I haven’t quite given up on my youtube.com addiction, but instead of hunting out 80s music videos, I’ve been hunting up other interesting things.
And by “other interesting things” I mostly mean Buster Keaton clips. Because (I confess) I love him.
There are a couple of Buster montages that have been set to music (like a Sherlock Jr. trailer that’s set to Air’s “Sexy Boy” and a montage set to ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down”) but one of them actually made me cry because it’s just that beautiful. The montage is all of Buster’s romantic scenes with his leading ladies* set to the very treacly but effective “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” by Bryan Adams.
And since I’m supposed to mention gender, do notice that some of Buster’s “I’m so in love with this crazy girl” moments are very fey, indeed. The scene from One Week where Buster’s character finds his on-screen wife drawing hearts on the wall of their new house is especially cute.
Of course my ultimate goal is to make damfinos of the lot of you. Or at least convince you that Buster was not just about gags, but also had a screen presence like no other, was a stuntman like no other, and directed with the best of them. There are moments in the love scenes where the expression on his face is heart-wrenching.
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* The very last leading lady in the montage is Eleanor Keaton, the wife who made Buster very, very happy toward the end of his life, after a bunch of crappy years and two bad marriages. That’s what made me cry, in the end; it was a very romantic touch.
They're Not Just Surprised Women Can Count, Either
In response to my post of earlier today, a friend writes:
Just to let you know, black folks get this one all of the time. He is so “well spoken” and “eloquent” as if the assumption that you are black that you cannot be well spoken. Think about it, when was the last time you heard of a white male or female thought of as well spoken? There is a tacit assumption that all white folks, both male and female of a certain class are inherenlty able to use the english language. While it is of course the exception not the rule for black folks.
Melinda Gates
The good news: there’s an article in today’s NY Times about Melinda Gates, who largely runs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The bad news: the tone of this article, which in talking about Ms. Gates’ accomplishments, seems to sound a little like, “look! we found a horse who can count up to 10 with his hoof!”
Why is this acceptable in this day and age? Why is it so astonishing that a woman with an MBA from Duke who married an equal is smart? Or that her husband respects her intelligence and engages her at a very high level?
But to portray Mr. Gates as the analytic strategist and Ms. Gates as the humanizing influence, the nurturing woman, would be a stereotypical distortion of their partnership, former foundation officials said.
Well then why bring it up at all?
And where’s the profile on the woman who just left the Foundation to run CARE instead? Do we only report on smart, successful women who happen to be married to famous guys?
Thanks to Joanne for the article. There’s a reason I can barely stand to read the papers some days.
"I'm your goddamned partner!"
A great interview with Karen Allen, who played Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark:
But 25 years ago, there was a summer blockbuster whose female lead was anything but an afterthought. She was pretty, yes, and looked good in a slinky gown and could even run in heels when necessary. But she also knew how to hold a grudge. She had a mean right hook. And she could drink any man under the table — even the scarred brutes who frequented her gin joint in Nepal.
She sounds as cool in real life as the character she played in the movie, so our “summer movie” date night will be going to see Raiders on the big screen again, because a movie theatre in Manhattan is showing it on the big screen again. To hell with Hollywood if they can’t come up with good women characters.
Married to an Animal?
I was reading the news about the rape of that woman and the murder of her and her family by an American GI*, and happened upon another article about marriage by Amy Sutherland.
I don’t know if I’ve read Amy Sutherland before but I’m not planning to again.
This is the kind of stuff I used to read in my mother’s Reader’s Digest. I didn’t think it was funny, or accurate, and I didn’t relate. I guess some women think of their husbands (and themselves) as trainable animals. But even the twist at the end doesn’t justify wasting any reader’s time with crap like this.
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*(I hope the military gets to try the GI. I know rape and murder of civilians has been part of war for forever, no matter how much we like to pretend it hasn’t, but the fact that this was pre-meditated makes me especially sick.)
You Talkin' To Me?!
For the years I was the most androge/genderqueer (though of course I was often simply called “freak”), I had no idea I was, until I realized that when someone called out “young man, you dropped a glove,” or “homeboy was out pretty late tonight” types of comments, they were talking to me. The odd thing is, I don’t remember any sense of “you’re talking to me?!” when that happened. Maybe the first comment was so obviously directed at me that there was no question, so I wasn’t surprised when it happened after that. I don’t know. It was harder for me to adjust to being called by Betty’s last name – I didn’t change mine – and more than one waiting room receptionist has called it out more than once.
I don’t like having to tell people not to call me “Mrs. Your Husband,” because they treat you like you’re intentionally complicating their lives somehow. But I just had another friend change her name upon getting married, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone would do that. And please don’t repeat that “sometimes it means a lot to the husband” excuse to me; if it’s that important to him, let him change his goddamn name.
Speaking of Femmes
I went to a French brasserie, or cafe, or whatever you’d call a little French-inspired Parisian-decor’d restaurant in Park Slope, with Betty and Donna and Caprice before the Joan Jett show. I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room, and unconsciously read the signs for which one to enter. FEMMES, said one.
And I swear, for a split second I was sure the other one would say BUTCHES.
(I have been reading, and very much enjoying, The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader.)
Butch Purse?
In a great piece called Butches, Lies, and Feminism by Jeanne Cordova out of The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, this story of a butch purse:
I punched my black leather purse into a tighter pillow underneath my head. My purse, whom I lovingly called ‘my yin chromosome,’ had been with me through nearly two decades of the lesbian civil wars. She’d been the butt of much harassment by lesbian-feminists and stone butches who didn’t understand the difference between a butch purse and a femme purse. A butch purse is an only child. Femmes have as many purses as shoes.
I laughed really really hard when I read that, as Betty has more bags and purses stuck into nooks in closets and cabinets and drawers than I can imagine owning in a lifetime. I occasionally go around and with the largest in hand, shove a bunch of the smaller ones into it – one bag-eating bag, as it were. And yes, you guessed it: I have one bag I use daily. I occasionally switch off to a larger bag for when I’m editing a ms, and sometimes I use a tiny pouch of a bag, like when I’m going to a club and don’t want to have to check a larger bag. But mostly I use a bag until it falls apart, and then I go find a new one. If repairs can’t be made, that is.
"Man Laws" Ads Force Woman To Hunt Down Ad Execs – Story at 11.
As if Anne Coulter hadn’t pissed me off enough, I ended up seeing coverage of the crap she’s spouting inbetween offensive commericals.
(1) The Tostitos commercial, where three guys are looking out the window eating Tostitos and commenting on the work gang below, and how three guys standing around and one guy working wouldn’t cut it in the corporate world. They pull back the camera to reveal a woman working feverishly on a laptop, who then announces, “I got it” and while the guys are high-fiving, she smiles weakly.
Fucking hysterical.
2) Then there’s the “Man Laws” of Miller Lite, which, I kid you not, has been written up by The New York Times as an attempt to atone for the “catfight” commercial they did a couple of years ago.
Are they shitting me? One of the “Man Laws” is that men only clink bottles toward the bottom, as otherwise their saliva might mix and Burt Reynolds claims that would “qualify as a kiss.” WTF?! How exactly is this supposed to be better than two women wrestling over “tastes great / less filling”?!
I can’t even talk about the “you poke it, you own it” one.
Betty is watching the NBA finals, too, which means I’m going to hear this crap every freaking time a game is on. Did someone say Worst of Both Worlds? Except this is like worst of all worlds, now: Betty en femme, drinking beer, watching sports, while sexist, idiotic commercials play. Woohoo. I’m loving life, really.
Quentin Crisp & Sting?
Okay, maybe I’m the only one who didn’t know this, because I never saw Sting’s “Englishman in New York” video, but I didn’t know QC was the friend Sting wrote it about.
Which makes me want to say obscene things to all the people who don’t like Sting or make fun of me for liking him. I think he’s a decent person, & trans-friendly as all hell: remember the skirt he wore at the Victoria’s Secret show? The fact that he cross-dresses in Brimstone & Treacle? Oh, right, and then there’s these lyrics he wrote an album or so ago:
My skirt’s too short
My tights are run
These new heels are killing me
A second pack of cigarettes
It’s a slow night, but there’s time yet
Here comes the john from his other life
He may be driving to his wife
But he slowed down, take a look
I’ve learned to read them just like books
It’s already half past ten
But they’ll be back again
Don’t judge me
You could be me in another life
In another set of circumstances
A friend of mine, he wound up dead
His dress is stained with color red
The next of kin, no fixed abode
Another victim on this road
The police just carted him away
But someone took his place next day
He’s home by Thanksgiving
But not with the living
I mean, I can’t name anyone else who’s written a song from the POV of a trans streetworker, can you?
But I promise, no more 80s music references, at least for a while. Tomorrow, though, the first preview of She’s Not the Man I Married.