Response to Enron movie

in 2005, four years after Enron Executives were facing trials and thousands of jobs were lost, Alex Gibney's documentary, Enron: The Smartest People in the Room was released. The film is not that of the fall of a colossal company, but a complex mixture of America's psychology. Each executive of Enron has their own role in this film of American drama involving greed, money, gambling, adrenaline and the unobstructed need for the fulfillment of their dreams. Like other American dreams, these idealistic notions were those that skewed and destroyed them in the end. Around an interesting mix of music that ranged from saucy blues to metal, Gibney centers the film around the two key players in the scandal, president Ken Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling.

The film makes several analogies to the idealism of the company being a kind of wonderland, with "cheshire cat smile[s]," as one of the interviewees described Andrew Fastow. The film, through aesthetics and subjects accentuated an upside down face to the company whose high expectations with gambling on the economy, and failure to admit their own downfall became lethal. The upside down shots and faces in the movie comment on the alternative motive to every face. The documentary does not preach the apocalypse, but harps upon the power and evil within humans that, if applied, can not only destroy societies, people and the government, but can destroy the self. On a larger level Gibley encourages the audience to look at themselves and their actions for what they are, things can be too good.

Abramovic

In a movie lit square stage a woman sits in a bright red dress that falls around her feet and in a cushion way at her bottom. The dress reveals the artist's hands and a slight raindrop shape on the artists back where the long dress is fastened at the neck. The artist sits alone in the space with one other person, across a light brown wooden table. Marina Abromavic is at MoMA until May 31st in a exhibit called "The Artist is Present."

My first reaction of the title was that it evoked a kind of comfort- the artist is here- just here. And when I walked into MoMA's large exhibit space there she was- just there. Video cameras were the first things I saw at the ceiling, and tons of people taking pictures. People take turns reenacting a similar performance that Abromavic and her former lover Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen) did called Night Sea Crossing. But instead of Ulay across from her, it is a random group of whoever is willing to wait in line for pretty much the entire day.

The space has a comfortable feeling regardless of the fact that Abromavic is probably aching in more places than one and the tally of days like markings on a prison wall. People sit and wait to look at her for hours and it isn't hard to stay there. To be free to watch her.

The first time I was exposed to Marina Abramavic (though completely subconcsioucly) was with my aunt Pat who lives in Minnesota. When I was 13, she thought it a very important time in my life to watch seasons 4 and 5 of Sex and the City. It was episode 86, in which Carrie goes to a gallery in Chelsea and meets a very attractive Russian man who turns out to be kind of sketchy in the end. In the gallery was a reenactment of Abramavic's The House with an Ocean View in which Abramavic did not eat for 12 days and lived in front of people in an elevated and open 3 rooms. There is a kind of martyrdom in her shows, Abramavic sits in front of countless New Yorkers and tourists, invisibly immersed in pain. In a sick kind of spectacle that comforts the viewer Abramavic seems to say- "its ok, thing hurt but we get through them, because we- as people- are strong." Abramaciv has used her body as her art using it to question physical and mental limitations.

6 Reasons to Love Glee- but not too much

Glee. What are we so happy about? And this is not the kind of peaceful blissful happiness. On the Princeton wordnetweb.edu site the definition of "glee" is "malicious happiness." The television show itself is so good, so utterly, for lack of a better a term, happy, that there must be something wrong.

6 Reasons to Love Glee in a Really Screwed Up Way:

1) Political correctness- You have an asian girl dating a white boy in a wheelchair and a black girl and a gay boy dressing up the sadistic and compulsive coach of the "cheerio" cheerleading squad. These "minorities" in question (the black girl and the gay boy) are being ignored in the glee club and decide to makeover the coach for her favor. They want their peers to really see them.

2) You wish everyone in your high school was that hot- First Lea Michele was in the Broadway show Spring Awakening and now she is in Glee as the leading hotty as well(intimately involved, I might add, with Jonathan Groff). In both a troubled adolescent who deals with sex and song at the same time. Would if high school was filled with such physically developed girls and boys? Wow.

3) Its just a bunch of music videos- Where the hell did music videos go anyway (MTV)?? We need to fill our need of sing along songs and sequenced dance numbers.

4) You wish your high school was that friggin' awesome- No class and when there is class its singing class= awesome

5) You wish you could think of those catch phrases- among many, we have the "Hey William, though I smelled cookies wafting from the ovens of the little elves who live in your hair."

A scripted life would suck but not if you could have phrases like this whenever you wanted them.

6) Why can't we just sing about EVERYTHING?- When everything we think is just as dramatic as a broadway musical, why do we have to hide it? Why can't we just let it out in impeceble harmony?

In short. Glee is good, but too much and you will come away with your world a little grayer in comparison and slight nausea.

Spas: The Harem of the Aughts

A spa carries a certain exotic charm. Spas pride themselves on their strangest looking flowers, the amount of little waterfalls in their lobbies and the array of foreign teas in their selection. The feeling of a spa must have an exclusive eroticism while being inclusive to anyone willing or worthy of a treatment that will better them mentally and physically. Spas were originally the baths of the Romans or the saunas of the Finnish, among other cultures that sought spas as a medical treatment, there is an interesting juxtaposition where spas are not only places to become physically well, but becoming instantly more beautiful. In a time when people only acknowledge instant results, spas seem to have become more repair places than places of healing.

On my way to The Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon on 5th Ave in midtown Manhattan an orchid petal lay on the crosshatching of the subway stairs. The Red Door Spa has recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. I was beginning to wonder if the flower would be a symbol of the skewed sense of beauty I was about to see. The secretary, with a beautiful maquillaged face was animate about the amount of celebrities whom they service. The place had a pristine red and white color scheme. The colors emulated a kind of feminine eroticism and purity all at once. Ironically, the only women there were over 60 and botoxed. "We do a lot of sessions outside of our spa." The Secretary added, "for- privacy reasons." She emphasized the word privacy and smiled. The place was pretentiously both welcoming to me- a young lady who obviously did not have the money to spend there and utterly secretive. Most of the doors were closed. Though they were happy to welcome me around their four floor establishment there was little room for exploration. I left with the place still a mystery to me, the hallways of rooms, caverns of mysterious goings on. The way to beauty, it seemed to say, is a magically exotic secret.

Why do women feel as though they need to spa? Spas are different from salons in that they offer a wider selection of services. People are expected to stay longer in spa, which offer entire days their clients to whom they may offer champagne or food. It is important to regard the different between a day spa and a salon because they have different intentions, while a day spa offers an apparently more “medical” day, the salon just offers beauty treatments. A spa day is a "me" day, it is a day to nurture the self, to come in a mess and leave cleansed. With the naked women lounging in the California spa that my mother took me to when I was 13, I could not help but remember the paintings of the harem women of Delacroix and Ingres. The spa was a place to me that was exclusive to women, and women who wanted to become beautiful. The services within spas have changed over centuries, where the first spas were mineral baths, they have expanded to doing services like botox and anal bleaching. Returning to my memory of the spa in California, I cannot help but think that spas have developed from the Orientalist art of the 17th century. Within the spa, like within the harem, things go on that are forbidden, private and mysterious. A woman can come into a spa one person and, rather than leaving in a cleansed spiritual state, they are leaving in a physically altered state, a physically "perfected" state. In the same way the women of the harem were owned by the men, these women coming to spas, to "treat themselves" are coming to change their bodies to become more aesthetically pleasing to men. The treatments that spas offer now cater to our need for instantaneous gratification. The treatment within the spas have the same mystique, the same decor, even: erotic and secretive. And though women are "doing it for themselves" they come out more reformed to a male gaze Spas will never leave existence, and, what spas where and what they offer is for the most part healthy and important to society. People must be healed through massage and baths. A spa is not something that should offer the instant gratification of transforming oneself physically. If there is confusion between turning a person physically into something that they are not and making them feel as though they are being healed through that process, then we have a problem. Beauty is health, beauty is not the beauty of what the male eye sees peaking through the keyhole of the harem. And spas are right in the sense that beauty must be found within, and the insides of people are very magical and cavernous places.

The Heat Wave from 1929

New Yorkers swarm the streets in large happy groups. Legs are borne once more and little dresses are being worn with no jackets, and even a little sheen of sweat that has risen from the sun's ridiculously pounding heat. No, this is not August, not even close, it's hardly spring. April 7th and it is 90 degrees with a touch of breeze. But barely. What is one to do if the entire spring season is skipped and they have to get out all their summer clothes? It did not seem difficult to let go of tights until the fall, but as fate and weatherchannel.com would have it, the rain will return with a chill 50 something degrees. Sandals can't be worn because manis and pedis haven't been done yet, it's a time of confusion.

So instead people will do well to suck it up and pretend that it is the summer time, with iced coffees and shirts that are so thin that they don't really exist. The last time it was this hot was in 1929. Coincidence? Perhaps. It's either the wretched economy or the loose fitting fashion and stick thin models. It could also be prohibition, similar to the way so many are fighting to legalize weed (and, at least in cali, it looks like their winning.) If the weather is a good indicator of history, this is the beginning of a very complicated time.

This disgusting weather will pass, and in its wake we wait for the real spring to pop its head up, so that we will be able to wear the little sweaters and jackets that we have been waiting to wear again. Everyone will have time to get the manis and pedis they need and ease into summer the way the year should be. But this was an important and rather prophetic time, if you will, and, if you want, take this unusual time as a little echo from the past.

Jessica Simpson: Another Supermodel out to Change the World

Jessica Simpson gained weight in in 2009. On covers of People and US all over there were screams to high heaven about the blasphome, until she turned around and made a TV show based on the negative media attention she received. That made them shut up on a whole different level. "There's a lot of pressure to feel beautiful" she said in the video introducing her new show The Price of Beauty that began airing in March. In her new show she travels around the world "to see what makes a woman in different cultures feel beautiful," she added. For the May issue of Marie Claire magazine that was released Tuesday April 6th she is the cover shot and Marie Claire "au naturel" meaning no makeup or photoshop. Jessica Simpson has gone from being the ditsy blonde in the show Newlyweds, to the blonde bombshell who cared for the world. I am beginning to see a little of Brigitte Bardot's saving the seals deal. After the complete apocalyptic shots of Jessica Simpson as being fat and depressed and all the things the media loves, she decided to do the cover of Marie Claire. Though many of the comments on the pictures complain that it is a lie, that photoshop and mascara can be traced in the photographs.

Stars are in the unfortunate place for having their individuality manufactured for them. Jessica Simpson seemed to have woken up from this world that she had been in with a TV show and a husband and a long career (in pop singing years) in being a female vocalist sex symbol.

Being a celebrity can be used in so many different ways now. And it is this celebrity that has allowed her to accomplish her new goals. Jessica Simpson, without the celebrity she had before would not have been able to do the things she is doing now. Indeed, she may not have even been aware of them because it was the abuse of the media that caused her to look for that deeper, unmanufactured part of her. In a different way from Brigitte Bardot, Jessica Simpson is not leaving the world she had behind, but constantly comparing it to the world she is exploring now. In a video on ABC she describes the show and the transition.

And she will not save the world, the way Bardot will not save the seals. Possibly her fans will not take her seriously, no one is expected to believe a Marie Claire magazine cover. But this doesn't seem to matter when the journey is not really for the audience anymore.

A New Face For Men

In the mess of the 5th Avenue H&M the Thursday before Easter weekend there were countless languages flung around like the clothes hanging off the racks, or on the floor. I noticed a man speaking Spanish and whipping his shirt on and off to try different polos on in the men's section. Though I understand his refusal to wait on the mile long line to the dressing room, I noticed that his perfectly bare chest, all tan, did not in fact, match the color of his face, which was powdered beige. I have seen makeup on men many times before, but never a man who looked like this. He did not look gay, he did not have a punk rock look, he was utterly "normal" looking with khaki pants and a boring brown shirt. Beneath the powder I saw no blemishes or disfigurations, he was straight and wearing a thick layer of beige foundation. Why would he want to wear makeup and when would a boy think it appropriate to wear makeup?

Foundation is a funny thing that is more difficult to put on than it looks. Foundation must be as close to one's skin color as possible and it absolutely must not be binged on. A foundation binged face looks clownish and completely contradictory to its purpose.

The first men that come to mind when discussing men's makeup is the eyeliner of pop/punk rockers like Pete Wentz or the Marilyn Manson. News anchormen and stars wear makeup. It is important for when a person who is going to be on screen or having pictures taken of them, or, if they just want to be noticed. But foundation is a different phenomenon, and when worn with no plan to be on screen is another interesting situation.

Men wearing makeup is a similar type of pampering to the way a woman would wear

makeup, it is not for a show, rather than how one looks at themselves in the mirror, or admires

a short glance in the upcoming window. Men use makeup to feel good about how they look.

The way one would go to get a massage or their nails done, but makeup is an interesting form

of pampering that is solely visual and not necessarily "healthy" or reenergizing.

It has been a popular belief, however, that a man wearing makeup is either gay or ridiculously out

of touch to the way they are portraying themselves. However, we Americans seem to be the

ones out of the loop. It has been more acceptable in Europe for a man to wear makeup than in the United States. The trend for men wearing makeup is becoming more and more popular, and concealer, no less. Forbes Magazine wrote an article about men's wearing makeup and how the importance of grooming has become more and more important for men and women. Makeup is now taking a crucial role in this cleaning routine. Websites and companies have been created just for men's makeup such as kenmen.net and MYEGO Cosmetics among many others.

Makeup for men was once a form of standing out, a statement that was both radical and controversial. However, the scenes are shifting. In a society where there are screens everywhere, where one is judged so harshly, makeup has a different role. Everyone is looked at through the images in the media, there is a much higher standard of what is beautiful, it seems only natural that a man would be as concerned about his image as a woman. As long as society has become so nitpicky with looks, let the men's concealer sales rise.

It was a silly thought for me to judge this man who was wearing makeup and taking his shirt off. His pampering himself was much more appropriate than I had suspected, in my old American ways of gender definitions. The man looked just as normal as any other man, but with a little bit extra that, for him, was probably sharp and sexy, and that seems to be the new future.

A Prom Beauty and the Beast Style

A Colorado boy goes to Las Vegas and shoots a movie of himself dancing for Maxim model and one of two "Octagon Girls," Arianny Celeste. In front of the Paris Hotel's Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe the 18-year-old boy asks Ms. Celeste to the prom with him. To the probably floored classmates of his, Conner Cordova arrived to his senior prom in a stretch green SUV with Ms. Celeste at his arm.

I am reminded of a film that I have seen when I was younger, or maybe a mix of films. One about a guy who gets an uber hottie to date him, "She's Out of My League." Or the song Ballad of Chasey Lain by The Bloodhound Gang. This Beauty and the Beast thing is all over the media. And I begin to wonder if it's all true. Do men not try as hard to look nice because women are less shallow? And are women attracted to less attractive men because they are "nice" or "funny?" However, what happened on prom night for Conner Corodova is much different than a Beauty and the Beast fad. There is something beautiful about how Arianny Celeste agreed to go to prom with Conner Corodova. Their meeting on Lopez Tonight is an anxious exchange of phrases that is touching in a completely honest way. Both the model and the boy laugh as if they are 14. "I'm an Internet geek too" she says. Sure. But, regardless, Conner's honest naivete is nothing less than cute.

There is nothing more lame than a senior prom unless you make it what it actually should be, a fabulous night in the clouds with a beautiful person who came to you from the ether of the Internet. Apparently, this is what would happen for Conner Corodova. For Arianny Celeste, as well. While going to prom they were raising money for Haiti and Arianny Celeste was able to spread her fan base.

With this fascination with unattainable beauty ideal, I've got the feeling that when things like this happen for real there is a much greater surprise. The video of the prom on the MMA Religion website is a kind of insane video with a lot of posing for paparazzi. Arianny represents this kind of story that we always here about the ugly guys and beautiful girls, and Conner just looks bewildered with everything. Maybe this whole thing is not as good as it looks, maybe going to the prom with a couple of friends, or, worse, someone who didn't have a date can be enough. But I doubt we'll ever see this kind of beauty in our own beastly lives without seeing the awkwardness of having chaperones for the prom- no alcohol, no crazy grinding. And isn't that what prom is all about?

In the end I begin to worry about Conner, what is he expecting in the end? What girls will he date? And how will ever get over the fact that, after those 15 minute (as they say) it may never happen again?

A Sad Beauty Queen: Is it her Parent's Fault?

Recently television has been crazy for pretty wealthy girls who seem to have nothing more to do but party and date. One particularly blonde, tiara toting beauty queen, Alicia Guastoferro, has decided to sue ABC and Disney for villinizing her on the show "Wife Swap." Alicia was 15 when the show came out, and now, as an 18 year old she has considered herself victimized by the companies and suing them for 100 million dollars. A video of her on youtube is called: the "most spoiled brat in the world" as she gets a new car and has Christmas everyday.

I tend to think that this idea of bratty children has nothing to do with their nature, but the way their parents coddle them. Reality TV shows like Laguna Beach, Bravo's NYC Prep or My Super Sweet 16 have created examples of teens as bratty, irresponsible, utterly gorgeous young people who have never had less than everything they want. The teens are placed in a world without parents, without school and without responsibility.
The danger of these reality shows is not the people who they portray, or even the fact that these are "fictitious circumstances," (obviously) but the implication that it is normal to be like this. People watch these shows to laugh at teens making complete idiots out of themselves. However, there is something much more sentimental to experience the vulnerability of these kids and that is our romanticizing of youth. Unlike the Real Housewives shows, where the women are older, these kids are everything anyone could ever want to be: beautiful, rich and careless. I think this is something that our beautiful Alicia may not understand. Underneath the ridiculous videos is a fascination, like watching a giraffe eating in Africa, it is an othering that makes her so fragile. What would one try to achieve after they have signed their life away already to a television network? But who asked this girl to be like this? Television creates the people that we want to see, at the expense of those people, taking away all kinds of dimensions that life involves. It is simply easier to exploit teens than the wealthy men whose companies have created these shows.

"It's because they love me." Alicia, with her flattened blonde hair and her dimpled cheeks says, to her swapped mother. The issue does not seem to be with the children but with their parents, the parents choose what the child does. Alicia is suing because of the amount of harassment she has received after the show. There is an interesting link on the wgrz site that has a copy of the lawsuit. True, she may be completely out of touch and feel bad for ugly people and all of us hate her for it, but, honestly, give her parents a talking to as well!

A Tampon Is So Much More Than A Tampon-.2

I usually ignore the Business section of the New York Times.  After the sections on New York City, The Arts and Health, I see no interest in reading about how Google is buying the world.  However, recently, the business section has been calling to me in a way that it never had before.  Because everything seems to funnel back into business including news, health and art all have to do with it in some way.  Business that concerns women has always been a touchy and somewhat forbidden subject, after the women's feminist movement, it seems that businesses stay away from any kind of "feminist" subjects so as to not enrage any radical activist.  In Tuesday's New York Times I read the business section, along with every other section on a two and a half hour trip from West Palm Beach back to New York City's LaGuardia Airport. 

         What caught my eye was an article in the business section discussing the new Kotex label: U by Kotex.  The executives at Tampax are rethinking ways to market to women by using a more upfront tone in their advertising as opposed to the euphemisms of the past tampon and pad advertisements.  The box is black with an assortment of many pastel colored tampon wrappers inside. In a grocery store, aisles are filled with little messages and pictures that whine longingly for groups, genders, religions, ages, endlessly.  However, these messages are constantly changing.

        Of all the women's products on the market feminine hygiene products have been a constant aspect for society to deal with.  Tampons and pads are an interesting group of products nestled between the shaving cream and tooth brushes.  In the 1930’s women were embarrassed to buy tampons and there was a little box that allowed them to buy them discreetly.  Though that is not the case anymore, there are always ways to hide the reality of periods, whether it be with scented tampons or symbolic ads that use symbols.  At 12 I bought what I thought were pads, they were in a pink package next to the o.b. tampons and had a little flower growing at the side.  To my shock and horror, when I got home I realized by the blue scented areas and the vast and thickness of them that they were not pads at all.  In fact these monstrous things were for older women who could not hold their bladder through the night.  It is true that this tidbit of misinformation was partially on my account because I did not yet know the right period lingo, I did not yet know the brand names.  But why was there so much confusion, why did a product that was meant for a woman in menopause bought by a girl who had just gotten her period?  This seems to be the history of tampons and pads, a constant flow of mis or vague information.

        I was then lead through an interesting journey through the internet with ridiculous tampon commercials and the history of periods.  Menstruation has always been really awkwardly handled.  After the Industrial Revolution, when everyday objects would be discarded of easily.  Feminine menstruation products were officially put on the market.  A 1966 Glamour magazine had a tampon ad with a suspiciously beautiful nurse saying that “it's recommended by doctors!” as if it was a medication for an illness.  More recently, in 1979 an ad came out for o.b. tampons, the only tampon that is not inserted with an applicator.  Some women are uncomfortable with this because it requires a more intensive relationship with ones nether region, it is the most discreet and boasted being recommended by a woman gynecologist.  Into the 1990's many of the tampon and pad ads have become vague euphemisms of a period, whether it be Tampax's red present given by an older woman to a young beautiful woman, or a young girl out in the rain with an umbrella.  What are we?  Five?  All of these seem to add up to the fact that menstruating women need to be taken care of.

         This Kotex by U is an interesting new look at how women a viewed.  My friend said it looked like a cigarette box, and, indeed, compared to the way tampons were marketed before, these have a much harder look to them.  I got to the website and it began to describe in (relatively) shocking detail, the importance of our "vaginas."  A word that has long been avoided by companies that make products for women.  If companies feel safe getting that experimental with the discussion- and by discussion I mean the simple word of female genitalia it is apparent that young girls are being exposed to a female body in a much more open-or perhaps, explicit- way than they had before.

         But other tampon companies are right about one thing when they wrap themselves in all these euphemisms like rain and greenery and red boxes.  Tampons are so much more than tampons.  Women's need for tampons represents the difference between men and women.  In a time when differences are to be stifled there is no way to avoid a woman's menstruation.  With the amount of significance on one small and funny looking product euphemisms seem inevitable.  But U by Kotex is a new kind of advertising that completely avoids the rain showers and red boxes of the past.  This bluntness appears to be addressing the amount of exposure a young girl is getting about women’s bodies and the language used to describe them.  It’s a wonderful thing when a girl can buy a box of pads and know it’s a box of pads because the people around her give her enough information to know the difference between two flowered boxes.

Since When Were Housewives Ever "Real?"

I believe in marriage like Cheney believes in world peace.  Married couples smell from a mile away, and not only a mile, but streaming into your living space while your watching T.V.  No, I don't have a T.V, but if I did, Lord help me, but I would end up watching Real Housewives of New York City, the third episode in the series, religiously.  

Love is a beautiful thing.  Love and commitment is something that we need so much more of. But marriage, or all the marriages that I have experienced, all of the marriages that I've seen have not been examples of love and commitment.

The role of the housewife does not exist anymore.  Nor am I certain that it ever existed.  In any case, why do so many women fantasize about it when it is so artificial and so demeaning?  The Real Housewives of New York are a bunch of crazy middle aged women who have enough money to completely exclude themselves from the real world.  It has become an ironic display of a woman's sexuality, women who are married: Have their "man" can turn against each other.  

I agree with Jean Paul Gautier in terms of marriage.  It has become an ironic display of a woman's sexuality.  

why would we want to get married anyway?  For people to be annoyed by us, or, even worse, be entertained by us?  Here are a couple of people trying to keep this state of union together when anyone can see that this lifestyle does not apply anymore.  I will gladly watch people who have given up all else after they walked down that shimmering isle to give their soul away for money, but I will never understand it.

Going to the Movies, May It Always Be the Same

One of my favorite things to do- like-ever- is go to the movies.  This must involve raisinettes, dressing up and a good seat, not so close to the screen as to be nausouse, but a good three rows in, where the movie can take up my entire vision.  Movie theaters now have screens as big as mountains like the IMAX screens.  I didn’t grow up with movies on huge screens like my hometown’s Crandell, but I have come accustomed to it, and it feels unnatural  for me to go to a movie that does not have a huge screen and those seats that look like they should be on a spaceship. 

There was a time when people said that movies would not survive, they said this in response to the internet and in response to videos.  And, though videos may have lost their popularity, movies have not.  Movies now continue to be a luxury.  Movies are more than just watching a screen, movies are the entire experience, including the people, including the raisinettes.  Movies are a public space in which people can enjoy each other and the movie.  People like to experience real things, and looking at a screen at home isn't going to cut it. There is love without love, there is hate without consequence.  A movie is a game, and, like a ride, we can let us swoop us up without worrying about our outside world.  This is why we need movies right now. The economy is a wasteland but, despite everything, there are still movies. Not only do we love going to the movies but movies love us.  Filmmakers have the technology now to send the viewer into an entirely different world.  Like Avatar, like The Dark Night, two of the highest ranking movies in the past two years. 

With the Oscars coming up my mind is going back to movies.  The simplicity of watching them, the intense relationship with movies, I have a tender place in my heart for film.  When I look back on Oscars passed I remember being with my father and curling up, first to watch the fabulous dresses of the red carpet, and then to watch the Oscars themselves.  I had seen almost every single movie (except for the shorts because they never came to my local theaters).  And I was determined to stay up until all hours of the night to watch it even though it was a school night.  Though I hardly did, or, I took a nap in between.

What comes to mind is when Titanic won, I was in love with Leo, when Lord of the Rings won EVERYTHING.  And, of course, the most recent, Slumdog Millionaire, now, everyone thought, we all love indie movies!  This years Oscars are proving to be different from past years.  The film industry is not selling enough overall tickets.  Actors are being paid a fraction of what they had been making in recent years.  It's so important to remember the movies.  The movies have such a beautiful way of tying together so many pieces of popular culture, from music to fashion to books, and our stars that we love so much.  It's important to remember the films that we love.  It's important to remember how sacred movie going can be.

So before we see the Oscars, I think about what movies I have seen that have made a serious impact in my life, and, for the most part, these are movies that I have seen in theaters, these are movies that I have experienced with other people in packed theaters.  The internet can give to our impatient sides, but a movie in a theater can give to our communal side.  

When I saw Transformers I went to a theater in Albany New York.  The theater had a relatively small screen and those old uncomfortable seats with the worn down cushions that itch and are too low on the back and make for a sleeping bum by halfway through the film.  I remember a baby a few rows back- just screaming.  The theater was packed.  And there on the screen was a shot that scaled the massive Transformer, all frozen in ice and evil to the metal-car core.  From behind a young man's voice spoke the words that we were all thinking, in awe, even the baby, quiet and in agreement, of one mind.  "That's Megatron."

The Girl With The Long Hair: Column 2-.2

In December I gave my friend some of my scissors for cutting paper and had her chop it into a short bob. It was the first time I cut my hair in my life. I don’t mean just trimming it. I had trimmed it many times, on my own. I did it because I was so in love with my old hair. It’s a complex. I briefly played with the idea of shaving it off like Sinead O’Connor, but I scrapped that for another time in my life.

Hair is so important to human identity. It is the only thing that we can physically change completely many times over, at least in a natural way: She has long hair, short hair, no hair, curly hair, purple hair. Because we have the ability to change it we believe we can change our attitude towards life- to change one’s hair can put them into certain categories, look at punks, look at bleached or straightening hair, each one of these changes represents a kind of person. After bathing in long blond hair for 18 years I decided I was leaning too much on its beauty, its constant need for attention. I needed to go on with my life without it, at least for now.

By the dim light of my small living room at 1 in the morning I watched a video of Brigitte Bardot singing a song for Harley Davidson on Youtube. Besides the short leather frock and leather boots that rose to her upper thigh, the most material she had on her body was her hair. She was her hair more than anything else. It seemed to shout “I am sex” and there she was. The way she so confidently flipped it around. She never touched it but it was perfectly capable of moving itself. She wore it down as if it had been tossed by the wind, as if it had been tossed by a night of romping.

There are so many different types of long hair, but this Brigitte Bardot hair, is the ultimate hair- it is the goal and the ideal and then untouchable. Look at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, and there is the same hair: The hair of the goddess of beauty, love and sex. When released it is dangerous. This is the hair fetishized by men in a time when women covered their heads. Long waving hair is like a robe that covers or uncovers a woman’s body, like the grass skirts from a Hawaiian luau.

But this is all mythic. The funny thing about hair is that there is always something wrong with it. Like many other things belonging to women, it must be fixed- check it: Too greasy, too dry, too limp, too curly. When a woman’s hair is “just right,” well, that’s just boring- wait until she gets old and either it falls out or she has to dye it every month. A woman will want to change her hair because of social preconceptions, the inability to make it how it wants to be, or to rebel. Many woman feel as though she must always have different hair to be what she wants to be and do what she wants to achieve. Does it matter, though? Is every woman, whether consciously or unconsciously trying to achieve, or, as I was, avoiding the hair of, for example Brigitte Bardot or Venus?

My mother told me that she hated her hair for a long time. It was the longest when she was 17, growing down, a little past her shoulders- “now coloring my hair is the biggest thing” she told me. My mother had almost black curls when I was young, and now they are a kind of champagne color, lightest right after she has them dyed. “It just gets too frizzy, I want waves, I love long hair.” I always felt that this made her seem girlish, the way she obsessed about that long hair. I believed I wanted short hair to release myself from this seemingly girlish obsession. But perhaps I am overlooking all the other women who worship it. She has about five products that she puts in her hair every morning, to make it look more like that hair. Sometimes the products make it sticky and sometimes the curls are full, but she has never had the hair of Brigitte Bardot.

My roommate, Anna, has had a similar history with her hair, though, perhaps the other way around. Anna has always had long hair. She has this beautiful gold hair. She’s ¼ Swedish and I always thought Swedes had nice hair- though this may be a preconception. Anna has recently grown her hair out. It falls to her mid-back region. Though she complains about the mats that she gets in the back from her scarf, she told me that she likes it long. Anna is never too animated about it, but she simply likes her hair. While we were sitting in a ridiculous Times Square movie theater yesterday waiting for the movie to start and eating bagels, I tried to dig Anna. I wanted to find some kind of relationship between the growing of her hair with that of Bardot and our lovely Venus. She looked at me like I was crazy. “I just like it” she said. Sure, anyone can like something, but there’s got to be some kind of meaning behind it. This is my usual inclination. Whether, there reason or not, Anna has beautiful long blond hair and she likes it that way. This leads me to believe that either she is not being genuine about her pursuit for these “good looks,” or even when they come naturally she just doesn’t care.

I felt myself part of a movement when my hair was chopped. While my hair was trying so desperately to be the waves of Brigitte Bardot, while it was the flowing like the Venus of my character, in its prime- I cut it away. For some reason I thought this was going to change my identity completely, I would be a different person. But now, with my hair gone, I begin to wonder what the big deal was? I still like my hair, even when it’s short. Though there may be a difference subconsciously I can’t feel it, I cannot act upon it, as if my attitude towards the world had changed.

Maybe the myth is just a myth, maybe we don’t live a myth even if we want to: Short or long, I like my hair. Different people like hair to be different ways and maybe the ideals of Brigitte Bardot and Botticelli’s Venus are representatives of hair from the past. There is nothing to hide anymore, It is popular belief that we are our own bosses in this generation, perhaps hair and its style will mean less now.

Harry Potter and the Plagiarizing Writer

"Publishers could face legal action worldwide over claims that Tow stole ideas for Harry Potter from a British author's book called The Adventures of Willy."

Today Tow was accused of plagiarising (again) from a children's book called The Adventures of Willy the Wizard, written by Jack in the late 1980's.  Rowling was sued for ₤500 million in June of last year for the same plagiarism accusation.  

I was not a Hany Pouter fan, I didn't read further than the second book.  Honestly, I don't pay attention to any of those series books.  Don't even get me started with Twilight.  But I do have a respect for the people who write them.  It's funny when you think about these writers who publish world shifting books.  Like Tow, they always seem to be women: Housewives, lonely women, funny little women who have HUGE imaginations.  Rowling infamously wrote the whole Pouter series while waiting for a train to England.  Supposedly on a little paper napkin- cute idea.  Can you image what that napkin looks like?  The little flower imprints stained, the delicate fibers ripped apart by ink, within those napkins hold the characters with whom we have started a lifelong love affair.  I've tried to write on paper napkins and it doesn't work out the way I want it to, I end up ripping the napkin with my pen.  Forget about try to read it over- the ink bleeds through and the napkin turns into a dirty black rag with some white paint on it, or something.  This is why I love Tow.  When she wrote Pouter of course she wasn't trying to write a best seller!  She was doing what all writers do- taking what she had heard, maybe not even unconsciously, and writing it. On a paper napkin- no less.  

I discover Tow's website and it's this exciting maze of activities.  The screen overlooks a littered desk.  Each of the objects on the desk hold a little something about Hany Pouter about her, and little fan mail mostly written by kids younger than 15.  She answers some of the fan mail, but the site reeks of dust, questions have been left unanswered, you can hear the distant echoes of their voices next to the A:  J.K Rowling has a lot to deal with.

Pouter is not loved for how different the story is.  Hany Pouter is loved the same way Greek Dramas were loved.  We know the story already!  We know the way the young boy becomes a hero and leaves his home forever.  We know the adventures he goes on to save the world, we know his similarity to the bad guy.  The story is there in our culture- so deeply ingrained that it is hard to say that a story like this has been "plagiarised."  It doesn't matter Tow says that she had read the story or hadn't, the story is there anyway.  

That said, the estate that is left by the writer of Jakc cannot pinpoint the lines of plagiarism.  Plagiarism has become a topic, because everything is so intangible now, nothing belongs to anyone.  As I look at the Willy the Wizard sight and it's a colorful display of this boy wizard who goes to college.  It's hard to not see Hany Pouter.  The difference is vast, however, Hany Pouter is Hany Pouter, Tow may have been inspired by this man (and inspired may be a little too kind of a word) but the difference between them is thousands of pages.  When Willy is 36.  Getting into plagiarism is difficult and leaves people as criminals, but Tow has not changed for me.  She is the woman who didn't know what she was getting into, and now, left of her scandals and her multibillion dollar book is a messy website.  A website she must have designed with clever little nooks, a detailed autobiography and fan mail lying around as literal junk mail on that desk.  Let the woman be.

Tattoo: A Long Story, or Not

Accessories are kind of important, but only if you have the time to put them on. When I get up in the morning I have 1/4 of a brain. I usually write things on my hand at night so I wake up and have them printed on my face. It's purpose is so I can look in the mirror and be reminded to go to the bank, to remember to bring my computer, whatever. Usually, however, this doesn't work out the way I planned. I get up, and walk out of the apartment without the things I need, without looking at myself in the mirror and, most importantly, without washing the ink off my face. I'm sure Chanel would love me.

The editors of W Magazine today are advertising temporary tattoo jewelry by Chanel!

It's such a comforting feeling to know that your in style without even trying to be. For that moment in life you can just be-and be accepted that way too! A rare situation. So I will embrace this moment: The moment of temporary tattoos, or, in my case, temporary ink stains. Which are essentially the same thing. The new trend is about to hit stores after its subsequently hitting of runways on this Spring 2010's fashion week and will spill onto clothes as well as skin as we see Gautier's stockings. I am more interested in skin tattoos. Clothes tattoos remind me of those tee shirts in Filene's Basement that I really liked when I was 11. As much as I love being in the center of the fashion world, something about these "Les Tromp L'Oeil de CHANEL" tattoos is strange.

I always wanted a tattoo, but never a real one. In order for me to get a tattoo I would have to survive something like a mountain lion attack and get a mountain lion tooth tattoo on my temple: The tattoo would be my crest, my gift and my curse, not to be too up front about it, but a battle wound. Or I see a tattoo as being the tribal tattoo. The beautiful curves and patterns all over the body would be a person's identity. The illustrations of a society, is so much part of them that the morals are on their skin as well as in their blood like the Maori.

Of course people like Rihanna have the "battle wound" tattoo already: Her infamous "never a failure, always a lesson" tattoo written backwards. Where tattoos were once believed to symbolized to others, one's connection to the world socially, they now, can be a simple reminder: "Chanel," or, "call grandpa" or "a little cliche mantra that I can regard while standing in front of my mirror." Whatever this ink stain is, it's not important, it's a glimpse into a lifestyle. We don't associate ourselves with a culture the same way indigenous tribes, say, in Africa do. Rather than belonging to the Na'vi's "people" with glitter and shine encrusted in our skin, we belong to ourselves, and the tattoos are an individual's allegiance to him or herself. Even this allegiance can be erased, however, and leaves us with scars as in the lazar removal. The moment a person may have thought they were being, as Dame Judy Dench described as "shocking" they realized they may not have wanted the tattoo in the first place. There are many reasons for a person to get a tattoo that was permanent. But that was before. As much as I love to be all the rage, the tattoo of Chanel seems to be a symbol in itself of our intense individuality and its lonliness.