23 March 2010

Is That So Wrong?

So I had this dream about Jessica Alba last night. It was ok as dreams go and then it got kinda weird. We were in the basement where I lived (I don't really live in a basement) and I had to try and make it liveable and girl-friendly. By that I mean a girl would feel comfortable enough to have sex there. With me, not Brad Pitt. It was full of moldy, wet stones (like the basement in the house where I grew up) and I was trying to sweep the floor(?) which was generally mucky. I swear, I really don't have dreams about celebrities that often. This is the first and only one that I can recall right now. After I woke (about 5:30 this am) I did my usual thing and surfed the web for news. Don't judge me, but I stop at the NYDailyNews, the NYPost (very briefly), USAToday, and the DrudgeReport, before moving on to bigger and better things, like the POPCandy blog I refer to all the time.

Today, while I was at the Post, I saw a pic of a hot girl and clicked it. This link took me to a gossipy site where there was pics of various hot actresses. You know their names, they're the usual suspects: Angelina, Scarlett, Jessicas Biel and Alba, Miley, and a bunch of other girls who are fringe actresses to me but might star in your favorite tv show. Looking at these girls I started to think about girl issues, mainly self-perception. How do teen girls view themselves? Do they want to be these women in the NYPost? I thought about what a commodity a pretty girl's sexuality is. Maybe sexuality is the wrong word. Their beauty or their looks is probably more accurate, because that is why I am looking at them. They're nice to look at. I'm not going to see Scarlett Johansson at the store where I buy my groceries, but those girls in the store are cute, and some could even be considered hot. Normal, everyday girls, working at the checkout line. Is it my fault that teens have poor self-esteem, because I look at girls in the NYPost and think the cashiers are cute? I don't know.

Recently Sandra Bullock's husband cheated on her with a fully-tattooed part-time stripper who resembles Marilyn Manson. Strippers are supposed to be hot, and some are, but I'd have to give this woman a thumbs down. And I thought that before I saw her fully decked out in Nazi regalia. Tiger Woods cheated on his wife with a bevy of willing women, none of whom were any better looking than his wife. I met a girl once who I fell in love with immediately. It was love at first sight. I told a friend of mine about it and he asked if she was cute. I didn't know how to answer that. She is beautiful, of course, with long brown hair, but she is so much more than that. I like to look at the girls in the Post and online but they don't mean anything to me. On the other hand, the girl with the long brown hair means everything to me and I wouldn't trade that for anything. Even Scarlett.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head



People complain about the rain. They see it "heading our way", as the weather guy puts it, and they shut down and gripe and lament the terrible weather. Even in March. Well, when I was a kid, I remember cutting out pictures of lions and lambs and pasting them to opposite sides of colored paper to represent Spring. And who could forget that "April showers bring May flowers"? So maybe I owe something to our public schools for my chipper attitude towards the weather. Spring weather was a fact of life, no different than the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria cutouts we pasted on the classroom's cork board before Columbus Day. The lion and lamb would eventually take their place on the cork board and we knew that Spring weather was coming.

I like rain. I think its life affirming. I like the sound of it as it pecks away at the windows, I like the melancholy it makes me feel, and I like the way it splashes in puddles. I even like puddles. My dad always told me a story about his dad, my grandfather, when it rained. "On a day like this", he would say as we stood in his shop, "Dad would sit on a bucket at the end of the barn, and sit and watch the rain." He was safe and dry. I've felt that too. Safe and dry and watching the day go by. We don't always get a chance to do that.