By now, you've probably heard of the woman who is on a mission to matrimony, by making 300 bread and toppings combinations, commonly known to us regular folks as sandwiches. If you haven't heard of this phenomenon and the reactions it produced, click definitely here, of course here, and maybe here, to get caught up. The culinary creations she's whipping up look awesome, and I'm certain that I'll be trying a few recipes. And she's publishing a book, which is cool. But like many, I'm left with a distinctly sour taste from this whole endeavor.
As progressive as I like to think I am, I'm still old fashioned, in some pretty basic ways. I think that all humans, who are not children under the age of 8, or disabled in some way should have certain skill-sets. Reading writing, 'rithmetic, cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, and banking should be in one's cache of abilities, to be well rounded. Some people have to overcome great obstacles in life just to be able to do these things. There's like a whole collective of people who paint masterpieces with their mouths or feet because their other limbs are unavailable. Let's not forget people like Helen Keller who had totally insurmountable odds, and still managed to kill the game of life. Surely the rest of us can learn basic life skills.
As archaic as it sounds I think all women should know how to cook. Period. You don't have to be Julia Child's or Chef Ramsey with knockers, but you need to be able to cook an egg and the occasional casserole or something. I'm not interested in being a stay-at-home-anything, but by and large I think there's some ability we have as women to make a home. I know, I sound like I stepped out the 50's. For the record, men need to be able to cook too, so they can quit routinely whoring themselves out for meals. Don't recoil fellas, if you're giving somebody some the night before and are expecting bacon and eggs left on the nightstand in the AM because you can't do it yourself, you're basically a prostitute. It's cool. I don't think any less of you, LOL and your categorical denial gives me a good laugh.
So, the sexism-sensitive sections of my psyche, realize that my earlier statements sound like a conflict. Being in the kitchen or home is not the only thing women can or should be doing. This woman is making sandwiches for her man and expanding her skills, that's not a fundamental issue for me. If we keep it all the way real, 90% of men want women in their lives to cook for them with some regularity. I'm not a man, obviously, but I want yell out "babe-make me a sandwich" sometimes, so I get it. But what doesn't work is the tone with which her excellent-cook-boyfriend proposed a challenge to her. The whole timbre of the conversation and her thoughts about it, is too much. According to her Intro on the 300 Sandwiches site, He really likes her to make him a sandwich once in a while. Once she does he says, "honey, you’re three hundred sandwiches away from an engagement ring."
It's a Rom-Com waiting to happen. Except the couple is bi-cultural so they will probably replace her with some girl from the CW going for her first film role. Though she describes the interaction as a joke ''between E and I'' but apparently, Honey took that seriously.
"That was it—a proposal hinged on me making him sandwiches. Sandwiches meant more to him than nice gifts, regular sex or any other incentive I could use to get him closer to putting a ring on it."
Like, seriously? I know I talked all that big traditional talk, but this just feels wrong. I'm all for having standards, for looking for preferential things in a potential lifetime mate. I get that. Maybe it was the number ''300.'' Maybe it was because before this sandwich business she mentions that she had been wondering about marriage and if their relationship was going to get there. Everybody's been there. Unless you already know and are in denial, in which case, run. It's probably safer for her to try to keep this guy and get him to the alter with sandwiches rather than sex and/or an unplanned pregnancy (don't front, women and men regularly pull the baby on board lever to manipulate relationships) But what feels false is, the idea that her weakest asset was the thing keeping her from a ring with this guy, rather than all the other awesome that she is, gaining it for her.
This whole deal is a bit top heavy.
He got excited enough to take their relationship somewhere else because she can perform a dramedy in 3 acts of sandwich making, and it feels woeful. I'm sure if he doesn't make good on his end, she can pack up her deli and move to the next. That isn't really a bad thing. Plus a bunch of people (me) will get some excellent food porn and signature pieces added to their own repertoires This girl will probably be cool, but there's gonna be some douchebag in another part of the planet who takes this thing to the max on their mate. It'll be like ''The Rules'' but with more pork sliders. And Idk, if I'm cool with that.
Catching Fire, the highly anticipated sequel to the first Katniss flavored YA Action film is coming out this week. Come Friday we may be chillin' with our large extra butter popcorn, and mammoth size drink (the one that will make us have to piss a river before the second act), but we should take a quick look back.
The first film was cloaked in a puff of sparkles that is Jennifer Lawrence, the spirit animal for ''chicks who keep it real'' everywhere. The burping, self-deprecating, candid actress won everyone's heart as a more tan version of herself in the first installment. But, there was a special brand of fool who roared with the fire of a Bizarro Katy Perry, they were angry, pissed, disappointed, confused...that *gasp* a movie from a beloved book series could have the unthinkable, a doe eyed girl of color as one of it's best plot devices. Rue, was black. And OMG, so was Cinna, and Thresh the other tribute from Rue's district. Be-still our thunderstruck hearts.
In this whole thing, I don't know which brand of ignorant is more idiotic or offensive: The idea that being pissed about the ''good characters'' being black could not possibly make one a slave to ingrown prejudice, OR the fact that clearly all those people couldn't read. The book defines Rue as having some color. I don't have much to say here, but I really want people to check their issues before this weekend. I just want to enjoy the movie, and not have a sea of tweeted nonsense to greet me the next day. I hear Katniss' wedding dress is gorgeous. But it's white. Idk. It's kinda gonna ruin the movie for me. (See how dumb that sounds, want to see the foolery in full? go here, here, and here.)
The target market of this film, in their faux-belligerence against character mis-representation, showed us just how hard old habits die. I shudder at the societal implications. Please remember that ''isms'' are so hard to get rid of because ''nice people'' do them, not just the Skinheads, or the Klan, or the homophobes, or the chauvanists. It also comes from grandpas who fix cars, grandmas who bake cookies, moms who take their kids to soccer, dads who coach the football, teens who hang at malls buying lattes and uggs. The fact is that most of the people who were on twitter lamenting about the little ''nigger,'' and about Lenny Kravitz (whose fineness and badassery one should never lament), are under the age of 30. Sort of guts the hope that we might live in a world where color isn't a big deal, and where value isn't a question of melanin, doesn't it?
It's clear that there is a strong message about classism and a critique of society, in these stories. I personally feel that these reality competitions are the non-dystopian cousins of The Hunger Games. I don't even mean that as negatively as it sounds, because I tried out for The Glee Project twice. I'm not above it. I do mean it as an observation of how we create valuation lotteries. The real world is kinda shitty sometimes, especially the part where people who work hard enough can naturally progress up the ladder. If some people's ladders start in a cavernous hole, it impacts the results. That discussion was clearly present in this story, much like how Planet of The Apes makes similar editorial comments about the way we do things. So people can recognize a message. That's not a problem. The irony is, because the one of the messengers didn't fit their imagining of events, the lessons were lost on them before the last credits rolled up the screen.
To be as blunt as possible, Katy Perry's music (specifically her singles) give me chills. All the time. I know most people who consider themselves lovers of music, scoff at the pop-music elite. People actively hate --but can't escape that Top 40 melange, tweaked to mind-numbing perfection, curiously upbeat, annoyingly catchy, which lends itself to being repeated 680 times a day on a given Clear Channel station so well. Most often Pop is the Pat Boone style version of whatever really interesting and diverse musical movements are happening in that day and time. There is something horrifying about when ''the masses'' start to like a thing. Which is how I felt when the Teen Choice Award decided to take this white folk's fascination with twerking one boring overplayed step too far this year, by trying to cajole their audience into one final act before the end credits, setting a ''twerking world record.''
I feel, and respect the ire that comes when your favorite sound is co-opted and made to be just another cog in the wheel. This applies to 80% of pop tunes to one degree or another. I get it. But here's what I find to be limiting about that viewpoint: A. You and I and everyone else are the masses. B. Some pop stars do more with their platform, for the culture, and for artistry than they are given credit. Katy Perry is certainly one of them. Gaga is another. As is Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, and even Justin Beiber.
I'm not ever here to make people like things they don't like. Or to condemn people for their tastes. What wakes me up in the morning is the idea, that artists (no matter what you or I think of them) have the right to create in a way that is right and honest for them. I'm here to champion that right whenever possible, with vigor, and sarcastic quips. Pop music adds some smoke and mirrors to that ''honesty'' but that's because Pop is a business, rather than a genre. It's always been that, and doesn't make any secrets about it. The same way ads, even with orchestral scores, witty jokes, thought provoking premises, cool pictures, etc...are here to sell you something. That's the reality. Doesn't make the old ''Wassup'' Commercial any less awesome, or culturally salient.
So, that brings me to Katy Perry.
That girl can make an anthem. GEEZ. She makes you want to get up and face the day. It's crazy. She uses the pop formula, the rhyming dictionary of her heart, and her upbringing to create this world of empowerment. She's cheeky, but not in the same way that other stars use rebellion as a means to their ends. Well, not totally. She started out rougher, but she evolved quickly (as did Gaga and Minaj). Because when you look up and have 40 Million+ followers, if you're wise, and a decent human being, you realize really quickly, what influence you have.
The conversation about who is responsible for society, is it artists or individuals, is another conversation that I will address in full or in part as we go on this blogging journey. Here however, I will be quick about it. Artists dictate style, they don't create society. They discuss it, the critique it, they fall victim to it, etc., LIKE ANYONE ELSE. They are, after all, human. Not Kryptonian. So I do not support the notion that we can or should blame art or artists for the ills in society. Sorry. That's the easy way out. That said, when you are creating the soundtrack to people's lives and people are buying that soundtrack in droves, you should be aware, purposeful, and honest about what you are saying. You should make sure that you are being true to yourself, and in that you create something that people can identify with.
There is fresh approach, and candidness about her music that I really appreciate. Her first songs were interesting, more than the ''chic banal,'' if I may borrow Zac Posen's oft used phrase. Still fitting the pop model, but turning it's styling on it's ear (same again with Gaga, and Nicki---except Nicki's talent is in a Hip-Hop/Pop infrastructure). Then she started making Stadium-Status anthems inspiring dozens of teens in that awkward period of life or love, and me, specifically as a 20-something. The awkward phase, never really ends after teen-dom. If sort of shifts from who likes me, to what city should I live in next. It's still uncomfortable, there's still lots of uncertainty, albeit with more maturity under your belt (hopefully). When you just suspend your (over)critical instincts and get in the moment she's created, the songs are really inspiring, interesting, full of story.
As I will say until I'm gone, music is to be felt first, then analyzed. Teenage Dream, Firework, Last Friday Night, Roar... all of these lift you, the listener. It's her own unicorn and care-bear filled world, but there are monsters under the bed, and there's smog in the air sometimes, heartbreak, but we're still having a good time. We are still finding meaning, we are still in some ways more than others, triumphant. Where Taylor Swift tends to have a deprecating form of story telling (that is also anthem-like in it's way), Gaga tends to be more brash, Minaj is provocative Katy Perry has a way of telling you the real, in a very relate-able way. She makes you feel like her brand of awesome is attainable. And that yours is too.
Really, what more can we ask for?
I Recommend: ROAR, Teenage Dream, Firework, Birthday, Unconditionally
