The oral history of Home Alone (I really recommend reading this, it captures the weird sweetness of that movie so well, and also I love knowing stuff like this):
Cynthia Abendshien, former owner of the Winnetka house
We were told shooting would be four or five weeks. They gave us an apartment. But [Bucksbaum] explained that, under the contract, if they needed to knock down a wall when we weren’t home, they could do it. So she told us it was best if we remained on the premises. First of all, it didn’t take four to five weeks. They were setting up the production and dismantling everything for five and a half months. In that time, we spent maybe three nights in the apartment.
John Abendshien, former owner of the Winnetka house
In that house, there’s a master bedroom suite with four rooms. Basically, we just moved into that. We put a hot plate up there to cook. We didn’t have to cook that much, because we had full access to the food truck that the crew used, which our daughter, who was six at the time, loved.
I love Alanis more than anything, she is my countrywoman, my soul, and my first cassette (okay technically I had Boyz II Men and Ace of Base first, but THEN her), and the writing and production of Jagged Little Pill is something I could read about forever:
When “You Oughta Know” was first taken to radio, the consistent response was “We are already playing two female artists, we don’t need another one.” Female artists “weren’t lucrative,” apparently. But I knew in my heart that the feminine imperative (found in male and female artists equally) was of the highest importance. Archetypally, the priests and priestesses and poets and writers have always been relied upon to engage the planet on multiple levels. And that we as artists could not be reduced to how “lucrative” we were. There were a million forms of currency that contribute to this funny, colorful planet, and music-from-the-core-of-yourself was one of the greatest contributions that artists through time immemorial have offered.
There was a cultural wave swelling…a readiness, perhaps, for people to hear about the underbelly, the true experience of being a young, sensitive, and brave person in a patriarchal world. This wave was moving through culture with or without me, and I happened to grab my glittery surfboard and rode that wave like a feisty androgyne on the back of a megalodon.
On keeping “the mentally incompetent” from voting, and who decides:
Roberta Blomster, 37, lives in a suburb with her parents and sister outside of St. Paul, MN, where she interns with Congressman Keith Ellison’s campaign and testifies at her state capital on behalf of people with disabilities. During her free time she knits and spends time with her family and their two dogs.
Doctors have diagnosed her with mild mental retardation and epilepsy, and she is under limited guardianship, meaning that her mother manages her health and financial decisions.
The decision about whether to vote, however, is hers alone — a reality that might be different if she lived in another state. She gets her news from the local paper, television and social media. “It feels wonderful knowing that I’m able to make informed decisions about who I’m voting for,” she says. “It’s a very satisfying feeling knowing that you’re making a difference.”
Beloved Friend of The Toast Ezekiel Kweku is going to be writing about the Warriors for Vice Sports this season, and here is the first installment:
What should truly make the rest of the NBA uneasy is that it feels like the Warriors have not yet reached their ceiling. Steve Kerr, one of the best coaches in the league, has been kept from the court by complications from back surgery. While Luke Walton has been ably filling in for him, he hasn’t made the minor adjustments necessary to tighten a defense that could stand to be more frugal, or make their offense a bit less dependent on Curry. Andrew Bogut, their starting center, has hardly played because of multiple injuries; his return means more depth and versatility—and fewer minutes for Marreese Speights, whose cold start is a photonegative of last season. The return of Bogut’s interior passing and dribble handoffs will also help Klay Thompson, who, perhaps hampered by a nagging back injury, also has not looked completely like himself on offense.
Nikki wrote so beautifully and kindly about the issues around crowdfunding adoption yesterday, and I really want all of you to read it (this particular point is one I had genuinely never thought about before, and now I will always think about it squeamishly):
Other people don’t need to know personal, private details about a child’s life before they were adopted, or how much their adoption cost. Crowdfunding pages often list all manner of personal details about the specific child in question – everything from birth names and family history to the reason for relinquishment and the exact amount the adoptive parents will need to pay to adopt them. Yes, this is the Internet! We love to overshare! But a child’s life, personal history, and adoption story belongs to them first and foremost. Private information about their birth family, details about abandonment, factors that led to placement, their personal medical needs, any history of abuse or neglect, and any other sensitive information should not even necessarily be shared with everyone in the adoptive family, let alone everyone on the Internet. Nor should these details be shared before the child has even been adopted, years before they are old enough to understand and take ownership of their own story.
ugh i have to wash my bras more:
Helmink chose to test four areas of the bra that he considered bacterial hotbeds: the underwire of the left and right breast and the parts closest to the left and right armpits.
“I moistened a swab with a sterile solution and then rubbed it on the sections,” Helmink explained over the phone. He then put the swab in a liquid solution. “I used an enrichment broth to see if there were any organisms there. If they grow, then I grow them on a plate.”
The result? Indeed, my bra specimen tested positive for coagulase-negative staphylococcus.
Everything they say about Rachel Fershleiser is true:
“Well Rachel’s the ultimate literary advocate, isn’t she?” novelist Jami Attenberg tells me in an email. “Although sometimes I think that what she does is indefinable. She moves people and books and ideas through the air. She’s a wizard of community.”
Novelist and musician John Darnielle calls her “a celebrity.” Nicole Cliffe, cofounder of The Toast, “an avenging angel who is also very nice.” The Millions described her work as “using technology to make things happen with books to make things happen with technology by having parties—so, the best job in the world.” Poet and Riverhead Books Associate Publisher Jynne Martin says Rachel’s work is “able to bring together the tech world, YA readers, serious literary publishers, indie bookstores and more. She is constantly generating ways for these disparate spheres to overlap… and helping on even the most granular of levels.”
Han Solo is amazing, and also clearly invented negging:
The 73-year-old star has softened significantly now that the planet is beside itself awaiting his return inStar Wars: The Force Awakens. “I was glad that the character was still alive for me to play in this new iteration,” he says.
If you spend any time with Ford, one simple reason for his long-standing discomfort with the role starts to reveal itself. Here is the hard truth that some, and Ford himself, may find difficult to accept:
Harrison Ford is totally Han Solo.
Are you anywhere near San Antonio? Maybe adopt a dog who washed out of bomb-sniffing for the TSA and offer them a better life than perusing filthy airports and then sleeping in kennels without knowing the bliss of sprawling on a couch to watch Netflix with their human mom:
The dog adoption is free, and the animals are between 2 and 10 years old. The breeds include German Shorthaired Pointers, Labrador Retrievers, German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois.
The dogs available for adoption are very active. And while some are trained, others are not, the TSA said in a press release. Most of the TSA dogs have lived in kennels and aren’t familiar with home environments.
The available dogs live in San Antonio, Texas. Adoptive families will have to travel there to pick up their new dog. The agency won’t cover travel costs.
On any given day, between 12 and 24 dogs are available for adoption, said TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.
Here is a fascinating and disturbing article about how Putin owns everything everywhere but never on paper (this article is also only scraping the surface, but who wants to get LITERALLY POISONED?):
Since Vladimir Putin began cementing his grip on Russia in the 1990s, many of his friends have grown famously rich.
Not so the president himself, say his supporters, who insist Putin is above the money grab that has marked his reign. His public financial disclosures depict a man of modest means. In April, Putin declared an income for 2014 of 7.65 million roubles ($119,000). He listed the ownership of two modest apartments and a share in a car parking garage.
Amy Davidson on interrupting during the GOP debate:
Why wouldn’t Fiorina, or any of them, interrupt? This field is still in flux—either that, or Trump or Ben Carson (who joked about recent attacks on his biography) will be the nominee. They are each at about twenty-five per cent in the polls; Bush is at eight per cent. The number of debaters on the main stage was eight this time, rather than ten, but the reduction has resulted not in the coalescing of support around a front-runner but in the emergence of more back-benchers—Ted Cruz, like Kasich, had an active night. Paul seems to have benefitted more than anyone from the absence, last night, of Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee, who were relegated to the undercard, where they spent their time dodging questions and provoking Bobby Jindal. Paul is now the loud, assertive voice at one end of the row, while Jeb Bush, at the other, standing on his toes for attention, is the dismayed one.
Roxane on the serious business of student activism:
I attended Yale from 1992 to 1994. While I was there, I understood that, as a black woman, I was regarded as a usurper on hallowed Ivy grounds. Either I was a scholarship student or a New Haven local—no one could believe that I was there, like the others, simply to learn. It was not uncommon to be the target of racial slurs, to be the subject of whispered discussions about affirmative action, and to tolerate microaggressions on a daily basis. Campus police made a sport of asking me and other black students, to show our student identification cards. My experience was in no way unique.
The current protests are symbolic of a far more complex problem: a troubled racial climate on Yale’s campus that has persisted for many years. In truth, most predominantly white campuses across the country are similarly plagued. I have spent most of my adult life on college campuses in one role or another, as both student and instructor; regardless of campus, the racial climates were always tense, at best. I am not surprised by what is happening at Yale. I am not surprised by the Mizzou protesters, or by the fervor of their commitment.
Gahhhh this has made me tear up at my desk and I don’t even like my dad half the time pic.twitter.com/rMEDpCRZbp
— biracial af (@alyssakeiko) November 11, 2015
Roxane G: Right on target, as usual. You can tell by all the annoying white-guy Twitter fights she gets into.
She and David Simon of The Wire were debating earlier this week over what was happening in Missouri, some asshole insulted her and said something to the effect of, “David will take my side,” and David Simon called him scum. It was very satisfying to see in my twitter feed.
I know, it was delicious.
She has the most glorious comebacks to those asshats. I wish I was half as clever as she is…
Everything around Master of None has been so wonderful, especially since Aziz seriously gives no fucks about talking about how shitty the diversity is on other networks. I seriously almost cried during the “Parents” episode because that opening is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen (followed closely by the opening of “Indians on TV”). I’ve been telling my parents how much I love them a lot this week.
Also, Brian (played by Kelvin Yu) may be the most handsome man in the world and I am totally in love with him.
I like that Aziz’s friend keeps saying, “You can’t listen to Brian’s advice! Women love him no matter what he does!”
It’s such an excellent show, and I was surprised by how powerful it is and how much some episodes have moved me.
And for real, Denise is right – Brian could text me just a question mark and I would be all over it.
I fell in love with Master of None, it just such a well-crafted show and it feels so much more real and current than everything else out there. I thought the “Mornings” episode was one of the best.
And yeah Brian is super hot.
Just started it last night and loving it, except the depiction of having young kids was a little Too Real.
The most realistic depiction of having small children that I’ve seen in a loooong time
It makes me very terrified of having a son, who is going to make an appearance in 4 months. Don’t put your penis on that!
Just keep him away from frozen waffles, and you should be fine.
I haven’t watched it yet but I am so excited to start this weekend!! And I just googled Kelvin Yu and OOF. Yum.
I binged the entire thing last night and it was even better than I’d been led to expect!
I just watched the entire series yesterday on my day off, and I <3 it so, so much.
My own family dynamics with my parents are very different, but that episode definitely made me tear up, too.
(And, yes, Brian is a cutie!)
Re doing something nice for your parents: Through a twist of events I’m bringing my mother to Rome next week for her birthday & Christmas.
So yeah, who’s the better child now brother dear.
(I *may* have issues with sibling rivalry. maybe.)
High five to you. I did something only sorta nice for my mom yesterday, but it was enough to put me ahead in the sibling rivalry stakes. And there are 4 of us, so I have competition. Not… serious competition from half of them, but theoretically!
Of course, every book I write is chock-full of characters who grew up with bad parenting, so I have to constantly be a good daughter to reinforce that I’m not drawing from life. (I will always deny that I am drawing from life. Shhh.)
I don’t think I can ever write an autobiography while my parents are alive, there is some dark shit I need to get out there.
The trip is largely for selfish reasons, I don’t want to go alone and it will buy me mad karma points. Plus it might get her off my back about having babies for awhile.
My siblings make excellent fodder for dinner party anecdotes – there are some ongoing sagas which have been keeping my friends fascinated/horrified attention for years now. So often they say, “you should write about this!” and I have to deflect. 1) I write romances, and there ain’t any happy endings in sight & 2) some of the siblings & both my parents actually read my published work, and I’m not *that* secure about my #1 child status.
Yeah no one is allowed to meet my family because I constantly tell stupid stories about them all
I may have done a poetry reading last night at which, for the first time ever, I read stuff about my parents that was more honest than flattering. I am not going to tell my parents that I did the reading, because the recording is going to be posted online, and it would start a conversation I am not ready to have. May not *ever* be ready to have.
This may be paranoia on my part– the more benevolent one doesn’t grasp subtext, and the more malevolent one isn’t that interested in my life. But still.
When my husband gave his first published novel to his mom, all shiny and proud, he worried she’d overreact to the main character’s drug use or casual attitude to relationships with women.
Instead she fixated on his depiction of the main character’s mother. He’d borrowed two mannerisms and half a family-lore-type tale, but it was enough. She still (almost 20 years later) frets that people will read it and judge her.
And it wasn’t even directly about her, and the mom is actually a decent character in the novel. So if you’re getting close to the actual bones of your skeleton closet, yeah. Be well fortified before getting your parent-adjacent poetry on their radar.
(WTG with the reading – that’s a brave step!)
My mom called me last night to ask if I wanted her to come take care of my after my hysterectomy and I told her an unqualified NO but now I’m thinking I could probably have been a little gentler about it.
I have issues about accepting affection/care from my mother, so I get you.
I’m getting better as I get older and geographically further away from her, but when I was younger it was really bad and I wouldn’t open up to her at all about problems or help that I needed.
We were close when I was a kid, but I’ve been hesitant to open up to her after I tried coming out when I was 18 and she interrupted to tell me bisexuals were “even worse” than gay people.
Ouch.
I laugh about it now because it couldn’t have been a better scripted conversation for contrived heartbreak (I’m convinced I’m in my own Truman Show a lot of the time). And she’s come around somewhat. She listens with good grace to me talk about my BFFs who are two wonderful ladies who’ve been together for 20 years. But I also know (through my dad) that she signed herself up for therapy when she did some snooping on social media and found out I was dating a woman several years ago. Or maybe the therapy was just for the cigarette we were sharing in the photo. She’s very anti-smoker, too.
mothers
I too laugh about it now, but so much of my life has been defined by my (not good) relationship with my mother (Single parent, only daughter, it was just us for awhile and things got intense)
My mother also had a similar reaction to finding out I was straight. She’s accepted it now, but I know she thinks my life would be much easier if I was a lesbian because men are so awful.
She also has the most hilarious selective memory; she caught me smoking so many times, and yet each and every time it was ‘OMG I can’t believe you smoke!!!’, same thing with my virginity, she honestly thought I was going to be a virgin until I married and was shocked to find out I wasn’t at 18, even though I told her when I first started having sex many years before (Her excuse was ‘I didn’t think that counted and I thought you’d only done it once and not again’)
I want to lock our moms in a room together with a hidden camera.
100% would watch. That would be epic
My mom would pray for your mom so hard. It’d be quite a sight.
It’s alright, mother would just break out her smudge stick and feathers and start cleansing her spirit.
You know what, fuck the cage fight. This needs to be a television show.
Have you seen Grace & Frankie? Cause my mother *is* Frankie except much less tolerant and also gay.
I haven’t, but only because my TV watching time is incredibly limited and I’m still trying to work my way through Leverage. It looks fantastic, though, and I’ve loved every clip I’ve seen of it. Perhaps I can watch some of it during my convalescence!
I would like to kickstart this ‘mothers in a room’ tv show. And also sponsor my own mother for one of the episodes.
Please let me know if you do some kind of Kickstarter for this.
Toasties will be the first to know!
War of the mothers coming soon to ToastTV
I have felt that feel. Bi five?
I took my mom to per se for her birthday and totally won Sibling of the Year.
We cried like 4 times and hugged the waiter at the end. It was fantastic.
I really love and appreciate that Ansari put ‘if your parents are good to you’
Yo, my parents are NOT good to me, so yeah I will not being doing a nice thing for my mum. My dad was, I would do a nice thing for him but he’s dead so I’ll just think some nice things or whatever, call it quits. I am always braced for the guilt with these screeds but instead I got to just feel good about parent who are nice, and it was wonderful.
Yeah I totally agree! I hate when people say things like ‘respect your parents’ because not all parents deserve respect.
As I get older I’m loosing a lot of my teenaged irrational anger (not all of it mind) and I do see now that a lot ‘bad’ parents are just trying their best, my mother for example, but that doesn’t forgive the truly bad parents out there, I.e my father, who is a truly despicable human being
So, I have been kind of interested in what’s been going on at Yale, and even though I definitely know that students can go overboard with their actions, I’m pretty sympathetic to their position. That is why I think this, from Conor Friedersdorf over at the Atlantic, is some gross bullshit:
“According to The Washington Post, ‘several students in Silliman said they cannot bear to live in the college anymore.’ These are young people who live in safe, heated buildings with two Steinway grand pianos, an indoor basketball court, a courtyard with hammocks and picnic tables, a computer lab, a dance studio, a gym, a movie theater, a film-editing lab, billiard tables, an art gallery, and four music practice rooms. But they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?”
IMAGINE THE AUDACITY of students who care more about feelings than they do about a bunch of STUFF! Who the fuck are we raising here? People who care about their community more than they care about billiards tables? What the fuck?
The benefits of wealth and privilege don’t allay the feeling that your resident adviser doesn’t support your basic human dignity? That’s disgusting. Shut up and enjoy your Steinway grand pianos.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/…
I HATE that this is the article getting the most play from this situation, just because it got published early on (Yale alum here). I am countering it with these pieces: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/10/y… and https://medium.com/@aaronzlewis/what-s-really-goi…
Roxane’s piece is SO on point and so was Jelani Cobb’s in The New Yorker yesterday: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/race-and-…
I also saw an amazing quote that I’ve now lost that really resonated with me, it was something like “This whole issue (at Yale) boils down to “Let (white) kids play” but “Make (black) kids respond like adults when offended.” “
Thank you! I know what I will be reading today now. And then watching Trevor Noah videos my sister has been sharing with me. Thanks again.
Yes, thanks for those great links, and thanks to all the commenters, as always (and perhaps the mods too, though I hope they were not kept too busy). I hadn’t got into this story before, and it was wonderful to read the discussion and to see some civilised divergences of opinion coming forward.
Of course, as a country, we eagerly endorse the murder of black people by police officers who “feel unsafe” despite their guns, tasers, and armor.
Does Friedersdorf do anything but scold the youngs, POC, and women these days?
I guess when you find your niche, you got to stick to it.
He is so gross and awful I just want to scream. But really I feel that way about all of the Atlantic and in particular the former Sullivan devotees. The Dish really pioneered the “it’s totally fine for my empathy to stop exactly at the limits of my specific experiences and maybe four of my (similar) friends'” form of journalism.
I like a couple specific Atlantic writers — Coates, Jeffrey Goldberg, James Fallows is interesting — but I can’t get behind their magazine for exactly that feeling.
I’m the opposite: there are specific writers I won’t click on at the Atlantic, but I like the magazine in general.
Thumbs upping bc you totally just articulated exactly what I feel like is going on with the Missouri side of my family right now.
I see someone else already pointed it out, but “all of the Atlantic” does include Coates. Who’s got to be one of our best living writers (not that I’ve read anywhere close to all of them).
Oh definitely! That was my mistake. He is a treasure that really deserves a better publication to be in conversation with.
His main shtick seems to be scolding Democratic politicians for not being liberal enough, less out of any real concern than trying to convince liberals that they shouldn’t vote. He also puts together a list of best nonfiction writing every year that’s fairly popular, although he’s never particularly in danger of contributing outstanding writing himself.
Interesting article – http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics…
Mark Oppenheimer over at Tablet, Yale alum and adjunct, has an interesting take (admittedly from a white guy) on the situation – Yale’s housing structure is particularly paternalistic, in houses with “Masters” and their partners that are effectively surrogate parents. Erika Christakis is the house mom to Silliman College students. So her email (which was stupid and not responding to the issues Dean Burgwell raised at all), seemed to be siding with her white “kids” over her kids of color, which is why it was taken so personally. I don’t agree with the reality of Oppenheimer’s recommendation that students should just confront their bigoted peers on their own (in a calm discussion in one another’s dorms — yeeeaaah okay….), but he makes an interesting point. I don’t think it translates to Mizzou at all, though, from what I can understand.
Also he links to an awesome Genius annotation of Erika Christakis’ letter.
Yeah, my feeling on it is like, for one thing, the administration’s email was literally as polite as could be: “we’re not banning anything or making any rules, but here’s how you can be considerate of others this Halloween,” which makes Christakis’ response something more like: “Some of my students have complained about the idea that they might have to be considerate of others at any time, and I agree, no one should have to care about racism if they don’t want to.”
And then this cat is going to be an integral and inescapable part of your life for at least the entire year? Someone whose response to, “why don’t we try to be more considerate?” is “no, I don’t think that’s necessary”? Yeah, I’d be pissed as shit about that, too.
ps Frumiosa is a very good name.
Thanks! It was also infuriating how in her email she basically says that if college students can’t wear blackface on Halloween, little white girls can’t dress up as Mulan. Which, how? Lady I get that you’re a child development specialist, but we’re not talking about five year olds. We’re talking about people who are supposed to be adults. I mean is she just stupid or obtuse? Yeesh.
I think that the doofiness of the email was kind of equally offensive.
“Guys, don’t be racist at Halloween!”
“idk but babies like to dress up as Mulan, who even knows WHAT Halloween is?”
Like, I am not in favor of a professor necessarily getting fired over having a bad opinion about Halloween costumes, but I kind of am in favor of a Yale professor getting fired for thinking that preschoolers are a good model for how we should be treating with undergrads.
Also, an adult who dressed as Mulan, but did not put on yellowface, would not be causing a problem? So her comparison made no sense? I’m confused.
Maybe Mulan’s clothing is too stereotypical, a la Pocahontas, so idk.
Also, even if an adult thought to themselves, “I don’t know, maybe I don’t want to do a costume that borrows heavily from someone else’s culture and is actually kind of a problematic character, even though I love Mulan there are literally infinite other costumes I could wear that are also good,” and then decided not to wear a Mulan costume, is that so bad?
Isn’t “not doing everything that I want just because I want to” literally the defining characteristic of adulthood?
No kidding.
That is exactly my thought process as to why I have never dressed up as Mulan, despite her being the best Disney character ever. Also why I do not dress up as Cho Chang, despite Ravenclaw being the best.
Excellent adulting! Good work.
(also: agreed that Mulan is the best)
My five year old (very blonde, white Jewish) son wants to dress up as Mulan for Purim, and I find this problematic but also dope as hell. Obviously no yellowface or eye makeup will be involved. Warrior dress, not kimono (or the Chinese term for kimono, pleading ignorance). Please advise.
I think that’s fine as long as he doesn’t do the pulling -at-eyes thing. WHICH! Remind me to tell you about racist Purim costumes, because that is a thing!
EDIT : talking about this only as Purim standards, from perspective as a Jew who never actually dressed up as Mulan and instead was generic “princess” for almost every Purim.
Isn’t “not doing everything that I want just because I want to” literally the defining characteristic of adulthood?
Not at Yale. Really not at Yale.
Well maybe it’s daggone time.
It’s time
Unless you have kids going the full Mickey Rooney “Mr Yunioshi”, I don’t think a little girl wanting to dress up as a bad-ass, stereotype defying warrior is something to get too worried about.
I especially hated the bit where she says:
Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours.
I CAN ABSOLUTELY DEFEND MINE. It’s not even that hard! America has a history of white people mocking other races by dressing like them. That’s racist. Don’t do it. If there’s a question in your mind, error on the side of not doing racist shit and pick from the universe of non-racist costume options available to you. TA-DA! I’m qualified to teach at Yale now, right?
“I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. That is why I wrote this email, and sent it to everyone on campus. Here is me, not defending my standards. What even IS Halloween!?!?”
Yes, I would really expect a child development expert to take into account the difference between late adolescents (and probably also some folks in their early twenties) and preschoolers. I mean that’s a huge chasm to just sort of glibly hop over. It’s also the point in my reading of her email that I said aloud, “give me a freaking break ..” Because really, that’s such a weak claim to authority on this issue, it’s practically outrageous.
Also, generally when little girls dress up as Mulan, they’re not doing yellow face as part of it!
There’s a way to dress up as a character who doesn’t look like you without being offensive about it.
That’s … really not what she said? Like, not even a little bit.
Just to be clear, what she says is
“As a former preschool teacher… it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it.
I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.”
She is in no way saying that blackface is appropriate. You can dress up like Tiana from the Frog Princess without wearing blackface, just as you can dress up like Mulan without doing anything horribly offensive to your eyes.
Just so we keep this in perspective – students from Yale are calling for both this woman AND HER HUSBAND to LOSE HER JOB over this email. An email that is – in my opinion – thoughtful and considerate and does not say anything even the slightest bit racist.
If we’re going to make this argument, formed in this way:
As a former preschool teacher… it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day.
we’re implicitly suggesting that a college student’s unwillingness to be considerate of others at Halloween (all the original email was asking) is of the same nature as a white preschooler’s desire to be a Chinese cartoon character — that, in other words, the unfettered imaginative play of a five-year-old who, presumably, does not have the intellectual or educational background to treat seriously with issues of race, society, and appropriation, should be held up as an example for how eighteen to twenty-four year olds ought to act.
And if that isn’t the argument, then what does having expertise in preschooler behavior have to do with anything? What does the little white kid who wants to be Mulan have to do with anything?
And yeah, it’s true that the students are calling for her and her husband to lose her job, but the students don’t have the power to fire her — the students can call for whatever they want. They’re angry, in many respects I think justifiably so, but if she gets fired, the responsibility is solely on the shoulders of whoever has the power to fire her.
Also it’s not clear to me whether or not the students want her and her husband fired from all of her jobs at Yale or just want her and her husband fired from the specific job that they have of leading and guiding the entire intellectual and cultural life of the dorms for which they are the masters. I’d agree that she shouldn’t be fired as a professor; I’m not sure that I agree that she and her husband (whom she cites specifically in her letter as agreeing with her) shouldn’t be reconsidered for the particular position that they have, and the duties and responsibilities that accompany it.
I agree completely that that email, which I would say is far from considerate and which is, in my opinion, as someone who experienced racism from my peers in college (mostly in re affirmative action, where my very qualification were called into question and from hearing about racist parties like the “white-only” fraternity one held at Yale that were held on or near campus) it would have been very insulting to get an email from a professor, especially someone who might be an advisor or mentor, saying that it was basically my problem to deal with and maybe I should have a polite chat with the young Republicans trying to sell affirmative action cupcakes to me at a steep discount, when in fact that’s exactly what they wanted: to make me justify to them as arbiters of who belongs, which I would neeeeeverrr haven given them the satisfaction of doing, and then also to have a chance to ruffle my feathers and make me look like the hysterical one, which I can 100% imagine someone wearing an offensive costume enjoying. So no, it’s not a thoughtful answer that students should take this crap on themselves. The master should do that. It’s literally their job to manage the atmosphere of the houses. I’m happy for them to keep their jobs as professors, but I think they’ve pretty clearly demonstrated that they don’t have the empathy or sensitivity to be responsible for the wellbeing of a whole house worth of students.
Yeah people are really mad about a student that dared to YELL at a professor at a forum, too, and it’s like, guys, man, come on. Imagine that you were really upset about something, and the solution that the school had to your being upset about it was to arrange a scenario where the person you were upset with would have the opportunity to public explain why you’re completely wrong, and if you lose your temper even once you’ll completely delegitimize your entire position.
That is not a reasonable solution.
Aww shoot, I just realized that I got too carried away with asides to finish my damn point. Clearly I can’t be trusted to have a dispassionate argument on the subject. tl;dr version: I agree that email showed bad judgment, especially egregious for someone holding a position of special trust, and it should be grounds for reconsidering that trust and reassignment or suspension from those duties. Not loss of the job of professor itself, which is a different role, with different responsibilities.
And yes! It totally sets people up for failure. Thinking about the bake sale, which was an annual display of racism at my university, still makes my cheeks hot and my heart accelerate. I do not even want to think what would’ve happened if they’d been given a platform where I had to engage with them to make my point heard. My heart goes out to those students.
This.
The email is tone-deaf and insensitive, which I agree is not grounds for a person losing her job, but it IS acceptable grounds for protest, and that’s what I like about Roxane’s piece. She says that no one should lose their job (or even apologize, which I actually disagree with; I’d like to see an apology), but that does not mean that we shouldn’t take the grievances of the students affected seriously.
When I saw the Atlantic piece being tossed around on Facebook by friends who work in higher education (or want to), I was conflicted. I skimmed it and thought (which I posted here) that the students were going too far. Then I heard the asshole who wrote it talking about it on NPR and thought, “Nope, this guy is just refusing to get it.” Then I read a piece by one of the students, and I am so on their side now.
I’m going to preface this by noting that I’m a person who both parents a preschooler and works professionally with 18-21 year olds in an educational setting. And here’s the thing – I think Oppenheimer has it largely right in his Tablet piece (in that college is a space where people need to learn to take hold of their adulthood), but 18-21 year olds, cognitively speaking, are not adults. Here is something from NPR explaining it in brief. They’re damn close, which is why we often make the mistake, but their abilities to think in abstractions and with empathy are still developing.
I teach people in this age group and you have to take this into account when designing learning experiences for them. You have to push very deliberately back against their impulse to think in either/ors, to want a single correct answer to a problem, to thinking of themselves as the smartest one/dumbest one/weirdest one/only one in the room. Their prefrontal cortex doesn’t quite work yet! They have poor impulse control, planning, and ability to empathize! This is not a generational thing – it is a young person thing and we have to respect it as part of everyone’s path to adulthood. College-age people have a tremendous amount in common with preschoolers, in that they are going through huge intellectual and emotional changes and need a lot of love and support and space while doing it.
All of the above is said with tremendous love and respect on my part. It is my favorite age group to work with, but the fact remains that it’s an age group with specific learning and social needs.
So, basically, yes – I think an 8-year-old and an 18-year-old should be able to dress up as Mulan. And I think the 8-year-old’s parents should explain why they can’t use makeup to change the shape of their eyes. And, if their parents never did that, I think the 18-year-old should make the stupid mistake of using makeup to change the shape of their eyes and then have to hear about it from their friend/RA/fellow partygoer and then do something different next time. And I don’t think that stupid mistake should be world-ending, but I think college is a great time to learn that the cumulative effect of a group’s stupid mistakes can mean something awful and significant for others. I think college is the place where some of us are lucky enough to push and grow and struggle. And I think students need to have space to make mistakes. And I think students need to feel safe to make mistakes and not be constantly battered by the effects of the mistakes of others. And it’s really hard to make both of those things coexist.
The problem with this scenario is that the house master serves a function similar to, but more overreaching than that of an RA. And they basically wiped their hands of the issue.
And it doesn’t cover people and young adults who are intentionally offensive in their costumes. It’s not a learning experience for anyone in that case. And fellow students should not be expected to do the campus climate policing themselves.
My university (in addition to the other racist things that happened above) had someone who hung a confederate flag in the window of their dorm room. It went to the administrative level, well above the RA’s level, who is often also a student, because the university administration realized it was their job to create a safe environment for all students. Halloween costumes might not always be at the level of nooses hung on campus or confederate flags or swastikas, or any of the numerous other threatening things that students have to deal with, but they do often help create an atmosphere of hostility, especially in conjunction with the themed parties they’re often seen at.
It’s not always honest mistakes, it’s often much worse than that, and people in positions of power shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
Your points are 100% fair and I agree with them.
Minority students shouldn’t have to deal with their white peers in blackface or whatever else just so the white kids can Learn a Lesson. Come on now. White kids feeling safe to make mistakes does not trump minority kids not seeing racist depictions of their culture on their own campus. Stupid mistakes will always happen, but there is nothing wrong with an email such as Dean Burgwell’s trying to raise awareness and prevent stupidity.
I agree. People, especially people who are still in the process of becoming adults, are going to do many stupid things. Other people shouldn’t have to put up with the net effect of stupidity. This often happens when people are forced into close quarters, like universities.
We should listen to people of color weigh in on white people dressing as Mulan before deciding it’s okay.
Or ANY character of colour, for that matter.
No. It’s true that the frontal lobe keeps developing throughout the early twenties, but this isn’t considered a valid excuse for anyone except college students. “College student” isn’t a type of human, or a developmental phase, or a disability. It’s a social role. And this isn’t about their age, because people who are 18-21 and not in college are considered to be adults and expected to be adults.
A 20-year-old who’s not in college has usually moved out of their parents’ house, pays rent, works a full time job (or suffers the consequences of unemployment), makes their own life decisions and is completely responsible for their actions. Would you consider a 21yo combat veteran, a 20yo gas station attendant, a 20yo parent, a 19yo waitress, a 21yo gang member or a 20yo office worker to belong to “an age group with specific learning and social needs”?
This is what coddling college students is – not holding them to the same responsibilities as everybody else simply because they’re students. They’re being allowed a social privilege. Young workers are expected to be professional. You could lose your job for dressing up in racist costumes at an office party. The Yale students aren’t threatened with expulsion, they’re being verrry politely asked to please consider not using racist costumes. The email panders to them by mentioning “how thoughtful they usually are” as if they need to be handled with kid gloves, while a workplace memo would be straight to the point (or not sent at all, because people would be expected to know already).
I don’t consider college students as apart from other 18-21 year olds, aside from being in possession of the extraordinary social privilege we have both referenced. I do think the various 18-21 year olds you mention have the same learning and social needs as 18-21 year old college students. In fact, I’ve taught a lot of 18-21 year olds who fall into the category of both college student and service member, college student and gas station attendant, college student and waitress, and college student and gang member. Those things aren’t often mutually exclusive now (except perhaps in rarefied Ivy League air, but not even then).
I think it would be wrong if a 19-year-old in his or her first job showed up to a work Halloween party in an inappropriate costume and got fired for it (assuming it was a single incident of bad judgement, of course, and not part of a pattern). I also think it would be wrong if a student got expelled for it. Additionally, I think it would be wrong if either circumstance went unaddressed.
What’s the age cutoff for this behavior, then? Okay to fire a 25 year old, not a 19 year old? Also, what’s the “inappropriate costume” line? Not okay to fire someone for blackface? Wearing a Nazi uniform? Hell, it’s all in good fun, right? At what point does this show a serious lack of judgment that should reflect on whether you want this person representing your business?
If we’re accepting kids to the army at 18 and trust their judgment, if we’re letting them vote, if we’re trying them as adults, asking them to not be racist jackasses doesn’t seem out of line.
To your various questions, I truly don’t know. What do you think?
wasn’t that the point of the original email, though? like, “hey maybe think about why these things are hurtful and think about choosing a different costume”; “we know students don’t always think things through or understand why this is wrong so we’re giving you some guidelines to consider ahead of time”
so, you still get the teaching moment without students having to confront the actual costumes. and pushing back on THAT just seems counterproductive.
I agree entirely and am realizing now that I should have made that more clear in what I originally posted. What struck me as important and what I wanted to tease out is that this situation is complicated and complicated in a way that I find meaningful and worth discussing by the needs of the many people involved.
I think that’s what the follow-up letter was trying to get at? And doing a bad job of it. Much like I just did. So I’m gonna go think about this more now and shut up.
I think the Atlantic piece grossly misrepresented the point of the original email, and that disgusts me. He keeps writing that Yale was trying to “police what students can wear.” Bullshit.
Oh, don’t worry. She thinks that adult white ladies should be able to play dress up in other cultures, too:
“When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others’ cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.”
If I like it, it’s definitely OK.
WTF.
Yes, this is a really important point (and it’s somewhat unique to Yale and a few other universities, at least in the US) — the college master is sort of a wise aunt, spiritual advisor, life coach, and book club leader all rolled into one. And that person lives in your home and you see them every day. It’s not a position of intellectual or scholarly leadership (though the college masters are professors), it’s a position of personal leadership. I can understand why that would sting more than, say, a professor saying something similar in a classroom setting.
Totally, I didn’t realize, as a state schooler who didn’t even live on campus, how important the master role was, until I talked to some Yale graduates who are about a decade out of college that can still quote things their house master said to them, like in passing in a hallway. It’s not just a random spouting out from a professor you can choose to never take a class from again. It’s someone who will be with you through all the important functions all the way to graduation. I also don’t think you can ask to change houses, barring I’d imagine some pretty extreme circumstances.
I was actually a Resident Master’s orientation aide and worked on our dorm council with them at my college (University of Chicago, pretending we’re an Ivy since 1890, what what) and you are exactly right. Their quarters are semi-open, they host you, they do nice things for you, they model academic and family life…they’re not your professors unless you take a class with them, but they definitely set a tone.
Hey, maroon!
I liked his piece (yay local knowledge!) but I thought he was too hard on Yale students: collective action is hard to start!
I would say Mizzou is Oppenheimer’s solution in action, but it was easier to achieve, because the protest got the football team involved (influential people) and that was against the admin, not their peers (less social cost than avoiding frat parties).
Yeah let’s not be naive – the football team, aka $$$$$, was the real deciding factor in the board taking the students seriously. Hey, they’re unpaid labor making millions for the college – let them use their leverage for good.
Yeah, i don’t know if any student group at Yale has that power.
I both hate football culture and that athletes aren’t paid for their labor, but basically, the school administrators who have been profiting from this system have put themselves in a place to be hamstrung by the football team, so they get their just desserts here. I’m glad the football team stood up for a good cause here, but I wonder what happens if a team boycotts for an unsavory cause (not changing a racist team name, stopping an investigation into rape allegations) — what are the dynamics going to be like?
Ahh but I bet the alumni do. They give a jaw dropping amount of money. They can certainly call some shots.
In the hypothetical situation (which is NOT to take away from the fact that the Missouri football team stood up for a good cause here) where a powerful football team goes on strike to protest someone being under investigation for sexual assault, I would put money on the majority of alumni donations supporting the football team. :/
Yeah – I don’t know about his point that we should be confronting drunk racists, exactly. But what I do think he’s saying, that’s important, is that the biggest problem here is not racist faculty/administrators, but racist students.
And while anti-racist students should be fully entitled to the support and solidarity of the institution, they’re going to hit a wall with whatever policies they hand down.
Isn’t faculty, etc. facilitating racist students’ harmful behavior a very big problem here? It is part of their job to br anti-racist, for the sake of all the students (but especially, of course, for students of color). The original email was great, the second one undercut it and harmed the university’s students and culture, amplifying any harmful behavior by racist students.
Yes! It definitely is, and I didn’t mean to downplay their role. They botched this one, at a major cost to their students, who – if nothing else – are entitled to know that their teachers have their backs..
But another part of it is that blaming the administration lets too many people off the hook. The students that are being coddled aren’t the ones protesting, it’s the ones putting on blackface and not giving a crap. They’re the ones who get to offend in a zero-stakes environment, and the reason they get away with it isn’t just administrative indifference, it’s peer approval, and that approval largely goes unchallenged.
True!
God, I love discussions on the Toast. Thanks yet again to the moderators, and to all you reasonable and respectful commenters. What a joy and a pleasure it is to actually communicate and learn about important issues in an online forum/community.
This (the Oppenheimer piece) is a very accurate picture of what the residential college system and social life are like at Yale, and the strange sense of infantilization that accompanies it. I’m not sure if I agree with the full extent of his call for student organizing: confronting drunken frat boys can be unbelievably scary (when I lived off campus, we had frat boy neighbors who would occasionally shout drunken misogynistic and racist slurs off their roof to women pedestrians), and Yale students often *are* working intensely hard with full schedules. But there’s an intensely strange dissonance which is reflected by the protests, which I think he puts his finger on: the residential college system is *designed* to make you feel like you’re a child, with the Master your Den Papa/Mama, so it’s jarring when that support structure falls through. Whether in the case of Christakis’ free-speech-grandstanding, or in the case of the university completely and utterly failing to provide support for student mental health problems (see this Vox article, which draws comparisons between the issues – this happened to several folks I know).
Long story short: Yale should just drop the whole goddamn system, turn the colleges into dorms, and try to provide actual formal academic and mental health resources to their students. And I don’t just say this because I was randomly assigned the shithole modernist college instead of a fancy one (Silliman has Steinways, we had a run-down woodshop and dead mice!).
Oh god. I read that article last night and wanted to scream. I mean, not like I’ve had any experience trying to fight the university man or received horrible emails from a school in response to my concerns or anything this year. Not at all. And if I did it would clearly all be because I’m a whiny, entitled, near-thirty year old, veteran and millennial.
Oh man, I’m so sorry! I actually thought about your situation when reading an article about this a day or so ago, because it really is frustrating how hard it is to hold professors responsible for their words and actions. It bums me out that you have to deal with all that, and that the administration you’re dealing with can’t be assed to do their jobs to protect students from tyrant professors. Just ugggghhh.
WTF is happening over at the Atlantic, anyway? All their coverage of this has been so gross. I don’t understand how the same people who publish Ta-Nehisi Coates can also turn around and spew out this PC-culture-is-ruining-the-world-also-student-activists-these-days-are-whiners-not-like-WE-were-in-1970 bullshit.
They’ve always had those stupid rage-bait articles about gender but recently there’s just been so much apex-Boomer crap.
It’s the same place that published Sullivan during the years when he was endorsing Charles Murray’s racist nonsense about IQ. He and TNC even had some back-and-forths about it…I want to say in 2010-2011?
Ew, I forgot about/blocked out the existence of Andrew Sullivan. That guy is the worst.
Apparently he’s defended the fucking Bell Curve as recently as last December: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/12/22/excuse-… Uuuughhhhhh.
Andrew Sullivan is the quintessential example of someone who’s exactly as progressive as his own personal identity will take him and not one inch beyond that.
Yeah, the Atlantic, as a whole, has long had a contrarian bent with regard to progressive issues. Coates always seemed like an exception to me.
ZILLIONS OF YES TO THIS.
Braak have I told you how much I appreciate your SJW comments? Because I appreciate them a lot. Thank you.
*not so casually thumbs up’s every comment in this thread*
Aw, dang, thanks. I don’t always feel like there’s a lot I can do on issues like this, but this is one thing I got a good handle on.
I feel especially obligated because Conor Friedersdorf et al make the exact kind of arguments that I made when I was in college; I feel a special responsibility to give these guys shit about it.
Good on you, sir. (Is it sir? Apologies if I am wrong.)
Yes, it is true. I am…a man.
GASP!
I see that Friedersdorf has been taking advice from this Medium article!: https://medium.com/@juliaserano/how-to-write-a-po…
(Guide on How to Write a “Political Correctness Run Amok” Article – Julia Serano is awesome.)
I did not know about mental health restrictions on voting, and I’m ashamed that it exists. It’s almost surely unconstitutional! I want to take on that fight.
Also, this is a very good piece on fascism, democracy, and the incident with the student photographer at Mizzou, from Tressie McMillan Cottom:
http://tressiemc.com/2015/11/12/fascism/
From the article:
“We overstate our youthful courageousness. Then, because we are wily from age, we defend that overstatement by understating the courage of the youth who displace us. ”
I think one of the reasons I’m almost always more sympathetic to students in situations like this is because I have a very good memory of how cowardly my peers have always been, how unwilling we were to stand up for our own rights or for anyone else’s, how unwilling we were to rock the boat in high school and college, how unwilling we were to even venture a question about authority. I very distinctly remember grad school classes full of people paralyzed with fear because we were asked an open-ended question; grad school professors that everyone hated but no one dared say a word about.
I guess I am always going to side with students on this. Yeah, guys; burn this shit down. Burn it all fucking down.
Oh thank you, that’s a fantastic article.
Cottom is a treasure.
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA APPRECIATION THREAD ALERT:
You must watch the latest Ham4Ham show, where he sings A Whole New World with Lea Salonga, and is clearly so thrilled, and incredibly adorable throughout:
https://t.co/VM0fLgnBXh
OH MY GOD, I just want to fold that man up and put him in my pocket. He is too cute.
Yes coming here to say this. Here is another video (there were so many for this one!)
Did anyone else choreograph dances to songs from Aladdin with your friends middle school? Memories…
TIL that I still know all the words to that song.
Also, yes, I love how much a nerd LMM is and how excited he gets about stuff.
LMM throughout that whole video
Me throughout that whole video
(NONE of that embedding worked like it was supposed to…)
PERFECT
So full of feelings.
Also she embarrasses him by singing a song he wrote for a girlfriend in college (when he was trying to get her to date him) and he was ADORABLE.
Further adorableness because I cannot resist:
Look how joyful the other folks from the musical are, too. Awwwww. He’s such a dorky awesome talented cinnamon roll.
Screw it, here’s this too:
Omg, Alex Lacamoire was just so happy! Also: “I don’t know about God, but I believe in Chris Jackson,” just the best. <3
The whole thing I was just
Well crap I’m bawling in a coffee shop now and my usual barista dude caught me and I’m all #Hamilfeels and he thinks I’m an idiot.
THANK GOD someone brought up Hamilton today because yesterday this happened:
Coworker (who gets to go to NY for a work trip): I’m looking around for theatre tickets.
Me (almost falling out of my chair with excitement): OMG YOU HAVE TO GO SEE HAMILTON!!!!
Coworker: Oh, what’s that?
Me: Oh… uh.. it’s this musical. I think it’s about, like, someone… named Hamilton? Toasties really like it.
Coworker: …what’s a Toastie.
I legit don’t know anything about Hamilton other than the fact that you all love it and talk about it all the time, and here I am screaming about it at work. I <3 you all a lot apparently.
I haven’t stopped screaming about this since I watched it
like, I have all sorts of problems with Miss Saigon and always will, but Lea is SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT and is amazing in so many things and I love her SO MUCH
I’m glad I’m not alone here in having transitioned, or expanded, from a Hamilton fan to a full-on Lin-Manuel Miranda fangirl. Fanwoman. (New superhero?)
We’re going to have a big thread about bra washing now, right? Don’t let me down toast.
I’ve actually gotten better since my younger years; I do all of my washing on the weekend and wash the 1-2 bra’s I wore that week then (NGL, its usually just 1), I also don’t sleep in a bra anymore which I think keeps it cleaner.
However as a younger woman I did sleep in bras, I also didn’t wash them very often (Bra’s are fucking expensive when you’re a poor teen, thus I only really owed 1 or 2 that fit). This meant that I would go days without taking my bra off. That’s a bit gross right? I had a habit of using my bra as a pocket too, which meant that I always found things I’d lost down there when I did eventually take it off.; lighters, money, train tickets from a week ago etc.
I don’t wash mine very often, BUT I have 5 bras and rotate them out every day. So I choose to believe I’m not gross, because at least they’re airing out between wearings, and “washed like once a month” doesn’t sound as terrible when you calculate out that that’s “washed like every 6th wearing”.
I’m about the same. I have four bras, and wash them with everything else when I run out of clean underwear.
People are always doing these studies about how everything is covered in bacteria, but until they can produce a whole bunch of people who have actually gotten sick from their dirty bras, I am not interested.
Yeah, I mean, everything IS covered in bacteria, but I think basically as long as you don’t lick your bra or rub it all over an open wound you’re probably okay.
I *think* there was a House episode where a homeless woman got a staph infection because she cut herself with her bra hook. Thats the only bra related infections I’ve ever heard of.
Frankly the western world is far to germaphobic for its own good anyway; showering every day is actually not that good for you and its actually beneficial to have a bit of germ exposure for healthy people. I used to work with horses and only washed my hands when I went to eat a meal, we were all fine (we also shared food with our horses and would happily pick up dropped food and continue eating, we had priorities and going to get more food was not one of them)
Here’s a thing I read once, childhood leukaemia was apparently unheard of in Soviet Russia – I mean, not rare, it literally didn’t happen – and this was probably because all the children went to big state-run creches and picked up everyone else’s germs. I can’t find it now because if you look for ‘childhood leukaemia soviet union’ then articles about Chernobyl come up, but take my word for it.
I’d give the glance skeptical to most Soviet-era epidemiology just on general principles, but here’s a more recent study that does suggest that early exposure to infections reduces risk for one form of childhood leukemia: Early life exposure to infections and risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The study I was thinking of wasn’t a Russian study, as I recall, but the data on actual rates of leukaemia from that time isn’t likely to be great, you’re right.
That’s interesting!
I know that recently common thinking has come around to the idea that early exposure prevents allergies, instead of the previous thinking that children should be kept in a sterile bubble until they are brought into the world at some point and just magically have a developed immune system.
Personally I follow basic hygiene practices (regular washing, cleaning my house occasionally), but unless I have a wound I refuse to use antibacterial products; if you eliminate all the bugs, then the only bugs that get through are the really nasty ones!
I am genuinely paranoid about getting scratched by my bra hook because of that House episode. I don’t know why, out of all the terrifying things I’ve seen happen on medical dramas, that’s the thing burned into my brain, but there you go.
I am trying to imagine a scenario in which I manage to break the skin with the hooks on my bra. I am really struggling, and I am a very clumsy person! I suppose i could do it if I really tried…
Yeah it wasn’t exactly realistic, but I imagine the episode was written by a man who’s never worn a bra
Honestly I’ve never had a bra hook go bad (broken and sharp), but I have had similar hooks on my skirts and such get deformed over time, and I can kind of imagine one of those gouging me in a way that could get sobadsofast if I didn’t have regular access to my own bathtub and then had to sleep anywhere that was kind of sheltered.
ugh, now I’m just determined to take zero bras with me if I ever lose my shelter. I don’t even like House.
Yeah I mean they found staph on the bra. You find staph everywhere. As long as it doesn’t get where it’s not meant to be, it’s fine.
I know, right? Staph is pretty common in noses. And yet, with one exception, it has never tried to kill me.
I used to get awful back acne right along the shoulder straps if I didn’t wash them just about every wearing, but I believe I am anomalous in this. Then I got pregnant and my skin changed, so, whatever.
Truth. Like, our skin is covered in bacteria at all times. Our insides are. They’re beneficial about 90% of the time! BACTERIA ISN’T NECESSARILY THE ENEMY!!! #gross4lyfe
I have about five bras in rotation and I would say I wash them fortnightly, which more or less is 2-3 wearings in between each wash. I feel that’s ok.
I don’t think I could sleep in a bra; one of the best moments of my day is when I take my bra off for the evening (i.e. the moment I walk through my front door at night).
Awwww yissssss bra removal is the best time of day. I take it off and get in a good scratch all around the girls and then put on a cami.
I used to wash the one or two bras I wore the most every week or so. Then I read something about how I should be *hand washing* them instead of just sticking them in the machine (in a garment bag, on cold, and then air dried), and I’m lazy enough that that’s cut down on how often they get cleaned. I’ve shifted mostly to wearing unpadded bras, anyway, so I feel a lot less gross about my somewhat lax washing habits. (The idea of sweating all over foam skeeves me out, and I sweat a lot in the summer/in the winter because I’m wearing so many layers.)
Also, I only wear proper bras when I’m out of the house. If I’m at my apartment I’ll either wear an old stretchy sports bra or no bra at all. (Most of my clothes are either Outside clothes or Apartment clothes. I change from one to the other as soon as I come home. This is non-negotiable.)
I get marks and spencer bra’s, those things are hardy! I don’t have time to be hand washing anything, all my underwear and delicate’s go in a 30′ degree wash and I won’t buy anything that wouldn’t survive that! Air drying is a must for all clothes though, tumble dryers destroy your clothes (although so handy. so so handy.)
I am awful. I have… 5 bras? And I only wear 3 of them regularly. And I haven’t hand-washed them in over a year, although I’ll admit to sending them to the wash-and-fold a couple times, which, I KNOW. I used to have a big plastic tub that could hold a couple gallons of water and I used that to hand-wash, but I took it down off the shelf after I moved apartments and apparently either my old roommate accidentally cracked it or I did during the move, but it doesn’t hold water anymore. I also don’t have a tub anymore so filling it would have been a pain. So I probably haven’t washed my bras since the end of summer. Ew ew ew.
I guess I’ll do that this weekend so I can claim I accomplished SOMETHING other than binge-watching all of Master Of None.
Eh, put ’em in a mesh bag and throw in the washer with your other laundry! Live on the edge! (maybe only do this if you are using a non-agitator type washer)
I 100% do that. cold/delicate cycle-lingerie bag-air dry. I have 4 regular bras, 1 sports bra, 1 mesh bralette thingy, 1 strap!less. they get washed….once every 3 weeks or so? at the most frequent? they last years before the elastic dies and it’s to the rubbish bin with them.
I have the special Intimacy detergent (I think they’re now Rigby and Penn?) to wash bras in, and I still only manage to wash them like once every three months. If that.
I’m not actually sure how often I wash my bras, cause I buy multiples of the exact same style – theoretically I rotate through but I can’t tell them apart so I just wear the least stinky.
I do this – but I have a tie rack on the back of the wardrobe door. So I hang them there, and then when I take it off i put it in the ‘still clean, wear again’ basket I have by my bed. Then I know which have been worn and which not, although the system fails if I don’t wash them after a couple of weeks.
(I am coming to the conclusion that I am obsessive about laundry, which is weird for me, A Not Clean Person, to realise. Although I am realising that maybe I actually AM a Clean Person and my self perception is out of whack. Can you have cleaning dysmorphia??)
Sounds like a great system! We all have that ONE thing that has to be organized, its not weird at all.
I’m actually pretty good about washing mine after 1-3 wears, but then I was the one in a comment thread on the last bra post who talked about preferring to go braless most of the time, so I’m kind of a cheater.
So excluding sports bras of course, all of my bras are submitted to the sniff test prior to wearing (and if I think of it, prior to placing back in the drawer), and if they are not malodorous, they are going on my body, staph be damned.
If you’re not watching/listening to the live-read of the Odyssey in locations across London, including ON A BOAT ON THE THAMES and ON THE LONDON EYE, you are wasting your day.
http://almeida.co.uk/the-odyssey
(I regret that Stanley Tucci has already read his portion. Why can’t it all be Tucci.) (Kickstarter for a production of the Odyssey starring the Tooch.)
I CAN’T MAKE THE LIVE STREAM WORK.
I think my work network has it blocked and it has put me in a filthy grumpy mood. I would love to be listening to it right now while doing stupid boring work.
The twitter feed is keeping me sane, but its not the same.
Its also finishing up the road from my office but I can’t leave early enough to get a ticket. THIS DAY IS KILLING ME.
UGH WHY DO I HAVE TO BE IN CLASS MOST OF THE DAY/AM I IN THE WRONG TIME ZONE
I can’t wait for them to put the videos up
They won’t put them up for ages 🙁 The Iliad only went up about 2 weeks ago.
I KNOW but my patience will win out, as long as I don’t have to wait 10 years for them to put them up
I am so torn between racing home and watching the end or waiting until it all goes up and having an epic binge-watching Saturday in bed. The twitter feed it make it sound epic, one actor got chucked off the boat!!
CHOICES
If you pick up a really complicated weaving project it’ll make that time just fly by.
It’s Ian McKellen time! Everyone hurry up and tune in!
On the subject of bras, Drunk History had a great segment about their inventor, Mary Welsh Jacob, who then went on to found a literary press and then two anti-war organizations AND found the time to have a dog named Clytoris. I mean, honorary Toastie if there ever was one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caresse_Crosby
And it’s narrated by Paget Brewster aka the best Drunk History narrator of ALL TIME
Yes! She was great and has SO MANY BRAS. Is it normal for someone to have like 30 bras? I think I have 6…
I may have like 30… but I’m a size that’s available everywhere, including the cheaper options, and very easily taken in by pretty sheer fabrics.
Oh my. I must watch this.
She’s amazing. The only thing that could have made it any better is if she’d read it in her Sadie Doyle voice.
AWW. Is that from @midnight?
Indeed it is.
I have such a friend-crush on her. She is the best.
😯 😀 Wow.
I was irrationally excited to see Nicole quoted side-by-side with John Darnielle. One step closer to the ultimate dream of somehow getting him on the Toast.
Seconded. Also “avenging angel who is also very nice” is my new life goal.
Is the link to the Alanis Morisette story missing or am I just not seeing it?
I forgot! It’s on Medium, and I’m on my phone, can someone share in this thread?
Here you go: https://medium.com/cuepoint/jagged-little-pill-an…
Thank you!
It is nice to know that Mallory’s dog’s head is not only teacup shaped, but also ice cream pint shape. Very useful indeed.
i melted into a puddle of tears during the Parents episode, and now whenever Papa Ansari makes an appearance I’m just all
I definitely just saved this gif and it’s going to get a LOT of use.
Same.
But more importantly, let’s talk about Putin’s daughter the award winning rock and roll dancer (and billionaire).
Where’s Ask a Gal Scientist when you need her? As far as I could tell, the bra article just said that unwashed bras had normal environmental bacteria on them, which means everyone can just carry on, right (and if they have a wound, you know, use appropriate bandaging rather than a bra, I guess)?
Yup, pretty much. If you shower regularly and you don’t have any broken skin in the bra-area, you should be okay. I mean, waiting a year to wash them probably isn’t the greatest idea, but that dude who says they should be washed every day is clearly an asshole and doesn’t understand bra wearing practices.
Yeah, I can’t even be bothered to click links like that. Yes, I did know that everything in the world is covered in microbes, not all of it good. My biology major beat caring about that right on out of me.
I LOVE this interview with the scientist who made the microbe map of the New York subway. His point was basically, “Look, it’s all germs, but don’t freak out. It’s OK to touch stuff, but just don’t lick anything.”
I foolishly majored in music but taking cellular & molecular bio remains one of the life choices I have made. Having some science-y knowledge on how bacteria/viruses/nutrition etc work is frequently reassuring.
I love that this doesn’t have a modifier. Like yes, that was a life choice. I made it.
But why oh why does my three year old insist on licking things on public transit? While I’m firmly in the “moderate germ exposure builds kid’s immunity” camp, that is just disgusting.
Small children are adorable monsters, that why.
You just reminded me that I personally have been licked by a toddler on the train. Not that I really cared. And I was probably one of the cleaner things she could have licked. Still, that was weird.
To see what they taste like!
My brother licked a stair railing one cold winter, to see if his tongue really would stick to it. It did. After he was loosed from it, his tongue felt sore, and he thought something cold might soothe it. So he did it again.
He is a parent now and has a Young Empiricist of his own, and he is very good at seeing the gears turning inside YE’s head (and suggesting experiments that won’t hurt).
This is why I love Alison Gopnik’s book The Scientist in the Crib. It’s all part of the quest for knowledge!
Bras make terrible bandages.
Yeah, my only takeaway from that paragraph was “ok don’t eat bras, check”.
Scandinavian news item of the day: Sweden gets short-term permission to start policing its borders and checking everyone’s passports, starting with the bridge and ferries between Sweden and Denmark, despite being part of the Schengen Agreement.* This will help them turn away asylum seekers without being criticised, since you’re only a real asylum seeker if you can prove your identity. Local police says that of course they’ll use racial profiling and literally ask that people not “play the race card”. The border control will also effectively pose an ultimatum to the huge number of refugees who actually are only passing through Sweden on their way to Norway and Finland – seek asylum in Sweden or be turned away from the border.
Meanwhile, everyone is completely oblivious to the fact that the sound between Sweden and Denmark is only 4 km (2.5 miles) wide at the narrowest point. Want to bet that anyone who can cross the damn Mediterranian on an inflatable raft and travel through Europe on nothing but hope just might be able to find their way across anyway?
* For those who don’t know, the Schengen Agreement says that participating countries won’t systematically police their borders with other Schengen countries, but instead focus on policing the outer borders of Europe. Schengen citizens can travel without passports (as long as they have some kind of national ID). If there’s a huge crisis or an important international event, countries can get a short-term exception so that they can require passports. Every country in northern, western and southern Europe has joined except the UK and Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
The alternative route to Norway & Finland (via Turkey and Russia) is looking more and more appealing.
It’s November, though. You’d need to wear an entire polar bear to cross the Russian-Norwegian border on foot, it’s way past the Arctic circle. The Russian-Finnish border might be doable, but it’s going to be super unpleasant.
True, true. I mean, I’ve gone on similar walks for fun, but… I’m not Syrian. And laying low in Russia until the spring is not a very appealing prospect.
Oh, wait, the cop actually said “the racist card”. “Yes, we’ll probably use racial profiling when we check identities, but please don’t complain about the racism.” He LITERALLY says “People can’t/shouldn’t pull the racist card just because we perform checks on people with darker skin” in one part of the article.
Jesus Christ, listen to this (my amateurish translation): When police choose who to check [at railway stations and on trains, not at the actual border], it’s inevitable that appearance plays a part, [anonymous cop] says. It could be that those who are blond and blue-eyed won’t be stopped as often when the police are performing a check, according to the policeman.
– And it could be that Swedes with darker skin are questioned more often than others. The best thing is of course if you carry ID. But if you speak Swedish well, the police will of course understand that you’re Swedish. In that case it probably won’t be a problem even if you lack ID.
YES. IT COULD BE. POSSIBLY, IT COULD BE THAT SWEDES OF COLOUR MIGHT BE CHECKED A TINY BIT MORE OFTEN THAN THE ARYAN VIKINGS. WHY IS THAT DO YOU THINK.
This is outrageous, I can’t believe that no one seems to have a problem with this! Keep in mind that they already do “random” passport checks in the coastal cities, and this is a really densely populated region with lots of immigration. Should every brown person in the Sound region just start to carry passports?!
It’s hilarious to me that my some of American friends said that Aziz’s parents in Master of None can’t act and that they’re really stiff when it’s EXACTLY how my Indian parents talk.
Right down to the “man” at the end of every sentence and the “ding ding”s and “ayyo”s. My mom says “Ayyo Rama” maybe a 100 times a day. South Indians Represent!
I have only heard EXCELLENT things about their performance, I’m sorry some of your American friends are wrong 😉
Aww man I’m South Indian too but his parents’ acting seems totally stiff to me! My parents say “ayyoooo” all the time too, but in a way that seems less wooden to me? But I still love that he put his parents in his show, even if they can’t act, because of what it represents to them as a family.
I think it depends on when they learnt English?? Like my Uncles and Aunties went to English medium schools all their life and they’re pretty fluent. But my Ma only learnt English when she came here and she pretty much talks exactly like Dev’s Mom when she’s doing it in English.
Also I’m pretty sure my Mom doesn’t talk much at all and when the reason she’s so stiff when she talks is because she forgets how one goes about doing it
Yeah, some comments about the show have been amazingly nitpicky and I see there’s even less substance to the nitpicks than I thought.
I thought the dad was excellent, but the mum’s line delivery was pretty robotic. It is such a wonderful show though, I’ve never even seen it as a problem, just an unavoidable tradeoff that comes with using your real parents to give those on-screen relationships some real depth.
totally OT but… my spellcheck no longer works in the reply box. it is with much shame that my unvarnished texts have been posting as of late. and in front of such smart people *hides face*
anyone else having the same problem? is there a fix? or shall i keep working in Word and then C&P here???
My spell checker is working fine, but I have a bad habit of typing fast and not noticing grammar errors and missing letters. I only notice them after its too late to edit and thus I feel constantly stupid in Toast company.
Its quite likely that no one notices, and if they do they’re probably forgiving people, but I feel your pain.
I’m having a weird problem where typing in the box is taking a while to show up and my capitalization is getting replaced by spaces somehow.
Forgiveness… can you imagine?
Also Tumblr has inured me pretty well to typos. My autocorrect is working here but that doesn’t actually help much. It’s annoying and wrong about as often as it’s helpful.
I Toast on my phone so I am always drafting longer comments in Memo and copying and pasting. If I’ve typed something directly in the comment box I always select all and copy before hitting submit because you never quite know for sure what is going to happen after that.
Harriet Walter talking about all-women Shakespeare: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/wome…
That Home Alone piece is great, and so is the accompanying essay: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Decemb…
“After all, what has the last quarter century been but a slow realization that there are no adults, that, since the ’80s or ’90s, we’ve all been home alone? The robbers are coming, and there is no one to save us. “
So what was everyone’s first cassette or CD? Mine was TLC’s CrazySexyCool.
MINE TOO! On cassette, because I didn’t have a CD player at the time, just a walkman. Actually I think I got Crazysexycool and Mariah Carey’s Butterfly around the same time. Oh, and the Friends soundtrack.
Then my mom got me a CD boombox for my birthday and I started getting CDs from Columbia House 10 at a time, including Jagged Little Pill, Jewel’s first album, etc.
My first cassette was Jagged Little Pill, first CDs were Ace of Base’s “The Sign” and CrazySexyCool, which I got for my bat mitzvah. Good 90s times.
Mine was No Doubt Tragic Kingdom. I high five 10-yr-old me for having great taste.
I was obsessed with that album in middle school. I would sit in my room and listen to Don’t Speak on repeat when I was feeling rather dramatic (which was often at that age)
Old Toasties represent! What was your first record?
Grease soundtrack for me.
(My parents gave me a CD player for my 16th birthday, when they were new tech. I made them exchange it for a typewriter.)
Hello, yes, I am old and my first music was on vinyl! Bryan Adams ‘Cuts Like A Knife’ was I think my first full album – may have had some singles before that.
I had one of the first cassette Walkmans when I was…14? I don’t recall my first cassette but a couple years ago at my mother’s I found a box of tapes that were definitely mine, from 80s-early 90s.
My first record purchase was actually two records and any coolness claimed because one of them was The Police’s Ghost In The Machine was immediately cancelled out by the other one: Air Supply’s The One That You Love.
It was the 80s, man. None of us knew from taste.
You still have bragging rights over me. After the Grease soundtrack, I bought Olivia Newton-John’s Let’s Get Physical.
And the Cats cast album.
AHAHAHAHA my parents gave me the Cats cast album for Christmas, right after I went to NYC on a class trip, saw the show, and came home with a mad dance crush on Mr. Mistopheles.
First two Van Halen albums recorded by putting two tape decks in a room side by side.
Born in 1980 and my first records were The Fat Boys (“Wipe Out”), The Monkees (“Pool It”), and whatever Expose album had “Seasons Change” on it. Thanks, Nick Rocks!
My first purchase, made at Sears, was the eclectic pairing of the 45s of Devil Went Down to Georgia and Funkytown.
Anyone needing an explanation of “45”, just shout out.
My parents bought me and my sister Thriller. I can’t remember my first cassette, but it was probably Paula Abdul. My first CD was Extreme (the one with More Than Words on it). My defense is that I was 13 at the time.
Fellow Old Toastie here. The first record I bought with my own money was Synchronicity by The Police. I think my sister still has it.
(I didn’t get a CD player ’til 1992, when I was out of college and had my first job.) 🙂
Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual. It expects a lot of what’s happened since. 🙂
Best friend had this. We danced to it after school. I loved it, especially the Betty Boop-inflected song that was the basis for the album’s title. I loved the voice she used on it, and also totally missed the subtext that the boyfriend liked dudes. (Or maybe was ace.)
Maybe Blondie?
First cassette, Spice Girls – Spice (I was going to say only cassette, but I actually have a few more now since they are hip again ha!)
First CD, Britney Spears, Baby One More Time. My parents gave it to me for my birthday, along with a boombox.
Edit: Someone brought up records! My boyfriend bought me a record player sophomore year of college along an original pressing of Death Cab’s Something About Airplanes. Which, thinking back, was probably too much since he had no money at the time.
Baby One More Time was my first CD too! I also got it as a birthday gift, but from friends of my parents & I could not have been more ecstatic.
“Baby One More Time” was my first CD too! It’s a good one. Remember “Email My Heart”?
Cassette or CD? neither of those things existed when I bought my first album. It was a compilation including Otis Redding, the Beatles, and various other bands of the day.
I bought Backstreet Boys’ Backstreet’s Back AND Savage Garden’s eponymous album at the same time on cassette, because 10yo me was clearly a pop goddess. I have the best childhood memories of vacuuming while dancing to “If You Want It to Be Good Girl” on my Walkman & feeling so naughty lol
Savage Garden was my second. Pop goddess then, pop goddess now, pop goddess forever.
Mine was Boyz II Men’s Cooleyhighharmony!!
If we’re not counting my pre-teen Andrew Lloyd Webber phase, AND WE AREN’T, it was totally Jagged Little Pill. Which I had to make an impassioned case for to my parents because of the “fuck” in “You Oughta Know.” (In reality, my parents were probably more distressed by the “go down on you in a theater” line, but sweet summer child that I was, I really didn’t have a firm grasp on what that meant.)
Hanson’s Middle of Nowhere, NO SHAME
Middle of Nowhere ruled then and rules now. I still listen to it once in awhile!
Me too! 3 Car Garage is much better but Middle of Nowhere is a classic.
Same! Or rather, I had a couple other CDs first (including Jagged Little Pill), but that’s the first one I bought with my own money.
Cassette: Thriller
I shoplifted the Backstreet Boys “Black & Blue” when I was 11. First CD I personally owned. (this was an immediate predecessor to my run as a teenage dirtbag)
Backstreet Boys, Millenium. Duh.
First cassette that someone bought me: Amy Grant, House of Love (I think)
First cassette that I bought myself: Savage Garden, a single with “I Want You” and “To the Moon”
First CD I bought with my own money: Alanis Morrisette, single with You Learn and You Oughtta Know. It got taken away from me after I played it in the car with my mom and she heard the “fuck” on it. I still rag on her for it even now, 19 years later (I was 11 at the time).
My best friend later bought Jagged Little Pill under the radar and we listened to it all the time. Then in high school my parents stopped caring and I took it out from the library all the damn time.
I should have known better than to try to bring home Blink 182’s Enema of the State… my mother was a nurse, and took one look at the album name and cover and I never saw it again.
Hehehe. The first major argument I can remember having with my mom about the music I listened to was when I was singing along to “All The Small Things” in the car when I was…maybe 8? 9?…and I sang “Work sucks, I know.” She was scandalized by the fact that I knew the word “sucks.” (She was still Not Ready when I came home from camp with a mix CD with “Juicy” on it two years later.)
My parents were pretty sweary but I was a prissy little tween (note: the word “tween” did not exist yet) and mostly avoided swearing in front of adults. Then one day I was sweeping and they were out (got to earn that allowance) so I was blasting Guns N Roses… I didn’t hear them drive up and come in, but they heard me singing Get In The Ring. (They laughed, quite a bit.)
My first CD was Whitney Houston, I’m Your Baby Tonight. First cassette…I thiiiink maybe it was whatever Starship’s song “Sarah” was on that my parents got because four-year-old me was inexplicably obsessed with that song.
The Beatles’ Abbey Road, when I was 7. BOOM!
(I wanted to get into the Beatles, having just seen Help!, and I liked that there was a song called ‘She Came In Through the Bathroom Window’.)
The first CD that I bought with my own money was Infinity On High by Fall Out Boy when I was 11 (which I no longer have because I gave it away a year later after I discovered My Chemical Romance and became embarrassed by my former love of FOB/intense crush on Pete Wentz)
The first CD that someone else gave me: Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers, from my big sister when I was 7 (I think? I might have been younger) I had no idea what the songs were about but I was aaalllll about RHCP at that age – I thought ‘Aeroplane’ was literally about planes, so you know, super age appropriate!
I don’t specifically remember which was my first, but I remember having Salt ‘n Pepa “Blacks’ Magic”, INXS “Kick”, and Technotronic “Pump up the Jam” on cassette all around the same time.
I do know that I had Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on vinyl when it came out, and listened to it SO DAMN MUCH.
First CD? My mom gave me some CDs with my CD player bombbox for Christmas one year, and I think they included Mariah Carey and MC Hammer.
I didn’t have to buy Thriller because my dad already had it, and we listened to it all the dang time. One Halloween we even hot-wired the doorbell to play the Vincent Price laugh when the kids rang it. Wow, we were weirdos.
SAME! And then my first CD was Jagged Little Pill. But cassette, CrazySexyCool.
My first (and only) cassette was an orchestral suite incorporating wolf howls and other forest sounds. I bought it from the science museum gift shop.
I… was an odd child.
Oh wait I take it back that wasn’t my only cassette. I also had the best of Weird Al and the best of Prince.
JANET JACKSON RHYTHM NATION
And I still love the shit out of that album.
I went on a school trip to Ottawa and had spending money, so I went to a music store and bought THREE cassetes. The Bareknaked Ladies EP (aka the Yellow Tape), Ugly Kid Joe’s America’s Least Wanted, and REM’s Out of Time.
Ace of Base. Nicole’s list felt super familiar to me.
Paula Abdul or Amy Grant on cassette (don’t know which was first). Shortly after came John Phillip Sousa (listened to over and over), then Mozart and Tchaikovsky greatest hits.
First CD was Cake, whatever their first one is, then BNL’s Stunt and Beck’s Odelay.
First cassette: Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping. I remember listening to it in my best friend’s mom’s car and both of us cringing in the backseat because we forgot there was swearing. We were probably 10.
First CD: Pretty sure it was Green Day’s Dookie, when I was about 12. That one prompted a very concerned talk from my mother about why on earth I wanted to listen to such depressing/angry/inappropriate music. I was like “um, because I like it? I dunno.” She didn’t find that to be a satisfactory answer.
Van Cliburn playing the Tchaikovsky 1st & Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concertos (because I was/ am a weirdo).
The Little Mermaid. Cherished that little piece of plastic.
A cassette. Elton John’s Greatest Hits that I bought with my own money at a garage sale. I still dig his old stuff.
“Master of None” is so sweet and true. Bravo to Aziz Ansari
My great grandmother also refused to answer the phone because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to speak English clearly enough to be understood. She finally got her high school degree when I was eight so she’d be able to pass her U S Citizenship exam. It took such a long time because she was working to support her family and raising 14 children, only 6 of whom survived into adulthood (due to lack of antibiotics and vaccines during that time.)
I love that he honors how much they sacrificed and how difficult it must have been for them.
I loved that episode! Even for those of us whose parents weren’t immigrants, it’s so easy to be nonchalant about the sacrifices our parents made for us. Even as a parent now, I have it much easier than my parents did when I was little, but having my own tiny monster has made me appreciate them A LOT more than I did previously. It’s nice to have a wake up call and just call them and say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know! Thank you!” I also did a lot of that during my first year of teaching because teenagers are often so terrible.
YOU GUYS I GOT TICKETS TO SEE HAMILTON NEXT OCTOBER AHHHHH I hope some of the original cast will still be there!! I can’t wait!
(Weeps with envy.)
I did, however, inspired by the Harrison Ford article, just buy tickets for the opening night of Star Wars, and we’re not telling the kids until we head to the theater, so that’s fun for me.
That sounds so delightful, what an awesome surprise for them! A+ parenting.
I’m just looking forward to a month of feigning indifference and being obstructive. “No, you can’t go to the midnight showing, you have finals in the morning. No, we can’t go Friday night, that’s the day your brother comes to town. No, we can’t go the next night, we’re seeing your grandparents.”
Less A+ parenting than hiding my evil nature behind a thin cloak of goodness.
My feelings EXACTLY.
Rachel Fershleiser, I, too, want to nerd out with the other snowflakes. That’s a joyous way to express it. And since I live in a place too hot to support snowfall, I’m glad I get to find other snowflakes here.
Urgh, I haven’t liked Harrison Ford in a long time, which was especially cemented by the five minutes of his interview on the Nerdist that I could listen to because he was just such a goddamn asshole, for no freaking reason. Hey, I get it if you don’t love being interviewed for the eleventy billionth time, but a) it’s part of your job, you should be professional while doing it, and b) it’s only your white male privilege that lets you get away with acting like a fucking toddler, which I have no goddamn patience for.
In contrast — I was listening to an episode of MBMBAM from last year with LMM on it, before Hamilton came out and exploded the internet, and he was SO nice and genuine and hilarious and sweet, and also had the best giggle I’ve ever heard. So, anyway, LMM > Harrison Ford.
LMM is the guest on the first episode of “Can I Pet Your Dog?” a podcast about dogs, and he talks about his dog, and it is ADORABLE
Tom and Lorenzo went off on Woody Harrelson turning up in pyjamas on the Hunger Games red carpet looking SO SMUG like he’s just so anti-establishment man, he doesn’t care about red carpet rules. They pointed out that a) he can only get away with it because white male privilege cf the above (I mean like, maybe Jennifer Lawrence could do it but only because she’s ~adorkable~) and b) how incredibly disrespectful it was to everyone else who worked on the movie.
“Maybe Jennifer Lawrence could do it” Yeah, but let’s be real. She couldn’t just “show up in pjs.” She would have to have hair and makeup on point and be perfectly styled in the most perfectly styled pjs, like she was ready to pose for a Victoria’s Secret PINK ad. If she just rolled out of bed and showed up in her pjs there would be a frillion effing thinkpieces about how she’s spiraling downward and probably on drugs and OMG what is wrong with her, is she going crazy, can we watch, how can we feed vampire-like on this beautiful woman’s dramatic downfall???
JLaw kind of wore a nightgown on the red carpet, tho:
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/11/jennifer-lawrenc…
My point still stands. I mean, it’s a dress. It’s an odd nightgown-looking dress, but it’s a dress. And her hair and makeup are still styled. It is not the “usual” style look, but it is still a “look.”
Yeah, I didn’t mean to disagree with you (which totally wasn’t clear, sorry), I just thought it was funny that JLaw was the example used, and she actually did show up in sleepwear.
But it only RESEMBLED a nightgown (with feathered cuffs, and have you ever owned a nightgown with feathered cuffs???). It was DIOR COUTURE. Woody Harrelson’s pajamas were not DIOR COUTURE.
I heard a song on top 40 radio this morning that could probably be a contender for Toast song of the year-
I’m sorry if I seem uninterested
Or I’m not listening, or I’m indifferent
Truly I ain’t got no business here
But since my friends are here, I just came to kick it
But really I would rather be at home all by myself
That song! There’s a line somewhere in there about “What am I doing here? Oh God, why am I here!?” and I’m like PREACH IT GIRL
I heard that on the radio the other night and was like “woah, I did not expect to super relate to this random pop song”
Apparently her debut album comes out today, if you’re interested. (As far as I know, she got signed to a record label because she was a teenager making YouTube videos in her bedroom but they were good enough to get people intrigued.)
Jewel’s Pieces of You and Jagged Little Pill which, no joke, I got for a school project (a Powerpoint of Ironic.)
Edit : supposed to be in Pretzelcoatl’s thread!
I’M EIGHTEEN TODAY!
my roomie kicked me out last night and threw streamers and balloons all over our room with my girlfriend so that was fun.
I’m going to miss the trans activism talk tonight because of play rehearsal, but my first birthday away from home shouldn’t be all that bad.
woo adulting!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Happy birthday! Celebrate a year well lived!
Happy birthday! Here’s to a splendid new year!
Related to a bunch of things, but it’s not like academic freedom in the US of A isn’t under attack!
For example, here’s an article about a Missouri state senator trying to block a PhD candidate’s thesis about abortion wait times:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/11/…
In case Conor Friedersdorf I guess was super anxious.
Goddamn.
So how long will it be be before we’re living in The Handmaid’s Tale?
It’s weird, but it doesn’t look like Conor’s ever had much to say about the whole Steven Salaita mess. You would think someone that worried about academic freedom would be supporting someone whose academic freedom was actually attacked by a university.
Yeah. Weird.
Lol I feel like I have to comment every time the MO legislature is discussed but can I just say that Kurt Schaefer is one of the few people I’ve ever met who I think might actually be evil? I feel a little bit of righteous glee every time I see negative press on him.
And this is perhaps Ford’s most profound Solo-ism. Adults may weep at the sight of him saying, “Chewie, we’re home”; thousands may gather to cheer his return; and a whole world of fans may declare loudly and unequivocally, “We love you!” But Ford’s response will always be a polite, grateful, and stoic, “I know.”
Damn, I’m not even a very big Star Wars fan and that still got me a bit verklempt.
I’m not a very big Star Wars fan myself (saw the first two movies, enjoyed them, didn’t watch any more) but what I love about Harrison Ford as Han Solo is that he’s the rare actor who actually seems to get better when he’s working with a script that he knows to be bad. He doesn’t go flat because the material isn’t giving him anything to work with. He doesn’t give the slightest sign of embarrassment, or camp it up, or do anything at all to show he doesn’t take the movie as seriously as it takes itself. He commits, one hundred percent, to the role, and the only clue that he knows he’s in a bad movie is that the clunkier the lines are, the better his delivery is.
Jagged Little Pill was one of the first–if not The First–non-CCM CDs I ever owned. It was quite the shock to my CCM-listening self, but it was also so, so necessary.
Whenever I hear Alanis’s “Ironic”, I think of this — In Grade 11 English we studied Heart of Darkness and for some reason, we had to do what passed for a “multimedia” presentation on a theme from the book. Keep in mind, this is pre-PowerPoint. (We used transparencies on a projector!) Basically, it was “find another piece of art, use it to illustrate a core concept of the book.” A classmate decided to talk about irony. And she played “Ironic” to define the concept of irony. My curmudgeonly English teacher, once he realized what the lyrics of that song were, silently stood up and walked out of the room.
My brother always sings
“It’s like rai-i-ain….
on your wedding day when your first husband drowned!”
Ed Byrne did a great stand up routine about this song many years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg
Hey Toast PTB – not sure if you are aware, but pagination for search is not working. I searched for ‘dog’ to find the Murphy intro; it didn’t show on the first page of results, and when I hit the ‘older posts’ link, it returned the same first page of results. FYI. =)
The parents tweet is really hitting home for me right now. My siblings and I have to make an incredibly tough decision about our mother’s end of life care, some of which could result in THE END very quickly and I got the call about the need for the decision just last night. We are still processing what we want for her and for us and drowning in a sea of emotions, while still trying to keep in mind what is best for her might not be the decision we would make for ourselves.
Basically, we never saw ourselves as having to be the caregiver and the idea that our parents sacrifice so much for us over a lifetime and make similar decisions before we are even aware of HOW to do so, and we just have to make this ONE decision while she had to make so many for us on our behalf, this is really hurting right now.
Go hug your parents, like, immediately.
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this right now. I’m sure you know this already but in case it would help to hear it from a stranger on the internet- there’s no perfect choice you can make. I have faith that you will make the best decision possible and even though it will be the best choice it might still feel bad. If you need a place to dump all your feelings The Toast is an excellent place to dump them.
I appreciate such kind words from a stranger. I ventured briefly into a forum for patients like my mother and it was… less than beneficial as the moderation and attitudes of the commenters were not quite what I needed to read at that moment. It’s tough as I am the only one of my friend/age group to be going through this (or just thr first) and thus have no one except the internet to reach out to for similar experiences.
Just sending internet hugs/good thoughts your way. I’m also posting some links that I’ve found helpful for dealing with grief. They aren’t religious in nature and I’ve found myself crying after reading through them, so just fair warning. I also second that this is a fairly good space to dump your feelings.
http://www.timjlawrence.com/blog/2015/10/19/every…
http://www.refugeingrief.com
Thank you for the links. I have not had time to read thoroughly yet, but in my brief glancing through I did see some things I did need to read, so I thank you and appreciate your care to find the links.
So excited for Ezekiel Kweku to be writing about the Warriors. Though I will always think of him as Shrill.
All week, my Feelings And Emotions have been lurking just under the surface for no discernible reason. The Home Alone article is about 0.1 seconds away from making me bawl like a baby.
Shooting that church scene was a kind of weirdly spiritual moment…And it was because of Roberts (the South Bend Shovel Slayer). He just commanded Macaulay’s attention. It was a magical moment.
OKAY CRYING FOREVER BYE.
I was an extra in Home Alone in the church interior scenes…which means I was in 7th grade 25 years ago?! Oh god, I am so old.
Please tell us literally everything. Preferably in tomorrow’s link round up or Friday’s open thread so it’s not lost at the tail end of this link roundup!
I was on tour in a van with 2 other young women and 3 young men when Jagged Little Pill was tops. We played it in the van because we all loved it and we all sang along. Then one of the blokes (who had been singing along quite happily) started protesting, saying that he found it very aggressive.
We were like:
…..silence…..
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Now that I’m typing that out I wonder if we were guilty of denying his feelings. But then I remember he made us play Steely Dan all the time so I lose my retrospective sympathy.
When in doubt, go with your gut. Your first instinct was absolutely the correct one.
Yeah I totally agree! I hate when people say things like 'respect your parents' because not all parents deserve respect.
As I get older I'm loosing a lot of my teenaged irrational anger (not all of it mind) and I do see now that a lot 'bad' parents are just trying their best, my mother for example, but that doesn't forgive the truly bad parents out there, I.e my father, who is a truly despicable human being
Yeah it wasn't exactly realistic, but I imagine the episode was written by a man who's never worn a bra
I'm probably about the same when it comes to washing jeans; but I'm a mucky pup and tend to spill things and wipe my hands on my jeans (a bad habit I picked up from working outdoors and wearing scruffy work clothes constantly)
Tbh though I don't have a set amount of wears until washing, I wear things, they go on the floor, I maybe wear them again during the week, then on the weekend I wash everything on the floor regardless of worn-status
Honestly I've never had a bra hook go bad (broken and sharp), but I have had similar hooks on my skirts and such get deformed over time, and I can kind of imagine one of those gouging me in a way that could get sobadsofast if I didn't have regular access to my own bathtub and then had to sleep anywhere that was kind of sheltered.
ugh, now I'm just determined to take zero bras with me if I ever lose my shelter. I don't even like House.
This forever.