Is “The Sopranos” a chick show?

From Salon.com, “Why an ultraviolent drama about a New Jersey mafioso paints a more nuanced portrait of women than anything you’ll find on Lifetime,” by Rebecca Traister. She concludes:

Perhaps it is the tense power seesaw between Tony and Carmela that makes them vibrate like tuning forks when they are in the same room; or maybe it’s just some great chemistry between Gandolfini and Falco. Either way, every scene they have together feels intimate and familiar. Barreca agrees: “Those scenes were like listening to your parents fight, when you’re both horrified and compelled to keep listening. I couldn’t believe that she was willing to go as far as she was. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears and rock back and forth. I didn’t feel a sense of feminist triumph.”

So it may not be empowering. But it is engrossing, and confusing, and genuine. And who said that good female narrative has to be empowering, anyway? Better that it be smart and give us something complicated to chew on. “That’s why the show is such a treat,” says Barreca. “You get so tired of being served the dishes you’ve helped to prepare. It’s so good when someone makes you something you’ve never tried before.”

Note: You’ll have to view a brief commercial (no worse than a pop-up) unless you’re a Salon subscriber.

Lifestyles of the rich and obnoxious

According to Independent.co.uk Lionel Richie’s Mrs. needs a lot of cash.

The details of the couple’s split became public this week with the leaked publication of Mrs Richie’s formal court petition insisting that she be maintained in the manner to which she became accustomed during her 20-year relationship with Richie, seven years of which she was his wife.

The document makes for intriguing reading, not least for the glimpse it offers into the materialistic proclivities of the Richie household. “The respondent and I had an extremely lavish lifestyle,” Mrs Richie writes. “We could comfortably afford to spend unlimited sums on everything and anything we chose.” And she isn’t joking.

Detailing her expenditure, she notes: “I spend in excess of $50,000 (£27,000) a month for my own personal services, entertainment and shopping.” This includes $3,000 on dermatology, $600 on hair, $250 on nails, $150 on electrolysis, $1,000 on laser hair removal, $450 on facials, $500 for a personal trainer, $600 for Pilates and $600 on massages; up to $15,000 on clothes, shoes and handbags, plus $5000 on jewellery; up to $1000 on “computer lessons”, $600 on therapy and a similar amount on vitamins and health supplements. She also spends at least $20,000 a year on plastic surgery. And she adds, without a hint of irony: “These numbers are conservative estimates.”

Clearly, this is a woman with one hell of a lifestyle, one she has absolutely no intention of compromising following her split from Richie in October. “I know that he earns in excess of $300,000 a month, because we have always comfortably spent at least that in any given month,” she writes, pointing to his album sales, his lucrative personal appearances and the imminent release of his new album, Just For You.

She points out that she gave up her business as a clothing designer to stay at home with the children, and that revenue from the house she lived in before moving in with Richie in the early 1990s went straight into his bank account.

She estimates that the value of their home, the original Guggenheim estate in Los Angeles, at $40m and claims credit for finding it, buying it and decorating it. The 18,000 square feet home include seven bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, a music room with a grand piano, a billiards room, a wine room, a gym, a home cinema, a recording studio and a “safe room” – also known, thanks to the recent Hollywood movie, as a “panic room”. She says that it costs between $35,000 and $45,000 per month to pay the salaries and incidental expenses of a house manager, head housekeeper, three subordinate housekeepers and other staff.

That is not to mention the regular holidays in New York, Colorado, Hawaii, the Caribbean and Europe, the fleet of vehicles in the garage (she drives a Porsche and a Range Rover) or the multiple expenses connected to the children, Miles, nine, and Sofia, five. Mrs Richie claims she spends $1,000 a month alone on birthday presents for her daughter’s friends. Miles attends a boarding school in Colorado while Sofia keeps busy at home with school, piano lessons, computer lessons, art and dance classes. Her mother adds: “I plan to begin sending Sofia to a therapist which I anticipate will cost at least $400 a month.”

Link via Dave Barry.

No lie: Bonds needs a plan

Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle on Bonds and steroids.

It’s going to be such an exciting baseball season! The wild home-run race will captivate fans. Imagine steaming into September, Bonds and Sosa neck- and-neck, with six apiece.

No, Barry Bonds won’t be the only guy under the microscope, but it’s going to be a rough season for him. Fortunately, I can help.

All Bonds has to do is avoid visiting hotbeds of anti-steroid sentiment. My research staff has identified the two places in America where performance- enhancing drugs are truly frowned upon.

One, the Oval Office, unless Halliburton gets into the steroid business.

Two, whatever ballpark the Giants are visiting.

Everywhere else, ‘roids are cool.

Money quote: “All of this assumes Bonds cares what the general public thinks of him. This guy marches not only to a different drummer, but to a different band in a different parade.”

The unpleasant truth that life presents a series of choices

Caitlin Flanagan has written a provocative and significant article in The Atlantic Monthly concerning women and mothers and children and nannies and working and not working: How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement. What Flanagan seems to realize, more than most, is that there are no ideal answers. Near the end of her lengthy essay she writes:

What few will admit—because it is painful, because it reveals the unpleasant truth that life presents a series of choices, each of which precludes a host of other attractive possibilities—is that when a mother works, something is lost. Children crave their mothers. They always have and they always will. And women fortunate enough to live in a society where they have access to that greatest of levelers, education, will always have the burning dream of doing something more exciting and important than tidying Lego blocks and running loads of laundry. If you want to make an upper-middle-class woman squeal in indignation, tell her she can’t have something. If she works she can’t have as deep and connected a relationship with her child as she would if she stayed home and raised him. She can’t have the glamour and respect conferred on career women if she chooses instead to spend her days at “Mommy and Me” classes. She can’t have both things. I have read numerous accounts of the anguish women have felt leaving small babies with caregivers so that they could go to work, and I don’t discount those stories for a moment. That the separation of a woman from her child produces agony for both is one of the most enduring and impressive features of the human experience, and it probably accounts for why we’ve made it as far as we have. I’ve read just as many accounts of the despair that descends on some women when their world is abruptly narrowed to the tedium and exhaustion of the nursery; neither do I discount these stories: I’ve felt that self-same despair.

Desipite her cheerless — yet all-too-obvious — conclusion, Flanagan writes with humor and style. Further, the article appears to be a solid survey of the literature on the subject.

Where Is My Gay Apocalypse?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford has his camera ready and wonders: Over 3,500 gay marriages and, what, no hellfire? I was promised hellfire. And riots. What gives?.

Morford also tells us:

(Oh, and while we’re at it, God also really hates shrimp. Maybe you didn’t know. Shrimp are evil, as are all shrimp eaters. Clams, too. Hey, it’s in the Bible. You can look it up. Why the Right is attacking homosexuals in love and not, say, Red Lobster, remains a mystery.)

The Dreaded Dred Scott Decision…

was handed down by the Supreme Court on this date in 1857.

The Missouri State Archives has an extensive report on Dred Scott, from which the following is taken:

[Chief Justice] Taney’s “Opinion of the Court” stated that Negroes were not citizens of the United States and had no right to bring suit in a federal court. In addition, Dred Scott had not become a free man as a result of his residence at Fort Snelling because the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional; Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the federal territories. Furthermore, Dred Scott did not become free based on his residence at Fort Armstrong (Rock Island), because his status, upon return to Missouri, depended upon Missouri law as determined in Scott v. Emerson. Because Dred Scott was not free under either the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 or the 1820 Missouri Compromise, he was still a slave, not a citizen with the right to bring suit in the federal court system. According to Taney’s opinion, African Americans were “beings of an inferior order so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”… Taney returned the case to the circuit court with instructions to dismiss it for want of jurisdiction.

Gabriel García Márquez …

was born in Aracataca, Colombia, on this date in 1928. The Writer’s Almanac has a lengthy essay on García Márquez that concludes with:

In January of 1965, he was driving from Mexico City to his home in Acapulco when the entire first chapter of a novel came into his head. He began writing as soon as he got to his house, and worked on nothing else for the next 18 months. When he finished, he was twelve-thousand dollars in debt, and he had to sell his wife’s hairdryer in order to pay the postage to send the manuscript to his editor. That novel was One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), about several generations of a family in the fictional village of Macondo. It begins, “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude is now considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 and has gone on to write many more books, including Love in the Time of Cholera (1988) and The General in His Labyrinth (1989). His most recent book is Living to Tell the Tale (2002), the first volume of his autobiography.

Bob Wills…

was born on this date in 1905.

You can see the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee,
It’s the home of country music, on that we all agree.
But when you cross that ole Red River, hoss,
that just don’t mean a thing,
‘Cause once you’re down in Texas,
Bob Wills is still the King.
(‘Bob Wills Is Still The King’ by Waylon Jennings)

Bob Wills was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. The following is from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Detail:

Bob Wills was the driving force behind Western Swing, a form of country & western that was broader in scope than the parent genre. A master at synthesizing styles, Wills brought jazz, hillbilly, boogie, blues, big-band swing, rhumba, mariachi, jitterbug music and more under his ecumenical umbrella. He has been called “the King of Western Swing” and “the first great amalgamator of American music.”

Wills grew up in a part of Texas where diverse cultures and forms of music overlapped. His enthusiasm and mastery were such that he assimilated disperate genres into what might best be termed American music. (Wills called it “Texas fiddle music.”) “We’re the most versatile band in America,” Wills forthrightly asserted in 1944. He might’ve added that they were most innovative band as well. Certainly, they forced country music to open up in its acceptance of electric instruments. Even rock and roll’s freewheeling spirit of stylistic recombination has antecedents in the work of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

Wills was born into a family of fiddlers that included his father, John Wills, who regularly won Texas fiddling competitions. Bob Wills learned how to play fiddle and mandolin from his father. As a young man, Wills performed at house dances, medicine shows and on the radio. With commercial sponsorship, Wills’ bands performed on radio in the early Thirties as the Aladdin Laddies (for the Aladdin Lamp Co.) and the Light Crust Doughboys (for Light Crust Flour). Following a salary dispute, Wills renamed his band the Texas Playboys and relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had a live radio show. This exposure led to a contract with American Recording Corp. (later absorbed into Columbia Records).

In 1935, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys laid down 24 tunes during their historic first session at a makeshift recording studio in Dallas. The group recorded prolifically in the late Thirties and early Forties, laying down such classics as “Steel Guitar Rag” (written by Leon McAuliffe, the Texas Playboys’ longtime steel guitar player), “Take Me Back to Tulsa” and Wills’ signature song, “New San Antonio Rose.” Their biggest hit, “New Spanish Two Step,” topped the country charts for 16 weeks in 1946. Wills’ mix of horns, fiddles and steel guitar made for a uniquely swinging sound that grabbed the public’s ear at mid-century. The Texas Playboys always had fine singers like Tommy Duncan and Leon McAuliffe, and Wills punctuated the tunes with jive talking, falsetto asides and cries of “ah-ha!” He’d call out soloists by name and instrument, good-naturedly goading them on to rollicking performances.

In terms of personnel, the Texas Playboys expanded and contracted like an accordion over the years, according to Wills’ desires and the whims of the market. At one point the Texas Playboys were 22 pieces strong, although the band more typically numbered between 9 and 18 members. There were personnel changes and musical shifts as Wills struggled to adapt to the changing face of America in the postwar era. Nonetheless, there was always a solid core of loyal regulars in the Texas Playboys. After leaving Columbia in 1947, Wills continued to record prolifically for such labels as MGM, Decca, Longhorn and Kapp. The group also toured the country and often performed at a Wills-owned dancehall in Sacramento, California.

Would I like to go to Tulsa, you bet your boots I would.
Just let me off at Archer, and I’ll walk down to Greenwood.
Take me back to Tulsa, I’m too young to marry.
(‘Take Me Back To Tulsa’ by Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning…

was born on this date in 1806.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

What do you think, friends or enemies?

The Mint Museums:

Photographer Julie Moos shoots portraits of couples who are either best friends or worst enemies and places them against a non-descript background. The viewer is left to draw his or her own conclusions about existing relationships. By evaluating body language, clothing and facial expressions one is given clues; but the stereotypical surface evidence can be misleading. In this series Moos brings to our attention how similarities and differences can affect our judgment about individuals and color our notion of who is considered a friend or foe.

Omarosa lawsuit

NewMexiKen knows who Omarosa is but knows nothing about any lawsuit.

“Omarosa lawsuit” is, however, bringing lots of visits to NewMexiKen today via Google.

So I thought I would help Google out: Omarosa, The Apprentice, Trump, lawsuit, NBC, Trump Ice, Kwame, Versacorp, Protégé, Heidi, Troy, Katrina, Nick, Ereka.

The Boston Massacre…

was on this date in 1770. The Boston Massacre Historical Society has contemporary news reports and drawings, as well as historical background from which the following was extracted:

By 1770 Boston was an occupied town. It had been compelled to accept the presence of four regiments of British regulars. For eighteen months they had treated the inhabitants with insolence, posted sentries in front of public offices, engaged in street fights with the town boys, and used the Boston Common for flogging unruly soldiers and exercising troops (then acting governor, Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, refuted these allegations).

It began when a young barber’s apprentice by the name of Edward Garrick shouted an insult at Hugh White, a soldier of the 29th Regiment on sentry duty in front of the Customs House (a symbol of royal authority). White gave the apprentice a knock on the ear with the butt of his rifle. The boy howled for help, and returned with a sizable and unruly crowd, cheifly boys and youths, and, pointing at White, said, “There’s the son of a bitch that knocked me down!” Someone rang the bells in a nearby church. This action drew more people into the street. The sentry found himself confronting an angry mob. He stood his ground and called for the main guard. Six men, led by a corporal, responded. They were soon joined by the officer on duty, Captain John Preston of the “29th,” with guns unloaded but with fixed bayonets, to White’s relief.

The crowd soon swelled to almost 400 men. They began pelting the soldiers with snowballs and chunks of ice. Led by a huge mulatto, Crispus Attucks, they surged to within inches of the fixed bayonets and dared the soldiers to fire. The soldiers loaded their guns, but the crowd, far from drawing back, came close, calling out, “Come on you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire if you dare, God damn you, fire and be damned, we know you dare not,” and striking at the soldiers with clubs and a cutlass.

Whereupon the soldiers fired, killing three men outright and mortally wounding two others. The mob fled. As the gunsmoke cleared, Crispus Attucks (left) and four others lay dead or dying. Six more men were wounded but survived.

Captain Preston, the soldiers, and four men in the Customs House alleged to have fired shots from it were promptly arrested, indicted for murder, and held in prison pending trial for murder in the Massachusetts Superior Court, which prudently postponed the trial until the fall, thus giving the people of Boston and vicinity from whom the jury would be drawn, time to cool off.

All troops were immediately withdrawn from town. John Adams defended the soldiers at their trials (Oct. 24-30 and Nov. 27-Dec. 5, 1770); Preston and four men were acquitted, while two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and released after being branded on the hand.

The calm with which the outcome of the trials was accepted doubtless was attributable in large measure to the evidence at the trials that the soldiers had not fired until they were attacked. But another important factor was the withdrawl of the troops from Boston immediately after the “Massacre.” The sending of British warships and troops to Boston for the protection of the American Customs Board and the “Massacre” resulting from the prescence of troops there were, however, ultimately of great significance in the movement toward the revolution.