I haven't seen the movie yet, but the hype surrounding the new Cameron Diaz film "The Sweetest Thing" is already making me puke. Billed as a female kick-ass answer to "American Pie" and the other gross-out comedies, it has writers for USA Today squeezing out breathless nuggets like "a no-holds-barred, shock-'em-till-they-scream comedy," with headlines suggesting that we have entered a whole new realm for women in Hollywood. Further proof is offered in the guise of "Bridget Jones' Diary" and "Kissing Jessica Stein," two movies that allegedly possess characters that "forget about Mr. Right and go for Mr. Right Now," which is such an unbelievable clich that I'm amazed it is still accepted as humor currency.
Obviously USA Today is no hotbed for cultural bellwethers, either past or present, and I've been subjected to the schlocky editors that force their minions to come up with pieces like this. However even putting aside that "Kissing Jessica Stein" and "Bridget Jones' Diary" had nothing to do with a woman's emancipation from priggishness, the mere mention of "The Sweetest Thing" as some sort of victory for women has got to make even casual feminists blind with rage. From what I can gather, hijinks ensue from some actress or another getting stuck mid-fellatio, and then some sperm ends up on someone's dress, and, well, whatever. The point is, these things are now happening to women in movies, and we're all supposed to be psyched that chicks are finally getting to be trashy, promiscuous and uncaring in their sexual conquests, a la "Sex in the City" (cited as a major influence by every actor/writer in the piece).
Producer Cathy Konrad said that the girls they met during auditions all squealed, "Oh my God, this is how my girlfriend and I are when we hang out and we're having a really nice night!" which is a quote about as disturbing as it is confusing. I don't suppose it occurred to Ms. Konrad that the dim-bulb morons they were auditioning for parts in this hunk of shit would have said just about anything to get a role; hell, we had forty of New York's finest stage actors tell us the same thing just to get into "The Pink House."
It's just that I don't see any equality in a rash of new movies that portray women as being purveyors of trash rather than just victims of it; in the final analysis, the actresses get the parts because they're hot and wear pants that show the crack of their asses. These movies also do nothing to quell the radically unfair ratio of men vs. women in movies females make up 51% of humanity, and yet movies are 85% about males. What's worse, movies about liberated sexual women have been around since the 1940s, leading me to believe that the collective memory of America's media is about 7 years. I mean, has anyone at USA Today seen "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," for fuck's sake? Diane Keaton blazed through more men in that movie in 1975 than Christina Applegate will know in her lifetime.
If feminism and artistic representation have been reduced to this bullshit, then our nation's women are really in trouble. I think if I have a daughter, I'm going to wire her with a listening device so I can hear if any of her vapid friends start swaying her in the wrong direction. I will have an IQ test for anyone entering my front door, and if they sleep over, they will be quizzed at breakfast. I am going to be Creepy Dad but she will thank me for it when she is president of NPR.
Speaking of white endeavors, Tessa and I played croquet on Meadowood's official lawn today, with instruction from Jerry Stark, ranked 17th in the world in this rarified sport. I wonder if he has a blood feud with David Goacher, the wily Brit ranked 16th. I know I would.
The Celextant, April 12, 2002
Took the pill around noon today, per Tessa's instruction to move it closer to morning apparently the pill made her a little wired. Still no effect. I'm beginning to tire of the difference between the English words "effect" and "affect." I hope to affect change in this matter. One of the effects of SSRIs like Celexa is to give the patient a "flat affect," which means that he/she doesn't feel much of anything for anybody. I hope the smaller dose affects this effect.
God, I'm clever. I wonder what SSRIs do for "tired sarcasm"
Today we indulged further into the opulence and pampering of Meadowood with an Aruyvedic Abhyanga massage, which was recommended to us as "the rarest of treatments," probably because it takes two therapists attacking you at once, a total of four hands racing all over your body. Youd think this would satisfy some ancient longing for group sex cultivated back in the heavy porn-watching days of one’s misspent adolescence, but it turns out that four hands end up being pretty confusing. It's pretty intense if you can let yourself fall into it, but I think that all massage sessions necessarily fall back into the tacit intimacy developed between the therapist and the client – and having two therapists kind of makes you feel like you're a Ford Taurus being assembled by overpaid union workers.
That, and I don't mean to complain (most people in this cruel world will never have a massage from two people at once) but they used a shitload of oil, so much that I felt like a tossed vinaigrette salad. I have ancient phobias - cultivated from that very same misspent adolescence about oil on my body, so it was hard to let it go. That said, they did do some wicked shit with synchronized patterns, and Tessa thought it was great, so who am I to complain? Sometimes I think that the best feeling I ever had from anyone touching me was a moment in 5th grade when Kent van Metre blacked in my fingernails with a pencil during Art class. I went into a trance, and I still remember it. I wonder if that Alternate Ian is totally gay.
After that, we went on a walk around St. Helena, spending money we don't have on really cool shoes. I can say I've bought my Most Expensive Pair of Shoes to Date, a pair of Barrett loafers that beat the shit out of anything else in my oeuvre. Tessa and I stressed out about the purchase for a while I was never going to buy them and she figured they were too good to pass up, followed by vice-versa – but in the end, I got swanked-up footwear for her screening of Five Wives tonight and will try to stop feeling guilty about it later.
Her documentary played tonight to one of the most enthusiastic crowds I've ever seen they started laughing at the beginning and never stopped. It was a much better crowd than the one in LA last year, probably because that venue was filled with morons and film students, two groups not known for participating much. The questions asked tonight were pretty great, and Tessa was on her game, leaving the crowd laughing and wanting more. After the screening, a throng of admirers hung around her, causing Bill Harlan's wife to remark "she's so solid!"
The Celextant, April 11, 2002
Took another half pill today. My mom wanted to know what I meant yesterday by saying it was a positive metaphor it's just that we enjoyed the idea of Tessa breaking a anti-depressant in half for me all those months before she even knew we'd be together.
No substantive change in my mood or noticeable effects on my psyche. I am wondering aloud if 10mg is going to be enough, given that it usually takes three times the dosage for anything else to work. I have had enough med school (three days), however, to understand that Celexa and Excedrin, although phonetic cousins, don't have much in common.
I'm so fucking pissed off right now I could bust a gasket. Only Tessa, quietly slumbering next to me, keeps me from ripping the refrigerator out of the wall and throwing it onto the sixth hole of the golf course we're hovering over. I just spent an hour and a half writing to this blog, some damn good stuff mind you, and then the computer pulled its usual bullshit freeze. I haven't lost that much writing since some gonad turned my Mac off one night at the farm, losing two pages of a novel that only ended up frustrating me into a ball of cynicism anyway. Is there anything positive to come of this, some Buddhist sense of impermanence that can offer solace?
Im trying, and my self-supplied answer is NO.
Ill try to cut this down to its bare essentials: we're in Napa Valley now, staying in the ass-end crook of Meadowood, the resort for which my dad is "cultural attaché." This place is as white as it gets, in both attitude and sartorial choice: denizens of Meadowood line up to tell you how much the owner, Bill Harlan, loathes dark clothes on the croquet field. As Tessa and I suited up in the mandatory collared shirts and dainty skirts for tennis, I had paradoxical feelings of being both blessed and complacent. It's been hard for me to get around post-tragic New York lately without feeling guilty, but being at Meadowood, it's almost impossible to shake the feeling that you're one more white American driving an SUV and complaining about your massage therapist. The decadence here is precious, at least; there are no porn channels on TV.
Speaking of troubling clouds (I know that phrase was in the first draft), the flight from NYC to here was thankfully uneventful, as long as you dont count the raucous turbulence over Nevada, or the scarily aborted take-off. JetBlue knows everything about their passengers except how tall they are; the personal TV sets are an unbelievable blessing, even if my legs stopped receiving bloodflow somewhere over Canton, OH.
Ive been trying hard lately to rectify the things in my life that are rectifiable, you know, the whole "wisdom to know the difference" yarn. Everything from dentistry to my emotional health is going to get an oil change, and one thing I start next week is therapy with Dr. Block, who lives a few hundred yards from us in Park Slope. Our phone conversation alone was better than my two visits to the state-appointed therapist, who sat me down in a windowless room and stared at me until I started to stammer. Hopefully Dr. Block can direct me to a good psychiatrist who will provide drugs, rather than the withering glares and suspicious grunts provided by the fine folks at NYU.
I know theres a certain honor in solving your problems through therapy alone, but sometimes you need a pharmacological remedy too, and this is one of them. I know my Prozac experiment ('98-'99) was ultimately unfruitful (and this time I'll know not to quit taking the pills cold turkey) but this time I'm trying Celexa, which Tessa's therapist hailed as "Prozac perfected." I'm not so much of a feckless naïve nutball to think that Celexa won't have its own share of problems (I'm preparing to ejaculate only on Sundays) but it's got to be better than the horseshit I've been putting myself though. Besides, it's only 10mg a day, which is more of a gentle massage than a massive rolfing.
I want to keep a good diary of this drugs effect on my psyche, and since "Prozac Diaries" is already taken, I want to call this section "The Celextant" because:
a) the sextant is what ancient mariners used at night to determine the course of their ship, something I need very much right now
b) and, c,
c) Ill never miss a chance to use a really stupid pun, especially if it's tangentially involved with my seratonin levels.
The Celextant, April 10, 2002
Took my first pill today from Tessas stash. It was halved by Tessa in May 2000, approximately four months before we started dating, a positive metaphor not lost on either of us.
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Actually, maybe it was best that I lost the first draft of this. Its way late, but this is better writing.