I can't sleep…
5:17 am. 25° F. Rollin’ down I-95 South in light morning traffic, with other insomniacs and the red tail lights of the hulking convoys.
I roll the tape back to the scene last night.
“Wow!”
“Wow what?”
“How much did it cost?”
“$55.”
“$55?”
“$55.”
“$55 per eyebrow?”
“Really Dad?”
“What?”
“Eyelashes. Eyelashes Dad. And, who would get just one eyelash extended?”
I ponder that for a moment. She has a point there. Continue reading “Driving I-95 S. With Whisk Brooms and Women.”
Jessica Bennett, A Master’s Degree in … Masculinity?:
Michael Kimmel stood in front of a classroom in bluejeans and a blazer with a pen to a whiteboard. “What does it mean,” the 64-year-old sociology professor asked the group, most of them undergraduates, “to be a good man?”
The students looked puzzled.
“Let’s say it was said at your funeral, ‘He was a good man,’ ” Dr. Kimmel explained. “What does that mean to you?”
“Caring,” a male student in the front said.
“Putting other’s needs before yours,” another young man said.
“Honest,” a third said.
Dr. Kimmel listed each term under the heading Good Man, then turned back to the group. “Now,” he said, “tell me what it means to be a real man.”
This time, the students reacted more quickly.
“Take charge; be authoritative,” said James, a sophomore.
“Take risks,” said Amanda, a sociology graduate student.
“It means suppressing any kind of weakness,” another offered.
“I think for me being a real man meant talk like a man,” said a young man who’d grown up in Turkey. “Walk like a man. Never cry.”
Dr. Kimmel had been taking notes. “Now you’re in the wheelhouse,” he said, excitedly. He pointed to the Good Man list on the left side of the board, then to the Real Man list he’d added to the right. “Look at the disparity. I think American men are confused about what it means to be a man.”
Read full post here: A Master’s Degree in … Masculinity?
Notes: Drawing by Olena Kassian @ olenakassian.com
Read more here: Spirit 88.3 FM – Avoid men and eat plenty of porridge for a long life, says Jessie, 109
…By my count, “Grudge Match” and “Last Vegas” are the umpteenth stories for men, about men and by men in which men do something one last time and with the goal of making that last time epic. And always, in one way or another, these men yearn to stop time, at least for a moment.
…If these Arthurian quests tend to put a jokey face on the core mission — Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (him again) are two guys living large and legendary while dying of cancer in “The Bucket List” — the implication is nevertheless tinged with pathos: Men crave one last victory before coming to terms with . . . well, something. Death, I guess. Or, if they’re not quite Eastwood’s age, perhaps they’re making peace with routine. Responsibility. Maturity. The old ball and chain that constitutes commitment. They’re hoping that maybe one phenomenally fun night of boozing, flirting, smashing things, driving fast, fighting, vomiting and slapping one another on the back will ease the pain of creaking knees, pouching gut, dimming memory and domestic servitude. Excelsior!
…Or something like that. I wouldn’t know. Because we women, we don’t play like that. I can’t think of one movie pitched to a female audience in which a gaggle of ladies or a pair of best gal pals go wild in an effort to recapture feelings of long-past girlish abandon…On-screen and in real life, women look to the future. We go for the forward-motion makeover, not the backward-glancing do-over. Continue reading “All is Lost”
