You suck, Fat Boy, you suck (1)

Posted 11 April, 2008 in TV and movies and that

I saw Run, Fatboy, Run a few days ago. Having seen Hot Fuzz and loved it, I was excited about seeing another Simon Pegg joint. David Schwimmer directed this one, and Pegg cowrote the script with Michael Ian Black, whereas Pegg’s other two hits, Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, plus the show Spaced, were directed by Brit Edgar Wright and cowritten by Wright and Pegg. Turns out Wright’s absence, and the presence of two Americans, really made a difference - I’m sorry to say this, but Fatboy sucked.

Sure, David Schwimmer’s indie-comedy pedigree is a bit dodgy. He was Ross in Friends, and he directed a whole bunch of Friends episodes too. He was relatively funny as Greenzo in that one episode of 30 Rock, but that was mostly due to Tina Fey’s good writing rather than Schwimmer’s inventive acting. Michael Ian Black, though? He should know better. He was in The State and Reno 911. Plus he played Johnny Blue Jeans in Viva Variety! How could he possibly produce a formulaic, on-the-nose comedic turd like Fatboy? Maybe the usual phalanx of American producers and execs descended upon him and made him rewrite the movie until all its personality was gone. Or maybe it is that he occasionally falls off the good-taste wagon, like he did when he took that recurring role in the abominable TV show Ed.

I am in possession of a (generally useless) MFA in screenwriting, and I sometimes like to play the “three-act game” when I’m watching movies. If a movie’s particularly by-the-numbers, it’ll go like this: The end of the first act comes at around 25-30 minutes into the film. Usually the tension has been set up by then. What does our hero or heroine have to achieve by the end of the movie? When the first act is over, we know the answer to this question. When I think the first act is coming to a conclusion, I check the clock and see if it’s “on time.” This time, I turned to O and said, “I think the first act is now over. Could you pause the movie? It should be right around 25 minutes in.” Indeed it was. If you want to see this movie (don’t do it) and you don’t want to read spoilers (but it really doesn’t matter if you do; the movie is that bad), then please turn away now. When Simon Pegg decides he’s going to run the marathon to win back his ex-fiancee, that’s the end of Act I. Not only is this formulaic, but it’s also preposterous. Dude has three weeks to train for a 26.5-mile race. Plus he smokes. Plus he already left his fiancee once, pregnant at the altar. Why the hell would his running a marathon make her want to go out with him again? I know that comedy often stretches the boundaries of reality, but this is just lazy writing.

The second act is usually twice as long as the first act, or a bit less, depending on the overall length of the movie. The end of the second act is when everything goes seriously pear-shaped for the protagonist. This is when Simon Pegg hits the proverbial wall during the marathon. But wait! It’s not just proverbial! No, Schwimmer has decided to actually film the wall! And then Pegg actually hits it! (If we’re going to start taking metaphors literally here, why not just insert a scene featuring a DVD of Run, Fat Boy, Run being flushed down the toilet? It would be funnier than the whole wall thing.) Meanwhile, as in all comedies of this sort, the protagonist’s supporters and enemies cluster behind him, either cheering or jeering. (O checked the clock again around this point, and we were at about an hour and 15 minutes in - bang on target.) Then - yes! Pegg gets up and hobbles onwards. I’m surprised the script didn’t have him win the marathon - with a movie this far-fetched, almost anything would be possible, including him turning into a giant winged dragon and flying to the finish line. Actually, that would be much more entertaining than what really happens, which is that he falls into his ex-fiancee’s waiting arms at the end of the race.

Again, going on how unbelievable the movie had been thus far, I was amazed to see that in the third act (as long as the first act; denouement; wrapping up of loose ends; usually culminates at about 1 hr 45-2 hrs plus, depending on the length of the film - this one ended at about 1:40), Pegg isn’t actually dating his ex-fiancee again yet. He does, however, ask her out to dinner, in a predictably cringeworthy manner.

Movies can follow the three-act structure and be brilliant - at USC, we studied movies like The Shop Around The Corner and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, whose structures were solid without being constrictive, and whose story points seemed naturally to come at the perfect times, rather than to be scripted according to the clock. It’s still easy to break those movies down and see the skeletons holding them together, but they look like what I imagine Brad Pitt’s skeleton might. Run, Fat Boy, Run’s skeleton, on the other hand, resembles bits of the Elephant Man duct-taped to various dinosaur parts.

What other bits of cliched business can you expect from this movie? There’s a giant pus-filled blister that explodes in someone’s face, even though blisters aren’t often filled with pus - they’re usually filled with lymph, a clear, and far less gross, liquid. But this is just another example of the stellar research job the writers of Fat Boy did. There is falling down stairs. There is a fat dude in skimpy running gear. There is so much Nike product placement that you end up feeling like the company has reached through the screen and groped you. There is a smart-mouthed kid. There is a bare Irish man-bottom. The owner of the aforementioned posterior, actor Dylan Moran, is actually one of the only good things about the movie. (The posterior itself, however, is a tad flat.) Pegg is good, too, but I kept finding myself wondering why the hell he decided to make this film. At one point (midway through Act 3, according to the clock), I also wondered out loud why the hell I was still watching this film.

100 things to do before I die (1)

Posted 25 March, 2008 in life shiz

I ripped this off from Mighty Girl again. I should seriously pay her for all the ripping off I do. Or maybe just buy her book.

1. Walk along the Malecon, that street in Havana where the waves sometimes break over the sea wall.

2. Learn how to stunt drive.

3. Get a permit for a concealed weapon. (Not that I would ever actually carry one - but no one would ever expect someone like me to have such a thing, which amuses me. See that little bobo white girl over there? She’s packing heat!)

4. Upholster a really complicated piece of furniture from scratch.

5. Make something complicated out of wood. (Like a working refrigerator, or a robot. No, not really.) Sand it and stain it, then use it regularly.

6. Become fluent in Spanish.

7. Learn how to do various styles of dance with a partner. (Hopefully O, but if he is not into it, then any gay man will do. I am taking applications.)

8. Go back to my middle school in England and take pictures. (They probably redid it so it doesn’t look so much like Dotheboys Hall, but I am sure some of the original Lord-of-the-Flies-type atmosphere remains for me to document.

9. Drive the same route my parents took when they brought me back to the aforementioned school on Sunday nights. Just to exorcise a few demons.

10. Live on a canal boat for a month or so.

11. Take various train rides across America.

12. Learn how to silversmith.

13. Learn how to blow glass.

14. Do some heavy construction stuff with mechanized equipment, possibly involving a tractor, or even better, a wrecking ball.

15. Implode a building. (I will probably never get to do this, but it would be so fucking metal.)

16. Find people whose stories you wouldn’t think deserve to be told, and tell them in such a way that other people will love to read them.

17. Own a dog, or several. (Hopefully O will cooperate with me on this one.)

18. Eventually, once again be able to touch my knees with my nose. (Once this damned zygote decides to vacate my torso.)

19. Learn how to sing, for reals, with training and everything.

20. Sew myself a really beautiful dress.

21. Go on safari.

22. Stay in that ice hotel in Sweden. (Or maybe just briefly check it out. I may be too much of a pussy to actually spend a night in it.)

23. Get published.

24. Get really ridiculously in shape.

25. Make a quilt.

26. Teach my kid the art of cheerful cynicism - i.e., most people suck, but there’s no need to be bitter about it.

27. Find some suet somewhere and make jam roly-poly, and some dumplings too.

28. Go to Iceland.

29. Spend a substantial amount of time in Leeds.

30. Learn to ride a bike. (Don’t laugh.)

31. Run around on the beach with my kids.

32. Make something incredibly cool out of garbage. Like this, for example. Then, if I decide to sell it, I won’t charge a price as retarded as this guy is charging.

33. Let shit roll off my back more.

34. Eat all the food in my kitchen pantry that’s been sitting there in cans and bottles seemingly for eons. (First, make sure it hasn’t been sitting there for actual eons, otherwise I may poison myself.) Don’t buy any more pantry-stored stuff till I’ve eaten everything in there.

35. Bone up (huh huh) on UK geography - it’s pitiful how little I know.

36. Have a house with a hidden room or a secret passageway/staircase.

37. Live in a brick house.

38. Live in a stone house.

39. Learn how to draw, so I can draw cartoons that will at least marginally look like what I’m intending to portray.

40. Embark upon a project with some friends that takes us a long time, requires manual labor, and leaves us all dirty and exhausted. Renovating a house or an apartment would be a good one.

41. Drive as little as possible - even though I love to drive, gas prices are gouging my ass, which is also getting fatter the more I drive and the less I walk.

42. Find some way to get my children a good education.

43. Visit my relatives in Australia.

44. Make my living as a writer.

45. Hang out with bears at the Russian River. (Human ones.)

46. Eat more vegetables.

47. Go to Morocco.

48. Write and do other creative projects for myself, rather than always thinking about how I’ll market them and what other people will think of them.

49. Go to New Orleans.

50. Eat pasteis de nata in Portugal.

51. Hang out in John O’Groats for a while. (Not the breakfast place on Pico - the top of Scotland.)

52. See how much of my stuff I can sell without really missing it… and see how much money I can bank from doing it.

53. Run around in the Catacombs.

54. Work for Cesar Millan and his giant pack of dogs at the Dog Psychology Center. (He doesn’t have time to hire or train people, though, sadly.)

55. Drive down the Seven Mile Bridge to the Florida Keys.

56. Galapagos, bitches! (I’m pretty sure those two words have never before been used together.)

57. Visit that Russian family with the fishing cat.

58. Pretend I’m a Mongol warrior.

59. Ogle some Faberge eggs.

60. Get a really bitchin’ tan for the last time in my life. I’ve given up tanning due to a. being so white that it takes me a year to get any kind of color anyone else would see, and b. fear of skin cancer, but I just want that last hurrah.

61. Go to Taos, New Mexico.

62. Be able to say, “You should see the other guy,” and not be joking.

63. Stay in a working lighthouse.

64. Have my friends Isabel and Andreas show me around Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

65. Ride the Orient Express.

66. Ride the Trans-Siberian Express.

67. See the All Blacks do their Maori dance before a rugby match.

68. Drive on the German Autobahn. Perhaps I am too much of a pussy to do this, in which case, O can drive and I’ll sit in the passenger seat.

69. Sit in the cockpit of an Airbus A380 as it takes off.

70. Find more nonsensical things to mock, such as this inexplicable item on some Net denizen’s 100-things list: “change something in Poland for better, maybe get rid of two ducks for example.”

71. Own and operate a cattery.

72. Have access to a group of hard geezers whom I can call upon to defend me or to threaten my enemies whenever I might need them to do so.

73. Learn how to fix a car.

74. Never stop finding unintentional spelling and grammar errors funny, such as this double whammy from another 100-things list: “Drink in a dark, smoky martini lounge preferably dressed as a gangster or mole.”

75. Finally find time to teach myself how to play bass really well with a pick.

76. See England win the World Cup. (Also to see pigs fly, the cow jump over the moon, snow fall in Hell, and so forth.)

77. See Leeds United back in the Premiership. (See parenthetical note on number 76.)

78. Find a physical activity I love so much that it becomes effortless to keep fit. (Cue sex joke here. Boioioioioing!)

79. Go snorkeling without being afraid that the mask won’t work and I’ll breathe in a whole shitload of water. (See? I told you I am a pussy.)

80. Hear my kids say that Mom’s cooking is the best.

81. In order to make this goal possible, actually cook more often than once every couple of weeks.

82. Be a more attentive friend.

83. Once, just once, give a real verbal smackdown to someone who deserves it. And don’t feel bad afterwards.

84. Discover how to eat chocolate in moderation.

85. Drive a tank. I will probably ding it up, but that’s OK, because it’s a tank.

86. Find a way to get into the wind farm that sits outside Palm Springs, and run around in among the windmills.

87. Successfully grow gardenias and freesias.

88. Float in the Dead Sea. (Bonus: good for psoriasis!)

89. Chill on Punaluu Beach, the black sand beach on the Big Island of Hawaii.

90. See a live boxing match in Las Vegas.

91. When I’ve gotten as much use out of my car as possible, give it to a stunt driver and watch him drive it off a cliff. Or have some SFX guys blow it up on a film or TV set. (I tried to make my dad help me do this with my last car, but he gave it to charity instead. Can you imagine? Charity! Pshaw!)

92. Have an experience that convinces me that the supernatural isn’t just a load of shit.

93. Witness my child make an incisively witty remark.

94. Spend the summer in Svalbard, Norway, where the sun never sets for like 4 months. Try not to go completely, gibberingly insane.

95. Hang out with the seismologists at the California Institute of Technology, especially that awesome Kate Hutton lady, during an earthquake.

96. Fly so high in a fighter plane that I can see the curve of the earth. (And try to ignore the fact that I have crapped my pants while doing so.)

97. Go fishing. I’ve never been.

98. Chillax under some baobab trees in Madagascar.

99. Have someone send a helicopter to come get me and take me somewhere posh.

100. Get super old and crotchety. Shout at people from my porch. Hit young men with my handbag. Be a horrible little old lady, and have lots of fun while I’m at it.

The due date and weight pool for the impending zygote (16)

Posted 24 March, 2008 in zygote

First entry: Captain Paranoia, aka my bro, with April 16th and 6 pounds 13 10 ounces.

Other guesses?

I am definitely pregnant. (1)

Posted 4 March, 2008 in life shiz, zygote

I mean, I knew that already - what kind of a dumbass would I be if I wasn’t sure? What I’m trying to say is, I haven’t been a moody mom-to-be. (Aside from suddenly deciding I must clean all the doors in my apartment every week or so. The doors?! I never even thought about cleaning doors before.) I am not a big crier in general. I don’t have a problem with crying - it’s just that I am a sarcastic and cynical bitch who is too suspicious of things to be moved by them very often. I thought this might change when I got pregnant, especially because everyone was suddenly so nice to me, seemingly without expecting anything from me in return. It did, a tiny little bit - I’ve been smiling more, I suppose - but so far, it hasn’t brought me to tears.

But today I have been looking at my Amazon baby registry, and I see how many people have bought stuff for my baby shower, for my little dude who hasn’t even been born yet (so they don’t even know if he will be cool, or a total douche! and yet they are still so generous toward him), and then I think of how lucky I am to have friends who want to throw me a shower, seemingly for no reason other than they like me, and it just makes me want to cry.

I am not my khakis. Or am I? (1)

Posted 29 February, 2008 in life shiz

I am a 121A. Not a 120 (fades too quickly) or a 122 (too goth), but a 121A (a little darker than my natural color, but goes well with my skin tone). I’m talking about my hair color - Clairol Nice N’ Easy, number 121A, Natural Darkest Brown. I hate to admit that I let a product define who I am, even if it is only in a small way, but these days, no matter how much they try to avoid it, (and sometimes because they try to avoid it) almost everyone I know has various products that have become symbols of themselves.

I’m not going to talk much about how terrible it is to be enslaved by products. Of course it’s terrible, especially when we’re bombarded with ads for shit we don’t need, and we’re maxing out our credit cards because we feel like we have to have the latest cool stuff or we’re somehow deficient as people. But other writers have covered this subject far more eloquently and knowledgeably than I ever could. Also, I and most of the people I know are trying our hardest not to buy into consumer bullshit and to waste as little as possible, but there’s a point beyond which we can’t really progress without a complete reorganization of society. I mean, I’m sorry, but I just don’t have time to weave my own cloth every time I need a new shirt, or make my own shampoo out of rice husks. I gotta go to work. So, yes, I buy stuff, and occasionally it is frivolous stuff. I try not to go overboard. That’s all I can really say about that.

O drinks this in the morning. While both he and I are skeptical as to whether the drink really burns calories as it claims, it is fat-free and has a decent amount of both calcium and the antioxidant EGCG. It wakes him up in the morning without giving him the stomach ache he gets from coffee, or the hefty dose of fat in the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf ice blended mochas I love so much. When I see the green Enviga cans on supermarket shelves, I immediately think of him.

The drink does go against some of my bobo beliefs, which is why I personally don’t imbibe it. First, it contains aspartame. Not only might this artificial sweetener cause certain types of cancer, but Donald Rumsfeld was involved in its dodgy FDA approval process, and we know what a pillar of integrity Rummy is. Secondly, Enviga is made by Coca-Cola and Nestle, which means O is in violation of two commandments of Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip: “Thou shalt not buy Coca-Cola products,” and “Thou shalt not buy Nestle products.” It is wise to obey Dan and Scroobius; after all, it was they who said, “Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.”

I don’t judge O for his choice of morning beverage, however. I drink the odd Diet Coke, which, like Enviga, contains aspartame and caffeine, and has the added bonus of delicious sodium benzoate; and I can often be seen toting a cup from The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I let myself be defined by my mocha just as O lets himself be defined by his Enviga. (Only one of us, however, is ingesting 500 extra calories a day from the liquid fat she’s sucking into her body.)

People also define themselves by the products they don’t use. My friend M will not wash her hair with shampoo that contains sodium lauryl or laureth sulfate. She introduced me to the Skin Deep cosmetic safety database, which rates hair, face, body and bath products based on the levels of potentially harmful chemicals they contain. I personally will not use nondairy creamer, because of all the artificial crap in it. I am inclined toward boycotting IKEA products from now on, since they sold me and O a busted piece-of-shit dresser and tried to claim we’d broken it ourselves, but God damn it, I am bound and determined to recreate the Bluefly Accessory Wall in my bedroom, and the LACK shelves are the only ones that will look right (plus they cheap as hell). I’m trying to find a set on Craigslist instead of going to the source: the sooner I can begin defining myself by my hatred of the Swedish behemoth, the better.

Perfume is a product by which it’s very easy to define yourself; almost everyone can think of a scent that, to them, symbolizes a particular person. Chanel No. 5 is my mum’s smell (and many of my friends’ moms’ signature scent, too, I’ve discovered). Giorgio Red is my grandma’s. The smell of a shampoo can also come to symbolize someone: Herbal Essences, the pink kind, reminds me of my sister-in-law C, while JASON Apricot shampoo smells like my friend M. (It’s sodium lauryl and laureth sulfate-free, of course.) One of my coworkers sometimes wears perfume that smells exactly like the conditioner that comes with my Nice N’ Easy hair color. (And so we returneth neatly to the beginning of our post, just like the snake which eats its own tail, and so forth.) At least, I think it’s perfume - maybe she, too, colors her hair with Clairol. If so, I’d say she’s a 114: Natural Light Ash Brown.

On becoming a mommy blogger - Part II (1)

Posted 14 February, 2008 in writing, zygote

If you’re a mother and a writer, especially if you’re a blogger who uses your own life as material, is it possible to separate the two? Lots of male writers are dads, and most of them don’t write about being fathers (or, at least, that’s not the only subject they write about), probably because traditionally, the mom, not the dad, does the nitty-gritty childrearing stuff.

I am not even a mother yet, and I spent most of the past two days reading articles about elimination communication (if you don’t know what that is, I’m not going to tell you, because you will probably wish you could un-know it), how to make Lego-shaped birthday cakes, and the circumcision debate. It’s hard not to let that stuff slip into my conversations with both breeders and nonbreeders. I imagine that once this type of thing is what I do all day, it’ll become even more difficult to find other subjects to talk about - simply because I won’t have had time to do things like read the news, do crazy DIY projects, or hang out with trannies. It’s inevitable that my blog will start reflecting this. Will I lose my audience (even though it generally consists only of spammers and kindly family members who take pity on me)? Will other moms be the only people who read my blog anymore?

Reading Mighty Girl the other day, I came across an angry comment from one of Maggie’s readers. She’d posted an entry about how to survive an airplane trip with a baby, and “Rhinestone” wrote: “Longtime reader, very little left here for me now…you have lost your edge, traded in your interestingness for the World’s Cutest Onesie. RIP Mightygirl. Hello Mightymom! Ugh.” Only 4 out of Maggie’s last 20 posts have been child-related, yet even the smallest amount of baby-type content seems to turn some people off. How are mothers/writers supposed to stop themselves from writing about their kids altogether? I can understand censoring oneself a certain amount, but is it fair that if a mother/writer wants an audience containing people other than fellow mothers, and if she wants to be considered a writer rather than a mommy blogger, she has to practically pretend she doesn’t have kids at all?

The thing is, I know children are boring to people who don’t want them. They don’t tend to inspire much good writing - even if a writer has the most original point of view and the most unique voice, she isn’t often able to wring much creative content out of her breastfeeding travails or how she potty-trained her daughter. But as a soon-to-be mother myself (and therefore as someone who is interested in baby-type topics), I’ve found several mommy blogs whose writers do manage to cast a new light on parenting, and I enjoy reading them. I imagine I will also enjoy writing about my own experiences with my kid (unless he is the Antichrist or something, which would be a huge pain in the ass). I will censor myself to a certain degree, lest I bore even myself - but I know I’ll write about some mommy-related things. So maybe, as a pregnant female writer who posts narrative nonfiction online and therefore draws on my own life for subject matter, I’m destined to become a mommy blogger too. Perhaps there’s no way around it, and I should resign myself to the mommification of my audience, and of myself, for at least the next few years.

I can promise you, though, that my mom-stories won’t be of the usual poop-and-bunnies variety: for example, I’ve got a mouth like a sailor, and I don’t intend to stop using this useful and often beautiful part of my vocabulary while raising my child. It’s important to know how to swear well. It’s going to be interesting trying to teach the kid the difference between words we use at home, and words we can say to our teacher when she is pissing us off. (Oops, well, looks like I fucked up on that one already.) Plus, I don’t believe in censorship: I believe in open discussion, which is why by the time my son is three, he will be able to tell all his friends in the playground exactly where babies come from. I’m looking forward to those calls from the preschool principal already.

My life in gay porn (2)

Posted 11 February, 2008 in that is f'ed up., writing, TV and movies and that

This afternoon, my literary agent released me from our contract, because she didn’t feel she could find my book a publisher. The book’s a tough sell, I’ll admit: it’s a memoir about the year and a half I spent as a writer for gay men’s soft-core porn magazines. I’ve changed names and identifying details, but the meat of it, if you will, is true. It was the best job I ever had.

I’m going to talk about some gnarly sex-type stuff below the cut, so if you don’t like that kind of thing, or if you got young’ins lookin’ at this hurr computer, don’t be clickin’.

(more…)

On becoming a mommy blogger - Part I (2)

Posted 1 February, 2008 in zygote

Soon, if all goes well, I will be a mom. I will also continue to blog. Will I become a mommy blogger? And what exactly does that mean?

My husband, O, and I have set up a baby-centric Web site where we post pictures of my growing belly, ultrasound images/video, and any other news on our foetus. It’s not really for public consumption - just for family and close friends. We posted our 20-week ultrasound pictures, in which you can clearly see our son’s “main thing,” as O’s grandma calls it. The ultrasound tech helpfully drew an arrow pointing to this organ and typed the word “BOY,” next to it. “Maybe when he grows up, he’ll be mad at us for putting naked pictures of him on the Internet,” I said to O.

I doubt our son will end up caring about whether people have seen his schvantz in utero. When he hits puberty, though, he might worry about it for a few years, because he will suddenly be mortified that I even know he has a schvantz. God forbid I actually talk about said appendage, lest he die of shame. There are lots of mommy bloggers out there, however, who write publicly about their kids’ personal business, from penes (the plural of penis, I’ll have you know - I looked it up) to poop explosions to family fights to popularity problems. So how much is too much? When does a funny or touching story become an invasion of your child’s privacy? I have definite boundaries when it comes to how much I reveal online about my own personal life, and I know I’d be pissed if someone else put me on blast on the Internet. Still, mothering is a 24-hour-a-day job, and what will I write about when that’s all I’ve been doing all day? If the best material I have at hand is a story about my son’s butt, should I just not post anything at all until I can write about something that won’t expose my child?

Here are a couple of examples of mommies, one whom I feel reveals too much, and one whom I think reveals just enough. (Speaking of putting people on blast on the Internet…)

Here’s Example 1, a charming little poop story. While I’m terrified that as soon as my son’s born, I will be able to talk about nothing but the day-to-day appearance of his feces, that’s my particular neurosis; I’ve read enough of this woman’s blog to know that’s not all she talks about. So I might cringe at the mention of crap, but if we’re talking about shaming this blogger’s son, this particular story is low on the Richter scale. Yeah, if he’s reading his mom’s blog archives when he’s 13, he might be a bit upset, but it’s not like she wrote about catching him whacking off. (What mom would write about that, anyway? Someone must have, on some blog somewhere, right? If anyone finds it, tell me. I’ll be appalled, but you know I’ll still read it.) I must admit that, despite my fear of becoming a poop-obsessed mommy, I find this story super cute. Still, rest assured, gentle reader: I myself will refrain from telling you whether my son’s crap is brown or green on any given day.

Example 2 comes from the writer Ayelet Waldman. She has discussed the line between mommyblogging and TMI, in this column for Salon. She talks about invading her children’s privacy by posting adorable little things they said or did. “There will surely come a day,” she writes, “when they will Google themselves, find my blog and both be furious with me for having stolen their lives and humiliated at the extent to which I have laid open my own.” I’m not bothered by her revealing cute details about her kids. What I am bothered by is that she’s sometimes used her opinion of her baby son’s looks as comedy material. “Abie was born with a recessive chin. He also has a unibrow and a moustache. Now it turns out this kid has a gimpy hip. It’s supposed to pass with time, but with the one eyebrow, the no chin, the moustache and the limp, he looks like a ninety-seven-year old Armenian. Not that that’s bad. Some of my best friends are Armenian. Come to think of it, their children are way better looking than he is.”

This isn’t TMI of the poop-and-masturbation kind; in this case, she’s invading her son’s privacy by letting the Internet take part in her lowering of his self-esteem - and all, it seems, for a cheap laugh, or to prove how honest, how warts-and-all, a writer she is. In my opinion, it is never cool to talk about how ugly you think your kid is. I’m not a vision of beauty myself by any means, but my mom was always adamant that I was gorgeous. While I didn’t quite believe her, I do think that her relentless praise of my looks helped build me a really great self-image, without making me conceited or vain. Waldman’s blogged before about her own struggles with self-esteem. Now she’s passing the torch by giving her kid a complex about his unibrow.

I remember being a little girl and pulling out the tail of my Barbie Horse by accident. I wanted him to have a tail, so I decided I would cut off a tail-sized section of my own hair and stuff it in the hole. Did it work? Well, what do you think? Later I heard my mum in the kitchen talking to a friend, chuckling about my haircutting adventure. When the friend had gone, I told my mum that I didn’t like her telling other people when I screwed up, that it was embarrassing. She took me completely seriously - she didn’t tell me it was dumb to feel ashamed, or that what I did was funny, or counter that I shouldn’t have cut my damn hair in the first place. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” And she never put me on blast ever again. I hope I can do the same for my son and possible future kids, whether it’s online or in real life.

In Part II: Are mommy bloggers boring to read unless you’re a mommy? Is it possible to keep blogging and mothering separate if your main subject matter is your own life?

Nursery Hell (2)

Posted 22 January, 2008 in DIY

For a visual retard like me, the idea of decorating a room is simultaneously exciting and horrifying. I’ve stood in our soon-to-be-nursery so many times, looking around at what space we’ve got and what furniture we already have to fill it, and instead of being inspired, I’m overwhelmed. I love looking at Web sites like ohdeedoh.com to get ideas, but soon my head begins to spin - what colors should we choose? What if the red lockers we already have clash with everything and we have to move them out, and then we’re left with no toy/book storage, and we can’t find another piece that fits our needs? And should I go back to IKEA, or will I eventually hate myself for buying such generic furniture and wish I’d scoured Craigslist instead? And where will I find curtains, and should I just make them myself in order to get exactly what I want, or am I setting myself far too many tasks, especially considering that in a month or two, I will be so enormous that I might not even be able to fit behind my sewing machine anymore? And can I achieve that perfect balance of practicality and beauty, or will the room end up looking dull because, in all my organizing and furniture-getting, I actually forgot to really decorate it? And then I fall on the floor frothing at the mouth, and O has to come and sit with me to make sure I don’t swallow my tongue.

Here are the pieces of furniture we currently intend to move into the nursery.

Two tall red steel IKEA lockers which will sit next to one another.

One wood and stainless-steel IKEA dresser, which will have a changing pad on top of it.

One Pali crib in white, courtesy of O’s friend Dave, whose kids have outgrown it. This isn’t the exact crib - they don’t make the exact model anymore, but this is pretty close to what it looks like.

So far, the colors we have in the room are red and white. We could go with some red curtains and a red bookshelf, but maybe the room will turn out too fire-enginy if we go that way. Also, if I have a predominantly red color scheme, will my little boy turn out to be an angry, hyperactive psychopath? Shouldn’t I have more soothing greens or blues to chill him out a bit? I’ve never really seen a nursery decorated in red before.

We could also move in this dresser, which is currently sitting in the other room:

This is an Oeuf dresser, and is infinitely cooler and more expensive than the dresser we own, but they share the same square shape and minimalist design. Ignore the legs - our dresser ain’t got no legs. If we use the white dresser and the white crib, but move the lockers out, we can then throw in whatever color scheme we choose. We can’t really paint the walls (which are currently white) because I think our landlord’s head would explode if we even broached the subject, but we can have big splashes of color in the bookshelf, on the crib bedding, in the art, and on the curtains. We could even solve the boring-white-furniture problem by making our crib multicolored. I have a secret, shameful lust for multicolored things: if I see an object I like and it comes in several colors, I immediately fantasize about owning one in each hue. Once when I was a drunken teenager coming home from an afternoon of Jello shots with a friend, I stopped off at WH Smith and bought myself an enormous pack of colored pens, for no other reason than that they were pretty. Maybe this is my chance, finally, to indulge my weird rainbow fetish - at least until my son is old enough to ask why Mommy decorated his room like a float at Gay Pride week. (Or maybe he’ll be gay, in which case my decor choice will fit him perfectly.)

Blue, green and brown is also a nice color scheme - it’s not too kiddie-twee-looking (oh, and like rainbow colors are soooo mature, Kate! I contradict myself constantly.) This nursery is awesome - they managed to make it colorful even though they, like us, were forbidden to paint the walls. I love the Flor tiles they use as a rug. The idea of putting an ultrasound photo on the wall is great, too, as is the grouping of tiny pictures and the little dude sitting on the shelf. A white couch, though? If I were a baby (and I once was, believe it or not), I’d see that couch as a pristine, rectangular target at which to aim my frequently exploding butt.

My next dilemma: now that I have some decorating ideas, how do I catalogue and store them? I could go the way of the printed-out/ripped-from-magazine page and stick them all in a binder, but I am loath to add yet another binder full of junk to my already cluttered bookshelf. An online gallery might be a good idea - perhaps I’ll set one up on Flickr. But then where do I store printed pages? I’d like to keep everything in one place, rather than having one online place and one real-life site. And then there’s the dilemma of color - if I’m at work, I can’t be printing out reams of stuff on the color printer, so any printed pages will have to be in black and white, which will be useless if I like the color of something -

And once again, the foaming at the mouth begins…

Rubbernecker, Issue 2: EEE!! Internet Mommies (2)

Posted 11 January, 2008 in rubbernecker

Whenever I have a question about something, I turn to the always infallible source known as the Internet. Now that I’m pregnant, I’ve been frequenting several online forums dedicated to pregnancy and motherhood. While I’ve found lots of useful information on these sites, I’ve also been struck by how peculiar they are.

In case you hadn’t already figured it out, I am not your average girl. I don’t squeal or gush, I rarely cry in public, I am not a big fan of the color pink, and I don’t own very many skirts. It’s no surprise, then, that most of the women on mommy message boards scare the crap out of me. They are textbook girly-girls: they love to decorate and shop, they obsessively chronicle their romantic relationships, and they will tell you all about their episiotomy and their spouse’s impotence issues, whether or not you actually asked. Add a baby to the mix, and these chicks just explode in a frothy gushing mess of ZOMG BABIES R SO AMAZING EEEEEEEE!!!! Yes, babies are pretty awesome, but damn, do you have to pierce my eardrums squealing about it?

Message-board mommies have developed their own special language. Everything is abbreviated. TTC stands for trying to conceive. TTA=trying to avoid conception. BTDT=been there, done that. DPO=days post-ovulation, in which you endure the TWW (two-week wait) to see if you will get a BFP (a big, fat positive) on your HPT (home pregnancy test). Sex and genitals have cute terms allotted to them: you don’t have sex; you DTD (do the deed) or BD (baby dance). Your breasts become your BBs. Your period is AF (Aunt Flo), whom you never want to come visiting, since getting (and staying) knocked up is your goal. Despite babies often coming out of them, vaginas are seldom mentioned. When they are, they’re usually called names like “yoni,” which is the Sanskrit word for “sacred space.” Let us all honor our ladyparts! I suppose it’s better than thinking they’re gross, but it’s still overly serious and hippy-dippy.

These forums don’t use the standard happy/grumpy/sad smilies, no siree. Here’s an example of a commonly used mommy-board smiley: a cartoon toddler running up to mama, lifting her shirt, breastfeeding and then scuttling away. In another one, a baby suckles on a woman’s breast, and you can clearly see nip. I am fine with this, but I am not sure my workplace would be. If I hear my boss coming, I scroll down really fast. There are also several mildly disturbing smilies, some worksafe and some not: a fried egg to indicate ovulation, a chicken to indicate a pregnancy, even two humping smilies in a bed under the covers. “Babydust” is a mommy-board classic - a little fairy smilie sprinkles sparkles, which is meant to indicate good luck for you and your pregnancy.

Moms on forums love tickers. These colorful mini-banners count the days until, or since, every event that could possibly be considered the least bit important. The length of one’s marriage is a popular topic: “4 years 1 month 21 days 21 hours 11 minutes since I married my best friend.” Pregnancy tickers tell you exactly how far along an expectant mother is, complete with a cartoon of the fetus in utero and a small blurb about which of its bodyparts are developing this week. There are also tickers counting down the days till vacations, maternity leave, birthdays, even important baseball games. “3 weeks 5 days 6 hours 57 minutes until we go to Disney World!”

The signature is a huge part of each message posted on a mommy forum. Tickers go in the signature, as do giant, luridly colored graphics telling you who the parents are and how old they are, the names and ages of any kids, and where the couple currently are in their reproductive journey. One might read, “Janine - 28. Bob - 31. Kaylen - 4. Raylen - 2. Trying for #3 - hoping for the stork to bring a pink bundle this time! Swim, spermies, swim!” This oversharing of information is then followed by a pic (or several) of the proud mama and papa with their babies. Other signatures won’t mention the hubby’s or kids’ names: instead, they’ll be referred to as DH (dear husband), DS (dear son) and DD (dear daughter.) “Furbabies” are sometimes included: “DDog - Scooter - 6,” or “DCat - Paws - 3/10/01.” There are also tickers bearing sad news, but we’ll get to those in a moment.

The last graphic element of a signature has to do with buttons - flashing, blinking, glittery buttons. Since they’re small images, you can cram a lot of them into your sig - and boy, do some folks cram them in. Unlike tickers and family-info graphics, buttons are generally used to express your stance on various mothering-related issues. Breastfeeding advocates have buttons that say, “I make milk…what’s your superpower?” “100% Booby-Fed Baby,” and “Jesus was breastfed.” Women who are trying to get pregnant might have buttons saying “Addicted to the Stick” as in the pee-stick: the home pregnancy test.

It’s optional to include your reproductive history in your signature, but the more trouble a woman’s had conceiving, the more likely she is to detail the process, and the longer it will probably be. A sample of one of these histories might read “DD Clementine Jane - came into our lives on 01/05/07 after 18 cycles of TTC. Conceived on third cycle post-lap after ovarian drilling and 25 mg of Clomid.” To translate, 18 cycles of TTC means 18 menstrual cycles - whose length, I’ve learned, can vary drastically from woman to woman - of trying to conceive. Post-lap=after a laparoscopic surgery, in which a tiny camera is inserted through the smallest possible incision, so the surgeon can see what he/she is doing while being minimally invasive. Ovarian drilling= a laparoscopic procedure used to treat polycystic ovary syndrome, a common cause of infertility. Clomid=an infertility drug that helps you ovulate.

I never knew about any of these terms or procedures until I started visiting the mommy boards. While I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with laying bare my babymaking travails on an Internet forum, I’ve learnt a huge amount about fertility and infertility from reading other women’s histories. I also understand the comfort these women derive from telling their stories, hearing others’ problems, and sympathizing or empathizing with one another.

That leads me to the subject of sad tickers and buttons. These graphics often detail miscarriages and stillbirths. A commonly used image is a drawing or photo of a sleeping baby. The accompanying text might read, “3 wks 5 days since our angel flew to heaven,” or “since our angel grew wings.” Women often state how far along their pregnancies were when the miscarriage happened - usually the first 12 weeks is the time when most of them occur. This is a supersensitive subject. Some people believe (and say so in the buttons on their signatures) that a lost baby, whether it was a three-week-old zygote or an eight-month-old stillbirth, deserves to be named, honored, and remembered. Others wonder what all the fuss is about - they don’t see miscarried embryos or fetuses as human beings, so they don’t feel the need to mourn them. Still others take pictures of their babies, swaddled in blankets and little knit caps and snuggled in their mothers’ arms as if they’d been born alive. They post pictures of their tiny, red 1-pounders and 8-ouncers online, and their buttons read, “Photographs of stillborn babies are not disgusting. They are precious.” There are many Web sites devoted to the memories of these children, and often they contain photo galleries of moms cradling their minuscule babies in their hospital beds, looking up at the camera and trying their best to smile.

Reading these stories, the negative as well as the positive ones, is how I’ve been preparing myself for every possible wrinkle and outcome of my pregnancy. I know it’s not possible to prepare emotionally, but I figure the more information I have, the more I’ll understand what ends up happening, whatever that may be. Unfortunately, sometimes all this information just scares the bejesus out of me, and I spaz because I haven’t felt the baby kick in an hour, or because I seem to be getting too big too fast, or because my bellybutton is about to pop out, or hasn’t popped out yet, or is halfway popped. Still, if I hadn’t done my research, I am sure I’d find something to worry about nonetheless - this way, at least I’m an informed freaker-outer with a finite and fact-based list of fixations.

But god, these mommies do scare me, with their twinkly sparkly signatures and their Disney World tickers and their exhortations to “Stick, little eggie, stick!” The concept of “babydust” both frightens and embarrasses me. It’s just too relentlessly positive and good-vibey for my cynical, sarcastic ass - plus I was never the princess-fairy-unicorn type of little girl. There are some more kindred spirits out there, especially on the crunchier message boards, where the anti-consumer, suspicious-of-everything moms hang out. But I still wish there were forums for moms-to-be like me, ones who prefer the word “cooter” to “yoni,” (because I am juvenile and it’s funny), who think purple kicks pink’s ass, who fucking hate Disney World (but will grit their teeth and take their kid if he decides he wants to go), who aren’t planning to name their kids Jaylen, Kaylen, Raylen, Daylen or Baylen, and who have never in their lives uttered any sound even distantly resembling a squeal.

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