Melissa Gira Grant

Angels of Light, “Untitled Love Song”

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:50:00 -0700

Angels of Light, “Untitled Love Song”

2009.07.03 / dsp / Melissa Gira Grant: After Nelson cut my...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:32:48 -0700

2009.07.03 / dsp / Melissa Gira Grant:

After Nelson cut my hair. I didn’t go in with a Laura Palmer pic for reference, but.

"Isaac’s no monster, though, or at least he isn’t meant to seem like one. His overlay of protective..."

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:13:13 -0700

“Isaac’s no monster, though, or at least he isn’t meant to seem like one. His overlay of protective self-awareness — his preemptive acknowledgment of flaws that you haven’t even noticed yet, the sense that he hates himself more than you ever could — has provided a reliable template for future generations of dudes, cinematic and otherwise. It’s this kind of guy who’d think to inoculate himself against charges of misogyny by having Bella Abzug make a cameo in his movie about a forty year old man who’s fucking a high-schooler. These dudes don’t just to get away with being assholes, they want to be loved both for and in spite of it. You have met these dudes. As kids, they were mocked for the same traits that they’ve now transformed into social currency, but this reversal hasn’t fully salved the wounded rage in them. So they are maybe going to take that anger out on some powerless girls, but they’re going to be so super aware the whole time, of what they’re doing and why. To paraphrase the terrible novel whose opening paragraph Isaac is writing at the movie’s outset, New York is their town, and it always will be. And maybe they live here because the city is like them: trapped between the impulse to expiate or to celebrate its sins, and trapped in the misconception that admitting to them somehow accomplishes both things at once.”

- Emily Gould Takes Manhattan, This Recording (via fuckyeahmisogyny)

"She had bequeathed me her vibrator, a strange swirling, buzzing thing that when switched to..."

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:38:09 -0700

“She had bequeathed me her vibrator, a strange swirling, buzzing thing that when switched to “High” gyrated in the air like someone’s bored thick finger going whoop-de-do.”

- “Childcare,” Lorrie Moore (New Yorker, July 6-13)

(fuckyeahtwinpeaks)

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:31:45 -0700

(fuckyeahtwinpeaks)

"Naturally, there is an NSFW variant of Look at This Fucking Hipster called Look at This Hipster..."

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:21:47 -0700

“Naturally, there is an NSFW variant of Look at This Fucking Hipster called Look at This Hipster Fucking.”

- Slate

Dared to post this (remember when this wasn’t for me)

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:24:09 -0700

Dared to post this (remember when this wasn’t for me)

2009.07.01 / dsp / Melissa Gira Grant: Half-broken body. I...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:44:39 -0700

2009.07.01 / dsp / Melissa Gira Grant:

Half-broken body.

I was told sleeping with my arms over my head was a sign of stress. Improvement: instead of getting good rest, I woke every hour to remind myself, move your arms down.

Reading this, on other birdlike bodies bent in on themselves.

Madonna wishing MTV a happy 10th anniversary (“Glycerin, I...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:46:26 -0700

Madonna wishing MTV a happy 10th anniversary (“Glycerin, I need more glycerin!”) is still so relevant.

"I have two scars from the rubber where I attach my garters. I would complain more, but it makes me..."

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:20:05 -0700

“I have two scars from the rubber where I attach my garters. I would complain more, but it makes me look good.”

- Christina Hendricks

LUSTY LADY: True Sex Confessions July 16th (with audience participation!)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:55:00 -0700

LUSTY LADY: True Sex Confessions July 16th (with audience participation!):

mariadiaz:

If you’re in NYC, come see me (and a bunch of some very talented people) read at In The Flesh. I’ll be reading about my “vegansexual” story. I’ll also be verrry nervous.

I’ll be “performing” “confessions” there too. And debating the wisdom/fallout/dealbreakeriness of everything I want to read since, you know, “true sex.” So you want to be there!

Fort Greene / 8:20something

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:04:05 -0700

Fort Greene / 8:20something

Fred and Rita will now show you.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:17:47 -0700

Fred and Rita will now show you.

On Periods And Such

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:55:33 -0700

drunkengenius:

hortenseg:

My first introduction to periods came from Andrea McArdle, who did an educational video about the reproductive system that was shown to only the girls in my fourth grade class. It began with her standing on a street and saying something like, “Hi, I’m Andrea McArdle. I used to play Annie on Broadway but today I’m here to tell you about your period.”

So for the rest of 1991, I couldn’t hear any songs from Annie without thinking of maxi-pads, which is awkward when you are nine. “The sun will come out, tomorrow…and you also might bleed for 5-7 days.”

Totally saw that video, too. And then they gave us free period kits containing ginormous maxipads (like the ones you get in restrooms as punishment for having not played nice with your weeping uterus) and whatever from P&G (they make Tampax, right?) which sure came in handy when my period came and I was home alone without my mom.

The video of the dude jerking off in the bathroom and getting a boner at the zoo, which was shown only to boys and later to the rest of us, was WAY more awesome.

Same here: fifth grade, 1989. Only it was like a filmstrip I think. And the part that scarred me was when Andrea McArdle is backstage with the other orphans and they’re all being lined up against a tape measure in a doorway. Once they hit too high, that’s it — no more Broadway! “That’s ok,” Andrea said to one of the ousted orphans. “There’s good things about growing up, too!” For a child who spent six hours a week learning tap and jazz from a former Rockette, this was the girl equivalent of getting kicked in the balls before I ever got a hard-on. I ‘acted out’ this womb anxiety by calling out another girl in class who whined that she’d just wear a pad “every day!” until she got her period, “just in case!” — “What, like an old person?” I asked the girl next to me, loud enough for the teacher to hear. Age kills dreams, girls. At least I can still do a triple time-step.

"When I read this post from Caroline McCarthy about moving from New York to San Francisco, my first..."

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:20:20 -0700

“When I read this post from Caroline McCarthy about moving from New York to San Francisco, my first thought was, “you’re going to hate it.” […] Look. You can certainly be a Mission hipster or Silly Valley type and have a wonderful experience here. But to do so you have to get off Valencia street and make some friends outside of the industry. You have to figure out what drew people here in the first place before it became populated by those stereotypes. It’s a great place to live. But you’ll never know that unless you truly live here.”

- Mat.

To whit: get dirty with the 30 Stockton, drink a beer at 6am with old men in North Beach, freeze your toes in the ocean in December, cruise the Polk and remember when it was the queer neighborhood to end all queer neighborhoods, make eyes with strangers at the Castro Theatre, come on to a rich man at the Fairmont, do the girls brunch thing but do it at the Palace and wear last night’s mascara, and skin your knees in the Stockton Tunnel at Bush Street in too high heels while staring up at where the fog eats into all the deco neon still shining up there. I ended up fortunate for avoiding the Mission for six years before moving there and picking up a slacker boyfriend. That way, wandering into Ritual every day to blaaaaaaawg for a job-sort-of could feel like a game, not the game, until it wasn’t and it was done.

GPOYwithacomputerinprintmediaW, after Katie. May 2006: the San...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:43:00 -0700

GPOYwithacomputerinprintmediaW, after Katie. May 2006: the San Francisco Chronicle made me Gen Y and also one of those bed-laptop-girls.

"According to the Center for Disease Control, you’re more likely to contract an STI from a..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:43:06 -0700

““According to the Center for Disease Control, you’re more likely to contract an STI from a typical college student than from a sex worker,” [HIPS’ Executive Director Cyndee Clay] tells the group. Already, my mind is slightly blown. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that a sex worker is a “dangerous” sexual partner, unlike innocent little Johnnie from IR class who looks virginal and clean as a whistle.”

- Word.

2009.06.30 / dsp / Melissa Gira Grant: One more for Meaghano.

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:12:00 -0700

2009.06.30 / dsp / Melissa Gira Grant:

One more for Meaghano.

"Take for example the moral panics around MySpace and online sexual predators. The data has..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:07:51 -0700

“Take for example the moral panics around MySpace and online sexual predators. The data has consistently shown that MySpace is not a site of increased risk for youth and that risky behavior is more likely to occur in chatrooms than on MySpace. Yet, if you’re a parent of a teen in this room, you’re probably scared shitless of MySpace. Why? What are you scared of? Are you scared of the site or the possibility that your child might be exposed to values that are different than yours? Are you scared of the display of sexuality or just the display of working class sexuality?”

- danah boyd, “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online”

The pink room

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:16:34 -0700

The old Victoria’s Secret was total cream: gold curlicue letters and on the tissue paper they’d wrap your teddies and panties and stockings in, too. I was fifteen. Mike and I had snuck in to see Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and I needed lingerie, now. I had seen lingerie before, but never on a big screen, never outside the Sear’s catalogue, never without a parental guardian, never with a fake id. Laura Palmer: I never wanted lace-top thigh highs so bad. So what if she showed them off best when roughed up by her own father. Mike stood by the dressing room door and looked. The white one that fit me wasn’t silk, but soft still. It crumpled up small enough to fill my coat pocket, to take to my boyfriend’s house. Mike was my boyfriend for a second. We were nine and then eleven. We kissed once and then he fulfilled the more important boyfriend gesture: held my metaphorical hand when I stood before him in that short not-silk thing. “Yes, that’s right.”