Friday, May 20, 2011

B-Fail?


Here's Beyonce's new video. First of all, I am NEVER mad at Beyonce. I think she is fly as hell, she works ridiculously hard, her songs are almost ALWAYS jams, and she's married to Jay-Z. This song is a total jam. Maybe not the fiercest B jam, but I would tear up a dance floor to this any day. Here's where the 21st century feminist in me kicks in. She keeps referring to us as "girls." Ok, we "run the world," but she still keeps calling us "girls." I mean, seriously, she says it about 65million times in the damn song. That's actually about all she says. Lots of fierce ass dancing and amazing clothes and location shots, but really, she doesn't say anything else. Girls. Who run the world. You might as well say, "and stuff" after that sentence. Ain't no girls in that video B. Sorry. All women. Furthermore, if you were at all conscious of how conflicted this song and video feel for me, (and I know I will not be the only one), you would try to make it make a little more sense.

I am all for girl power, and I am absolutely aware that women have to keep telling themselves that they rule the world because every day we are out there in this world, we are treated like the world rules us. I just don't find this song to be empowering at all. I think it looks fucking great, and she looks great, but beyond that, and a few dance steps stolen from the Rhythm Nation tour, it's fluff. I know that there will be young girls, and women alike who will take this as a call to arms for women, but really ya'll? Really? She's not telling you how to rule the world, or how to even start feeling like it is possible for you to rule the world. She's not starting a revolution, or burning her bra, or demanding equal pay in the workplace. She's not saying anything.

Can we all take a collective guess why? Oh, well, because it isn't sexy to actually say in any format, that you believe in your rights as a woman. It's like, in old timey comics, right when women got the vote, they were portrayed as ugly troll beasts because it was "un-ladylike" to vote. This is the same deal. We're seeing this beautiful facade that claims to be about empowering women, but what it ends up being is a male-driven fantasy of what a strong "girl" should look like.

Again, hell yes I would love to look like Beyonce, but at the end of my day, do I think that it will change my place on the ladder? Maybe, but most likely, no it will not. Beyonce makes so much money, they deliver it to her in old timey bags with dollar signs on them, but really, I am sure she STILL makes less than her man does, and homegirl actually WERKS!

If all it took for me, (or any of us women)to rule the world, was gyrations set to 11, 2 bags of hair, and some hot ass clothes, then shit, I would be ruling the world right now. Someone would be typing this for me while I drape myself over a hot pink velour chaise lounge stroking my cat, sipping on a dirty Martini, and smoking Nat Sherman Fantasia ciggies. You make it seem so within my reach B.

Where are the youngs of all age groups to look in order to find role models? The answer remains unclear, and if we keep this kind of horsey bullshit up, we'll be right back where we started, fighting for our right to have rights.

On that ever so cheery note, please enjoy this ode to Beyonce's wig stylist.

XOXO
Betsy


Thursday, May 12, 2011

Out of the Heart of Darkness...


Today, while I was trolling craigslist for jobs, I started trolling around google for images of The Upper Peninsula. See kids, I'ma be getting a tattoo of my homeland to show my pride. Yes. I am proud to be a Yooper. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, and, well, I am not denying that there are many things about the magical place that I am from, that are, how do you say, questionable. I get that it's way up north, and it's sometimes hard to believe oh ye of south of Milwaukee heritage, that there is anything up there in the "styx." Briefly, I'd like to address that phrase. "Styx" as in the River Styx, as in the "boundary between Earth and the Underworld." Just to clarify, I'm not from a Hellmouth. I'm from Escanaba.

Whilst dicking around the interwebs, I came across one blog of some man who calls him/herself "blatantproof.". Well, the blatant proof of this blog is that this person thinks they are better than me because they live in D.C. and eat Chipotle, Potbelly, and Sushi (High.Class.Broads). Houghton, MI. I guess, just doesn't accommodate such a sophisticated palette.

What consistently blows my mind is that, I live in a city. A rather large, dense, urban city. Yet, when I return home to Escanaba, I don't feel the need to throw shade at my home. We all criticize the place we are from, that is true. I totally remember times when I was much younger, and much more critical, and I knew from a very early age that I was not going to stay there after I graduated from highschool. The world is an enormous place, and I wanted to get out and see what was out there, and meet all the freaks I could, AND, I talked mad shit about my home because I didn't appreciate it. What I don't get, is that I am from a place that is so naturally beautiful and calm, and where, for the most part, the people are kind and generous, smart and interesting. Yes, I know that there are ignorant sons of bitches who probably cranked up the Toby Keith, and unloaded round after round into the night sky when the news of Osama's death hit the airwaves. Yes, I know that I used to get a day off of school for the first day of deer hunting season. Yes, I am aware that there are still quite a few old racists and that the town's economy is struggling, there aren't a lot of big fancy things like Chipotle or Potbelly, and sometimes it feels like a place that time forgot and that is why the town's economy is struggling. Even with all of that, Escanaba is still my home, and I am still proud as all hell to be from there. Haters gonna hate, and all I gotta say is, why ya'll so angry all the time? You are from one of the most beautiful places in this country, and hell yeah it's isolated, and it can seem like a winter wasteland around December through February, but man, in the summer...Forget about it. If I take you there in the summer, you will fall in love, and you will look at me, and the way I am here in the city, and you will look back out over the lake, and you'll understand everything about me, and we won't even have to say anything. It's THAT kind of magic.


I mean, look, I am from here, and I live right close to the end of that peninsula. I can walk to the lake and go swimming. I can look out the window in the second floor bathroom of my parents house and see the lake. I can drive an hour north and dip my feet in Lake Superior (my favorite). I can sit in a house with no air-conditioning and feel the breeze coming off of the lake and smell the fresh water. I can take my parents dogs 20 minutes out of town to a private beach area where you can swim in the clear, clean water. I used to work here. Is this really THAT bad? AND, Christine and Jarvis, we are totally going HERE!

XOXO Escanaba. Hearts and Glitterbombs, and Jeff Daniels and his stereotype mongering can suck it. Or just stay in Lower Michigan. Ya'll are called "Trolls" for a reason. Stay under that bridge.

Sprinkles and Sparkles.

Betsy
P.S. The Dust has risen!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Of monsters and men.


I watch a lot of bullshit movies. Campy, terrible, D, E, and F grade movies. You say Jurassic Park, I say, that Sci-Fi Original steaming pile where dinosaur bones, SKELEEEETONS!, came to life and killed people. You say Citizen Kane, I say Jason X, where Jason gets frozen and ends up in space and then turns himself into T 1000 Jason, and still can't be tamed, even by smarty pants girl from the past who holds the key to the legend of Jason Voorhis. Yeah. Look into it. Bad all around.

So, tonight, while I was dicking around on the Apple movie trailers page, I came across this movie called The Troll Hunter. The poster art for this movie makes it look like an advert for a monster truck rally. Of course, I was like, "Yep. Check into this." What I found there was an absolute deLIGHT! I know what you guys are thinking, and part of me is thinking the same thing. Summer is for totally ridiculous movies that are most likely in 3-D, have lots of explosions, tons of titties, and gallons of fake blood and severed limbs (muchas gracias Pirhana 3-D for covering all the bases). We get a little high, or we get a few 40s, and we go to the movies. Movie theaters have A/C, unlike the sweat lodges we all seem to live in, and, what the hell, rack 'em up so we can keep our conversations relevant and feel like we're covering all of OUR cinematic bases.

Ok, so I watched the trailer for The Troll Hunter, and I actually got really excited. Giddy almost. This is campy, 1950s monster movie territory for sure, but what I found exciting about it, was the approach. It isn't pitched to you as some kind of bullshit monsters out to gnaw a bitch in half and wreak havoc on smalltown USA just because it has some nondescript thorn in its side. First of all, it's Norwegian. Therefore, the folklore is regional, which makes it both intriguing and special to us. It's filmed in that same hand-held documentary style a la District 9, and, one of the better monster movies that came out a few years ago, simply titled, Monsters. Of course there are lots of night vision shots, dark stretches of forest complete with jerky camera movement, screaming, and then, naturally, a shot of the great ugly troll beasts. They look amazeballs you guys. Something born from a dream Guillermo del Toro and the creature design team from The Lord of the Rings is what they resemble. I am sure that this sounds corny and like those "In search of Bigfoot" programs on The History Channel, but I want to, and I wish I could assure you that this will most likely be a very interesting take on the way we process and receive storytelling, and that maybe some folk tales are rooted in some kind of truth. I mean, they all probably are, but that someone would be so dedicated to this one story, or rumor even, that they would pursue it all the way to the end. Then, imagine that that thing that you thought was just some crazy campfire story was true, and you found proof. Actual proof. How would that feel for you? Honestly, thinking about seeing something so buried in ancient lore, in person, would make me question everything I knew about everything.

Now, I get the impression that the trolls are something like a Bigfoot situation, where you think it's some fakey fake guy in a gorilla suit, ever so strategically thrown out of focus, so you can't really tell that it's a guy in a gorilla suit. Maybe, though, they're not. Maybe, as it played out in Monsters, these are creatures who arrived here under mysterious circumstances, weren't able to get back to where they came from, so they wove themselves into the landscape around them, became a part of it, and all of humankind treated it as just a strange progression in their routine. It's like in zombie movies, where the non-zombie folks are aware of the word "zombie," and refer to the walking dead as such instead of "walkers" or "infected." They assume that these are things that happen, and there aren't any super cute euphemisms for them.

Monster movie time doesn't have to be all giant scorpions attacking helpless ladies and cars driving into gila monsters resulting in a hilarious miniature explosion. They can tackle a subject like giant gnarly beasties living in the woods with the kind of sophistication that is campy and insightful at the same time. You can make a movie about trolls that attaches a kind of humanity to them that we usually only reserve for ourselves or the animals in Homeward Bound (don't even get me started). I realize that some of ya'll are going to watch the trailer and throw all kinds of shade my way, but I'm just sayin'. Science fiction can be truly interesting when executed properly.

SO! Without further adieu...here's the trailer for The Troll Hunter. Enjoy and ya'll are more than welcome to come watch it with me while we sip on Andre and eat Doritos.



XOXO
Betsy