Toasties! How was your week? Mine was certainly A Week, and I am ready to move on. Some excellent things happened around here, though; they always seem to.
Nicole blessed us with this list of the books that literally all white men own, which was glorious, but would it surprise you to learn that some men did not take it particularly well…?
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eye contact, darling
eye contact, and smile, and back away so slowly he doesn’t realize we’re moving
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A NEW STANDARD HAS BEEN SET in this wildly popular series: If Cobie Smulders Were Your Ostensibly Platonic Gym Buddy For Whom You Have Conflicted Feelings
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And speaking of actors who should have had way more screentime in Avengers: Age of Ultron, I wrote about Dr. Helen Cho and how much it means to see an Asian in a movie who isn’t a geisha or a martial arts expert or some white lady’s kinda pointless best friend.
IMPORTANT FOLLOW-UP BUSINESS:
a) Here is a picture of Claudia Kim again, because why not
b) And here is MARK “THE HULK” RUFFALO RETWEETING ME:
c) My first honest-to-god reaction was, “UGH, some jerk pretending to be Mark Ruffalo has retweeted my post,” and then the thing got about 100 more retweets in sixty seconds (THE RUFFALO BUMP) and I went “oh” in a very tiny voice and then hyperventilated a bit. (I’ll be telling this story for the rest of my life; get used to pretending like you haven’t heard it.)
d) Later on my husband asked me how my workday went, and I said “GREAT!! MARK RUFFALO RETWEETED ME!!!” and it struck me, yet again, what a strange, strange job I have, but I would not have it any other way.
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All right Janeites and people who like to make fun of Janeites, Pemberley got its long-overdue Great House Therapy treatment thanks to Susan Harlan:
Their style: “I would describe our style as neither gaudy nor uselessly fine, by which I mean it’s not disgusting like Rosings, which looks like somebody vomited up chintz and then covered everything that didn’t move in gold … Truth be told, I don’t think Darcy would want me interfering too much in the material manifestation of his masculine, masterly virtue, but I do make the occasional tweak: a new Ming vase here, an embalmed pygmy person there. We have a lot of Greek statues, and of course the portraits of Darcy in the picture-gallery.”
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Meredith Talusan wrote this awesome piece on what Shonda Rhimes taught her about being a woman.
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Mallory did the world a great service and explained how to accept compliments and handle praise.
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Stephanie Lai on her visits over the years to Haw Par Villa:
I am 10, and I don’t know where we are. Singapore is new to me, and my cousins are at school. I’m wearing a giant shirt with a counterfeit Mickey Mouse on it, hot off the streets of Penang, proudly purchased by my grandmother. Mickey is pink.
Mum hustles us out the door. “I’ve never been,” she says, and that’s all I know.
There are other people milling around when we arrive. They’re all Chinese, too. This doesn’t strike me until later, but here, now, I don’t question it.
The snake looms over the gate. We move towards the Gates of Hell, and though it is my first glimpse, it is not my last.
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REJOICE: Ayn Rand has moved on to the Baby-Sitters Club!
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“You receive a vaguely lewd poison pen letter and decide to have a bridge party to celebrate” and other Signs That Agatha Christie Is About To Murder You
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Many Waters was so weird, guys
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Nicole and I talked about our experiences being on financial aid in college, and many people said smart and helpful things in the comments! (My high school guidance counselor even chimed in.) Read it if you haven’t yet and share it with anyone you think could benefit; this one was really important to us.
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Yesterday was “Employment Day” at my daughter’s school; she was supposed to come in prepared to talk about a job she might like to do one day, and she chose “writer” because, she says, making up stories is her favorite thing to do.
“They said we can dress up like the person whose job we want to have.” I asked her what she thinks writers wear. “You know, maybe glasses,” she said, “and, like, a serious-looking shirt, and serious-looking pants.”
In the end we agreed that maybe she should just wear her usual comfy clothes, and bring “a writer’s book” and a favorite pen to school with her. She chose a little notebook, one of the many she has stashed around the house that are filled with half-finished stories, and a pen she got as a party favor that writes in twelve colors. At home she’s always scribbling, unless she’s reading, and the last thing of hers I read was a story she’d written about sisters who are train conductors. She says endings are the trickiest, but she loves a new beginning.
See you Monday, friends.
Tags: mark ruffalo is now a Friend of The Toast, meta, toast points
That is SO COOL that your daughter is a writer and she’s already writing about sisters as train conductors. SO COOL.
Also very cool that Mark Ruffalo retweeted you, but it is only right and justice that you should have more people paying attention to you and what you say (as well as The Toast).
The last line of the train conductor sisters story was “But now is not the time to talk of spring.” !!
1) WHEN is the time??
2) Where does she even get this stuff
That is delightful. Actually, every bit of this Toast Points was excellent.
it’s the excellent source material!
I know The Toast doesn’t publish minors, and that is a Very Good Thing, but I am just really so so so excited to read your daughter’s first novel in 15-20 years.
Damn that’s a good line. Is she available for mind melds, by any chance?
That’s a fantastic last line.
Isn’t it? I thought the whole final chapter was a bit rushed but she really nailed the final line. Like IT STAYS WITH YOU.
Eloisa James responded to one of my tweets last month and I WAS INCANDESCENT WITH JOY. I’m a giant dork.
It’s funny – my mother was in a romance writer’s group with her for years and I honestly didn’t know how big she was until I was an adult. I’ve met her numerous times, she’s a real sweet woman.
I met Nora Roberts once or twice too, but she didn’t say much. Janet Evanovich was much nicer.
Nora Roberts got mad at me once, but she didn’t know it was me. Shhhhhh!
(I made an announcement over the mic during an event when she was dealing with her big crowd of fans across the room & it was interruptive.) (I hid as soon as someone told me to not do that again. But.. but.. that other person in charge told me to!)
Well, somebody needs to post an “If Mark Ruffalo Were Your Boyfriend” column a right quick.
If Mark Ruffalo were your boyfriend, he’d send you the links from the Link Round-Up, knowing you’d already seen them, and you’d know it was his way of telling you he’d read up on the subject matter and was ready to discuss them.
Not to mention HAYLEY ATWELL retweeting IF HAYLEY ATWELL WERE YOUR GIRLFRIEND
My heart legit jumped when I saw that. Ugh I love her so much.
Between that and Mark Ruffalo saying that he wants Marvel to have Black Widow merch for his daughters and nieces, I think he’s one of my new favorite people.
He’s a lovely man with lovely fluffy hair.
So now that you and Mark are BFF, what kind of guest post do you think he’ll be writing for us???
Mark Ruffalo is one of the rare actors I seem to like more the more I learn about him. How refreshing. I would have DIED in your shoes. How exciting!
Again, your daughter is the best.
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Your daughter is a pretty cool kid, and I will totally be buying her first novel when she publishes it.
I will be sure to let you all know when she does, fear not.
This was a relatively downbeat week in my actual life, but in Toastworld it’s all calendar-worthy. That discussion of financial aid was so fascinating to me! I didn’t need to think, oh, if only, since I completely lack both the grades and the drive, but the Importance of Access to Information cannot be overstated. Maybe I would have been ambitious if I knew there was anything to aim for! So it’s an incredibly valuable thing to be sharing with people, and I just wanted to cheer you both really loudly. Further cheering: Your (Nikki’s) piece on Dr. Cho. I have no idea what the hell Age of Ultron is, but your point about visibility nevertheless hits home. It’s crazy what a closed-loop universe exclusion and limited portrayals create; you can hardly blame people for being ignorant when they’re operating with flawed intel (but still, blame them). I am often stupidly happy/giddy with relief when I see any diversity onscreen and get to work my Sesame Street muscles: Different! The same! Finally, those men on books just filled me to the brim with joy. Thanks for all of it.
Thanks for reading! It was a fabulous week at The Toast, I agree. I’m really glad Nicole and I had that financial aid discussion, too. It was good to get it all out — surprisingly cathartic! — and I hope it finds its way to some people who could use the encouragement.
So it’s been sort of a weird week of lack-of-motivation, where I have been tired and grumpy about having to Do Adult Things and also resentful out of nowhere that as a society we really overvalue some kinds of STEM compared to others, as exemplified by how my fiancé the software engineer at Large Tech Company did very well in an internal bug-fixing contest and won a FUCKING GOPRO AND A GODDAMN DRONE, and my disease ecology lab struggles to get funding and there is zero real financial aid.
Also, in the realm of What Exactly Is My Life Help I Do Not Understand, today after a day of field work I stopped by Safeway on my walk home from the bus to buy ice cream to soothe my grumpy-ass soul, and on my way out a guy says “Excuse me, sorry to bother you” and I brace for the uncomfortable being hit on by someone twice my age but lo, he is actually close to my age and opens with a question about where I got my unquestionably awesome glasses frames, and seems sincere about it.
…and then we chat a little bit and he’s clearly kind of awkward but it’s cool until he asks if I would like to get a drink sometime. (Remember I am wearing dirt-stained hiking gear and my PANTS ARE TUCKED INTO MY SOCKS and my hair is making a very valiant and rather successful attempt to escape its “Elsa braid”, as it was described by Adorable Little Girl On The Bus this morning.) So I tell him I’m engaged, and when this doesn’t seem to put him off, inexplicably tell him “but I’m up for new friends!” (maybe because he didn’t get angry that I was off-limits sexually?), and now he has my email address and WHAT DID I JUST DO?
I am cringe-laughing, this is exactly the sort of situation I would find myself in, I have no advice and am useless to you.
Well he has not yet contacted me (and as I walked away I realized that he was carrying a case of Budweiser and thus we can NEVER BE FRIENDS), so maybe it was just a momentary glitch in the Matrix and nothing will come of my sudden bizarre behavior.
honestly, and i imagine this a bit off in the future, but the train conductor sisters story and the notebooks of started stories make me want to get started on progeny of my own.
though i don’t think i own any serious looking shirts or pants, so maybe work on that first? anyway, your kid is delightful! may she write many amazing things.
If you want to have progeny I wouldn’t worry about buying nice clothes for a few years, seriously
She is a lot of fun! I don’t really blog much about my kids, and that’s on purpose, but I’ll probably keep sharing little stories like this from time to time so long as no one objects. I thought readers of The Toast in particular would enjoy hearing about her literary pursuits.
please do! i completely understand wanting some separation and privacy, but i don’t think any of us will object to more stories of precocious literariness in the future 🙂
ugh, this week could have been better. I think I need to move on from my job, my paycheck got delayed AGAIN, I’m doing less of my actual job and more other responsibilities, and while I had been saying “well if something great comes along I would probably go for it…” for awhile with this I’ve decided “nope! Full on job search mode! Time to ramp it up!” blergh I hate job hunting though!
:/ Job-hunting can be so rough. I hope you find something perfect! Good luck!!
Man my life is getting excited about—and then getting let down by—shows with asians in their main casts.
Although, this also made me realize how few of the sites I regularly follow have minorities on staff talking about minority issues. I really was surprised when I saw that you were writing about asian representation, especially considering I was just telling a friend about how (the still admittedly great) Smart Bitches Trashy Books wrote a well meaning, self-congratulatory post awhile back about how they were embracing diversity on the site by adding a picture of a black woman to their header. (I will never not laugh about that.)
Man my life is getting excited about—and then getting let down by—shows with asians in their main casts. Although, this also made me realize how few of the sites I regularly follow have minorities on staff talking about minority issues. I really was surprised when I saw that you were writing about asian representation
Never ever be surprised to see me writing about Asian representation, I could write a BOOK about it (don’t worry, I won’t). I keep meaning to write Nicole’s Guide to the Asian American TV Characters of Her Youth, Ranked from Most to Least Model Minority-Like, but you know. Life keeps getting in the way.
I feel you on the excitement and letdown of shows that cast Asian actors. That’s my pastime, too.
We are so glad you and your daughter enjoy it!
(THE BUFFALO RUMP)
Ruffalo is really cool. My Tumblr feed is almost completely cartoonists and Trek blogs, but Ruffalo is on there as well, and aside from whatever event he’s doing to promote his latest project (AoU, The Normal Heart, etc.), he reposts environmental stuff that otherwise I wouldn’t see.
Ruffalo is really cool. My Tumblr feed is almost completely cartoonists and Trek blogs, but Ruffalo is on there as well, and aside from whatever event he's doing to promote his latest project (AoU, The Normal Heart, etc.), he reposts environmental stuff that otherwise I wouldn't see.