Music Monday: Music To Wake Up To

I am not sure how this song came into my life, but it was used to cue us to cut the cake at our wedding and we now wake up to every morning thanks to the wonders of the iHome.

Why share this potentially embarrassing secret? (sorry, honey) Well, because neither my husband or I are morning people. I repeat. We are NOT morning people. But I dare anyone to wake up to that song and not be in a good mood.

However, in posting this, I discovered that in the grand expanse of the internets something has been forgotten. No one has uploaded video of said baby elephants walking to this music! Sure there are still pictures, but that simply will not do. Someone in the internets needs to rectify this situation immediately. The fate of humanity rests in your hands.

Your Friday Awesome: Smashing the Patriarchy in 140 Characters

I can't believe this Friday Awesome has anything to do with Twitter. When it launched I thought it was the dumbest thing ever invented, now I have two accounts that I update daily. No, I won't tell you what I had for lunch (unless it is @KungFuTacos and I saw awesome graffiti on the way), but it has certainly helped cut down on barraging my Facebook friends with links about things that I think are awesome or horrific and 140 characters is much quicker than a blog post.

While Twitter has revolutionized ad campaigns that capitalize on parodying anxious masculinity, and  launched the careers of people who may or may not be capitalizing on family members, one account manages to prove that feminists not only have a sense of humor, but are incredibly witty and media savvy.

@feministhulk uses the most stereotypically masculine of superheros (in tiny purple shorts) to create tweets that make anyone that has ever taken an introduction to Womens' and Gender Studies giggle:

Some have wondered if a male, violence prone superhero is the best person to use for project like this (hellllllloooo, allies...) but Feminist Hulk has an answer for them:

The identity of the person behind @feministhulk is still unknown, but whoever it is lives in San Francisco so I would love to smash the patriarchy and eat cake and ice cream in tiny purple shorts with them.

Your Friday Awesome: How to Thank Your Bus Driver

Okay, sure. I've taken public transportation in a number of cities and not everyone loves their job. In fact, some bus drivers hate their job and by association you, but can you really blame them when they get to deal with not so nice, or fresh smelling people all day long?

My new bus line is like the Cadillac/penthouse/business class of bus lines. A handful of stops on a limited rush hour route, frequented by regulars who can (almost) always get a seat. The two drivers who do the morning route are super friendly, timely and one guy makes sure that we know what time it is, what the weather is like and that he wants us to have a good and productive day when we get downtown.

Remember when you learned about bus drivers on Sesame Street? Its kind of like that:



It would be awesome to do something like this for them, but I don't think the guy that takes great pride in letting us know just how early he gets us to our stop would be too excited about it. Maybe I'll just give him cookies.

YouTube Loves Boobies, Hates the Gays

Today I was made aware of this awesomeness:



It gets pretty epic in the second half - camp and choreography and bears, oh my!

The first time I watched it at Jezebel it played just fine, but when I clicked through to YouTube I got an "18+" warning. Hmmmm...

So, being surrounded by investigative journalists and with two degrees in spotting the kyriarchy at work, I hopped on over to see if the original Katy Perry video had the same warning.

Yeah, nope. I emailed the director of the parody, Ryan James Yezak, just to make sure that YouTube was to blame for this censoring of superfun gaydom and this was his response:

YouTube put it up & I don't know how to get it off. There's nothing inappropriate & so I don't know why someone would flag it. You should TOTALLY blog about it. What about the video is inappropriate? I'm going to look into it.

Well, you bet I will, Ryan! For reference, here is the original:



So, YouTube deems boys in short shorts dancing with beach balls and maybe a very, very, very, very veiled reference to boy on boy beach action as "adult content," but a bare-naked Katy Perry dancing with a whipped cream ejaculating bikini top and a not at all veiled message that she and the women (and all "California Gurls" to which I as a woman from California take offense) in the video only exist for your consumption, is not?

Sounds like a homophobic double standard to me, YouTube.

Your Friday Awesome: Kids Say the Darnedest Things (about Gender)

These kids are amazing. I hope they continue to feel supported and strong and happy so they can remain committed to F-ing with the kyriarchy.

The best part are the conversations with adults. Unless you are a total asshole (and they are most definitely out there) you're not going to tell a 3rd grader he can't wear a pink scarf, hat and pants on camera. I'd like to think there is some serious thinking going on in those adult pauses.

A place where kids are free to be themselves and push adults to question social norms? That's what I'll be celebrating this 4th of July.

Music Monday: The Family Band

Who said Music Monday posts had to be only about deconstructing popular music or pissed off bad ass ladies? Not me.

I met my husband way back in high school, but then I went off to college and he toured the world, living on $5 a day, sleeping in squats or The Van, and generally living the punk rock lifestyle with this band. Then we reconnected about the time they became this band. And now he is in this band.*

And of course once your significant other is in a band, well then, you know lots of bands...so, many, many bands. But not very many of those bands are made up of ladies. Though we know these ladies, and some of the women in this band, and this band has a bad ass lady drummer, among others.

My husband has always agreed with me that there should be more ladies in the Bay Area music scene, and that we like hanging out together (duh, married), so he's been pushing me to do less critiquing of popular music and more making of probably not-so-popular music. So, on Thursday I picked up his guitar (rule #1: carry your own equipment) and we went to the practice space so we could make some punk rock (rule #2: pee before you leave 'cause ew, gross).

This was pretty much our first lesson:

Me: I don't know how to play anything.

(Not true, I can play "Come as You Are" as any self-respecting 14 year-old in 1994 could.)

Husband: All you need are these three cords.

(Shows them to me, I try not to get frustrated that I am not automatically awesome, reminds me that punk rock is sloppy, I remember that punk rock does not have valedictorians.)

Me: But, I'm not going to be able to transition quickly.

Husband: That's what distortion is for. Put in your earplugs and turn it up.

And so I did. And it was pretty awesome. By the end of it, my index finger was developing a blister and I had graduated to a thicker pick, 'cause you know its more bad ass, and I had a really good time.

So, I'll let you know how the progress goes. But until then, here is my inspiration, for becoming a bad ass lady musician:



And who knows, maybe a future Music Monday will be about this bad ass lady singing about something that pisses her off, though I doubt it will be considered popular.

*That band is super fun to watch, you should go see them, IMHO.

Your Friday Awesome: Pride

Despite the wind and fog, I love June in San Francisco.