Monthly Archives: April 2003

_You are Worthless_

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This is the best self-help book I have ever read. No matter how sorry for myself I feel, this book snaps me out of it.

There are sections about your love life, your pets, your friend and yourself. And they say it all, right out there.

Things like:
No one really likes you.

If your pet were bigger than you, it would consider you prey.

Your significant other will never be as attracted to you as they are to a person they saw on TV once.

I’m sure a psychologist could use many multi-syllabic words to explain why, but the simple fact is, I love this book.

I grab it whenever I am overcome with too much angst or self-pity. It truly works.

“M. Butterfly”

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Hwang is a genius. That is all I have to say. This play is so insightful, cuts so close to the bone. It pulls away veils for anyone that encounters it.

I first read it in book form, and I was in love with it immediately. I was really lucky, because right after I read it, I was able to hear David Henry Hwang speak.

He seems so genuine and open. He wrote this play, but he is also kind of impressed with how it turned out. Often artists are humbled by their muse.

The basic story is a true one, of a French diplomat who carries on an affair with a Chinese person for 20 years. Whoops! The Chinese person was a man, not a woman, and even more whoops, a spy.

Gallimard, the Frenchman, was tried for treason.

Hwang takes this story and unfolds it like an accordion. There is so much to it, and he pulls it apart so nicely.

I remember him saying, during the Q&A period, that he himself had a lot of empathy for all the characters in his play. He said he understood the Asian perspective, but he was a man as well, and he understood the desire to objectify women.

I just heard John Lithgow and B.D. Wong play these parts. Lithgow gave a gorgeous performance, and that confirmed my opinion of his genius. But I hadn’t heard of Wong before. He was SO GOOD. The rold of the mistress is a very demanding role. Wow. He was good.

This play is really necessary for everyone to encounter. It will make you check your assumptions.

His Girl Friday

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This movie was FAST! they didn’t stop for a minute.

The girl reporter, what they would have called it then in the 40s, was romanticizing a regular housewife life. She had picked up some dumb cluck man and was going to settle down with him.

But she had to separate herself from the ex-husband/editor/boss that still seemed to think he was in her life.

Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant have so much chemistry, the dumb cluck has no credibility at all.

I love the heroine. She is in so much control. She is instantly in charge of every change in the situation, and works it all out to her favor.

A lot of classic movie irritate me, because the females are so beautiful and behave so impossibly. But this woman not only does things that I might do, she does them better than I would.

Bend it like Beckham

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How does an Indian female, just finishing up high school (or whatever they call it in England), get away from her parent’s expectations and play soccer?

This movie was so great! A chick flick about sports. And it had a killer soundtrack. There was the fights over a boy, the struggle with parents, the shopping and clothes that made your eyes pop (Indian clothing is really elaborate).

There was a lot of pressure on Jess, the Indian heroine, to follow the traditional roles for females in her family. Her interest in boys seems to be mostly as opponents or teammates on the playing field. Some of the other Indian girls, including her sister, are much more interested in boys. Jess’s mother keeps wanting to teach her how to cook a full Indian dinner.

I loved the wedding scenes, when Jess’s sister finally does get married. Oh man! I am now filled with a desire to buy my own sari.

The other female lead, Juliet, shows that it’s not just Indian traditions that want the stereotypical female roles for the daughters in the family. Juliet’s mother is very distraught at her daughter’s preference for sports rather than lacy underthings.

Women are still struggling for recognition in the sports world. Somehow, it seems to be more complicated for us. Bend it Like Beckham adresses a lot of those problems with humor and honesty.

COLOR HUNGER

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This morning, I woke up and I had to wear something colorful. The need was so intense, I could not ignore it.

Even though I was swept along on this wave of lust for bright color, I was confused by it. This has never happened before. It easy enough to recognize that–there is nothing in my closet that could fulfill the need.

Recently, I’ve stepped away from all-black-all-the-time to embrace colors such as beige or muted greens. Blue, there is a little navy or discreet blue in there.

As a teenager, I was very enamoured of the deepness of black. Black was so all-ecompassing. Black was simple, black was stark. This was the era of neon colors, so I had a few pieces of Red or Electric blue. But I loved to wear black and the other colors, becuase it set off the contrast. It was another kind of starkness.

Living in the San Fracisco area encouraged the my love of black. Black pooled in my drawers, and sulked in my closet. I laughed about it being difficult to find a particular item of clothing, because the black all blended together.

I learned to avoid cotton dyed black. It faded. Wool, or other fabrics held the deepness of the color better.

So where has this lust for color today come from?

It has been coming slowly, I recognize that. I’ve been lingering over the patterns and flower shades on the sales racks. Not quite taking the plunge, but thinking about it.

Why now?

Am I the pawn of fashion’s will? Have the designers dictated that Colors are now the thing, and I pant after them like Pavlov’s dogs?
Am I being influenced by this palm-tree and porsche city? The flowers growing year round, the huge billboards shouting for my attention with bright splashes? The dabs of mandatory paint on the feminine toes everywhere through sandals?Or, to be Alanis about it, had I finally come to a healthy place where I was comfortable with complications in my clothing? Maybe the huge numbers of people in my new city were intimidating, and I wanted to stand out.

These thoughts sifted through the cracks of my consciousness as I single-mindedly shopped for the brightest, loudest piece of color I could fasten to my body.

I wanted something that would announce my prescence boldly without me saying a word. I wanted to stand out and make heads turn.

I found the most amazing little red dress, with purple and orange and hot pink palm leaves in a pattern all over it.

And I really don’t care. I love it.

“The Young Man from Atlanta” by Horton Foote

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More LA Theater Works!

This performance reminded me of “The Dollhouse” a little bit. Lily Dale was so tremendously protected and naive. I personally cannot imagine a life where I would never need to spend any money whatsoever. Maybe in Texas they have worked out a system where the wives can go about their business and never need to see the color of money.

Will Kidder and his wife Lily Dale have lost their 37 year-old son to a drowning. They are still mourning his loss when Will loses his job.

That’s practically the whole story. Oh, except that the roomate of their son keeps hanging around.

Sounds homoerotic to me. Their son lives at the YMCA with a “roomate.” YOU connnect the dots.

Anyway, the couple has to come to terms with what they have of their life. I guess it’s supposed to be set in the 50s. I just cannot imagine a life like that. I have so much more freedom and possibility than Lily Dale.

She calls her husband “Daddy”, which is also creepy.

It did keep my interest though. I was waiting to see what happened. Shirley Knight, the actress who plays Lily Dale, was nominated for a Tony for her onstage performance of this role. She did stick to it, that’s for sure.

The world has changed a lot.

I’m a bunny, right?…All we do is hip hop!

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Who says the bunny can’t jam? You’re buggin’
If you don’t know who I am, You’re buggin’
If Bugs ain’t the coolest in the land, you’re buggin’

EEeeehh..we only buggin’

Space Jam sound track is dead on. Most of the songs are really serious songs, and the CD is worth is for them.

I still like when Bugs does the rap at the end. Man, that’s funny. He dead on imitates so many of the hip hop affectations.

Bugs can do it…He’s the rabbit

War makes me sad…So Let’s run off to the hundred acre wood

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There was a guy at work wearing a tigger coat.

“Oh you like Winnie the Pooh?”

“My wife loves him. She has all the movies.”

MOVIES?!

He didn’t even know it was a book. He didn’t care that it was a book.

Poor man.

Winnie is so much cleverer on paper. That’s one of the best things about it, the stories work on a very sophisticated level.

I picked it off the shelf, looking for something to read before I sleep, something that will make me have pleasant dreams.

My copy of A.A. Milne’s book was published in Russia. A student gave it to me as a gift when I was there. She thought I would like to have another book to read in english.

The funny thing about it, is that is has asterisks at the hard to translate bits. In the back, there is a definition of the phrase in Russian. Phrases you wouldn’t expect, like “he lived under the name of Sanders”, and the gender ambiguity of the name “winnie” have to be explained.

Somethings, like “Heffalump” have the explanation saying essentially, “it doesn’t translate.”

It’s nice too, to see a different illustrator’s interpretation of the characters. Disney has permanently stamped his mark on Piglet, Kanga and Rabbit. We cannot concieve of Pooh without the red shirt.

Anyway, that’s just my copy.

Go get your own. Turn off the news and sit down to remember there are pleasant places still.

A World Between

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Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian-Americans

I love classic books, as I’ve already said in other posts. At the same time, I know that there are a ton of incredibly good works of literature that never quite make the hit list.

This book was co-edited by one of my professors in college, Persis Karim, who has become my friend as well. She’s a mover and a shaker, and I didn’t even know she had been involved in this book when we met. She was already on to other things.

Someone else bought it for me as a present.

It’s an anthology, so you can open it up to anywhere and just read for a little bit. Some of the pieces are a little hard to understand.

But some of them grab me by the throat, they are so beautiful and evocative of things I don’t understand. Some of them make me gasp and cry.

I’m really glad I have this book. I think I will eventually read everything in it. It wouldn’t be somehting I want to just sit down and read straight through. It’s too strong for that.