Since I committed to writing and posting a song at the beginning of every week about current events, it’s been an interesting experiment in creativity and inspiration. There are hundreds of books, courses, websites and experts who purport to know the secret to writing, but it seems like the advice usually boils down to two things: Write about what you care about, and write regularly whether or not you feel inspired. Which all sounds great, until you’re staring at a blank screen (or blank piece of paper, in the pre-computer days) and thinking, “What now?”
By Friday or Saturday, I’m usually poking around various political websites (particularly this one!) and watching Daily Show monologues to see what topic has caught people’s attention. This was really easy during the election, with a surfeit of fabulous memes like killing Big Bird, ‘Binders of Women,’ or ’47 Percent.’ But current events don’t always skew so colorfully, and frequently I feel like I’m scrambling to find anything to write – anyone who’s ever coped with a deadline knows that feeling of, Oh well, even Dorothy Parker wasn’t brilliant every time. (Or Ellen DeGeneres, or Weird Al Yankovic, or Michele Bachmann, or whoever your favorite humorist is . . . )
However, this past week was chock full of big news stories, so much so that I had a hard time deciding. Scalia’s dissent in the DOMA case was tempting – his rant about the rationale being “legalistic argle-bargle” sounded like a temper tantrum in a Dr. Seuss book. And living in the San Francisco area, I loved the fun, colorful way the city celebrated – literally so, with City Hall bathed in rainbow lighting. (My suburban girlfriend met her GBF – gay best friend, just in case – in the Castro the night after the decision. She couldn’t figure out why there were so many Ikea signs and flags around, til someone pointed out that the blue & yellow signs were actually Equal Rights emblems, not Ikea logos.)
But there was something so irresistable about the news from the Texas Legislature last week, which had all the elements of a great story: Noisy crowds, valiant efforts by an outnumbered heroine, iconic pink sneakers, and even a few idiotic rape comments thrown in for good measure. (See Texas Rep. Jodie Laubenberg’s curious explanation that a rape exception to her abortion ban wasn’t necessary because rape kits ‘clean everything out.) Plus I love Wendy Davis’ backstory, a teenage single mom from a trailer park, working her way up to Harvard Law School and a state Senate seat, while still maintaining the proud Texas tradition of big hair.
Since Rick Perry immediately convened another emergency session, the ultimate outcome is up in the air, but last week’s filibuster is one moment in Texas politics the whole country won’t forget very soon – so to commemorate it, here’s The Ballad Of Wendy (‘She Shut That Whole Thing Down’)
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jul 2, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
“Don’t you know you’re my everything?” Chaka Khan sings in Sweet Thing. She is singing to her lover who is being shady and trying to run away. “I wish you were my lover, but you act so undercover.” Oh shoot- now I am distracted by “Chaka Khan let me rock you, let me rock you Chaka Khan. Let me rock you.” That’s all I want to do. Rock you. I feel for you. Chaka. I really do. But I also feel for me. Waiting for you is really hard. Chaka.
The waiting is always the hardest part. Waiting in line especially. I was waiting in line in the Ladies Room of the Empire Hotel Lobby recently and a stubborn-looking older woman was in front of me when I walked in. There were a few stalls there and one looked vacant to me, even though the door was closed. I attempted to check to see if it was available and the woman cockblocked me. Well, not literally because this was the Ladies Room but she did it in her own feminine way—by standing in front of me and blocking me!
Then in a very faux helpful voice she said “there’s someone in there.” I had fully intended to let her go in first if it was free, but being the good girl that I am, I backed off, fuming. (She did have about 50 lbs on me.) As soon as she went into her stall, I breezed into the stall that was supposedly occupied and of course it was vacant. (I do know how to peek under and look for feet!) The dilemma was that there was no move for me to make that would bring me justice. Should I wait for her to come out of the bathroom just to say: “man, were you wrong, lady!”? It would defeat the purpose. But it’s still bugging me two months later.
Don’t blow my high, that’s all I’m sayin’. Chaka. (sorry it’s going to keep coming out of me like a hiccup now.) I feel for you, and if you want to wait in line in the Ladies Room, that’s your prerogative. But don’t stand in my way, please.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jun 25, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
More and more, public figures seem to be unable to extricate themselves from scandal gracefully, so much so that often the apology gets them in more trouble than the original misbehavior. Think about Bill Clinton parsing words about what ‘is’ means, Mark Sanford permanently making ‘hiking the Appalachian Trail’ into a joke, or anything relating to Anthony Weiner. In this day and age, it’s impossible to say or do anything without some sort of permanent online recording of it, and we are all human and likely to make mistakes, so it’s high time celebrities and politicians learn how to say “I’m sorry” without digging themselves an even deeper hole.
And the first lesson should be, say you’re sorry, you did something wrong, and then stop – don’t try to defend your actions, don’t explain it’s because your spouse didn’t understand you or your parents raised you that way. (This is a corollary of the advice my mother gave me when I became an instant step-parent of an 8-year-old through my first marriage. Mom said that when a kid asks a question, only answer the question, don’t volunteer additional details until asked. So if a toddler says, “Where did I come from?,” perhaps she only wants to know the city in which she was born, not how she was actually conceived. My first solo outing with my new stepdaughter was the week after we’d all seen the movie Look Who’s Talking, and sure enough she piped up, “You know those things swimming around in the very beginning of the movie? What were they?” Recollecting Mom’s words of wisdom, I answered, “Those are called sperm,” and held my breath. Nope, she was satisfied, she just wanted to know the word. Whew.)
Last week Paula Deen could’ve used my mother’s advice – the celebrity chef faced a growing storm over remarks she’d made in a recent deposition, acknowledging she’d used a racially offensive term, as well as rhapsodizing over the charms of a ‘plantation wedding’ with polite dark-skinned waiters in nice uniforms (and commenting about how many jokes there also were about Jews, gays, and rednecks, thereby managing to offend everyone else). Ms. Deen rushed out a series of rather odd videos, in which she apologized, but then continued to explain that she grew up in the south, that’s just how they all talk, she wasn’t a racist, lots of people use the ‘n’ word all the time, and some of her best friends, etc. On top of her appearances strangely resembling hostage videos, she compounded the damage by attempting to explain herself, then no-showing a much-hyped Today Show appearance (and Matt Lauer didn’t hesitate to tell his audience what happened). As the controversy continued to build (and more former employees came forward with claims of discrimination and hostile work environment), Food Network abruptly announced they were not renewing her contract.
People rushed to comment, with strong feelings on both sides. Her die-hard fans swore never to watch Food Network again and claimed that she was being punished for using language everyone else used, while plenty of older southern ladies chimed in that they’d NEVER used the word in question and resented Deen for claiming that everyone in her generation did. Pretty soon the online comments veered off into condemning rap music, accusing Deen of hypocricy for hiding her own diabetes until she got a lucrative pharmaceutical contract, and claiming that peole who didn’t cook with butter were unAmerican. Meanwhile it’s not like Deen is going to be impoverished, between her cookbooks, her restaurants, and various product lines – she’s carved out a unique niche for herself as the former inventor of a bacon-cheeseburger with a donut bun, who now offers slightly more healthy variations on down-home southern fare, and there are multiple websites devoted to her ‘Deenisms’ (such as “The more cheese, the better,” “I’m not your doctor, I’m your cook!,” and “If y’all will excuse me, I’m gonna make love to this here potato”).
I don’t know if a sparser apology would have changed Food Network’s decision, but Deen didn’t do herself any favors by her awkward explanations, including insisting that she just adored all her African-American employees (one of whom she jokingly accused of blending in with a blackboard because he was so dark), and claiming that most plantation-owners treated their slaves like valued members of the family. I do hope she recovers from this debacle – partly because she’s just too darned entertaining to disappear (is there anyone else you can imagine teaching us how to make deep-fried stuffing-on-a-stick?), and partly because I think she sincerely regrets her mistake. (And also because thanks to her, news outlets didn’t have room to revel in details about the Kim Kardashian/Kanye West baby, other than the fact that they have probably topped Gwyneth Paltrow and Frank Zappa in the you-did-WHAT-to-your-kid? baby naming insanity contest.) (The baby’s name is North, by the way – seems way better than Apple or Moon Unit at first, but just think about it for a bit.)
Anyway, it’s been a very entertaining few days, so here’s a song commemorating the whole story:
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 18, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
I thought the GOP hit bottom with women voters in 2012, thanks to “legitimate rape,” “binders of women,” etc., and I was looking forward to the ‘new and improved’ party after its public autopsy and rebranding. But apparently several holdouts haven’t gotten the memo – and it’s not just bothering us leftist liberals. Several republican strategists and senior leaders (including Bob Dole) have been critical, college-age republicans say the party is out of touch, and Rep Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said the party was ‘stupid’ to focus on abortion and parsing words about rape instead of on jobs and infrastructure.
But there are still plenty of state legislatures, talk-radio hosts, and US Congressmen who seem to be obsessed with reproductive functions – they remind me less of responsible leaders and more of my teenage sons, but even they’ve outgrown that phase (although they still enjoy rating each other’s burps). And of course I understand that a few idiotic comments don’t represent an entire party, but it’s hard not to see a pattern, between all the mandatory transvaginal ultrasound laws, the Governor of Iowa signing a law that makes him personally responsible for deciding which women in his state can have a federally-funded abortion, or Saxby Chambliss claiming that sexual assault in the military was just a result of all those young people’s hormones. Critics were quick to point out that many of the accused assailants were well past puberty (although I’ll cut the man some slack, given that my 47-year-old husband still frequently behaves like a teenager), but what I want to know is whether Chambliss realizes that by his logic, we should expect (and forgive) sexual assault every other place where hormonally-charged young people live together (like college dorms).
And don’t get me started on the insane illogic of opposing both abortion and family planning. (We’ve already seen how poorly that works from religious leaders – My former mother-in-law was a devout Catholic who nevertheless used birth control, like almost American Catholics, because as she put it in her beautiful Italian accent, “How can-a the Pope tell-a me how to have-a sex if he no-a have sex?”) Or the incredibly tone-deaf misogyny of people like the Governor of Mississippi, who attributed the decline in American education to the fact that mothers have entered the work force. (However, I’m getting a good laugh out of the attempts in some states to limit abortion by calculating based on the date of woman’s last period, which means that she was pregnant 2 weeks before she actually conceived.)
Fortunately, this trend is making life incredibly easy for comedians, particularly those of us who miss Todd Akin et al., as well as a great climate for ’60s-type protest songs. So here’s my contribution:
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jun 11, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
Anyone familiar with 12-step programs or various philosophical guides to serene living will tell you that the key to happiness is to surrender to the moment, to change what you can, to accept what you cannot change, and to know the difference. And anyone familiar with air travel in recent years will tell you that even the Dalai Lama would struggle with staying serene when you’re confronted with cancelled flights, long lines, inedible overpriced food, and cramped uncomfortable seats.
But we do our best to cope – for me, that means loading my Kindle with a wide assortment of reading material and bringing socks along so I don’t have to think about what I might be getting on my feet in the security line. For others, it may mean scoping out the best chair massages amd cheapest bars. And for everyone, it means trying our hardest to surrender, to remind ourselves ‘this too shall pass’ and we will, despite all appearances, eventually get to our destination.
Occasionally I try to go one step further and look for the silver lining – can anything good come out of this experience? I know of one couple who met in line to get re-routed after their flight was cancelled, and I have one friend who travels frequently for work and wrote a book while she was waiting at airports. Up until recently, the only unexpected benefit of air travel hassles I’d ever experienced was on the third leg of a rescheduled flight that was originally nonstop – I was so sick of sitting, I had walked back to the galley, started chatting with the flight attendant, and found out we had a friend in common. When she heard I’d been on the canceled flight, she poured me a double scotch and didn’t charge me. I immediately felt better – sure, the scotch helped, but it was more the unexpected generosity.
And lest you think that my only silver linings involve alcohol, this past weekend provided another. I had yet another delayed flight and long wait at a small airport, and I was also panicking since I’d been away, hadn’t kept up with the news and thus hadn’t figured out what this week’s song would be about. As I was combing through the newspaper looking for an idea, I heard the announcement about my delayed flight and a lightbulb went off – I could write a song about air travel, instead of just complaining about it! Suddenly, what was once a huge annoyance became a source of inspiration, or as my ‘woo-woo’ friends say, I reframed the experience. (Of course, it’ll only work this way once, but I’ll take what I can get!)
So have faith – next time you have a cancelled or delayed flight, look for something fun and unexpected to happen (or at least look for the nearest good chair massage place), and if you aren’t lucky enough to travel much, you can hum this song to get the general idea.
Michele Bachmann recently told us she was not going to run for re-election in 2014. While some people greeted her announcement with either relief (no more being confused by Minnesota having both legal gay marriage and Bachmann as a representative) or snickers (instead of a press conference, she posted a gauzy, underscored video that bore an eerie resemblance to those short films airplanes use to show you how to buckle a seatbelt.) But there were also many people who were distraught that she would be leaving public life, especially since Fox News is denying rumors that she would simply be moving there.
Of course her loyal followers are upset, but probably not nearly as much as comedians. One basic tenet of good comedy is to say outrageous things as though they were perfectly normal. (A great example of this is George Carlin’s segment in “The Aristocrats,” the cult movie about the world’s dirtiest joke. Carlin’s advice was to deliver off-color content as though one was describing how a carburetor works – the movie is worth watching just for that part!) Ms. Bachmann was a textbook illustration of this principle, maintaining her composure while expounding vehemently, and seriously, about everything from the IRS’s conspiracy to deny Tea Party members any health care, to “The Lion King” serving as a homosexual recruiting tool (convincing kids that they should be gay because a gay composer wrote the music). And facts be damned – when she was criticized for stating that Lexington & Concord were in New Hampshire, she simply explained that New Hampshire had as much right to be proud of “the shot heard round the world” as the actual location. My personal favorite was her claim that there was a suspicious coincidence in flu surges occuring during Democratic presidencies, like an outbreak under Obama and then the big swine flu epidemic in 1976 (which was under Gerald Ford’s watch, not Jimmy Carter’s, but whatever?). Frankly, at times I wondered if she were some sort of giant humor project, like Stephen Colbert’s brief run for president, and the whole thing would be revealed like Joaquin Phoenix’s odd ‘performance art’ on The David Letterman show.
But now she’s leaving – and while there will still be plenty of loony conspiracy theorists around, none of them will make writing comedy as easy as Ms. Bachmann has, because what she actually said needs no embroidering to be funny. (I discovered the truth of the axiom that real life is funnier than anything I can write when my kids started asking me about the facts of life . . . when I explained the whole thing to my younger son and asked if he had any questions, he said with great concern, “What if it gets stuck?” I told him that wouldn’t happen, not as long as he was 18 and she was Jewish . . . . Sadly, now that they’re older teenagers with cars, they’re not home enough to provide me with material. But I digress . . . )
I’d actually planned on doing a song for Ms. Bachmann during the 2012 election, but she dropped out before I got to her, so I’m grabbing this opportunity just in case she vanishes from public life and devotes her life to combating the scourge of gay liberal Disney-movie propaganda . . .
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 4, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
My first and last Beiber rant.
I just watched a video clip of two people reacting to the reaction of several commentators who offered their opinions on the reactions of two other people to an event that I personally didn’t find important enough for anyone to form an opinion on in the first place.
And now I feel the need to add my two cents to the two people reacting to the several commentators… reaction to the two people who originally reacted to an event that doesn’t seem very important in the first place.
My commentary is this:
If an event isn’t that important–or involves the name Justin Bieber– it’s probably not worth the time to form a full opinion about it. And certainly not worth the time to form an opinion and publicly express it.
And if someone does do those two things, it’s not really worth the time for a commentator (or group of commentators) to comment about further because that will only lead to more people, or at least two, who will feel compelled to comment publicly about their disagreement with the commentators commentary about the original two people’s reaction to the unimportant event.
And then, dammit, I’ll feel compelled to get involved and suggest that maybe, at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, whatever I think about Justin Bieber, I should just keep to myself. And maybe other people should do the same.
Let’s all just agree that Justin Beiber seems like a nice enough fella and sings well and has the same hair like of a lot of young people we know. And leave it at that.
It just saves everybody time and energy to talk about more important things.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue May 28, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
As any parent has reassured her kids time and time again, none of us are perfect, we all make mistakes, and a simple apology can work wonders. But apparently most public figures with misdeeds for which they want to be forgiven have gotten a bit side-tracked, issuing “I’m sorry if anyone took offense” non-apologies that make the initial mistake even worse. Sometimes it works – Mark Sanford never really apologized for his “hiking the Appalachian Trail” nonsense, other than explaining that his mistress was his soulmate, and South Carolina voters forgave him enough to elect him to Congress in a recent special election. Sometimes it’s just entertaining, like waiting to see what will happen with Anthony Weiner’s mayoral ambitions (as well as with the unfortunate juxtaposition between his last name and his texting).
But sometimes the non-apology just makes matters worse, as in the case of Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO. A several-years-old interview resurfaced recently, in which Jeffries explained the store didn’t sell large sizes because they only wanted ‘cool, popular, thin kids’ wearing their clothes (the store had already generated some controversy because of their policy to burn irregular clothes, rather than run the risk of them being worn by unacceptable ‘poor people’). Unfortunately, Jeffries’ response was to apologize ‘if anyone took offense,’ which just fanned the fires, on top of opening himself up to critiques of his own fairly odd appearance. (And while I do agree with those who say that it’s hypocritical to criticize Jeffries’ looks while we complain about his looks-ism, I understand why people couldn’t help noticing Jeffries’ amazing resemblence to Biff from Back To The Future as well as to Jocelyn Wildenstein, the wealthy socialite who has spent over $4 million on plastic surgery to make her face look more like a cat. (Who needs to write fiction when reality is this weird?)
Several journalists and celebrities weighed in (pun intended) in fairly creative ways, like a journalist who bought up thrift shop A&F clothes and donated them to homeless people, a plus-sized model who created her own spoof ‘Attractive & Fat’ ad campaign, and comic Ellen Degeneres, who explained that ‘coolness isn’t a size’ while holding up an ‘extra small’ A&F logo shirt that would have been small on Barbie. (I also loved her take on ‘size double zero,’ wondering if people who wore that size would ask, “Do these jeans make my butt look invisible?”) And hundreds of teens have responded to Jeffries’ Facebook non-apology, writing in that they are thin enough to wear A&F clothes, but not that shallow or snobby.
Karma seems to be doing a fairly good job in this case, as A&F’s sales have plummeted (although it was great fun to watch Jeffries attribute the slump to an ‘inventory problem,’ which is probably a shortage of superficial trend-obsessed teens who are stupid enough to pay for the privilege of doing A&F’s advertising for them, wearing logo-encrusted poorly made shirts). But I still couldn’t resist weighing in musically, with an actual apology to Sir Elton John . . . .
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue May 21, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
Americans have always had a love-hate relationship with France. On the one hand, we use “french” as a positive adjective, applied to everything from kissing to toast, and we admire French cuisine and fashion. (I’ve always had this image of impeccably chic French women with a spartan wardrobe of 3 perfectly fitted sweaters, a pair of slacks, a pencil skirt, and 2 Hermes scarves, out of which they create 300 different, equally stunning outfits. As well as never getting fat despite enjoying daily champagne and truffles.) But we also use being French as a symbol of snobbery and effete-ness (remember how John Kerry was attacked during the 2004 election for speaking fluent French?, which was supposed to reflect everything that was wrong with his privileged background). And there was that unfortunate episode in 2003 when France’s refusal to participate in the Iraq war resulted in Congress renaming a familiar side dish – anyone remember “freedom fries”?
So France’s latest news will probably cause some mixed reactions, but I for one am thrilled that the country we associate with ooh la la and romance has now opened up official recognition of romance (i.e. marriage) to same sex couples. Sure, France is a largely Catholic country, but it’s also a place we associate with l’amour, toujours l’amour. (Madame Popejoy, my high school french teacher, would be proud of me, I didn’t even have to look up the spelling!)
Quick disclosure – I was actually born in France. (I have no french roots, but my dad was in the airforce about to be stationed in Labrador; he & mom had a whirlwind courtship and he swore the last thing he would do before he shipped out was to get her pregnant. And it was. So she went to France, where her parents were on sabbatical and which was at least a little closer to Labrador. So while I have no recollection of my 3 formative months in France, I have a soft spot for the country.) (And my parents checked, as a US citizen born in an Air Force Hospital, I could run for President. Of course, at the time they checked, Donald Trump wasn’t around. . . . )
Anyway, here’s this week’s song in celebration of France joining the increasingly large list of countries that have legalized same sex marriage:
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue May 14, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
As last fall’s election made painfully clear, we are a bitterly divided nation: liberal vs. conservative, urban vs. rural, blue vs. red. States in particular have gotten increasingly polarized, with many state legislatures in the control of super-majorities, and each with their own occasionally defiant ideology. Some are pro-business & anti-regulation, some have enacted their own abortion restrictions, some have legalized marijuana even for recreational use, etc. And many states have well-accepted images – Texas has cowboys and oil mavericks, Florida is the home of retired grandparents with New York accents, and thanks to the TV show Portlandia, Oregon is now known to be laid back yet trendy. And so forth.
But what’s happening to California? We’re still a lopsidedly blue state, known for our mild weather, tourist attractions, and botoxed spray-tanned movie stars, but we also used to be the proudly progressive state, or as my Long Island father-in-law calls us, “the land of fruits and nuts.” However, now 12 states plus the District of Columbia are ahead of us in legalizing same-sex marriage. And that includes all of New England, which used to be a bastion of Puritan conservativism. (In my freshman history class at Yale, where I was the only student from the west coast, we learned that the early colonial settlers preferred New England to Virginia because they feared the milder southern weather would encourage indolence and leisure – the professor helpfully added, “so that could explain what’s wrong with California.” Fortunately, I have neither blond hair or a tan, so no one realized I was one of those self-indulgent slobs who’d been corrupted by sunny weather.)
But I digress – Minnesota’s vote for marriage equality is a cause for celebration, and I also understand that legislators in California are waiting for the Supreme Court decision on Proposition 8, but it’s still just a little embarrassing to realize that the way state legislatures are jumping on the bandwagon, we probably won’t even make it to the top 20. And of course there are plenty of liberals in Minnesota, but we don’t exactly think of it as a wild and crazy state full of drag queens and hemp growers. Minnesota has always defied easy categorization, with stoic, independent residents who don’t mind the harsh weather, a place whose congressional delegation can include both Al Franken and Michelle Bachmann, a state which includes wide open spaces and the thriving Twin City area where Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat in the air. So sure, I expected they might come around on marriage equality, but I still thought California would get there first. Now is our only example of leadership going to be allowing right-turn-on-red, as Woody Allen once observed? (Congrats to any of you who recognized that as a line from Annie Hall, and yes, I’m one of those fair-weather fans who prefers Woody Allen’s funny movies . . . . )
Oh well, we can drown our sorrows in organic chai lattes and kale smoothies (which by now they probably have in Minnesota too), and sing this song celebrating the latest good news on marriage equality despite California’s diminishing hipness . . .
