The Texas prosecutor who, IMHO, straight-up murdered Cameron Todd Willingham is ACTUALLY FACING SOME MISCONDUCT CHARGES:
Following a preliminary inquiry that began last summer, the bar this month filed a disciplinary petition in Navarro County District Court accusing the former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, of obstruction of justice, making false statements and concealing evidence favorable to Willingham’s defense.
“Before, during, and after the 1992 trial, [Jackson] knew of the existence of evidence that tended to negate the guilt of Willingham and failed to disclose that evidence to defense counsel,” the bar investigators charged.
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oh man I did not KNOW I needed a bunch of actors and actresses and composers to tell me exactly why they love Stephen Sondheim until THIS MINUTE:
“I was 16 years old when I played Charley in Merrily We Roll Along at my summer camp in upstate New York. I suspect that everything I know about how to craft musical theater scores comes from having spent those four weeks inside that show, getting to know it as an actor, as a pianist, and as a young writer having stumbled upon the keys to a creative life I didn’t know was possible. Steve has said he’s spent his whole life trying to fix Allegro; I think maybe I’ve spent my whole life trying to fix Merrily. Aspiring to work at that level is the most delightfully impossible task I could have ever set for myself. I hope I never get all the way there.” —Jason Robert Brown, composer
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i can read an unlimited number of pieces arguing about Rory Gilmore’s boyfriends:
Joel: It’s almost unfair to talk about the two after taking in the whole series because Jess becomes almost a beyond human android boyfriend created for Rory in a lab by Season Six, after starting out as a bratty close-up magician, and poor Dean starts off as a rugged Cormac McCarthy-reading boy from Chicago, and descends into a bizarre blue collar Tennessee Williams reject. In a perfect world, I would choose the Dean of Season One or the Jess of Season Six, as both iterations in Seasons Two and Three are such garbage. Season Two Dean is controlling and runs to her mom when things begin to go south and Season Three Jess tries to bully Rory into having sex in the middle of a party. No thanks!
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Mallory and Choire invented being lazy, and God bless them for it:
Charting the rise of the no-caps, low-punctuation line is trickier. Empirically, the style seems popular within a certain circle of literary online writers. Schnoebelen points out that dispensing of punctuation, or separating sentences with commas, wends closer to oral speech patterns. Doing so aligns with the personality of the sites these writers represent, which don’t claim authoritativeness in the same way as old media publications where formatting is standard, and content therefore (presumably) trustworthy. (Neither Sicha nor Ortberg returned a request for comment.)
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You will not regret watching this video of an unflappable Englishman saving a baby swan from a fence while the swan’s dad tries to beat him up.
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Our own Jaya Saxena tried to become Jewish with chopped liver, it did not work!
All brides probably worry that they’ll never be good enough for their in-laws — that even if you’re everything he wants, you’ll never be everything they wanted for him. For me, this revolved around Judaism. Jaya, I imagined them thinking, might be an amazing match, but Jaya-but-Jewish would be perfect; they were just putting up with me because the Jewish version of me hadn’t presented herself. None of them actually made me feel this way. I’m positive nobody in the family gave any thought to this but me, but it rooted in my head so thoroughly that extracting it would have torn the whole thing up.
So instead, I thought about it more.
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Millihelen has a guide to wearing binders:
I have always been a husky man. I am now one year post-op, but when I had breasts, they were nothing to play around with – no pun intended. So binding was always difficult.
For many, chest binding can help them pass. For me, however, I knew even if I got my chest fairly flat, it would not be enough for me to publicly pass as male. Still, there is something about that feeling of having a flattened chest that brought the peace of mind that I desperately needed.
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One of our very own Toasties has written a romance novel under a NOM DE PLUUUUUME and you can find it here!
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
The answer to who Rory should end up with is OBVIOUSLY PARIS. The existence of her boyfriends is just a long-form argument for never forming attachments to men.
I can’t believe I used to be team Jess as a teen (and, if I’m honest, a little bit longer than that). I was so misguided. Luckily Mallory’s Femslash Friday post about Rory and Paris opened my eyes.
I think if anything I’m the opposite, because teenage!me was just so opposed to ALL MEN AND BOYS, and now I have to work with them sometimes and whatnot. But her boyfriends were just so awful! Rory was also awful, of course, but in a different way. I never understood why she couldn’t find ONE DUDE who wasn’t either crying in his Ford F-150 over his Springsteen-esque broken dreams or…well. Logan.
I’m (mostly) straight, so I guess that explains my fondness for Jess – I mean, he was hot AND he read books, which at 17 was the ultimate in dreaminess. My affection for him was only surpassed by my love for one Pacey Witter, so I guess I had a type: slightly rebellious brunettes.
Come to think about it, the boy could be described as a slightly rebellious brunette. Maybe I still have that type. But the boy isn’t broody or a bad influence and is supportive, so the mild panic I just felt (shit! Am I living with a Jess?) wasn’t justified.
Oh, yeah, I’m a lez so the appeal was definitely never there for me.
haha we’ve all been there. Teenage media can be an odd reflection of where we end up.
Jess is exaaaactly the kind of idiot I would have fawned over in high school. It was a little disturbing to still find myself pretty attracted to him at 28. Like, at least my reaction now is “OK that guy is super super hot and like poetic or whatever but I’m not DATING those guys anymore, remember??”, but I dunno how much that really feels like progress.
I meeeeean I like the lesbian angle but Paris and Doyle are kind of perfect, and also Paris is still pretty awful. But so is Rory kinda so I’m not outright rejecting it.
Paris can date both Doyle and Rory. Paris is a) obsessively organized and b) too much for one person to handle, so I think polyamory would be an excellent fit for her.
Hmmm I like where you’re going with it, but can you really imagine Rory dealing well with polyamory? She likes having many people fighting over her, but she wouldn’t be able to deal with their attentions being divided in turn.
Oh my god can you imagine the organizational charts she would make
I had to stop reading when ‘Joel’ declared himself #TeamMarty. Of all the awful men in that show, Marty is undeniably the absolute worst.
But the answer is Jess, if “no one” is not an option. The much harder question is, for me, would I rather marry Luke or Jackson? And why can’t I have both?
Marty is the nice guy TM personified. Which I guess doesn’t make sense, since a nice guy is a person per definition, but you get what I mean.
That second question is indeed hard. My first instinct would be to say Jackson, because Luke (while hotter) would probably get on your nerves with his eternal crankiness and sermonizing, but then Jackson did lie about getting snipped, and that’s a pretty major offense.
Excellent points. However, I have simply formally redacted the whole “Jackson-lying-about-getting-snipped” plot line from my memory of the show, because it’s apparent that the writers were under the influence of some unholy drugs throughout all of the last two seasons and it’s best to simply pretend that stuff didn’t happen. See also: Lane’s pregnancy.
I am in favor of any plan that strikes that preposterous (and mean!) plot line from existence. Poor Lane.
Both Luke and Jackson tend to struggle with communication and truth telling about IMPORTANT LIFE DETAILS.
If we’re ranking Stars Hollow men by “ability to communicate feelings,” Kirk and Taylor win hands down.
I think you just figured out Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
This is my beef with pretty much every romantic plot line ever. In order to drag out will-they-or-won’t-they plot lines or create drama once characters are together, basically every story is written in ways that make the characters actually kind of terrible for each other. Like, it is not actually cute that it took Luke years to be like “hey I think you’re pretty cute let’s get a coffee?”. In real life, using your words is both useful and sexy!
I didn’t even realize that there were people who were Team Marty. Pretty sure Marty is where all the pressed white dudes got their idea of what a Nice Guy should be.
Right?? I can see that happening if you didn’t see any of Marty’s reappearance when he was dating Rory’s friend, because he didn’t Nice Guy out until then. But dude seems to have recently watched the whole show, so no excuses.
Can anyone tell me what happens with Marty in the last season? I skipped that season except for the last few episodes.
Rory makes some new lady friends, and one of them talks about her boyfriend all the time and it turns out to be Marty. First Marty pretends that he doesn’t know Rory when the girlfriend introduces them, which is super awkward, and then later on she’s having a friendly conversation with him and he goes “Youuuu look gorgeous as always” even though he’s still dating her friend.
I’m imagining Josh Radnor watching Gilmore Girls in the early aughts and finding himself very drawn to/ inspired by the character of Marty.
Also, the answer is always and forever Luke. For reference, please see “Written in the Stars” (5×03), specifically when he and Lorelai are in bed together and he is making a list of what he needs to listen to and THOSE ARMS.
Yeahhh you’re right, it’s Luke. Jackson is more the kind of guy I’m likely to date in real life, but we ARE in a fantasyland here. Also it was so damn refreshing to see Melissa McCarthy in a role where her size isn’t a joke and she gets a serious romantic plot line with a cute beardyman that I’m doubly attracted to Jackson as a result.
Those arms get the slow clap.
Let’s not forget the waltz in 4×21.
I have watched that scene more times than I care to admit in the past six months.
marty is actually the antichrist and didn’t deserve any woman on that show.
he and tristan should ride off into the sunset together and right off the edge of a cliff.
I was weirdly pro-Tristan. Or at least, I was so irritated with the way they presented in Dean in Season 1 that I just wanted Rory to dump him and run off with Tristan even though he is terrible.
I celebrated Sondheimas by seeing Hamilton and it was literally the greatest experience of my life, I am never going to be that happy again.
Anyway, I saw Assassins when the revival was on Broadway in high school and it CHANGED MY LIFE. Nothing has ever been the same. It’s still my favorite show of his- dark, subversive, funny and MY GOD The Ballad of Booth is just a stunning work of art.
I AM HERE TO TALK ABOUT SONDHEIM ALL DAY BRING IT OOOOON
oh my god you’ve seen Assassins AND Hamilton, all of my envy forever
My first introduction to Assassins was actually the Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation, and I could not believe someone made a musical about presidential assassins and also that I’d never heard of it.
It’s definitely one of his more obscure pieces, which still boggles my mind because freaking NPH was in it and also it is SO GOOD.
I was lucky to have a spectacular theater teacher in high school and she’s the one who set up the trip and got us those tickets. She’s one of the most influential teachers I ever had, even though I never ended up working in theater or anything creative-ish.
PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT HAMILTON OMG CAN I TOUCH YOU??!
IT’S PROBABLY MORE AMAZING THAN YOU ARE IMAGINING BECAUSE IT IS PRETTY MUCH THE ONLY THING I HAVE EVER SEEN THAT HAS EXCEEDED THE HYPE.
THE WHOLE CAST IS FLAWLESS AND I LAUGHED AND SOBBED AND WE WERE IN THE SECOND ROW AND JONATHAN GROFF STUCK HIS TONGUE OUT AT MY FRIEND AND LESLIE ODOM JR. RECOGNIZED US AT THE STAGE DOOR AND I BABBLED LIKE A MORON AT LIN-MANUEL AND IT WAS BEYOND ALL MY EXPECTATIONS.
OMG HAMILTON! I saw it last month and have been obnoxiously lauding it to all my friends ever since. At least now that they’ve announced the Broadway transfer I’m not that asshole talking about a sold-out show they won’t be able to see?
HAMILTON IS AMAZING. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE SOUNDTRACK SO I CAN CATCH ALL THE THINGS I MISSED.
Also, Lin-Miranda Manuel > Jason Robert Brown as heir to Sondheim’s legacy, any day of the damn week. JRB, get over yourself.
I do still have a great fondness for JRB, but he keeps doing all these movie adaptations and his music is still pretty good, but he’s definitely not pushing the genre forward the way Lin-Manuel is. The real future of musical theater is going to look a lot more like Hamilton than Honeymoon in Vegas. I enjoyed the Bridges of Madison County but HAMILTON. HAMILTON IS THE BEST OF ALL THE THINGS
I may or may not have tracked down a boot to tide me over until the soundtrack comes out…
I have fondness for JRB’s older stuff, but I haven’t listened to anything of his since 13.
There’s a boot? I would like to discuss location of said boot further with you. I will be buying the soundtrack the moment it’s released, no worries. (Email reebchan [at] gmail if that’s better.)
Where is the chopped liver recipe WHERE IS IT i want it now
you’re gonna have to buy my book for that :-O
Jaya you’re killing me! Where is the recipe?
Baby swans!!
What the eff. This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
I had no idea until this moment that swans were themselves swan boats. Why even bother with these then?
I suppose Fake Swan Boats are really intended as a crude facsimile of the Swan Parenting Experience for those of us whose parents failed to ferry us across bodies of water on their backs, THANKS MOM
Probably because real swans would kill you if you came anywhere near them.
yes thank you Monday needed this.
thank you for that last one it made my morning 10000x better d’awwww
I think I just started ovulating. Thanks.
That’s so funny, I *just* told The Mister, “my ovaries are exploding and I can’t even MAKE birds. “
Wouldn’t it be so much better if we could make birds instead of babies though???
Yes/no? Because feathers are adorable, but that whole how-mommy-birds-feed-baby-birds thing is not.
Eh, you can also use an eyedropper. I could deal with that much better than a dirty diaper.
That video was absolutely delightful! I love that the dude was just trying to calmly reason with the Dad swan, and that maybe the Dad swan was…hesitantly taking his advice but still not 100% confident about it? I dunno. Anthropomorphizing is fun.
Also thank you for these pictures they are lovely!!!
Swan families are adorable, but fairly terrifying — that guy was so calm and cool about it!
I spent a summer working at a camp in a nature centre that had swan families and we had to spend so much time keeping the kids away from them (and explaining to the kids why some of the cygnets disappeared… not fun)
I think I made a similar comment about the one time a guy who murdered a black kid got convicted for it: isn’t it sad that justice actually being served is so abnormal that we take this much notice of it?
My favorite thing about swans is how everyone thinks they are beautiful and graceful and the most elegant of birds, but that is a complete projection of human aesthetics onto nature’s foulest-tempered surviving dinosaur.
Like you’re just walking through the park all, “Oh look at the swans, aren’t they so graceful and nice,” and then the swan just COMES AT YOU with its gigantic fucking wings and its huge hissing snake face, “SAYS WHO MOTHERFUCKERRRRRSS!?”
Swans: beautiful and graceful, ready to thrown down at a moment’s notice. But at least they aren’t geese; geese are the devil.
Geese are THE WORST; there was a park near where I went to undergrad that had a great little island-thing (I don’t know, it was like a hill in the middle of an ornamental pond and there were benches) that would have been great for quiet outdoors reading time or whatever…if it wasn’t also home to the meanest, evilest colony of geese I’ve ever met. It’s been eight years since I graduated, and I still have terrifying memories of those damn geese.
Last year I was on holiday with my partner’s family; we were out in the countryside and there were some geese. My partner’s mother decided to go over and take a closer look at a goose, partner’s brother and his small toddler accompanying her. The rest of us stood at a safe distance. Of course, the goose attacked; there is a wonderful photo of them fleeing in terror, taken while we all stood about shrieking with cruel laughter.
While feeding the waterfowl in Stratford-upon-Avon, a goose decided I wasn’t producing food fast enough, grabbed the skirt of my dress in its beak and tugged. It then pecked me. Geese are scary things.
My barnyard geese used to be allowed to wander around the farm. Then they started challenging cars that pulled into the driveway, surrounding them and pecking at them and honking, trapping people inside. Then they started challenging cars that were driving down the 45-mph two-lane road we live on. They stopped traffic.
They don’t get to wander anymore.
Goosey goosey gander, whither dost thou wander? NOWHERE, MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU LOST THAT PRIVILEGE.
…is what I imagine you saying to them.
Well I didn’t but NOW I will!!!
I love this wee goosey story! I can picture it perfectly!
When I was a camp counselor, one of my campers was a very in-your-face, tough-kid teen–a wonderful person, but could be a bit over-exuberant. So one day, our group happened to walk by the geese.
“I’m gonna charge the geese,” she said.
“Don’t charge the geese,” I said.
She charges. The closest goose to her doesn’t budge an inch, just turns its head toward her and hisses. She almost tripped over herself trying to turn around and run back to the path.
A swan is just a gigantic, beautiful goose.
YES. Swans are TERRIFYING.
YES! Could not agree more.
Swans are best viewed from a distance. They are mean mean busking machines.
I don’t know that they can really compare to parrots. Swans are awful but parrots are smart enough to have true maliciousness behind them.
parrots are terrifying.
my friend has this story about how her uncle had a parrot that he adored and refused to get rid of, even though it had a blood thirst for his wife. they were disgustingly rich and had a whole room dedicated to the parrot. it was the parrot’s room, and in this way, the murderous parrot and the wife basically never had to cross paths. but imagine—living in the same house as a sharp-beak’d and talon’d animal that you know loathes you. awful. anyway, one time they had a party, and the husband brought the parrot out to show the guests and then the wife walked into the room, not knowing the parrot was out and about. the parrot locked eyes on the wife and the husband was just like, “RUN!” and she ran for her life.
the parrot still TORE OUT A CHUNK OF HER HAIR WITH THE SCALP ATTACHED.
AND THEN HE STILL KEPT THE BIRD.
Well, now I’m just picturing Mommy Fortuna from The Last Unicorn, but with a parrot instead of a harpy.
We have swans and geese that live on our corporate grounds over the summer (we have a sizable Corporate Water Feature they seem to enjoy) and I fucking hate them. They shit all over the parking lot and mosey around like they own the place and honk at YOU like YOU’RE interfering with THEIR business (of standing around and shitting, I guess???).
Once my girlfriend came out to the parking lot of her apartment and there was a goose on her car, and she tried to shoo the goose away, but instead of leaving it just flapped its wings at her and honked back.
Geese just don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves, I guess.
My corgi gives the geese and swans on my neighbor’s pond a very wide berth when we walk there (not surprising, as they’re twice as big as she is). However, she will happily eat and roll in their poop when they are not around, which, to me, makes them at least twice as annoying.
A guy was killed by a swan in Chicagoland a few years ago! Please excuse my terrible parsing of events, and I would certainly google it to independently verify but here goes: he was a swan scientist, studying their nesting practices, and kayaking around a lagoon. The male of the pair chased him down, knocked him out of his kayak, and then DROWNED HIM. That huge hissing snake face is not misleading you. It will murder you, given half a chance.
WHAT.
Ok, I definitely got some of it wrong (his job, for example) but here’s a story about a wrongful death suit: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Wife-of-Man-…
SWANS ARE STILL TERRIFYING MURDERERS. I didn’t get that part wrong.
The swans who live on Lake Geneva are the cockiest, most self-important animals I’ve ever met. They got used to everyone feeding them bread and biscuits, so they’ll straight up stare you down and demand their tribute. Or mug you if you’re a child, as I learned.
I’m also pretty sure they’re building some sort of doomsday device under the lake: I once left my bag with my walkman inside on a bench, and moved a couple meters away. A swan stuck his head in the bag, plucked out my walkman, and let it drop on the ground so that the batteries would pop out. He then took the batteries and fucked off.
Whatever it is they’re building, they need power.
omg
A friend of mine told me that swans will whip their heads around on their long bendy necks like organic flails, and that he watched someone he knew get his legs broken by a furious swan once.
Swans: mean as hell.
The public library that was my childhood refuge had a pair of swans on its little artificial lake. Some donor had insisted that was how her money was to be spent. So the planners did some thinking: libraries attract children, swans attract children, swans kill just because it’s Thursday. So they built that lake so deep in a steep artificial valley that wings or climbing equipment were required to reach the lake. No children were ever harmed by those swans and neither swan was replaced when it reached its natural end of life.
And one day when all the staff who were there when they made this decision are gone, everyone will look at that lake and think, “What the everloving fuck were they thinking?”
I love it.
Everyone’s hands were tied. A wealthy donor had dropped a big wad of cash for landscaping the new library and insisted swans be included. I assume the donor died before the swans did, since the birds were never replaced after their deaths.
This is my favorite defense of not using punctuation, as provided by tumblr:
Q: when did tumblr collectively decide not to use punctuation like when did this happen why is this a thing
A: it just looks so smooth I mean look at this sentence flow like a jungle river
I went to a Sondheimas holiday pageant, complete with a freakishly-lifelike Sondheim puppet, and someone serenaded the puppet with “Move On” and it made me cry a little bit.
Also check out the other videos from the Wildlife SOS guy. There are lots of other adorable animals being adorably rescued and he deserves the attention because he is a saint and animals are better than people.
And before you get really confused like I did, the Simon Cowell that founded Wildlife SOS is not that Simon Cowell!
I would like to see that Simon Cowell be attacked by a swan, though.
“…animals are better than people.”
Hmmmm…after checking out the 22+ replies re: swans (and one horrifying anecdote concerning a parrot)…I beg to differ. Swans and their commoner cousins, geese, will EFF YOU UP at any given opportunity.
I will concur that Simon Cowell is a saint, hands and paws down!
That’s because they know people are horrible.
I have never seen somebody sum up my frequently terrible taste in men quite like this:
“I guess I’ve always just preferred crazy emotional people who I’ve had good physical chemistry with than stable people who just want to love me. I just have to do what’s terrible for me, and Jess really appeals to that side. You better believe I would drop him the second he got his life together and started that small independent publishing company/coffee house/art gallery/performance space.”
Yeah, still Team Jess, I guess. Trying to learn to be Team Luke.
I also liked that description but objected to the implication that Dean is a “stable guy who just wants to love me”. Dean is dangerously controlling loser.
Agree completely! Dean was a freaky goodfornothing who ran to whoever he thought had power to make Rory do what he wanted her to do.
Longing to become the second type of person, still annoyingly the first. WHY
OK but re the swan article: Did anyone else go to Hot Fuzz immediately? SWAN!
Toasties, I am not a jumpsuit person, for many reasons, but if you ARE (or long to be but cannot find one that fits), eshakti has a couple, which means you can get custom sizing, and they are currently having a 27.5% off sale (I do not know why the weird %, but it was weird enough to make me open their email, so). They also sell pants now.
Oh no I wish I’d seen them before I placed my eShakti order last week!!
Innnnteresting! I’ve never ordered from them before, but the idea of custom pants/jumpsuits is very tempting!
I like the idea of being a jumpsuit person, but it looks like eShakti’s custom jumpsuit sizing doesn’t ask for any measurement of torso length, so I’m pretty sure it would have the same sizing problem as any other jumpsuit.
eShakti secret: You can give them your torso length! measure from shoulder seam to waistband, over the boob, and add that in the special instructions field.
Oh, that is good to know! You have just increased the likelihood that I will actually get around to ordering something from them someday. Thank you!
Longform went and rounded up all the articles they’ve linked to about Robert Durst. http://longform.org/posts/the-longform-guide-to-r…
that was what i did with my morning. durst overload.
This is my beef with pretty much every romantic plot line ever. In order to drag out will-they-or-won’t-they plot lines or create drama once characters are together, basically every story is written in ways that make the characters actually kind of terrible for each other. Like, it is not actually cute that it took Luke years to be like “hey I think you’re pretty cute let’s get a coffee?”. In real life, using your words is both useful and sexy!
Newsradio gets points for this: will they/won’t they? Nah, they do, second episode, and it doesn’t work out. BAM.
Toasties! Because I lurk here, I know that some of you are lurking at theTournament of Books! Today is the day to throw off the silent cloak of anonymity! Roxane is OBVIOUSLY going to win the whole thing (obviously!!) and I would really like for the conversation about her novel to be better than it has been there in preparation for her victory. Join me!
is this the safe space in which to admit that i have the teeeeensiest bit of a crush on raul esparza? and that as much as i adore NPH there can only be one true bobby baby?
HI ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE SMOLDERING CHARISMA OF RAUL ESPARZA
please yes help it is turning into a wee problem also (and i mean, duh) HIS VOICE ~swoons~
Oh, hi, I am not very familiar with his theater work, but even when he is playing a smarmy jackass like Frederick Chilton, I am ENTRANCED by his magnetism. I mean:
Remember how nobody liked or cared about Chilton until he started getting sarcastic with everyone who disagreed that Hannibal was a cannibal and overnight he became the fandom darling
I mean, deservedly? I always thought he was an interesting character but a tad one-note – an arrogant jerk who rises to the level of his incompetence and then abuses his power is a fairly tried and true trope for a tertiary character. His experience with Gideon humbled him, to a certain extent – physically, emotionally, professionally – but didn’t really carve out that core of superiority, which gave the writers room to fill a gap in the way humor is used in the show. Will has a dry gallows humor, Hannibal is mostly funny because the audience understands that he speaks in double entendres, the forensics team love their dorky puns – Chilton’s straight up snarky, but not in a plucky Buffy way – you know it’s going to end badly for someone so smug. The writers really walk that razor edge of making him someone you’d love to see take a fall but also be okay in the end; he might be a jag, but look who’s setting the bar as far as malfeasance goes.
I should clarify: I completely agree. I was totally one of those people who didn’t like him until he was suddenly hilarious.
Oh, totally! I can’t really say I liked him before – I understood his function but found him watchable pretty much just because Raul Esparza is perfection. Until he started throwing shade left and right, he didn’t really have any redeeming qualities. Except for his suits, which even then were just an imitation of Hannibal’s, as was most everything else about him, man this show is the best.
“IT FUCKING RHYMES, PEOPLE. IT RHYMES.”
This is the safest space for that sentiment. I don’t have a teensy crush on Raul Esparza, but rather an uncontrollable passion. I would highly recommend digging up his turn in the previous Cabaret revival on YouTube if you would like to enjoy his biceps etc.
…i don’t know if i’m emotionally prepared for biceps, definitely not while at work.
The Cabaret twitter posted a photo of his turn as the Emcee a few months ago, and I just about swooned, my god.
NPH is a talented guy but Raul Esparza owns that role. I believe this in spite of all the actors who performed the role before he did, the way young-earth creationists believe dinosaurs were put in the earth to test your faith: never mind them, it all started with Raul Esparza.
I saw Raul Esparza (and Elisabeth Moss) in the otherwise terrible recent Broadway revival of Speed the Plow and his charisma and talent was palpable even from my seat in the nosebleed section. He is amazing and, yes, way better than NPH as Bobby.
I saw Raul Esparza in Leap of Faith while it was in previews or testing or whatever in LA. It was rough going, because the costar was Brooke Shields. All the other performers were real Broadway types and she…well, the LA times says it best: “Shields makes her musical confessions in a voice so tentative that it’s easy to imagine cast members backstage crossing their fingers for her. ”
Literally everyone breathed a sigh of relief every time she hit her notes. Cruel of them to put him next to her.
Oh lord. I have seen the film of that production of Company so many times, my brain basically fails to accept any other production. I wanted to like the one with NPH but no… Raul Esparza all the way. All the way.
Is this where I say that all the men (and also all the women) of Gilmore Girls are insufferable and manipulative, and that I want to spirit Sookie away from both the husband who lies about a vasectomy and the soi-disant Best Friend who never bothers to be there when Sookie needs her, take her to a peaceful cottage near the shore, and spend our lives making long lovely lunches and dinners for each other and borrowing her sweaters?
If the show had morphed without explanation into being the Sookie and Lane show, where Lane got a hospitality degree and started up a business with Sookie, catering and playing gigs for all the big events in the area, including that demanding Gilmore woman a few towns over who occasionally mentions her daughter and granddaughter, I would have watched it with even greater enthusiasm.
yes. yes this is the place. the loreleis gilmore are absolutely TERRIBLE to their best friends; and a bit willfully obtuse about their behavior in other situations as well.
there are times i could understand it (young single mom + anxious overachiever is bound to equal some problems), but most of the time it was too much.
also, were there no other kids in stars hallow worth being supportive of? i mean, i get the “it takes a village concept,” but how many other kids were RELIEVED after rory’s sendoff that their parents might actually start recognizing them for a change…? (as far as i remember, sookie’s kids got no actual traits…sookie was just an extension of the rory gilmore fan club)
I maintain that it was straight-up deliberate character assassination for Jackson to have lied about the vasectomy. VASECTOMIES CAN FAIL. DUPLICITY WAS UNNECESSARY.
I KNOW RIGHT? It’s one of the few hints that maaaaaybe the show is consciously crafting these shiny-happy characters to be Actually The Worst instead of just incidentally, accidentally Actually The Worst.
Hmmm I like where you’re going with it, but can you really imagine Rory dealing well with polyamory? She likes having many people fighting over her, but she wouldn’t be able to deal with their attentions being divided in turn.
oh, god. Rory texts Paris because she got a minor note from her editor and is freaking out but Paris doesn’t answer right away because she is on a date with Doyle and they have a Rule about looking at phones during dates, and then Rory throws a fit because Paris dared to not immediately run to her side to comfort her in her time of (not really that important) crisis.
. . .and then effing DEAN shows up and she makes out with him because OMG he is so stable and always THERE FOR HER, and by there for her I mean lurking creepily outside her window. I’m getting mad just thinking about it. No poly for Rory!
THANK YOU for excerpting this: “Season Three Jess tries to bully Rory into having sex in the middle of a party.” Everyone on Team Jess needs to remember this and LOOK AT THEIR CHOICES.
Season 6 Jess: fans stop wanting Rory to end up with him, and instead start figuring out how to *be* him.
Seriously, how do you turn your life around like that in under a year? How do you go from being a high school dropout bike messenger to publishing a book and running a publishing company before you’re 21? WHY IS THIS A THING?? Where did he meet the right people?? How did he get them to like him??
God I fucking loved that swan video and I showed it to my roommates and they DID NOT appreciate it adequately and I was extremely disappointed in them. “Don’t be SILLY” stoic and excellent gentleman admonishes furious hissing bird-monster. COME ON, you guys, it’s the BEST.
So you guys, I sent the Buzzfeed article on Sondheim to my husband and daughter because we are all diehard fans. My husband wrote back, “Thanks! The girl and I are listening to Pacific Overtures right now. :-)”
…and now I have “It was a bowler hat. I have no wiiiiiife…” stuck in my head. Happily.
My favourite part of the swan rescue video is when he says “now don’t be silly” to the attacking dad swan. He may well be the only person to ever say “now don’t be silly” to an angry swan and lived to tell the tale.
(Speaking of: all in favour of setting a pack of angry swans on John H. Jackson?)
+1111111 for binding. i’ve started binding on my “boi days” and it is such a relief. i don’t feel icky about my body and i don’t have to hide it under frumpy, sloppy clothes. i can dress sharp as fuck and feel really good about myself. it’s definitely done wonders for my mental health.
does anyone else here bind???
Rory makes some new lady friends, and one of them talks about her boyfriend all the time and it turns out to be Marty. First Marty pretends that he doesn’t know Rory when the girlfriend introduces them, which is super awkward, and then later on she’s having a friendly conversation with him and he goes “Youuuu look gorgeous as always” even though he’s still dating her friend.
Someone just sent out this article as part of a discussion on women in science, and I seriously can’t believe this is a real thing?
https://coe.lehigh.edu/content/reverse-gender-gap
This part in particular, about how to help boys do better in school, leaves me feeling angry and confused:
“He also urges more male teachers in the lower grades to serve as role models, more boy-friendly books (sci-fi, action and adventure) and more projects that involve doing something “heroic.”
“Where is the room to be Harry Potter?” he asks.”
Ugh ugh ugh ugh
“However, the opportunities for boys to be exposed to male role models are distinctively disadvantaged across the nation by the dominance of women in teaching. Some have posited, not without warrant, that female teachers instinctively reinforce “female” behavior and fail to acknowledge, or even punish, the gender-specific behaviors of boys.”
UGH
Lack of punctuation really enhances declarations about one’s inability to even. It’s not laziness, it’s a perfectly cromulent rhetorical device.
HIS EYES….Like a SHARK.
I want to see who kathy durst was. Those friends! I want to watch a whole documentary capturing who she was that she has friends who loved her like that.
Is Durst smart or dumb? That's haunted me. Why the woman's wig? Why the stalking his brother? Why the letter? Why the returning to the trash bags. Does he just not give a fuck? But at the same time he knows how to be likable? Why galveston really?