Dear Facebook Friends and Not-Friends (Facebook is a Goldfish Bowl)

2 May

Do single people use Facebook more than married people, or coupled people? Is it really just an elablorate dating site for those interested in (re)connecting with those they (used to) know? Do happy people or sad people use Facebook more often? Those who live in the cities with their families or without?

How many friends is too many? What’s the point of “defriending” versus “hiding” on your newsfeed? Is that person really of so little value to you that it’s not worth it to keep them, even on a virtual back burner? What if you need to contact them to ask who their dentist is?

Why am I not friends with hardly anyone I went to elementary school with? What’s the deadline on friending people who you should’ve friended in the first two years of being on FB but did not, and now it has been six or eight, and you all have survived without each other this long, but why? I would totally read your status updates. I would totally click on your wedding pictures.

I am often bored with my newsfeed; what is my resistence to expanding it? Why do people call it “cleaning house” when they go through and defriend people? How many phone numbers are in your phone that you don’t use and is it the same thing? (I say no.)

But I won’t friend people who I don’t know. If you don’t know me but you like this blog, then like the DMP Facebook page or follow me on Twitter. FB is for people whose faces I have seen, hands I have touched, people who I played duck duck goose with or more likely who tripped me on the asphalt. I check my security settings regularly. I don’t have friend groups; I don’t post anything that I’m not willing to let everyone I am friends with see. I’ve defriended someone once, when I wasn’t interested in giving that person information that could remotely clue them in to my whereabouts or even my pyschological state. You’re allowed to cut people off who are toxic. But those who are merely unnecessary at this moment? Things change. You can’t re-friend. It’s awkward. They know. Believe me. You would know, wouldn’t you.

When will we start handing out our FB contact info to strangers we meet in bars (but do we do that, anymore? or do we just FB message people we once thought we could’ve had something with?) rather than phone numbers or even emails? I’d like that. Feels safe, if clunky.

I had goldfish when I was younger. My parents tried many things to keep me from begging for a dog: goldfish, cats, newts. All of these were terrible animals. The cats were lazy, dumb, and skittish. The newts ate their own feet and released some sort of toxic smell from those little white nubs that never went away. The goldfish wouldn’t stay alive.

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Dear “West Wing”

1 May

Speaking of tv shows….West Wing had a reunion! A walk & talk reunion. The best kind.

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Dear “Girls”

1 May

This is why I’m not writing about “Girls”: Tom and Lorenzo have got it covered in a scant 500 words.

Also I don’t have HBO.

Frank, by the way, is in the background muttering “Thank god” and “So can you stop telling me what all the articles say already?” Because I also have a compulsive need to click-click on any analysis about “Girls.”  

Speaking of Frank, I told him we were moving to Seattle when I gave notice with my rent check this morning. He got all huffy for some reason. “You can’t decide my life! You don’t know me! …I’m a sentient being in this relationship and I demand to have a say! Yada YADA YADA yada.”

When I pointed out how much closer Seattle is to his motherland (CANADA!), Frank settled down into a steady whine. At some point I think I heard the words, Romney can’t catch me there— ? And then it just sounded like he was quietly chanting hockey-hockey-hockey-hockey-hockey under his breath for about an hour.

Now he’s making my sandwich for lunch and sorting through what to keep of the kitchen supplies and talking about how he didn’t really like “Tiny Furniture” all that much, anyway: “Can’t that Lena chick smile? I don’t think she laughed once in that movie. Sure, I like her message about embracing your own body, but…life’s just not that bad, eh? Even if your girlfriend is an evil dictator.”

God he’s a sap and a romantic.

xo,

MM

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Dear White House Correspondents’ Dinner

30 Apr

God, this seems like a hard gig, doesn’t it? You’ve got half an hour, the president’s writers are at least as good as yours, some of your jokes are so wonky they have to be explained to the audience made up of wonks, you’ve got to make fun of celebrities and politicians, but the fact of the matter is, the night is for the journalists….or it was supposed to be, originally.

I started wondering if there’s ever been a female host at the WHCD. There’ve been a couple: in 1993, Elayne Boosler; in 1999 Arethra Franklin provided the entertainment (one assumes she didn’t do stand-up); in 2009, Wanda Sykes. In 2005 “First Lady Laura Bush made some jokes” (from the Wikipedia article on the WHCA). 

Fun fact: the only repeat performer (as far as the chart shows) is Al Franken, in 1994 and 1996 (Conan O’Brien being the gingermeat in that particular Frankenwich).

Interestingly, this “tradition” of a comedy host is fairly new. In 1945, the first year of the dinner, they had “performers” which included Frank Sinatra. The chart then skips to 1969– was the dinner not held?– when it notes that “President Nixon personally requested the Disneyland Golden Horseshoe Revue.” (There’s got to be some good jokes in that.) It’s only in 1991 that recognizable “comedy hosts” start performing as such, and even since then, sometimes the dinner has relied on spoof videos or split the duties between more than one entertainer.

So it’s only very, very recently that there’s been a hint of rivalry between the “two” comedic performances: the president’s, whoever he (or, I hope, someday she) may be, and the host’s. And in fact, it’s only since Obama took office that this “rivalry” has gained any footing in the sense of it being a true competition. For while the quality of the jokes may be the same (as I mentioned, both obviously hire writers, and there’s no requirement that a certain number of the jokes be the speaker’s own), comedy is all in the timing…and Obama is our only President with a certain instinctual one-two count. 

Now, President Clinton has a sly-dog sense about him, and one can imagine that Presidents like Bush and even Teddy Roosevelt were fond of pranks, but Obama is somewhat known for being able to make (and take) a joke.

One likes to imagine he’s enjoying the night with that big ear-to-ear grin of his. One likes to think of Obama as being the funniest, smartest guy in the room, even when put up against paid, professional comedians who do this every night of their lives. One likes to forget that he’s President and see him as the guy on the basketball court, the best roaster at the company or family annual dinner. And that’s ok. But it isn’t true.

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Dear 50 Shades of Grey

27 Apr

Have you guys heard of this book 50 Shades of Grey? It’s a novel– a softcore BDSM novel. Apparently it’s remarkable because it was the #1 bestselling e-book on the NYT list and #3 on Amazon’s best-seller list in March.

This means that someone actually noticed that women buy and read a) romance novels and b) smut. Maybe it means that someone noticed that women have sex? I doubt it, though. That seems farfetched.

For whatever reason, this particular one has caught on and women aren’t “ashamed” to pass it on to their friends. As the Jezebel article says, “Another anonymous woman said that her friends were obsessed with the erotic novel, which was the first of its kind that they felt comfortable discussing openly. ‘Women just feel like it’s O.K. to read it,’ she said. ‘It’s taboo for women to admit that they watch pornography, but for some reason it’s O.K. to admit that they’re reading this book.’

I keep picturing moms in the grocery aisle opening their raincoats or reaching a hand between their torso and their front-carrying baby backpacks to pass the e-code to the book off. They slide by each other saying, “Oreo’s? Oh, no, honey, those aren’t good for you.” 

Look, this is what we’ve known since the kindle arrived: that electronic reading would make smut more widespread– or at least, more often read in public. 

But still, I’m unclear on why women who weren’t “passing” their smutty books around before this one suddenly feel compelled to share Shades of Grey. Do they feel like it’s “ok” for some reason in this case? Do they feel like it’s so good it would be selfish to keep it to themselves? Shades of Grey, despite what these women may think, is not the first of its kind.

Yes, women don’t often discuss their favored arousal media. It’s still pretty taboo. Is it because unlike porn, which we all assume men are watching, we don’t assume our BFF has a stash of smut? So trading favorites requires first a confession (and an unpredictable reaction) before getting down to brass tacks? But how often do men sit in the boardroom or watch their kids on the soccer field being like, “You catch Jessica Rubber’s latest stretch act in Cumby?”

WAIT! Before you leave due to the awfulness of my made-up porn pun:

1. Did I mention IT DOESN’T SOUND SEXY? Or like a healthy expression of sexuality?

The smut in this novel– which is supposed to be an exploration of BDSM, remember– doesn’t even sound that risque. One of the women who writes at Forever Young Adult (who, yes, spends her time reading and reviewing young adult literature, so it should’ve been pretty easy to push her literary sex boundaries, since one can imagine she mostly reads awkward make-out scenes) says, “Y’all. Y’ALL. Look, I knew this book was not going to be good, OBVIOUSLY, but I thought AT LEAST the sex scenes would be good! Or at least so shocking that I was a little bit prudishly appalled by them. BUT NO…Ugh, I actually turned to my boyfriend this weekend (why was I reading this while with my boyfriend? I don’t know) and told him that the sex in this book was turning me off sex entirely. (His response?  ’Let’s find you something else to read.’)”

And obviously all of the sex takes place in a monogamous, heterosexual, committed relationship that is based on love. That is the only way women like their sex. 

Did I mention that she’s a virgin when they meet? She hesitates to commit to his demands because, while she loves him, she doesn’t know if this is what she wants/likes. He makes her agree before she ever has sex for the first time. Healthy! 

2. Did I mention that IT’S FAN FICTION?

Christian and Anastasia are based on….drumroll….

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Dear Nice Guy Who’s a Better Person Than I Am But I Don’t Want to Date

25 Apr

This is one of those posts where you’re either going to hate me or like me more after I tell you what a terrible human being I am. (Here is where you say, Is there any other kind?)

So I went on a date a couple of weeks ago. Nice guy. Wore a button-down shirt to our coffee date. Let me pick the time and place (oh come on, did you expect me to wait for him to do it?). Brown curly hair, brown eyes. Graduate student in history (my undergrad major). According to his email, which was basically an online dating profile: “Hiking, playing frisbee golf, and drinking lots of Twinings black tea are the hobbies I’m most involved with at the moment.” 

Obviously, halfway through the date we started talking about Twilight. He asked me my favorite poet, and I said Elizabeth Bishop. This was the only question he asked me all night. The rest of time he spent answering my questions with interview-ready responses. When I asked why he went back to graduate school, he gave me his “list of qualifications” off his resume, did not ask why I was in graduate school or anything about what I was studying, and then he said, “I feel like I’m at an interview!”

To my credit, I didn’t mock him. Then.

Therefore I was desperate to string my one question out as long as possible, so I said, “Of course, a little farther down the line of favorite things to read…you know, Bishop at the top, but about ten down you find Twilight.”

He hung in there. “Of course,” he said, “that makes so much sense.” Or something like that. The fact that I can’t recall the conversation perfectly (one of my greatest skills in life) tells you pretty much all you need to know about how things were going at this point.

“No, really,” I said.

“Totally,” he said. I nodded. “Oh…” he said. “Really.”

I love talking to people about how much I don’t hate Twilight. You can find just a few of the reasons here. I think Stephenie Meyer writes a nice, clean sentence that doesn’t get in the way of me chanting make out make out make out. And no, I don’t care if it’s with Edward or Jacob. I just think people should make out more. I’ll save the rest of my reasons for when we talk face-to-face. I find it’s a good litmus test, and I don’t want to ruin it before I have the chance to see if you turn red or blue. So I told him that yes, I have in fact read all 4 books, but woefully have not yet made time to catch up on the movies. 

He said— I kid you not— “Well, I guess all this really does is reflect badly on me, that I’m judging something before I even give it a chance.” He said this sincerely. About Twilight. As if the hype hasn’t give him a pretty good idea of whether it’s his cup of Twinings black tea.

I should’ve known: in the email he sent me asking for the date, he wrote, “If I had one wish I would ask that the everyone on the globe have access to quality education considering many of the world’s problems are due to ignorance.”

I really, really hope he gets that Mr. America sash. That’s such a good answer. 

xxo,

MM

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Dear…Wait. Before we go any further. Are you following me on Twitter?

24 Apr

Because you should. It’s @dearmrpostman. Quit being a deadbeat, pay your child support, and follow me already.

I do what all the celebrities do and I talk about drugs and bodily functions.

See? I’m just like Alec Sulkin.

Seriously, if you need more DMP in your life, get in the Twillage and let’s be neighbors. I’m maaaaaybe half-fluent in twitterspeak so it’s sort of like watching the drunk baby:

love,

MM

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