I Believe in Angels

The dividing line between those who love tattoos and those who hate them is deep and cavernous.  There’s a Grand Canyon between the two factions, and one that doesn’t seem amenable to resolution any time soon.  I happen to be on one particular side of that Canyon (the side that pays a lot of money to have artwork painfully etched onto her body), but I don’t judge.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I don’t mind the side that doesn’t like tattoos, I get that they aren’t for everybody, but I can’t stand when people tell me that they will diminish my ability to get a job…it’s 2008 people.  No matter what you think of them tattoos are no longer signifiers for badass, no longer signifiers for criminal or delinquent, they are simply a form of artistic expression.  

For some people, they’re simply pretty or cute, for some people they’re ironic, for some people they mean something more.  Personally, I never have and never will get a tattoo that doesn’t mean something to me.  It really doesn’t matter if anyone else likes them, they are my tattoos on my body and they have meaning to me.  Like scars or clothes or jewelry, tattoos tell a story about who the wearer is as a person.  Sure, part of it is aesthetic, they do look cool, but almost like a cave painting they are telling of who we are and what we do, what we like, what’s important enough to us to endure the pain (which isn’t that bad, but does change depending on where said tattoo is), pay the money, and make a choice to have this thing permanently on our body.  

But there are odd sorts of relationships that come from having tattoos.  And no, there’s not some club where all of us with tattoos give a thumbs up like corvette drivers or anything like that.  The relationship I’m talking about is the odd partnership between tattoo artist and tattoo recipient.  It’s a relationship of trust, but also one of shared experience, of artistic vision, of classic economic exchange of money for services rendered.  Not to mentioned it’s a shared lump of time where one party is in deep concentration for hours on end, while the other is lying still while being carved into with needles and ink.

Finding a tattoo parlor and tattoo artist can be a task in and of itself, let alone saving the money, sitting for three hours, babying your new baby during the healing process.  Tattooing is not just some rebellious youth art form any more.  It’s legitimate, and I’m pretty sure it’s here to stay in mainstream culture.  So whether or not you like it, I think it might be time to just accept it.  And I’ll send a picture of my new back when it heals so you can all marvel in just how amazing the artistry of ink and needles can be.  

Peace, Love, and S.C. Ink,

Julia

P.S.  My new one only took six hours…ouch!

Non-Verbal Communication

I’ve had a number of conversations in the past few weeks that revolved, either directly or indirectly with non-verbal communication, especially between women.  It all started with a story I’m writing, which, as cliche as this is, is based on certain people that I’m close to, a group of friends.  One of my friends (on whom I’ve based one of the characters) and I were out to breakfast and we were talking about our tight knit group of friends and how we communicate non-verbally now.  Neither of us were really sure when the point was that we were able to read each others body language and facial expressions so flawlessly that we could stop speaking certain things out loud, but we knew that this was something we didn’t start out knowing and learned in the many years of our friendship.  I can tell when this particular friend is lying to herself and I can tell when she needs to lie to herself and when I need to call her on it.  I can tell from far away if she’s talking to someone she doesn’t like, I can tell if she has to pee.  This is all reciprocal of course.  My friends read me like a book, often better than I read myself.  They know when to push certain issues and when to leave them alone, and I don’t have to say anything.

The other conversation I had was with my mom.  She was talking about how, since her house is now mostly testosterone, it has changed from when I lived there, when it was mostly estrogen.  When I was a kid my mom and I never had rules per say.  We didn’t need rules.  I knew when I was doing something that was going to cause that look or a shouting outburst.  She never rarely needed to tell me that what I was doing was wrong, I could just read it.  If I was playing my music too loud, her head would poke in the door and her eyes would connect with mine and I would turn the music down, no harm, no foul, no talking.  Now there are rules in that house, there have to be, because the men that inhabit it aren’t in tune with her like I am.  And sure, you can argue that mothers and daughters have a kind of sixth sense, an ability to communicate that trumps any other relationship and any other communication alley, but I think it’s more than that.    

The third conversation, and perhaps my favorite one occurred approximately seven years ago, when I was still in High School.  I was watching a choir concert with a girlfriend of mine and one of our guy friends.  Three of our other girlfriends were in the choir and we were watching them.  After a few minutes my friend and I started laughing and asking each other what our friends were talking about up on the stage.  Our guy friend was completely lost, the three girls on stage were on three separate parts and were in the middle of singing, but they were most definitely communicating.  My friend and I had to actually walk through the conversation with our guy friend, who, even after a while of teaching, didn’t understand what was going on.  

One of my favorite things about close friendships is the presence of non-verbal communication.  It’s one thing to recognize by someone’s body language that they are cold or uncomfortable.  It’s a completely other thing to understand every nuance of what they are feeling simply by watching them sit on the couch and watch t.v.  

There is a point here, and I’m getting to it right now.  My mom and I disagreed about this point so I’m opening up the forum for discussion.  Do men share this weird Shining-like connection?  My point of view is that in long term relationships men learn to read their partners in such a way (I would guess it comes from getting yelled at many times by their wives and girlfriends), but they have to learn it, and the learning curve is much much longer.  Within the first two years of my closest friendships I was able to read my friends.  But that ability never goes away.  I’ve gone years without seeing certain friends and can still read them as soon as we get back together.  But do men experience relationships the same way?  Are male friendships as in tune as female friendships, and if so, where’s the non-verbal communication?  

From all my experience with men and watching male friends bond together and interact with each other, it seems that that kind of communication isn’t a factor?  One of my guy friends says that it’s because guys say what they mean.  

What’s the answer here?  And did I even ask a question?

Peace, Love and Body Language, 

Julia

Nancy Pelosi

So I’m at a book event for Nancy Pelosi last night, and it was kind of like watching the most depressing three ring circus of all time.  She wasn’t depressing, nor was the actual event itself, which should have been a nice evening, no, it was the members of my political party that decide the most logical way to behave in our current society is to act like children.

Here’s the scene.  This event was at the American Jewish University (not Berkeley, not UCSC), it cost $30 to attend, it was mostly well-off jews (what’s new in L.A., that’s pretty much everyone).  There were protesters, which is to be expected at events with major political figures, standing politely on the street with their signs, to which I say ‘fantastic, protest all you want.’  The atmosphere was definitely tense, as is the political climate throughout the country.  There was a battalion of police officers and secret servicemen (who were nice, but a little scary), there were private security officers, basically there was an army of law enforcement.  Now, I’m not the biggest fan of law enforcement and have been chased by a few police officers (I’ve always evaded them), I’ve nearly been arrested several times (it seems whenever I go to Santa Cruz, I come very close to being thrown in jail), and I was never a fan of authority, especially authority that carries guns and billy clubs.  And especially in Los Angeles (Capitola cops are just bored, L.A. cops are entirely different and kind of scary).

About an hour after the Speaker of the House started talking (and after I had consumed the first food I had time to eat all day, which consisted of two mint milano cookies), the screaming started.  Some guy was screaming at Pelosi about dead Iraqis and the normal stuff that we are all pissed off about.  This of course started a chain reaction of events, that basically devolved the event into shifting tenseness, and a few other people standing up and screaming.

Here’s my deal:  I get it.  I’m pissed off too.  I think this country is shooting itself in the foot; we’re going down fast and our elected officials don’t seem to be doing much to stop it.  If you care that strongly about it, get involved.  Get a job with Obama’s campaign, go join a lobby.  GET INVOLVED.  It’s one thing to be Michael Moore at the Academy Awards (which is a nationally televised event that tens of millions of people watch), it is quite another to scream and yell in front of 500 people and no press (plus, going to L.A. county jail in a suit or a dress and heels doesn’t seem like a great time to me).

I believe in free speech.  I’m not saying that these people don’t have a right to stand up and yell at the Speaker of the House about issues that they are passionate about, but really, what’s it going to accomplish?  This is something a child does.  They’re not getting their way so they simply yell.  Democrats of America, stop being fucking stupid, the only people you rally by doing stuff like that is people who are already on your side.  I think we saw with Reagan how reactionary methods can completely screw us over, so why are we using the same tactics?  I went to the protests against the Iraq War and guess what?  They didn’t accomplish anything.

Now I don’t know a whole lot about Pelosi (I just know what my mom told me when I asked her about it) but it seems like she’s not really the problem.  In fact, it seems like she might just be one of the only people who is intent on working and not fighting.  Let’s face facts, we’ve spent 50 years fighting each other in Washington and now we’re fucked.  Perhaps we should try working this out as adults and compromise and take little steps toward something better instead of violently shoving one way and having the pendulum come flying back the other way.  That hasn’t gotten us anywhere.

I was pretty disgusted with the actions of people that are on my side of the divide and for one moment I caught a glimpse of what the other side sees: a bunch of punk kids lashing out because they’re angry.  Well, I’m angry too and maybe instead of whining about it, we should actually do something that will garner results.

Peace, Love, and Politics,
Julia

Girlfriends

So my email the other day about sisterhoods in packs of four kind of got me thinking about girlfriends.  The three other girlfriends in my sisterhood are spread throughout the west coast and sometimes it feels like a piece of myself is missing when I don’t get to experience things with them.

I was watching the news the other day and there was a story about how a group of scientists had done a study on women and their social habits and they had found that one of the main reasons women live longer than men is their relationships with other women.  I’m not a scientist so I can’t really explain it but the report said that there was/is something about that social relationship that contributed positively to women’s health.  Women who didn’t have close girlfriends lived about as long as men did.

Whereas my email before was more of a look at specific numberings of groups of women (and not altogether serious), this is something that I find to be really interesting.  As much as I love my girlfriends sometimes they drive me crazy, and I’m certain I do the same to them.  I mean, there have been times when I was simultaneously holding their hair back as they vomited boxes of wine into our previously clean bathroom, and wanting to absolutely kill them for putting me in a position where I was now covered in bile.  There have been times when I want nothing more than to just go see a movie with the three of them but can’t because we live 1000 miles away from each other.  And there are times when I’m completely in my own life, not a thought about them, but somehow, as ridiculous as this sounds, they’re still with me.  They made me who I am and I can’t be anyone else around them because they know me completely.

Maybe that’s the part that really lends itself to healthier lifestyles, when you have a group of people who won’t allow you to be anyone but yourself, you can’t put up defenses or put on tough girl acts.  Embarrassingly enough, after watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, I came to the realization that we’re all out there kind of putting on a tough front (specifically when you have to be in the dating pool).  I know my friends and I are constantly pretending like certain boys and certain things don’t have any sort of hold over us when they do.  Sure, we might be able to brush certain things off, but sometimes it hurts, and sometimes we pretend it doesn’t.  The thing is though, when I’m with my girlfriends, they always know.  They know when it really hurts and when it doesn’t.  They know when I need to lie to myself and when I need to be slapped in the face with the truth.

The girlfriend dynamic is an interesting one.  As Tibby says in the original Traveling Pants movie (I’m paraphrasing), we can fight because we know that we’ll always love each other.  That’s really what matters to me.  Who cares that we refuse to grow up (we are talking about the girls who sneak booze into the movie theater, take pictures with our asses showing in Las Vegas and who all would rather travel around and visit each other than start working on a career)?  We will always, in some ways, be eighteen years old around each other, and in other ways, we’ll always be the older one taking care of the others when we need it.  And that’s the beauty of female friendship.

Peace, Love, and People Who Know You Better Than You Know Yourself,
Julia

Fearsome Foursome

I just got back from watching The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 with one of my best girlfriends (yes, she and I and two others have matching tattoos of lips on our left butt cheeks; we’re classy ladies, I know), and I got to thinking about girls and groups of four.  What is it about female groups of four friends?  Is it that we form foursomes because we so often see them in the media or is it that the media is simply saw these fabulous four-groups of women and saw huge potential?

In any case, it is an interesting kind of phenomenon.  Sure, groups of four lend themselves to drama.  Sex and the City, Little Women, even The View, have four women talking and not talking, agreeing and disagreeing, fighting and loving each other.  In every case the four women are significantly different, and yet they all turn out to be such good friends.  Sex and the City we all know and love, the pessimist (Miranda), the optimist (Charlotte), the writer (Carrie), and the slutty one (Samantha), who, throughout the course of the show realize that they each have a little bit of the other ones inside of each other.  

In fact, all the four girls movies carry this theme be it in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,Grease (before Sandy joins the Pink Ladies), Now and Then (if you’re my age you know it well),Designing Women or even Golden Girls, all the ladies couldn’t be more different, yet couldn’t love each other more.

It’s the same with my three best girlfriends.  We all come from different backgrounds, different places.  We all behave differently in different situations.  Sometimes we bug the crap out of each other, but we always love each other.  We call each other on our bullshit, we let each other believe the bullshit when we need to, and sometimes we know each other better than we know ourselves.  What is always fun to me is when we try to discover ourselves within our onscreen counterparts.

I was lucky enough to have lived with my three girls in college and in that time we made what can only be referred to as an urban family.  We were shoulders to cry on when boys broke our hearts, we poked fun when certain bodily fluids from certain gentlemen callers ended up on articles of clothing and whatnot, and we were there when we just needed to be crazy.  In fact, we’re still there for all of that.  We’ll still go see the Sisterhood, sneak in and drink a bottle of champagne on a Thursday afternoon, and come out talking about how much we all miss each other, how much we want to all be together when these kind of movies come out.  And it doesn’t feel like a socialized construct for the four of us to be friends, but is it?  Are we just a product of reading Louisa May Alcott or seeing Golden Girls, are we a product of watching Now and Then ad naseum as kids, are we products of numerous nights of Sex and the City and cosmopolitans?  Or is something older, something more primitive and primal at work?  Are we like the women of yore who hunted and gathered in groups of four (did they even hunt and gather in groups of four?  did they hunt and gather?)?

What’s the deal with the foursomes?  

Peace, Love, and Sisterhoods,

Julia

P.S. Perhaps I’ll have to write about threesomes (and not the naughty kind) someday where we will discuss Charlie’s Angels, Crossroads (starring Britney Spears), Clueless and Mean Girls, among others.  

Cult of Buffy

I’m a little obsessed with the Buffy musical at the moment.  I was avidly opposed to the T.V. show Buffy the Vampire Slayer for years.  I loved the cheese-tastic movie which debuted in the early 90s (and starred the boy of my pre-teen dreams, Luke Perry).  Then the T.V. show debuted and was nothing like the move and I hated it.  In all honesty, I didn’t get it.  I didn’t get that it was supposed to be campy.  I also didn’t get that there was philosophy behind it.

Basically, two years ago I read a book called Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, where real Doctors of Philosophy talked about Kantian Morality in Buffy, talked about the allegory of High School as Horror, talked about the weird diegetic world of Buffy and how aware the characters are of their status as characters on a show.

Now, in season six of Buffy, there was an amazing episode entitled Once More, With Feeling.  It’s this total broadway nerd’s dream come true, a demon comes to town and people start breaking into choreographed song and dance numbers.  It’s like Enchanted, but not so fairy tale-esque.  Basically, Joss Whedon (god of nerd world) wrote this amazing hour long musical that drove the story arc of season six forward while being a great musical, and working like a good musical does (i.e. the songs move the story forward).  It’s self-aware of it’s ridiculousness and the characters are more than a little disturbed by the fact that they keep randomly breaking into song (wouldn’t you be?)

They played the Buffy Musical at comic-con; it was the closing ceremony, so-to-speak.  And it was like watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show at a midnight movie.  People sang along, waved parking tickets, copied the Grrr Arrrgh at the end of the episode, they jeered at Dawn, and cat called when Buffy and Spike finally make out at the end.  Basically, it’s every dork’s wet dream: vampires, musicals, hot girls, lesbians, and a tap dancing demon.

I have admitted this to the two people I sneered at when I was first introduced to the musical four years ago and now I’m admitting it publicly…it rocks.  I concede, the Buffy Musical is one of the greatest things to happen to television.

Peace, Love and Dancing Vampires,
Julia