This little piece of social satire has me mesmerized:
Keep clicking.
I think that it may be one of the most insightful things about our cultural view of Hillary out there. (Particularly the nature of biases against her.)
And here’s the not quite as mesmerizing, but still sort of on-point Obama site:
Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Last summer, I briefly heralded my family’s new found normality (after lo, these many years of my husband’s reign as a local independent impresario) in a post called “What we do on a Friday night these days.” It wasn’t a very exciting read, but posting it was sort of… illuminating.
To this day, handfuls to dozens of people still visit that post every week, and it’s not because they think my Cosmic playlist is brilliant. It’s because, come Friday, a number of people from all over the world apparently go to the search engine of their choice and type “things to do on a Friday night,” hoping the bots will show them the way to a good time. Somehow, they end up here instead, tripping the light fantastic through my domestic burbles.
If you are one of those souls meandering through cyberspace, looking for weekend inspiration, I actually can help you. It just so happens that despite of the fact that I am kind of a shut-in these days, I am still something of an expert about things that people can do on a Friday or Saturday night. Over the course of my career, the two jobs I actually had to go into an office to complete involved localizing a well-known national chain of websites and writing for a local alternative weekly – both publications were deeply involved in informing people about the myriad ways they might spend their free time.
I also waited until my mid-30s to become a parent, so that I could enjoy many years of going out on Friday and Saturday nights before giving them up to drool and intergalactic renditions of “The Farmer in the Dell.” I’ve seen enough that I’m not so worried about what I might be missing these days.
My unsolicited advice
For starters, if you are one of those people who lives in a mid-sized-to-major city and scrunches up their nose in confusion or non-recognition when I mention the name of a local free alternative weekly newspaper, you probably aren’t well-enough informed about what your city has to offer to viably complain that there isn’t anything to do. Start there – look for the free rags in the foyers of restaurants, coffee shops, libraries and bookstores, or search for “free weekly + (name of your town)” online. Hunt through their calendar listings and see what you’ve been missing, then consider going someplace you’ve never heard of. If the unknown scares you, pack hand sanitizer and low expectations.
Otherwise, here is my all-purpose, non-geographically specific list of suggestions about things you can do on a Friday or Saturday night.
Part One – Going Out
Gallery openings
I weep when I consider the uneaten cheese cubes cast into garbage cans when an artist loads up a snack table, hangs his or her work for all to see and no one comes.
Actually, in my town, I’ve found that it’s rare that no one comes, even if it’s just people questing for free cheese cubes. Whatever your motivation, it would behoove you to become one of those people. Don’t think that you have to know what you’re looking at. It’s better that you come with questions.
See live, original music in a smaller venue
I obviously have my biases when it comes to this one, but I would be remiss if I didn’t evangelize a little about live music. The fact is, if you love music, and haven’t ever seen it live, in an intimate venue, your relationship with it is effectively stuck at second base.
While it’s true that if you are anywhere between 35 and 65 years old, you can probably have a fairly intimate experience with some band that specializes in covering all the music you sang in the shower when you were twelve, that is not the same as seeing an original act. Connecting with a bunch of people through drunken nostalgia can be fun, but connecting with something new and stirring can actually be transcendent. (Don’t expect that at your first show, but believe me, it happens.) It also makes you smarter and better looking.
I haven’t gone to them as often, but all the same concepts may apply to theater, dance and other live performances.
Go to the drive-in or an independent movie theater
I’ve found the cost of mainstream Hollywood movies offensive in recent years, especially given their soggy quality. I don’t know if exorbitant numbers of writers, directors or film editors are snorting bleach these days, but an awful lot of big-budget films seem to be about 20 minutes longer than they should be. This makes entertaining movies mediocre and mediocre movies excruciating.
The fact that my city still has a drive-in has made many a burdensome movie almost bearable. (I’m talking to you, Titanic.) I can sit there and groan over the scenes that ought to be deleted and only annoy my husband. Because drive-ins now send audio through your car radio signal instead of on those old window speakers, you can still be moderately awed by the actions of magical creatures and things blowing up on the screen, and also have the steering wheel conveniently handy to bang your head against during inexplicable jumps in plot and/or dialog.
And yes, supporting independent films (or at least independent theaters) is healthy for you and me. Although I’ve been disappointed in several indie movies lately because they too often seem like shallow vanity projects for award-seeking stars, when they are good, they are really good. And worth seeing on the big screen.
Do guerrilla theater
Why are you hellbent on being entertained when you could be the one doing the entertaining? You don’t have to have an agent or a cause. Join or look to these people for inspiration. (I’m especially fond of their freeze series. Another great one is Look Up More.) Going to public places in full costume when it’s nowhere near Halloween is also a good idea. Consider it an anthropological investigation.
My brother had a few of these inspired moments in his youth. Like the time he and a friend made up fake fliers in support of building a canal in the center of Broad Street here in Columbus. The kicker was the suggestion that our city’s replica of the Santa
Maria be floated down the middle of the canal as an innovative form of public transportation.
To be continued next week, with suggestions about what to do if you’re staying in.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
The snowy skies cooperated and cleared to crystal, so naturally, we spent much of evening admiring the lunar eclipse. We crunched down the icy street but soon found there was no better view than the one through the bare Black Locust branches from our back deck.
Dan’s cell phone rang over and over with friends calling to make sure that Declan wouldn’t miss the orange-red sight in the sky. Dec helped me stir hot chocolate on the stove while his dad hooted at and applauded the moon. I ladeled some of the warm mixture into Dec’s orange mug, and he sipped it as he stood on his stepstool, looking up at me. Then, in a moment that was both celestial and Beatles-esque, he said “this world is the one thing money can’t buy.”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
For the past several days, Dec has been playing with a bathtub basketball hoop my mother gave him, replete with a ball from every major sport in the U.S. It is currently stuck to the side of the television armoire in our living room. (Thankfully, the net is sealed at the bottom, so we aren’t swimming in balls.)
He watched some of a slam dunk competition with his dad over the weekend, a prelude to the NBA All-Star game. It included one player who put a cupcake with a lit candle between the backboard and the hoop, then extinguished the flame with the force of his dunk. Since then, Dec’s been “taking it to the cupcake” (a.k.a. sinking balls into the armoire net), yelling “YES!” in his biggest he-man voice.
If you were to ask Declan how he is doing in the past few weeks, he would have answered instead with his full name, followed by the daddy-induced tag line, “the boy who is the man.” He’s declared this to strangers in elevators, check-out clerks and anyone he’s talked to on the phone.
Since Sunday, he’s been referring to himself as his full name, followed by “the boy who is the man, LeBron Declan.”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
One of the hardest things about working at home is the constant tug of war between the things I should be doing to secure us financially and the things I should be doing for my child.
On some days I am mindful and methodical about the way I spend each moment, I kick down deadlines, I help Declan make a new discovery, I do laundry, I write satisfying paragraphs, I am kissed by everyone in the house.
But on days like today, I end up feeling inadequate at everything. I can’t come up with enough ideas, send enough emails, make enough calls without feeling like I’m doing it all at Declan’s expense. And I can’t read books, marvel adequately at Dec’s independence or play imaginary games without feeling like I should be back at my computer, pressing forward, finding my next gig.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
“Hold Mars,” Declan told me, pressing a plastic ball into my hands.
“Now tell it you won’t hit it, push it or hurt it,” he said.
“I promise I won’t hit you, push you or hurt you,” I told the red planet replica. “You are my friend, and I will be kind and gentle with you.”
I stood up and handed it back to Declan.
“Do you understand me?” He asked. I nodded.
I may have to rename the dog Mars.
Last night, “Monster House” came on one of the family movie channels. Absentmindedly thinking it was fine for him to watch because it was animated, I left it on.
In the first moments, a scary old man grabs a tricycle away from a little girl, then breaks it and confiscates it. Declan’s face fell and his eyes welled with tears.
“He… he broke it!” He said, turned to me, his bottom lip was quivering.
“I know. That was mean, wasn’t it?” I replied.
“But what if she needs it?” He shook his head, clearly still stung by the cruelty of the scene.
The plot shifted to another character. I convinced Declan that the new boy on the screen was going to help the girl get her bike back, then I distracted him into hugs and storybooks and turned the TV off.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
1) Upon listening to “She’s Leaving Home” with his dad, he comes looking for mom, a crushed expression on his face. “It’s so sad!” He says, shaking his head. “The baby is gone. She’s just gone!”
2) When you’re sitting together and “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” comes on, he looks at you and says “Oh, this is a really good psychedelic one.”
3) It’s indescribably awesome to hear him sing “With a Little Help From My Friends” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” at the top of his lungs while doing a full-body toddler dance.
4) Every song he hears that he likes on the radio, television, elevator, grocery store speakers, he asks “Is this the Beatles?”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
Orbiting the sun!
Orbiting the sun!
Orbiting the sun!
At least that’s the word from my younger counterpart, who chanted this while marching around the dining room table.
We might go to the library too.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
As of now, I am not stumping for anything or anyone, but I am definitely feeling stumped.
For example… how is it that I learned more about Hillary Clinton’s policies during her informal interview with David Letterman (who, as much as I love him, is a mediocre interviewer at best) last week than I did in the entire segment on 60 Minutes with Katie Couric on Sunday night? Why was Barack Obama asked all about his campaign, his future, his family, while Clinton was mostly asked, in not very subtle terms, to please cry about Barack Obama and her apparent perfectionist of a father?
And why, as primary elections plow on, does every newscast I watch seem to paint Clinton as some kind of strange svengali cuckquean? It’s to the point that I, who really wasn’t a big fan of hers, have begun to 1) feel sorry for her and 2) feel that the media is even more ghoulishly, lip-smackingly sexist than I thought.
I remain undecided on the Clinton vs. Obama question, though. Assuming the Ohio primary does still matter, I’m at a loss about who to vote for. And that is rare.
As far as Hillary is concerned, I am not a fan of her war and anti-terrorism decisions, or the middling, poll-driven behavior that her husband was also so prone to. That said, I feel the Constitution has been gutted and skewered for the past eight years, with real “activist” anti-science appointments throughout the court system and trounced civil liberties. Hillary could hit the ground running and begin restore many things more quickly. And I prefer her health care and family policies. Being a member of a self-employed household, health care cuts closest to the bone for me.
On the other hand, I can’t deny that Obama seems to embody a spirit of Democratic renewal for all kinds of American people. The fact that he is pulling so many who may have felt disenfranchised out to the polls is already a vital contribution to the country’s political future. He is damn inspiring, complex, interesting and someone who, because of his lack of baggage, I wouldn’t have to hold my nose to vote for. I don’t know that he could have the immediate impact that Hillary could, but when you think about some of those vaunted, fallen political leaders of the 1960s – the ability to orate well and inspire can ripple through generations.
I am open to persuasion.
P.S. Since Edwards left the race, they have been struggling with this question over at MOMocrats too.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
“Mommy, my fingernails are very, very sharp,” he says to me. “So you be very, very careful around my fingers, okay?”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
