Thoughts, Opinions, and Irrational Ranting

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

I don’t think you’re a bad guy. Yeah, you’re big business and a Republican, a combination that would normally inspire a knee jerk reaction of the highest power from a pinko such as myself. You were the first, and probably last, Republican I ever voted for, and generally you’ve been okay. Maybe I’ve been fooled. Maybe you just seemed alright in comparison to the fascist rule of Rudy. Maybe I’ve misjudged you from the very beginning. But maybe I haven’t, maybe you’re not all bad. So Mayor Bloomberg, I’m begging you – if you really love New York and you want it to live forever as a place of importance and magic and inspiration, preserve and enforce the zoning laws that are keeping the city from becoming nothing more than a generic Midwestern mall.

When I was a kid, my mother would ask me if I knew why New York special. Her answer to this all important question was “Because no matter what you’re looking for, you can find it here.” It didn’t matter that other cities were growing in size or investing in fancy new waterfronts or shopping districts, they would never be New York, because none of them would ever have the diversity. My mother’s examples proving her theory were manifold. You want a rare orchid? The Flower District. Homemade ravioli? Little Italy. Rare books, Jewish deli, discount ballet tickets, imported Japanese mushrooms, the perfect cocktail dress or the best cheesecake you’ll ever eat? My mother knew where to get all these things. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, my mother was particularly fond of the Garment District. Did you break the button on your favorite coat? You could find an exact match to replace it in the Garment District, and while you were there you could marvel at the stores selling nothing but lace, nothing but buttons, nothing but zippers, nothing but bolts of satin in every color imaginable. New York, my mother intoned with gravity, was ten years ahead of everyone else in fashion. New York had things you couldn’t even imagine.

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Last week, work began on Project Worm Bum, otherwise known as “Michelle’s Most Epic Halloween Costume Yet.” Each year I promise to have a fantastic Halloween costume and each year I let costume supply shopping wait until the last moment, when I typically lose enthusiasm for the effort and just do a crap ass job. See: the sailor outfit that consisted of a sailor shirt and jeans and the Cyndi Lauper outfit that looked nothing at all like Cyndi Lauper. But not this year! No! This year I resolve to finish my costume with time to spare.

Stark and I had an amazing idea for a costume while watching a movie that shall remain nameless. This led to elaborate plans for a costume that quite possibly will be too awesome to even fit in the apartment. It involves acrylic paint, a wire armature, and yards and yards of the same stretchy fabric they use to make figure skating costumes. WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY BE? You’ll have to wait and find out.

But here, in the interests of posting something to this blog so it looks like I actually work on projects instead of just procrastinate, are the first photos of Worm Bum construction. No one involved has any experience with making armatures, so it was an adventure, to say the least.

Here are the beginning stages of assembling part one of the armature:

And the final product, with cat:

The end of this summer hasn’t been the most productive for this project. Between two road trips, work, a overly ambitious Halloween costume, and assorted other smaller projects I’ve been working on, I haven’t really gotten anything done. In fact, I haven’t even had time to post some updates from months ago, so here we go. Hopefully this will help me get motivated again! As of my last post, I had completed the Wonder Wheel and its cars. Next, I set about working on the boardwalk. After much agonized sketching and re-sketching:

I finally managed to get it all painted.

I think it looks rather nice when the beach, the sky, and the wheel complete the picture:

After finishing the boardwalk, I got the brilliant idea to sink hours of my life into a under boardwalk tableau. This was inspired by a section of the interviews in which my mother discusses how all sorts of unsavory activities used to take place under the boardwalk until it was finally filled in with sand. I attempted to illustrate the unsavory activities, although I have to admit – my mother never mentioned aliens, escaped convicts, or battling dinosaurs. The idea is for there to be a very short animation made by having the camera tilt down as my mother talks about the boardwalk.

Here is the initial sketch:

And the almost finished product:

I have since filled in some more of the color, but then I decided to go on a cleaning binge and the unfinished painting ended up under the bed. Next up: The animated puppets that will march along the sand.

When I checked for updates to the Shameless blog this morning, I was treated to a disgusting bit of misogyny via Mir’s post on the new Bacardi Breezer ad campaign. This campaign, with the tagline “Get Yourself An Ugly Girlfriend” is one of the most offensive, sexist attempt at promoting alcohol that I have ever seen, which is saying a lot, considering the general grossness of alcohol advertising. I’m not sure how Bacardi thought it could convince women to drink Breezers by insulting their looks, but, well… that’s what they’re trying to do. Certainly the best way to sell a product is to remind women of all the things they hate about their bodies, right? That makes total sense.

I have been looking for an excuse to do some more feminist adbusting since Your Mom Had Groupies, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Thus, I present a new ad campaign that I like to call Take A Beach Stroll With Sally (Click the image to make it bigger):

Once again, I’m putting out the call for contributions, because adbusting is more fun in groups! Who would you like to join you at the beach or at the mall? Make your own ad or just leave a comment telling me how you would bust this gross ad campaign. If you have a contribution, please submit it here and I’ll make a big post with all the responses!

Or, if you don’t feel like spending your day messing around with Photoshop, you can just tell Bacardi exactly how you feel about their new campaign.

EDIT: Sources in Israel (oooh, I love saying that) have informed me that this is an old campaign, dating from 2007 or 2008. They are not sure if it was dropped by the company or even if it was ever officially used by Bacardi. McCann Digital is an Internet exclusive ad agency known for its disgustingly offensive campaigns. McCann recently listed the ad campaign on Best TV Now, dating it as being from this month and listing the client that commissioned it as Tempo.

Possibly, and this is entirely my speculation, it was going to be submitted to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Does anyone else have any clues? I, for one, would love to hear from Bacardi on the matter. Adbusting remains very satisfying, whatever the response.

EDIT: McCann has pulled the promotional minisite down and removed it from their website! Heh, feminists either crashed their site or… they feared the bad press. I wonder…

EDIT: An apology (Corporations apologize? I have never heard of such a thing!) from Bacardi can be seen in the comments. Also, the lovely Mir submitted her own ad-busted version of this ad, which I think is hilarious (and suffering from far fewer rage issues than my own:

I have been trying to keep track of all the books I read, even try to review them occasionally Facebook. Unfortunately, my little bookshelf application on Facebook keeps annoying me with popups and glitches, so I thought I would just record my recent reads list here, starting with the end of last year. I think I will try to do this every year.

2008

1. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: B-
2. The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith: A-
3. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning by John Mahler: B
4. Persepolis I and II by Marjane Satrapi: A+
5. After Dark by Haruki Murakami: B-
6. Cover Me by Mariko Tamaki: B
7. The Devil’s Cup by Asshole McAsshole: F
8. Two Ends of Sleep by Lizard Jones: A
9. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith: B
10. After Dolores by Sarah Schulman: A
11. Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain: A+++
12. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami: B
13. Slow River by Nicola Griffith: A
14. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood: A+
15. Godspeed by Lynn Breedlove: B (But the first ten pages are, like, A. Too bad she couldn’t sustain the style.
16. The Corner by David Simon: A- (It had issues and some sketchy decision making, but it was too engaging to blow off.)
17. The Chelsea Whistle by Michelle Tea: B+
18. People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman: B
19. Beebo Brinker by Ann Bannon: B (Clearly this is the section of the year where I was raiding Stark’s lesbian fiction collection)
20. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: A-
21. Tea by Stacey D’Erasmo: B-
22. Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs: D- (This book was so profoundly disappointing. Ugh.)
23. The Code Book by Simon Singh: A
24. Every Contact Leaves A Trace by Connie Fletcher: A

2009

1. Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury: Unfinished.
2. From the Velvets to the Voidoids by Clinton Heylin: Unfinished, but let’s give it an F for pretension.
3. The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel: A+
4. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino: B
5. Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brien: A-
6. World War Z by Max Brooks: A
7. Homicide by David Simon: B (Having read The Corner first, it’s impressive to see how much Simon’s writing has improved. It’s amazing how many stories appeared almost exactly in Homicide.)
8. 2666 by Robert Bolano: Oh dear…. where to begin with this?

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I was whining to Trancer recently about how TV sucks, and I thought, hmmm… maybe I should do an end season roundup of my year of TV.

Well, I have to admit, I broke up with a lot of shows this year.

First to go was Sarah Connor Chronicles, then Ugly Betty and Chuck, and now I’m pretty sure I’m divorcing Bones. Under the cut – my year in TV.

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The requisite squeeing fangirl post. Stark and I saw Star Trek (dammit, I keep typing “Stark Trek”) yesterday and had differing opinions on the film. Stark said “Meh,” I said “Wheeeeeeee! Saving the universe and getting in bar fights! Tribbles and booze and wild space adventure! Pyoo pyoo set phasers to stun!!”

Right before my trip to New York, Space Channel was showing a Star Trek movie marathon. We diligently powered through each of the movies up until I left. Sadly, I only got to watch up until the eighth movie before I had to leave the country, so I missed out on Insurrection and Nemesis. Oh well, I have heard I wasn’t missing much. Generally, I thought the entire series wasn’t all that great. Most of the movies amounted to just decent, extra-long episodes of the show. Which is not a bad thing, really. I mean, for the hilarious interactions of Bones/Kirk/Spock alone, they’re worth watching. The most movie-like of the movies was The Voyage Home, which had an engaging script, time travel with an amazing purpose, and great interactions between the cast. Chekhov getting captured as a Russian spy! Bones bitching about medieval medicine! Uhura being baffled by San Francisco! Kirk doing a terrible job of hitting on a woman and making her pay for his dinner! SPOCK MIND MELDING WITH WHALES!!! Awesome. Here are my ratings for the series:

I, Star Trek: Boring but inoffensive
II, The Wrath of Khan: Campy awesomeness. KHAAANNNNN!
III, The Search For Spock: Kinda rambling and slow, but generally decent.
IV, The Voyage Home: WHALES! BEST. MOVIE. EVER.
V, The Final Frontier: AWFUL. AWFUL. Never leave Shatner in charge of a story. Ugh.
VI, The Undiscovered Country: Definitely an improvement on V, but more like a long episode than anything else. Lots of boring galactic council meetings. Lucas should have learned from this. Space politics, like real politics, are BORING.
VII, Generations: I liked this movie. It was actually the first Star Trek movie that I ever saw in theaters, so I’ll always be fond of it.
VIII, First Contact: Borg queen! Borg queen! Data being smarter than everyone! Awww, Picard, you make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when you say things like “Engage.” Purrr. And the day is saved by Picard’s hot biceps of power and righteousness!

In sum, STAR TREK RULES!
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After weeks (months?) of planning, cutting tiny holes, testing paint samples, running to Curry’s for some random supply I didn’t realize I needed, the tiny scale model of the Wonder Wheel is finally complete!

Sketching out a circle this size was a real bitch, let me tell you. But cutting out tiny lattice work with an exacto knife was even worse. Hello, early onset arthritis.

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Amazon, already the scourge of small publishers and independent booksellers, has finally gone too far. No, I am not talking about the Kindle. That thing is just pointless. I am talking about Amazon’s new policy of labeling any and all LGBT printed matter as “Adult.” This policy strips the material of its sales rank, excluding it from bestseller lists and certain search results, and basically destroys its sales. This policy has not just been applied to erotica, but to general fiction, young adult novels, academic theory, political treatises, history books, dictionaries, and self-help books. Books that have not suffered the same fate include heterosexual romance novels by authors like Jackie Collins or even pornographic books published by Playboy.

Here is a constantly expanding list of books that have been stripped of their rank, classified as “Adult” for daring to contain mentions of the horrible, deviant behavior that is same sex love. Examples include classics such as Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Also marginalized are Brokeback Mountain, Stone Butch Blues, books by respected fiction authors like Sarah Waters and Christopher Isherwood, as well as non-fiction (and completely non-erotic) works by Kate Bornstein and Randy Shilts, including The Mayor of Castro Street, which certainly must have received a boost in sales after the release of the Oscar winning film, “Milk.”

Thank you Amazon, for first putting all my favorite bookstores out of business, and now trying to make it so that no one will ever publish gay books ever again. Because with profit margins tight and a terrible economy, why bother sinking money into a book that will never sell, because the largest bookseller in the world will declare it to be shameful porn and hide it on a dusty shelf behind a beaded curtain at the back of the store?

Pissed off about this new policy?
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Stark and I had an adventure in the kitchen last night. She made fresh ravioli and I made stuffed artichokes. My family used to have Sunday dinners of ravioli, sausage, meatballs, fresh Italian bread, and stuffed artichokes, and it was enough to food to kill a horse. I remember these dinners very fondly, but I always doubted my ability to recreate the culinary delights of my Italian grandma.

Last night I finally took the plunge after a thirty minute phone consultation with my mother, and I have to admit, they were really good! Just like I remembered my grandma making them! So, in effort of spreading the yum, I will share the recipe (now with photo illustrations!):

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