For Mom on her something-somethingth birthday

As I approach my Jesus year, I thought
I'd dye my hair Deep Copper
On Facebook I called it My So-Called Life Moment
Which you, Mom, didn't get.
Well, here's the moment:



Angela's color is Crimson Glow
Mine's supposed to be Deep Copper,
And Mom, because I know you'll ask
That's Claire Danes at fifteen or so

So why did it take me so long?

There was no point in rebelling against you
You wouldn't have cried, like her mother did
You would have said, "Express yourself,
If that's what makes you happy,"
and not in a snotty way.

You were better than that Mom in the Target commercial
with the improbably cute triplets
You never would have made me color code

And now my hair goes with my dinner
Rainbow chard, toasted millet pilaf, and pan-seared
summer squash
You taught me to cook like this
Even if you never really taught me how



So what am I rebelling against?
Maybe I'm having a third-life crisis or maybe I'm
catching myself creeping boring
Probably I'm attention-seeking
Definitely I'm experimenting
But mostly I think I just felt like it

Maybe there's power in doing that thing you just feel like doing
I mean, maybe my hair really has been holding me back

Because you asked for a picture
And because it's your birthday,
I will post these here
Even though they don't quite catch
the iridescent-ness of my new head



It's hard to get the color right in the kitchen at night by myself when I just got back from the gym and don't want to show too much of my sweaty face



The color's redder than it looks here
More radioactive "fashion forward"

How I Spent My Summer, Part the First

This has become the saddest blog. I know.

Instead of a big update, I'm going to do several little ones to catch myself up, and maybe I'll leave some things out entirely, because the present is what it's all about.

But because it was a packed and positive summer, I'll try to hit some of the highlights . . .

I worked at a summer program in Wilmette during July, helping 3rd-5th graders create both a short film and a short play. They had two weeks total to create the film, and they shot it in two days. The result was a dystopian action flick in which a child becomes governor of California, and I'm so proud of them!



And here's more about the program, with some shots of me teaching. In one shot I believe I may or may not be crawling on the floor like a jungle cat. Yes!

Gigging

So, I've been having a nice conversation in the comments on the last post. And I keep meaning to write something more about ladies in movies, but maybe I won't get around to it. Maybe I'll just post this awesome vid about the Bechdel Test and leave it at that . . .



I also keep meaning to do a giant catchup post with links about my weird new blog and my summer program and pictures of me wearing silly costumes and acting with two different types of produce -- as Evan says, one more makes a triptych! That will come, soon.

For now, though, I'll just say that I've been making a conscious effort to pursue a more sustainable way of earning a living while pushing myself to get my novel in shape to send out, and the coolest things keep happening.

They are little things . . . unexpected gigs, fortuitous conversations, but they add up to make me feel like I'm being supported in my efforts, like the universe is saying, "Oh, you're trying? Well, let me help you out." That doesn't always happen when we try, I know, so I feel lucky, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the support continues.

Some of that support has come from family and friends, so thank you! And let it be known that I am "gigging" as the rockstars say and looking for flexible work that pays well by the hour. Dirty jokes need not apply.

Thank you for calling me out

Last night, I went to see Salt, a super fun action movie about Angelina Jolie kicking butt. And my friend pointed out that one of the coolest things about it is that she doesn't show any skin -- less than a male action hero would usually show. For a lot of the movie, she looks completely androgynous, and not in a sexy way. (Can't find any screen shots of her dressed that way to support my point -- no big surprise.)

The only time she shows her body is when she's covered in blood and being tortured, which is shot mostly at a distance and in low light -- it makes her vulnerable, and it's disturbing as it should be. There's no sense of the camera fetishizing her body -- contrast that with Daniel Craig's naked torture scene in his first Bond movie.

Then there's all this talk about how the role was originally written for a man, and kudos to Jolie for scooping up a script she liked. But when the guy next to me in the theater turned to his girlfriend and told her that fact, there was this glee in his voice, a kind of marvel . . . he was excited to be at an action movie starring a hot woman AND he got the added bonus of knowing that the story was fit for a man.

Hmmm.

And then, upon leaving the theater, my friend and I are joking about how empowered we feel and how we're going to use all our new spy moves to beat up guys, and we see this giant ad for Eat, Pray, Love, and I've never read the book, but my immediate reaction is contempt. My friend called me out. She'd had the same knee-jerk contemptuous reaction, and someone showed her Melissa Silverstein's post on Women and Hollywood with the same title as Entertainment Weekly's interview with Elizabeth Gilbert: If Women Like It, It Must Be Stupid.

And I felt mad with myself -- not for failing to be excited about that movie. That movie's not made for me and my friend. Neither one of us is going to get super excited about a rich lady's spiritual holiday starring Julia Roberts -- although I've got friends who love that book, and I should maybe read it and see why.

I felt mad with myself because I had that built-in reaction that because this movie's popular with women, it deserves my contempt -- that it deserves it more than a similarly pop-hit movie starring oh-how-bout Hugh Grant? About a Boy is the story of a rich man on a journey of self-discovery. That book is loved by both men and women and is not hyper-literary, but there's not really a male equivalent to "chick lit," is there? And so it's popular fiction.

So where does this contempt come from? There's the widespread contempt for stories that fall into the "chick" category. But part of my contempt comes from something else that Silverstein's blog post touches on . . . for a movie about a woman to get made, it needs the built-in audience of an Eat, Pray, Love and a Julia Roberts. And so, part of my contempt comes from the fact that I don't see myself in the story of this woman, and yet, this is one of the few stories about women offered. I'm mad at it because it has to represent all women, and that's not a fair burden to place on any movie.

Two of my favorite movies are Garden State and Rushmore. I'd like to see more small, quirky movies starring women, and I don't doubt the stories are out there, but it's even harder for them to get made, and when they do get made they're almost always deemed "chick flicks." The lady characters in the man-movies aren't enough. I do like Olivia Williams' character in Rushmore -- she has some complexity and a larger share in the story than a lot of love objects get, but I don't love her or get her point of view the way I do with the guys. The teen girl in Rushmore has it all figured out, and Natalie Portman's just a manic pixie dream girl.

I have friends who fell all over themselves for 500 Days of Summer, and that one just makes me so angry. Zooey Deschanel's character is a mess. She works as an assistant in this retro-styled company in a much crappier job than what's-his-face's and yet, she gets to be the guiding light who tells him to follow his purpose? Her purpose is apparently getting married to someone hotter than him, making origami, and wearing lots of Anthropologie.

I'm not sure what the answer is -- it's not rushing out to see Eat, Pray, Love. And it's not forcing boyfriends to sit through it as the end of Silverstein's post seems to suggest -- yes, as one of my male friends pointed out, she gets a little ranty.

Recognizing and fighting the bias though, I think that is part of the answer. So, thank you, my friend, for calling me out on mine. I will try to pass it along.

It's been too long

I know.

There are things to share. I'll share them when it's not so late.

But the only thing on my mind tonight is that I just gave my apartment a deep cleaning. The hands are raw, the back is tired, and I feel pretty great about it. It's good to take care of my space, and myself, and all those good things. I should do more of that.

End of Time

I keep hearing the words "END OF TIME." Not "endtimes." "End of time" itself.

I saw an article about time disappearing from the universe. Listened to a podcast about Mayans and 2012, and another about Haiti being the harbinger of decline.

And the oil spill. I have trouble even thinking about the oil spill.

Tomorrow I start a summer job helping a group of 3rd-5th graders make a movie and a play about, what? You guessed it. The end of the world -- or to be a bit more positive, about starting a new world after the old one is gone.

2012 hasn't been in my consciousness, and it's not something I worry about, but I'm curious about the cultural impact it may or may not have over the next year and a half. Y2K was interesting, and it's kind of cool that we have these two big dates so close to each other. The fact that they matter to a good number of people makes them mean something, whether we think they "mean" something or not.

And I'm full of energy, not because I think the world is coming to an end, but maybe because it isn't. I mean, it is all the time, but right this minute, I'm here, and doing interesting and energetic things. It's a good time to be in the world.

Tonight was a good night to put together the Ikea bookcase that's been sitting in pieces in my bedroom for a number of months now. This morning it was lumber. Tonight it's furniture. Why did I wait so long to put it together?

Kids Don't Vote

That's my favorite line in the series The Wire, suggesting basically that education gets shafted because "kids don't vote."

So we have to vote for them. My theater company Barrel of Monkeys teaches writing workshops in Chicago Public Schools and performs student writing, building self-esteem and enthusiasm for language arts. And we have a chance to win a grant from Chase Community Giving.

Yes, this is an extended ad for Chase, and yes, it's a lot of jumping through hoops, but the money would make a real difference to BOM's budget, especially in the coming year when so many schools are being forced to cut outside programming.

So search for Chase Community Giving on Facebook and give us a vote. Or use this link: http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/364283300-barrel-of-monkeys-production

I wouldn't be posting this at all, but we're slipping on the leaderboard, and to win money we need to stay in the top 200. Thank you, thank you!