Pop Song of the Week: "Poison"

Alice Cooper has issues with women? Surely you jest.

Gothic Icon of the Week

Lydia Deetz as an adult.

Taken from here.

Movie Quote of the Week

What is powerful about a woman running around in a bathing suit?
--Connie Britton, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

Rough Night Was Rough, All Right -- Especially for the Audience

This just in: women can be rough and crude too.

At least that's the impression I got from the 2017 movie Rough Night, a gender-reversed imagining of the dark comedy Very Bad Things that managed to be more tasteless than the original but unfortunately, not all that funny. (To be fair, I didn't find Very Bad Things to be all that funny either though there are some critics who liked it better than me.) The highlight of Rough Night appeared to be Scarlett Johansson's Hilaryesque haircut though Kate McKinnon's MarySueish foreigner earned points from me for simply being one of the few characters who dared to act like a likable human being.

Of course, the main problem with the movie is that most of the actresses in Rough Night weren't playing characters; they were playing types: the fat girl, the lesbian, the lesbian of color, the foreigner, and so on. Worse yet, they were not even playing relatively entertaining types. My eyes started glazing over after the umpteenth crude joke and considering that the screenwriters managed to include almost every possible joke involving vibrators, adult diapers and fratboy humor that one could possibly put in a movie, the movie proved to be remarkably dull. Scarlett Johansson initially showed promise as a female politician based loosely upon a former Secretary of State but then she got overwhelmed by a formulaic plot that seemed to have little purpose save to make audience members my age really hate all the main characters in this movie.Even McKinnon's attempt to parody the end of Chicago did not quite work. However, the movie did succeed in making me feel sorry for Demi Moore, who had the thankless role of a bored neighbor who liked to experiment with bisexuality.

The only reason I saw this movie was because a friend wanted to see it. And I would like to think that the very fact that I went to see this flick with her says something more profound about the true nature of friendship than anything you're likely to find in this movie.

Poema de Mi Id: Parte IX

"White Trash Girl"

I want myself a white trash girl.
A chick who knows where all the pawn shops are.
A woman who looks how to use a food stamp card.
A girl whose hair smells like mayonnaise and
whose skin is the same color as cottage cheese.

I want myself a white trash girl.
A dame who hides her nakedness in Dollar Store underwear.
Who bears scars and bruises from her last boyfriend
And who continually bumps into doors when I'm not around.
A girl who still has a scar on her belly from her last child.
One who knows every last cuss word in the book -- and then some.

I want myself a white trash girl.
Of course, I could just date a girl
from the local barrio instead.
But that would be tacky.

Book of the Week

Hey, it's a book of film essays written by an actual Latina. And yet she refers to her Peruvian ancestry only once. Almost as if she were a regular film critic. Or a film philosopher.

A Latina film philosopher... What a concept!

Seriously, I found this book quite interesting. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Chocano's work in the future.

Edited to Add:

If there's one major problem with this book, it's the way Ms. Chocano's writing makes me want to think twice about my review of Lars and the Real Girl. And that's hardly a bad problem to have.

Movie Quote of the Week

Men! Every time you search for an answer, you always come up with women. You're not getting out of this one so easily.
--Barboura Morris, The Wasp Woman (1959)

Quote of the Week

Women deserve full access to all positions of power not because they are exceptional, but because they make up half the humans on the planet.
--Tim Ward, Savage Breast: One Man's Search for the Goddess

Movie Quote of the Week

Imagine a girl in show business today wanting to settle down and raising a family. It's so refreshing, isn't it?
--Danny Kate, White Christmas (1954)

Cuento de Mi Id

“A Day in the Glamorous Life of an Entertainer”

5:30 a.m. You wake up and start getting the kids ready for school. You ignore your ten-year-old daughter when she mumbles something under her breath about you being a whore. You take a quick shower and put on your “mom” clothes: black jeans and a sweatshirt.

6:30 a.m. Your ride arrives. You hustle your kids out the door. You make sure they’re polite to the driver. You ignore the driver’s request for a kiss but you thank him profusely for waking up so early.

7:00 a.m. You drop your kids off at school. You kiss them both and you pray that they did their homework.

Then you look for signs of your ex-husband being in the area and you sigh with relief when you don’t see him or his car. You ask the driver to take you to a doughnut shop. You ignore the calories. It’s only one doughnut and you’re going to be at work for hours.

7:30 a.m. You go home and wave goodbye to your ride. You dodge his request for a quick kiss. You go upstairs to your apartment and you crash for a few hours.

9:00 a.m. You start getting ready for work. You take a long, hot bath. You shave your legs and other body parts. You are sure to use plenty of bath lotion to give yourself that nice scent the customers like so much on the rare occasions that they notice it.

9:30 a.m. You towel off and you get dressed. You take your backpack which contains the clothes you might wear at work. You are sure to include your high heels.

10:00 a.m. Your ride arrives. He requests another kiss. You dodge it. He drives you to the club and he drops you off at the entrance. You go in and you check in with the house mom. Then you go to the dressing room where you ignore the graffiti on your locker and you start changing into your work outfit. Today it’s a blue dress that you bought last weekend. You never wear it outside the club. Only here. And you never wear it when you pick your kids up at school. Never.

10:30 a.m. The club opens. The lights come on. A few customers straggle in but most hang back until lunch time and the free buffet. You’re not particularly flattered by this, but you don’t come here for flattery. You come because you need the money and this is one of the few jobs you can get with your high school diploma that will pay you enough for you to be able to feed and clothe your kids and pay the rent on your $500 per month apartment. And even with that, you often have to use food stamps.

11:00 a.m. The lunchtime crowd starts showing up. Mainly senior citizens and a few blue-collar workers. Occasionally a well-off businessman. But the truly well-off usually don’t arrive until late afternoon. You start getting a few tips but it’s the young girls with hips the size of your forearms that get most of the tips. You mainly get the mean ones who aren’t anxious to waste their SS checks on a woman like you and the poor Mexicans who do their best to cross your “border” with their Roman fingers.

2:00 p.m. The end of the free lunchtime buffet. The crowd dissipates. The club is slow. If you’re lucky, you have made a tidy sum. But you aren’t always lucky. If you’re lucky, you’ve found time to grab a quick lunch from the buffet. But you dare not eat too much lest you lose your job for being too fat. So you play video games in between sets and hope that today your ex doesn’t discover what club you’re working in.

3:30 p.m. The first of the after-work crowd starts strolling in. You dance for a customer and talk some construction worker into letting you have a sip of his beer. You don’t really like to drink on the job but there are times when alcohol seems to be the only way to make it through the day. Even though your kids are out of school, you have no way of picking them up so you pray that they have gone to day care like you asked them to.

5:00 p.m. More after-work customers show up. A rich businessman pays you $500. You don’t get that every day. More often you end up owing the club money. Indeed, this is the first day all week that you have broken even. You hope you get another shot at him but he already has his eye on another girl. A younger, thinner girl. Some of the girls who work here are so thin you can see their ribs and you can’t help but suspect they’re on drugs. But the manager could care less what substances you take as long as you show up on time and the customers don’t complain. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to attract a large crowd of regulars, you don’t even have to show up on time. But you don’t have a large crowd of regulars. And none of the ones you do have have come in today.

5:30 p.m. You’re asked to perform in a special section that is separated from the main club by a wall and an one-way window. Hardly no one goes back here until they are with a dancer so you don’t make any money. You do see one of your co-workers making money in a way that the local vice squad would not approve of. But you say nothing and pretend you didn’t see a thing.

7:00 p.m. You are finally off work. You hurriedly change clothes so that you can leave the club when your ride arrives. Of course, you have to settle up with the management before you can leave. You didn’t make much today so you hardly have anything left when you do leave. Your ride arrives and takes you to the day care center where the lady in charge asks you for money you don’t have. You pick up your kids and once more you ignore your daughter when she calls you a whore. Ironically, you’re one of the few women at your club who isn’t a whore, but she doesn’t care. She picked up the expression from your ex, and you have yet to persuade her not to use it.

7:30 p.m. Your ride takes you to the dollar store where you buy school supplies with what little you have and then to McDonalds where you buy your kids a Happy Meal. You know McDonalds is not the best place to eat, but it’s the best you can afford, and it’s not like you’re in a mood to cook. Your ride takes you to your apartment, where he kisses you on the cheek and asks if he can come up.

You tell him no, but someday you’ll say yes. Your kids get out of the car and you can tell what your daughter is thinking by the way she looks at you. By then, you’re too tired to care anymore. You follow your kids up the stairs to your apartment and tell yourself for the umpteenth time that you’re going to quit your job next week.

TV Quote of the Week

You know, it is a defect that I have observed worldwide. Obviously you have seen it too, that is to say that men of any country seem to think that men of other countries are the lucky ones. You know what I mean? For example, we take the Italians. The Italians, they like Swiss girls. The German man likes the Spanish woman. And the Greek, ah the Greek, they like the Danes, you know. That's the way it is. It never fails. Never, never, never fails.
--Vito Scotti, The Bionic Woman (The First Series), “Fly Jaime”

Movie Quote of the Week

Read the Bible again sometime. Women are painted as bigger antagonists than the Egyptians and Romans combined. It stinks.
--Salma Hayek, Dogma (1999)

TV Quote of the Week

Earth. Mother of the most beautiful of woman in the universe. That at least has not changed.
--Michael Forest, Star Trek, "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

Spanish Girls and Women: Parte II

1. ménade -- maenad.
2. ménades -- maenads.
3. menina -- lady in waiting.
4. mestiza -- female half-breed; woman of mixed race.
5. mexicana -- Mexican woman.
6. modelo -- model.
7. modelo de desnudo -- nude model.
8. modelo de portada -- cover girl.
9. monja -- nun.
10. mora -- Moor woman; Muslim woman.
11. morena -- dark-skinned woman.
12. morocha -- dark-skinned one; brunette.
13. muchacha -- girl.
14. mujer -- woman.
15. mujer alta -- tall woman.
16. mujer fatal -- femme fatale.
17. mujer guerrera -- warrior woman.
18. mujeres -- women.
19. mujeres altas -- tall women.
20. mujeres guerreras -- warrior women.
21. musa -- muse.
22. nadadora -- female swimmer.
23. naturista -- female naturist.
24. niñera -- nanny.
25. ninfa -- nymph.
26. ninfeta -- nymphet.
27. norteña -- female northerner.
28. novia -- bride; serious girlfriend.
29. nudista -- female nudist.
30. pelirroja -- redhead.
31. pintora -- female painter.
32. poetisa -- poetess.
33. prima -- female cousin.
34. primera actriz -- leading lady.
35. puta -- whore.
36. querida -- dear; mistress; paramour.
37. reina -- queen.
38. rubia -- blonde.
39. rubia de bote -- peroxide blonde; fake blonde.
40. rubia platino -- platinum blonde.
41. rubia tonta -- dumb blonde.
42. rubicunda -- reddish-blonde; strawberry blonde.
43. señora -- married woman.
44. señorita -- young lady; unmarried woman.
45. simbolo sexual -- sex symbol.
46. sirena -- siren; mermaid.
47. soltera -- single woman.
48. solterona -- old maid.
49. sueca -- Swedish woman.
50. supermujer -- superwoman.
51. sureña -- female southerner.
52. tía -- aunt.
53. trabajadora sexual -- sex worker.
54. trabajadoras sexuales -- sex workers.
55. vampiresa -- vamp; femme fatale.
56. virgen -- virgin.
57. viuda -- widow.

Spanish Girls and Women: Parte I

1. actrices -- actresses.
2. actriz -- actress.
3. amazona -- Amazon.
4. amazonas -- Amazons.
5. americana -- American woman.
6. amiga -- female friend.
7. animadora -- cheerleader.
8. bailarina -- dancer.
9. bailarinas -- dancers.
10. bella damisela -- fair damsel.
11. bibliotecaria -- female librarian.
12. bloguera -- female blogger.
13. bohemia -- female bohemian.
14. canguro -- baby-sitter.
15. cazadora -- huntress.
16. cazafortunas -- gold-digger.
17. corista -- showgirl.
18. criada -- maid.
19. chica -- girl; chick.
20. chica de calendario -- calendar girl; pin-up girl.
21. chica de la noche -- lady of the night; prostitute.
22. chica de sus sueños -- girl of his dreams.
23. dama -- lady.
24. dama oscura -- dark lady.
25. damas -- ladies.
26. damisela -- damsel.
27. damisela en apuros -- damsel in distress.
28. damisela venenosa -- poison damsel.
29. desnudista -- stripper.
30. diosa -- goddess.
31. Diosa Madre -- Mother Goddess.
32. domadora -- tamer.
33. domadora de leones -- lion tamer.
34. dominadora -- dominatrix; sexually dominant woman.
35. doncella -- virgin; maid; maiden.
36. doncella cisne -- swan maiden.
37. doncella de hierro -- iron maiden.
38. enfermera -- nurse.
39. escritora -- female writer.
40. española -- Spanish woman.
41. francesa -- French woman.
42. Frida sufrida -- long-suffering Frida.
43. griega -- Greek woman.
44. güera -- fair-skinned woman; light-skinned woman; blonde.
45. hermana -- sister.
46. inglesa -- Englishwoman.
47. irlandesa -- Irishwoman.
48. isleña -- female islander.
49. latina -- Latin woman.
50. lectora -- female reader.
51. lesbiana -- lesbian.
52. literata -- woman of letters.

Quote of the Week

Whether I understand women or not, however, is beside the point of these columns.

The point is I like them, on the whole more than I like men.

I am an incurable male chauvinist by the standards of the radical feminist. I admire women's bodies greatly.

I also enjoy their minds.

And their attention and their affection and their concern.

I like them strong, I like them smart, I like them pretty (and that need have little to do with age).

And, God help me, I like them Irish.

I like them a lot.

So that's why I write about them.
--Andrew M. Greeley, A Piece of My Mind... on Just About Everything

My comment:

Well, I don't necessarily like my women Irish but apart from that, I'm more like Mr. Greeley than I care to admit sometimes. It must be a Catholic thing...

TV Quote of the Week

Smart chicks are soooo hot.
--Nicholas Brendon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "The Gift"

Quote of the Week

Women are the best judges of anything we turn out. Their taste is very important. They are the theatregoers, they are the ones who drag the men in. If the women like it, to heck with the men.
--Walt Disney (1959), as quoted by Amy Nicholson in "Who Killed the Romantic Comedy?" in the February 27th issue of The Dallas Observer

Cuento de Mi Id

“Love in Bain”

The hot bath water pressed down upon Diana's less-than-flat stomach like an insistent hand. It surrounded her limbs and pubes -- even her torso -- and would have covered her neck and head if she had allowed it.

But she did not allow it. She had kept it at bay -- just as she had kept her ex-husband Dennis at bay. The water flowed into orifices of Diana's body that only Dennis had known. Flowed there because Diana allowed it to flow there. She and the water became one in a way that she and Dennis had never become. Yet she still remained Diana.

That was important to her. Dennis had never wanted her to be Diana. He had wanted her to be “Diane” -- that giggly little creature she had been in the early days of their marriage. The one who shied away from confrontation. Who depended upon Dennis to kill the mouse. Who preformed oral sex when Dennis wanted to have oral sex without ever getting so much as a back rub in return. That Diane was gone. Drowned within her flesh. Instead there was now Diana. Cool. Calm. Assertive.

Taking a hot bath in the middle of the afternoon because she wanted to take a hot bath. Not another hot shower like the ones she took before she went to work. Those were over all too quickly, and no matter how long she spent taking them, she always felt a chill when she got out. As if the water had flowed over her, not into her.

Baths were different. You could take a hot bath in the dead of winter, and if you stayed in long enough, you could get out without shivering. You just didn't soak in the water. You became the water. Your body's temperature and the bath water's temperature became one. You didn't lie there, naked, waiting for someone to hold you, waiting for an embrace that never came...

Enough fretting about the past. Almost time to get out of the tub.

Diana still had weekend errands to run today. Shops to visit. Groceries to buy. Weeds to uproot. Dry cleaning to pick up.

She glanced at her scattered clothing and imagined going to the mall to buy a whole new wardrobe. Perhaps that blue dress she had seen at Joske's. Or the red dress in the front window at Dillard's. Or perhaps she could just go there as she was now -- without a stitch on. Just walk through the mall naked and watch the customers squirm in embarrassment and avert their eyes. Converting to nudism would no doubt help her save a fortune on her clothing costs. However, her heating bills would probably go through the roof come wintertime.

And in any event, why stay here?

If one were going to be naked, why not migrate to a warmer climate?

She imagined herself naked on a beach at Cancun. Mariachis were playing in the distance, and dark-skinned men were dragging reluctant señoritas up a nearby pyramid.

Strange. She never realized that there were pyramids in this location.

Perhaps Egypt.

Egypt where the sand invaded every orifice and the smart women learned to shave down there for sanitary reasons. A whip was cracking over a relucant work crew in the distance. A naked servant was massaging her weary back. She looked into a brass mirror -- and saw all the worries of the world reflected in her eyes.

Diana was old. And growing old. But she had not really lived yet. She had not even seen the Library of Alexandria. But no, the Christians had burned that down just last year. No, the Muslims did. Never mind. The two cults always blamed each other as cults always do. And crawling across the floor was a scarab. She looked at the scarab and remembered...

Lying outside a villa near Pompeii.

Mount Vesuvius was smoking in the distance, and one of the maids was talking about a possible eruption. Impossible, Diane said. The volcano has been quiet for years.

Besides, she added, gesturing towards her lares and penates, do you think that these would ever let any harm come to me?

Meanwhile, the outside sky began to fill with ash...

Diana was modeling for the great sculptor Praxiteles, and the studio was cold. There was a draft upon her body she did not care to think about, and she hoped that the old man's fee was worth it. To be immortalized in art, he had said. And yet her stomach rumbled.

Forget art, Diana thought. One life is enough for me. Just let me be prosperous in this one. And not end up like the aged ones who started out in the temples of Aphrodite and ended up becoming priestesses of Artemis...

The revolution was coming.

Diana's lover was upon her. He still had her cunt in his mouth when the mob burst through the bedroom door. They dragged them both out by their hair and made her kiss the severed head of her dead maid-servant. Then, of course, they threw her onto the wagon...

They wanted answers, of course. But Diana did not have anything to tell them.

That did not matter to the Inquisition. One of her neighbors had known something and now they wanted confirmation. They tested her with a pin, searching for a spot on her body where there was no pain, and instead they found that her body had an infinite number of spots that were sensitive to the touch of a pin. They stripped her naked so that their search would be more thorough and then they cursed her for her nakedness.

Then they showed Diana the tub.

They showed her the tub.

The tub. Where she lay awaiting a summons from the Grand Sultan. A black eunuch scrubbed her back and a white eunuch caressed her toes. Briefly Diana thought of another tub.

Then she forgot it.

Then she remembered it.

Then forgot it.

She had no life now that her husband had been killed in battle. Now she was the sultan's wife. One of them, at least. Or at least she was a concubine. Or a...

The tub, she thought. Something is within the tub. A dark shape. A mosaic, perhaps. It looked like...

A wasserliche. That's what they called it in German. But it was still a dead body. Diana glanced at the innocent young face and regretted having stayed so long at the factory. If only she had come home sooner, her daughter would not have died. She would have been --

But wait.

Diana had no daughter.

Yes, she did. She remembered giving birth to her. She remembered the fun she had conceiving her, and the pain she felt when her husband was killed in the war, and the misery she had felt trying to get by in the dark time afterwards.

And yet...

A bird flew overhead. It was a raven.

She pictured herself in the raven's place and seeing with a raven's eyes.

She saw a distant city ahead.

Then a distant ocean.

Then a distant harbor.

There was a lady in the harbor.

A tall, green maiden with a big torch and a spiked helmet.

And within the city, there was a skyscraper.

On the skyscraper was a balcony.

The balcony led to an apartment.

The apartment had a bathroom.

The bathroom door was only halfway open, but she could see that the room was occupied by someone taking a bath. Or at least someone who had been taking a bath but who had apparently fallen asleep while doing so.

She started to brush the curtain aside. But the curtain would not yield to her fingertips even though she was once again human.

However, she could step through the bathtub curtain and look down upon the tub's occupant.

Look down and see a middle-aged, heavyset brunette floating like Ophelia upon the waters.

Only this brunette was not quite floating.

In fact, her head was under water...

Diana gasped. That body in the water was her.

She once again reached out, this time in desperation. But her hands passed right through the body in the tub. They passed through everything, in fact. And as her hands passed through the bath water, she could tell that the water was really quite cold -- as if it had been sitting there for a long, long time.

Now what do I do? Diana thought.

What could she do?

And yet...

No more periods, she thought.

No more weight problems.

And, of course, no more ex-husband to worry about.

Why should she complain?

She was free now.

Hadn't she always wanted to be free?

Not like this, she thought.

Then she once more glanced down at her body.

Remembered the sensation of the warm bath water upon her skin and within her genitals.

Oh, well, Diana thought. Now I have all time and space before me. Come to think of it, who really needs a body anyway? Had I not just traveled quite a long way just using my mind?

Diana walked off and tried to imagine herself wrapped in silk.

But for some reason, she still felt naked.

TV Quote of the Week

It's unfair to judge yourself by the criterion of age. A vital, intelligent woman is much more than the sum of her birthdays.
--Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman, "Beauty on Parade"