Roxie's Watching: Trans Films

First off a big thanks and a face lick to Queering the Apparatus for twisting our paws and insisting that Roxie’s World be a part of its very first queer film blog-a-thon. We are delighted to be included in the festivities. We’d also like to extend a hearty welcome to new visitors to Roxie’s World who came here by way of the blog-a-thon. We are America’s favorite dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball. When we host our first blog-a-thon, it will probably focus on Canine Stars of Stage and Screen – Asta! Lassie! Pongo! Toto! Snoopy! Eddie! – but for this shindig we’ll rely on the expertise of Moose, one of my two moms and an English prof who happens to be teaching a course on trans lit this semester. She’s doing a number of films in the class, so I’ll play the silent Siskel to her chatty Ebert as she takes us on a guided tour of some recent trans films. Take it away, Moose!

Thanks, Roxie, and thanks again to qta for inviting us to the party. Being an English prof, I should first explain my use of the term “trans film.” The broadness is purposeful. I’m using it to refer to films that focus on characters who exhibit a range of variations from conventional gender identities and expressions. I’m interested in stories that run the gamut from gender-queerness (drag queens and kings, butches and nellies) to transsexualism involving chemical and/or surgical modification of the body.

If we limit our discussion to films of the last ten years – which puts Belgian director Alain Berliner’s poignant story of a beautiful, resourceful boy-girl, Ma vie en rose (1997), at the head of the line I am drawing -- two things immediately stand out. One is that we’re seeing a lot more trans characters, and two is that we’re seeing such characters depicted with greater nuance and performing a much wider variety of narrative roles than we saw in the past. We’ve come a long way from the bad old days when trans characters in film were viewed almost exclusively through the frames of camp or pathology. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) are fun and fabulous films, but their marvelous accessories do not include a lot of emotional depth or complexity. Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) are gripping films, but both feature trans characters who are serial killers. Films are under no obligation to offer “positive” images of members of any minority community. Nonetheless, Roxie’s World says paws up to the spate of trans films in the past decade that avoid or demolish stereotypes and depict complex trans characters in richly woven stories. Even the campiest of the recent films, John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), a wild homage to 80s glam rock and the song stylings of Toni Tennille and Anne Murray, tells a trans story as a way of raising serious questions about where gender “lives” – i.e., in the body, the mind, or a social/political world as divided into “male” and “female” as the Berlin of Hedwig’s childhood was divided into “east” and “west.”

To what do we owe the new variety and sensitivity of trans representations in film? Much of the credit has to go to a vocal, visible trans community that has protested the narrow and often damaging terms of previous representations and raised awareness about transphobic violence. In the U.S., the brutal murders of Brandon Teena (in 1993) and Matthew Shepard (in 1998) sparked a movement to expand federal hate-crime laws to include crimes motivated by bias against a person’s perceived gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Both of those murders also became the subjects of films and/or plays that were both critically and popularly acclaimed. For the purposes of this discussion, Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999) is the most important of those projects because it offered a sustained example of what queer theorist Judith Halberstam has termed the “transgender look” in a film that reached mainstream audiences and earned Hollywood approval in the form of a Best Actress Oscar for Hilary Swank, who played the role of Brandon Teena. Halberstam’s concept, which explores a dynamic of looking with transgender characters rather than at them, is crucial to understanding the politics of representation shaping many more recent trans films. Boys Don’t Cry depicts a trans character as the victim rather than the agent of horrific violence, but even more importantly, in Halberstam’s account, in key moments the film shows shots from Brandon’s point of view that confirm his masculinity and give viewers access to an alternative vision of time, space, and bodies that survives the character’s physical death.

Documentary films have been powerful vehicles for bringing viewers “inside” trans experiences by allowing the subjects of the films to tell their stories in their own voices and from their points of view. Sundance Channels’s 8-part series on four transsexual college students, TransGeneration (2005), is a significant achievement in this regard, as it follows four protagonists (two born-male, two born-female, of varied race/ethnic and class backgrounds) on their journey through gender identity and higher ed. The audience readily feels for protagonists who are so young, in some ways so uncertain and in others so fierce, so impressively determined to fight for their dignity. They offer eloquent testimony to the violences of compulsory, binary gendering, but in their resilience and their mostly satisfying outcomes they demonstrate that resistance is not futile. Other powerful trans documentaries include Gabrielle Baur’s exploration of the world of drag kings, Venus Boyz (2002), and Kate Davis’s recording of the last year in the life of female-to-male transsexual dying of ovarian cancer, Southern Comfort (2001).

We’ll end this brief tour of recent trans films with Duncan Tucker’s Transamerica (2005), a feature film that starred Felicity Huffman as a pre-op male-to-female transsexual who learns she has a son a week before she is scheduled to have sex-reassignment surgery. Though in some ways undeniably sentimental, as Mod Fab points out today, Transamerica can also be viewed as a comedic/utopian exploration of trans possibilities. Tucker’s use of the road trip as a narrative framework and his panoramic cinematography evoke the grand American traditions of road films, Westerns, buddy films, and outlaw flicks. Those evocations also remind us that the road can easily become a landscape of profound threat for certain kinds of outlaws – Thelma and Louise as well as Brandon Teena come quickly to mind. Transamerica consciously echoes both Thelma and Louise and Boys Don’t Cry, yet it lovingly delivers its pretty-in-pink protagonist from murder or a fateful plunge off the edge of the world. Bree Osbourne survives her road trip. She reaches home in time for her surgery and thus reaches what she sees as the home of her proper gender. At the same time, as the final credits roll, Dolly Parton’s Oscar-nominated song “Travelin’ Thru” moves away from the comforts of home in offering a rollicking celebration of flux, mobility, drift, and uncertainty. “Well I can’t tell you where I’m going, I’m not sure of where I’ve been,” the voice declares, “But I know I must keep travelin’ till my road comes to an end.” She calls upon the lord for protection and direction, but you get the sense that the speaker is delighted to be in transit, intoxicated by the possibilities of “travelin’ thru.” The journey itself is the destination, which seems as good a “place” as any to conclude this mini-survey of trans films.

Bitches, Unite!

Why is Roxie's World issuing a clarion call for bitches to unite? (Don't feel left out of the call, fellas -- Some of the biggest bitches I know are boys. You know who you are, and you know how much I love you and your raging bitchiness.) Moose is back on duty in the red chair and has been gathering the evidence for this Thursday night theme party. Just to prove she hasn't gone rusty in the research department, she tracked down an embeddable version of the John McCain campaign event in South Carolina on Monday in which a female supporter asked, "How do we beat the bitch?" Now you can watch it without leaving the happy confines of Roxie's World:


Don't you just love how Republicans go about the sacred task of restoring honor and dignity to the White House? Don't you admire the steadfastness of their commitments to country-club fashion hits of the 1970s? I mean, someone needs to stand by ponytails, scarves, and gold hoop earrings, don't you agree? Not to mention tans in November and bottle-blond hair. Aren't we glad Republicans will fight to the death to defend those? You tell me what you think of McCain's response to the question. By my bleary old eyes, he pauses with what might generously be described as a pained expression on his face (but doesn't McCain always have a pained expression on his face?) before joining in the laughter and then declaring it an "excellent question." He then cites polling data suggesting he is best positioned to "beat the bitch" before offering a perfunctory declaration of respect for Senator Clinton. His campaign has disingenuously claimed he "first responded" by stating his respect for the senator, as pointed out yesterday in Talking Points Memo.

Even New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, a bitch-hating bitch if ever there was one, seems a little put out with the War on Bitches this week. Her Wednesday column ran under the plaintive headline, "Should Hillary Pretend to Be a Flight Attendant?" Mo Do is upset with a spate of new studies suggesting that bias against intelligent, ambitious women is alive and well, both in the world of hetero dating as well as in the work place. Turns out the moms' moms were right when they told their daughters boys would be scared off by girls who came across as "too" smart or ambitious. (The moms' moms neglected to mention that at least some girls find smart girls a turn-on, but, lucky for me, they managed to figure that out by themselves.) Not surprisingly, the unreflective single gal Mo Do doesn't seem to have noticed that her own relentless and catty attacks on Clinton are part of the problem she laments, but, hey, maybe she'll figure it out over the next lonely Cosmopolitan she sips while watching reruns of Sex and the City.

Next, we turn to global uber-bitch, Benazir Bhutto, who was released today from her second house arrest since returning home to Pakistan last month. (Memo to John McCain: If you can't beat the bitch, arrest her ass!) The Bhutto Death Watch continues here in Roxie's World, though we know y'all know that means we are just in awe of this bitch's bravery. Bhutto had an Op-Ed piece in Wa Po yesterday calling on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to resign.

Finally, we call upon the mighty bitches of Roxie's World to respond to an outrage against bitch power that is roiling the world of . . . competitive bridge.

(Photo Credit: swangames.com)

These four bitchin' babes -- Jill Levin, Jill Meyers, Debbie Rosenberg and Irina Levitina -- represented the United States in the world bridge championships last month in Shanghai. Click on the image so you can read the little sign Rosenberg is holding up declaring, "We did not vote for Bush." The sign has provoked an absolute kerfuffle in bridge circles. (I know, I know, kids -- You didn't know there were bridge circles, did you, and that they were as politically charged as the more rarefied circles you travel in at, say, your gym?) The Times reports the sordid details of the drama here. The women face the prospect of a yearlong ban from competition for their protest, which they insist was spontaneous and aimed at expressing solidarity with international friends in the competition who had raised questions about U.S. policies and actions. We're pleased to report that the French team has expressed support for the Americans in fine bitch fashion. According to the Times, the French sent an e-mail to the federation's board and others saying:

By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner . . . you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality.

To which Roxie's World can only reply: PAWS UP, and cut the cards. Wait -- Do they do that in bridge? Never mind, kids. The point stands: Bitches of all ages, sexes, and breeds are under assault. We've got to stick together to fight the meanies and the misogynists, the warmongers and the chick-haters. Are you with me, kids? Can we deal you in?

(Props to the blogosphere's original bitch, BitchPhd, whose post on the McCain event put us onto this theme.)

Still trying to wrap your mind around the saga of the Bridge Bitches? Keith Olbermann interviewed a couple of them on tonight's show. Vid is here.

Call Me (at) Ishmael's

From the Department of Paranormal Communication

I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value -- certainly no large value . . . However, let it go. It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden.
-- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Mark Twain, director of the Office of Persona Management for Roxie’s World, is in a bar called Ishmael’s, around the corner from RW Enterprises, LLC global headquarters, eating fried mozzarella sticks and drinking whiskey in front of a large-screen TV. Twain has been despondent and drinking heavily for several days over concern that Moose’s recent lecture at Rutgers University on the subject of this blog and blogging generally would compromise the integrity of my persona as sole owner and proprietor of Roxie’s World. At my behest, Moose tracks him down at the bar for a talk.

Moose: Hey, Mark. How’s it going?

Mark: Oh, it’s you. Back from your little road show, are you?

Moose: Yeah. Hey, look, no hard feelings, eh? What do you say we get back to work? Roxie wants to get the whole creative team together to talk about next steps. How ‘bout having a cup of coffee, maybe some eggs, and heading back to the office with me?

Mark: I’m enjoying these fried cheese sticks, thank you. An amazing culinary feat, you know – We didn’t have these back in my day. We ate actual food then. But what do you mean by “next steps?” It’s hard to un-ring a bell, Moose. The damage you did in your lecture was incalculable, devastating. What are Roxie’s readers supposed to think when you stand up publicly and speak for Roxie’s World? That’s not what you’re supposed to do around here! You’re merely a typist, a researcher, a critic, for heaven’s sake, and you know my opinion of critics –

Moose: Yes, yes, I know, Mark – the most degraded of all trades – but that’s really all I was doing at Rutgers – speaking as a critic about the development of the persona, the growth of the audience, and the relationship between and among words, images, music, and video in Roxie’s World.

Mark: Images are very important, you know. My books were always so nicely illustrated.

Moose: Absolutely. That Edward Kemble fellow did some amazing work on Huck Finn – Such spare, simple drawings, yet so evocative, despite the unfortunate appeal to the race and gender stereotypes of the day.

Mark: The what? Oh, never mind. Bartender, I’ll have another whiskey and bring the lady – may I call you that? – bring the lady –

Moose: I’ll have an extremely dry martini, up, with olives, and another round of those mozzarella sticks. This may take awhile. As I was saying, Mark, I really don’t think my lecture should be any cause for concern. I devoted a whole section to your office and to the important work you do maintaining the integrity not only of the central persona but of all the identities in Roxie’s World. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we need you back in the office soon. We’ve got a problem with a persona we’ve come up with for a new reader. She has some ambivalence about it, and I think we may need to go back to the drawing board.

Mark: All due respect, Moose, but you are way out of your depth on this. You have no idea how essential persona integrity is to what we’re doing in Roxie’s World. It is everything, and I mean everything! If our readers should come to doubt their belief in Roxie, we are doomed. If they come to suspect that she is really you, next thing you know some nincompoop is writing a book called Was Roxie Gay? And then where are we? Up the Mississippi without a paddle, I tell you.

Moose: I really think you’re over-reacting, Mark. Our readers are more discerning than that. And you and Roxie and the creative team are better than that.

Mark: An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency, but spare me the flattery, madame, and pass the marinara sauce. We have other problems arising from your lecture, you know. While you had your head in the clouds of meta-blogging, the world continued to spin on its axis, and Roxie’s World has fallen woefully far behind. (He glances toward the TV, which is playing images of chaos in the streets of Pakistan.) It’s high time we updated our Benazir Bhutto Death Watch, for example. They’ve got her under house arrest now, and Musharraf is insisting that the best way to defend democracy is to destroy it. I’m thinking that brave woman’s days may be numbered.

Moose: I know, and I’m sorry we haven’t been on the story. It’s perfect for us – a beautiful, intelligent woman with a voice like melted butter and the courage to face death to help save her country –

Mark: (With a sidewise glance at Moose) Melted butter? Guess I’m not the only one trapped by the race and gender stereotypes of my day, eh? In any case, we’ve also been ignoring the presidential race here in the U.S., where another beautiful, intelligent woman who hopes to save her country is getting heat from a couple of fellas who seem to think that one politician calling another politician “calculating” is likely to strike voters as something other than a pot calling a kettle black. Excuse me – Was that racist?

Moose: I don’t think so. Joe Klein has a wonderful piece on exactly that subject in the latest Time. He argues that what some call calculation, he would call principle and that Hillary Clinton and her husband have been pretty consistent over the years in being moderate problem-solvers, willing to make deals in order to “get stuff done,” as Bill Clinton puts it, for the American people. Klein insists that the senator has become a very effective campaigner who doesn’t come across as the robot a lot of the coverage tries to conjure up. John Dickerson also has a piece in Slate on Clinton’s appeal to women voters in Iowa. According to him, the more the male candidates go after Clinton, the more women voters gravitate toward her. You know, Mark, my theory is that every time some guy calls her “Hillary,” ten women voters swing her way.

Mark: Interesting theory, Moose. When you’re through pretending to be a writer, you might try pretending to be a political analyst. And do I need to point out that the college basketball season has started and your beloved Lady and non-Lady Terps are already back in action? Shoulders and her crew knocked off #6 Oklahoma the other night, and Shoulders was named the ACC’s first Player of the Week for the season – but did Roxie’s World have anything to say about it, though our good pals the BasketCases did?

Moose: I know, I know, Mark, I hear you. Look, I realize this lecture has been a big distraction for all of us, but the guys in Clicks and Eyeballs are pretty happy with the new readers we’ve picked up, and I swear we’re back to regular programming now. We need you back in the office, though. I’m really stuck on this persona management problem. I mean, what would you call a gregarious Victorianist who loves opera, hates New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, and deplores the fact that any expression of deep feeling is dismissed as “sentimental?” We tried “Anti-Mo Do,” but she feels it’s too limiting. I kind of like the Gregarious Victorianist, but I think we might come up with something even better with your help.

Mark: (With a sigh and picking up his coat) Moose, [you] must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes [you] as much as a week sometimes to make it up. Coffee to go, bartender. I’ve got work to do.

Garden State Update (Updated)

Newsflash: Moose turns world on with smile in blockbuster blog talk at Rutgers. Enthusiastic audience says, "She took a nothing day and suddenly made it all seem worthwhile". . . . Yesterday's horoscope for Aries affirmed in every detail. (See Thursday's post.) Roxie's World considers adding an official astrologist to growing list of official persons. . . .Mark Twain still drunk in seedy bar around the corner from RW Enterprises global headquarters, convinced that persona integrity has been severely compromised . . . .Rutgers English faculty vowing to become regular visitors to Roxie's World, planning series of meetings devoted to trying out new blog names for themselves.

One minor disappointment: In all the excitement, Moose deviated from her prepared text and neglected to thank Candy Man for his devoted attention to Roxie's World. Moose is planning to join Mark in the bar as soon as she and Goose get home this afternoon to drown her sorrows over this breach of etiquette. She hereby publicly and profusely thanks Candy Man for being a dog's best friend in cyberspace.

It was a great day, kids, and we're just as proud and happy as we can be. Paws up to Moose in her moment of triumph and a five-paw salute to Rutgers English for awesome publicity and extraordinary hospitality.

Update: Those of you who are dying for details of Moose's lecture should run over and check out our new best friend in the blogosphere, Manuel at A Blog Next Door. He has an amazingly detailed summary of the talk, with verbatim quotes of some of the funniest lines. He also says very nice things about Moose's first attempt to analyze what we've been up to here in Roxie's World. A big lick on the cheek and a hearty welcome to this brilliant new blogger!

The Sound of Moose-ic

Through the miracle of Roxie-Cam (trademark: RW Enterprises, LLC), we can tell you that Moose spent part of the morning before her Very Big Lecture at Rutgers doing 3.5 miles on a hotel treadmill while listening to The Sound of Music on her iPod. As I have said many times, Moose is weird, but we'll let her do anything to psyche herself up. She was so buoyed up after hearing "I Have Confidence" that she played "The Lonely Goatherd" twice so that she could imagine all of the blog pals and friends and family members who have been so supportive of all the fun we've been having here in Roxie's World singing it along with her. She grinned and hummed and imagined a kickline of her favorite homosexuals (including, of course, QTA, Candy Man, and the Official Prep School Teacher of Roxie's World), a chorus of her actual and metaphorical sisters (including Big Sissy and Baby Sis, who, as we speak, is in rehearsals for a local production of The Sound of Music, as well, of course, as Goose, Rutgers Alumna, Dudley's Human, my Aunties Faye, Katie, and Isa, the Official Baby Butch of Roxie's World, and even the Shy One, provided we can coax her out onto the stage for a public singalong). She also imagined a bunch of my dog pals running across the stage for a chorus of barks during the big finish -- You know, "lady oh lady oh LAY!"

Moose also checked her and my horoscope for today. (We are both Aries.) It read, and I quote,

For Thursday, November 8 -Nothing can slow you down today -- your energy is booming and people are climbing all over each other to line up and see what you've got to offer! Ride this wave of good feeling with everything you've got -- and invite others to catch the killer surf with you. You will feed off the energy that an audience gives you, and you will savor the energy of the crowd. There is a real sense that anything is possible when a group of like-minded folks hang ten together.

It's like it was written right here in Roxie's World by our own team of tea-leaf readers and prognosticators, isn't it???

Okay, kids, it's almost showtime. We'll let you know how it goes. Meantime, here's a little video amusement to help focus your dreams and the good thoughts you are sending in Moose's direction.

Canine Cultural Studies

Welcome to Roxie's World, Zippy, where dogs have been publishing the results of their studies of humans since March, 2006! Sorry we don't have time for more detailed results today, but my typist is putting the finishing touches on the big lecture she's giving next week up at Rutgers. (Check out the incredibly snazzy publicity here. Make sure you click through Roxie's "Best in Show" for a selection of my most brilliant musings on a range of topics.)

The Office of Persona Management here in Roxie's World is pretty upset with Moose for stepping out from behind the curtain to talk about my blog, but she has promised to give me all the credit. Still, OPM director Mark Twain is drinking heavily in advance of the event and has threatened to resign if Moose in any way compromises the integrity of my happy little corner of the blogosphere. We love Mark, but he is a bit of a drama queen.

Okay, kids. Gotta run. Moose needs the computer back. Peace out.

Hillary's Bunions

If Hillary Clinton becomes president of the United States, it's safe to predict that every part of her body and most of her bodily functions will have undergone perversely fascinated scrutiny by a news media that operates 24/7 but apparently only thinks about the serious challenges facing the nation for an hour or so, say, every other Tuesday. Fortunately for Clinton, her poll numbers have moved steadily upward through the lunacies of the Cleavage Kerfuffle and Cackle-Gate (to which Roxie's World proudly contributed in defense of the candidate's hearty chuckle). Now that her lead in the polls and money is approaching the insurmountable point, news-starved reporters are finding their way back to the irresistible subject of Clinton's hair.

In fairness to Wa Po fashion/culture reporter Robin Givhan, whose article on Clinton's wearing a shirt with a V-shaped neckline on the floor of the senate officially launched the Cleavage Kerfuffle, the astonishingly vapid piece she published yesterday in the paper's "Style" section isn't, technically or primarily, devoted to Clinton's hair, but the cutesy headline on the story gestures in that direction: "Touching Up (And On) Feminist Roots." The point of the article appears to be to reflect upon how feminism has changed over the past several decades and how it is informing Clinton's campaign for the presidency. Givhan pursues the point through a strained comparison between Clinton's campaign and "WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution," the show at the National Museum of Women in the Arts that the moms and their friend the Shy One took in last Sunday. (I comment on the show in this post.) WACK!, which includes a number of women performance artists of the 1960s and 1970s who brought their bodies and sexualities into their work as a way of critiquing masculinist ways of seeing and depicting women, gives Givhan an excuse to mock that "old" work as "vulgar," "humorous," and "cliched," though she commends its feminism for having a bracing "clarity of purpose." Clinton, by contrast, represents for Givhan a feminism that "has become more nuanced, more reserved, more politically savvy, but also more painfully ambivalent." Givhan explains:

Clinton dwells on the uneasy relationship between making a historic statement for a group and being held captive by it. Of being proud of one's gender, but not wanting to dwell on it. Of savoring the pleasures of femininity -- ever-changing hairdos -- but not wanting others to be distracted by them.

On Givhan's planet, "the body has been, for the most part, banished from the cultural conversation" and "No one needs to spread her legs to make a political point." This, in her judgment, is a good thing, though she seems bothered by the supposed ambivalence of contemporary feminism, by its reduction, at least in the Clinton campaign, to jokes about weight and "bad hair days."

Robin, dear, we know you're a fashion writer who has probably, at best, only "dabbled in women's studies," as you put it in your article. We don't expect you to be strong in the kind of historical and structural analysis that would be necessary to explain that the Clinton campaign's careful tip-toeing through the minefield of gender politics is part of a broader cultural dynamic of ambivalence about women's power and female bodies in the public sphere. Breasts, hair, hips, that space between the legs no one needs to spread anymore to make a political point -- They are all relentlessly scrutinized (by people like you, in industries like yours) and severely judged (as when you wrote of Clinton's display of cleavage that it was "unnerving," because it came across as if "you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur"). Women's bodies have hardly been "banished from the cultural conversation." It's just a question of whether they are an audacious and liberating part of the conversation, as they were in those "old" works of feminist art you seem so eager to trivialize, or a half-buried yet compulsively reiterated subject that taps into deep-seated anxieties about sex, power, desire, and social change. You are a part of that conversation, and your ambivalence is every bit as palpable and problematic as Clinton's.

Meantime, here in Roxie's World, a planet populated by reasonable middle-aged women whose audacious bodies occasionally ache, we think about Clinton's long, hard days out on the campaign trail and worry about the one part of her anatomy that is not likely to garner significant media attention -- her feet. As she makes her way through the vast cornfields of Iowa and the snowy woods of New Hampshire, we hope she's wearing sensible shoes with good orthotics and that, at the end of the day, she's got someone to give her feet a thorough and vigorous massage. Really, Bill, it's the least you can do. Put the cigar down. Your hands have some serious work to perform.