Noun: Various. Opinion: Love.

Image credit: AMC

One of the interesting things about writing a blog like this is how often one comes up with opinions one would ordinarily never have bothered having about stuff no one else cares what you think about. Another interesting thing is finding out that it is more difficult to explain why you love things than hate things. There’s something about hating that people trust; the hostility acts as a dais on which you get to stand and allows you to be taller than everybody else and no matter what you say you see (bald spots! dandruff!) people will take your word for it as you’ve undermined anything positive they had to stand on. Say you love something, however, and people tend to scoff. Love seems to make you vulnerable and ridiculous. There’s something perverse, important and terribly interesting going on here, which I will not investigate. I will instead wallow and relish in this messedupness, the way a wolf rolls in deer shit and carrion, by celebrating the things I love that I know make other people spoon-gag.

Opera—I freaking love the opera (say in sing-song voice with extended vibrato on the last syllable–go ahead, go back and read it again just like that). The impractical costumes, the monotonous recitative, the lung-bursting arias! The fake weapons, the mediocre dancing, the part where two zaftig singers embrace but can’t quite encircle their arms around one another because of their oversized midsections! I love it all! I hate the overpriced tickets, but that’s about the only thing I hate about it. My love for opera does not, however, make me blind to the fact that other people really hate opera. I’ve had to turn off the radio, leave performances early and utilize headphones because of the rampant opera hate. This is entirely unfair, as most of the hate comes from people who’ve never properly listened to opera. This is also entirely understandable, as opera has lame public relations—like cats. Look at dogs, dogs have great PR: man’s best friend and all that. Dogs are always showing up on rooftops during floods and next to the graves of their owners who were killed in a natural disaster. They’re positioned as loyal and noble and loving and having low, easy-to-achieve expectations of you. Meanwhile, cats show up on You Tube beating up on dogs. Cats are loved by cat people despite their poorly managed reputation—cat people laugh when a cat rubs up against their leg then hisses at them when they bend down to pet it. Cat people find this adorable. When cats stare at cat people and cat people respond by saying “hi!” and the cat runs away, cat people think that’s endearing.

Opera people are like cat people. Opera and cats have something in common: they come across as detached and elitist, but they’re both really, really beautiful. And just because one cat is kind of an aloof asshole, it doesn’t mean all operas are boring. You follow? Look, if you’re one of these people who find opera boring or obnoxious—whatever, I don’t feel like fighting now. But if you’re someone who thinks you don’t like opera when you’re actually just intimidated by it? Come. I stroke your hair. Relax–it’s just opera. Even if you spoke the language it’s being sung in, you still wouldn’t understand what they’re saying—the melisma warps the vowels to the point that French, Italian and German all pretty much sound like the same gibberish. Hey, I’ve fallen asleep during the opera. So what? Sometimes they’re too damn long—usually by the time I wake up the same soprano’s still going at it; you won’t miss much, don’t worry about it. It’s just opera. Read the Wikipedia entry before you go, that will help you follow the story. Opera’s all about the journey, the music, that’s why you can see the same opera over and over and never tire of it. Most of the time the stories don’t even make sense, anyway. Again, it’s just opera. Bug Bunny did it, so can you.

Now, once you get over the whole intimidation thing, you might be surprised to find that there is a world of beauty you never knew existed. There are notes you’ve never heard sung before. There is emotion you didn’t think could be expressed with such accuracy or in such an interesting way. Once your brain encompasses the complexity of a Mozart aria, you may just wonder how you ever withstood the herp-derp repetitiveness of a contemporary pop song. Opera may be hard to love at first, but it’s easy to stay in love. If all you know about opera is what you saw in Pretty Woman, forget that twaddle immediately! If I recall correctly, he says something about how if you love opera the first time, you love it forever, but if not it will never be a part of your soul. She, of course, cries ecstatic tears her first time. That is because they are watching Verdi’s La Traviata, where a john falls in love with a hooker and then the bitch DIES. She cries because she herself is a HOOKER. Get it? Do NOT take life lessons of any sort from a goddamn Julia Roberts movie. Those of us who love opera know it took time; first familiarity, then friendship, then affection, then the kind of love that makes marriages work for life.

Gwyneth Paltrow—Everyone hates Gwyneth Paltrow, but I…actually, I hate her, too. A lot. Next.

Home Economics—I am not one of these women who takes pride in not cooking or sewing or cleaning. I do not knit ironically (I knit poorly, which resides in a different quadrant of attitude, catty-corner from the one that says “tragic, self-mocking hipster”). My oven is in regular use. I hate doing laundry and I hate ironing; I nevertheless fancy myself competent at both (as long as you ignore collars and sleeves. And the section around buttons). I take pride in generally being a good steward of my things and space. I do not feel any less the feminist for being domestic; in fact, I’d like to think I’m making a stronger statement. I am advancing the cause by using my powers for good, to improve the quality of my life and not in subservience to someone else’s pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, if I could afford it I’d hire the cadre of servants from Downton Abbey—but I believe that truly happy people are the ones who know to find joy in the chores they must do. Thus drudgery becomes delight! And a sinkful of dirty dishes gets cleaned in the span of one and a half Al Green songs with made-up lyrics (“I’m…so in love with you; Whatever I want you do; It’s alright by me…You–make me feel; Like a shoe…I–want to spend all my cash on food…”).

Betty Draper—AMC’s Mad Men is scheduled to return to the air in a couple of months, and this seems as good a time as any to assert my affection for this crazy bitch. If you don’t watch the show, you probably won’t be too insulted by my love for Betty Draper. In the beginning of the series, she is the model housewife of the main male lead. So textbook is her performance of the housewife role that it is hard to tell if her flawlessness comes from effort or vapidity. Then Betty’s character suffers through the indignities of an unfaithful husband, a repressive society, suburban scrutiny and imperfect children. We see her veneer crack little by little—when we see what’s underneath, instead of vulnerable flesh we discover a fossilized spirit cast in amber, once liquid resin but long ago polymerized by heat and pressure. She turns monstrous in her selfishness and contempt for the world, including her own children. This seems the most honest depiction of the influence of mid-century values on a bystanding woman. Trapped in a supporting role to my own life, confined within fences both physical and metaphorical, hindered from fulfilling every corporeal and emotional need, disallowed from pursuing my intellectual interests, required to set my hair every morning, demanded to maintain a certain waist size, dismissed for every quality I possess in mind or character, performing all these duties perfectly to the thankless indifference of the world, I, too, may eventually disassociate from decency and compassion when so little has been rendered to me. I, too, may subvert my oppressors in self-destructive ways. I, too, may lock my daughter in a closet out of frustration. I find her an entirely sympathetic figure, a beautiful body harboring a longing soul that was scourged by negligence. A waste of mind and spirit. A compelling picture of a heart blackened and gloriously corrupt. I hope she wins.

Keanu Reeves—It’s not like I’ll watch anything Keanu’s in, like I would for, say, Meryl Streep or Peter O’Toole. But Keanu manages to show up in a lot of movies I genuinely enjoy, like a traveling film bomb, including Much Ado About Nothing, the first Matrix, Dangerous Liaisons, A Scanner Darkly, etc. He shows up in a lot of other shit, too, so there’s that. However, while his range as an actor is limited, the diversity of his projects is prodigious, which is admirable. I never found Keanu’s screen presence disagreeable—what other people see as wooden strikes me as refreshingly lacking in exploitation. He does not chew scenery, he does not bully the viewer with emotion, his beauty is clean and unaggressive and quite delightful to take in. He’s a glass of unsweetened iced tea, a little on the underbrewed side. The waiter forgot to add the lemon wedge. But I drink it anyway. I hereby officially lobby for more pretty boys in the movies, or at least as many as there are less interesting, insipidly attractive women who have been tolerated on-screen (some even win Oscars for it). Maybe that will cheer up Keanu. It will me.

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, though why would you? I just spent six paragraphs expounding on things you hate. I apologize. But really, I gave you the opportunity to stand on your dais and laugh at the midget who likes fancy music, baking, frigid blonds and Ted Logan from his and Bill’s excellent adventure. Stand there on your platform, make fun of my hairline and enjoy it! Or…should you be among the few who love what I love…come join me and look for boogers up their nostrils! Haha, that’s a hairy one.

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