I read all of George RR Martin’s ASOIAF last week, because I read like the wiiiiiiiinds of winter, and it is so so so long and clearly has not had the benefit of even the gentlest editor, and I begged for release before it ended. Even now, I’m not sure it’s really over. I took a nap on page 850 of 1125, and when I woke up, I had dreamed I’d made it to 925, but I hadn’t. Is THIS the dream? Are you dreamers, like me? ANYWAY, the show is better than the books by a factor of a billion, don’t believe anyone who says otherwise, they’re living out the make-another-VHS-copy-of-The-Ring-scenario, and here’s Sarah Mesle on the finale episode.
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Actual LOL for Manfeels Park.
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Our own Mary J. Breen wrote this piece about her time in CUSO (the Canadian equivalent of the Peace Corps), and I love how it gets at her enduring uncertainty about what she was doing in Malaysia in the first place, and the limits of interference in general:
During those years, the tragedy of the Vietnam War was unfolding just six hundred miles north across the South China Sea. Over 300,000 US troops were in country by that time, and disk jockeys were sent to entertain them via Armed Forces Radio Saigon. Remember Good Morning, Vietnam? The disk jockey I loved turned out to be the one who replaced Robin Williams’ real-life character in the movie. I’d never heard anything like him with his frenetic, funny patter interspersed with breaks for ultra-serious news reports listing the latest count of “enemy dead” (never US dead) and perky little jingles with messages like, “A dirty machine is a bad scene.” I couldn’t get enough of this music, even though listening was a guilty pleasure because it was impossible not to remember that some of the same GIs listening to the same songs that night would be dead by the next—those same young GIs we’d regularly meet in Singapore on R&R, where they were buying up anything Singapore had to offer. I remember one guy showing me his arms with a dozen silver watches on each. “Bullet proofing,” he called it. Now, even after all these years, whenever I hear Ain’t Too Proud to Beg or Nowhere to Run, I am back in the jungle listening to Motown while Americans of my age are killing and dying for a bogus cause in a similar jungle not so far away.
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You have probably already watched David Bowie and Mick Jagger’s “Dancing in the Streets” without music, but if not! IF NOT, man.
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It’s the most apt metaphor to say that I realized I was putting all my eggs, literally, in that particular basket, and I had imbued the idea of freezing my eggs with so much meaning that I expected to see all of my anxieties and fears about getting older and being single and dying alone to disappear instantly the second I went through with it.
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FEELGOOD STORY OF THE YEAR:
On a recent afternoon, Mary Killoran, 86, was willing herself through a kettlebell dead lift. Mrs. Killoran, a retired medical transcriber, has lived alone since 1971 in an apartment overlooking the East River. A few years ago she suffered a bad fall and began using a walker.
Mr. Addo, 44, taught her exercises like balance lunges and stretching techniques. Gradually, she regained her balance and traded the walker for a cane.
Now, she drinks a protein shake each morning and strolls to the World Trade Center and back — twice a day. She works out about three times a week, but stops by the gym even on off days to visit Mr. Addo. He helps her “be more cheerful, so you don’t have to be depressed,” she said.
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My bestie, who is Australian, ran into Tony Abbott (one of the world’s great all-time losers) at an Australian Function last week, and said: “Any plans to do anything about climate change?” (No, he has no such plans.) And it reminded me of one of the finest moments in attempted political meet-and-greeting:
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What kind of female are you? You may be wrong.
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Today, in “can’t get a fucking break” news. See also (or, no, please do not go see) the comments section for any articles about the money being given to the Central Park Five.
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I’m not a big “books about watching people play card games” person, but the excerpt from Molly Bloom’s book about running Hollywood poker games in Vanity Fair made me want to set Tobey Maguire ON FIRE, summarized here:
That feeling of contentment, however, was issued a rude awakening when Tobey, in for $250K and down to his last $50K, pulled out a close win over a World Series of Poker champion named Jamie. “I had to worry about my job security if he lost,” Bloom writes. Tobey went on to humiliate Bloom in front of the remaining players, loudly offering her a thousand-dollar chip if she did “something to earn these thousand dollars. . . . Bark like a seal who wants a fish.” Bloom writes that she tried to laugh it off, but Tobey continued: “‘I’m not kidding. What’s wrong? You’re too rich now? You won’t bark for a thousand dollars? Wowwww. . . you must be really rich. . . . C’mon,’ he said, holding the chip above my head. ‘BARK.’ ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘No?’ he asked. ‘Tobey,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to bark like a seal. Keep your chip.’”
Bloom was incensed: “My face was on fire. I knew he would be angry, especially because he had now engaged the whole audience, and I wasn’t playing his game. I was embarrassed, but I was also angry. After all I had done to accommodate this guy, I was also shocked. I had made sure I ran every detail of every game by him, changed the stakes for him, structured tournaments around him, memorized every ingredient in every vegan dish in town for him. He had won millions and millions of dollars at my table, and I had catered to his every need along the way—and now he seemed to want to humiliate me. . . . He gave me an icy look, dropped the chip on the table, and tried to laugh it off, but he was visibly angry. When he left, the room was buzzing.”
Because, right, he would NEVER have pulled that shit with a dude, because he would be (correctly) concerned that a dude would punch him in his weasel face.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
CLEANSING FIRE FOR TOBEY MAGUIRE.
also, political meet & greet Prison Island Style warms my icy heart.
SECONDING THE REQUEST FOR CLEANSING FIRE.
“‘I think the game needs restructuring,’ he said one night. ‘How so?’ ‘Well, you make too much and it takes too long to get paid.’ I raised my eyebrows. In what other universe do you show up, play a game, win a million dollars, and get the check within a week?”
Tobey Maguire’s usual universe, clearly. Install Mme. Guillotine on Hollywood Boulevard already.
Fire is too good for him. Let him fall down a deep hole. He won’t die, but will live out his natural span down there, lonely and never seeing another human being.
He will be forced to bark like a seal if he wants provisions lowered down to him.
I’d rather have him condemned to be stuck in Spider-Man 3 forever, doing that embarrassing dance scene over and over again, in that black Venom outfit.
END TOBY MAGUIRE
Tobey Maguire is kind of a small dude (in more than one way, now that I think about it). I could beat him up for Molly.
Also, other dudes at the party – a Lady has been insulted in your presence. That requires a Duel, guys. ( Or at least call Tobey out on his appalling behavior, and then run him through. He is no gentleman).
BRB, sending copies of Code Duello to weaselly Hollywood guys.
I sincerely hope Ben Affleck was not present then because if he passed on that one he is not the man i thought he was.
At first I thought you were saying you could beat Tobey Maguire up in exchange for molly, the drug, and I was trying to figure out if Tobey has the molly and you’d be robbing him of it after the beat-down, or if a third party would give it to you as a prize, and is there a secret Hollywood fight club where you can beat up shitty celebrities who are overdue for a punch in the face…
Excellent movie idea, although I meant “beat him up on her behalf”, because no one else at the gathering had the cojones to do so, obviously. They were all doing their #notallmen #notme #notmyfault default BS
How does someone like Tobey Maguire become so successful? He’s not particularly (at all) good looking, or a particularly good actor. And apparently he’s a total douche.
But the rule is if you defeat Tobey Maguire in an honor duel, you take his power and become the next Tobey Maguire. Everyone does everything they can to avoid this, naturally, and so Tobey reigns insane and unstoppable.
But there has to be some way around the Prophecy! What if the duelists pierce each other’s hearts simultaneously? That would leave the dybbuk trapped between bodies.
Dude can’t even shuffle a deck without turning it into some kind of lunatic petty grift/power trip, can you imagine what he’d be like in a suicide pact?
The UK ASOS warehouse was burned down. Police suspect Arson. They’ve started trading again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27971064
>FEELGOOD STORY OF THE YEAR:
No lie. My Internet needs have been met for the coming week.
Guys I came back to America after two weeks away and there was the Mick Jagger/David Bowie video waiting for me, and just god bless, man.
Toby I take back all the nice things I said about you post-Tropic Thunder, and I double down on all the mean things I said about you post Spiderman 3.
Pete Molinelli, a court officer who lives in Southbridge Towers, said that the building’s seniors used to be “just kind of shut in.” And then Mr. Addo arrived.
“All of a sudden, it’s like there are all these new people in the neighborhood,” Mr. Molinelli said. “But no, they’ve been here forever. Addo brought them out.”
WHO THE HELL IS CHOPPING ONIONS IN HERE DAMMIT.
The bit about him throwing her a 90th birthday party! Sniffle.
But also, this reinforced my determination to do squats all my life, they genuinely help you be more mobile in your old age (hello, getting out of a chair unaided!)
Not only that, but recent studies have shown that post-menopausal women who do weighted squats can actually build bone mass.
SQUATS 4LIFE
My mother went from needing regular calcium supplements to putting on so much bone mass that she got taken off them, thanks to workouts at different martial arts gyms. (Yes, I’m totally bragging on my mom. WHO WOULDN’T.) Now I wish there were an Addo for my grandmother.
GO, MOM! That’s fantastic!
Yeah, a real fascinating thing about bones is that they’re piezo-electric — calcium crystals generate mild electric current when you put pressure on them, and this current causes calcium ions to adhere to them. Weight-bearing exercise (i.e., pressure on your bones) is the best way to build bone strength!
Not only that, but even though your knee is one of the weakest joints in your body, the regular squat is your knee flexing in its strongest position, which means doing squats will improve the function and longevity of your knees, even if you’ve had trouble with them, or previous injuries,
Squats are great! It’s a shame that they are also terrible, and everyone hates them.
I don’t hate them.
I think they are awesome and any program my trainer gives me is made 100% more fun when he includes squats. I feel like such a BAMF doing them, because most of the other people who go to my gym are no-neck douchebros who haven’t done a leg day since high school. If then.
They are also good for 1) leaping, 2) kicking guys, 3) leap-kicking guys. Ideal for if you ever see Tobey Maguire. KEEP ON WITH THE SQUATS!
I don’t hate them either. I’d do them every damn day if my muscles could repair fast enough. They’re also good for sprinting, which I actually do hate, but y’know, it’s good to know I could kick ass at it if I chose to.
I also LOVE squats. So much so that when I was lifting by myself, squats were the only thing I really got good at, because I did them all the time, because I loved them. I mix it up more these days now that I’m in group training, but I still smile widest on squat day.
I love squats because after trying to do any upper-body exercise, squats make me feel like a bad-ass.
Squats are the BEST! I hate running (haaaaaaate) so I am super glad that squats can supplement my cardio in such a way that my quads get pumped up without having to run like 5 miles a day. Because I will do no such thing.
Well, it’s good that you all like squats, but it’s my considered advice that you all upgrade to pistol squats immediately, if you have not already done so.
Those things are BONKERS.
Fully agree that they are terrible. I will do push-ups any day. Pull-ups are fun even though I can only do two so far, and that only on a good day. Squats are the devil, and I have concluded I will never be able to make myself do them on my own. In future I will be all upper body and no legs at all.
squats are actually my favorite and when my book had me doing less squats I was sad
Mr. Addo is a hero and I want to be swinging kettlebells at age 90. I love everything about this story.
CHRIST, Nicole. I am like, Known among my family/friends for being a really fast reader and and it’s taking me about a month to get through ASOIAF. Although I’m currently somewhere in the middle of the fourth one and ugh who are these characters nobody caaaares and I am taking a break to read that Catherine the Great biography instead.
What’s this about a Catherine the Great biography?
It’s by Robert K. Massie and it’s a few years old. I started it right after it came out but never finished it for some stupid reason, and then Nicole mentioned it recently and I saw it in the library over the weekend and snatched it up. Way more fun then reading ponderous descriptions of people’s festering wounds, GEORGE.
I had to take a break between the fourth and fifth. I think it took me a few months one summer. Getting them done in a week is INSANE.
PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY
Hmm I read the first 3 books in 2 days while recovering from minor dental surgery so there were a couple of Percocets involved. There might be something to this reading GRRM=surmountable pain theory.
The Catherine the Great book was awesome – you have chosen wisely.
The show is so much better than the books. I think this is in large part because the show’s writers get to cut all the descriptive prose, and are forced to consider how the dialogue will sound coming out of the mouths of actual human beings, and make sure it’s at least good enough to be redeemed by their actors. (Also, whenever he writes about sex I want to scream. All moral issues aside: just say “tits”, Martin; this “teats” business is fingernails on a chalkboard.)
UGH I KNOW ENOUGH WITH THE TEATS ALREADY
It’s like nipples on a breastplate. Amiright, guys?
Guys? Guys?
Where did everyone go?
I’m just glad no one’s going around saying “jape” all the damn time.
AGREE. Also we get it everyone is wearing boiled leather stop saying boiled leather the words “boiled leather” don’t even look like words to me anymore. (I am actually pretty hooked on the series, contrary to how it may sound, but dude needs an editor for suuuure.)
I almost quit reading the books over the word “butt” in someone’s narration. I just couldn’t cope with the implication that whoever it was — I think it was Tyrion? — was perfectly at ease with all the ludicrous quantities of violence and sex and sexual violence surrounding them, but could not bring themselves, even in the privacy of their own internal monologue, to think the word “ass.” I don’t remember this bothering me in the last couple of books, though, so maybe he’s stopped doing it.
I darkly suspect that he thought “tits” and “ass” did not sound sufficiently Ye Olde Sub-Tolkeinian English.
So A Dance with Dragons really IS the final book? I’m never sure or trusting with these serial fantasy authors.
Two more to go.
Ah, ok.
Winds of Winter is next, and then…A Dream of Spring, I think, for the alleged final one? But who knows if he’ll pull some more bullshit and split the next book or two into more because he can’t meet a deadline. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, MARTIN.
I might steel myself and wait it out so I only hav to re-read the whole danged thing once.
WHATEVER, Nicole. The show is excellent in many ways, and sometimes I agree with their choices, but there is a LOT of character development that gets swept to the side in favor of D&D’s favorite character (Tyrion) and at the expense of their least favorites (Catelyn, Stannis).
Yeah I am torn between your opinion and Nicole’s, in that I feel like on a word/sentence level the books need an editor like nobody’s business, but on a larger level they far surpass the show in innumerable ways. I cannot believe the shit D&D pulled on Cat Stark and Selyse Baratheon (oh wait I can, all too well).
YES AGREED. + the swap of Jane Westerling for Hot Foreign Nurse I will never understand! Mom Westerling was not about that treasonous life! Robs teenage romance + Dads honor = The Fall of the North! Its so fitting! And don’t get me started on D&Ds interpretation of Jaime because he was my fav and you SLEW him.
MANFEELS PARK!!!!! I didn’t get beyond that one, help I’m going to spend the rest of the day at work giggling about it, goodbye forever!
Has anyone talked about David Sedaris recently? He is SO WEIRD and I love it SO MUCH. Is it that he makes me feel better about my own, more minimal obsessions? Maybe, but also I couldn’t stop laughing. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/30/140…
David Sedaris is one of the few authors who has me laughing hysterically. I know he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I cannot read him or listen to him without dissolving into laughter. And I’m not really a ‘laugher’ when it comes to reading humour. So I think he just tickles me.
Two points about the Bowie/Jagger video:
1. The parody video is missing the intense erotic charge of the original, which is a shame. Those fellas should be kissing, come ON.
2. My single favorite moment, even more than the moments where Bowie & Jagger are singing into each other’s mouths, is at 1:34 in the original and ~0:30 in the parody: when WILD PARTY ANIMAL DANCING MACHINE KICKING AND WAILING OUT OF CONTROL Mick Jagger takes a swig from a canned drink, then bends down to set it precisely on the ground next to him.
Watching the original, I am struck by the fact that Jagger, around the two-minute mark, is dancing like a cross between Dr Zoidberg and Hugh Grant in Love Actually. It’s disconcerting. (And what on earth is he wearing?)
That is so Jagger. SO JAGGER. One part wild and crazy rocker, one part Type A OCD control freak. Like, you’re rocking out in your room to Get Off of My Cloud,” and then you realize you’re singing, “It’s 3 a.m., there’s too much noise, don’t people ever want to go to bed?”
1. Am so so so glad to hear I was not the only one to hate the books, though it hasn’t convinced me to watch the show either
2. Suddenly gleeful for Garfield’s spider-man reboot, may Maguire be consigned to the pit. Weasel.
So I read a lot of fantasy books, and while I like ASoIaF, and I think there are some things the show does better and some things the books do better, Martin is 1000% guilty of the male fantasy writer trope of having NO IDEA what is actually interesting and so just writing down everything. Like seriously, almost every male fantasy writer does this.
This. And when I started off reading it, I thought, ‘wow, he is a really courageous author, and not afraid to kill off characters you really like and have got to know’ and now I just think he kills people off to keep the story ‘interesting.’
I did read that he writes so slowly they’re concerned the TV series will overtake the books. Which made me feel better that I’m still working on the first draft of my novel which I had expected to finish by now!
RIGHT?! It was meandering in a way that maybe was supposed to be "aimless like his soul" but came off as "WTF? Whats happening? Where is he? Why? oh THATS the end goal? Hmm."
Honestly……like, seriously guys. I don’t know what my life was before The Toast.
See also: J.K. Rowling.
Nicole I am Australian please tell me I am your best friend.
David Sedaris is one of the few authors who has me laughing hysterically. I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but I cannot read him or listen to him without dissolving into laughter. And I'm not really a 'laugher' when it comes to reading humour. So I think he just tickles me.
Tony Abbott IS a dickhead.
I am so disappointed that he is our PM. If the other party hadn’t been so useless before the last election then we wouldn’t be in this dismal state. It’s awful. Mind you, considering the election before that, it was almost a hung parliament, we’re just in a position where our two major parties are kind of equally unappealing. I remember reading a tweet about that election and it summed the whole thing up:
“The Australian public has spoken. It said: Meh.”
But I was intrigued as to why you would possibly want to put his photo up on the Link Roundup, so at least it made me click, right?!
Tony Abbott IS a dickhead.
I am so disappointed that he is our PM. If the other party hadn't been so useless before the last election then we wouldn't be in this dismal state. It's awful. Mind you, considering the election before that, it was almost a hung parliament, we're just in a position where our two major parties are kind of equally unappealing. I remember reading a tweet about that election and it summed the whole thing up:
"The Australian public has spoken. It said: Meh."
But I was intrigued as to why you would possibly want to put his photo up on the Link Roundup, so at least it made me click, right?!
This. And when I started off reading it, I thought, 'wow, he is a really courageous author, and not afraid to kill off characters you really like and have got to know' and now I just think he kills people off to keep the story 'interesting.'
I did read that he writes so slowly they're concerned the TV series will overtake the books. Which made me feel better that I'm still working on the first draft of my novel which I had expected to finish by now!