Monday, July 07, 2008

Gender Roles

Today I navigated to Yahoo to check my personal email. Yahoo always displays stories / articles / news / human interest junk for their users to click on.

And today there were two articles about relationships:

For WOMEN : "10 signs that he's willing to commit"

For MEN : "How to tell if she's attracted to you"

It's not just Yahoo. It's everywhere. Obviously popular media STILL assumes that all women want is a long-term commitment and all men want is to know if they're going to get laid.

It's so reassuring to know that some things never change.


Did I just imagine that women's movement and the sexual revolution took place?

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

7 Songs Meme

Snagged this from Sheila...

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs."


"Tiny Dancer" - Elton John
Because I just finished a musical and the music director kept playing this song on the piano during downtime and we would all sing along. It had nothing to do with the show we were doing but it was great. It also took like five or six times of warbling along with the cast to get past the whole "Hold me closer Tony Danza" thing - but I'm so over it and back in love with the song now...

"Dragula" - Rob Zombie
High energy song. I've been going on walks and listening to this. I find it therapeutic. I know. Creepy.

"Fire and Rain" - James Taylor
Someone was playing this a few weeks ago across the street from the theater and I had forgotten how much I love it. It had been years since I consciously chose to listen to this song. So I've been playing it a lot lately.

"A Pirate Looks at Forty" - Jimmy Buffet
I love me some Buffet. Don't judge me. I'm not into Cheeseburger Buffet, I like rankly old sailor Buffet. Wistful drinking too much on a breezy afternoon Buffet. I'm all in the midst of warm fuzzy rediscovery of this love of Buffet.

"A Postcard to Nina" - Jens Lekman
My sister got me hooked on this song recently and I listen to it constantly. It's gorgeous AND funny.

"Spit It Out" - IAMX
Again, a recent addition from my awesome sister. I blast this in my car and howl along like a crazy woman and people look at me askance. Again, therapeutic.

"Rebel, Rebel" - David Bowie
The best song ever. For walking. For dancing in my living room. For singing along in the car. Impossible to think about your woes while bopping along to Rebel, Rebel. Kind of always into this but listening to it a lot lately.

Dorothy Parker

Fair Weather

This level reach of blue is not my sea;
Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,
Whose quiet ripples meet obediently
A marked and measured line, one after one.
This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves
Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.
I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.

So let a love beat over me again,
Loosing its million desperate breakers wide;
Sudden and terrible to rise and wane;
Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide
That casts upon the heart, as it recedes,
Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds.”
- Dorothy Parker


My sister has that line tattooed on her arm, "They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm." I've always loved it and had never read the poem which was it's source. Parker was renowned for her wit, her sharp tongue, her great mind... but I think in popular culture her sheer talent for words gets forgotten as her legacy is reduced to snippets of humor that are easily dispersed in conversation. The woman who wrote these verses was not simply a humorist or satirist, great though her contributions in that arena may have been.