um....

Monday, January 28, 2008

My feel hurt, my ankle hurts, my butt's sore.
I sang, danced, acted, fell down (sometimes on purpose, sometimes not), danced with my "mommy," and did the can-can.

I shit you not.

God, I love opera....

It's Monday again.....

Yep, my luxurious weekend is over, and it's back to it.....

Over the weekend, I heard a news report about lesbian couples in France who are trying to get the laws changed so that they can adopt. This really surprised me. Single women can adopt (I assume single men can, but I don't know for sure), but despite that, lawmakers claim that it's not homophobic. They claim some dumb-shit excuse about there not being strong paternal influences in lesbian adoptions.

Again, I'm really surprised. In France, having a "mome en celibataire" (having a kid when not married or in a couple) is not looked down upon. The phrase doesn't have the same negative connotation as "having a child out of wedlock" or whatever. Not only that, but the French attitude towards other peoples' love lives is a little bit of "everyone can do what they want" mixed with a fair amount of "Je m'en fous" (technically "I don't care," but more accurately "I don't give a fuck/damn") So why the discrimination????

I'm so disappointed in my almost-countrymen (countrypeople? countryfolks?). What the hell? This is the country that is so adamant about people's private lives staying private, about doing what makes you happy.....argh!!!

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Clumsy update: rammed my ankle into a rolling cart in the class I was working in today. 3 times. It hurts so bad I think I've managed to actually hurt myself this time....

bleary eyed sunday ramblings

Sunday, January 27, 2008

I actually have the day off today. This is pretty remarkable. Well, it's not completely "off," as I do have to teach piano, but I don't have rehearsal or work. Between last week and the end of next week (that's confusing but I don't know how to write it differently) today is my only day off from rehearsals......

So far, the show I'm in is fun, but we haven't started staging yet. That all starts tomorrow, and apparently the staging is going to be manic and hyper with a ton of dancing. We'll see how I feel about it being fun after that. At yesterday's music rehearsal, Justin, one of the guys, had just finished his aria, and while the director played the little postlude, he looked up and said "This is where your solo dance will be." Justin's face went white. Literally, all the color drained in about a second. The response was great: "Don't worry, the last time we did this show, Mercury was a gymnast, but we won't make you go that far." Justin's face got even more white.....

Anyway, I'm encouraging you to read 2 articles this weekend. This one is from Alternet, and talks about assimilation versus separatism in queer communities, and how that relates to the struggles of the suffragettes and post-slavery/civil rights issues. The other is the short story in this week's New Yorker. It's called the Reptile Garden, by Louise Erdrich. I think you can listen to it at www.newyorker.com, or in the print version.

In general, the fiction in the New Yorker hasn't been grabbing me lately. I don't know why, but I've been more into the regular articles. This is quite a shift, since when I started reading the New Yorker (at my grandma's house when I was a kid), I only read the fiction. And the cartoons. So, yeah, it's the first time in a while that I've been really into one of the short stories.

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I watched the US Figure Skating championships last night. Youth is definitely the name of the game at the moment, but when 2 out of 3 of the medalists in the women's competition are so young that they can't even compete in Worlds, I think things have gone too far. I really wonder what the point is of competing in Senior when you know that even if you win, it's the end of the road. If you're too young to compete internationally, why not stay in Junior, where you can actually go to Junior Worlds? It just seems dumb. Yes, Senior is where all the attention is, you'll get better known, all that, but for Nationals to be the end of the road would be a total let-down, I would think.

Poor Kimmie Meissner fell 3 times, all of them rather bad wipe-outs. She was the defending champion, and while only 18, has a maturity and a grace that were totally lacking from the ickle 14 year old "prodigies." She's obviously an amazing athlete, but it much more normally proportioned, and doesn't look all bony and stuff. Plus she's smart as hell, and can actually give a good interview, unlike the little ones. She looked so upset, but was trying to be stoic as she watched her horrible marks come up. It was really awful to watch, and the fucking TV cameras were right up in her face. I hope that she gets put on the team for Worlds (they have to create a team, since they can't just send the medalists, like they're supposed to), because she certainly deserves it (she won in '06).

Yes, I Watch Too Much TV

Friday, January 25, 2008

Today on Oprah, adults whinge about their parents' divorces....30 years ago!
(actually it was yesterday, but whatev)

Yes, yes, it's awful and horrible and messes children up, but who knew it would still do all that 3 decades later!

Okay, incredible snark aside, I was vaguely curious about this episode of Oprah. Apparently she did a show about children of divorce a little while ago, and got a ton of mail from adults whose lives are still all messed up.

Some "divorce expert" was on, helping people deal and talk to their families. The thing is, though, it was presented as this new concept, that adult children of divorce all have difficulty.
I watched the introduction wondering whether I'm some freak for not feeling at all bad about my parents' divorce. Then I heard one woman say that 20 years later she still cries herself to sleep and I just burst out laughing. I'm not the one with the problem, clearly.

I know that sounds harsh. What I should say, I suppose, is that rather than giving good examples of how divorce affects families forever, we saw bad examples of how being a crappy parent affects kids forever. The moms all had dumb-shit things to say like "I wanted my kids to hate him as much as I did" or "When he left, I just wanted the kids to go away."

.....uh....these people are responsible for raising offspring??? Goddess help us.....

I really wished that Oprah had shown counter-examples of parents who separated but did right by their kids, because now the unthinking masses have fuel for the "oh, poor dysfunctional child from a broken home" line of thinking, which pisses me off. I think my parents not being together helped me become strong and independent.

My last snarky thing (I hope): When one 20-something woman said "it was like the death of the family and it was all my fault" I kind of threw up a little in my mouth.

Here's a news flash, Oprah watchers: lots of parents get divorced and manage not to f#$% up their kids in the process. I know that sounds shocking, but it's true.

I think that one of the big dis-services that these parents gave their kids was that belief that there's only one way to have a family, only one definition of happiness. The women (because no men were featured sharing their childhood pain) all seemed to hang on to that Disney-fied fairytale BS. That happiness comes from marriage, and without marriage you're incomplete or miserable or something. Oh yeah, and having to get a job is terrible and awful. That woman wasn't at all insulting to working class folks, no not at all....
This is just my observation, but it seems like friends of mine who grew up in families where the parents provide everything and create this fairy tale image are having a harder time being productive grown-ups than those of us who had more realistic expectations...

Okay, one last snark: It was all upper class looking white women.....I don't have a point to make there, but it did seem interesting....


You can file this post under "incoherent rant"

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Continuing the clumsy streak: Boyfriend went to hug me last night and managed to accidentally stick his thumb in my eye.....

oh yeah

Thursday, January 24, 2008

One more thing.

I had the world's clumsiest day yesterday. In chronological order, I:
...locked myself out of the house with an armload of wet laundry
...tried to get out of the car only to have the door swing back and knock me into the door-frame, upon which I hit my head
...reached out from the back seat of Mom's car to help my grandma pull her door closed. I didn't realize that some of my hair was caught in the door, and when I leaned back to sit down, the chunk of hair came ripping out.....ouch!

Odds and Ends

Just a quick word today, because I really must practice. I was called at the last minute for this opera gig, so I got the score on the same day as rehearsals started. I really must get my butt in gear and learn the music.

More on Juno: Here's an interesting little piece about the portrayal of love in the movie.

More on movies: Persepolis is amazing. Everyone should see it, but especially folks who think that attacking Iran is a decent plan. They should be forced to watch it on constant repeat. It's based on Marjane Satrapi's graphic novels, and retains her clean, spare drawing style. The voices are done by some of France's legendary actresses, and it's even more powerful on the screen (in my opinion, at least) than on the page.

More on Roe

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Yesterday's Roe v. Wade anniversary sparked some great blog posts and articles. Some of my favorites were Maggie's and the articles at Alternet's Reproductive Justice and Gender section. Maggie also mentioned me in today's post, so I'm feeling really flattered.

On a more sickening note, what a day for "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" to air an episode about someone who steals embryos from a fertility clinic. Not only that, but it's written so that the chief of police takes a special interest in the case because, you know, the 1 day old embryos are people too......only about 2 seconds gets given to the notion that using the term "murder" to describe letting the frozen embryos thaw (and therefore cease to be viable) is totally ridiculous. Way to go, NBC......**head-desk, head-desk**

A lot of crazoids are trying to claim that the death of an embryo or foetus is murder. What's the next step? Will a miscarriage that happens naturally be involuntary manslaughter? How about stillbirth? This is a scary effing precedent....

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In music news, I always complain about not getting work. It seems, though, that when I do, it's a flood. I got a call the other night from one of the small opera companies around here, offering me a small role. Rehearsals start immediately and go through the end of February. Shows go into March, after which I've got a couple of weeks and then 2 concerts, almost back to back....oy.....

I hope you have a lovely Wednesday.