Although we gals have pushed, yelled and fought for our rights for decades, it’s an unfortunate fact that men dominate a number of professions in the U.S. (and often make more money than women doing the same things). Can we imagine a world where estrogen ruled, women weren’t subjected to workplace prejudices, and men were delegated to diaper duty (okay, we don’t have to go this far, but still…)??

Let’s take a look at some professions dominated by men and see how women could handle them…

Job: Floor Trader
Description: Member of a stock or commodities exchange who trades for their company amongst a sea of hysterical competitors.
Why women should dominate this profession: Many women I know admit to making a habit of picking fights with their boyfriends. There’s something about our argument style (sometimes fierce, sometimes whiny, sometimes teary, always clever, and oftentimes a mix of the four) that, when combined with batted eyelashes, ensures that we’re going to walk out of the room knowing that the score is Girl: 1, Boy: 0. Read More »

Something Old: Halloween (1978)

Something New: The Strangers (2008)

The Connection: Both feature the creepiest of horror creepshows, the lurky masked killer (or killers, plural, in the case of The Strangers)

Long before I had ever seen Halloween, Michael Myers scared the crap out of me. The iconic pictures of his blank white face, unmistakably human and at the same time utterly monstrous, the brief clips from the movie of him unhurriedly lumbering towards his hysterical victims; for me, Michael Myers was an exact representation of that thing that you suspect is lurking in your closet or following you down the street at night when you feel like you’re being watched. Michael Myers was, as young Tommy Doyle observes so astutely in the film, the quintessential Boogeyman.

But a terrifying killer does not necessary insure a good horror movie. And while I respect Halloween’s place in film history, and acknowledge that when John Carpenter made it in the late 70s, he was dabbling in uncharted territory, it just doesn’t quite gel for me. The movie opens with a six-year-old Michael Myers stabbing his older sister to death with a large kitchen knife while she babysits him on Halloween night. His parents arrive home shortly thereafter to find him standing on the lawn in a trance-like state holding the murder weapon.

Flash forward fifteen years to October 30th, 1978, and he’s being transferred from one institution to another under the supervision of psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis when he escapes, steals a car, and drives off in to the night towards his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. Hiding out in his now abandoned family home, he spots high school student Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) on her way to school and spends the day stalking her and her friends, hovering around behind bushes and the like in coveralls and his sinister white mask. That night, while Laurie babysits the aforementioned Tommy Doyle and another neighborhood girl, Myers picks off her drinking, drug-using, promiscuous friends one by one until the final showdown between Laurie and Myers. Read More »

Once again, I have underestimated human nature’s obsession with sex and nudity. My little naive self actually thought that the bums in Knocked Up were the only people who thought they would be able to make money off of a silly website idea featuring celeb’s private parts in all forms. They had a sudden reality check when their hopes and dreams were killed by an already existing site…Well, it turns out that fantasy site is, in fact, a real website (mrskin.com) that saw a 35 percent bump in visitors when the movie was released. But, the New York Times reports that it definitely was not struggling previous to the movie publicity.

Just last year MrSkin.com had a revenue of 5.3 million dollars! What blows my mind is that most of this money comes in from subscribers who pay 30 dollars a month to access the site. Really?? Maybe my current unemployed frugal status causes me to react very strongly to that statistic. Read More »