know. Even that would be complicated, because Protestants and Catholics put the books in a different order. I think.

Alzheimer's

So apparently marijuana may prevent Alzheimer's. Are they sure it doesn't just make Alzheimer's harder to detect?

Comma

Bush has apparently said that the war in Iraq, in the history books, will be a comma. A lot of people are very upset by this. I am not. Know why?

I don't know what the fuck he means.

You know how sometimes you'll be watching a sci-fi movie or something, and you know something's gone haywire when the robot character starts inserting random words into sentences? I'm trying to remember if Data ever did this, and I'm sure he did, but I can't think of the specific incident. But Tock (or possibly Tick-Tock) does it in Return to Oz and that's how they know they have to wind him back up. Well, that's what this sentence seems like to me. Like Bush needs to wind himself back up.

Especially since I'm not convinced Bush knows what a comma is.

My daddy always said . . .

that with some things, you could either laugh or cry, so you might as well laugh.

I'm trying, Daddy.

I don't know which one of them I'm more annoyed at. Mr. Girls-Who-Work-Will-Leave-You-And-Not-Clean-Your-House, or Ms. Nuh-nuh-I-lurv-my-husband-and-that's-an-adequate-refutation.

Let's start with both of them, for treating all women who fit their definition of "career" - have had at least university-level education, work more than 35 hours a week, and earn more than $30,000 a year - like they have the same level of income and the same responses to it. Like there's not a huge difference between the way $300,000 a year influences your decisions and the way $30,000 a year influences them.

And special hate is reserved for this statement, from Ms. Elizabeth Corcoran: "There is, of course, the continual dilemma of who does the work around the house. But if both spouses are working, guess what? They've got enough income to hire someone else to fold laundry, mop floors, etc."

You've got to be shitting me, right? If they both just fit the definition, then they both earn about $60,000 a year. That's enough to hire cleaning staff? In too many parts of this country, that's not enough to have a house to clean!

I'm not sure if I'm madder about that, or about the way her response is basically, "Well, my marriage is fine, and I'm a career woman, so clearly you're wrong." Is it wrong of me to expect better journalism? More thoughtfulness? Less navel-gazing?

No, wait, I'm madder about the ignorant elitism. Especially because the only way to afford house-cleaning services on salaries of $60,000 a year - if you can even afford it on this - is to pay illegal immigrants less than minimum wage to do it.

Then let's look at this set of gems, from the original article by Mr. Michael Noer.

"If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003). They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006). You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001). You will be more likely to fall ill (American Journal of Sociology). Even your house will be dirtier (Institute for Social Research). "

Look, those statistics (if true) are important. It's important to know that, basically, life is this difficult to live, even when you're making money. But Mr. Noer is not treating this as a question of why these statistics are true, why it's so damaging to a marriage for a woman to work, when it's so frequently necessary or at least seriously beneficial. I have to assume that a portion of Forbes's readership is female, and that those particular females are "career women." Considering that, shouldn't this article be aimed, at least in part, at them? Shouldn't it be, "How can we make career and family more harmonious for everyone?" or "How can we adjust our expectations of marriage to include both partners working, which is likely a trend that will last?" rather than, "Hey, fellas, never make a working woman your wife."

The "whys" of these statistics are important. Why will career women be unhappy if they quit their jobs to stay home with their kids? Could it be that the household now has less money? Could it be because they went through the trouble of educating themselves and getting themselves good jobs and priding themselves on the work they were doing, and now they don't do it anymore? Could it be because we live in a society which will not provide easy or affordable ways to raise children without someone - usually the mother - quitting work, but will look down on women who do anyway? (Oh, excuse me, I forgot. Anyone making $30,000 a year has no money worries and could easily afford the services of day care or a nanny to take care of the children.) Could it be because their own husbands don't appreciate the work they do at home and look down on them for just sitting around the house all day? Could it be because they feel trapped, choiceless about their current situations?

Why will they be unhappy if they make more money than you do? Why will you? Because we still expect men to be breadwinners? Isn't that unfair? I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Feminism is a two-way street. The sexism we fight is a sexism that hurts everyone. If you stop expecting women to not have "careers" and to take care of your home and your children exclusively, we'll stop expecting you to earn all the money.

Your house will be dirtier? So clean it, you schmuck! I think he's right that marriages frequently work best when labor is specialized. But the lines of division don't work really well anymore. Even if a couple was able to support only one partner working, a) it doesn't have to be the husband, and b) housework is a really heavy load. The working partner should still take care of some of it. And most couples in this country simply can't operate like that. A single income cannot support a family. So, assuming that the "market" labor will have to be done by two people, the "non-market" labor will have to be done by two people (or more - either help, if you can afford it, or children, if they're old enough). So husbands may have to clean something occasionally for the house not to be "dirtier."

I know what my husband would say to that. He'd get very mad. He'd point out that he does do most of the cleaning in our house, so how can I talk as if men as a general category, as if they all violently oppose cleaning?

I guess I'd have to respond, because this guy does. And because, if the statistic about dirt is true, clearly most guys in this country do violently oppose cleaning, since the mere fact of a woman working is enough to make houses statistically dirtier. (I would really prefer to not know how that study was conducted, by the way.)

I have no explanation for the falling ill thing. I guess it's possible that if both partners work, then that's germs from two different workplaces entering the house, so you will fall ill more easily. But if you have young children, workplaces are the least of your worries.

What about this? "Women's work hours consistently increase divorce, whereas increases in men's work hours often have no statistical effect. "I also find that the incidence in divorce is far higher in couples where both spouses are working than in couples where only one spouse is employed," Johnson says." Well, duh. When one spouse isn't employed, there's a very good reason for staying married, right? That's the problem with dividing household labor by "market" and "non-market" activity. The "non-market" partner has to stay with the "market" partner or risk debilitating poverty. It's always important to keep in mind that "not divorced" and "happily married" are not the same thing.

This kind of thing shows up all the time in arguments about women working, and I wonder if the men writing it even notice the insecurity they're displaying. The thinking seems to be, "There is nothing attractive about me except my wallet. If women can fill their own wallets, they'll leave me." This shows up in a lot of conservative, wealthy, white guy arguments, otherwise notable in the anti-same-sex-marriage movement, whose argument seems to be, "If we give women a choice between us and other women, they'll leave us." It's really frightening. And, knowingly or not, Mr. Noer drives that point home by arguing that women at work can meet co-workers, for whom they'll probably leave their husbands. It's so sad. It almost makes me want to give Mr. Noer and his ilk a hug. Then I remember the probably-deeply-steeped-in-reality trope of men leaving their same-age wives for much younger secretaries and I stop feeling bad.

Actually, this reminds me of something in the anti-gay movement, too. Have you ever talked to a guy who absolutely shudders at the mere thought of exposure to a gay man, because he's so desparately afraid that this man might, well, hit on him? I've always laughed at the arrogance of it, and also at Jerry Seinfeld's bit about how easily men are sold things, but it occured to me not too long ago that these men are the kinds of men girls meet at bars and parties all the time, who grab at them, leer at them, come on to them very aggressively and won't let up, get sexually inappropriate at the merest provocation, and then, when rejected, get hostile, even violent. And it occurs to me that what they're really concerned about is gay guys treating them exactly the way they themselves treat women. And that's what's occuring to me here. Afraid that if your wife works, she'll leave you for a handsome co-worker? Then you're probably the kind of guy who'd leave your wife for a cute secretary. Karma, she's a bitch.

I'm going to end this post before it gets too alarmingly random.

Because the World Works like this . . .

Three days after my last post, I ran across this through Salon's Broadsheet.

And before I start anything, Evangeline Lilly? Are they serious? Has there really been such an extreme dearth of actually curvy women that EVANGELINE LILLY counts? Good God, y'all.

Then there are the assertions that, 1) the "curvy" ideal as it applies to Drew Barrymore, et al, and pin-ups from the '40s and '50s is less exacting than the super-skinny ideal, and 2) if you are a "curvier" woman, you're less afraid of carbs (and therefore, ugh, your boyfriend's "salami"*). Let's take 1) first. It's just as exacting. I haven't done a great deal of research, but I'm sure Bettie Page, et al, received a lot of pressure to look a certain way. It was just a different way from the way Nicole Ritchie and Kate Moss and the other skinny minnies feel pressured. They aren't being given more "leeway" to celebrate their "cushioning." Remember when breast implants, rather than super-skinny-making diets, were the big horror in terms of what women were doing to their bodies to fit the ideal?

A lot of this reminds me of the reaction when "Baby Got Back" first came out. Everyone celebrated it as liberating for women because it turned against the skinny trend for women. But it was just as exacting. "36-24-36? Only if she's 5'3"!" ". . . an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face . . ." "My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hon!" Never mind that Sir Mix-a-lot was hardly sporting an ideal body himself, he was playing arbiter of appropriate women's body shapes. It was just a different shape. (Not that I don't love that song. Those lyrics were called up from memory, after all.)

It is important to keep in mind that, for the most part, you don't get to choose which ideal to try to live up to. I'm never going to achieve the super-skinny look. I could fast, I could exercise seven hours a day, it wouldn't matter. I'll always be more Winslet than Moss. Likewise, Kate Moss could stuff her face full of pizza daily and she won't look like Kate Winslet. Or me. Whereas, if I did diet and get in better shape, I could start to look more like Kate Winslet.**

Which brings us to 2). Note, I'd have to diet. So does Kate Winslet. The Kate Winslets of the world typically have to be more careful of their weight, and their carb intakes, than the Kate Mosses of the world, and not just because Kate Moss has cocaine to help her. (Cocaine, by the way, will kill you, and fuck you up in all kinds of fun ways, and is terrible for you, but it is the best weight-loss drug in the world.) Some women are naturally skinny. The women who aren't have to watch their food intake. Is all I'm saying.

I again assert that this is not a dig at those particular actresses. (Well, I don't like Evangeline Lilly much, but it's not her fault. I hate her character on "Lost," but that doesn't mean she's bad at playing her.) It's articles like this that make me nuts.

* I know I'm married, and much more carb-friendly than even those gargantuans like Drew Barrymore and Catherine Zeta-Jones, so I don't count, but seriously? Details guys? Referring to your genitals as your salami? So very juvenile and unattractive.

** Another Adventures from Subbing tale. I had a class of all black males one day, and because of whatever we were talking about in the context of their history class, the discussion turned to body shape and image, and the boys asked me why white girls don't have butts like black girls. Do they just diet them off? What is it? So we had this huge discussion about how sometimes you have the butt, and sometimes you don't have the butt, and white or black, there's very little you can do to affect it one way or another, unless you basically do four hours of lunges daily, and even then, the butt will disappear in about ten minutes if you stop.

Body Image

I only bring this up because my Wild Words from Wild Women quotes calendar has this quote today: "God made a very obvious choice when he made me voluptous; why would I go against what he decided for me? My limbs work, so I'm not going to complain about the way my body is shaped." - Drew Barrymore.

Now, seriously, if you had a body like Drew Barrymore, would your attitude about it be, "Eh, at least my limbs work," or "Yippee kay-o kay-ay! Let's go shopping!" Because mine would be the latter. Ditto if I looked like Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet, or Reese Witherspoon, all of whom have been called very "brave" by VH1 (or possibly E!) for "celebrating" their bodies instead of trying to diet them away. And I'm going, "Reese Witherspoon is now considered Rubenesque? I have definitely fallen down the rabbit hole."

I mean, I guess considering that Hollywood is what it is . . . but are there really producers running around telling women like Angelina Jolie, et al, to lose weight for roles? I don't understand. Do these producers have absolutely no sexual chemicals running around in their bodies at all, thus rendering them incapable of responding to or even recognizing sexy female bodies?

And no one is calling Camryn Mannheim or Kathy Bates brave, by the way. They seem to be pretty comfortable with their bodies. But I guess if you're actually fat and okay with it, that's not "brave," it's just icky.

I don't mean this as a dig at any of these actresses. In fact, I do admire their attitudes, which are usually less, "Look at me being TOTALLY OKAY with my boobies! Look! Look!" and more "What the fuck are you talking about?" And even though the Drew Barrymore quote seems to put her in the former category, it's not really her fault that she gets asked these assinine questions. My beef is with the askers and framers of these categories, this gestalt that finds boobs and upper arms wider than the elbow all scary and then patronizingly congratulates the women with these scary features for seeming not to mind.

People are weird, is all I'm getting at, here.

One other minor point which has nothing to do with anything: have you ever noticed that you can't really say "voluptous"? It always comes out "volumptous," doesn't it?

Becoming a Luddite

I’m giving it all up and becoming a Luddite.

I wake up this morning, energized and ready to go to the gym. I get dressed, I grab my gym card, my keys, and my iPod, and head out the door. I notice that one of the elevators appears to be shut down. The door is open and the inside is dark. I assume they’re doing work, as they do fairly often, so I press the button, assuming another elevator will arrive.

The button won’t light.

I figure maybe that elevator wasn’t shut down properly and the system expects me to get in it. I don’t want to get into a dark little box and expect it to safely carry me 34 floors. So I decide to walk down to the 33rd floor, where an elevator is not parked and waiting, and see what happens.

Nothing. The button won’t light.

I go back to my apartment and start my computer to look up the number for the doorman’s desk to find out what’s going on.

My internet’s down.

So now, because my phone is a VOIP, my phone doesn’t work, either. I’m stuck on the 34th floor of my apartment building with no way of communicating with the outside world. And it’s all specifically because of all of this technology that’s supposed to make our lives easier.

So I’m done. I’m moving to a farm in the middle of nowhere. I’m not having a phone, or electricity, or a computer. If you need me, write a letter.

(Obviously, if you are reading this, the problems have been solved and I’m back to being totally dependent on modern technology again.)

"Adults Only" - Dirty or Boring?

This post has no timely relevance at all; it's just an old anecdote. When I was about 7 or 8, my family went to London to stay with my uncle, who was living there for a couple of years. One of the days we were there, my parents went to Bath and left us behind, saying this trip was just for adults. My imagination was immediately filled with all kinds of mysterious and arcane sexual practices that must be going on in Bath, to warrant a "just for adults" rating. And keep in mind, I was a very naive 7 or 8, so these imaginings were incredibly vague and therefore loomed even larger in the "sexual naughtiness" part of my brain than if I were capable of imagining specific practices.

Then in my mid-teens, I started reading trashy romance novels and also Jane Austen, learned what Bath actually was (just a resort town around some still-working Roman baths) and was forced to conclude that "just for adults" meant they thought it would bore my sister and me. Which was probably true, and heavily disappointing.

Nice Guys

I ran across this while strolling* the internet, and I enjoyed it very much, but I have a codicil. I have blamed this for a long time on the Dawson's Creek syndrome. Y'all remember how Dawson was allegedly the nice guy and Pacey was allegedly the jerk? I remember having these conversations in mixed-sex groups, and the "nice guys" I was usually friends with would bemoan the fact that we all loved Pacey far more than Dawson because Pacey was the jerk, and this all mirrored the actual discussions had on the show, wherein Dawson would whine that he was such a nice guy, he never got the girl, and Pacey was such an asshole but he did.

So I think Dawson's Creek effectively convinced guys my age that the traits that Dawson displayed were nice-guy traits and the traits that Pacey displayed were jerk traits. And what were these traits that the show claimed made Dawson nice and Pacey not? Well, Dawson wanted a relationship with lots of snuggles and Pacey thought about, and talked about, sex.

That was really it. Go back and watch the show, if you can stomach it, or need an excuse to drink a lot.

And the thing was, Dawson would whine and whine about how he was such a non-sex-worrying, relationshipy guy, so how come he wasn't getting any? And Pacey, yes, joked about sex a lot, but was also a loyal friend and actually generally really sweet, whereas Dawson was completely self-absorbed and pissy all the time.

I think guys have somehow gotten the idea that "wanting a relationship instead of just one-night stands" makes you "nice." But fellas, it's not enough. "Nice" means respectful of people, regardless of what they want from you. "Nice" means paying attention to other people's wants and needs, and treating those wants and needs as if they are important. You can be nice and not want a relationship at all. You can want a relationship and be a total dick about it, like stomping on the ground when the girl you want a relationship goes to a dance you didn't ask her to with somebody else. (Dawson's Creek, Season 1, possibly episode 2 or 3. And shut up, like you don't remember, too.)

I'm married to a guy who's mostly nice on both counts (wanting a relationship, and actually being nice). But we have gotten into arguments where he thinks that waking me up at 6:30 in the morning to snuggle is nice because don't girls like snuggling? Don't nice guys give them snuggling? I once got so mad about this, I cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, at which point he unfortunately noticed how productive I am when I'm angry.

I know this post is a little rambling. I apologize to my audience of two.

Again with the Shyster Thing

This article sort of nicely sums up my problem with the word. How am I supposed to fight against this when not many people know it's an ethnic slur?

Maybe We're Not Created for Procreation

I believe my political views on issues like birth control, abortion, and feminism are pretty clear. But at last, I think I'm getting some scientific back-up.

I am in the midst of reading Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee. Which is us, by the way. And he says that actually, the female reproductive cycle of humans gives every evidence that we are not built to use sex exclusivel as a procreative tool, because, unlike some other primates, we do not know when we are ovulating, and we can have and want sex even when we're not.

See, other species make it easy. Their butt turns bright red, or they go into heat, or something, and that's when they're fertile, and that's when they want sex, and that's when they're at their most attractive to members of the opposite sex. But we hide our ovulation well. Even with our current scientific knowledge about it, we're wrong a great deal of the time. That's why the rhythm method works so shoddily; we just can't predict when we're going to get pregnant. Furthermore, we're capable of wanting sex even when it won't produce children (since we have no idea when it will), and men are capable of wanting it from us. Plus, we have a clitoris, which not many species have. (I think it's just us and Bonobo chimps, but I could be wrong.) So clearly, we're supposed to be using sex for recreation and bonding, possibly even more than we're supposed to be using it for making the babies.

In a weird way, this also accounts evolutionarily for homosexuality, which is supposed to be "unnatural" because it's not procreative. Because if you're supposed to be having sex for fun and bonding, why shouldn't you have it with members of the same sex?

And I can hear the objections already. Aren't we supposed to have kids? Isn't passing on genetic material the most important thing, evolutionarily? Well, yes. But we're humans, not fruit flies. It's not a numbers game. It's getting the kids you have to reproductive adulthood, which takes at least twelve years. So you're really better off having a few to whom you can devote your resources. So it'd be good if you didn't get pregnant every time you had sex. And it would be good to form a bond with the person you had sex with, so that they devote their resources to your kid, too.

See, it all works!

PLEASE JUST SHUT IT!

This is a blurb that recently appeared at Slate.com. (Scroll down to the bit about Utah.)

OH, MY FRICKIN' GOD, PEOPLE! Humans started being distinguishable from other primates 6-8 MILLION YEARS AGO. No one is accusing your GREAT-GRANDFATHER of being an ape. But pretty soon, I'm going to start accusing YOU.

What kills me about this in particular is that, in all other respects, we (and I'm not sure who I mean by we but I'm pretty sure I mean contemporary people in general) seem to have absolutely no long-term memory otherwise. I was talking to a friend of mine, for instance, whose parents will not buy anything from a German-based company ever, because of the Holocaust. She and I have both thought this was a little silly. I think it is especially silly now because companies are multinational most of the time; what does it even mean to say you bought a German car? The parts are made in Taiwan, assembled in Michigan, and owned by stockholders from Japan. But she was also telling me that on one of her many worldly adventures, she made friends with a German girl our age who was bitterly resentful that people acted like she had something to do with the Holocaust. And while I understand that she didn't exactly do anything, I also think World War II ended 61 years ago. That's not even a lifetime in a modern industrial nation. It's not exactly time to start pretending the whole thing never happened.

Americans are very similar on the subject of slavery. It's gone now, like a puff of vapor. It has no relevance any more. It's this wicked, wicked thing that some other, wickeder group did that has no effect on anything that's going on now, and Godforbid you bring it up in connection to current racial tensions. It only ended 141 years ago. That's, okay, two reasonable but not terribly long lifetimes.

It's like the entire human race (or maybe just Americans, or Westerners, or something) is a psychiatric patient with severe repressed memory problems. We have all of these problems, and if we just looked into the past, we'd be able to piece together why we have them, which is the first step to healing them. But we won't. We either can't un-repress the memory, or we don't want to.

And even the language these people are using reflects that nano-second memory problem. You don't want your great-grandfather to be an ape. That's close enough to you to care. So never mind that no one is saying he was. Because no one would care if we were just saying that our ancestors 6-8 million years ago were the same as the ancestors of other modern apes. It has to be your actual great-grandfather for you to get upset about it.

I can't believe this is even a conversation in 2006. I think I wrote in my former blog about how this shouldn't even be a thing for religious people, because according to Paul, faith should be stronger than reason, and how better to prove that your faith is stronger than reason than to have a science class that teaches things antithetical to your faith, and managing to believe your faith rather than the science? Making science accountable to faith, and in fact caring about science at all, is very anti-Pauline, really, and if it's anti-Pauline, it's anti-Bible, and so why are these evangelical the-Bible-is-always-right people INSISTING SO LOUDLY THAT THEIR GREAT-GRANDFATHER IS NOT AN APE? GET OVER YOURSELVES!

Relax. Your Daughter is Probably Not Having Oral Sex with her Entire Seventh Grade Class.

WARNING - THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SOME INFORMATION ABOUT MY OWN SEX LIFE. IT'S NOT GRAPHIC OR DETAILED, AND IT'S CONFINED TO THE "OBJECTION THE FIRST" SECTION, BUT IF YOU HAVE THE KIND OF RELATIONSHIP WITH ME THAT PRECLUDES WANTING TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT MY SEX LIFE, DO NOT READ THIS POST. ESPECIALLY DO NOT READ THIS POST AND THEN COMPLAIN TO ME THAT YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MY SEX LIFE, OR THAT YOU OBJECT TO ME WRITING ABOUT IT AT ALL, GIVEN THAT YOU PERSONALLY MAY BE VIEWING IT.

I know this scare has been brewing for quite some time. "Oh, my god, teenage girls don't think oral sex is sex!" "Oh, my god, they're HAVING oral sex!" "Oh, my god, they're having oral sex with random and mutliple people at parties, publicly, like they're WHORES, and also the girls are not receiving it in turn!" I remember this. I remember this scare going on while I was in high school, because that's when the Clinton scandal was taking up 109% of everyone's attention. Apparently, many adults decided that if Clinton said oral sex wasn't sex, then teenagers would pick up that belief, too, even though a) they were being awfully optimistic about how seriously teenagers take - or even know about - the opinions of their authority figures, and b) I don't know about any of you, but I learned in 1994 that oral sex was sloppy thirds and sex sex was home base, and so the two were clearly not the same thing. That was well before the Clinton scandal broke. But this scare has come to my attention again recently. Bitch magazine published on their (s)hitlist a link to Caitlin Flanagan's article in Atlantic Monthly about the phenomenon. So I thought I'd take it up again, with all of my objections to this faux trend and the hype about it.

Objection the first: Thinking oral sex is not the same as vaginal sex and does not constitute the loss of virginity is not the same as casually performing oral sex on multiple boys in one party.

I'm pretty sure I had this conversation with my mother when the Clinton scandal broke. She was shocked to learn that I didn't think it was the same as sex, and that I thought it was a less big deal than sex. I was probably 15 at the time of this conversation, which means that, though my words echoed the words of some of the girls quoted in this article - and the opinions of most of my peers - I wouldn't actually have any oral sex for another three years. In the privacy of a dorm room, not at a party. With my boyfriend. Who is now my husband. Obviously, I don't think of myself as a typical example. But I have girlfriends. I don't know any one of them that considers oral sex to be equal to or dirtier than vaginal sex. I also know that not one of them has performed oral sex on multiple partners in a casual and public setting. I don't believe that any of them has made a habit of performing oral sex on people with whom they are not in a relationship. Not to say it hasn't happened once or twice, but that's probably the extent of it. Even the girls I knew in high school who were significantly more experienced and racier than me didn't engage in that type of behavior. The raciest thing I heard in middle school was a Spin-the-Bottle game that involved breast-touching. I have a younger sister who is now a senior in high school who was upset when a few of her friends decided that a camp bus ride was boring and that French-kissing all the boys on the bus was the best way to pass the time. They were thirteen, I think. These girls (or at least one of them) are the "slutty" ones, the ones with the worst reputations at school, and that's where it started.

Objection the second: If they're still called "sluts," not much has changed.

I found it remarkable that Flanagan didn't notice it when she said, "Wide-eyed young girls spilled the beans on their slutty classmates, and intimated that they themselves weren't so different." Right. It's still considered slutty to behave like this. It was considered slutty to behave like this ten years ago, and it was slutty twenty years ago, and it was slutty forty years ago. It's not becoming a norm of teenage behavior. Obviously, I'm not arguing that sexual norms haven't changed since the 1950s. I'm just arguing that they haven't turned into, "It's now considered normal and acceptable in high school to give blow jobs to as many guys as you can at a single party." I'm also arguing that they've kind of changed for everyone, roughly equally. Can't figure out why a thirteen-year-old thinks pleasing her boyfriend sexually is more important than getting herself off? Ask the twenty-five-year-old reading Cosmo. Don't know why a fifteen-year-old thinks casual sex with acquaintances is a good idea? Tune in to Sex in the City. Why do we expect teenagers to have different values than the culture they're being raised in?

Objection the third: Are those values really such a problem?

Obviously, to the extent that girls are not learning that their own desire is important, it's a problem. And I do believe that that is happening, although not to the extent and not with the end results that so horrify Flanagan and others. But to the extent that oral sex is a little more casual than vaginal sex, and sex in general is a little more casual than it has been before, is this really such a big deal? Did the parents of these teenagers wait until they were married to have any sex at all? Do the parents of these teenagers not perform oral sex on their partners? I don't understand all of the hand-wringing.

And I'm not being deliberately facetious. I wring my hands, too, over the idea that girls don't demand sexual pleasue for themselves, and that they allow themselves to be used in a degrading manner - as part of one of these "trains," for instance - in order to be more popular, and that many teenagers don't understand that you can transmit diseases that way even if you can't get pregnant. I just don't think it's happening as much as these articles imply, and I also don't think that all of the evidence used in these articles is evidence of it happening. Half of all seventeen-year-old girls have had oral sex? Okay, fine. But that statistic doesn't speak to how many times, who they had it with, or who got sexual pleasure from it (since you've "had oral sex" whether you were the receiver or the giver), and I refuse to get my stomach in a knot over the idea of a seventeen-year-old engaging in sexual activity with her boyfriend that has no chance of getting her pregnant (as long as they are acting to prevent transmission of diseases).

And I know that people will say, "Oh, but you're not a parent." Okay, but a) I am a big sister. I feel very protective towards both my younger sisters, one of whom is in this age group. And I can honestly say that as long as she's safe, loved, and getting as much as she's giving, I'm happy for her, and b) if parental reaction to this is more about, "Oh, my baby is growing up," and less about, "These practices are emotionally and physically dangerous," as is implied by the "But you're not a parent yet" attitude, then I have even less respect for them than I did before. Parents, teenagers have sexual urges, because they have gone through or are going through puberty, which means "the time in life when you get sexual urges." The lucky ones are even acting on them. You did or would have, too.

Objection the fourth: If you are an adult interviewing a teenager on their attitudes about sex, you should know they are probably making every effort to come across as blase and experienced to you, because they are teenagers, and they do that. Their answers have no bearing on their actual behavior. If you don't know that, you're perhaps in the wrong profession.

This relates to that "and intimated that they themselves weren't that different" sction of the quote. They tell an adult a story about a friend of theirs whose behavior is slutty, and the adult acts predictably horrified. What are the kids going to do, align themselves with the values of these adults, right in front of them and everything, or quickly align themselves with that which the adults want to reject? Clearly, they're a little shocked and put off by these stories as well, or they wouldn't be telling them. You can't take their "intimating" that seriously.

Objection the fifth: You probably know your own kid better than you think you do.

After another recent teenage-behavior scare, the one about "friends with benefits" (which is, again, something that plenty of older people are doing or pretending to do), my father asked me if I thought my fourteen-year-old brother was at risk for this type of behavior. Now, I love my brother very much, and I think one day he will grow into quite the lady-killer. But right now? He's kind of a dork. I don't know that he's been able to say "Hi" to a girl he has a crush on. I told my dad that he was more at risk for NOT having any of this type of behavior for a long, long time, and that if my dad really wanted to help, he'd figure out how to get him into one of these situations, not out of them.

I've encountered this attitude in other venues. Remember this spring, when some schools banned prom because kids just use it as an excuse to rent hotels and get drunk and have sex? Lots of hand-wringing them. But listen, parents. If your kid goes out to parties all the time before prom, and doesn't come home, and always claims to be sleeping at a friends', whose parents you don't know, then they are also going to do that at prom. If your kid engages in none of these activities before prom, because a) you are too strict for them to get away with that, b) they are not really inclined to that sort of thing (which plenty of teenagers are not, I swear!), and/or c) they are too dorky to be included in that sort of thing, they are not going to do them at prom. You probably already know which of these categories your kid falls into.

I also had a sort of weird discussion with my mother-in-law. I went on a teen tour to Israel when I was 16, for five weeks, and expressed that I expected that I would send our kids on one, too. (Actually, since my grandparents sent me on mine, I sort of expect that my dad will send my kids on theirs, but that's neither here nor there.) My mother-in-law said that she thought this was a bad idea because kids get up to all kinds of trouble on trips like that, away from home, with limited supervision. I said, first of all, that supervision is not that limited, and second of all, that I went on a trip. Not entirely getting my point, she said, "Yeah, and you said some kids were drinking and partying." I pointed out that a) they got caught and their parents were called, and b) I still didn't do anything. I was sitting that night with a bunch of people who knew that it was going on and chose not to go to it. I reiterate, if your kid does that kind of thing when not on a teen tour in a foreign country, your kid will do that kind of the thing when on a teen tour in a foreign country. Admittedly, in Israel, your level of supervision is no longer a safeguard, but you still have the other two - inclination and dorkiness. And you usually know whether your kid has either of those. Really, the biggest worry is if you know your kid wants to drink, you know your kid is cool enough to be invited to hang out with those who want to drink, and so only your vigilance has kept them from doing so. And I think, given their genetic material, there's little chance our kids won't be too dorky to be invited to the big, drunk orgies.*

I have no other objections I want to get into right now**, but I do want to say one other thing. I really do understand why parents don't want their kids having their boy/girlfriends in their actual bedrooms, because there are beds in there, and things can go in beds, so I'm not objecting to the rules themselves. But I do think parents have to understand the phrase "my room" from a teenage perspective. To a parent, who owns the whole house, a bedroom is the place where one sleeps, (hopefully) has sex, and engages in private activities of various types. To a teenager, their room is basically their apartment. The rest of the house is not "theirs" in the same way, and so their bedroom is usually their location for sleeping, eating, dressing, studying, socializing, lounging, etc. So some of the time, when they bring a boy/girlfriend up there, it's not with the understanding that sexual activity will be engaged in, it's with the understanding that this is where they live and so where else would they go? Again, I'm not saying that means you should let your teenagers have their boy/girlfriends in their rooms. I'm just remind you that your understandings of "bedroom" are different so you can be guided accordingly.

*I should stress that these kids don't exist yet, much less do they show signs of wanting to rock and roll all night.

**I do object to how obsessively this is all focused on girls, because obviously, boys are not a factor in blow jobs at all, but there's just too much there.

Adventures in Subbing - Learning and Not Liking the Slang

I suppose I intended to do some serious logging of all of my substitute-teaching adventures, and it's too bad that I stopped when I did, because I've been having some fun in the interim, but today I just want to talk about one aspect of my job - the learning of new slang - and one new word in particular - shysty.

As those of you who can figure out the origins of this term might imagine, "shysty" is an adjective for a person who is untrustworthy, especially with money, a person you can count on to cheat you, steal from you, or lie to you. Obvious to me is that it comes from "shyster." Apparently the kids don't know this, nor do they know that "shyster" is a derogatory term for Jews.

I can't even be too hard on them for not knowing. Some of them have never met a Jew, and anyway, one of my husband's teachers at the dental school used the word "shyster" as if it had no ethnic implication at all. And generally speaking, when I hear it and I say to a kid, "Hey, don't say that, it's a racial slur on Jews," they say they didn't know that and apologize. But so far I've only brought it up to kids I know, kids whose schools I go to all the time. And I don't know if they still use it when I'm not around, much the way they're cautious about saying "white" in front of me. (Well, some of them are. Some of them have no problem not only saying "white," but saying "white motherfucker," in front of me, and not understanding why I think that's a problem.)

But I don't even know if I can state categorically if they're wrong to use it. If for them it is completely divorced from any association with Jews (and they are not using it to apply to Jews or even to imply that the people they are applying it to occupy any other ethnic or racial category than their own), is it wrong for them to use it? I don't know. Nor do I know what to do about it in situations where the kids just met me five minutes ago, and will likely never see me again, and, though they may not mean to be racist or anti-Semetic, don't particularly care if I'm interpretting them as either.

And I thought this was just teenage slang. I'd never heard any of the adults use it. (I didn't hear them tell the kids not to use it, but I figure they have a hard enough time getting them to not say "fuck" all the time.) But last night, on Project Runway, Zulema said it. I don't think she knew either. And maybe the producers didn't. I mean, if a contestant said the n-word,* I'm sure they wouldn't have used that footage.

To end on a lighter note, I wil share some slang I do like:

Track star - promiscuous person. As in, one who runs around a lot.

Chaluppin' - somewhere between walking around, looking for girls, and cheating on your current girl. But in a fairly relaxed way.

Thirsty - desperate, particularly for sex.

Woo woo - yadda yadda yadda


*I can't type it. I feel ridiculous writing "the n-word," and I am trying and trying to convince myself that it's just a word, and I'm only referring to it as a word, not using it to describe a person, and I would never use it in an actually racist way, but I still can't do it. I can't say it either, even when I'm discussing it as a word with the kids, and even when the kids tell me it's okay for me to say it in that context. But it took me until I was 12 years old to say my first curse word, too.

Ew, Kissing

I saw the new Pride and Prejudice this weekend, and, despite my initial misgivings, I was pleased.

Now, this is not a faithful adaptation in many senses of the term. For one thing, it's significantly shorter than the ultra-faithful 1995 BBC version, which (justifiably) launched Colin Firth to stardom,* and came in at around five hours long. This is trimmer, at only a little over two hours, and as a result, they cut out a lot of scenes, combine some others, and cut or combine some extraneous characters. You get a little less time to, for instance, watch Wickham be charming, so when he's revealed as a tool,** you're not really surprised, or invested enough to be surprised. One of Bingley's sisters is cut, so the remaining one has to take on the bitchery that was usually shared between the two of them over a longer period of time into a few short scenes. (Fortunately, the actress handles that pressure with aplomb.) Everything just moves a lot quicker (until the very end, when time suddenly stands still, but that will be discussed later). Most of the time this is fine, although sometimes it's clear they forgot little details. For instance, the visit Elizabeth pays at Bingley's estate while her sister is there and ill is cut short, so that the scene in which her mother and sisters come to see how everything is going in the novel turns into the scene in which her mother and sisters come to pick the two of them up. But this isn't obvious until they drive away, so one is left confused by the fact that Jane doesn't join them downstairs when they come in, and the fact that Caroline Bingley seems so surprised at the extra Bennets' appearance. But these are minor, and most importantly, when plot points hinge on minor characters, those plot points are delivered deftly and quickly.

Unfortunately, a lot is also dumbed down. Jane Austen always displayed incredibly subltey in her wit; nothing sounded insulting until you thought about for a few minutes. Some of that gets tossed away. For instance, instead of Elizabeth Bennet's customary nonchalance at Darcy's overheard declaration that she is not "handsome enough to tempt" him into dancing, she is visibly insulted and later throws those comments back at him, albeit humorously, and then walks off in slo-mo as triumphant music emphasizes her put-down of him. The movie also feels the need to explain things - like Charlotte Lucas marrying Mr. Collins - that the novel and other adaptations allowed the audience to understand for themselves. It's occasionally irritating, but not truly detrimental.

There were two elements of this movie's turn away from the source material and subsequent adaptations that I appreciated very much. The first is that it eschews the tradition of presenting Pride and Prejudice as a light, silly comedy of manners with no real emotional component. I suspect that the director or the script writer was a nerd in high school, because no one could capture the emotional pain of socially awkward characters like Mr. Collins, Mary Bennet (the boring, pedantic sister, who hates going to balls and prefers reading books of sermons), and even Mr. Darcy himself. He is so rarely portrayed as genuinely feeling uncomfortable and out of place at a country assembly, rather than just too good for his surroundings, and this depiction nails both.

The other, somewhat faithless, thing I appreciated was the way class was depicted in this film. In the novel, the way it's explained is the way it needs to be explained to an early 19th-century novel reader, i.e., not at all. Although I've always liked the BBC miniseries, I agree with Stephanie Zacharek's criticism that it concentrates very hard on being pretty at all times. It's possible that the way Longbourne (the Bennet home) is decorated absolutely correctly in a periodic sense, and that the Bennet family is dressed absolutely correctly, but to modern eyes, it's difficult to tell the difference in material wealth between the Bennets and Mr. Bingley based on home and dress, because they all look pretty and old-fashioned to us. And though Pemberley (Darcy's estate) is obviously bigger than Longbourne, it's not obviously nicer. Very little about the dress of the Bennet girls in comparison to the Bingley sisters or Georgianna Darcy makes their economic differences obvious. This movie may (or may not - I certainly don't know what an early-19th-century middle-class chair looks like) not be as historically accurate in its details, but it certainly does a better job of driving home exactly what is at stake financially for the girls.

Also driving home that point is a much-improved (to my mind) Mrs. Bennet. I wrote a paper last year on depictions of her (including the one in the original) and found that she's always shrill and ridiculous, despite the facts that 1) she has a very legitimate concern about the future of her girls, of which Jane Austen is obviously not unaware, and 2) she's right about nearly everything. The novel opens on her fervent desire to see her eldest, prettiest daughter married to the new owner of Netherfield, and lo and behold, it happens. True, she doesn't get to see any of her daughters married to the man who will inherit the estate, but Elizabeth, the daughter she was pushing in that direction, marries the wealthiest man any of them have ever met instead, so it all works out. Mrs. Bennet's real fault in the novel seemed to be that she was just too obvious about these things, too honest, in a society that was supposed to hide these motivations. (That's why the moments in this movie in which other characters were too honest about their motivations - like Charlotte Lucas when she explains to Elizabeth why she's marrying Mr. Collins - bugged me. If that's Mrs. Bennet's fault, all the other people in the story can't share it.) Most depictions of Mrs. Bennet, though, make her purely ridiculous, and none of her statements or emotions are meant to be taken seriously. This film managed to balance the inappropriateness of her character and overabundance of her emotions with the very real nature of the Bennets' problem. Furthermore, we were more able to see how easily any of the Bennet women, the haloed Elizabeth and Jane included, might fall into similar behaviors. One of the cutesy visual jokes of the movie (which, despite being cutesy, I liked) was the constant eavesdropping at the door at innappropriate moments - and the constant being caught at it.*** Elizabeth and Jane participated in this habit with as much enthusiasm as their mother and sisters.

Donald Sutherland's portrayal of Mr. Bennet really drives this home. He's tragic, really. Sad and weary at all turns, a gentleman farmer who is afraid he hasn't been very good at either, and a father who knows he's done a piss-poor job of providing for his daughters, but still can't stand the idea of their marrying for money. Usually, he's Mrs. Bennet's straight man, the one winking at the audience (and Elizabeth and Jane) to let us know that he knows how ridiculous she is. But this version allows him to be every bit as aware of his negligence as he ought to be.

While I don't mind that the costumes and the set design may have been fudged a little to make us understand who has money and what having money means, I do mind a couple of anachronisms that seemed out of place. Most egregious was Mr. Bingley walking into the bedroom Jane is staying in while she's sick at Netherfield (Bingley's house). I know most modern audiences who have no historical perspective whatsoever wouldn't understand, if Bingley's so in love with Jane, and she's in his house for days, why they don't see each other that whole time. But for a man to just wander into the bedroom of an unmarried female guest while she's in her nightgown? It's the equivalent, today, in embarrassment and inappropriateness, for the guy you like to wander into your bathroom while you're putting in a tampon. Also, at one ball, Caroline Bingley appears to be wearing a sleeveless dress. I know that the richer and more urban you were, the more daring your dress tended to be, but I think that's pushing it.

I also minded a lot one other area of faithlessness. I always loved Jane Austen's ability to deliver romance stories that leave out the mushy stuff. Once you know a pair were together, that was pretty much it. The end. Sometimes, she's even teasing to her reader. When Edward comes to propose to Elinor at the end of Sense and Sensibility, the readers have to leave the room with her sister and mothers; we don't even get the pay-off of a proposal scene. And, quite famously, we never see kissing. It's part and parcel of the whole idea that, though Jane Austen appears to be writing about lurve, she's really writing about money and manners and hypocrisy. Though this movie does a very good job with the first, and an okay job with the other two, it insist on having the mushy love stuff, too. As fast-paced as the movie has been to that point, once Elizabeth has more or less vocalized her desire to be Mrs. Darcy (to his aunt, played brilliantly and imperiously by Dame Judi Dench), the movie slows to a stop. Elizabeth runs outside**** and sees Mr. Darcy approaching her through the fog. Very, very, slowly.

A digression: I was reminded of an incident when I was an undergrad at Brandeis. I was assistant stage managing a play, someone's senior thesis for their theater major, and there was a scene which began with an old man working at a book shop. The director (who was crazy in an almost stereotypically director-y way) and the actor playing the old man decided that the most hilarious thing ever would be if the transition music into that scene was "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles, and if the actor would walk to the center of the stage where his desk was v . . . e . . . r . . . y, v . . . e . . . r . . . y, s . . . l . . . o . . . w . . . l . . . y. Seriously. Maybe one footstep per ever half-bar. We all thought they were nuts. We were begging them not to do this. The play was already kind of confusing and out there, and we thought this would just put the audience over the edge and we would lose them. We were wrong. The audience burst out laughing, and didn't stop laughing for the entire walk.

Okay, end of digression. Because this slow walk was not at all the same. It was not funny or romantic; it was boring. And then, when they finally meet, they get all melty, and Elizabeth actually KISSES his HAND, and looks all moonily at him with the Lauren-Bacall-patented chin-down, eyes-up look, like they might actually do it right there in the fog. Then they extended the talk between Elizabeth and her father so we could be really, really convinced they were in lurve. Then, THEN, we were subjected to a scene which appears nowhere in the novel, in which Mr. and the now Mrs. Darcy canoodle on his balcony and talk about how happy the are and they actually KISS. Which made me very mad.

But I enjoyed. I must commend Kiera Knightley, for doing a better Elizabeth Bennet than I thought she would, and to commend Matthew MacFayden for his very endearing, and very un-Firth-like Darcy. I always loved Colin Firth in that role, of course. He was the sine qua non of arrogant, stand-offish sexiness. MacFayden gives Darcy vulnerability (and seems somehow younger). My friend used to talk about the way Colin Firth looks at Elizabeth Bennet as eye sex. Having seen this version, I would say that Colin Firth was having eye sex, as in, he was looking at the person with whom he was having sex with in his mind at that moment. MacFayden's Darcy looked at her like he was looking at the person with whom he morosely thought he'd never be able to have sex with. It was hot, in an entirely different way.

Overall, I was a very pleased movie-goer. And it's very rare for me lately, to approve of a piece of narrative art. Kind of restored some of my faith in storytellers. (In case you're interested, Veronica Mars is the other thing that's restored my faith in storytellers.) You know, except for the kissing part. Ew.




*In fact, the only scenes that were not in the novel but were in the mini-series were 1) Colin Firth taking a bath, 2) Colin Firth fencing with an open-collar shirt on, and 3) Colin Firth swimming in a pond in his extremely thin white shirt and tight pants and then coming out of the pond and promptly running into the love of his life while dripping wet.

**I follow a spoiler policy similar to Television Without Pity's. This novel is nearly 200 years old. If you don't know the plot structure, that's the fault of your high school English teachers, not mine.

*** Actually, one of my favorite scenes, which broke my heart, really, was the scene in which Elizabeth has finally and conclusively turned down Mr. Collins, and at the moment he is realizing his rejection, the door swings open, having accidentally been pushed by one of the eavesdropping sisters, some of whom are giggling. That proposal is usually played for laughs, but this film goes for pathos, really. For the first time in my very long history with Pride and Prejudice, I kind of wanted to hug Mr. Collins.

**** This movie takes the characters outside a lot more than the BBC version did, and I loved that. Sometimes it fell on the treacly side. I know it rains a lot in England, but does it really rain so conveniently every time Darcy and Elizabeth step outside to have a "moment"? But Austen herself is constantly pushing her heroines to go on walks, and Elizabeth is supposed to be a pretty outdoorsy girl, for her time and class, so getting her outside all the time was nice, I thought. Plus all of her walks around sweeping examples of English countryside contrast so nicely with that moment that Caroline Bingley asks her to take a "refreshing" "turn about the [stuffy, tiny, drawing] room." Although I'm sure part of their motivation was that they'd already spent lavishly on the little bits of Netherfield and Pemberley that we do see; they couldn't afford more indoor scenes.

Frivolity

Lately, I have been obsessed with fashion. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a fashion designer, and now, with Project Runway in its second season, and blogs like Go Fug Yourself and Manolo, and access to sites like this and this, I can indulge this obsession as much as I please. (Keep in mind that this indulgence is not happening anywhere near my actual body. My wardrobe is almost entirely Gap and Old Navy, because I have neither the money nor the figure for the clothes I really want, nor the patience required to overcome the first two problems.) Also, something happened (I can't remember what) in early November of 2004 that made me prefer staring at pretty things rather than thinking about the state of the country or the world.

In this veing, my current obsession is the Dolce & Gabbana Spring 2006 collection. See, for example, the photo at right and above.

Is it not exquisite? Is it not (to borrow a phrase from Michael Kors on an episode of Project Runway*) "deliciously girly," while, at the same time, glamourous, sexy, and sophisticated, as well?

Of course, one could argue that it is not exactly wearable. But actually, I sort of disagree. I mean, if one happens to not be a six-foot tall runway model, one might want to forgo the exposed lines of underwear and stocking top, and instead wear a demure slip. Still, one would need to be confident of one's shoulders and arms, but that's true of any strapless dress, and certainly, strapless dresses are worn by many. If one is less than confident, one could wear a shrug.

Or, what about this one?

Totally wearable! For non-sticks and sticks alike! And it's actually really hard to find beautiful clothing that could be worn by non-sticks, but isn't positively screaming, "No, seriously, fat girls can wear me! Fat girls! Over here!" And being modelled by a "plus" size-eight model.

They've also put out some lovely suits that would look good on anyone:

Who wouldn't look good in those? Though the Everywoman - or really, any tastefully dressed woman operating in real life as opposed to on the runway - should probably choose a nice shell rather than a black lace bra to wear under the suits. Just a thought.

Not that wearability is a necessary standard for gorgeous and fun and sexy and girly, as these designs are. Check out these:

If you want to see the whole collection, click here or here. (If you click on the second one, and read the runway review, I just want to say, I'm confused, too. First of all, it's not red, it's hot pink, right? And second, bosomy?)

Enjoy! Perhaps something more serious will come up next time.

* Though he was not, actually, using the phrase in the positive, but rather to describe what a certain losing outfit was not. For more on that, see here.