January 11, 2017 at 7:05 am (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Eavesdropping, Explorers, Fan Fiction, Links, Movies, Recommended, Surprises, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Jennifer Lawrence, science fiction, websites
Of course, because this is the future and we write fan fiction, watching “Passengers” leads to some interesting gender flipping in our de-construction of said movie.
The idea of having Jennifer Lawrence doing the choosing was entirely Sunny’s. Self thought: Go for it!
Stay tuned.
January 9, 2017 at 5:02 pm (Eavesdropping, Recommended)
Tags: causes, crime, inspiration, Mondays, Protests
You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today . . . Future reference, if you are confused about whether a girl can consent, see if she can speak an entire sentence.
— Emily Doe to her rapist, Brock Turner, quoted in Glamour, December 2016
From Emily Doe:
I had forensic evidence, sober unbiased witnesses, a slurred voice mail, police at the scene. I had everything, and I was still told it was not a slam dunk. I thought, if this is what having it good looks like, what other hells are survivors living? I’m barely getting through this but I am being told I’m the lucky one, some sort of VIP. It was like being checked into a hotel room for a year with stained sheets, rancid water, and a bucket with an attendant saying, No, this is great! Most rooms don’t even have a bucket.
After the trial I was relieved, thinking the hardest part was over, and all that was left was the sentencing. I was excited to finally be given a chance to read my statement and declare, I am here. I am not that floppy thing you found behind the garbage, speaking melted words. I am here, I can stand upright, I can speak clearly, I’ve been listening and am painfully aware of all the hurt you’ve been trying to justify.
I yelled half of my statement. So when it was quickly announced that he’d be receiving six months, I was struck silent.
After Turner was convicted of rape last spring, a judge “sentenced him to just six months, saying anything more would have a severe impact on him.” — Cindi Leive, in Glamour magazine
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
January 5, 2017 at 5:47 am (Conversations, Eavesdropping)
Tags: essay, humor, satire, The New Yorker
Self knows it is really lame that she’s just now getting to her New Yorkers of February 2016. Nearly a year ago. But she’s so anal about it. She refuses to throw away a single issue she hasn’t read. That’s a very big pile she’s staring at, right now.
On to “Shouts & Murmurs.” It doesn’t always work. Sometimes it feels like whoever’s doing it is trying too hard to be satirical. Because that is the whole point of “Shouts & Murmurs”– to be satirical. Some people have satire in their blood, and some people can’t be satirical to save their lives. Some people can point to a stick of butter and make the gesture itself seem satirical. Others can say Moo Moo and ape a cow and pretend to be giving birth to a stick of butter and everyone would just look at them and say, Wut?
But, as usual, self digresses.
Here’s one that works: Kelly Stout conjures a judge giving jury instructions.
Jurors, I remind you that part of your duty today is to avoid discussing the details of this case with anyone outside this jury. Do not, for example, Gchat with your best friend from college, because she lives in Philly and doesn’t know any of the restaurants around here, and always says dumb, unhelpful stuff like, “Falafel isn’t as healthy as you think.”
Information from the news or from social media must not influence your finding in this case. For example, do not use Instagram to try to figure out whether Rob’s friend Warren got a Skrillex haircut or if it just looks like that because of the light. Also, Warren may not even be able to come, because his stepmom is in town.
You are allowed to make reasonable inferences, as long as they are based on the evidence. It is OK to speculate that Rob’s roommate may get on your case for being pro-Hillary and have literally zero sense of humor about it when you call him a Bernie Bro, because that is what happened when you guys met up for dim sum.
(How nostalgic self gets when she reads of pre-election chatter like the above!)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
January 1, 2017 at 5:54 pm (Eavesdropping, Holidays, Recommended, Sundays, The New York Times)
Tags: discoveries, elections, essay, politics, The New York Times
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Comfort the mind with this wonderful excerpt from Jonathan Mahler’s “Search Party,” in the 1 January 2017 New York Times Magazine.
Our most famous self-investigator is, of course, our incoming president, Donald J. Trump; perhaps no one is more committed to embracing and trumpeting unproven claims from the internet. Six years ago, as he flirted with the idea of running for president, he became especially preoccupied with a theory being advanced by a right-wing extremist named Joseph Farah. A self’described ex-Communist, Farah presided over a nonprofit organization, the Western Center for Journalism, which was dedicated to promoting “philosophical diversity” in the news media, and now runs a popular website, WorldNetDaily, which bills itself as “America’s Independent News Network.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors U.S. hate groups, has a different point of view, calling Farah “the internet king of the antigovernment ‘Patriot’ movement.
Farah had floated plenty of specious arguments in the past, among them the claim that gay men orchestrated the Holocaust, and that Muslims have a 20-point plan for conquering the United States by 2020. But the Farah campaign that captured Trump’s imagination held that America’s first black president, Barack Obama, might have been born outside the United States.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
December 23, 2016 at 2:29 am (Artists and Writers, Eavesdropping, Links, Movies, Recommended)
Tags: David Bowie, grief, music, reviews, transitions, websites
Early in January, David Bowie died, and then Alan Rickman four days later, and those twin losses now seem like the double toll of a warning bell whose somber echo would resonate through the year. 2016 was a year when the pillars that used to hold up our shared cultural universe wouldn’t stop crumbling around us. Prince? You expect us to somehow continue American pop music without Prince? Oh God, Gene Wilder. Oh no, Leonard Cohen.
— Dana Stevens, Slate movie critic, The Top 10 Movies of 2016
December 21, 2016 at 5:03 pm (Artists and Writers, Eavesdropping, Links, Movies)
Tags: Jennifer Lawrence, performances, review, websites
As a committed Everlark fan fiction writer, self still hasn’t gotten over J-Law.
But the fandom is up in arms over Passengers.
Do dear blog readers know that there are a number of Hollywood screenplay writers who write Everlark? For fun?
Neither did self, until the rumbling about Passengers started.
First, there was a tremor over the photoshopping of Lawrence’s eyes in the promo posters.
Next, the trailers.
And finally, the screenplay. Apparently, Lawrence’s status as a feminist is strained to the utmost in this movie, where she is presented as a kind of trophy for Chris Pratt. There are, of course, worse things in life than becoming the trophy/girlfriend of Chris Pratt, but Lawrence surely deserved more than just to play that role.
This is a kick-ass woman, Hollywood! Self things she’s moved past the girlfriend roles.
From A. V. Club:
A spaceship malfunction wakes up Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) 90 years early “and he’s now doomed to live out the rest of his life surrounded by sushi bars and infinity pools, but not a single human companion.”
Unbeknownst to all (or maybe not unbeknownst to all!), Jim has developed an obsession with one of the sleeping passengers, of course a gorgeous blonde (played by Jennifer Lawrence) named Aurora. But, just so you know J-Law’s character is no bimbo, the script has her playing a journalist.
Preston “deliberately wakes her up early so he has someone to talk to.” (I’ll bet!) He then “proceeds to present an innocent face to his new friend/captive and to charm/manipulate her into” a “sexual relationship.”
As Yoda himself might say at this point: The ICK factor is high in this one.
Passengers becomes — Barbarella???!!
Jane Fonda played Barbarella and she was good in the role.
Lawrence cannot play this role because, no matter how high the hot-ness factor, that gaze of hers is just too knowing, too capable of pinning a man to the floor.
So, who could play this role as space girlfriend? Someone curvy, since this is a male fantasy movie. Scarjo, perhaps? Margot Robbie? Or that woman in the TV series Quantico?
But there is a problem here because Lawrence for the life of her cannot play anything but shrewd. That’s just who she is. And whatever role she plays, big or small, the hugeness of the Lawrence bullshit-detector cannot be hidden, much less effaced. So it is really, really asking a lot of the audience to swallow the fact that one of the shrewdest actresses in movies today is playing someone who cannot read through a man’s intentions. Especially since the screenplay has her playing a journalist. And surely it doesn’t take a journalist, or even a whole village of journalists, to deduce that Jim Preston has an ulterior motive in waking Aurora up early? Because why wake up a journalist in outer space? Wouldn’t it make more sense to wake up an engineer? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have J-Law play an android? Space ship + woken up early + by Chris Pratt = yes, do go there.
Who wrote this?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
December 20, 2016 at 6:59 am (Books, Conversations, Eavesdropping, Recommended)
Tags: Mondays, nonfiction, reading lists
A friend tells the father, Herbert William Clutter:
What happens to Clutter afterward is cruel, but it is also ironic. In light of the above statement.
Self just noticed that the book’s publisher describes it as a “true account.” Somehow, those two words in combination — especially the “account” — make one think of story.
There is subjectivity in the word “account” — it is not definitive. One event can have many different accounts. It’s not exactly objective reporting, there is blurring. There is point of view.
Point of view is necessarily limited. There will be gaps. Not everything will be explained.
Self finds all of this fascinating. It makes her realize how much importance rests on a book’s label. Because that label is the “hook.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
December 16, 2016 at 11:48 pm (Conversations, Eavesdropping, Lists, Surprises)
Tags: elections, Fridays, Hillary, Obama
Since self has been laid up with a bug for the last three days, she has plenty of time to ruminate on the year soon ending. And these are her darkest thoughts:
A lot of women (mostly older women) disliked Hillary.
A woman can run for President, she can be the smartest woman in America, and the other candidate can still slam her on her looks. (Thinly veiled: “She just doesn’t look Presidential.” Self recalls that a long time ago, when Desperate Housewives was a hit, The President-Elect pronounced Eva Longoria just “a 7 out of 10.” Thank God he did not go that low this time)
Women are hard on a woman who wears pantsuits all the time.
Self heard this during the latest election season: Melania knows how to dress and Hillary is “ugly.” Post-election: Michelle Obama is an ape in heels.
American animosities that had been frayed open by eight years under an African American man came to tortuous conclusion when a woman ran to succeed him. It was just too much. For most of America. A return to sanity was sorely needed. And that is why we are here now.
Stay tuned.
December 12, 2016 at 10:41 pm (Eavesdropping, Links, Recommended)
Tags: California, Capitola, Eunoia Review, Literary Magazines, Mondays, poetry
From Richard Schnap’s poem, “As The Road Narrows,” in the 13 December 2016 issue of the Eunoia Review:
We attach meaning
To many things
That have no meaning
Read the rest of the poem here.
The Beach at Capitola
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Running my sauce box about my humorous human encounters and probably some other stuff. Enjoy!
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