Stand By Me

Watching Stand By Me with my sisters.
This movie never ceases to make me nostalgic.
It was my first rated R movie, watched with the cousins before I even entered double digits.
It was my first River Phoenix movie, introducing me to a man, a community, and a mindset that would save my life.
It makes me remember feeling like I could be a writer, as a profession, as a life.  A belief that I still sometimes get flashes of.

  

It also makes me remember a time when future wasn't so scary.  

“Everything was there and around us. We knew exactly who we were, and exactly where we were going. It was grand.”

Everything had a simple answer then, even the hard questions: friendship, abusive parents, dead kids, class warfare, the death of a sibling, our destinies.  They all came down to absolute truths: loyalty, beauty, truth.

I wish life were like the movies.  I wish Stephen King, Rob Reiner, and Steven Spielberg would team up and create the story of my life, casting a still-alive River Phoenix and a pre-ironic Wil Wheaton and a pre-douchebag+cocaine Corey Feldman and a fat Jerry O'Connell. Things would make much more sense that way.

For now, I know that Vern would eat cherry Pez for the rest of his life, that Chris didn't steal the milk money, that Gordie should be a writer, that Teddy's dad stormed the beaches at Normandy, that Superman would beat up Mighty Mouse, that everyone's weird, and that kids lose everything unless there's someone there to look out for them.

"Great. Spit at the fat kid. Real good."

It's an awesome movie.  If you haven't seen it already, you need to.  ASAP.

The OC, Sylvia Plath, and Why I Can't Focus at Work.

So my sister leaves for Florida on Thursday.  She starts like real life, grown-up work- my 20 year old brain cannot wrap my head around it.  SO, we're spending the next couple days trying to finish every episode of The OC ever.
We're on season 4 right now (the final season...sniff, sniff.)

Summer is my favorite, always will be.  She's strong without being a stereotype.  [She also continually reminds me of my workout and diet plans for this summer.


Spent the car ride home today reading The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath.  It's chronological; I'm almost done with the 50s.  It's incredible.
"We cast our skins and slide/ Into another time."




Work is actually pretty good.  I'm social media-ing.  I get so freaking distracted though, and it's relatively monotonous.  Oh, well, it's an internship; it could be much worse.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Nicki Minaj and Lil Kim are not the first rappers to have a feud.  They're just the two that it hurts the most.

Rap is a black male genre.  So when Jay Z took on Nas in "Takeover," it did nothing but sell more records. I'm not overlooking the fact that this is a racially charged issue.  One must simply look at the fates of Tupac and Biggie to understand that this is much deeper than who is the most lyrically talented rapper.

But when we look at Eminem, a white, heterosexual male who starts "feuds" with anything that moves, we see the lens of privilege is strong here.  Somehow, this poor white kid can break into a genre that is traditionally not his, make it his, and anger most people already in the game, say "fuck it" and continue selling records, even to people he insults.

When Nicki Minaj first broke onto the scene, I didn't love her.  But with Pink Friday, I began to really see her for what she is: a feminist.  She's a gender fucking female who is doing big things in a man's world.

And Lil Kim was one of the first women to make any strides in the male-dominated world of hip-hop.

So why are these two women tearing each other apart?  Why did Lil Kim put out an album cover with a highly sexualized and violent image of Nicki with her head ripped off?

Why can't we just get along? Why must we get in each other's way?  Why can't we build each other up?

When the rest of the world is tearing us down, why must we join them?

I'm a twit, degenerate, young rebel and I'm proud of it.

Yes, the title of this post and this blog is a proud declaration of my "Little Monster" status.

While I appreciate and acknowledge that Lady GaGa is, as a brand and as a person, flawed, I find her inspiring.  So while I do not unequivocally accept her, I am, indeed, a Little Monster.

And that's what I envision this blog being about.  A safe space to love and to question, to acknowledge imperfections but appreciate the attempt.

This blog will be feminist in nature.  But that's not all it will be.  I'll talk about music, about movies, about the news, about injustice, about justice, and basically about whatever I find that inspires me to passion or indignation.  I love this world, but I'm not content to leave it as I found it and I hope that you're not either.

"Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

I vow never to write about something that doesn't make me come alive.  I hope you join me on my journey for as long as it sparks some fire in you as well.