Pristine Angie’s Good Homemaker Adventures at www.d332.com

Ira Levin’s original 1972 novella The Stepford Wives was both suspense and witty satire. It told the story of Joanna Eberhart, a semi-professional photographer who moves to a small town in Connecticut away from New York City. Living with her husband and two children, Joanna notices the women of Stepford being staid, cheery homemakers who were obsessed with cleaning and cooking. Their husbands, a group of computer and chemical engineers spent most of their time in the Men’s Association, where women are barred from entering. She befriends Bobbie Markowe, a neighbor who exhibits all the traits opposite to those of the Stepford Wives. Together, they try to drum up a consciousness-raising group for women and bring feminism into Stepford. Along the way, they notice a pattern of change occurring among the wives. After looking into the newspaper archives, Joanna discovers that there once existed a Stepford Women’s Group headed by someone who was now only concerned with daily chores in her kitchen. How did this transition occurred and can Joanna escape the ever tightening grip?

The term Stepford Wives has become a household word in the course of thirty some years since it’s inception. Though no such town exists in Connecticut, the state of mind in the code of a Stepford Wife remains a point of debate between those who celebrate homemaking versus those who feel domestic chores are a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women from entering professional careers.

Though there have been several adaptations of Levin’s book, we shall stick with the original text to create a list on how to become a Stepford Wife.

APPEARANCE:
Be the picture of traditional femininity. Get your hair and nails done and be dressed well all the time, even if it’s going out to the driveway to fetch mail. Remember, you have to achieve robotic perfection. That means all that work and time will be going into appearing in tip top condition and being ultra-neat.

(note: Director Bryan Forbes made the first Stepford Wives movie. Because he insisted on his wife Nanette Newman being cast for a role, and she did not have a slender figure, wardrobe for the movie had to be drastically altered to “hide” her shape. This led to the flowery frocks that people have incorrectly come to associate with the image of the Stepford Wife. The Stepford Wife is a product of the male imagination at it’s most lubricious level. If you are at a loss for references to such imagination, pick up a copy of FHM magazine and multiply that with a Maxim magazine.

1. Always wear your makeup.

2. Always take care of your hair. Not a strand should be out of place.

3. If you are not well-endowed in your torso area, use bra inserts, augmenters, or the chicshaper. Large bosoms featured prominently in Levin’s original story.

4. If you are not thin, wear a girdle.

5. Wear tight, but conservatively-cut clothing to show off your assets. (Remember to wear an apron during housework)

6. Look in the mirror. Imagine yourself as a girl in a television commercial; you should look flawless, at all times. The picture of the Stepford Wife is the picture of a person who is healthy and takes good care of herself.

ACTIVITY:
Now you are ready to start your day. You are a domestic goddess and the home is your domain. Your home away from home is the supermarket. And the only higher power you answer to (and only when you are spoken to) are the men in your lives. That means, in order: your husband, your son, and then other men.

7. Clean clean clean! Everything needs to be spotless. Even if it takes a dozen repeated rubs, scrubs, and buff in the same spot. Clean and clean some more, in every corner of the house.

8. Cook.

9. Shop at the supermarket. Push your cart slowly. All items need to be placed in your shopping cart neatly, methodically, and in an orderly fashion.

MANNERS:
Stepford Wives are the model of etiquette. They are quiet and they speak softly. They use good manners, apologize often, and are perennially cheery. A Stepford Wife smiles as smiling is an act of submissiveness and agreeableness.

10. Practice gracious and polite behavior even when you are alone. Eat with the silverware in place even when you eat alone. Etiquette and proper manners begin at home, when no one is looking.

11. Never raise your voice.

12. Always say “please” and “thank you” for the smallest things, in public and private.

13. Always apologize for the smallest things, in public and private.

14. Do not possess any strong opinions on any subject, unless you are expressing enthusiasm for cleaning products or food ingredients and recipes.

15. Your man is No.1. He is the kingpin in your life. You answer first to him, then to your son, and then other men (and only when you are spoken to).

16. Don’t read, because who has time when you have this much housework to do and so many men to attend to?

I’m sitting here scratching my head while reading the reviews for the new illustrationless BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE - (REVISED) Gospel Perspectives on Marital Intimacy. Don’t get me wrong. The Mormons have provided me with countless hours of reading pleasure. (The two Andelin books are the two books I would pick to take on a desert island).

But in the Amazon reviews, everyone’s talking about a chapter called “Drawing the Line” where the “unnatural, unholy” act is admonished as something that should not be done.

I was trying to figure out what that “unnatural, unholy” act was.

Turns out, it’s oral sex.

I can’t tell you how much of a relief that was.

I kept thinking they were talking about an 8-way with an RC on the sofa leading to a DAP while I have my tea before doing ATM’s that lead to a switch piledriver then ending in a Tony Danza Donkey Punch topped with multiple facials.

Phew…guess I’m in the clear after all!

Imagine someone telling you:

“Hi, I’m with the A/ABiCgGfGqIsLGTQPsPoly3rdg2sK of New York? We were wondering if you support the A/ABiCgGfGqIsLGTQPsPoly3rdg2s’s of our society?”

Once upon a time, there used to be a LGBT community. Then someone discovered male enhancement pills, took some, and found he couldn’t afford a Hummer.

And now: A/ABiCgGfGqIsLGTQPsPoly3rdg2s (Androngyne/Ambigender/Bisexual/Cisgendered/Genderf**k/Genderqueer/Intersex/Lesbian/gay/transgendered/Pansexual/Poly/Third gender/Two spirit)

I think diversity is a great idea, but continously segregating, sectioning and diluting already small groups into microscopic levels, like the concept of political correctness, is just playing into the hands of the powers that be.

Think of a Yahoo Group. If there’s four large groups, and they mobilized with each other and put their differences aside, they could get quite a few things accomplished.

But many insist on having their own identity (consumerism having been blurred into individualism), and so, instead of coming together, you have a thousand Yahoo Groups with 2-3 members each that nobody reads.

Now go out to the midwest, where the LGBT is a small group in a local town. Does anyone have the luxury to enter a war of words just to declare their two-spirit identity?

Ironically, the very people who fight for diversity and argue against being labeled are turning into the people who want to label themselves to specificity ad nauseum. Instead of combining our minds to think of bold new solutions, we’re fighting amongst ourselves over mere letters.

In the time it takes for me to argue whether I’m A/ABiCgGfGqIsLGTQPsPoly3rdg2s, I’d already have been able to tell you I’m a human being.

man robs Burger King in New Orleans wearing a dress

Man in New Orleans climbed through the take-out window of a Burger King and robbed the place at gunpoint. Looking at the first frame at the top, I have to say that the choice to use a silver semi-automatic shows tremendous foresight; not only does the silver coordinate with the metal panels of the drive through booth, the gray tones of the brushed metal compliments pink flowers on the flower print dress in a delightful gray/pink combination.

Where we seem to go wrong is the orange-reddish bead necklace. This throws a wrench in the color palette even though we are looking at an analogous color scheme. For future criminal acts, d332’s Good Homemaker wardrobe advice department recommends a lighter, more neutral beaded necklace.

I know both sexes have complained about the opposing team not vocalizing enough about what they want. But men, (and I know this is a stereotype) being not proned to over-verbalizing, are really the party that retains its mystery.

Let’s make no mistake about this: Women tend to be more vocal about their wants and needs. To this day, I have never had a guy sit down and say “We really need to have a talk about my needs.”

The internet is a great pressure release. It affords men the ability to come out and complain about what they want, something they are not allowed to do by mainstream society. I see this as a rare opportunity, an opening to learn what goes on in men’s heads. They can whine and nag without being seen as less masculine. Instead, many women get insulted and lash back at the digusting political incorrectness of their gripes. The two are unrelated. If guys are yelling and screaming online repeatedly for something, that tells me, that there’s a level of consensus on what certain men want.

I know if guys (the ones who are vocal, online, and have Maxim subscriptions anyway) are in agreement that they want us to shut up and keep the beers moving, then what’s the harm in giving it a shot? You don’t have to follow it word-for-word. Just know the general design, and, like a fashion show, emulate the direction as a vague blueprint. And if all that doesn’t work, well we can always go back to reciting Catherine MacKinnon’s legal advice and reading aloud the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Marie-Josée Croze as Henriette Durand

My earliest memory of Julian Schnabel are of mural-sized paintings, and photographs of the artist, topless, standing on windswept beaches. When his other films Basquiat and When Night Falls came out, I was hoping to see how he would translate it on to the screen. Everything I expected from those previous films is present in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly where a pedestrian filmgoer like myself, can clearly detect the wonderful vista in the mind of an artist’s eye. The electronically-tinted tidewater glaciers breaking off in slow motion, majestically to Bach’s Concerto for Piano BWV 1056 Adagio is an absolute delight. Long hair blowing in an open-top convertible, the setting sun on the surface of a woman’s face. These are things that keep one’s interior warm and alive.

And speaking of the eyes, Mathieu Amalric has the most difficult job in the world: acting an entire movie with one eyeball. He succeeds with one dilated eye, anxiously bursting to free itself from the paralyzed body in which it belongs. Although Emmanuelle Seigner is featured on the cover, the real treat is Marie-Josée Croze as the therapist. Croze is one of those actors who, like Amanda Plummer, has such a total command of her face, she can make one dimple twist a certain way while an eyebrow moves another way, combining a facial expression that is constantly shifting, with complex emotions subtlely underlined. Anne Consigny as the stoic and handsome assistant gives that one working eye a good reason to open up each morning. If one were to pick actors for the many classical Bergman facial shots in this film, the ones presented here were excellent choices.

At first, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly reminded me of Johnny Got His Gun. After a while, like the incantation of the lettering system (”E,S,A,R,I,N….”) the story comes into its own, developing its unique visual vocabulary and rhythm. Like the most frequently-used letters, our protagonist draws on his most meaningful memories and imaginative fragments to help him construct a viable reason to exist and recuperate. It’s almost a play on the phrase “do I have to spell it out for you?” as we often see, from within the patient/narrator, that you can assemble letters into words, and then words into sentences, and yet, what is really going on inside your head, cannot always be translated.

I have been wanting to get to re-writing my Introduction Page to this site for over a year. I’ve always shied away from paying too much attention to my website, as those of you who know me have already discovered. Any mention of any pictures will bring me here to look up, since I don’t remember which is being referred to.

While attending to my Introduction Page, I noticed many hyperlinks that go in all direction. That’s because this website is 11 years old this August. It has gone through a multitude of changes.

One of the things I promise myself to do more is to bring a camera with me when I do go out with friends. I hate for anyone to think that this girl sits at home and snaps pictures all day. I do go out often, but I never tote a camera along. I also promise to smile in more of my pictures.

Here is the new Introduction to this website (which can also be found on the upper corner side bar of every page entitled Introduction)

Eleven years after the debut of my first website at Yahoo Geocities in 1997, the mere six page Transvestite Freedom Fighter has morphed into a veritable beast in a labyrinthine maze of links. Although all the original pages can be found archived here, the original concept of the website rests on one fundamental idea: “Never apologize for who you are, or what your website is about.” I never understood why transgendered people continually prefaced their webpages with an adult warning content. Transvestite Freedom Fighter was a call to stop associating one’s identity in the same category as explicit adult content.

Eventually, the page changed into The Art of Not Passing. This theme inspected the whole importance many transgendered people put on passing. As a person who is on the fringe even within the transgender community, I saw passing as a curious metaphor for conforming. It wasn’t that I had any problems with the notion of passing. After all, one must pass to experience as little friction in our non-accepting culture, seeing that transgender people are the final frontier for prejudiced treatment in modern day. I simply chose to inspect the idea of passing as a way to illustrate how everyone needs to “pass” according to their environment, in order to survive and function.

I believe the day everyone passes will be the day the label “transgender” gets retired. Much like a global economy and a global culture, indigenous societies and unique voices are quickly being swallowed up, losing their identities.

The Art of Not Passing then became The Solitary Arc, which was just a collection of my writings and pictures. In a way,The Solitary Arc paved the way for the self-identifying d332.com. I’ve always felt that with all the transgender websites detailing every aspect of SRS and transitioning, the collective perception of trans* people is that SRS and transitioning is all we talk about. So I thought I’d reveal instead, the other things that occupy this transgender person’s mind.

I am driven by a sense of happiness that I derive from speaking to the people within the culture. I wanted to provide a modest but positive free website on the internet regarding the community, because we haven’t really been given a fair chance in the public’s eye. Most of what people get from search engine returns either adult sites or argumentative in-fighting within the t* discussion groups (and there’s a lot of that).

Certainly, the group that is closest to my heart, the brash, self-descriptive gay transvestites, have been disappointingly under-represented.

So here I am.

I have been transgender for over thirty years. I don’t plan to transition fully, but I’m going to get a few bumps put on here and a few bumps taken off from there. Anyway you cut it, both the male and female anatomy are gorgeously remarkable works of art. I am struck by wonder when I think about the beauty of the human body. I am not a hormone-taker, as I feel that sex drive is one of the critical lifeforce in sustaining the great human imagination.

My increasing preoccupation with the home-making Stepford Wife has made this website arrive at the point it is at today. Although I am a staunch advocate for women’s rights, equality, and feminism, I also believe that everyone should be able to live free and chose the life they want to lead. Stepford Wives, and more importantly for me, the docile Asian “Lotus Flower” are social constructs. The difference between the two is that one lives in comfort and modest luxury, while the other has to make do with bargain-hunting white males. For my personality type, the choice is clear.

Human beings are constantly in danger in their coexistence with viruses. But we shouldn’t flatter ourselves as superior beings. Instead, we should take the path of virus mutation as an ideal, and develop accordingly. I want to continuously, energetically, and joyfully change, morph, improve, learn, and absorb knowledge, wisdom, and humane lessons with each passing day.

This, for me, is the most important transition: to be a human being first, and a transgendered person second.

So relax, make yourself at home, and enjoy!

Director Kenji Mizoguchi once dropped his shirt and exposed his back to a colleague. There were two scars that were the result of razor slashes. He got it from a prostitute he was seeing. Mizoguchi said, “you see these? Until you get them, you are not allowed to make any movies about women.”

When I saw Ugetsu, Mizoguchi’s acclaimed film, I thought everything else from his filmography would be lacking in some way. I was wrong. I just watched Sansho the Bailiff last night, and all I can say is, words can’t even begin to do this movie justice.

Not a single frame is wasted. If you randomly picked any scene from the movie (look under cut), the composition will be classically proportioned. Negative space is gorgeously balanced to a T and the lighting is absolutely iridescent. Sansho is a two hour seminar on photographic composition. With each scene, I asked myself, “How long can Kazuo Miyagawa (cinematographer) keep this up? Nobody can be that good consistently!”

Again, I stand corrected. Up until the final frame, every shot is spectacularly composed.

The story is about a family split up by vicissitudes and crooked people. Armed with only a two-sentence precept, a child must endure a life of slavery and cruelty before he attempts escape in order to re-unite his once noble family. The humane story is beautifully acted, reaching a level of conviction that one almost feels it’s a real life occurrence. The speech where Yoshiaki Hanayagi announces the end of slavery in the compound is so intense, you feel the madness radiating off the screen when human beings are indentured in chains. Mizoguchi’s indigenous Japanese style shines under his always sympathetic narrative of women’s plight.

One of the handful of movies that actually brought tears to my eyes. And I’m notoriously known among friends as the ice-queen who walked out on Terms of Endearment. For me, there is no message greater than the one presented here: the importance of the humane act as a moral code of conduct.

I’m in awe that once there existed a society that made such fantastically crafted films with a deep meaningful message, and after all these decades, all these technological leaps, and all the atrocities we have seen, that craft is all but lost in the loud, bombastic, CGI-manipulated instant gratification of Hollywood creations.

And we just accept it.

Look at audio standards. There used to be a time when people turned their noses up at high-fidelity records, claiming only reel-to-reel can retain fidelity to recordings. Now, a 96 kbps is the standard and few demand more.

Click on the title for more screenshots from Sansho.
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I’m not sure if anyone noticed this, but with the advent of the Super-rockgroup comeback (combining rockbands on mega concerts), the mall-ification of commodities has become the new marketing concept.

Commercials feature multiple products pitched in thirty seconds. TV sitcoms have commercials running on the announcement bar while you watch.

So why haven’t we yet combined reality shows? I mean, the Jeffersons showed up in Archie Bunker’s home. The Fonz dropped in on Laverne and Shirley. So let’s get this party started!

My #1 vote for the most obvious combination of reality shows:

Bridezillas on World’s Deadliest Catch.

It’s the natural solution AND natural selection for a dreadful problem in humanity. Why risk honest, hard-working men (and sometimes reformed ex-convicts) for a job when you can use a segment of society that serves no function whatsoever? The best part of Bridezillas on World’s Deadliest Catch is that Captain Sig Hanson never has to stop his ship if a greenhorn should go overboard. Just keep on moving.

Additional suggested combinations follows (TV programmers and Nielsen families, pay attention!):

How it is Made vs Man Vs Wild

Everyone has heard the scandal of how Bear Grylls tows his “wild horse” in from a farm to attempt to rope in, or that he checked into the local Hilton when he was supposed to be roughing it out in a straw teepee in the wild, or how his crew hunts down a rabbit for him before he chucks the improvised spear. I’d like to know how you can make it through the night with eight branches for a campfire when Survivorman Les Stroud continually advises “take the amount you think you’ll need to help you make it through the night, then multiply it by six times.” Well, here is a suggestion you can make to Discovery Channel.

Brookhaven Obesity Clinic vs. Survivorman

This one is self-explanatory. Put a bunch of people who each need to eat five whole chickens, four dozen eggs, ten pounds of bacon as an aperitif to a breakfast vat of chee-tohs on an island where they have to live off tree roots and leaf shavings. Problem solved.

American Chopper vs Cash Cab

Just the arguments in that little cab alone. Money can’t buy.

MTV The Hills vs. World’s Dirtiest Job

This used to be called Simple Life, but I’m willing to bet this combo will be far more entertaining.

A frame from Shirin Neshat’s work (click on picture to go to an interview with the director)

I still remember how much I was tickled when someone talked to me at a party, then decided to visit this website afterwards. There’s a slight discrepancy between What I talk about in person, and what goes on in my little head when I’m alone.

In person I talk about Hello Kitty, stuff animals, hot pockets, Family Guy, Bloo, the movies of Emma Roberts, and pizza, pink things in general.

When I’m alone, I come to this website, or Amazon reviews, to wreak havoc and see how I can trump my last entry with something even more excruciatingly dry and obscure.

My latest entertainment consists of watching, reading, and learning about the evolution of Iranian cinema. A good place to begin is the documentary Iran: A Cinematographic Revolution.

Arabic film-makers intrigue me because human representation in their traditional art is mostly forbidden. Lacking a geneology of human portraits, film-makers had to rely strictly on visions erected through the written word. Of course, outside influences are bound to play a role, but an indigenous style seems more likely in cultures that resist Western influences more actively than those who accept it.

Of course, having seen Shirin Neshat’s installation Rapture at the Whitney Biennial in NYC instantly endeared my attention to this widely respected community of film-makers, that is little known in the US.

I have Palestinian friends who tell me that the American image of the Arabic world, filled with people chanting for the demise of the white Satan is a false impression, much like Berliners who once asked me whether America was filled with Bush supporters who accepted every word from Fox News. The story of Iranian cinema goes along the same lines: directors and film-makers continually face censorship as they tried to reveal the real poverty-stricken Iran vs. the mythological Disney World promoted during the Shah’s regime.

When the Ayatollah took hold, over a thousand cinemas were burnt to the ground, because it allowed licentious portrayals of women. However, directors and film continued to be trained by the thousands. Yes, there were tight controls on what could or could not be filmed, but this has always been part of the tension between governing bodies and artists who controlled the most powerful medium in modern times: Kieslowski and Tarkovsky both had to use metaphors in their films to go beneath the radar and relay what they really wanted to say.

Keep in mind that it was due to the Bolshevik Revolution that many classically trained artists escaped into the Middle East. Henceforth the genealogy of Russian storytelling had been grafted into the Iranian narrative, beginning with Ovanes Ohanian in Hadji Agha.

Kamran Shirdel attempted to show the real Iran in his movie Teheran, Capital of Iran (1965), but it was banned by the Shah. Fereydoun Goleh, the outspoken and insightful Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Marriage of the Blessed (1989)), the voice of Iranian women appears in Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s Nargess (1992), then there’s Pomegranate and Cane, Turtles can Fly, and of course, the works of Abbas Kiarostami are all things I need to get my grubby hands on.

I, along with experimental film lovers still eagerly await the release of Shirin Neshat’s work on dvd, as it’s interweaving labyrinthine schemes rank high on the things that reminds me so much of my favorite author and poet, Jorges Luis Borges.

*Sigh*, so little time in this life!