#jobbies

Just musing here, nothing is set in stone.

We won’t be going back to the states, because while it was good to be home for a while, I don’t feel pulled to LIVE there again yet.

I don’t want a job where I can’t have any color hair I want or visible tattoos if I want

I’m thinking of networking around some bars in Tokyo, possibly getting my foot in the door as a bartender or helping out around where I can

Been thinking about being a front-desk helper for tattoo parlors in the area wherever we move to, as well, because I like that atmosphere

I have the qualifications to be a teacher no matter where we move to in Japan, but I’m so burnt out on being at a desk and working in the Japanese education system that I don’t know if I want to do it after this year

Signing on for a fifth year has felt amazing, and I look forward to my last round of self-intros and holidays, so there is absolutely no regret when I admit that I’m tired; I would not have stayed if I didn’t want to be at O-ko, so this is not me complaining about being here until 2018

There is a lot I want to do in Aomori for my students that I could not do if I did not stay a fifth year, and I am hoping I get to teach more this last year too

After this, part of me thinks that I would rather run a private eikaiwa for French and English and set my own hours, instead of sitting at my desk waiting to get a blood clot in my leg from being sedentary

I need to start running again, that’s a reminder

I’ve thought about applying to some international schools anyway, but the thought doesn’t make me happy, and I wonder if that means I need to do something different? Or could it be because I’m not actively teaching at my school lately that has me feeling blue?

Knowing that I have people in Tokyo that will support/advise me is super helpful in making these sorts of decisions. Me saying I would rather work some lowkey jobs that make less money might come as a surprise, since I’ve got the wherewithal to do more, and if I lived anywhere else I might consider it.

If I’m being completely honest, I want to be a writer and nothing else will do. Everything else feels like a means to that end recently. But I’m scared that in the future, I can’t support myself and my husband with writing alone.

Me: I *hated* A Star is Born!

No One, Ever: Please, dissect your opinion and give us ALL THE SPOILERS. I’m on tenderhooks here!

Me: Well, yet again we have to sit through *another* film that sees the Manic Pixie Dream Girl exist solely as collateral damage on the Tortured Genius Hero’s rocky road to redemption.

Let’s start at the beginning. The first act of this film is legitimately excellent. Bradley Cooper’s character Jackson is all swagger and gin. His tunes are amazing. The live gigs are so beautifully filmed you can understand a) why people love him, and b) why he loves performing. Lady Gaga’s character is so spiky and spontaneous, and her songs in this chunk of the film are magnificent. You can’t wait for *this* artist to get her own spotlight and do her thing.  She looks like the fourth member of Haim who also happens to be an effortless belter. She’s instantly compelling and I genuinely forgot Ally was Lady Gaga. 

Until she *turns into Lady Gaga*. Well, a bargain bin version of Lady Gaga that reads more like satire. It’s as if the film is taking the piss out of it’s leading lady’s day job and she doesn’t even realise. I thought we were meant to be embarrassed for her descent into shit-poppery, but then she inexplicably WINS A GRAMMY. SERIOUSLY?  You watch her being moulded into something that is the opposite of what we’ve previously seen - and liked - and you’re supposed to go with it. The girl who sang La Vie En Rose while pulling roses out of her hosiery would have had a thing or two to say about that absolute stinker she sings on SNL. Take us back to the piano, the seventies throwback outfits, the  Suzi Quatro haircut, the sweaty face and the *decent music* please please please!

Am I a music snob? Maybe. But that’s not all.

Music aside, up to this point she has mothered both her father and her boyfriend, but somehow at the hands of the hilariously cartoonish Bad Manager Guy she is a child with no opinions. Her manager is less Simon Cowell, and more Wyatt Frame from Josie and the Pussycats. It’s ridiculous.

Ally ping-pongs between these three men who all tell her what to do and she barely bats an eyelid. And on an even more sinister note, what The Big Bad Thing happens, there’s that earnest, lingering close up of her face when she says it’s all her fault. Like having a career and being an independent person from her significant other contributed to his inevitable catapult off the rails. 

I think her part, like so many others, was written by a man who loves music but fetishises the female figures within it. I wanted to love it, but it made me feel weird. And not good-weird, like a Lady Gaga music video circa 2009. Weird-weird, as if the decades of feminism and absolute boss women in music who control their image between this and Barbara Streisand’s whirl around the Star franchise didn’t even happen. 

So, with a heavy heart, I award this movie ten Jobbies out of ten.