sweetheart redux

A young Lesley Arfin (some time in the 90's) In the 1990’s, before the internet was a thing, first and second generation Riot Grrrls read reviews of zines written by other Riot Grrrls who lived on the other side of the country (or sometimes even in England or Canada), and would sent their $1.25 + 2 stamps price to order these zines, and 9 times out of 10, this (losing) business transaction led to a penpal relationship.  It was amazing.  A lot of the RG rhetoric at the time waxed poetic on the concept of a “girl army”, and while these penpal relationships may not have been a tool of some militant action towards gender equality, it was a very wonderful and amazing network that could not have existed without Riot Grrrl.  I still remember how exciting it was to get the mail everyday (I did a zine with a fairly large readership, called Sweetheart, from around 1993-1997), just how special it felt to have my dad hand me all these wildly decorated envelopes from arou...

Good morning.  If you're new to this blog, it just occurred to me that it is unfortunate that, if you were to want to follow the adventurous/oversentimental tale of Yesteryou, a novella I wrote, the first chapter you'd be seeing (mixed in w/ my musings, photos of my crafts, film reviews, etc) right now is chapter 17.  So just a note on that:  I'm serializing the chapters (like I did last year with my novel Planes of Sunday) so if you wanted to start at the beginning, you just have to click in the lower right hand corner of "older posts" til you got to chapter 1, and then voila.  or perhaps you could also type "yesteryou" in the search bar to bring up all the chapters.  Anyway, it's minorly inconvenient but I don't think it's so bad.  in the olden days people would wait with  baited breath for issues of periodicals to come out that'd contain the next installment of a story by oh I don't know charles dickens or mark twain (i think ...

Despite his well-documented personality flaws, I have been quite partial to Oliver Stone films since I was a pre-teen.  I found The Doors (1991) to be absolutely thrilling to watch, there’s so much exciting partying in that movie and frenetic artistic and self-destructive energy, I thought (whenever I watched it, which was A LOT):  “I want to be like Jim Morrison when I grow up!”  That’s sort of a joke, but truly, I thought his character was very well-developed, and the occasional ‘trippy’ camera work wasn’t overdone and it was just an engrossing, thrilling film.  As a side note, I was too young to see any of the movies that I’m writing about, but that’s beside the point.  In my underdeveloped way, I was able to appreciate them.  Less fun to watch but also a really engrossing film, where you’ll feel strong, strong empathy for the protagonist, even though he’s been turned into a self-defeating, powerless asshole because of the war, is Born on the F...

16.   "Hi, it's me, the girl from the carnival, did I wake you?"  "Nope.  Hi.  How are you?”               “Okay I guess.  Sounds like you found your way back home.”               “Ha, yeah, it was a total surprise, too.  I was just walking around, actually I’d started trying to visit some of the sites from the Rocky movies, and I found my apartment building on accident.  I just moved there and I totally forgot the street name and the number, but from now on my landmark is going to be an Ethiopian grocery store on the corner that’s always closed and smells like cum for some reason.  Wanna come over and pick up your pot.”               “Um, I don’t know.  When I was walking back to the hotel I'm staying at it occurred to me we might as wel...

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My son is the most amazing being I've ever witnessed.  He is so curious, and preternaturally kind and sensitive, and funny, too.  Just this morning when I was holding him against me, chest to chest, as we took the elevator up to day care, he kept pointing (a new skill) at the little flower on my locket, and looking up at me inquisitively.  Then I opened the locket for him, and he just about lost his mind in happiness and amazement to see the two tiny photos inside my locket:  one of him, and one of me with my husband.  this moment, him discovering himself inside my locket -- it just stands outside of any temporal boundary as being something too precious, like to precious to exist terrestrially, you know? The past few years, I'd taken to calling myself a secular humanist, mostly because I've been going through a hardcore Vonnegut obsession since at least 2006, and that's what he considered himself. before that, i was just an athiest who took comfort in the th...

Yellow and Gray Crocheted Scarf $12 + Shipping 6.5 inches wide by 66.5 inches long, crocheted from soft acrylic yarn, in a 1950's-era color scheme of soft gray and canary yellow. Made in a smoke and pet free environment.

15.             Pulling into the parking lot of the South Philadelphia Sheraton, a person is usually struck by the unlikely combination of the landscapes comprising the neighborhood.  The hotel sits close to a 4-lane highway that parallels the Delaware River, across which you can see the murky land of New Jersey.  There is an empty derelict button factory across the highway, spooky to pass by on foot because it is full of howling ghosts.  But right next door to this abandoned building is Penn's Landing, a festive combination of fairgrounds, shops and restaurants intended for tourists.  People seldom walked on the sidewalks in this stretch of the city -- the parking structures fed directly into the shops and fairgrounds, but if one were to stroll alongside the highway, one would come to an area of gas stations and discount stores with their signs written in Spanish, eventually bleeding into a recently gentrifi...

I was a Child but I Already Knew A child already knows That something is hidden there, some elemental horribleness under the surface. What monstrous selfishness or horror does he intuit, even when his skin is still so smooth it glows and surprises like the miniscule iridescent facets of an opal? Opals are said to be bad luck when they are not your birth stone. It is an old wives’ tale.  Wives are people too.  So are their men. Men and women are powerless against disaster. Women sneak pills And men get yoked and tugged at like sickly, sloped-backed nags at jobs where the finished product is Something immediately disposable or else Something so permanent it is like a new planet, in a star system of trash, in a galaxy of the pop-tops from old beer cans and pages and pages of manuscripts dotted with emoticons. The smiley face. The frowny face. I think maybe it is the frown a child already senses, primordially, The sad, powerless giving-up of a f...

I had a really bad experience on Etsy (see below rant), and so I don't want to have my shop on there anymore, though I've had it on there for a few years at least.  I do have a little site that's just my own crafts, too ( http://www.wearetheleopards.net/ ) , but I don't think anyone sees it unless they're clicking on the link from here, because I don't really know how to advertise or otherwise drum up interest.  It's sort of a bummer to me, though, or I guess it's just the downside of making crafts --  because I make these really pretty scarves and hats and purses and coasters and jewelry.  It's my hobby (as it is many girls that look and act like me, I suppose), but then I just put them in boxes and sometimes I look through them all and feel proud that I made something so pretty, but also ridiculous that it's all stashed away in boxes.   Anyway, I think that from now on, I will occasionally list some of my things on here, and close down my Et...

Here are 2 of my favorite scenes of women dancing in films:  the decapitated woman in Evil Dead II, and the anonymous/menacing girls in Inland Empire.  I'm not quite a pro at the computers, however, so I was only able to imbed the Evil Dead masterpiece, and for the Inland Empire scene, you have to click on the link under the stunning still of a terrified Laura Dern and get redirected to YouTube.  There was a third girl dancing scene I wanted to share, and I used to be able to find it on YouTube, but I couldn't when I was looking last night; it's Greta Gerwig dancing by herself to Paul McCartney's dopey masterpiece Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey in the film Greenberg.  I really enjoy that film, but that is definitely the best scene in it.  ah, c'est la vie.  enjoy these ones: Evil Dead II http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djh1UprzoLk&feature=player_embedded Inland Empire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djh1UprzoLk

14. "So tell me more about your childhood," Richard beseeched Beth on their first date. "Hmmm.   I don't think I will," she teased. "What?   Come on, that's not fair.   I just bought you a sundae." "No, it's just that -- it was no good, you know?   I had toast for every meal, and every man who ever set foot in our house was horny and poor.   Mom always slapped us too hard -- I had an imprint of her hand on my check for a week, once -- but she was too stupid to stay mad at for long.   Gloomy stuff like that.   It's so boring, though, really.   I can't stand when people talk about their dysfunctional families, like it's enough to make them interesting, just because they suffered a little.   Everyone suffers, even if you have a happy, smart family, you end up suffering wondering if you're happy and smart enough.   That's just life." "Well, what do you like people to talk about, if not the...