Today, I will tackle projects and make New Year’s Resolutions. This is one of them. Do more creative stuff. Write. And knit. Experiment with cooking. Decorate my space. 2011 is sort of a blur. My goal for 2012 is to slow down and be more aware of my surroundings.

Be better to myself. I have a rather inconvenient food allergy that I choose to ignore a lot, because I’d rather have a cupcake now and feel sick tomorrow. No more of that. This means fewer days eating whatever and more cooking and planning meals. And eating on the nice plates instead of out of tupperware straight from the microwave.

Take more photos. Do things with them besides stick them on facebook.

It’s gloomy and windy in DC, so I’m posting a photo from December 26 in Napa. I didn’t take many photos since Middle Sister and Jason both got new cameras and did a pretty good job of documenting all of my visit home. But, here is Napa on a glorious, sunny December morning. My mom, cousin and I are on our way to a family friend’s winery. We sampled amazing wine, befriended a fat yellow lab named Katie, flipped through a family photo album going back to 1970, explored the caves he’d built himself and basically did wine tasting the way only natives get to do it. <3

I wanted to skip it. Everyone was making such a big deal about it. Lady movie! About funny ladies! Go see the funny lady movie or there will never be another movie about ladies ever again!

So on the one hand, I hate the idea that a movie about women is such a rare commodity that we should all be obligated to see it twice. I kind of wanted to avoid it on principle. Besides, when has a movie (especially a comedy) ever lived up to the hype surrounding it?

But I avoid most movies on principle. And everyone I knew who saw it recommended it. And it has been about 10 years since I was actually in the target demographic for a movie.

So here we are. It took me three actual attempts because the movie was sold out entirely on Friday night and most of Saturday afternoon, too. This is a good sign, right? At the very least, it made me want it more.

Anyway, I laughed some, I guess. I learned that I still don’t  get poop jokes. And I really, really wished that the plot of the movie could have centered around something, anything other than a wedding. Because, dude, really? I know weddings are a big deal and super stressful and all, but really?

It’s like, yes, we get to have this funny movie starring funny ladies or whatever, but only if they’re being funny in the confines of things we’re comfortable with them doing. I don’t like it.

Oh, and they can only be in it if they are nice to look at. You know, skinny and pretty. If they’re not, we have to make a great many jokes about how socially unacceptable their appearance is. And they have to be weird or quirky or something to justify their otherwise socially unacceptable presence on-screen. Imagine a world where a fat woman gets to be just a regular character in a film. Wouldn’t that be cool?

And can we just take a moment for Kristen Wiig’s outfits throughout the entire film? I know her character is supposed to be a punchline and all, but maybe you can be funny and maintain a little bit of dignity? And by “dignity” in this case, I mean clothes that cover your vagina.

So if we’re accepting the lowest common denominator of movies about ladies, we’ve got it. Which is…nice. If that’s what we’re looking for. Maybe the path to quality cinema is paved with poop jokes and fat jokes and submitting to the worst of the worst stereotypes about ourselves in order to convince the male-dominated film industry to give us some screen time. So I saw Bridesmaids last weekend. And it was pretty fucking depressing.

You’re welcome, America.

The reincarnation of DC Beer Club is plodding along. Turns out the Wednesday before a holiday weekend is maybe not the best for people. Last Wednesday was the second DC Beer Club I’ve hosted, at Pizzeria Paradiso in Dupont Circle. The main criteria for summer beer club locations is a good beer selection and a patio. PP has both of those things, although the patio is pretty tiny and pretty crowded on Wednesday night. It was fine for the two of us,  but if we’d had more people, we probably would have had quite a wait.

Foodwise, I really enjoyed the Siciliana pizza without cheese (tomato, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, onion, capers, garlic and oregano – I’m trying to take the lactose intolerant thing more seriously). My friend Jim had a Bruschetta  with fresh mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. Okay, onto the beer.

My first, and easily the favorite beer of the evening was Avery’s Majaraja. This was the best that either of us tasted, because a. it’s from Colorado (where all the best beer is born) and b. it’s totally delicious. The Majaraja is part of the Dictator Series. It’s a seasonal Imperial IPA. Lots and lots of hops, but more tangy than bitter. Go find it. It’s amazing.

Stillwater Existent

Jolly Pumpkin E.S. Bam – A Michigan beer in honor of Wes Morgan, founder of DC beer club. Jolly Pumpkin is based in Dexter, MI.

Jim’s review of Rogue’s Brutal Bitter “Close relative of Harpoon IPA, not too simple but not the most complex thing in the world.”

Glazen Toren Saison d’Erpe Mere. Jim says, “light, sweet, fragrant but not too”

Xbeeriment Black Force One I thought this was delicious. Jim says, “chocolate is subtle, espresso is stronger”

Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale At this point, we’d moved onto Churchkey on 14th at Rhode Island for “one more beer”. Except that you can’t really have one beer at an establishment with 50 on tap. My palate was a little dead, so I resorted to picking beers based on the name. The Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale turned out to be awesome, and I’m excited to get back to Churchkey over the long weekend to sample it again.

Jim’s favorite at Churchkey was Undercover Investigation Shut-down Ale ”complex and satisfying”

A little background on beer club – Wes started it in early February, and then passed it on to me when he moved to Pittsburgh at the end of March. It was conceived as a club to “learn more about beer” but was mostly day drinking and talking about politics. Although our trip to Granville Moore’s (H St. NE), where our waiter had actually traveled to Belgium, was pretty educational. Beer club today revolves around my quest to drink a beer on every patio in Washington, DC this summer.

There’s this video that’s showing up all over the facebook, where some woman is “calling out” Beyonce for selling us “a bill of goods” in her song “Run the World (Girls).” Because (spoiler alert) it turns out, we don’t.

I know, I know! I was pretty upset, because I, too depend on pop singers for my social analysis. Here’s the thing, though: this feels to me a lot like the culture of calling out that’s becoming more and more prevalent among young feminists. The idea here is that you can always provide a better feminist analysis than anyone else, so instead of doing work for social justice, we point out each other’s mistakes and missteps to prove that we can do feminism better.

In this case, I don’t think Beyonce was claiming to be “doing” feminism. There’s not a lot of street cred to be had by offering a deeper feminist analysis than someone who wasn’t doing one, but I guess if making a video about it makes you feel better, than do it.

And we can “call out” 90s girl power, while we’re at it…because the Spice Girls are still relevant? But just like we said while girl power was happening, it’s not the problem. Kind of like wearing pink mini skirts or liking sex with men aren’t the problem. Beyonce’s not John Lennon, and she’d not making any claims that her music is changing the world. And I would argue that giving young girls (or girls of any age) an empowering message set to a beat they can dance to, giving them a couple of minutes to feel pride in being a girl, because yeah, they are growing up in a culture that fucks them up and devalues them and no, they don’t know it yet, and a lot of them will never realize it – but giving them a “victory anthem”, it isn’t such a bad thing.

And just like there were plenty of us who looked at the Spice Girls’ platform sneakers and pigtails and realized that girl power was a fashion trend and not a social movement but “Wannabe” was still really fun to sing with your friends in the car, there are girls out there in the world today who love Beyonce’s music and it’s not our place to tell them that listening to “Run the World (Girls)” is bad or anti-feminist. It actually does us a disservice, because it feeds into the myth that being a feminist is about being negative and calling people out all the time and never having any fun because you’re always pointing out how anti-feminist the fun stuff is.

(And Commander in Chief was stupid and poorly written. Impact on sexism aside, it deserved to be cancelled.)

Here’s the video, in case you haven’t seen it yet. Thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p72UqyVPj54&feature=player_embedded#at=30

i mostly interview people, which can get old. and then you ask a question like “so, where do you want to be in your career in five years?”

…pause…

“five years? wow. i guess i’ll have to start getting my act together by then!”

i appreciate your honesty, but you might think about getting it together sooner if you want me to actually hire you.  in any case, it made me laugh and i’ve told the story several times this week. turns out, most people hate being asked where they see themselves in five years. and most people (at least people i am friends with) don’t actually know where they want to be five years from now.

i don’t actually have a five-year vision for my life, either. i don’t know if this is what i pictured five years ago – but given i was 22 and already working in a campaign office, it probably isn’t too far off the mark. good job, self.

this actually made me think about a conversation i had with my dad last december when i was home for the holidays. my family wants be back in california like woah. and they know that boston is not exactly sunshine, lollipops and rainbows for me. my dad’s question, actually, was “don’t you think it’s time you stopped flitting around the country and got settled somewhere?”

yeah. “flitting” –verb (used without object)

5/2/2010 - Boston from the Waterfont

so i was totally about to start blogging again, and then life happened, by which i mean work happened and i sort of forgot that was my plan.

i was in d.c. last weekend and found about 20 minutes to run around the american history museum, which is the best of the smithsonians. it was uber-packed because everyone and their mom, 12 cousins and 93 children were in town for the cherry blossom festival.  in any case, zo and i spent some quality time  with america’s first ladies. i hadn’t been their since 2003, so i was pretty excited to see michelle obama added to the chronology:

also, her inauguration gown? lovely.

perhaps i will try to take more pictures during my trip to chicago this weekend and my blog can have a new life as a travelogue of sorts. because everyone is anxious for photos of my upcoming trips to chicago and gainesville, am i right?

in any case, i am much better friends with twitter than my blog. the only issue being that i read back through a bit of my blog today and realized it was kind of awesome. so maybe i should try a little harder to actually write things that are meaningful and lengthy. the downsides, aka, things twitter has that my blog does not have:

219 followers. no really. 219 people read my tweets and i am pretty sure the majority are real people and not pornbots.

instant gratification. good for the ego.

megan mccain. enough said.

So. Walking to CVS with my friend Sarah, and some guy yells “Hey! Excuse me! You, in the green shirt!” I turn around, guy goes “You were supposed to have dinner with me last night!”

It probably goes without saying that I did not actually know this person, nor did I have meal plans with him last night or ever.

I politely informed him he had me confused with someone else and walked away.

However, this raises two important questions for me: has anyone I know ever actually tried to meet someone this way? And: if you have approached by/approached someone else in this manner, has it ever actually worked?

Please share. I’m dying to know.

okay great.

pop quiz: what’s wrong with this paragraph?

“On a chilly evening last fall, a raid on a dogfight in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood on the south side turned up more than 50 people, including a pregnant woman and a few juveniles, in a basement watching dogs fight a bloody battle.”

so, yes, dogfighting is bad. and terrible and disgusting and sad. and i very much support the humane society working to eradicate it completely.

what i take issue with is the humane society specifically calling out the pregnant woman in the audience – as though her presence at a dogfight is somehow more immoral than the fight itself. because she’s merely a vessel for her fetus, you know? and when we see a pregnant woman doing something we don’t approve of, we have the right to judge her, on account of her precious, precious cargo that requires her to give up her right to self-determination…

gag.

yes, it sucks that 50 people attended a dog fight. bad news. but the humane society, like people for the ethical treatment of animals, needs to learn to stick to the issue at hand. dog fighting is appalling on it’s own, and there’s no reason to invoke a woman and reduce her to her reproductive status in order to prove that point.

so please, please, please keep up the good work — but stop practicing sexism while you fight animal cruelty.

thanks.

There are things to blog about though. Here are some: I took a cross country road trip and now I live in Boston. So here are more than 140 characters worth of thoughts about things.

For starters, Boston. I live, actually in south Allston, about a mile from Harvard Square. I walk through Harvard a lot and have yet to run into Matt Damon. This is fine with me, because I hate Matt Damon, but I guess I sort of figured he’d just stick around there, reminding us that he wrote Good Will Hunting. Although now that I think about it, I read somewhere that he didn’t.

Things I have observed about Boston:

The “Massholes” thing is way overblown. People in Boston are not that bad. I mean, it’s nothing like the Midwest, but if everywhere was as friendly as the Midwest, other countries wouldn’t take us seriously. All you need to know to get around in Boston is: don’t make eye contact; don’t smile or say “hi” to anyone you don’t know; and saying “Excuse me” is for pussies.

For example: the mailman just walked into my office. When Lindsay said “hi” he said “hey”, but when she said “thank you!” he said “’kay” instead of “you’re welcome.”

Honking is a legitimate form of self-expression. You remember that old comedy bit about how “fuck” is the most versatile word in the English language? In Boston, it’s honking. You don’t just honk to avoid danger. You honk to express your feelings.

There are no corners or intersections. Only Squares. So Boston has so much history, they have declared every intersection of two streets to be a Square and named it after someone. On Saturday in Cambridge I passed Bunny Hill Square. In my neighborhood in Allston, every corner sorry, Square has a plaque and a little wreath and a little flag attached to the street signs.

Bonus trivia: I used to think there were no Happy Hours in Boston because they thought it would mess with their surly East Coast image. Turns out, it’s Blue Laws.