Watching • Wasilla City Council: A Reading

“Can’t we just say it was everybody plus Linda?”

A dramatic reading of a transcript of a Wasilla, Alaska City Council, by actor Chris Schneider.

What’s most remarkable about this meeting isn’t the cartoonish bickering about refreshments and writing instruments, nor is it that that bickering takes up most of the time. What’s remarkable is that despite all the other back-and-forth, the Wasilla City Council accomplishes all of its goals and wraps up the meeting in a little over five minutes. Of course, it’s easier to be efficient when you have one item of new business, but considering most of the meeting is spent on the subject of the unofficial refreshment fund, the councilmembers deserve some credit for pulling it together.

“Other people are here for principle, and that’s what I stand on.”

In contrast, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where you can have spent tens of thousands of dollars to get elected; you can conduct your meetings with the assistance of computers and microphones and human aides; you can adopt a formality of speech similar to all big, (self-) important legislative bodies; and you can talk uninterrupted for six minutes, and when your motion “dies for lack of a second,” stomp out of the meeting like a big baby.

 —Meave Gallagher, Oct. 15, 2008

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Watching • Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!

In the 1840 presidential campaign, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler of the Whig party ran against Democratic party founder and President Martin Van Buren (our first president born a U.S. citizen, and the only one—thus far!—speaking English as a second language). An Ohioan jeweler named Alexander Coffman Ross wrote clever lyrics celebrating Harrison’s military victory at Tippecanoe in 1811, and knocking Van Buren as “Little Van.” The song spread like wildfire across the country, eventually acquiring a dozen verses, and significantly outlasting Harrison’s monthlong and Tyler’s one-term presidencies. This video features They Might Be Giants’ 2004 cover of “Tip and Ty.” —Meave Gallagher, Oct. 14, 2008

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Watching • Anyone Else but You

First lady of France Carla Bruni and Nouvelle Star 2007 winner Julien Doré sang the Moldy Peaches’ “Anyone Else But You,” a.k.a. the ultimate love song for the socially awkward. Coming from French Elle’s Sexiest Man of 2007 and the world’s most beautiful first lady, though, it’s a lot hotter than when Kimya Dawson and Adam Green first wrote it to strangers passing them by on the street. Most notable about Bruni and Doré’s version here, however, is the inclusion of the last verse, the one no other movie or commercial or television show to date has ever allowed you to hear. Mme. Bruni sings it, and as she is fluent in English, you can bet she knows exactly what it means. Do you suppose it makes her think of Président Sarkozy? [via Kimya Dawson’s livejounal] —Meave Gallagher, Oct. 7, 2008

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Watching • Nailing It

I know that the whole world fell in love all over again with Tina Fey and her Sarah Palin sketches on Saturday Night Live the past two weeks. Of course she does a mean Sarah Barracuda, but in my opinion, Sara Benincasa’s series of Sarah Palin vlogs is much better. With Dina Saez as Palin’s “personal assistant, life coach, Jazzercise partner, and cousin Dina Heath-Barr,” Benincasa made 16 vlogs, which you can watch on her YouTube channel. More recently, the ladies partnered with the Huffington Post’s and InterActive Corp’s lighter political site, 23/6, to make even more Sarah-skewering vlogs. Because they have more time and freedom to work on their vlogs, Benincasa and Saez layer joke upon joke, creating if not a more nuanced caricature of Sarah Palin, a series more appealing to the political junkies among us.  —Meave Gallagher, Oct. 3, 2008

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Watching • Kucinich for the Win

Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is my favorite congressional representative. He’s intelligent and thoughtful, he’s vegan, and he doesn’t seem to have ever compromised his integrity during all his years in politics. Furthermore, the answers he’s always demanding from the Federal government are the same ones the rest of us want to know: What are you accomplishing? Have you actually read that bill we’re voting on? From what I’ve seen, Rep. Kucinich is the only guy on Capitol Hill willing to call out the crooks and liars on all their bullshit, as illustrated in today’s video. Though we can’t all live in his district (thankfully), you can be sure he represents our national interests in the House, too. Barack Obama is great and all, but he’s no Dennis Kucinich. —Meave Gallagher, Sep. 30, 2008

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Watching • SnagFilms

SnagFilms provides a wonderful service: it is “a web site where you can watch full-length documentary films for free.” The site hosts big famous docs, like Super Size Me, and lesser-knowns like Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars. Personally, I go for uglier histories like Girl 27 and the Medici trilogy from PBS, but that’s another point in SnagFilms’s favor: It adds films in different genres every day. Trust, this is not all wars and This American Life-style misfits. Make sure you remember to do a little work in between Peter Jennings Reports and Heavy Metal in Baghdad, because it’s easy to lose several hours to all the content here. Oh, right, and you can also post entire films to external sites; SnagFilms knows that free, high-quality content sharing is what the internet is all about. Web 2.0, I love you. —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 13, 2008

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Watching • Mexican Breakfast

About a year ago, a clip of Gwen Verdon, star of stage and screen, dancing Bob Fosse’s three-and-a-half-minute “Mexican Breakfast” routine to the tune of Unk’s “Walk It Out” appeared on YouTube. Today that clip has been viewed nearly one million times, and inspired a number of imitators. Now Ms. Verdon’s smooth kicking and hip-shaking has been synced to M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It,” and one of my favorites, “Supermodel (You Better Work)” by RuPaul. —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 12, 2008

» Watch more Gwen Verdon dance remixes at You Go Gwen

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Watching • Video Digest: June 27, 2008

June is the gayest time of the year, thanks to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (L.G.B.T.) pride celebrations happening throughout the month. This June is extra-special because same-sex marriage was just legalized in California; just last night as I was standing on Castro Street, a car stopped at the intersection and the man in the passenger seat yelled, “I just got married!” The whole block applauded.

In honor of Pride Month, let’s digest some videos of parades and parties past. We’ll start with a double whammy: Bearforce1, the “world’s first true ‘bear band,’” on a float in the 2007 Amsterdam pride parade. These four gentlemen are not the smooth-chested boys of gay stereotype; they are hairy and proud and unstoppable, and must be seen to be fully appreciated.



In Washington, D.C., they have dancing “cowboys.” My father, an excellent dancer, has always maintained that “real cowboys don’t do triplets.” Well, neither do cowboys in hot pants; the real fakers are in musicals like Oklahoma, truly the height of ridiculousness. These guys here are serious dancers with serious moves, no joke.



As a refreshing break from all those big, burly chests, let’s see what the ladies have been up to. Atlanta, where all the streets are called Peach Tree, shows off its Dykes on Bikes organization. Often the Dykes on Bikes lead the Dyke March, a lesbian-centric parade that happens before the big Sunday bash. Incidentally, this isn’t novelty, although costumes are sometimes involved. Dykes on Bikes mean business.



Tel Aviv held its pride parade earlier this month, complete with giant pandas, blindingly silver hot pants (again with the hot pants), and an Israeli-Jewish-Gay dance floor anthem with unexpectedly serious lyrics. Mostly serious, anyway.



Getting progressively freakier, put on your tiny pants and enormous (faux) feathered headdress and shake it at the Sao Paulo parade. Around 3.5 million people came out, so to speak, to celebrate pride in 2007, including one quite benevolent pope impersonator. Might the actual pope take lessons in loving one’s neighbor from his Brazilian friends?



The lesbians and friends of San Francisco gather in Dolores Park on the last Saturday of June for the annual Dyke March. The all-day event is long on gathering and short on marching, but when surrounded by a strong lesbian community in a collectively great mood, who wants it to end? When I attended a Dyke March one year I learned that sexual orientation has nothing to do with a woman’s desire to go topless. This makes the march much more rewarding people-watching than other nudity-friendly events, which tend to draw more older gentlemen in nothing but a hat and shoes—and I don’t know anyone who would rather see their grandpa naked than a joyfully topless lady.



Guten Tag, it’s pride parade in Berlin! The Germans call their celebration Christopher Street Day, after the June 27, 1969 Stonewall Riots on Christopher Street in New York City. That date is why June is L.G.B.T. pride month, and why the serious festivities traditionally take place on the last weekend of the month. Check out Mr. Gay Europe 2007 at 1:12—his name is Jackson Netto, and he concurrently held the Mr. Gay Germany and Mr. Gay Swimwear titles before winning the big title. He is also my new imaginary boyfriend.



Although the super-sculpted, smooth-bodied, square-jawed physique of the ideal (gay) man is as ugly a stereotype as the fashion-model-body of the ideal woman, there is something irresistible about the Mr. Gay International “competition” (read: beauty pageant). Especially the swimsuit portion, where the hot pants are shortened into teeny tiny swim trunks. It’s kind of exploitative and could give a person seriously low self-esteem, true; on the other hand, are you going to not watch a bunch of really, really good-looking guys pose and prance in teeny tiny swim trunks? We’re human, after all. Besides, there are several men of color competing, and Mr. Argentina, your 2008 Mr. Gay International, doesn’t shave his chest. This is the greatest beauty pageant ever; I can’t wait until 2009.



 —Meave Gallagher, Jun. 27, 2008

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Watching • Video Digest: June 13, 2008

When the need arises to indulge in the felicity of unbounded domesticity, not everyone is up to the task. Some of us weren’t raised by kings and/or queens of their castles; others were, but perhaps failed to learn such skills as home horticulture and grilling the perfect tomato. Would you pass this 1939 good wife test? Even granting myself half-points for things I do sometimes, and counting “has meals on time” as “comes to meals on time,” I scored a -3.5. In contrast, my partner scored a 9.5.

Low scorers, do not despair! In the interest of public service, we’ve assembled the following tutorial in the ways of housekeeping. Watch carefully, listen closely, and soon you too will be a domestic deity.

Lesson 1: Keep a clean kitchen. You will never experience true domestic bliss with a dirty oven, so at least take a sponge to it once in a while. It may seem like cheating to wipe down only the visibly dirty areas, but unless you’re performing an exorcism de cuisine, hardcore scrubbing isn’t necessary.





Lesson 2: Wear an apron. Whether you are cooking, cleaning, or feeling kitschy, an apron is essential to being a model house-spouse. Without my apron, I would regularly end up a flour-and-dishwater-covered mess. The secret no one tells you is to never wash it. That way you always look like you’ve been houseworking up a storm, even if all you really made were cocktails.





Lesson 3: Know how to remove stains. Adult bibs are not outdoor-wear, nor are cloth napkins to be used as ersatz bibs by tucking them into your top, no matter how much messy eaters would like to. All domestic artists should be able to scrub out a spot of red wine—you have budgets to stick to, after all, and nice clothes don’t make themselves!





Lesson 4: Make use of children. Before they know chores aren’t supposed to be fun, children believe that cleaning is more fun stuff that people bigger than them get to do. Should you acquire a child, strongly encourage this misconception for as long as possible.





Lesson 5: Place settings matter. To the more casual diner, more than one type of any utensil may be redundant, but good hosts and hostesses understand that impressing their guests means lots of silverware. In multigenerational families, setting the table is usually fobbed off on the children (age regardless), though that does not excuse the non-reproducing from observing table etiquette.





Lesson 6: Throw at least one party. This means that you provide all the comestibles, and in return your guests wear nice clothes, arrive on time, and lavish compliments on you and your abode. Hiding ugly feelings behind a veneer of politeness is called good manners, and we weren’t raised by wolves, were we?





Lesson 7: The outside counts, too. This means gardening, and as long as you have a window in your home, you can have some greenery. The environmentally aware homeowner in particular must pay attention to landscaping: lawns are out and edible gardens are in.





Lesson 8: Advance techniques: Reupholster the furniture. A new cover on your chairs or couch can change the entire room, and if you’re using the chairs you got free off Craigslist four years ago, they could probably do with some nice new seats. It’s much easier than it sounds, too, which is good for subtle bragging—the only appropriate form of bragging for the domestic artist.





Lesson 9: None of this is mandatory. Some of us have neither drive nor talent for cooking, decorating, or any home improvements besides occasionally turning on the Roomba. In this modern age, good housekeeping is a choice, and no one can force you to arrange flowers or make your own coffee table against your will. Taking pride in the home you make is the most important part of domestic deism, anyway.





 —Meave Gallagher, Jun. 13, 2008

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