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 | Feb 19, 2018 | Life, Parenting
What’s not to love?
My child is stalking a guy on my meditation app. At the end of the meditation a screen appears with a congratulations and a list of people who were using the app at the same time. When the meditation ends, my daughter immediately picks up the phone to look at all of the pictures of the people who were meditating with us. Every night there is someone named Chris who uses a picture that she likes in the list. And every night she tries to click the button to send a “thanks for meditating with me” message. She literally scrolls through pages of little pictures until she finds Chris every single night. I have tried to explain to her that we don’t know Chris and if we continue sending messages on a nightly basis that poor Chris might become frightened and think that we are obsessed with him. Her response was that she IS obsessed with him. Clearly.
She has no information about Chris other than he has a picture of what she thinks is an alien with trees growing out of his head and that he lives about thirty miles from us. Chris could actually be a woman. Or Chris could be a psycho serial killer, although I doubt it. I mean you don’t really hear much about serial killers spending a lot of time getting zen. Either way, we know nothing about Chris, yet my daughter is obsessed with finding this person nightly after our meditation ends. She is even getting antsy during the meditation if it lasts too long, which is kind of defeating the purpose of meditating. She starts bouncing around grabbing at my phone when the timer gets down to under two minutes.
I’m not like a regular mom. I’m a cool mom…
In her six year old mind, she and Chris are friends because they meditated together. I can’t really blame her though. We call her classmates “friends” and her gymnastics teammates “friends” and even the other children who she sees a few times a week at the child care center at the gym “friends”. Clearly if they are her friends, then so is Chris. At least she knows his name, which is more than I can say for half of her “friends” at the gym.
I wonder what Chris thinks about the weirdo who keeps thanking him for meditating together. Who is this No, Seriously person? What can Chris ascertain from my profile? Well, we can begin with my tagline which is “square peg in a round hole world” which could be interpreted as “I’m a rebel”. My photo only adds to the mystique – you know, no face and the super cool old school NYC concert venue shirt. Looking through my activity he could hopefully gather that I am a parent based on the nightly meditations from the kids – sleep section. So obviously I am a super cool mom who is defying the laws of aging. Then again, from the photo and activity combo he may think I am an immature teenager who really likes rainbow angels. The joke is on Chris. I am a really immature middle aged woman going through what appears to be the longest mid-life crisis in history! Poor Chris is in for an even bigger shocker – it’s not a angsty teenager or middle aged soccer mom doing the stalking; it’s a six year old little fireball with a penchant for unusual cartoon characters. Sorry Chris.
by Jen Logan | Sep 11, 2017 | Being Awesome, Punk Rock
Coffee and punk rock is all I need to get things done today!
Since I left my nine to five job in January I have become pretty carefree. So much in fact that my husband has been calling me “The Dude“. I can’t really blame him. I have taken up wearing a uniform of sorts which consists of pajama pants and a CBGB tank top with a sweater that looks like a homeless man was wearing for years before handing it over to me. When I leave the house I throw on a pair of workout pants to “dress it up a little”. It usually stops people from trying to hand me dollar bills at the grocery store. I’m not going to lie though, on occasion I just throw on yesterday’s pajama pants. Don’t judge me! (more…)
by Jen Logan | Jul 2, 2017 | Life, Parenting
Tap dancing in the driveway singing punk rock.
My daughter and I were walking into the gym (my new hang-out) when an SUV pulled up along side of us. The windows were down, the music was up and the thirty-ish scruffy football player looking driver started singing along “Staring at the blank page before you, open up the dirty window, let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find…” loud enough for a few rows of cars to hear. I’m not a big fan of pop music, but I have channel surfed enough to recognize the theme song from the Hills (AKA Unwritten
by Natasha Bedingfield) that he was belting out. (more…)
by Natasha Bedingfield) that he was belting out. 
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