Behind The Make Up

Obama Reality Television Show, "The District": Dangerous?

Newsweek recently launched reality television show, The District (see below) a spoof on the MTV reality show The City (I'd strongly suggest you watch the first sixty seconds or so of The City to contextualize The District; it makes a big difference).

The City features Whitney Pratt, a young blonde leaving all she knows in California to pursue a fashion career in New York City. The District features Barack Obama, leaving all he knows as a Senator in Illinios to pursue a career in Washington D.C. as the United States President.

Each episode is about three minutes long and provides a bubble gum version of the past weeks politics. Footage is created from a mix of news video clips and uses the celebrated Obama impersonator, Iman Crosson (aka Alphacat) for voiceover.

Simplifying politics into a popular format can be a useful way to engage and inform a wider audience. That said, the using the rhetoric of the reality TV show is problematic as it’s dominated by one perspective, here, Obama’s. Politics are and need to be a multifaceted subject, their foundation should be a forum of discussion; this is the very basis of democracy. The District undermines the importance of political conversation by streamlining very complex issues into a shallow, one sided image of the current days issues. The episodes comes off as objective, not subjective.

My 8 Requirements For A Fulfilling Career

I plan on not being her...

My next career will build on my values, passions, and general life goals. Subsequently, I am dedicating the next month or so to identifying and grounding myself in these and then carving out a plan of action. This foundation will allow me to make intentional career decisions that are clearly congruent with who I am, the skills I hope to develop and what I hope achieve both short and long term.

At the moment, I am talking to as many ambitious, grounded, successful, passionate, and insightful individuals as possible. I throw around my career, educational, and general life happiness goals, learn about there own, and lap up as much wisdom and advice as possible.

Yesterday, I met with my friend Michelle, an extraordinarily disciplined and insightful woman, who is in her late thirties and has built tremendously successful career. I admire her work ethic, the way she honors her routines, and her sense of perspective and depth about the world around her. Every time I meet with her, I leave motivated, inspired and filled with new ideas. Now, that’s what you want from good friendship!

After our lunch, I came up with this list of features that are essential to what I want out of my career.

My 8 Career Must-Haves...

Tantalizing or Tasteless? Sport's Illustrated 2009 Swimsuit Issue

I took great interest in this article, from Back In Skinny Jeans, one of my favorite blogs, that analyzed the overtly sexual cover of this year’s swimsuit issue. I second Steph’s critique; I can’t say I was overjoyed to see Bar Rafeali, a simply beautiful model, beginning to strip off her nearly transparent bikini to showcase her petunia.

While the the image highlights Rafeali’s stellar physique and features, the stripping steals the spotlight causing the cover to be less a portrait of female beauty and sensuality, and more of an explicit sexual statement. As the focus is bluntly on her sexual goods, and subsequently, less about her, Rafeali moves from autonomous subject (i.e. empowered sensual goddess) to subjugated object (i.e. body of good looking sexual parts). Her averted gaze only accentuates this, emphasizing her as passive and disempowered.

Creating A Schedule

The schedule vs. reality debate

 (I wrote the following earlier this week as part of a comedy writing workshop I am taking. We were asked to write a piece on a neurosis we had---- please leave thoughts or advise!!).

Nothing excites me more than a spanking new planner. It’s sections and graphs of thirty or thirty-one or twenty-eight days are like bright lights at the annual fair, booming with prospect and excitement.

Of course I am a reasonable, sensible, rational individual. I understand that creating a perfectly color coded spreadsheet of next weeks schedule, down to, well the minute, does not mean that it will necessarily happen. But it endows me with certain high, an extraordinary sense of ambition and purpose. Control.

Staring back at a well scheduled week, I loose myself as the blocks of colored hours marked “coffee”, “walk the dog”, “write in café”, “drinks with Nicole”, “grocery shopping”, “return emails”, “therapy” begin take life in my head and blend into some beautiful movie that I imagine myself as the fascinating leading lady of.  I feel satisfied and excited. I sense that I have met my destiny head on, he gave me a wink, I gave him a smile, we shook hands and decided to work together. Magic. I know. I think so too.

So, I have developed what some may term a scheduling/planning/list making substance abuse problem.

Please Advise. I'm quite close to trolling the self help section at borders.

I hadn’t seen her in years. The wonders of Facebook informed us that she and I were both in London and at the same time, I visiting my newly British in-laws, she, in her last year at RADA.

At a young age, Jill set her eyes on being an actress and pursued it to the umpteenth degree. To the envy aspiring starlets everywhere, she, at the time of our meeting, was on her third call back for Juliet at the Shakespeare Globe. I often wonder if Jill was primed from the get go, supremely talented, or just really god damn lucky. My inclination is that it’s was the talent part with a dash of the later two.

After a lunch reunion joined us right back to our teenage friendship, I asked her if she found RADA hard. It was after all the most competitive theater school in the world. Hard seems to be a logical fit. She frowned for a moment, before answering slowly.

“Well… some days are hard, but when you’re doing what you really love, it’s never hard, you want to do it everyday. Each day you have to confront yourself and that’s never easy, but I couldn’t be more happy doing anything else.”

Now this is not a profound answer. I would speculate that almost every individual that truly loves what they do could provide a similar one. But, it hit me like a ton of bricks, leaving a bruise that kept me thinking long after Jill and I kissed each other goodbye. Each time I caught it’s yellowy black presence out of the corner of my eye, I was reminded that I couldn’t remember the last time I had merely a week of consistent eagerness for the day. And c’mon folks, this past year, I graduated, got my first time full job, got engaged, planned a wedding and got married. And still not a week! Well, maybe my honeymoon… but I was in a glass cabin on white sand beach. Of course I was excited to wake up like every friggin’ morning… and for a variety of very legitimate reasons.