In the Saddle

Bus

I actually thought Game Change was pretty good on the whole. If Palin was half as bad as she was portrayed, it’s even crazier to think about her being in the WH.

I liked it…but it’s hard to watch such a seriously skewed side of the story. I can believe a lot of it, but I do question how much of it is really really true. Also, it was just uncomfortable to watch.

It was always infuriating to me that they made such an irresponsible choice in Palin as McCain’s running mate, but I did feel kind of icky that the Republicans involved were real quick to throw her under the bus once their strategy didn’t work. This movie feels the same way to me. Yeah, they admitted that she wasn’t properly vetted, but more so, they really pushed the blame on her.

And, look, I cannot effing stand her and think she’s disgusting and it is truly scary to me that she came pretty close to being in the WH, but this is a person existing in the world right now and this is a pretty damning movie. Everyone else comes out looking either sympathetic or good. So….I don’t know…just seems smarmy.

(don’t) wave that flag…

Maybe I’m a big ol’ poop, but there is seriously nothing more arrogant sounding to me than Americans shouting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

YES! This is exactly it!

Julie: I’m worried about her youth obsession.

Natasha: Continue. Cuz this is my main complaint with her.

Julie: Well, her insistence on maintaining an exhaustingly current entourage, instead of changing/evolving/ageing, she just switches up the collaborators so they’re current. That’s depressing.

Natasha: I think she’s out-grown trying to be sexually provocative and sexily antagonistic a la Express Yourself, but now she is lost.

Julie: Well, she wants to be SEXY.

Natasha: Remember her Frozen phase?

Julie: I loved that. I loved Ray of Light. I loved loved Music. Confessions on a Dance Floor is her last GREAT album. I’m just worried about her mosquito in amber ambitions. The skin thing, her hair getting longer. She’s only wearing black, She only lets them shoot her from across the stadium.

Natasha: What would Madonna doing Madonna actually look like now? Without the youthful accessories and shackle shoes?

Julie: I want her to be like Anjelica Huston. But she wants to be a girl, not just a woman.

—from The Awl….awesome chat about Madge’s halftime perf.

This is exactly how I was feeling while watching Madonna last night. It was a mixed bag.

On the one hand, I was grateful that it was a well-thought-out, well-executed, well-rehearsed performance. Call me an old fogey, but that’s always been my one complaint about shows like these…they’re usually all bells and whistles and not much thought or cohesion. It’s almost always a medley of songs and, to me, anyway, it usually seems pretty frenetic and not very well-rehearsed. You know Madge was NOT having that. Her shit is ALWAYS tight and well done. So I appreciated it on that level. I didn’t even mind the medley — it was a good example of a non-medley sounding medley.

On the other hand, I thought M was a little…well….awkward. Stunted. Weird. And dude, those heels. Don’t dance in those! No! Those are just asking for a slip and fall or for you to be horribly, well, awkward, in trying to prevent the slip and fall.

And then there was the point of the conversation above. At first I couldn’t put my finger on what was bothering me about her and I was blaming the shoes (easy target)…and then it hit me. Woman is 53 years old, dancing besides 20 year olds. The little dance break she did with LMFAO was cute because that was like, oh, look at the cute old lady in amazing shape keep up with the young dorks who write cheesy party hits! But the rest was weird. Her dancing alongside Nikki Minaj and MIA? You’re 53, woman! Put Nikki Minaj and MIA next to you, doing the same dance moves, and…no matter how in shape you are…they will always look better doing the kind of dancing and writhing they were doing. Because it’s what 20-30 year olds do (how old is MIA?).

Now, this is not to say that Madge can’t be sexy at 53 years old. She absolutely can be. Hello Tina Turner, Anjelika Huston, Helen Mirren, Jane Fonda….etc.etc.. But sexiness comes with owning your age and who you are as a person. And we’ve all seen who Madonna’s become outside of performing. The faux-British accent, the haughtiness, the smugness. It doesn’t fit with the fun-loving sexy girl she’s trying to still be. She’s no longer Madonna in the Lucky Star video. She’s not even Music Madonna (my favorite Madonna era EVER). I don’t know what this Madonna is. I don’t think she does either. She’s just trying to stay relevant, I guess.

It’s the trying that was awkward. She’s not the Madonna we all grew up with and know and love. She’s not even looking at us. She’s got her plastic-surgified eyes on the younger prize.

Oh yeah, and the world peace thing was laaaaaaaaaaaame.

But you know…just sayin’.

the older I get…

…the more I realize that unless you know the person you’re judging, you just can’t. You can’t say anything about them as a person, them as part of a culture, them as anything. (Says the girl who judges celebrities and such constantly. I must stop this.)

Seriously though…I’m referring to this Privilege blog uproar people are talking about. There was one post this lady made…Enjoli referenced it…about this woman and her High WASP family going on a vacation and dealing with “Others,” a.k.a. people not of “her” kind. I knew two lines in that this was a post about loud Jews on vacation. As a generally observant person, I understand an outsider’s perspective on how we can sometimes behave and carry ourselves. But as a Jew myself, and thus an insider, I know there’s so much more than a big diamond ring and a NY accent at a pool at the Four Seasons Maui. Just like I know there’s more to this chick than her blog about “deconstructing class” while discussing pretty things of privilege.

Bottom line is…WHO CARES? Who. Cares. All you can be is who you are and if that’s a good person, then you try to instill that in others, if you can. And if you’re a shitty person, then you leave a whole bunch of disappointed people in your wake and probably don’t care about that either. All you can be is who you are. And try to relate to each other on some level. And if you can’t, you can’t and you find new ground on which to stand. And that’s exciting too.

I don’t know, I’m rambling. It’s just….this world is so dumb, you guys. People are so high and mighty. Myself included sometimes. And the more I’m faced with that, the more I realize how dumb and futile judging people is.

I don’t know…whatever.

Here’s what (who am I, Andy Cohen?)

I like that Reese Witherspoon said what she said. I don’t think it was slut-shaming. I also don’t recall Paris or Kim or any of the like reacting all that proudly to their sex tapes (self-released or not). They didn’t own it. They didn’t say, whatever, I like to fuck and I did this. They cried and acted all victimized and shamed themselves, quite honestly. And then got hugely successful. FOR NOTHING. It says more about our culture than it does about them, but that’s a whole other discussion. I, for one, like the idea of telling people, especially young people, that they can actually use their talent and their brains and some determination and perseverance to get ahead in their world. Because that isn’t what they’re seeing, not just from the sex tape gals, but from all reality TV “stars” that, I’m sorry, don’t really promote the best images of women in any regard. The good girl v. bad girl language and use of the word “cool” was an unfortunate and dumb choice on Reese’s part. BUT, she never once said don’t have sex. Hell, she didn’t even say don’t make a sex tape! She just implied there are other ways than a reality show or a sex tape or sexy pictures to make yourself known and go further in your career. And I’m glad she said it.

On the flip side, I also realized as I was writing a different version of this post that Reese is kind of hypocritical in that her career thrived a lot on scandal and tabloid frenzy during her divorce and during her (*ahem* gaycoverupinmyopinion) relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. Sooooo…I guess it’s okay to be a tabloid subject as long as you spent your early career doing interesting indie films and then you graduated to horribly generic, boring big-box-office schlock? So then it just brings it back to actors saying actor things when they have a public forum and who cares and she actually is really talented even if she does shitty movies now and I honestly don’t care what she has to say, but I am glad that at least someone made the point that celebrity today is much more infamy than talent-based.

Also, also! I find it interesting that on my dashboard there were angry posts about what a horrible person Reese is for saying what she said and slut-shaming and all that, and then almost stoic and calm posts from the same sites about Weinergate and how what he did and who he is as a politician are separate, that he can be a shitty person but one can still like him as a politician. So. We’re yelling at Reese for saying something that could have a few different interpretations, one of which being that acting like ladies might not be such a bad thing, and we’re not yelling at Weiner for showing his Weiner and generally being kind of creepy? So we get angry when women tell women to be ladies, but we are merely disappointed when men don’t act like gentlemen? Interesting is all.

Bottom line…everyone just chill. It was a dumb awards show where they present ridiculous awards like “best line in a movie” and is basically just a vehicle for an endless stream of promotion. Actors are actors and they are sometimes haughty and annoying. And politicians have proven time and again that they are not the family/straight/monogamous/moral/fill in the blank people they make themselves out to be. This is not surprising in the least. Let’s all move on.

thoughts.

There are feelings all around. I’m reading a bunch of them. I agree with most who are not in favor of celebration, but I read a post by Minou that I appreciated and understood about letting everyone have their moment of feeling whatever it is that they’re feeling. I liked that. And then I read several posts on STFU Conservatives and started to get angry at the dumb asses who are now taking the opportunity to criticize Obama. And my thought is…

It’ll never end out there.

It’ll never end in our own country.

Chanting USA over and over again doesn’t make us better. We haven’t won anything. We just took out a horrible, evil, cruel man. It needed to be done. I’m proud of our military and our intelligence and their work and courage. But we haven’t won. This isn’t a celebration.

Anyway, all I can see is NY on 9/11. That’s all I have in my head. And it’s upsetting. And I miss NY. And I feel…..glad, I guess….that he’s gone. But I am somber. I worry about the future. Because it isn’t over. It is foolish to think it is.