Requiem for a Scream

So tonight I finally got around to watching the new Denzel Manchurian Candidate. Oy. First of all, weirdo cameo appearances by people like Al Franken as a TV pundit (why? how?) and Oprah hanger-on/best friend Gayle King as a reporter (did anyone but me catch that) made NO sense to me.

With vacuous and sweeping references to the Patroit act and the threat of terrorism, the new Denzel Manchurian Candidate was a real MoveOn.org bummer fest. What was originally a brilliant, abstract examination of encroachment on the individual is now a silly, "they are mobilizing against us, fellow boomers, we must re-subscribe to the Nation RIGHT AWAY" partisan diatribe. What was timeless is now mired in specificity. Even Meryl's hilarious Hilary aping can't save this sinking ship, Celine.

What's interesting to me about the original 1962 Frankenheimer version, other than the greatness of the art itself, is that the star, Frank Sinatra, bought the rghts and effectively buried it in the wake of the Kennedy assasination. It seems like a such a grandly Sinatraian act - both touchingly considerate and chivalrous, and totally meglomaniacal. I mean, WTF did this mind control metaphor have to do with JFK? Not even my bro Oliver Stone went there!

The 411; Teens and Sex - A Katie Couric special

Let me see if I can summarize this dense, informative piece for you:
Katie is blowing the lid off terms like "hooking up" and "friends with benefits" while letting us know that there's a lot of
(1) Teen Sex
(2) Sex in the Media
(3) Lack of Communication between Parents and Teens
And there* appears* to be *some sort* of causal relationship between these elements.
Move over, Stossel!!!

Take my syndicated columnist, please!

In the latest example of the great trend of the 2000's - the end of journalistic ethics - the National Review online now revealed that one of their Bushie attack dogs was actually a paid contractor for HHS. Hola, Maggie! Welcome to the storied legion of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, once lying hacks, now rich and famous best-selling book authors. The weirdest thing is that NRO isn't even disturbed or planning to fire her. WTF do you have to do to lose your job over there? I once lost a job at a hair salon for taking 2 sick days. No respect, I tell you. No respect.

Where is Colin's son when you need him?

If only the FCC was as concerned about this outrage as they were about "Nipplegate."

Red State Mommies RULE!

Ah, Monday. It can only mean one thing. Ok, two things. It means the boyfriend goes to work in money-makin' Manhattan, and I have the whole palatial estate to myself (to "work" from home). It also means that I get to watch "Trading Spouses" on Fox, one of my many beloved reality TV selections. "Trading Spouses," like its companion show on ABC, the better-titled "Wife Swap," offers two families the chance to "trade mommies" for two weeks, in exchange for $50,000. This week, the controlling and bitchy neatnik Mia from MN went down to gun-thumping Chattanooga to live with the Howard family, while their very own heart-of-golder, Angie, flew north to attempt to bring some fun and warmth to the uptight Hammond clan. Angie's intro gushed "We may not have much money, but have each other," and a little deja-VIEW crackled in my brain. "Hey, I think I've seen this one before." I thought. Oh, no; that was the down-home cajun Mom who swapped with weird Cali vegan meglomaniac who made everybody watch animal rights films while she cried. No, no, it was that plastic surgery trophy mom who tried to give the kids make overs. Wait, I *had* seen it before, a million times. Tonight's episode, like many, many, many of them are, was about watching the richer family revealed to be a bunch of shallow, cold, pretentious automatons, while the poorer, but funner, family may be quirky, and may have hundreds of taxidermied crocs around the compound, but, dammit, they love one another. Inevitably, the poor family is southern/red state and the rich family is more urban, from California, or Maryland, or Minneapolis. It sort of makes me wish my southern upbringing had included some buttoned-down, carosel-eschewing, army-insulting, chitlin-rejecting mom from the north. Then, when we were finally reunited, my whole family could have danced around the moonlight, catching fireflies, strumming guitars and generally revelling in the simple pleasures of God, family and country.

Fat Pig

Welcome back to Ytossie. I have been gone for a while, since election night to be precise. No, I wasn't in a Bush-reelection- depressive state, unlike many of my fellow boho types. I've been facing a few - uh - challenges, not the least of which has been planning my wedding, which will basically be an elopement except pre-planned. You know, no one invited. Just us and some mail-order minister blowing a conch shell and draping us in orchids while talking about freedom, creativity, and the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix.

Now, don't get me wrong. Love the family. I do. But the "big day" is set to be just us. So why is it that I spend almost every day in the gym, doing reps, picturing the tankini and sarong?

In the midst of this, I went to see the new Neil LaBute play, Fat Pig, which was playing in the West Village at a tiny little theater on Christopher Street. This is a play about a successful man with a harpie ex-girlfriend and beastly friend at work. He starts dating a heavy woman, and, in typical LaBute fashion, things get as ugly as possible from there. For starters, let me say that Andrew "Weekend At Bernie's 2" McCarthy acted circles around everyone else in the play.

Ultimately, I have to give Neil credit - he leaves no stone of ugliness between the genders unturned in his search for material. And the last time I saw weight issues tackled in earnest, I believe it was in the horrific and permanently damned Shallow Hal. But in LaBute's grafting of the model of interracial couples onto that of - what? - intersize couples, he missed a few things. He made the subtle discomfort into blatant outrage. He wrote an office as though it were a high school, with people running to show the photo of "the fatty" in the cafeteria, and highly juvenile commentary firing through emails, all around, between colleagues and friends.

I think we can all agree, for lots of people, the skinniness monster is big. It can involve a ferocious competitiveness between women, and degrading dismissiveness in men. But even then, bitchiness tends to be a subtle art. Successful down-looking involves maintaining your plausible deniability at all times, much like Nixon and Dean tried to. The play would have been better for me if it hadn't involved a main character facing a weird 1984-like world of stark choices when it comes to junk in the trunk. LaBute's attempt to demonize the characters who held these beliefs did not change the fact that theirs was the moral of his story. He wrote a world where weight rules all, and if the implication is that it's wrong, but true, I find that to be a tremendous literary cop out. I don't like cheap values disguised as moral complexity.

I'll be thinking of this as I hit the treadmill this week to attempt to look good enough for my private wedding that no one is invited to.