Pretty Lady for Hire

Yes, darlings, it is true. Pretty Lady sold her soul--or at least, her idiosyncratic Voice--for bargain-basement prices. Alas, one must live. Behold:

Extreme Window Shopping

Achieving A Timeless Style (on a Limited Budget)

The Ideal Cheap Date

Please to forgive the rather inane content, as well as the choppy editing. The commercial world has not yet caught up with Pretty Lady's more esoteric sensibilities.

As well, please do Pretty Lady the honor of ignoring the fact that this atrocity has her name upon it. I have been forever cured of the notion that having a professional editor actually improves one's readability.

The Return of Pretty Lady

Hello darlings!

Truthfully, I have been stalling. I have been unable to decide whether to make Pretty Lady an official archive, leaving her all perfect and unspoiled, or to forge ahead with current events, time permitting. Pretty Lady has therefore been in Limbo, although Time Out NY is now following her, much belatedly, on Twitter.

For motherhood has been the least of recent upheavals. We are living in Philadelphia, in the bleeding-edge community of East Kensington; I am a startup entrepreneur, much to my own surprise; and Joe is producing (and directing, and mopping up after) a heck of a new production for the Philly Fringe.


Since this is Joe's baby, and I've been wrapped up in learning how to grow a business (Inc. Magazine is now my favorite coffee break reading material, I kid you not), I haven't been directly involved in the process. But after reading the original script by Richard Kirkwood, I made the independent decision to get behind it one thousand percent, risking the possibility of embodying all kinds of horrific stereotypes in the process--Stage Wife and PR Harpy among them.

Because not only is it Noises Off-level hilarious, it's relevant. It's relevant to the bleakly absurd economic climate that's driven millions of people out of their jobs and their homes while the top .1% grow ever richer. It baldly displays the cant that pigs use to justify their actions, and the sophistry which makes asses of all of us. It's an extreme play for extreme times, and it deserves all the limelight it can get.

So, will Pretty Lady be writing again? Well, CBS Local in Philadelphia has hired her/me to do a little Primetime blogging, promoting a couple of shows called '2 Broke Girls' and 'How to Be a Gentleman'. Also I'll be working on an e-book entitled, tentatively, Pretty Lady's Guide to Harmonious Relationships. Also, there are about 10,000 things I'd like to say about startup entrepreneurship, which don't quite fit into the theme of my new blog. So that's probably a yes, darlings.  

New Blog

I'm writing about my healing practice, beautiful spaces and my gorgeous new neighborhood on my Practical Bodywork Blog. Come visit!

We Are the Dupes

There's a protest against censorship on the steps of the Met today, because of the Smithsonian banning of David Wojnarowicz' video, 'Fire in my Belly,' above.

I, for one, am disgusted.  I am disgusted because people are such goddamn dupes. 

You don't have to censor art to get rid of it.  All you have to do is ignore it.  'Censorship' was the best thing to happen to Wojnarowicz' work; tens of thousands of people have now watched this video who would otherwise never have heard of it.

We're still completely missing his message, however.

For those of you who are confused as to exactly why an ant-covered crucifix offends some people; it's because the message of Christ is that he was crucified and resurrected.  Ants imply the presence of rot; Christ, allegedly, didn't.  But we, the people, crucify each other every day and leave the corpses to rot.  That's the message.

David Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in 1992.  Today, there are saviors dying of hideous diseases all around us, but we're ignoring them on behalf of self-righteous protests, for and against 'censorship.'  We are allowing ourselves to be overtly manipulated by the forces which profit from people's deaths.

Because do you know what ELSE happened this week?  Republicans, on behalf of the wealthiest .1% of us, filibustered a bill that would have provided healthcare to 9/11 first responders who are dying of cancer. 

They did this because it is in the financial interests of the ruling class for the other 99.9% of us to be distracted and at each other's throats.  While we're blaming our neighbor for being bigoted, immoral, intolerant, depraved, degenerate, lazy, and generally a Bad Person, we're ignoring the ways in which ALL of us are being exploited by the plutocracy which is destroying this country.

Artists: Christians are not the enemy.  Christians: Artists are not the enemy.  I know that it is scary to realize that YOU could be the one abandoned by the system when you fall ill, lose a job, or help someone else at your own expense, but sticking your head in the sand doesn't change the reality.  Your neighbor is your natural ally, whether he be a starving artist, an offended Christian, an illegal immigrant, or a dying firefighter--as long as you look at who is REALLY pulling the strings, and refuse to be distracted by trivialities.

Wake up.

In Praise of Facebook

What's with all the Facebook bashing?  'Facebook users are narcissistic.'  'Yes, and also immature.'  Facebook 'friends' aren't real friends!  Get over it!  Move on!  The rest of us have. 

Well, I love Facebook, and I'm not ashamed to say it.  I love it because it satisfies two of my primary neuroses--wanting to know how people are, in perpetuity, and not wanting to pester them. 

I was beyond delighted, the first time I was 'friended' by someone from elementary school.  I had been looking for that girl for twenty-five years.  Just because we're not seven years old and living down the street from one another anymore doesn't mean that I stopped liking her; it's a real thrill to know that A. is doing just fine, is happily married with two kids, and living in Dallas.

Is this so strange?  Reading the comments in this letter, I get the feeling that there are a lot of people out there who can't understand it.  They regard Facebook as an onerous burden, or a popularity contest, or a haven for the self-involved.  But it seems to me that there's nothing less self-involved than being interested in other people, whether you see them every day or not.

The reason I love it is that it takes so little effort.  What's narcissistic, as well as time-consuming, is emailing a thousand people five times a week; Facebook is great because you can ignore it. You can share as much or as little as you like, and everybody out there is free to take it or leave it.

Also, it helps me to avoid one of my existential terrors--that of Calling At A Bad Time.  Thanks to Facebook, I will never run the risk of inviting someone to see the latest Harry Potter film when they're on the way to their mother's funeral.  I can limit my guest list to people who are not in labor.  I can send congratulations, condolences and silly jokes at the right moments, not the wrong ones.  How is this not a fabulous thing?

Of course my Facebook 'friends' aren't all my friends.  I'm not an idiot.  It's a good way of helping me decide who I want to get to know better, however.  If I 'friend' a new acquaintance and discover that she's a member of 'One Million Strong For Sarah Palin,' that saves me the price of a cup of coffee.  

 

I'm not going to 'defriend' her, though.  Since Facebook is such a minimal-impact medium, it perplexes me when people feel a need to purge their 'friend' lists for trivial reasons, such as 'I don't know who all these people even are,'  or 'We haven't spoken face to face in three months.'  The only things that will cause me to defriend you is: 1) I don't know you, and you keep sending me press releases for events in cities that I never visit; and 2) I know you very, very well, and you know what you did.

Tipping the Proletariat

Memo to Greg Beato: go pick on someone in your own tax bracket.

But if tipping isn’t exactly a rational exercise, it is an ingenious and metaphorically valuable contrivance. It gives plate-schleppers a chance to act like entrepreneurs. It gave men who can’t afford dessert a chance to act like philanthropists. It imbues the players on both sides of a transaction with a greater sense of autonomy. A waiter isn’t locked into whatever limits his boss might set for him — he can partially determine his own fate. A customer can exert some power in determining the ultimate value of his dining experience.

Greg, forgive me, but you've tipped your hand there.  "It imbues the players with a greater sense of autonomy."  Not the real thing. The reality of tipping is that it places the livelihoods of the lowest wage earners at the mercy of the whims of the self-righteous.

Ask yourself; how many waiters do you know who have health insurance?  Bartenders?  Baristas?  Estheticians?  Hairdressers?  Have you ever taken a moment to consider the economic realities of life in the service industries?

Let me clue you in.  A massage therapist who works at an average spa (as a not-so-random example) is a contract employee.  That means they receive a flat rate per service provided, which averages between 20-35% of the retail price of the service.  If there are no clients, they do not get paid.  They receive no guaranteed minimum salary, no sick leave, vacation, workers compensation, health insurance or overtime.  When they blow their backs out working on an overweight client or catch the flu from a sick one, they're two weeks away from indigence.

Your average waiter or barista has it even worse, because employers use tipping as an excuse to pay less than minimum wage.  It is perfectly possible to work a 9-hour shift without even a bathroom break, and net less in wages than your average customer just spent on dinner.


Under these circumstances, tipping is not just a 'metaphorically valuable contrivance.'  It's bus fare, groceries, diapers and the gas bill.  When a client exercises her option not to tip, she is making a unilateral, uninformed decision to deny basic sustenance to the person who has just fed her, cared for her, and relieved her pain.  Is this liberty, or is it exploitation?

As one Facebook friend put it: "The way service providers are treated certainly reflects how people feel about service--as though it were a terrible fate, but one that was deserved, thereby justifying the Darwinian bully attacks."  It rarely occurs to the American consumer that service might be an honorable vocation, not a desperate option for the ignorant and the feckless.

     
Greg Beato rails against making tipping automatic; in this way, he declares, we lose our option to 'starve the beast' of taxes, Big Government, and all the ills thereof.  So why is it, Greg, that 'starving the beast' all too often requires starving the ones who barely glean a living from the crumbs it drops, rather than those who gain the most from its excesses?

The Long Silence

I almost need to steal the title from Franklin's latest post: Patience With Everything Unresolved.  In fact, I almost need to steal Franklin's template.  Being is becoming, and blogs are becoming something else.

It's not that I haven't had anything to say.  I've shamelessly blogged my way through several major life transitions; maybe it's in the nature of the current one to be different.  In any case, I'm not making any promises. 

Briefly, the news is this: I've decided to become a physical therapist.  It's a doctoral degree that will take me five or six years to complete, including prerequisites.  Although I've got two bachelor's degrees already, they're--surprise!--virtually useless.  I recently sent for my transcript, and its dominant theme is 'Course Of Study Undertaken By An Adolescent Mind.'  People under twenty-five should not be allowed to go to college, I swear.

What this means is that I will be broke and working my ass off for the foreseeable future, which will not be a big change.  What will be a big change is that when I'm done, I will be employable at a solid middle-class salary for the first time in my life. 

This could not have happened if I hadn't become thoroughly and irremediably disgusted with the state of the art world.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that I am an idealist--stubborn, possibly naive, certainly foolish.  Art represented part of an ideal to me, and I invested a big chunk of my soul in it, along with considerably more money than my actual income. 

And 'art,' as practiced by the self-styled elite of the global art scene, is a giant confidence game.  I used to think I could either change it or create a niche for myself within it; now I think that my values are incompatible with its founding principles.  Continuing to sacrifice my time, money and attention to this cynical game doesn't make me a dedicated artist, it just makes me a chump.

I've long been aware that I have three vocations--artist, writer, and healer.  For the last couple of decades, I've been weighting the 'artist' as the primary part of my identity.  Letting go of that is a wrench to my ego, but necessary to my soul.  I will have a studio again, I will paint again, but maybe not for a good long time.  Now is the time for exercising my lazy but adequate left brain, and taking the adventure that comes.