Category Archives: Observations

I can’t say goodbye to 2017 fast enough

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I’m being harsh…psyche. Between the serious PTSD I have from not only moving back to America (post-Brexit) but the now constant post-Weinstein sexual harassment stories floating about. I grew up in production, literally.

I got my first job at 20 years old picking up trash from a tarmac after seeing Biggie step out of a plane with a set of twins. That was the first day I was aware that how I looked was how I kept working. I’m a hard worker and dressed mostly in baggy everything so I wouldn’t have to repel the comments, but none of that saved me. None of us. And we’re below the line. I’ve had directors stare at my boobs through entire meetings, props hug me too tight while asking if this was sexual harassment. I even had an AD on a long running tv show ask me to run so he could see my titties shake. When I didn’t (because I didn’t have to) I wasn’t hired on that show again. It had been a lifeline in a young freelance career. Many crew went on to higher positions behind the camera. That opportunity was cut off from me because I didn’t throw my boobs around.

Then I watch this administration do everything in it’s power to demolish poor and working class people, and I’m about to look for a job…again. Freelance life is boring and I just want a full time gig without the sexual harassment.

I want to go to work, collaborate with talented sane people, make something beautiful, come home too tired, hang out with my husband then count my money as I fall into a deep secure sleep.

That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

I finally get Taylor Swift

I work in a shop and when I began I noticed the music and it was what we now call “classic” which is just music from my childhood.  But some music, the new stuff, I have come to recognize as the kids that win awards now, like Taylor Swift. It’s corporate music. It’s the same music you hear in every store you shop, restaurant you eat, and commercial you watch. I get it now. That’s how they have so much money.

People don’t listen t the radio (as such) anymore so the marketers have curated the most innocuous muzak that has that clicky autotuned thing pop songs have now.

I feel so “duh” about it. But it has made me listen to the words to the songs more and that Taylor Swift…gets around.

PS: There’s a muzak version of It Ain’t No Fun, If The Homies Can’t Have None. It’s if the homies can’t have fun, which is also true…not the spirit of the song.

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I don’t like selfies.

Nina, girl, I know

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I’ve been mad since 2012 when it was announced that Zoe Saldana was playing you and I saw the pictures of ‘you’ in blackface. Oh miss Nina, I’m so sorry they did that to you.

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Those of us who know, who you taught through your life and your music are heartbroken.  I have no real opinion of Zoe Saldana, you know how there’s always gong to be someone who doesn’t know. Someone not invested in your community. Not interested in how your art and activism for Black people, who you so loved, was integral to your being. Someone who’s never been called ugly because they were Black or had any barriers placed before them because of how they looked.  It wasn’t her story to tell, she should have said no, but she’ll learn…if she’s interested. She’s in a really terrible situation and Hollywood is on some real bullshit right now. The days of reckoning you talked about are upon us.  The frequent quote about her is that she “gave her heart and soul” to the performance to which I say, so what? She should have said no. She’s not the artist for this. She hasn’t seen enough, but then again, I don’t know that girl.

But let’s deal with the thing that I love most. Context.

They took you out of context and for that I’m sorry

& they don’t know about Mississippi at all anymore.  Goddamn indeed.

 

Gentrification Blues #3

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This weekend was hot. It was the official beginning of summer. I barely left my house. When I did I was again confronted with the changes in my neighborhood. It’s like the rats on a ship or roaches in the dark metaphor. Into the blinding sunlight and mildly scorching heat came the ghostly bodies of my new neighbors. Mouth dryingly pale and still without manners. It’s going to be a fun summer. I love sitting on the stairs of the library, now known as my office, and having to stare down the Park Sloper with the baby crying because it’s hot and mommy can’t take it in the library SCREAMING like that to cool it off or leave because she’s got a great spot to get some sun on her legs.

So here I am sitting alone listening to my iPod scribbling furiously on the stupid story I’ve been hacking away at, I mean writing, for like 2 years now…. “Sorry, what? No, no one’s sitting there.” What could I say? No one was sitting there. I wasn’t prepared to act crazy and have imaginary friends. So down she sits and my table’s perfectly placed for two ways to get sun and put the baby under the umbrella. The screaming baby. The baby screaming so loud that my Erik Satie makes my head hurt and hands shake cause it’s too loud and grating. I stare at the mother who apologizes profusely, but what am I supposed to say? “I accept your apology, but it would be better if you took your SCREAMING MONKEY home.”

She started doing all the things mothers do to make their children shut up, to no avail. I start shifting. I’m already hot and uncomfortable and writing outside and feel weird. How do I describe how I felt with the future sitting there raising hell and a mother who kinda didn’t give a shit. (Now, let me say that I have friends with kids and I know it’s a tough job and adults don’t want to be cooped up with kids all day. But I also know that that’s why I don’t have kids and really resent being subjected to other peoples problems.)

I guess it’s just that I’m seeing something more and more that disturbs me about this neighborhood I love so much. Too many babies. When I’m dictator, I’m putting a moratorium on procreating in Prospect Heights. Go to Queens to fuck up your kids.

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Look, I’ve been avoiding all this Tiger Woods business until I read a really great blog about it today on the heels of talking about “important” news stories I’d missed the last couple of weeks with my kid sister. While I had to google Adam Lambert (I don’t Idol), I knew that Tiger’d been in a car accident.Megalomaniacal me said “nobody cares when I hurt myself” so I ignored it.

Then I started hearing about affairs, mistresses coming out of the woodwork, the wife chasing him with golf clubs and smashing windows. That’s interesting, but no. I’m going to remain on my moral high ground and continue to ignore. I’ve lived through enough sex scandals to know that unless someone’s been living under the bed in a dog collar, it’s just fodder.

I told The Kid last night that if one of the mistresses was named Darshawnqa with long airbrushed nails and hair sculpture- then I’d be interested. But this morning I read this from one of my favorite blogs and I paused (and laughed at the video). But only long enough to write this post.

In conclusion, he’s 33 years old and been playing professional golf since he was a teen. He hasn’t had a life. Leave him alone. Who cares. Now I’m part of the problem, but enough is enough already. He likes pussy. Let him be. He’s not the first or last professional athlete to cheat. I think the over arching statement of pro athletes should be that they’re going to cheat on their spouses. The ones that don’t- they’re the exceptions. If I went from town to town with women throwing themselves at me- I’d probably be too tired to even play whatever game I’m getting paid for.

THAT IS ALL.