“Fuck Portlandia”

Without a doubt, Portlandia is very popular.  It has driven a massive influx of people to this area not as tourists, but to live.  I’m not going to mince words here: Portlandia has damaged this area and given fans a strong sense of entitlement.

The latest news, which is finally starting to break into the mainstream today, but has been known locally for a couple days, is that In Other Words, a small, local bookshop that has contractually allowed filming there for the last six years, has cut the show off entirely.

Let’s back up a bit and head back to the beginning.

When this show first started, the economy of Portland was balanced in such a way that young people could come here and survive without needing to work to the bone.  Feminists had a home, transgender folks had a home, book-lovers had a mecca, and there was a general sense of calm.  Sure, there was a stereotype about this area that it’s a bunch of hick lumberjacks,  stereotype so close to the mark that there’s still pride in mustaches and flannel, but marginalized groups weren’t the butt-end of jokes.  The locals have long taken pride in supporting craft breweries, artisans who create in their attics, bookstores that can’t afford to sell below sticker price, and lots of authors who hail from this area.  Despite its imperfections, Portland was a land where creative types had an outlet and the time to make things, and there were plenty of people willing to keep money local by supporting them.

Then Portlandia came along, and, “from a place of trust,” was granted access to some small independent store.  However, even from the early days of the show, it was know that “the fact that it is a spoof might not always be clear.”  That starts the problem

Frasier is a semi-local show, having been set in Seattle.  The show was cleverly written to ensure the audience knew that the butt-end of the jokes were the socially-inept, rich, out-of-touch Crane brothers, and that they and their ensemble were not representative of your typical Seattle resident.  Frasier didn’t make Seattle a trendy place to live because the jokes were very much kept focused on a very small ensemble, and ultimately could have taken place in almost any other large city.

When it comes to Portlandia, though, “[a]re we laughing at Portland, or laughing with it?”  (This article gets something wrong that we now know to be horrifically wrong, which will be addressed below.)

Portlandia differs in that the primary two, Fred and Carrie, are meant to represent actual locals.  The people who reside in this area are the ones to be laughed at.  We, the citizens that the show relies on to exist at all, were to be “gently” mocked for the progressive things that make this place different, such as concern for the environment and acceptance and protection of marginalized groups of people whose very existence results in less than equal privilege, including transgender people, blacks people, poor people, and women.  In school, mocking the different kid is seen as bullying.  On television, it’s seen as worthy of Emmies and Peabodies while the groups of people who have been historically treated as second class, beaten, raped, and killed are told that it’s just a joke.

It goes beyond this, into a sort of harm that race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity can’t protect the locals from.  It’s not just hurt feelings or fueling bigotry anymore.

Jake Stein of Arts.Mic claimed that publicity is publicity, and that it can only be good because he claimed to see an economic boost to the city.  His example of this is a bike tour of downtown Portland.  Frankly, it takes financial privilege to be able to make this claim now.  Already, at the time of his article, real estate was rising, and problems were brewing.

Perhaps the most tangible way Portlandia has hurt Portland through its brutal mockery is that the locals now seem like silly side show attractions in a land of amazing breweries and coffee, which has driven a massive influx of people to this area to chase down the Portlandia life.  One such episode was even a native advertisement meant to plant the seed of utilizing Zillow to buy homes in Portland.  It’s not a laughing matter when 58,000 people move to one city in one year (July 2014-June 2015), and that is largely being driven by people who believe that Portlandia is how Portland really is, to the point that real estate agents use the show to draw people here.

Ah, but that must mean good stuff for the economy!  Well, no.  Let’s say each of those 58k people in one year are broken into family units of six.  Yes, that’s large, but it still leaves a need for about 10,000 units.  How many cities have 10,000 vacant apartments of any size, vacant houses of any size?  What this causes is a housing shortage, and a housing shortage means that prices go up.  This is just one year.  Since Portlandia started such a boom here, we’ve had a few more years with that kind of growth.  There hasn’t been time for developers to buy up enough adjacent single-family homes to tear down and put high-rises on.  So up, up, up with the prices.  From November 2014 to November 2015, Portland rental rates went up 11.1%.  This isn’t a one-year event since Portlandia happened.  Rents are still rising at a nauseating rate.  And still rising with no end to it in sight.  But wages didn’t increase.  In fact, the influx meant that locals were more desperate for work, resulting in employers knowing if one person didn’t take that undesirable job at minimum wage, there were fifty others who would.  Ah, but it’s the Portlandia experience.  How quaint.  How cute.  At last for those who chose to come here to chase the Portlandia dream and can leave.

Minimum wage of $9.75 an hour doesn’t cover the median rent, $1,662, of a Portland apartment.  Transplants who come here to buy while working at a remote firm in San Francisco or Manhattan, or trust fund brats, don’t need to worry about this.  For the locals, it creates the requirement of two jobs if you want to eat as well as pay the rent.  For the locals, the rising rents and not enough jobs has resulted in something called urban camping becoming legal.  The solution, thus far, has merely been to make it legal to sleep on sidewalks.  Urban camping.  Such a trendy name that I’m surprised the show hasn’t run with it yet and skewered homeless people, many who have jobs, but can’t afford to compete with wealthy yuppy fans.

It’s easy for Portlandia co-creator Carrie Bownstein to claim that “Portlandia is a mindset” to handwave the show’s effect on the area. In fact, I admit that, when I read that, I mentally slapped her for her claim that she’s “annoyed” that a show that was created to skewer Portland is being seen as a show about skewering Portland.

I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.  She’s annoyed that the show she co-created for one thing is doing that one thing.

I just…

I can’t.

I can’t even.

Prior to being made the butt of jokes, Portlanders were on with life and the delicate balance between creation and survival.  But Portlandia just had to mock the city in a harmful way that put it on the map, made it trendy, and Carrie Brownstein dismisses it.

Well, it should come as no surprise that In Other Words finally had enough with the anti-feminism, painting feminists as bitches and demoting transgender women to mocked men in drag to make transgendered people and women into jokes.  I have to many posts on this blog to start linking to to demonstrate why this is an issue that angers me so much.  Suffice it to say that we women are already seen as property to be had and raped and judges will ask why we didn’t keep our knees closed, and transgender people are still fighting to be seen as their gender with judges humiliating them in courtrooms.

Based on the store’s posts and above-linked articles, the final straw was when the show demanded the removal of a Black Lives Matter sign in the store.  In Other Words is in an area with a higher percentage of black people.  Removing that sign because a show about Portland doesn’t want to acknowledge Portland and the people in the direct vicinity of the store didn’t sit well with anyone.  So In Other Words kicked the show out.

But would you believe that this damage and insult isn’t the end of it?  The straw that caused me to decide to address this mess was after reading comments on Facebook by non-local fans who say that “bitchy feminists” standing up for marginalized people “proves” that the show is right about Portland, and that the owners of the bookstore are just pissed that people here aren’t reading books anymore, and the store and people here need to shut up because it’s funny stuff.

Well, nothing I’ve posted about, real things that people here are dealing with, is funny.  There’s nothing funny about people losing homes and having their identities turned into jokes.  There’s nothing funny about fans of the show thinking they’re entitled to laughs at the expense of people telling people to stop.  Jokes and teasing are only fun if everyone involved is genuinely enjoying it.  Well, Portland’s not enjoying it.  My friend and her young son who lost their home literally just last night aren’t enjoying that they can’t find housing.  The artists who are being priced out by transplant yuppies aren’t enjoying it.

And I can tell you, personally, that locals sure as hell aren’t enjoying people who have, at most, visited downtown once upon a time telling us online what people do or don’t do here based on a harmful show.

We sure aren’t finding it funny when we’re told, when trying to set the record straight in self-defense, that we’re delusional.  I won’t even quote what someone said to me when I responded to his comment about In Other Words just being mad that people here don’t read anymore, but it ended with me, after bringing up Powell’s and the booming author scene, being dog-piled by people claiming that I just don’t want to see Portland for how it really is, that Portland is too like Portlandia or else it wouldn’t be so funny and Carrie Brownstein, who lived here for a while, wouldn’t have set the show here.  (Carrie doesn’t live here now, and isn’t the one living with the damage she’s causing.)

Portlandia has, among other things, set the people here up in such a way that we either stay quiet and let women and transgender people be made into jokes, or, if we speak up, we look bad for it because we’re “being just like the show” and making Portlandia more real and funny.

Portlandia has set Portland up to lose.  In Other Words:

Image credit: http://www.wweek.com/arts/2016/09/27/feminist-bookstore-made-famous-on-portlandia-posts-fuck-portlandia-sign/

To disclose: I am not upset over housing instability of my own or anything.  My life is remarkably unaffected, all things considered.  I own a large home thanks to generous assistance from my mother-in-law, we are food-secure, my daughter has privileges few kids in the US are fortunate enough to have, and I don’t have to work for an income for us to be stable, which means I an fortunate enough to work on artistic endeavors.  It’s not from a personal place that this show angers me, but from a human one.  Bad things happen, and are allowed to keep happenings, when those who are privileged enough to be above personal harm stay silent instead of using our privileges to help others.  So think twice before calling me “butthurt” or something.  And if you want to call me an SJW-feminist-bitch-taco again, then that’s a badge of honor.

California’s AB1570 will have bad consequences for indie authors and booksellers who sell signed books

California passed Assembly Bill no. 1570, a well-intended bill meant to stop the flood of counterfeit signed items, but that will devastate the market in its current incarnation.  Before I go further, let me disclose the obvious: I am not an attorney, and can not give legal advice.  This article is my understanding of the bill based on my research and my experience with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) for my day job of making and selling custom clothing items for adults and children.

Like so many bills, especially in California, this bill means well, but crosses what’s reasonable right into the territory of WTF, and will disproportionately affect small independent booksellers and authors.  This bill also affects sellers of sports and film memorabilia in the exact same ways, but my focus is on authors for what should be a very obvious reason.

As of now, any item sold for more than $5 must accompany a certificate of authenticity from the dealer.  Pawn brokers who selling items obtained through loans that weren’t paid AND who don’t claim to know anything about the items being sold (specifically, very specifically, pawn brokers have to claim to be clueless and giving loans for things they know nothing about, which is going to be none), people who sell items and then sign them, and online sellers whose primary business is not signed memorabilia, are the exceptions to being caught in the “dealer” label.  Otherwise a COA is mandated, which must include:

1) Item description and who signed it.

Okay.

2) Purchase price and date of sale, or a be accompanied by a separate written bill of sale.

Sell at San Diego ComiCon, and you better take a booklet of those carbon-copy receipts.

3) Disclose if the seller witnessed the signature, and if so, the date and address. If the seller did not, then the information must include who did.

Here’s where it starts to get tricky.  A lot of items already on the market are separated from this information.  If a store has a book authenticated as signed by Stephen King, this information may not be available.  Do you think the state will include “we don’t know” on the certificate?   This seems to be intended for when a seller obtains a signed item by going to a convention and having someone sign something they already paid for.  But intentions don’t matter.

It also has a larger problem, addressed below:

4) If the item was obtained from a third party instead of the seller or agent witnessing the signature in person, the name and address of the third party must be included on the certificate.

Not everyone wants their addresses publicly disclosed.  If I sign a stack of books for a friend to sell at a convention or fundraiser in California, there’s no way this side of hell I’m going to disclose my address.  How many authors, actors, sports players, etc., are going to be okay giving the world their public addresses?  If I give a book to one of my best friends, and she sells it to a store that sells signed books, why should she have to disclose her address?

On top if this, this information must be kept on file by the seller for seven years.  Even if a seller has an address to put on the certificate, writing up these certificates and their file-copies is a lot of extra time and work, especially for small-time sellers who are often already working to the bone just to sell enough to pay the basic bills, and will sting even harder charity organizations and volunteer-run groups, as well as little groups of authors at conventions who group their books together for someone else to sell for them.  I’ve only done a few book-signings/sellings, and each one so far has had the books pre-signed on a table with someone else doing the selling while the authors mingled.  Sometimes sellers are sitting at the table with a line of people buying the books and then having them signed, but often enough, someone else is helping do the actual selling of items already signed.

Now we can’t know yet how stringent the new rules may be enforced.  The state could decide to turn a blind eye to sellers are conventions who have other books grouped together that someone else is selling for them.  The state might hand-wave an event selling donated signed items.  The state might decide it’s not worth pursuing certificates lacking personal information.  But it’s California, land of Prop. 65 warnings that require any item or public location that has ANY amount of one of over 800 chemicals “known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm” to post signs all over the place, and that has been so stringently enforced that school buildings will post the warnings to cover their butts for the traces of asbestos in the top of the attic or the brackets within the walls that might have had lead in them, even though those things pose literally no harm without being accessible and disturbed, and has resulted in pretty much everyone shrugging their collective shoulders and deciding that everything will kill us, so why bother worrying about it, before enjoying some arsenic-tinted lead paint chips.

But given California’s history of taking consumer-protection to extreme levels right on over the bell-curve and into territory that becomes as detrimental as no oversight, booksellers selling signed books may want to think twice, and authors and buyers may want to start conducting transfers and signing stacks of books at the local Starbucks.  There should be one on a corner near you.

Or you could decide that all signed items are to be sold for $4.99 or under, or sign bookplate stickers as “free” things with item-purchase, and in the meantime, take Scott Brown’s and Bill Petrocelli’s leads and start contacting California representatives.  After all, with some tweaks this bill could make sense:

1) Raise the sell-price limit for all items to $250

2) Perhaps leave the level around $50 for items most commonly forged (celebrity-signed photos are often just high-quality copies, and countless football helmets are cheap souvenir helmets with decal-transfers…and I admit I have, unknowingly, been on the buying end of both, and in California!)

3) Entirely exempt mandates that certificates be written up for items sold when the signer is in the vicinity who can verify the signature on request (though sellers could certainly still provide certificates)

4) For certificates given to consumers, leave off addresses when those address are residential, even if the dealer’s copy includes that information

Those simple three changes would come close to striking a balance to protect booksellers and indie authors, as well as help curb the flow of the items most likely to be forged. But as written right now, AB. 1570 will do more harm to independent sellers and authors that it will protect buyers.

Re-reading my first book

To my fellow writers out there, do you ever experience this?

It’s been a while, a long while, since I’ve had the time to write anything on the last book in my Sacred Blood trilogy.  Before working more on the last book, I decided to re-read the first two to refresh myself.  I both feel stupid and excited.  What a wonderful combination.  But you see, I’d forgotten a lot of the details, and so, in a way, it’s like I’m reading a new book that I’m enjoying.  The stupid feeling is because I wrote this.  I’m excited about my own writing.  Geez, does this mean I write well, or that my standards are that low?

Am I the only one who has experienced this?

When a woman has to defend herself for defending herself

There have been many examples of the last several years of men feeling entitled to women, from a Elliot Rodger in Santa Barbara shooting and stabbing people because women wouldn’t have sex with him, to people defending Brock Turner and claiming that going to jail for raping a woman would he “too hard on him” and arguing that he’s somehow not a rapist, to Kraigen Grooms raping a toddler, posting it online, and admitting to a judge that he did it and have a 3-year-old picked out to rape next, and getting no jail time at all.

I just saw that Gigi Hadid was grabbed from behind and lifted from the ground.  She reacted as many women would do when accosted by a stranger.  She fought him off!  Good for her!  So why the hell is she having to defend herself for defending herself against him?

Her attacker’s name is Vitalii Seduik, and he call himself a “prankster.”  Somehow he’s managed to evade prosecution.  It’s like “pranking by assault” is the new version of how libelous speech on the internet can be protected by various laws protecting satire.  It’s horrid finding yourself on the receiving end of “satirical” libel.  Readers almost invariably believe that libel because “drama is fun,” especially in a time when so few people bother to fact-check anything.

And it’s something else entirely to physically grab someone, and then quip about it being a prank.  It’s not a prank.  Assault, no matter the form, whether it’s grabbing, hitting, or rape, is not a joke.

THANK YOU Rachel.
To unknown article writer: fan?!!! The ACTUAL fans that were there can tell you what happened. I’m a HUMAN BEING — https://t.co/G7Pbp0G8yP

— Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) September 22, 2016

and had EVERY RIGHT to defend myself. How dare that idiot thinks he has the right to man-handle a complete stranger. He ran quick tho 👊🏼😏🐱

— Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) September 22, 2016

Seduik had no right to put his hands on Ms. Hadid.  She had EVERY right to defend herself however necessary, and “it was just a joke” should not be seen as a defense on Seduik’s part.  Women are assaulted in this world at a rate so high that it rarely makes news.  We are murdered left and right, and under no circumstances should we be expected to tolerate being grabbed by people we don’t know.  Whether you call them “crazed fans,” a “prankster,” or an “overzealous fan,” attackers should never be defended, and under no circumstances should an attacked woman be insulted for her behavior.

 

Where I’ve been

Back in February, I intended to start my recaps and to get back to writing.  That ended up not happening just yet, and I have a long queue of people e-yelling at me for not doing it.  While I appreciate people wanting to read my writing, please understand that this isn’t the job that pays any of my bills.  Among other things, I had surgery on six body parts at once, and that was entirely out of pocket.  I’ve still got thousands of dollars in bills from that.  Helping support my household and pay the bills has to come before my books and this blog.  I am not rich enough to forsake the work that actually pays.

When I can.  That’s what it comes down to.  I’m homeschooling a child with autism, which is full time in itself.  On top of that, I run a small business.  I have clients around the world for that.  I also volunteer my business services to non-profits around the US.  To make sure I get some physical movement, I take some ballet, and my daughter is in ballet and Girl Scouts to assist with her socialization.  Schooling a child is a full-time job.  My business is a full-time job.  I am literally doing the equivalent of two full-time jobs.  I am up by 8am to start the day, and am rarely in bed before 4am.  Seven days a week.  And now I am on the board of directors for an internationally-known historical reenactment society, and I still try to maintain a social life.

So I can not, in any sincerity, apologize for not resuming the recaps when I intended to.  I simply can’t.  Real life happens.  If I was paid for this blog, people would have every reason then to be angry, but not when this is a job I do, when I can, for the love of it.