Self Actual

So they're advertising this movie called Post-Grad on Pandora (like out loud).

It stars Alexis Bledel (who will always be Rory Gilmore to us, a girl who felt like a real agemate, a sympatica, the young star of the WB's much-loved mothers-and-daughters television saga, Gilmore Girls, the wonderful show [may it forever be in syndication] which was shuttered in its seventh season as Bledel's Rory was leaving Yale and making some really bunk "post-grad" cherr-sez, like not marrying a fictional version of A.G. Sulzberger [who is both a Jew and called A.G.!]). And I'm glad, because I like Alexis Bledel, and I like to see her working. But, as one might expect, her character in this Post-Grad seems an awful lot like Rory or that chick she played in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants or really her (the actress)--very pretty, kind, humble, smart, occasionally compromised on account of being pretty but maintaining her general air of lily-whiteness. And somehow it never bothered me, until...you know what I'm saying.

I graduated a year ago last weekend. Since then, I've watched Reality Bites (for the trillionth tiempo),which NEVER disappoints (though it makes me feel like I ought to have stayed in Memphis and shacked up with a broody slacker—inherently disappointing!). And I rented Kicking and Screaming, which, Chris Eigeman aside, sucks (Oh G-d how I hate Noah Baumbach!). And I've caught The Devil Wears Prada on the tay-vay a (ahem) couple of times, which is cool because Stanley Tucci and Simon Baker and Meryl Streep and Adrian Grenier and it's pretty innocuous.

And a movie that's actually called Post-Grad. I'll totes go see it, but it will induce a certain kind of dull sadness, a creepy, antiseptic hospital feeling, a glummm. Because graduating from college is trauma. And (G-d strike me down for mentioning this too often) the Recession is more trauma (trauma on trauma!). And, easy as it might have been with all of that youth and credit and time and apathy, college caused for one hell of a letdown/crack-up/hangover once it ditched us into this damn city just when we probably ought to have been returning to nature and during the Recession (ha) at a grey crossroads of limitation and indecision. And that's not what this Alexis Bledel vehicle is about. It's about the same old bait and switch, the here's a movie that is somewhat supposed to be about you and your demographic and here's a heroine who feels like a little bit of a loser and here's her life being overtaken by a love triangle and OH solved, sublimated (with a few laughs along the way). Whatever.

"What Watch"

Thanks Pillow dear, for your last post. Not only because we love to love the fox-and-hound friendship struck between Clinton and H.W., but also because we need to talk about Jezebel.com (and how they're, you know, really irritating...er...difficult). Advance apologies, the following is gonna be a doozy (with a possible sequel)—this diatribe/exploration has been coming for a long time.

Megan Carpentier, D.C. political correspondent to the Gawker owned "neo-feminist" blog, wrote about the ex-president joke curfuffle: This whole thing went down, I shit you not, at a National Automobile Dealers Association conference, where the ugliness of feminists is obviously an important topic. Those guys laughing in the background? Those are the dudes that want to sell you your next car, con you into the undercoat you don't need and generally treat you as an inferior being because you're a female who, naturally, knows nothing about big, complex machines. Oh!—the ever-so-self-conscious "dudely" tone! Oh!—the anger and bile! Oh!—the hypocrisy of defining yourselves as "neo-feminists" and spurning the veteran leaders of Women's Lib (Tracie, née Slut Machine, famously posts that Gloria Steinem and co. are "dinosaurs"—[though I must note that her television posts are the best thing on the site]), all the while behaving as knee-jerk, glib watchdogs (dinosaurish maybe?).

Now, I don't have the tiempo or energía to sift through all of their recent posts (of which there are many many), but I seem to recall a regular commentor recently saying of the site's newest contributor, "she's too pretty to be a feminist, but we'll trust her anyway." It was typed in jest, but problematic whatever the intention. We needn't tackle beauty+liberation (and further hypocrisies), because it should be obvious to anyone (including Papa Bush) that ALL WOMEN ARE INJURED BY THE PATRIARCHY AND THUS SHOULD BE AND ARE FEMINISTS (and—shit, I can't help it!—physical beauty is not a thing that causes women to somehow be "in cahoots" with men, but something that causes further painful entanglement in/by their muddled, oft cruel desires and suppositions).

Let's instead (ha!) pause to be grossed out by the tribal "we." At A&P, we say "we" a good bit. We refer to we writers, a group of dear old friends, constant conversational companions since we were in Airwalks and/or shooting room temperature peach Schnapps (you devils). At Jezebel "we" refers to a bonafide online community, a bunch of broads who are technically (or untechnically?) strangers experiencing a kind of "group mind." Sometimes I find that Jezebel addresses a mixture of things that are endearingly pertinent to we (our generation, that is), and anyone who blogs owes a thing or ten to the Gawker franchise for slickening and standardizing the medium. But the four of us, Alpha, Pillow, myself, and silent partner, Petrova, spurn "communities." We have loved each other through and often because of our rejection of "the group" and its "mind." And this discourse is drawn from the real thing, real human contact.

Props to Jezebel for taking a stab at blogging feminism. One is bound to be inconsistent when approaching such a whale-of-a-notion daily. Generally, I don't like to engender things, and I don't like any ethos that polarizes. But it is damn necessary to address women's issues, and to resuscitate that tarnished moniker, feminist. For truths—I think my beef with Jezebel is down to (god bless you, PMC) poor taste. Their name and graphics are horrible. Their sycophantic, commenting followers are downright loserly (and/or in high school).Their ideas about clothes are super(duuuuper) embarrassing. Their use of language is bland and watery. Call me a snob (it's accurate), but I can't be havin' that.