Psycho Sunday: Badass Women in Combat Gear #7

RIZZOLI AND ISLES (TNT)

For Rizzoli and Isles, combat gear can be hospital scrubs and scalpel or a pantsuit and t-shirt and a police .45 handgun, but they manage to run around “Boston” solving crimes, dealing with their complex families, making us giggle, all the while looking unrealistically fantastic. That Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon) frequently takes down the bad guys like a linebacker is on the plus side of the ledger. That Dr. Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander) has the bad habit of talking about shoes while cutting into dead bodies is on the minus side.

But this show does manage to pass the low-bar Bechdel test, in that it a) has at least two women in it, b) who talk to each other c) about something besides a man. It also passes the slightly higher-bar Mako Mori test, which analyzes films by whether there is: a) at least one female character b) who gets her own narrative arc c) that is not about supporting a man’s story. It’s hard to believe that here and now in the twenty-first century, it is still so difficult to find shows like this.

“Mako Mori Test.” Geek Feminism. n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2015

The Return of the New Haven Bed Race

Oct21

So I was just thinking about the small column I used to write once a month for Matsuyama’s small newspaper The Ehime Weekly RIQ (never did find out what RIQ stood for). There were a few of us foreigners who took turns writing the column, which would be printed in English and translated into Japanese, a sort of Engurish Puraktis. I was thinking about how writing the 20-line (and later down to 16-line) micro-essays was good practice for blogging. Then I thought about my favorite topic, the New Haven Bed Race. Then I Googled the race only to find out that it had stopped running in 1990 but was now running again after 25-year hiatus, and this past Saturday made a comeback! Hoorah!

It is a cool way to make money for charity. Teams decorate their beds and uniforms according to a theme, so for example a hospital team might all be wearing scrubs and stethoscopes with the rider dressed as a patient. The registration this year is $300, which seems excessive to me, but it is for charity, so I guess an eight-person team can split it to make it less ridiculous. Then everybody lines up down on the New Have Common and race in heats.

Giggles all around.

Psycho Sunday: Badass Women in Combat Gear #8

Oct18

Sometimes combat gear is a SWAT uniform. Sometimes it is a black leather catsuit. But if you are Eliza Dushku, a tank top or a denim jacket will also do.

As Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Dushku played a Slayer who had had it rough and made a lot of bad choices. As Wikipedia points out, “With Faith, the writers explored the nature of power, and the boundaries and consequences of its use. They wanted to address the issue that, whether the creatures a Slayer kills are good or evil, she is still a professional killer.^[41] Co-executive producer Doug Petrie, and writer of Faith-centric episodes such as “Revelations” and “Bad Girls“, says one of the things he loves about the character is that Faith is not wrong in describing herself and Buffy as killers. He goes on to discuss a Slayer’s rights and responsibilities, and how Faith believes her contributions to society relieve her of any legal or moral responsibilities, a view which Buffy does not share.”

Like Natasha Romanov, Faith is a little broken to begin with and only gets worse with all the killing she does—and enjoys. The nice thing about the Buffy/Faith relationship is that we get to see that how you let the job affect you is a choice as much as it is about your environment and support system. So it is not that being a female badass necessarily comes out of brokenness.

In Dollhouse, Dushku played another sometime badass, the Doll/Operative Echo, a former eco-activist turned programmable person. Sometimes a thief, sometimes a hostage negotiator, sometimes a sex worker, the character eventually regains a sense of her original personality and works to take down the company that employs her, and by employ I mean “use.” And again, the pint-sized Dushku made it work.

“Faith (Buff the Vampire Slayer.” Wikipedia. 30 July 2015. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.

Pride Goeth, after the Fall

Oct17

How did we get here after nine feet

Of snow fell on my city, my streets

Where I walk unhindered eight months

Of each year? How did we get to this brightness

With trees waving yellow hands and smiling

With cheery red faces? Who allowed spring

To be so very short indeed, maybe two months

And then a long, slow summer, not too hot

And, thank God, not humid nearly at all

For a change? This chill in the air cheers

Me, suggests to me even better things

To come, despite the inevitability of winter

Just around the corner. I will not say

I am ready for any of it. I will not claim to be

Happy to see autumn go, with its bright

Calm and see winter come, all slippery

And not trustworthy at all, white sidewalks

Preparing now, in secret, to take us down.

Weighing In On the Issues, #2

Oct14

Ah, autumn. When the trees turn red, yellow and brown. When the weather cools to a crisp Ishouldhavewornajacket-ness. When students keep turning in the papers I assign, and I keep being forced to grade them. And, apparently most importantly, when pumpkin spice is a thing.

Everywhere.

Doughnuts. Coffee. Beer. Crackers. And although I haven’t been to Staples recently, I suspect pencils.

I get it. I do. We all appreciate pumpkins. We all anticipate dressing up as Agent Melinda May and waiting for the Great Pumpkin in our local organic-certified sincere pumpkin patch (okay, admittedly, I am speaking for myself here). And we all just loooove our allspice.

But enough already.

Thank you. That is all.

The Ankle Brace of Forgiveness

Oct14

Well, it has now been about a month since I sprained my ankle fighting off the Saracens (whom my landlord sent to check on our plumbing). So, among other things, I have not been doing any yoga and bloody little exercise other than walking and taking stairs Very Slowly Indeed. This means that I also haven’t needed to wear my hand brace for protecting my arthritic carpal bones. But I have been wearing the damn ankle brace instead and it has been annoying.

It seems odd to me the love/hate relationship we have with these kinds of mobility aids. I remember walking the dog with my mother one winter and watching her hack away at some ice in the sidewalk with her cane, and I realized she hates her cane as much as I hate my hand brace. I guess it is a resentment that we need something to do the stuff we used to do unaided.

On the other hand (as it were), being forced to slow down and pay attention to bumps in the sidewalk, which can be very painful at speed, is not necessarily a bad thing. A friend with a lot of invisible disabilities always used to remind me to listen to my body and go easier on myself, and the damn braces remind me for her.

Psycho Sunday: Baddass Women in Combat Gear #9

Oct11

Number Nine on my list of BWCGs is Black Widow, Natasha Romanov. Unlike Deputy Jo Lupo, Romanov probably didn’t start out as a badass, but was twisted by the USSR’s Black Widow Program, which trained young girls to be assassins. Played by Scarlett Johansson, an actor with a strong work ethic, Romanov comes off as badass, but not in a testosterone kind of way. In the recent film Avengers: Age of Ultron, she is the only Avenger who doesn’t feel the need to try to pick up Thor’s hammer; she makes it clear she has nothing to prove. The downside of her portrayal in that film is her getting paired up romantically with the Hulk instead of Hawkeyes (wrong, wrong, wrong) and the whole thing where the graduation ceremony from the Black Widow Program is getting a hysterectomy. That makes sense in a communist patriarchy kind of way storywise, but it says something about women who are Allowed to be Badasses in Popular Culture. Too many of them are broken in some way.

But I like that Johansson does as many of her own stunts as she can, and from the very beginning in Iron Man 2, those stunts are just PRETTY! She says:

“I like doing the stunts. Oh, sure, it hurts sometimes. I came into work on Winter Soldier some days aching with bruises and bangs, and Samuel L. Jackson, my co-star, would say: ‘So why not just hand over that stuff to the experts, Scarlett, and save yourself from pain?’ I explained to him why I just couldn’t do that. Please don’t think I’m stupid, though. I know my limitations. When Natasha, my character, has to bound 20ft in the air and do four cartwheels, it’s my stunt double Heidi Moneymaker who’s doing that.”

Peachey, James. “Scarlett Johansson Keeping Figure, Doing Stunts…” Daily Mail. 2 April 2014. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.

In Which, Suddenly, I Nerd Hard

Oct10

I am not sure when it happened, the transformation from English teacher who likes smart action TV to nerd. People say you are a nerd when you like something unabashedly and a whole lot. I suspect it is a combination of Joss Whedon simply doing what he does—creating feminist TV and fun movies—and the social phenomenon of Netflix and bingewatching old and new TV shows. Suddenly I can immerse myself into something cool and pay really close attention to the details and catch the kinds of continuity elements that are obvious when you watch four episodes in an evening rather than over the course of four weeks. That leads to an admiration of the writers/actors/set designers, a kind of “I see what you did there” that otherwise would be unavailable to me. Then you add social media and discover that other people really love the same things that you really love, which then makes it even safer to really love it, a kind of reverse peer pressure.

So, yes, the Earth is going to hell in a handbasket, no question, but at least I have my Captain America.

The Joys of Horseradish

Oct9

I just discovered that horseradish has its own International Horseradish Festival in Illinois. Yum. Who’s with me?

John “Keats’ letters preserve his contributions to literary history, but they also contain a surprising moment in culinary history: one of the first mentions of a roast beef sandwich in print. On a walking tour of the U.K. in 1818, Keats worked up such a hunger that he fantasized about food. “[I] long for some famous Beauty to get down from her Palfry … and give me—a dozen or two capital roast-beef Sandwiches,” he wrote—perhaps the only Romantic poet to privilege lunch over lust. While the first appearance of sandwiches in print dates back to 1762, they were often made with ham; it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century that roast beef sandwiches were popular enough to be referenced by cookbooks. By the turn of the century, the dish had firmly established its place in the lunchtime pantheon; Keats’ fantasy meal was well ahead of its time.” Paperandsalt. “John Keats: Roast Beef Sandwiches with Horseradish Dressing.” 31 Mar. 2015 Web. 9 Oct. 2015

Note: mixing horseradish with Greek yogurt is healthier than mixing it with mayonnaise or sour cream. You’re welcome.

Weighing In On the Issues, #1

Oct7

Before I begin explaining Campaign Issue Number One, I have to explain where it comes from. Hopefully, if you haven’t been living in a cave recently, and/or your cat hasn’t knocked your computer mouse off your desk so that you are incapable of accessing Facebook, then you know that Berkeley Breathed has broken his 25 year sabbatical and brought Bloom County back in time for the 2016 American presidential circus. I mean, election. And of course Opus is running, with Bill the Cat as his Veep of choice.

Now let me get a leetle political here and say that at this point I would probably vote for Opus before any of the Republican contenders and most of the Democratic ones, which is sad. I believe that Opus probably wouldn’t get us into yet another war (not sure about Bill) or try to defund cancer screenings for women. That is just not how he rolls.

However, I must say that the hot-button issue he has chosen as the main plank in his platform is something I simply cannot get behind: reverting to using two spaces after a period.

People talk about how we’ve abandoned our traditional values, rejected the teachings of the Bible (presumably by eating shrimp and not having concubines, because I am pretty sure ancient Hebrew doesn’t actually use punctuation). But what they ignore is the reason we used to have two spaces after the period back in the day when we typed on actual typewriters, manual and electric.

The way I was taught, the letters in the font that typewriters used were of different widths and the space was narrow, so the extra space did something to balance that out. Now, the letters of most fonts are less varied, so the extra space isn’t needed. I don’t know if that is true. What I do know is that should you, gods forbid, justify your writing on both left and right, an extra space could end up giving you a huge hole in the middle of your paragraph as your word processing program works overtime to fix what ain’t broke.

Where do you stand on the debate?

buildingapoem

All about Poetry: Sublime, Ridiculous, Useful

Category Archives: inspiration