More Pleasantville Thoughts...

 somewhat delayed by digestive pyrotechnics yesterday.Even though I don't tell anyone to stifle more than I usually do, I do have a rare agreement with Archie Bunker's "Change!Change right now!" Though I'm not sure how much Margaret Mead's "post-menopausal zest" was really written about with a wheelchair user in the middle of the desert in mind. Not exactly complaining, but mine has not been a life with a lot of "Whew!Glad that's over." in it.

Anyway....

-Are television characters somewhat understood to be in a separate dimension there, or was there an elder actress both learning to speak jive and sometimes wishing she got to have more of a say in what she was a symbol of?

-There is kind of a whiff of infidelity in rooting for Joan Allen and the soda jerk, even if we don't have a full picture of Mom and Dad's marriage and there's a lot of just doing the expected thing that's in the literal script.  Kind of makes me sad that the Dad character doesn't keep up.

-after, you know, a decade and a half of watching retailers fail and customer service get hollowed out and replaced by chatbots and hold queues, the thought of going into a store where you might actually see the owner seems nice and all too rare. I guess I could understand the black-and-white urge to hold onto downtown more than when I first watched it. 

Don't Stop Believin? And Why We Still Need Pleasantville...

 This week featured another long-shot contest submission, with a prize amount that could give your Bohemian Crip's life a real jolt. But I have tried for this market a few times by now, to not much avail, although when they gave me feedback, it was good enough to put aside the Joyce Davenport law school fantasy, that poor threadbare thing, for another year or so.  Even if I'm not sure how I'd have made that happen, either, and I've never sold those pieces that I wanted their opinion on so eagerly.

Basically, they think I'm a writer, but I'm not their girl or anything.  Given the numbers of writers there are, I suppose that's likely, and doubly so for the Disability issues that continually chap my hide for not making room for me, even if when short-sighted abled editors look at ideas like that and see a lock.(Which still seems reductive.   Not that I'm on his level but I hope nobody followed Ralph Ellison around like "Wow, there are sure a lot of black people in this."but I almost bet they did. Maybe I'll end up being a class project someday, too; I'm not sure if I really want that anymore, though. Being me at this age makes it hard to dream at the same time I'm not sure I'm actively doing anything else, either, which my youth repeating the catechism of Ed Roberts and Judy Huemann did not prepare me for, and which actively sucks.)

I'm not completely torn up about that, but it does kind of cut into either "You never know!" or "You already know what will happen when it's just on your hard drive," because, a lot of times I do and the computer passes.

But, hell, maybe I'm due.  And at least, I've started sending out things in which I really believe, so I guess I wouldn't mind seeing them get around a bit before finding what might be some kind of permanent home. Before this, I submitted  to get used to the process, which didn't really happen anyway, or because it was The Chicken Challenge and I thought my chicken bit was hilarious and nobody agreed.(it's fine that not many of those pieces are out and about now, though.)

Watching "Pleasantville" feels different under encroaching fascism--it's one of my favorite movies of the nineties and one of the most beautiful films I know, but like many reviewers when it came out, I also kind of thought it was refighting the sixties, which, given that I am hippie spawn, I'm kind of down for, but  I couldn't have that little Dumb History People satisfied pause at the end, right? Because plenty of people now would be happy if our books were blank and if we never escaped Main Street.
JD Vance hates that movie so much.

"In The Dark" Almost Recovered Its Three...

 but it didn't, at least not enough to make Season Three feel like a good use of my time.  I did get to see Chloe gain some independence and save the day amid all the wild double-and triple dealing and all that, so that got the story back to its emotional core, but it's a little sad when shows have one great season of stories and are on for three.

Kind of Getting How Southerners Feel...

 watching The Sex Lives of College Girls", which I am finally getting the chance to love, get Arizona wrong time after time. Mostly, even though I know it's wrong(Gilbert is more of...a bedroom community or a suburb than a small town in the hinterlands as depicted there, although yes, Kimberly has probably been to an ostrich festival, which would make her seem provincial to most Essex folk.) it doesn't interfere with the story all that much to know, as those writers don't, that the secretary of state used to succeed the governor and we didn't have a lieutenant gov role till last election.(I voted against it, not sure why, just that I'm past the point of thinking more formal roles are the answer to anything. Also, I stopped donating to Katie Hobbs over her tacking to the imaginary middle in her ticket selection, but that's beyond this post.. Get it from your new friends, Katie.

Vote by mail, however, is one of the few  jewels in Arizona's tarnished crown. One of the few times we were ahead of the curve and did the right thing. especially in an episode about people knowing things from personal experience(and it's a thirty-year history that I "unearthed" on DuckDuckGo...care less. Kaling, et al, it makes you look cute. ) Also, disabled people probably wanted a Jocelyn episode-- at least I do. I'd like to know the secret for having a mobility aid and being where the action is.

Things I've Heard That I Might Say To Christopher Titus....

 Actually, in one instance, I might be cheating a little, because nobody has actually full-on said "It disturbs me when I think you're hot," but I do think that a lot of the weird reactions to my dating profile might have come out of a similar place. But it's harder to understand because I was not paid by a streaming platform to riff on all my deepest, darkest secrets, but just trying to share life in a disabled body.(I used to not even admit that because it was like some "Mean Girl" "So, you think you're pretty," thing, and like Cady, I did not begin my life with some irrational  loathing of some part of my body that I had to be taught to think about,ie, giant thighs or thick ankles.  (Over time, I've just learned to save time and not like any of it.  #winning. But I do match American beauty ideals in some ways.)

But I do understand that feeling of feeling okay after hearing someone else's story after I watched the stand-up special "Carrying Monsters"definitely feel like mine might fit in one of those baby harnesses now! 

For "Get A Job!1"I'd Have To Get HIRED!"

 Not that anything about this will ever be that simple, work won't love any of us back, and all that kind of stuff, right? Also, ableists, not that you want to help me out, but you *could* pick a lane instead of trying to make us count angels on a pin between, say "Get A Job, You Lazy Fraud!1", "DEI is Bad." "You Are Too Gross To be Seen In Public." Also, if you want us to work, stop carrying your bosses' water in vilifying working at home.  It is the best option for many of us.

A lot of online commenters act like just our deciding to get a job is the deciding factor in whether we get one or not.  This is news to me, and it would definitely be news to my eager, earnest recent-graduate self still trying to stay high on the fumes of the ADA becoming law after about fifteen years or something like that--a task at least as hard as putting on those "professional" thigh-highs. 

I was not, you know, a perfect fit for any of the jobs I went on so I can't say with perfect assurance that I was discriminated against.  It wasn't a matter of fitting back into some old field that I could adapt physically.  I was young and inexperienced...people saw me, more than my work.(Even though that woman feels like a different person from me now, from time to time I still think 'Check it out, I wouldn't have to use my mother as a reference,"(I wasn't a perfect fit, but I still think I could have done all right doing some of them. I have to say that one more time, even though I'm not secretly yearning to help rich people set up foundations to shield their money from taxes these days. It doesn't even hurt anymore, but somebody does have to take a chance on you, not just decide it would look bad to turn you away.)

The contrast between what people thought about my actual being and even that pup's resume is one of the painful things that I think about when I can't sleep at three AM. And, no, having a hiring manager look you full in your eyes and tell you your responding to an ad is "One of the bravest things you've ever seen," didn't inspire confidence that we'd be yucking it up in the breakroom later.  Nobody wants to share space with that person. And at least, I got to meet people, not get ruled out by a computer and a big old pile of keywords that aren't gonna match my experience. it is probably even harder now.

 

I'll have you know, I sold the *shit* out of the Bic in that interview...other people watched me. I wish I could have taped it  and sent it to Bic.com.  Maybe I'd be blogging about my writing around my life in office supplies.(Not really, probably but I can spend a lot more time than most women my age imagining alternate timelines for myself--it is the most fun part of having a life that almost happened.  Because it *could have* right?)

I stopped looking because people wanted too much availability from a body that is only predictable on a part-time basis and because  a job that I could physically manage and that fits around my benefits...at least in the private sector was revealed to be kind of a cozy fiction.

 

"It's The Apologies That Drive Me Mad."

 

I thought I knew what “I Swear” was going to be so much, I thought writing about it would be as obligatory as a side project can be—more like being a beat reporter than pretending I really got to be a cultural scribe like the people I’ve online-met from Vulture and Salon. Because we’ve all seen that movie multiple times by now, right?

Dedicated, crusading mom finds the beauty in her freakshow kid who uses the ability in his inabilities to carry the day on the soccer pitch, right? Blah, blah, blah. If that had truly been my job (Or is it?) I might have felt tempted to scribble something down to that effect already.

. But that would have been wrong…it’s not that kind of movie, at all. (And, no, being among the “Most Liked” on Netflix so far this week is not a great tip-off in that direction, either.  Mainstream America apparently loves themselves an “I know my boy, and he’s still in there, Dr.  Smith!1” like it loves pie. Some of their most liked have been my Most Eyerolls.) Even in non-American versions like this one might have been.

 The loving mum in “I Swear” doesn’t end up handling the pressure and a neighbor, facing her own health crisis, steps up to help support the ticcing teen and become part of the support system he doesn’t get from his own parents. These are painful moments in a real life so I hate to say that the views of the Scottish countryside after young John fails to exhibit his earlier precocity on the soccer pitch in front of a coach from out of town and either jumps or falls into the river—I haven’t been a critic in enough places to be that jaded—but it was a sign that we got beyond the tropes of it all, and that’s what made me pay attention and stick this film out.  Not like “More abandonment and suicide attempts, please!”, I promise, although the disability experience can be a dark one at times. Or maybe I should say something like “Being that different,” because John Davidson (As far as I know, not connected to the toothy late American broadcaster that hearing the name makes me think of) doesn’t self-identify as a disabled person.   

There is nothing like a film about Tourette’s Syndrome to make you think about how much of what is polite can be seen as repression of one’s first thought (although it would seem that verbal tics are often composed of the things a person might know might be the worst things one could say in a specific environment or context.)