If you’re gonna make a statement like that, you better be up to standing by it. Don’t let the media focus on the finger. Make them talk about why you want middle America to sit on it and spin.
Amanda Marcotte makes a pretty strong case that Parks and Rec has recently been laying off the subversive feminism it specialized in over the last couple of years. Ben has become a bigger part of Leslie’s life and has played the “knight in shinning armor” on more than one occasion. Where once our strong willed, independent heroine would have come through on her own, or (more often) by rallying her friends and coworkers to pitch in, now we see Ben more and more saving the day.
I can’t say I completely agree that we’re seeing the writers dumb it down. After some growing pains, I see Ben as integrating into Leslie’s team. She’s always had a tendency to get in over her head, and the show has been clear that it’s characters care about each other and are step in to help. Ben sacrificing his job to save Leslie, for example, is similar to her taking the fall for shooting Ron in the head. In the show’s world, these are the things you do for the people you care about. You could argue that it’s a trope the writers have returned to too many times this season, but I’m not sure it reflects a change in the shows point of view.
However, in a follow up post, she points to this week’s Operation Ann as the payoff of this new anti-feminist bent. She calls this episode a “fundamental betrayal of both the characters of Leslie and Ann and of the show’s quiet but persistent feminism they’re now selling down the river in a desperate bid for ratings. ” This is a serious accusation, and I don’t think the evidence warrants it.
To me, the question is whether or not the story stayed true to the characters. Were Leslie and Ann acting in a way we would expect their characters to act? This is a tough question because, over the course of 4 seasons, Ann has only every really existed in relation to the characters in the series. I’ve seen most episodes of this series twice now in the last two months (don’t ask) and I still don’t think I have a great handle on Ann Perkins. That’s problematic, but it doesn’t effect this argument. It’s been a constant of the show since day 1.
But we do know a little about Ann. Specifically about how her feelings of self worth are tied up in her relationships. She gets lonely and makes bad decisions. After breaking up with Mark, she kisses Andy. When Chris breaks up with her, she dyes part of her hair pink and flails about dating random men (after she considers moving). What Amanda sees as “having a fun time tearing through every dude in Pawnee” was really Ann’s reaction to being rejected. Remember that that storyline ended with her and Leslie’s first big fight as Ann decides to skip out on a job interview so that she can go on a date with a guy literally named “The Douche”.
So when Valentines Day comes, it doesn’t seem out of character for Ann to be a little bummed that she’s spending it alone. Even empowered women who realize that Valentines Day is horse shit can still find herself feeling down having romance thrown in her face constantly. This episode wouldn’t have worked if it were randomly situated in the season. But in context it makes sense.
I don’t know that Amanda’s correct in thinking that Season 2 Leslie would simply have given Ann the same speech she gave Chris and sent her on her way. We know that Leslie is a romantic at heart, and that she loves to meddle. To me, it’s totally plausible that after seeing Ann seem sort of lonely, Leslie would take it upon herself help Ann find a date, whether she wants it or not. Why didn’t Leslie treat Chris the same way? She’s not as close to him or as protective.
So Leslie puts the rest of her team on the case. They are each charged with bringing a single male friend for Ann, and of course each screw it up in their own unique way. When April suggests she try going on a date with Tom, the audience is as shocked as Leslie. But April’s reasoning makes sense. “[T]he whole point of Tom’s character” is not that he’s “an insufferable douchebag”. In fact, he’s an insecure but generally decent guy who often acts like a total douche as a defense mechanism. The show has often hinted that there’s a likeable guy underneath the cologne cloud. Ann (and the audience) want to see if there really is anything worthwhile to this guy.
In Season 3, Ann (sort of) almost set Leslie and Tom up. That didn’t work because Leslie would never have put up with Tom’s bullshit.
But Ann isn’t Leslie. She doesn’t see the world in quite the black and white way her best friend does. Whether you like the direction this storyline is going, it’s true to the characters. And hopefully, it’ll be funny too.
Word on Twitter is that Etta James has passed away. I actually still remember the first time I became aware of her. Of course, I knew the song At Last, but didn’t know her name or her history.
Then one night I was in a cabin in Maine with a girl who loved Etta James. She loved her spirit and her soul, and they way it came out in her music. We turned on the TV and Etta was Letterman and blew me away.
I can’t find video of that on YouTube, so I wanted to post another personal favorite. Thanks to the success of At Last, people tended to think of her as a balladeer. But she had incredible range, and was also a great blues shouter. This song rocks as hard as the best 60’s soul numbers.
In the swamps in southern Ocean County, on the mainland side of the Barnegat Bay, there’s a dirt road that takes off eastward from an otherwise empty stretch. It’s a bit after the American Legion, and about a mile before the porn shop. After rattling your way down this unmantained isthmus, suddenly there was a mound in front of you. I only ever tried this at night, but it sure seemed to come out of nowhere. There are steps that lead up to a wooden platform. It’s a foot bridge about 6 feet wide, over one of the tributaries that criss cross the swamp.
The strange thing about this bridge is that there’s really nothing on the other side. If you walk across, there’s another short set of stairs that… leads you right into the marsh. There are no paths on the east side of this bridge. Just waist high swamp grass. Other than a couple of radio towers and the LBI bridge in the distance, it’s about as remote as you can get in the most densely populated state in the union.
This was one of my favorite out-of-the-way spots in New Jersey. I’ve seen sunrises from there. I’ve drank whiskey. I’ve shot off model rockets, almost been thrown into the river, confronted wasted rednecks, and wandered into the dried out swamps during a drought. To make our mark, sometimes we would bring chalk or magic markers and scrawl phrases that meant something at the time. The locals who probably went out there to fish the next day must have had no clue what these writings meant. We didn’t mean them to be graffiti. We just wanted to leave a little something permanent.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing permanent out there. The Bridge To Nowhere burnt down several times. The last I heard they gave up rebuilding it.
You should still be able to make it out there. The remains of the bridge are nearly as beautiful as it was in it’s prime. It used to symbolize the temptation of wandering into the unknown. Now you can go and think about what it’s like to see a while other world that’s just out of reach. Either way it’s a good place for some writers to go drink by moonlight.
Telling you all this is really an excuse to play the song Bridge To Nowhere by the Stone Lonesome, featuring vocals by Zach Jones, one of my favorite local musicians. I can only assume this is the spot he’s singing about. How many places like this can there be?
Young couples have long signaled their devotion to each other by various means — the gift of a letterman jacket, or an exchange of class rings or ID bracelets. Best friends share locker combinations.
The digital era has given rise to a more intimate custom. It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail,Facebook and other accounts. Boyfriends and girlfriends sometimes even create identical passwords, and let each other read their private e-mails and texts.
Someone should tell teenagers that teenagers are fucking crazy, and this is a bad idea.
I don’t go to shows as much as I used to. Not that long ago I would go see local bands several times a week. I became friendly with many of the musicians and the other regulars at these clubs. There was a communal aspect.
Nowadays, not so much. I tell myself that I’m not getting old, I just can’t afford to go every night, pay an average $8 cover and then buy drinks on top of that. And I don’t think I’m alone, because when I do go, I don’t see the same crowd. Maybe I’m imagining things. Maybe I’m remembering things being greater than they were. But I can’t imagine that the Great Recession hasn’t affected music fans. People have less disposable income, and knowing that it costs almost $10 just to walk in the door places is going to keep at least some people away.
At least a few non-traditional venues have started having original music in the area. These are bars that are not known for hosting music, but I’ve seen more people attending these shows than I have at most nights at the Saint or the Brighton recently.
Part of the reason has to be that these venues aren’t charging covers. You come in with, say, $20, and that’s what you can spend on booze for the night. Chances are once you start drinking, you’re going to spend the whole $20. Whereas, at the Saint or the Wonderbar, you go with $20, you’ll end up spending the amount, but only half of that will be on beer. So you spend most of the night nursing your drinks and wishing you were able to get another drink. It’s a worse experience.
So either way, the bar is getting that $20 from you. But by being more inviting about the cover, these new venues are probably going to be appealing to a lot more people. More people, each spending the same amount of cash, leaves a larger pot at the end of the night.
My band recently played EJ’s, a dive bar at the end of the Seaside boardwalk. Normally this part of the boardwalk is more or less abandoned during the winter, but somehow we were able to draw people out on a Friday night to come dance and drink. Everyone there had a much better time than if they had had to lighten their wallets just to get in. And that means they’re more likely to go back. And at the end of the night we were paid as much as, if not more than, we would have been playing to a half empty bar with an $8 cover.
The goal should be to get as many people as possible to come out. Build a community around the music. This benefits the club owners as much as the musicians.
Ultimately, we can’t afford to turn anyone away. Money shouldn’t be a barrier to going out and experiencing a show. We all want to get paid. The club owners want to make money. The bands want to go home with something in their pocket. Some of these guys have aspirations of doing this for a living. It’s tough to remove a source of income. You don’t have to squeeze every dollar out of your audience. Open the doors and let people in. It’s a win for the fans, the bars, and the musicians.
WordPress’s back end tells me that yesterday I received several visitors who found their way to my blog searching for James Garfield Memorabilia.
I would like to welcome all Garfield-ites, and want to let regular readers know that from now on, they can expect plenty more James Garfield blogging. After all, you have to give the people what they want.
Going to Rutgers and living in New Brunswick, NJ, we used to always sit on our stoop drinking beer. It was a college town, and kids were always on their way too or from class. So the stoops were a way for us to get interact with our neighbors. They were a place to enjoy a beautiful day. The stoop was a place to avoid the trapped in heat of a house with no air conditioning. There were days where it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that we were renting a stoop with a house attached.
I remember the way we kept the beers behind our backs. We would hide them behind out shins as the cops drove by. Once I remember we had a bottle of Jim Beam, and to avoid open container laws we stuffed the bottle into an oven mitt and drank out of that. Sure, you could say we were going a little overboard. If we had to go to those lengths to drink, it wasn’t worth it, and maybe we should have been enjoying a nice iced tea instead. All I can say is it was college and what were you doing when you were 21?
I wouldn’t have given that stoop up for all the back yards in New Brunswick. Without that stoop, I wouldn’t have known that we had an old timey country band living 2 doors down.
It’s crazy, looking back, to think that we were always split second away from a fine just for enjoying our private property. We weren’t hurting anyone. We rarely went overboard. If we did cross any lines, there are plenty of public nuisance laws that could have caught us. Why bother casting a net that will snare law abiding citizens on private property?
It’s funny that, now that I have a proper porch, I don’t spend much time on there. I’ll have a beer our there and play some guitar on occasion, but in Long Branch we don’t have the walking culture that the college town part of New Brunswick has. Being set back 15 feet from the street, where no one is walking anyway, takes much of the fun out of the experience. While I don’t live in a stoop-friendly neighborhood now, I can relate to those trying to keep it alive. Long live the stoop!
Nothing Was Delivered 