empty box of tampons

I don't know why I can't get over Michelle Wolf's monologue at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, but I can't. It was so funny. And rad.

I particularly liked the jokes that felt like they had women as the target audience.

The "smoky eye" one. I wonder if there are a lot of men who didn't get the Maybelline reference. I mean, I've probably seen hundred of car commercials in my life, but I can't tell you the taglines of any of the major car companies. I haven't been socialized to give a shit. Most of those commercials are made for men, what with their need for speed. So I'm wondering how many men actually recognize the Maybelline tagline and how many of them don't because they tune out completely during makeup commercials.

I confess, I've bought eye shadow palettes that advertised themselves as smoky eye kits. To get the joke, you have to know (1) what the smoky eye is, and (2) you also kinda need to have some sense of how many smoky eye tutorials show up in women's magazines. Enough where it's possible to get the sense that we're all actually just on the quest for the perfect smoky eye.

The focus of the joke is Sanders' incessant lying in press briefings, not her eye shadow. But if you see how "burning facts and using the ashes as eye shadow" plays on the silly, upbeat tone of the smoky eye tutorial ("So resourceful!"), you get the added perk of a little satirical riff on women's socialization to be hyper-focused on our appearance.

A man couldn't make the eye shadow joke because they don't have to know about the work that goes into creating those sexy, smoky eyes of which they are the beneficiaries (if they are straight and buy into dominant beauty norms).

Also, the "Ivanka is as useful to women as an empty box of tampons" joke. We're the ones who know how annoying it is when you are sitting on the toilet, see that you got your period, reach into the cabinet under the sink for a tampon, and realize that the box is empty. It sucks so bad. Toilet paper wadded up to make do until you can get to CVS. That joke was for us.

All these men and anti-feminist women are crying about how she shouldn't make jokes about Sanders' and Ivanka's appearance (Oh, the diaper genie one!) as if they give a fuck about the ubiquitous reduction of women to their looks. She made no jokes about any woman's appearance. In fact, the kerfuffle over the jokes that aren't about women's appearance, but not about the ones that were actually making fun of individual men's looks, suggests that they really do equate women's value with their appearance. Make fun of Christie's and McConnell's nasty selves, and that's okay, because everyone knows that they're big, respectable men with big, respectable jobs. But if you go after a woman's appearance, you're leaving her with nothing! 

whilst sharing a joint at a Philip Glass concert

A musician friend of mine asked my boyfriend at the time, "What kinds of creative things do you do to express yourself?"

And my boyfriend at the time said, "I play golf, man."

okayyyyy

oh yes

Lucky for me, students at my school go down to the auditorium to take their yearbook photos during their English classes once a year. Today was that day, and oh man is it awesome to watch people take their yearbook photos. Big, toothy, ridiculous grins. Weird, toothless, stretched-lip smiles that pose as real smiles but are just weird facial expressions. Kids who "don't smile for pictures." All of this stuff is great. And that's before you even consider the photographer's directions to "turn your head just a little that way," or "shoulders back."

You might be thinking that this doesn't sound funny, and if so, you might also be forgetting how cool the average fifteen-year-old is trying to look most of the time. And you might be the kind of person who, admirably, doesn't take just a little bit of pleasure in watching awkward but harmless self-consciousness.

I assure you; it's funny.

I even had one student who intentionally tried all these "model" poses (eg. fist under the chin, arms crossed and looking over one shoulder, lips pursed into a kissy face, etc.) while the increasingly frustrated photographer humorlessly repeated, "You can't do that... can't do that either... can't do that either..."


Every time I watch this, I laugh out loud at Bill's face at the end.

my thoughts exactly

Thank you, Mr. Buckles.

whoopsie-doozie

Johnny called me this morning, and when I picked up said, "I need you to find something funny so that I don't end up killing Eoin." Luckily for my nephew, I think the fact that he tried to give his sister "a haircut just like mine" is hilarious.

According to the photo Johnny sent me, it's sort of a faux-mullet, but Nola thinks she looks "so pretty." Maybe I should preemptively nominate her for What Not to Wear, so that when she get to the buying-her-own-clothes stage, we don't have any problems. This young woman needs some Stacy and Clinton up in her life.


UPDATE: Now she and I have the same haircut!

among friendth

Here's a quiz:

The best part about seeing Quinn this weekend after a long Quinn-hiatus was
A. seeing Quinn.
B. acquiring this photo from him, taken when he went home to visit his family (including little brother Dylan and dog Cole) this weekend:


Answer:
I guess A, but B would be a really good guess.

Writing really IS so hard!

It's rare to see a comedy, at least for me, about which I can sincerely say as the credits roll, "That was one of the best movies I've ever seen." But that I did say about Hamlet 2 the other day. Don't let the 2 fool you, as it did me; I generally turn my nose up at sequels. Or maybe do let it throw you, so that you'll have low expectations like I did, and then get your mind blown.

I couldn't find a clip of my favorite scene in isolation, but it's 5:03 - 5:45 of this one. I wouldn't recommend that you watch this whole clip because it doesn't work as well out of context. Just the 5:03 - 5:45 part.

"When people get married, they should prepare for dying," Delaney said.

My Uncle Bob is home from his post in Poland with the State Department and is staying with my Grandma. He's been helping her go through all of her stuff, and shared with us at Christmas dinner an old San Antonio newspaper article called, "Body to Science Called Realistic Way to Go," featuring my Dad's Grandpa, Hubert Delaney. Here are my favorite excerpts:

Although Delaney certainly isn't against philanthropy or helping the field of medical science along, it wasn't basically philanthropy that led him to donate his body to medical science.

It was money.

Delaney reports that under the agreement his widow won't have any funeral or burial expenses in connection with his death. The medical school, he said, will pay all the costs of transportation and costs incident to the preparation of his body for the medical stint.

That can come to a sizable sum, Delaney avers. He pointed out that a body in a coffin costs double the fare in transportation rates.

Two factors primarily triggered Delaney to will his body to medicine. The best-selling "The High Cost of Dying" started him thinking, and a short stint as a cemetery lot salesman after his retirement transferred his thoughts into action.

...

"I listened to salesman sell people cemetery lots in the shade, and I wondered what difference it could make after you're dead," Delaney observes.

But Delaney admits he had been thinking of ways of beating the undertaker long before he took the medial school route. Seven years ago when he and his wife took a cruise from New Orleans to Europe aboard a freighter with no doctor aboard, he told her if he died enroute, he wanted "to be sewn in a canvas and thrown overboard."

"I told her I didn't want to be carted around the world dead in a freighter," Delaney reports.

A Catholic, Delaney reports he checked out his after-death plans with his parish priest and that it has his okay.

"When people get married, they should prepare for dying," Delaney said.

...

Delaney didn't make any points with his personal physician when he suggested after his (Delaney's) death that the doctor go by and see what mistakes he had been making, if any, in his treatment.

"I just thought it might teach him something," Delaney chortles.

Pretty funny stuff. There's also a type-writer produced letter he wrote to my Grandma and her sister. The best part:

I have been writing to congressman, senators, and influential people all over the country asking them to pressure Congress to put a limit ON THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ASSETS THAT ANY ONE PERSON MAY HAVE AT ANY ONE TIME IN HIS LIFE WHETHER THAT LIMIT IS ONE MILLION OR FIFTY MILLION JUST SO SOME LIMIT IS SET. It may be raised or lowered as seen fit. As to birth control I am for quality control. Anyone contemplating marriage should submit his health record and if his or his family record shows any incurable diseases, insanity, or pronounced physical defects he must submit to an operation so he or she could not bring children in the world so I am with the Pope on birth control. I might add the latter suggestion of mine was published in the paper here and some guy called me Hitler and Kay told me if he hadn't she would have so you know how she stands."

three scenes from school today: a good day

We have this one student who has a learning disability and is really self-conscious about it. He's got this really out-going personality, and he's constantly making sure that everybody in the room knows that he's smart. The other day he was bragging to me about how large his vocabulary is, so we decided to capitalize on his large vocabulary, his loud personality, and his need for academic affirmation. We've got him teaching his classmates a vocabulary word a day. He writes it on the board, gives them the definition, and asks them to come up with synonyms. Then, he chooses one volunteer to write a sentence on the board using that word. Today, his word was bamboozle. The volunteer he chose wrote, "Ms. Dahlke and Ms. Janney bamboozled (student name) into thinking that he in charge of something big."

---

Our students have been learning to do narrative writing by writing family stories. One of the things about the assignment that's been tripping them up is that they need to write from the perspective of someone other than themselves. In other words, they can't be the narrators of their stories. So to help them practice playing around with perspective today, we reviewed the events in "The Three Little Pigs," and then held a "press conference" about the disappearance of three little pigs. Each class period, four students volunteered to be the Big Bad Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf's grandmother, a relative of the Pigs, and a police officer on the case. The rest of the students questioned them. It was hilarious. In one class period, when the the students asked the police officer what he found at the scene of the crime, he launched into a monologue: "Well, I was licking the donut glaze off of my fingers when I got out of my car and found the Wolf. I thought, 'Mmm... He smell like bacon. Sweet swiiiiine... smelling so diviiiiine.' So I say, 'Wolf, what happened to all the cribs? They all gone, Wolf. You goin' to jail!'" Over the sound of all of us dying laughing, he goes, "Thank you, I'll be here all week. Actually, I'll be here all year."

---

I'm teaching an after-school version of my class for an alternative education program for kids that need to learn in a different kind of setting than the regular 50 minutes, 4 minutes, 50 minuts, 4 minutes, 50 minutes, 4 minutes deal. At the end of each session, I have to walk the students out. So I was walking the last kid out, and he needed to stop at his locker. He put all of his materials away, and was like, "Dang, I need a bookbag." I told him that I have an extra one in my classroom that I can give him. And he goes, "Oh, thanks. But let's keep it between me and you that you gave it to me." I thought that maybe there was some rule that I didn't know about that prohibited us from providing those kinds of things for the kids, so I said, "Oh, why?" And he goes, "Because I got a rep to protect."

"It's great to be back in America!"

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divine intervention

This note was attached to some student work that was left in my school mailbox by a student who was out on suspension.

good taste

My grammar school crush (whom I hope does not read this blog because I'm still embarrassed about how much unwanted attention I sent in his direction as an eighth grader) sent me this link today: http://www.joe-biden.ytmnd.com/

Oh my gosh.

hilarious! (but also smart and thorough?)

So Sydney, my friend and colleague, had her students annotating a poem in class. One student forgot to turn it in, and so sent it to Syd, but couldn't remember her first name. Sydney's last name is Azzi. Check out the recipients of this email: