Hey, read this

Read my sister's blog.

She's in Spain.

It's good stuff.

(She's also much better about updating than I am and has possibly inspired me to be better.)

French film, in review

Dear Faithful Readers*,

I apologize for my long absence. I have been busy enjoying some European travels during my excessively long vacations and doing my best to get out of my current living situation with the crazy French family. But those are stories for another day. Or, you know, another night when I don't have to work tomorrow morning at the unheard-of hour of 9am. Ridiculous.

For the moment, I would like to simply dispel a rumor that has been circulating for (what must be) ages, and this is it: that French cinema is good. Okay, so we Americans see Amélie and we're like, 'Oh the french are so quirky and imaginative!' Okay, so maybe Jeunet is quirky and imaginative, and maybe that's what we think of as 'typically French,' but that so isn't even his best film. (Plus he does way better with Caro at his side.)

So, anyway, blah blah blah, one or two well-known and French directors†, and that's what we think of as French cinema. Only it's not. French cinema is pretty much just like so much Hollywood crap only more (overtly) racist and sexist.

Case(s) in point:

1. Agathe Cléry

"She is white. She is racist. She is going to become black."

This film was wrong in so many ways. The woman on the poster is in blackface! Not just blackface, black body! The movie is supposed to be a commentary on racism in France. This racist woman delevops some rare 'skin disorder' and slowly starts to become black. She then begins to suffer all of the disadvantages that a black woman in France would (she loses her job, which was basically marketing cosmetics to white ladies, and almost loses her apartment), and that's about as far as the so-called commentary goes. Luckily, a young black female doctor (did you even know they had those?!?) takes her under her wing and shows her how to dress, talk and walk more 'black,' complete with hair salon muscial number. Oh, and did I mention it's a musical? It's a musical.

Other highlights: an hommage-to-Michael-Jackson dance number in which the actress most definitely has a body double and that body double is most probably a man; second solo dance number (post-full-black transformation) in a dance club where Agathe (as a black woman) finally lets loose and it turns out (now that she's black) she's a really great dancer (further use of body double)!

So then guess what? She (after loosing her old job) finally gets a job at this office where they only hire people who aren't white, and her boss is this black man, and they immediately start sleeping together! Because they're both black and so obvs they're totally going to be into each other. Does anybody seem to notice that he's her boss and that their affair might cause some kind of, like, business vs. pleasure conflict? No. Because it's France. They take their business with their pleasure here.

Anyhow, blah blah blah, harmony, blah blah blah, she becomes white again, conflict ensues (will her black boyfriend dump her? will she lose her nonwhite job?), resolution: they get married and have an improbable amount of children as she is in her 40s (but this is probably made possible by his virility).

So, basically, a racist movie about racism.

2. De l'autre côté du lit (From the other side of the bed)

"Give me your place and take mine."

Um, did you see the poster? So, she's a busy mom and he's a workaholic and he's all, Why hasn't the worker finished renovating this room yet! You have one thing to do and you don't do it! And she's all, What?? One thing!! Let's trade places! And there is some hesitation and fighting, but then they do it. Also she punches him in the face.

So guess what, she just takes over his job! It doesn't matter that she doesn't have any training, she just shows up in a low-cut business suit and doesn't even have to give an interview or anything! And guess what else, she's really bad at it and it makes her cry! And he can't cook! Or do their daughter's hair! What a disaster!

But then they both kind of get better at it (You mean a woman can open it?), but of course she cracks under the pressure first, because women are all emotional and shit. Also, for some reason they both have to cheat on each other in really predictable and traceable ways (he takes pictures with a polaroid camera), but you know, they're French, so it doesn't seem to bother anyone for too long.

Anyway, she tries to sabatoge his homemaking (conniving womenfolk), but then he kicks her out for cheating on him with someone at the office, but then he wants her back, but then she finds the polaroids (no doy). Resolution: he is arrested over accusations relating to a program she launched in his place (but he's still technically the boss), he takes the blame, and she comandeers a police car whose radio is conveniantly broadcast in all the rooms of the police station; she professes her love/apologies while driving into/over half a dozen police officers who are trying to force her exit from the vehicle. She wraps it up, gets out of the car, and no one even tries to arrest her.

Okay, so maybe those are the only two movies I've seen in theaters since I've been here (besides Madagascar 2, but that doesn't count), and maybe the posters should have been enough to put me off, but I'm bored, okay? I don't have a lot to do, and at least the poor quality of the French cinema inspired me to take up the keyboard once again.



*Um, I mean, Mom

†My knowledge of French directors is clearly so vast.

I can (maybe) make a difference!

Franken Scores: More Ballots Found In Democratic Stronghold

Thanks to The Huffington Post (and like the closest Senate race/most elaborate recount in Minnesota history), I now know that my absentee vote might actually count! Oh, I really hope mine was one of those in the newly discovered stack of 133 missing absentee ballots. Although, would that mean my Obama vote didn't count? I guess it's fine if it means that slimy Norm Coleman is off the scene. Also (for a laugh), check out the video in question in the Norm Coleman ad contraversy. His wife lives in LA and it's so clear that there's some serious green screen action going on here.

Omg have you seen this?!!

No words.



So many people just got Rick Rolled. I love people who are in on the joke that is on them. I can only assume he is.

Just one more thing I missed by being in France for Thanksgiving.

Always A Lady

As a direct response to my post entitled The sleezy, sleezy Frenchman, and in no small way inspired by reading the WIG's blog and her link to this post on pandagon.net*, I have created this short (and hopefully terribly useful) guide on how to not get hit on in public.

1. Dress appropriately. You know, like a nun or whatever. You shouldn't want to look good for you if you don't want someone to leer at you and tell you how good you look. Don't think about what clothes you're putting on unless you want a man to try to talk you out of them.

2. Don't smile. At anyone. At any time. Having fun with your friends, laughing, smiling, these are all signs that you want strange men to approach you. Your smile, no matter whom it may be intended for, is an open invitation, nay an order, sent out to all surrounding men. You are asking for it.

3. Um, be a lesbian? But not the sexy kind. The really mean kind. The feminist kind. Cut your hair short but don't take care to shave anything else.‡ But, if you are a lesbian, and you are in public with your partner, whatever you do do not engage in any PDA. If you want to express your love out in the open like that, you have to accept that's it's totally cool and normal for a man to get in the middle of it. Like, that's his god-given right. So be a mean, ugly, feminist, single lesbian.

Me disguised as a nerdy man. Disguises can be very important when trying the ward off the advances of the opposite sex.

4. Say something smart. It doesn't matter what, it doesn't even matter if it makes sense. If a strange man approaches you, try to launch immediately into a discussion of the gender binary or just use the words "dichotomy" and "facism" in the same sentence and watch how far they run. Intelligent women are the opposite of sexually appealing. And they hate sex. Like you.

5. Stay home and read your scriptures, you prude. If you detest the "uninvited attention" of men so much, you must hate sex and men and fun. (Didn't you read number 4?) You can't possibly be both an intelligent woman who does not want to be accosted by strangers and someone who likes flirting and feeling attractive.

So there you have it, five simple rules to live by, ladies. If you break them, it's your own damn fault.




*Dear god, I wish I could force my sexist host brother to read this, but I am WAY too lazy to translate it into French.

‡Having short hair on your head and long hair in your armpits does not a lesbian make. However, you should expect to be taken for one, if this is your style.

You have to promise never to tell anyone...

About Ghostwriter!* (Kudos to my friend The 7th Grade Poet for reminding me that this show existed.)

If you don't know about this show, you were obviously not alive from 1992 to 1995, or maybe your parents just didn't restrict you to public television viewing the way mine did, but I was totally the target audience for this show at ages 7 to 10. Like, I totally believed in Ghostwriter. At the age when most kids were writing Dear Diary, I was writing Dear Ghostwriter, I feel sad. Please find out if Shane likes me? (If I were not in France, I would find my old diary and pull a direct quote, but I swear that is not far off.) Also, I kept a casebook where I would write down evidence (of what? I have no idea, I seemed to think there were potential mysteries to solve) and interview questions, in case I ever found anyone to interrogate. Plus I totally bought one of those pen-on-a-string necklaces that Jamal would give you when he made you promise never to tell anyone about Ghostwriter. Oh, Jamal.

Classic Ghostwriter moment. Jamal was so cool for having that computer!

I think I just felt like I had a lot in common with the Ghostwriter crew. They were growing up in the mean streets of New York in mostly middle-income families, I was growing up in the White Bread suburbs of Vancouver, WA; Gabby and Alejandro had to work really hard in their parents' store, I really wished my parents had a bodega for me to work in; they used a computer that pretty much only displayed large text on the screen, we had a computer for word processing; sometimes Samuel L. Jackson would guest star as Jamal's dad, I have a dad.

Also, there was this one episode where Gabby steals money from the till at her parents' store to buy this coat she wants because her friend tells her she can say there's something wrong with it and get a refund. But it was on sale and there is a sign that says NO REFUNDS ON SALE ITEMS and then she's screwed because she didn't read the sign at first and then she's out fifty (of her parents') bucks. Anyhow, it really reminded me of the time I was in Fred Meyer with my mom (when I was like 5) and I found this broken porcelain animal on the ground (I think it had fallen off the shelf) and I picked it up and took it home. But then I realized that I had stolen it (!) and was so overcome with guilt that the next time we went grocery shopping, I took it back and put it in the same spot on the floor of the same aisle. Gabby and I were pretty much the same person.

If you have as much free time as I do (and you shouldn't), take the time to check out some videos, they're pretty amazing. And then wonder to yourself, who decided to make Ghostwriter look like a floating period with two eyebrows right on top of each other?

*¡Fantasma escritor, en español!

The sleazy, sleazy Frenchman

draguer /dRa'ge/ (v. French)
1. to dredge
2. to chat up, hit on, flirt with

It figures that the primary definition is "to dredge," because I swear to god, that's how hard these men are trying and they have certainly made it their life's work.

The other night, I was trying to explain the merits of feminism to my visiting 20-year old host brother (that was hilariously frustrating), and he retorted that he didn't like feminists because they didn't want to talk to him. I tried to explain to him that being approached in a bar can be creepy for a woman, but he felt it was "unfair" that he shouldn't be allowed to talk to a woman he found interesting. I pointed out that it's hard to know if someone is interesting just by looking at them, and that there are appropriate ways of approaching a woman. That we know if you just want to get in our pants. He was baffled, and continues to think feminists "want too much." But then again (as he put it), he's only seen them on TV.

So for any Frenchman who is still confused, I've compiled a list of inappropriate ways to interact with the ladies:

EXHIBIT A: Creepy old man doctor I had to see for my mandatory medical visit. Was it really necessary that I be in my underwear the whole time? Even for the medical history and the eye exam? Are you sure? You may have done this with everyone, but I still deem it inappropriate.

EXHIBIT B: Hip hop teacher (not the 14-year old). You are, in fact, 30 something, so why do you persistently flirt with the 16- and 17-year olds in the class. I'm glad that I'm too old for your taste, or are you actually picking up on the serious EW vibes I'm sending out? I appreciate some good, old fashioned flirting, it happens to be one of my favorite pasttimes, but let's keep it appropes, okay?

EXHIBIT C: The countless men in the street (teenaged to middle aged) who deem it necessary to yell things at me. For realsies, Messieurs, that knowing grin and those suggestive comments just make me want to barf, not talk to you, and definitely not sleep with you. Inappropes.

EXHIBIT D: Our favorite cartoon skunk.

That cat is so not into you, Pépé. Note the way she is using both her arms and her legs to push you away? No means no, Monsieur Le Pew. No means no.

So here's the deal, Frenchies: It's not your god-given right to tell me whatever you're thinking about me in the streets, in a bar, or outside my home, and I'm certainly not obliged to respond in any way other than to ignore you, or possibly say things to you in English that I only wish I knew how to say in French. Basically, I'm just not into you, so for goodness sake, give it a rest.