guys my hamilton obsession is getting scary, half my day is now just texting Matt Lubchansky to see where he currently is in HIS eternal loop of the cast recording, help me. also, LOOK AT THE CASTING LIST, THIS IS SO GREAT
[HAMILTON]
Yo, Eliza, I don’t have a dollar to my name
An acre of land, a troop to command, a dollop of fame
All I have is my honour, a tolerance for pain
A couple of college credits and my top-notch brain
Insane, your family brings out a different side of me
Peggy confides in me
Angelica tried to take a bite of me
No stress, my love for you is never in doubt
We’ll get a little place in Harlem and we’ll figure it out
I’ve been living without a family since I was a child
My father left, my mother died, I grew up buck wild
But I’ll never forget my mother’s face, that was real
As long as I’m alive, Eliza, swear to God you’ll never feel so
[COMPANY]
Helpless
By 1970, appliances, ready-made food, and other technologies had reduced both the amount and the rigor of household work and rendered domestic help a luxury. By the 1980s, household help was played for laughs on sitcoms such as “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “Mr. Belvedere.” It was a running joke on “The Gilmore Girls” that Lorelei Gilmore’s wealthy mother Emily couldn’t keep a maid. By then, only women of Emily’s class were expected to have one.
By contrast, in 1959, when the Douglas Sirk domestic melodrama Imitation of Life was nominated for two Academy Awards, maids were a mundane aspect of the middle class experience. And the reason for the shift is not merely that Sears started selling affordable dishwashers and laundry machines.
I have watched this happen, and it REALLY turns people off your candidate:
Over the past few months, Sanders’s predominately white backers have used Twitter to target any black activist or journalist who dares question the candidate’s civil rights record. The battle reveals a long, simmering racial divide in the progressive movement that continues to go unacknowledged. If Sanders wants to win black voters he’ll need to address it.
This Hajj stampede is so horrifying.
My friend Carrie says her new puppy is so gawky she’s basically ready to read Judy Blume:
HAMILTON is without question the best musical I’ve ever seen in my life.
— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) September 24, 2015
Halfway into the first act of HAMILTON, @AngelNafis whispered to me “Nigga, I might not survive this show. You might be alone by the end.” — Saeed Jones (@theferocity) September 24, 2015
HAMILTON 2016.
— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) September 24, 2015
Ack! That puppy…so…cute <GASP>
The ears, the gawky legs, the paws, the eyes. This is prime puppy. The ears…
Last night I was alone in the apartment singing to the cat to the tune of Nonstop (“why you gotta be the cutest kitty in the room? “) when my boyfriend came home and started singing to the cat to the tune of It Must Be Nice (” It must be nice to have kittycat on your side”). So Hamilton’s basically taken over our brains and our cat thinks we’re crazy, is what I’m saying.
I want to hug everyone involved in this story.
“It Must Be Nice” is playing on my computer RIGHT NOW.
“It Must Be Nice” is playing in my head right now!
This is the earwormiest show that ever did earworm.
Official Hamilton lyrics are up! http://atlanticrecords.com/HamiltonMusic/
I have been listening to the soundtrack on loop but I might have to start only listening to act 1 as I would prefer not to explain to my coworkers why I keep tearing up every one hour and 40 minutes or so. Also in my obsession with the musical I found this fun blog on Hamilton (the person) http://itshamiltime.com/
My husband was worried when he came downstairs after putting our kid to bed and I was a sobbing mess. It was “Dear Theodosia” that did me in, so even Act I isn’t always safe.
My husband made fun of me after he came downstairs to find me a sobbing mess for the third damn night in a row. Never listen to “It’s Quiet Uptown” when you’re pregnant.
THE BOOKLET CAN BE DOWNLOADED. LEGALLY!
*ahem* Sorry for yelling. But y’know, if you want the Hamilton lyrics, beautifully formatted, here you go.
And I see someone beat me to it 🙂
Ahaha I love the Toastie hivemind when it comes to Hamilton. All links to be shared!
The way that American life has gone so very quickly from household help being standard to being totally forgotten except for the very highest classes (and retroactively forgotten too–so there’s an idea that domestic help was an Old Timey thing and not something common until the 60s) is truly something that baffles me today. It’s such a hugely important way of understanding how people lived but it’s rarely ever talked about, and even labour studies classes almost always focus exclusively on the efforts of male laborers and female laborers who work OUTSIDE the home–textile workers and factory laborers and so on. Domestic help is usually glossed over or shunted into the “family history” component but it is emphatically not. And it’s shocking to me because it was so immensely common!
Great point. The fact that it was so casualised as well meant it could be glossed over as ‘family’ stuff.
I remember reading something about Virginia Woolf and the many servants she had, who, like most servants, carried heavy water buckets up and down flights of stairs even when they were old and arthritic. It seems so repulsive to a modern eye, that an able bodied person would just assume they have a right to be waited on hand and foot by someone even it’s clearly physically difficult for the servant. Having servants was such an assumed part of life; few writers of that time or previous even imagined what life would be like if you were responsible for your own housework. ‘A Room of One’s Own’ is also dependent on ‘servants of ones’ own’.
Yeah, when I was in grad school my focus was youth and family history and a friend of mine did labour history and we would argue for EVER because I chalked domestic and servant history into labour and he thought of it as family. There’s probably a bit of truth in both sides, but you cannot convince me that a family paying a servant would have considered them family in all but the absolute rarest cases. Primary source documents do not back that up!!!! If families considered servants family members, household guides wouldn’t have sections on disciplining, dismissing, and correct wages for tasks! Business transactions!
That’s interesting. When I worked as a historical interpreter I was actually “portraying” a maid in the mid-1800s and at that time it was NEVER considered “family”. The rise of servants was actually part of the rise of the middle class, also connected to the industrial revolution — women whose labour was no longer needed on the farm went into factories, yes, but a lot more of them went into service to the factory owners (and the like).
Servants might be proud of the family they were serving or feel some loyalty towards them, and the family may have taken some of the financial burden of caring for sick or retired servants, but it was more of an extra paternalistic employer-employee relationship. OH ALSO, young women went into service knowing full well that there was a reasonable chance that they would be sexually assaulted at some point over their career. So there’s that.
Do you think that’s because we have come to conflate “household” with “family?” Because servants were certainly considered part of the household, subject to the authority and discipline of the husband/father who was also responsible for feeding/clothing them. But they certainly weren’t family.
I teach women’s labor history, so I have, um, lots of thoughts on this! Mainly that the idea that there’s a clear separation between “family history” and “labor history” is silly, and itself the product of the 19th century ideology that figured the home/family as a private sphere, sheltered from the crass world of business and politics.
Is your friend still close to the labor movement? Because domestic workers are one of the fastest-organizing sectors today!
One aspect of it that’s morphed (at least in NYC) is that middle class families do tend to have a “cleaning person” who comes every week or two, a pick-up/drop-off laundry service if there’s no laundry in the building, a drop-off grocery service such as FreshDirect, a nanny for the toddlers who are too young for day care yet, etc. Obviously, it’s not the same as having a live-in maid or what have you – it’s more like a federated, Uber-style version of live-in “help”.
I wonder if this is region specific, because I think in most parts of the country it is vanishingly rare to have laundry pick up or grocery delivery (although that is getting more common), and I think nannying is also far more common in large urban centres than in the rest of the country. But I wonder too how much of that is due to social inertia and stigma against it, and how much is due to cost, when things in NYC and LA can work on such a different scale of cost and benefit.
I think, too, that internet-service-adoption plays a role. In other words, in less-urban areas, probably a lot gets accomplished via word-of-mouth as opposed to Task Rabbit? “My neighbor’s sister’s teenage son mows my lawn,” etc.
I’m not advocating these services per se – they come at a human cost just as old-timey “service” used to. It’s just that this is a shift I’m seeing. Though I will say that, after suffering a meniscus tear and Baker cyst rupture on my knee, having FreshDirect and laundry (and Uber) have been a freaking godsend while I’ve been more or less immobilized.
At least these federated services, while there may be questions over general workers’ rights, are somewhat formalised and organised with contracts, agreements, consequences if money isn’t paid etc, whereas in the 19th century model the domestic servants were almost entirely at the mercy of their employers, and were dependent on them for a place to live too.
I think nannying is more common in more urban areas because of space reasons. There is a max that a preschool can charge and actually get people to pay and it may or may not be enough to pay for the space for a daycare and enough employees etc. etc. The regulations on this are pretty intense in most states, at least if you get beyond caring for 2 kids in addition to your own in your own home. These kinds of illegal or at least unlicensed daycares are in existence too and are often the cheapest option. But short of those, a nanny ends up being not that much more than licensed and regulated care and it can be way easier and more flexible for working parents.
After going on disability, I worked about 10 hours a week cleaning houses. I had the rich persons’ houses, mostly, and I actually worked for a couple who were trust fund babies. I don’t think that’s as common in Minnesota as it is in the northeast or in California.
Anyway. I cleaned this couple’s house once a week for 6 hours. The woman’s mother, though, was a Scandinavian through-and-through, and despite her wealth, she “cleaned her own damned house.” No help at all. So this woman, I’ll call her Alice, when she was in Minnesota visiting, would follow me around her daughter’s house while I cleaned, telling me if I missed a spot, telling me about her cleaning methods that maybe I’d like to try, and telling me family gossip … we had a great time and the work went so much faster with her “help”. She was just so hilarious. She reminded me of my grandmother and her sisters, who would visit each other and end up doing an impromptu spring cleaning, all the while talking and laughing … and afterwards, having a cocktail or three. So Alice’s daughter tried to stop her mother from following me around, so we had to make it our little secret. Alice is one of the reasons I miss cleaning the trust fund babies’ house … . But it’s also a counter point to having domestic help — at one point, no matter how rich you were, you took pride in your house and cleaned it.
So having help in THAT family was not common. Just thought I’d add that little tidbit to the conversation.
I do think it might have something to do with the ever-growing wage disparity between the rich and everyone else. Most of the people I know of in my area that can afford cleaning help are in upper class, if not genuinely *rich*. There is no way that anyone in my neighborhood growing up could afford an official cleaning service or regular maid-like service, let alone live-in. The problem often is that cleaning services are priced for the people at the top, which is totally justified, but that means that having access to any sort of household help is virtually impossible for those at or near the bottom. When you are the person doing the household work for other people, you rarely can afford someone to do household work for you.
As a sort of add-on/agreement to what you’re saying about how it’s an Upper Class/Luxury thing to have a cleaning service:
One of the first things my mom did when she moved from working-class income to middle-class income was hire someone to clean the house, definitely. We had someone come every 2 weeks for regular cleaning, like mopping the kitchen/bathrooms or scrubbing the tubs, and then she expected the household members to do maintenance in between (toilets, sponging out the microwave, sweeping).
Over the decade since then, we’ve had more or less household income due to layoffs and everything, but momma has always done what she can to keep that luxury, even if it was only once a month. It became even more important when both her and my health deteriorated, and we could barely stand to cook dinner when we got home, and my sdad’s working 70 hour weeks for the post office.
It’s kind of weird that these days, with layoffs and my sdad being out of work a lot this year because of heart problems, our household habits are a lot closer to where we were when i was a kid, not very many luxuries at all. Yet we (well, me now – I started paying for it last spring when my income improved) still pay to have someone come clean – and it clearly helps my mom feel like losing her job wasn’t a total kick to her self-worth. (Also, our current cleaning person is my retired aunt, who started doing it for friends because she was bored and enjoys cleaning, and it gives her a little extra cash each month. I don’t know if we’d feel comfortable indulging in the cleaning-person luxury if my aunt hadn’t offered to do it, and plus she and my mom do brunch and gossip on the days she comes over.)
That’s one of the first things we did when we finally had a kid — with both of us working full-time, it is a sanity-saver to have someone come clean the house every 2 weeks. We have to do the maintenance in between, just like you described, but having someone else do the big stuff every 2 weeks means that I get a few extra hours each week to spend WITH my kid instead of cleaning the house.
If our income drops, I can imagine we would do the same as your mother — cut back in other areas but try to keep this luxury because of the TIME we get back by doing it.
This is interesting – for me, I have thought on and off about getting housecleaning help but in the end it’s never quite made sense because the housework that an outside person would do is not the stuff that are points of contention in our house (mostly that’s the dishes). But what HAS changed significantly is getting handymen etc in. I find that work harder, more time consuming, and dirtier, and for me it’s also a bright line between having enough and being ‘properly middle class’, whatever that means in my own head. I hadn’t really thought about it like this before now, but it really is the biggest thing in my life that makes me feel like I’ve ‘made it’ somehow, like I’m comfortable and safe.
My feelings on Hamilton:
[COMPANY]
Helpless
Maybe it’s because I’m the type of person the article is apparently complaining about, but I thought that Washington Post article about Hamilton was soooooo damn smarmy. How the fuck do you sit through a musical in which people of color play notorious slavers and think to yourself “Yes, irony is dead. This is just some good, surface-level fun.”
But I dunno, I guess RIP in Peace to Irony. Had a good run, but it was finally killed off by that most vibrant of American media, the big-budget musical.
I don’t think a musical has to be surface-level to be non-ironic, though. When I read the article, I thought it was talking specifically about the use of irony where the musical/book/TV show either makes fun of people who make a sincere effort or punishes them narratively because Idealism Is For Suckers. It’s still a pretty surface-level thing to focus on in Hamilton, but I didn’t think the article was dismissing all the depth that is there.
I thought it didn’t make a great case that Hamilton is the One True Non-Ironic Musical, personally. Pretty much all musicals are emotive, from the heart, tour de forces so it read more as one person finding that that particular musical made them feel and thus wrote it as it a cultural phenomenon.
Yeah, honestly, and thinking of recent or still-running musicals here, Wicked is pretty non-ironic–there are some winking references to the Wizard of Oz movie, but it’s in a spirit of fun, not teasing. Spring Awakening was so earnest it kind of made my teeth hurt. The Lion King wavers between deep sincerity and occasional jokey fourth-wall breaking, but I think it’s at its best by far when it wears its feelings on its sleeve. Avenue Q has the strongest dose of irony I can think of–the fact that it’s a Sesame-Street-like setup is always part of the joke. I think that’s simply part of the project; it’s a comedy about people in their twenties living in the city for the first time, and it would be weird if it never winked or made cultural references or questioned itself.
I just don’t see any need to posit some modes of human expression as “in” or “out” or “over.” There is stuff irony is uniquely equipped to communicate. That doesn’t mean we all have to go around holding everything at arm’s length, just that we’ve got that kind of speech available to us.
I don’t know if you know the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson?? It had some good stuff, but it fell into the self-referential wink-wink type of irony a LOT. They spend practically the whole show shouting at you ‘HEY IT’S AN EMO ROCK MUSICAL ABOUT HISTORY WE’RE MAKING JOKES ABOUT MICHEL FOUCAULT ISN’T THIS FUNNY?” … Which was fine when they were singing about the Corrupt Bargain, but when they had to deal with the serious stuff, like genocide, it felt really insincere. They didn’t ignore it, but they also didn’t handle it nearly as well as they could have because they were more concerned with getting jokes across. They ended up too removed from the subject matter to actually say anything.
Hamilton- obviously the casting is both a statement, and a major whopper of dramatic irony. But there’s none of the winking removal or self-referential nonsense that dilutes the moments they actually say something within the show, either. When Hamilton points out TJ’s slave-owning hypocrisy, or when Laurens sings “we’ll never be free until we end slavery”- those moments are played straight and you’re looking at the cast and thinking, “well, obviously”, and it hits home.
Anyways this isn’t really to refute your point, I’m not sure that article was entirely thought out, it seems more of an enthusiastic reaction post than, like, a critical reading. But as a theater fan, I totally get where the author was coming from. BBAJ’s treatment was exhausting, but Hamilton’s is invigorating.
My roommate was listening to BBAJ in order to get back at me for all the Hamilton and I was so confused…
It was SUPPOSED to be awful, right?
Idk man, I love parts of that show a lot. Populism, Rock Star, I’m Not That Guy/I’m So That Guy are tons of fun to sing, The Corrupt Bargain song is great. I sing “Crisis Averted” every time I see/think those words. It had some ideas that really worked! Plus, it’s the only “rock musical” I can think of where the songs are actually songs you could hear at a grimy rock show, rather than musical songs dressed up with guitar and drums.
But holy hell, was there also a lot of nonsense in that show. I didn’t see it IRL but I still don’t understand the narrator in the wheelchair that gets shot at some point?? I basically don’t listen to any of the songs with Jackson’s wife bc they’re just so confused and awful. & like I said, the Ten Little Indians song is…. not entirely awful but also not good? Plus then they sing that song at the end that’s like “ACTUALLY the moral of this show was manifest destiny and environmentalism! parking lots!” and you’re sitting there like “not…. it’s not the genocide part of manifest destiny?” why??
As much as I love Ben Walker singing about Populi-jism, there’s a reason it only survived 4 months on Broadway, is what I’m saying.
I didn’t see it IRL but I still don’t understand the narrator in the wheelchair that gets shot at some point??
WHUT. I also did not see BBAJ and just listened to the soundtrack (Populism gets a lot of play at my house around election time), but every so often I see a stage direction from BBAJ floating around the great wide interwebs and it’s just so confusing. I legitimately did not know that show had a narrator. Or like I saw this a few days ago: ” They splash blood from the basin onto one another and furiously make out.” Just . . . what? What song is that even in? “Illness as Metaphor?”
I wonder if poor Michael Freeman is secretly incredibly bitter about Lin-Manuel Miranda. I mean, HE did the cool historical president musical thing way before Hamilton, and he had a new musical debut at the Public last fall that got completely swallowed up in the Hamilton buzz. (I am one of about five people who loved Fortress of Solitude, but man, I loved the hell out of that show. I’m still rooting for it to get reworked and make a surprise transfer to Broadway.)
Michael Freeman is the Aaron Burr to Miranda’s Hamilton…..
I was just thinking about poor Michael Freeman this morning! I was listening to “My Shot” on the streetcar, thinking, “This is BBAJ if BBAJ could tell a coherent story or made any kind of statement.” Not that I don’t appreciate what Freeman was trying to do or that it was like BAD bad, but Hamilton’s doing everything he was trying to do plus like five other things.
Really though, BBAJ doesn’t really suffer from anything that most rock-driven musicals don’t also suffer from, which is that the score doesn’t serve the story, or at least not in a theatrical sense. This is my beef with a show like Spring Awakening: fun and interesting score, but not really satisfying on stage because the story is so fucking flat, because who are these characters? Why should we care? The score is great at evoking a feeling, but it doesn’t accomplish anything dramatically. Same with Hair, which is actually fun because it doesn’t pretend to be about anything but the music, or any jukebox musical you can name — whether you find something like Mamma Mia or Rock of Ages enjoyable is entirely dependent on how much you want to see those songs performed live. The only legit rock musical I think is really successful is Jesus Christ Superstar, and despite the stand-alone hits, that album owes as much to musical theatre convention as Hamilton does.
I think you could make a case that Hamilton works in a way that rock musicals don’t because hip hop lends itself better to character and story-building than rock or pop do, mostly by the nature of its verbosity. But then you could also just say that LMM is a one-in-a-lifetime genius and leave it at that.
[/thesis]
Marry me. (This is everything I think about jukebox musicals’ vacuity.)
K LET’S ELOPE
. . . Oh no, his name is actually Michael Friedman. Sorry, sir! I think you’re very talented.
Yeah, I think you’re right that he gets tripped up in the disconnect between story and score. In the shows of his that I’m familiar with, the scores are really musically and intellectually interesting, but they don’t necessarily work with the structure of the story. Like, Hamilton is beautifully structured: the story builds around those three duels, which are carefully spaced out; all of the characters get just as much introduction as they need in order for the audience to care about them and then get shoved offstage before they get boring; the story builds in a beautiful dramatic sweep. BBAJ and Fortress are both extremely structurally messy–like, Fortress is based off a book with a loose six-act structure, and the musical cuts two of those acts and then compresses the remaining four until they fit into the confines of a two-act musical. There are a zillion characters, and some of them get big flashy intro songs and then disappear for the rest of the show, and some of them hang around the whole time with little to no characterization. It’s a gorgeous show, I saw it twice and wept through the whole thing both times, it has a lot of interesting things to say about pop music and institutionalized racism and toxic masculinity, but it’s a mess.
Oh, well clearly I had no idea either, my bad.
I think you’re probably right below, that he needs a good book writer, or at least to consult a dramaturge? There’s so much great stuff going on in his work, it’s a shame that it doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. Alternately, maybe a concept album is more his speed?
yeah, the blood stuff is Illness as Metaphor. Basically that whole song is about AJ and his wife’s bloodletting habit- except, emo rock musical, they’re ritual cutters? It’s…. awkward, to say the least.
AND yeah, so, the narrator! afaik she’s a modern-day old lady in a wheelchair who’s, like, a Jackson superfan and she introduces him in the show, and explains his childhood and stuff. Then she starts narrating what he does as an adult, and at some point Jackson himself breaks the fourth wall and shoots her. That’s what leads into “I’m Not That Guy” because he’s saying, he’s not the person she says he is (and then I’m So That Guy, oops actually he is!). There’s only the one line in that song, “Sometimes you have to take the initiative, sometimes you have to shoot the storyteller in the neck” and then…. she might make a return towards the end of the show? I don’t know, it’s too confusing for me to piece together just from the soundtrack.
Huh. Well. That sounds insane, but it worked in Into the Woods! Maybe . . . it works there too?
Maybe Friedman just needs to team up with a really good book writer. I love his scores to death and I think he’s really smart, but his shows all fall apart when you actually end up putting them onstage. Someone who could give his avant garde tendencies some discipline could work wonders.
I saw this show in LA when I was in High School (2008? 2009?) and I LOVED it because it was so weird and fun and Funny!History! Looking back at it now, and reading all these comments, I feel pretty confident that I would have enjoyed it but it wouldn’t quite have resonated with me in the same way. I wish I could remember more of it so I could solve this mystery for everyone. I do remember LOTS of winking-at-the-audience and breaking the fourth wall. Pretty sure Child Jackson was just played by the actor walking on his knees?
Finally listened to Hamilton on NPR last night… only the first act, so far, but I bought it so it will definitely be commute listening by Monday. Saeed Jones’s tweets definitely pushed me to listen, especially these two: https://twitter.com/theferocity/status/6470785356… https://twitter.com/theferocity/status/6470788639…
Nearly made me cry. (Not sure if you can embed tweets in comments.) He hits the nail right on the head with those. I kept thinking about it while I listened.
Those tweets are absolutely wonderful! Thank you for posting.
I was standing on the subway platform this morning on my way to work, and I was like, “gee, maybe the Hamilton soundtrack is for sale on Amazon Prime now, let me just check…” and you guys, IT WAS FREE TO DOWNLOAD (so if you have Amazon Prime, get on that)! So I’m standing there waiting for my train, frantically downloading this very long album (GOOD BYE DATA, NO REGRETS), and it finishes downloading just as the train goes underground. I got to work right as “Satisfied” finished. Best commute ever. I’m done, thank you for your time.
Wait, it’s free on Amazon Prime? I pre-ordered and paid $18!
…eh, worth it!
Aren’t people crushed to death every year at the Hajj? You’d think the Saudis would try to make it safer…
There’s a link in the WaPo article to the graphics where they show of the measures that have been taken to increase safety. They’ve rebuilt bridges, have permanent air conditioned tents for pilgrims and have tried to make getting in and out of the sites easier for both emergency services and pilgrims.
Which have worked for the most part as this is the worst incident since the 90’s.
I’ve been listening to Hamilton non-stop since NPR posted it a few days ago. I’m proselytizing about it to everyone I know. but so far, no one else IRL is listening to it! How do I get these people to understand?!
I have this problem too. The boy is fine with me putting it on at home and likes it, but otherwise, I’m striking out.
I KNOW I’M SURROUNDED BY PHILLISTINES
I am so hesitant, because what if I introduce it to people and they *don’t* love it?? What would I do??
I also know that my mother will love it, but it will also absolutely destroy her emotionally, so I’m weighing the pros and cons of that.
I quoted it on Facebook today and a lot of people gave it a thumbs-up but I’m not sure any of them actually knew it was a Hamilton reference. In the meantime, my Twitter is basically all Hamilton, all the time
God, I’ve been so unbelievably grateful this week that my best friend has also been just as absurdly obsessed as me so I’ve had my own person to text about where we are in our eternal Hamilton loops; I honestly don’t know how I’d have been able to handle all of these feelings by myself.
My dude is trying not to listen to it at all until we see it and WE ARE COMMON FOLK WHO DON’T LIVE IN NYC IT WILL BE A MILLION YEARS BEFORE WE SEE IT.
I, OTOH, have been listening non stop (Non-Stop!) since first hearing the NPR stream.
After days of emoting, I put headphones on my partner and played “My Shot,” and somewhere around two minutes in, his eyes started glistening, and at the end, he said, “I’ve never heard anything like that before. That changed my ideas about what can be done in music.”
So, I’ve got one convert, but he’s a *quality* convert.
I’m out of the house now and can actually buy things that say “Parental Advisory” ALL BY MYSELF.
muahaahahahaha.
*furiously buys Hamilton and feels like a rebel*
I’ve already apologized in advance to my roommate because she hates Hamilton for reasons I dont understand but I need to swing dance to “What did I miss”.
It’s important to me.
Swing dancing is always important! *lindy hopper fist bump*
I finally started listening to Hamilton last night – just the first act, but my god. Something about the strings in the very first song made me tear up a little. I have no explanation.
Also, my husband doesn’t like musicals, except the film version of Les Mis (only the MOST musical of musicals), so I’m divorcing him.
totes legit
My husband also doesn’t like musicals, but ESPECIALLY the film version of Les Mis, so I routinely torment him by singing bits of the soundtrack.
Mine was so not enthusiastic about going to see it with me, so I was expecting grumbling. Then we go and the lights come up after the end credits, and I look over and … tears. Streaming down his face. Mine too, so no judgment. Just amused in light of his resistance.
Okay, I can’t cry anymore, let’s talk funniest lines in Hamilton. My fave is, “I was chosen for the constitutional convention!” LMM’s delivery fucking KILLS me.
I’m partial to Lafayette’s “Who’s the Best? C’est moi!”. Though “You punched the bursar” is also hilarious in context. And every line out of Jonathan Groff’s mouth, of course.
I am a simple, simple woman and Lafayette’s accent kills me.
“I may have punched him…it’s a blur, sir”
“Sit down John, you fat mother$#&*@”
My mother is such a 1776 nerd I tried to tell her about this but my little siblings were right there…
AH its so good.
That killed me!
THAT might be my favorite. Although “you punched the bursar?” from Aaron Burr (sir) also gets me every time.
Oh, and just when I thought I couldn’t love it anymore, the explicit version! “SOUTHERN MOTHERFUCKING DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANS”
I was so delighted by that this morning that I listened to it five times in a row.
I had literally said to my friend, “That pause after Southern is interesting, wonder why they did that.”
And this morning…. “OHHHH!!! Nice.”
“I will kill your friends and family…to remind you of my love!”
I desperately want the guys who do Rex Factor to listen to Hamilton so they can hear the King George stuff. I want Ali’s reaction more than anything!
ba da ba da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh
Also: “Don’t modulate the key, then not debate with me!”
‘My dog speaks more eloquently than thee/but strangely his mange is the same’ is a solid insult and I hope dearly that LMM pulled it from a real colonial letter or something.
Oh, oh, and the randomness of “I’m a general, Whee!” never fails to elicit a chuckle.
Not only is that an AMAZING line, AMAZINGLY delivered, but the mix on it where it like — I want to say reverbs a little? KILLS ME.
The delivery of that line makes me giggle uncontrollably and then miss the rest of the bit about the constitutional convention. I love it so much.
I also really, really love the “Damn”s in The Reynolds Pamphlet.
OH and in the first cabinet debate, after Jefferson finishes with “imagine what’ll happen when you try to tax our whiskey”, there’s all the crowd noises and someone in the background just says “Alcohol!”
HA I never noticed that! Damn, I guess I’ll have to listen again. OH WELL.
The crowd hecklers are amazing. In the second cabinet meeting after Hamilton says, “Should we honor our treaty, King Louis’ head? / ‘Uh…do whatever you want, I’m super dead!'” this woman shouts, “That’s foolishness!!!” all indignantly. It’s beautiful.
Seconded on the King Louis’ head line.
“It’s hard to have intercourse through four sets of corsets.” Word
“Martha Washington named her tomcat after him!” “That’s true.” FAVORITE.
ALSO all of the uber-fuckboy “Hey”s in Winter’s Ball leading into Helpless. IT KILLS ME I WANT TO SEE THAT LIVE SO BAD.
Everyone relentlessly mocking John Adams gives me life, but especially when Groff says, “He’s that . . . little guy who spoke to me,” like he still can’t believe someone that little had the effrontery to speak to him.
I agree with everyone below, but I extra love all the King George stuff, ALL OF IT, especially “I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do”. Plus I do picture his little shoulder-shimmy every time, and it is was SO GOOD.
I NEED to see that shoulder shimmy. I need it.
Also, there’s something about the way James Madison delivers the response to TJ’s question in the second cabinet meeting — the just too-long pause before he says “France” — that slays me.
OH MAN Madison as Jefferson’s hype man is amazing. This bit:
JEFFERSON: Such a blunder sometimes it makes me wonder why I even bring the thunder
MADISON: Why he even brings the thunder
Okieriete Onaodowan does not get enough credit — I know Diggs is probably going to get the Tony for Best Supporting, and he deserves it, but Okierete has two such different characters with such different energies, and he’s such a big dude who manages to perfectly inhabit James Madison, our palest, tiniest, nerdiest president, by adjusting his stature and delivery just so, and making him into an awesome hype man. (And his #Ham4Ham shows, where he performs as Mickey Mouse? Incredible.)
Also, a cut line from Public Theater, Madison’s eulogy of Hamilton was roughly: “We’re all in his debt. He would have loved that, he loved debt.”
HAHAHAHAHA MADISON YOU DOG what a sick burn
Madison, you mad as a hatter son!
I miss that line! It was so perfect! I mean, I get why he changed it but IT WAS SO GOOD
Okay, so this brings up an interesting question though: I’m positive Diggs will get a nom, and I’m positive Hamilton will sweep, but will he win? You could fill that category just with Hamilton cast members and still have some left over. I want Onaodowan to get a nod, and Ramos too, but I think it’s more likely Diggs, Groff, and I’m PRAYING Chris Jackson get the noms.
But then, what do you do about Leslie Odom Jr? For the Lucille Lortel Awards, he and LMM were both nominated for lead, and LMM won. I’m kind of hoping they nominate Odom for supporting instead of lead, because I think LMM will probably win for lead and I NEED Odom to get a Tony, like NEED.
Odom should win for lead and LMM should win for book and music and musical.
Ah, but does he deserve/will he win for lead?? I think he’ll get the nom and he’ll probably win it, but I think I’d rather see Odom get it??
ALSO bets placed on who will actually win for supporting? I have a feeling it will be Groff — the Judi Dench factor — which I GET but also makes me mad to think about, so I’m choosing to believe it’ll be Diggs or Jackson, and I’ll be humming that tune from now til June.
That is my ideal outcome too, and I don’t think it’s totally nuts. IIRC, LMM was nominated for lead actor for In the Heights and did not win–although he did win for book, music, and musical–and I can see that pattern continuing here. OTOH, we might get a Book of Mormon situation–their two male leads were both nominated, and they split the vote and the award went to another show entirely. It really depends on how the rest of the category shakes out.
I also want Phillippa Soo to win lead actress and Renee Elise Goldsberry to take featured actress. I think REG is the only one in the cast that I really NEED to win, because she is just so extraordinary.
I think I need both REG and Diggs to win.
I share the feeling that Odom and Miranda might cancel each other out, which would be a crying shame.
Canceling each other out happened this year with Sydney Lucas, Judy Kuhn, and Emily Skeggs from Fun Home in Best Featured Actress. This was very sad, because either Lucas or Kuhn should have won.
Burr is a lead — co-lead, maybe, but it’s a lead. Odom is so good that I think he’ll win eventually. Maybe he submits as lead just to ensure another Hamilton nominee in supporting.
I predict Diggs, Jackson, and Groff all getting nods as supporting, with Diggs being most likely to win if they don’t split the vote. I would nominate Ramos or Onaodowan over Groff, whose role is funny but small, but him being a repeat nominee may swing his place. But really, there should be a Best Ensemble award, the whole cast is incredible (and so loving together!)
And almost is good as the time Madison asks Jefferson where he’s been and Jefferson goes “Uh, France,” in that amazing “derrr” voice.
That line is my FAVOURITE PART. It’s just his voice.
I ALWAYS smile and chuckle when TJ makes his first appearance, because his swagger is out of control and he’s like “hey y’all you are so #blessed that I’m here!” and he’s such an ass and I love it.
“She’s married to a British officer.” “Oh, shit.”
“Where have you been?” “Uh, France?”
“Wouldn’t you like to work a little closer to home?” “Actually, I would.”
“President John Adams. Good luck!”
Also, I’m gonna be That Asshole – when I saw it at the Public, when King George sings “I’m so blue” he stamped his foot and the spot changed to blue and I CRACKED UP.
YES, I CRACK UP EVERY TIME REMEMBERING THAT LIGHT CHANGE. KILLED ME DEAD.
I love all the meta-theatrical jokes? Like in “Take a Break” when he compares himself to Macbeth but first says “forgive me if I don’t name the play.” That’s so NERDY.
I loved that so much. When I worked on a production of Macbeth, we called is MacDaddy because YOU DON’T SAY IT IN THE THEATER. And I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply when you’re working on a production of Macbeth, but no one was taking any chances. Nerds, all of us.
“Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after him” & LMM breaking character to excitedly tell the audience “That’s true!”
Also! Lafayette’s dismissive, disgusted “You are the worst, Burr.”
This delights me EVERY TIME!!
Ohhh, I actually laugh every time in Cabinet Battle 2:
“Should we honor our treaty, King Louis’ head?”
“Uh…do whatever you want, I’m super dead!”
Oh I somehow forgot about this! This is the best.
Important background information https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/status/64712410707…
I can’t help it; I die laughing at “We’re reliable with the LAAAADIESSS” every damn time
“You are the worst, Burr” in Lafayette’s amazing accent
and everything King George III says, but especially:
“I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love”
Pretty much any of Hercules Mulligan’s lines
Angelicas line “When I meet Thomas Jefferson I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequal” also I love in Burn (i think) when she tells Hamilton “I’m not here for you”
Man, Hercules Mulligan’s lines are all so much better in the explicit version than they were in the radio edit. He clearly has the dirtiest mouth of all of Hamilton’s friends and it totally works.
Everything Angelica says is gold. Also I love it when she shuts down Burr and he goes, “I’m a trust fund baby, you can trust me!”
It’s in The Reynolds Pamphlet! And the chorus goes “oooooh” and I die.
It’s not my FAVOURITE line, but there’s a bit in “You’ll Be Back” where King George sings “you’re making me mad!” It took me three listens to catch the pun, and then I laughed and laughed.
He also sings “When you’re gone, I’ll go mad” which put a huge smile on my face when I got the double meaning
Everything Jefferson and Madison do in the Election of 1800, especially this:
[BURR]
Congrats on a race well-run
I did give you a fight
[JEFFERSON]
Uh-huh…
[BURR]
I look forward to our partnership
[JEFFERSON]
Our partnership?
[BURR]
As your vice president!
[JEFFERSON]
[laughs] Yeah, right!
You hear this guy?
Man openly campaigns against me, talking ‘bout “I look forward to our partnership!”
[BURR]
It is crazy that the guy who comes in the second gets to be Vice President
[JEFFERSON]
OOOH! Y’know what, we can change that! Y’know why?
[BURR]
Why?
[JEFFERSON]
‘Cause I’M the president!
The way he says, “‘Cause I’m the president,” I keep imagining some self-satisfied little head-tilt and I diiiiiie.
I love the SHOWTIME bit at the beginning, such a great NYC nod to the subway dancers.
“Here’s an itemized list of thirty years of disagreements.”
Has no one mentioned King George’s “AWESOME, WOW” in What Comes Next? Because I basically fell off my couch the first time I heard it.
I somehow always forget that that line is coming until it’s happening, and then I die laughing. Also, how does Jonathan Groff manage to sound like a British person impersonating an American and not an actual American which he is???
He’s an actual American??
The “BITCH, PLEASE!” in the John Adams diss track they cut gets me EVERY TIME.
During Ten Duel Commandments, when in response to Hamilton spinning himself up into high dudgeon, Burr says drily, “Okay, so we’re doing this.”
Guys, let’s just accept that this week was more or less a write off on anything not Hamilton-related, and that we should totally have a temporary spin off site call “The Toast To The Groom (to the groom…to the groom…to the groom…)” where we post exclusively Hamilton related articles like “Places In ‘Burn’ Where I Can No Longer Even” and “If John Laurens Was Your Boyfriend”
I would sponsor the latter article so much.
“raps by Philip Hamilton (Ages 9-19)”
“The ballad of Peggy Schuyler”
“999,000 things Hamilton STILL hasn’t done”
“Dirtbag Charles Lee”
“Everything that rhymes with ‘Burr, sir’ ranked”
“Hamilton’s Mangy Eloquent dog discusses Seabury”
I would read all of those. But “Everything that rhymes with ‘Burr, sir’ ranked” especially.
Brilliant!
If John Laurens were your boyfriend, you’d know he had a thing going with that handsome Alex Hamilton from down the street, but your passionate abolitionist conversations are enough to keep you coming back for more anyways.
For work I am commissioning a historian who specializes in Charles Lee to write a blog piece responding to his role in Hamilton and never in my life have I been more pleased by my job. It will probably be a long explanation of why Lee was secretly the hero of the Battle of Monmouth, but I would really enjoy it if it turned into Dirtbag Charles Lee.
please link us when it’s available!
Oh I just thought of one
“if Angelica Schuyler was your dearest comma Angelica”
I was just going to say, y’all can have Laurence, Angelica Schuyler is my shit. (And Renée Elise Goldsberry! As soon as I saw her on stage I went, “yaay, Geneva Pine — WHOA!”)
“This man was chosen for the Constitutional Convention. You won’t believe what he did next.”
Oh man, the domestic workers article. I’m reminded of going to a women’s history exhibit on an elementary school field trip, and how when one of the other girls in my class, who was herself black, asked about history-making black women (of which there were few or none in the exhibit), she was told “they were mostly domestic workers.” (With the implication that they weren’t doing anything worth talking about.) I think that must have been the first time I, as a working class white girl, was ever exposed to the idea of white privilege, and man, twenty-five years later, my heart still hurts for that girl. What a shitty thing to be told, and at such a young age.
RAGE RAGE RAGE
Is elementary school too early to start talking about the inherent flaws in the “great (wo)man” view of history and the way that civilization is driven forward by the labor and culture of the common people? Because if not, I volunteer to travel back in time and give a giant wedgie to the loser who said that to her.
Ugh.
racial divide in the progressive movement that continues to go unacknowledged
Nope.
What do you mean, “Nope”?
Meaning, the feminists and womanists I read have been acknowledging the fuck out of Bernie Sanders’ race issues. I wonder why the author of the piece has missed all of that.
I think it’s one of those things where you can get infinitely more specific– I mean, I often hear people saying stuff like “how come feminists never talk about X?” And I’m like oh my god, feminists are already talking about literally everything, as we speak someone is probably compiling an anthology of feminist analyses of old Subway commercials.
But the point is that the feminist movement, or the left, or whatever we’re talking about, is GIGANTIC, and the internet is chaos, and there are a million people offering a million views at any one time, so I can’t really blame people with not having encountered every single idea. And I mean, you’re already pretty far down in the weeds if you’re following twitter conversations between people who care deeply about Bernie Sanders’ campaign strategy. I don’t know if it would require zooming out, zooming in, or panning to the side to find the voices that you’re talking about, but I fully understand how somebody could get really deep into a conversation that’s taking place online without even bumping into a closely adjacent conversation.
Or he just doesn’t read many women writers, which is infinitely more probable based on what we know about progressive men.
I guess what I mean is, I think there’s a difference between “the very particular pocket of the progressive movement that I surround myself with is dealing with this problem” and “the progressive movement as a whole is dealing with this problem.” There are a lot of people whose honest experience with the progressive movement is full of issues that no one in their vicinity wanted to acknowledge, and I think the solution needs to be bigger than “whatever, you’re just hanging out with the wrong people. No true scotsman etc. etc.”
The internet is good at creating the illusion that everyone is on the same page, but I always, always try to keep in mind that the world is full of people, even people who look like me and have opinions similar to my own, who have never even heard of the writings or concepts that form the foundation of my views. I mean hell, I read a lot of progressive women on twitter, and I didn’t really know anything about Bernie Sanders’ record on racial issues until I clicked on that link today.
I mean, this is a lot of justification for something that is a well-established pattern — men coming in and saying something that women have been saying forever as though they invented it. Occam’s Big Paisley Tie comes to mind.
Feminists telling black people feminism doesn’t have a race problem is also a pretty well established pattern. Though that article is about the progressive left as a whole, not feminism specifically so that’s a bit moo.
Right, clearly problems in the progressive movement are not specific to every single person who is a progressive. Starr is talking about general trends, and posting his personal experience as a black man with talking to white progressives about Bernie Sanders on twitter. The best thing for white progressives to do, even if they’ve already acknowledged the problem, is to listen.
yeah, I read (ugh it seems to have vanished from my browser history!) a response to that article that pretty much said, look how few Americans are on twitter, much less talking politics on it, and look how many people haven’t even heard of Sanders, so how is this a problem for the campaign? or really for anyone not targeted by these assholes? Which made a lot of sense to me, in that I know my basically-lives-on-the-internet and reads-all-the-feminist-internet-things bubble is tiny and it’s always a little jarring to see how little it overlaps with mainstream news. Like, imagine Sanders giving a sincere apology and c’mon guys don’t do this shit on my behalf speech, and how many people would just react with “…what?”
But on the other hand…how many of the targets of Sanders fanboy harassment could have been enthusiastic supporters with a decent amount of influence? How many folks who’ve never heard of Sanders would have heard of him if someone in their social circle hadn’t decided “welp, can’t be vocal about this guy on Twitter?”
But yeah, that “continues to go unacknowledged” sentence sucks and could have used a big ol’ qualifier.
That you’re using the word “womanist” suggests to me that a lot of your reading is amongst feminists of color, who, of course, have been talking thoughtfully and a lot about Sanders and race issues. Standard-issue white liberal feminists? Not so much. This is a real, and awful, blind spot for us.
I have been agonizing over this stupid job application since Wednesday, and the deadline is today so I need to buckle down and get it done already. The screening questions though. I have the experience they’re looking for, and the ability to explain that in writing, but my mind just goes completely blank when I try.
*curls up in a ball*
I am rooting for you! Job applications are a nightmare. You can do this!
Today’s Deep Thought on Hamilton:
Every tear we have shed is the fault of New Jersey.*
*Seriously WTF New Jersey?
**Except “Burn”. That’s on you AHam.
YOU GUYS from the casting breakdown posted above:
Hamilton – Eminem meets Sweeney Todd
Eliza – Alicia Keys meets Elphaba
Angelica – Nicki Minaj meets Desiree Armfeldt
Aaron Burr – Javert meets Mos Def
George Washington – John Legend meets Mufasa
I AM DYING
My favorite line was “Lafayette is an earnest, idealistic Frenchman who reveals himself to be a superb military commander/rapper.”
“John Legend meets Mufasa” is just so perfect.
I was just coming down here to say that.
Let’s not forget him describing Peggy as “the Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child.”
I may or may not have snorted into my coffee at that one.
Lafayette as “Lancelot meets Ludacris” is also a beautiful and perfect gem
I may have laughed until I cried at John “Nas meets Elder Price” Laurens.
Well, shit. I was pretty successfully staying ignorant to Hamilton, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to Broadway to see it and who the hell knows if/when it will get to our (admittedly pretty great) theater in mid-Michigan, but I started listening to the cast recording this morning and GOOD GOD-DAMN is this fun/awesome. Looks like I’ll have to keep an eager eye out for it now!
NOT HAMILTON NEWS:
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/sep/25/s…
criminal proceedings! against Sepp Blatter!! by the Swiss themselves!!!!!
i knooooooooooooowww!
this was Big Morning News for me.
Yes, isn’t it about time?
I know she was clear on the exploitative nature of domestic service but the tone of that maid article seemed frustratingly nostalgic to me. Middle class families aren’t stretched for time because child care isn’t affordable, or because men are not sharing household responsibilities, it’s all because those darn maids went and became too expensive to hire. Pity the middle class!
Question for Americans: do you have a federal program wherein foreign workers with virtually no rights are lured to come work temporarily as nannies/caregivers/maids in middle class homes? That has been Canada’s solution and it’s a national disgrace.
Actually, yes! We’re totally on top of that with au pairs.
Are they lured from the Philippines with limits on the amount of time they’re allowed to spend in the country? I tend to think of an ‘au pair’ as a young, usually white woman, possibly from a middle class background herself, who works as a nanny while traveling and has a very different relationship with domestic service than temporary live-in caregivers on account of her racialized/classed identity.
This is, however, entirely based on my own local context.
my rich aunt and uncle on Long Island had a live-in nanny from the Phillipines while my cousin was little. I don’t exactly know what the arrangment was or her immigration status, but they’re, uh, very upper-middle class at the least and it was a thing there?
I don’t know if it’s a federal program, but that shit happens all the time, from what I have seen and heard.
Yeah there were a couple of phrases of ‘isn’t it a pity that it means that more not-insanely-wealthy-people can’t get domestic help’?
Well, no, because you see those are the people who would have had to BE domestic help. See: white women flooding the market in the depression and pushing black women out (to, presumably, starve? What happened to those black women and their families, when they couldn’t find work even as domestics? I’m assuming nothing good) Clearly it was about financial need. So while the author is correct that families with lower incomes could use more help, having a system of servants won’t help them, it will give them LESS time and access to their families, because they’d be serving someone ELSE’S family.
A Facebook friend posted that article about Bernie Sanders last night, and you would not believe how quickly the liberal white dudes on her list swooped in to snidely defend themselves. I almost commented to say something like “Point proven…” but I wasn’t in the mood for an argument.
There’s a Sanders supporter in the comments literally calling people “dummies”!
UGH everything is terrible
I have been worrying about the puppy. Is she ok? How is her health? I probably shouldn’t worry so much about a dog that I don’t actually know. And yet…
But she’s just SO DARN CUTE and I want to know if she is okay too!
How many babies named Theodosia or Angelica are going to be born this year? (A little girl nicknamed Theo would be so freaking cute.)
If my baby had been a boy, he would have been named Alexander. We did not go with Angelica for the girl, though…
I’m naming my firstborn Hercules Mulligan
Theodosia is now on my list of Hypothetical Girl Names along with Loula and Cariad.
Not Angelica though because Im a turn of the millennium girl and Rugrats still haunts me.
I’ve spent the last three days thinking about having a daughter and naming her Theodosia. Did you know that was also Theda Bara’s real name?
Hm, lots of middle class people have domestic help, I just think the nature of the domestic help has changed. We have “cleaning ladies” rather than maids, and they usually don’t live in the house anymore. They’re definitely still out there.
Thank you for sharing the link about Honey Lee Cottrell. I had only just heard that she was ill and then the news that she died appeared in my FB feed. So far this fall is really too full of absences.
This may get lost in all the Hamilton appreciation, but I am here if anyone wants to talk Imitation of Life (1934). Claudette Colbert is awesome always, but the real powerhouse in the movie is Louise Beavers as Delilah. It also introduced me to legitimate badass Fredi Washington:
“You see I’m a mighty proud gal and I can’t for the life of me, find any valid reason why anyone should lie about their origin or anything else for that matter. Frankly, I do not ascribe to the stupid theory of white supremacy and to try to hide the fact that I am a Negro for economic or any other reasons, if I do I would be agreeing to be a Negro makes me inferior and that I have swallowed whole hog all of the propaganda dished out by our fascist-minded white citizens.”
Also I cried so hard at the end of that movie. SO HARD. I think I was lying on the couch and the tears all went into my ears.
What a woman. Thank you for the link.
No problem! I looked her up immediately after I watched the movie because she was so good and I would have loved to have seen her in more things. I’m actually a little surprised no one has written a biography.
I think my favorite part of the wiki article is where it says she was dating Duke Ellington and noped on out when she realized he wasn’t going to marry her.
Who walks away from Duke Ellington? She does, that’s who.
Sent from my iPad
Literally ALL I can bring myself to care about right now is Hamilton, which is a PROBLEM as I am moving out of New York City on Sunday and I’m never going to get to see the original cast (unless I drop $300+ that I shouldn’t drop to see it tomorrow night).
DROP IT. DROP IT LIKE IT’S HOT.
I dropped it like I could feel the flames licking my cheeks and singing my eyelashes and IT WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY.
I’m interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on why drop-off laundry is comparable to live-in help…is it because it is slightly more luxurious cost-wise than doing it yourself, or just the very idea of having someone else do the actual physical work when you could do it yourself (vs. a specialized service)?
A regular laundry load costs me about $5 plus detergent, whereas drop-off is $12-15, so I do try to limit my use of the service to particularly busy weeks—and of course i understand that not everyone has those extra $7 to spare, so it is a luxury in that way. But I guess I saw it as kind of a time-vs.-money situation (like paying more for rush shipping, or buying coffee out instead of making it at home) – as in, I should probably save that money, but some nights the two extra hours of sanity after a long workday, spent at home instead of at the laundromat, are worth the cost. Is it instead an issue of worrying that laundry workers perhaps don’t make a fair wage?
Anyway, just a jumble of thoughts, I promise I’m trying honestly to understand and not just react in defense because I use my friendly local laundromat’s drop-off service every so often 🙂
I finally a sitting down and listening to the whole Hamilton soundtrack while doing Friday afternoon chores/making dinner, etc. and I got to Blow Us All Away just as I sat down to dinner and now I am SOBBING INTO MY PASTA AND I CAN’T STOP. Fucking soggy pasta. I don’t know if I can listen to the rest now.
This feels kind of like when I read A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel’s novelization of the French revolution) and was horribly traumatized by all the guillotining. BUT STILL. (Also note: read A Place of Greater Safety. More revolutionaries! More! More!)
Still crying.
YES.
I want to read the article that goes into more detail about what happened to those Black women in the depression, and how that all played out. Like how did that look on an individual level? Was it literally rich white ladies firing their black maids to hire white maids? What happened to the black families then?
Also what about how the Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938 deliberately excluded domestic workers and agricultural farm labourers – that is, by proxy, black men and women? WHAT ABOUT THAT?? http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstr…
I have yet to make it to the Hamilton soundtrack because my longest available listening time is at work, when I can’t really concentrate on it, and I keep forgetting to download it when I’m at home, which would mean I could listen to it on my commute. Maybe tonight’s the night??
In the meantime, I’ll just be re-listening to Keating! The Musical. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDvtwXSEJVA
I’ve been listening to Hamilton non-stop since NPR posted it a few days ago. I’m proselytizing about it to everyone I know. but so far, no one else IRL is listening to it! How do I get these people to understand?!
I've been listening to Hamilton non-stop since NPR posted it a few days ago. I'm proselytizing about it to everyone I know. but so far, no one else IRL is listening to it! How do I get these people to understand?!
I have been listening to the soundtrack on loop but I might have to start only listening to act 1 as I would prefer not to explain to my coworkers why I keep tearing up every one hour and 40 minutes or so.
I have been listening to the soundtrack on loop but I might have to start only listening to act 1 as I would prefer not to explain to my coworkers why I keep tearing up every one hour and 40 minutes or so.
Thanks for sharing, hope that it can be a goodness for us all. be a modest muslimah , Keep istiqomah. ^^