um:
Alfredo Prieto’s case has been reassigned to U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson, a former prosecutor appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush.
In a profile of Hudson in connection with his overseeing the sentencing of Michael Vick in 2007, ESPN.com’s legal analyst focused on Hudson’s tough-on-crime approach to the law. “In a campaign for commonwealth attorney,” the story noted, “Hudson used a large button that said, ‘I Voted for Hang ‘Um High Henry.’”
This is a really horrifying look at how priests who have been accused of sexual assault often make their way to churches in South America, so decide if that’s how you want to spend your morning:
In a yearlong investigation, we tracked down and confronted five such priests. All were able to continue working for the church despite serious accusations against them. When we found them, all but one continued to lead Mass, mostly in remote, poor communities in South America.
Some of these men faced criminal investigations, but went abroad without charges being brought against them. One of the priests admitted to GlobalPost that he had molested a 13-year-old boy, and acknowledged that he can never work again in the US. He continues to preach in a small Peruvian fishing village. Another is currently under investigation by authorities in Brazil for a string of alleged molestations, including accusations in the poor neighborhoods where for two decades he ran a home for street children — with the support of the Catholic Church.
You are more than welcome to talk about yesterday’s school shooting all you want; I get the sense this is one of those dudes who vigorously jerked off to the idea of all of us talking about him and his motivations, so I’m just not going to post about it formally.
Questlove on Hamilton and hip-hop:
So what has Lin done? For starters, he has brilliantly re-presented American history through the use of race-blind casting. Roles played in history by white people are, in Hamilton, played by Latino or African-American performers, without any explanation. Or rather: the lack of explanation is the explanation. That’s been the creative move that has powered much of the show’s critical attention, and it’s easy to see why: It’s audacious and funny and serious all at the same time. It’s radically democratic: The only thing that’s elitist is how hard it’s become to get a ticket. (Yes, even for me, and I work for them.)
But I think that the reason that Hamilton is blowing people’s wigs back is something a little different. I think that Lin is stepping forward, boldly, with the first real synthesis of two great American institutions: the Broadway musical and hip-hop. Before Hamilton, each of them had their monuments. Broadway had its Chorus Line, Cats and West Side Story. Hip-hop had its Ready to Die, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 3 Feet High and Rising. But the two worlds turned independently of one another. When there was a seismic event on Broadway, the citizens of hip-hop nation didn’t feel the ground move under their feet. And when there was a major release or retrenchment in hip-hop, the dancers and directors and dramaturges didn’t experience an inner reawakening. Until now. Because Hamilton‘s isn’t just a hip-hop musical or a stage presentation of hip-hop; it’s organically and genuinely both things at once, in ways that are too important to be skimmed over.
Millihelen does a rundown on which beauty boxes are worth it (I LOVE those things, and I put all of them into this big grab bag in my guest room so that when Jaya visits she can do like twelve face masks a day.)
Laura Ortberg Turner on her anxiety and her desire for contentment:
The thing about anxiety is that it only afflicts you — or, on better days, accompanies you — when you are conscious of it. I think fondly of my days as an infant — how weird, because I cannot remember them — because those are some of the only days in my life when I was not anxious. I hadn’t started biting my nails or worrying about my career path or incessantly checking my bank account balance. I hardly had nails, and those that I did were cut for me! Earning money was beyond my capacity! Someone else took care of all of that for me.
The 40th anniversary of the Thrilla in Manila (I am utterly obsessed with boxing and MMA writing, in case this seems incongruous here):
Denied his hand behind the neck tie up, Ali’s breaks along the ropes became a great deal more dangerous. Where covering up against Foreman simply resulted in Foreman swinging away at Ali’s arms, Frazier was accurate. He would dig inside, under and behind Ali’s elbows. What’s more, Frazier’s right hand seemed more dexterous than ever as he doubled up on both lefts and rights. Where Foreman had two targets—head and body—Frazier saw two obstacles, the arms, and anywhere they weren’t was ripe for assault. Ken Norton commented between rounds that Ali could not apply the same strategy he had utilized against Foreman in this fight with a far more savvy and accurate infighter.
By the third round, Ali was hooking with Frazier. Exactly what Dundee wanted him to avoid. “Don’t swing with him!” shouted the always audible Bundini Brown from Ali’s corner as the champion returned to trading hooks with Frazier in round four. Ali spent the majority of the fifth round in a corner, and the cracks began to show. The commentary team noted that the bout was taking on a similar feel to the first—with Ali building up a lead, and then Frazier ‘coming on’ as the fight progressed. Round six was equally disastrous for Ali as he tried to dance but couldn’t seem to get his feet moving, he wound up on the ropes and taking the body blows again.
There is truly a lid for every pot in this magical world of ours:
Ed Houben is now, at the age of 46, one of the preeminent makers of babies on the planet, father to 106 children of whom two-thirds were made the natural way (i.e., by sexual intercourse) and a third made via artificial insemination. In addition, there are 30 or so he estimates from his years at the clinic. Put another way: Ed Houben, who once had sex once every decade, has fathered roughly ten kids every year for the past 15 years. And he’s still at it, thumping his way into history. So prodigious is his legacy that the BBC dubbed him “Europe’s most virile man,” while he regularly gets billed by media as “the Sperminator.”
The prerequisite for his calling, he believes, is full transparency. So visit his website—with the tagline “It is nice you found my website!”—and you will discover that Ed has tested negative for gonorrhea and chlamydia. You can see that he’s tested negative for syphilis and HIV, too. You can gaze upon pictures of him, one in which he kneels beside one of his small children, from some years ago when he was a bit more youthful.
My friend Carrie’s new puppy had no idea they MADE fire hydrants this big:
Sarah Jeong talks to Zoe Quinn and Randi Lee Harper and Ken White about the problems with the UN’s cyber violence report.
Deleted comment of the day:
Props to WaPo for actually transcribing that bear vs. kayak video. https://t.co/8VmqHNKhhy pic.twitter.com/HISmI1WK4M
— Nat Herz (@Nat_Herz) October 1, 2015
The bear transcription. I’m going to hyperventilate.
Bears are so rude. They never listen.
How did I miss this video, it’s like I set up that “animals fucking with humans” google alert for nothing.
Someone should set this woman up with Sean so they can appreciate nature together. http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/this-man-…
That video is my favourite video of recent months. I also appreciate that Buzzfeed included another example with it of the excellent ‘people from Massachusetts yelling at sea life’ genre. If anyone has any more, send them my way.
Thank you. You are doing good work here. I showed this to my boss, who grew up in New Jersey and she laughed until she cried.
HOW HAD I NOT SEEN THIS?! Thank you for this magical gift.
That kayaker is so POLITE! They don’t even swear, they stick to “gosh darnit”, “please stop” and reasonable arguments WHILE BEING ATTACKED BY A BEAR. Amazing ability to handle pressure, in my opinion. They should be cloned.
I wasn’t sure whether the kayaker was a man or a woman, but then I clicked and now I think that it’s a great comment on the restrictiveness of gender roles that she’s still polite even while defending herself from a bear. “Oh, this bear? No, it’s just being a little difficult right now, I’m not angry, I just mean that it would be great if the bear would stop bugging me…”
Her self-control is admirable, but it’s so weird that we learn to do this.
I was trying to trap some feral cats for Trap-Neuter-Return and was waiting in my car and this jerk walking by with his girlfriend starts kicking the traps over. So I get ready to go tearing over there and yell “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!!” only to find as I’ve opened my mouth that I can only say “I beg your pardon?!!!”
Ah, now I can hear it!
Stop that, bear! I think I’ve got something to say to you
It’s late September and you really should be having a snooze
Instead you’re trying to eat my boat
It’s my only means of getting afloat
Gosh darn bear, it’s not even food!
Toasts, since we are all about HAMILTON! here lately, I thought that you would enjoy this article from the Journal of American Studies:
The Erotic Charisma of Alexander Hamilton
My favourite quote: Abigail Adams wrote to John, ‘‘Oh, I have read his heart in his wicked eyes. The very devil is in them. They are lasciviousness itself.’’ Her husband coarsely described Hamilton as having ‘‘a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off.’’
I’ll be in my bunk.
mm I love me some Hamilaurens.
“Secretions”? John Adams, you ruin everything.
shots fired by adams there
more like too many shots fired by Hamilton amirite ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
He’s reliable with the LAAAAAAAAADIES
I swear I’ve listened to the cast recording 20 times since Sunday, and still that line sneaks up on me and slays me. I giggle and clap my hands with delight every damn time.
Looks! Proximity to power!
Looks like I’ll be spending some quality time on AO3 this weekend.
Bless you for bringing this into our lives.
<3 this is amazing
Thank you for the link!
He was […] so charismatic that Congress would not allow him to make an important policy presentation in person
So late, but so glad my namesake knew who had it going on.
I connect with that bear transcription a bit too much today.
BEARRRRR.
oh PLEASE stop eating my things, bear!
STOP IT, BEAR!
Has anyone here watched We Bare Bears on Cartoon Network? My favorite thing right now. Charlie and Burrito episodes are just wonderful. BEARRRRRRR(S)!!
I saw a couple of episodes while I was in Las Vegas (the only time I’ve watched actual on-TV-broadcast TV in ages) and it was so cute!
For real. Today, I am the unlucky kayaker, and the world is the bear. Please stop being terrible, world! Oh please!
My often careless, always absent-minded best friend is named Bear. I yell at him just like this, only with more f-bombs. WEEKLY.
I’m obsessed with the Millihelen beauty box roundups! I am a beauty product minimalist– I barely use any “product” beyond soaps and sunscreens so I have absolutely no reason to subscribe to a beauty box, but I have been tempted for so long. A lot of people in my apartment get them and they look like little treasure chests, not to mention that beauty product package design is like a wonder of the world. Getting to vicariously participate in the beauty boxes, getting to see each of the brilliant little packages (especially the Korean product boxes) without paying for and throwing out a bunch of products I’ll never use, is amazing.
I’m subscribed to a couple of beauty boxes, and convinced my mum to try one about a year ago. She’s afraid to use almost everything that comes because she’s got sensitive skin, and she also hates most of the colour choices they make. She gives away probably 90% of the stuff she gets. AND YET she refuses to unsubscribe, because she loves the feeling of getting a package in the mail every month. It’s like Christmas!
I love reading the Milihelen reviews! They inspired me to gift myself a Birchbox subscription for a few months for my birthday. It was great fun, I got a couple of products I really like, a bunch that I’ll probably never use, and I used the points I racked up to get a full-size lipstick and eyeliner for free. If you can afford it for a couple months it’s a very fun little hobby, even for someone like me who is basically hopeless when it comes to makeup.
You could subscribe to something like Lootcrate instead.
I was too and then I realized there are box subscriptions for EVERYTHING. I am currently getting a monthly quilting box, it is lovely! It is quite addicting and am currently searching for more to spend all my disposable money on.
Which quilting box are you getting?
I used to get the BoxyCharm box, but gave it up when my rent went up. It’s my favorite, because nearly everything in the box has a retail value close to the price of the box, so if I like just one item in the box, it’s worth it, but I’ve liked most of the products that came in it. It helped me cut down on my makeup spending, because I just want to try new things!
I don’t want to be a pedant — I don’t think the difference here is really pertinent or meaningful, necessarily, but I do think it’s interesting that we talk about the casting Hamilton as being “race-blind,” because it pretty clearly is not. Race-blind is when you cast a show indifferent to race, but Hamilton is cast with the explicit intention of putting people who are not white into historically white roles (or, I guess, the roles of characters who were historically white people).
I think that there’s an interesting distinction in there, though, because “race-blind” is typically how we talk about an approach to the classics that says, “oh, race doesn’t really matter here, let’s put in some black or latino actors” — which I think is fine and good, especially when it comes to things like Shakespeare where for the most part it doesn’t make much difference to the story — but Lin-Manuel Miranda is engaged in an active process of reimagining this historical period as not being full of white people. It’s different in the sense that you COULD cast race-blind Shakespeare, but you could also cast all-white Shakespeare, but (while I guess you could) you wouldn’t want to cast Hamilton with all white people.
(I am sure someone will try it though.)
Anyway, I am only bringing this up because I think the institutional theatrical approach of race-blind casting is fine in some respects, it also leads to huge problems, because it encourages mostly liberal theater directors and producers to imagine that race is purely cosmetic, and that we can simply ignore it or not ignore it as we like. Race-blind, I guess, is a poor second to race-conscious.
Thank you. That language was bothering me but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
Nah, that threw me too. I have nothing to add except that one time my primarily white high school decided to put on The Wiz. It went as well as you’d think. Some shows probably shouldn’t be race-blind.
The community theatre that I’m involved with put on RENT about five years ago. The region is literally 99% white. It was a weird production.
Yeah, I feel like in a few years when we start getting community theater/high school productions of Hamilton we’ll be seeing a lot of this, and I will be 😐 forever.
same where I grew up. I wonder if a similar dynamic could be created by flipping genders in casting. except for King George of course.
That’s always harder to do with musicals than plays, because of the issue of vocal range. It can be done, though–there have been a couple all-female productions of 1776.
I’m a mezzo, and I have to sing most of the men’s parts up an octave. I think King George’s song would not be too much of a stretch for a contralto. (Maybe Burr, too? That’s a pretty high tenor part.)
*sets off to contemplate how to transpose the musical so the sopranos get some fun stuff, too*
This makes me REALLY torn. An all-or-mostly white production of Hamilton will lose something big. (although i think it will gain a little bit of it back when some of those roles go to women).
But the alternative is that it doesn’t get performed as much, which would also make me sad.
Yeah, in the NYTimes article Lin actually says: “That’ll be the note that goes with the school productions: If this show ends up looking like the actual founding fathers, you messed up.”
Like an all-white production of A Raisin In The Sun! (ACTUALLY HAPPENED, according to Stephen Colbert on the commentary track of the episode of Strangers With Candy where the school puts on a production with students with the whitest names possible, while the black kids all played trees. Man, I love that show.)
I was in a community theatre production of Ragtime when I was in college in the midwest. It was…something. I’m still torn about it, because we had truly astonishing black performers as Coalhouse and Sarah (both are now professionals on Broadway), but we did NOT have enough people of color to fill out the black/immigrant ensemble. At least they didn’t actually cast white people in the POC roles, but the ensemble was not balanced.
My high school did that too! And then I few years later I found out what The Wiz was actually supposed to look like and went “wtf how did they think that was a good idea.”
My primary school (5-11 year-olds), in a very white area, did it. I don’t know why.
my slightly toxic friend was arguing that and halfway through I realized he was right….whoops.
There’s a lot of problems that we have talking about this, because especially in the US — and especially in often very white, very liberal enclaves like the theater — we incorrectly talk about racism as though it’s simply a question of personal animus based on skin color, and this leads us to worry about discriminating based on race. Except, obviously that is bonkers — Lin-Manuel Miranda is certainly discriminating based on race; “discriminating” means “choosing one instead of another.” How could you NOT discriminate based on race? Especially if you wanted to address race in some real, conscientious, useful way? This can lead some people to say that the production is racist (or, like the dope I was arguing with on Facebook about The Mikado, that it’s proof that any kind of racebending is okay, up to and including casting a bunch of white people in historically non-white roles).
My hope is that we (by “we” I mean theater practitioners, but also everyone) can start seriously talking about racism as institutional oppression and erasure, and therefore how sometimes being unconscious of or indifferent to race can actually be just as bad as straight up racism.
You are making me think a bunch of thinks this morning, including Mickey Rooney playing Mr Yunioshi, Johnny Depp playing Tonto, the Met putting up Otello with a white Iago sans blackface. There’s a lot that theater and film have to answer for in the larger questions of race in the US. Being race-blind won’t help at all.
In Philadelphia, one of our local theater companies recently got slammed for doing a production of Julius Caesar set in feudal Japan, and for the which they cast zero east Asian actors.
This is the kind of problem that “race-neutral” encourages, it lets (mostly white guys) pretend that we’re just as qualified to talk about any culture as the people who are from that culture.
There was a Julius Caesar set in an African dictatorship done in London a couple of years ago and it would have been seriously weird to see a significant number of white faces (I think the cast was all-black, but it was two years ago, so I may be forgetting).
The thing that infuriates me about Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (beyond the hideous racism) is that in the novel, Mr. Yunioshi is a respected photographer and not a comic, racist stereotype at all! Which would have been a way more interesting character to have in the film. (The DVD commentary has a member of the production team saying basically, “Yeah. That was bad. Mistakes were made.” So they knew at the time it was a terrible choice. But they did it anyway!)
(A white Othello, you mean?)
Er, yes. I did not have nearly enough coffee today.
I heard something interesting on NPR last week about how opera Othellos have all been white lately. Apparently it’s a crazy hard role and there are only a few singers capable of giving a world class performance, and right now they’re all white–the conversation was about the politics of blackface in opera. On the one hand, I have to wonder, are there really no black Othello voices in all the world? On the other hand, opera on the whole has a pretty good history of truly rce blind casting for the last twenty years so … I don’t know. (The production under discussion did NOT use blackface.)
Laurence Olivier as Othello. Blackface, nappy wig, huge honking cross around his neck.
I agree with everything you’re saying — and it’s interesting you mention West Side Story, because I read one of the New Yorker articles on LMM, and there’s actually a story in there about how he was in a production of West Side Story in high school, and they just had Asian/white kids to play the Latin gang (he tested into a very good school from kindergarten, and he was pretty much the only Hispanic kid, known only as Lin). LMM’s own father came in to coach the kids on a Spanish accent.
Yes, this. I saw a quote, months ago, on twitter from LMM that said something along the lines of “when your high school puts this on, the cast shouldn’t look like your history book.”
Side note: I was in NY this week and I saw Hamilton and I would like to direct everyone to the Grantland interview LMM did, in case it hasn’t gone around yet: http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/genius-…
I actually think that this is a huge and very difficult-to-manage problem. I got into a discussion with a friend of mine a while back about what you should do if you wanted to do West Side Story but you didn’t have any Puerto Ricans — my basic opinion on this is 1) find some, or 2) do a different play — but this is a huge problem isn’t it? Schools don’t get to decide their populations, and drama clubs don’t get to decide who auditions for them — my wife is the drama club teacher at her high school, and she is always trying to get diverse casts for her plays, but a lot of the times, the black and Hispanic and Asian kids just don’t try out.
But WHY don’t they try out? Often, it’s because they don’t see any place for themselves, either among the drama club kids, or in the plays that the drama club produces. So, on the one hand, producing Hamilton encourages kids who are not white to think that there’s room for them in the theater, but on the other hand, it takes time to convince kids that it’s okay and they can be interested in it, and what are you supposed to do in the meantime? If you only do white-kid shows in the meantime, you’re only going to reinforce the idea that theater is for white kids.
So, I don’t know. I agree with Lin-Manuel Miranda that people should be making a strong, active effort to have a diverse cast for a show like this, but I am very sympathetic to the drama club teachers that are going to be tempted to have it be mostly white kids.
I totally get what you’re saying. This was something my high school theater program ran into, and I’m really sympathetic to teachers and advisers trying to do right by their students and the material.
Long-term, I think the solution is “more plays with characters that are intentionally not white, or with characters who can be cast non-white,” and making those shows easy for schools to do and interesting for people to perform. But that doesn’t solve the problem of “what’s our winter musical going to be this year, and how do we get people to audition?” It’s not easy at all.
I just created an account to say: YES to everything you just wrote.
I grew up and am still living in the Cleveland area, which has a great, but not very diverse theatre scene (70% white, 25% black, with us 5% “other”s struggling to eke out an existence) and as a biracial, somewhat white-passing actor, it’s a weird line to walk. Someone did a production of South Pacific last year and cast black women as Bloody Mary and Liat, and I had very complicated feelings about it, because on one hand, make the effort to find Asian/Pacific actors, for Christ’s sake, we brown people aren’t interchangable. On the other hand, maybe they did look for them (just not hard enough, apparently.)
My personal feelings lean toward “ffs, white directors/producers, don’t do those shows unless you know you can get the actors, because it’s insulting to see otherwise,” but you’re so right about the populations drama clubs/schools and smaller communities in general–you can’t force people to audition, and a lot of theatres (schools and community both) don’t have time to train inexperienced actors. It’s this awful Catch-22.
Apologies for the ramble; I just love the Toast so much and this post is coming on the heels of someone posting an August Wilson quote about the “imperialism of colorblind casting” on a theatre forum for Cleveland performers. Like, yes, POC should create their own theatre and not rely on white people to cast them in their white shows, but then again, we’d never work as actors otherwise, because who has the time/money to start their own theatre, or get producers to back you, especially when you don’t live in NYC or have the ability to quit your day job and work on it full time? FEELINGS. SO MANY COMPLICATED THEATRE FEELINGS.
A community theatre group in my predominantly white hometown did Hairspray and they went to incredible lengths to find African-Americans to play Seaweed, Little Inez, and Motormouth Maybelle, to the point where I believe they made an arrangement with Equity and paid them a small stipend, which is generally well beyond their means.
And then they went and put a bunch of women in blackface to play The Dynamites.
I just… why. WHY.
Noooooooooooooooooo. So close, and yet: noooooo.
I feel like everyone could tell a race-based theatre horror story (as a biracial actor, I have race-based audition horror stories as well, but that’s another story.)
When I was a teenager, I was in AIDA (the Disney one) at a local theater (in the Nubian ensemble, of course.) The previous summer, they did Miss Saigon. They had Asian actresses for the leads, but people were constantly asking me, a young, half-Filipino woman, why I hadn’t tried out for it, because basically the entire chorus was made up of white girls in yellowface. /facepalm
Another local theater did it as a youth show (16-22 year-olds, but still: what??!) and cast a black girl as Kim. Soooo yeah.
Well, not just can’t force them to audition/don’t have time to train them, they may not actually be in those communities. My high school was overwhelmingly white, and I know that’s not a unique case. I am trying to recall, and I remember max 5 Black kids in my graduating class, 0 Hispanic/Latino kids, and maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 kids from either East or South Asia. In the school as a whole there were a few more in each category, but we did not have a lot of racial/ethnic diversity.
So, you know, maybe that’s not a place that needs to do Hamilton (or West Side Story or a lot of other shows). But then you have what Braak pointed out, which is that those kids of color who might really WANT to do theater feel like there’s not a place for them, and how can they not feel that way if every show looks like Oklahoma? (We did Pippin and Once Upon a Mattress while I was in drama, and both of those actually lend themselves really well to whatever ethnic make-up you have, so the answer is maybe “do shows where the ethnicity is actually not relevant and cast kids of color wherever you can”)
Yeeeeeeees.
Sometimes it’s obvious that you just don’t do the musical/play, sometimes the change you make is obviously okay.
But there are SO MANY situations where it’s not clear. My Catholic high school put on the bad version of Anne Frank with the multimedia aspect stuff going on, and….. the play itself was pretty terrible, iirc, but they also cast a (very) blonde Irish Catholic girl as Anne Frank. Talking about the Holocaust is important, and if they’d done it without the perspective of Jewish characters, that would be really bad. And there are plenty of Jewish people who don’t look “stereotypically Jewish”…. but Anne Frank was a real person, and we know what she looked like. The role wasn’t demanding, so it wasn’t an issue where this girl was a much better actress than other options. Would it actually have been better to cast a similarly talented brunette who was also not Jewish? Or would that have been approximately as bad? I honestly don’t know.
I’ve been whining about this in chats all week. I think race-blind casting is often a good idea, and to an extent this was race-blind (it seems like it was race-blind except for white, and it might have been race-blinder when you reach the chorus, I swear I’ve seen a few white people there in clips), but the main cast wasn’t accidentally all POC except the king. But when you say “It wasn’t race-blind but that’s good!” it’s really hard to get to the nuance before you get side-tracked into “well then why is a non-race blinding casting of Macbeth not good?”
Yeah, there are some apparently-white people in the chorus, though the view I got of them from the balcony is not an authoritative statement of their identity by any means–I actually read Eliza as white when I saw the show, not knowing anything about Phillipa Soo.
And like, even if intentions are good, race-blind casting is so ineffective because at the end of the day, lots of directors just hire the people they know, which often are other white people, because there are so few POC to begin with, so they can’t even get a foot in.
I mean, not everyone can afford to go on an exhaustive nation-wide search to fill every role, but is it that hard to write a few racially-specific casting notices?
Yeah, another problem that’s especially bad in small theater markets — sure, you can ALWAYS find great, talented black actors in New York or Chicago, but it’s a lot more work in, say, Provo. Unless someone is purposefully looking, and looking hard, race-blind casting is still going to end up being “mostly white.”
I wonder if there are any actors of colour who could speak about the process of submitting themselves for race-blind parts. I feel like they’re more likely to submit if they see that producers are looking specifically for a POC — but that’s merely a hunch.
This is a good question, I should ask around and see if I can get someone to write something about it. Maybe a roundtable, hm.
I would really like to read that! As someone who sometimes writes casting notices and manages auditions, for a company that (allegedly) has a diversity mandate (though you wouldn’t know it to look at our current line-up), this would be super super helpful to me.
THE SOUR GRAPES OF COERCING AND STEALING CHILDREN
IF ONLY YOU WOULD GET OVER ALL THAT STEALING OF CHILDREN
MY EXPERIENCE AS A (PRESUMABLY NON-ASIAN) ADOPTIVE PARENT TRUMPS YOURS AS AN ADOPTEE, EVEN WHEN TALKING ABOUT AMERICAN ADOPTION FROM KOREA.
My blood would boil at his chutzpah, if I weren’t so impressed by the completeness of his blindness. Suck it, bro.
I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT NONE OF MY CHILDREN COULD HAVE BEEN STOLEN; WHY, LOOK AT HOW BLESSED THEY ARE BY MY AMERICANNESS
I’m pretty sure I had a Jenna Maroney-style rage stroke while reading that bit.
SO MUCH BITTERNESS ABOUT CHILD THEFT
A (presumably) white American says to other (mostly) white Americans.
I might have written Laura Turner’s anxiety essay myself. Nail-biting, not feeling ‘good enough’ – I’m right there with her. And don’t underestimate the importance of a good sofa.
I credit/blame all of you, Toasties, for making me obsessively listen to the Hamilton cast recording and sing it all day and talk about so little else for the last week or two. Thank you.
BUT ALSO last night I was listening and reading along with some annotations to the lyrics, and found out that there are AT LEAST TWO references to My Brother, My Brother, and Me (an advice podcast for the modern era!) in this damn thing, and my head very nearly exploded. To see LMM specifically call out on Twitter that he wrote a lyric with Griffin McElroy in mind is a little too much for my poor brain.
I hadn’t heard of that podcast but I did see LMM say he wrote the King Louis head line in honor of it — can you explain the reference? I was trying to guess what an advice podcast has to do with beheaded French monarchs.
It’s an advice podcast that is less about advice than it is about haunted dolls, Highlanders, Dune references, and a limbless horse named Torsey The Torso Horse. French monarchs are among the less weird topics. It is excellent.
ETA: If you’re interested, you might as well start with the episode LMM is on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSyy3dP4a8M.
It’s not a very deep reference, I don’t think, so you’re not missing much. (Though I haven’t been keeping up with MBMBaM for a while, so maybe I missed something?)
Basically, Griffin frequently adds the word “super” as a modifier, so it wouldn’t surprise me to hear him refer to King Louis as “suuuuper dead.”
The other reference was in “We Know,” when Hamilton says, “Unless…” and Burr, Jefferson, and Madison reply, “Unless…” This is how the brothers on MBMBaM frequently set up their goofs on the show.
Clearly I’m missing a podcast I should be listening to!
“Ghost Horse” might be LMM’s greatest lyrical achievement and it’s always worth a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBDa8ZcXRKA
LMM/MBMBAM 4ever.
I cannot deal with the level of connection between this awesome weirdo advice show and this incredible actor/composer/playwright.
Today I read an article on Marie Claire about what wines go with what cheeses. (I will read literally anything about how to pair wine and cheese.)
I then learned that Helen Mirren has decided not to do anymore nude scenes and that she refers to her breasts as “pleasure pillows.”
Following that, I learned about why we have periods, thanks to the comments section on braak’s piece about his newborn from yesterday.
And now I have learned this about MBMBaM!
WHAT A FRIDAY IT IS TURNING OUT TO BE, YOU GUYS!!!
I have no idea what else I might learn on this day, but if it follows in this trend… It is looking to be a very exciting day for me!
God I love the McElroys SO MUCH even though I still kind of can’t tell the brothers apart. I think about the guy who wrote in to ask how to flirt with the hot cashier at his grocery store all the time and their utter contempt gives me strength. “IT’S NOT A LADY ZOO.”
They’re genuinely pretty great. Any time three white dudes make a whole show about them giving other people advice, there’s high risk of asshattery ahead, but they seem to actually have their shit together. That question is a great example.
Also, a “crush” maybe seems like the wrong word, but screw it – I totally have a crush on Griffin. The other two, I had a lot of trouble telling apart for a long time. Griffin has always stood out. I think it’s something to do with his random outbursts and breakdowns. And the fact that he frequently reduces the other two to incomprehensible laughter and stuttering.
Also, I don’t think I will ever get tired of reading about the strategy of good boxing matches. I saw the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire (on like, ESPN History or something) and it is amazing to watch, it makes Ali look like some kind of wizard.
This is my favorite thing I read yesterday: Peeple is a terrible idea. As proof, here is Peeple for Disney characters
Gaston’s Profile
Lefou
(knows Gaston romantically)
Gaston has contested this. Gaston says: Lefou, why did this say you knew me romantically?
Lefou: GASTON I CLICKED THE WRONG BUTTON I’M SO SORRY WILL YOU EVER FORGIVE ME WILL I EVER AGAIN KNOW THE LIGHT OF YOUR MAGNIFICENT COUNTENANCE OR GAZE UPON THOSE RIPE FIELDS OF RIPPLING MUSCLE?
Oh my ribs hurt from holding in my laughter.
Oh that is incredible. Blessings on your house!
“Lovely singing voice but she was a way better employee when she had hands”
The article about the pedophile priests is really too much to take. Just seeing the lead photo and reading the caption was enough to turn my stomach. Allowing children to be put directly in the path of pedophiles…just burn it all down. Gah, I can’t even think clearly on this one.
“Allowing” is not a strong enough word. They know exactly what they’re doing.
In the end, aren’t we all just kayakers, politely and futilely objecting on the sidelines as the bears of self-doubt and misogyny and cold tea you forgot to drink all eat away at the little kayaks of confidence and musical theater and reality TV that keep us afloat???
“It’s the end of September, why are you here? You’re supposed to be asleep!”
Why would you pepper spray a bear and then expect it NOT to eat your kayak in revenge???? So many questions
Lord, I needed that video today
I just found the cold tea I forgot to drink yesterday waiting for me at work this morning.
I drank it.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
There were people singing gospel on my train in this morning and they sang “who woke you up this morning? God got you out of bed!” and I was like, Well if I believed that I would HATE God because never leaving my bed again sounds like a pretty dang good plan right now. So yeah, life eats my kayak, for sure.
You know, there are a lot of downsides to living in the Rust Belt, but not having to listen to strangers sing at me in the morning suddenly makes it all better.
So I’ve basically been reenacting that bear transcript all week with a squirrel that keeps digging in my container garden, only with a lot more swearing. Fucking squirrels.
Try red pepper? It sorta works with my rampant squirrels.
I think more animal videos need transcripts. That should be a thing!
I’m not sure anything will ever top this one:
This piece on having an Indian accent has been making me feel SO MANY FEELINGS: http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/how-do-you-pronou… .
It’s also about Priyanka Chopra, a bollywood actress who has her own show on ABC and it gives me so much joy to see her face plastered on American billboards.
My favorite parts:
Now, nearly a decade later, I still fall victim to nagging thoughts about having picked up a “second” accent. For instance, yes, I know that it’s problematic that some accents are granted more capital than others. Yes, it’s problematic that markers of certain cultures buy access while markers of other cultures become barriers. It’s problematic that even subconsciously, I knew adapting would be easier than reversing centuries of internalised racial paradigms. Of course I know these things. They keep me up until the wee hours, writing essays like this one.
I envied my classmates from England and Australia and France, who retained their native accents even after decades abroad. The difference is that their accents – while carrying some distance – never brought on assumptions of backwardness. On the contrary, their accents come with labels like “cool” and “sophisticated” and “cultured”.
Would it be possible to base a relationship with a person solely on liking the same podcasts? Just asking if it’s possible. Tatiana Maslany & I have almost identical tastes!!! *Zouks voice* Listen up, jerks!
http://www.earwolf.com/episode/masters-of-the-uni…
My sister and I went to the live show last weekend and both confessed mutual crushes on Zouks.
“I’m very scared of mirages, in general.”
Okay, but does June look like Cillian Murphy in Sunshine? I’m not seeing it, based on some Google images I looked at. Her dad sounds amazing.
U.N. bureaucrats generate lazy report, news at 11.
ok but now can we get a transcript of Grizzly Man’s grisly death????
Looks like that UN report was authored by Janice Raymond and Tipper Gore. What a disappointment.
Ugh. Tipper can’t stay away from the culture wars. Here’s Frank Zappa’s rejoinder to one of Tipper’s previous projects, the PMRC:
Re: anxiety and the idea of home – when I am feeling anxious the little voice in my head is often saying ‘I want to go home’, even though I may well already be sitting in my own living room.
Never have I resonated so much with a refrain as when the Mountain Goats sang “and I wanna go home/but I am home.”
Are we going to talk about the writer of the Babymaker story being called MICHAEL PATERNITI???