Cosmo Gives Us the Guy Truth

As usual, Cosmo is here to solve all of our relationship problems. Check out this piece of advice from the April 2010 issue - it's from a piece called Guy Truth, apparently written by a guy, on a page titled The Guy Report in a section called Man Manual. So there's no way that this advice could possibly go wrong.

Q: I had a great date, but the guy said he doesn't want kids. Should I tell him that's unacceptable?

A: Um, no - just move on. But do you really want to ignore potential due to an offhand comment?

In only two short sentences, Cosmo manages to give two contradictory pieces of advice, both of them bad. It's almost impressive.

I will say that I laughed at the way the question was worded. It's not 'should I tell him that I do want kids?' or 'is it too early to talk to him about the fact that we don't agree on something this important?' or something like that. No, it's 'should I tell him that I will not accept the fact that he doesn't want kids?' But let's overlook that minor issue with the question so we can move on to the real fun in the answer.

Our advice in sentence one of the answer is to "just move on" without telling him that the reason is his "unacceptable" comment about having kids. Why bother with any of that pesky honesty or communication stuff, right? Just leave him hanging! Let him wonder what went wrong. It's the fun and fearless thing to do.

The totally different advice in sentence two is to think about not moving on because after all, this guy might have "potential", which shouldn't be ignored because of an "offhand comment". First of all, does 'I don't want kids' really qualify as an offhand comment? I mean, 'I don't like guacamole' is an offhand comment. 'I'm not a big hockey fan' is an offhand comment. 'I think Avatar kinda sucked' is an offhand comment. 'I don't want to have children' is a different story.

Oh, but wait. I left out the best part. The inset photo with this piece is of a male lion with a cub, and the caption says, "He's not wild about kids...yet." So that brings us full-on into 'hang in there girl, you can totally change his mind!' territory, and we all know that always works out for the best. Sure, it's possible that this particular guy might change his mind - we're not told his age or anything else about him that might help us determine how likely that is - but it's not that smart to advise Ms. Unacceptable to bank on Mr. Potential having a change of heart in the future.

So, let's review this advice. You shouldn't tell this guy that you won't accept the fact that he doesn't want kids. You should just move on. But you shouldn't just move on because he has potential, and potential apparently means the vague hope that someday he'll change his mind and decide that he's "wild" about the idea of having kids. At no time should you ever consider having an actual conversation with him about any of this. And all of this after only one date. Cosmo is truly amazing. I can't wait to read the follow-up article with the photos from the Unacceptable/Potential wedding.


As a bonus, here are the other two questions and answers from this article.

Q: Why does he invite me over and then just play video games?

A: You keep tolerating it, so he keeps doing it.

This is an easy one. Obviously the true answer to this question can be found through careful study of I Read While He Plays Video Games.

Q: I told my man I had dinner with my ex, and he got mad. He knows we're friends, so why the big deal?

A: One, dinner sounds like a date. Two, you told him after the fact.

For this one, I'm just going to share our actual conversation.

Jezebel: I have to laugh at 'dinner sounds like a date'. Like, you should have met your ex for brunch, that's less threatening.

Lilith: Uh oh. Dinner is a date? I have a lot of explaining to do to you. And Eve. And Mary. And my parents.

Jezebel: Seriously. Who knew?

Lilith: OMG I'm such a dinner slut!

Jezebel: If only we had learned to speak Cosmo sooner.

Based on this Cosmo dinner-is-just-like-a-date formula, Lilith and I are practically common law spouses at this point. We're thinking of registering at Target and Pottery Barn.

Who is iamamiwhoami?

I've been following this iamamiwhoami viral campaign for awhile now thanks to Oh No They Didn't, so I thought I'd share the creeptastic goodness with all of you. If you're not familiar with it, basically a mystery artist calling herself iamamiwhoami has been uploading these videos to YouTube and sending them to some music blogs for the last couple of months, and there's been a big guessing game about who she might be. The videos are...well, no summary that I do is going to be better than just watching them. Here are the first six videos in the order that they were released (if you're the type of person who's really easily creeped out, don't watch these alone/in the dark/before bed/whatever):




















There's a great summary and analysis of the mandragora imagery in the videos at Necessary Voodoo, so it's a good place to start if you find this whole thing interesting:

These videos are based on the myth of mandragora as an anthropomorphic figure: For more information, read about the myth in it's entirety here. The gist of these video clips are the life of a mandragora: It's conception, it's womb-state, it's birth, it's life after birth, it's coming of age. The animals in each video are allegories for the video it's self...in video one, you have footage of a goat in the throes of labor. In video one, you also have our little mandragora, in the throes of labor, albeit from the baby's point of view. In video four, you have a carpenter bee, an animal who creats it's nest by drilling holes into trees. In video four, you also have our mandragora 'nesting' by drilling and fucking up some trees. Video five, a llama spits at it's aggressors. Video five, again, mandragora spits at it's aggressors (dogs)--which of course, goes along with the mandragora mythos and their interconnection with black dogs.

The 'serious' guesses about who iamamiwhoami might be ranged from Christina Aguilera (some of her fans really really wanted it to be her) to The Knife to Goldfrapp to Lykke Li. The totally unserious guesses were hilarious: Paris Hilton, Heidi Montag, Ke$ha, Justin Bieber, Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, and so on. But the recently released seventh video has produced the best theory so far about the identity of iamamiwhoami:





After this video was released, several ONTD members did some detective work and concluded that iamamiwhoami is Swedish singer Jonna Lee. The investigation really gets going in this post and then continues into this one. (You have to be an ONTD member to see the second one but you can get the idea from the first, or you can just take my word for it.) It's pretty convincing, so some music blogs quickly ran with it and even MTV got involved, which is only shocking in the sense that it's MTV bothering to care about a music-related story.

Here's Jonna:




She's performing at SXSW this week, so if she is iamamiwhoami that may be when some kind of reveal happens. Personally, I like the music and I appreciate someone trying to do something kinda weird and creative and different, so I'll keep following to see what's next. What do you all think? Is it Jonna, or someone else? Do you care? Do you like the music? Are viral campaigns like this cool, or a waste of time? Are you hungry for one of those strawberry cake things now?

We haven't been slacking...

Well okay, we have been. We are always slacking. But the reason for our brief 'hiatus' has actually been Mother Nature herself. For those of you not in the area, this (and this) happened in New York this weekend.

In addition to the general annoying stuff (trees falling, fences breaking, aluminum siding flying off of houses) there was also the stuff that keeps us from Evil Slutopia (power lines falls, loss of electricity, and gasp loss of Internet service!)

These pics aren't of our actual neighborhoods, but it's a close enough approximation. You get the idea.

So please excuse our brief, temporary SUCKING while we wait for our Internet service to be repaired, etc. (We're sneaking Internet at work right now. Shhh!)

Is it too early to start obsessing over our summer conferences?

Linda Lowen jokingly called March "Women's Conference Month" earlier this week because there are so many events going on this month. In fact, the WAM! conference would typically be in March as well... but they're taking a year off to transform Women, Action and the Media into an independent national organization.

However, for the ESC... it's all about the summer! This July and August, we actually have two conferences scheduled back-to-back: The International Women's Writing Guild and BlogHer.


This year, the IWWG's annual "Remember the Magic" summer conference moves to Brown University in Providence, R.I. from July 30-August 6, 2010. Then we have to hop on the train back for BlogHer '10 in New York City August 6 and 7, 2010 at the Hilton. It's going to be an exhausting-but-awesome week to say the least! 

BlogHer '10 is already sold-out so if you were planning on going, here's hoping you already registered. (Even if you can't make it to the conference, any NYC-bloggers should still keep your eyes open for off-site BlogHer parties that weekend - more info to come later.) 

It's NOT too late to secure your spot at Brown with the IWWG... (You can register for a weekend, 5-day week, or full 7-day week. For those of you in the Providence area, there is also a commuter rate.) A little extra bonus...If you register and pay by April 15, you will be automatically entered into a special drawing: The winner will be reimbursed for the full cost of her conference attendance. Also EVERYONE who pays in full for their weekend, 5-day, or 7-day stay at Brown by April 15 will receive a membership for a full year in the IWWG (a $55 value). Mention this offer at registration. More info here.



In case you're wondering why you would want to go to BlogHer or the IWWG... here are some reasons:

IWWG "Remember the Magic":

• You Had To Be There... (At Skidmore)
• Our Week at Skidmore
• Evil Sluts and the International Women's Writing Guild

BlogHer:

• The ESC Does NYC BlogHer Meetup
• The ESC Does BlogHer

You know you want to be a part of this year's write-ups... don't ya? And just so we can bring this blog post full-circle and end on the same note on which we began: Last summer at BlogHer '09 we got to meet... Linda Lowen! Oh yes. Here's hoping Summer 2010 is just as good as (or even better than) Summer 2009. See you there!

Kathryn Bigelow: Queen of the World

SHE DID IT!!!!!!!

Kathryn Bigelow made history last night when she won Best Director - the first woman ever to receive the honor.

Her film, The Hurt Locker, also took home Oscars for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing (winning a total of six of its nine nominations).

Congrats to Bigelow! The media has been going wild over the fact that she won, which is great because she deserves the attention, but also sad... that it has taken so long. In fact, in the past 82 years there have only been three other women nominated for this award (Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties in 1975, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993, and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003) so yeah, it's about damn time.

"I hope I'm the first of many, and of course, I'd love to just think of myself as a filmmaker. And I long for the day when that modifier can be a moot point. But I'm very grateful if I can inspire some young, intrepid, tenacious male or female filmmaker and have them feel that the impossible is possible, and never give up on your dream." -- Kathryn Bigelow [Washington Examiner]

Of course, as with any groundbreaking or glass-ceiling shattering incident involving women... some of the stories tend to lean toward the sexist. (We all remember how the media obsessed over Diablo Cody being a "former stripper" after her win for Best Screenplay for Juno.) So what has the media decided to obsess over when it comes to Bigelow? Her ex and her looks. Of course. Who cares about the movies... when it comes to women, all anyone really cares about is her physical appearance and who she is or isn't fucking.

For those of you who don't know (although how could you not, the way the media has been shoving it down our throats for so long) Kathryn Bigelow and Avatar's James Cameron used to be married. And they both happened to have movies in the running for Best Picture. OMG! It's a battle of the sexes and a battle of the exes! Only... not so much. If you only read gossip blogs and entertainment websites, you'd think that The Hurt Locker and Avatar were the only films nominated for any awards all year and the Oscars would be the culmination of the biggest showdown in movie history!!!!!! (Even "bigger" than the uneventful Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie/Jennifer Aniston Oscar Ex-Plosion! from last year.)

Check out some actual story titles and quotes from this year's pre-Oscar award season coverage...

Kathryn Bigelow Looks Younger, Wins More Awards Than Ex, James Cameron


Bigelow beats her ex in a second category, her oddly youthful appearance. Believe it or not, Bigelow is 58. Cameron is 55. [Huffington Post]


Best-picture Oscar race is pure drama


James Cameron's Avatar was named best drama at Sunday's Golden Globe Awards. But Kathryn Bigelow, his ex-wife, picked up the best-film prize for Hurt Locker from the Broadcast Film Critics Association on Friday. The directors and their films are likely to square off at the Oscars. [USA Today]


James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow: Exes go from divorce contention to Oscar contention


This year's Oscars are being billed as the "battle of the exes," with flamboyant tech wizard James Cameron on one side, and Kathryn Bigelow, his thoughtful, shrinking violet of a former wife, on the other. [...]


But is this mutual "play nice" policy only to be expected in a town built on posture and artifice? Some within the industry suspect Bigelow would relish the opportunity to wipe the floor with her ex. [NY Daily News]


It's James Cameron vs. Kathryn Bigelow!


Forget saving the Navis. James Cameron's biggest mission these days should be to beat his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, for a slew of awards! [...]


Even if there's not much animosity between these two anymore, it must be galling to compete with your ex spouse for a Golden Globe (and then there'll be the DGA and the Oscar and God knows what else).No matter how much affection might linger, it has to be the most awful thing on earth to risk losing an important trophy to the life partner you dumped! It's like having someone run you over, then take your limb 20 years later!


I mean, if an old boyfriend of mine beat me for the Oscar, I'd beat him WITH the Oscar. [Village Voice]


The Bigelow/Cameron Oscar Face-Off Is a Battle of Good vs. Evil


Kathryn Bigelow, Cameron's ex-wife and the director of The Hurt Locker, has a good shot at beating him for both the best director and best picture Oscars this year gives me a sense of anticipatory schadenfreude like you would not believe. For all I know, James and Kathryn speak on the phone every day and wish each other's movies nothing but good fortune, but anyone who's ever watched as a smug ex goes on to enormous success has to place him- or herself squarely in Bigelow's camp. It's almost a good-vs.-evil thing. [Slate]


Avatar Owes Hurt Locker Alimony


What really added the sting to Cameron’s second victory was Kathryn Bigelow in the audience, who directed the Iraq war drama TheHurt Locker. Seven critics' groups named Bigelow the year’s best director, while five called her film best picture. No critical circle gave Cameron a best director nod for Avatar. [The XX Factor]


Well, Kathryn Bigelow is hotter than James Cameron


While The Hurt Locker isn't exactly my favorite film of last year, it's the perfect "I'm okay with _____ winning so long as ______ and _______ doesn't." [Fin de Cinema]


James Cameron And Kathryn Bigelow Oscar Rivalry Is Just One Of Many Feuds Between Famous Former Flames


While vengeful grudges are more often seen in Hollywood's fictional output, there is the occasional awkward scrap between the industry's creative minds — and it only gets more awkward when former flames are involved.


At this year's Academy Awards, filmmakers James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow will go head-to-head in the Best Director category. It's a tight showdown between two deserving nominees to be sure, but it's made all the more interesting by the fact that Cameron and Bigelow were once married to one another. [MTV]


James Cameron and ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow vie for awards glory


Now, as the nominations for the Bafta awards appear to confirm, he faces one final adversary in the run-up to an apparently inevitable haul of Oscars: his former wife. [Times Online]

Kathryn Bigelow Vs. James Cameron: An Oscar-Themed Battle Of The Exes


Kathryn Bigelow, nominated for The Hurt Locker, is leading the pack of Vegas odds makers with her closest rival none other than her ex-husband, James Cameron. Don't you hate it when an ex spoils the party?


[...] This time, it's head to head. This time, it's personal. Why wouldn't Bigelow want to best her ex, especially when he reportedly left her for his lead actress in The Terminator? [Forbes]


Divorced Couple James Cameron & Kathryn Bigelow Make Oscar History -- Will Compete Against Each Other


Bigelow was Cameron’s third of five wives and she never re-married. Ironically it took him 15 years to release his sci-fi spectacular Avatar, yet it came-out in the same year as his former wife’s movie. [Radar Online]

And our personal "favorite" from The XX Factor:

James Cameron Is More "Feminine" Than Kathryn Bigelow

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has earned as many Oscar nominations as her ex-husband James Cameron's Avatar, meaning that the media narrative of this Oscar season will surely constellate around the "Battle of the Sexes"—or "Battle of the Exes." A tiresome narrative, perhaps, but there is a way that their films do represent polar extremes.

No, really.  Of course, then when you click on the 'Read More' link, it brings you to the full article that has a different title...

James Cameron is More Sentimental Than Kathryn Bigelow


Cameron has a lavish feel for the tenderness (and violence) that springs up between men and aliens, whether the "aliens" be robotic machines or acid-blooded creatures who want to lay eggs in your throat. The dialogue in a Cameron movie is usually, as Hanna put it to me the other day, aggressively bad; Cameron is interested in dialogue only insofar as it positions the characters in his films for disaster. His characters are archetypes, always rushing onto the next archetypal moment, whether DiCaprio's Jack screaming "I'm on top of the world" from a boat, or Sigourney Weaver's Ripley growling "Get away from her, bitch!" as the queen alien menaces poor orphaned Newt.

Bigelow, by contrast, has a great directorial feel for the way dialogue creates texture and drama, and an eerie feel for the kinds of male relationships Cameron seems to care less about; you can see the evidence in The Hurt Locker and in Point Break. While Bigelow didn't write The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal did) or Point Break, she knows how to establish charged masculine space, and the dialogue between men in her films is at once natural and poignant. Perhaps that could seem like another version of men-are-action, women-are-talk, but it's not that simple, somehow. Cameron is, I think, the more sentimental filmmaker of the two; Bigelow may understand words, but it's the nonverbal energy between men she most memorably evokes.

Yep, because Sentimental = Feminine. And apparently Shitty Dialogue = Feminine.






The post-Oscar coverage hasn't been any less annoying...

And the Oscar for sweetest revenge on the ex? James Cameron won the divorce... but Kathryn Bigelow got the top prize


It was the night when the ex-wife finally had her revenge - and more than 80 years of Oscar history was overturned. [...]


Meanwhile, 58-year-old Bigelow - director of the Iraq war thriller The Hurt Locker - had slightly different motives for wanting the Oscar. Even if she is too polite to say it, what could be better than beating a former husband at his own game (particularly when the consensus is that he won hands- down in the divorce courts)? [Daily Mail]

Happiness Is The Best Revenge

James Cameron mimes choking his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow after she beat him out for Best Director and Best Picture last night at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. [Guanabee]

How about Yahoo Movie's Oscar Red Carpet Fashion Report Card? We confess, we do love to look at the red carpet fashion.... but it's annoying that the women of the Oscars are still "judged" by what they wear - and "how well" they wear it, while the men get high scores for all wearing practically the exact same thing.

Kathryn Bigelow - Grade: D


Although she looked a tad uncomfortable in her taupe gown, the night belonged to “The Hurt Locker’s” Bigelow, who became the first woman ever to win an Oscar for Best Director. Can you believe James Cameron’s Amazonian ex is 58?!

And of course, leave it to Perez Hilton to always get right to the heart of the issue:

Kathryn Bigelow Got Better Seat At he Oscars Than Ex James Cameron!

But we don't want to dwell on the negative. Oh who are we kidding, we live to dwell on the negative! But we're not going to anymore. No matter how stupid the press coverage might be, this is still a momentous occasion. After 82 years of Academy Awards, we finally have the first female Best Director.

And it makes it all the more special that the award for Best Picture was announced at just about midnight last night/this morning... on International Women's Day. That timing also reminds us that there are lots of talented women around the world making films and being artistic and creative, and we've got to pay attention and be supportive of them so that we'll have more Kathryn Bigelow moments to look forward to in the future.




Related: Can Oscar ever really be gender neutral?

Fantasy website creation

So we were slacking off on our blogging for a couple of weeks there. We blame the current political climate for burning us out and the Olympics for distracting us. We're coming out of it now though. But we have noticed something about ourselves - when we start to feel motivated again after a down period, we always get motivated about the 'wrong' things and usually end up going off and starting up a million new projects in the process.

This time, we've been playing around with some different blog templates and also some of the different 'create your own free website in five minutes!' services that are out there. We've messed around with Wix a little bit and we like it so far. Obviously we always like the word free, but we also like sites that make it pretty easy for anyone to build a site, especially when it comes to our consulting work. Some of the clients that we work with are really great writers, artists, etc., but they aren't always super web savvy, so we're always happy when we're able to involve them in the basic process of designing a site and show them that it doesn't have to be some big crazy intimidating project. And the more tools we have to do that, the better.

Has anyone else tried Wix, or a similar site? What did you think? Did you find it easy to use, and were the results good? Let's hear it.



*Website fantasies brought to you by Wix.com.

Deep Thoughts on the Academy Awards

We're not really watching the Oscars - obviously - but we're still checking in on a few of the happenings thanks to a few brave people live-blogging, posting pics and videos. Even if we don't want to support ABC right now, we do need to know if Kathryn Bigelow wins Best Director or not! But we just had to comment on a few even more pressing concerns...


Why is Zac Efron at the Oscars?

I mean, why not I guess, but that's random. Was 17 Again nominated for Oh wait... Nicole Richie is there too. My apologies to Zac Efron. He's like an honored guest compared to her. At least he's been in a movie.


Why is Miley Cyrus at the Oscars?

Good God. Not only is Miley Cyrus there, she's fucking presenting an award with Amanda Seyfried. And of course Miley fucks up reading the teleprompter and goes "Oh, we're both nervous". And Amanda Seyfried looks at her like Bitch, don't bring me into your fuckup, I read my part. Do they think they're going to pull in the tween audience to the Oscars by having her present? Get a real musical artist. I mean, was Taylor Swift busy? Ke$ha? Anyone?


Who thought it would be a good idea to let Ben Stiller wear that?

Ben Stiller is dressed like one of the blue Avatar people. Good God. Seriously, what the fuck? Words fail me on this one.