Momma's got a brand new bag

On this warm, sunny day in May, Hallmark says we should buy our moms things. Flowers, candy, jewelry, an elliptical cross-trainer...whatever the woman who birthed and/or raised you might desire, as a national remuneration for the sacrifices she made to defend you against the lions of society until you reached adulthood. While it's widely known that I think this holiday is bullshit, I sure do love my momma, and if it makes her feel good to have a day, then the day is hers. I have to admit, though, that there is something good about a Hallmark holiday when I help huge Hell's Angel-types tenderly picking out chocolates for their mothers.

At the same time, there's this: the real history of Mother's Day, which puts the whole Hallmark mythos to a shameful rest. The historical truth gives Mother's Day no more significance on the schedule of national holidays than Secretary's Day, or the less popular National Nude Day (July 14, in case you were wondering).

But for those who choose to ignore these hard facts, should we really have to be reminded to honor and cherish our mothers on one specific day? We should honor them every day of our waking lives. I believe that wholeheartedly, especially after having read a few chapters of Tina Cassidy's comprehensive history of how we are born, entitled, Birth. Squeezing out a baby is no picnic. In fact, human births are among the most painful and dangerous in the animal kingdom. Not only that, but as Cassidy points out, women have been almost helpless in birth for centuries. Midwives and doctors have done some crazy things to preserve their respective reputations as deliverers, all of which have made the whole process more painful and more difficult. Compound that with the 48 hours of labor my mother endured to have me, and you can imagine the homage I pay to that woman.

As an interesting aside, check out 'Postcards from Yo Momma', a little peek into the world of mother-child electronic correspondence.

And then there are the women who have popped out, oh say, seventeen children. Like this woman and her family, featured on the Today Show last week. How this woman is having an eighteenth child is beyond my understanding. Should one's uterus have given up and fallen out by maybe the 10th? If children really are a blessing, then this woman is three-quarters of the way to saint status. And what of women who cannot or choose not to bear children? Are they being punished for sins of the past? I have nothing but admiration for women who choose to be surrogates, giving women babies who wouldn't otherwise have the chance to be moms.

I'd like to say that if I had the ways and means, I would be a surrogate in a heartbeat.

So Mother's Day...My mother is with neither of her children today. She's with her own mother and her goddaughter, at the latter's first communion hundreds of miles away from her doting, flesh-and-blood daughter. I should be there with them, but my hip and happenin' NYC lifestyle prohibits leaving the island to go too far these days. Don't I feel like a lackluster daughter? Go ahead, judge me for the ungrateful child that I appear to be. But not too fast, because I will be flooding RM's mother with Mother's Day cheer. The woman who brought my sweetheart into this world is worthy of just as much as my own mother on this Mother's Day.

On being fabulous

I went to see an amazing graphic novel art exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA Saturday, and accrued an honorable mention from the fantastic crew over at Comicmix.com.

Also, as an addendum to my previous post about Internet video: if you've got some time to kill, check out Washingtonpost.com's 'On Being'. It's a fascinating way of capturing someone's essence on camera.

Internet Video killed the TV star

A large part of my job is to watch videos online. Whether we choose to realize that multimedia is the way of the future or not, we can't deny that some of the stuff that's gracing the interwebs is creative genius. A lot of it is crap, too. But the gems are that much shinier for it.

So I've decided to drum up a weekly compilation of the latest Internet video that has caught my eye...I urge you to watch it, if nothing more than to simply acquire the authority to tell me that I have bad taste in Internet video.

Vid the first: Occupational Hazards
Courtesy of Gawker, this montage makes me regret that I ignored my j-school profs warnings as he sent me off into the field with a camera. I mean, come on, was I really going to get stabbed or gunned down on the south side of Chicago?

Don't answer that.

Vid the second: Matzah Man
If you'd been thinking that Passover cuisine is only appealing for matzah enthusiasts, you might be correct.

Vid the third: To walk or to bike?
Really, if you think about it, this is a great idea.

Vid the fourth: Those voice-over guys
In case you ever wondered who they were...and now you will never forget.

Up and Down

I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

-Mitch Hedberg

For some reason this conjures the image of one Saturday at Crossgates Mall. During the throes of this family shopping day, my brother sneaked away from us to go sate his curiousities about the escalator (wow, a moving staircase!). As soon as we realized he was not with us, we turned our heads to discover the naughty boy had somehow affixed himself to the upward moving banister of the escalator and was being tugged to the second floor of the mall, his face frozen in that "caught red-handed and now I'm up shit creek" sort of way.

Artistic differences

The concept of what is and what isn't "art" has been one that has always eluded my more scientifically minded self. In school, I received higher marks for my knowledge of the human anatomy than I did for my attempts to paint it. But who says art and science are mutually exclusive? I don't know the answer to that either, so it forces me to conclude that maybe I am willfully ignorant of what makes ART.

Which is why THIS is driving me crazy. For those who don't have time to pursue the link, it's a story about an art student at Yale who claimed that her senior thesis was video footage of her undergoing a series of self-induced abortions in a bathtub, as well as some other "artistic" portrayals of the process involving the purported bodily excretions that would result. Before anyone cries foul, the next day, the student admitted that it wasn't true. But that was after millions of people who read about it on the Web puked and the Yale administration shat a cow.

They're calling it a work of "creative fiction," much like H.G. Wells' little "War of the Worlds" ruse on the radio that scared the pants off thousands of people in New Jersey. Or in another way, it's like that viral marketing attempt by the Cartoon Network guys to market a late-night show in Boston, sending the city into lock-down, bomb scare mode. It gets people talking about "issues," namely the things that scare them. In this case, I think it creates a reason to have a meaningful conversation about the great "abortion" debate--which, let's face it, has become a political farce, degraded by the use of its emotional power as a cause to rally everyone behind a wide range of social and economic issues on a political platform. Much like the existence of three-legged aliens, there is nothing but creative fiction behind it.

So on one hand, I give kudos to this girl for getting people to notice what she was doing. On the other hand, EWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

More bacon than the pan can handle

Sure, I'll buy into Mike Doughty's "Dude Theory".

dude theory - the idea of making a relaxed record that sounds like a bunch of dudes playing music for the pure joy of playing.

Doughty, the supremely talented singer/songwriter and former lead singer of the bon-bon shaking 90s band Soul Coughing, proved his thesis a week ago at his rockin' concert at Revolution Hall in Troy. The ever-"haughty melodic" (and probably biased) thesis review board, consisting of myself and RM, sat on the upper level balcony, just above where we stood the last time we were at the venue--almost two years ago, when we saw the Mike Doughty Band for the first time.

Evidence of dude theory was apparent from the start, thanks to the unusual first act: a group of nordic-looking bearded fellows in t-shirts playing an improvised, informal, atonal set featuring unintelligible yells and grunts. Never has primal sound been more musical to my ears. Later, our suspicions were confirmed that this was actually Doughty's band in disguise.

Act the second was The Panderers, a youngish band Doughty had signed on his new record label, Snack Bar. They were a little wet behind the ears, but their sound was far from the contrived, radio-"quality" bullshit we are treated to in the mainstream. Their songs were written and sung from the heart, and they reminded me of the times I watched my dear dude friends from high school getting their jollies by jamming at coffee houses.

Act the third: Doughty's gal-melting voice. It's a hard crust with a buttery center, amping to a degree of macho sensitivity that any lady would want in the father of her children. But one can easily tell that the wooing a lass is not his primary objective. He's having way too much fun up on that stage to be the sensitive, lonely guy he sings about. The honest and relaxed quality of his music (which does sweep the ladies off their feet) is purely dude theory.

That ain't more bacon than the pan can handle for me.

Do what you gotta do

"It's wrong on so many levels that it's 3-D."

That's a gem I picked up from a bloke in the elevator this afternoon. At the time I thought it was just about the lamest thing I'd ever heard (well, besides the circumstances of the recent demise of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and the musical stylings of his hooker), but I managed to trump that on the train home. Yes, I'd had a lot to drink at work (weekly dinner/happy hour), but I can't even use that excuse to justify my ridiculous behaviour.

I was looking up answers to the New York Times crossword puzzle on my blackberry, in public.

I know, I know.

The man sitting next to me on the train was horrified. So much so, that I think he threw up a little in his mouth. Or maybe I imagined that. Or maybe it was actually me who did that.