Review: Californication

Assume that there be spoilers for the entire first season of Californication. Yes I watched the entire season and though I watched every single episode I honestly don’t think it is worth it so please read my rant and spoil the show for yourself if you haven’t seen it. Ready? Okay.

The number one problem with Californication is that it doesn’t use the red hot chili peppers song at any point during the first season.

The number two problem? There are a lot of number two problems.

The first season follows Hank Moody, a blocked novelist living in Los Angeles. His novel God Hates us All (so he’s what? Christopher Hitchens?) has just been adapted into a shit movie called “Crazy little thing called Love.” His ex-girlfriend Karen is engaged to not him and their 13 year old daughter is, well, 13. He is completely miserable. To cope Hank sleeps with anything that moves. One night he picks up a sassy young thing in a bookstore (she’s reading his book.) They sleep together, she punches him, he never calls her back. A couple of days later he’s at Karen’s house when her fiancé’s daughter Mia comes in. It’s the same girl. She’s 16. Oooops.

The arc of the first season follows Hank trying to stop his ex’s wedding, while being manipulated by Mia who steals his new book (the book that will save him, he thinks). Meanwhile, Hank’s agent Charlie’s marriage is on the rocks. He starts messing around with his assistant. The assistant then starts sleeping with his wife Marcy while manipulating Charlie into training her into being an agent.

Did you get that? I used the word manipulate twice in one paragraph.

So why did I watch the entire first season?

Charming is not the right word to describe David Duchovny performance. He’s too pathetic to be charming. But he’s charismatic and clever and he knows how to turn a phrase. The show would be completely unbearable with out Duchovny showing the anguish that lies just below the surface. In one scene Charlie and Hank have just been caught having a threesome by Karen and Marcy. Hank hugs Charlie and says “No wives to hold us down, isn’t life grand.” Charlie agrees but the misery on both their faces speaks otherwise.

The plots are very smartly structured meaning that in the middle of every single episode I would have a moment where I went “this show is so miserable, this is the last episode” but the very last scene would always end on an unexpected turn that left me going “oh nos! how is Hank going to get out of this one?” And thanks to the miracle of ondemand I could find out immediately and repeat the vicious cycle.

But no matter how cleverly written, no matter how witty it doesn’t change the fact that all the characters are one dimensional. Hank is the tortured writer who, no matter how awful his behavior, women will flock to, an archetype that bothers me so much because I see people I know perpetrating it. (Being emotionally mature and managing to have a healthy adult relationship will not hurt your writing, guys, in fact it might even teach you how to write women, something you boys are incapable of pulling off. Oh but who needs to write women? They’re all sluts or manipulative minxes. Ooops, I forgot.) Karen is the long suffering wife archetype who thinks she wants stability but really wants the excitement of being tortured (oops, I mean adored) by an artist. Obviously Hank knows what she wants better than Karen. The assistant and Mia are both seductresses and nothing more. The only interesting woman is Charlie’s wife Marcy but aside from being a wit to rival Hank she has very little to do except sleep with the assistant and then miss her husband. I can’t remember if she has a job or a hobby. Her character arch is limited to her sex life.

I have this theory that all the people writing for Californication wish they were Hank, a man who can write a genius novel in two weeks and who people still want to work with despite his hideous behavior. They wish that their ex-wives still loved them, that their daughters adored them best, and that 16 year old sluts would throw themselves at them (there is a scene in which Hank gives a talk at Mia’s school and afterwards throngs of sweet young things wait outside the door giggling, wanting nothing more than to accost him.) And as well as the writers fantasies becoming Hank’s reality their terror becomes Hank’s terror, when Mia blackmails him, when Charlie’s assistant supplants him couching her bad behavior in the language of feminism and sleeps with his wife to boot. That’s right guys, feminism will rob you of your books and jobs and turn your wives gay to boot. To be fair, my least favorite episode, the one which has both Mia and the assistant justifying their bad behavior as feminist victories was written by a woman. But women can be just as misogynist as men. The reason why sexism still exists in that women are incredibly willing to be complicit in their own oppression. Just as Karen is complicit in her own misery.

In the last episode Karen leaves her own wedding to run off with Hank, despite the fact that we have just spent an entire season watching Hank be an asshole to her in between declaring his undying love. Lady, you are just rewarding his bad behavior and when he makes you miserable for the entire second season I know you are going to blame Hank. But you’re the one who ran out of your own wedding. Its your own fault. Live with the consequences.

I am being a little unfair. At least once an episode some character would do something that surprised me, Mia having a touching moment with Hank’s daughter for instance or the scene in which Hank opens a letter from his dead father. This is one of the reasons why I watched the whole season, there were these flashes where there were real, complete people on screen and not witty stereotypes. People with a range of emotion beyond the miserable-horny-miserable continuum. But those flashes always ended by the next scene and I was left being frustrated at having these moments of genius taken away from me.

And that’s what pissed me off most of all. The writers are so smart, the actors so skilled. LA has never looked more like a sunny den of sin. So why does the show have to retread over boring stereotypes and wallow in misery. (I’m all for wallowing in misery in a place like Deadwood.) There is a quote from a book I never read but I really like it that goes “we accept the love we think we deserve.” What it means is that when you keep sleeping with sluts who have no respect for you, there is nothing wrong with the sluts, there is something wrong with you. Hank needs to go to therapy and do some self reflection and stop being such a goddamn martyr. But Hank belongs to that school of writers who believe that therapy will kill their writing… I admit that I am part of this group but I don’t whine about how miserable I am. So shut the fuck up Hank, I don’t care about your bullshit anymore…Until the second season come out.

Michael's Question

Michael wants to know “Do you identify more strongly with your Quaker or your Jewish heritage or equally with both? Why? What informed your connection?
Can I steal this?”

I’ll answer the last one first: of course!

Before I moved to New York I definitely felt a lot more Jewish than I do now. That identification stemmed less from actual agreement with the principles (in the abstract my spirituality is much more Quaker than Jewish) than from opposition to my surroundings. Growing up one of 5 Jews (yes I know that’s an exaggeration) in a rather conservative and Christian part of the world made me different. In elementary school when we started learning about the holocaust the teachers would turn to me and ask me if we knew any family who had died. In retrospect that seems totally fucked. What 8 year old is equipped to explain their family’s oppression, to talk about genocide for Moses’ sake? But I was the go to girl for Jewish questions for a while, some polite and some hostile.

That period of my life was also the period when the evangelicals stood outside the farmers market and told everyone they were going to hell. It was the period when the Jehovah witnesses came by at least three times a year. And it was when my classmates were starting to go to bible camp and came back with questions about why I didn’t go too. I learned to make Jesus killing jokes really early. I knew of no other way to deal with it. And so I became more Jewish than I have in my life to the point where I was wearing a Star of David necklace. If I was going to be the Jew girl I was going to claim that for myself. And so I answered the questions, and corrected the pronunciation of Yom Kippur (I have heard it pronounced like the fish so many times). This is all funny of course because my family left words out of the Chanukah prayer my entire life. Really I was barely Jewish. My dad, grandma and I would all be hard pressed to tell you anything coherent about Jewish Dogma. But that didn’t really matter. Our last name is Jewish and we are Jews.

One of the reasons I moved to New York was because I wanted to be around more Jews. But once I showed up I realized that I don’t actually believe in the Jewish God and that my identification was based solely out of being an other. I identify with being a God-killing-Jew not so much the normal, everyday Jew.

And so I have faded from that identity. I go to the High Holidays services because it is a connection to my ancestors and I like the food. That’s about it.

Note 1: I have never been physically hurt or threatened for being Jewish so all of the above may come off as a poor-oppressed-me whine. But one of the very first Chanukahs in my memory we wouldn’t put the menorah in the window because a family’s windows were smashed in Bozeman. That sort of thinking at such a young age combined with the fact that the only Jewish history that was taught was the holocaust really affected me for a long time.

Note 2: I’m not Jewish enough for many Jews because my mom isn’t Jewish. Having this strong identification forcibly taken from me by other Jews (Jews from places like New York or California where it was never dangerous to be a -stein or a –berg) made me incredibly angry and sped up my alienation. But that’s a whole other kettle of gefilte fish.

***

In reading over this I realize that it is interesting that while I had the choice to identify with either the safe religion (Quaker) or the unsafe one (Jewish) I chose the unsafe one and played it up. Take from that what you will, armchair psychoanalysts.

Newest Addiction

I wasn't so sure about this song when I first heard it but it's totally snuck up on me and now I'm obsessed. Solange Knowles' voice is not nearly as effortless as her sister Beyonce's. But after listening to this song several times I think the slight strain adds a dimension that the perfection of Beyonce lacks. Also it keeps her from the vocal aerobatics that honestly drive me crazy in most Beyonce songs. Not to mention that the video is absolutely awesome.

Questions from Sushi and Eliza

I’m going to answer Liza and Sushi’s questions together which are “do you actually believe in god? or is it something that's been so integrated into your heritage, etc. that you feel obligated to buy into it? and if you do, what do you think god/the afterlife consists of?” And “What do you think happens after you die?”

So heres a story. On Monday my play was read and both my parents saw the play for the first time. They hadn’t read it before and aside from the basic premise (nuns on mars) they knew nothing about it let alone how much it deals with trying to have faith. Afterwards we all go out to dinner and my mom turns to me and says “Why did you write a play about God? You don’t believe in God… Do you?”

Believing in God was not part of my heritage, in fact given the way I was raised I should be an atheist. Yes my family is culturally Jewish and Quaker but that just means we’re in it for the food. Yet I have always felt this ache that the world can not be explained in purely scientific terms. That there are mysteries that will never be explained. So coming to a point where I could admit that I believe in a God was very hard and took a very long time. Its something I have struggled with my whole life. I still don’t believe in God as a white bearded man sitting in the clouds. Its more an acceptance that there are mysteries. (I would call myself “spiritual” except those god damn new age hippies took that word and made it all lame with their crystals and incense.) There is a lot of ambiguity in the play which is exactly the way I feel. I think if you have seen the play you essentially have listened to three different sides of me hash it out for 90 minuets. The last lines of the play are:

LUCIA

What does it mean?

CARDINAL

Must everything have meaning?

LUCIA

Yes.

CARDINAL

It means... have hope.

LUCIA

That is not what it means.

CARDINAL

I’m just an old man. I don’t know what it means. I just know I would really like a hot chocolate.

LUCIA

Do you have chocolate bars?

CARDINAL

Yes.

LUCIA

Come in. I’ll make you some.

***

In summery, we’ll never know. But we should hope. And drink hot chocolate. Because hot chocolate is awesome. “We have to build the republic of heaven where we are. Because for us there is no elsewhere.” --Phillip Pullman

...

And in regards to what happens after we die I have made a conscious decision to believe in The Amber Spyglass thesis. Its very long and beautiful and I am going to rob it of some power by trying to condense it here. But essentially it goes that we will tell our stories to the guardians at the gate and if we tell it truthfully our matter will drift apart and we will rejoin the stars.

Where do babies come from?

Asher wants to know where babies come from. Really, Asher? Really? You expect me to beat this:

Taken From Lola

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it/just answer your question. Ask for anything.

Dude, I am so sorry.

Both the Heat Wave and the Snow are my fault. How is it my fault? Well when I was packing for Montana I looked at ALL of my beautiful, warm, fashionable coats and said "snow in June? Pshaw!" And so instead of bringing my coats to Montana I brought all of my pretty sun dresses. Which are sitting there. Not getting worn. Because it is 30 fucking degrees outside. While my coats are sitting in a box pushing 90 degrees in New York.
Thanks God, I love you too.

BEAR!

UPDATE: the bear came back. And got into the Chicken Yard.





UPDATE #2:

Me: and now there are deer

Me: jesus its been an active day outside the kitchen window

Sam: wow

Sam: it's going to be that video where the elephants and the lions and the wildebeest and the alligator all fight

Update #3:

Asher: and it snowed?

Me: yep

Asher: montana > maryland

SNOW!

The date: June 10th.
The weather report: Scattered Thunderstorms.
The reality: Snow.

Question:

How many episodes of Califonication do I need to watch before I'm allowed to decide that I hate it?
One? Two? Four?
After I manage to drag the razor that is this show across my wrists one, two or four times and have figured out how to word a coherent responce to why I hate this show so fucking much belive me I shall post my rantings here. In the meantime however:
OMG this show is soul killing.

Vitamin Fortified Cotton Candy

So my car doesn’t have a tape deck (or cd player, or mp3 player or any of those new fangled gadgets you kids have.) Which means when I’m in Montana I listen to a lot of bad pop radio. And it also means I become hideously into specific pop songs that under other circumstances I would never listen to.* Every summer there is one song that gets played on the radio all the time and manages to drive everyone insane and yet I love it forever and never get sick of it beyond all reason and get so excited whenever it comes on the radio.
Two years ago it was Crazy – Gnarls Barkley.
Last year it was Umbrella – Rhianna.
This year its Love in this Club by Usher. (What club do you want to have sex in? oh, THIS club, I forgot thax.)
As with all of these songs it is an incredibly well put together pop song. Meaning of course that it has the nutritional value of cotton candy. But its really GOOD cotton candy. And when I’m driving home at night with the windows rolled down I want something with a beat that I know all the words to. This summer I plan on getting really excited whenever Love in this Club comes on the radio.
This could be more shameful. I’m also really into a Miley Cyrus song. I know, okay? But doesn’t it make you want to put your foot down on the gas pedal?

*That statement is such a lie. I totally bought Rhianna most recent album. Shhhh, don’t tell.

Review: Lost Girls by Alan Moore

Among comic book lovers there is a holy grail. Well, there are like 897 holy grails BUT my personal holy grail was to get my hands on a copy of Alan Moore’s “Lost Girls.” Alan Moore is my personal comic writer hero who wrote “Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (among others). A few years ago he wrote a three part adaptation of “Peter Pan,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Alice in Wonderland.” Decried for violating the copyright of the original works and, oh yeah, for being child porn, some bookstores won’t carry it. Those that do charge $75, which I do not have. If you should try to get it out of the library or through interlibrary loan the waiting list is 6 months to a year long. Sometimes more.
But my friend Jeff’s new roommate owns (OWNS!) a copy and what’s more she was generous enough to loan me hers (THANK YOU SARA). And so I spent the past week thumbing my nose at the Meese commission.
“Lost Girls” takes place in a hotel in Austria on the eve of World War One. Three women, Dorothy Gale, Wendy Darling, and Alice Fairchild, meet and become friends. They tell each other the stories of their sexual awakening and heal from their wounds. Alice was assaulted by a family friend (nicknamed Bunny) and then became an assistant to a lesbian teacher who drugs her with opium and leads her into a life of decadence. Dorothy works her way through the farm hands on her aunts farm before going to New York City and sleeping with her father. Wendy and her brothers wander out of their parent’s house and befriend a homeless boy and his sister who seduce them but who are themselves terrorized by a wealthy pervert. All three experiences traumatized them but by telling them to the others they free themselves from their pasts. Unfortunately war is breaking out and whether or not they live to enjoy their sexual freedom is left untold.
Meese said that porn was defined as “I know it when I see it.” “Lost Girls” is definitely porn. But it certainly has artistic and literary merit meaning it’s not obscene all la the Miller Test. Okay? Well that out of the way, “Lost Girls” is beautiful and grating, lovely and infuriating and ultimately kind of stupid.
The art is gorgeous. Drawn by Melinda Gebbie in warm pastels, and black and white silhouettes she varies the art between the stories but it is universally stunning. The stories are clever parallels of the original, in my summery above I did a bad job of conveying the correspondence between the sexual events and the events in the original stories. Its very very clever.
During the Victorian era, when these stories were written, sexuality needed to be handled through metaphor and symbolism. The metaphor of the original stories is haunting and beautiful. There is a reason that of all the books written during that period those three stories survived. What Moore has succeeded in doing is simplifying the stories and making everything so so obvious. Once everything is laid out in the open its no longer open to interpretation, readers cannot bring their own experiences to the book. While many can feel that going through puberty is like flying away to neverland (and sex like flying) the hyperspecificity of “lost girls” robs the readers of the mythical experience of storytelling.
Same with the art. While it has been argued (and I agree) that erotica is just porn for rich people, there is something to be said for subtly. “Lost Girls” has orgies and entangled limbs and incest to make De Sade blush but ultimately its just kind of boring. At one point Alice dreams of her first sexual assault. She is being chased through the woods by a monster. This section corresponds to the Jaberwocky section of “Through the Looking glass,” a nonsense poem recited by the Cheshire cat.
“`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"”
In “Lost Girls” the Jaberwocky is a giant penis. The effect of combining the horrible (sexual assault) with the surreal (the original poem) is ridiculous and insipid. It reads and looks stupid.
Ultimately that’s the whole book. By trying to transcend the originals Moore adds nothing and takes away everything. It shouldn’t be banned and it shouldn’t be $75, but just because it’s a literary scandal doesn’t make it any good.

Trashing Harvard (what fun!)

Some of you may have heard that J.K. Rowling spoke at Harvard’s graduation. Some of you also may have heard that the graduating class of 2008 was less than pleased.
Some choice quotes from the NPR story:
"I think we could have done better," shrugged computer science major Kevin Bombino. He says Rowling lacks the gravitas a Harvard commencement speaker should have. "You know, we're Harvard. We're like the most prominent national institution. And I think we should be entitled to … we should be able to get anyone. And in my opinion, we're settling here. "
Senior Andy Vaz: "From the moment we walk through the gates of Harvard Yard, they constantly emphasize that we are the leaders of tomorrow. They should have picked a leader to speak at commencement. Not a children's writer. What does that say to the class of 2008? Are we the joke class?"

Apparently you’re the doesn’t-get-a-joke class. Good lord. What really seems to piss them off is that she wasn’t a) a Pulitzer prize winner, b) a Nobel prize winner, c) a world leader. She wasn’t powerful enough.
There are many types of power in this world. There is the power of Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, all of whom were past Harvard commencement speakers. But there is the power of family, of teachers, of art. Bill Gates can send billions of dollars to Africa but it is art that shows that it is the right thing to do. To quote Stoppard: “Art – Fugard or Auden or the entire cauldron- is important because it provides the moral matrix, the moral sensibility, from which we make our judgments about the world… The plain truth is that if you are angered or disgusted by a particular injustice or immorality and you want to do something about it now, at once, then you could hardly do worse than write a play about it. That is what art is bad at. But the less plain truth is that without that play and plays like it, without artists, injustice will never be eradicated. In other words, because of Athol Fugard, the Guardian understood that the Raphael piece [an article about wage inequality in 70s South Africa] was worth leading the paper with, worth printing.”
It is arguable that J.K. Rowling has done MORE for the world than Kofi Annan (perhaps not true but arguable). Annan led an ineffective and ponderous bureaucracy that, through the wimpy way its charter is written, stood by and watched terrible atrocities play out without a way to rectify them. Rowling also hasn’t stopped any genocides but her books push the ideas of family, of love, of justice, and equality. She has, through metaphor and imagination, dealt with genocide, xenophobia, the Patriot act (or whatever the British version is), how you survive if you lose everything, and what you do in the face of injustice. You fight back. Books change our moral compass. Its subtle but it happens. Rowling is a force to be reckoned with. Thank goodness she has a giant heart.
I suppose both Kofi Annan and J.K. Rowling have made me cry but in very different ways and in different circumstances. Which just gets back to my point – power comes in many variations, its not always a business or world leader, its not always a MAN. And the Harvard grads are going to need to learn that very very quickly or they will find themselves manipulated by someone they think has no power over them.
And on that note I will let J.K. take you into the weekend with my favorite excerpts from her commencement speech.
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared…. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet… Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know…What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy…If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better…As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.”
--J.K. Rowling

LolMontana

Sometimes I don't open the door for trudie. So she decides to take matters into her own claws.

My Mama's for Obama

Yesterday Montana voted. Of course, even though we were the very last primary EVER (our polls closed later than South Dakota) the super delegates stole our thunder (including the coveted star wars delegation) by swinging towards Obama before our results came in. SCREW YOU SUPER DELEGATES. Regardless I went to the Wilma for the primary party and watched Obama’s speech on a giant movie screen with what felt like half of Missoula including my high school English and drama teachers, Colony folk, my brothers friends, my parents friends, and of course Scotty who looked like she was going to pass out at any moment. I gave her a big hug and told her congratulations (she been on the campaign since September and her response was “now I can sleep.”) It was wonderful and inspiring and everyone was drinking papst and cheering along with the screen. And I have to admit I was inspired (momentarily).
Afterwards I went out for drinks with assorted people including a guy who did the lights for every one of Obama’s campaign stops in Montana. He developed a giant crush on Michelle saying that she was the nicest person ever and totally chatted with him before she went on stage. I think that’s possibly one of the biggest things that makes me like Obama – everyone I know who has met him or Michelle says that they are wonderful, kind people.
Though people found it hilarious that Bill showed up in the MoClub (great burgers, hard-core alcoholics and the first (and only?) place I have ever played video keno) to court the young people but the only young people who were there were the Obama staffers. Scotty was amused and took pictures of the kids in their Obama shirts shaking Clintons hand. I’m glad he was a good sport.
Sidenote: Obama is not in the spell check.
And its all awesome great and man that man can speak but I think Roger summed it up best when he said, “you know who else could speak? Hitler.”
And while I would love to have Scottys enthusiasm I cant change the fact that I’m the person who wrote a play a year and half ago based on the premise “what if obama raped someone, what would his hard-core staffers do?” So much as I love this historic moment I’m going to keep one being a cynical bastard over here with my whiskey. My heart is safer that way.

NO NO NO NO NO!

For the love of all things holy do NOT remake The Women, George Cukors genius 1939 film and do NOT remake it with Eva Fucking Mendez replacing Joan Crawford. Are you people NUTS? I have no problem with Eva Mendez, I think she was the best part of We Own the Night. But really? Can you imagin Eva Mendez saying "there's a word for you ladies but its not used in polite society out side of a kennel." No? Me neither.
I am sort of okay with Roslind Russel being replaced by Annette Benning. I'm always happy to see her out and working and not taking care of the Betty brood. But really, on the list of unnecessary remakes this is at the top.
And while the original is all about vicious women tearing each other apart what do you want to bet that the moral of this one is all about sisterhood triumphing. In my personal opinion "sisterhood" has ruined women in film. Also it doesn't exist. If you don't believe me just look at the Hillary supporters tearing apart any woman (or NARAL) that supports Obama.