It's like being almost famous, except better.

Today was my last day of classes and my last 10-hour Tuesday ever. And something strange occurred to me recently: since I'm taking two literature classes in the summer, I will be done with course work by the end of next Spring. I only have one more year to go. And then to quals. Joy. Rapture.

I am going to dedicate the next year to writing and writing workshops (hence the summer classes), and while doing so, I am considering taking Japanese as well. It's Monday through Friday for an hour a day, but I figure if I'm really dedicated to learning the language, this year will be perfect for it since I won't have literature classes clouding my brain and taking up my time.

I'll just have writing clouding my brain.

And lately, that hasn't been a bad thing.

I'm looking forward to July and our trip to England. I think it'll be a trip well deserved.

Labels: grad school

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I finally saw it tonight.

It's not as bad as Freddy Got Fingered (where I actually felt violated afterwards). But I don't understand why this movie was such a phenomenon. It had a couple funny parts, like when Borat was in DC and he was turning into oncoming traffic on a one way street that was packed during rush hour (because I've actually seen that happen in DC). I also liked the bagging of Pamela Anderson. But that's about it.

Labels: movies

( 3comments )

at April 23, 2007 9:06 AM  Charlie said...

Why Borat was a phenomenon:

It appealed to both of these wide-ranging demographics... 1) people who think politically incorrect things are funny by virtue of their political incorrectness alone, and 2) people who like to laugh at and "other" those they view as intolerant, while giving themselves a free pass for their high-mindedness. Also 3) People like me who think they are above it all. :)

Does that make sense?

 

at April 23, 2007 9:08 AM  Samantha said...

Actually yes. Thank goodness, because I've been thinking about it and I honestly couldn't figure it out. It literally stumped me. So thank you!

 

at April 29, 2007 10:31 AM  ish said...

Also, though its certainly been done before its the first time really since Andy Kaufmann for someone to commit so strongly to a caricature as a character, which makes it kind of brilliant and fascinating (to me at least). Of course, Kaufmann was doing it 25 years earlier so clearly he's the real genius, but Baron-Cohen certainly got some interesting mileage out of it.

Incidentally, I've heard from people who know and whose opinions I trust that the Borat work Sascha did in Da Ali G Show was actually much more interesting, and that the movie, because it was a movie had to be a bit broader with its brush.

Similar to the differences between Serenity and Firefly, in which Firefly was allowed to take longer and be more subtle.

All that said, you may just not like it, which seems perfectly OK to me. I'm mostly interested as I said above in the character commitment aspect.

 

I didn't go to prom. My school didn't have dances. And I didn't get invited by anyone who went to a school who did have them. I never really cared. Until now.



If I had known about this contest back then, I would have crashed a prom just to have an excuse to make a duct tape prom dress and I would have suckered one of my guy friends into taking me so he could make one, too.

The picture I stole from the site is not nearly the coolest winner. I really like a Cinderella inspired duct tape couple. It's impressive. I want to know how many hours it takes to make one of those things.

Labels: duct tape prom dress

( 2comments )

at April 12, 2007 7:01 AM  Lindsi Dawn said...

LOL... That's great!

 

at April 23, 2007 9:05 AM  Charlie said...

I appreciate this immensely

 

Kirsten Dunst thinks America would be a better place if people would smoke a little more weed. “I drink moderately, I've tried drugs. I do like weed. I have a different outlook on marijuana than America does,” the “Spider-Man” star said, reports WENN. “My best friend Sasha's dad was Carl Sagan, the astronomer. He was the biggest pot-smoker in the world and he was a genius. I've never been a major smoker, but I think America’s view on weed is ridiculous. I mean — are you kidding me? If everyone smoked weed, the world would be a better place.”

I tend to agree. I've never tried pot personally, but my brother smokes it and it totally mellows him out. I think marijuana laws are pretty lame. I used to be a tight ass about drugs and the law--but I've grown up since then and learned how to think for myself. My personal choice is not to smoke (asthma sufferer with a family history of cancer), but if people want to do pot, then whatever. It doesn't impair people the way alcohol does.

Labels: kirsten dunst, marijuana, mellow, pot, smoke, stupid laws

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I have a mohawk now.

And it is awesome.

That is all.

Labels: blazin' awesome, hair cut, mohawk

( 3comments )

at April 8, 2007 11:46 AM  Lindsi Dawn said...

Your mohawk is awesome! I love it!

 

at April 9, 2007 9:57 AM  Lorie said...

What inspired the decision to go for a mohawk? I have nothing against mohawks, but I can't say I've ever thought to myself, "You know what I need? A mohawk." So I'm kind of curious what would trigger the idea.

 

at April 9, 2007 10:04 AM  Samantha said...

I have always wanted a mohawk. I don't know why. Ever since I was a kid and I first saw one in person. It seemed brave and wonderfull, but my mom wouldn't let me do it. And I wasn't rebellious enough to do it anyway. I wanted to make to her happy. And having hair down to my butt made her happy--even though people threw giant burrs into my hair.

So now, I have the option of having a mohawk without the committment of shaving my head. Because whereas I was wild about shaving my head as a teenager, I'm not so wild about it now. So it's cool to have a mohawk day if I feel so inclined.

 

In case you've never heard of this before:

She's So Fine: The Anatomy of a Girl Crush

by Cathryn Michon

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A recent New York Times article postulates that one thing men and women have in common is that we both get crushes on women. This interests me greatly because I just went through a bad "girl breakup" that was the result of a "girl crush."

If you ever try to discuss the topic of girl crushes with a man, his eyes instantly glaze over and you automatically know it's because he is hearing the "do-wacka-wacka" of cheesy porn music in his head. Sometimes you have to clap your hands together really loudly right in front of his face just to pull him out of his catatonic state.

No, it's not that kind of "girl-on-girl action." A girl crush is where you meet a woman whose sense of style or brilliant achievements or personal charisma makes you kind of adore and worship her.

How It Happens

The New York Times piece quotes Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a learned and attractive author and college professor, who says she has been a frequent object of girl crushes, mostly from her students. I, for one, believe it, because in an odd coincidence I actually had lunch with her very recently, and I'm here to tell you she is prime girl-crush material. She's smart and funny and when she tells you her age you're shocked because she looks so fantastic.

A key element to the girl crush is arguably the appearance of the crushee, and yet the classic girl crush is decidedly nonsexual. (Attention, male readers: Did you hear me? Turn down the "do-wacka" music. Do I have to clap my hands again?)

I think the reason that looks or style factor into the crush equation has to do with the issue of role modeling. I love Oprah Winfrey because she's a true Grrl Genius, and also because she looked impossibly hot on her 50th birthday. On some level I feel that Oprah and Dr. Pepper Schwartz are paving the way for me to be interesting and accomplished and hot at any age.

Just the other day I developed a thing for that woman on CNN who flies around in the eye of a huge rainstorm, just because that is so unbelievably cool. She wore a fetching NASA blue jumpsuit, and she had her hair in a Gidget-style ponytail. My crush was born when she accidentally said, "That's affirmative" to the reporter because that's the kind of mistake you make when you spend the day flying around in a storm. Then she actually blushed from embarrassment.

Come on, how adorable is that?

If the object of your girl affection is famous, or even someone you are worshiping from afar, it must by necessity remain a crush.

Webster's unabridged lists no derivation for the origin of the word "crush," but I'm going to guess that it comes from a combination of "crazy" and "rush," because that's exactly what happens. Sometimes there are actual physical symptoms to a girl crush, and they are all unpleasant: sweating, trembling, heart palpitations.

There is also an element of fantasy involved in these relationships, and the idea of your crush usually falls apart when you try to consider it in reality. When I tried to imagine myself with the CNN storm-flying girl, I sort of pictured us both in those cool jumpsuits saying, "That's affirmative!" but I couldn't really figure out a reason why I'd be with her, or where I'd get my jumpsuit, and I started to realize how silly my girl crush was becoming.

When your girl crush does not involve a notable or famous person, it can often mellow into a friendship, and that is the best.

Parting Ways

Now, the dark side of the girl crush is the girl breakup. Whereas men (outside of characters in Tennessee Williams plays) don't generally get crushes on each other, they are also wise enough to avoid the dreaded breakup, because that's when every mutual friend you have ever shared with your ex-crush is forced to weigh in and take sides.

I have never once heard of guy friends "breaking up." They might have a big fistfight, but at least they maintain the dignity to let a friendship that is over just fade away. Women, on the other hand, usually turn it into a drama festival, one that often culminates in the ever-popular email tell-off. Jan Yager, author of Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives, advises against this: "Email has made it too easy to express thoughts and feelings that once you hit 'send' you may regret."

I had a friend named Ruth, who I once would have described as my best friend. Ruth was a professional mentor I had a girl crush on, who then became an actual friend. I admired both her giant brain and the coppery red hair that fell in perfect ringlets to cover it. I had never cared for her controlling, perpetually unemployed husband, but since I also had a controlling, perpetually unemployed husband, I didn't give it much thought at the time.

When I left my marriage, she was the only friend I had that was against it, and that was the beginning of the end. I should have seen that the friendship was partly based on us both having unhappy personal lives.

When I got into a new, healthy relationship, she couldn't bear to be around me. She had told me when I divorced, "I don't want to hear all your little stories of dating. Save that for your other girlfriends." Apparently if I wasn't going to stay unhappily married, as she was, I was to keep quiet about my new life. My personal happiness, which every other significant person in my life had celebrated, was keenly painful to her.

So she "broke up" with me. Oddly, it was more painful than my divorce, but maybe because I had seen the divorce coming. It ended with an email from her, in all caps, telling me to "STAY AWAY FROM OUR HOUSE!!!!" It was the email equivalent of screaming, and it was so unlike Ruth that it shocked me.

Keeping Girl Crushes in Check

So what did I learn from all this?

I think because my relationship with Ruth began as a crush, I was never willing to examine its inherent flaws.

That's just what I used to do with boyfriends, and then a husband.

So my advice is: Have all the girl crushes you want on amazing famous women. Imagine yourself flying around with them in the eye of a hurricane, if it helps you to get in touch with your fearlessness. Don't worry about whether or not you can find a matching jumpsuit ‑- because it's all pretend anyway.

But if you have a girl crush in real life, and it becomes a friendship, make sure the junior high behavior ends there ‑- and do the hard work to make the friendship work.

And never send a breakup email that's in all caps, ever. Unless you're ‑- I don't know ‑- 12.

I thought the article was amusing, and somewhat accurate. I've been remembering lately that I had way more girl crushes than boy crushes growing up--and this resulted in my parents telling me that if I ever became gay or dated someone who wasn't white, they would kill me. Okay, my mom never said that. My dad said that. My mom just said that if I grew up to be a lesbian, she would be sad that I would never know the joy of having children of my own. (Oh, the irony.) But my mom would steer me towards boys. She asked me once if there was anyone I liked, and I remember saying a girl's name--I think it was a girl named Carrie at the time, the time being second grade--and my mom said, "No. Are there any boys you like?" And I said, "No. The girls are prettier."


Anyway... the fact that my father was abusive and psycho did scare me into thinking that if anyone ever found out that I thought Justine Bateman was totally cuter than Michael J. Fox, I was afraid that there would be physical repurcussions.

Do you see how gorgeous Justine Bateman turned out to be? How can you blame a six-year-old being dazzled by Mallory? Plus, Justine plays a cameo role on Arrested Development in the third season, which she plays beautifully and ironically and wonderfully and ignited my girl crush on her all over again.


I'm trying to remember my first crush object, though. I'm wondering if it was Rainbow Brite, but I can't quite remember. I remember liking Michael Jackson when I was four years old. My dad used to weirdly tease me about liking guys. He would screech at me that I was in love with MacGyver or Michael J. Fox. He said that I wanted to have sex with them. I was six years old and didn't understand what sex was, and yet he was saying these things. I didn't know what sex was, but I knew enough to be embarrassed.

As an adult looking back on those moments, I wonder if my parents picked up on the fact that I wasn't liking boys "the way I was supposed to" and were consciously trying to steer me toward them. As if the teasing would make me want to like a gender more than the other. I think it worked in the opposite direction. I remember as a teenager being totally fixated on Angelina Jolie before she was super-famous--back when there was only Foxfire, Hackers and Gia to rely upon. I loved her. I loved her more than I loved Jude Law (also before he was famous--back when Music From Another Room was pretty much his most mainstream movie). I also had a crush on Claire Danes from Romeo + Juliet. I hated the movie, but I thought she was so cute. I remember going to Wal-Mart with Lindsi once and we always checked the posters. I was specifically looking for one in particular (one of Claire Danes) but all they had was a poster of Leonardo DiCaprio. I didn't tell Lindsi that I wanted a poster of a girl in my room because at the time she was way into the Orthodox Christian thing, complete with the idea of courting before marriage instead of dating--back when she was still idealistic ;) and I didn't think she'd understand. Well, actually I thought she'd understand a little too well, and two things would happen 1) she'd stop being my friend and 2) she'd think I had a crush on her and suddenly feel weird about letting me stay over (especially since we slept in the same bed when I spent the weekend at her house).

So I kept it to myself and fantasized about Angelina Jolie instead of boys I knew at school or at the church group I attended. I'd make stuff up about liking random guys when Lindsi asked if I liked anyone. I had boyfriend for a month when I was 17 that, in retrospect, I didn't like, but I thought maybe it was weird that I was 17 and had never dated or kissed anyone yet. Plus, I was curious what it was like. So I kissed him and made out with him and hated it and suddenly having a girlfriend seemed like a more realistic possibility. If I didn't like kissing a guy, then would I like kissing a girl?

I felt really confused because I was sexually molested by a ten-year-old girl when I was four. So while I didn't like guys, I felt guilty by the fact that I thought I liked girls. And so I wouldn't let myself get real life girl crushes. I kept it strictly in Hollywood.

I remember Jon scanned a picture of Jude Law for me once back in, like, 1998 out a magazine that spotted Jude Law as an actor to watch for and I asked, "Do they have any of Angelina Jolie?" And he didn't know who that was and we inevitably spiraled into Denise Richards talk--at least I think that's the way that conversation went. It was nine years ago. Holy moly. It's been nine years...

But I still get girl crushes every once in a while. Yoanna, Eva and Naima from America's Next Top Model. Yunjin Kim from Lost. Tori Amos and Gwen Stefani are definitely up there. Aimee Bender (my all-time favorite living female writer--who is my advisor! who I am taking an independent study with in the fall!). But even on my girlfriends in real life. I'm so proud of all of them right now. Lindsi finally is taking a break and has found a creative outlet--something she enjoys and is good at--and she's so good at making cards and scrapbooking that I think she could sell her creations. Laura is finally living her dream and trying her hand at acting--she's even been on 1 vs 100! She was a Coast-to-Coast Laura for a whole minute! Lorie is finally kissing Meijer good-bye and going to rely on jobs she actually enjoys doing and for which she gets paid pretty damn well. And Natasha is my newest girl crush. She's almost done with coursework and we started at the same time (I'm only halfway done myself--and we both teach), plus she's taking three classes and she's a coordinator for WRIT 140 on top of being an instructor. She's juggling so much, and yet still has such wonderfully intelligent things to say in class, and is fun to hang out with on Friday night or just walking to a parking garage.

So I wonder what crushes are and how do we get them? And do we allow ourselves to have crushes or do they just happen? Because whereas I felt my infatuation with Angelina Jolie was more sexually-based when I was a teenager, I don't feel the same pull towards her now, and my crushes on my girlfriends are not sexual in nature now either. So do all crushes involve some element of admiration? Are there different kinds of crushes? Are there sexual kinds of crushes and emotional crushes or intellectual crushes? Or am I simply trying to define this because I'm obsessed with defining boundaries and parameters, so that I can then fit myself nicely into a little, brown box tied up with a soft, blue categorized bow?

Labels: family ties, girl crush, justine bateman, questions, sexuality, what is a crush?

( 2comments )

at April 6, 2007 10:37 AM  Jezebelsriot said...

I love this post. Where do I start? I think I went through various similar experiences, especially with the parents. When I was 11 or so, I ripped out tons of pictures from magazines, beautiful models in seductive poses and wallpapered my room with them. When my dad found them, he turned to my mom and said, "What is that shit? Is she a dyke?" He stayed out of my room from then, convinced his oldest daughter had gone a route he could never condone or even understand.

I have a strange relationship with my girl crushes now. After a few lesbian experiences before Mike, I feel like there is space within me that could grow in a lesbian relationship, but it would be at constant war with the part inside of me that loves a man's certain smell and the particular fleshiness of a penis.

And yes Mallory was gorgeous! Have you ever noted that she and PJ Harvey could be two shades of the same people? I am suspicious.

 

at April 9, 2007 10:10 AM  Samantha said...

I think for me, when I was younger, my crushes were more sexual in nature because as children we're inherently sexual beings and during this period we are conditioned for society and we're learning what is acceptable or not acceptable to the immediate group to which we belong (primarily families). So I think I genuinely had an interest in girls back then, but felt too guilty about this because my parents would be disappointment and violent.

Now, my crushes on women are not sexual in nature. I don't think they are. My crushes now are mostly on an admiration basis. So that's why I'm wondering what is the difference, for example, between a crush and an obsession/fascination/admiration? Does TaleSpin count? I don't see why it shouldn't. Something definitely attracted you to that particular show.