MLK Jr. Day & Pre-Inauguration Reflections: What Now?

The upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump (whom I don’t think I’m going to ever be able to refer to as “President” in this lifetime) is just days away. In the weeks leading up to this event, he has shown in a laundry list of ways – most of which have already been well reported on – the type of presidency he plans to have. He is a misogynistic, totalitarian, xenophobic and racist liar who managed to bamboozle middle America and people who have grown sick of the same old shit in Washington – and has given new hope to racists and sexists throughout the country who have wanted to bring back America to the its former “greatness”.

OK now that we have that out of the way: what has been going through my mind?

Like with most folks, honestly it’s been a roller coaster. I go from hopeful to despair in a matter of minutes on a fairly regular basis. There are moments when I get frustrated with people who refuse to see how far we actually have come and then there are others when I feel a deep sadness at how far we still have to go. It’s hard to stick with any sort of emotional stance. However, I have said this before and still stand by it – some great things happened in 2016: the prison strikes; the announcement that one of our nation’s more atrocious presidents, Andrew Jackson – an enemy to the Africans forcibly brought here on slave ships and the Native Americans who already lived here – would have his face replaced on the $20 with Harriet Tubman’s; the unemployment rate finally hit a pre-recession low; and the Black Lives Matters movement has grown and has been given more and more legitimacy…. just to name a few. I’m not saying people have no right to be scared – I’m just saying progress is happening even though it doesn’t necessarily feel like it. I have to say that to myself every single day, guys.

There is plenty to worry about but I don’t want to lose sight of how far we have come – that is my internal struggle. I’ve been quietly looking at a number of things to get involved with in 2017 – local civil rights and social justice groups whose mission statements are aligned with my core values. My goal is to get more involved in the fight and not just because I think we are all going to need to step up a little bit more in the coming years – but because another really great thing came out of 2016: continual and meaningful conversation on race and gender. This past year, I’ve spoken to so many people who have become more aware than ever of how important these conversations are and have realized that it’s necessary to keep having them and to be OK with how uncomfortable it could get. As a woman of color who has a lot of white friends, over the years I’ve sort of trained myself to keep a lot of my opinions on race to myself. Every once in a while, I’d get offended by something a white friend of mine would say but I always made myself brush it off. I’d tell myself to stop being so sensitive. I have come to realize that by doing that I am doing them and society a disservice. So, even though it makes me deeply uncomfortable, I have unlearned everything about bottling up those feelings and I have forced myself to speak up on topics of race – and also sexism – to those around me.

But conversation is just one step. It's an important one but it is not enough and we need to be willing to do just a little bit more.

If Trump getting elected as president is what it took to shake America to its core, giving us a frightening wake up call, then so be it. This is not to say that I think it’s a good thing – but honestly, America is just as racist and scary as it’s ever been and now more people understand that. On social media, I referenced a recent episode of Black-ish, where the father on the show – who remained mostly silent during an episode where all his colleagues were railing against Hillary’s election loss – is asked by one of his white liberal colleagues why he doesn’t care more about what’s happening in this country. What follows is an amazing monologue that I haven’t actually been able to get out of my head for days and I recommend that you watch it if you haven’t already. Essentially, the black community and other disenfranchised groups are used to losing over and over again. And this has been largely ignored by white people and people of privilege over the decades. But now there is a threat big enough to scare us all. It’s been interesting – the conversations that I’ve been having with a lot of my white male friends, many of whom are treating this election like the end of all things, like it’s the worst thing recent American history has to offer. I was blown by the electing of Donald Trump too (still am) – but what we need to be honest about is how things aren’t getting worse, progress isn’t being stripped away… this has BEEN happening. This has always been America. Not even I understood that fully but this didn’t happen out of nowhere. And I can’t stress enough in saying it’s the systems that exist in this country that have allowed this to happen. Liberal America didn’t get that – and still doesn’t, in some ways – but what happened has happened and all we can do is learn from it and find our own ways to fight back and to move towards a kind of unity against those that want to keep us from progress.

Today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I am thinking a lot about the Civil Rights Movement. Not just what MLK Jr. did but folks like Nannie Helen Burroughs, Bayard Rustin, Fred Hampton, Harry and Harriette Moore, Dorothy Height and countless others that go unsung because we live in a society that focuses too much on lionizing big ticket names in the Civil Rights world. I strongly believe that change happens from the bottom up – from impoverished communities where the promise of the American Dream is no more than a lie that can never be attained. Even MLK himself said, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” I am not taking away anything from what MLK meant to the Civil Rights Movement but not everyone can be what he was – in fact, most people can’t be – and sometimes I worry that when we focus so little on the foot soldiers, if you will, then the battle against oppression starts to feel too daunting. I feel like even MLK would agree with that. We all have the power to impact our society for better or for worse and we are strongest when we are together and when we are mobilized.

So yes, times are dangerous and we should all be angry, be critical, be aware, be ready to fight, but also be hopeful. Because at the end of the day, that is honestly the only thing that will keep up moving forward. It’s the one thing we can all share and spread to the communities around us. Knowing what others have had to endure before us, we need to keep in our hearts and in our minds that the human spirit is strong and much has been accomplished. Progress may seem slow, it comes with a lot of risk and it may at times seem like it’s going in reverse but if we all do our part and keep pushing onward then the possibilities are endless. I believe in us and I will keep believing in us, as a people, until my very last breath.

Much love and happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Now let’s get to work.

Election Fever Recovery: Getting My Anti-Establishment Groove Back

Just completed a very long work day and there were a lot of lows and highs. I woke up this morning feeling kind of miserable and panicky. To be honest, my initial reaction to this week's big news was somewhat calm initially. I mean I was angry in ways that were hard to articulate but I was still feeling pretty hopeful. Today I woke up and every bit of serenity I had vanished into thin air.

It's hard to truly explain where my head has gone and the weird sense of despair that keeps taking over me. The truth is I was never one of Hillary’s big supporters – never have been, never will be. And while I know so many people are probably ready to jump down my throat and start pointing fingers at me, saying people like me are the reason that Trump’s impending presidency happened, I need you all to calm down and understand that many people of color that I know and have talked to about Hillary Clinton agree with me. Every time someone sings her praises – for even I will admit that the Idea of Hillary Clinton is pretty good on paper – I will never be able to get past “super predators” and her (and the Democratic Party’s) dismissiveness of the Black Lives Matter movement. I cannot even get into the crime bill shit show of the 90s because that deserves its own separate post but I will say that Clinton did a lot to earn the distrust of people of color, particularly in poor black communities.

That being said, I realized something early on in this campaign season. Whenever I would try to say any of the above, I would get shut down – angrily and vehemently – mostly by my privileged white liberal friends. I’m just going to be as real as possible right now and I’m going to hope that I am not attacked for it. I love my passionate liberal friends and share similar ideals as them in so many ways. I understand why they gravitated towards Hillary and I didn’t hate them for it. But a weird shift happened at a certain point…. suddenly, somehow if you didn’t want to vote for Hillary, you were privileged and were considered part of the “problem.” I experienced this first hand so I learned to subdue my opinions and quietly express my reservations to like-minded friends only.  I allowed my voice to be squashed. And eventually a weird sort of acceptance happened – not that I suddenly loved Hillary, but I started to… think… maybe she IS the only option at this point?

And obviously so much of those feelings also come from a place where I have had to watch (first hand) the media circus lift up Donald Trump again and again, treat him like a joke, like entertainment. And again and again, he would do or say things so reviled that my anti-establishment brain softened and even I started to see Hillary’s appeal. And yet there was that nagging thing in the back of my brain that wouldn’t ever go away….

I’m saying all this because Donald Trump is a problem and I hate that he is the President of the United States because this country really MEANS something to me…. but I’m angry that no one wants to have a deeper discussion about why Hillary didn’t nail down the black vote and what her role has been to the black community. Even typing that now, I can already feel many of you getting fired up – outraged because OBVIOUSLY Donald Trump is worse and any other opinion is ignorant and short-sighted. But this is worth a complex discussion and we need to stop talking in terms of “this side is right and that side is wrong”. And honestly, I think it’s time we all really evaluated how this country’s “democracy” is really working out for us.

I’ve been ambivalent through a lot of this election, truth be told, up until about a month or so ago. Then, like with most people, election madness set in and I started to feel very stressed and constantly on edge. Election fatigue hit me really hard, guys. I mean, here’s the thing: I genuinely consider myself to be a patriot. I say this without irony: I am frustrated by this country a lot of the time but I have always felt pride in being an American. Or… at least I did?

Now this brings me to my point – the pain I am currently going through. Today I listened to the latest episode of Politically Re-Active (a fantastic podcast that I truly recommend to all of you out there) and it wasn’t until then that I realized why I’ve been taking these election results so hard. One of the hosts, Hari (my comedy love), mentioned recently that he was voting for Jill Stein. Flash forward: Hillary loses the election and everyone loses their shit. Since then listeners apparently have decided to blame Hari personally for Hillary’s loss and have attacked him and his character. Hari, a New York voter, felt confident about NY swinging to Clinton so decided to go the third party route in order to legitimize the Green Party, which is more aligned with his ideology – and he was CRUCIFIED for it. I hear so often from progressives that we need to start finding a way to dismantle the crazy two party system that we are strapped to but here is a person who takes a small step towards making that happen in his own way and he’s punished for it. And what were the stakes? Hillary won New York by a landslide. Just the IDEA of thinking differently and moving against the current is upsetting, I guess. ACTUAL steps toward progress are sneered at and there are always excuses for why "this isn't the time". And people are so quick to either forget or ignore the failings of our leaders and to continue to put our trust in systems that have largely worked against most of us.

And there it is – I became guilty of the very thing I spend so much time railing against. I allowed myself to believe in the system again, for just a moment in time, and it blew up in my face. Not because Hillary lost, not because Donald was elected president, not because America has too many angry white people holding our country hostage – the most damaging part was I let myself believe in the same machine that inflicted our horrific criminal justice system on us, that uses the housing market and unholy relationship with developers to wipe out communities of color and cultural hubs, that have put little to no accountability on the law enforcement that have waged a war against my black brothers and sisters, that tell women what they’re allowed to do with their bodies, that oppresses us from a very young age and teaches us the importance of compliance. There are a lot of terrible, frightening things about Donald Trump being President – things that have been swimming in my mind since yesterday, like his picking a Supreme Court Justice, his disregard for climate change and the environment, his rampant islamophobia and sexism – but it’s the system that we are all so easy to trust that allowed this to happen in the first place.

When the reality of our situation settled in, I felt betrayed. Deeply and soulfully.

But now that I’ve identified the source of my pain, I feel fired up. And also, I allowed myself to remember that this was the year of the most brilliant prison strike – events that showed us that resistance can accomplish such good things. There was also significant growth in the Black Lives Matter group. People became aware of the epidemic that is police brutality in a way they hadn't been aware of before (at least people not of color) and some amazing conversations have started to finally happen. And a diverse cluster of badass women were elected into a few of our country’s highest offices – which despite my feelings towards our government, I still believe is a wonderful achievement.

Anyway I’m not sure what my next steps are but I do know that I’m glad that I took a day to wallow about the state of this country because I needed it. However, I am gladder that I have gotten my perspective back and feel a certain optimism again – because you know what? We probably have some tough times ahead and there are some major setbacks but if we all become a little more organized, thoughtful and empathetic we can figure this shit out and we can continue to take positive steps forward. People are good and want to do good. And the angry white people – the Trumpeteers – who voted the Orange One into Presidency don’t speak for us and we shouldn’t allow them to drown out our voices.

And I, personally, will never allow someone to drown out my voice again – not even people whom I care for. It’s hard to push back when you believe in something that others don’t and it’s easy to just pull back in order to avoid causing any waves – but that is doing a disservice to yourself and to the people around you and to the society that you want to help build.

Kudos if you read all this. I don’t expect most people to agree with most of what I have to say but I do hope you can respect my opinions and the spirt in which they were given. Much love to you all and don’t worry… everything will be okay. Weed was legalized in a bunch of places. Bowie’s legacy still lives on. Nutella still exists. And I mean, fuck…. 2016 has to end eventually, right?

And I will conclude this never ending post with a quote from the ever-popular Hamilton musical:

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

Much love,
N

Election Fever Recovery: Getting My Anti-Establishment Groove Back

Just completed a very long work day and there were a lot of lows and highs. I woke up this morning feeling kind of miserable and panicky. To be honest, my initial reaction to this week's big news was somewhat calm initially. I mean I was angry in ways that were hard to articulate but I was still feeling pretty hopeful. Today I woke up and every bit of serenity I had vanished into thin air.

It's hard to truly explain where my head has gone and the weird sense of despair that keeps taking over me. The truth is I was never one of Hillary’s big supporters – never have been, never will be. And while I know so many people are probably ready to jump down my throat and start pointing fingers at me, saying people like me are the reason that Trump’s impending presidency happened, I need you all to calm down and understand that many people of color that I know and have talked to about Hillary Clinton agree with me. Every time someone sings her praises – for even I will admit that the Idea of Hillary Clinton is pretty good on paper – I will never be able to get past “super predators” and her (and the Democratic Party’s) dismissiveness of the Black Lives Matter movement. I cannot even get into the crime bill shit show of the 90s because that deserves its own separate post but I will say that Clinton did a lot to earn the distrust of people of color, particularly in poor black communities.

That being said, I realized something early on in this campaign season. Whenever I would try to say any of the above, I would get shut down – angrily and vehemently – mostly by my privileged white liberal friends. I’m just going to be as real as possible right now and I’m going to hope that I am not attacked for it. I love my passionate liberal friends and share similar ideals as them in so many ways. I understand why they gravitated towards Hillary and I didn’t hate them for it. But a weird shift happened at a certain point…. Somehow if you didn’t want to vote for Hillary, you were privileged and were considered part of the “problem.” I experienced this first hand so I learned to subdue my opinions and quietly express my reservations to like-minded friends only.  I allowed my voice to be squashed. And eventually a weird sort of acceptance happened – not that I suddenly loved Hillary, but I started to… think… maybe she IS the only option at this point?

And obviously so much of those feelings also come from a place where I have had to watch (first hand) the media circus lift up Donald Trump again and again, treat him like a joke, like entertainment. And again and again, he would do or say things so reviled that my anti-establishment brain softened and even I started to see Hillary’s appeal. And yet there was that nagging thing in the back of my brain that wouldn’t ever go away….

I’m saying all this because Donald Trump is a problem and I hate that he is the President of the United States because this country really MEANS something to me…. but I’m angry that no one wants to have a deeper discussion about why Hillary didn’t nail down the black vote and what her role has been to the black community. Even typing that now, I can already feel many of you getting fired up – outraged because OBVIOUSLY Donald Trump is worse and any other opinion is ignorant and short-sighted. But this is worth a complex discussion and we need to stop talking in terms of “this side is right and that side is wrong”. And honestly, I think it’s time we all really evaluated how this country’s “democracy” is really working out for us.

I’ve been ambivalent through a lot of this election, truth be told, up until about a month or so ago. Then, like with most people, election madness set in and I started to feel very stressed and constantly on edge. Election fatigue hit me really hard, guys. I mean, here’s the thing: I genuinely consider myself to be a patriot. I say this without irony: I am frustrated by this country a lot of the time but I have always felt pride in being an American. Or… at least I did?

Now this brings me to my point – the pain I am currently going through. Today I listened to the latest episode of Politically Re-Active (a fantastic podcast that I truly recommend to all of you out there) and it wasn’t until then that I realized why I’ve been taking these election results so hard. One of the hosts, Hari (my comedy love), mentioned recently that he was voting for Jill Stein. Flash forward: Hillary loses the election and everyone loses their shit. Since then listeners apparently have decided to blame Hari personally for Hillary’s loss and have attacked him and his character. Hari, a New York voter, felt confident about NY swinging to Clinton so decided to go the third party route in order to legitimize the Green Party, which is more aligned with his ideology – and he was CRUCIFIED for it. I hear so often from progressives that we need to start finding a way to dismantle the crazy two party system that we are strapped to but here is a person who takes a small step towards making that happen in his own way and he’s punished for it. And what were the stakes? Hillary won New York by a landslide. Just the IDEA of thinking differently and moving against the current is upsetting, I guess. ACTUAL steps toward progress are sneered at. And people are so quick to either forget or ignore the failings of our leaders and to continue to put our trust in systems that have largely worked against most of us.

And there it is – I became guilty of the very thing I spend so much time railing against. I allowed myself to believe in the system again, for just a moment in time, and it blew up in my face. Not because Hillary lost, not because Donald was elected president, not because America has too many angry white people holding our country hostage – the most damaging part was I let myself believe in the same machine that inflicted our horrific criminal justice system on us, that uses the housing market and unholy relationship with developers to wipe out communities of color and cultural hubs, that have put little to no accountability on the law enforcement that have waged a war against my black brothers and sisters, that tell women what they’re allowed to do with their bodies, that oppresses us from a very young age and teaches us the importance of compliance. There are a lot of terrible, frightening things about Donald Trump being President – things that have been swimming in my mind since yesterday, like his picking a Supreme Court Justice, his disregard for climate change and the environment, his rampant islamophobia and sexism – but it’s the system that we are all so easy to trust that allowed this to happen in the first place.

When the reality of our situation settled in, I felt betrayed. Deeply and soulfully.

But now that I’ve identified the source of my pain, I feel fired up. And also, I allowed myself to remember that this was the year of the most brilliant prison strike – events that showed us that resistance can accomplish such good things. There was also significant growth in the Black Lives Matter group. People became aware of the epidemic that is police brutality in a way they hadn't been aware before (at least people not of color) and some amazing conversations have started to finally happen. And a diverse cluster of badass women were elected into a few of our country’s highest offices – which despite my feelings towards our government, I still believe is a wonderful achievement.

Anyway I’m not sure what my next steps are but I do know that I’m glad that I took a day to wallow about the state of this country because I needed it. However, I am gladder that I have gotten my perspective back and feel a certain optimism again – because you know what? We probably have some tough times ahead and there are some major setbacks but if we all become a little more organized, thoughtful and empathetic we can figure this shit out and we can continue to take positive steps forward. People are good and want to do good. And the angry white people – the Trumpeteers – who voted the Orange One into Presidency don’t speak for us and we shouldn’t allow them to drown out our voices.

And I, personally, will never allow someone to drown out my voice again – not even people whom I care for. It’s hard to push back when you believe in something that others don’t and it’s easy to just pull back in order to avoid causing any waves – but that is doing a disservice to yourself and to the people around you and to the society that you want to help build.

Kudos if you read all this. I don’t expect most people to agree with most of what I have to say but I do hope you can respect my opinions and the spirt in which they were given. Much love to you all and don’t worry… everything will be okay. Weed was legalized in a bunch of places. Bowie’s legacy still lives on. Nutella still exists. And I mean, fuck…. 2016 has to end eventually, right?

And I will conclude this never ending post with a quote from the ever-popular Hamilton musical:

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

Much love,
N

Two Years Later: Trying to Live My Best Life

Update: I’m busy as hell and this summer has been chaotic. But! I was able to sneak away to Rehoboth for a week and the beach is always a nice break from the craziness.

I really needed the ocean waves to heal me (even though they also dropped me on my ass a few times) because I’ve had some heavy things on my mind. Summer has become kind of a rough time for me in general for reasons I’ve mentioned in other posts. But to be clear, today is the anniversary of my father’s passing. It’s so weird to say that still. It still feels really new somehow. Almost unreal, like he’s still around but I just haven’t talked to him in a while. Every once in a while when I’m speaking to someone new and parents come up in conversation, it’s difficult to find the words. Like, how do you casually tell someone your father is dead without stopping the conversation cold? Those are the weird things I struggle with.

You know, I recently watched that new Netflix show, Stranger Things (which, by the way, is fantastic and you should go watch immediately) and there is a scene where the police chief is asked about his daughter and he says something like, “She lives with her mom in the city.” He walks away and the person he was talking to was informed that his daughter actually passed away. Sorry for the minor spoiler there but I really, this captures that experience so perfectly because there’s no guidebook on how and when you tell something like this to another person. But not acknowledging it seems…. like a dishonor somehow? And dishonest.

Once, at work, I had a newer colleague ask me what my dad does for a living and where he’s living these days. I paused for a half a second and I honestly considered just saying he was in California (which isn’t really a lie – his ashes were spread along the Pacific Coastline) because I didn’t really want to him to look at me with pity in his eyes. I didn’t want to hear “I’m so sorry” and I didn’t want to have to explain what happened. But in the end, I said that my father had passed recently. I tried to sound breezy about it but I actually sounded very high pitched and the words got stuck in my throat for a beat. The guy was polite and said the standard “I’m sorry” (which I mean… as much as I have grown to hate those words, what else is someone going to say in that scenario?) but then we sort of just… moved on. There wasn’t any real weirdness and I didn’t carry that moment with me for days and days. It’s a process – finding little ways to be okay with something that is very much not okay and learning how to manage your grief in healthy manners.

The hardest moments honestly are the times it’s unexpected. When I was at the beach this summer, the group of us strolled down the boardwalk after dinner in search of ice cream and we discovered the most hilarious and random Elvis impersonator performing on the main gazebo with a bunch of back up dancers/singers and very bright lights. It was hilarious and I loved it but it also made me think of my dad, whom I have road tripped with to Las Vegas many times. He was OBSESSED with horrible Elvis impersonators and would plan an entire evening in Vegas around finding the best (or maybe worst?) ones the city had to offer. There is a whole album he had of pictures he’d taken with impersonators over the years. It was such a weird interest and the second I saw that Elvis in Rehoboth, my first thought was, “I have to text this to dad”…. and then I remembered. Those moments when I forget for half a second – those are the most brutal times. Remembering that I will never hear him laugh again or say his signature, “Well isn’t that something?”

It’s been two years. Two years. My dad has been gone for two years. How does anyone ever get used to that? He never got to see The Force Awakens. He never got to hear the music of Hamilton. He never got the opportunity to mock the British for Brexit (which he would have done with many, many terrible dad jokes, none of which I can even dream up). He and I will never spend another Thanksgiving together. We’re never again going to sit on the beach together and watch the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. We’re never going to have another argument over which is better – French toast or waffles. (Yes, French toast is the answer. My dad was confused, clearly.)

As Chris Hardwick often talks about on his Nerdist podcast, I’m also part of the Dead Dad Club and I’m still learning how to cope with it. I got through Father’s Day without crying, which is kind of amazing. And I’ve surrounded myself with people that make me see the good in the world. This week had its ups and downs but I was able to spend time with people I care about and who fill my life with laughter. Over the weekend I will be celebrating a couple of birthdays, for two awesome people that help in keeping this crazy life of mine fun. It’s helped in making this week less somber and more of a celebration of life and appreciating what I still have to hold on to. I know it’s what my dad would want. He grew up with nothing (except the strongest and most loving mother in the world, which I guess is actually everything) and all he wanted was for me and my siblings to know that we were loved and lucky – and we should spread love and generosity to others who needed it and accept love in return. I am fiercely independent, to a fault in some ways, so the “accepting love” part can be hard for me sometimes…. but it’s something I’ve gotten better at, especially in the past few years.

I guess my point is…. today is hard. But it could be harder, so I think maybe I’m in a healthier place than I have been in the past year or two? Instead of feeling like the world is ending all over again, I’m going to do all the things my dad would want me to do today – do something generous for another person, hug my dog, watch a Star Wars movie, eat ice cream for lunch, spend quality time with my brother, celebrate life with my friends. I’m going to live the best possible version of my life today because that’s the best way I can think of to honor him. How lucky am I to have a dad who, even when he’s passed, inspires me to be happy and to do good things?

An Ode to Harley Quinn (And Why I'm a Little Nervous)

So I've been thinking a lot about the character Harley Quinn and how her character in Suicide Squad will be like.

During my free time, I've bee re-watching a lot of Batman: The Animated Series because it's a great show to just have in the background and I find it oddly comforting. I've long said - and will probably continue to say so for many more years to come - that this is the best version of Batman that has ever been made. It has it all - it's fun and savvy, with an emotional complexity that appeals to kids and adults alike, with absurd villains as well as moral questions that don't always come with easy, spoon-fed answers. Yes there is the typical good guy/bad guy narrative that you'll see in just about any comic book/superhero story but it's actually kind of surprising how many times I'd get to the end of an episode and feel torn about an outcome - or the lack of one. It's the kind of smart show I don't even feel like they make for kids anymore (but please tell me if I'm wrong).

Now, with all that being said.... I'm worried about Harley in the Suicide Squad movie, which is set to premiere in August. But I guess I have to explain her as a character a little bit in order to be clear about why I'm worried.

Harley is, without a doubt, one of the best comic creations I've ever come across. She was introduced towards the beginning of season one of the animated series and was intended as a one-shot character to never be seen again. However, she tested so well and was so immediately popular that they brought her back as Joker's permanent sidekick/on again-off again girlfriend. Her popularity and cult following grew so much that over time she was written into the DC Comics canon and was even given her own comic book series - having adventures separate from the Joker often times. What is so great about Harley is her penchant for fun above all things and her almost childlike joy when causing chaos. Her bubbly personality is infectious and it's hard not to like her even when she's doing some very, very bad things. There are characters that are firmly grounded as heroes or villains but she doesn't truly fall under either of those categories. She's alarmingly complex. Which brings me to her relationship to the Joker....

Now keep in mind when I first started watching this show, I was about 9 years old. And throughout my life, I've periodically gone back to it. And sometimes when you grow up with something, you get caught in what I like to call a "nostalgia cloud" and certain things that are troubling don't really hit you the way that they should. I stand by the statement that the animated series is fantastic but it's not without its problems. Also, I have read an extensive amount of Harley Quinn story lines in comics throughout the years and she's really been fully fleshed in this really interesting, human way. I say all this because as I have been rewatching the TV series, I've realized that the relationship depicted between herself and the Joker is.... really really hard to watch.

I'm older, I'm wiser and I've met and worked with women who are victims of abuse. And Harley Quinn is a deeply damaged and mentally ill person who is in a really horrifically abusive relationship. Now I don't think there's anything wrong with showing a person in an abusive relationship - in fact I support that 100%. Brings light to uncomfortable truths that people find difficult to face. But there's a light-heartedness to Joker's abuse of Harley that makes me feel queasy. I mean, it's very clear that the Joker is "wrong' in treating her the way he does and they even go into the background of how the relationship began (Harley was his psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum) but I'm not sure the show really made it clear how messed up that relationship actually was and why. And that "why" is very very important for young impressionable children. Even the Harley and Joker merchandising sends mixed messages. Why are they being treated like star-crossed lovers or soul mates or something? Essentially, Joker drove her to madness and then continues to mentally and physically beat her throughout their partnership. Why has that been romanticized?

Again, the comics really flesh out Harley, her story and her illness in a way that I think is real unlike almost any other character I can think of. She's very relatable and it's hard not to empathize with her (and to feel the frustration when she inevitably goes back to the Joker every time for reasons varying from wanting the change him to not feeling she's worthwhile without him). It's actually incredibly heartbreaking but it's also such an honest representation.

But.... I digress. Back to Suicide Squad. I'm really looking forward to this movie for a lot of reasons - I think this will finally be a DC Comics film I can get behind (since I loathed Man of Steel and cannot bring myself to watch its ill-reviewed sequel). I think DC Comics is doing their best with this next movie to lighten the tone and to "de-grimify" their franchise, which I fully support. It's just going to be difficult to navigate a film which is going to focus very much on Harley and the Joker and their complicated relationship. Based on the trailers, everything I've read about the story being depicted and some leaked footage that has made its way onto the interwebs, it appears that Joker is very much going to be portrayed as Harley's abuser but I am concerned about how that will be written. It can be done very well (as I think the Netflix original Jessica Jones proved in spades) but it'll be a very fine line and if they miss the mark, everything will fall apart.

Though at the same time.... the movie has to try to find a way to be fun.

I'm very interested to see if the director, David Ayer, is able to pull it off. I'm a big fan of Street Kings and End of Watch and both featured very complex characters but these were also very dark movies.

Anyway, I'm counting down the days until I finally get to meet the world's first on-screen Harley Quinn (96 days, y'all) and I'm hoping they honor her the way that they should. We're finally entering an era of bad ass female characters on the big (and small) screen and I just want these women to thrive - Harley, Jessica Jones, Wonder Woman (!!!), Captain Marvel, and even this new Mockingbird "Most Wanted" series (a spin off based on the only character on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I actively enjoy). I can only hope this trend continues. Movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens and their rampant popularity and success certainly have helped the cause. The last thing I want to see happen is a regression or more of the same old patriarchal shit.

Here's hoping for the best in this new Nerd Girl Golden Age.

Musings: When Songs Change Us

So recently I had the honor of listening to Bob Boilen of NPR’s All Songs Considered speak at his book launch (and by the way, if you haven’t picked it up yet, the book is called Your Song Changed My Life and it’s fantastic). During the event, he touched on what song changed him and what songs were picked by other artists he interviewed for his book and why. It made me think about myself and
what song has impacted me on that level, if any. I thought about it for a long time. Music is very important in my life and I have a very eclectic collection so picking just one song seemed daunting. I’ve spent days asking my friends what songs they would pick and I have gotten an array of answers – “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead (which was a contender for me as well); “Suedehead” by Morrissey; “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine; and even “Pony” by Ginuwine (ahem, hello sexual awakenings). But for me, I kept coming up empty. Would I choose something by Radiohead? Jeff Buckley? The Beatles? Oasis? Otis Redding? Lauryn Hill? I had no idea how to even go about deciding how to pick this one song! So many songs have meant so many different things to me. And then I had to stop thinking so hard and really just sit back and track back my musical history to a moment in time and suddenly it was very clear to me.

I was 16 years old and I was living in Lakeridge, VA – a bitter transplant from San Diego. I grew up listening to and loving my parents’ music – I didn’t rebel against it at all, I embraced it. Donna Summers? Yes! Smokey Robinson? Aye! The Mamas and the Papas? You betcha! I loved it all – so much so that by the time I reached my teens, I felt like an out-of-place weirdo. Like, why didn’t other people my age love this music as much as I loved it?

OK, let me take a step back actually. I don’t want to make it seem like I was or am above Top 40s. Definitely not the case! I owned that first Spice Girls album (and still listen to it to this day). My very first live “concert” was when I was in preschool and I saw Tiffany at the mall. The first tape I ever bought was Different Light by the Bangles (which, by the way, we will revisit by the end of this blog post). If I hear “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys, I will dance my ass off. Ace of Base – they were my spirit animals. I liked all the music that my fellow 90s kids liked…. but for the most part, it was all very superficial (as a lot of that music can be) and I never felt an emotional connection to most of it. That was reserved for the real music – my parent’s music.

At the not-so-tender age of 16, I believed that no one was really making the kind of music that could crawl into your gut and pull at your insides. I mean my older brother introduced me to the Kinks, Violent Femmes, Talking Heads, Queen, The Smiths, Joy Division…. but that still felt like HIS music – like I was just glomming onto, yet again, a better greater era that had come to an end. And hey, nothing wrong with that! I’d accepted this lot in life and I was fine with it. The music industry had given up and I would just have to be okay with the Third Eye Blinds and Jennifer Lopez’s of the world.

But then a weird and magical thing happened.

I was with a good friend of mine (one whom I have written about before and was probably the most important friendship of my life) and his birthday was coming up. His family was forcing him to celebrate it and he was dreading it because he hated his parents and they were going on a road trip to FLORIDA. Knowing how upset he was about the impending doom, I took him out to dinner – some bougie place by the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria. We had steak and spiked our Shirley Temples. It was March and still pretty chilly out so he wrapped his coat around me while we walked around the pier. We talked about the books we were reading and how we were going to live in NYC together one day and start a band. He teased me about my love of the Bangles (who, at that time, was my absolute FAVORITE BAND IN THE WHOLE WORLD) and I defended it. I serenaded him, terribly off key, with the Bangles’ “Angels Don’t Fall in Love” and he groaned and shoved me and told me he loved me even though my taste in music was total shit. And I teased him for being a pretentious prat because all he listened to was The Smiths and The Cure – and while I also loved those bands, I was more open to more kinds of music out there and he was not (or so I believed).

We got into my mom’s car (I was sober, promise) and waited for it to warm up. I flipped through my wallet of CDs and started to put that Bangles album into the player and my friend begged me not to make him listen to it again – not on his birthday. I almost reminded him that this wasn’t his car and it wasn’t ACTUALLY his birthday – it was in a week – but I let it go. I told him we could listen to whatever he wanted to listen to. He pulled this CD out of his messenger bag and the cover was this gorgeous redheaded woman lying on a dirty floor – she had on this leather jacket and her eyes were open but I wasn’t sure if she was alive or not. The band name was Neko Case & Her Boyfriends and the album was Furnace Room Lullaby. I’d heard some of it before that point – but not really. More like it would be playing in my friend’s room when I’d show up to hang out…. and I wo
uld immediately make him change it because one type of music that I refused to give a chance was country. Sure, I mean there’s like Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris but they were exceptions! But today’s country music? Nope. I did not do twang. I’d hear a couple notes from that Neko Case album and I’d make him turn it off straight away.

But this was his “birthday” and he knew that this was the moment he was going to get me to shut the fuck up and listen. Honestly, I don’t actually even think he was trying to get me to care about this album as much as he just wanted to listen to it because he loved it and this time I was finally going to be quiet and not whine over Neko Case’s singing.

I carefully pulled out of the parking space as he hit play. I remember sort of listening but not really during that first track. As I drove out of Old Town and my friend lit up a cigarette next to me and rolled down the window, I started to settle into the music more. By the third track, I was in. I was all in. The song “Porchlight” has long been one of my favorite Neko Case songs but really it was “Mood to Burn Bridges” that really struck me:

So if you want moral advice 
I suggest you just tuck it all away
'Cause my mood to burn bridges
Parallels my mood to dig ditches
Don't cross me on neither a day, baby

My mind was exploding. It was just like, “Oh shit what is this?!” The lyrics were a punch in the stomach. But more importantly the musicality of it! The album as a whole was firmly placed in the realm of country but wasn’t married to whatever pop hell modern country had supposedly devolved into. It was so expansive – one moment ethereal and the next ass-kicking. And “Mood to Burn Bridges” toed this weird line between playful and vengeful that just…. got it. I don’t know how else to say that. And what I found amazing is while this was definitely an “alternative” country album, there were so many more things happening – it was a little bit rock n roll and a little bit bluesy. And it was all weaved together in this perfect partnership of badass harmony in a way that I had never been exposed to before. It was honestly the very first time that I realized that a) there were artists today still making fucking incredible music and b) genre bending in music is, you know, a thing and it’s amazing.

After that, I started to break out of the “musical box” I had created for myself and explored what else was out there. Neko Case was my entrance into a whole new world. And that first time listening to “Mood to Burn Bridges” was the moment I saw the door to that world open up. And while Neko Case herself is firmly a Gen-Xer (and had been in the music industry already for quite some time), this was definitely MY era of music, finally. Someone who was out there NOW making music that was speaking to me. And through Neko Case, I discovered artists like the New Pornographers, AC Newman, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Evan Kane, Ryan Adams, Linda McRae, Wilco and so many others. From that moment on, my devotion to music can almost be described as religious.

I still keep a special place tucked away in my heart for bands like The Bangles and Ace of Base, but I had finally discovered my own world of emotionally intricate music that wasn’t through someone else’s generation and it felt pretty good. (Though, that being said, one of the things that I love about Neko Case’s music is how timeless it really is.) And in the end, it shaped who I am now as an appreciator of the musical arts – and really, also opened up emotional flood gates I didn’t even know I had. And what more can you even ask for?

So thank you, Neko Case – thank you for giving me a musical world that feels like mine. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be lost in a sea of bubblegum pop and booty-popping remixes, wishing desperately to wake up in a generation of music that understood me in any way. Keep on keeping on, you badass punk rock Patsy Cline.

Bill Cosby: Our Role in Perpetuating Celebrity Canonization

I would like to start off by stating that I wasn’t originally going to say anything more about this Bill Cosby situation - for a multitude of reasons. I posted my opinion on the Cosby Show as an entity (and that opinion hasn’t changed) but after weeks and weeks of this continued media coverage, it’s getting harder to express my full anger towards everything that’s happening. First, I want to make this very clear right from the bat – while I believe we live in a society where a person should be seen as innocent until proven otherwise and that witch hunts are fundamentally toxic, I do believe that Bill Cosby is guilty of these allegations… that he’s a rapist. I believe it 100% and will certainly eat my words if, at a later date, somehow these allegations are proven to be a conspiracy of lies.

Now that I have that out of the way, I am going to say nothing in defense of Bill Cosby. He has been able to get away with far too much over his decades of Hollywood power and it’s not right that he’s had to suffer zero repercussions until these last couple of weeks when all forms of media have recoiled from him almost simultaneously – no more Cosby Show on TV Land, no comedy special on Netflix, cancelled pilot for NBC. And while a bunch of people are like, “Yeah! He’s finally getting his just desserts!”… my response is, “Well what about the victims?”

Oh, the victims, you say? Yes, them.

And let me say that I am APPALLED at a lot of the things I’ve been reading. I have heard an equal amount of people express disgust towards Cosby’s horrifying actions as they have towards the women who have waited so long to come out about this – either because it was irresponsible of them or implying that this is all one big lie. I don’t even know which of these is most offensive so let’s address both, shall we?

I have never been raped. I cannot and will not presume to know what enduring that kind of violation is like. God willing, I’ll never know. More importantly, since I’ve never been through it, I find it absolutely VILE to express judgment towards anyone who has and how they react to it. The fear and the shame that one has to deal with is on a level I can’t even comprehend and I can imagine one’s knee jerk reaction to just cover it up. Is that the absolute best decision a person could make in that situation? Probably not, guys – but victim shaming is the exact fucking reason why people DON’T feel brave enough to say anything.

And the implying that these women are lying…. I don’t even know where to begin. I mean, anything is possible. The reality is that there are people who are fame-grabbers, who would stoop to the lowest lows for a piece of it…. but are we honestly ready to believe that ALL of these women are just making it up to target Bill Cosby for… what? No charges have been filed. No charges CAN be filed due to the statute of limitations. None of these women, to our knowledge, have asked him for money – and he has PLENTY of it so believe me, he would have eagerly thrown them millions in order to keep wiping this under the rug. I guess one could argue book deals, TV movies, guest spots on daytime TV talk shows and the like but surely we can’t believe that this has zero basis in reality. And even if one or two of these women are lying, there’s a thin line between reserving judgment and – yes, here we go again – good ol’ fashioned victim shaming.

Twitter and Facebook have been on FIRE with pointing fingers at these women – as well as countless bloggers and journalists. And then… I saw that horrifying segment on The View. Now I've never respected this show anyway. From day one, it seemed like an insulting, demoralizing, soulless exploration into exactly what happens when a bunch of rich and famous women are happy to sell out their own gender for a few gold coins and a captive audience. However, to be fair to them, I had never actually watched the show – until this week. What I saw was perhaps the most nauseating and hateful thing I've seen in a long time. If you are truly unable to have a serious, thoughtful dialogue about rape then just shut up. If all your capable of is victim-blaming and defending your good ol’ celebrity buddy Bill (and not even TRYING to look at this from both sides) then you have no business having a national audience. You embarrassed me as a woman, Cast of the View. And you embarrassed yourselves. Perhaps the show is always like this (like I said, I've never watched it) but if it is, then our society is in worst shape than I realized. Stay at home moms, there are better things to watch on TV, I swear! DO NOT CONTINUE WATCHING THIS SHOW!!! I’m dead serious. It’s incredibly problematic.

But I digress.

All of this has been pretty terrible. But what gets to me the most is how people, for the most part, aren't looking at the bigger issue – that Bill Cosby was in a position to get away with this for so long at all and how we glorify these celebrities so much that they are no longer people to us anymore. It’s clear that people have reacted so strongly to this because everyone has this idea of who they think this man is – a voice for the black community, a pudding pop-pusher who loved “keeping it real” and making us a laugh, Heathcliff Huxtable, our ideal father and advisor. It is hard to accept that he is capable of these crimes he’s committed because we have to accept that he is not who we have turned him into in our collective minds – and more importantly, because of this level of worshiping, we are complicit in granting him the level of power to get away with these crimes. I am a believer of personal responsibility so I’m not saying because you looked up to Bill Cosby that means you’re the reason those women were attacked. Bill Cosby is the reason those women were attacked, and him alone, but we do have to understand that his ability to live a life free of repercussions is because we live in a society that treats the rich and powerful as untouchables. There’s that old term, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I think a more accurate term would be, “With great power comes a great big stack of Get out of Jail Free cards.”

It’s hard to think about how much we allow this level of celebrity worship to grow and how much our system is built around keeping the powerful relatively scar-free. It’s hard to think about how much we accept the way this system is built and how unwilling we are to challenge it or understand how when these sorts of crimes actually happen all the time. Bill Cosby’s team (allegedly, of course) systematically crushed and intimidated any woman who attempted to bring his crimes to light. And when one woman finally did bring him to court, it was swept under the rug so quickly and so completely that by the time the media FINALLY decided to give a shit about any of this, it came as a complete shock to everyone in the universe. There have allegations about his behavior since the 80s and yet everyone was acting like someone had discovered that the Dalai Lama eats babies.  The media is part of the problem, obviously, but we have to take responsibility too.

We are all guilty of treating celebrities and public figures like they’re more than human and it needs to stop. We need to stop identifying them as the characters they play or through the songs that they write. Another example that’s been pointed out a few times in some recent articles I've written – not to mention by my lovely friend Kat whom I enjoy having spirited debates with – John Lennon. I am an avid Beatles fan. They’re probably one of my favorite bands – top five for sure. I believe that they have made a huge impact in the music industry. I believe that they’re one of the most influential bands of all time. I believe that every single member of that band was necessary to create the magic that they made (yes, even Ringo). However – and this is a big one guys – John Lennon was a wretched, womanizing wife beater. This isn't opinion. It’s public fact – a fact that Lennon himself admitted to and pretty unapologetically acknowledged. Despite this, most Beatles fan look to him as an icon and a beacon of peace – the sort of human being that we should strive to be.

Personally, I've always been the sort of person who leans towards separating the art from the artist (but I can totally understand one’s inability to do this because art is personal and we put ourselves into our art) – however, even if I believe that I think that separating the art from the artist shouldn't mean saying, “Well yeah maybe he did these terrible things but he made so much meaningful music….” and just letting yourself forget the ugliness. The Beatles’ music – like the Cosby Show – meant a lot to a lot of people and held much social importance during the time in which they were created. Do I think we should throw that away? I don’t, personally. However, I think that we need to take a step back and understand that regardless of the art these people have created, they should not be canonized by us. This is the true issue: can we as a society learn from this and really move forward towards a more realistic attitude towards celebrities?

Thankfully, in the age of social media, it’s harder for the famous to get away with as much and fly under the radar of public scrutiny regarding dark issues that they want ignored. Information is so much easier to find, it’s so much more tangible. And the Twitterverse will rip you to SHREDS. Bill Cosby learned that lesson when his INSANE marketing team came up with the idea of doing a meme contest amid all these rape allegations. And Cosby probably honestly was surprised that it turned out the way it did – with hundreds of “rape”-themed memes popping up everywhere. He had managed for a good four decades to get away with his crimes, flaunting his power and using intimidation to get away with anything he wanted while managing to convince the world to love him. I bet he’s sitting somewhere right now, confused that things have escalated with no sign of calming down. He’s been entitled for too long. This must be very very confusing for him.

At the end of the day, though, who knows what will really change – but my hope is that people don’t simply look at Bill Cosby as a monster and close their eyes to the bigger picture. The celebrity arena is filled with people we look up to and who are capable of terrible things and have done them. But creating a world where we bring these people back down to our levels – as humans – we make it harder for them to continue decades of pathological criminal behavior without punishment. And in the meantime, take to social media and create awareness because sometimes (like now) it’s the only real weapon we have.