sundries: boys, girls, dogs, mermen, and movie directors

This morning I listened to two young men at my subway station have the following discussion:

#1: So yeah, there was this guy, like, like, like Brad Pitt, and he had hair like her [pointing at me], and he was wearing this really tight pink dress shirt, like a woman's shirt and short short, like woman's shorts.
#2: Brad Pitt!
#1: Fucking faggot.
#2: Yeah, yeah. What did you do?
#1: It was ugly, man, fucking faggot!

Gender-normative privilege means never having to be viscerally relieved you look like you conform at a given moment.

Do we really want a .gay Internet suffix? The article doesn't address it, but I wonder. On one hand, super convenient when I'm planning travel in a world that's still not always friendly. On another, the Internet is great because there's no gay ghetto. The gay is here and people just have to deal with it. If there's a .gay all sorts of harmful filtering gets a lot easier. I don't know. I'm troubled.

kproche! It turns out I have a friend in the accessories industry. You might get your cut-rate tacky mermen Christmas tree ornaments after all. She's going to look at the next trade show, and if she succeeds I'll bring them to Gally.

Meanwhile, I enjoy being a girl! I get my own hotel room for the Zurich trip. The men I work with are all in a suite together.

I am deeply troubled by this review of Mira Nair's Amelia, which contains the line "The director Mira Nair, whose only qualification appears to be that she’s a woman who has made others films about and with women (“Mississippi Masala,” “Vanity Fair”), keeps a tidy screen — it’s all very neat and carefully scrubbed. I don’t recall a single dented automobile or a fissure of real feeling etched into a face.".

Why?

I don't recall reading a movie review in which a male director's credentials are questioned in this manner. No one would expect a male director of a biopic to be a pilot or a fighter or a sea captain or whatever the subject of the film was about. Nair, whose films tend to be interesting failures, has taken on a pretty broad array of subjects in her films, and there's always this undertone in reviews of her work that's "why is the Indian woman making movies about things that aren't Indian?" which, you know, also makes me want to punch people in the face. Additionally, even assuming directors are required to stick to subjects of personal relevance to them (something that only seems to be asked of PoC and female directors), anyone who doesn't get why an Indian woman has a great deal to say about the lot of a woman in the Regency-era (Nair directed Vanity Fair a couple of years back), doesn't know the period. Or India.

Also, "she keeps a tidy screen"? Really? Nice to know Nair can handle cinematic housework. Or something. When we review men, this comment is usually "the film is workman-like" and that would have been an appropriate way to level the criticism that seems to be being made. Alas, no. Girls are tidy!

Additionally, a fascination with a sanitized and gleaming past should hardly be laid at Nair's doorstep in general or because she's a woman. It's a film-affliction in general, and one that I might argue is a valid creative choice in a film presumably meant to feel like it's about the future even as it's about the past.

The whole review is riddled with sexism both about Nair and Earhart (who is, historically, actually considered to be a mediocre pilot, although I don't know enough about the reality of planes of that period or flying them to say whether this assessment is fair -- luck was such a large part of the game back then), including the Times's assertion that the letter Earhart wrote to her husband before their wedding was remarkable. It read: "I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. Please let us not interfere with the other’s work or play." OMG! A woman wanting something other than "traditional" fidelity! How can it be?!

The whole review is appalling.

Then there's For every 100 women enrolled in college, only 77 men are, in which the gender gap in higher-education is discussed and no one asks why if women are better educated why we're still paid less or considers the possibility that we all go to college because we need more credentials to have even an uneven chance of success. Additionally, I really think we need to stop expecting so little of men in so many ways. Yuck.

As an aside, I do wish Lars von Trier would go away.

Shouting is the new spanking, but mostly I'm linking to this piece for the single phrase "pregnancy-flaunting." I've mentioned in the past that even in my childhood (30 years ago), visible signs of pregnancy were hidden and not discussed in the world that I lived in, because even the acknowledgment that married people fucked and the results thereof was not okay. However, as a throwaway phrase without explanation, "pregnancy-flaunting" is pretty wacky and unclear, even if I am sick of the whole "people with kids are better than people without kids" thing you get in certain segments of New York society. Anyway, pregnancy flaunting?!?!?! Mostly though, it's just another New York Times article on first world neuroses.

How many types of scary is this? First, sounds like the pilots fell asleep, which is the stuff of nightmare enough. But then, they had the flight make unnecessary maneuvers so that folks on the ground could be sure the plane hadn't been hijacked and there were fighter jets standing by.

Soupy Sales died. I doubt anyone younger than me even knows what I'm talking about.

Last night I dreamed we were in London and I got drafted to play a grave digger at the Globe, but then the script was formatted strangely, and I couldn't figure it out.

That cats, which exist to emit hair, poo and love, dragged a bag of cookies out of Patty's book bag, riped the plastic bag opened, ate some and left a big mess for me to clean up this morning.

The tiny mew mew we saw on the stairs yesterday seems to have gone back to wherever is home. There was no sign of it last night. I hope the little guy is okay.

rollick gives us a HILARIOUS (and illustrated in a way that might be marginally NSFW) post about sexy Halloween costumes and dogs and why the two really, really don't make for sexy matching adorable holiday fun.

Alarming family conversations, part 1 - My mom: "How big are Patty's hands?"

Alarming family conversations, part 2 - Patty's mom: "What size underwear does Racheline wear?"

(It is worth noting that her mother gave me pajamas for Christmas last year that three different people have remarked, apropos of thing, "OMG, did Jack steal those from the Doctor or what?")

I have acquired my flights to Gallifrey One. February 25th, 8pm, LA Airport Marriott bar, pink drinks and gossip. If you're not there, we're talking about you.

Tonight we are seeing Songs of Ascension at BAM.

This song makes me cry. Every. Single. Time.

Do you know this girl? (if you're fannish, you may be able to help)

Do you know this girl?

The girl can't remember who she is. By the details in the article it seems very possible that she is in some way a member of one of our communities as there are indications of fannishness and her own writing endeavors.

"One of the weirdest clues to her identity is that she recently found herself recalling words that turned out to be an excerpt from the fantasy novel "Fool's Fate," by best-selling author Robin Hobb.

The book is part of a well-reviewed trilogy that has sold more than 1 million copies.

According to the ACS, the girl also said she has been writing a fantasy story featuring a heroine named Rian "who's been raised by the commander of the guard post on the edge of a fantasy kingdom."

Officials declined to make her available for an interview.

They asked anyone with information to contact the NYPD Missing Persons Squad at (212) 694-7781."

Everyone deserves to know who they are. Spread the link, and if you have info, please contact the police.

LA here we come

redstapler, marchek, brewsternorth, and I are now booked on the same flight for Gally. Yes, there will be group cosplay on the airplane again (which, honestly, was only really fucking awkward on the shuttle to the hotel with a bunch of airline pilots who were mostly like "what the fuck?" and one who was like "I love Doctor Who!").

What will happen this time?
Will redstapler be hit on by a hot stewardess again?
Will there be a repeat of marchek dressed like Ianto while mopping the hotel lobby floor?
Will I actually manage to change the buttons on the Jack coat before the flight (anyone who bets money that I will is an idiot, it's procrastination station around here)?
What havoc will bodlon add to the mix?
Will kalichan make it out so that she can express her love for Georgia Moffett?
Will Barnaby waste more time than is really reasonable trying to get marchek and I to enter the masquerade so he can direct us in a kissing scene?
Will estelofimladris, scifichicx and I wind up as a Jack/Ianto/Jack cosplay sandwich on a panel about porny fanfic again?
Who will dance with the Dalek?
Will Tony Lee once again grace us with his live interpretive performance of Twilight? And if so, will anyone survive?
Will the Pikachu be back? Will it have been washed?
Will Kristin Stewart be on our flight again? Will Janice Dickinson?
Will we be catty precogs?

These questions: merely the tip of the iceberg.

So... friends, fellow travelers, and vicious and witty associates at Gally: LA Airport Marriott Bar, 8pm, Thursday February 25th -- pink drinks and gossip! If you're not there, we're probably talking about you. If we're not there... well, it was probably just a flight delay, but we might be off doing something you should really be talking about.

(man, I love this con)