Stateside with Rosalea: Life’s Biggies

** Sex **

The big news this week was the outcome of the final episode of Sex and the City. Seriously! It was evening network news fodder on Monday night. Not having cable TV, I’ve never seen the program, though scraps of storylines had wafted my way every now and then. Just last week, a commentator on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer voiced an opinion about it that I’d probably agree with.

Being of the generation that took Mary Tyler Moore avidly to heart as a role model – happy, independent, with an exciting job, not having to be supported financially or emotionally by a man – I was interested to hear the commentator wonder if the moral of Sex and the City was that thin women in exciting well-paid jobs, happy to change men with the weather, were still – God forbid! – unhappy.

Today I learned a little more about the occupation and preoccupation of Sex’s lead character in a column written by Kerry Dougherty of the Virginian-Pilot. She wrote that she is not going to miss the program, because Carrie gave an impression of the life of a columnist that was impossible to live up to -- dashing out her column in minutes and earning enough money from it to buy Manolo Blahniks at $500 a pair.

Writes Dougherty, “The closest I’ve come to fashionale footwear is a pair of Ugg-knockoffs that I mail-ordered last year from a New Zealand sheep farm.”

Ugg-knockoffs? I though we invented the damn things.

** Marriage **

Y’all know already that I’m with Dharma’s pre-Greg boyfriend on this subject. Marriage is just the state poking its nose into folks business where it isn’t needed or warranted. But you can’t deny that the Springtime of Love—as February 2004 will no doubt come to be known—was a warm and fuzzy spectacle if ever there was one. At least as portrayed by the media in the Bay Area.

Only the churlish and those terrified at the prospect of being turned down by 100 percent of the population instead of by only half of it could be against the obvious happiness that so many people have gained from being wed in San Francisco. It’s hard to remember, now that the memes have been coopted by the conservative right, that the first couple married were two elderly women who’d been together for decades.

I grew up in a small country town that had as two of its characters women very like that couple. They were nicknamed Cabbage and Cauliflower, and those prosaic names somehow fitted their ordinariness perfectly. Everyone assumed they were more than friends and nobody minded; nor were they any more of a curiosity than the lady who gathered up newspapers to recycle them. In the sixties, when there was, as yet, no recycling.

** Honeymoon **

Well, I hope some Kiwi entrepreneur is right onto this marriage thing and offering honeymoons in New Zealand. There’s no better time you know, as the accompanying photo shows.

http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0402/138ec397df6e9c965699.jpeg

It’s one of the many advertising pillars on Market Street—San Francisco’s main drag. Throw in a pair of Ugg-knockoffs for the newly weds, and she’ll be sweet as!

** Breadwinning **

Casting about for an occupation to help support your new spouse? How about President of the United States? Yes, Showtime is going ahead with its reality show called The American Candidate. First proposed in 2002, the new version only requires you to be over 18 years old and a US citizen. And not running for office, or a reality show participant in the past twelve months.

Go for it!

http://www.sho.com/site/americancandidate/home.do

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Unfortunately it appears that NZers are not allowed to view these web pages.)

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