Canned Heat in My Heels Tonight

As most people who know me well are aware, I'm the biggest sucker for anything involving dance. I was a cheerlearder and on the dance team in high school (pre-SCGSAH days), my favorite movie as a child was Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and I actually saw Center Stage at a movie theater when it came out (with my dance team). Now, thanks to Randy Jackson, my favorite television show is America's Best Dance Crew. While most people are freaking out about LOST on Thursday nights, I've recently been finding myself more excited to see the challenges the dance crews will be given, how they will continue to up the dancing ante and what, exactly, Mario Lopez will say or do to make me chuckle. Seriously, he's the most unself-conscious host I've ever seen on television and its so completely enjoyable to watch him dance around or go unscripted and say something absolutely cheesy. After four weeks of dancing and elimination, I think that I've narrowed my favorites down to the JabbaWockeeZ and Kaba Modern. Check out their respective awesome:

Monday Night Movie

Last night, I saw the charming, and sweetly affectionate Milos Foreman film, Loves of a Blonde, at MoMA. It was being shown as part of a two week retrospective of his work that started on Valentine's Day and ends this Friday. My initial interest in this retrospective was sparked by an interview with Foreman that aired on Fresh Air the Friday I was driving with my aunt to surprise my grandmother for the 80th birthday. You can hear the full interview here, but I was most struck by the story that starts at around the 2:39 mark. Foreman is telling Terry Gross about the day his mother was taken away by the Gestapo during World War II, and the story tugged at the strings of both my and my aunt's hearts. Hearing the incredible perspective and clear understanding he had of the event as well as the way it must have shaped him as an adult, completely endeared him to me, and this fondness for him was only heightened after my experience last night.

Loves of a Blonde is a great movie for all the reasons you hope a movie will be great: there are some delightfully awkward characters at whom you cannot help but laugh; there is the middle-aged couple who bicker and have clearly been together for a very long time -- their frustration with each other's idiosyncrasies is both hilarious as well as completely heart-warming; there's the beautiful and eager blonde; there's the musically-inclined heart-breaker; there's a story with a clear and perfectly timed crescendo, the tension only as taut as you can stand; and, lastly, the ending that should be sad, but is, instead, somehow hopeful. Plus, there's a cute little song at the very beginning which caused many older members of the audience to chuckle at the Czech pronunciation of the word "hooligan."

What ever happened to social responsibility?

Around this time last year, the Gardasil shot, a vaccination against certain types of HPV that cause cervical cancer and genital warts, made its way onto the market and into the national media. It was controversial for a number of reasons -- some people are just totally anti-vaccinations, some people think it promotes sexual promiscuity, etc. -- and though I could certainly understand some of these perspectives, I was also floored that people wouldn't be accepting of preventative medicine, especially against something as terminal and serious as cancer. Even my father, a pretty socially conservative Southerner, was calling me, urging me to look into insurance coverage and offering to help me to pay for the $450 worth of shots that I would need if I weren't covered.

Now, it seems as though a new vaccination will soon be available: the Gardasil for boys. This weekend, the New York Times ran a story about what sorts of debates this vaccination will engender, and I have to say, this comment, from a Massachusetts mother totally enrages me:

“You don’t want to say it’s just the girls’ problem,” Mrs. Cattell said hesitantly. “But my sons won’t contract cervical cancer. And genital warts are treatable. I’m very skeptical. What risks will I expose them to?”

Are you kidding me?! What risks might your sons be exposing the women with whom they're sexually active to? What if this vaccination had been available when you were young and possibly sexually active with multiple partners (and your partners were as a well), and a man told you that because he couldn't be affected by cervical cancer, he didn't really give a flying fuck if you could? What if you had a daughter who might be sexually active with someone who has HPV and who puts her at risk of also contracting the virus because his mother also thinks it's mostly a "girl problem?" Ugh.

This mother, on the other hand, seems to recognize how important this could be, and also seems to be thinking about the greater good in general:

“If there was a vaccine I could take that would get rid of prostate cancer, why wouldn’t I?” said Lisa Lippman, a Manhattan real estate broker with three sons. “If there was a vaccine that sons could get that would get rid of breast cancer, most parents wouldn’t hesitate. But cervical cancer is the ‘sex cancer.’ ”

She's right, though, about the social stigma that comes along with this vaccination, but when are people going to realize that no matter how sexually responsible they might think their partners and children are being, they could very well be wrong. And wouldn't we all be better off it we played things safe and armed ourselves against the things that are beyond our control by taking our health into our own hands and not playing STD-roulette?

What's next?

Seriously. Women are given so many underwear (or, if you prefer, lingerie) options, all, in essence, meant to make us more sexually desirable, even if it is under the guise of fashion or convenience. In terms of the skimpiest of options, there's the thong (no panty-lines when wearing that skin-tight turtleneck sweater dress from American Apparel!), the G-string -- which is just a trashier version of a thong -- and now, this: a strapless G-string. While I will be the first to admit that I do own a number of thongs, some to make me feel a little more sexy, some for wholly practical purposes, this has just put me over the edge. If you are wearing a dress that is so tight and short you simply cannot help your vagina from showing, then the chances are, you want the world to see all your goods. Otherwise, you'd take care to strategically place a hand or else you'd simply wear clothing with more coverage.

I think the purpose of the strapless G-string is to liberate women to wear any and every article of clothing they wish without having to worry about what may or may not slip into the public view; and, in theory, I'm totally behind this sort of thing. However, when these items seem to mostly perpetuate the idea that women are most sexy when they are wearing so little it's not hard to imagine what they look like naked, I have to raise a hand of protest. See, this sort of thing is what causes most women to be unnecessarily self-conscious, that makes those of us who do not look like runway models feel as though we aren't as attractive as we could be, that if only we could feel comfortable wearing that skirt that hits just below the buttocks, we, too, could be the object of every man's affection. This really and deeply upsets me.

As best I can tell, I do not have a single female friend who doesn't, on some level, have body-image issues: my hips are too wide, my thighs are disproportionately skinny, my ears are too Dumbo-like, my breasts are too asymmetrical, and the list goes on and on. There are as many reasons to blame as there are body-issues to face, but I think that one of the biggest is the hyper-sexualization (Cosmopolitan-izing) of women that just keeps getting more and more extreme. It seems that everything in our society is telling women how to be more sexy, more sexually pleasing, more sexual in general. Yes, we should be in control of our own sexuality, we should be made to feel comfortable about any decision we make about with whom and when we have sex, but not at the risk of this behavior becoming self-destructive and the basis on which women find all of their self-worth. This strapless g-string, if you ask me, is a reflection of just how absurd and uncaring our culture is. Now, it's going to be okay for America's women to be more like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, since they'll at least be able to cover their lady parts, even if that's the only thing conservative and responsible about their behavior and appearance.

In Anticipation of Spring

The Fischbach Gallery has just opened a new exhibit titled "Say It With Flowers," and, though I've yet to make the trek all the way over to Eleventh Avenue (and missed the opening reception so that I could attend my grandmother's 80th surprise birthday party in South Carolina), I just know the show is going to be such a pleasure. See, my favorite bartender and sweet friend, Ryan Cobourn, also happens to be an incredibly talented artist, and has been selected to have one (maybe two) of his paintings hung alongside what seem to be some pretty good and well-established artists at the gallery. Caroline and I have some tentative plans to go check his work out this weekend and I'd encourage every reader of this blog to do the same. This man deserves some artistic fame -- if only because it will cause the tiny watercolor of his that I own to greatly appreciate in value -- and it would be a great way to escape the icy cold of February for some May flowers (we'll just skip the April showers) and cultural enlightenment.

Ice, Ice, Baby

Living in New York, there are about a million things to be afraid of, but, oddly enough, my biggest fears are all things that would cause me the greatest embarrassment and not personal harm. Last night, after the best trivia performances of 2008, four beers, and an impromptu snowball fight, I totally experienced one of my greatest fears: I slipped on some snow/water on the steps down to the L train at Union Square and ate it. Hard. It was every bit as embarrassing as I had feared it would be, and was more painful that I could have ever imagined. Even today, my elbow is still all red and tender and, though I haven't seen the evidence yet, I am certain that an ugly and deep bruise is beginning to appear on my right butt cheek. Though, I guess I should be thankful that it's not worse and more embarrassing.

New Year's Eve of my junior year of high school, my friends and I were celebrating at a house party in Charleston, SC, and as we were leaving, my good friend, Jen, busted it in the driveway. For a week or so after she continued to experience this intense pain, and, after going to the doctor, realized she has broken her coccyx (the spelling of this word was a trivia question last night, weird!) and had to sit on a doughnut-shaped pillow for the next month. For Jen -- because she's such a carefree gal -- this was endlessly funny and only slightly annoying, but I can imagine myself being too proud to carry around a butt pillow for a month in high school and causing permanent bone/tissue damage. Today, however, I'm wearing rain boots with extra awesome tread, so hopefully I won't have any additional spills and I can head down South for a few days to heal my ego and body in 70 degree, snowless weather.

Project Ferosch

The best (read: both most interesting as well as talented) contestant on this season's Project Runway is, hands down, Christian. He's twenty-one, thinks he knows everything, has an out of control asymmetrical hair style, wears black skinny jeans nearly every episode and says outrageously funny things like, "I'm I beast. You people just don't even know." Not once has he faltered on a design challenge (in my opinion), and, while he's only won two of said challenges, he's most always in the top. I love his style, and love how he seems to make clothes that are somehow both timely and timeless. This past week, fashion lovers of all kinds gathered in New York for Fashion Week, and the final five Project Runway contestants were are able to show their final collections under the famous Bryant Park tents. Jezebel was lucky enough to attend all five shows and was also kind enough to post pictures (as well as some commentary) on their site. Here is Christian's collection and I can't even begin to express how absolutely wowed I am by the maturity and polished feel in each of his pieces (especially that half cappuccino, half brown multi-layered short dress). This kid is for real and I hope that -- unlike most other Bravo reality stars -- he is able to turn his experience into some real success.

Update:

In case you were wondering how fierce/awesome Christian is, Best Week Ever has put together a little video illustration. Behold the glory:

The Biology of Love

NYU's core curriculum (designed to make its students well-rounded and full of information only useful when attempting to impress people at cocktail parties) required that I take two "natural science" classes. The better class I took -- and the one that I didn't nearly fail -- was called human behavior and was taught by the charming and amazingly intelligent Paul Glimcher. It was a great class, and even though I remember very little of what I learned, I'll always remember the lecture he gave entitled "The Biology of Love," which was all about how love is not an entirely abstract and romantic notion only supported by human experience and works of art, but that there is a real neurological reaction that takes place when two people are attracted to and love each other. It was fascinating and while a large part of me was sort of disappointed by how scientific it all seemed, there was a small part that wanted to know what the implications of this could mean for the future of the most complex and mystifying of human emotions.

Today, the Wall Street Journal has a story about the longevity of love, which is, in essence, a lot of what Professor Glimcher was lecturing about four years ago. After revisiting this topic and reevaluating my opinion about it, I’ve come to find that I'm less excited about what this could mean for our experiences of love, and more depressed about our need as a culture to understand everything and find a science to explain that understanding. For me, the most upsetting part of the article is at the end, when the scientists and journalist hint at the possibility of a "love drug" in the (probably distant) future. I mean, really, who wants that? I certainly don't. There's nothing more gratifying than that feeling of pure excitement when you first realize that you are developing very strong feelings for someone, and while it can be hard to trust those feelings and even harder to trust that those feelings might be reciprocated, wouldn't something entirely central to the idea of love be lost if we had pills to ease our every fear?

It's sad to see that our culture is quickly turning into one of entire convenience -- we want everything to be done for us, including the feeling of our own emotions – and we are losing, I think, the essence of what it means to be human. Certainly some medical/scientific breakthroughs have had necessarily positive effects on our qualities of life, but where do we draw that line? Is it the same to take a pill to treat something as severe and debilitating as bipolar disorder as it is to take a pill to prevent one from the potential heartbreak of falling out of love with someone? I think it's these experiences that ultimately help us to discover what and with whom we are the most compatible and even though it can be devastating to lose a certain sense of emotion toward a person, it also opens the door to something that could be even more exciting and rewarding. With the loss of love is always the potential for a new and even better love, right? Maybe I'm just too much romantic.

Sexual Suspension

To be perfectly honest, I don't remember at all what my middle school taught me and my fellow students in our sex education (read: health) classes. Certainly I remember watching videos about eating disorders and the birthing process, but I cannot say for sure whether I went to an abstinence-only or safe sex education school. Even though I can't speak from my own education experience, I am of the opinion that parents are completely naive and ignorant if they think the best way to teach their children about sex is to simply tell them not to engage in it. However, this story about two St. Louis teenagers being suspended for wearing tee shirts promoting safe-sex education sort of confuses my moral and political stance.

While I am generally pro youngsters taking matters such as these into their own hands, and am definitely all about one’s first amendment rights, I'm inclined to agree, ever so slightly, with the principal's argument that the tee shirts were distracting to other students. I can see, pretty clearly, how the presence of these shirts in a classroom could cause quite a stir (especially as there were condoms attached to the tees) among adolescents who, it can be assumed, already have short attention spans. While their protest definitely garnered the attention the students were looking for, perhaps this was not the best way in which to exercise their freedom of speech.

In 2002, a student from Juneau, Alaska was suspended after displaying a sign outside of his high school that read "Bong Hits for Jesus." The student sued and, last spring, the case was argued before the Supreme Court where it was ruled that their freedom of speech rights had not been violated by the suspension. Central to this decision was that the sign promoted illegal drug use, but prior to arriving at the Supreme Court, another important argument (as least on the School Board's side), was that the sign and the response it received from students and teachers disturbed the school's educational mission. While this is a harder argument to make in the Juneau case (students and teachers had been released from the classroom to view the Olympic torch relay that was making its way to Salt Lake City, Utah), it is easier to make this argument in the case of the two girls in St. Louis. Given these differing circumstances, I do believe the school's mission was jeopardized by the tee shirts, and that this is a (necessary) battle best left to be fought with the School Board and not in the classroom.

Still, I'm totally floored by these girls' passion about this subject, seemingly without the coaxing of their parents. It's sort of amazing to think about all of the potentially influential children that are being raised around America this very second and -- knowing that our generation (with the exception of this loser) is coming out to vote in the biggest numbers ever this year -- it really gives me a great hope for our nation's future.

Politically Famous

Today is Super Tuesday, a day that has come to signify a certain decision-making day in the lives of most voting Americans. As has become the case throughout this primary season, many voters (presumably) woke up this morning unsure of who they wanted or were going to vote for and, perhaps as a direct result, we've seen more and more celebrities (A-list through D-list), publicly back the candidates of their choice. I've been noticing this more and more over the past week or so, but have become pretty outraged by it today, probably due to the blogosphere saturation of the subject. From the Grateful Dead, to fashion designers and everywhere in between, it seems as though celebrity personalities are coming out of the woodwork to voice their opinions. Perhaps I'm becoming increasingly more upset because certain celebrities are about as politically ridiculous as one might expect (I'm looking at you 50 cent), or perhaps it's because it seems as though even non-Americans are interested in who American celebrities are voting for. Whatever the case, I think that it's insane that we live in a country where people are so ignorant of real issues that they are looking to celebrities to help them guide their vote. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is a good thing because people might not vote if it weren't for the influence of these people, but I think it would be much more responsible of people to form their own opinions before taking the endorsements of hip hop artists and porn stars as political authority.

Barack the Vote

Last year, when I changed my state of residence from South Carolina to New York, I decided that I wanted to switch my party affiliation and register to vote as an Independent. I still feel really strongly about this decision because -- and even if it's only in theory -- it supports a multi-party system, which, ultimately, is what democracy is all about. Unfortunately, this means that I cannot vote in tomorrow's primary and show my unwavering support for Barack Obama. My good friend, Amy, is in a similar situation, only she's unable to vote because she's not yet a full U.S. citizen, so we decided the best way to participate in this year's NYS primary was to hit the streets and try to win some new supporters for Obama. Yesterday morning, we met up with a bunch of other Obama lovers at the Au Bon Pain in Union Square, collected some posters, flyers, buttons and stickers and then made our way around lower Manhattan encouraging people to not only vote on February 5th, but to vote for Obama.

It was a fascinating experience, and, while we may have been targeting neighborhoods with demographics of younger people already excited about Barack, it seemed as though there was a lot of support for him. Only a handful of people expressed that they were Clinton supporters and we got a lot of smiles, thumbs up and fist pumping in response to our "Please vote for Obama on February 5th!" cheering. Of course, there were the serious dissenters, including an older man who looked long and hard at both Amy and myself before very deliberately saying "fuck Obama," as well as the man who said "it's a white house, not a black house." And there was also that concerned supporter who echoed the sentiment of the African-American women quoted several months ago in the New York Times who said, " I hope he doesn't get shot."

Around a third of the people we encountered were foreign and therefore unable to vote, but the vast majority of these people claimed that if they had the ability they would most certainly vote for Obama. This response solidified for me the idea that he would do more for our international relations and the foreign perception of our country than Clinton might be able to do, in spite of her experience.

The highlight of the morning, however, was certainly the two elementary-aged girls in Tompkins Square Park who rode up to us on their scooters asking who Obama was and then claiming that their mothers were "voting for the woman because she has more experience." They circled around us like bees around a honeycomb and, after a little back and forth about why we like Obama better than the woman, they said, "we'll vote for him, and we'll tell our mom's to vote for him, too." We gave them some stickers, which one of the girls proudly stuck to the center bar of her scooter before they disappeared nearly as quickly as they came, chanting Obama's name while their parents followed behind, pushing strollers and, I hope, were proud of how smart their daughters seemed to be.

Here's a great and inspiring video made by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas with the support of several politically active celebrities that makes me smile with my entire being. I've never felt quite so hopeful as I do today, and I look forward to tomorrow and seeing the voter turnout numbers continue to awe as our nation decides to take its fate into its own hands, determined to elect a leader who can clean up the mess our current President is leaving behind and put us on a new and better road to prosperity and happiness:



I guess I should also mention that the New York Giants won the Super Bowl last night in what I am sure is the greatest championship game in the entirity of football. A game which proves that the underdog can win, that all you need is to play (or campaign) with the most heart and you, too, can perservere over even the greatest of odds.

Holy Shit.

If you were ever on the fence about whether or not to vote for Obama over Clinton just watch this clip from yesterday's Fox News program, Hannity and Colmes, in which Ann Coulter says she will campaign for Hillary if John McCain wins the Republican nomination. This, by the way, is the woman who wanted to strip women of their right to vote. Democrats: do the right thing.