the eventfulness of the last few days started with hippos refraining from flinging their poo at us and ended with the some of the soberest silliness ever to grace the haphazard house (which, if you don't know already, is chez moi)

it all started on friday during an adventure to the zoo with my lovely charges (what a weird word), h. (2yrs old) and l. (4yrs old). after climbing around the creepily decorated zoomazium (the all-seasons play area at the zoo) and wishing i was small or the giant fake tree with the swirly-slide snaking through the middle was much bigger, we ventured out to eat lunch and find some animals. we were at the zoo after all. it had already been over 2 hours so i let l. pick two animals to visit (h. is still a bit too young for the complexity of this decision). she chose the hippos and the farm (which is technically more than one animal but i'm just the nanny so i get to have flexy rules).
so we meandered through a few different exhibits in the "african savanna" that contained the hippos. the sadness (mine, not theirs) began to set in after we visited the giraffes...they were wandering listlessly outside (it was like 40 degrees outside! savannah my ass). later a friend told me that the giraffes at the zoo have arthritis so they don't move much. i hurried them along, eager to leave the misery emanating from these restless prisoners, pasting on a fake smile and deliberating how much to say if l. asked me what was wrong. i mean i remember what it's like to be a kid and how fun the zoo is and i don't want to ruin that for her—what good will it do anyway?
next are the hippos. l.'s attitude seems to have shifted a bit—to a mixture of nervousness and excitement. i'm excited too since i don't remember the last time i saw a hippo (pretty sure the boise zoo didn't have any). there are two huge creatures bobbing in the water and, like most of the other zoo creatures, not moving much. we walk along the path to another viewing spot and notice one of them slowly swimming toward us, wiggling its ears. now i distinctly remember my mother warning me that hippos wiggle their ears when they are angry (such an essential piece of information for surviving in idaho) so i'm just a tiny bit worried. l. tugs at me and asks, "are they going to fling poo at us?" only phased for a moment (you get used to out-of-the-blue-questions with a 4-year-old), i reply "how would they do that? they don't have hands..only really big paws." without missing a beat she responds, now covering her ears and backing away in terror, "with their tails!"
now, counter to her representation on this blog (see previous post about the wind), l. is not a timid child. she is known for being the "tougher" of the girls at school (a very gendered label if you ask me but i didn't say it) and just earlier that day she pulled some kick-ass self-defense moves when some kid grabbed her at the zoomazium. and she has no fear of falling when she clambers all over the playground. but i think that poo is a sensitive subject for her—see she's not potty-trained to poo in the toilet yet (pee yes, poo no). did i mention that she's 4? or that her 2-yr-old brother has already pooped in the toilet twice?
but i digress.
turns out the hippo is not swimming toward us, per se, but toward the spout of water spewing from the rock near where we are standing. it opens its fucking huge mouth (see exhibit A, reenactment courtesy google images) and drinks some water. i am fascinated. really, top to bottom the open mouth is at least 4 feet tall. it has two huge tusks, one of which is laying horizontally in its mouth. its tongue looks like a giant slimy sea creature. l., on the other hand, refuses to believe me that it will not fling poo at us and is begging me to leave. i'm in a weird state—in utter awe at this creature and its closeness and power and bewilderment at her fear. i would understand if she was afraid of the big open mouth (about the same size as her body) or the giant tusks, but poo? i ask where she heard this and she says that she overheard another kid say it last time she was at the zoo. maybe she's confusing hippos with monkeys? after watching a minute more i reluctantly leave with her to check out the kimono dragons..which i reassure her are not the fire-breathing kind.

that evening, after an exhausting day, i pedaled like the wind to westlake for critical mass. i met up with some pals and enjoyed gawking at the costumes (halloween ride!), which included the entire cast of alice and wonderland and a tandem turned into a pirate ship (a big painted wooden board was attached to either side). we didn't ride for long though 'cause we broke off to grab food before seeing Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps.

what an amazing show. check out clips here and here. it included, but by far was not limited to, fort-building, story-telling, beer-chugging, nekked-getting, aerial acrobatics, and temporary-tattooing. his stories shifted from hilarious to horrific to heart-warming to disturbing, and somehow the shifting tones made sense..they weren't forced or awkward. they just were. highly recommended—not sure where he's performing next but i'll let ya know.

then (still the same night, mind you) s. and i went ice skating up north at the highland ice arena. by now it's like 10pm and we don't get there 'till like 10:45 but they don't close 'till midnight. so i haven't been ice skating since i was like 12, when my fam used to go up to sun valley. my mom was really into watching figure skating on the olympics and we would usually watch with her. and we got to see bryan boitano and kristi yamaguchi skate at this little rink in sun valley. luckily bodies retain memories better than minds and my feet and legs basically knew what to do. it was so fun and i used all these muscles that i'm not used to using. before we left s. tried to steal pizza from 500 missing christians. hehe, ask and i'll tell you the story.

so then saturday i got to make a yummy stir fry for dinner with the homemade tempeh that my housemate, b., made. a bit freaky (what with the fuzzy looking white mold growing all over it—that's what makes it tempeh) but scrumptious nonetheless.

i quickly packed the steaming hot food into glass jars (didn't have time to eat) and pedaled like the wind (but less so than before 'cause it was uphill) to ballard to meet s. (another housemeat—oohh i like that typo, housemates, you shall now be housemeat) for a show. the performers were amanda from dresden dolls (check the link, it's a beautiful site) and estradasphere at this amazing new venue called 608. these guys, estradasphere, just moved up here from santa cruz (where they were apparently pretty "big"). mmm, violin. the venue looks like maybe used to be a bar but a bunch of folks live there now. check out this tour of the space:


phew, okay there's more that i initially planned on 'talking' about like sunday's secret cafe for CCEJ and our house's crafternoon, but ya know what? the extent of this post is daunting me and it's my blog and i'll do what i want to, even if it's not what i initially planned. harrumph. plus once i finish this giant post, i can talk about other things.

oh, and i want go watch buffy before the kid wakes up. **

ever heard of wind anxiety?

'cause the four-year-old (l.) that i nanny/babysit has it.

i had an inkling of her concern but didn't know the force of her worry until a week ago, after a trip to the seattle children's museum. while parking, i noticed a raggedy pillow in middle of the parking space. i made a comment about it as i parked over it. "oh, that's funny there's a pillow under our car." l. got really worried about it and asked me to retrieve it. she was worried that it would blow away. i reassured her that it wouldn't go anywhere while we were parked above it and she forgot about it. but as we returned to the car after our face-painting, scary improv-theatre-for-kids adventure, she asked about the pillow again. she wanted to take it home. this raggedy, dirty, probably oily pillow didn't quite fit the aesthetic of their ginormous-house-on-a-cliff-overlooking-the-sound. so i again reassured her that as we drove away, someone that actually needed the pillow would find it and put it to good use. as i'm trying to buckle her and her two-year-old brother into their car-seats, she is getting panicky, begging me to move the pillow so someone else doesn't park there and smoosh it. really, on the verge of a tantrum. after a couple minutes of back and forth i acquiesce to the tears in her eyes. i back out of the parking space, move to the one next to it and move the pillow to the base of a tree next to the sidewalk. as we're finally pulling out of the parking space she's repeatedly asking me if the pillow will blow away.
the other day i rode by that spot and the pillow was gone. i will tell her that someone who needed it took the pillow to sleep on.

so then today (un-seattle-ably gorgeous weather, 65 degrees and sunny!) i'm trying to get the kids outside. she notices the trees moving a bit in the wind and, at first, refuses to go outside (just into the backyard). i finally convince her to come kick a soccer ball around with me but she fixates on the idea of the wind blowing everything away again. this is not just a curious, inquisitive four-year-old concern. she's getting really upset and panicky about a plastic kids basketball hoop, that has already blown over, fretting that it will get picked up and carried over the bank. she's worried the soccer ball will blow away as we are playing. we collect leaves and twigs for art making and later i suggest that we put the extras that we didn't use back outside and she frets that they will blow away. yeah, the dead leaves that we just picked off the ground cannot go back there because they will blow away into the ocean. she asks if they will dissolve in the water. i say i don't know probably (trying to figure out in my head if she is worried that they will or that they won't). she keeps asking and i have no idea what happens to leaves when they get blown into the ocean.

later, we walk by an overturned plastic chair in a yard in capitol hill. as soon as i see it and hear her say "jesse..." with an anxious tone, i know her question. "will that chair blow away?"

you think your youth a permanent truth

saw itty bitty titty committee last night at the closing show of the seattle queer, oops i mean lesbian and gay film festival. many mixed feelings still rolling around in my head. it was entertaining and full of hot folks and some good sex scenes (though after seeing shortbus the bar has been set pretty high for good sex scenes in non-porn, feature-length films). also super problematic. my hesitancy about ranting on about how fucked up this movie was (which i would have done in a second without blinking an eye a year or two ago) comes from my thoughts around context, perspective and complexity.

first here's the trailer:


so the plot is that Anna, this 18-year-old "latina baby-dyke" (as she's dubbed in the press about the movie), works as a receptionist at a plastic surgery clinic. one day after work she catches a obnoxiously button-nosed tiny blonde (as she's dubbed by me) spraying feminist graffiti on the front of her office. Anna, the ignorant baby-dyke is radicalized and educated by a cadre of radical white queers. see what i mean? here's some breakdown...

racist/white supremacist - although the main character is a QWOC (queer woman of color), all the other main folks are white (or pass as white). we do see one instance of Anna dealing with racism but it's coming from another woman of color ("does she speak English?") - nice diversion. and this "radical" group is taking all these legal risks in a way that only privileged white kids can - with abandon and ignore-ance of racial profiling and the violent role that police play in so many communities of color. lots more i could say but i wanna move on to

ageist - this is a huge theme of the film. the subtitle is "every generation needs a new revolution." the main characters are all 18-25 and the one who's not (the partner of button-nose blonde) is made to look super old(er than she really is). you can tell that her wrinkles are exaggerated with make-up and she and her mainstream non-profit running friends are some of the enemies in the film. now don't get me wrong, i hate the non-profit-industrial-complex as much as the next guy but to draw this brightline between the radical (young, hot, angry queers) and the liberal (old, ugly, conformist, pant-suit-wearing lesbians) doesn't really do any of us any good (see the title of this post).

tongue-in-cheek radical politics - so yay there's all this radical name- and quote-dropping throughout the film but it's so surface and cliche. i feel like the directors were like ok we wanna appeal to a wide(r) range of folks so we're gonna throw in all this "radical" stuff for the young folks to keep it hip but really we're gonna be making fun of their passion and anger and cast it as a silly phase of youth. blarg, am i making sense (to folks who've seen it at least)?

hmm, my rant could go on and on and on but here's what i hinted at above...yes, it's fucked up, yes there's a lot of oppression justified and perpetuated and some represented, and (not but) this shit is everywhere. that doesn't justify the gross stuff in the movie, it contextualizes it. on the same note, saying "oppression is everywhere" should never shut down folks' legit criticism and feelings. and i don't really wanna get on a high horse and preach about how fucked up this movie was. (hehe, may be too late for that huh?) it just feels pointless and presumptuous of me. i'd rather have conversations about the complexity of this movie than immediately write it off.

so, go see it if you can. ask me questions (whether or not you've seen it). share your thoughts. this would also make for an interesting inter-generational discussion group.

good beer, sarah silverman, and idahomos

had a loverly evening with my sis drinking the yummiest beer from Dogfish Head and watching sarah silverman's jesus is magic.

highlights include: (warning not work-safe unless you have headphones)

and

and

the evening was concluded with this riviting interview with idahomo senator larry craig

oh, and on the gay note...dumbledore is gay!!!

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

did you watch Aladdin as a kid? watch this

thunderstorm in seattle?!

so i'm chillin' while the kid naps and all of a sudden the sky starts dumping buckets. yeah yeah, it's seattle, i'm used to the rain but not this. then the huge claps of thunder start. plus i just happen to be in a mansion on a cliff overlooking the sound so there is nothing to shield the wind. it's amazing. i'm enjoying the lull of the pounding rain when, oh shit, kid wakes up. screams and cries till i come up there then doesn't want anything i offer. comfort and rocking? hell no. bottle of milk? how dare i! cuddly animals? ejected from the crib immediately. so, i leave him to cry (which is really hard) and now (maybe) he's back asleep. i actually think that he wasn't really awake just in this semi-conscious daze. this is what my days are like.

nope, crying again. ::sigh::

you know you're from boise when...

(found this online. posting this mainly for my sisters but maybe the rest of you'll get a taste of my hometown. some of this i totally don't get 'cause it's more recent then when i lived there. i left the kinda fucked up things in there so you get an idea of boise mentality)

• you change from your heater to the AC in your car on the same day!
• Everyone's dad either works for HP, Micron, or owns a construction company and the one who owns the construction company is the richest one of them all.
• You can spot a Centennial girl by how big her "Utah Poof" is.
• You know what the "Utah Poof" is.
• You know what real emo kids look like, and know that they all hang out at the Venue.
• You know a family that has more than 8 kids and don't think it's unusual.
• You've played fugitive downtown. (never heard of it but it sounds fun)
• You can drive past a multimillion dollar mansion in Eagle, then see a trailer and an old farm house right next to it.
• You know someone who camped outside the Krispy Kreme when it opened.
• You see a 2C driver and steer clear.
• You can spot someone from the North End in a second by their apparent lack of bathing, shaving, and Birkenstocks.
• You think the Boise Weekly is ultra liberal.
• You know who the "Boys of Boise" are and that they congregate outside The Flying M.
• You have called a van a "Mormon Assault Vehicle."
• You went to the Old Boise Penitentiary for a field trip in elementary school. totally did this
• You participated in the 4th Grade Rendezvous and still think it's great.
• You were devastated or deeply excited when the River Festival was shut down.
• As a member of BARF you helped get the River Festival shut down.
• You still get excited when you see the hot air balloons early in the morning. one of my favorite things about going home
• You are terrified to drive through Nampa/Caldwell because you are scared you are going to be shot…even though it's safer than other cities suburbs. ugh, no...i was born in nampa
• You were pissed when they banned alcohol on the Boise River, so you hid it in Gatorade bottles.
• You know someone who says they made it back from Bogus (the ski resort) in 12 minutes at night when it was snowing.
• You go to Oregon to buy good fireworks.
• You know what "The Inversion" is.
• You get pissed off when people drive badly in the rain even though everyone does it.
• You meet someone from U of I and automatically assume they are a drunk.
• You have been to the Hookah bar and had someone accuse you of smoking weed because of it.
• You have seen "the blue field" a million times and probably played Optimist football on it and you don't understand people in other states fascination with it.
• You get totally annoyed when people call it BOIZE instead of Boise.
• You actually look forward to Boise doing fireworks in the park and you fight for a prime spot near the Julia Davis band stand.
• You have driven the downtown cruise and realized how lame it was but did it anyway.

i wanna be a robot superhero

this, of course has nothing to do with me being a three.

found out my grandpa in connecticut may have had a heart attack today. they're not totally sure yet. this would be his third i think. last time the docs said they didn't think he'd survive another one. my mom just talked to him on the phone (from the ER) and (of course) he was joking with her and acting like everything is fine. i swear he'll make light till the end. he can't walk and might have some internal bleeding. they're still doing tests.

i kinda freaked out. i haven't talked to him since last november. what do i say? yeah, still doing childcare. not using my gazillion dollar degree. not using the brain that y'all are so impressed with. i can't even write him a letter. thought about him lots tho. i think about a lot of people that i don't stay in touch with. why can't i have a little cell phone implanted in my brain that texts someone when i think about them? automatically, with no jesse-insecurity-override. that will be part of my robot powers.

didn't help that i currently have killer cramps and a monstrous tension headache. see, a robot superhero wouldn't have these pesky organs. hmm, 'cept maybe i'd have a few human organs like skin so people would still wanna cuddle with me.

i wanted to be someone he can be proud of. he was proud of me when i went to that schmancy university. probably thought i'd be a nice lawyer or doctor or at least a professor and maybe make enough money to help him not live in gov't housing. instead what am i doing? see, if i didn't have these pesky non-robot, non-superhero, human desires like wanting to be happy or having radical values, i could put up with the culture of law school. or i could put up with working the hellish jobs that could pay off my student loans. i think one of my superhero powers would be a contextual gender: depending on the context, everyone would perceive me as the most credible and intelligent human ever. my clothes would also be contextually impressive and they wouldn't cost any money.

well, at least i have friends that don't think that i'm a failure 'cause i'm crying and staying home instead of stuffing it all in and being productive. hmm, not like my body would let me do that right now anyway...but i can have robot superhero dreams can't i?

really i'm fine. everything is great. no problems here. did i mention i'm not a three?!

seattle queer film festival

so i just attended my first film at the seattle queer film festival - local produce: shorts.

it was horrible. not just bad in the way that many shorts have a tendency to be, nooooo, teeth gnashingly boring sliding into really fucked-up.

so i went to the wrong theatre at first and missed the first one, travel queeries, which was done by someone that i know. i was bummed 'cause it was the main film i wanted to see but you can get the idea by watching the trailer. in the 8 minutes it played (it's a work-in-progress), it was probably more radical and entertaining than all of the other films combined.

as for the shorts i suffered through, let's start with taken.

the plot was decent. two women reunite after 10? years apart. they were both prostitutes together and friends. later it is revealed that they also shared unrequited love. one is black, the other white. their friendship ended when they were both arrested and the white woman used her privilege to get away with only 2 years in prison while ratting on her friend who got 10 years. the black woman reveals that she has AIDS and they discuss that. so fairly interesting plot right? problem is the whole 20 minutes of the film take place in a moving car. just back and forth dialogue for 20 minutes. it was like eavesdropping on an intense confrontation that's interesting at first but then gets boring, but you can't leave! after the first 10 minutes i (and i think most of the audience) couldn't wait for it to end.

it gets progressively worse from there.

next was grizzley men (which is not even spelled correctly!). what could have been a funny and clever mockumentary of bear culture was stupid and in the end offensive. some dude that is a parody of a rural, working class resident of puyallup spends every summer in the wilds of capitol hill, protecting and documenting the "bears" in their natural habitat (read: the cuff, the eagle, etc.). in the end the dude is captured by the bears and the only thing left behind is a tape of his last words. he is saying "no, no, don't take my pants off, no, stop" then a spanking sound and cries of pain which become cries of pleasure. the audience is laughing the whole time.
now i fear coming across as someone on a high horse, judging bdsm culture and whining about my offended sensibilities. but i actually have no problem with consensual violence (though in my mind that's an oxymoron b/c violence implies lack of consent, so maybe i should say consensual simulated violence), in fact i enjoy it myself from time to time. ;D my annoyance with the film becomes ire when bdsm culture is misrepresented as the coercion of consent. fucked up.

next was we are...glbtq. not bad...for a mainstream straight audience who need to be educated about issues around queer youth. which i'm not saying is not okay for this festival. just boring for me. it's about the child welfare (foster) system and how queer youth are overrepresented because they are often kicked out of their homes. i overheard that it was actually made for dshs as a guide for better understanding of "lgbtq" youth. just lotsa stuff i've heard before and annoying yet typical attempts at "mainstreaming," i.e. we're just like you, we're normal, it's important to come out because hiding things about your identity is destructive psychologically (instead of challenging the heterosexist assumptions that construct the closet in the first place, blarg). so maybe i'm just jaded. it was definitely the least bad of all the films.

the description of the next film, too big for this town, says it all: " Billy Bob fought the battle of the bulge, and won!" but i'm gonna say more...wtf is up with a glorified infomercial rife with fat phobia and the obsession with image that saturates mainstream "gay" culture. but, like the others, it starts innocuously enough. this guy starts telling his story, with images from his childhood, about how fat he was and how he always got ridiculed (and put in the attic at school!?) for it. he goes on to say how disgusting he was and then instead of healing and challenging the bullshit messages in our culture he discovers the stomach clamp (or something). it is like a gastric bypass but less invasive and just clamps your stomach down. then with the help of his buddies that also had the procedure done, he lost a bunch of weight and now "looks great" and is oh so happy! it ends with a nice little disclaimer about his "testimonial" and how they are not liable for the product. meh? why the hell is this at the queer film fest?

ok so so far it's been bad, weird, and mildly offensive. (did i tell you it gets worse?)

[warning: disturbing violence and rape described below]

the grand finale is rock zombie, which i was hoping would be a funny and bad zombie short complete with the expected gratuitous violence and bad acting. but from the first scene i was deliberating whether or not to walk out (which i eventually did). it starts with a woman being dragged into a room by a guy (if you can judge gender by clothes, which was kinda implied by the genre). she is screaming and struggling then killed and turned into a zombie. i'm like "ick" but i know it's a zombie flick so it's kinda inevitable. then there's this goth-ish rock band of three guys with pretty make-up. one of them sees the zombie woman outside and thinks she's a prostitute. he chases after her with a ten-dollar bill saying "come on baby" until she turns on him and growls. he sees she's a zombie and runs back to the band. other folks get turned into zombies and there's chasing and eating and blood flying. like i said, expected. another guy in the band gets a gun and shoots the heads off of some of the zombies. but one of the zombies kills the first guy (the one who chased the "prostitute") and he turns into a zombie. then he smiles menacingly and chases after the same zombie (cause now he's dead so it's not gross to want to fuck a dead woman), while she runs from him. he somehow gets his hands on the gun, shoots off her legs, grins at his success, jumps on top of her and proceeds to rape her. people in the audience were actually laughing at the point. here is where i left. and fuck you if you think i'm being oversensitive 'cause it's just a b-movie and that's part of the genre. really.

now i don't know if seattle just has some really shitty filmmakers or if the queer film fest folks just suck at picking films, but i was sorely disappointed. at the worst i expected boring and sappy shorts, but never this.

::sigh::

oh and mercury is in retrograde again. arg.

hello

new blog. no disclaimers or promises. just me when i feel like writing. i like comments too.