crooked house

Mommy Bloggers On Oprah and Heather Armstrong's It Sucked

Yesterday I watched the Oprah show featuring Cheryl Hines from In the Motherhood and a number of mommy bloggers, many of them from among those who do the Momversations videos, including Heather Armstrong of dooce, whose book I discuss below. What was most fascinating was that it looked as if the producers of the Momversations videos produced this particular Oprah show -- even the flowery mod graphics were similar. The episode was a funny, lighthearted, and very superficial look at how difficult and draining motherhood is, how most of us do it pretty badly at least some of the time, how we feel bad about this, and how we try to hide it. Entertaining, if a bit thin. And then, at the very end of the show, a woman in the audience rambled on a bit about how mothers shouldn't judge one another and that we judge from a place of insecurity. Both reasonable statements, in my view, if about as easy to actually apply to one's behaviour as the Golden Rule. She went on to say something like "there is no right or wrong answer [in terms of mothering]." And Oprah chimed in to amend that remark in her authoritative way with "when you're working in the best interests of your children" or words to that effect. Unfortunately, neither the original statement or the amended one, the one with the Oprah seal of approval, is true. There may very well be a large number of right ways to raise children but any idiot can see that there are also a large number of wrong ways to raise children and that many people employ wrong-headed techniques in the firm belief that they are using these techniques for the good of their children. This is what makes it difficult. And difficult to talk about intelligently, without being either too namby-pamby supportive or too close-minded, judgemental and harsh. I know I personally veer wildly between wanting to join hands and sing Kumbayah with other mothers everywhere and wanting to pick up rocks and throw them at them (witness my reaction to "orgasmic birthing"). Actually, I'm a lot like my kid that way (although thankfully he has yet to form an opinion on orgasmic birthing).

Also on the topic of motherhood and mommy bloggers, on the weekend I picked up superstar blogger Heather Armstrong's first book It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita. I'm a fan of her blog, dooce, and I think I've been reading since the initial media frenzy when she became the first person to get fired for writing about her employer on her blog. Of course I only became more interested when she had a baby around the same time I was trying to conceive, and when she had a similarly difficult time postpartum (we both went batty, albeit in slightly different ways). Heather's sobering experience as a mother is a pretty common one, although it's one that's not usually articulated in such a frank and funny way. Unfortunately, It Sucks was a little disappointing. If you've read the archives of her blog, you've pretty much read her book. I was definitely expecting her to flesh things out in book form, particularly the specifics of her breakdown. It was as if she was afraid to stop being funny long enough to do this. But there is a real difference between the succinct kind of writing that works well online and the kind of lengthier, more reflective writing that works well for memoirs. However, my opinion, or the opinion of any other reviewer, doesn't matter. Because the book is already on the NYT bestseller list. And that's what most amazes and intrigues me about Heather's story, actually -- her wild success as a blogger. In less than ten years she has gone from being fired for keeping a personal blog to making $40,000 a month from it. She's become a celebrity, a kind of brand -- a sort of a hip modern Erma Bombeck crossed with, oh I don't know, Angelina Jolie. The story of just how that happened is probably worth a book of its own.

Luke Interprets the Radio News

We usually listen to CBC talk radio in the car. (Unless, of course, we're listening -- on repeat -- to tracks 1 and 4 from Fleetwood Mac's Rumours cd. If Luke had been alive at the time, he would've been a Bill Clinton supporter on the strength of his theme song alone.) The other day, the newscaster announced that Muammar Gaddafi is now chairman of the African Union. Luke heard the name as Abby Cadabby. As far as he is concerned, Abby Cadabby is the new chairman (chairfairygoddaughter?) of the African Union. I agree that she would've been a much better choice.

Blubbering for Joy

I had to go to bed early last night -- I was just too tired to stay up to watch the results. Although I did catch the use of supposed hologram technology to "beam" a reporter into the CNN studio. I think she was actually in Boston. But it sort of looked like she was standing across the room from Wolf Blitzer. She had  the glowing blue outline and everything. As he chatted with her image -- and it was a chat more about the hologram than the election -- he remarked on how nice it was to have removed the loud crowds from behind her. That's CNN for you: doing all it can to remove the actual news from the newscast. And who made the decision to introduce this somewhat goofy technology on that night of all nights? "It's going to be the most historic election in decades -- how will we top it? I know, let's bring in Princess Leia!"

So anyway, it wasn't until I was getting Luke ready for preschool that I heard the news. And started crying with happiness. Yay, Obama! Congratulations, America. You look beautiful.

When Luke gets home, we're going to put on "Age of Aquarius" and dance around the living room.

Sex in the City Goes Square Pegs

Candace Bushnell is set to write The Carrie Diaries, a YA novel about "Sex and the City" heroine Carrie Bradshaw's high school years. The children's division at HarperCollins will publish it in the fall of 2010. Read Roger thinks Ursula Nordstrom's grave must be like a blender. The Observer thinks the proposed title is boring and suggests Sex Ed.

I think it's already been done:

Andy Borowitz and the Facts of Life

Back in the 80s, Andy Borowitz used to write for the television show The Facts of Life. Via Jennifer.

YouTube: Feist on Sesame Street

Luke's favourite singer, Feist, on Sesame Street. Via swissmiss. Hardly a day goes by here without a couple of performances to her cover of "Inside and Out."

Hear and Now

If you get a chance to see Hear and Now (currently on HBO On Demand), do watch it. Filmmaker Irene Taylor Brodsky's 65-year-old deaf parents decide to get cochlear implants -- and the story is both moving and fascinating.

Two Little Girls in a Little Dollhouse from Sesame Street

Here's a little sickly sweet nostalgia to go with your lunch.

Vintage TV Ad for Crappy Instant Coffee

Wow, times have certainly changed. In our house, I'm the one who's a total ass if I don't get a good cup of coffee. Via the extremely entertaining [BB-Blog].

A Summer to Die, Echoes of a Summer, Poetry for Tots, The Return of Jezebel Jones, and The Tudors

Since Luke turned three we've signed up for every activity under the sun. We started preschool yesterday and gymnastics today, both of which seemed pretty successful. Well, the gymnastics ended in tears but that was because I hadn't had enough lunch. Seriously, though, I'm exhausted -- from the strain of sitting back and letting him go. I'd like to write a proper post but find I can't string two sentences together. So I'll just post a bunch of quick links to stuff I've found lately:

This Boston Globe profile of Lois Lowry reminded me of her A Summer to Die, a book I read and was floored by as a child. It's written from the point-of-view of a girl whose sister is terminally ill with leukemia. There's a frightening scene where the sister suffers a seemingly unstoppable nosebleed -- for years after I read it every time my nose bled I thought I was going to die. Actually, to be honest, every time my nose bleeds now, I still think I'm going to die. I've reserved the book at the library, to see how it stands up. For some reason, it is linked inextricably in my mind with the 1976 Jodie Foster tearjerker Echoes of a Summer, which was played repeatedly on television here in the late 70s and early 80s. It's about a precocious eleven-year-old girl with an incurable heart condition whose parents take her to their summer home at the seashore to die. I don't know if it's supposed to be set in Chester, Nova Scotia -- a village near here where a lot of wealthy Americans have summer homes -- but it was definitely filmed there.

HBO has a new Classical Baby series -- this one's devoted to poetry. We don't get HBO so Luke and I will probably pick up the DVD. You can watch animated versions of three poems by Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, and Garcia Lorca here, read by the poets themselves. I love Gertrude Stein's voice. Via  Omnivoracious.

If CAAF and Gwenda say that The Return of Jezebel Jones was bad, then it was bad -- but I'm surprised. I never got to see any of the episodes -- I'm not sure if I just missed them or if they didn't show here in Canada. And I can't view the ones available at Fox on Demand because I'm located in Canada. (BOO.) I wish Sherman-Palladino would put the scripts online or make them into a novel or something. The premise is too good to give up on.

So last year before we went to Paris, I did a little preparatory reading including Antonia Fraser's Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King and Marie Antoinette. (Ugh. The cover image wasn't of Kirsten Dunst at the time.) Fraser's writing so engaging and readable that I promptly borrowed all the other books by her I could find at the library and read them all in quick succession. I can't even remember what they all were but I do know that one of them was The Wives of Henry VIII. Unfortunately, that messy little binge on historical biography did nothing to clarify my confusion about the history of the British royalty, a subject I've had very spotty knowledge about ever since we covered it in the 8th grade. In fact, it worsened it because now, instead of simply mixing up the British kings with each other, I now get them mixed up with the French ones. So I was pleased to find that I sort of knew who people were when I started watching Showtime's The Tudors series on DVD last weekend. That is, I thought I knew what was what -- until Henry's sister Margaret married and promptly murdered the elderly King of Portugal by smothering him with a pillow as he slept. I think I would've remembered that. The scene sent me instantly to google where I discovered that the makers of The Tudors have taken great liberties with historical accuracy. In the series, Henry's sister Margaret is actually a composite of his two sisters, Mary and Margaret (which really messes up subsequent history, since they were the ancestors of Lady Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots respectively. I think. I wouldn't take my word for it, if I were you.) And while Mary was married off to a much older man -- the king of France -- neither of them killed their husbands. Oh well, at least Jonathan Rhys Meyers is mesmerizing to watch. The Bloopers are fun, too. I was most impressed with how the actors could instantly transition from goofing around to seriously impressive emoting. Most of the time I can't even act convincingly as myself.