Dear Mr./Ms. BarBri Lecturers,
I'm sure you think it's cute when you announce at the end of session that you need a ride to the airport and would love it if one of the 800 of us could give you a lift. I'm sure you think we're all dying to get extra one on one time with the prof and find out all the super-secret items that just *might* appear on the bar exam, esp since the lecture is so large that none of us can stop to ask questions.
But here's the deal, the airport is OVER AN HOUR AWAY! It takes half a tank of gas to get there and who nows how much to get back home. Which is like $60 or something. And we've already had been subjected to the sound of you're voice for up to 12 hours already.
And dude, you can so get a cab! I'm sorry if Barbri won't reimburse you the expenses, but just remember, we're getting screwed by barbri too. At least you're getting paid to be there; we're shelling out a couple grand to listen the Charlie Brown teacher sound of your voice (and so many others) day after day, so please don't provide additional provocation by trying to shave your costs and asking us for a ride. And don't give me any of that poor-poor law prof salary crap. Half of your audience spent 100k on tuition, and the other half is unemployed.
Cheapo.
I remain affectionately yours,
Ana
Monday, June 23, 2008
Welcome back...
Most of the happy times in my life have stemmed from finding my inner voice and listening to what she says in disregard of the external. The voice was prevalent in early childhood, but fully disappeared in my teens not to return until she was slowly willed back in my late twenties. By the time I entered law school, she was so strong, I didn’t think I could lose her again.
There is something about law school. No other process has so tested my personal insecurities. I started strong, and I fought, but over time I began to wear down. Hesitancy floated over into other areas of my life, personal and professional. My first semester was my best – in terms of grades and personal life. My last semester was my worst – also in both categories. By the time school ended, I could barely recognize the girl staring at me in the mirror. What happened? Where did I go?
I’ve sat through bar review fearfully anticipating defeat. I do not know this stuff, I say. I can never learn it all it time, I reiterate. What am I doing?
Then yesterday, I was sitting in the MBE review, and I realized that I’d learned more the night before on my own. I am not an auditory learner. I knew this when I entered school, and the first semester I focused my studying accordingly. The book was my bible. Over time I wavered. I needed to pay attention to the prof. I needed to listen. Everyone else was doing it! It was what you were supposed to do. I took copious notes. I reviewed them. We know how that turned out.
Suddenly I looked up from my materials and said to the person next to me, “I’m going home.”
“Ana, there are six hours left in the lecture,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” I replied and packed up my stuff.
Today I went back to BarBri because we weren’t reviewing, but had returned to filling in blanks. I sat through the lecture, listening with one ear, but mostly concentrating on what was written before me. Today was also the deadline to sign up for the special two-day state procedure course offered at the end of barbri. When class began I had no intention of signing up, but as time passed and the fear grew, I convinced myself that the course was necessary.
At the break, I sat outside with the blank registration form, moping over the $200 fee, money I didn’t really have. The song Under Pressure by Queen streamed through my earphones.
“It’s only $200,” I told myself, “if that’s the difference in passing the bar, then it’s worth it.”
“Don’t do it,” came a voice from out of nowhere.
I took off my earphones and looked around. Nope, just me. Clearly I was hallucinating.
“HELLO? Don’t do it.”
I seemed to have forgotten the sound of my inner voice.
“You know this company is capitalizing on your fear and self-doubt, right? You did notice that the deadline for the ‘special supplemental class’ occurs prior to the actual instruction of it in the main course?” she queried.
“I think I might need it,” I pleaded with her.
“Pshaw! What benefit could you possibly derive from ten MORE hours of lecture? When did you become Miss Hospital Corners? You can barely get out of bed, much less make one!”
“But, the materials,” I argued.
“You have the materials,” she said.
I looked down at the registration sheet and read the information. The class was being taught by the editor of the most respected procedure manual in the state. True, I did own this book. True, I had read portions of it extensively. True, my name would appear in the upcoming edition because I’d worked on it as an editorial assistant for the company that published it.
“Grow some balls, Ana.”
“But,”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
“oh.”
Walking back inside, I took stock in the voice and avoided the registration table. As I looked over to see numerous students turning in their forms, Another One Bites the Dust came onto the ipod.
Over the last hour I found myself feeling better until the end of the class approached. I hated fighting with 800 other people to get out of the parking lot. Why did it stress me out so much? Why could I not just deal with it?
“Leave now,” she said.
“We've got ten minutes. I might miss some blanks!"
“LEAVE NOW!”
“Okay.”
Once outside, I popped on my earphones to the sound of We are the Champions. Happily inside my car, I exited with ease.
“I did it!” I cheered.
“And when you get home,” said the voice, “I know this sounds cheesy, but download the theme song from Rocky. Also, stop watching Lord of the Rings. You’ve become a little too knowledgeable on Elvish, plus your ears are getting somewhat pointy. If you keep this up, the only place you’ll be able to meet men is at a Star Trek convention.”
There is something about law school. No other process has so tested my personal insecurities. I started strong, and I fought, but over time I began to wear down. Hesitancy floated over into other areas of my life, personal and professional. My first semester was my best – in terms of grades and personal life. My last semester was my worst – also in both categories. By the time school ended, I could barely recognize the girl staring at me in the mirror. What happened? Where did I go?
I’ve sat through bar review fearfully anticipating defeat. I do not know this stuff, I say. I can never learn it all it time, I reiterate. What am I doing?
Then yesterday, I was sitting in the MBE review, and I realized that I’d learned more the night before on my own. I am not an auditory learner. I knew this when I entered school, and the first semester I focused my studying accordingly. The book was my bible. Over time I wavered. I needed to pay attention to the prof. I needed to listen. Everyone else was doing it! It was what you were supposed to do. I took copious notes. I reviewed them. We know how that turned out.
Suddenly I looked up from my materials and said to the person next to me, “I’m going home.”
“Ana, there are six hours left in the lecture,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” I replied and packed up my stuff.
Today I went back to BarBri because we weren’t reviewing, but had returned to filling in blanks. I sat through the lecture, listening with one ear, but mostly concentrating on what was written before me. Today was also the deadline to sign up for the special two-day state procedure course offered at the end of barbri. When class began I had no intention of signing up, but as time passed and the fear grew, I convinced myself that the course was necessary.
At the break, I sat outside with the blank registration form, moping over the $200 fee, money I didn’t really have. The song Under Pressure by Queen streamed through my earphones.
“It’s only $200,” I told myself, “if that’s the difference in passing the bar, then it’s worth it.”
“Don’t do it,” came a voice from out of nowhere.
I took off my earphones and looked around. Nope, just me. Clearly I was hallucinating.
“HELLO? Don’t do it.”
I seemed to have forgotten the sound of my inner voice.
“You know this company is capitalizing on your fear and self-doubt, right? You did notice that the deadline for the ‘special supplemental class’ occurs prior to the actual instruction of it in the main course?” she queried.
“I think I might need it,” I pleaded with her.
“Pshaw! What benefit could you possibly derive from ten MORE hours of lecture? When did you become Miss Hospital Corners? You can barely get out of bed, much less make one!”
“But, the materials,” I argued.
“You have the materials,” she said.
I looked down at the registration sheet and read the information. The class was being taught by the editor of the most respected procedure manual in the state. True, I did own this book. True, I had read portions of it extensively. True, my name would appear in the upcoming edition because I’d worked on it as an editorial assistant for the company that published it.
“Grow some balls, Ana.”
“But,”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
“oh.”
Walking back inside, I took stock in the voice and avoided the registration table. As I looked over to see numerous students turning in their forms, Another One Bites the Dust came onto the ipod.
Over the last hour I found myself feeling better until the end of the class approached. I hated fighting with 800 other people to get out of the parking lot. Why did it stress me out so much? Why could I not just deal with it?
“Leave now,” she said.
“We've got ten minutes. I might miss some blanks!"
“LEAVE NOW!”
“Okay.”
Once outside, I popped on my earphones to the sound of We are the Champions. Happily inside my car, I exited with ease.
“I did it!” I cheered.
“And when you get home,” said the voice, “I know this sounds cheesy, but download the theme song from Rocky. Also, stop watching Lord of the Rings. You’ve become a little too knowledgeable on Elvish, plus your ears are getting somewhat pointy. If you keep this up, the only place you’ll be able to meet men is at a Star Trek convention.”
Saturday, June 21, 2008
"You're so melodramatic!" my mom always said...
I am pretty sure that by the time the bar is over I will hate Lord of the Rings. Why? Because right now I’m stuck in some kind of strange funk where all I seem to be able to do is crawl from my bed to the couch and pop in one of the DVDs.
In the past few weeks I’ve watched the entire trilogy several times in one day and developed serious crushes on the characters of Pippin and Gimli. For awhile I thought I’d change things up and listen to the actors’ commentary, but hearing the actual people as opposed to their characters dampens my romantic notions. At times I’ve become so enthralled that I won’t leave the couch even for a cigarette, choosing instead to let ashes fall to the ground as smoke clogs the air.
My strange behavior has become known to all of my friends, and now whenever I do make it out of the house, I receive jokes to no end…but I enjoy the levity. Everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to make things official and post on facebook that I’m “in a relationship with Frodo.” Wine-Time-Girl corrects them and says it’s more like “it’s complicated with the entire Fellowship.”
When I do go out, I’m still in a solitary mode and will often end up on an empty patio smoking cigarettes and talking to myself. My friends are cool with this though.
“Shh, don’t bother her,” they say when someone asks about me. “She’s talking to Frodo. You just can’t see him because he’s wearing the ring.”
The allusion is that the bar exam is my ring, my burden to bear.
Barbri is just frightening. There are about 800 people in my class and every morning we file into a ballroom at a crummy hotel convention center in a bad part of town. There are eight people per round table and you can’t open your book without both leafs hitting the book of the person on either side of you. There aren’t enough seats, so if you get there too late you have the wonderful honor of sitting on the floor. Throughout the three-plus hours, people scrawl notes madly, highlight furiously, and bite their nails to the quick as forced air the temperature of an ice storm blows in your face. Oh, the beauty of industrialization. When it’s all over, everyone scrambles to leave the scene at one time, cutting other people off in the parking lot like packs of wolves. If you are even slightly empathic, spending half a day every day with hundreds of people wound tight with fear is a physically draining and unpleasant experience.
…So I’ve kind of just stopped going. At first I shifted to the night classes. Then I listened to a few online. (BarBri will let you do this a handful of times – then they’ll ask you to pony up an additional $800 for the ipod version.) In hindsight, the best way to do barbri would be to have one friend buy the ipod version, split it a few ways, and then get together every day for small group lectures accompanied by wine. (Fairy-God-Brother and I have done this twice.)
Okay, actually I’ve only technically missed three days, but it’s enough to worry Fairy-God-Brother. Yesterday he gave me an itunes gift card for showing up to the simulated MBE exam, and today, when I failed to appear, I received a phone call telling me that I ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY WILL BE ATTENDING TOMORROW.
I’m very lucky to have him right now. He’s moved into a garage apartment around the corner and we’ve begun trading music back and forth. He sends me Ella. I send him…
“You’re music kind of makes me want to cry,” he says.
Really? The Patty Griffin? The Nellie McKay? I haven’t even sent any Damien Rice yet. (By the way, itunes tells me that Cold Water is the most played song on my ipod right now.)
“I can’t stop listening to Strange Fruit,” he says, “but the Etta James and Eartha Kitt are awesome.”
I do not seem to be the only one of my friends losing her mind. One friend disappeared after the first week of Barbri and has assured us that although she is not studying now, she will start doing so in time for the bar. Another friend failed to show up at a BBQ yesterday and called in her regrets to say that she was in nervous breakdown mode and had been unable to leave her house for the last three days. Yet another classmate has been sending cryptic emails to Wine-Time-Girl and nasty-grams to me for reasons we can’t figure out. We’re both hoping she doesn’t off herself during this time period.
The bar is the underlying problem, but I think there’s more to it than that. We’ve all been thrown from the routine we’ve known and relied on for the last three years. Only a handful of us have jobs. We all have a slew of debt. Money is tight and prices are rising. Nobody knows if we made the right decision, if we’ll enjoy what we do, or what we’ll be doing in a few years and if we’ll still be friends. Plus, we might fail the bar. In the past few weeks I’ve considered starting a commune, running off to an artist’s colony, joining a theater group in a distant small town, or possibly just getting on the next plane to anywhere.
Everyone’s crazy is manifesting itself in their own ways. Mine is to hide in my living room day after day, watching twelve hours of fantasy where good manages against all odds to triumph over evil. I hope that by the end of July when I trot my butt down to my very own Mordor, I’ll be able to rip that bitch off my neck and throw it into the fire. Hopefully, the psychological after-effects will not send me off on a boat with the elves.
In the past few weeks I’ve watched the entire trilogy several times in one day and developed serious crushes on the characters of Pippin and Gimli. For awhile I thought I’d change things up and listen to the actors’ commentary, but hearing the actual people as opposed to their characters dampens my romantic notions. At times I’ve become so enthralled that I won’t leave the couch even for a cigarette, choosing instead to let ashes fall to the ground as smoke clogs the air.
My strange behavior has become known to all of my friends, and now whenever I do make it out of the house, I receive jokes to no end…but I enjoy the levity. Everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to make things official and post on facebook that I’m “in a relationship with Frodo.” Wine-Time-Girl corrects them and says it’s more like “it’s complicated with the entire Fellowship.”
When I do go out, I’m still in a solitary mode and will often end up on an empty patio smoking cigarettes and talking to myself. My friends are cool with this though.
“Shh, don’t bother her,” they say when someone asks about me. “She’s talking to Frodo. You just can’t see him because he’s wearing the ring.”
The allusion is that the bar exam is my ring, my burden to bear.
Barbri is just frightening. There are about 800 people in my class and every morning we file into a ballroom at a crummy hotel convention center in a bad part of town. There are eight people per round table and you can’t open your book without both leafs hitting the book of the person on either side of you. There aren’t enough seats, so if you get there too late you have the wonderful honor of sitting on the floor. Throughout the three-plus hours, people scrawl notes madly, highlight furiously, and bite their nails to the quick as forced air the temperature of an ice storm blows in your face. Oh, the beauty of industrialization. When it’s all over, everyone scrambles to leave the scene at one time, cutting other people off in the parking lot like packs of wolves. If you are even slightly empathic, spending half a day every day with hundreds of people wound tight with fear is a physically draining and unpleasant experience.
…So I’ve kind of just stopped going. At first I shifted to the night classes. Then I listened to a few online. (BarBri will let you do this a handful of times – then they’ll ask you to pony up an additional $800 for the ipod version.) In hindsight, the best way to do barbri would be to have one friend buy the ipod version, split it a few ways, and then get together every day for small group lectures accompanied by wine. (Fairy-God-Brother and I have done this twice.)
Okay, actually I’ve only technically missed three days, but it’s enough to worry Fairy-God-Brother. Yesterday he gave me an itunes gift card for showing up to the simulated MBE exam, and today, when I failed to appear, I received a phone call telling me that I ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY WILL BE ATTENDING TOMORROW.
I’m very lucky to have him right now. He’s moved into a garage apartment around the corner and we’ve begun trading music back and forth. He sends me Ella. I send him…
“You’re music kind of makes me want to cry,” he says.
Really? The Patty Griffin? The Nellie McKay? I haven’t even sent any Damien Rice yet. (By the way, itunes tells me that Cold Water is the most played song on my ipod right now.)
“I can’t stop listening to Strange Fruit,” he says, “but the Etta James and Eartha Kitt are awesome.”
I do not seem to be the only one of my friends losing her mind. One friend disappeared after the first week of Barbri and has assured us that although she is not studying now, she will start doing so in time for the bar. Another friend failed to show up at a BBQ yesterday and called in her regrets to say that she was in nervous breakdown mode and had been unable to leave her house for the last three days. Yet another classmate has been sending cryptic emails to Wine-Time-Girl and nasty-grams to me for reasons we can’t figure out. We’re both hoping she doesn’t off herself during this time period.
The bar is the underlying problem, but I think there’s more to it than that. We’ve all been thrown from the routine we’ve known and relied on for the last three years. Only a handful of us have jobs. We all have a slew of debt. Money is tight and prices are rising. Nobody knows if we made the right decision, if we’ll enjoy what we do, or what we’ll be doing in a few years and if we’ll still be friends. Plus, we might fail the bar. In the past few weeks I’ve considered starting a commune, running off to an artist’s colony, joining a theater group in a distant small town, or possibly just getting on the next plane to anywhere.
Everyone’s crazy is manifesting itself in their own ways. Mine is to hide in my living room day after day, watching twelve hours of fantasy where good manages against all odds to triumph over evil. I hope that by the end of July when I trot my butt down to my very own Mordor, I’ll be able to rip that bitch off my neck and throw it into the fire. Hopefully, the psychological after-effects will not send me off on a boat with the elves.
Ouch...
I just paid almost $7 for a bag of grapes. Grapes! My groceries filled less than two brown bags and came to $60 - after my $10 coupon!
Gas is $4 a gallon. (I'm driving more than normal because of stupid BarBri.)
My scotch is between $10-11/glass at bars now! WTF? No more scotch.
My cigarettes have gone up $.70/pack. (I refuse.)
My car was smacked up by a hit and run the other day = $600 in deductible and rental car for a week.
Barbri = $2500 and my work isn't paying for it - though I probably shouldn't complain insofar as I have a job.
60K worth of debt
3 years of being a student instead of holding down a full-time job and having income.
Things are starting to get a little pinched over here.
Gas is $4 a gallon. (I'm driving more than normal because of stupid BarBri.)
My scotch is between $10-11/glass at bars now! WTF? No more scotch.
My cigarettes have gone up $.70/pack. (I refuse.)
My car was smacked up by a hit and run the other day = $600 in deductible and rental car for a week.
Barbri = $2500 and my work isn't paying for it - though I probably shouldn't complain insofar as I have a job.
60K worth of debt
3 years of being a student instead of holding down a full-time job and having income.
Things are starting to get a little pinched over here.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Convention is overrated...
Guy 1: Your shoes are so awesome.
…
Guy 2: OMG, I love your shoes!
…
Guy 3: I have to buy you a drink; those shoes are just too fabulous.
And so on…
My mother after hearing me recount the story a few days later: Why is it that I have NO problem picturing you in a gay bar, camping it up in ruby red slippers, and receiving drinks from homosexuals? When I think about it, you must have been so much in your element that I almost find it disturbing.
Me (to my Mom): What can I say? There’s no place like home. Everyone there was a friend of Dorothy.
…
Guy 2: OMG, I love your shoes!
…
Guy 3: I have to buy you a drink; those shoes are just too fabulous.
And so on…
My mother after hearing me recount the story a few days later: Why is it that I have NO problem picturing you in a gay bar, camping it up in ruby red slippers, and receiving drinks from homosexuals? When I think about it, you must have been so much in your element that I almost find it disturbing.
Me (to my Mom): What can I say? There’s no place like home. Everyone there was a friend of Dorothy.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Sex and the Twit-y...
Believe it or not, Sex & the City was a feminist show – at least in the beginning and at least in the area where I was living.
SATC kicked off a year after I finished college, promising an honesty and equality never before witnessed in my reality.
Women could sleep with whomever they wanted without social retribution. They could chase careers sans husband and child. They could enjoy sex. They could experiment. They could have children out of wedlock. And they could make partner. Sure, all the characters sought men throughout the show, but seeking a soul mate along with the perfect job and great shoes isn’t anti-feminist. Feminists like boys too.
And then of course, there was the friendship, the unlikely pairing of four different women who set life aside every Sunday to meet for brunch. Like their own private boys club – only not.
Watching the characters evolve rather than remain sitcom-ically stagnant was also an enjoyment. Carries fears of marriage, Miranda’s ambivalent embrace of motherhood, Charlotte’s dream of the picture perfect marriage and its ultimate reality. Only Samantha ever stood out to me as virtually two-dimensional. All she ever seemed to talk about were the dirty (and sometime offensive) details of whom she’d slept with the night before. She rarely exhibited any type of emotion or connection with other people, and when she came down with cancer, it was almost a joke.
I will admit, I cried when the show aired for the last time. I loved the girls and I didn’t want to let them go. Every so often I remember S&TC as superficial and shiny, but when I pull out the DVD’s and pop them in the player I remember how good a show it was…
…which is what made the movie SO DISAPPOINTING.
All of the characteristics that made the women so interesting and endearing has been stripped away for the big screen. The girl-talk that I loved so much is gone and solipsism reigns supreme.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Carrie, my favorite, the quirky, neurotic, key-tapping writer. In the movie, she's just plain scary. I mean, I was trying to figure out exactly what kind of mood disorder she had. When Big has second thoughts right before the wedding (which incidentally - he's been openly expressing for weeks to deaf ears), but immediately changes his mind (and in time to make the actual wedding), Carrie has a psychotic episode in the middle of a New York street. As I watched her throw the bouquet in Big’s face my immediate thought was, “OMIGODYOUPSYCHOBITCH.”
Welcome to relationships Carrie. It's not just about YOU anymore. It's a partnership, a two-way street. They require listening and responding to one another, but Carrie’s so consumed by Big’s thirty-second hesitation that she spends six months bad-mouthing his name and refusing all communication. I think she sums her character up best when she says, “He didn’t want to do anything. I was willing to put a bird on my head!” Yep, that's what she was willing to contribute to the relationship - head attire. I mean, is it any wonder?
Carrie’s not the best friend either, walking out on Miranda in a restaurant and refusing to speak to her over a comment Miranda made to Big prior to the wedding. …As if Big is some idiot who can’t make decisions for himself and is totally helpless to Miranda’s errant expletives.
Don’t feel too bad for Miranda though. She’s not about to win any self-awareness awards in this movie. After Steve admits to having a one-night stand, she immediately moves out without another word, screaming throughout the rest of the movie that she can't believe he 'hurt' her like that. At no point does a period of introspection cause her to reflect on the time she tried to cut a family dinner short due to a work deadline, refused to take her kid to the bathroom because she was too stressed (that's what the maid is for), belittled her own husband, or asked him if he could ‘just finish already’ while they were having sex. Apparently, after Miranda made the great “sacrifice” of moving to Brooklyn she feels as if everyone should fall to her feet or get out of the way. If I were Steve, I wouldn’t have cheated; I would have filed for divorce and sought custody.
Charlotte is the great dame with no personality and even fewer lines. Now that she has the perfect husband, perfect 5th Avenue apartment, perfect Chinese baby Lily, and perfect stay-at-home lifestyle, she’s in ultimate bliss. I mean really, who could have any problems with that? Essentially, she's a freaking Stepford Wife. Charlotte just smiles and pats her dogs until she finds out she’s pregnant at which point the adopted child disappears from the movie – as if to say, “Forget you, I GOT A REAL BABY NOW!” (“Real” baby also gets a handed-down Jewish name unlike her adopted sister because I guess the need for heritage just isn’t important with adopted children. If they make a sequel, I hope it starts with Lily sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch discussing her pyromania.)
Samantha? Well, despite a poorly written monologue with Smith near the end of the movie, she’s the one girl in the two-plus hours who is real. Having moved out to LA with Smith to manage his career, Samantha struggles with boredom, isolation, an absentee lover, and ultimately weight gain. Though her speech to Smith is about ‘me,’ she’s the only one of the bunch not completely self-absorbed, but rather true to herself. After ten years of Carrie-worship, Samantha might be my new idol.
The movie ends just as ridiculous as it begins. Carrie and Big are sitting in the world’s largest walk-in closet discussing how everything was fine until they decided to get married. At this point I thought the movie had potential. I thought Carrie and Big would turn to each other and say, “You know what? Just because everyone says we should get married doesn’t mean that it’s the best thing for us.” Instead, Big gets down on one knee and proposes. Again. After they’d just spent five minutes talking about how marriage messed things up. What is wrong with these people?!?!?!?
In the span of two+ hours, my empowering feminist women were reduced to self-absorbed, narcissistic, sniveling, superficial, cardboard cutouts. (It was almost like reading an actual Candace Bushnell novel!) The movie's not so horrible to sit through. If you don't think about it at all it's great. Girl gets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back. YAY! And girl gets great shoes and huge apartment. YAY! On the other hand, if you stop to analyze the movie, it might hurt a little.
As for me, I plan to go drink Cosmos until I forget it ever happened.
SATC kicked off a year after I finished college, promising an honesty and equality never before witnessed in my reality.
Women could sleep with whomever they wanted without social retribution. They could chase careers sans husband and child. They could enjoy sex. They could experiment. They could have children out of wedlock. And they could make partner. Sure, all the characters sought men throughout the show, but seeking a soul mate along with the perfect job and great shoes isn’t anti-feminist. Feminists like boys too.
And then of course, there was the friendship, the unlikely pairing of four different women who set life aside every Sunday to meet for brunch. Like their own private boys club – only not.
Watching the characters evolve rather than remain sitcom-ically stagnant was also an enjoyment. Carries fears of marriage, Miranda’s ambivalent embrace of motherhood, Charlotte’s dream of the picture perfect marriage and its ultimate reality. Only Samantha ever stood out to me as virtually two-dimensional. All she ever seemed to talk about were the dirty (and sometime offensive) details of whom she’d slept with the night before. She rarely exhibited any type of emotion or connection with other people, and when she came down with cancer, it was almost a joke.
I will admit, I cried when the show aired for the last time. I loved the girls and I didn’t want to let them go. Every so often I remember S&TC as superficial and shiny, but when I pull out the DVD’s and pop them in the player I remember how good a show it was…
…which is what made the movie SO DISAPPOINTING.
All of the characteristics that made the women so interesting and endearing has been stripped away for the big screen. The girl-talk that I loved so much is gone and solipsism reigns supreme.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Carrie, my favorite, the quirky, neurotic, key-tapping writer. In the movie, she's just plain scary. I mean, I was trying to figure out exactly what kind of mood disorder she had. When Big has second thoughts right before the wedding (which incidentally - he's been openly expressing for weeks to deaf ears), but immediately changes his mind (and in time to make the actual wedding), Carrie has a psychotic episode in the middle of a New York street. As I watched her throw the bouquet in Big’s face my immediate thought was, “OMIGODYOUPSYCHOBITCH.”
Welcome to relationships Carrie. It's not just about YOU anymore. It's a partnership, a two-way street. They require listening and responding to one another, but Carrie’s so consumed by Big’s thirty-second hesitation that she spends six months bad-mouthing his name and refusing all communication. I think she sums her character up best when she says, “He didn’t want to do anything. I was willing to put a bird on my head!” Yep, that's what she was willing to contribute to the relationship - head attire. I mean, is it any wonder?
Carrie’s not the best friend either, walking out on Miranda in a restaurant and refusing to speak to her over a comment Miranda made to Big prior to the wedding. …As if Big is some idiot who can’t make decisions for himself and is totally helpless to Miranda’s errant expletives.
Don’t feel too bad for Miranda though. She’s not about to win any self-awareness awards in this movie. After Steve admits to having a one-night stand, she immediately moves out without another word, screaming throughout the rest of the movie that she can't believe he 'hurt' her like that. At no point does a period of introspection cause her to reflect on the time she tried to cut a family dinner short due to a work deadline, refused to take her kid to the bathroom because she was too stressed (that's what the maid is for), belittled her own husband, or asked him if he could ‘just finish already’ while they were having sex. Apparently, after Miranda made the great “sacrifice” of moving to Brooklyn she feels as if everyone should fall to her feet or get out of the way. If I were Steve, I wouldn’t have cheated; I would have filed for divorce and sought custody.
Charlotte is the great dame with no personality and even fewer lines. Now that she has the perfect husband, perfect 5th Avenue apartment, perfect Chinese baby Lily, and perfect stay-at-home lifestyle, she’s in ultimate bliss. I mean really, who could have any problems with that? Essentially, she's a freaking Stepford Wife. Charlotte just smiles and pats her dogs until she finds out she’s pregnant at which point the adopted child disappears from the movie – as if to say, “Forget you, I GOT A REAL BABY NOW!” (“Real” baby also gets a handed-down Jewish name unlike her adopted sister because I guess the need for heritage just isn’t important with adopted children. If they make a sequel, I hope it starts with Lily sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch discussing her pyromania.)
Samantha? Well, despite a poorly written monologue with Smith near the end of the movie, she’s the one girl in the two-plus hours who is real. Having moved out to LA with Smith to manage his career, Samantha struggles with boredom, isolation, an absentee lover, and ultimately weight gain. Though her speech to Smith is about ‘me,’ she’s the only one of the bunch not completely self-absorbed, but rather true to herself. After ten years of Carrie-worship, Samantha might be my new idol.
The movie ends just as ridiculous as it begins. Carrie and Big are sitting in the world’s largest walk-in closet discussing how everything was fine until they decided to get married. At this point I thought the movie had potential. I thought Carrie and Big would turn to each other and say, “You know what? Just because everyone says we should get married doesn’t mean that it’s the best thing for us.” Instead, Big gets down on one knee and proposes. Again. After they’d just spent five minutes talking about how marriage messed things up. What is wrong with these people?!?!?!?
In the span of two+ hours, my empowering feminist women were reduced to self-absorbed, narcissistic, sniveling, superficial, cardboard cutouts. (It was almost like reading an actual Candace Bushnell novel!) The movie's not so horrible to sit through. If you don't think about it at all it's great. Girl gets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back. YAY! And girl gets great shoes and huge apartment. YAY! On the other hand, if you stop to analyze the movie, it might hurt a little.
As for me, I plan to go drink Cosmos until I forget it ever happened.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
I promise to write soon...
Hey readers...I haven't forgotten you - in fact, I've been writing most days, BUT apparently my apathy has turned to teenage angst, and every time I finish a piece in the last week or so, I reread it to find that it is mean, whiny, bitter, angry, or otherwise icky. I'm sparing you really. Give me a few more days.
In the meantime...
Fairy-God-Brother gave me an itunes gift certificate for my birthday and I'd love your suggestions on how to spend it! The ipod is a recent thing for me. Several years ago my dad bought me a an mp3 player with a radio and I used it religiously...until I won an ipod in a drawing.
I thought it was kind of lame until I discovered itunes...and got to download random songs from random places.
For example, this song played on the radio constantly when I was in Paris. I used to walk the rue with this song in my headphones:
Feeling sad? This song will make you happy and bouncy:
French hip-hop?
And at the suggestion of a recent commenter:
So tell me, what should I get next!?!?!
This song is, annoyingly, not available at the U.S. itunes store, nor will YouTube let me embed it.
This one isn't either...
Will itunes slap my hand if I try to download from the French store?
In the meantime...
Fairy-God-Brother gave me an itunes gift certificate for my birthday and I'd love your suggestions on how to spend it! The ipod is a recent thing for me. Several years ago my dad bought me a an mp3 player with a radio and I used it religiously...until I won an ipod in a drawing.
I thought it was kind of lame until I discovered itunes...and got to download random songs from random places.
For example, this song played on the radio constantly when I was in Paris. I used to walk the rue with this song in my headphones:
Feeling sad? This song will make you happy and bouncy:
French hip-hop?
And at the suggestion of a recent commenter:
So tell me, what should I get next!?!?!
This song is, annoyingly, not available at the U.S. itunes store, nor will YouTube let me embed it.
This one isn't either...
Will itunes slap my hand if I try to download from the French store?
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