Movie Buff: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

Last evening I finally got around to watching The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.  It’s been in my Netflix queue for several years and popped up in my mailbox.  I was expecting Julianne Moore in a delightful light-hearted tale of a plucky woman who entered a lot of prizes.  Much to my surprise, what I got instead was a look at what life was like for millions of American families who weren’t the Cleavers or the Andersons.  It’s easy to dismiss those old 1950s and early 60s sitcoms as postwar escapist fantasy but I don’t doubt that many people lives were, if perhaps messier and more chaotic, were quite happy and stable during those years.  And then there was everyone else.  My own mother’s first husband (about whom she rarely speaks) drank and gambled away his Friday paycheck leaving them broke by Monday.  This was reality for millions of women.  It was hell.  Too often we tell the story of women’s liberation as a story of bored, unfulfilled women who wanted to do something besides housework.  There is some truth to that, but the reality is that a lot of women went to work because it was work or starve.  They were treated like crap for doing what they needed to do to survive or for the survival of their children.  For some reason we still don’t want to talk about this reality for millions of people for whom divorce was not a possibility for social, religious and financial reasons so they took the abuse and scraped by the only way they knew how.  Remember that when someone acts like women had it so good in some earlier time.  Perhaps the lucky ones did.  And then there was everyone else.

Do advertising agents really think we are this shallow and/or stupid?

The new Citi card campaign features a woman whose friend is appalled that her boyfriend is always paying for their dates so he can get the points on his credit card.  (The said friend offers to pay using the same card.)  So let’s get this straight.  It’s terrible to be taken out for free dinners in nice places because the person who paid got some miniscule little perk for their spending using the card?  Am I missing something or is that the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in a commercial.  Just to be clear anyone reading this who wants to buy me dinner, my email is houndentenornyc@aol.com.  (I’m in the Dallas area now, btw.)  🙂  Really, pretty much any time.

Houston Chronicle Editorial Board Admits they are a bunch of Fucking Fucktards

Okay, not quite literally, but they may as well have.  The Houston Chronicle endorsed Ted Cruz for the Senate last fall (after endorsing hometown right wing douchebag David Dewhurst in the primary).  It was obvious from the primary, which in Texas IS the election, after all, that Kay Bailey Hutchison’s retirement mean we were all screwed.  It will come as no surprise to Houstonians that it took the right-wing rag this long to admit it made a mistake.  Cruz is a disaster both for the nation as well as for Texas.  I doubt Dewhurst would have been any better given his performance earlier this year attempting to ignore the rules to push through the bill being filibustered by Wendy Davis, but we can always hope.  Come back, KBH.  Texas needs you.

Jessye Norman sings Schubert’s (and Goethe’s) Erlkonig

This is the best performance of this I’ve seen/heard so far. I love the production of this and the way La Norman embodies the various characters. It reminds me of the all too rare instances when I’ve heard someone do this with storytelling.