I am a contributor to the eHow website, which is a place where people can share tips on aspects of life that they are expert at. (FYI, my eHow name is "jenniebrown".) I added two articles this evening (after not posting since December of last year), and then, out of curiosity, searched the site for "Michael Jackson". (No, the site did not freeze afterwards.)
Not surprisingly, I found articles titled "How to Mourn the Death of Michael Jackson" and "How to Think of Michael Jackson" and "How to Deal with Michael Jackson's Death", etc. This one stood out: "How to Not Care That Michael Jackson Died" (find it here).
The author, "edieness", takes a highly skeptical point of view about Michael Jackson, the person behind the "King of Pop". She includes some jokes which are not -- how do I put this -- tasteful, but then again humor is not BFF with good taste.
I thought "edieness" was interesting, even gutsy, because she went against the grain of the mostly reverent Michael Jackson coverage that is pouring out of major news outlets like water from a neglected faucet. I was so impressed that I went to Twitter and called it to everyone's attention.
Seconds later, regret crashed between my eyebrows like a tiny silver hammer.
Was I mean by "passing on" a not-so-nice article about a celebrity who died only a few days ago?
But who was I mean to?
Michael Jackson?
No matter what you believe about the afterlife, it's unlikely that he cares now.
Michael Jackson's fans?
They would not likely read an article with that title, anyway, and if they did it would not change their minds.
The records of the Jackson Five were some of the first that I had ever listened to. I paid attention to the Jacksons throughout the 1970s, and listened to "Thriller" over and over again. No one can say that Michael Jackson is not one of the most important artists in popular music. No one can listen to one of his hits without recognition, if not tapping one's feet.
No one can say that he was not also an extremely troubled individual whose interactions with children were sometimes dubious. No one can say that some unpleasant truths are not about to come to light.
Must we be unswervingly reverent to people just because they die? Must we keep our opinions locked behind our teeth, or hovering at the edge of our fingertips, because you're just not supposed to speak ill of the dead?
I don't think so.
As writers, artists, and thinkers, we must not be afraid to express ourselves, as long as we are not gratuitously cruel to the innocent. We must not be afraid that some people won't like us for what we say. To try to please everyone is to turn yourself into tasteless mush - and it's impossible anyways. Don't be afraid to be contrary.
I guess I just answered my own question.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Get Dad Some “Eats Free” This Year
There are no bad apostrophes, just bad typesetting, as shown in this sign at a local restaurant:
Move the apostrophe from “Dads” to “Fathers” and the (grammatical) sun comes out again.
P.S. If you need some good typesetting, please contact your friendly neighborhood (and by neighborhood, I mean Internet) Meandering Mouse.
Move the apostrophe from “Dads” to “Fathers” and the (grammatical) sun comes out again.
P.S. If you need some good typesetting, please contact your friendly neighborhood (and by neighborhood, I mean Internet) Meandering Mouse.
The Inimitable Magic of Midnight Movies
Last night, Two Dogs and I watched a documentary called Midnight Movies (which is available at Netflix. This doc (based on the eponymous book by Stuart Samuels), takes a close look at six of the most important films of the genre (though far from the only ones): El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Eraserhead.
Of these, I have only seen Rocky Horror, and frankly was not that impressed, except for “Time Warp” and Rocky Horror’s blond hunky goodness. I had never heard of El Topo, thought that The Harder They Come looked like a dull crime drama, am too frightened of Night of the Living Dead (even though it was filmed in Pittsburgh, the big city near me when I was growing up), and am still working up the courage to see Pink Flamingos and Eraserhead. Despite this record, I still love the idea of midnight movies, and harbor hope that they won’t become completely extinct.
Born in the convention-defiant maelstrom of the late 1960s, and living long enough to become all but obsolete in the home video age, midnight movies share these characteristics:
1. Out of the mainstream – way far out;
2. Sexually and/or politically subversive;
3. Packed with weird and disturbing imagery, almost like dreams;
4. Marijuana-friendly
The midnight hour was also an essential ingredient. Larry Jackson, the manager of the Orson Welles Theater in Boston (an early promoter of midnight movies) said, “At 12 o’ clock, a different world of movie-going took place.”
Imagine driving to a big-city or college-town theater at a quarter to midnight, finding a parking space, and then walking to the theater under ghostly street lamps. You won’t see little kids or uptight middle-aged matrons among your fellow movie-goers; they’re people who know, people who dare, people who don’t let Reader’s Digest tell them how to think – people like you.
You buy a popcorn and a drink at the concession stand (that alone is transgressive; snacking after midnight is so naughty), and find a seat in the middle of the theater. You sniff the air, and discover the skunky aroma of pot smoke. Before the lights go down, you notice that the theater itself is a little run-down; the velvet of the curtains is worn-down in spots and the wooden armrests are grooved with amateur carvings. This doesn’t bother you one bit; who wants to see a midnight movie in an antiseptic chain theater?
Darkness closes in on the theater. The mumble of conversation sinks into whispering. The curtain parts with the rattling of pulleys. After a series of coming attraction trailers and lovably cheesy “go-get-some-popcorn-now” ads, up comes the midnight movie. And man, it’s stranger and better than you ever imagined. It turns you over and cracks your head open like an egg. It’s as if the sky had turned bubblegum pink.
Beats sitting at home watching some lame Loretta Young movie on the Late Late Show, no?
What are your favorite midnight movies? Two Dogs wasn’t happy that his favorite, The Song Remains The Same, wasn’t in the documentary. I can also vouch for Freaks, Heavy Metal, and that collection of Beatles shorts that popped up from time to time (Beatles fans, you know what they are). We are keeping our eyes out for the midnight movie experience again, but no more Rocky Horror. BT, DT.
Of these, I have only seen Rocky Horror, and frankly was not that impressed, except for “Time Warp” and Rocky Horror’s blond hunky goodness. I had never heard of El Topo, thought that The Harder They Come looked like a dull crime drama, am too frightened of Night of the Living Dead (even though it was filmed in Pittsburgh, the big city near me when I was growing up), and am still working up the courage to see Pink Flamingos and Eraserhead. Despite this record, I still love the idea of midnight movies, and harbor hope that they won’t become completely extinct.
Born in the convention-defiant maelstrom of the late 1960s, and living long enough to become all but obsolete in the home video age, midnight movies share these characteristics:
1. Out of the mainstream – way far out;
2. Sexually and/or politically subversive;
3. Packed with weird and disturbing imagery, almost like dreams;
4. Marijuana-friendly
The midnight hour was also an essential ingredient. Larry Jackson, the manager of the Orson Welles Theater in Boston (an early promoter of midnight movies) said, “At 12 o’ clock, a different world of movie-going took place.”
Imagine driving to a big-city or college-town theater at a quarter to midnight, finding a parking space, and then walking to the theater under ghostly street lamps. You won’t see little kids or uptight middle-aged matrons among your fellow movie-goers; they’re people who know, people who dare, people who don’t let Reader’s Digest tell them how to think – people like you.
You buy a popcorn and a drink at the concession stand (that alone is transgressive; snacking after midnight is so naughty), and find a seat in the middle of the theater. You sniff the air, and discover the skunky aroma of pot smoke. Before the lights go down, you notice that the theater itself is a little run-down; the velvet of the curtains is worn-down in spots and the wooden armrests are grooved with amateur carvings. This doesn’t bother you one bit; who wants to see a midnight movie in an antiseptic chain theater?
Darkness closes in on the theater. The mumble of conversation sinks into whispering. The curtain parts with the rattling of pulleys. After a series of coming attraction trailers and lovably cheesy “go-get-some-popcorn-now” ads, up comes the midnight movie. And man, it’s stranger and better than you ever imagined. It turns you over and cracks your head open like an egg. It’s as if the sky had turned bubblegum pink.
Beats sitting at home watching some lame Loretta Young movie on the Late Late Show, no?
What are your favorite midnight movies? Two Dogs wasn’t happy that his favorite, The Song Remains The Same, wasn’t in the documentary. I can also vouch for Freaks, Heavy Metal, and that collection of Beatles shorts that popped up from time to time (Beatles fans, you know what they are). We are keeping our eyes out for the midnight movie experience again, but no more Rocky Horror. BT, DT.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Mr. and Mrs. Mouse Bomb
Along with my various and sundry hats of writer, graphic artist, photographer, and mousewife, I also design T-shirts and other goods for Cafe Press.
I received these two T-shirts a few days ago. I call the design "Mouse Bomb". Two Dogs and a drummer friend came up with the idea in Orange not too long ago -- "The mouse is the bomb." So I designed a bomb-like mouse (a mouse-like bomb?). Here's how the shirts came out:
And the back view:
Small creatures can have a huge impact, no?
You can buy the shirts for yourself at my Mouse Bomb outpost. Be the first on your block to know...the mouse is the bomb.
I received these two T-shirts a few days ago. I call the design "Mouse Bomb". Two Dogs and a drummer friend came up with the idea in Orange not too long ago -- "The mouse is the bomb." So I designed a bomb-like mouse (a mouse-like bomb?). Here's how the shirts came out:
And the back view:
Small creatures can have a huge impact, no?
You can buy the shirts for yourself at my Mouse Bomb outpost. Be the first on your block to know...the mouse is the bomb.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Mouse in motion
Sorry for the delay in my June blogging, but I have been a mouse in motion. I was laid off from my full-time job late last month. I was a little surprised, for I had been busy all that week. But my mom said to me that big changes were going to happen within the family, and this must be my big change.
I do not see this as a referendum of my worth. I see this as an opportunity to take the next step upward. I am still figuring out what that next step will look like, even as I make "micromovements" (as the artist SARK puts it) every day. All I can do is all I can do.
I do not see this as a referendum of my worth. I see this as an opportunity to take the next step upward. I am still figuring out what that next step will look like, even as I make "micromovements" (as the artist SARK puts it) every day. All I can do is all I can do.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
How I Spent NABAACD
Well, National A Book and a Coffee Day has come and gone, at least as far as May 2009 is concerned. I passed out flyers at local coffee shops and libraries and sent Twitter tweets after each pertinent post. (FYI, I am JennieBH on Twitter.) I hope you spent it very well. Here's what I did:
I went to a charming little restaurant called Zov's. My coffee was a cappuccino. My book was "Retro Hell" by the editors of a no-longer-published "zine" called Ben is Dead.
If you are a person of a certain age, if you can remember a cartoon called "The Funky Phantom", if you ever got excited about mood rings, if your first exposure to the 1950s came from "Happy Days" and Kristy McNichol used to be your role model, "Retro Hell" will provide hours of memories and fun. You will find yourself talking back (even if only in your head) at each entry in this "ABC Afterschool Specials" to "Zotz" encyclopedia. "Retro Hell", alas, is no longer in print but is available at used booksellers and (if you're lucky) your local library.
To tell the truth, I didn't spend much time reading because my husband Two Dogs was with me. I asked him if he remembered the Battle of the Network Stars series. He didn't, mainly because he grew up in Mexico City. I wondered if this concept would work today. We have long ago left the era of the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). We'd now have to include Fox, the CW, and myNetworkTV -- and all of those cable networks. We could have a Battle every day of the year.
(Don't you love books that make you think?)
On a side note, Zov's has excellent baked goods, including cupcakes with flower-shaped frosting. I had this one, mainly because it had a chocolate cake underneath:
It was as delicious as it looks, but it's something to eat once a month, at most!
I went to a charming little restaurant called Zov's. My coffee was a cappuccino. My book was "Retro Hell" by the editors of a no-longer-published "zine" called Ben is Dead.
If you are a person of a certain age, if you can remember a cartoon called "The Funky Phantom", if you ever got excited about mood rings, if your first exposure to the 1950s came from "Happy Days" and Kristy McNichol used to be your role model, "Retro Hell" will provide hours of memories and fun. You will find yourself talking back (even if only in your head) at each entry in this "ABC Afterschool Specials" to "Zotz" encyclopedia. "Retro Hell", alas, is no longer in print but is available at used booksellers and (if you're lucky) your local library.
To tell the truth, I didn't spend much time reading because my husband Two Dogs was with me. I asked him if he remembered the Battle of the Network Stars series. He didn't, mainly because he grew up in Mexico City. I wondered if this concept would work today. We have long ago left the era of the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). We'd now have to include Fox, the CW, and myNetworkTV -- and all of those cable networks. We could have a Battle every day of the year.
(Don't you love books that make you think?)
On a side note, Zov's has excellent baked goods, including cupcakes with flower-shaped frosting. I had this one, mainly because it had a chocolate cake underneath:
It was as delicious as it looks, but it's something to eat once a month, at most!
Thursday, May 28, 2009
One More Book Recommendation -- Gone with the Wind
This is my final book recommendation before this year's NABAACD on May 31. I would be most remiss if I did not mention this book. It's a big book, a big good book. It won the Pulitzer Prize. It was the basis of a movie that won ten Oscars. It has been a reliable best-seller for over seven decades -- it's now #5,653 in Amazon's bestseller list (and for Amazon, that number is up there).
It's Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and if you choose this book for sharing a coffee with on Sunday, you've done well indeed. But watch out. If you finish Chapter I, you will have to read Chapter II. And so on, and so on, until a barista taps you on the shoulder and tells you that the coffee shop is closing. (If you finish GWTW by the time you finish your coffee, you're a naughty reader because you just skimmed the book. Some books take skimming as a high insult.) GWTW is like the movie Titanic -- it's long, but it's so compelling that you don't care that it's over 1000 pages.
What makes GWTW a great book is not only the sheer storytelling, it's the highly dramatic historical setting -- a time when this nation was, if not literally torn in half, at least psychically and spiritually so -- and it's the characters. Margaret Mitchell knew that if a reader can't care about the characters, nothing else in the story matters. A rip-roaring plot with characters as flat as tortillas is as fulfilling and memorable as a roller-coaster ride at Six Flags.
Scarlett O'Hara is more than a spoiled Southern belle. Rhett Butler is more than a charming rogue. Ashley Wilkes is more than a golden-haired hero on horseback. And Melanie Hamilton Wilkes is more than a sweet timid mousewife. Each of them is as layered as a Russian nesting doll.
Scarlett is not a role model. She is often shortsighted and thoughtless, she is neither a loyal friend nor a sensitive mother, and she is tone-deaf when it comes to her dealings with men. But she is also capable of kindness and loyalty, of guilt that she is not living up to her mother's loftly ideal, and of heartbreaking unrequited love for Ashley. It is the last most of all which keeps her from being a total B-I-T-C-H. Who among us hasn't pined for the unattainable person? Who hasn't agonized that the one you love loves someone else more?
I do have to write about GWTW's greatest flaw, though, so it doesn't shock you. While Mitchell was psychologically astute when it came to the major white characters, her depiction of black characters is not just politically incorrect -- it's just plain incorrect, period.
The black characters are compared to children and apes and bloodhounds with "unerring African instinct." The "good" ones live for serving their white masters, and the "bad" ones are ungrateful for the care their masters have given them. Both Scarlett and Rhett utter the word "nigger,"* and Melanie would rather abandon her beloved South than have her son go to school with "pickaninnies." (Of the four major characters, only Ashley says nothing that is racist.) Did I mention that the Ku Klux Klan are the heroes in this book?
But still...but still...I forgive GWTW this flaw, a flaw which would have made me stand up and scream if this had been a lesser book. That's how great it is. Even black female readers forgive the book. We all live in the twenty-first century; we know that racism is sheer foolishness. Don't feel guilty for reading and enjoying GWTW.
I am not sure where I'll be going or what I will be reading for NABAACD. I am sure that I will let you know what happened. Have a happy NABAACD, everyone!
* I debated with myself today whether to spell out this word or use the euphemism "N-word." I chose to spell it out because I am a writer and words are my tools -- all words, the grand and the base and the lovely and the ugly. Euphemisms for vulgarity fool no one and treat the readers like infants.
It's Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and if you choose this book for sharing a coffee with on Sunday, you've done well indeed. But watch out. If you finish Chapter I, you will have to read Chapter II. And so on, and so on, until a barista taps you on the shoulder and tells you that the coffee shop is closing. (If you finish GWTW by the time you finish your coffee, you're a naughty reader because you just skimmed the book. Some books take skimming as a high insult.) GWTW is like the movie Titanic -- it's long, but it's so compelling that you don't care that it's over 1000 pages.
What makes GWTW a great book is not only the sheer storytelling, it's the highly dramatic historical setting -- a time when this nation was, if not literally torn in half, at least psychically and spiritually so -- and it's the characters. Margaret Mitchell knew that if a reader can't care about the characters, nothing else in the story matters. A rip-roaring plot with characters as flat as tortillas is as fulfilling and memorable as a roller-coaster ride at Six Flags.
Scarlett O'Hara is more than a spoiled Southern belle. Rhett Butler is more than a charming rogue. Ashley Wilkes is more than a golden-haired hero on horseback. And Melanie Hamilton Wilkes is more than a sweet timid mousewife. Each of them is as layered as a Russian nesting doll.
Scarlett is not a role model. She is often shortsighted and thoughtless, she is neither a loyal friend nor a sensitive mother, and she is tone-deaf when it comes to her dealings with men. But she is also capable of kindness and loyalty, of guilt that she is not living up to her mother's loftly ideal, and of heartbreaking unrequited love for Ashley. It is the last most of all which keeps her from being a total B-I-T-C-H. Who among us hasn't pined for the unattainable person? Who hasn't agonized that the one you love loves someone else more?
I do have to write about GWTW's greatest flaw, though, so it doesn't shock you. While Mitchell was psychologically astute when it came to the major white characters, her depiction of black characters is not just politically incorrect -- it's just plain incorrect, period.
The black characters are compared to children and apes and bloodhounds with "unerring African instinct." The "good" ones live for serving their white masters, and the "bad" ones are ungrateful for the care their masters have given them. Both Scarlett and Rhett utter the word "nigger,"* and Melanie would rather abandon her beloved South than have her son go to school with "pickaninnies." (Of the four major characters, only Ashley says nothing that is racist.) Did I mention that the Ku Klux Klan are the heroes in this book?
But still...but still...I forgive GWTW this flaw, a flaw which would have made me stand up and scream if this had been a lesser book. That's how great it is. Even black female readers forgive the book. We all live in the twenty-first century; we know that racism is sheer foolishness. Don't feel guilty for reading and enjoying GWTW.
I am not sure where I'll be going or what I will be reading for NABAACD. I am sure that I will let you know what happened. Have a happy NABAACD, everyone!
* I debated with myself today whether to spell out this word or use the euphemism "N-word." I chose to spell it out because I am a writer and words are my tools -- all words, the grand and the base and the lovely and the ugly. Euphemisms for vulgarity fool no one and treat the readers like infants.
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