Am I a Black Leather Purse with Silver Buckles?

I was in a clothing store recently, looking at belts. Nearby two women were shopping for purses--a mother (50-60s?) and daughter (30s?)

The mother was asking the daughter's opinion of a purse, and the daughter was hmm-humm-hemm. "It's not really me," the mother said, "but..." And the daughter replied, "Ya it's nice, but it's not really you. It's more me." And the daughter went on to explain why, but I don't remember what she said.

I glanced over--furtively!! It was a medium-sized purse with silver buckles on it.

I returned to my belt shopping and tuned out of their conversation, but shortly after I heard the daughter say, "...if you really like it, then..."

So the mother still wanted that purse. Even though it "wasn't her." I felt like walking over and saying to her: IT'S YOU IF YOU WANT IT TO BE YOU.

There's only one person in the world who gets the pleasure of deciding what *you* is and that's you. If you want to be the sort of woman who wears a black leather purse with silver buckles, then you CAN be that woman!


Saying something "isn't me" should be reserved for stuff you don't actually like, and it isn't set in stone. As Kate Bush once sang: "I'm the concierge chez moi, honey." If you want to let a black leather purse with silver buckles into your image, then open the door and invite that baby in.

For the Boys: Where's the jolly fat man?

Do we associate fat male comedians with sadness? I'm not saying there's a higher % of large actors whose lives have experienced some tragedy, but it sometimes feels that way.

 Silent screen star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was falsely accused of raping and killing a woman at a party. It took 3 trials (the first two ended as mistrials) before he was cleared (the evidence was overwhelmingly in his favour), but of course the damage was done, his career was finished.

John Belushi and Chris Farley both died of drug overdoses. 

John Candy died in his 40s from a heart attack.

 

But the wonderful John Goodman is still doing alright. 

And now three overweight comedians have emerged from the new generation of young actors: 

Seth Rogen, 

Jonah Hill, and 

 

Zach Galifianakis (though Rogen's recently lost weight to play a superhero.) 

So... we still have some big boys finding film success, and hopefully nothing else.

Monday Morning Music: To be ugly and musical

For all the pop industry in the video age has become très très focused on people's appearances, it's still possible to have some measure of success and not be A Pretty Person. And who knows, maybe the internet will help roll back the Image Thing, since finding new music is less dependent on video watching.

One of the grrreatest of the Weird Lookin' Musicians is of course Tom Waits. He looks kooky, he sings kooky, he writes kooky... one can only love and adore him. My husband's not much of a music aficionado, but one day he saw Waits perform on a tv show, and he was blown away: He sounds terrible, but he's amazing!   Ahhh, I thought, Fernando is finally beginning to understand rock n' roll.

I'll lose everything
But I won't let go of your hand

Is this not one of the most beautiful songs you've ever heard? Sigh.

Books: Forever roaming with a hungry heart

Today I'm going to share one of my favourite poems with you: Tennyson's "Ulysses." I'll give you both the *best parts* version for those who want a quick read, and then the full poem (which isn't very long.)

I was introduced to it in a Victorian poetry class in college, and many famous lines come from it, including (as the elderly teacher pointed out) Bruce Springsteen's hungry heart.

It's a first person narrative of Ulysses in old age--he's been sitting around at home with no adventures to go on, and he's just reaching the point of saying fuck it! and getting back out there.

As with any heroic story, it's a lovely analogy for the idea of seeing your life as a never ending adventure--the continuous cycle of death and rebirth mentioned in Tuesday's post.

  

The Best Parts Version:

 

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone...

 I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart

I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life.

...And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. ...Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

The Full Poem:

 

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

*** Tennyson at Goodreads***

   

Clean ALL the things!! Or, The failure of perfection

A sex therapist use to come into my work place to read books and research, and he once said to me--everyone thinks that everyone else is having more sex than them.

I suspect this may apply to housekeeping as well. Or "Being an Adult" in general. Because when someone posts something like the following, everyone writes in because they identify.

From the blog Hyperbole and a Half:

a few times a year, I spontaneously decide that I'm ready to be a real adult.  I don't know why I decide this; it always ends terribly for me.  But I do it anyway.  I sit myself down and tell myself how I'm going to start cleaning the house every day and paying my bills on time and replying to emails before my inbox reaches quadruple digits.  Schedules are drafted.  Day-planners are purchased.  I stock up on fancy food because I'm also planning on morphing into a master chef and actually cooking instead of just eating nachos for dinner every night.   I prepare for  my new life as an adult like some people prepare for the apocalypse.

 

You now have to go read the whole post to see how it goes, and see her wonderful drawings about it.

I saw a great diorama at a museum once, showing what a room looks like under candlelight, gaslight, and electric light. And the commentary was that housecleaning duties increased over the years as the lighting got brighter. So basically... we increased the standard of what we consider a clean house, not for actual health and hygiene reasons, but because of fraking technological advances!

I think our North American society is plagued with a sort of perfectionism. Which is untenable, because you're guaranteed to fail, and exhaust yourself in the process. Which reminds me of a funny book I came across online: Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid! The Movement of Imperfection.

The It Gets Better Project

In early November I caught the episode of Oprah where Ricky Martin talked about coming out. His main two messages seemed to be: (1) Don't force people to come out, don't out them; (2) coming out is one of the greatest feelings of your life.

This has come on the heels of Ellen Degeneres' message about bullying of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual teens, and the It Gets Better project which has as a mission:

THE PLEDGE: Many LGBT youth can't picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can't imagine a future for themselves. So let's show them what our lives are like, let's show them what the future may hold in store for them.

This movement is super lovely, as demonstrated in this Canadian video version:



It's been 12 years since the horrifying story of Matthew Shepard, who was tortured to death for being gay. It took until 2009 to get an Act of Congress passed to expand the definition of hate crimes. And now it seems like the suicide of Tyler Clementi and other teens has spurred this new wave of LGBT support, specifically aimed at teens and against bullying.

Anyway, it's nice to see. It seems pretty clear from these testimonials that it's hard to love yourself, and pursue your goals, when you can't be open about who you are.

Joseph Campbell's Fast 7 Easy Weight Loss - Follow the hero path to a new svelte you!

I don't know what channel I was watching a lot in October, but I kept seeing ads for Herbal Magic, and they're so annoying. First, because they claim it isn't a diet. Anything that requires you to buy expensive supplements is a diet. Puleeze. But the other annoying part is the comments by the supposed success stories:

"I didn't know who I was, I was just surviving life, not living life."

"I feel like I've won my life back."

"I'm back to myself again."

People (if you really exist) -- you cannot put your whole life on hold because you're overweight. You might have health problems, you might be sad about the clothes you can't buy, but you can't Not Be You! As Alanis Morrissette once sang, if life is just our physical bodies, then might as well kill ourselves now. Come on. 


In the hero's journey as described by Joseph Campbell, one of the steps is the "call to adventure"--the moment when Frodo agrees to get rid of the ring, or Luke decides to go with Obi-Wan--but some people reject it, and instead become "a victim to be saved":

The myths and folk tales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's interest. The future is not regarded in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure." (The Hero With a 1000 Faces.)

In other words, if Joseph Campbell wrote a diet book, he would say that the best path to being healthy is to fully live out your life, and not to wait to lose weight.

Monday Morning Music: To the humans

I'm going to time-warp you for a moment.

Last night (Nov 3) I wrote a post about the current anti-bullying trend, which will show up here on Nov 24th. Today (Nov 4) I was listening to my new N.E.R.D. album and my so-far-favourite song came on, so I went to find a video of it to share on my regular blog. All I found were live versions, and it seems they've been dedicating this song to bullied kids, so I decided to post it here instead as a preview of things to come!



N.E.R.D. is a hip-hop-and-rock band whose music I love just cause their sound is just a little different, a little more intelligent than the average fare. (They also produce as The Neptunes.)

I love this song for the warmth of the chorus. I posted the live version that comes off clearest, but here's the dedication they made in other live videos:

"To all those kids that keep getting picked on, keep getting bullied. We gotta put an end to that. Doesn't matter if you're fat, black, gay, straight, Puerto Rican, purple, polka dotted, Mexican Whatever you are you deserve your life and you deserve your liberties because you're a human being. So we want to dedicate this next song to you guys, man, to humans."

This reminds me of a semi-viral article I read recently called "Two Phrases That Destroyed American Culture", one of which the author says is "You have to earn respect":

I mean, how egotistical does one have to be to automatically assume that their respect is so fucking important that one must jump through multiples hoops in order to earn it? How about we give people respect because they are humans with lives and feelings just as important as our own?

I bet this song, make no sense to you
With the world on your shoulders, what can you see?
God blessed us all, with the gift to pursue
Just clear your mind and, you'll feel like me

Books: Should Jane Fonda be writing a book about old age?

The big plastic surgery story in 2010 was that Jane Fonda got more, after having said she wouldn't.

In 2006 she said the following in an ITV interview:

"I'm going to try to organise other women in my profession and my friends to say No to the duck lips and getting rid of the wrinkles. I've just traveled through Sweden and Finland, looking at faces that were real, that had their life experiences on them, as opposed to in Hollywood [where] everybody is starting to look alike. I said no, I'm not going to do it, somebody's got to give a face to getting old."

 In 2010 on Larry King she said:

“I caved. If I was really brave, I would have not. I vowed I wouldn’t — I did, and I don’t feel proud of it. I didn’t want to look kind of tired and jowly any more…I didn’t do a lot, right? Your lighting is so good, you probably can’t see my crow’s feet and everything like that. I don’t look weird — do I look weird? I like my crow’s feet and I like my little laugh lines. It was just the little jowls away, that’s all. I didn’t want to lie about it. I’m writing a book about getting older, so I had to admit it. I feel so good. I’m so happy.”

She also said:

"what pleases me is that I won’t looked pulled or weird or tired all the time. And my crows feet are still alive and well. "

 

I appreciate that she admitted it, but there was so much truth to her earlier statement, it's pretty disappointing that she didn't start her *revolution* and instead calls her Elder Look "weird." Plastic surgery is becoming so ubiquitous, pretty soon there really won't be a Face of Old in our movies and TV shows. By the time I'm in my 60s, the idea of what a 60 year old Looks Like will have changed. It makes me wonder what affect this may have on our self-esteems, especially at that magical! time of life when most people say you start to feel more comfortable with who you are. Will that 60s Self Acceptance be lost to my generation or the next?

Kanye West believes moving to L.A. is what killed his mother:

Donda West died whilst having cosmetic surgery procedures including liposuction and a breats reduction. The rapper has now admitted that his mother was influenced by living with him in Los Angeles. The Power star said: “When I moved to LA, she moved to LA, And she wound up in a place that would eat her alive. “Even if I stayed in New York, it wouldn't have been like that. If I had lived in New York, she'd still be here.”

As singer P!nk once sang: "I gotta get the hell out of Hollywood cause every day is Halloween."

Plastic Week! - Plastic Surgery and the Tragedy

I thought I'd written about this before, but I can't find anything when I do a search. So here goes... my rant about Mickey Rourke.

 

 

 

 

WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????!!!!!!!!!!!!

  

(breaks down sobbing)

Oh my God you were SO GORGEOUS. (sob sob) So très très gorgeous. (weep)

 

 

Maybe part of this is boxing, drinking, weight gain, whatever, but there is some plastic surgery in here fo shizzle. (That's two plastic surgery posts inspired by Iron Man 2. Thank God Downey didn't inspire a third.)

I thought he was so cute back in the day that I didn't want to see 9 1/2 Weeks because I didn't want to see him play a fuckwit.

 

 

I even swooned over him in Barfly, playing the sozzled Bukowski. (Gosh I need to rewatch that movie. It was like a Romantic Drunkofest.)

 

I think what saddenates me so about plastic surgery is that it's basically irreversible--one more cut, one more job, and bang! You've crossed the line into Puffyface McNo-lid. You will never see that person looking as lovely as they once did, or as lovely an Oldy as they might have become. Look at Eric Roberts who starred with Rourke in The Pope of Greenwich Village.

 

We got to watch Roberts grow into his gray hair and wrinkles.

 

 

If he's had plastic surgery, then he hasn't crossed any crazy lines yet.

We'll never know what sort of 58 year old Rourke would have looked like. (He's only 58?? You usually see that sort of plastic surgery on someone older.) Alright. Sigh. Rant over.

Plastic Week! - Plastic Surgery and the Hypocrite

I recently saw a photo of Joan Rivers, and I hadn't realized how plastic surgeoned she'd become. Can't she see it? Judging by this quote, I'd say she doesn't realize it:

“Like ‘Poltergeist,’ I’m back,” a smiling Ms. Rivers announced on her “Fashion Police” Globes show. “Old hosts never die, they just have plastic surgery and come back looking younger than ever.” (NYT)

Over-surgeoned people must have some sort of body dysmorphic disorder--they think they look younger! and fab! while the rest of us sort of gasp.

And yet she continues on with her career of dissing what people wear to award shows.

?

Anyone who would take beauty advice from a woman with that much plastic surgery (or at least BAD plastic surgery) needs to have their fashion head examined.

Plastic Week! - Plastic Surgery and the Comedian

I recently watched Iron Man 2, in which comedian Garry Shandling plays a senator. He was perfect for the role, but I couldn't get over how plastic his face looked. So much that it made me wonder if he'd gotten all Botoxed just to make the role better.

So after watching I googled him and, well, he looks plasticky. When you put his name into Google "Garry Shandling plastic surgery" is the top suggestion.

And what's such a shame is that his wrinkled forehead and sloping eyes were the major part of what made him look like Garry Shandling. And it was part of his Funny cause he always looked confused or lost.

Wrinkled forehead...

 Wrinkle free and unrecognizable!

Oh my days, I just don't get it. He's a comedian. Aren't comedians allowed to look *bad*? Do they really have to worry about aging the way Pretty Stars do??