A Rose by Any Other Name Might Smell the Same, but It’d be Really Hard to Find in a Phone Book January 16, 2010

I’ve been getting a lot of mail lately that isn’t for me. I mean, it IS for me, but it’s addressed to the wrong person.

See, I got married a couple of years ago, and I didn’t change my name.

It wasn’t some momentous decision — hell, it wasn’t even a decision, really.

To be perfectly honest, it didn’t even occur to me until the following December. For 6 months I’d been going on as I always had been: using my regular old always-had-it-always-will name in emails and letters, bylines in articles, on my out-going voicemail — everywhere. So it was kind of jarring when we started getting holiday cards addressed to Mr and Mrs His-Name.

I know that no one meant any harm with it — though it’s funny to imagine someone sitting at their desk, licking an envelope and smiling menacingly…”‘NOW I’ll show her!” — but I still thought it was deliciously ironic that people who were so careful in their selection of holiday greetings that didn’t indicate a religious preference, were printed on recycled paper, and purchased from companies that donate a portion of their proceeds to needy children … made the common but blithe assumption that a married woman in the late 2000s will automatically take her husband’s name.

It’s always interesting to me when I stumble across these little contradictions that show we haven’t come as long a way, baby, as we think we have.

I want to be clear here that I’m not condemning someone who does change her name. If that’s what you want to do, then more power to you. I just want it to be a choice, not a cultural automation. Change your name, hyphenate your name, combine them both into something brand new — knock yourself out if that’s what you want to do. Just make sure it’s something that works for you.

When the husband and I are out, we occasionally get asked about the name thing and are culturally compelled to explain ourselves. He likes to say that I had too much invested in my “brand” to change my name. Which, while it’s flattering to think I might have a “brand,” isn’t really true. Because that would then imply that the only reason NOT to change your name is because of your profession.

And the truth is, I just didn’t want to.

I even really like his name. It’s strong, has good consonants, and would totally work.

But it’s not my name.

And for me, this whole thing fails a feminist litmus test when you swap it around and ask if the husband would take the wife’s name.

Until we reach a place where we can ask that question without sounding insane or laughable, then we still have a long way to go.

And until then, it’s not my married name or my maiden name or anything else that defines me by who I’m partnered to.

It’s simply my name. And it’s how you’ll be able to find me for the foreseeable future.

All the reviews since the last time I posted links to my reviews September 14, 2008

Even though I haven’t been posting all summer, I have been seeing shows and writing about them for our favorite tarty little paper, the Portland Mercury. Unfortunately, there’s more crap than quality out there…and since I actually like theater quite a bit, I don’t love having to write negative reviews. But I just can’t bring myself to suck it like the O or WWeek and tell you, loyal readers, that something mediocre is something great. Insert lipstick on a pig reference here. Or, a slightly clunkier takeoff on that: you can dress a creationist in a naughty librarian costume, but she’s still someone who’ll burn your science textbooks.

From T:BA:08, my favorite of the festival, Lemon Andersen’s Beautiful Struggle
From T:BA:08, Linda Wysong’s Backyard Conversations

From T:BA:08, Daniel Beaty’s Resurrection

Blackbird at Artists Rep

Pylon at Portland Ensemble Theater Company

Third Eye’s craptastic Cannibal! The Musical

NWCTC’s decent Troilus & Cressida

Profile’s mediocre House of Blue Leaves

Speaking of things that are over, the 24-hour Plays at CoHo

The usually rockin Do Jump!’s okay Entusiasmo

CoHo and Cygnet’s kickass 9 Parts of Desire

defunkt’s The Garden Party

Miracle Theater Group’s Oya: Call the Storm

The remarkably awful Scotland Road by Jeffrey Hatcher

Dreamgirls. Enh.

A book review! X Saves the World

Social Networking Sites are SO 2006. September 14, 2008

So I know it’s been about 79 years since I last posted…but I thought it fair to re-enter the virtual party with a little PSA. In case any of you were wondering, Facebook is officially over.

I just joined and am having fun wasting craploads of time looking at pictures of people I haven’t seen in 10+ years and their children. I’d stubbornly refused to attend the party for no reason other than that I’d spent a lot of time on Friendster, ok, and I wasn’t thrilled about having to set up another profile especially since MySpace just makes my brain bleed a little every time I land there and I really don’t have the time or platelet count for that kind of hemorraghing, ok?

But Facebook appears to be designed specifically for us aging xers who couldn’t live without our computers but whose brains were actually formed more by words on a page than moving pictures on a flatscreen.

But yeah. Since I’m here now, I’m pretty sure it’s over. Sorry about that, guys. But hey. It’s election season, so at least we can channel our time and energy into that, right?

The Vegetable Killer May 11, 2008

It looks like spring is finally here, only a couple of months late. I’m desperately hoping that the reports of 80-degree highs coming later in the week aren’t an indicator that we’re going to launch directly into summer. But, you know, the thing to keep in mind is that at least we haven’t completely screwed up our planet’s weather patterns.

With the new house and yard, I’ve decided to try to plant some things this year. Not like some crazy flower garden — I need a little more direct result than that. What I really want is to be able to grow my own food. Coming from the standard pre-packaged Chef Boyardee childhood, I find the idea that you can go into your backyard and pick out food to eat for dinner so completely bewitching.

Unfortunately, even here in the glorious Northwest where roses grow like weeds, a brown thumb is still a brown thumb. I’ve been nurturing and nursing little plants into life, some from seeds and some from starts, watering and tending … but the graveyard-slash-compost pile grows ever larger. If I didn’t bury the seeds too deeply, it was too shallow. Water too much, water enough? Oh and of course there’s remembering to bring them inside before the overnight, late-season frost. You know, little things like that.

Between trying to keep plants alive and remembering to feed the cats, I think my life-tending skills are stretched to their greatest capacity, and we’ll see how this goes. Adding to the fun, I didn’t label anything–so whatever does end up living, it’ll be a fabulous surprise. “Ooh, cucumbers! … Eggplant? why the hell did I plant eggplant?”

I was out watering yesterday, and the raspberry bushes are starting to show little berries, and one of the tomato plants … couldn’t tell you which one … looks it’s starting to grow fruit, as well. Fingers are crossed and eyes are peeled.

Maybe this’ll work out after all…

With a Name Like Botox… April 4, 2008

It’s got to be, oh I don’t know, TOXIC?!

Botulinum Toxin. You’re injecting botulism into your face. If you don’t want it in your canned vegetable, do you really want it in your forehead?

I just saw an ad for Botox. Their tagline is “freedom of expression.”

Totally reasonable. This is what the founding fathers intended. Free press, free speech, organized militia, and–injecting a deadly bacteria into your face in the relentless pursuit of an unachievable goal.

Awesome.

And I’ll leave you with this: the Botox website’s (ok, fine, here’s the link) first clickable link is the question, “Will I be able to make facial expressions?”

You know, I might be going out on a limb here, but if you have to ask….

Is it REALLY that hard not to be an asshole? April 2, 2008

I mean, come on.

What does it take?

A little self-awareness, a little sense that you’re not the hottest shit being plated up at the restaurant of life?

Maybe the ability to turn your own self-image issues into something besides complete derailing of the train to productivetown?

I really hate Wednesdays. It’s like the circus of asshats around here, only none of them do cool tricks and there’s no cotton candy.

Taking the Commuter Train to Circus Town March 30, 2008

It’s A’s mom’s birthday and we’re taking her to see Cirque du Soleil and then going to eat dinner at some restaurant that floats. Being a reviewer for the last year or so, I no longer go to see shows as an extracurricular activity. This’ll be the first performance in months that I’m not bringing a notebook to.

We went to Cirque when they were in town last time, and it was phenomenal. It made me want to run off and join the circus. Except I know I’d end up being a roustabout, not the cool lady dangling from a rope by her ankle.

Since we’re going out with mom and it’s her day and all, and we’re going to the “theatah” (in a tent on a brown site, yes, but still a big fancy show), I’m having a hell of a time deciding what to wear. I have to dress like a grownup most days of the week, and I try not to on weekends. I always feel conspicuously overdressed whenever I wear work clothes to non-work things. But I’m guessing jeans and a Portland Spelling Bee t-shirt aren’t going to cut it.

Runny: Everywhere You Want to Be March 27, 2008

Yeah so I’ve been busy. When I decide to get involved in stuff, apparently I don’t fuck around. I’m working my job, I’m starting my own business, I’m volunteering for the Democrats, I’m volunteering for a public art project, I’m doing slightly paid but not well work for the Downtown Association (see the super-rad new walking map’s website here), and I just applied to be on the board of an industry association. Criminy. You’d think I wasn’t a lazy schlub who loves her some couch surfing more than anything else in the world.

Oh, and we’re still doing the ridiculously insane exercise deal. Almost three months down. And I’m still swimming in fat pants but not buying new ones yet. I’m just walking around looking like a clown or a toddler (depends on the shoes).

I actually managed to split the seat of the pants I was wearing yesterday. Having done that before because my duds were too tight, I found it funny that it happened because they were too loose. I was in the bookstore and I crouched down to look at a book on the bottom shelf. And the seat of my pants, riding as it was mid-thigh, wasn’t inclined to stretch that way. Awesome. Nothing makes you happier to be alive than having an entire store of people on their lunch break hear your ass break free of your pants. I guess at least it’s good I wasn’t leafing through porn magazines when it happened.

So. ORbike did a cool little profile on me and didn’t make me sound like too much of a jackass. Here’s the link.
And here’s a crapload of links to Mercury reviews since the last time I barfed up a load of reviews. Speaking of barf, come ON, Portland. Decent theater really isn’t that hard to make. My standards have been sufficiently lowered by living out here for a few years now. I’m not looking for genius. I’m just looking for better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Scotland Road
Dreamgirls
The Importance of Being Earnest
Tales of Ordinary Madness
The Clean House

Bike Activist? Me? February 27, 2008

The weather here finally cleared up and it’s actually been quite nice the last few days. I bike-commuted yesterday and today and remembered that a) riding a real bike is a hell of a lot different than a stationary one, and b) I’ve got a passing interest in bike activism.

Portland, OR, is an incredibly bike-friendly town. There’s still a long way to go, but the  bike activism community has done amazing work make the streets safe and open to bicycles. The difference just across the Columbia River, in Vancouver WA, is enormous. Although I’ve worked up here for two years now, it’s living here, and trying to ride the roads instead of just the bike trails, that showed how incredibly different it is here.

Vancouver’s an odd little burg. Right next to Portland, it’s not in OR–so any laws, changes, progress that affect PDX can only be watched from afar. Similarly, we’re three hours south of Seattle, and a bit of an afterthought as far as Washington state goes. This limbo makes Vancouver a really interesting place — separation from the two urban centers has made it self-reliant and somewhat provincial, taking great pride in its mom-and-pop shops — but proximity to the cities has also made it a semi-urban escape for city slickers like me, and there are just enough yuppie comforts to keep us in the fancy coffee and magazines that allow us to enjoy the small-townness of it all.

Vancouver is historically a working-class town, home of shipyards and manufacturing centers — and a conservative town with a libertarian edge — where you hang on to what you’ve earned and damn anyone who tries to take it away from you. It’s a de-centralized city, with a small-town downtown and a suburban sprawl extending out from it. Vancouver after 1920 was built for people with cars, and the infrastructure has only developed to support that. Cars here are old and lovingly patched together, or new and large and loud.

Bike activism hasn’t really made it to the ‘Couv yet. Bikes on the road are seen as an intrusion, and riders are often menaced, pushed off the road, and otherwise harassed. Bike lanes, when you can find them, are littered with debris, some of it actually tossed out in front of riders. Casual conversations I’ve started about road etiquette generally devolve into what bikers do wrong, not what drivers can do better.

Of course, the situation isn’t helped by the riders who *do* act like asses, cutting in and out of traffic and riding without lights or helmets.

But change takes time and advocacy, and riding in Vancouver has mostly been the province of upper-class recreational riders in expensive spandex, and people for whom riding isn’t so much a choice as it is the only option. It appears as though it’s going to take more folks like me — solidly middle class, who might have a car but want to be healthier, and for whom saving $30 on a tank of gas might not make or break me, but will definitely make a visible difference in my budget.

It’s horrifying to saddle up and feel like a target … but at the same time it’s a little energizing … it doesn’t have to be like this, and there are things we can do to change it. I’m not sure what they all are, but I’m going to find out. And I do know that one of the best things we can do is to get out on the road and to ride safely and consistently — we have the right to be on the road, and we have the responsibility to set a good example.

Swimming in Fat Pants February 4, 2008

For the last month, Alexander and I have been on a ridiculously intense exercise/diet deal. We’d both been bitching about being fat and never working out, so I decided ok, let’s use this whole new year thing to actually do something about it, instead of just watching tv, eating potato chips, and complaining about it.

It was a tacit choice for me there to list exercise first–I’ve tried the dieting route before, and a listless, grouchy, fat me is far, far worse to spend time with than a nourished, energized, fat me. So we’ve been doing these insanely rigorous workouts and eating a ton of food — just mostly healthy food, and almost none of it processed or sugary.

If you overlook the fact that for the last three days I’ve been craving a piece of cake, riddled with poofy icing and floating in a little processed-sugar halo, why, it’s been working out quite well. After a couple of weeks of wanting to kill ourselves, we figured out the schedule and the energy levels needed, and for the last couple of weeks, it’s actually felt like we’ve managed to find more time and gotten more done.

It’s a 3-month program, and we’re just finishing up the first phase of it. I’ve held off talking about it for this long because if it was a miserable failure, I didn’t want to have to write about quitting it. But I’ll hold off for the time being on any promotional spots, and we’ll see where we are in a month or so.

I can say, though, that I’ve gone from being hobbled by my @$@$%# back, to gently nurturing it, to actually being able to run, slowly and carefully, for two minutes straight. It’s sad that 2 minutes is a landmark goal, but since a month ago even the idea of running caused shooting pains up my right side, I’ll take what I’ve got, nod to general fitness and my chiropractor, and consider myself ahead of the game.

I’ve purposefully not gotten on a scale or anything like that, trying to convince myself this isn’t about vanity, it’s about getting healthy. But I shall relate to you that my happy dance this morning when my fat pants were a tidge looser than I remembered from last week — why, that dance had nothing to do with general fitness and everything to do about looking at my ass in the mirror and finally being able to smile again.

New review from last week: find it here.