This dog is walking himself!

Does this sign make anyone else think of Marmaduke?


I mean, clearly, this is the cheeky, French version. If it was Marmaduke, there'd be a mailman's foot attached to the loop of the leash (dear god, I almost wrote lead, I've been living in Europe too long...) and the dog would be tearing across the sign.

Or, as in this case (or perhaps, more accurately, the follow-up to this frame), he'd be dragging a mostly-asphyxiated dog catcher along beside him.

He sure does.

Taking on Tebow

The hype is out there: we are furious or we are elated (okay, we are furious). CBS (despite its rejection of politicized ads in the past) has approved a $3 million Superbowl spot for Focus on Family, featuring Tim Tebow and his mom talking how it's a good thing she didn't have an abortion. The whole notion is pretty absurd--the idea that anyone would have noticed if Tebow had never been born or gone on to win a Heisman trophy--and completely misses the fact that Mrs. Tebow did have a choice which she was free to make (more on this and CBS's shit excuses in a great piece by Jill at Feministe).

Pam Tebow must have made other choices along the way that impacted her son's path to football fame and fortune; were those, too, implicitly right? Should we, perhaps, ban the right to choose which sports our children may play? Should football be viewed as a sport morally superior to all others? This seems no less absurd to me than the message of the Tebow ad.

Thankfully, though, Planned Parenthood is tactfully fighting back. Check out this new video and pass it on to a friend. Let's get people talking about this instead of giving Focus on Family any more of our precious time and attention.

The Best Year-In-Review Tribute Ever

Hi everyone, this is a piece I was commissioned to write, I will put up a link once it's up but for now here it is:

We're already almost a month into 2010, and by now all the resolve and self-reflection we built up over the New Year's holiday has probably started to wear off. But there is one bit of self-reflection, a “year in review” style tribute, that I still haven't gotten over. In fact, this has been my feel-good jam for most of the beginning of this new year; it's so incredibly good that I'm hoping it's an omen for how awesome the rest of the year is going to be. The tribute in question is a mash-up called “Blame it on the Pop,” by DJ Earworm. Let me also say that I'm a big fan of the mash-up-- I've been celebrating this art form ever since I discovered Girl Talk a few years ago. In “Blame it on the Pop,” Earworm creates a mash-up of the top 25 pop songs of 2009. To say that the result is a sum greater than its parts is an understatement.
“Blame it on the Pop” manages to weave together these poppy anthems, most of which are about getting it on or getting crunk, into a song whose message-- I say this with complete sincerity-- is profound and inspiring. Wait a minute, you may be saying-- we're talking about Fergie here, right? And Flo Rida, and Taylor Swift, and Miley Cyrus? Believe it. And while I do love a ridiculous club jam as much as the next girl, I find most of these songs to be completely intolerable on their own. And even with those artists in the mix who I do really enjoy-- Beyonce, Lady Gaga, and Kanye, for example-- it would still be a stretch to call them “poetic.”
Of course, in any tribute to 2009 it's impossible to separate one's own feelings about the year itself from the tribute, and maybe that's why it's so easy to assign such depth to an arguably superficial song. To borrow a lyric from The Hold Steady, this past year had its massive highs and its crushing lows-- both personally and politically. We started off hopeful with the inauguration of Obama, but the despair of the recession and the war pervades much of our collective memory of the year. It seems impossible to hear the strung-together lyrics of Earworm without seeing an acknowledgement of this collective despair. It so happens that the most common word among all these songs is “down,” which becomes the refrain of “Blame it on the pop,” with a repeating chorus:
Baby don't worry/ even if the sky is falling down/
it's gonna be okay/ when it knocks you down
Variations on this theme repeat throughout, as well as what I find to be a particularly poignant lyrical mash-up: Just get back up/ when you're tumbling down/ down/ down.
The video is great too, if only for the hilarious juxtaposition of all these artists-- from shirtless Flo Rida simulating oral sex to Jason Mraz singing to the sky, imploring us: “look into your heart and you'll find love, love, love.” Earworm somehow isolates the best aspects of each artist, and the song builds on itself so well that by the end I was practically tearing up at an image of Fergie. And I swear to God, if you had told me last month that I would ever write such a sentence about Fergie, I would have bet a million dollars against you.
I think that's why mash-ups are so incredibly appealing; I don't use words like “cosmic” lightly, but a good mash-up has a way of creating a sense of cosmic beauty. When an artist can combine certain beats with with certain hooks to make something so much bigger than each of its parts, it has a way of making the universe seem more intentional. Because, ultimately, a mash-up makes things fit together-- things that were once alone, and maybe mediocre, and maybe forgettable. And there is something very comforting about knowing that those things can be put together to make something amazing.

The Kafka-esque nightmare of the Bushwick hospital

The combination of being relatively new to New York and relatively new to Adulthood has made me absolutely inept at going to the doctor. Every time I've tried to go anywhere in this city for any health-related reasons, it has gone cartoonishly awry. Here's a few examples:

1. Tried to go to Dentist, went to dentist in Chinatown where no one spoke English
2. Tried to go to Gyno, went to gyno who told me that I will get pregnant if I use condoms
   
3. Tried to go to ENT for sinus infection, was given steroids without any examination of sinuses

So, a few days ago, when I woke up with an incredibly sore throat decorated with gnarly white spots, I knew that nothing about getting better was going to be easy. I was in so much pain I decided to stagger to my local hospital in Bushwick, despite multiple online reviews describing said hospital as the "worst hospital ever".
The waiting room did not have nearly enough chairs, so after about 4 hours of waiting on the floor and watching Judge Mathis (which I was fine with) I finally got to see the doctor, who shall hereforth be known as Dr. Meanest Doctor Ever, or Dr. M for short. Here's how the conversation went:

ME: I have a really sore throat with white spots. I think it's strep.
DR: Have you been having a lot of oral sex?
ME: stunned silence. I've never heard of an STD that gives you strep throat. And I have a monogomous boyfriend who has never given me strep throat before. Please, help me.
DR: Do you have a fever?
ME: I don't know, I don't own a thermometer, but I'm sweating a lot and I'm very cold.
DR: Oh Molly, if you had a fever, you would know.

The doctor then proceded to NOT take my temperature and NOT take a strep test. I asked her why she refused to take a strep test, and she said she didn't care whether it was strep or not. You don't care? Okay... wait, what?
Then she gave me a shot of antibiotics, in my ass-- which I was FINE with, because my friend Guy got a shot in his ass once for strep and I know that's an acceptable medical procedure. But then she ALSO gave me a shot of painkillers in my ass, too, and I've NEVER heard of that, and neither has my friend Guy. So I'm pretty sure at that point she was just trying to humiliate me.
Then this conversation happened:
DR: Do you have insurance?
ME: Yes.
DR: Then I'll write you a prescription for antibiotics.
ME: Well, my insurance doesn't cover prescriptions.
DR: Okay, then forget it.
ME: Wait... do I need antibiotics?
DR: Well, maybe, but they're expensive. Here's what you should do-- you should lie, and say you don't have insurance.
ME: But I'm using insurance to pay for this visit.
DR: Oh... you shouldn't have done that.

After this Abbott & Costello routine finished, I realized that no one at the hospital had even asked for my insurance card-- after I insisted that they take my information, they wrote down my policy number on a post-it note and sent me on my way.
When I got home, I looked up the antibiotics she prescribed me. They're not for strep throat. They're for UTIs and Gonorrhea, so apparently she never got past that initial first impression that I was just riddled with STDs.
The only time in my entire life where I have felt this helpless was the time I had to go to the post office in Prague.

FOOTNOTE: I looked up the symptoms of Gonorrhea. They mostly have to do with the genitals. I am quite sure I don't have Gonorrhea, but I guess if I do, I can kill two birds with one stone.

Barbara Wawa interviews Lady Gaga

Barbara Walters' annual celebration of mediocrity, her "10 Most Fascinating People" special, airs tonight. Now, Ms. Wawa is already teetering on the edge of senility, but this year's flurry of non-heterosexual sexual expression is just about enough to make her concerned-looking head explode.
Ms. Wawa looks SO CONCERNED as she asks Lady Gaga about her sexuality, which she claims to have learned about by listening to Ms. Gaga's latest album (a hilarious thing to picture Barbara Walters doing). Ms. Wawa first asks if Ms. Gaga is bisexual, then asks if she likes men, then asks if she likes women-- implying that Barbara Walters is not quite sure what "bisexual" means. Look at her face when she asks "Have you had sex with women?" Such a patronizing, concerned face is only warranted if Lady Gaga actually Barbara's daughter, and she's 13, and she's been sneaking around.
The Lady Gaga stuff starts at minute 2.32. In addition to Wawa's panicked expression, Gaga's justifiably uncomfortable reaction is pretty fun to watch. Freaking out the squares-- just one more reason to love Lady Gaga.

Can't embed the video, but find it here.

Romantic Comedy Predicts Grim Future for Independent Media

Writing a feminist review of a popular romantic comedy is kind of like writing a grammatical review of an episode of the Wendy Williams show-- we all know it's going to be a train wreck, so it's probably not worth spending too much time thinking about. But sometimes, there's that one episode where Ms. Williams makes such a mockery of the English language that it moves you to action; and sometimes, there's that one romantic comedy that so destructively attacks feminist ideals that the only way you can get through it is to find a notebook and start writing.
Like many people, I know romantic comedies are clusterfucks in a whole lot of ways besides sexism, but sometimes when your boyfriend comes home with a bootleg copy of The Ugly Truth he got from his aunt, you say, "What the hell" and allow yourself to take a peek at the carnage. The basic premise is as follows: When the local TV news show that Katherine Heigl produces starts to suffer in ratings, her boss hires Mike Chadway to literally take over every segment of the news. Is Chadway a newsperson, you ask? Why, no, he's a Man-Show-Esque misogynist commentator whose sexually aggressive diatribes seem especially out of place alongside the show's two actual news anchors. Yes, many RomComs require a certain suspension of disbelief, but this one actually creates a world where all news reporting is replaced by a daily 30 minute segment of violent rantings and jello wrestling.
What I learned about the "Truth" the title speaks of can be summed up in the running list of quotes from the highly aggressive, misogynist, romantic lead Chadway, who, in the end, turns out to be right about everything. Keep in mind, he said all these things at work. In meetings. Or on television.

1. "When guys ask you hw you're doing that's Guy Code for 'let me stick my dick in your ass.'"
2. "Men like something to grab on to other than your ass." (in Spanish, couresy of the bootleg I was watching: "A los hombres les gusta tenes algo que agarrar.")
   
3. "Flicking your bean" (female masturbation reference)
4. "I've had sex with a lot of women, most of them conscious" (this was a different character, but still)
5. Vag, pussy, "I like a woman on top," "wet crotch" x2, "cock" x 15, gang bang, orafices...
   

And a list of action highlights:

1. Simulated hot dog blow job
2. Heigl accidentally gives her date a hand job at a baseball game. She spills soda on his crotch then rubs him off on the kiss cam. All the while she has no idea what she's doing.
   
3. She (for no reason) puts on vibrating panties before a work meeting, then some kid gets the remote, yada yada yada..... While giving a speech, TO WORK, she comes, twice. Everyone thinks the speech was a great success. Because she came. Twice.
   

The movie ends, confusingly, in a montage of hot air balloons. What is not confusing nor surprising, however, is that the movie also ends with the misogynist being right about everything. The strong career woman falls for his bad boy antics, and thus justifies and gives legitimacy to all the hateful, violent things he has said about women.
It seems that it's only acceptable to present a strong, independent-minded woman in pop culture if she is foiled by a stronger, traditional man (a la Jessie and Slater in Saved By the Bell). It is discouraging to see such a powerfully anti-feminist movie gross $200 million at the box office as recently as this summer. This review may come a few months late, but this method of undermining feminist characters is something we have seen and will continue to see, especially if people like Heigl keep taking such one-dimensional roles.

My strange double life as a Yuppie Mom

Hi there Schad Readers,

Molly here, out in New York. I haven't been contributing much to Schad lately, but that's because I've been in the midst of a job switcheroo. Here that, guys? A new job! IN THIS ECONOMY?? It's true, and I am a lucky gal. However, I'm still trying to process my previous job as a Nanny, or, as I liked to call it, Outsourced Child Raiser to the World's Wealthiest Children.

Now, this is a difficult topic to navigate. I, in no way, mean to dis Nannies themselves, nor do I mean to dis working mothers. But, as a nanny in New York, you get a glimpse into a world that, I believe, is starkly different than everywhere else the country-- essentially, Manhattan is a city of children being raised by people who are not their parents. I would be very interested to hear about what Chicago is like, or any other big metropolitan areas with big economic disparities, when it comes to raising children.

So, for the last year, I was to Yuppies as Jane Goodall was to the chimps; I, unshowered, poorly dressed, and slightly hungover, crouched amonst the wealthiest members of the New York animal kingdom and observed this strange species. And, in an ongoing series, I would like to share my findings. I learned a good deal about their eating habbits, mating habbits, and, most fanscinating, their child-rearing habbits.

I have already gone on far too long, so I will close today with just a simple Fun Fact, and come back tomorrow with an analysis of an article on gender identity written in Time Out New York Kids.

Yuppie Fun Fact of the Day: Rich People love cashews. They can talk about them for up to 20 minutes at a time.