Friendly Competition

Guys, in case you're one of my 3.2 readers who doesn't know me in real life and haven't been bombarded on Facebook about this: I AM IN AN IMPROV MARCH MADNESS COMPETITION! Troika Madness at HUGE in Minneapolis. My Twilight Zone-inspired group Pigmeat is in the semi-finals tomorrow night. I made a picture for our match-up:

Yeah.

Energy Drink Review: Super Shock Citrus

Let me tell you what I appreciate about the Super Shock products: they're no-frills. There are no flashy graphics or ad copy or design sense on the cans that are trying to convince you to pick SS* Super Shock over those "brands that you've heard of." And they were 2/$2.50 at the SA today, so pretty much I was required to buy one reg and one citrus flavored one on the cheap. Let's give the citrus version a try!

It's the middle one. But SRSLY, a good deal through June 30.

I'm trying to see if there's a website or something, but the can does not give me many clues. The Super Shock drinks are manufactured by a company called Monarch Custom Beverages from Canton, Georgia. They make private label bevs and their website is not really that informative. No info on Super Shock, but their main bottling plant is in MN, so that makes sense. Apparently the manufacture is "under the authority" of Norther Tier Retail LLC, which I also tracked down. Perhaps it would seem like Northern Tier Energy is just a big energy drink company, but you would be wrong about that assumption! Nope, they do stuff with, like, ENERGY, like refining crude oil here in Minnesota! They also own all of the SuperAmerica convenience stores in MN and WI. (SuperAmerica is used to be the upper-Midwest version of Speedway, BTWs. Freaked me out when I moved to Ohio and the theme song ended slightly differently.) So Super Shock is like the SA store brand energy drink. And you don't make websites for that crap.

FLAVOR: I suppose it is kind of citrus-y. It's pretty heavy on the energy/chemical aftertaste, but I don't mind that. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR, PEOPLE! It does not taste that good, but I since I enjoy ingesting noxious chemical cocktails, I don't care too much. If you're the kind who cares about "flavor," probably not a great choice.

EFFECTIVENESS: I'm about 60% of the way through, and I'm definitely perking up. I'm not going to lie, I also dig doing internet research about which company owns which. I get all jazzed up. Somebody hire me to do research for them, PLZ. But anyway, I drank the whole thing and have a decent caffeine buzz going. So definitely high on the efficacy scale. Here, let me make an energy drink efficacy scale in MSPaint.

It took me a couple of hours and I had to use like, math and grid lines, but here 'tis:

OVERALL: I would highly recommend this cheap-ass SA energy drink. It doesn't exactly taste good, but it got me up to Max Velocity-levels of random MSPaint art inspiration.


*Note to self, do not abbreviate this product that way. We've got Nazis in Minnesota, after all. TOO SOON.

An uninvited guest

Oh hey look! My BFF Sr. Depressington is in town!

Sr. Depressington makes life complicated.

I knoooow, it is so uninteresting to read about how depressed I am, six or seven loyal readers and random curious internet citizens who accidentally came here because Captain Awkward (kindly) keeps linking to that one post by the Sexy Gay Jesus.* I check my analytics page people, I know who you are! Or at least which cities you live in and/or what you googled to find me. But anyway, here's some things that tend to make me at least momentarily less depressed and/or anxious, so you should be friends with them too:

-This is the best thing on the internet. It's drunk and bitchy and silly. It's like me, but law student-y. (#whatshouldwecallme)

-Watch this show. Now. All of it. Laugh, cry, repeat. Speed through the episodes because you want to see what happens and then mourn when it is all over. Then find out which movies Netflix has that feature Yoo Gong (far too few). (Coffee Prince)

-Order this motherfucking book of awesome history/literature comics nerdery. I added it (among other things) to fill out an Amazon order for free shipping that I SWEAR started as a necessary academic purchase. If you are not already subscribing to Kate Beaton's comic blog, you are basically the worst at life. (Hark! A Vagrant)




*The SGJ is just about recovered from His recent re-birthday celebration, so I imagine if you need some advice, he'd be up for answering your important life questions or whatever. Email me. Totally.

What I'm up to

I know all .2 of you who aren't my Facebook friends and therefore don't get to see my constant finals/procrastination whine-a-thon are like, "What is Lauren doing since she released her last awesome video? Also, remember when she used to actually write posts?" I am not sure who you are talking to. Each other? Yourself? Me? Anyway, I'm trying not to fail out of school/life right now, but I've got some more (slightly-less-epic) recipe videos ready to be edited and I've also been working on a secret Twilight project since I sucked down a bunch of vodka at a The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1: Mostly Boring Wedding Crap screening a couple of weeks ago. I will give you a taste of the awesomeness/crazy ridiculous time-suck on my part to come:

We all do, Jacob. We all do.

Anyway, at least there's new Very Mary Kate. She's funny and also has a real camera.

I went to see "Eclipse," and all I got was this righteous indignation

Shockingly, the latest "Twilight" movie is super-terrible, but slightly less boring than the first two movies. Still too much horrible "vampire" makeup and sad-face from Edward and Jacob joins the team of dudes who want to control Bella. Anyway, the whole thing smacked of a fucking purity ball. The scene when Edward rejects Bella's sexual advances and then immediately proposes to her and totally makes it all better is when I lost it. That might have been about the time my flask was emptied of vodka, making the rest of the film more painful. Anyway, I used MSPaint to make a visual summary of the film's plot (sans all that stupid vampire/werewolf fighting shit that is really beside the point):

Pre-Vacation Provocations

These may or may not actually be provocative, but, you know, wordplay is fun. And now I will use this opportunity to post some Jason Mraz:



Anecdote: I once sang "The Remedy" at karaoke while quite drunk. It was difficult. There are a lot of words and they go fast. Of course, I remember this, and I do not remember singing "What a Girl Wants" with Julia later that same night, just the part where I was kneeling over the toilet in the Shari's* bathroom and realizing that this was probably the lowest point of my life. Don't drink a white russian and five long islands in a night; I don't care how weak they are, kids. Be smart. Drink responsibly. Choose songs with easy words for karaoke. All important lessons.

I'm going to the homestead to visit the fam for an extra-long weekend. I think I'm going to bring my laptop because god do I love the internet, so I should be blogging from in front of the digital cable. In the meantime, here's a couple links:

-Ms. Mix & Bitch, my new favorite advice columnist/DJ for your personal life, talked a while back about her love of her anti-depressants, and since I'm on the "thank The Sexy Gay Jesus for SSRIs, am I right?" train these days, I appreciated her general appreciation of finding the right meds to live your life without feeling like every tiny daily setback will cause the whole thing to shatter. Also, she's hilarious and gives awesome advice and playlists. Solidarity of the Depressed! We can get together and talk about how no one understands what we've been through and ill-advisedly drink lots of alcohol that can counteract our meds. It'll be fun. An Ode to Psychopharmacology. (Mix Tape Therapy)

-John Bacino, a friend of the dear Pretentious Ex-Boyfriend, has been creating awesome abstract digital art and putting it on the interwebs. (Thanks, Facebook!) Check them all out, but I found a recent one I'm particularly fond of: all the terrible acts i'm on the verge of committing. (johncbacino.) See the Creative Commons page of copyright magic.

-Lisa Kansas over at PunkAssBlog engages in a fascinating analysis of gender in relation to specific crimes. She gets to the root of some of the issues surrounding attempts to get men involved in/to the forefront of the elimination of a rape culture. Ch-ch-check it out. Rape and Neonaticide. (PunkAssBlog.com)

-Mirroring my long-held views about boys and guitars, the Token Sinner discusses how douchebags think that just because they can pluck out something that sounds vaguely like "Come As You Are,"** that means they are hot sexy musician men and you should probably just leave your underwear at the door, honey. Growing up with a music-obsessed brother (who never fucking stopped playing) and having dealt with someone who I'll just refer to as my Arch Nemesis, for whom the concept of Semi-Circle Action*** was invented, I was very reluctant to go anywhere near the guitar for many years. Eventually I gave into my musical desires because it's not like I was going to haul my ass over to the music building to play the piano all the time, and goddamn it I need something to sing to. So now I've been annoying my roommates and friends with the guitar myself. HOWEVER: I like to think my level of pretension is very low, and I assume that people don't really WANT to hear me play unless they specifically ask. Guitars: The Most Pretentious Musical Instrument Ever? (Sinnercyst, via The Hand Mirror)


*It's like Perkins, but in the Northwest. I maintain that the color scheme of Shari's is more pleasing than Perkins', but I may be biased due to having spent innumerable amounts of time and paper route money there in junior high.

**Is this a dated reference? Can 24 year-olds make dated references? It can be hard to say when one has older siblings; I seem to have a much better memory of late '80s/early '90s pop culture than a lot of people my same age.

***Semi-Circle Action occurred when my Arch Nemesis would start playing an instrument/singing and crowds of (mostly) girls would gather around to fawn over him. Actual level of skill or talent is irrelevant: a showoff is a showoff is a douchebag. Get over yourself. Everyone else: Don't feed the narcissist!

I wear my reviewer's cap for books, too: Pin-Up Grrrls AKA awesome book I wish I'd written

So, after watching the fantastic The Notorious Bettie Page with Ka$h (a rare movie we could agree on, though our local independent video store has tragically CLOSED and I don't know what we'll argue over now), I remembered I'd processed a book about pin-ups and feminism back when I worked in the library.* So I went and checked out Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture by Maria Elena Buszek and added it to my seemingly never-shrinking pile of books to be read, and eventually got to it. Can I just say that it was awesome? Because I am saying it. It was awesome. This is exactly the kind of interdisciplinary analysis of pop culture that I'm totally hoping to pursue in my academic career.** I have to say my main complaint was that there weren't enough illustrations. Sometimes she'd be talking about a particular image, but we'd just have to imagine it as she described it. Stupid lame academic presses that won't shell out for more pictures!

But so content: Buszek gives a fascinating and thorough outline of the history of what came to be known as the "pin-up." The coolest part is that she explicitly fleshes out the connections between sexualized imagery of women in pop culture and Western feminist movement in general. Just as fascinating as Pin-Up Grrrls is as an art history or cultural studies text, is Buszek's ability to retell the story of modern feminism in a really accessible way. She successfully uses material culture (pin-up images) to help illustrate how women were publicly perceived at various times. And so while we get to see the evolution of the portrayal of sexuality in popular culture, Buszek makes clear that this is part of the continuous historical narrative of feminism. Even during its "lulls," the women's movement was contributing to and reappropriating pieces of culture that were subversive, empowering, and celebratory of women's sexuality.

Buszek starts out discussing how the advent of easily-reproducible photographs in the mid-1800s led to the earliest identifiable pin-up-type images being disseminated to promote certain actresses. They quickly gained popularity, and became standard for any woman of the theater to have done. Some of the imagery was pretty risque for the time: scandalously small costumes, dressing in drag, etc. And though the styles are obviously dated, you get the sense that the women being photographed retain their subjectivity in a frank and anachronistic way. They appear to be in control of the messages they're trying to send, and seem to really relish their ability to buck contemporary mores restricting women in the public sphere. Buszek calls this an "awarishness," that marks early theatrical pin-ups as feminist in nature. And one of the most interesting and important points she makes is that though they are often created to titillate male viewers, women have always made up a large part of the pin-up's audience. These photographed women are allowed to transgress cultural boundaries that ordinary women cannot, and are rewarded with popular stardom instead of ostracization. The appeal is obvious.

In subsequent chapters, Buszek goes on to discuss the ebb and flow of support for feminist causes through the early twentieth century, using illustrations like the Gibson Girl to trace the development of a new, more modern and independent ideal of femininity. The suffrage movement was the main focus of much of the first wave of feminism, and some of its proponents didn't shy away from using the theatricality of pin-up imagery to promote their cause. During a quieter period of feminism in the post-20th Amendment, interwar years, the emerging motion picture industry brought with it a whole new set of pin-up subjects. Movie star fanzines have been around since the early days of silent films, and young women have long been their biggest consumers. The progressive view of women (and the special social allowances given to actresses) presented in these magazines and represented by their idols helped feed the incipient feminist resurgence that would come with the homefront demands of WWII.

The huge blow-up of what we now see as the "classic" pin-up image popularized by the Varga girl occurred leading up to and during the war, and captured an acceptance of a more overt feminine sexuality.*** Unfortunately, as we all know, the immediate post-war period was all about "get back to the kitchen" and judgey-judgey sexual double standards. And then came Playboy. The pin-up had definitely shifted from more subjective to objectifying. But rebellious imagery was still being created, with the mainstreaming of bondage-inspired photo shoots and such (Bettie Page!), even during the buttoned-up 1950s. As time past, the classic Varga-type pin-up came to be seen as, well, cheesy.

When the '60s rolled around and the second wave of feminism started heating up, artists and activists started drawing on these cheesecake images to express subversive messages. Conflict within the movement over whether sexualized imagery of women could really be considered "feminist" continued through the nasty sex/pornography wars of the late second wave and into the emergence of women of color and third-wave feminisms in the '80s and '90s. More recent feminist artists have again reclaimed the pin-up as a mode of expression, both drawing from and undermining the layered cultural messages (re)presented**** therein. This tendency to accept the artifacts of popular culture as important influences on our lives is part and parcel of the third wave. The difference between just kowtowing to any sort of exploitative depictions of women and realizing the power of such imagery and media and using it OURSELVES to reshape the message is the type of action Buszek is trying to celebrate with the writing of Pin-Up Grrrls. She has definitely bought into post-modern ideas of reappropriation as useful tools in feminist expression. The best part is that she links the attitude of reclaimed sexy modern pin-ups with its predecessors, the subversive and just-as-popular theatrical pin-ups of the nineteenth century and all that came between.

So: read it! It will give you great fodder for nerdy academic conversations about sexualized imagery of women, as well as a good grounding in basic modern feminist history.


Also recommended for awesome pop cultural feminist history magic: College Girls and Pink Think by Lynn Peril (especially College Girls). It's a good thing they always put pink on the covers, or else I wouldn't know it was for girls! (This is sarcasm. See: Pink Think and my recent HuffPo rant.)



*I used to work in the library. On campus. It was sweet.

**Though I have recently decided that when I get to grad school I should try and form a band because music is fun, and being in a band is a surefire way to pick up chicks hot hot boyfriends (the desired result, in my case). The MA/PhD/professor track is still the back-up plan, however.

***In a drunken discussion with Ka$h post-Bettie Page movie, I decided a classic pin-up girl would be what I would get if I were to get tattooed. Still thinking about it, actually.

****My crazy first-year course professor would be so proud of me for using this term this way. (Notice the single dangly earring. OMG.) If she remembered who I was.

Worst Roommate Ever: Peeps Diorama Edition

So I fail at life. Apparently the deadline to submit our Peeps dioramas to the Pioneer Press contest was Monday night at midnight. I didn't get around to it until Tuesday afternoon. FAIL. Sorry, kids! But I told my roommates that I'd post our non-entries on my blog, where up to several people might admire them. So:

Master Peeps Theater Presents Jane Eyre. Admire those flames, kids. Also: the giant dragonfly.

The X-Files: The Truth Is Out There (we didn't think of any puns). I spent a lot of time making sure that Ford Taurus was from the appropriate era.

Sorry I suck at deadlines, roomies! But now they're on the internets and we will be famous.