O Tenenbaums

Nerd alert!

Today's Beatific Gonzette piece isn't to commemorate an overlong Facebook comment that I'm proud of OR to say something about an Associated Press article, or EVEN to wish over and over again that David Lynch and Mike Patton would do a musical comedy show together. (With Crispin Glover?!?! Oh, wish, wish, wish.)

Today's Beatific Gonzette piece is still completely self-indulgent, but in honor of it being Christmas Eve, my thoughts are of trees and carols, oh tenenbaum, oh Boo Boo Tenenbaum, oh Royal Tenenbaum, and just like that we're on the subject of J. D. Salinger and Wes Anderson.

Much like my "Oh shit! Ted Raimi?!?" moment of joy when going through Twin Peaks for the first time earlier this year (I paused the show and ran out of the room to locate and tell my husband), I had an "Oh shit! I'm reading a Wes Anderson movie?!?!" moment when reading my first Salinger this summer.

Which is a silly and backwards reaction to have, I know.

But also a holiday-appropriate subject to write about, as the short season of intensive gift-giving is a perfect time to meditate on how cool books and movies--inexpensive gifts but awesome gifts--are. Doubly appropriate because it's a holiday season for appreciating friends and family. Wes Anderson movies remind me of my sister and our mutual friends and J. D. Salinger books remind me of my luminescent friend Abigail, who loaned me three of his books while insisting that I actually read them. (If you're reading this, hi Abby!!!).

I haven't finished reading them.

But I did read most of Nine Stories before having such a strong "this is awwwwwesoooooome!!!" reaction that I had to put the book down and run around my little apartment. In my most personal life, I am a dork.

I know that I'm not the first person to want to write about the ties between the movie The Royal Tenenbaums and Nine Stories. But this is my blog, I have a bit of travel time to kill, and I'm going to write about it.

In the short story The Laughing Man, the singular female character Mary Hudson wears a trademark fur coat, even when committing acts of minor athleticism, just like Anderson's film character Margot Tenenbaum. (While Margot was seen escaping school in her coat, Mary played center field in hers.) Both Mary and Margot also made cigarette use into a full affectation. Both used presence and absence like a private Morse Code. And both existed in their respective stories during bittersweet relationships with men.

In the short story Down at the Dinghy, a woman named Boo Boo Tenembaum feigns idyllic military connections to impress her child enough to keep the little boy from running away from home in a tiny boat. I would normally love to go through this story point-by-point with good attention, "vocally" enjoying each direct or psychological connection that this story shares with Wes Anderson's Royal Tenenbaums. But tragically, I am nearly at my holiday destination and I am horribly carsick from road-blogging as a vehicular passenger, and I need to stop writing for the day.

I hope that your holidays freakin' rule, Dear Reader. (Also, I dare you to search for "Yule Goat" on Wikipedia today or tomorrow.)

Quick Response to "Who Holds Responsibility For Ills of the American School System?"

As I've been known to do on this blog, I'm reusing one of my overlong Facebook comments for blog content.

This is my response to a question posted by the Associated Press. "Who do you believe holds the most responsibility for low test scores, poor graduation rates and other ills of the American school system?"
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It's complicated!

1. The dominant American culture doesn't value or use academia enough to make education seem useful or "cool" to children. For one example, there is a huge anti-science movement among many American adults. To really pursue an education might feel disloyal and frightening to the children raised in anti-science American families. (I've actually seen this happen before.)

2. Uninteresting, condescending, boring textbooks are also part of the problem, because they often (unintentionally?) discourage the critical thinking skills that a quality education would need to foster. The book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" critiques American public school textbook content quite well.

3. A lack of interest in the world outside of the United States is another aspect of American adult culture that is very likely to reduce children's interest in academic learning. It encourages by example an attitude of "I only want to know the bare minimum of what I need to get by" and discourages healthy curiosity.

The closest thing I can think of to an easy solution would be to support funding for publicly available, immensely fascinating learning materials that children can find for themselves, without any reliance on adult assistance. Probably through television? I like the way that Mythbusters uses the basic language and methods of hypothesis testing in an accessible way. I like the way Alton Brown describes molecular structure. It would be nice to have similar programming prepared to cover a wider variety of academic subjects, so that viewers could absorb a decent basic education passively. Something that children and adults can enjoy together.

To successfully influence children, we need to influence everyone.

My Bittersweet Love of Automobiles

From an early age, travel by automobile has been one of my surest delights. Flying down a road, scenery blurring as it whips past like film speeding through a broken projector. Loud music in surround sound--four or more speakers!--synching up with this sensation of epic, unnatural movement. And to have my hands on the steering wheel? My feet on the pedals? Oh, it's beautiful. While other girls (and men, women and boys) may fantasize about horses, I dream almost exclusively of being at the sheltered helm of metal steeds. Few pleasures can match a road trip or long commute.

More than clothing, more than food, more than craft supplies or books, gasoline is frequently my largest financial indulgence--bordering on a vice or guilty pleasure.

But the guilt! I'm not without a geological education. It was one of the subjects I overindulged in, in college. Environmental geology. Even after my interest officially wandered into neuroscience and psychology, the possible AND certain consequences of environmental ne'er-do-welling weighed heavily on my mind. Does the bioaccumulation of PCBs and other industrial contaminants--passed from mother to child in utero--contribute to our higher rates of autism? Cancer?

This brings me back to the "guilt" part of guilty pleasure. I burn more gasoline than necessary.

It seems like whatever industry exhales or discards has a tendency to turn around to bite us medically, if often in ways too complicated and indirect to get the general public excited about.

Some products, some substances have only obscure, unclear consequences. Not so with my beloved gasoline.

The combustion that soothes my character degrades my lungs, spoils the natural sunscreen in the sky (no small concern for a ginger!), requires environmentally AND politically sketchy geological extraction, may encourage war, certainly fouls up the delicate and increasingly unstable systems responsible for the sort of weather our species requires, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, our climate now acts like an alcoholic parent! Spoiling us and beating us--sometimes to death--with terrifying unpredictably.

But still, I return to the subject of my car. My modest little vehicle. My metallic pet. The charming metal box that hurls me from work to home, from home to friends' houses, and always to see my family.

The internet and telephone can help me see and talk with people too far to walk to and too obscurely located to bus or train to. But in-person visits are still much preferable to the telecommute, and time spent at the helm of a car is such a pleasure in itself, that I still fail to join my gasoline-free friends in their medically and morally superior lifestyle.

Woe is me, the sinner who does not bike to work. (Yet.) I dream of guilt free cars, of limitless, safe propulsion. No toxic batteries or airborne, particulate exhaust.

My fantasy is that the wretched and finite nature of fossil gasoline will not take the beauty of the automobile down with it.

A Moment of Neeeeerd Rage!!!

OK, there is NO WAY I'm the only comic book nerd out here who finds it massively creepy that at the end of Iron Man 2, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts hook up.

I'm sorry, but no. It is simply not OK.

In the first COMICS, Ms. Potts used to throw her little gold-digging self at her rich boss, but he would always snub her for whatever supermodels were already in his car. Largely because he was hiding a physical disability and secret robot habit and didn't want anybody too close to his personal life for longer than a weekend.

And in later comics, Ms. Potts wised up, realized that her boss was a flaky drunk and married the limo driver instead, as nature intended. Never once hooking up with her boss!

In IMMEDIATE comics, yeah, she did. After being widowed and after she thought Tony was going to die soon. But it was too brief to be much of an affair, and then he jumped straight into bed with his other primary female ally, because he thought he was dying and could burn a few bridges on the way out. Being a party boy and all.

Now, I love the Iron Man comics. The Iron Man Civil War collection is something I re-read frequently. I love the weird social and psychological dynamics of the title, the love-hate friendships that start to resemble family, the fantasy of wealth... It's even fun to imagine what the weight of the world must feel like when it's resting on mentally unstable, brilliant shoulders.

But dude! Hollywood should NOT have turned one of comics' best awkward male-female friendships into a "the guy gets the girl because main characters always hook up" scenario. Part of the fun is that he never really does.

OK, nerd moment over for now.

Like Water for Spouse

Weird side-effect of being in a long-term relationship: When I actually need sleep, my body thinks I need to track down my husband, because I'm unaccustomed to sleeping by myself.

Almost the same thing: When dehydrated, I used to crave food instead of water.

(Now, drinking water is a major pastime at work, so I do crave it when thirsty. Oh, the lone health benefit of long hours spent filing.)

The Best Lie I've Ever Told

This was originally written as a contest entry in the hopes of getting $20 in store credit to spend through Groupon Seattle. (PS: I love you, Groupon Seattle.)

I sleep in a centrifuge so I'm full of energy and violent confusion when I first wake up.

Instead of using an alarm clock, it just stops spinning at 6am every weekday. This launches me into a swimming pool full of foam rubber effigies of famous spokespersons. This helps psychologically prepare me for the day. Once I've figured out which direction is up, I use this knowledge to stand up, walk, get dressed and brush my teeth.

Next, I ultra-charge the day to the max by dressing a whole litter of kittens up like Batman and chasing them around the living room. Then, steak and eggs breakfast for everybody! Even for the kittens!

My Featured Comment on Qewz News About "Female Viagra"

My compulsive writing problem got me a little bit of positive attention this week!

An excerpt from my response to a Qewz News post on Facebook is today's featured quote on their main news website:

The whole response this line was taken from may have been overlong and brimming with potentially crackpot hypotheses (one of my specialties), but I think the part they took was alright. A little offensive perhaps ("dumb kids") but still OK.

Here is their original question:

Qewz News: A "little pink  pill" to solve women's sexual  problems probably won't be hitting  drugstore shelves anytime soon. But  that doesn't mean discussion of  the need for it, or lack thereof, is  likely to end. Is this a  legitimate public health concern, or is the  drug company  manufacturing a disorder?

Here is my original, gigantic response in its gorgeously, playfully unwieldy entirety:

What a fun question!

1. Until dumb kids start sneaking their parents meds and doing themselves serious medical harm (see Viagra), I like the idea of medical science trying to produce better aphrodisiacs. I'd also like to see science try to build a better roller coasters, too. Why not?

2. PTSD is a prime example of how an unsavory cultural experience CAN lead to legitimate medical problems. Stress-induced insomnia and constipation are other, perhaps more appropriate examples. Sometimes human bodies lock up and stop working properly when the external social conditions aren't psychologically healthy.

3. I've heard mainstream American culture referred to as "drenched in sexuality," but haven't seen convincing examples of this.

[Look out! From here out it kind of turns into an essay, but I couldn't figure out what to cut so I just posted an overlong response. Sorry everyone!]

It's true that American pop culture gives a lot of attention to the concept of the budding, sexually eager virginal teen who's finally ready to be looked at in his or her underwear, but that's not actually sex.

What sexually healthy adults do once they move past that fumbling, unskilled, virginal stage is too frequently kept a mystery in American pop culture.

Instead, adult sexuality is most frequently depicted in one of the following, rather asexual ways:

* Two lonely coworkers who try to repress their feelings of sexual tension by cracking wise and maybe kissing once, after years of chaste simmering.
* Asexual marriages.
* Marriages in which the couple initiates sex by hugging, making a wisecrack and chastely kissing just before the end credits roll.
* Single adults who don't spend enough time with any one sexual partner to really experiment or figure things out. This might be a lovelorn single adult character who rarely dates or this might be a promiscuous single adult character who specializes in one-night stands, and who doesn't have to learn how to keep things hot once the initial novelty of acquaintance has worn off.
* Sexually wise adults--whose experience often serves as a punchline--in which sexual references are delivered in such an absurd-sounding fashion that the "normal" adult characters in the scene are baffled, and little or no real wisdom is passed down.

This is all OK subject matter, but it doesn't really help to foster an environment in which adults who have long-term, frequent access to the same partner can work on refining their shared sex life.

Instead, American pop culture gives off the general impression that studying the idiosyncratic sexuality of oneself and one's long-term partner is just explicit, "icky" and something to be terribly, horribly afraid and ashamed of. Not something that anybody worthwhile would actually do.

That fear CAN'T be healthy. I'd be shocked if it DIDN'T contribute to sexual dysfunction!