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How I Use Pinterest in My Yoga Practice (And How It Can Help You Connect With Your Passions, Too)

2012-02-22T23:41:00.000-05:00

Source: shareitfitness.files.wordpress.com via Andrea on Pinterest

Pinterest has inspired me to incorporate surfboards into my practice! Haha, no. Pinterest is the fastest-growing social media site ever. Which you know because you're on it! Everyone is on it. But not everyone knows quite what to "do" with it (how many followers do you have with 0 pins and 0 likes?)

Pinterest is the Internet's virtual pinboard, with everyone tacking up--"pinning"--their interests. It's completely photo-based, lending itself to pretty photos of "things": things to buy, things to cook, places to visit. It looks like a shopping list for your dream shopping spree, which can leave people who aren't jazzed about finding the exact right lilac-and-honey-themed centerpiece for their table, or redoing the bathtub in spanish tile at a loss for how to use the site for themselves.

There is a joke somewhere in here about how Pinterest = Goop, and I will get back to you just as soon as I've worked out that punchline.

Anyway, I'm not a redecorator, or a wedding-planner, and although I do pin occasional outfit ideas, I don't get really excited about pinning "things I want to buy" because it has the ability to become the graveyard of "things I'll never be able to afford."

BUT I have found a ton of success using Pinterest to inspire my yoga practice.

Whenever I log on to Pinterest, I'll scan my home page of people I follow and what they've repinned, decide it's too full of orgiastic cupcakes and now I'm hungry, and then either click on the Fitness tab or do a search for "yoga."

The Fitness tab--under "Everything" on your header--is a treasure trove of motivational macros:

Source: s3.amazonaws.com via Lola on Pinterest

There's a ton of motivational stuff: "fit" photos, motivational quotes, complete workout circuit sheets, even healthy recipes. It CAN get a little thinspirationy at times, especially with all the "oh, she's soooo skinny I want those collar bones!" captioning, and while I get that some people will post a photo of a celeb and say "I want her body" and that is a thing people say, it just weirds me out because even when I loathed my body I always wanted my own body, just better-looking.

What I love to do is do a search for "yoga." Then I get to see what everyone else like me on Pinterest is looking at, and talking about. I pin some stuff if it's particularly inspiring, or if it's a pose that I'm working towards, I'll pin it so it inspires me and reminds me what my goal is, onto my Yoga Life Pinboard.

I've found some great yoga blog posts through Pinterest. Everybody has the same fear about falling on their face in crow! And I've found some great 'Pinners to follow who also pin yoga stuff, so I can keep getting more and more new ideas.

But what I really love is just to look at pictures of people in the poses. When I'm on the treadmill, or when I was lifting weights, I liked to check myself out in the mirror. I know it's just supposed to be for "checking your form," but I guess I'm a narcissist! I was a kid who spent a good deal of her time on the couch or at a desk, so it still amazes me what my now-active body is doing. I'm running! My ponytail is flying in the breeze! These are my muscles!

You don't get that in yoga, there are never any mirrors. Because it's not about the form. It's not about what you look like, it's about how a pose feels, and I get that and respect it. But scrolling the photos of people in even the simplest poses, imagining that my body makes similar lines, I feel something I've felt so rarely in my life: graceful.

I also love to pin photos of people in the hard twisty poses or the inversions that I've gotten down. It reminds me how much I've achieved by being dedicated, and it motivates me even more to go back to the mat to have new "I did this" poses to pin.

So I guess the moral is that I've found a way to make yoga and Pinterest competitive. Ha! Is there a medal or some kind of award for that?

But really, Pinterest has deepened my commitment to my yoga practice. It has given me a new source of inspiration, and it's a fantastic tool to access a broader yoga community. And I think my Pinterest philosophy can help anyone navigate this new social network: follow your passions. In every other social network, we're worried about what other people will Like or Retweet. But Pinterest works best when you use it completely selfishly.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips: Helping Ladies LIke Me Look Grown-Up and Put Together

2012-02-22T20:56:00.000-05:00

I am terrible at many things. Like Calculus (only subject I ever almost failed. If I had been better at it I might be splitting atoms right now instead of talking about Journey songs). Pushups. Basketball. Also chess, but that's because it's impossible for me to go about anything in a roundabout way.

I am also terrible at painting my fingernails. Terrible with both hands! I always end up looking like I used a paint roller to do it while I was having some kind of seizure. So I always leave them bare. But I read so many fashion magazines that I feel like I'm not completely put together. Like, outfit-minus-one. It's the one thing I'm bad at that I have a little bit of a complex about (well, the Calculus too, but only sometimes). Are grown-up put-together ladies looking at my fingers and saying, "oh the outfit looked so good but...missed it by an inch"?

Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Strips let me live like a grown-up.

These are the things that look like stickers. They should be harder to manage, right? They're not tricky at all. Practically idiot-proof: even I can make them look great.

Image via SallyHansen.com

For starters, every thing you need comes in the box: cuticle stick, three-way nail file/buffer, 16 strips. And easy-to follow instructions: they walk you through all the prep work so that the strip will stick correctly.

The strips come in different sizes, so you pick the one that fits your nail the best. They're sealed in two packs of eight strips each, so there are plenty of sizes to choose from. Then all you do is peel off the backing, put it on your fingernail, stretch it out a little and press it down, and file off the excess.

Plus there's no dry time so you don't have to worry about smudging them. It's so fast and easy I did a touch-up at the last minute on my way in to work in the morning.

Plus, here are some tricks I've figured out:

If you've got shorter nails, you'll be tearing off enough "excess" from each nail to be able to use it to do another nail, and get two out of each strip. Which gives you more than enough to do all ten fingers in one pack, so you'll split a $10 box into two uses.
If you run out of the smaller ones, use a bigger one and use the sharp edge of the cuticle stick to take off the excess around the edges.
They don't chip for days, but when they do you can sometimes fill in the chip with regular nail polish. I made the butterfly pattern last longer by filling gaps in with white polish.

The downside is, if you don't get them pressed down reallllly well at the base, there's a chance you could be running your fingers through your hair and get a hair stuck under the nail strip and shivers down your SPINE. Get them securely sealed down! Also, since the strips are made with polish, once you expose them to the air you have to use them or throw them out, so you can't open the second 8-pack and keep going to it for re-dos. Which, $10 is less than a manicure, but more than my previous $0 fingernail polish budget, so. But, they come off easily enough with polish, so it's not like it's that difficult to change up the look.

And every single day I had them on, at least one person grabbed my hand wanting a closer look. They are foolproof and amazing. And they come in regular nail polish shades as well as crazy patterns, so I can use them for normal looks and wild ones, and look like an adult. Finally!

Andrea is not paid to endorse any of the products in this post.

Judge Me: I Am the Crazy Lady With Arbitrary Dating "Rules"

2012-02-21T21:11:00.003-05:00

A while back I completely blew off a one-word text from a guy I have every reason to think is a decent human being. I rationalized it by telling myself that "sup?" does not a conversation make. Since this is a guy I don't really know too well, I'm pretty certain that's that. So now I'm a huge jerk! And the truth is, if he did text me again? There's no way I'd answer, since who keeps after a jerk who blows them off?

Because I have arbitrary dating rules.
Yes! Men, the very real chance that you could say something innocuous and suddenly be out of luck actually does exist! And I'm like the president of that or something. I guess I'm confessing this because if I end up all alone and die at the age of 90 in my apartment and am found three days later half eaten by wild dogs, I'd like there to be at least some explanation as to why beyond, "must have been a huge lady-juicebox!" We all have things we look for and try to avoid when we're dating, but this is beyond realizing you don't like someone: this is the mental system I use to vet guys I actually like. A lot, in some cases. I have Big Red Flags that are deal-breakers, and what makes the situation so pernicious is that to my logical mind all of them make perfectly rational sense.

For starters, I blow off guys who don't make all the moves initially because I've had so many that want nothing more than to be dragged by the hand through their lives. At points I was given the job of being the sole emotionally functional member of a two-person relationship, of being the emotional wherewithal for two grown-up people, or of dragging another person out of a depression single-handedly, a task I failed at spectacularly, not being able to rescue two drowning people at the same time. I know! Unfair to compare the two. Obviously, the two poles here are far from each other. But if you can't pick a restaurant then my mind is afraid it'll have to be me taking care of everything, and everyone, all the time. It's full-on Sookie-Stackhouse's-fairy-godmother "he will steal your light!!"- style panic.

Same goes for any guy who says he's "super tight with my family" or "family's so important to me." I pass over those profiles or completely reject those matches when I'm online. Some guys have been super-close to their families, so much so that they would not even entertain for a second that I have a perfectly good reason for not being in contact with mine. Not that I brought it up, but it became a weight they could hold over my head when they wanted to make me feel smaller than them. I've found the "family is part of you" crowd doesn't always understand that "so is a tumor."

I am particularly terrified of the ones who say "I want a wife" or "I feel like I should be married" or "I thought I'd be married by now." They usually have a perfectly-set-up life that they would like to just drop a woman into, and it seems from the outside that any one will do. The problem is usually that I don't fit into the specific shape they're carved out for this imaginary woman. So they try to shove me into it as hard as they can. Sometimes with their fists.

Who wouldn't want to try to avoid that?

The thing is, I think I've come up with a test no one can pass.

So now what?

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Feminist Women On The Moon

2012-02-16T21:27:00.003-05:00

Everyone, I think it's time we got out. When Planned Parenthood (and also Nancy Pelosi) tweeted that photo of a sausage fest testifying to congress about women's rights to have control over their own bodies, I was so speechless with rage I almost clawed my own eyes out. Self harm! It's no good. Look, we've tried. We marched, we yelled, we begged we pleaded, we cajoled and we patiently explained. And after a hundred years a group of men sit in front of the body that will determine whether women have a right to take medicine, and everybody's all, "U mad?"

I think it's time to put that plan into action...you know, the one we were talking about the last time we were drinking whiskey and braiding each other's hair? Let's find whatever moon colony plans Newt Gingrich has been able to work on and steal them to build our own feminists-only moonbase.

I acknowledge how Ayn Rand/John Galt-y this plan is. But read what I wrote up there in the beginning. Self harm! A hundred years and we're back outside banging on the doors? And nobody can even conceive how that might be a problem? We need to just gather our bats and gloves--and uteri since that's all anybody cares about ever!--and get out of Dodge.

We could probably pull off Operation Moonbase in a year, tops. I mean, a lot of us are women, so none of us will be so distracted by the existence of a member of the opposite sex that we become useless for several hours a day.

We'll have to remember to stockpile all the contraceptives that no one in America will have access to soon enough. How great is it going to be when there are no starving or abandoned children, or kids who are abused or neglected by parents who didn't want them, since we'll be able to determine the size of our families and have kids when we can provide them the great financially-secure life they deserve! Ironically, if we can get all that contraband birth control that no one will be allowed to use in America anymore, we'll have so few abortions on the moon!

A world made up of Feminists! Everyone will get equal pay for equal work! It'll be a seed-based economy, but still.

Aren't you excited to wear all of the skimpy dresses?? No one will interpret our style of dress as a consent to sexual activity! No one will be shouting at us that we should smile, so the moon-streets will be pretty quiet....that might be a little weird at first. But maybe we could bring back the polite-nod-and-hello? You know, since eye contact with a stranger will no longer be a binding contract to sleep with someone?

We're going to have to learn how to turn seeds into alcohol, too, because I think the amount we'd need would be too heavy for our spaceship. Now we can drink, and if someone does a bad thing to us, it will be because they did a bad thing and not because we had a sangria!

A person can even do the gender-neutral pronouns without people thinking ze's pretentious!

I think this would work out for everyone. Everyone left in America can still pretend that women are sub-humanoid children who neither have nor desire any opinions or rights. And look, no one has to come if they don't want to; and no hard feelings. Contrary to popular myth, Feminism is actually about doing the opposite of force people to do things that aren't right for them.

Although: misogynists will have to find another type of body as a battlefield to fight their culture wars upon...maybe we should take all the puppies, just to be safe?

The moon, kids, we should go to the moon.

Or France.

Happy Valentines Day! Facebook Wants You To Die Alone

2012-02-13T14:22:00.000-05:00

Have you checked your Facebook messages today? Oh you have? Have you checked the OTHER messages today? You know, the secret ones that Facebook doesn't give you alerts for?

Over a year ago, Facebook changed the messages function, sorting all incoming messages and sending them to one of two inboxes: those they determine are "meaningful," like messages from people you're already friends with or pages with whom you interact a lot, go in the main inbox and you get an alert. Messages from people you aren't friends with or don't interact with as much get thrown into a bottomless void they've labeled "Other." And you don't get an alert. Which, on the surface, seems like a decent idea. Who cares that the 1000-miles-away-museum you Liked after vacation last year is having a canned food drive?

But two things suck about this: One, that to my knowledge Facebook didn't bother to let people know that their messages were being sorted this way. Two, that not only can you not change the sorting preferences so that more messages go into the main box, but you can't even automatically display the "Other" submailbox in your home screen. Which, since you don't get alerts that you have a new message in a box you can't see, means that you have to remind yourself to physically go looking for possible messages whenever you log onto Facebook.

So, what did you find when you checked out your hidden messages? Anything good? Because I found a BOY.

Let me tell you about this boy. I met this boy while I was hosting a singles event for my station (you know, the ones where I'm not supposed to meet boys because other girls have paid to meet the boys and they already let me eat the buffet so come on). We were playing an icebreaker game where people had to name the movie from a screen grab of a chick flick. And this boy--who was tall! and adorable!--got every single one of them right. Even The Devil Wears Prada. Even The Princess Bride. Even The Craft!!! People, this boy. And then we got to talking and he had a good job and did not live with his mother and was very funny, and eventually he said, great to meet you I'll look you up on Facebook.

And I'll bet you know how this story goes.

This boy who I had written off as Cute-But-Oh-Well-He-Never-Messaged-Me, this boy who I thought I had never heard from, was hiding in my Other Messages Box the whole time! With, might I add, the world's most perfect introductory message! I'll just copy and paste the whole thing for you and I'm sure he won't mind since my point is to let you marvel at its perfection:

hey, just no poking and we should be ok. Was nice meeting you earlier. Would have chatted longer but didn't want to keep you from your job. If you're interested i wouldn't mind meeting up, what are you up to on sunday?

Dumb joke to break the ice (forgivable in light of the rest!). Didn't want to keep you from your job (!). Why don't we meet up ON A SPECIFIC DAY OF THE WEEK (!!!!). Now this is how you talk to A Lady.

I mean, this is Men Of Earth Here Is Your Teacher level perfection right here.

And of course it's 8 months later and I am now the jerk who never responded, and he moved to New York. New York! As if this boy could not get any more perfect. And Facebook wants me to die alone. Because I don't already have enough problems. Happy Valentines Day!

Image via Slate.

If You Only See One Silent Movie This Year, See it With a Bunch of Olds Who Don't Give a Crap About What Anyone Thinks

2012-02-05T13:57:00.000-05:00

We all know about The Artist by now, yeah? The one that keeps winning awards everywhere? The one everyone keeps assuming you've seen but you actually haven't because you're embarrassed to admit (even to yourself) that you're one of those Philistines who's still going "gah, a silent film?" That one. Go see it. It's fantastic! It's great and funny and clever and awesome. It's even more awesome surounded by the elderly in the middle of the afternoon.

I have this weird affection for going to movies in the middle of the day, at an independent theater that's largely membership-based and has cheap popcorn, so I usually find myself the youngest person in the semi-crowded theater by about 40 years. It's the Pre-Early-Bird Special Sweet Spot. This came in very handy when I saw Midnight in Paris and everyone was "quietly whispering to each other (ahem)" the names of all the historical figures that kept popping up. People chatter during movies anyway, loudly or not; sometimes it's quirky and interesting to have a side commentary rolling, and when it's not the loudness of the movie will usually drown it out.

There is no such luck with the soundtrack of The Artist.
It's silent in that there's no dialog, and what music there is isn't ramped up to the Michael Bay Setting, so you can hear whatever's going on around you. I was worried I was eating my popcorn too loud, but I needn't have been! I doubt from the volume of the "whispers" they would have head me anyway. And the old ladies were indeed whispering to each other, beacuse they all had crushes on the male lead.

For 1 hour and 40 minutes, I got a running list of all the sexual acts these women wanted to perform on Jean Dujardin. Ahem.

NOW: I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't thinking up things I could do with each of his eyebrows separately (and I was not the only one because I heard that seconded and third-ed), but first of all I kept it to myself and second it is nowhere near, "If I ever met him it would be hard not to pull down his pants and [...and here I am undone by my Catholic shame. Sorry!]." WHAT! I guess the cane wouldn't really get in your way since you're only like 4 feet tall, but girl, I hope you do not think that conversation was just between you and your friend. They were three rows away. And also, I should point out that that's a little rapey.

One woman a little closer was reminded of Douglas Fairbanks. Do you know all the things she fantasized about doing with Douglas Fairbanks when she was a teenager? No? Because I do!

Also, some euphemisms have changed over the past 50 or so years. I had to look some stuff up later. Still not sure one of them wasn't talking about the dog...

I don't know whether it was nostalgia for the silents, or Douglas Fairbanks, or the particular je ne sais quoi of a Frenchman (it was probably the eyebrows, the more I think about it), but I have never heard an audience like this before. And I've seen Shame. It was a little uncomfortable at first, but once they really got rolling it was cukoo-bananas-awesome. It kind of puts the furor over the posters for Dujardin's upcoming film in a bit of an ironic context, doesn't it?

If you're going to see The Artist, I highly recommend driving out to an older neighborhood and catching a matinee. It won't be a silent film.

Dear My Future Children: Here's the Talk You'll Get About Drugs

2012-01-31T21:47:00.000-05:00

Hey kids! Greetings from the past--the probably distant past. There's been a lot of talk lately among the other grownups at work about lying to their kids. Probably since it was recently the holidays and you know how people get all tore up about the ethics of Elf on the Shelf. Anyway, the conversation always wanders over into drugs and alcohol territory, and what they'll tell their kids when they ask what their parents did. And that's when your old ma gets to put on her smug face--a face you know well!

You see, your mom is thrilled that she finally has an advantage to being a turbo dorkasaurus all those years. I can still have the moral high ground and never have to worry about lying to you at all.
That's right, I did NOTHING. I swear on my National Honor Society pin I was the cleanest teen you've ever seen. I didn't drink until college and even then I didn't get drunk. I didn't smoke anything until I was practically old by your standards (25!). And I didn't turn out to be a square! I know you think I'm tragically uncool, but let me assure you independent sources have verified my coolness. I rock now. But back when I was your age I was a nerdbot whose idea of fun was driving around making movies with her friends and getting cappucinos at the Wawa late at night with the cops. We never did anything illegal except break a few minor traffic laws and it was still the funnest. So my hypocrisy vis-a-vis The Drugs is not an argument you'll get to have with me. Being my kids, though, you're scarily creative, so I'm sure you'll find something else to complain about.

And look, it's not like you're going to be sheltered from the world of adult recreation. You've already got a realistic, functional relationship with alcohol. Our unofficaial family whiffleball team is called the Irish Livers and mom always gets to take her "special water bottle" deep into center field because none of us are good at sports anyway. You'll know wine varietals before you can tie your shoes, and one of your first words was "reserve." By the time you're old enough for us to have this talk, you'll have plenty of experience around grownups who drink and don't get crazy.

I should note that, speaking of Irish Livers, you're welcome for that genetic advantage, should you decide to party in college. Best to keep it to yourself, though, and just laugh at your obliterated friends. I am sorry you're always the one holding their hair and carrying them home though.

And I'm not worried about the hard drugs, because after enough Take Your Child to Work Days and tagging-along-with-mom to concert broadcast nights you'll have seen people high on every conceivable substance. And you will have obviously gleaned, as you are my children, that people who are on stuff are jerks, and you will swear to never be That Guy because fingers crossed I raised you half right. I don't intend to lie to you about what's going on, even when it's within our own little family circle. "Mom, why was Uncle [idk, Jerry?] so weird all night?" "Well hon, he did a mountain of cocaine before he came over here and that's why he was a huge douchebag all night." You'll never be in any danger, but you won't be sheltered from the age-appropriate truth either.

That leaves pot, which you might think is cool but I have GOT YOU THERE! You may think you'll have this one over on me since it's basically legal (or maybe it's even legal in the future?) and we really don't think it's that bad for you in this house. But here you are thwarted by your own biology: you see, children, you have my genes and it's god's honest truth that we are one of those few people who you learn about in school where pot makes them SAD. Like, saaaaaaad sad. Like sobbing in the corner harshing everyone else's mellow no one will even pass it to you anymore SAD. Weeping over Flavor of Love reruns because Love Is A Sham; trust me on this one. Or don't! I don't even feel like trying to convince you not to smoke pot because the perfect reason not to is lurking like a time bomb in your DNA. I'm laughing back here in the past right now, and wearing my smug face again.

My smug face will be even more uproarious if this backfires on me, but I'm trusting biology on this one: you will suck at pot.

You can hate me for that one. I used to hate me for that one because I didn't get to be cool like all the other kids. But now I love it! Because I future love you, Future Kids. And you don't get to be cool like all the other kids, but you get to be good-looking because I intend to marry a smoking-hot dude so maybe that's fair?

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Stop Being Horrible Jerks to The Transphobic Girl Scout

2012-01-12T21:44:00.001-05:00

Dear Grownups of The Internet, such as you are: you're driving me crazy over a 14-year old girl. Because I agree with you but you are going about this the completely wrong way.

A pretty horrible video went viral a few days ago, but the thing has legs and it just won't stop. The message is undeniably awful. Taylor doesn't like that GSUSA includes trans girls. She argues that it creates a safety hazard, which is horrifying, because the only safety hazard I can see is the personal safety of trans girls among people who think the things in the video. She laments the death of "a place to be yourself and who you are, and not something you are not," which, ironically, is exactly the environment being created by letting both cis and transgendered children be what they are. She clearly doesn't understand that a trans girl IS A GIRL. Her video was co-opted by HonestGirlScouts.com, a bunch of horrible adults for whom the trans issue is tangential to their larger goal of hating Planned Parenthood and the UN(?) but, you make your bigoted hay while the sun shines, right? She calls for a boycott of Girl Scout Cookies to protest equality and inclusion, thus ensuring that cookie sales this year will be gangbusters in counter-protest. Every Girl Scout I see will be selling me as many boxes as all the money in my wallet will buy.

The reactions are shrill: Jezebel calling her "Stepford-esque." Gawker being, well, Gawker. But even Elephant Journal got snarky! The video is private now, presumably because of all the vitriol she suddenly found flying in her direction--surprise! All appropriate reactions if this were, say, an old lady ranting at a Tea Party rally that Obama wants to force everyone to have abortions so he can sell the stem cells to China.

But she is a child.

What she needs, and what will go a long way toward there being one less bigot, and maybe by ripple effect save the lives of transpeople, is a community of articulate and open-minded adults to take her under their wings, educate her on the nuances of gender, and empower her with the wherewithal to change her own mind. This is not your ordinary, closed-minded, run-of-the-mill bigot. I cannot allow myself to believe that her mind is totally closed off to change, because she is a child. She is obviously smart. She obviously thinks long and hard and logically about the things she feels. Her logic is so, so dangerously flawed, but she's capable of articulating it calmly and with intention. Which means she's probably capable of processing new information, once it's made available to her, to develop a more realistic view of transexuality. Basically, I'm pretty sure once she has a gender-studies class or two in college she'll look at this video and wish it had never happened. Because she is 14.

Do you remember when you were 14? I was kind of a jerk. I mean, I look back at some of the things I believed, some of the things I said (I had really weird ideas about affirmative action for absolutely no reason) and I want to crawl into a hole and die. But I'm looking back through eyes that have a much better understanding of the way the world really is--there are years and years of formal and informal study of sociological and gender theory rattling around in my brain. Those are valuable resources I didn't have when I was still a child. To my limited, simplistic, sheltered 14-year-old mind, the (horrifically incorrect!) argument that penis-equals-boy-end-of-story probably would have made perfectly logical sense. Because at that point in my life I didn't have the tools to see just how wrong I would have been. I feel like if someone can explain to this confused child what it's like to be a transgendered girl (which I make no claim to be able to do), the final piece of the puzzle would snap into place for her and she'd have a completely different view.

We always whine about how it's all screeching and Hitler accusations in the discourse today, and no one will bother to present a reasoned argument and have a reasonable discussion. Well, boom, we got it, terrifying as it may be. This young girl laid out her opinion and her reasoning behind it very clearly and very rationally. The reasoning is deeply flawed, and the conclusions terrible and dangerous for trans girls. But being reactionary is going to entrench those ideas and make them even more dangerous. The video is gone, the other side retreated, and now there will be no discussion. This could have been a great moment in gender-theory dialog, and we blew it by trolling a child.

Yes I disagree with every word this poor confused child said. Yes, it makes me want to buy All Of The Thin Mints now. But I'm going to continue to be a sister to every Girl Scout, even the bigots, even though like a sister would I will point out to them when they are dangerously wrong.

I may be a starry-eyed naif for believing in the power of a calm non-judgmental counterargument, but that's fine with me because every once in a while it works. I was having a conversation with an older aquaintence, whom I've heard say some pretty bigoted things. This person knows I disagree with those things, but we've never had the appropriate moment to have a full-blown discussion about it. We were talking about Dancing With the Stars and this person was saying how they were uncomfortable watching the season, probably wouldn't watch it at all, and started calling Chaz Bono "it." I immediately interrupted and calmly said, "He. He is the proper pronoun. I know it's confusing and if you want to have a conversation about the pronouns I'd be happy to help you out. But "it" isn't the right word." And that was the end. And apparently it was also the end of the DWTS boycott, because we talked about every episode of the season and I never herd the wrong pronoun again. In fact, we even talked about how much Chaz was improving. One piece of information slides into the right place, and click, the world looks different.

My point is, you really never know how much any person is capable of changing their mind until you give them an opportunity to do so. And you do that by talking, and not by shouting.

Yogadventures: Check Your Self Before You Wreck Yourself

2012-01-09T17:42:00.001-05:00

Yoga is now popular enough that there's a backlash. Hooray! (Remember how fun that was with agave nectar two summers ago?). The New York Times Magazine, home of such hits as: "Do Female Comedians Mean The End Of Manners?" and "You're Still Single Because You Aren't Worried Enough About Falling Down," is terrified that The Yoga Will Kill You. You will die in downward dog!

A recent article, "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body" focuses on the risks of bending and twisting, and injuries that can come from yoga. Hip replacements! Fractured ribs! Strokes! And, yes, it is all very scary. Even I clicked on it because obviously if I'm doing something that's going to kill me, I want to know about it. I might decide to go ahead and roll the dice on it, but hey, informed consent and all that.

Scary headline aside, the gist of the article is that doing yoga WRONG can harm you:

In one case, a male college student, after more than a year of doing yoga, decided to intensify his practice. He would sit upright on his heels in a kneeling position known as vajrasana for hours a day, chanting for world peace. Soon he was experiencing difficulty walking, running and climbing stairs.

Hours! Of course he hurt himself. There are also examples of people straining necks and backs by "throwing themselves into twists." What!

I'm no expert, but I'd hazard a guess that idea of yoga injuries is big news because we don't consider yoga a "real workout." And by "we," I mean that I bow to the divine light that is in all of us but you jerks know who you are. There's this notion out there that yoga isn't real work, and doesn't need an appropriate warm-up. We aren't so cavalier about other forms of exercise: we know that we need to take care of ourselves just as much as push ourselves or risk injury. Health clubs post signs all over the place reminding you to see a trainer if you want to try a new piece of equipment. Would you walk up to the 100-lb weights on your first day in the gym? And if you did, you fool, would you be surprised when your arm fell off?

Take the mention of the yoga pose out of that example above, and replace it with any other exercise: he ran on the treadmill for hours a day. He lifted weights for hours a day. He did jumping jacks for hours a day. See what I mean?

This quote from veteran yoga teacher Glenn Black sums up what's going on pretty nicely, I think:

“Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people. You can’t believe what’s going on — teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now. It has to do with their egos.”

Again, no expert, but if a yoga teacher ever tells you you "should be able to do something by now," you should throw a block at them. And then take your mat and leave, and probably call the yoga police. Because he's right, it's all the ego. It's what some of the other people in the article mean when they say it's not yoga that's hurting people. It's people hurting themselves because they feel obligated to push harder, farther, deeper, and they stop listening to their own bodies.

The only thing I've ever heard, in all of my yoga classes with all of my teachers at all of the different studios I've ever gone to, is exactly the opposite of that. One of my teachers likes to say, "find your edge." Meaning, first, that YOUR edge is different than everyone else's, and second, finding the edge implies not going over it. That doesn't mean that you'll never progress, because the edge is always moving: sure I can do splits now, and backbend all the way down a wall, but I didn't force my body into doing those things, and when I eventually discovered I could do them, it was almost a surprise.

I'll admit I'm guilty of being competitive with myself sometimes. I've been bummed that I couldn't get into one twisty pose or another that I was in the day before, so I've tried to get myself into it even though I knew I wasn't warmed up the same way (I'm sorry, elbows, lesson learned). I tried a handstand even though my arms don't straighten and I fell on my head. But I'm getting better: I know when I do handstand prep and I feel my arms go out to the side that I shouldn't try to do a full handstand. I was at a detox workshop this weekend for two hours and I was in direct sunlight and couldn't move my mat, and it was so intense that I thought I was gonna die a little bit. And you know what I did? I sat out an entire core section and jumped back in when my heart rate went down a little and my muscles relaxed, and I did not die, nor did anyone harangue me about not pushing myself hard enough. I listened to myself, just like the teacher told us all to do at the beginning of class. THAT is yoga.

Have fun out there and don't die. Especially don't die in deaf man's pose, it's not as fun as it looks.

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In Defense of The Neti: There are Scarier Ways To Get A Brain Amoeba

2011-12-23T20:04:00.000-05:00

The neti pot has been getting a lot of press lately, mostly from Health Department Warnings about it because three people got brain amoebas from using them and died horrifically. Brain amoebas! I always thought if my neti pot killed me it would be by me accidentally drowning myself. However, it's not the neti pot itself that gives people brain amoebas, it's the act of getting water up your nose if that water happens to already contain a brain amoeba.

SO! Absolutely use distilled or treated water in your neti pot. And still use it, unless you're too afraid, because it's awesome.

Because, turns out there are lots and lots of ways to get water up your nose! Here are some things to be afraid of:

1. Swimming.

2. Being told a really funny joke and while you're drinking water and shooting water out of your nose.

3. Washing your face too enthusiastically.

4. Getting hit in the face during a water-gun fight (Summer)/snowball fight (Winter).

5. Being a jerk at a bar and getting a drink thrown in your face.

6. Mishap with a detachable shower head.

7. Being a contestant on America's Next Top Model.

Where did the brain amoeba come from? When will it get its own horror franchise? Is this new? Is it global warming/smiting (depending upon your relationship to logic/god), or is it the beginning of the zombie apocalypse? And should we just wear nose plugs everywhere, forever?

Jimmy Kimmel Turned My Parents Into Hipsters

2011-12-23T19:31:00.000-05:00

So uploading videos of you giving your kids crap gifts is a thing now? Please. PLEASE. People, my parents are the hipsters of crap gifts: they were doing it WAY before it was cool. And man were they good at it--your half-eaten baloney sandwich is great and all, but, grasshopper, you have much to learn.

Not to say every gift was horrible--the stunningly out-of-left-field bagpipe chanter remains the Greatest Unasked-For Gift in history. But in our house Christmas was always a time of year for brilliant psychological warfare.

There's a fine line between a gag gift--haha an old banana!--and a gift that says, in no uncertain terms, "we neither know you as a person nor do we care to, and we don't think money would have expressed that as clearly."

The trick to crap gifts is to really stick the landing--never, ever admit that what you've given is in any way less than the perfect gift. Tell your dissappointed recipient that they just don't know how much they actually do like it. Double down if need be: how shrilly can you scream that your ungrateful child has ruined christmas by hating the oversized sweater in the color she's loathed since childhood?

Have you been having a hard time adjusting to college because we forbade you from majoring in theater, and so you feel like the only thing that really made you happy is forever beyond your reach? Here's a commemoration of your last stage role ever, from a year ago, in ceramic doll form! Stop crying.

Your children will eventually figure you out and become award-worthy actors (ha!), excited about everything. Draw them out:

A gold bracelet! It's so nice!
You don't like it.
Yes I do!
No you don't you haven't worn gold since you were twelve.
Then why did you--
HOW DARE YOU be ungrateful we spent money on that!

But even having mastered that, can you really go in for the long haul? After months have passed, on a random night when your children are slow to eat their peas, will you be able to storm up to their rooms, grab the abhorred gifts that you've guilted them into keeping from their places of shame at the back of the closet, throw them in a trash bag and threaten to give them to Poor Kids Who Also Love Peas? Thus achieving the piece de resistance, forcing them to cling to the very thing they shoved as far away from themselves as possible? [Why was it always Poor Kids? How did I not become Republican with all the threats to redistribute my wealth?]

Can you also work in a threat to euthanize their puppy?

Because only then can you step to the OG's.

The Boots of The Round Table

2011-12-20T18:01:00.002-05:00

If there is ever a magical future version of Camelot, where brave knights achieve great feats and go on heroic quests to earn their place at the renowned Round Table and sit beside their sovereign as equals, they will not get in by slaying dragons or finding swords in lakes. NO, all the knights will be ladies, and those ladies will have successfully bought a pair of boots.

Women's boot shopping is the modern-day equivalent of the Hero's Quest: you will face great odds, there will be many trials, you will doubt yourself and your god--it is the most frustrating and often demoralizing experience on Earth.

This is because boots are not created to be worn by any living woman, ever. They are made for martians with very large, very flat feet and teeny-tiny, reed-thin calves! Calves that are so thin (I imagine) they would snap if forced to bear any weight. At any given moment of the day, there are no less than three women sitting in shoe stores with puzzled looks on their faces and boots zipped only as far as their ankles. Seriously WHO are these women zipping up some of these boots? Anyone who has ever worn a heel before has a calf muscle.

And what is this trickery with the half-zipper? Where there's a zipper up four inches in the center of the boot that doesn't go all the way up? Is there a species of women who frequently need to adjust their ankles? Do you need a vent? Or are we storing daggers in boots again because while I'm on board with that, I still think your best bet there is More Room In The Calf Goddammit. I don't know, the half-zipper might seem like the most logical thing in the world once you have the boot on, but again, calves here.

It's not even a weight issue: I lost 60 pounds one year, and figured, hey, everything fits now, why not boots? NOPE.

So, why even bother? Because, Lo, when The Boots Fit there is much rejoicing. Not just by our brave Lady, who may be so enchanted that she wears them around her house with shorts and a sweatshirt the entire first night because dayum. Strangers on the street ask to take pictures of them. Anonymous men remark that they need to find a similar pair for their ".....uh....SISTER!" Drunken males simply start yelling "Boots! Boooooots!! I like your boots!" across intersections at 2 am.* All of those incidents would actually be in response to these beauties, which are Madden Girl and ironically means they were designed for teenagers:

Even though they are clearly rated R.

The last time I bought boots, I wandered the aisles for over an hour. And I had just gotten an Amex card as a bonus at work AND had a gift card, so money was literally not an object. I could have taken home any boot in the store except that none of them fit, until finally--finally!--out of desperation I decided to just try on a pair on Nine West knee-high suede wedges that did not come in my size. But, surprise! They actually run one-and-a-half sizes too small for no reason. I can't even, with that, it's like I outsmarted a wizard or something. They are dressy and casual enough to wear with anything, and the wedge heel means they make my legs look amazingly long but are so comfortable. And they go to my knee without making my knees look like they're spilling over the top. They zip all the way up my calves like they were made for them.

This is the actual conversation I had with the woman at the counter:

"Oh my god these boots. They're beautiful!"

"Thank you so much...I seriously almost gave up."

"Thank god you didn't. Wow. I am so happy for you! Oh I am so, so happy that you didn't give up! They're just....I'm so happy for you."*

Because if you have ever tried to buy boots, you know: it is exactly like slaying a dragon. Like slaying a dragon and making boots out of its hide. And dragon-boots, well:


Tie down your husbands, because these boots are coming for them.

[Note: I sincerely tried to find out the actual name of those Nine West boots and link to them online. They've passed into urban shoe legend and for that I am sorry. Although if you find them, send me a link and I will gladly update].

*I swear on my copy of Bossypants that all of these incidents actually happened.

I Want An IKEA Boyfriend

2011-12-09T19:15:00.001-05:00

Dear Santa, for Christmas this year will you bring me an Ikea Boyfriend?

I'm starting to realize that my job/schedule/lifestyle/selfishness/compulsion to eat peanut butter straight from the jar precludes my having the full on boyfriend-boyfriend experience. Yes, this is largely the same logic I use, re: a dog. Which is fine, I like my unwavering devotion to working out every day and the fact that there are no Doritos in my house. Besides, holiday parties, cold winter nights, shoveling out from under two feet of snow? All things that would be made unbearably worse if there was a significant other tagging along, no?

What I want is a man-person whose sole responsibility is to come with me when I go to Ikea: an Ikea Boyfriend. Because Ikea is a place you really shouldn't go to without a partner.

Okay, sometimes being the only single person in Ikea is fun. You can give smug looks to the young couple arguing over "but WHICH throw pillow covers!" Smug looks that say, "well, I guess there are three of us who definitely aren't getting laid tonight! But at least I can buy whichever throw pillow cover I darn well please."

But then there's The Ikea Tango: you stare for awhile at Ektorp. Measure it. Sit in it. Fondle the fabric samples. Bemoan your inability to remember exactly which shade of greige your curtains are. Do the same thing at Kivik. And then go all the way back to Ektorp and start again (put all your chairs in one place, Ikea, dammit!). The trick to pulling this off is that you need another person to sit in the chair while you stare at it. Because there is always a middle-aged lady in a windbreaker sitting in the chair, or her teenage daughter. And then you can't measure/sit/fondle, you can only hover, staring, until they get up. Two people hovering a chair is A Couple Trying To Make A Decision About Decor. One person hovering a chair is Creepy.

And obviously, there's the warehouse part. Now, I am amazing at wrangling a huge sofa box onto one of those cart thingies, and also getting it into my tiny car, and my house. There should be an Olympic sport. I would like to not HAVE to accomplish feats of strength that leave whole families staring open-mouthed in the parking lot. But do you know what I have to do since there are blockades keeping the carts from going into the garage itself? I have to leave my sofa by itself! I have to depend on the kindness of strangers while I'm pulling my car up into a loading spot. Not that anyone could snatch an entire sofa that quickly, but still, I'm at the mercy of everyone who happens to be there and the extent of their stealiness. My Ikea Boyfriend will pull the car around while I watch the ginourmous box. And then he'll be big and strong and get everything into the car. Well, that part's not absolutely necessary, but should he want to show off some muscles I'd promise to be genuinely impressed.

It would be great if he was tall. Like, really tall, because then we could do schtick: "Oh, honey, you'll never fit on that couch/chair/bed! What ever are we going to do with you! At least [double entendre about big people and corresponding, er, proportions], har har har." I can do better than that awful scene in 500 Days of Summer, but I need a writing partner.

The best part is, he doesn't even have to be able to assemble anything! I actually love assembling Ikea furniture because I have something to prove. Also the assembling of an Expedit bookcase was the death knell of a previous relationship--to this day I call it The Dealbreaker. All he has to do is know how to pour more wine.

Who will be my Ikea boyfriend?

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Muppets' Happy Song

2011-11-22T19:53:00.001-05:00

"I feel like we should do a musical number right now."

"We haven't seen a happy movie in a looong time."

That was what you would have heard if you had heard us talking outside the theater after the screening of The Muppets, all of us mid-to late twenties or early thirties. We had been Muppet fans as kids of course, but none of us had the perfect-excuse-to-be-at-a-PG movie (a child). We did have the second best, though: "I got these tickets from work and this is a station screening so I am at work right now." While we were waiting for it to start, we chatted about the movies we'd recently seen. This involved a stilted discussion of Shame that had to be conducted completely in euphemisms, because we were surrounded by 8-year-olds. Although I suspect they know what johnson means. So basically, we had our world-weary cynicism jackets on, and zipped up to our necks. One of us even had a moment of: merciful god, this is a musical wtf. Brr.

We were worried for a second there: when the trailer came out with its jokes about fart shoes, we started to get worried.

But it's okay! The Muppets is great!

The thing that makes The Muppets work is that it's ABOUT nostalgia. Walter, Gary (Jason Segel), and Mary (Amy Adams), are the Muppets' biggest fans, and in order to save the Muppet studios from the hands of a greedy oil tycoon (Chris Cooper), they get the Muppets back together to put on one more show. You don't have to completely buy into it at first; it acknowledges that its world is a little sideways, and its brand of absurdity doesn't really fit into the current zeitgeist.

Did it ever though? The Muppets were always about being outsider-y. About being brave enough to be funny without being mean. And the movie does exactly that; which we wanted it to do while at the same time being afraid it wouldn't be able. It's why we were so worried--what if it wasn't our Muppets? But, man, it's soooo funny--and I can't believe I''m saying this, but the fart-shoes joke worked. Twice...well, once-and-a half. I think it's funnier for adults than for kids, because, in true Muppet form, there's always a different, grown-up show going on at the same time. The kids in the audience seemed to like it, too, but I think I missed some of the in-jokes and references because there's just so much going on. Did it get a little cute and meta for it's own good once or twice? Yeah. But it's so interesting to be on the grown-up side, and finally get everything on all of the other levels. I think I like it better over here.

And I'm sorry but it's impossible to be snarky while always-adorably-earnest-faced Jason Segel, who cannot dance, is trying his very very hardest at musical numbers (this cuts off before it gets really awkward, but I do appreciate that there are some great high kicks going on):

I was having a crappy, crappy day and was probably in a bad mood right up until the opening credits rolled. A bad mood that popped like so many bubbles, and stayed away all night. Well, until I got home and had to park four miles away from my house, but world-weary cynicism is tough to shake on the first go-round. I don't remember smiling so much at a movie. I had to remind myself that I was in a theater with other people and not strangers, and not grab my friend's arm and yell, "omg look do you see who that is?" Because half the fun of the movie is the cameos. I'm not going to ruin them for you, except to say, youguysyouguysyouguysDaveGROHL!

Bottom line: It's The Muppets. Which, if you know what that means, know how much that means.

If You Liked Immortals, You Owe It To Yourself to Watch The Fall

2011-11-15T21:18:00.001-05:00

Between Immortals winning the box office and the trailer for Mirror Mirror, that other Snow White movie, hitting the internet today, director Tarsem Singh is having a moment. I love this man, he makes absolutely gorgeous movies.

I knew I was going to see Immortals as soon as it opened, even if the reviews weren't great, because I knew it would look phenomenal, and I wanted it to be ten feet tall in front of me--and in 3D! Whatever else is ever said about Tarsem Singh, the man knows how to take a freakin' picture. Every shot of Immortals was intricate and beautiful. Even the gore was exquisite (And the 3D is great for a change).

Yes, Roger Ebert was right, Immortals is "the best looking awful movie you will ever see." For the record I didn't think it was awful, but it isn't great. What IS great, and also exquisite, and also phenomenal, is another Tarsem Singh movie, The Fall.

Like Immortals, The Fall is very mythic and grand. It's about a little girl in a 1915 California hospital with a broken arm (six-year-old non-actor Cantica Untaru, adorable), who befriends a bedridden stunt man (Lee Pace, also adorable). He tells her a story, whch makes up the bulk of the film: we see it through her eyes, so every misinterpretation becomes part of the story. As their own experiences become part of the tale, we begin to see how people aren't always what they seem, or what we want them to be. It has the visual grandeur of Immortals and some of the more whimsical tone of Mirror Mirror, without being too cute. And I always cry at the end, but by this point, that's just Whatever.

Everything about The Fall is beautiful. The acting is wonderful. It also has a very dry sense of humor. And because it's a Tarsem Singh movie, every shot could be your computer's wallpaper:

And this is a crappy one, comparatively.

The thing about The Fall that makes it better than Immortals is that it isn't bogged down by CGI. There is no CGI according to the director, which is hard to believe but makes sense: it was completely funded by Singh and shot wherever he happened to be making a commercial or music video at the time (there are over 20 countries used as locations over the course of 4 years). It takes place entirely in a world that actually exists, and wasn't painted on later. We don't really get any sense of wonder with CGI anymore, first because we can tell it's there, but also because of course it looks bananas, it's supposed to. In Immortals, people are running all over cliff faces and you're never afraid they're going to fall. In The Fall, with its real locations, every shot makes your brain go, "LOOK at what this LOOKS LIKE!"

Of course I love the pretty pictures: this movie was the first time I really understood the concept of drinking something in with your eyes. But the story is also so, so beautiful. It's about the way we tell each other stories, and the way we use them. How we become interwoven into them, both as a teller and a listener. It's also about the way we heal each other, whether on purpose or not. How much our intentions matter, or don't, and what they can cost us. Also Lee Pace looks really good in his sleeveless bandit outfit.

I cannot promise you the gore-orgy (Goregy? Can we coin that?) of Immortals, if you were approaching that movie from a 300-style perspective. Although there is SPOILER some very creative dying at the end. And cool fightin'! When I saw it it was on Netflix instant and Starz, neither of which it is now, and you can only buy it on iTunes not rent it and it's not on Amazon, so I'm sending you on kind of a hero's quest to obtain this thing. But it's worth it! If you return No Strings Attached to Netflix tomorrow you could have it by the weekend, and you weren't really even going to watch that anyway, come on.

Amusingly Horrible Things That Have Been Said During Pick Up Attempts, In No Particular Order

2011-11-05T13:10:00.000-04:00

...By Him

"We could go see Harry Potter. And if there was, like, kissing and stuff, that would be nice. I mean if you want." [Officer, I did not know he was 12. He was in a bar!]

"How old are you? Oh good you're in my range. It's 25- to 39-ish. [For what?] For dinner"

"My goal is to talk to you for a while and then another goal is to maybe have your phone number eventually."--Goals!

"So? I hate the radio."--In response to me finally telling him what I do for a living, after avoiding the questions and changing the subject a hundred times.

"Haha yeah RIGHT."--After I asked "how do you know this isn't my boyfriend?" as I was sharing a table with my male friend who is African-American.

"I hate asking you this, since I know how everybody hates their jobs and just gets mad when I ask, but what do you do?"

"You're so beautiful" x100.--It's nice and all, but he literally just. kept. saying it. prompting my friend to hilariously respond with "We KNOW, ok?"

"I'd like to invite you to my mansion. In GLADWYNE."--That was his opener. He looked like Phil Spector. He would not stop staring after we said no. I firmly believe if we had gone we would have been locked in the basement.

"Since my son died when he was an infant, I always wonder if when I get to heaven he'll be a baby, or if he'll have grown up in heaven and we can, like, hang out."--I just met you!

...By Me

"No, I swear I'm only talking to you for the attention." [To be fair, this was not me, this was The Rum Sociopath and it was 4am. And he thought I was being coy! I was not.]

"Listen, Sweatpants, I'm gonna give you a success tip. First, the sweatpants."

"I don't eat."--A simple No Thank You to dinner would have been more polite I guess.

"I would never go out with anybody who goes to this place."--A place I am in, so obviously I go to this place.

"But you have a windbreaker tied around your waist."--I seem to have a problem with casual wear.

"I roofied that drink."--Turns out this is actually a good pickup line if your intent is to sleep with the hot 25-year-old guitar player in the band you just saw. A gift from me to you!

Anybody else got any gems?

The 3,000 Mile Bath

2011-11-03T21:01:00.000-04:00

People go on vacations to do things they don't get to do in their everyday life. Climb mountains. Snorkel the reefs. Run with the Bulls. Finally have good diction when they're slowly shouting English phrases at people in foreign countries.

What do you go on vacation to do? I take baths.

I live in a studio apartment which has a walk-in closet and as a trade off, a tiny bathroom. It's practically a ship's head. Every year I work at Campout for Hunger and I'm always amazed that the RV's bathroom is bigger than mine. Actually, last year the RV had more square feet than my apartment and I thought about just living in Wal Mart parking lots because at least the RV had a washer-dryer. But my tiny bathroom has a very small shower that some gentlemen callers have not been able to shower properly in, and no tub. So no baths.

But but but where do you go to cry with wine, you're asking? I know, I KNOW. I have to have my good cries on the sofa like a ridiculous person.

If you're one of those people in the 1% who have soaking tubs put into their redone bathrooms and then never use them because they're "just a hassle to clean" then why are you even reading this and can I come over? I swear I'll bring Scrubbing Bubbles. You really don't know what you've got 'till it's gone--one day you couldn't care a fig about having a soak and the next day you realize it's been five years since your last bubble bath and it makes you sad for some reason. Tiny-apartment dwellers of the world are nodding their heads in agreement.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I got to go to the Footloose press junket in LA and stay at the fancy-schmantz Roosevelt Hotel. Yes the thing I was most excited for was the tub. I even brought a 3floz Ulta Smoothie in dragonfruit frappe because I was serious about doing this right. So serious, in fact, that I chose the bubbles over hair conditioner because they both wouldn't fit in my ziploc liquids baggie.

My first night, the screening finished around 9:30, and my ear was plugged up completely like it always does after I fly so I was half-screaming at people and shouldn't have been going out anyway. I ran the water and poured in half the bottle of smoothie [for everyone going OMG a hotel bath the germs I always clean it all myself and bring my own sheets ack! Don't worry, it was clean, I have my ways, and I didn't get herpes or TB, ok?]. I cracked a Heineken because the tiny bottles of wine in the mini bar were 35 dollars and I didn't know at the time that there was a CVS a block away--my one regret.

At this point my neighbors started being extremely loud. There were lots of voices, so they were having some sort of party, and it was still early by LA standards, so they were just getting started. They were ruining my bath! However, there was a chance that the following would ensue: I knock on the door to say you guys are sooo loud! And they say well why don't you party with us and then you won't mind. And I say ok whatever and it turns out they know someone famous or powerful or etc who falls head over heels for me and boom--fame and fortune and a life of golden tubs and bubbles both real and champagne. What would I choose?

Reader, I bathed. I pretended I was Marilyn Monroe, who may or not have been there in spirit since she allegedly haunts the place. It was glorious.

Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Just As You (Horrifyingly) Are

2011-11-03T19:58:00.001-04:00

Let's all hang out with Mindy Kaling and cry about stuff! That's what girl friends do when they hang out, right? I'm a little out of practice. How glad are you that Glamour.com and Crown, the publisher and now NPR have excerpts of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me posted? Now you can have all the fun for free that everyone else who has hard-cover-book-amounts-of-money gets to have! (Obviously you'll buy the book eventually, but you just can't right now and why do things have to cost money and not charm?)

So, in the NPR excerpt, "Non-Traumatic Things That Have Made Me Cry," Mindy confirms two things that I have always believed to be true: it is impossible not to have a huge crush on Colin Firth, and everyone gets misty at the part in Bridget Jones' Diary when Mark Darcy says, "I like you. Very much. Just as you are." But, um, the second thing maybe not for the same reason?

That supposedly romantic line is actually terrifying to me. Because I'm an Iceberg. Maybe it's because of my job. Maybe it's my past. Or maybe I'm just an insane recluse! Who can know these things. But when you're looking at me, chances are you're seeing about 10% of a person. So if anyone were to claim to like me just as I am, I'd be very suspicious who it was they liked. And what they'd do when they saw the rest.

But everyone is a mirage in their own way: the truest line in Bridget Jones' Diary is actually a few minutes before, where she tells the smug marrieds that so many girls are single because "underneath our clothes, we're covered in scales."

You really think you like that girl Just As She Is? Do you REALLY know what she is? And what about all the things you don't know, that aren't that awesome?

Sure, blue string soup and orange marmalade are cute, but how many days can you overhear someone tallying their calories, cigarettes, and alcohol points before you go mad?

Maybe she spends the last half-hour before getting into bed examining her pores in the close-up mirror? Or eats crackers for dinner over the sink while reading Vogue? Maybe she hogs all the covers like a sleep-burrito.

Maybe she still slides her feet about two feet over the side of the bed when getting up in the middle of the night because: Monsters?

Maybe she loves horror movies, but will only watch them from her bed, encased in blankets and pillows, in the middle of the afternoon?

Maybe she puts hot sauce on every single goddamned thing.

Maybe she does that weird cry-laugh thing when The Notebook is on, where she's crying because it's so, so sad and yet, the ironically detached part of her brain thinks it's funny that she's fallen for this stupid movie and its tricks AGAIN? And she's actually experiencing two separate emotions at the same time the way you only see alien monsters and psycho patients do in horror movies?

Are you sure you want to spend your life knowing that any peanut-butter jar you bring into the house will have very, very telling spoon marks in it?

Or something.

Look all I'm saying is that the whole "Just As You Are Thing" is very nice and all, and we know where Mark Darcy is coming from; but he might just want to cool it a little bit.

Sensible Things to Do With Your Leftover Halloween Candy (and Perfectly Reasonable Excuses for Not Doing Them)

2011-11-01T17:04:00.000-04:00

1. Bring it in to work--If you do this you'll still eat most of it yourself since you will spontaneously have ninety reasons to walk right by the lunchroom. And also, won't your coworkers be thinking, "these 50,000 calories aren't good enough for her but she's fine with all of us putting on ten pounds?" Faux pas.

2. Throw it out--Waste! Your mother never took your advice to just mail your leftover peas to Those Poor Starving Girls In China, so they're probably still starving. And we just hit 7 billion people, so we should probably start hoarding resources, even if those resources are Reese's Cups.

3. Return unopened bags to the store--Well isn't this impossible, since you always open ALL of the bags and dump them into a big serving bowl so as to look to the strangers' children like a benevolent, proper grown-up hostess lady. What kind of person gives out candy straight out of the bag? A creep, according to Emily Post, probably.

4. Put it in a bowl and put it out on the stoop--This was probably a better idea at the end of last night when the trick-or-treaters started to get thin. Now you'll just look like you're one windowless van away from being a child molester, and don't you already feel like the neighborhood thinks you're a witch?

5. Give it to a homeless person--Really? If you were homeless, would this be the kind of generosity you wanted? Of course not. Unless you also have lots of leftover Halloween drugs.

6. Save it until Christmas and use it for stocking stuffing--hahahahahaha like it would ever last that long.

7. Eat it mindfully, keeping to the actual serving size and factoring the calories into your daily budget--Really, is the guilt from the inevitable failure even worth an attempt at this? Of course not.

Well that's settled! Scientific proof that the safest way to dispose of Halloween candy is to just mainline that stuff until it's gone as quickly as possible.

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Yogadventures: It's Your First Time!

2011-10-27T21:54:00.001-04:00

A friend from work was asking me about trying out yoga, and my first thought after "Yes! Definitely do that!" was, "you should read my blog, I write about yoga all the time!" And then I remembered that most of my posts about yoga involve failure and existential woe. Not a great way to convince someone how awesome it can be, is it? You know me, though, always looking on the bright side and all that. So, for her, for anyone thinking of trying yoga on for size who hasn't been sacred away by all my talk of handstands and circus freaks, behold: Your Yoga Virgin Pep Talk.

My first yoga experience was a "Yoga for Dummies" DVD the summer after my freshman year of college (I know, I KNOW but it helped me lose my freshman 15...and also the other 15). You can definitely pregame with the Exercise OnDemand videos your cable offers; there's bound to be a beginner yoga video in there somewhere. You'll get to know what the poses are called, but no one is there to check your form, so really the best way is to go to a class. Classes can be intimidating! There might be chanting that you may or may not know how to feel about! But there are four things you can keep in mind to help you feel more at ease your first time.

BEWARE LABELS
Every class has a description on the studio or gym's website, but they don't always give you the greatest idea what the class will be like. One of the classes I regularly go to is labeled All Levels, and that's pretty much a joke--I would label it Unequivocally Advanced. Some other people who regularly take it also can't believe there isn't more warning that it gets pretty involved. Until you've got the gist of which pose is which, stick to classes that are specifically labeled Beginner. If the class description mentions that it's good for people who have never been on a mat before, so much the better--plus you'll have the added bonus that everyone is awkward and new!

The opposite goes for the different types of yoga, and there are lots: Bikram. Hatha. Ashtanga. Yin. Kundalini. Baptiste. And those are only the types I've heard of, and some of those are subsets of some of the others. If it's truly a beginner class, it will necessarily be slower and pose-focused. So basically, beginner is beginner is beginner no matter what style of place you're at, so don't worry about whether the beginner teacher is an ashtanga or a kundalini.

[Once you're pretty sure you know what's up, you'll begin to realize the styles that you like and the ones you probably won't. For example, I've always loved yoga but my only complaint was that I didn't feel like it was enough of a workout. So Baptiste Power Vinyasa is for me and the ashtanga depends on the teacher, and the more stretchy, meditation based yin classes are decidedly not my bag. Fun fact, I loathe yin, but that's because I need my workouts to placate my death wish.]

KEEP IT SIMPLE
Yoga studios are full of props. Mats, blocks, pillows, blankets, straps. What in the what, right? Honestly, your first time? Forget about all of it. The only thing you NEED is a mat. So grab one of theirs if you don't have your own. There are spray bottles somewhere full of tea-tree oil: spray a borrowed mat so you don't get foot fungus! I know, ew, but you're grateful to know that! You teacher will tell you to grab specific things if you're definitely going to need them, and she or he will probably be able to scoot you over a block or a strap if it turns out it'll help you in a pose.

CHILL OUT
I wouldn't do the hot stuff your first time out. I've never been to one of the hot beginner classes, so I don't know what the conditions are like, but I've been doing yoga for ten years on and off, and it still took me awhile to get used to the heat. It's hard to tell if you like the actual yoga when the heat is making you think you're going to throw up or pass out or die. But definitely try out a hot class once you've got your feet under you, if you think that might be your style (the throw up and pass out and die stuff goes away--it's like sea legs). Try out any type you think sounds interesting--every studio has a drop-in rate, you rarely need to sign up beforehand, and some even have a two weeks unlimited for twenty bucks deal. If you're at a gym and not a studio, try out a lot of different classes. I've found gyms tend to let the teachers have more leeway to practice the style they're most proficient in, so you might get a good mix.

DON'T SWEAT IT
I had a really interesting conversation with a woman who's another regular at the really hard class I mentioned above. She was saying that sometimes she feels like a loser because all of us look so graceful and balanced in our complicated poses. And she's jealous that I can do wheel. Which is hilarious, because I'm jealous that she can do headstand! She should read this blog, because like I told her, whenever you see me looking all peaceful and balanced, I'm probably about to fall over or burst into tears. The point is, don't compare yourself to anyone else in the room. Your pose isn't going to look like anyone else's, because your body doesn't look like anyone else's. The thing about yoga that's different from every other form of exercise ever invented is that there's no better, and there's no wrong. There isn't even "easier" or "harder" when you get down to it: there are variations of every pose, and you use the one that's right for your body, and you get the exact same benefit as the person who's twisted half around. Honest.

During our conversation, the other regular and I realized we both had the same feelings about a poor, poor beginner who came to our supposedly all-levels class (again, WHY that label; it's like circus acrobat school every Monday night). She tried so hard and eventually bailed in the middle of class, and all of us felt like yelling out "no, stay! You're not failing you just have to figure out how to do it your way!" We all felt so bad that she might miss out on some wonderful experiences because she didn't know that tiny little thing.

So if nothing else, remember that! Don't get discouraged. You can't fail at yoga, and you can't not belong. Because although other people are in the room with you, the only person on your mat is you. And like I said before, everyone is feeling like a spazz at at least one point during class (and if I'm there, for at least half of the class), so they're really, truly not judging you AT ALL. We don't care if you fall over, we're probably about to fall over, too.

And, you can duck into child's pose whenever you damn well please. Sometimes teachers forget to say that at the beginning of class, but it's saved my sanity so many times in power vinyasa. You could technically spend the whole class in child's pose and just listen to the teacher and peek out at everyone else.

Also? Take off your shoes pretty much the minute you walk into the studio. You'll look like a pro.

Everybody go have fun and get strong and bendy! And if you have a question about anything I didn't mention, absolutely leave it in the comments, I'd love to try to answer it!

Namaste.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Goody Bun Screw: A Triumphant Advancement in Hair-Putting-Up Technology

2011-10-25T22:36:00.000-04:00

I was wandering around CVS a few weeks ago waiting for a prescription to be refilled, so on impulse I bought a Goody Bun Screw. Because, haha, I'm a twelve year old boy and, bun screw. And because my hair looks decent up in a bun, but of course I'm remedial at making my hair be in one. My hair has what we'll call a very well-defined sense of self--you can ask it nicely, but you can't order it around.

This thing is amazing! All you have to do is kind of get your hair into the idea of a bun, and then you put it over your sort-of-bun and twist. And it looks DONE. No more playing roulette with an elastic band hoping for the one-in-a-thousand moment when it actually looks good and you can barely see the band...but then everything flops out to the side. How many times do YOU try and retry until you just decide "whatever it's fine who cares?" I think I've topped out at three.

With the Goody Bun Screw, it's perfect the first time and it looks so good. It looks like there should be a thousand bobby pins in there, but it's really as simple as it sounds. Plus it holds. I wear mine at yoga. I run with it in. And you'll have to come back and see if I can post some pics of my actual hair to prove it (it's hard to get the back ya know?), but rest assured it really for real looks like this:

The best part is, you just throw it in your purse or gym bag and you've got a backup hairstyle ready in an emergency. It won't stretch out like an elastic band, or snap--mine's been knocking around my purse for ever and it doesn't seem like it's going to break any time soon. Even the TSA was cool with it when I went to LA last month, and I was certain I'd have to explain it to someone.

I swear no one is paying me to say this, either. Nor am I begging for freebs, because what would I even do with more than one?

But I'm someone who spent the entire first 16 years of her life fighting with her hair, and then the past 13 years just walking around under whatever it decides to do that day. I'd never keep something that virtually guarantees you a Good Hair Day a secret. Enjoy.

Image via.

The 5 Most Awesome Things About Working In a Soundproof Room

2011-10-20T21:33:00.001-04:00

I work in a production studio all day. It has a heavy door with the kind of slit window you see in the scary mental asylums in the movies. Because it needs to be soundproofed, the walls are padded, too. This hilarity was never lost on any Production person ever, and we make the most of the metaphors. Mine doesn't have a window, which deprives everyone else an excuse to "see what the weather's doing" i.e., "check in on her to make sure she hasn't gone crazy all alone in there." They worry about me.

They shouldn't! It's awesome. Here are five awesome things about being alone in a soundproof room all day, that have ruined me for cubicles and normal office people forever:

1. The weather. Sound counter-intuitive, because wouldn't it be depressing not to see the outside all day? Not so. When it's georgeous and sunny, you aren't staring longingly out the window wishing you could be out there. And you know how, when it's crap out, every time you look out the window all you want to do is curl into a ball in your bed? Not me, I have no idea how crap it is out there.

2. The tunes. There is rarely a problem, ever, that really, really loud Beyonce can't solve. Especially when you've got great (and great big) speakers and the most badass sound equipment. And then for truly heinous problems that even Queen Bey can't solve, you can always step it up to the Jill Scott. Have fun with your headphones, cubers, it is not the same.

3. The Privacy. Of course, some times there IS a problem that neither Beyonce nor Jill can solve, no matter how loud you turn them up, and you need to have a cry. And while wine may be available, office drinking is discouraged until 5ish; and there are certainly no bubble baths around either. And oh god what if people see, etc. But you don't have to go to the bathroom and try to cry silently in a stall as fast as you can! Just turn on your on-air light so people think your mic is on; they won't be able to see what you're up to and they certainly won't bother you with the light on.

4. The Conversations. It's something prods will sometimes admit to each other, but never anyone else, so you're getting let in on a little secret here: we all talk to ourselves. You know how they say "it's fine to talk to yourself as long as you don't answer?" That's crap. I have full-on conversations with myself. As if there are actually two people in the room. I guess it comes from years of improv training, but it's not that weird! And honestly? The best conversations are the ones you have with yourself. Who else is going to be completely honest with you? Who else can you be absolutely certain is completely on your side? Yes, normal people think this is crazy because they don't know how awesome it is, but they won't be able to hear you so why would they judge you for being nuts? Which brings me to:

5. Because you are! You've gone crazy form talking to yourself all day, but you can hide the crazy in the soundproof room. Just remember to zip it back up before you open the door so no one ever knows. Crazy-face on the inside, girl!

So hopefully now everyone can stop worrying about me being horribly depressed, locked in my soundproof cell. Actually, now you're jealous, aren't you? You are! You're jealous. I will rent you the room, and if necessary, the Beyonce.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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SPOILER ALERT: Men Don't Actually Want Funny Ladies After All

2011-10-19T20:53:00.000-04:00

Or at least a great deal of men who talked to The Gloss don't. I love The Gloss, and Jennifer Wright was right, her Real Talk slideshow was definitely the most depressing thing I read all day. Not that I wasn't already pretty certain what the answers would be, just from personal experience.

The worst guys in the slideshow are the ones who think they really do like funny women--or try really hard to sound like they do because they feel like they should, but then their words betray them:

I'd definitely prefer to date a woman with a good sense of humor. The only reason I date anymore is to have stories to entertain my friends with, so even better if she can laugh at them, too.

Carl! You're sneaky! You make it sound like you would love to be with a lady who is funny but it turns out you define female humor as laughing at YOUR jokes! I see what you did there. Extra points for the "whatever I don't want girls anyway" fakeout. Actually, the idea that "I'd love a funny woman who will laugh at my jokes AND THEN if she makes me laugh too, that's a bonus" crops up a lot. I do not think this word means what you think it means, boys; even Siri will laugh at your jokes.

And then of course like moths to flames, the juiceboxes come to talk "science":

Funniness is stereotypically a male trait, not a female trait. So when women say they want a man with a sense of humor, that is a proxy for desiring an indicator of manliness.

Uh-oh, did you just make a joke, lady? Now Fred cannot tell if you're actually a lady at all. Why are you acting like a man? Why is being attracted to you making Fred have strange conflicting feelings inside?

I don't want a woman to have too great of a sense of humor because I like to be the funny, clever one.

Bob is obviously neither of those things.

I'm not about to drag that poor Are Women Funny horse up out of it's grave to beat it. This is not about whether women are funny. The majority aren't! The majority of men aren't, either. Most people are not funny. No, the question posed to these dudes is, "say you find a woman is actually, verifiably funny. Do you want her?" And for the most part the answer is NO.

All of these are cleverly juxtaposed with glamor shots of your Tina Feys, your Anna Farises, your Kristen Wiigs. So you read these horrible things and then you look at poor, poor, gorgeous, naked Kristen Wiig laying sexily in a pile of leaves and you just feel bad for her, because nothing good will ever happen to her, ever.

Look, I get it! I do, I understand. Because, the Ladies: they are terrifying.

I mean look at us. Our hair always smells nice. We've invented a diabolically illogical system with which to involuntarily test you whereby your clothes either "match" or "do not match." And that's before we even open our mouths. Add to that a girl who can keep a table of your friends in stitches, and it's a wonder there isn't a horror genre completely devoted to such a frightening idea.

Obviously this is not all dudes. But lots of dudes do not want a funny lady. And that's fine! It actually works out great for me, because I don't want an insecure jerk with no sense of humor. Everybody wins! It's not like I'm going to change who I am because it's not some peoples flavor. If you can't crack up yourself, how are you ever gonna crack up somebody else? Or something. Whatever, I'll just be the funniest cat lady there ever was.

Yogadventures: The Sick Girl and the Sadist

2011-10-17T21:03:00.001-04:00

So, this one time I was sick and I went to hot yoga just for the humidifier. And it went exactly as well as you would expect.

Now, I usually don't work out when I'm sick. Because seriously when you've got a built-in excuse, you use it. And also, your white blood cells are working overtime to fight off the germs and that has to be calories, right? I can't even remember the saying--I feed a fever and a cold, and I don't work out.

But I had to go to LA in a week and a half for a press junket. And I really didn't want to sit in a room full of movie stars not having invested every possible second in Looking As Good As Possible. I know one day or another of working out or not working out isn't going to make a 10-pound difference, but welcome to modern-lady insecurity central. I wasn't about to pound out a kickboxing class, but maybe I should go to yoga?

I mean, I wasn't exactly English-Patient-watching levels of sick. And, yoga, especially hot yoga, is supposed to wring toxins out of your body (although, how those toxins didn't get wrung out before they had a chance to do any damage is anyone's guess, I had been doing pretty much daily wringings at the time; they must have been quick little bugs).

And yes, the glorious humidifier. A good power vinyasa class will get up to around 40-50 percent humidity, and open the hell out of your sinuses. People sniffle when they aren't even sick. And I figured 10 bucks or so for a yoga class is cheaper than buying my own humidifier [it is], and also would one even work in my apartment? It's one room, but it's a pretty open floorplan. All I had to do was show up, and I'd get a glorious 75 minutes with the humidifier to use however I wanted. Yoga is great like that--the whole do-what-your-body-tells-you-ness of it all means there's never anyone yelling at you to push yourself like a personal trainer or spinning teacher is wont to do, and you could literally just lie there on the mat for the whole time and no one would say a word. I could skate through taking the easy route.

But we all know Miss A-Plus For Life Club was never going to do that.

Which might have worked out a little better if the teacher wasn't HARD AS HELL. I have never had to hold a low pushup for so long in my entire life. I had never been to her class before, so I didn't know that it would be Non. Stop. Pummeling. Which I would love on any day when my only class intention was something other than: "Live." I've never spent so much time trying not to collapse in arm poses. I've never spent so much time trying not to fall down! Although that could have been sinus-related inner-ear malfunctions...

You know how, sometimes when you're in a really hard pose and you're trying to stay there and breathe in the same rhythm as the teacher who is invariably NOT in said pose? And you do a very un-yogi-like thing and wish horrible things on them? This was one of those nights. I decided this person was a sadist who was enjoying my suffering and How Dare She.

And what a day to be told that you've been doing eagle pose wrong your entire life! Especially by a teacher who insists on holding you up to adjust you when your only thought is
"please, please let me go I just want to fall down on the floor right now AND DIE please just LET ME DIEEEEEEEEEE."

Obviously I did not die. But, man, I barely survived. With snot all over my towel, which, ugh, gross. But two days later I was all better! So, the lesson is, definitely GO if you want the heat and moisture to wring you out and drain everything and open you up. But know what you're in for!

Although you're allowed for wishing horrible things to befall your sadist teacher because, hey, you're a sick person.

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One Thing the New Footloose Gets Very, Very Right

2011-10-13T20:25:00.003-04:00

Trigger warning for discussions of physical assault and domestic violence.

Having been raised very sheltered from the pop culture of my childhood, I have lots of blank spaces where certain touchstones go: I didn't see Dirty Dancing until late in college. Or Karate Kid until a boyfriend made me watch it many years later. And I didn't see the original Footloose until two days before they sent me to LA for a press junket for the remake.

Seeing it with my grown-up, lived in eyes for the first time, I didn't really like it all that much. It bothered me that Ariel came off as a psychotic whose only motivation was the craziness in her head. And then when she gets in that knock-down, drag-out fight with Chuck that ends in him holding her down and punching her until she stops struggling? Boy did that hit a trigger.

And it had me really, really upset.

As in, how-am-I-supposed-to-watch-this-again-in-two-days-in-a-room-full-of-strangers-and-maintain-some-sort-of-professional-demeanor upset. How am I supposed to talk about this movie when my only thought right now is pleasestoppleasestoppleasestop?

I was worried. And, thankfully, I needn't have been.

Maybe it was just knowing that all of that was coming allowed me to get my mental guard up? But I don't think so. See, in Craig Brewer's remake of Footloose, that scene is different. And the reaction to it, by the characters and, through them, by the film overall, is VERY different.

The remake is more or less a faithful revival of the original. In fact, "revival" is a word that I'm borrowing from the director himself. It's very similar, and where it deviates, it makes sure to leave a footprint from the original, so fans can play I Spy.

But i's portrayal of domestic violence is one hundred thousand times more enlightened than it was in 1984, and I wish I had gotten the chance to thank Craig Brewer for that when I interviewed him (I didn't because I used up half my time talking about Black Snake Moan--four minutes is not as long as you would think!)

In the new movie, the scene itself is shorter. What happens still happens, but not for so long. That helps.

And Ariel is a more self-aware character. Instead of just being a girl who acts out, Julianne Hough shows us a girl who's consumed by the loss of her brother to tragedy, her father to grief and her home to paranoia (girl has got it, people, trust). It's not that she's acting crazy for the attention, it's that she's using exhilaration to forget about pain. And that changes the tenor of the fight. Because it takes away the easy explanation that what happened was just a natural consequence of her behavior. That she was asking for it.

But the more I think about the new movie, the more I know that what really made all the difference was what came after. Two main male characters--her father and Ren--both separately and unequivocally condemn her boyfriend's actions. Her father in the church--he later slaps her himself and the movie does a good job of not only NOT forgiving it but loudly acknowledging its hypocrisy--and Ren in a later scene. Two separate occurrences of Ariel being told that what he did was 100% wrong.

And there's no "but." No one asks what she might have done to make him angry. No one tsk-tsks about her recent thrill-seeking behavior, and any imagined role it may have played. No one tells her that her black eye is "only one side of the story" (a perennial favorite of some people I used to know).

In the words of Ren, the Hero We're Holding Out For Till The End Of The Night: "I think he should be in jail." And that's it.

And that's so, so much.

Because I realized that what had hit my trigger was in one way the scene itself in the original, but more so how it was tossed aside as just something that was inevitable, and hey, it brought the two love interests together because conveniently Ariel needed a ride after Chuck sped off and left her in the dirt! End scene. The violence belongs only to itself. It's never really discussed in any other context with any other characters.

Unfortunately the first movie's treatment of the issue is more realistic than the remake's. People ignore, they shrug off, they explain it away with victim blaming, they refuse to believe. Because it's tricky! It is. And it's hard to address. But what happens is that society's tendency to do those same things is already creating a vortex where abuse will keep swirling inward inside the victim's psyche, given more strength by the silence of friends. Such a small thing as acknowledging that a wrong has been done is so important. It puts a kink in the vortex. A diverging voice muddles the swirl.

It's why people go nuts when Jon Hamm talks about rape. It's why people write thank-you blog posts to directors who get one scene right! It's a complicated and tricky thing, and it's hard to get right.

Which is why when someone does, it's so, so powerful. And it means so, so much.

Should We Have a Conversation About Yogasms?

2011-09-29T22:58:00.000-04:00

...because I feel like it would go something like, "what?! girl, gross. really?!? ugh, ew. what?" And then I would have to feel bad that my Catholic upbringing makes me prudish about doing sex things in public places and won't let me be happy for people who spell yOga with a Capital "O" [PS yes this will be full of euphemisms, in case the Baby Jesus is reading].

A Daily Beast article is currently going viral wherein ladies are orgasming all over the place at yoga classes. There's even a word for it--yogasm--so it has to be thing, right? It's "on the rise!" Like cancer! Be afraid: orgasms! Who can tell when one will strike next! Well, I kind of think I can. I definitely believe that these women are telling the truth, but then again there's this:

“I was in lotus pose, focusing on breathing and lifting the muscles of my pelvic floor,” she said. She wasn’t prepared for what happened after her instructor pressed his body against her back and synchronized his breath with hers, lifting her ribs as she inhaled, and pushing down on her thighs as she exhaled. “I was tingling all over!” she gushed...The teacher is a famous name in New York City’s yoga circuit. Toned and tattooed, Rojas gives classes that are often packed with women hoping to get some hands-on instruction."

That could have been written by Nora Roberts. And did they mention he has a Venezuelan accent? Girl, you have a huge crush on your yoga teacher that you let get way out of hand!

Look, yoga gets touchy--in a not sexy way!--all the time. And sometimes there's an emphasis on root chakra opening, and it's all "mula bandha, etc." And maybe if you have a male teacher and he's really good looking, you're super-excited when he adjusts your triangle because it's the most action you've had in a long time? And maybe you do poses slightly wrong on purpose but not the same one so he doesn't think you're stupid or get a complex about being a bad teacher? Or maybe there's another one you weren't attracted to at all but it's been soooo loooooong and one day you're just like whaaaaaaat? O, the vowels of it all!

I guess I can see that happening. Maybe.

But the thing is, all of my years of clinical research on the subject of Happy Times--my hours and hours AND HOURS of study--make me wonder what kind of lady just accidentally has an orgasm? I mean, it was always my understanding that if you wanted a train to take you somewhere you had to buy a ticket and then physically Put Your Self On The Train. You don't "graduate" with a "degree" until you complete the "coursework." Right? Who are these ladies who are all "whoopsa-daisy!"? And there are no tales of this happening to guys, who anecdotal evidence suggests might be more susceptible to such a thing. Which brings me back to diagnosis: crush.

Which basically is a long way to get around to saying two things: first, to everyone who's followed my yoga misadventures thus far and may have seen that article, please let's continue to look each other in the eye because NO WAY. Also if you're scared to try yoga now because you might accidentally go to town...no. Second, those ladies that just have surprise orgasms all over the place need to call me. We need to talk about yOOOOOga...

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My Strange Love OR: How I Learned to Stop Sniffling and Love the Neti Pot

2011-09-20T21:37:00.001-04:00

I am the worst sick person in the world. I have stood in the middle of our work cafeteria and cried because the only thing I wanted was chicken soup and it was not chicken soup day. I have protested loudly that "no one can keep me from going home early I am SICK!" to coworkers whose only thought was that the crazy lady should crawl into her bed as quickly as possible and stop infecting everyone. I have driven myself--sick--miles out of my way in search of the only place to get takeout matzo ball soup (I'm Irish). I have insisted on watching The English Patient over and over again, because in my delirium I forget why I hate it and besides it won all those awards and now I really do have five hours to sit and watch it...

In the absence of a thermometer, the severity of my fever can be accurately measured by determining the likelihood of me watching The English Patient. From, "well I've always had a thing for Naveen Andrews" (mild) to "maybe I haven't really given it a proper chance" (hospital).

But there's one thing I do when I'm sick that is absolutely the best: I reach for my neti pot.

WHY does this one look like a wang.

At this point you're having one of two reactions: ugh you put water up your nose on purpose that is revolting! Or: yeah, neti pot, high five! It's definitely one of those things where you just completely do not understand why anyone would ever do such a thing, until you do. I was certain I'd be in the former camp forever--I still hold my nose in the pool because, ew water up your nose. It took me many years, many MANY sinus infections, AND a job that requires me to consistently sound like a person who Is Not Dying to finally become desperate enough to try anything to breathe again.

There's a reason why every time someone mentions a neti pot, people come out of the wood work going, "oh my god I love mine! Use it every day! Makes everything smell like Jesus and peace!" and you sit there going, "you people sound like you're in a cult:" because it gets you exactly like a cult.

Imagine you've got a raging headcold, so bad that all you want to do is cry and eat soup and watch The English Patient and you can't even remember what it was like when your eyes opened all the way and air went into your lungs without you having to will it there. Imagine someone comes along--someone you know, or kind of know at work, or see on facebook from time to time who seems like they know a thing or two for example Oprah, and this person promises you that they can make you feel like a human being again. Instantly. Not in a week, not after a z-pack and a course of antibiotics (which you wouldn't even take because the Google results of "wine interaction with amoxicillin" are inconclusive). Instantly.

Now, there are tons of things that can go horribly, horribly wrong when you go to use it. And these things would cause a non-sick person whose reasoning faculties are still about them to run. But of course everything that can go wrong can be directly attributed to user error. It's not the neti pot that heated the water to a temperature that was one degree hotter or colder than the precise temperature of the nasal membrame! That agony/burning/stroke is your own doing, since it's been so long since you've been sick and you forgot how you accidentally did this right last time. Make your excuses! Even when you accidentally almost drown yourself because your head isn't at the right angle--you'll know it was really almost drowning when you cough up water (PS, yup, waterboarding is torture!)!

But when you do it right it's easy. You can even watch demonstration videos narrated by nice ladies, featuring other nice ladies who look like your librarian. [Sidebar: WHAT is the trend of everybody posting their own neti pot video? It's like hippy planking.] You don't really feel anything because the water is the same temperature as everything in your nose, and the saline mix makes it milder, and it really does just go in and come out again. Really, you'll only feel like you're going to die, like, one percent of the time. Besides you'll forgive the evil thing the second it works exactly as it should, and you go from snifflemonster back to human in half a minute flat.

DVR Thunderdome: Buffy Summers VS Summer

2011-09-15T20:51:00.000-04:00

It's Fall Premiere time! Have you gone through Entertainment Weekly's grids as if they were puppy adoption pages, wondering which new shows looked cute enough to bring home? Have you sat with HuffPo's "shows to watch" slide show and a glass of wine and agreed and/or disagreed? No? But it's commitment time! Who will you love? Who will you finally break up with because you've finally realized that loving them isn't enough and they'll never again be what you fell in love with (sorry, Desperate Housewives, it's not me it's you)? There's only so much space in your heart and on your DVR. Choose now!

Today in the DVR Thunderdome we have Ringer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as Bridget, who pretends to be her twin sister Siobhan (also SMG), who just commited suicide, versus New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel and attempting to answer the age old question: what if a girl moves in with three dudes, and also she's exactly like every character Zooey Deschanel has ever played? Ladies, and your shows, prepare to battle to the death over the Tuesday 9PM DVR Slot 2. Slot 1 is already permanently reserved for the Dancing With the Stars Results Show. Don't you judge me.

Battle on!

Star Loyalty:
New Girl: Zooey Deschanel was the only good thing about Failure to Launch, so she has a track record of being the one shiny spot on a turd. Also, as someone who self-identifies with her character Summer from (500)Days of Summer, I feel like I should be present to defend the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, if only to my couch cushions.
Ringer: It's Buffy! It's TWO Buffy's!
Winner: Sorry, Buffy, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl needs more defenders. New Girl.

Nerd Cred:
New Girl: Pretty high-level Lord of The Rings joke by a lady character without any sense of irony. Pretty boss.
Ringer: See above re: it being Buffy.
Winner: LOTR jokes! New Girl.

Fish-Out-Of Water Fun:
New Girl: living with three awkward dudes
Ringer: stealing your sister's life of penthouses, opera benefits, gorgeous gowns, and severe buns.
Winner: As the only gal among dudes of varying levels of awkwardness virtually every second of the day already, I'm going to have to go with the consumption porn. Ringer.

Potential For Musical Numbers:
New Girl: Besides the fact that she has her own band, She & Him, Zooey does the theme song and it's on after Glee. Aside from her character's habit of making up songs to sing to herself, can a full-blown sing-out be far behind? Potential very high!
Ringer: Not that we didn't all adore the "Once More With Feeling" episode of Buffy, but....potential very low.
Winner: Ringer. Not that I don't love bursting into song at inappropriate times myself, but I already have all I can stand with Glee right now.

BFFs:
New Girl: Jess hates living with her friend the model and all her friends are models and FRENEMIES! Said model friends so far only show up to dress Jess and turn down the sexual advances of the dudes.
Ringer: Bridget has no friends and Siobhan is sleeping with her best friend's husband and CAN WE PLEASE STOP DOING THE THING WHERE ALL THE WOMEN HATE EACH OTHER?!?!?!?
Winner: No one. In fact, everybody loses. Everybody on Earth.

Man Eye Candy, and Potential for Sex Scenes Through Which to Live Vicariously:
New Girl: Hot Asian Guy turned out to be a juicebox, and we all know you're not allowed to be sexy and also funny in TV land.
Ringer: Ioan Gruffud as Siobhan's husband, Kristoffer Polaha as her lover, and Nestor Carbonell brought along his superhuman eyelashes. It's on the CW so there's no chance of True-Blood-style sexytimes, but the network is practically Cinemax for teenagers half the time, so steaminess at least is guaranteed.
Winner: At least it's only ten and a half months until True Blood comes back on

Female Lead Badassery:
New Girl: Jess is generally pretty helpless at life and has to be reminded to shave her legs ("and the back!") by a man. Ugh.
Ringer: SMG plays TWO badasses, and already had a kick-ass fight scene in the pilot. Plus, it seems like both sisters are liars, each trying to use the other to get what she wants.
Winner: SMG will kick my ass twice if this point doesn't go to Ringer.

What I'm Ultimately Coming Home To On Tuesday Nights:
New Girl: Boys take care of me for a change because I'm helpless, and also yay ironic detachment!
Ringer: This life I picked is harder to pull off than I anticipated, and also OMG conspiracy!
Winner: New Girl because that generalization of Ringer could be my life anyway.

AND THE DVR SLOT GOES TO:...tie. Tie?!?! See what happens when strong supporting female characters and sexytimes are a draw? Maybe one of them will come up with an awesome supportive ladyfriend, or maybe Ian Somerhalder will crossover/guest star on Ringer and decide to take a bath and then we'll finally have a victor...Until then it'll come down to who's more Hulu-, Fancast-, OnDemand-able.

Up Next: the Grey's/Runway/Jersey Shore Battle Royale...

I Own A Record!

2011-09-06T21:27:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know, but I didn't before...but the label sent over lots of Queen records for Freddie's birthday and the music director made sure I got one. Yay! So now I can be one of those people who walk around and say things like, "well obviously if you want to experience the classic albums as they were meant to be you can only do that on vinyl," or "really, if you know how to listen to it, new vinyl does actually sound better than a digital recrding," or hahahahahahaaaaaaaa no. Those things are best said from behind ironic facial hair, and anyway I actually avoid those people (because you kids don't advocate for antennas over HDTV, so really? Who are we trying to fool here, eh?). And while I have nothing against the records themselves (I actually love the smell, is that weird?), well, I just plum don't know how to work 'em.

And I work at a radio station! Actually, I worked for a station that still has a Vinyl Cut feature. Yes with real records. Some of which happen to be stored in the studio where we have our writing meetings for my current station, so the one thing I do know how to do with a record is to make a Pope hat out of the white liner jacket. Because when everyone runs out of punchlines, it's time for props, obviously. If I had known about this as a teenager I would have been soooo into the vinyl resurgence. Pope hats! I have photographic evidence of this that I am banned from posting because one of the other prods is a sourpants. And my new record is too new to have the liner so there will be none forthcoming. But trust me, Pope hats--who else has done this? I mean, not necessarily at your jobs, but I don't know what you guys do all day, so maybe? If not, totally do this at your jobs.

I like the nostalgic idea of vinyl, but it's a strange kind of nostalgia because it's for something that I imagine. I like the clicks and pops and scratches and whatnot, but maybe because they're so alien? See, I love the whole, "and then my parents used to put on their old records and dance," but that only occurred in my Alternate Universe Childhood where my parents exposed us to the music they liked (hand to god I did not know who the Rolling Stones were until I was in college...truly share your passions with your children, people).
I did have records, though. I had a Rainbow Brite one and I think my parents lit a candle and said Hail Marys praying for the day it wore out, because how many times can you listen to this without going insane:

I have not heard this song in 25 years. And I just sang every word. That's how bad.

But apparently we had the Cadillac of record players: all you did was flip the switch to Play and everything happened automatically. It's like I grew up with one of those asinine cars that parallel parks itself. So I did not learn how to fend for myself in that regard. And did you know you do not have to listen to a record all the way from start to finish? Because I did not! Not until about a year or so ago, and I still can't tell where one song ends and another begins. And although Temple is a seriously technical school when it comes to media majors, they didn't think it was necessary that my skill set included How To Play A Record. I told someone at work this, and he gave me the Don't-Say-Ironic-Haha-I'm-So-Young!-Things-It's-Annoying Face.

But you know what I did learn how to work? A Studer:

Hi!

This bitch plays and edits reels of tape--with razors! That's right, they give production people razor blades to do their jobs. Or at least they did. We now have computer programs, so there's no need for razors. And I've never needed to use it professionally, just in college as part of an "LOL Nostalgia!" lesson or two. But man I sure know how. That one up there is in my studio right now, and is even still hooked up. I love having it there because of course I throw it around to prove my cred: "well, I know that thing is older than me, but YEAH I know how to work it." I don't actually have any razors for it (exhale, sales department), but still, the badassery is possible. Records, maybe someday, I mean I own one now I have to get something to play it with. But THIS is one dead technology I can work like a boss.

Day 25: For Once. For Ever.

2011-09-01T20:55:00.003-04:00

Be only here and only now. Let your mind be completely present in this moment and only this moment. This moment is both passing and infinite. You are here forever. You were never here.

That's what they start saying when you've been stuck in Warrior 2 for what's probably been 10 whole minutes--has it only been 10 seconds? it feels like 10 years--and that's the point you start to want to kill them. Your thighs are burning! Your knee is shaking! Your toes are staging a mutiny! Surely you can NOT stand here all day to indulge their masochism.

But you do, because secretly, you can. It's a secret even to your own mind. Why do our bodies default to can't? Is it really survival? What kind of survival instinct says, "I'll bet we can't run anymore. Oh well, here comes that saber-toothed tiger"? In yoga, you use your conscious mind to argue with itself. And focusing on only the infinitesimal present keeps you from giving in to, "okay, it's been too long, if it's going to go on for much longer we're taking a break." There is no time. And there is no The Time Before. You have never chickened out. You have never fallen down. You have always existed here, just like this.

I didn't know that today would be the first day in my entire life that I would be able to get myself up into a headstand. In fact, at the beginning of class (when some teachers take requests), I specificlly asked for less-handstands-please-remember-my-arms-don't-straighten. With apologies to everyone there who loves handstands, like, more than a friend, of course. So at the end of class the teacher said it was time for a few minutes of whatever upside down move each of us prefer. I meandered into my crutch, "headstand attempt,"and then I heard, "I'm going to spot you okay? Which foot is your dominant foot?" And then my feet were over my head.

And there I was. With a spot, against the wall, but I was in a headstand. And that was literally all it took. After I came down to rest my neck for a second I got right back up into another one, all by myself. Just like that. For me, being physically put into the pose made my brain turn the Can't off forever. In that instant that I decided, what the heck, I'll try this thing again, I created every moment in which exists every headstand I'll ever do for the rest of my life.

The glee of being there, and having done it by myself, literally yanked my inner child right to the surface. It was all I could do to stop myself from yelling, "hey! Teacher! Lookit! I did it!" But I think when she glanced over she could tell by the grin on my face. Because I know I'm a little biased here, but I'm pretty sure it was the most fantastic headstand ever achieved by a human being ever.

It feels like a dumb cliche to say that I feel like a different person, but as of 6:15 today I am A Person Who Can Do A Headstand. And prior to that I was not. It's small in the grand scheme of things, but how many times in our lives do we get those on/off moments, especially with physical milestones? I've been working out for years, and pushing myself and my training, and I've had those rushes of endorphins when you thought you were spent but found an extra ounce to propel you forward even faster, but they were nothing like this. It was not like spending yourself out. I feel like most of the truly physically-altering moments come when we're so young: today I am A Person Who Talks. Today I am A Person Who Walks. Today the body I've always lived in is different than it ever was before.

But this! This is what I hoped to accomplish with the 30-Day Yoga Challenge. This is the moment when the switch flips from Off to On. Because, really, take out the word "headstand," and substitute anything at all.

May all beings be happy and free. And at the moment when they need it, may there be someone near them to grab their legs and throw them over their head, so they can be transformed.

Namaste.

Further misadventures at the 30-Day Yoga Challenge Page.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What Wine Goes With Your Natural Disaster?

2011-08-30T23:07:00.002-04:00

Did you encounter a dilemma, wondering what to pair with any of last week's Acts of God? The PA Liquor Control Board has you covered. It seems the PLCB was shocked to discover that after Mayor Nutter told us we might have to spend two weeks indoors staring at our family members in the dark (underwater), we all reached for the bottle. So much so that it made front page news. Liquor sales were up FIVE MILLION DOLLARS MORE than usual.

But back to our question: champagne for earthquakes, I guess because of the whole "yay we lived!" vibe? And red wine for hurricanes, because it doesn't need to be refrigerated and remember when M Nutt said two weeks? I'd go with a California Zinfandel because it's strong so it'll last. Sadly we'll never have any numbers for beer, since our archaic Quaker alcohol-selling system keeps it separate from the hard stuff. But I'm thinking IPA's for hurricanes--they were meant to travel to/from India and not lose their taste. Or maybe a stout, since if you can't cook it could also be a meal?

Drink up Philly!

Day 22: What the Hurricane Taught Me

2011-08-30T21:53:00.003-04:00

Bitch.

So....Irene. I live in one of the floodier parts of town, and although I'm up the hill from the river a ways, I'm at the bottom of a small ridge so all the water runs down from the hill and spills into my street, and manhole geysers are a pretty regular thing here. So who could tell whether my first-floor apartment was going to food or not? It was a toss-up. But I decided to wait and see what would happen, and besides if I did flood I wanted to be there to move my Harry Potter books off the bottom shelf of my bookcase. So I hunkered down by myself in my apartment with my supplies: "non-perishable food items" in the form of wine, frozen pizza, chips and salsa, wine, the biggest jar of reduced-fat Skippy I could find, and wine; also my lantern, batteries, duct tape, and a 1000-page book with dragons in it. Oddly, the duct tape was the thing that reassured me most of all. I could duct tape the cracks in the door frame and then the water wouldn't get in? Yes, I did this, laugh at me.

You know what sucks about being all alone during a hurricane?

Ev. Er. Y. THING.
Imagine that! See, when you're all alone, there's no one to tamp down your irrational fears. As in, how serious is this tornado warning? The Governor of Delaware said everyone should sleep in their basement (although wtf flooding?!?!), but there isn't any wind? Is the amount of water in the street more water than usual and what does this mean since it doesn't even count as The Hurricane until 4 hours from now when it "really gets bad?" If I go to sleep will I wake up having drowned? My neighbors didn't take their recycle bin inside what if it becomes a projectile and smashes through my picture window, I don't have anything to board it up with?!?

Even all alone, I didn't let myself get scared. I didn't give in to panic. I briefly thought of running across the street to the bar, but I thought a shivering wet girl sobbing, "I just don't want to be alone" was a recipe for disaster. Besides, I was too nervous to really even drink! You guys, I did Irene wrong. If I had to flash the silver fox signal to have Anderson Cooper come and save me, I didn't want him to see me off my ass drunk.

But everything was fine! The only part of my neighborhood that flooded was the really floody part that floods all the time anyway, and we were all like whatever! Because, Yunkers: You Can't Drown Us. It was a beautiful sunny day and everyone went to brunch and then looked at the water (or tried to paddle a floaty raft in it if you're a college student) and tried to get on the news. I figured that since everything was fine I was fine, and the next day skipped merrily to yoga.

Of course after a long night of trying to convince yourself you're not overreacting/paranoid/freaking out, the best place in the world to be is the one place in the world you can't hide from yourself: the yoga mat. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the yoga mat is the same as the Magic Mirror Gate in the Neverending Story that shows you your true heart ("most men run away screaming!"). And in the middle of the billionth handstand (WHY does it always have to be handstand?) my brain decided it wanted to deal with everything.

I hated the fact that I was alone that night. Even though "I always thought I'd be married by the time we had a hurricane" is nobody's life plan, I felt like a failure. Especially for being so scared. I'm not a person who gets scared. I get nervous, I get paranoid, I get overthinky, and then I say fuck it right to it's face and I slay that dragon. I don't get to be scared: in my job people call us when they're scared and we give them info and play their favorite song. If we panic, everyone panics. And I'm not supposed to care about doing it alone: this is my life. I picked it. There are plenty of guys who would have loved to be with me and I turned them all down. And if I had been in it with any of my exes, I would definitely still have been alone. This is my life. But I don't want this to be my life anymore! But there's not really much I can do about it.

So, the billionth handstand. Which of course I can't do because my arms don't straighten. So my brain uses this, along with everything that hadn't been conciously addressed the night of Irene, and starts chanting, "You're not as strong as you think you are."

Bullshit! I walked away from a two-year abusive relationship and all my friends abandoned me for it and I was fine! I wrangled a living out of seven part-time jobs because I was unwelcome in my childhood home after college and I was fine! I'm stronger than anyone else I know!

You're not as strong as you think you are. You're not as strong as you think you are.

And then tears. Because why not! I am now officially That Weird Lady Who Cries In Our Yoga Class. I mean I don't know if anyone actually could tell, no one said anything. (Would you though?). But there was audibly sharp I'm-not-sobbing-in-child's-pose breathing. During the meditation portion the teacher was going on about "how you approach problems on the mat is how you approach them in real life," so maybe it was obvious? God how embarrassing. Although, ironically, the way I approach problems off the mat is to not deal with them at all and then be blindsided to find them breathing down my neck at yoga, so that logic is busted.

I can't say it enough and don't know why I don't take my own advice: before you go to yoga, unpack all your existential shit and sort it the hell out.

Further misadventures at the 30-Day Yoga Challenge Page

Day 17: I Want to Be a Circus Freak

2011-08-24T20:20:00.002-04:00

Day 17 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

Want.

"Here's one for all you circus freaks!"

...was the joke that preceded a pretty pretzelly move that I didn't really get that far into BUT MAN there was this guy who nailed it. And then even the reverse, where you put your hand under the opposite way. Don't even try to figure out what I'm saying, even I don't know what-all was going on and I was there. But there were limbs doing things I've never seen limbs do in Real Life. I was supposed to be working on my own remedial version, but all I wanted to do was stare.

Actually, what I really wanted to do was say, "damn you really are a circus freak!" But can you believe some people wouldn't think that was a compliment?

For me, it would be a dream come true to be one of those acrobats in the circus. So much so that romantic childhood fantasies of running away with the circus are an official part of my professional bio (and today I work at a radio station so technically I did eventually run away with the circus!). And if I had some money I'd go to circus school--we really do have a legit one in Philly. Do not even try to tell me that trapeze isn't a marketable job skill.

Because yes, from an early age I wanted to be able to do all the flips and aerial acrobatics and bendy stuff. Back then I was too chickenshit to try it, still being possessed of a healthy fear of death, so my attempts at gymnastics usually involved overwhelming fear and then crying. But now! Now, after having one too many stories that end in, "and then I almost got stabbed," and spending two years merging onto the Schuylkill Expressway at the old South Street Bridge, I'm not all that chickenshit about death anymore. Plus, I've done enough things that I figure I'll leave an interesting obituary, and that helps.

But also in the past few years I've begun to embrace oddity as something to celebrate and cherish. Weird, right? Well, yeah, that's kind of the point. I love the faces of students at Career Day five seconds after they hear me say, "oh yeah I'm a colossal weirdo." Who says that like it's something to be proud of, right? There's so much pressure everywhere, not just high school, to have The Right Life. To have the right clothes, the right job, the right partner, raise your kids the right way, like the right things so you'll be just like everyone else. Maybe it was because early on I realized that I was never going to do everything the right way. Probably it's because I did run away with the circus after all: it's an inside joke we often tell ourselves, that all of us are in radio because we don't belong anywhere else. So the odd-outsider perspective is an unusual one, which makes us interesting? Or maybe being strange makes us relate-able? For me, the people that are odd are the only ones who can surprise you, so I try to bring people's weirdness out by showing them how okay I am with mine. I approach it like, I'll wave you my freak flag if you wave me yours, and then we can all just chill. Free to be you and me and all that.

Which is why I love when yoga classes almost morph into circus school--I'm kinda getting to know which teacher is more prone to that and making sure I get to those classes. Especially in the higher-level classes, it can become "let's see what we can get up into tonight." I hear a lot of people who don't want to do yoga because they "don't need to be a contortionist." But that's the appeal for me. I want to get to the point where I can bust out a ridiculous move at parties, like, "oh, that? Boom."

So enough with all the enlightenment/epiphany/get-out-of-your-rut crap. The 30-Day Yoga Challenge now has a new goal: I want another freak notch on my belt! If for no other reason than when we go to workshops and do those stupid icebreakers where you have to tell the stranger next to you something about yourself, I'll be able to say, "I'm a classically trained operatic soprano who once beat her male friends at swordfighting at the Ren Faire. Would you like to see me put my foot behind my head?"

Further misadventures at the 30-Day yoga Challenge page.

Day 11: How To Pick Up Hot (as in attractive) Girls Who Do Yoga

2011-08-18T20:56:00.001-04:00

Day 11 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

OHM here often?

1. Go to a yoga class.

Sike! There are no more steps. Did you click through hoping it would be really complicated and there would be lots of steps? It's really that simple: are you a reasonably-attractive, straight, under-40 cisman who is not a total creeper and does yoga? Because congratulations, you are the Yoga Holy Grail. Boom, done.

I mean, I know I'm doing tons of heteronormative and age-based assuming here, but I'm juuuuust taking a guess that if it's me you chose to explain this to you, you're probably looking for the under-40 straight cislady. Because a trout can only tell you how to catch a trout and not a salmon amirite? Also why am I a fish. Moving on!

From my wide experience at gym/non-gym, heated/non-heated, granola/no-granola yoga-doing (with and without chanting!), I can pretty much guarantee you that you will be the only one of your kind wherever you go. And therefore the most attractive You in the room. Possibly the most attractive You all the girls have ever seen in a yoga class! Which obviously makes it a dumb place to go if you're looking for guys. So the girls aren't looking, which actually works to your advantage, because they won't have engaged The Perv Shield that all girls have for occasions when they know they're in a situation that can breed unwanted attention (bars, singles mixers, every street everywhere on earth).

But there You are! The species so rarely seen in their yoga world! You already have 100 bonus awesome points just for existing in this world. And yeah, some people will assume you're only there to meet girls--but whatever, even Adam Levine will cop to that. If any of them give you the stink eye, they're probably not single. But make it look like you actually came to do yoga, and be at least a little competent at it, and you can have your pick of any lady you desire. Seriously: I have only twice encountered an under-50 male in any yoga class in my entire life who was not the teacher. One of them was straight (and also gorgeous holy moly I don't know how I did a single balance pose the whole time). I have literally begged people at work to have deadlines for the first time in their lives so I can get out of there earlier and always be in this class on the off chance that he ever shows up again.

And why am I so certain that it's really that simple? Another of those secrets no one tells you about yoga: the feeling at the end, in shavasana. when you're all just lying there, with all your charkas wide open--really, all of them, every single one (all. of. them. Do I need to draw you a picture? allofthem)
--let's just say when it's time for the final Namaste, they'll be more than eager to chat with you, ifyouknowwhatimsayin.

Further misadventures at the 30-Day Yoga Challenge Page.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Day 10: Chanting Is All The (Uncontrollable) Rage

2011-08-17T19:47:00.000-04:00

could you shut it? i'm working out here

In the course of this little experiment, I've started to read some yoga life articles, just to see what other people are talking about and to give me some new things to think about (and write about!) besides, "down dog again...also very sweaty today." And apparently there's a horde of people out there on the Internet who are all, "argh enough with the all the damn chanting already aaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!"

Really, this is a thing?

For starters, these posts usually overstate the amount of chanting in your general yoga class. Even when I used to go to the super-spiritual studio with Ganeshas and Shivas and incense and everything, the MOST we did was an OHM at the beginning and one at the end and the mantra (Loka Samasta Sukino Bhavantu. Shan'ti Shan'ti Shan'ti). Maybe ONCE in my year or so there my teacher asked us if we wanted to try some kundalini stuff, and since we were all like, sure, then we did the chakra chanting. But in my gym yoga classes, I encounter an OHM or two only most of the time, and that mantra is rare. That's it. How this turns into "enough with all the chanting just shut up and let me work out!" like it's Mister Rogers' Neighborhood or something, escapes me. (You know what though? I would do yoga to an episode of Mister Rogers--"it's such a good feeling to know you're alive"? I would chant the ever-living shit out of that.)

There's even a so-called new approach to yoga with no chanting or OHMing at all, called the No OM Zone. The reviewers' comments boil down to "omg finally I can do yoga without all that hippie granola crap!" (To any of those people: why would you ever listen to a woman with a Kate Gosselin hairdo, for anything, ever?)

Some people try to compromise, and offer a "well, I'll give you a half-hearted OHM under my breath, but I Will Not Chant! So there." But you're in a form of exercise who's very point is to challenge your conceived notions of your body and what it can do, or will do. The whole crux of this thing is to reach beyond what your mind has decided you can and can't, and will and won't do, because only then do you discover where your strength, flexibility, etc lie. I can tell you, if your mind is putting up walls between what it will and will not do, you're not getting anything out of it.

You don't actually want to do yoga! And that's fine! Go do pilates instead.

I kind of get the "oh but my religion!" argument. But don't let any Ganeshas and Shivas and incense fool you: if you walked up to a real live Hindu person and said that you practice their religion, they will probably laugh right in your face. Western yoga has pretty much stripped the practice of any connection to outright religiosity, and there's an entire argument for not even doing it at all unless it is indeed a part of your religious practice. This fear of the spirituality reminds me of the hysterical leaflets the nuns would send home in grade school, warning our parents of ten ways their second-grader could accidentally drop acid. Relax, you're not going to unintentionally do wicca or worship satan.

I get that people may be bothered by chanting in a language that they don't understand. But OHM doesn't actually mean anything. It's just a sound. And the mantra, paraphrased, is, "wouldn't it be cool for everyone if no one was a jerk? Let's try that." And shan'ti means peace. You can't say peace? Again, you're not accidentally unsaving your soul.

Sure you could actually say, "peace," but there's an advantage to chanting words you don't know. I studied opera in college and had to sing in Italian, and I encountered this--it's easier to sing in Italian than in English! You know the meaning of the phrase, but not the specific words, so your mind focuses on the physicality of making the sounds rather than saying the words. It makes you aware of what your body is doing.

And resonance! Oh, man, yeah, resonance. Sound is energy traveling through air, so when a room full of people are putting out the same kind of energy everything builds on itself--this is how you get that I Am The Whole World feeling. When everyone's chanting a good, long OHM and none of them are tone deaf so you're all on the same pitch and everything in the entire room is humming the same frequency MAN ALIVE.

Have you ever felt like your entire body was ringing like a bell?

Try it and then try to tell me you hate to chant.

Would you like a very intimidating article about how resonant frequencies work in yoga that is pretty interesting if you have the time to really digest it? Here you go.

Further misadventures at the 30-Day Yoga Challenge Page

Image: Sura Nualpradid / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I Don't Come Down To Where You Work And Knock The Johnson Out Of Your Mouth

2011-08-15T21:37:00.002-04:00

But maybe I should. Seriously! One of you is even doing it wrong, all of you stop it. Also, chocolate ice cream, Rick Santorum? Isn't your CIA bodyguard supposed to jump in front of you before this happens, or is this some kind of subversive signal to a whole 'nother kind of Base?

PS now that we've got photographic evidence that the only thing that's bipartisan is the eating of phallic foodstuffs, can we please stop talking about how it's sexist?

Day 9: Forgiveness Blows

2011-08-15T21:13:00.001-04:00

If you can't forgive yourself, you can't forgive others. Which is probably why after a truly deep, cleansing, powerfully challenging practice (With tears! Yes, more tears--hip openers are Pandora's Box?-- awesome) I was the girl screaming out her car window that "you have a stop sign you jagwad!!"

And Saturday I was all Compassion, etc. Dang.

What's the Sanskrit for "may all beings be happy and free and also obey traffic laws?"

Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.

Day 7: The One Where There Was Disco!

2011-08-15T21:12:00.001-04:00

Hadji had me at "my San Fransisco yogi friends call this The Jane Fonda." But then everything had jazz hands and I was so happy I could Just Die. "This flow is gonna be like a dance, okay? And also do it like you're an animal!" And did I mention he has the greatest taste in yoga music ever:

This was the cool down portion of the morning, but also there was neo-soul funk and I THINK at one point the Suger Hill Gang came on. I told him I liked it and he said, "you know, I use whatever is good, I'll even throw some rap in there." Now THAT I want to see. I want to see if Watch The Throne will help me with crow pose.

If anyone was ever worth getting up at 7am on a Saturday for, it's Hadji.

I don't know if the other people in the class appreciated it. Well, they were mad that he was a few minutes late and they kept whispering that they were "going to say something the second this is done I mean it" and THEN you add the disco yoga, and, well. We Hate Different Things Argh Argh Grumble.

But boo on them if they get all cranky because that was exactly what I needed that morning. And the joy of the practice even followed me all the way to work: when some guy stumbled by our broadcast screaming that all our contests are fixed, and another wanted to make sure we knew that the insufficient of amount of Def Leppard we play is "a fucking DISGRACE," my first reaction wasn't neck-hairs-up defensive. It was compassion. Yeah angry people suck, but they're never angry at us, we're like the billionth thing. And people take that billionth thing out on strangers who they know can't be mean back. But what's easy to forget is the incredible sadness that makes a person lash out at someone unprovoked. Those people aren't free--not in their lives, because who is, but not even in their minds. Not in their hearts. So my first reaction was to remember the mantra we used to close class that morning:

Om Lokah Samasthah Sukhino Bhavanthu: May all beings be happy and free. And may my I live in a way that makes them so.

Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.

Day 5: A Tyranny of Handstands

2011-08-11T20:52:00.000-04:00

Day 5 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

My arms don't straighten. The left WAY more so than the right. I know you're thinking to yourself, yeah, I'll bet they actually do and she just has them twisted around or something. But indeed they do not! I've never had an injury that I can recall, and I do remember getting all kinds of x-rays and the doctor finally concluding something like "golly that's odd." It just decided to grow crooked. Thank you to whichever ancestor gave me THAT latent gene. In the course of living life, this is not a problem. Most people don't even know it, because you can't really tell unless I'm doing cheerleading moves (and BOY did my coaches have a grand time with me--fantastic jumps, arms for shit).

In yoga, it's pretty much everything. It makes my down dog go a little itsy tiny bit to the right side. It means my right shoulder usually hits the ground first at the bottom of my pushup. It means that both halves of my body are so uneven that my ability to do the same pose on both sides can vary from Killed It to Almost Got Killed. And it has created for me an arch-nemesis: Handstand.

If you're anywhere but a first-day beginner's yoga class, you're going to encounter handstand. It's very important, as are all inversions. Because, you're never upside down! Well, duh, right? Yeah, actually being upside down while not strapped in to a roller coaster messes with your psyche. Your brain has no idea what your relationship to the Earth is. And it's all the way down at the bottom of you! How is it supposed to control the other parts, flailing above it? Handstand is deeply humbling, and you can learn lots about a person just by watching how they attempt it: do they try little kicks first, to kind of see where the edge is, or do the hurl their feet into the air and back towards the wall? To paraphrase Shun Yu (by way of Firefly): "you can live with a man for fifty years and think you know him, but ask him to do a handstand and on that day you will truly meet the man. If you are also holding him over a volcano when you ask."

If you're a physics/mechanics nut you know where this is going: my crazy-bandy-arm creates all kind of force vectors that are not straight up and down, sending the force to the side instead of to the floor and making the elbow fly out to the side. Curtains.

Handstand is The Big Bad. The Final Boss at the end of the last level. And I get turned away at the boss door, not told to come back with x or y item or after having completed z quest. Nope, I just get told it's Game Over, no Crooked-Arm Girls Allowed.

I am not used to not being good at things (see, Sunday). I'm a member of the Straight-A's forever club. I have the same number of professional achievement awards as I have years at my job. One day my dentist told me I was the best mouth he'd seen all day and I asked him to write that on a card so I could hang it on my fridge. If I was a knight, my shield would say Adapt Evolve Achieve. When I have a problem, I kick it in the ass.

How do you kick your left arm in the ass?

I did attempt Handstand once, and I fell on my head. Something a later teacher would joke to the class is impossible; your body won't even LET you do that! I'm sure my whole body was smirking. It totally let me do that. It turned on me. So now I have to explain how my arms don't straighten, especially leftie look at him he's practically a half-moon! and usually teachers look at my arm in disbelief and say, oh, um, yeah, I would avoid Handstand altogether. Which sometimes means I get to do a headstand instead, but some teachers are fundamentalists, so since I can't do Handstand I end up lying there with my legs against the wall, rolling my eyes. Because it's just the complete abdication of doing anything at all, and don't pity me and tell me I'm getting the same benefit because I'm not.

There's lots I can't do YET in yoga. Crow pose is going to be my new Half Moon, I can tell--one day I'll just be able to do it and LOOK OUT! But man, Handstand is killing me, because there's nothing I can do about it. My body will probably (oh god shred of hope) never be able to do it. And there's nothing I can do to work up to it, short of breaking my arm and resetting it straight, and even then?

It's an interesting thing, to be truly helpless in your own body.

Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.
Image via Yoga Journal.

An Alternate Interpretation of The Most Sexist Ad of All Time

2011-08-11T13:57:00.000-04:00

Because uuugh for the thousandth time I have to get mad about this exact same thing that hasn't really changed but just gotten more subtle over the past 60 years. But I mean listen to the music cues: sure she ended up at the airport, but on her way there she was clearly foiling a Soviet plot to take over America, and they can't show that because of national security etc, but obviously this woman is A BADASS SECRET SPY. And when she slides over so that her misogynist (cover!) husband can drive, she's all, "HA! You're WELCOME. Sucker."

Day 4: Can't Stop the Signal

2011-08-10T18:54:00.000-04:00

Day 4 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

Today I did something I do maybe twice a year, tops. I left work to go to the gym on my lunch break. Actually, you could take out the "to the gym" part and be just as correct. It's true, I'm a shameful lunch-at-one's-desk-eater. For some reason I always felt like telling us we have an hour where we can stop working and do whatever we want is a trap they set so they can see who's not busy enough to merit their position being eliminated. But not today! Today I encountered a rare moment where I had not a stitch to do, and also the person who writes up the orders was leaving at the same time so there would be nothing more until he came back anyway. Goodbye desk! Goodbye studio! Wave to the Western Culture of Workaholism on your way out! Oh no, did it see us leaving?

Did you know being in the sunlight in the middle of a beautiful 84-degree day is awesome? Of course you did, you're not a crazyperson.

Class was good too! Very sweaty, although I feel like I could be MORE sweaty? Isn't hot yoga supposed to just wring out every ounce of water in your body? Am I not getting the full benefit? Either way, I finally had the experience of being the (I think) most advanced person in the room. And half moon showed up! Remember half moon? Everybody else used blocks and I got to be all, "oh, no I can do it without the block!" And she was like, riiiiiiiiiight and I was all um, YEAH so you can take this block and--no this is not kickboxing.

Which is something I'm wondering about. I've gotten used to the satisfaction of being absolutely pummeled by my workout, while club music pounds in my ears. I like the grrrr-toughness of kickboxing, and pulling out the last bit of stamina to go blasting over a hill on the elliptical induces euphoria. Basically, when it comes to workin' it out, I like it rough. Will I get that same feeling from yoga? Do I need it? And if I do need it will it surface somewhere else? I always joke that punching and kicking things in Powerstrike keeps me from punching and kicking things in real life. Not that I would ever assault a person, but what if my calm is only found at the center of chaos?

All things I pondered in shavasana! Along with a manic run-through of every tiny little action I'd be taking in five minutes to get back to work. I had cut it a liiiiiittle close with the timing, so if class ran too late and if all the showers were taken and and and there was a small chance I would not be back in time for something very important that would go on with or without me. So I lay there, coiled like a spring, unable to turn my brain off, chattering away inside my head and waiting for the moment I could dash out the door and not lose precious seconds.

Everything went fine, of course, but maybe it's not the best idea to go to yoga during the day? Even if I wasn't up against a very hard deadline, I feel like I would still be begging every second to go by faster, stressed that someone would decide I had been gone too long, that I'm slacking, that I'm not invested. Or maybe I need the trial by fire: learn to turn it all off and go deep in a stressful situation. If I can do that, just think of the amazing mental gymnastics I could accomplish, on and off the mat.

Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.
Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Day 3: I Strap On Some Cojones and Find Out If I'm "Intermediate"

2011-08-09T18:04:00.001-04:00

Day 3 of the 30-Day Yoga Challenge

boom.

Even after Sunday's Adventures In Feeling Inadequate, I was surprised at how much I really wanted to go to yoga again. I was actually bummed about "having to" go to kickboxing instead. Is my spirit animal changing already? But, bummer: the only class I could make was a level 2:

Intense & renewing flow practice to enliven the body and balance the mind. Int/Adv. Heated.

And girl, you are not intermediate-slash-advanced! Remember the shame spiral! The falling! Your arms don't straighten! Your biceps are apparently fake! I told all this to my Favorite Boss Rodney, who is my favorite because he lets me talk crazy nonsense and then tells me exactly what I need to hear (he once threatened to turn off the internet in my studio after: "she weighs that? but HOW TALL IS SHE and does that mean I'm fat!?!?!" People, the Internet is a terrible place). And the best part is, he's always, always right: "well, you already cried once, what else worse could happen to you?" Every living creature needs its own Rodney.

So YEAH! Buoyed by matter-of-fact-ness, I turned once again to The Google. Judging from the poses about.com considers "beginner" "intermediate" and "advanced," I was actually IN an intermediate class on Sunday. Why this made me feel like that makes me intermediate is anybody's guess, considering how freaking hard it was, but I didn't die, so yeah? Plus, hellooooo half moon! Half moon is my Achievement Pose: it took me forever to be able to do it without the wall or a block, but now I'm all, "you say you want a half moon outta this warrior 2? BOOM." Actually, more, "oh, half m--okay, let me just move my foot and then floooooat down foot up don't over-correct with the foot corestrength no i need to bend my knee i'll get there hold on hold on BOOM whoah the boom made me lose my balance." And also chair pose is intermediate? Stop it.

Honestly, I've been doing yoga on and off for ten years. If I'm not Intermediate by now, I've probably wasted thousands of dollars, and all those Saturday mornings when I could have been sleeping in. And I realized that I wouldn't even bother to go to a beginner class, so then mathematically...

But--but! And here is where the crazy happens: the worst that could happen is much worse than some tears during shavasana, because I can always imagine worse. Hallucinate, actually: The instructor grills me on my yoga credentials and then declares that I do not belong there! The entire class rolls their eyes at the idiot who thought she should crash and Int/Adv class! I get unceremoniously thrown out while everyone laughs and does handstands! Or worse, everyone spends the entire class wondering at that girl who can't do anything right and nobody has a good time because all the advanced yogis are distracted by the girl who's bad at it! What nerve she has coming here and crashing our class, someone whisper to her in hushed tones as we're leaving that perhaps she shouldn't come back. And then I will see those people every day for the rest of my life, and they will look at me and sigh.

Which, really, the chances of that happening are infinitesimal. I don't think anyone else has the creativity to even come up with something so consistently horrible, and if they do they probably have better things to use that creativity on than caring that much about me. And seriously? Yoga people being such juiceboxes? Hardly. But that's pretty much the root of all my junk: the paralyzing fear that if I take a single tiny wrong step, all the other kids will point their fingers at me call me out as a FRAUD who Does Not Belong. Truly it's a wonder I get anything done, ever.

But this is why I cooked up this harebrained scheme in the first place, isn't it? So things would change? To deal with the existential junk that yoga forces you to face? So, I decided to strap on a pair of cojones and obey the magnet I put on my studio door for this very reason that says, "Do one thing every day that scares you.--Eleanor Roosevelt" Ain't nobody throwing Eleanor Roosevelt outta no intermediate yoga class.

Stay tuned.

Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.
Image via Yoga Journal.

Day 2: I Throw Some Money At The Situation

2011-08-09T14:10:00.006-04:00

Day 2 of the 30-Day Yoga Challenge

Salvation?

Had to do the laundry today--it takes me about three hours to do since I hate the laundromat and leave it for the last possible day, so I couldn't make the 6p "Realign to Refine" class at my gym:

Focus on your breath while flowing through postures. Develop awareness of your mind, body & spirit. Be adjusted by an additional Jivala teacher during this class to help refine your flow. All levels Heated.

Constant adjustment! Which would have been buckets of fun, right? To have the very thing that was spazzing me on Sunday be happening all the damn time? I guess the point of the class is that the other instructor is nit-picky so maybe I wouldn't have felt bad about it. Things to be found-out-about next week.

So I spent the night talking to my mom, aka The Google, typing things like "how do I not break my neck during hot yoga?" The Internet seems to think that a yogitoes mat towel will solve my slipping problem. It has sweat-wicking material on one side and silicon nubbins on the other so that it doesn't slide off your mat. Everyone goes on and on in the comments about how amazing it is, and one lady even admitted turning it upside down and letting the nubbins keep her feet in place during warrior poses. She's my hero--people, you can cheat at yoga! My existential junk has no problem with that. They're ridiculously expensive, but I found them for a few dollars less on Amazon, and since I'm doing this at the gym for free instead of plunking down over a hundred bucks for a month at Hot Box in Manayunk, fifty bucks seems like a doable investment.

The bonus is that I don't actually have a whole bunch of money to fritter away, so making any kind of monetary investment signals to my brain that I Am Actually Going To Do This. It's why I bought myself an iPod when I started going to the gym, and why I buy new First Date dresses that I am not allowed to wear unless and until I actually go out on a date.

I did not, however, signal to my brain that I was actually going to spring for overnight shipping, so while my yogitoes is making it's way toward me, I'll me using a hand towel for the rest of this week and maybe putting antiperspirant in strange new places.

Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.

Day 1: In Which I Am Shamed By Hot Yoga

2011-08-09T11:35:00.006-04:00

Girl you do not need those legwarmers

Day 1 of the 30-Day Yoga Challenge

After reading Anne Helen Peterson's love letter to hot yoga over at The Hairpin, I became obsessed with trying it out. Maybe it's a Saturn-return thing, but starting on New Year's Day I've had the nagging desire to just blow everything up and make my life look different, so I was eager to try anything that would "change my life, body, and spirit animal." I've been doing yoga on and off for over ten years, so I know my way around a tadasana like nobody's business. Or I thought I did!

Hot yoga is hard work. The room is heated to almost 100 degrees, so your entire body is working hard and sweating more than even I'm used to, and I regularly work outside in 100-plus temps. I knew this, and I was excited about it. I wanted more of a challenge than the more spiritual yoga classes I had been going to for years and I was confident that, even though it had been a long while since I'd been on the mat, I'd be bringing my new muscles, hard-won with a few years of weight training. I decided to start with the easiest heated class to fit into my schedule, 4pm on Sunday. Here is the write-up:

Wind down your weekend with this smooth, flowing yoga class with Noah. This class is appropriate for all, especially those looking to start a yoga practice. Mild-heat.

Start a practice! Mild heat! And then I showed up and there were only three other people there and I was the youngest person by about 30 years. I was actually worrying that I would own this class so hard it would be a waste of my time.

HERE IS THE THING NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT YOGA, and it is even truer of hot yoga, where your soul and sanity are melting down your forehead: you CAN NOT be dishonest with yourself and do yoga. It will immediately and very clearly show you each and every one of your limitations, both physically and mentally. If you don't believe me, turn your AC off, wait ten minutes, and try to hold Down Dog for ten breaths. And that's the easy part.

As a bonus, if you don't have all your existential junk sorted out beforehand, it's going to start rattling around. I knew this, actually: I took a theater class in college where we used yoga to access our deep emotions as actors and stuff. It was a crash course in how yoga will betray what you're not so sure you want to reveal. Exactly eight hours after a conversation that ended with "well you asked where this was going, but you didn't specifically ask if I had a fiancee, so no I don't think I needed to tell you that," I was able to "emote primal, raw anguish." I got an A. And it wasn't even hot in there.

Of course, these are all things I am reminded of on Sunday afternoon. While we're doing about the hundreth shoulder-stand-balance thing and all the olds are pretzeling and balancing away and I'm slipping, not just because my mat is now a slip-n-slide (although it is), but because my arms don't actually straighten so these are four-hundred times harder for me in the first place even when I'm not out of practice. And there are TONS of arm-strength poses, which goes to support my theory that yoga classes taught by men are more physical than yoga classes taught by women, and focus more on upper-body strength because men generally have more upper body strength than women. I'm probably not going to ever be able to do a push-up pose with my feet off the floor, because two-thirds of my body is below my belly button.

So I spend an hour slipping and sliding and flailing and FAILING. In every other class that I've tried, I've be able to see this as a positive: if it's easy there's no benefit, and now I have something to work on. And the irony is that you cannot fail at yoga: every pose is a process; no one does them perfectly, the point being that you use the process to learn how your body works. But I am not of a headspace that wants to have anything to do with my limitations. And because of what I said before about yoga showing you both your physical and mental limitations, the failing here comes to represent everything that's stalled out in my life. The fact that I can't get past the tipping point in crow pose to a place of balance is obviously because nothing is balanced in my life! Of course I can't get centered, there IS NO emotional center to my life! Why am I a failure at pigeon pose? Why do I feel like a failure at EVERYTHING? And the fact that I get lots of adjustment from Noah, the instructor, means that I've just been doing it wrong for years. Even my downward dog is wrong! I've been wrong about everything! Wrong all along.

So I do what I always do when I'm exhausted and defeated and can't help it: I cry. I cry at yoga! I cry in shavasana. I'm lucky that the lights are turned low and the tears could be mistaken for sweat since it is still pouring down my forehead. But deep breathing will turn into sobbing or choking so I basically have to hold my breath. Which destroys the whole purpose of the pose. Which makes me feel even worse. Nothing like a corpse pose shame spiral!

The odd thing is, even though I want to slink out of class with my head down afterward, and even though I want to cry in the car on the way home (I keep it together because, daylight, obvi), I kind of like the fact that all that deep stuff had been shaken loose from where it had been shoved down. I LIKE the mental challenge that goes with the physical one. I like that I'm fully confronted with myself, and there's nowhere for either of us to hide. It's a good place to start, and that's what it is, a beginning.

And also, I may have been the one who kept falling over in half-moon pose, but I wasn't the one who let go of a huge fart during meditation. So I may have embarrassed myself in front of some flexible olds, but I don't have to feel THAT bad about it.

Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Whale Is Indifferent To Random Mariachis

2011-08-03T20:32:00.001-04:00

As are we all, generally.

So, this video went viral today and the Official Internet Response is "wow, cool, the Beluga is dancing to/lurves the mariachi's!" But I'm preeeeety sure the whale is just like WTF. Or am I just watching it wrong?

Or maybe the whale is a hipster, and was over mariachi bands before being over them was cool? But secretly is digging it and can't say anything because the other hipster whales will be all "sellout!"..? I don't actually know how hipsterism expresses itself outside of homo-sapiens in No-Libs.

A Roundabout Way to Justify Eating Snack Foods For Dinner

2011-08-01T21:02:00.003-04:00

1. Watch this video from Fitperez.com and learn how to make your own guacamole.

2. Buy all of the ingredients for like $3 (for some reason this has only ever worked with Haas Avocados, btw).

3. Make guacamole--which, being homemade, will have zero scary chemical preservatives, and no added fat/sugar, etc. And so therefore counts as a vegetable instead of a dip! And is delicious on tortilla chips. Bravo.

4. Use leftover lime half as garnish in gin & tonic. Feel good about wasting absolutely nothing--so green! like a lime--and count each drink as a serving of fruit.

5. Eat a well-balanced meal of fruits and vegetables. Michelle Obama would be so proud!

Ever Think You'd Get Nostalgic For The Uncanny Valley?

2011-08-01T20:52:00.000-04:00

Between this (which is NOT AT ALL a person FYI), and Olivia Wilde's nipples in The Change-Up being CGI-painted-on later, I would trade technological advancement for the return of Beyowulf and the terror that was The Polar Express. Somehow those cold, dead eyes, were our Good Old Days....Avatar, what have you wrought?

Why I Don't Lie About Being Single

2011-08-01T20:08:00.001-04:00

Last week, after an appearance, I found myself asking the question I'm sure women whose jobs entail meeting lots of strangers ask themselves at some point: should I just wear a fake engagement ring already? 99 percent of the guys who were at the place were nice and fun and etc, but it was a singles mixer so of course it brought out the Predators. The ones who just won't take no. The ones who can't comprehend that a woman who is there working is not there to meet singles. Which would have been the antithesis of my actual function at said mixer, which was to facilitate the hooking-up of other singles. That would have been like a waiter taking a bite of the cheesecake before taking it out to the table (I mean, there was a cover charge. I can't swoop in for free and take all the men. Plus I ate the free buffet, so I had already stolen enough for one night).

The tricky part is, I have to explain all of that to this guy, who's been in my face for ten minutes telling me I'm the most beautiful woman he's ever seen so WHY won't I go out with him if I'm single he's a NICE GUY he SWEARS, and I have to do it in the absolute nicest way possible. Because if I give him the sliver of an argument against me, say by telling him politely but directly that, "I've said no to you already and you have to leave now," he might tell the client and my boss that I was a huge bitch to him, and then it doesn't really matter what did or did not get said because Bitch Always Sticks.

Wouldn't it be easier to just wear a fake ring? Wouldn't it be easier to just lie and say YES when they ask if I have a boyfriend? Yes, yes. It would. But I can't.

I can't speak for anyone else and what they choose to do about things like this, but I really just hate the idea that I have to lie about myself, to conjure an entire other person out of thin air, in order to have a valid reason to say no to attention I don't want. I am a single woman who simultaneously does not want to date you. Why (why do they always ask why?)? Because I don't. And those two thoughts create absolutely no contradiction in my mind.

Also, I hate the idea that being Single is an illness that needs to be cured. Because if being single is always the wrong answer and being attached is always the right answer, then why not any man? Why not someone who will stand in my face for ten minutes and swear he's a nice guy while not taking no for an answer, because the only right answer is yes? It gives the Predators a license to feel that they're owed something from me simply by bestowing on me their attention: they're doing me a favor by trying to save me from singleness, and I should be grateful.

And again, it would be so easy to lie. I know it wouldn't save me from the juiceboxes who see a ring as a dare, but it would cut down on a lot of frustration. But it would make me feel like I was giving currency to the warped idea that being single is something I should be trying to change about myself. That something about the way I am, now, just as I am, is inherently wrong.

And I shouldn't need a man to protect me, even an imaginary one.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I Went To Bible Camp!

2011-07-20T22:48:00.003-04:00

future atheist slept here!

My family is Catholic. My dad, very much so. My mom once wrote a college paper on how Eve reaching for the apple/knowledge/empowerment was a profoundly feminist act, so, probably less so. We were at St Mary's Church every Sunday and her Catholic gradeschool every weekday. But for one week out of the summer, I ended up at fundamentalist Protestant Bible camp.

And I luuuuuuuuuurved it.

Camp HaLuWaSa was built into a former cranberry bog in South Jersey. The name stands for "Halleluiah What a Savior!" My mother and her sister went there when they were young, which is I guess how we found out about it. They went to Catholic school growing up, which was odd enough because my grandparents' philosophy was pretty much, "maybe God's up there, but we just don't really wanna hang out with him." But then Bible camp? Were there no other camps in South Jersey (it's like, ALL farm)? But then again, in the early 60's even Haluwasa was new, so maybe not.

According to the website, the mission is:

to evangelize and disciple believers to maturity through the instruction and demonstration of Biblical principles and values

And also to reenact the crucifixion. Or maybe that team just lost at flag football? [Slides! Kayaks! Wilderness! Crucifixions!]

The camp is nondenominational, and while we were always welcomed with open arms, it definitely does have an evangelical bent. It was this that worried my mother, as every year before I'd go I would be sat down and reminded to be wary of people trying to "save" me. Catholics believe the soul is saved at baptism, and then you reinforce that with being good all the time, and erase any sins in confession. Most protestants will tell you that throwing water at a baby doesn't do squat (a position I have come to embrace though not for the same reasons), and you have to ask for Jesus to come into your heart, and really, really, super mean it. So in this scenario Jesus is like a vampire vis-a-vis your house, which makes sense considering the resurrection/undead squickyness. But the tradeoff is you don't have to reallllllllly worry about the good works thing, so you're spared the humiliating charade of confession.

Anyway my mother was worried that I'd get all wrapped up in the Jesusness of it all, and go and get myself saved (perhaps she sensed my future all-consuming lust for Vampire Eric?). Somehow, being "saved" the evangelical way would have completely negated my Catholicism. I guess when you believe that pouring water on an infant makes them believe one thing over another, that seems like a pretty logical fear. She also feared that if there was a particularly fundamentalist counselor who could make Biblical absolutism seem like more fun, I'd come home with nine years of Catholic school indoctrination completely undone.

Thus, I was sent off to Jesus camp for one week every summer, and told to just keep it to myself that I was Catholic, listen to Bible study but only halfway, and if anybody tried to make me ask Jesus to come into my heart, to stall and mumble something about being on Team Jacob and then RUN. And also to have fun in arts-and-crafts and not spend all my money on chipwiches the first night.

By the early 90's this could not have been the only sleep-away camp in existence for a thousand miles. So...What in the ~~hell~~ (um, oopsie!)...WTF?

Whatever the reason for sending me off to Bible camp, I can honestly say, all these atheist years later, It.Was.The.Greatest.EVER. We lived in the development at that time, and while we visited my grandparents on what would become the family farm later, I was pretty much an inside kid, save for time invested in trying to swing all the way around the backyard swing set. For an entire week in the summer, I got to try on the life of an Outdoor Kid. And no one knew me but the friend or two I brought along, who were perpetrating their own similar fraud anyway.

I slept in a teepee that let in the rain (and it rained alot!)! I did the zipline and the rappelling wall! I hiked in the woods and slept under the STARS! I went canoeing on the Batsto river! And there was a train! I learned how to sleep through constant bullfrog song, which probably helped me a lot in Temple's dorms. I played Freedom USA and American Eagle 123, which aren't as xenophobic as they sound and involve diving into the woods and being tackled. And when you're 13, being thrown to the ground by 13-year-old boys in whatever context, even because they're trying to tear a nerf ball out of your hands, is exhilarating. My first year, my cabin got Super Cabin ribbons to take home, because we had the most points in a system that works exactly like the House Cups in Harry Potter.

Because I was a weird little kid with emotional problems, I cried from homesickness the first day or two. But by the time the week was over, when my parents would show up and my mother would pronounce me Dirty, I was weeping to leave. In fact, every year I cried myself to sleep for several nights after camp from missing it. I wrote letters to my counselors for the whole summer: Aunts Beth, Joy, Allison, and Jill (they were called aunt or uncle to circumvent the ill-mannered problem of calling an adult by their first name).

I don't remember much of our evening services, but I remember walking back to the cabin, exhausted and thrilled at the thought of bed, and being absolutely in awe of the sunset on the lake.

And I know that after spending five days without air conditioning, one comes to worship the coolness of the morning air at dawn.

And it was absolutely not-for-a-second like that horrible place in Jesus Camp.

I don't remember much of the Jesus stuff, except for a few of the songs, and that I was sad to learn that Green Day's "All By Myself" was about masturbation. I didn't exactly know what masturbation was then, but I knew I should feel bad for liking a song about it. Maybe it was because in the early Clinton years of prosperity before the rise of the Religious Right there were far fewer bogeymen: no one had decided that The Gays were out to melt children's brains and no one had ever heard of Sharia Law. What I remember was that Jesus loved us and we were great the way we were and we should be nice to everybody else because the same was true for them.

And maybe that was the point? I don't remember any teasing, bullying, hazing, mean girls, cliques, fights, or general tween-anger shenanigans. The belief that we were all good, were capable of doing good, and were loved equally by something whose scale was larger than humanity's struggle created an environment free of cynicism, irony, and world-weary detachment. It's the one good thing, if nothing else, about religion. And for four summers I got it in an IV drip of that evangelomorphine, 24/7. At the exact moment in my life when I needed it the most.

Which is probably the reason that, even after realizing that I don't believe in any kind of God stuff and turning away from it completely, I still consider my time at Bible camp as some of the greatest weeks of that part of my life.

Although, PS, mom? I got saved with Aunt Jill during my Wilderness Outpost year, at night after service in the field. Clearly it didn't take, though, so no worries.

Is It Okay That I Don't Really Care About Kate Middleton Anymore?

2011-07-11T21:28:00.001-04:00

Chris Pizzello/AP Photo via ABC News

Wils and Kate have completed their tour of The Colonies, and are back in England by now, so, confession: after all of it; the dresses! the funny hats with Canada leaves! the inevitable upskirt wardrobe malfunction! the only thing I can think of is...ugh, still?

This is not a Katey-Hatey post, she seems like a wonderful, nice person who we could all be bff's with forever. And I'd hazard a guess that, after the complete press seizure that was her wedding, and the paps at the supermarket snapping away because The Duchess Pushes Her Own Cart, and now the American Tour, she'd probably be relieved if no one cared about her for five seconds. As Will and Kate prove they're the opposite of Heidi and Spencer (or even Charles and Di), you have to assume that some part of her brain is saying, "come on, I'm just me." At least because she seems like the kind of person you want to like.

I was completely on board for the wedding. I didn't even expect to be, but there I was, eating cake at work at 8 in the morning and pretending I had something in my contact lens. But that day she was the girl that her man fought for, and stuffy royals and your snobbery be damned because love won! It was beautiful and romantic and now I have something in my contact lens.

And then. And then...what? She's never had a job, and isn't really supposed (allowed?) to have a proper "work" job, and what will she DO? It's doubtful she'll ever have an identity that is her own, ever again, and not based upon, or a reflection of, her husband. Which is all fine, but, then, what exactly are we so excited about? Does it jangle the feminist amygdala in anybody else that, still, in 2011, The Kate Swoon in its present incarnation is based solely on the fact that she married well?

Which isn't to say she owes us anything; that she's a public figure by marriage doesn't mean she belongs wholly to the ionosphere of celebrity now. That she wore nice clothes and spent the tour applauding the doing of things by her husband may in fact be a cleverly managed attempt at NOT cultivating a public identity. Which would allow her a sliver of the privacy she and William seem to want to try to hold on to for as long as they can. Which is great! And I promise to look away if that's what she wants.

Or maybe it's still too soon. Maybe she'll be the next Angelina, or hell even bring back flesh-colored tights (please can we do this, everybody?). For now, as a good citizen of the hive-mind of intelligentsia (Internet-eratti?), I'm duty-bound to fall in awe of every Shiny Thing We All Love. But if you see my eyes get glassy over the two-hundreth photo of The Duchess In A Dress, it will be because I'm faking it. Unless I get the tights, and then we'll see about getting the girl canonized.

The Weekday Afternoon Date: WTF How Is This A Thing

2011-07-07T21:42:00.001-04:00

You look so beautiful at 2p on a Wednesday.

Is the unemployment crisis so bad that nobody has a job? Instead of going to work we go on dates?

Have any other single ladies out there been experiencing this trend, or is this just a symptom of my terrible luck with online dating? It's been a barrage of midweek-afternoon first-date offers, with little to no notice. Hey how is your evening going, there's this concert at noon tomorrow. Hey can we get coffee at some point on Wednesday (which was actually, hey I'm in town for two days, if at some point I have a spare hour can I text you and you can entertain me while I'm otherwise alone in a Starbucks?). And the clear winner: I have an extra standing-room only ticket for this week's 1:05 Phillies game, wanna go?

Now, I could go on all day about the sheer logistics of a baseball game as a first date. There's no exit strategy--if we hate each other that's three hours of awkward stares. Not to mention the sheer numbers: unless you have antlers, you can tell me the exact sign you're standing under and I will never find you among the 200 people who are currently occupying the same exact spot. And SRO? I know you don't know me, but I can guaran-damn-tee you I'm worth a chair, brosef.

But, really: 1pm on a Thursday?

It's not that any one of these was a non-rescheduleable weekday-afternoon thing. It's that ALL OF THEM WERE. I get that teachers are off for the summer and bartenders and SOME musicians and the A-List strippers wouldn't be working on a summer afternoon anyway, but that's not a sizeable enough chunk of the population for that to be a fair generalization.

I know I don't come off as independently wealthy (although maybe I do and it's scaring away all the doctors and investment bankers?). Do you gentlemen not encounter many ladies with jobs? Who are available to wait by the phone should you happen to not have a book to accompany your latte? I envy those ladies of leisure but they're teaching you bad habits. And I suspect they're in the seventh grade, which was the last time anyone I know had the time to revolve around a man, even if she waned to.

A teeny part of my brain wonders if it's a reaction to The Rules? She's going to turn down the first one anyway so as not to seem too available so why not burn a near-impossible one first and THEN the real one? Or maybe the afternoon is less pressure as it isn't as likely to lead to something else? Like, if we meet in the middle of the day we'll both have places to go and that'll be it, but if it's drinks then it could be dinner and then should I just try to take off her clothes? Or are they trying to start early because they're hoping it lasts longer--and then we had coffee and coffee led to drinks and we're here so let's just get dinner and should I try to take off her clothes? (You know what, though, even I don't think I'm THAT awesome.) Honestly if it's going to be that complicated then I'm just getting all the cats now. I already have the caftan, so I've got one foot on Spinster Lane.

WHAT is the deal? Why is it always the weekday afternoon?

Or maybe they actually think I'm a really, really good stripper?....Actually, I kind of say my job is "hanging out with everyone," and I never say exactly what it is...Ah, okay, they think I'm a stripper. A really good one who only works the weekend nights, though, so...yay?

image via photostock

Beats That Deserve Better 070711: Swagger Jagger

2011-07-07T20:56:00.001-04:00

It's so hard to be a sweet hook: everybody wants you, so they'll whisper things like "X-Factor sensation" in your ear, and before you know it you've fallen in with the wrong crowd and you don't even recognize your life anymore and you wonder how it went oh so wrong:

Cher Lloyd - Swagger Jagger from JayGaga on Vimeo.

I'm pretty sure there's a good song somewhere in there, at least there deserves to be.

Your move, Ke$ha.

AC-Induced Existential Crises and the Self-Sufficient Single Lady: A Beginner's Guide

2011-06-01T20:06:00.001-04:00

Pictured: Malevolence

Congratulations! You're an Independent Single Lady! You take care of business when there is such which has needs of which to be taken care! Throw your hat up in the air.

At some point in your success-twirling dance, you will become very sweaty, and notice that your AC is broken. Probably your first tip-off will be the screeching death throes of the motor. So you set to cycling through fan speeds at different tempos to trick it, doing the turn-on-turn-off dance to see if maybe it's just exhausted? And then resort to violence, but only as a last resort because you want your security deposit back some day.

But you do it all nonchalantly because fixing problems self-sufficiently is all in the day's work of the Self-Sufficient Single Lady, and Success! You've gotten the squealing to stop. Oh that's because the motor is no longer running.

You will call your landlord, who says he'll come over soon to check it out. Realizing that Check It Out does not equal Send Someone Over To Install A New Unit and that soon does not equal now, you begin to look for new apartments. There's no way you're actually going to move, you're way too lazy and now, too sweaty, to put in the effort. But you just want to send him some karmic energy rays to give him nightmares about having to find a new tenant. You will discover that every other apartment in the city is way less space for way more money and no parking, and decide that while you can't afford to not be stuck here in this hothouse, you can afford this pint of Half Baked and this bottle of Merlot.

It will suddenly be one hundred degrees out every single day, because of course it will.

Your landlord will magically produce a spare AC unit, but he will not be able to install it in its alcove himself and it will OF COURSE be a holiday weekend when no one else will be around to install it, either. But it functions so you both decide to set it on the coffee table, plug it in, and let 'er rip.

Not long after he leaves you will discover that while the three feet in front of the unit are cool, the entire rest of your apartment is scorching because the AC has been blowing out hot air in every other direction. You immediately have a hallucination of dying all alone in your tiny AC-less apartment and being found only weeks later after you've been half-eaten by rats, and you decide that the unit is also spewing exhaust and the situation is now untenable.

But you're not beaten yet! You're going to move that unit and prop it up in the only window that opens, the little one who's ledge is kinda halfway up the wall! And it's going to work because you're a Self-Sufficient Single Lady and also an Engineer IRL! AND you can totally lift it yourself because you work out! Pat yourself on the back, and warm up your biceps.

At the same moment when the tidal wave of condensation soaks your jeans and the carpet, you will come to the realization that you have not opened the window wide enough.

It is in this moment of physical and emotional weakness, with the AC unit perched precariously between your leg and the window ledge but not in the window, trying to figure out which type of movement will get you and your apartment the least amount of wet (security deposit!) that you will be visited by a demon:

You couldn't just get a grown-up job. If you weren't so stubborn about having ridiculous dreams and just made practical decisions. Ha! Weren't you the smarty-pants who was just telling schoolchildren that you didn't mind that your job didn't pay you anything because loving your work is more important to you? You COULD be in a nice apartment right now; a bigger one, in Center City! One with central air conditioning. That works. And why isn't there anyone here to open that window wider while you balance that unit? Because you're sooooo picky about boys. You threw away all those decent-enough boys because they weren't exciting enough for you, and now you're all alone, and even your half-baked solution to this problem isn't going to work because there's no one there to help. This is your Self-Sufficient Single-Lady life? You're stuck in a tiny, hot apartment that you can't afford to move out of, all alone, holding an air-conditioner.

Remember, you have to speak the demon's name in order to compell it back to Hell:

Mother, I thought I told you not to call me.

Like people who lift semi trucks off of their pinned children, you will not remember how you got the air-conditioner wedged into the window. But you will remember the feeling of smug satisfaction when you prop it up on your Complete Works of William Shakespeare so that it will drain out the window in the back and not into your house.

Because you are now held hostage by an air conditioning unit, confined to your apartment all weekend because your first-floor window is wide-open to the street, the early effects of Stockholm Syndrome will make you think the unit is laughing at you when it starts to drip condensation out its front. Heavily.

You will thank god for the day your Ikea impulse-buying disease and your "there's no such thing as too many towels" philosophy collided, because all of those formerly-superfluous towels will soon be essential to your furniture's well-being. As will your bucket, which the unit will fill according to its own caprices and not according to any logic. So you will leave for work for ten hours and it will be halfway full, but take a two-hour trip to the grocery store and come back to find it overflowing. Conveniently, it is overflowing down the wall right next to where the wall outlet is, so you will now possibly die in a fire. Your Stockholm Syndrome will lead you to believe this is an Enhanced Interrogation Technique, and you will wonder what The Unit wants from you.

But after an entire week of isolation and living according to The Unit's needs, and with your recycling bin filled up by many, many empty bottles of wine, you will come to find the metaphorical cracks of light peaking through the curtains you shoved in the window to provide some insulation and theft-deterrence. When you are awakened in the night by the special drip-sound that means the water level is close to the top of the bucket again even though it's only been two hours, you will feel like you have adopted a puppy and remind yourself, that, just like a puppy, The Unit will eventually relieve itself elsewhere than all over your apartment.

Then after a Google search you will finally figure out that the numbers on the display range from 19-31 because The Unit is in Celsius and not Fahrenheit, and you will simply say "of course it is." And for the first time in a week you will laugh.

You will sit in the cold, cold, air-conditioned dark, and you will laugh.

This Is Not A Picture Of Me

2011-05-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

Although seriously don't I look good? Wait, no.
[breathe, exhale] This is not a picture of me.

Well, it's kind of a picture of me. My company likes to throw theme parties for clients, and this year's theme is "What Happens In Vegas..." And yes, half of us actually need that ellipses in order to make people think we're capable of doing something that should indeed remain in Vegas. But I digress. We have this thing where the art department photo-shops pictures of us into movie scenes of people doing crazy shenanigans, and then everybody gets to say, "oh look at so-and-so, as if he would ever do THAT with a donkey!"

So, Professional-Shenanigan-Haver that I am, I scoured facebook for a decent-enough shot from an actual crazy night, but where I wasn't too bleary-eyed drunk or fat-looking (fun fact: there is 1000 percent less alcohol in the photoshopped "Vegas scenario" version). And of course the ridiculous face is a must, because I'm a good sport and hey, there's an entire facebook album devoted to my making ridiculous faces that might as well get some play.

Incidental de-crazy-ing of the actual photo notwithstanding, I look goooooood in this picture. Which is what I was thinking when I showed it to the other Production Guy:

Me: And, look, he made my head just a little too big and now my body looks really thin.

PG: Um, your body looks thin because that's not your body.

To be fair, it didn't come out THAT mean, but that's the gist. And he's RIGHT! That is in no way my body. And the worst part is, I know that. My conscious brain tells me that that is my slightly-too-big head 'shopped onto some skinny actress' body. Even the skin tones don't exactly match.

But the problem is that I have to keep telling myself that it's not me. Just like I have to tell myself that all those images of all those women in the magazines and on the billboards are altered, too. But I'm a human animal, wired by eons of prehistory to use my sight as my primary means of interpreting the world. And if I can't look at a picture of just my head without having to consciously remind myself that the rest of it is not me, then you can bet my cavelady brain isn't buying it at all.

It's a better lesson than every women's studies and journalism course I ever took in college. All you have to do is take a photo of yourself and 'shop it into perfection and you'll see. No wonder we're all self-loathing depressives. Our conscious minds are trying to force us to disbelieve our own eyes, and it isn't working at all. But the scariest part is that until I was reminded that this was not a picture of me, I didn't even know how fooled I was.

Although......if I ever go back to online dating, this is so my profile photo.

All My Lady Prods Put Your Hands Up!

2011-05-23T21:33:00.000-04:00

...No one? Seriously I'm having a Wilson Phillips Moment and I need a friggin high five over here.

source: TheaterVIP

I'm perfectly willing to admit I got a little choked up during Bridesmaids. Not during the feelings-y crap, no; it would be the scenes where Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph and everybody else were having fun and being ridiculous (so yes, the WFM was pretty tough for me). And at that moment I realized that I am officially sick of being one of the boys.

I am the only woman who attends our weekly writing meeting. And I am usually the only one on the Engineering field trips as well. And it doesn't suck (I do always get my own bedroom at least). I love my guys, and wouldn't trade two-thirds of them for all the ladies in the world. And I like being the Tough Girl who can hang with Tough Tech Dudes. You should have seen my arms after a three-day outdoor concert call: cut like em-effers. But it took watching a two-hour collaboration between all those hilarious, smart women on the screen to show me how much it just isn't the same.

And I'm not just talking about the obvious awesomeness of a wine-and-magazine party. Although, helLO.

Being the only woman in the room makes me pretty easy to disregard. We're a station that targets women, and I often get yanked into rooms to provide The Women's Perspective. But when I say something that isn't total agreement with whoever is talking, I get brushed off with, "yeah, but look at you, you're with a bunch of dudes all day. You're different." If I try to suggest that we aren't all helpless Luddites who cower before Daylight Savings Time (true story), I get reminded that I am only none of those things because I'm an engineer, and therefore a freak. I don't know nothing about The Ladies, because I'm inadvertently surrounded by The Dudes.

If I had another awesome lady by my side, things would be different. She would get it--not only life in general, but the peculiar brand of odd that it takes to be in the industry. When someone suggests we need to do handyman tips because his girlfriend is overwhelmed at the sight of a plunger, it wouldn't be SO bitchy to ask, "geez, who cuts her meat when you're not around?" if someone else was nodding. And when I hear that losing a sock in the dryer causes a woman's mental well-being to go into a tailspin, I'd have someone to roll my eyes towards. AND, when the sales manager asks in front of all the other managers if perhaps A MAN SHOULD DO MY JOB FOR ME because the client wants to rearrange his spot and it might be hard (twice); someone else, for once, would be there saying, "OH MY GOD THAT'S UNBELIEVABLY SEXIST."

But as any guy will tell you, it's hard to meet chicks. We're earning the most college degrees, but I guess none of them are in radio, communications, or engineering. It doesn't help of course, that in my eight years in the game, exactly two production jobs have opened up in my company, and only four that I know of in the entire city. And it certainly doesn't help that the last people who held every single one of them were men. It's hard to see yourself in job if you can't see anyone like you in it.

Where are the fabulous women hiding? Where is the magical island populated by Kristen Wiigs, Maya Rudolphs, Tina Feys, and Amy Poehlers? I want to go to there. I want to be Raptured to there. Now, where do I go to catch the Invisible Jet?

A Round of Applause For The Rapturers

2011-05-19T20:53:00.001-04:00


source: familyradio.com

[Please read before 6pm on Saturday.]

Dear Crazy Rapture Wingnuts,

Don't get me wrong, I sincerely hope you're right about Saturday. I hope every single one of you is taken up to Heaven to meet Jesus (oh, to overhear THAT conversation.) Meanwhile, down on Earth, the rest of us will be writhing in a terrible agony of gay marriage, reproductive freedom, orgies, evolution-teaching, being okay with Muslim people, health care reform, and in some cases shelfish-eating--ah, Leviticus. See, you've been trying to scare us for thousands of years, but honestly this is a win-win for everybody. We get to live out our progressive egalitarian-utopian dreams, and we don't have to hear you whine about how it's really Sharia Law. Imagine all the people, living life in peace, etc. So believe me I would like it if this whole shebang went off.

But look at me saying "if." You're CERTAIN! So certain, in fact, that all your signs clearly state that "the Bible guarantees it." I saved some proof off of Buzzfeed. Guarantees! You've left yourself with absolutely no exit strategy on this one, so you must be really, really certain. Even your superheroes used to have an exit strategy. Wasn't there some story about how everyone was like, Elijah, have your god make stuff blow up if he's real, and he was all, sure if that'll prove it to you, and then there was nothing? And then Elijah was like, oh he just talked to me in my brain and said he's taping Oprah's last show right now so he can't but you shouldn't need proof you pussies; and that was that. Or maybe it was Elisha; who actually reads the Bible anyway? My point is, exit strategy.

So, since I make a point to applaud courage in whichever form it takes, I sing of thee, Rapturers. I feel like I should put on one of those tiny hats so that it could then be off to the sheer amount of cojones required to actually, FINALLY put your money where your Bible is. Before, it was always the angry heathen rabble demanding proof that the Bible was literally true (see above re, Eliwhomever). But this time around, you're waving a challenge in our faces. And a pretty big challenge it is.

So I'll take it. Come Saturday, May 21st, 6pm local time, I will faithfully anticipate the Rapture. Until that time, I promise to believe that LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE WORD of the Bible is the absolute Word of God that he wrote himself with a feather he plucked out of the most beautiful angel's ass. And if even ONE SOUL disappears without a trace, I will immediately take to The Internets and blog about how you were right. You won't be around to do it, and let's face it, neither I nor The Internets are going anywhere.

However, at 6:30pm, if everyone still seems Earthbound and mortal-coiled, you will begin to rethink the biblical absolutism. Because, really, I don't know how you're backing out of this one. After all those "the Bible Guarantees May 21st 2011" billboards, buses, signs, and radio specials, there's no taking this one back. So you can start by admitting to yourselves that the Bible was wrong about the Rapture. Then, gradually, and because y'all tend not to be the most physically- or mentally-fit you can do it slowly so you don't sprain anything, you can think about some of the other things it might not be all that correct about. Like gay people. Or shellfish. Or the fun kinds of sex. I know it might take awhile to come around to Lady GaGa, so I'll give you that one for now.

But that's the deal. Have your Rapture. By all means. But if you don't get your Rapture, we get our Enlightenment back.


(via Cindy Hepner,/The News of Cumberland County)

Deal?

Diagnosis: Bitchface

2011-05-04T21:30:00.001-04:00

image credit Michal Marcol via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

OMG you guys, I have Bitchface.

For most of my adult life, complete strangers have been coming up to me and telling me I should be smiling. Always men. Always significantly older. "You should smile, darlin'!" As if the thought would never occur to me otherwise.

Most of the time, I'm at a broadcast site, trying to do my job, i.e., setting up about a hundred different pieces of equipment that invariably aren't working, by a hard deadline because the show goes on whether the broadcast is set up or not. If someone is doing that with an orgiastic smile, you should drug test her. And then make her share. But usually, I'll be troubleshooting the piece of equipment that has inevitably decided to catch on fire, and some jerk will amble over and worry aloud about my face. Usually I have to look up from the interface of a broken console to even be aware that it's me. And yes, I'm usually staring at a machine with the same look a new mother has when she's tried everything and just can't figure out how to make the baby stop crying. But why would you interrupt someone who is clearly working on something (that you dragged yourself from the village of Whateverbucket to see), and interrupt her to dissapprove of her mood?

I usually chalk it up to the fact that they've probably never seen Thinkin' Face on a lady, and remind myself to feel bad for them.

But it happened again, and this time I wasn't even at work! I was in the neighborhood running errands, and I heard, "smile sweetie, it ain't that bad!" Some guy sitting on a bench outside the Sleepy's (which isn't even a bus stop so my wannabe social worker is a dude who chills at Sleepyses in strip malls). Now, I was on my way to the liquor store to buy wine. I was the happiest I'd been all day! And yet, still, my expression worried some slack-jawed ass enough to mention it (yell it) to me.

Apparently while my brain is going "I'm strolling through the neighborhood thinking about wine, yay," my traitor face is looking like it just wants an excuse to cut a bitch. Which, I found after some self-diagnosis on The Internet (specifically krisatomic and her lovely illustration), is a condition known as Bitchface.

I probably contracted Bitchface in college. My parents dumped me from our farm directly into North Philadelphia and sped away because the neighborhood scared them, and suddenly, if I ever wanted to set foot outside the protective red TU flags that marked the perimeter of our Green Zone, I had to learn to look like a badass mother-effer. And then my face probably froze like that on one of the days when they refused to cancel classes over a little thing like two feet of snow.

But no matter how it happened, I now have to face the idea of living my life knowing that, as happy as I am on the inside, to the world outside I will always look like I am ready to murder a puppy. At my wedding the priest will probably stress "you may now KISS," thinking I'll mishear it as "kill and devour," and then they'll have to reconsecrate the church. My children will wonder why I'm so mad that they get straight A's and dance all the solos in ballet. And there will always be a parade of strangers so worried over my mood that they'll need to remind me to smile, so they don't feel so afraid.

And it will always be Just My Face.

We Bitchface sufferers should design a medical-alert bracelet, so strangers don't have to wonder: "That girl looks so angry, which bothers me enough to need to address the situat--oooooh, she just has Bitchface. Whew, I guess she's not out to murder us after all!" The bracelet could look like this:

>: [

And we can wear them proudly, until there is a cure.

5 Reasons It's Better to Meet Someone in a Bar Than Online

2011-04-30T19:01:00.002-04:00

So I've gone and quit eHarmony. Done. Finito. Hundreds of dollars and only one (bad) date later, and I've finally caught on to the fact that taking my money and giving me no matches is a scam. I only did it, and for as long as I did, because I fell for the argument used by every online dating service, ever: "who are you ever going to meet in a bar?!?!" The horror. "How can you be sure you're compatible with a random stranger who just happens to be in the same place as you on the same day?" As though choosing the same website--or any at all for that matter--is any different. But actually, there are lots of things that I can figure out about a guy just by being in the same room as him, that I'd never be able to find out online until it's that point in the awkward first meeting where he says something like, "tell me more about your mischievous and fun personality" and I'm wondering how long I have to sit there before bolting for the door to not come across as too mean. Behold:

Things you can infer about a person in a bar that eHarmony can't tell you:

1. He likes to hang out at the same kinds of places as I do. True, I'll go to the club once a year or so to remind myself why I hate the club, but it's safe to assume that if a guy is at a particular place with a particular ambiance, and I am there too, we both dig the same kinds of places.

2. He is capable of having at least functional relationships with other people. This person didn't come to this specific place for the express purposes of meeting me (stalking excluded). If he's at a bar with his buddies, he actually HAS buddies who aren't his mom.

3. Whether he's an extrovert who leads the conversation or that guy who skulks around the edges of a circle and doesn't contribute. Basically, the degree of social awkwardness.

4. How he dresses himself for a random night out in public. You can post ten different mountain-climbing pictures on eHarmony (am I the only person who's never scaled a cliff face?) and still think that a jersey for a sport that you are not currently/very recently actually playing is basically the same as a sport jacket. See also, head-to-toe collegiate logo.

5. Summer only: If he wears Mandals. Dealbreaker.

And at least at the bar, when you put down some money, you get alcohol to show for it.

Find Another Reason To Hate Gisele

2011-02-04T20:32:00.002-05:00

You mortals with your sunburns and your skin cancer.

She's right about the sunscreen thing. Kinda.

Gisele was recently quoted saying she doesn't use regular old sunscreen because, "I cannot put this poison on my skin....I do not use anything synthetic." And the Internet self-righteously gasped itself into apoplexy. Again. (Hey Tiger Mom, you can relax, your streak of being the Internet's Most Sniped At Person is over!) But just like that study that found that beautiful people are actually smarter, I gotta side with the supermodel on this one.

Now, disclosure: my skin is so pale I'm practically translucent, so yes, I use sunscreen. ALOT of it. Like, fancy Australian stuff that's twice as expensive and is so thick I'm disgustingly slimy all day. An yes, it's important that people not read that and think that not wearing Coppertone is going to make then look like Gisele. The kerfuffle here is because everyone spontaneously forgot to read the word "synthetic," and the fact that The Internet seems to have a very short memory on this.

Every year the Environmental Working Group publishes its report on sunscreen brands, rating them from "green light: recommend" to "red light: avoid." Not because they're a bunch of socialists who secretly work for Acorn and/or the Tides foundation, but because (via HuffingtonPost):

The EWG found many products misleading in their claims, lacking in adequate protection from all types of ultraviolet radiation, and containing many potentially hazardous chemicals.

And according to the same article, even after years and years of slathering our collective selves with sunscreen, skin cancer is on the rise. Why?

The type of Vitamin A used in sunscreen can actually accelerate the growth of tumors. Like, 20% faster. Sunscreen also blocks your absorption of vitamin D, which we get from the sun and reduces the risk of cancer and strengthens our immune system and bones.
Does your sunscreen have oxybenzone in it? Probably, it's the most common active ingredient. Because it easily penetrates the skin into the bloodstream, the FDA warns against using it on children because it can cause allergic reactions and hormone disruptions.

So yes, that sunscreen? Probably poison. Should we stop using it in the summer? Not entirely. Should we be smarter about the science and maybe try to find some products that are lower in the SYNTHETIC ingredients that might be doing us more harm than good? Bingo.

But the best news is, you don't even have to let go of that pent-up rage you feel towards Gisele, who in the end is only saying that to promote the launch of her own all-natural skincare line. Why not redirect it towards the FDA, who toyed with the idea of regulating sunscreen, started drafting regulations, and then just never got around to it. Why? Gee, dunno, maybe they worked on it for two years or so and got distracted.

Romeo and Juliet and Kettlebells

2010-10-20T21:29:00.000-04:00

I'm currently involved in a love affair with gym equipment. If you remember my earlier post, you're already aware that I use inanimate objects to fill emotional voids that would otherwise be filled by stable adult relationships. Oh well, a girl's gotta survive somehow. So, if Google is my mother, and GMail is my father, then the kettlebell is my boyfriend.

That's right, I'm in love with the simplest, but most intimidating piece of gym equipment there is: the brainchild of some Russian who said, "what this cannonball needs is a handle!" Kettlebells combine cardio, strength, and flexibility training--a total-body workout all at the same time! And working out with kettlebells is super-efficient: according to Women's Health magazine, a 15-minute kettlebell session can burn up to 300 calories. I was taught to train based on intervals: short bursts of all-out effort to hit your target heart rate, then a period of rest to get it back down before another intense burst to spike it again. It's supposed to burn calories more efficiently and keep your metabolism humming longer after you've stopped working out. And after every kettlebell superset (a full set of reps of three different moves, no rests till the cycle is done), damned if that heart rate isn't right back up there. I've heard soldiers love them; if you have to travel light, you can bring an entire gym with you. Another fan? Carrie Underwood.

KB and I were introduced by a mutual friend--a trainer at the gym who was so bored he decided to adopt me and then see if he could kill me. Like everyone else, I had been terrified to pick one up--what would I even DO with one? What are the moves? Am I going to break my neck? But it was loooooove at first deadlift.

I'm glad I had a professional introduction, because the moves are simple, BUT form is very, very important. Which is why we have our very own relationship counselor, in the form of Carlos, my gym's resident kettlebell expert. See, the first trainer taught me two moves, which hey, got me to pick them up in the first place, were two more moves than I knew, and are still the ones that feel most effective. But a girl can't sculpt on two moves alone, so I always get excited when Women's Health publishes new kettlebell workouts. UNTIL, I get to the gym and Carlos marches over to tell me that I'm wrong, wrong, wrong. Most of the time, it's me; like I said, KB can be a difficult dance partner and it's all about the form. But beware: that WH article I linked to has THREE moves that I was told were incorrect. You know what they say, take every piece of relationship advice with a grain of salt, because no one on the outside really knows what your relationship is like. Those jealous cows at Women's Health, trying to sabotage the relationship between me and my kettlebell-boyfriend!

Thank goodness for Carlos. Usually, I wouldn't take well to someone getting that involved in my relationship. However, when the relationship advice is, "you're going to blow your knee out/destroy you're back/completely miss your core work," I'm grateful.

I don't consider it a stretch to say that kettlebells are my life partner. They make me happy--hellooooo endorphins! And, they make me a better person; well, a better version of me. After just a month of getting serious, a coworker asked me if I had stopped eating. That's NOT in any way to endorse eating disorders OR dramatic, rapid weight-loss. Both of those are dangerous, and I hadn't actually lost a single pound (but that's probably because I refuse to live in a world without beer, soft pretzels and ice cream; in which case, thank you kettlebells for erasing my bad habits). After just a month, my entire body was sleeker, and more toned, so it looked drastically slimmer without everything jiggling around.

We've been together six months now, and I'm in love. But I'm not selfish! I'm willing to share the love of my life with anyone who wants to experience it. But I would definitely recommend a professional introduction. Considering everyone else I've met who's a KB enthusiast has the same almost cultish devotion to them, if you can find the go-to trainer at the gym, you'll be in for the time of your life.

Ma Google

2010-10-20T19:04:00.002-04:00

Hey, Guy Whose Son Thinks Your iPhone is His Mother, I can beat that: I'm actively being parented by Google.
For various-and-absolutely-reasonable reasons, I don't have any contact with my actual biological parents (and that's also all I'll say about that). But really, what am I missing out on that I can't replicate with a little typing?

Someone to take care of me when I'm sick? "H-o-w t-o b-r-i-n-g d-o-w-n a f-e-v-e-r." Actually, that search started with "do I have a fever," and then WebMD--which is the combined wisdom of everyone else's mother plus their hypochondriac aunt--told me that if I have to Google it, I probably do. But, thanks to Mama G, I finally learned which one it is that you starve (Cold or fever? Neither!)

Google even brings me comfort food: "M-u-r-r-a-y-'s T-a-k-e O-u-t M-e-n-u." Hello, I'd like your largest matzoh ball soup, to go, please. See? I want for nothing. Not even, it seems, a Jewish Grandmother. Which, PS, we don't have nearly enough of in my Irish-German gene pool.

Someone to teach me basic life skills? Done. "H-o-w t-o h-e-m p-a-n-t-s." Come to think of it, this post is pointing out glaring deficiencies in my education. "H-o-w t-o d-e-f-r-o-s-t a f-r-e-e-z-e-r." "H-o-w t-o c-l-e-a-n a-n o-v-e-n." "H-o-w t-o c-o-o-k v-e-g-e-t-a-b-l-e-s." Seriously, did no one even attempt to raise me?

And now, with Google instant search, it even interrupts me--just like a real-life mom! No, Google, I wasn't searching for "continuing EDUCATION," I had an XBox question. And for the last time, no, I'm not going to law school.

There is a point where Google and my actual mother diverge. They have different definitions of the term, "selfish little monster":


...and not a single picture of me came up. hmm.

Lest you think my electronic upbringing is in a single-digital-parent household: GMail is my dad. Rather, Priority Inbox by GMail is my dad. Did you know it congratulates you when you've read everything in your priority inbox? "Woohoo! You've read all you important messages." Attention to and acknowledgment for having my priorities in order AND a high-five for a small achievement? Gee, thanks, Dad!

The "Man" Problem

2010-10-04T21:06:00.002-04:00

This is not a post about being single.

Well, not completely.

This is about a conversation that I've officially had way too often. No matter who it's with--coworkers, best friends--it's always eerily similar:

Come on there are lots of guys out there.

Yeah, guys. Little boys in the bodies of grownups, but no men.

You're going to come in one day with two black eyes and a big grin and say, 'I've finally got me a real man!'

Or:

No more passive-aggressive wusses.

Well, then, you're going to get beaten up again.

Why are those my only options?

In every single instance, the conversation ends with the assumption that there are only two kinds of men out there: the "Real Men," who are all abusive apes, and the rest, who are so insistent about abdicating the role of Alpha that they forfeit their own spines. I'll call them Amoeboys.

It seems our culture has decided to associate manliness with hyper-agressiveness. A Philadelphia Inquirer article about the rise of the anti-hero in superhero movies said exactly what I've been thinking forever:

Your little boy is damaged.
He's been traumatized by violence, oversexualized, and indoctrinated to believe that to be a real man he must be aggressive, narcissistic, manipulative, and misogynistic.

So masculinity is boiled down to a stereotype. And the ugliest, most dangerous one at that. It sends the message that masculinity is something that has to be fixed, or sublimated like a flaw. Where did it come from? As an unfortunate simplification of the Feminist Movement, where all assertiveness was freared to be anti-woman? Or the abovementioned hypersexual-hyper-violent media culture where violence is always the answer and humans are objects in the hero's game? One theory I heard blamed it on men not being able to fix things anymore because our lives are run by machines we don't understand (when was the last time you upgraded your computer's memory or changed your own oil? Basically, no more hunting-and-gathering.).

It doesn't actually matter. What does matter is a generation of boys raised to believe that they have to transcend their own masculinity. That they have to be so acquiescent to women as to be subservient, in order to avoid being labeled aggressive. I call them "Amoeboys" for the amorphous organisms they resemble. I'm a magnet for them, as far as amorphous things can be magnetic. It's why eHarmony has been a spectacular failure so far; I refuse to make any kind of first contact, having decided that I'll only get more Amoeboys--if they want me, the grown-up men can be assertive and come to me. It's not working--who's surprised?

I kind of get it. I have a very, very strong personality, like, well, every single other woman in my family. I provide a pretty rigid mold that Amoeboys can mold themselves around ("Here is what I want." "Oh I can be that."). They defend this subservience by defining themselves as the opposite of the stereotype: literally, "well, I don't hit you, isn't that better? I'm evolved." Again, such stark choices. Amoeba or Ape. Punch or Puddle. And since when do the invertebrates get to claim they evolved? They've abdicated their own masculinity, and want a gold star for it--how on earth did this happen? This isn't to knock any of my exes, they meant well and were wonderful people. But Mother of God, Amoeboys are boring.

I can't believe the last one didn't stomp out the door when he heard me say this: "If we're always just going to do whatever I want to do, and you're not going to contribute anything, then why do I even need you?"

It all boils down to simple Newtonian Physics: A Body In Motion Tends to Stay In Motion. That girlfriend of yours with that big personality is a steamroller that's just going to run right over you unless you can apply some force. Why would you want to be overwhelmed like that? This is not to condone any kind of abuse, intimidation or violence on either side, or encourage hysterics and needless drama. But you know how all those relationship experts say the couples who fight well are the strong ones? I NEVER EVER had a fight with any of the Amoeboys. No one's course is so correct that she can claim the momentum to be the perpetual-motion machine. Every imperfect human being needs course correction, and that comes from friction.

Defining masculinity so narrowly, and treating it as a flaw because of that narrow definition, is unfair to everyone. Especially the generation of girls raise right along side those boys, who were taught to be strong and assertive in good ways--that is, the opposite of Amoeboys. We lose out because, here come the physics again...For Every Action There Is An Equal And Opposite Reaction. Not just "there is," but usually "there has to be for such an action to occur." When you jump as high as you can, you are physically shoving the ground away from you (action). But it wouldn't work if the resistance of the ground itself weren't shoving you into the air (reaction). Some of us need a force equal to our own. So we all need to find a way to redefine masculinity, in the same way our mothers and grandmothers once redefined femininity, so a generation of strong girls AND boys can see how high they can jump.

Westboro Church Has Bieber Fever!

2010-07-29T19:50:00.002-04:00

The Devil's Haircut!

Justin Bieber, today you are a man. Not everyone gets singled out by Westboro Church. Well, just *nerds, soldiers, synagogues, flags (no, that is NOT a typo, it's really flags), people who believe that God loves everybody, kids who go to High School in Milwaukee, and Lady Gaga (and come to think of it what's that sound outside my door?). But what kind of beef could America's Most Hilarious Hate Group possibly come up with for Justin Bieber?

No beef at all, actually! Just really intense, twisted, sublimated longing for dreamy eyes and schwoopy hair. That's right, Westboro's whole demonstration at his Sprint Center concert on Wednesday in Kansas City was the mouthbreathing-fundy-protester equivalent of "do you like me circle yes or no."
According to Politics Daily:

The church group says that Bieber "has a platform given to him by God to speak to this world; he has a duty to teach obedience by his actions and words. He refuses to do that because he knows his concert halls would be empty! So, he teaches you to sin and rebel against God's commandments."

So, basically, Westboro Church is that boy who pulls your hair because he really, really likes you but doesn't have the emotional maturity to say he actually likes girls, so he turns those feelings into aggression. "See, fame is vile and evil and ruining the world, but not yours Justin--yours is from God! He wants you to say you like us and then everybody else will be our friend, too!" Where Lady Gaga is a "proud whore" who eats souls and is also a bad singer (really? that too?), the problem with the 'Biebs is he refuses to rename himself Jesus and be their messiah-BFF.

Either this place is run by thirteen-year-old girls, or no one one Earth is immune to Bieber Fever.

*none of these links will take you anywhere near the actual Westboro Church website; those asshats get no free clicks from me.

I Can't Afford to Watch 'Mad Men'

2010-07-26T21:20:00.002-04:00

Dear Person Who Signs My Checks: I need a raise. According to Nielsen Media Research, via The Hollywood Reporter, half of Mad Men's audience makes over 100k a year. This is newsworthy because, while MM has lower ratings than other more popular cable originals, it's the largest concentration of wealthy viewers. Which means, if you're the kind of advertiser whose target has a certain standard of living, it's like shooting gilded fish in a diamond-encrusted barrel [PS, thank you BMW for the limited commercial interruptions]. As part of the "Other Half," it got me thinking.

The reason I love Mad Men, and the reason I always enthusiastically recommend it to other people who do my job (yes, sometimes for 30-45 minutes--guilty, EW), is because it's amazing to me to see a reflection of the climate in the creative professions as changed very little in 50 years. Don is the face of Sterling Cooper Draper Price, but it's really Peggy and Pete who do all the work. And it's for clients who are usually presented as obstinately in the way of their own success. It's a device to create narrative tension, and not a covert statement about a group of people, but who hasn't heard a tale similar to the bathing suit company that wants to do more business than bikini-makers without showing an inch of skin? Or the ham company that did test-marketing in Jewish neighborhoods? Said tales are usually followed up by a whine about the death of the three-martini lunch and the office wetbar.

On Mad Men, the people in power, the decision makers, the ones who probably most likely resemble that newsworthy demographic, are antagonists to the strivers who outwit their clients' own self-destruction, which is more often than not the result of their refusal to embrace a world that is rapidly changing around them. Peggy and Pete practically invent viral marketing, only to be chastised for "shenanigans" that aren't even billable.

The characters who are portrayed to have it all are the ones who are held up as cautionary tales about the pitfalls of getting what you want. Don Draper is, without a doubt, an antihero; on the outside he has everything: house in Westchester, beautiful wife, the reporter in the premiere reminds him. But Don later points out to Roger that the reporter hasn't done his research: the wife is still in the big house in the bucolic suburb, but another man lives there now. And it's not because of some external tragedy. Don let all of what he supposedly wanted implode around him because it didn't fill the void inside him. At the end of the episode, Peggy tells him, "we're all here to please you," which is impossible because even Don can't make himself happy.

It reminds me of a conversation about the film American Beauty I had with an elderly coworker when I was in college. I had said my mother hated, hated, hated it and I couldn't figure out why. Delores answered with something I'll never forget: "Well, kids like you, they tell themselves they'll never be like that, and old ladies like me, they've been there and come out the other side; but people that age, they see themselves too much and they don't like what they see." I know what I see when I watch Mad Men. But that other half, the newsworthy ones, the one who keep coming back, what do they see?

'Dynamite' Video: Google Maps Won't Show Me The Chop Shops Where You Can Dance Dance Dance Dance

2010-07-26T20:07:00.002-04:00

Just another Hooker Wednesday

The plot: Taio Cruz rides his BMW superbike to an all-lady chop shop, where it happens to be "Hooker Wednesday" (my office doesn't do theme-dress days, so I'm just going to assume that at most auto body shops, Hooker Wednesday is every other week, after Hawaiian Shirt Tuesday).
He saves them from the soul-crushing boredom that's inevitable when your job is to lay draped over a car sipping flourescent cocktails when you're not wearing awesome heels and sawing things that throw awesome sparks [note: this is my dream job]. All it takes is blowing the place up during a private concert. So he's like the Pied Piper of sexy lady mechanics?

Now before you go saying crazy things like "it's dangerous to do mechanical work in those outfits, not to mention impossible to keep them clean," know that director Alex Herron is way ahead of you. You see, they have an onsite bubble bath. In between draping and sipping and sawing, they can wash the day's grime away before it even has a chance to get into their pores. I imagine the bubble bath also functions as a burn tank, too, because those sparks are really going everywhere.

The best (un?)intentionally funny frame comes at 3:08, where Taio throws his hands in the air--"air" being "conveniently boob-level of the girl who's conveniently walking by." Just FYI, ladies, that's about the height he'll be throwing his hands, so you should use caution if you don't want to "accidentally" get in their way.

Now, I loooove this song. But it always gets me down when the video for a dance-pop song doesn't match the frenzy of the song itself. Having all those shots of girls draped over everything just sucks the kinetic energy right out. Stop just sitting around ladies, he came to dance dance dance dance! And only ONE explosion? This is the only time in my life I'll ever say "more stuff blowing up!" but yeah, couldn't they have Michael-Bay-ed the crap out of this? It's a song about dynamite:

Taio Cruz - New Music - More Music Videos

(Clip via MTV)

He's At It Again!

2010-07-14T23:54:00.012-04:00

The What's Eating Leonardo DiCaprio article's teaser made it onto the front cover of Newsweek this week, so I flipped to page 54 and got halfway through without even looking at the byline. But by then I had pretty much figured out who wrote it.

"DiCaprio’s career has been engineered to make audiences forget Titanic, but he has swung so far in the other direction that he has alienated the female fans who made him a star."

OMG you guys I'm alienated! Sorry for the overreaction, but I guess I was too busy buying tickets to see The Departed, Revolutionary Road, and Shutter Island to even realize that I didn't like Leo anymore.

I'm willing to admit that I'm overly sensitive to men who generalize about women, and what they want, because in my experience they're always so insistent that it's the opposite of what I actually want every single day. But let's assume for the sake of argument that I'm just a hormonal PMS-er: The Departed grossed 289 million worldwide and won four Oscars. Shutter Island? 166 Million. Even if not a single woman who wasn't me saw those films, that's still a loooooot of dudes. Is this really the resume of someone who's career needs reviving? I know it isn't Avatar money, but let's be honest, alot of that was repeat business from nerds who decided they could no longer live anywhere but inside their friendly neighborhood IMAX theater. Revolutionary Road, the third film mentioned in the triumvirate of flops, only grossed 52 million worldwide. But isn't it safe to assume that most of those audience members were women? I still cite an ex's reaction to RR as the credits were rolling as a major reason for breaking up with him; is it really a stretch to say that there probably weren't alot of bros hi-fiving it at the end?

Much is also made of the Dead Wives Club: in Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island, and now Inception, "DiCaprio's crazy wife suddenly dies," and ergo, women suddenly flee. Has Setoodeh never seen that episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte dates the widower?

All jokes aside, though, the thesis here seems to be that women aren't interested in anything except happily-ever-after romances starring Reese Witherspoon, that are bathed in soft pink and name-check Manolos. But what does that really mean? We underestimate the intelligence of the female audience when we label it a group with Special Needs. How different is saying "women won't see a movie where Leonardo DiCaprio scowls too much" from, "children's movies shouldn't be too dark for kids to handle." In the end, it would be easier on everyone if when people ask "would women enjoy this" (Ramin Setoodeh included--who by the way I thought was quitting), the answer could just be: would you?

When "Straight Jacket" started causing a stir, I was willing to chalk it up to a poorly-explained-to-the-ignorant-masses hypothesis, and just let it slide as a mistake. An unfortunately offensive mistake, but it didn't seem like there was malice in there. This isn't on the same scale as the other, but it IS the second time my gut reaction is to balk at unfair generalizing. And give Leo a break for growing out of the swoony teenage heartthrob. He's grown up. And all the little girls who kept going back to see Titanic? The ones who "made him a star?" We're all grown up, too.

Can't wait to see Inception.

2010-07-14T21:40:00.002-04:00

So THIS is what finally pushed me over the edge to buy Adam Lambert's album:

I know. How did my gym mix live without this for so long? It fits in perfectly with the Slipknot and the Rage. The only downside is that I've started to sweat glitter, which isn't really a downside except that glitter is hard to wipe off a mat.

Two things though:
1. I'm shocked to find out that all these years I've been wearing the wrong amount of leather. Apparently the "right" amount of leather is "everything in Kiss's tour wardrobe at once." Noted.
2. Yes, like all the girls in the club on Surefire Winners, I'm desperate to know where all the pretty boys went. But, Adam, if you have them, and you took them to the place where you got that Battlefield Earth hairdo, you should probably just hold on to them.