a blank white page and a swelling rage

i can’t find a clip of it online anywhere, but this is one of my absolute favorite scenes from tv. it’s from aftermath, the second episode of the united states of tara. kate, the teenage daughter, says her little speech in a completely emotionally devoid voice and she’s fantastic. alice is tara, her mother’s alternate personality and is a fifties proper housewife type personality.

Tara: [as Alice] What is it?
Kate: Just having a weird day.
Tara: Well, snap yourself out of it. We’re here to have a nice dinner.
Kate: I don’t wanna have a nice dinner.
Tara: Kate, I know you aren’t fond of me, but I’m concerned about your development as a young woman, just like your mother Tara. You’re promiscuous. You aren’t guarding your flower.
Kate: What do you want Alice?
Tara: I want to let you know that even though I deeply disapprove of the way you carry yourself. Me and your mother love you very much.
Kate: [scoffs] Yeah?
Tara: Yes. She wants you to know she didn’t mean to over react about those pills you brought home. She just doesn’t want you being intimate at your age. Because she had you at 19 and that was quite a hardship.
Kate: I’m not a hardship, I’m awesome.
Tara: Your a graceless ingrate, ha.
Kate: You mean a slut? A girl who likes boys, who lets boys know she likes them? A girl who orgasm’s, who moans and moans and screams in ecstasy? A girl who sucks and fucks, a girl with absolutely no back-door shyness?
Tara: That’s it! I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap.
Kate: Ha ha! You’ve got to be kidding me.
Tara: Try me.

[from imdb]

Diablo Cody is awesome. in case you don’t know, she wrote the script for little miss sunshine, and is the creator of the united states of tara. i think this scene is fantastic because not only do toni collette and brie larson (especially larson) do a great job with it, but i think it makes an interesting statement about the change in the view of sexuality. on one hand, you have alice, who lives as if she were in the fifties, and to her it’s absolutely horrendous that kate would be so wanton with her body. then, you have tara, who both understands and laments her daughter’s sexual discovery (prior to this scene, tara had found birth control in kate’s room). and finally, you have kate, who is out for pleasure alone.

diablo cody has set up a really interesting show in this way. while i don’t believe it’s an accurate portrayal of dissociative identity disorder (but i really don’t know enough about it to say either way), it provides her with the opportunity to provide multiple views on every day situations. tara’s other personalities include a male southern redneck and a rowdy teenager, which allow for commentary on both age and gender. i find it fascinating (and often very funny).

Yeah, just go see it. I was going to write a whole review, but now I’ll just say a few comments:

• Zooey Deschanel is fucking awesome.
• The non-linearness of the movie is actually not confusing. It’s just kind of cool.
• This movie demonstrates an excellent use of split screen. It was terribly sad, but I loved the whole “expectation vs reality” piece. Who among us hasn’t experienced that?
• My mom thought Summer was a bitch. I didn’t. I could totally see where she’s coming from. My views on relationships and marriage are currently in changing mode, but for a very long time, I belivied marriage was purely stupid. Now I think it’s mostly stupid. I could easily see how the right person would change that. Like that redhead chick pointed out, she was upfront about her feelings. How is that being a bitch?
• That last bullet didn’t help sell the movie, sorry. It’s late and early I had some wine that made me a bit woozy. It was probably paired with a mild case of heat exhaustion. Today is not my day.
• Ditto on that bullet.
• If you’re anything like me, you’re looking for the chick flick without the predictable ending. Even though they tell you the ending in the first sentence, it still is nice to have a happy movie that doesn’t end so completely unrealistically.
• It’s an interesting self-experiment to see the movie and deal with all the yearnings for them to get together and then to have to just deal with the fact that it wasn’t right. It’s like the lite version of life.
• Just go see it. Really.

I finally got far in the mail today. Well, I suppose it’s not fair to say “finally” since it technically came out today, but I ordered it a while ago and I’ve been eagerly awaiting it. And I have to say, it does not disappoint. Regina Spektor is one of my favorite musicians. I think both she and her music are intelligent and adorable. I like both her older, almost rougher music and her softer newer music. She’s a fantastic storyteller, and her songs create very connectable moods. I used to like her because I found it funny that such a visually cute and innocent woman could come out with some occasionally vulgar lyrics.

However, far lacks that vulgarity. I feel it’s a more mature album, but it still retains Regina’s little quirks, like her dolphin noises in Folding Chair. She continues to mix styles and it’s just lovely. I never quite know what to expect from her because she has such a large range. I’ve only given the album a couple listens so far, but right off the bat I liked the opening song, The Calculation. It’s the story of a couple learning that their relationship has more than just a surface to it and I love listening to it. My favorite song on the album is Eet, which makes me yearn with desire for… something. I don’t quite know how to describe it, but it is a feeling that only Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons have made me feel before. It’s entirely a good thing, I swear. I also love Dance Anthem of the 80s. It’s a bouncy and fun song that suddenly becomes gentle and lovely in the middle:

I went walking through the city, like a drunk but not.
With my slip showing a little, like a drunk but not.
And I am one of your people, but the cars don’t stop.

And for your viewing pleasure, here’s Eet:

And now I’m off to my bed so I can give it a third listen.