Oscars.

I just watched the Oscars, y'all. I have thoughts.

NPH did ok as host. Does anyone ever really do great at hosting these things? They always look so goddamned stressed. Emma Stone looked amazing and did you know she's in "Birdman"?! I guess I begrudgingly have to watch that now? Cate Blanchett also looked radiant as hell. That woman is a class ACT. Jared Leto was missing something from his '70s look: a ruffled shirt! What a missed opportunity!

Patricia Arquette won best supporting actress and talked about wage gap while fellow nominee Meryl Streep fist-pumped.

There were a couple of moving music performances: one highlighted how slow our progress has been in the civil rights movement (John Legend and Common) and the other was Lady GaGa singing a medley from "The Sound of Music". Should I see that movie too?

Graham Moore, writer of "The Imitation Game", wins Mixtress Rae's Oscars for most inspiring speech by encouraging weirdos to "stay weird". That was really super sweet and I can't wait to reblog endless gifs of that moment on Tumblr later tonight.

John Travolta presented an award with Idina Menzel and he touched her a lot and it creeped me out. John Travolta always creeps me out.

Everyone called Wes Anderson a genius, but I stopped watching "The Grand Budapest Hotel" after an hour in favor of a bath because it doesn't pass the Bechdel test and the main character compared women to meat (wow, how much more cliche can you get?). I want to like Wes Anderson because I like the dry deliveries of his actors and the set design in his movies, and because he looks like Beck, but the parade of white men in his movies is tired. Seriously Wes, if you have room for 27 white dudes in every movie, you can squeeze in a couple of dozen other races and genders, don't you think?

Now for the best picture nominees and my limited and oversimplified understanding of what each film is about:

WHIPLASH: an abusive conductor and his relationship with a student
AMERICAN SNIPER: something about how hard war is and PTSD and stuff
BIRDMAN: a film about how Michael Keaton thinks he'll never move past playing Batman
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL: a Wes Anderson movie set in a hotel
THE IMITATION GAME: a movie about a very accomplished man that wasn't recognized for his genius because he was gay
SELMA: movie about civil rights in the '60s and Martin Luther King, Jr
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING: a movie about Stephen Hawking
BOYHOOD: a movie filmed over the course of 12 years about a boy growing up

First of all, EVERY SINGLE ONE of these movies is about men. Men men men. At least four of these movies are about men that aren't straight (The Imitation Game) and white (Selma) and of able body (The Theory of Everything) and mind (American Sniper).

But guess which movie won fucking best picture?!?! The one about a straight white cisgender beautiful actor (Michael Keaton) whining about no one knowing him as anything but Batman. REALLY?!! Really? really?

The overwhelming struggle of how hard it has been for Michael Keaton to move beyond his role as a superhero in the hearts and minds of America. What a struggle.

Overall, I see that we are in a revolution for civil rights, gay rights, and feminism. Things are changing and the voice of weirdos (perceived and real) is getting louder. The white man is going to kick and scream on the way to being taken down to the level of everyone else. It's going to get really really ugly. But another victory for a type of person (white, male, cisgender, straight, actor, etc) that doesn't need any more victories right now is still a disappointment.

Unfortunately, the worst part is that I wasn't surprised.

perception/deception

In high school my English teacher (you remember: the cute one that is now a principal?) taught a class about pluralism.  Pluralism (as I remember him teaching it then) is this idea that perception is reality and everyone perceives things differently, so can reality be defined/constant?  This is something we've all thought about at one time or another, so I am presenting nothing new, but recently I had to take a hard look at myself.

Remember in Anne Rice's "Queen of the Damned" where spirits were these giant balls of misty energy that spanned hundreds of miles with a concentrated meaty center? After the tornado, I was forced to gather up all of my misty-wide energy and stuff it into the shell of my body.  I then turned that body into a fortress and tried to ignore it.  In the time since that stupid Spring day I've over-indulged in alcohol, food, and darkness.  Any escape I could find, I clutched onto until my fingers bled.  As a result, what was already growing stagnant within me even before last Spring became so still, so unforgivingly rigid, that I couldn't even see that I was frozen.  My father died and I felt as if I was looking through an opaque glass at myself from another realm.  Apathy has been my muse, and I thank her for her service, but I have to break the fucking glass.

Recently, a confrontation/intervention was placed in front of me that I could not ignore.  I have always known who I am, so it was really hard to admit that I didn't know who I had become.  I had become this insular being without ardor.  I had forgotten that what we all are is fluid.  We change and evolve and taking a look at who you are is required of you every day.

The only people that remain sane in this world let go of the perception they believe others have of them.  They don't let themselves be defined by that perception.  Not even the perception that is their own.  I've always known this, but recently I've lost sight of where I sit within it.  I feel SUCH a kinship to those that are being their genuine selves without definition.  What I am now is not who I will be.  What I have been is not what I am.  I always really liked the lyrics to Incubus' "Make Yourself".  The idea of creating your self has always been important to me, but the thing I am grasping now is that you have to do this continuously throughout your existence.  It isn't forever that you are, it's forever that you choose to be.

With one swift primal scream I must let that giant all-encompassing spirit take her space again.  It cannot be contained within my body.  It must pervade everything around me so that I can feel and be felt by others.

We cannot see things as they truly are, or they are what we see and we can't see what anyone else sees. So why construct an image without purpose?  If what you're trying to fit within doesn't feel comfortable, get out!



The celebrities that I find interesting usually have zero control over their personae (Courtney Love, Grimes, and Fiona Apple) and don't care.  They are raw and real and it inspires me tremendously.  I also enjoy when they have TOO much control over their personae (Lady GaGa, Marilyn Manson) because they're taking their art to such an extreme that it becomes an agenda.  Grimes IS art and GaGa forces you to confront your own art and both of these images make you look at yourself.  The video above makes no sense and that was probably Grimes' unintentional point.  She just gathered together people she liked and visual images that intrigued her and she danced.  I cried watching this because her weirdness feels so genuine to me.

My next tattoo is:

stop.
making.
sense.

and this to me is my zen.  Reminding myself that what I think others think does not matter.  Who I am and that I am confrontationally genuine is what is important to me.  I want to be a Fiona, a Grimes, a Courtney Love.  A brash, bold, ballsy, blunt BITCH.  The witch within is emerging from the gristle she's been hiding amidst.

Girls, come on!

I was just looking through about 15 pages of Google images of Lady GaGa, nobigdeal, when I came across a picture of GaGa squatting down singing and there's a tiny indication of a tampon string emerging from her leotard thing and the writer of the blog where the picture was from was using words like "nasty" and saying sentences to the effect of "you should tuck those strings back before you show us your crotch, GaGa!" etc. I am outraged, and I'll tell you why:

1) when you're a performer of the magnitude of Lady GaGa, pictures are taken of you constantly. Girls, if you weren't paying attention in health class, spend 1/5 of our fucking LIVES bleeding out the crotch! There's gonna be a picture with a tampon string if you are a famous girl performer and you wear crotch-cutting leotards. Deal with it!

2) being a female and calling another female nasty for an accidental tamp-slip is terrible! You should be kicked out of the girlclub right now. How the hell can you fault someone for having a period and still daring to put on a kick-ass show?

How the hell can you point fingers at a woman who's doing what she wants and making a living being subversive and interesting? She is on her period and she's not compromising her regular crotch-baring-singing-crouch OR her outfit. She's, like women on the Tampax commercials, swimming and biking and wearing white pants. We should show this picture in our blogs with applause...not criticism! You go girl, having your period and still rawking the leotard and letting it all hang out.

I'm not gonna post it because GaGa is a very intentional performer, but this shot wasn't. Also, it could have been photoshopped, which is even worse that someone would fabricate this just to make fun of someone. That's gross. Way grosser than tampons!