Uh, my weekly television column at Torontoist has been up for two days…. just pretend I posted this on Monday, will you?
7
Nov
Uh, my weekly television column at Torontoist has been up for two days…. just pretend I posted this on Monday, will you?
6
Nov
As the American healthcare system continues to disintegrate, people are forced to make life choices that might otherwise seem foolish.
(Seriously: she has brain lesions for which she cannot get treatment. What the hell.)
6
Nov
…but I’m not sure if this guy pulls it off.
6
Nov
THE HEAD CHEERLEADER SLASH QUEEN BITCH OF SCHOOL
This exhaustingly crap old trope is so annoyingly stereotypical it honestly makes my teeth itch every time I see it – which means my teeth itch a lot, because of the following true formula:
1.) Most writers are nerds.
2.) Most nerds hated high school.
3.) Many nerds have not gotten over #2, and most writers-who-are-nerds definitely haven’t.
Thus, when creating an antagonist in a high school setting and feeling lazy, most writers end up channeling their own inner biases and taking it out on whoever they thought had it easier than them in high school, which is almost always the athletes and especially the cheerleaders. (The cheerleaders, far more often than not, come off worse than the athletes do. I leave it to the reader to chart the obvious gender politics inherent in this point.)
And if the cheerleaders in general get the shaft, well, the head cheerleader is especially singled out, like the queen bee of an evil hive. The head cheerleader, by definition in this writerly world, has to be the bitch of bitches, the alpha female, the leader of the vicious pack, et cetera ad infinitum. She’s almost always the worst, most hateful type-A-personality she-devil; almost always amoral, usually slutty (hellooooooo gender politics, again), and on top of that our stereotypical TV/movie head cheerleader, more often than not, is stupid. So not only is she evil and in a position of power, but the inference is that she only got there because she was lucky.
Let’s not kid ourselves: most head cheerleaders will be type-A personalities, that’s an entirely fair characterization. Why? Because cheerleading is difficult and demanding, with relatively little reward. (Yes, there are some full athletic college scholarships available for cheerleaders – but if a female athlete wants an athletic scholarship, statistically she’s better off pursuing swimming or track.) To excel at it requires a lot of determination and commitment, and to captain a team you have to be the sort of person who enjoys command and competition for its own sake.
But cheerleaders aren’t inherently evil. Most of the ones I’ve known in my time, both through my own schooling and through the schools of younger friends and family, were just competitive athletes, usually good students (because, well, they had to be to stay on the team, much less go to college), and perfectly friendly. Heck, outside of the football-crazy portions of southern America the cheerleaders aren’t even necessarily the top of the social pyramid – the “cool girls” subset can just as easily be totally unrelated to cheerleading.
The Head Cheerleader Bitch is a construct. It’s a sexist one to boot, usually existing to contrast feminine sin from womanly virtue: our Good Girl heroine isn’t ANYTHING like Tammy McSlutty who runs the cheerleaders. (This is so prevalent, in fact, that in Bring It On, where the heroine is a cheerleader, the writers felt it necessary to insert not only a head cheerleader who was duplicitious, slutty and kind of scanky, but two ambitious underling cheerleaders trying to backstab the virtuous Kirsten Dunst.)
It needs to be retired. Re-tired! Re-tired! R-E-T-I-R-E-D, that is what it means to me! Oh yeah! Oh yeah!
5
Nov
In all the hubbub that’s crossed the blogosphere about Pakistan in the last couple of days, I’ve been noticing a common thread, especially prevalent in North American writers but hardly quiet in many a writer from elsewhere in the first world, and that’s the assumption that the choice that exists to be made is between Pervez “I Am A Stereotypical Brutal Dictator” Musharraf and a million howlin’-mad Muslims who want everybody in the whole wide world to wear a veil and not eat pork.
It’s worth remembering that the disruption that “forced” Musharraf’s hand came as a result of his arrogant disregard for the country’s laws and his endemic corruption. Viewing images of the protests last month, I was struck by one image: hundreds of lawyers, all in suits, marching in protest. Not a one of them would look out of place in a Western court. Pakistan is a country where, despite all expectations, the public holds their constitution and legal system in high esteem. (There are certainly fundamentalists who want to change it, often dramatically so, but the key is that they also want to change it from within.)
None of this is to say that Pakistan, were Musharraf to disappear tomorrow, would suddenly turn into a landbound version of Malaysia or the like. But it’s a country with a large, intelligent professional class and an interest in political stability, neither of which are inherently in conflict with the Islamic character any longterm, stable, sorta-democratic Pakistan would have. Yes, I think we can all agree an Islamic government in Pakistan would probably mean less rights for women and religious minorities there (for starters), but I’d argue that a stable albeit limited democracy is superior to a bunch of tribal lords feuding with each other, particularly when the country in question has nuclear weapons available.
A final note, quoting Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings:
Religious people in Pakistan are not all fundamentalists or Islamists or extremists. Many of them are committed to both their faith and to democracy, just as many American Christians are. (Not in just the same way, as though culture were irrelevant; but: committed to both.) Democratic institutions are not nearly strong enough, and there aren’t nearly enough really inspiring leaders, but the last thing Pakistan needs is a military dictatorship that prevents these sorts of institutions from growing and learning.
Well said.
5
Nov
In case you haven’t noticed, thanks to the help of Stefan Rivet: the remix of Teen Titans #44 is now up on the site.
To those of you who have asked me if I’m ever going to do another comics remix, the answer is: yes, and I’m about halfway done one right now actually, but my schedule is a lot busier than it used to be. I’m hoping to have it up next week, but no guarantees.
5
Nov
The brilliant and original XKCD is currently trailing the hackish, never-ever-even-remotely-funny (and often disturbingly sexist) Day By Day in the 2007 Weblog Awards by about 400 votes, and this cannot be borne.
Go now, and vote for XKCD. Vote every day. Tell everybody else to vote as well. Because a comic strip that is actually funny should win the damn award.
(For those wondering, Penny Arcade isn’t even close.)
5
Nov
The Amazing Race is, as everybody who reads my blog knows, the best goddamned show on television, and it is no small wonder that CBS was planning to hold off on it for midseason because of the impending writer’s strike. Unfortunately, Viva Laughlin was exactly the farce that everybody predicted it would be and got cancelled after two lousy episodes, so lucky us, we get the Race sooner than expected.
And, once again, it is instantly the best show on teevee, but initial signs point to a step up from previous seasons. There’s much less stunt casting, for one (yes, okay, the team of Goths and the team of married lesbian ministers, but two out of eleven is pretty forgivable). More notable from a casting point of view is the devout lack of the traditional Team Of Two Athletic Twentyish-Or-Thirtyish Men Who Win The Whole Damn Thing, not one but three all-female teams (the show’s producers pretty obviously want an all-female winning team, if you couldn’t tell), and the first ever grandparent/grandchild team who are the only all-male team on the race. (And, let’s be honest – not likely to win, because Donald the grampa, while definitely possessed of sand, seems to lack the shrewd racing instincts to make up for his lack of youth.)
Of course, we still have the usual healthy array of dating heterosexual couples, with initial signs pointing to at least one representative of each of the three traditional types of Amazing Race dating couples: Eerily Complimentary And Perfect For Each Other (TK and Rachel), Slightly Dysfunctional But Generally Healthy (Lorena and Jason), and What The Hell Are These People Doing Together (Jennifer and Nathan).
Plus, there are the Goths, Kynt and Vyxsin, who really seem like very nice people once you get past the fact that they thought to bring a lot of pancake makeup with them on the Race, that their names are Kynt and Vyxsin, that they wear matching outfits, that their names are Kynt and Vyxsin, that one of them actually used the phrase “oh my Goth,” and that their names are Kynt and Vyxsin. Luckily, Kant and Victoria seem like strong, intelligent racers and thus I will probably get over the name thing in maybe two or three years.
(Kynt and Vyxsin. What the hell.)
First episode features: the gorgeous countryside of Ireland, the highwire bicycle, the proof of the old advice to never, ever try to force a donkey to move (seriously, Racers – I’m a city boy born and bred, but even I know not to yell at a donkey), the elimination of a team who clearly thought they were hilarious and entertaining and were in fact just really painfully annoying, Ronald and Christina exploding with father-daughter pride for one another, Azaria and Hendekea showing off serious race smarts (now I want to go and check to see if a brother-sister team has ever won the Race before), and finally and most importantly this wonderfully insightful line from one of the married lesbian ministers (who are instantly one of my favorite teams) which sums up the entire appeal of the Race, an appeal that no other competitive reality show has:
“The Amazing Race is a love letter to the planet. The beauty of this Earth comes from God, and we get a chance to sort of hopscotch around it, and love it, you know? What a gift.”
That nails the appeal of the Race so precisely. The one truth about the Amazing Race is that to win it, you have to throw yourself with abandon headlong into other cultures and experience them, first-hand and up close (where their breath might not be pleasant). You have to be willing to partake of what is given to you. In other reality shows, you have to scheme and plot and brown-nose your way to success. In The Amazing Race, you just have to be faster and smarter and wiser and stronger and, on occasion, as in life, just plain luckier – and you have to reach for the human experience with both hands. That’s how you win the Race, and that’s why it’s the best show on television. Here’s to the new season.
2
Nov
La Peregrine is awesome. They should bring him back. (Preferably not to kill him immediately.)
Bahlactus once cracked an egg in Reno, just to watch it fry.
Holy crap, the loonie is at a buck-seven USD. Economic analysts are saying that a jump to $1.10 isn’t just feasible but indeed near-term likely.
The Federal Reserve is just looking at this point for an excuse to cut interest rates, but it has to realize that doing so would be, you know, bad. Like drawing reasonable comparisons to Weimar-era Germany level of bad. Like oil-prices-well-over-$150 bad. And while I quite anticipate being able to buy things from Amazon this Christmas with what essentially amounts to about a fifteen-percent-off coupon, having Americans forced to cart around stacks of $10,000 bills in wheelbarrows to buy loaves of bread is something, on balance, I would prefer to avoid.
2
Nov
Remember how everybody was all “oh, let’s be reasonable, the Tories aren’t going to try and instill their backwards right-wing values on Canada while only in charge of a minority government?”
Well, ha ha.
1
Nov
Well, this game would probably be very addictive to me if I didn’t have Team Fortress 2.
Ah, sweet, sweet Team Fortress 2. I do so love shooting people.
1
Nov
So you say to me, “I like search engines and all, but what I really wish is that I could have a search engine endorsed by KISS. I bet KISS would provide me with an excellent search engine.”
And I say “have I got something for you.“
31
Oct
Contest of Champions, the first Marvel miniseries, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary late last year. So I felt it only appropriate to take a look back at it, and see how it might… differ… if published today.
NOW:
THEN:
NOW:
THEN:
NOW:
THEN:
NOW:
THEN:
NOW:
THEN:
NOW:
THEN:
NOW:
30
Oct
If you’ve been looking for a good summary of scholarly opinion on the political future of Iraq, you could do a lot worse than this post by Marc Lynch.
Warning: the conclusions derived are, for the most part, not good. But they’re thorough and well-written.
UPDATE: Also, this thorough explanation of whywaterboarding is torture and therefore both immoral and useless should be considered required reading.
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