all is ashes in my mouth bc leonard nimoy is gone but he will live on in my kitchen window and all our hearts always
Sister of The Toast Laura Ortberg Turner wrote about Katy Perry and God for Buzzfeed:
A hallmark of the charismatic church is the belief in an active, intimately involved God. Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann wrote a book about the American evangelical relationship with God, When God Talks Back. “Over the last few decades,” she writes, “this generation of Americans has sought out an intensely personal God; a God who not only cares about your welfare, but worries with you about whether to paint the kitchen table.” This upbringing has undoubtedly influenced Perry as it has so many of the faithful; to them, God isn’t a distant grandfather type but an omnipotent being who has an opinion about every possible decision they have to make, no matter how small.
When Perry talks about praying before her Super Bowl performance, she is talking about (and to) this kind of God. The charismatic God “really is unconditionally loving,” says Luhrmann over the phone from her home. He’s “a loving God and a buddy God…people do this back and forth when they’re talking to God, the way two young girls talk to each other. They’re sharing everything.”
Tamir Rice’s murder believed to be his own fault, says the people who pay the people who murdered him.
Also, the LAPD killed a homeless man.
My friends have been fostering the world’s most adorable rescue greyhound, but are moving and really want to find him a place he can live forever! If you live in California (I imagine! he’s in LA right now) and don’t have cats and could fall in love with THIS FACE:
…I know. I KNOW…then go here for more information! If you think this involves a tremendous amount of work, you should know that greyhounds enjoy BRIEF BURSTS of energy followed by many many many hours on your couch. If I lived in California, he would be decorating my living room as we speak and my cat would be GONE.
Putin is going to hunt down the real killer of Boris Nemtsov. Putin says Nemtsov “always openly and honestly voiced and upheld his views” which doesn’t sound even a little bit like a warning to other people who might want to do that!
Thank fucking God for cell phone video, but probably you shouldn’t need to worry that SEVEN cops and prosecutors will file false reports in the first place:
But here’s my question: Why aren’t the seven witnesses to Dendinger’s nonexistent assault on Cassard already facing felony charges? Why are all but one of the cops who filed false reports still wearing badges and collecting paychecks? Why aren’t the attorneys who filed false reports facing disbarment? Dendinger’s prosecutors both filed false reports, then prosecuted Dendinger based on the reports they knew were false. They should be looking for new careers — after they get out of jail.
Jamil Smith on August Wilson, and why black storytellers matter:
I wasn’t overwhelmed by Wilson’s physical or literary stature when he turned to me and shook my hand. What I thought of immediately were our shared roots. My first words were a bit embarrassing, but I’m still glad I asked. After all, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
“My mother’s family is from the Hill District, like you,” I told Wilson. “Any chance you knew the Howards?”
The playwright bemusedly replied that the family name didn’t ring a bell, but I realized what I’d asked was a bit rhetorical. I already knew that he knew my people. They were in his plays.
As someone who learned to drive at 28, I feel vastly superior to Adam Gopnik who didn’t learn to drive until his forties:
The potentials may serve merely as vicarious experience, but almost all experience is vicarious: that’s why we have stories and movies and plays and pictures. It’s why we have drive-in movies in summer towns. We expand our worlds through acts of limited empathy more than through plunges into unexpected places. My father’s “Now you know how to drive” had wisdom buried in its simplicity. The highlights of life are first unbelievably intense and then absurdly commonplace. I am now a licensed driver. But almost everybody is a licensed driver. Having a child born is a religious experience. But everybody has kids. Everybody drives, and now I can, too. That’s all, and enough. Now I can drive straight across the country, without a stoplight. I don’t think I ever will. But at least I know I can.
A difficult and SEARING look at Norman Mailer and Gary Gilmore by Rachel Monroe, who is always great.
OKAY, I have a very important thing to talk about! I have not read or seen Fifty Shades of Grey, bc erotica should be BETWEEN A WOMAN AND HER COMPUTER, and I tried to hide under Mallory’s popcorn bucket when the trailer played before we saw Lucy, but there is a related topic very dear to my heart, and that is how PRETTY and ADORBS Dakota Johnson is, as she trudges her way through this horrorshow of a landscape of personal humiliation WHILE also having been involved in a major financial success! Did you see girlfriend on SNL? She was slaying me. Those little bangs, that perfect face, that blend of defensiveness and shame and I GOT PAID and also being very beautiful? If she had a PayPal, I would send her the money I did not spend to see her movie, bc she has earned it in my eyes. I salute you, you perfect treasure. I hope you successfully pivot into a long and storied career.
No, the MOST important part of this link roundup, though, is that I read Martin Short’s memoir, I MUST SAY: MY LIFE AS A HUMBLE COMEDY LEGEND in two sittings yesterday (I briefly paused to eat dinner while watching Tommy Boy again, it’s on Netflix) and it is PERFECT, it is the FINEST example of its kind, and I laughed and cried and there’s personal triumph over extreme loss and GILDA and NORA EPHRON and a wonderful marriage and absolute A+ namedropping and intense Canadian Content and I tweeted about it at least a thousand times and I want you to buy it immediately and also send copies to your family.
