...and if you don't believe me you never really knew

...looks like i know where this is going and i might know how it ends, but I'm still willing to begin. -- MM

Lately, i have been OBSESSING over Mandy Moore's last two albums. I know most people think she is ridiculous - but i tell you, if you want to hear heartbreak, pain, suffering, release, transformation and forgiveness all in a single note pick up 'Wild Hope' (released June 2007). Even i was impressed by her writing and singing skills and I've been a fan since the beginning. I always believe in her talent, grace, and poise. When i met her back in 2007 i almost died! She was sitting in front of my chatting about how much she like my hair and smiling. MM..right in front of me? Yes, its a wonder i didn't try to shove her in my bag and calmly walk away. Say what you want about her, but it's guaranteed 99% ignorance and taking a cue from the general public. Advice: make your own conclusions, please?

Songs i would suggest to open Pandora's box (aka Mandy Moore's amazingness):
1. Wild hope - Wild hope
2. Most of me - Wild hope
3. Slummin' in paradise - Wild hope
4. Gardenia - Wild hope ( NO ONE can resist this, it's heartbreaking)
5. Ever Blue - Amanda Leigh
6. Have a little faith in me - Coverage
7. Merrimack Rive - Amanda Leigh
8. Mona lisas and Mad Hatters - Coverage
9. Song about home - Amanda Leigh
10. Breaking us in two - Coverage

Onward - - why do they insist on remaking perfectly constructed horror films from the 70's/80's? This has been a particular fad over the last 4 yrs. Some examples include , but are not limited to: Halloween, Friday the 13th, Black Christmas, Sorority Row, My Bloody Valentine, When a Stranger Calls, Prom Night, The Last House on The Left, Wicker Man, and The Hills have Eyes ( in this case there was even a sequel). I can't make any sense of this uprising. Although i can point out that this uprising coincidentally coincided with the collapsing of the economy. Now I'm no fool, i know that even saying the word "collapse" is misleading. But speaking in broad terms that is how the average American sees the issue. Hollywood knows this, and in a time of low morale a country needs horror. That is of course where the slasher film comes from. Horror films have been around a long time - - they date back as far as the 30's with films like Freaks and Frankenstein. I am not suggesting that the horror film was created in the 70's/80's but that it emerged as victorious during that time. People live off of the carnage. Hard times bring horror films. People want comfort, so they go to the movies, and they also want to watch someone have a worse experience then them. The movies is the perfect place for that. In the dark, hunched down in your seat, you can feel and experience emotions that are usually private. But in the movies you can be alone together - - group trauma. People want to be traumatized in groups - - if you're going to experience trauma why not have someone who was there with you? Someone who will always understand, but at a distance? Who can account for the same trauma and even explain how it effected them? It's back door mob mentality - going to a horror film i mean. I'm the kind of person that goes to see EVERY single horror film that comes out. So i know. I know what it means to sit in a theater, look around and realized i am one of two people this is not covering their face in fear. When i went with Miranda and Steve to see 'The Strangers' i began to realize how strange horror movie culture really is. First of all this movie freaked EVERYONE in the theater. Even i jumped a few times...well, once. Steve got so freaked his squeezed his coke until is exploded all over him and Miranda almost NEVER watched without looking through the slits between her fingers. As i looked around the theater i realized that myself and one other guy were not covering our faces. In an entire theater which usually seats over 50 people, only two were scared enough to NOT stop watching. I mean real or not, you've got to be pretty traumatized already to not flinch while watching someone be murdered on screen.

Pamela Barnes Ewing and Bobby Ewing.

Guess who?

Hot child in the City; i wish...

Ohmigod....it's so hot. We're having a bit of a heatwave i think. Since it's been raining ALL the time lately so i should be happy...i guess? But im' not, im just sweaty.

Today was a rough day for me. A lot of emotional peeling - - layer after layer. But it's all for good health.

It's nights like this i miss miranda. to hold me hand, or just laugh at me being silly. It's nice that i get a partner and a bestfriend in one. I love her, more than i could ever really express. It is so nice to finally be with someone who isn't ashamed of me - - so many people have been (and i think (sometimes) still are).

I'm supposed to go on a picnic tomorrow but i also have a list of films i'd like to watch.

- will and grace
- sex and the city. series or movie...it doesn't matter
- beaches. - i am a sucker for bette midler
- and most importantly halloween

i wish i wish i wish i was in that cool city air again.

Double checking

So the two women are divorced and decide to live together and raise their families side by side. The two men are BROTHERS, but i have to say they are highly homoerotic. They even have a child. One of the characters nephews. Now you tell me....what about both these shows ISN'T queer? In some way. I love Kate and Allie. sweeeet women living the good life.

I told you not to eat the skittles from my hour glass

Ohmigod.

I JUST rediscovered 'The Faculty'. You know that movie from 1998, when ALL Hollywood was doing was funding films for, about, surrounding, and exploiting teens. And when i say teens i mean the actors who played 16 yr olds but were actually 21, the 16 yr old girls who fell in love with what they were being told was a 16 yr old boy - but was actually a 21 yr old boy, causing the actors 'adoration' of his teenage fans to appear slightly pedophile-ish. The teens who actually believed that the lives, stories, and stereotypical roles would happen to them. I mean how many teenage boy losers do you think dreamed (and believed) in the day that a 'jennifer love hewitt' character would read their letter, put aside her responsibility to being the most popular girl, follow them to the train station and live happily ever - until college.? Or i wonder how many teenage boys thought they could go the Sebastian route and convince a beautiful virgin like Reese witherspoon to give it up to them? While simultaneously trying to get into another girl (their step sisters) pants - - and ultimately shedding the bad boy image for love. Unfortunately he dies in the end, but so do Romeo and Juliet. It's like a teen movie right of passage for someone attractive, in love, or having just recently reached an important point of clarity die. He did leave behind a journal though, gotta love the Virginia Woolf touch.

Teens films of the 90's definitely filled the young and impressionable minds with an idea of unity. Lets go back to 'The Faculty' since that's what inspired me to write this anyway. Six completely different and fairly unlikeable people come together to stop aliens from taking over the world? Right. We have Casey(the nerd), Zeke(the drug dealer), Stokely(the pseudo lesbian, depressed, gender ambiguous loner), Mary Beth ( the southern bell 'out of towner'), Delilah ( the most popular girl in school), and Stan ( the captain of the football team). All of them come together - - they overcome high school differences and hierarchies to emerge as young adults. Mary Beth even goes so far as to say (to stokely) ' i know you pride yourself on being the outsider, but aren't you tired of being something you're not?'B Yup, she said that. And then, after we discover that Mary Beth is the queen alien they have been looking to kill all along, she says to stokely ' we don't know if you're gay, straight, alien..'. Now how sexuality and extraterrestrial life could have ANYTHING to do with one another is beyond me. And i don't mean in a theoretical or symbolic sense, i mean in the physical world. Well, there you have it, the homophobia in film came from two very predictable sources: the small town southerner and the most popular girl in school (who obviously needs to protect her ability to be fucked, because high school IS hell). But of course this cant be blamed on 'the faculty' considering 'the breakfast club' did the exact same damage. But that was the 80's, teens NEEDED that kind of damage.

Anyway, in the end we're left with Casey the nerd. Who is played by a young and eager Elijah Wood...before Tobey Maguire took over his spot. Because he killed the alien queen himself by injecting her with what i believe was speed...crystal meth? (I'm really not sure) he gets the girl and fame - he gets Delilah. We're also shown that Stokely and Stan are dating, c'mon...that's just not likely. And finally we're shown that Zeke has joined the football team. In the end both he and Stokely give into their impulses and are shown to be 'normal' members of their high school class. The resulting message? Sex, drugs, and teenage unity can save the earth.

"There are few things sadder in this life than watching someone walk away after they've left you, watching the distance between your bodies expand until there's nothing... but empty space and silence."-Someone like you♥

Instru(menstrual)

It's funny (not funny ha ha) that horror is the LEAST respected genre of film and yet ( i would argue, and i know what i am a talking about) deconstructs and exposes many of societies values and culture. It explores human life (both waking and comatose) in a very explicit way. This way may and can often come off as non-productive, but i assure you horror films will save us all.

Horror films are also VERY female centered. While of course there is the portrayal that women are hypersexual damsels in distress, who deserve to be murdered for their looseness - - their sexual power/freedom. However, (and this is the piece most people miss because they don't watch these movies at all) Women can also be antagonist - - which can be seen as a reflection of men’s pathological fear of women, their power, and menstruation, resulting in castration anxiety. Women in horror films are often thought to be child like. I mean 'child like' in the sense that they're helpless, simple, - - even small. One thing in particular that audiences gleam from horror films is that women do nothing. They do nothing to advance the plot. They do nothing when there is danger around ( mostly because they can't, am i right?). They do nothing but scream, moan and eventually die a brutal death. Wrong. Well its not wrong so much as it is surface. That understanding of women in such a male dominated genre is understandable, plausible, reasonable, and even expected. Women are thought of this way even when the film stars, or is directly about HER! There are a few women characters I'd like to talk about here. They together, but separately, string together a truth of extreme feminist importance. The period. Menstruation. The Flow. You may be asking a couple questions to yourself right now: in what movie is a women's period central? is there more than one movie? how can horror films be feminist? and I wrapped my head around this from a bunch of different directions; and i found something interesting. The films 'Ginger Snaps' (2000), and Carrie (1976) are just two examples of womens power - through menstruation.


You’ve probably all heard the euphemisms, and probably the jokes, such as: "Don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die."


to be continued....