Thanksgiving Boycott

I have come to the conclusion that Thanksgiving is a highly overrated holiday. Not to mention, it is antiquarian and reinforces traditional gender roles within the family. Now I know I shouldn't assume that every family is like mine, but from my experiences mine is more typical than atypical. The day proceeds as follow:

~Ungodly hour in the a.m.: mom wakes up to start working on the Thanksgiving meal
~Roughly one hour later: dad stumbles out of bed, immediately turns on the TV
~10 minutes later: dad grumbles and mom continues Turkey Day preparations while simultaneously starting breakfast
~Following 3-5 hours: mom is slaving away in the kitchen while dad flips back and forth between basketball and football games
~Food time: everything ready but at least half of the intended guests are not there
~1 hour after food is ready: Everyone is here but now dad is in a pissy mood because he had to wait to eat and mom is exhausted
~1 hour later: Food is consumed, people start straggling away and mom is now left in the kitchen cleaning up and putting away leftovers

Now, I can hear the criticism already, "well, why didn't you help?" Well...I did. I took over breakfast duty this year, did an emergency run to the grocery store, and helped with last minute preparations. But I had to blackmail Steve into doing the Stovetop stuffing (which is his special request every year), and any mention to dad about getting off his lazy ass to help out is scoffed at or simply ignored. The remainder of the approximately 14 guests made very little contribution to the over all effort. And it kind of annoyed me.

As we were gathered around the dining room table (minus dad, who was still watching games), my older brother tried to coax his youngest son into "saying the blessing." Having very little patience for religion or children, I immediately offered to take over the duty. My blessing? "Mom, bless you for cooking for all of us today."

Every year I walk away from Thanksgiving (and sometimes Christmas) a little more bitter than the year before. It is a horrible experience for me. I abhorr seeing my mother slave away for holiday I don't believe is truly worth celebration. It chaps my ass to see my father so uninvolved in the whole process. And really...I've never felt particularly close to most of my family, and such get-togethers only serve to make me feel that little bit more out-of-the-loopish. So my solution: I am officially boycotting Thanksgiving. And depending on the Christmas celebrations this year, possibly all large family gatherings in general.

Of course, I haven't shared this with my mother yet...but I'm sure she'll understand.

Now taking offers of alternative celebratory suggestions.

"Hey, mom, why's it called that?"

That is the question I expect the next generation to ask when someone in the future makes a reference to Boothill.

For those of you that drive up New Providence Blvd on a regular (or maybe even an irregular) basis, you might notice something missing from the skyline. Yep, you read it correctly. Boothill no longer has its namesake: the giant boot. I only noticed it this morning. I searched google for a photo, but apparently no one has ever thought to post a pic. I'm not even a Clarksville native but I'm kinda sad that giant foot apparel is now gone.

I mean really, what's Boothill without the boot!?!?!?!?!?!?

A Clockwork Orange

I've recently found myself interested in movies that I either missed because I was born too late, or was simply not allowed to watch as a child due to their content. I have to owe much of this interest to two things:

1. Netflix, for enticing me with its instant play movies, which tend to be older flicks.

2. A growing sense of nostalgia for an era I missed.

Anywho...I recently watched A Clockwork Orange. I first heard of this movie when I was 18 years old, and a friend was explaining to me why the Glasgow Underground was called the clockwork orange (in case you are curious, its because the trains are orange and the track goes around in a circle...makes sense). But, for whatever reason, it has taken me twelve years to actually get around to watching it. And, I've been surprised to find that a lot of my friends haven't see it...maybe its something to do with the movie being banned in the U.S. for a few decades or something, or maybe they too had parents that (unlike some modern folks) censored what they watched. At any rate, I thought it would be fun to review this cult classic.

So, without going into too much detail, A Clockwork Orange follows the misadventures of English miscreant, Alex. Within the first twenty minutes of the film Alex is pretty much pegged: he is a thief, a rapist, a murderer, a megalomaniac, quite possibly a sociopath...and he does it all with a suave sense of sophistication and a love for Beethoven (who Alex annoyingly refers to as "Van Lud"). Now, I have to admit that I secretly root for the bad guys in movies. I'm not sure why, but I always hope that they come out on top, and when they do...well that's a darn good movie in my opinion. But I found it really difficult to like Alex. Anytime anything bad happened to him, I could hear the voice in my head saying things like, "yes! I hope that leaves a scar!" or "ohhhh I hope he's dead!" But since A Clockwork Orange is narrated from the first-person perspective, I could argue that Alex is the good guy, and the establishment, or society, or whatever humdrum thing he is fighting against, is the bad guy...well then, I guess I'm still on target.

One of the things that really grated against my little feminist spine was the blatant sexism of the film. Now, we'll just ignore the rape scenes (Alex's term for rape was even annoying, "the old in/out, in/out, real savage like." Ugh, really? Dork.). The movie was overly cock-centric. Nearly every scene portrayed women as walking pleasure holes. Even mannequins were sexualized with full breasts, erect nipples, and pubic hair, and placed in rather disturbing and compromising positions. And there was so much phallic imagery I felt I was being slapped in the face with a penis (Alex's "nose", girls sucking on erotically-shaped popsicles, ...oh yeah, and the giant cock-n-balls Alex uses as a weapon (which can be purchased in rocking chair form -a rockin'cock if you will- at the following link for a reasonable $950 http://www.toytokyo.com/shopping/index.php/page/product/product_id/6624 ), just to name a few.

Now, to be fair and even, there was some testicle bashing...but not enough to equalize out the inferior status assigned to females. There is only one strong female role in the entire movie, a doctor, and she was so strong (and scary) it wouldn't be a far stretch to imagine her as a part-time dominatrix. But as a general rule the women were portrayed as weak, helpless, and deserving of victimization.

So, its at this point that I have to wonder: did I hate the movie because it really was/is a sexist film (even in its day), or do I just have no appreciation for the role of women in movies from this era? I have to admit that I found my sensibilities equally disturbed by Logan's Run. Okay, there are vast differences between the movies,...but both portray women as giggly little sex toys.

Well, before seeing A Clockwork Orange I really bought into the cult classic hype. I *expected* to like it for its edginess, which I had heard much about. But post-viewing, I really feel as if my inner brain is scarred permanently, and I have lost two hours of my life that I will never get back. But the worst part, I just know Malcolm McDowell got so much in/out, in/out because of this movie. Ugh.

Things that scare the shit out of me...

Call me paranoid, I don't care. But today I was driving to campus when I passed a mini-convoy of two military-grade humvees. Okay, right, so far so good, nothing out of the ordinary there, after all I live in a military town, convoys are fairly common. But on top of each humvee was mounted a huge ass gun (for arguments sake lets just assume it was some type of large machine gun) on a turret, and each machine gun was manned...with a live, honest to god American "hero" at the ready. Double-u, tee, eff?

Fine, I'll play nice and assume the guns did not contain live ammunion. I'll even give the benefit of the doubt that they were merely moving from point A to point B. But I find the soldier-with-gun blazenly parading through lunchtime traffic a little disconcerting. This show of force didn't comfort me in any way. And I can't help but wonder, is this what Americans can expect to see now that an army has been deployed within U.S. borders? Are American streets to be patroled in the same manner as the streets of Bagdad?

I think its time to consider that underground bunker.