by Jen Logan | Mar 8, 2018 | Chick Stuff, Life
I’m rotten to the core.
I don’t know why I always identify with the villain, but since I was a kid I have always felt a certain camaraderie with the “bad guy”. I have always been drawn to people who are clever and ingenious. I like someone who is quick witted and a little cynical and if he can con Kanye West into shutting his egomaniac piehole for 30 seconds, even better. That kind of magic is like watching the Sistine Chapel being painted. Unfortunately, this kind of artistry is rarely used for good. It’s always the villains who possess these qualities in books and movies.
When I was a small child I was never a big fan of fairy tales. I did like Sesame Street and my favorite character was Oscar the Grouch. I also liked Animal from the Muppets and of course the Grinch. I liked the bad boys and the cynical jerks even as a kid. I progressed to Travis Bickle and Lestat as a teenager. It wasn’t until I was in college that I understood that being called cunning wasn’t a compliment. I guess my moral compass has not always pointed due north.
I would argue that sometimes there is justified revenge and there is almost always appropriate retribution for being wronged. Neither begin with turning the other cheek. My favorite characters in books and movies had usually been wronged in some way, big or small, and they reacted accordingly. If that made them villains, so be it.
When I was 21, I started a business – a record label. It was named Medea after one of the most interesting characters in Greek mythology. She murdered her own children to make her ex-husband pay for his infidelity. Talk about blind rage. She has always been one of the ultimate villains because she didn’t care about her own suffering as long as she exacted revenge on those who had hurt her. The ironic thing about this is that a large part of my time in this business was spent babysitting a bunch of guitar playing man-boys. If Medea’s children behaved anything remotely like these guys, I could see where she was coming from.
My husband has always found my love of villains to be a little unsettling. When I read “Gone Girl” I was rooting for Amy. I wanted her to make her husband pay for having had an affair. It didn’t matter that she was bat-shit crazy, he had to pay and the punishment had to be exponentially worse than the crime. We read the book at the same time and had totally different reactions. I was cheering for “my hero” while he was horrified that she was getting away with it. I felt the same way about Alex in Fatal Attraction. Again, I am all for justified revenge. Karma is a bitch, but not always swift.
I have been binge watching Breaking Bad over the last month. Walter White is one of my favorite villains, mostly because we get to see him transform from a doormat to a badass over time. Also, he is clever and smart. He is a meth-making MacGyver who took on every possible enemy from the Mexican cartel to ex-con neo-nazis and won, all while kicking cancer’s ass. So what if he poisoned a kid and set up his brother-in-law to take the fall for him as the biggest meth producer in the southwest. I mean, everybody has their flaws right?
I think one of the reasons I can relate to the more villainous characters is because they are who they are. They are real, flaws and all. I like people who don’t take crap from anyone. They don’t care about being liked, they just do their thing. I think most of us have a little villain in us which is why these characters are so relatable. We just don’t let our inner villain out of its cage often, if at all. I probably let mine out a little more than I should, but hey when you have a gift, you really should share it!
by Jen Logan | Jul 27, 2017 | Being Awesome, Chick Stuff, Life
They call me “double scoop” for a reason.
I was talking to a girlfriend today who is making a bad choice but doesn’t really care. She is dating a guy who she knows is bad for her but she can’t seem to stay away from him. My response to her was “Well, I know ice cream is bad for me, but sometimes I just really need to eat some ice cream.” My friends seem to talk to me when they want the okay to do something bad. I am always the one that will support their decision to live a little dangerously. Sleep with the bad boy? Go for it! Quit your stable job to do something you love that pays dirt? You only live once! Let the kids stay with their grandparents to run off to Jamaica for a week of debauchery? Hell yes! I am that friend who will give the bad idea legs to run with. (more…)
by Jen Logan | Jun 25, 2017 | Being Awesome, Chick Stuff
Sneaking around the gym
My gym is pretty eclectic. I can start a work-out on an elliptical machine next to a twenty five year old body builder and end it next to an eighty year old heart patient. One thing they all have in common is an aroma that I don’t want to inhale twice. I get it, you work out, you sweat. I’m pretty sure I don’t smell like a big bunch of roses after my workout. So last week when a middle aged man jumped on the machine next to me and I caught a big whiff of wonderful, I almost flew right over my handlebars. It was as if he had just walked out of a dryer, all fresh and full of fabric softener. It wasn’t a scent I could place, but it had a vague familiarity. I’m guessing it was from some swanky spa I visited years ago with my mother or when I borrowed a towel at a classmates house back in lower school. (more…)
by Jen Logan | Jun 8, 2017 | Chick Stuff, Life, Parenting
Hanging with the girls…
Being an only child, you need to improvise when you want to have a girls day watching movies, or a dance party. My daughter creates her parties using a couple of three foot tall Disney princesses. Although they normally reside in her playroom, they make an appearance in other rooms of the house while she is playing. Inevitably, they spend a night sitting on the couch in the family room. On these nights, my prankster husband finds it funny to set the girls up in strange places when he leaves for work in the morning. I awake to find Belle next to my bed or Anna peeking out from behind the bathroom door. He takes great pride in freaking me out first thing in the morning. (more…)
by Jen Logan | Jun 1, 2017 | Being Awesome, Chick Stuff, Life
Attention Target shoppers – there’s a creepy guy near the children’s swimwear…
My husband and I have had fun filming. So much fun that we filmed an intro video. We wanted to incorporate all of the things that I do on a regular basis, so of course we had to film me shopping at Target. It is my second home after all. Seriously, when I got in my car after leaving the gym on Saturday, my GPS told me how long it would take to get to Target rather than my house! Filming at Target was kind of fun. My husband was a bit like a nature documentarian, following this big cat in her natural habitat. The only bummer was that he made me put back everything I had put in the cart. Apparently they were just props! What’s up with that? I don’t think I have ever walked out of Target without my arms weighed down with bags. I don’t work out my arms at the gym, these guns are strictly from lugging around shopping bags. (more…)
by Jen Logan | May 25, 2017 | Chick Stuff, Parenting
Brainy too!
My daughter’s teacher came out into the hallway this morning at drop off to tell me a story from yesterday. All of the kids were given a piece of paper with a printed poem and a blank space for them to draw a picture. They were told to draw their picture and they would read the poem together when they were finished. Since this is kindergarten, the children are all at different reading levels. My daughter reads pretty well already. I know this because she reads to me every night and the stories she tells me actually match the books. This is a little surprising to me considering she spends so much time with my Dad who is completely unable to tell a story or sign a birthday card without adding his own verbiage. As my daughter was drawing her picture, she was, of course, reading the poem out loud. One of her classmates asked her “You can read?” Her reply was quick and decisive. She said very matter-of-factly “I’m not just a pretty face!” Indeed, she is not.
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