LaurieWrites

Yeeha!

The Dixie Chicks won many Grammys for a very good album tonight, and this pleases me very, very much. "Taking the Long Way" was, without question, one of the best collections of songs in recent memory. I really like Corinne Bailey Rae's album, too, and that could have emerged as a winner, but that would have been the only other choice that wouldn't have bothered me (like everyone is lining up to hear my opinion about it!) I cannot believe that she lost to Carrie Underwood, but the good goes with the bad, I guess. And the Chicks' win was really the good.

I wrote a paper for a class last summer about the whole "ashamed the President is from Texas" comment, and the more I researched it, the more I realized how extremely judgmental our world is, and how hard it is to stand up for and articulate what you think - what an act of courage that can really be. Now, I realize that these are people who have put themselves in the public eye, and that brings with it an extra level of scrutiny, so it's silly to think that judgments and responses won't happen. But the level that it happened, and the hatred and craziness that people spewed over it was just out of line. It was fascinating to read about so much polarization in an industry that is about entertainment on the surface, but it's also clear that our music reflects our cultural identities too, to a point.

I've grown up around country music and bluegrass. I know my Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. But what I've been struck by since the relatively benign days of Joe Diffie and George Strait (who I would go see live, in a heartbeat, and whose songs I do know by heart) is a turning tide of anger and misogyny, or women projecting the persona of a simpleton or a manhater. It's weird. I can't stand Toby Keith, and his comments about the Chicks were really just gross. The worst part about it was how one statement erased all the love for an act that had brought listeners back to a genre that could be considered to be aging poorly, and turned it into a family rift, with them not even allowed on the back porch. Weird.

Anyway, I'm really happy for them. I know they're celebrities, and they're not suffering in any way material, but I saw "Shut up and Sing", the documentary about their experience, and it made them come alive for me as very cool and normally flawed women who were actually pretty torn up about this, and at times, very scared. I recommend the film because it was quite a good character study in its own right, even if you've never given a crap about the Dixie Chicks. It's out on DVD on February 20th.

Meet Virginia

This is the first post brought to you by my new, totally very fun, articulation-stealing MacBook Pro. Are the words sort of glowing at you off the page? Was it completely riveting from "This"? No? Go have a drink, honey, and come back and answer those questions in a little bit, and we'll see if they change any.

I've wanted this machine for quite some time. Part of my conversion over the past few years from normal, technology-neutral person to raging, hardcore computer/photography/design geek has involved close acquaintance with the kingdom of Jobs and all the toys that go along with it. Let's face it, the people in the Pumas and the way cooler glasses than yours on his marketing team deserve many, many raises, because please - suck people in much? "Have your finger on the pulse" much? Sheep, we're all sheep. I'm a perfect target, as a completely visually-driven person, and an abstract thinker on top of that. So the pretty, pretty PICTURES and sensible directions and shapes that emit from the monitor and tell you what to do next are like candy...seriously.

Plus when I go to conferences and to other places where the cool kids hang out, they all have them, and what meaning would my life have if I wasn't trying to keep up with the baby Joneses?

Lots, but I still wanted the computer, because my glasses were lonely.

Her name is Virginia, by the way, because for some reason I felt like giving her a name. In this case, it's a shout-out to Virginia Woolf, and her statement in the book of a similar name that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write," what she specified as fiction but I take liberties with that, of course. Since I wrote that ill-advised short story in freshman year about me and John Taylor on Ibiza, I've stuck to nonfiction and poetry exclusively, because it's seemed somehow less easier to embarrass myself with the truth, no matter how unfortunate it might have seemed as well from time to time. The "V" comes in handy for the whole "V-Day" celebration in February, and, well, the name just fits. I don't have my photo software set up yet, or no doubt there would be gratuitous photos of this new computer, but that'll have to wait.

I can do so much more with photos with this computer, and since I already need her to earn her keep, I'm off on a quest to get paid for some words and pictures this year, so there is much work to be done. For now, though, it's just all kinds of fun.

Sad

Anyone who's hating on Anna Nicole today should think twice, because first of all, like easy targets much? And second of all, some people are just dealt an odd, sad, hand that they can just never get out from under. The only difference between her and a lot of the other goofballs who seek that kind of fame is that her body and mind really couldn't let go of the chemicals, or the abuse she heaped upon them. Somebody ought to make a film reel of her outtakes for Britney Spears. It's sad to have so much materially and still be so lost.

As Wendy says, she hopes wherever she is, she gets to eat ribs. And I also hope a guardian angel disguised as a human being steps in to take care of her little girl. She could be the real loser here.

Life can be so, so strange.

February

I know that I'm not supposed to consider Wikipedia a true research tool, because of the fact that it can be written or edited by anyone with an ax to grind about the subject of a particular entry, or someone who just happens to be stoned and tired of watching Spongebob who decides to screw around with Web  content instead. However, I just can't resist statements like this one in the February entry. 

"January and February were the last two months to be added to the Roman calendar, since the Romans originally considered winter a monthless period. They were added by Numa Pompilius about 700 BC. February remained the last month of the calendar year until the time of the decemvirs (c. 450 BC), when it became the second month. At certain intervals Roman priests inserted an intercalary month, Intercalaris, after February to realign the year with the seasons. See from Roman to Julian. Thereafter, it remained the second month of the calendar year, meaning the order that months are displayed (January, February, March, …, December) within a year-at-a-glance calendar. Even during the Middle Ages, when the numbered Anno Domini year began on March 25 or December 25, February continued to be the second month whenever all twelve months were displayed in order."

Did Roman priests have year-at-a-glance calendars? Did their administrative assistants order them from the ancient Staples catalog? And the "monthless period" bit is pretty cool too. Or maybe I'm just bored. That said, here's what I've done with February so far:

*Fallen gracelessly on ice while yapping mercilessly into my friend Jeremy's ear about a confluence of things, primary among them happy hour, dating, and disabilities. That's a power trio. Replacement ccrapp ell phone went skidding across the ice mid-sentence, yet I recovered it and continued yapping with nary a glitch. Back still hurts.
*Acquired frozen feet and hands from sudden plummet in temperatures, which do not warm up indoors either. Resigned to this fate until April.
*Forgotten to mail several things, some with horrifying results, due to apparent phobia of approaching any United States Post Office.
*Utilized this horrifying machine at the gym due to cancellation of yoga class due to concurrent cancellation of county schools due to concurrent LACK OF ANY APPRECIABLE SNOW ON ROADWAYS OR SIDEWALKS. Therefore, blame County Superintendent of Schools or appropriate Snow Day Decider lackey for aggravation of chronic back injury initially aggravated in fall on ice. (Please see Asterisk #1 above, and note how, as Chief Seattle once said about way more important issues, all things are indeed connected in this web of life.)
*Saw The Painted Veil. Dug it. I think I would like to go to China someday.
*Superbowl experience was thus: Ate approximately one pound of chili cheese dip. Watched Prince's halftime show. Found do-rag oddly appealing. Paid minimal attention to game. Ate piece of roast beef sub.
*Showed clip of "Say Anything" to underscore career development concept. Zero out of twelve other people in the room had seen film. No one recognized John Cusack. Died inside.
*Did not realize that it was National Hot Breakfast Month AND Bake for Family Fun Month too. Bloghorrea NYC did, though.
*Relied on this man to help me learn how to load 4x5 film. Thank God for the Internet, sometimes. I mean really.
*Realized that shooting with said film and assorted equipment is going to bankrupt me posthaste.
*Downloaded extensive amounts of music here. Timesucker, glorious timesucker.
*Signed onto the podcasting team for Blogher Business and also registered for South by Southwest Interactive.   NYC! Austin! Yay! March will be very techie and a lot of fun. And maybe I'll thaw out a little by then.
*Finally, there were more photos this week. Here are a few.

Namaste

I recently started back to yoga, so it makes me way happy that Eden  has a new installment posted at Yogabeans. So funny.

I'm doing Pilates also, in which the teacher instructs us, while lying on our backs, to "engage our powerhouse", which it turns out is the "abdominal quadrant" (I'm all, "Four sides? Of what? Sorry. My Chicken McNugget habit has shot my quadrant to hell"), and then, to "SHINE our flashlight to the ceiling". This involves doing exactly what it sounds like it might. I can only be grateful that I'm in the class alone, without anyone I can look at and lose my shit entirely, because as it was I was having a hard time not LOL'ing and WTF'ing all by myself. You know, cause I love to speak and laugh in acronyms. Ergo, IBID, op cit, and all that jazz.

Anyway, the instructor tells us to shine our flashlight, though, in that earnest instructor tone that indicates it is a completely normal turn of phrase that no one should laugh at, and that it totally makes sense to refer to one's pelvic region as one's flashlight. So I'm fine with it. So fine, in fact, that I raced back to my office to share this discovery with my coworkers, one of whom indicated that her flashlight had burned out long ago, and another of my dearest friends who currently sings "This Little Light of Mine" frequently when he sees me coming down the hall. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine - and give Pilates a try. I'm glad I did.

And now vicariously we love you.

Conversation with my mother this morning (way too early, as I need to be in a room, teaching other human beings with actual words and ideas and concepts, every Monday morning at 9 a.m. Funny ha-ha much? Yeah, I think so too. And so do they, I think. Dude, I could never teach high school. 7 a.m.! It starts at 7 a.m.!)

Me: Mumbles random gratuitous comment about a bodily function, mostly to self.
Mom: Oh! Are you talking about my little friend in the cartoon? Mr. Who?
Me: Are you serious? Your little friend? Are you referring to Mr. Hankey?
Mom: Oh right! Mr. Hankey! I just love those little guys.Hahaha!

I'm not sure my mother is the demographic Matt Stone and Trey Parker are banking on, but things are just that insane around here and also she may represent an untapped market. And also again, Matt and Trey do not, nor will they ever, have a MySpace page, at topic which appears to dredge up more conviction than many political issues. I mean, I thought this was a good idea already, but this clinches it: Matt and Trey for President.

The rest is still unwritten

I was accepted into an advanced personal essay class that started this past Saturday, here. It's taught by Bill O'Sullivan, who is an editor at this magazine. I've been so focused on writing for the web that I'm excited to actually sit down in a room with paper and pens and other people who are telling stories - in this case their own, which is always pretty interesting.

It costs too much money and interferes with my photography, and also gives me one less excuse to sleep more than I ought to on the weekends, but I've been waiting to take Bill's class for years and could never seem to fit it into my schedule, so when I could I submitted a sample and there I am. And from the first story out of someone's mouth during the introductions, I knew why I was there. The woman's classmate the last time she took the workshop was a woman who had cancer, and wrote about it. She died last month, and at her funeral, she made her ashes available for anyone who wanted to take her on a trip. This classmate took her to India, and scattered her ashes in the Ganges, and when I heard this story, I knew that if I got nothing else out of this span of eight Saturdays, I had a human being I'd never met to keep in my heart, so that was worth the drive in.

The upshot is that I've got to start working on essay-type things again, which is quite necessary if I want to move forward in the way that I'd like to. You can find my most recent piece (that I realize isn't organized enough to be workshopped in its current form, but that wasn't the point of it) here, on the Word Salad site that's been sadly neglected in recent months. I originally envisioned that as the spot for more personal writing, although I guess all of this is pretty personal when it comes down to it, hmm? So we'll see how well it works, but I'm going to try to be better about updating it, so stop on by if you'd like.

YouTube So Crazy

I took the "Bride's Hair Disaster" bit over to Blogher,  where you can learn along with me that YouTube is gaining even more popularity as a possible step to...video camera stardom?

Check out the post and let me know what you think, if you're so inclined.

For Real

So the Love God's Way thing is allegedly a hoax.   The argument that it's "perfect satire" can indeed be made, but I get lost at the part where if people aren't made aware of this, they're left wounded by another example of what they perceive as the world's unending cruelty. And I really hope the misspellings on the Love God's Way site were part of the joke, otherwise I just really don't know what to say to this guy.

Ya heard. I'm a big baby.

And speaking of hoaxes, so is this, which was apparently filmed on this woman's wedding day, but was staged nonetheless according to most reports. I sent it to my sister, who's getting married in July, with the news that if things get this deep, I'm off the train.

Speak

I've had a ferocious case of writer's block lately, but Molly Ivins died today, which has bummed me out unexpectedly hard. Molly was one of the writers I gravitated to during the Bush/Gore debacle, and even before was someone I read when I was out in Ohio, cut off from my daily Post fix and not so much on the Internet yet. She had fought inflammatory breast cancer since 1999, which she was saying almost five years ago "is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that."

There is nothing I like better than a person who uses humor reflexively in response to both joy and pain, and I know firsthand how necessary it is for those of us who dwell in this odd strata to do this. But I also know how it can catch up with you, until it's just you and a mirror or an unexpected psychotic break in the car during the commute, (or more helpfully, in the shower, where drivers in taller cars than yours can't look down and see you, all runny nose and busted up makeup) and all the pain comes welling up from nowhere and you have to let it out.

Or maybe you just let it out by writing things like this, which she did, four days before she died.

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single   one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying   to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and   demanding, “Stop it, now!”

The Texas Observer has many more columns linked here, but God almighty, if that's the last published piece she wrote before she died, I give more than my usual thanks for the First Amendment, and just say "how appropriate." And also, "Brava, Molly." It's good news that sometimes a legacy does fit the grace and contribution made during a notable lifetime. And I'll selfishly take this as a message today - an imperative, perhaps, to keep doing what I do, which is to say and write what I'm thinking, because I can, on a much less public and much less important stage than she commanded from the pulpits of Texas and national politics and media. Lately I've been feeling a bit more like a bull in a china shop than usual, which is to say a lot. I seem to be excessively willing to state my feelings about matters of principle, again, because I can, but also because it seems so important and so irresponsible not to. I'm surrounded so often by "perhaps" and "maybe" and "let me get back to you" and "maybe we just need to TWEAK it a little" and "Oh, that's not in the plan" in my daily life, and it's slowly driving me crazy.  I find myself apologizing for being outspoken and opinionated, which I couldn't help any more at this point than the color of my eyes or my lefthandedness. I don't know how, and yet when I get those looks that tell me I'm being difficult, or I should just "let it alone," I buy it more often than I should, even when I know I'm selling out at the same time.

Molly Ivins, all 6 feet plus of her, did not do this, when she called Bush "Shrub" or worked barefoot and swore at the New York Times until they sent her back to Texas.  And Maureen Dowd, who calls him lots of other things, is quite fresh in my mind because I just got through another couple chapters of her book in the bathtub. The book is called "Are Men Necessary", and goes at this central question from many an interesting angle, not all as inflammatory as one might expect. I told a male friend of mine this weekend that I was reading it, and he managed to say, "Uh, I think we are."  So here are these women going for it, putting their words OUT THERE, and I'm worried about writer's block because I'm not sure I have anything of value to say, and feel guilty for telling the guy in the cafeteria that the veggie soup has so much salt in it I can feel my blood pressure skyrocketing just holding the container.

Most of Molly's obits through Google News are calling her a "liberal columnist", a title she didn't reject:

"Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about being born liberal — fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed."

One of the things Maureen Dowd quotes in her book is that the root of "liberal" is the Latin "liber", meaning "free", asking, "Isn't that what we're supposed to be about anyway?" In the context of country and government, that's what I understand, and as a woman getting older in the United States, with all the good stuff and the challenges that represents, I'd say it's what I'm learning to be about on a personal level more every year, damn the consequences. If it weren't for my access to voices like Molly Ivins, I wouldn't have learned to expect it, or to aspire to it, or, at this point, to call myself out when I'm sabotaging it. So for that I'm really grateful,  because the expectations and aspirations more or less keep me - and a lot of you, I'd imagine, too - going.

Reading this, I wish I'd gone to her house for dinner, and am reminded that it's important to hang out with people, even at a distance, who can teach you a thing or seven and inspire you at the same time. When her editor's son was born, she gave him three books. He writes,

"In her inimitable way, she captured the spirit of each in one-sentence inscriptions. In "Alice in Wonderland," she offered, "Here's to six impossible things before breakfast." For "The Wind in the Willows," it was, "May you have Toad's zest for life." And in "The Little Prince," she wrote, "May your heart always see clearly."

Like the Little Prince, Molly Ivins has left us for a journey of her own. But while she was here, her heart never failed to see clear and true -- and for that, we can all be grateful."