Sansa rolled in something unspeakable and was given a bath, thus ruining ALL her good work at becoming thoroughly vile and smelly.
Jenny Diski, who was just a brilliant, brilliant writer, has died of cancer, and the LRB has lifted the paywall on all her writing, please spend an hour (or four!) here.
On Mississippi’s (lack of) open container laws:
If you ask someone from Mississippi how long it takes to drive from Jackson, the capital, down to the Gulf Coast they might tell you “about six beers.” Walk into most gas stations there and you’ll find waist-high barrels filled with tallboys (sixteen to twenty-four ounces) and hog legs (thirty-two ounces) covered in ice. The beers are located near the door, sold individually, and placed in brown paper bags for a reason.Mississippi is the only state that doesn’t have an open-container law that prohibits drivers or passengers from drinking inside a motor vehicle. And while some counties and cities have passed their own ordinances to ban the practice, Mississippi still has an abnormally high rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities.
These days, there are only a handful of workplace taxonomies in scripted television. We’ve got police precincts, crime-and-forensics teams and legal-medical-Beltway dramas. NBC’s “Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago P.D.” are a virtual sexy-calendar night. These shows might know what a blue collar is, but they’re class-unconscious: Their characters don’t usually work for the explicit maintenance of their livelihoods. They work for comedy, for suspense, for sport. For the most part, TV cops, lawyers, bureaucrats and doctors inhabit the same kinds of toothsome residences and wear the same exquisitely tailored clothes, all showing off how fabulously art directors and costume designers earn a paycheck. Sometimes we see more of their work than that done by the people who inhabit it. Now on TV, no matter your actual job, almost everybody belongs to the same generic, vaguely upper-class class.
More on the Syrian hospital hit by an airstrike:
A two-month-old cease-fire had brought a brief respite to areas of Syria racked by fighting. But in a 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday, at least 60 people — including children and doctors — were killed in rebel-controlled neighborhoods of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once the country’s commercial center.
Airstrikes Wednesday night collapsed a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), killing patients and staff members, including one of the city’s last pediatricians, the two aid groups said. The strikes were the latest in a series of increasingly violent attacks that have violated the truce, raising fears of a complete breakdown of efforts to end the years-long conflict.
Good news from my hometown:
Over 100 community members demanded the Kingston Frontenac Public Library revise its new Code of Conduct at a meeting of the Library Board on April 27. And the community got what it wanted.
The meeting had such a large attendance that, even after it had been reassigned a larger room, all chairs were filled and some community members had to stand outside the doors to listen. Many had signs with messages like “Libraries are for everyone.”
The community was responding to concerns raised last week that the Library’s new Code of Conduct was meant to exclude marginalized community members including the homeless.
More than a million people in the UK are so poor they cannot afford to eat properly, keep clean or stay warm and dry, according to a groundbreaking attempt to measure the scale of destitution in Britain.
A study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found that 184,500 households experienced a level of poverty in a typical week last year that left them reliant on charities for essentials such as food, clothes, shelter and toiletries.
More than three-quarters of destitute people reported going without meals, while more than half were unable to heat their home. Destitution affected their mental health, left them socially isolated and prone to acute feelings of shame and humiliation.
This is a really solid piece on Tina Fey:
The beauty of “TGS Hates Women” is that Fey isn’t lashing out at her own critics. In fact, she was operating as a pop culture critic herself by taking the situation and exaggerating it for comedic value. In order to pull off something like that, you gotta hear both sides. Which makes Fey’s Achilles’ heel on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt even more apparent. When the show was heavily criticized for its problems with race in its first season, Fey didn’t listen and hear both sides like she did on 30 Rock. No, the criticisms were lobbied at her this time and she was not here to get clocked by anyone’s Twitter fingers.
The cultural impact of banning shisha establishments in Toronto:
For shisha smokers, many of whom are Muslim or raised in Islamic environments, these establishments offer a halal setting for recreational activity that doesn’t conflict with religious or cultural values. “I think smoking shisha is just another everyday thing that you can do,” said Ali. He laughed softly: “I don’t drink alcohol, so what am I supposed to do now? Go hang out in parking lots?”
Toronto isn’t the only municipality cracking down on shisha. Vanderlinden said she recently gave a testimony to the New York City Department of Health with regards to Toronto’s bylaw and enforcement. And in the U.K., Birmingham professional football club, Aston Villa F.C, recently dropped one of its players for smoking shisha during a trip to Dubai.
Speaking of cancer, our lovely Ella on magic and blood and sickness and lipstick:
And I think of our friends, and I think of all the strangers who have given so generously of their money and their love; all the strangers who tell me they are thinking of us, and praying for us, and hoping for us; all the strangers who have given their blood and their bone marrow and their time. Five people have told me, now, that they joined the register because they read about us, and that they are now a match to save a stranger. What’s that, if not real magic?
The blood of a stranger, willingly given: Voldemort couldn’t dream of that kind of power. Which, of course, is exactly the point. The realest kind of magic (as per Harry Potter, Matilda, and all the rest) is practical, everyday love. The kind that manifests as a lipstick, or as someone doing your washing up, or as a text “just checking in”. The kind that manifests as recommendations for books, and parcels of books, and laughter and not talking about cancer, the kind that manifests as turning up at your house with the things for dinner or a bag of expensive hand cream, the kind that manifests as a hundred tweets expressing love and solidarity.
A Quora poem about Silicon Valley:
Why is Powdered Alcohol not successful so far?
How does UberX handle vomiting in the car?
Is being worth $10 million considered ‘rich’?
What can be causing my upper lip to twitch?
she is not wrong, and also if you hire Ralph Lauren, you’re gonna get Ralph Lauren, so let’s start there, maybe:
The United States is already struggling to maintain any respect in the world, and now Ralph Lauren, who is always tasked with designing the USA Olympic uniforms, is trying to portray us all as Hamptons-humping WASPs just off an outing on a yacht. Well lookie here, old Gatsby, old boy, our athletes will sneer before ashing their cigars on the winner’s platform. This ceremony’s a real gas!
Rio 2016, on behalf of America: I’m sorry.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that other countries’ closing ceremony uniforms are so much better. I mean, South Korea is out here innovating fabrics, infusing their uniforms with mosquito repellant to protect their athletes from Zika; meanwhile, we got Unkie Ralph and the boat shoe brigade feckless and bare-skinned in linen freaking shortpants.
What on earth is “girl about town lipstick”? At least make your horrifying appearance rules easy to understand.
“girl about town” = slut/whore, so I am thinking red? Or black? Or brown? Or… literally anyhting other than the “nude” they recommend, I guess?
I am super pleased about how many of those look “don’t”s apply to my own personal aesthetic, actually.
You don’t want to be mistaken for having any kind of personality in cheer, I’m guessing.
But “girl about town lipstick” is in the “do” category, so I guess it’s a good thing?
I couldn’t tell you what it means, though. To me it sounds like a description of a stylish woman from the 1920s, with possible “slut” implications.
If we’re gonna travel down Slut Road, we might as well do it dressed up like Phryne Fisher.
Phryne Fisher is your best guide for traveling fabulously down Slut Road.
I cannot like this enough.
But I would have thought they don’t want their cheerleaders to look like whores (or they’d tell them off for “looking like a whore” in any case) so… I don’t know, more obvious than nude but not as slutty as red? I’m pretty sure any lipstick you chose would be wrong somehow.
Ooooooo, you’re right, I misread “girl about town” as part of the don’ts, not do’s. But your last! The patriarchy in a nutshell: anything you chose would be wrong somehow.
Yeah, but at the university where I teach, cheerleaders are often expected to “entertain” football/basketball/baseball recruits. And their (used) bloomers get auctioned off to raise money for (mostly male) sports teams. It’s all so gross.
WHAT
I really, really wish I were kidding. I’m reluctant to post where exactly I work for obvious reasons, but this type of thing is apparently not that uncommon among US universities where sports are Big Business.
WOW. I am so appalled that all my words are failing me.
Sex sells, so the male athletes on recruiting trips get their sex, whether it’s from “student ambassadors” or straight-up prostitutes (paid for by boosters so it doesn’t show up in university expenses). See this, or this, or this, or this, well, you get the idea. [TRIGGER WARNING on all of those for sexual abuse, rape, and general objectification of women.]
ETA: I’m not trying to be critical of sex work, although I have serious problems with how sex work manifests in a patriarchy. It’s the crap that goes on to entice often underage boys to come and risk their bodies for an institution that’s ostensibly devoted to higher education that I’m pissed about, and the ongoing objectification of women and what that means for their status in an academy that’s increasingly driven by sports, that really bothers me here.
“nude” is actually the DON’T and “girl about town” is the DO, so idk what is going on.
I’ve started using blue lipstick as my “girl about town” look because it makes me feel like a fucking sea witch. Somehow I suspect that would not fly at UW
I too have recently started wearing non-traditional colours! What brand(s) do you prefer?
I’ve been loving LASplash’s liquid lipsticks. They are SUPER DRYING which is a con but they look amazing and stay really well and there’s a gold color that almost feels work appropriate. I don’t know how frequently they restock though and they seem to be out of some of their best colors
NYX Wicked Lippies are fun and vibrant but I feel like they don’t stay as well? They are also creamy and not so drying and traditional sticks.
I haven’t tried any of Colourpop’s crazier colors but I tried them out recently and I am fully aboard that train now, quality is great and price is perfect!
I’ll keep going if you want me to, but one time my bf tried to subtly find out what makeup place he should get me a giftcard to by saying “hey a friend is interested in your favorite eyeshadow brand” and I missed the hint and literally wrote a four page manifesto, which overwhelmed him so much he just bought me socks and a bottle of wine.
Has anyone tried Manic Panic’s lipsticks? The thought of having one that matches my Venus Envy hair is really tempting…
I didn’t even know they made lipsticks, but I am all over trying those out now! For science!*
*How I justify all my makeup purchases.
You are my kind of people.
Also, I’m probably going to make a huge Colourpop order today – I’m feeling a bit sassy and now that I wear almost no make up to work I want fun colours to play with on the weekend!
I would totally listen forever, yes. Makeup was not a thing I did as a teen and I feel like i have a LOT of catching up to do.
For example. Is it time to replace my eyeshadows? I moved them when I moved to this place in 2007. Possibly it is time to reinvest?
I generally do NYX. I really like a bunch of Maybelline’s purples but I feel like they usually put them out as part of a season collection rather than permanently.
I just bought three Nyx matte suede lipsticks online, one of which is purple.
It’s technically for cosplay but if I like it I’mma wear it just to wear it.
I saw a woman wearing flawless navy lipstick a couple weeks ago and I almost DIED it was so fierce.
AMAZE.
Yes! I recently bought illamasqua’s navy blue and it is the best, they do some really good colours http://www.illamasqua.com/shop/lips/lipsticks/lip…
I think I’ve officially been in the South too long. That line made total sense to me. (Something flattering to your skin tone that will pop without being too attention-seeking, no bright colours but definitely something coral or berry.)
I am from the South but that did not make sense to me, so thank you for explaining it! What you’ve said makes perfect sense.
Haha, I feel like I’ve had to study people to understand how everything works (so much is unspoken! so much is vital to understand but never explained!) and I’m friends with a few former sorority girls turned chevron-loving, monogram-obsessed women so I feel like an anthropologist sometimes. I’ve been down here for about 10 years now and I finally feel like I understand most of what I’m seeing – it does make for some fantastic emails to my British friends (esp re: weddings, Southern mothers, and seersucker suits).
If your sorority girl friends are anything like my sorority girl friends, they do NOT think of themselves as “former” sorority girls, EVAR.
Girl-next-door lipstick would have made more sense to me.
I suspected as much. Perky, but unaggressive.
I feel like women in the South kept wearing neutral/rosy/berry/coral lipstick when the trends were nude or lip gloss. I still remember being told to wear lipstick as part of (southern but not deep South) sorority recruitment in 2003.
“Girl-about-town lipstick” would refer to shades adjacent to one’s actual lip color without extra gloss or sparkles or whatever. Think peachy pink versus red or purple. (Source: rode on the cheerleading bus to sporting events in college, witnessed many verbal floggings over lip color).
The keyword is ‘girl’, meaning not TOO trying too hard sexy, fresh innocent sexy, you know, like Lolita. Everything about that is so creepy I can’t stand it. It’s as if it were written by a pedophile
When I was on the high school tennis team, we’d come back from matches at other schools, and it’d be around 7 at night. We’d walk back through the gym to get to the locker room and 9 times out of 10 there were these cheer workshops going on with elementary-aged girls and my best friend and I would just be horrified, thinking “look how young they’re starting them, geez.”
Eh, I did cheerleading when I was 7/8 for a neighborhood football league (as in, we actually cheered at their games), and it was totally innocent and fun, but we also weren’t competitive at all, didn’t wear makeup, and accepted anyone who signed up and paid the fee.
I mean, it sucks ass that it was so segregated by gender (girls cheered, boys played football), and it’s probably changed since then. But I was a hyper little kid, and getting to jump around and sorta-dance and yell stuff while wearing a cute outfit was my ideal hobby.
Girl About Town is the name of a MAC lipstick shade (which I own and love) but it’s an extremely bright pink which doesn’t seem in line with the cheer aesthetic they’re promoting here?
My question is wtf are cheer shoes, because if you asked me what type of shoe that girl is wearing, I would say “I guess…. sneakers?”
Yeah I really wanna know what the difference is between “cheer shoes” and “running shoes.”
“Those aren’t spirit shoes, THESE are spirit shoes!”
“THESE… are gold!”
Cheer shoes are a specific style of sneaker, as far as I can tell.
The shoes are the one aspect here that actually makes sense to specify — unlike all of the byzantine beauty guidelines that serve only to ensure that you are the right kind of fresh-faced girl about town. Cheer shoes are basically sneakers that are lightweight for tumbling and smooth but grippy for stunts.
And aren’t they a little bit split-soled?
I think it is supposed to be “lipstick you wear while brunching and shopping with your girlfriends” instead of “date night” lipstick?
I asked this exact question when AHP posted this on FB and was promptly informed it’s a MAC shade. Sooo…the more you know, I guess?
Stila Beso for life, so I guess I’m out, anyway.
Pink. It means pink, maybe with sparkles.
I think it’s something between “girl next door” and “lady who lunches”.
I’m also confused about “distracting fingernail polish.” Unless you’re into this kind of business: https://www.google.com/search?q=3d+nail+art&s…
I can’t imagine being distracted by someone’s fingernail polish.
Actually, no, I am way too familiar with this line of argument. I went to Catholic school and anything that they arbitrarily didn’t like but couldn’t otherwise justify banning was deemed “distracting.” We once had an entire assembly about how we all needed to start buying our slacks in “true khaki” and not “tan” or “beige” or “sand,” because the multitude of pants colors was becoming distracting.
Giggling audibly at my desk, picturing the dizzying spectrum of shades of very light brown.
“We all needed to start buying our slacks in ‘true khaki’ and not ‘tan’ or ‘beige’ or ‘sand'”
That’s the whitest White People thing I’ve ever heard (and I spent a summer working in Nantucket).
Yeah they had to backtrack on that one because all the parents were furious at the idea of having to buy new clothes in the middle of the school year. But it will live on forever in my heart as one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever witnessed.
I could imagine!
(I went to a public performing arts high school where green hair was pretty much the norm, so the whole idea of a dress code is kind of exotic to me).
I think we may have had that same assembly, with some bonus scolding on how maintaining the proper width of corduroy swale was absolutely necessary in a learning environment.
This part did make sense to me. I didn’t wear polish on my fingernails for 10 years because at around age 10 I had to take my white Wet n Wild polish, which I had just put on, off on the way to my piano recital. We were not allowed to wear polish at our recitals because it might be distracting and people would be paying attention to your fingers and thinking about that instead of about the hours and hours and hours you put into your music.
When I was older I noticed most women in my college orchestra didn’t wear polish, but at least for the strings players (which I then was) that was probably because we had to cut/file our nails constantly so they wouldn’t be too long and I don’t know how to do that and not mess up your polish.
I do actually have “distracting” nail polish – I usually have some kind of nail art, and people will sometimes sidetrack the conversation to ask about it (e.g. if I’m paying for stuf while out shopping, or meeting with coworkers). But in this case I’m assuming they just mean “noticable”, like dark colours.
What the fuck is “girl about town” lipstick?
One of the makeup companies needs to come out with this color – I’m voting Kat Von D and I hope it’s a poisonous purple or green. Will go SO well with the orange spray tan and spidery fake lashes, dontcha know.
Here you go, friend
“Girl About Town Lipstick is a brightened medium-dark fuchsia pink with blue undertones. It has an amplified creme finish.”
How can lipstick have four different colors in it? Especially when, by looking at it at least, it is really just a bright pink?
The same way wine made from red grapes can taste like blackberries, woodsmoke, and leather: someone’s job is to put “it’s pink, but a different pink from that other one that’s also pink” into words.
Okay. Fair. Their job is to be the ultimate troll and bs-er.
But…blue?
There are blue undertones and orange (I think?) undertones in a lot of colors, which, to me, is more about whether that shade is warm or cool. Like there are the overall colors that are warm or cool, but within each of those colors there are differing shades that also run on the warm-cool spectrum.
For example, with reds, there are orangey and tomato-y reds on the one end and the Marilyn Monroe, occasionally pinky reds on the other.
I wear a lot of red lipstick and nailpolish so I’ve probably thought about this…too much, but it’s important to me because I don’t want to waste money and blue-undertone reds look like hot garbage on my face.
Yup, colors are either warm or cool toned (they can be neutral, I guess, but that’s harder to determine)
Think of Crayola crayons:
Red-violet is purple but with more of a red tone to it.
Blue-violet is purple but with more of a blue tone to it.
Pink lipstick with blue undertones would look better on someone whose skin is cool-toned, whereas pink lipstick with yellow undertones (can’t really have pink with red undertones, that’s just pink :D) would look better on someone with warmer skin.
Yeah basically if your lipstick isn’t going to be pure red it will need to be either a little bit orange or a little bit purple (picture the color wheel), and that goes for pinks as well.
Okay. That makes a lot of sense! I don’t buy lipstick, so I had no clue.
Allrighty, I have to admit that the MAC pink is about the color that goes with the rest of the UW “beauty” standards. Not hating on pink lippy at all, but that particular pink + bronze beachy tan + lashes + hair extensions comprises The Look.
Double the Cancon!
Today in (Feminist) History!!
On this day in 1429, a 17 year old Joan of Arc lead a French force to relieve the city of Orleans, which had been under attack by the English since October of 1428. Joan was a peasant girl who believed she was chosen by God to lead France to victory. Despite the fact that she had absolutely no military training at all, she managed to persuade crown prince Charles of Valois to let her lead the French army into the fight. With a French sortie (sudden attack) distracted the British troops on the western side, Joan of Arc entered the eastern gate unopposed. She brought troops and supplies into the city, but also in the process inspired the French, who began to fight back more passionately. The siege at Orleans was broken on May 8th. She lived long enough to see Charles crowned as King, before she was captured by Anglo-Burgundian forced and burned at the stake after being tried for witchcraft and heresy. She was only 19 at the time of her death, and was officially canonized as a saint in 1920. (Source)
Also on this day (since the main bit was a shorter one):
• The birth of Mary Brown Williams Ledbetter, better known as Brownie Ledbetter [what a great nickname!], in 1932. Brownie was a social justice crusader and political activist involved in the feminist, civil rights, environmental, and labor movements. She was focused especially in Arkansas, but supported the movements within the U.S. and worldwide.
• Na Hye-sok, a Korean poet, journalist, and artist, was born on this day in 1896. She wrote under the pseudonym of Jeongwol and was known as the first feminist writer in Korea, as well as the first female professional painter. ”
• In 1854, Ashmun Institute was founded in Pennsylvania as the first college for African-American students. Women, however, were not permitted to receive degrees until 1953.)
[I’m gonna keep posting these next week since people seem to like them? But I have the week off, woohoo, so they might get posted like, 30 mins later than I have been, gasp haha.]
Nicki Minaj has the nicest smile and I want her to smile at me.
Saying that makes me feel a bit like one of those men in the street who tells women to “Smile!” but she does have a lovely smile and I want to earn it!
Thank you for posting these; I’m really enjoying them!
If Joan of Arc hadn’t existed and someone wrote a hist fic with a 17 year old girl as leader of the medieval French army, they’d be lambasted for being unrealistic. Such an astonishing, mysterious, impressive person.
I read this book recently on her and how Yolande of Aragon kind of orchestrated that entire narrative, do recommend! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797366-the-…
Ooooh thank you for this link!!! *adds to goodreads want list*
You’re welcome!! I’m really enjoying researching them tbh.
I KNOW, right? Let’s be real, if someone wrote that as a book everyone would be like, WHAT A MARY SUE.
Are you blogging these anywhere? They are awesome and I would love to find them when I don’t get a chance to skim the comments. Either way, thanks so much for taking the time to put it together! Sincerely, longtime lurker
Not at the moment, mostly because I posted the first one on my tumblr, and a group of anti-feminist dudebros found them and reblogged them and were being nasty. And yes, I enjoyed blocking them and ignoring it, but the idea of having to deal with that EVERY time I post one is kinda stressful. Which is too bad tbh, because I’d like to be able to post them elsewhere.
>:-(
Why must men ruin EVERYTHING?
(These are all really great, by the way — thank you!)
I don’t know but it’s like they actively do it on purpose. Especially in this case because these men literally found my post by going into the “feminist” tag on tumblr and reblogging it. Like. They actively went into the tag of something they hate just to find things to be nasty on. What a wasteful, sad life.
I’m glad you like them, though! Maybe I will make a simple wordpress blog or something, just to post them every day and have them collected, you know?
Update: I made a wordpress blog to host these, too! So you can always check there daily if you want to see that day’s update. It’s: http://femhistory.wordpress.com
Thank you for this series, I am loving it so much.
When I was in eighth grade Catholic Confirmation class the teacher told us to choose our patron saints wisely because people often found that their personality/strengths later in life would be eerily similar to those of their name Saint.
Joan was an easy choice; still waiting for the valor, courage and badassery to kick in full force.
This is true! I was going for St Catherine Laboure, but ended up with St Catherine of Siena due to my teacher mis-hearing me, and wow, Catherine of Siena was definitely a way better fit to my adult personality!
Joan of Arc huzzah! I look forward to each of these posts. Here are my contributions of Joan of Arc links:
I have a fierce love for this piece by Sady Doyle with her thoughts on Joan of Arc.
Also, “Maid of Orleans” by Dark Moor is hands down my favorite Joan of Arc song. The chorus:
I’m not a man searching the glory
I’m just the hand chosen to fight
It’s a long way to our freedom
I was betrayed. I’m burning at the stake
GIVE THIS WOMAN A COLUMN
Fun fact about the Joan of Arc witchcraft trial: the English were less concerned that she claimed to have a two-way direct communication link with God and that God spoke directly to her. Instead, they were all bent out of shape because she was behaving “unnaturally” (and therefor must be possessed and/or a witch) because she was wearing men’s clothes and leading men and generally refusing the natural role of a woman. She’s also credited with creating a sort of proto-nationalism among the various French groups that comprised the army at that point, which ended up being a huge turning point in the Hundred Years’ War because it allowed for a more cohesive army. (Remember, feudalism meant you were fighting because the lord you were a vassal of, who was probably not the king, told you to. Modern nation-states and modern patriotism did not exist, nor did standing armies. As a vassal you owed a certain amount of military service to your lord per year–usually six weeks–but the army was made up of a bunch distinct groups, each of which was loyal to a different lord. Made tactics very challenging.)
Ah, thank you for the good work you do! I am loving this series!
With regard to that NYT piece (which is indeed great!), I’ve realized lately that one of the things I like about Brooklyn Nine Nine is its ability to combine workplace comedy with what look to be pretty typical 30- and 40-something lives in NYC. Holt is fairly wealthy, and Gina’s setup is a bit confusing, but the others’ apartments and dwellings feel realistic for cops, not too glamorous.
Ugh, I miss it already.
And we can see that Holt has family money — his mother is a judge! Kevin’s career and affect would leave me unsurprised if he also came from money.
Jake is in extreme debt and extremely financially irresponsible, so everything about his finances makes sense to me.
Also notable is the fact that Jake is in “crippling debt,” outstandingly so, and while it’s mostly played for laughs I don’t recall a whole lot of other shows even coming near that topic, period.
I was actually going to bring that up, and one thing about Gina is there’s that episode where she ends up renting out her apartment to Jake and getting a better one, and when he’s like “How do you have this apartment, how can you afford any of this” she’s like “I have saved every possible penny and the only reason I stay in this shitty apartment is because it’s dirt cheap”. So she ends up with a better apartment but there’s actually a reason for it.
And that something that I love about Gina, for all that she’s played for laughs/portrayed as having skewed priorities her shit is really together. You can be a woman with vocal fry who talks in abbreviations and play kwazy cupcakes and still know how to manage your damn finances/life and it’s great.
Yeah! Gina is totally the kind of person who has a ton of awesome clothes, but it’s because she stalks sales and thrifts and probably has created an exchange network with a bunch of other women where they can all give each other clothes they don’t want anymore. She puts work into it!
The Burgomaster and I just finished watching the two seasons that are out on disc (we are Those People) and are in love with Brooklyn Nine Nine. Missing it with you!
I am also one of Those People! I am watching it every week as it airs on E4 (in the UK); in between seasons I just have to wait for it to return. (S1 is on Netflix, but nothing else as yet.)
We just got s3 on Netflix in Canada and I burned through it so fast, ugh, fave!
That episode where Gina explains to Jake how to money works was so good!
I’m not sure I agree, actually, although I also love the show.
It’s not that I think that Jake or Amy have unreasonable living situations, but that neither of them seems to actually make any life choices based on their income. Jake’s relative squalor comes more from his slacker-slob lifestyle than anything else. Amy seems to buy what she wants, but is a relatively modest person. Boyle must be spending all his money on food, he’s never locked out from exotic truffles, etc.
Yeah, this is a good point, although this leads me to wonder how outwardly obvious the connection between my life choices and my income. (Do I need an “is” at the end of that sentence? Let’s say a tentative no.)
I’ll buy that Boyle only uses his income for food, given that he used to live in his ex-wife’s basement and he only seems to own one outfit (maybe multiple copies of the same one).
His pants are so cheap they chafe off his leg hair!
I agree with this. While I buy that Boyle spends lavishly on food and is cheap with everything else, we’ve never seen anyone really struggle with money as far as I can tell.
**MILD SPOILER FOR SEASON 3 FINALE**
Also, Rosa’s apartment? I get that the whole point of the joke is that she lives in a surprisingly tasteful and well-furnished place, but she’s apparently wealthy enough to a) not be bothered by half her living room being destroyed, and b) to (presumably) break her lease and move at a moment’s notice whenever a coworker intrudes on her living space. Also, c) a panic room?
Another show that is VERY (to the point of agonising) realistic about work is Peep Show. JLB Credit is *everyone’s* depressing office job. Even when it gets surreal, it’s still realistic.
God, Peep Show is amazing. I love those two. And yes, their work lives are totally realistic, and they live in a realistic apartment for their (well, one of their) incomes.
“Goodbye, Mark Corrigan, credit manager. Hello, Mark Corrigan, senior credit manager!”
Oh God, yes. That was a depressingly accurate picture of a number of places I’ve worked. (With a lot of adorable details, like people’s attachment to their tea/ coffee mugs).
I immediately thought of B99 too, as well as Better Call Saul and Shameless.
Agree. I wish they’d have brought up Raising Hope also but I don’t think that got very good ratings.
My favorite is Rosa’s place, because it totally goes against what you think you know about her. Also, the fact that she rents it under an assumed name…and that she smiles and chats all the time with her neighbors…and that “Rosa Diaz” may or may not be her real name…all utterly delights me.
Yeah I think a lot about what kind of jobs people on TV (and also in movies) have. It’s a weird thing because obviously you don’t want a show where most people are like, working — I’m not going to tune in for an hour-long drama if thirty minutes of it is like…moving an image around in photoshop and then sending it to your boss to see if he likes it more or less than when it was a half a centimeter to the left.
But it also gives us art with a wildly-disproportionate example of what life actually consists of.
i’m p sure TV magic could make most fields of skilled work at least as interesting to watch as ‘your shitty neighbors’ endless cycle of relationship drama’ and that’s the staple of like 90% of shows, it’d just take some love and knowledge of the subject matter while the latter demands only drama
yeah as I was writing that I definitely did think that I would like to see an episode of a TV comedy that is just thirty minutes of one person sending the same ad copy to their boss over and over
Will write this from personal experience.
It’s the kind of thing that would be hilarious/cringey but also too real? Sometimes I like that TV comedies aren’t so real. It makes them a little more escapist to me.
That’s why I have a hard time watching The Office now that I actually work in one. Many things are wildly exaggerated, yes, but others (esp the first couple seasons) are way too painfully real to make watching it enjoyable for me.
I was about to say, isn’t that kind of the premise of The Office?
I mean I’m an actual copywriter and I watched the hell out of Mad Men, but then I don’t live in a stylish New York apartment or drink at restaurants where the bartenders wear tuxedos or spend my free time trying to conceal my shadowy past.
This is a lot like the fictional TV show my newspaper colleagues and I liked to imagine we were starring in, called COPYDESK! In which editors dramatically call for missing sports copy and heatedly debate semi-colon usage and valiantly try to get a headline to fit on deadline.
I want to be played by Parker Posey.
I think about this a lot too. Every time I watch New Girl I just tell myself that it must all take place on a Saturday morning. How else are they all hanging out at the loft?
YES. A bartender who somehow has every weekend off to go on quirky camping trips is not making enough money to live in SoCal. Even with 3+ roommates.
That apartment is ENORMOUS. Even with 3-4 people living there or whatever.
Also is it just me or have all the characters gotten dumber and more badly behaved as it goes on? Especially in the past couple of episodes it seems like every character is being sort of belligerent and awful (aggressively pursuing a romantic relationship with a coworker who already said she wasn’t interested, threatening the owner of a rival business, etc) and somehow everyone puts up with it?
I hadn’t noticed that specifically, but I think you’re right. This season has dropped significantly in quality overall, IMO. The latest Jess romance is not interesting to me at all and the rest of the story lines feel pretty meh.
Was just saying this yesterday. I feel like up till this season they had developed a really good flow+chemistry, but this season has felt very stop-and-start and unmotivated. They definitely did not help themselves by doing that whole Megan Fox thing, and then as soon as I started to get used to her Zooey came back, and now I feel like they’re not sure what to do with themselves.
I did really enjoy the most recent episode though, and am thinking that weed+Anne of Green Gables might be New Girl’s most brilliant contribution to modern entertainment. I have never been more jealous of Jess & Cece’s friendship.
he’s not aggressively pursuing her, though, is he? just sort of wistfully thinking about it? he tried dating other people etc etc (this obviously does not include the most recent episode which i will not spoil if you haven’t seen it but does i think work to dispel the idea that he’s stalking her or something)
What makes it weird for me, I think, is that TV characters’ lives share a lot with *my* life, but in ways that I recognize are pretty rare and not representative of, well, anything.
In the most extreme case, there’s Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. We are both Jewish lawyers who went to prestigious undergraduate universities, lived in New York, then got jobs in big, stressful law firms, which made our mental illnesses obvious, and then decided to re-evaluate that lifestyle and transition to something easier that had the possibility of making us happy.
How many people does that describe? But Rebecca is far more of a typical TV character in 2016 than, say, Archie Bunker.
Speaking of TV finances, Rebecca’s spending habits stress me out SO MUCH. They even dedicated a whole episode to it, and then in the finale she was still blowing $2000 on wedding gifts and I was like REBECCA NOOOOOO I THOUGHT YOU LEARNED THIS LESSON ALREADY!
You mean you were both working hard at New York jobs, making dough but they made you blue?
(The spoken word theme with Paula and her husband was my favorite scene ever.)
Yeah, I think on some level I believed as a teen that the working world was going to be all Hilarious Hi-Jinks in the tea room or something. In retrospect, I’m glad it’s not like TV.
When I was having a hard time finding jobs out of college, ’cause the economy was terrible, it was hard for me to watch any rom-com type movies, even if they might make me laugh, because I’d be thinking “ugh, she’s like 27, how the f is she already in this high-powered job, particularly considering that her outfits are not appropriate for the corporate culture? Did she just flirt her way up ’cause she’s model-pretty? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?”
Now that I’m 30 and unemployed, watching anything with characters my age or younger than me who have wildly unrealistic living situations/spending habits/jobs stresses me out. Also, any show where a character is stressed about being unemployed for MAYBE a week or two and then magically has a job before the next billing cycle even begins with minimal effort.
Oh yes, I constantly yell at characters for making poor business decisions on a whim. One of my favorite critiques of Fifty Shades of Grey (and I have so many!), courtesy of tumblr:
“YOU CAN’T DO THAT
how did he ever succeed in business”
You CAN, if you’re important enough. The pres of my org has been known to cancel/reschedule meetings with very little notice (though generally only with internal staff, I don’t think he’d do that to a client). I can definitely see a scenario of “Mr. Grey’s previous meeting is running over, can we reschedule?” (not that I want to defend Christian Grey’s choices, because they are generally Not Good)
Well yes, bosses can do what they want to their employees. But I don’t know of any company that can afford to treat an important client that way because the boss isn’t done with his sex game yet. (I have no idea which it is in that particular scene.)
God I fucking hate our (UK) government so much, what’s the cause of poverty for a lot of people? Benefit sanctions. Benefit sanctions are a fucking scandal based on some stupid, made up idea that everyone’s trying to game the system, when the only people trying to game the system are benefits advisors who are looking for any excuse to sanction someone because they have been given TARGETS they are given TARGETS for taking money away from people who have NOTHING. A friend of mine ended up waiting two hours at the job centre because her advisor was late, if she had been late by two minutes, she would have been sanctioned. She’s currently facing sanctions because they’re telling her to stop doing the college course THEY TOLD HER TO DO so she can get full time work instead. It’s broken and horrific and the coalition government conveniently changed the election laws when they came to power in 2010 so we can’t even call an early election, we’ve got at least four more years of this shit, probably more since they gerrymandered voting registration recently to keep themselves in power forever.
Honestly I wish I believed in hell so I could wish that anyone who’s ever been in a cabinet position for this government rots there.
Whoa, I did not know that about the election laws change. That’s scary. That’s like the extreme gerrymandering and ID laws here in the US that are designed to keep the Republicans in power. I had no idea that was going on over there.
Yep, I mean it’s becoming increasingly obvious that first past the post doesn’t work, but it works for the people who make the laws so… tough luck.
100% with you on ID laws, but it’s worth noting that at least here in the US, both sides gerrymander where and when they can. (Of course, once once side starts doing it, then there’s no real downside to the other side doing it, which is how we end up with things like this: https://newrepublic.com/article/109938/marylands-…
Oh, yes, I know both sides gerrymander, but not to the same degree, and not with the same effect.
Some examples: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/red… http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerryman…
While I totally agree with almost everything 30LitresOf has to say, the change to the election terms is arguably better. Previously the sitting government had the power to set the date of the election, and they could use it to their benefit (for example, if you get a momentary economic bubble you can quickly call an election while people are feeling good about the status quo). The idea of having set five year terms was to make it so that all parties could anticipate in the same way. It’s still possible for the House of Commons to call an early election, though – just this is usually unlikely if there is a majority government.
The change to voter registration is straight up disenfranchisement, though. It means that a lot of the people who would be most likely to vote against this government (for example, young people) now have to reregister, and there’s been almost no advertisement of the change. (I’m actually pretty disappointed in the National Union of Students, who could have done a big push to let students know since this is a group disproportionately affected by the change. I work in a university and have seen nothing from them.)
Everyone who advocates cutting benefits should be forced to try out living on benefits for a period of time. Complete with all the form-filling, bureaucracy and capricious ‘rules’. Then they’d shut up about people supposedly ‘gaming the system’.
It is horrifically frustrating knowing that nothing will change while this government is in power. I really do believe that the destitution and humiliation experienced by benefits claimants is a feature in Cameron et al’s eyes, rather than a bug. They seem to think that if it’s REALLY UNPLEASANT to be poor, people will just… decide not to be.
Oh yeah absolutely. It’s that stupid ‘scrounger’ mentality, that people would rather be on benefits than in work, when that’s not how poverty works at all.
I work in housing and one of our tenants put in a claim because has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and wrote about how voices tell him to jump in front of trains and buses, and he was denied JSA and declared fit for work. Honestly the only way I can comprehend this kind of crap is that this government is made up of complete fucking monsters.
I know someone who quit her job at the job centre because she just couldn’t handle how horrible you had to be.
I was thinking yesterday about how the Tories have managed to get The Evening Standard on side, meaning that they essentially have Tory-biased news and opinion being distributed to Londoners for free every weekday. At least if you buy The Times or the Telegraph you generally know what side of the political spectrum you’re aiming for, but the Standard is so insidious because anyone and everyone picks it up.
Mississippi: proof that the states are truly the laboratory for democracy
…in the sense that they create horrifying monsters they can’t control?
And that at least one of those laboratories is a meth lab.
Hands up who can’t pull off the bubbly blonde sports bra-booty shorts-cheer shoes look
*the earth itself forms a rocky hand and raises it to the heavens*
I’m sitting here wishing I had more hands because raising two is not sufficient.
Seriously, I got to hair must be down and felt the rage bubbling up. What are the people with unmanageable hair supposed to do? Trust me, it doesn’t look good down except for the first day, and I’m not washing it every day, because then it will never actually dry.
I mean I bet you tickets to Hamilton that ‘curled or straight’ hair does not mean naturally curly hair is in the ‘do’ category
The other thing is that like…wouldn’t you want your hair back for cheerleading? This is an incredibly athletic sport with flips and turns and dance moves and such. Why would you want your hair in your face while doing that?
Oh right, THE PATRIARCHY is why.
This was my thought, too! I work out nearly every day but NEVER with my hair down — that would a) be a constant distraction from whatever activity I’m doing and 2) be almost a guarantee that I would at some point fall down or run into something/someone.
Also it would stick to my neck and give me a horrible rash that I KNOW the cheer coaches would not find attractive.
Yeah, I was in gymnastics for 11 years, and having my hair down would have been a safety hazard. Honestly, even braids were a problem for me. A braid clipped up so it wouldn’t smack across my face and knock a contact lens out (true story, happened in multiple meets) was the only way to go.
I mean, it’s 4:30 on a Friday and I am still in my underwear and haven’t even brushed my hair today and I’m already on my second beer…
*raises hand*
New aesthetic: Embody all the UW dance team “Don’ts” at the same time
I was just thinking, I need to see a cheer squad whose look is based solely on those. Glorious purple hair, tattoos, and Slut Road lipstick.
I think that happened in one of the 527 direct to dvd Bring it On sequels!
There was a dancer on the NBA All Star telecast (I think she was in a Utah Jazz shirt, but I don’t know if they send the actual dancers to All Star weekend?) that had a purple streak in her hair and some vaguely goth makeup – I saw her briefly in a cutaway and was like WHO IS THIS WOMAN WE NEED TO BE FRIENDS
If you embody all the don’ts at once, I think you end up with Lemonade.
That, or Cyndi Lauper. Either is a good look to go for.
I’m thinking the official Toast uniform should be as follows:
–Dark smokey eyes
–Boy George-esque quantities of blush
–Rainbow nail polish
–Brass knuckles
–High anime pigtails
–High waisted shorts
–Oversized cardigan
–Running shoes
High waisted shorts, running shoes, and oversized cardigan is my aspirational look.
(Really, it’s the French Olympic uniform, but I will never be that chic. This is more reasonable.)
Can I wear my new oversized sweatshirt with a picture of the devil eating somebody instead of a cardigan? I want men to know I don’t hesitate to devour my enemies and use their lost souls to strengthen my power.
Also, it’s super comfy.
Can we have some alternatives to the running shoes for people of various persuasions?
Festival Toasties: clogs
Dirtbag Toasties: barefoot with ankle hemp bracelets and a defiant attitude.
Slut Road Toasties: whatever helps you travel down Slut Road faster, my friend.
Classic Hollywood Lesbian Toasties: any shoes Lauren Bacall wears in Young Man with a Horn
Monk Toasties: sandals or barefoot with no ankle bracelets
I’m going to work my brand new orange pointy-toed Nine West heels into this somehow. I tend to dress in jeans-and-a-tee-but-with-heels aesthetic, I feel it goes well with my undercut hair and tattoos.
Someone needs to embody all of them for a day and write a piece for The Toast (like those Buzzfeed experiments where they’ll live a certain way for a day).
I would do it but I don’t know what “trendy colors” means in the context of hair.
It means anything but blonde.
Mostly what struck me about this list is how perfectly it lines up with the audition scene in “Bring It On” with Kirsten Dunst on one side and Eliza Dushku on the other. And clearly we would all want to be Eliza Dushku, isn’t that the whole reason that movie exists?
“clearly we would all want to be Eliza Dushku, isn’t that the whole reason that movie exists?”
There is also the “wanting to date Eliza Dushku” contingent. (And the both/and crowd.)
I just assumed that was necessarily a “both/and”
If we’re talking Olympics kit, Tom Daley’s Stella McCartney designed dick ribbon really takes the biscuit, I feel.
http://www.espn.co.uk/rugby/story/_/id/15411575/t…
Those are some gloriously tiny shorts. I couldn’t look away.
Are those technically even shorts? Discuss…
Those are in no way shorts, they are extremely skimpy gonch!
Perhaps banana hammock is the mot juste?
I never thought I would say this, but, bless you Stella. What a wonderful gift for this Friday morning!
It’s like when people do those ‘If male superheroes were posed like female superheroes’ illustrations, but for real!
“Takes the biscuit” is a good thing, right?
Technically it’s not, because it basically means taking the piss, as in taking liberties, but in this case I mean, like, it’s so silly it’s impressive.
The silliness is not the only impressive thing going on there…
I love how the diver is like, “If I flex my impressive abs and thrust out my chest, everyone will look at my upper torso, right? …Right?”
And the tennis player or whatever he is on the left is just, “fine. i give up. stare at my crotch.”
Rugby. Those are rugby shorts, the finest gift clothing ever gave to thighs.
Not coincidentally, rugby is the finest gift sport ever gave to thighs.
I think AFL (Australian Football League) is a rivial Great Thighs sport tbh.
Plus also biceps. Who needs sleeves when there can be biceps.
Oh… that is quite nice. I have to say I was hoping for an actual ribbon with a bow, though.
‘He added: “I was heavily involved in the way the trunks were going to be cut, to ensure you’re all in place when doing your dives and nothing goes awry.”‘
What a great way to put it.
The “everyone is vaguely upper middle class” thing bothers me SO much, especially as someone who grew up blue collar (real talk: Roseanne is the only one who gets it right). Its lazy, a way to just inform us that characters are poor or not-rich without having to sacrifice costume and set design or have to discuss anything too ‘politcal’ or ‘controversal’. Somehow these people never wear the same clothes twice, have all the latest tech, their teenagers have cars (looking at you, Pretty in Pink), ect. They also never seem to run into the issues that actual working class people do (money, maybe never being able to retire, lack of good educational opportunities for their kids, job loss that actually has an effect, medical debt, access to proper reproductive health resources ect.)
yes, this came up on here somewhere like yesterday and I said pretty much the same thing – my folks would say as much growing up, that Roseanne was the only show that depicted something remotely close to our real lives. And when she won the lottery well, it was just horribly done BUT winning the lottery is the dream for people at that class level. My Dad has always bought lottery tickets even though I think he understand that he will never ever win more than he puts into it. But it’s a compelling dream!
I just started watching Broad City and I appreciate that you see them at their jobs in most episodes, and they have tiny apartments. My partner loves Friends and I could never get into it – it didn’t make any sense to me that those people could afford to live at all in Manhattan. Ross maybe, but the rest of them were not well employed enough for those apartments.
Yeah, and I LOVE that they repeat clothing on Broad City. Abbi’s blue mini dress shows up multiple times and everyone understand that it’s like her one really nice outfit.
I love the return of her Challahback Girl t-shirt
oh, the one she just bought (as I said, I’m still in season 1) and wore to the chichi party where they hooked up with the DJs and I’m pretty sure the one she was with is the same guy who was Badger on Breaking Bad.
What season where she won the lottery? I don’t remember such a ridiculous and premise changing thing ever happening, and surely no network would approve it! 😉 /s
Yea, I never know with shows set in NYC. I’ve never lived in a huge mega-city like that, so it always seems like people live way better than they should on TV, but I don’t have a lot to compare it to.
Even Parks and Recreation had April (an intern!) wear a lot of like, $200 blouses from Bloomingdales (I know, because I As Seen On Tv-ed it). Now, maybe her parents had a lot of money, but I doubt they were still buying clothes for their married, adult daughter, and she worked in local municipal politics. Girl should have had like, one blazer and three blouses. (I love that show so much, though, I can forgive it).
it was the very last season, which was just really strange. and it literally ended with “and it was all a dream” except that it was all a story written by Roseanne to deal with, like, not having money and Dan dying. I think Roseanne must have started cracking then, leading her to be the conspiracy-theorist TERF she is today. Sigh.
the conspiracy-theorist TERF she is today
Whaaat? Ugh, Roseanne, you’re breaking my heart!
do you really want to know?
If not don’t click.
I lost a lot of respect for her after reading this piece by her in NYMag which was occasioned by Charlie Sheen being fired from Two and a Half Men; it was intended as a defense of herself and what happened on Roseanne, except that it has the exact opposite effect. (Here’s a reaction from sitcom veteran Ken Levine.) It’s a damn shame, because those early seasons of Roseanne were so great.
Parks & Rec was in a really weird place, wasn’t it? All about jobs, never about money. I remember plenty of jokes about how badly everyone was paid but it never showed.
April owned two homes by the end of the show!
I mean…my uncle in small-town Indiana owns three. He has an HVAC repair business and sometimes gets paid in goats.
(Haven’t watched Parks & Rec, so this may not be relevant at all.)
You know, I love goats and I can’t even imagine the day I will be able to own ONE home. I’m a teacher in a big city, obviously I chose the wrong career. I should have been an HVAC repairperson in Indiana. I’m not even being remotely sarcastic.
Is he hiring? *sigh*
I think April’s two houses are more realistic than Leslie’s wardrobe.
Yea, I kind of give it a pass because they show obviously tries to build this bucolic, wholesome, Mayberry kind of vibe, and everyone being well-dressed, well-groomed and living in nice places sort of fits into that vibe. Realistic isn’t exactly what they are aiming for anyway, I don’t think.
Totally, it’s not a crticism, because I see what they’re doing and they did it well. It’s weird but at least it’s up front about, we’re taking away a thing most people worry about, so our characters can do what they want.
Tbf though, medium town Indiana is more affordable than NYC/ Other big metropolitan areas
Expert thrifter?
(yeah, probably not.)
I think Malcom in the Middle did a pretty decent job too, but it’s been so long since I’ve watched it I don’t know if I’m remembering accurately.
I know in one episode of Friends they mention Monica’s apartment is rent controlled, and I feel like there are a few references to Chandler having a high-paying job but still.
Malcolm in the Middle was pretty great, although I dropped it after a few seasons because it seemed like Hal and Lois were starting to chew the scenery a bit. They seem to have a fairly nice house, but money did pop up occasionally. (I used to wonder where the money for Francis’ military academy came from, though.)
I bet Hal was dealing drugs
Lots of people have theorized that Breaking Bad is a sequel to MitM. It may have even influenced Walter’s choice of partner in crime.
wha… uhh… is that not the same person? lol
I never watched breaking bad, however someone told me that if you watch the last episode of Malcolm and then start up Breaking Bad, they made a point to link the episodes/shows together.
I didn’t see the last episode of MitM, but I don’t think that it’s literally true; it’s more of a reflection on the lack of detail of Walter’s life before the events of BB.
I love “Malcolm in the Middle”, and I felt like it was quite realistic. (Especially the one with all the boys going through the same pair of hand-me-down pants, and how Dewey fantasizes about THE PERFECT PANTS that have never been worn by anyone else).
I only remember one episode, where Lois is fighting a ticket for running a red light, and she’s just flamingly furious because she didn’t do it, then she watches the video clearly showing she did it, and she says calmly “the video is wrong.”
Omg, just watched that one with my kids and at the very end it ends up she IS right, she was reacting to a car that pulled out in front of her and she didn’t seethatbpart of the video!
And the new mattress!
Yeah, I thought of MitM as fairly decent with regards to money – they probably had less of a burden when Francis emancipated himself (the military school would have been expensive, but perhaps it balanced out if they weren’t having to constantly pay for repairs etc. on stuff he’d broken?) but with medical bills and Reese repeating a year, plus another baby; they probably would have been even poorer by the end of the series. (I think Malcolm and Reese were kicking in money by series end, at least.)
Yeah, in very early episodes of Friends they state that the apartment is technically in Monica’s grandmother’s name and is rent controlled and they have to sort of pretend that the grandmother still is a resident there, and that’s part of why she can afford it.
I think in Friends they made a perfunctory attempt to explain why Monica and Rachel had such a nice apartment – something to do with an illegal sublet from her Monica’s grandmother, I think. The other apartment was more normal-looking, but still huge for the Village, and it was indicated that Chandler was paying all the rent, because Joey rarely had consistent work.
I remember there was one episode where the six had an argument about money, with the three poorer ones accusing the three wealthier ones of always making plans they couldn’t afford, but I don’t think there was much of an effort to talk about money after that.
and I guess a latte didn’t cost fifty bucks back in the 90s.
They brought up that it was in their grandmother’s name several times throughout the run of the show. I liked that it was mentioned a lot, not just as a throw away, but I cringed when Monica offered that lovely, rent-controlled place to Ross and he turned it down!
Still doesn’t explain the clothes, though.
Joey was essentially Chandler’s kept man, I think at one point they calculate the debt there, and it was at least 20k.
I am a little young for Roseanne but the show that feels most like my working class, blue collar family from the recent past was Raising Hope. I liked that they showed stuff like making choices about what appliance to fix this year and how the family couldn’t afford to go on vacation and how people without money rely on family connections so much more for support and so on. I know some people felt like that show was punching down but I liked it a lot.
I loved that show–the first season was great, even if not all the humor was landing perfect, it did give a correct sense of money. (Loved when to get into the preschool they said “We live next to the dangerous mall! We’re so poor we have to live next to the dangerous mall!” Somehow that combination of lived experience and trying to use it to your advantage–even though it basically never works, because there really is no advantage to not having money, no matter what people with money say–seemed very true to me. And funny!)
But then in the second season they TURNED DOWN a WORKING TOLIET because it was like, from someone? That just seemed SO unrealistic and a betrayal of working-class, middle-class experience. It’s a TOILET. Have you live without a toilet that works consistently? It. Is. Hell. That they would UNINSTALL a working toilet because it was a gift is completely unrealistic. I get that different working-class families see gifts/charity/etc differently, but as far as I know that’s supposed to be the only toilet in the house! If you can get a nice toilet, you take the nice toilet.
Ross is a professor. Definitely could not afford that apartment on his own.
I somehow got the impression that Ross and Monica’s parents were helping him out. I’m not sure why I thought that, but the show always pointed out how their parents favored him so I guess I assumed that financial help was part of that.
Interesting…there’s a whole plot thing about how Monica does not get/want help from her parents, and how their parents carefully taught them to save 10% of every paycheck, so it would be kind of weird if Ross was also taking financial help from them.
The show relies heavily on the idea that Ross is the “responsible” one who’s done everything right in his life and that’s part of why his parents favor him, but as I get older I’m more and more perplexed by the idea that the show holds him up as the ideal of responsible adulthood. Ross: the guy who got a doctorate in paleontology to work at a museum, lost his job at the museum because of an anger issue, got a faculty job at a university (which like — I don’t have an earth science degree, but is that really how the field works? You work at a museum for a few years, get fired, and then just luck into a tenure-track university job!?), got tenure within a few years despite “all [his] recent articles hav[ing] been widely discredited,” and then slept with an UNDERGRADUATE IN HIS CLASS (along with some other pretty professionally reprehensible stuff, like giving a student an A for having a crush on him, abandoning a colleague at a restaurant, etc etc). Like. No. None of these are good life choices with any hope of a successful outcome (apart from the tenure, which just seems impossible).
Ok, I mean, sorry, I know we all know Friends is ridiculous and unrealistic and racist and suuuuuper homophobic. But sometimes I start thinking about how bizarre its ethics really are and it makes me sad because it was such a formative part of my teenage life D-:
Ross is terrible, all around, full stop. He makes my skin crawl.
Yeah, this always alienated me from mainstream TV and movies.
Oh man, the realism of Roseanne was so freaking important. That show went a long way in making me feel normal. In its depiction of finances, in its use of loving sarcasm, in the fact that the actors weren’t all Hollywood beautiful people. So much about that show is still so close to my heart, even though I haven’t rewatched it in awhile.
Jane the Virgin addresses a lot of this stuff. Jane still enjoys privileges that a lot of working class people wouldn’t, but part of that is having a rich baby daddy and a celebrity father, and they talk about money and class and making hard decisions on the show. The clothes that she and Xo wear are probably not realistic, but they really do talk about what can we afford, etc. as part of the show on a regular basis.
Yes! The Rogelio plotline early this season is super relevant to that, and so is Jane’s continual conflict over whether to accept money from Rafael. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the most recent episode also addresses the difference in financial situations.
They doooo address it, but also do Xo and Alba have jobs?? I mean I know Xo is pursuing her singing career but is Jane literally the only person in that house who works (and she’s a part-time waitress)? I’ve been feeling unsatisfied with the way the show pays lip service to income disparity (all the struggle over Michael’s job etc) but doesn’t totally answer all its own questions…..
Xo has a semi-regular singing gig at a restaurant and also teaches dance classes to little girls. Plus, they’ve been living in that house for something like 40 years, so unless they had to mortgage it at some point it’s probably paid off, which is a big expense that that they would no longer have to worry about. (Note: I’m a couple of episodes behind, so I don’t know what the situation is with their house right now in light of recent water damage.)
They show them shopping at Target and honestly a lot of the stuff they wear you can actually buy at Target.
I also value Shameless for this (though I’m not up on the most recent seasons), because that’s the only show on right now were class permeates everything the way it did on Roseanne. And in a way that’s even more valuable for me personally because my family was not by and large the noble, hardworking poor. They are drug addicts and alcoholics and often pretty sketchy; seeing a bunch of kids struggle with that kind of family legacy without being dismissive of their background is really important. I mean my Dad was basically Frank at certain points of his life. Lip’s discomfort at his rich college was so real feeling. It can be cartoonish or HBO-gross, but I still don’t think there is anything else on TV right now quite like it.
Wasn’t pretty in pink about rich kids though? In my (extremely not upper-class and not-rich) school, a ton of the kids in about the upper half of our economic spectrum had cars – plus the working class wing who had the sense to buy a cheap car and work on it.
Why doesn’t everyone get fingertip-length shorts?
ok i read that Quora poem and now think I need to breathe into a bag for a bit
i will [finally, finally] be living silicon valley after having spend nearly two decades here; can confirm that this is an alarmingly accurate poem
I misread “Quora” as “Qream” and thought, would someone who drinks Qream really be that logical in the first place?
My hometown tried to ban shisha smoking (and the selling of paraphernalia, too). It failed, but ugh. Such bullshit. I love it when politics combine two of my favorite things: Racism and Prohibition!
My neighborhood has several hookah bars, which tend to be the locations are various shootings and fights. My neighbors are up in arms and want the places closed, and this article provided a really important perspective that is DEFINITELY missing from the conversation here. Perhaps if I am brave, I will link this article the next time the topic comes up!
Sending you TONS of bravery through the interwebs!
Ahhhhhhh this gif makes me so happy every time.
Well I mean to be fair Prohibition combined racism and prohibition so (targeting minority ethnic groups and immigrants and their “drinking culture” i.e. their community centers).
Sansa should consider rolling in a dead fish for her next project! Shuddering from experience, it takes more than a few measly baths to put a dent in THAT stink. My dog has never been prouder or more pleased with herself than she was on that day.
Another possible next-level upgrade is to roll in compost and then bring a rotting animal corpse back for your waiting human.
The old compost-corpse 1-2, eh? Points for both stinkiness and alliteration!
The dog we had when I was a little kid used to go down to the beach and alternately eat and roll in the alewives washing up on our beach. She was never happier; my parents were rarely less happy. That was for serious, some next-level stench, and once she started eating the dead fish, it wasn’t just a matter of bathtime for dog. Dog fish breath. O_O
Amazing! I can only hope that she eventually figured out how to do dog fish breath burps, and so pushed the very borders of what dog stinkiness can achieve.
We have lots of chickens, so sometimes the eggs pile up and we don’t always manage them well. At one point there were some that had gone slightly off, but not enough for us to notice it yet. Enough for the dog to notice though! He got up on the table and ate like two dozen eggs, including the stinky ones, and then he had rotten egg barf and diarrhea all over the carpet in the living room. FANTASTIC.
I am in awe. Truly, your dog is the Mozart of stinkiness.
A huskie I had as a child got her dumb ass sprayed by a skunk TWICE. Nothing, but nothing gets that smell out. Not baths, not vinegar, not douche, not tomato juice. The only reason my mom didn’t give up and shave her was that it was late fall in mountainous Northern New Jersey and the fool creature would have frozen to death.
Dumb? Or dazzlingly clever and with an exquisite sense of seasonal timing?
my dog got skunked right in the face and we had to do three hydrogen peroxide+ baking soda+dish soap treatments before he smelled sort of okay again.
it was horrible
Oh my gosh, the skunk reek. My friend’s Newfoundland got skunked and her vet recommended tomato juice rinses to start. She went to Sam’s Club/Costco/similar to get the largest possible quantities of tomato juice. Lo and behold, it wasn’t on sale but Ragu was. My friend thought, “eh, tomatoes, same diff” and bought a case of spaghetti sauce. So the Newfie and my friend spent hours in the tub, with Newfie alternately reveling in the massage/attention and trying to eat the sauce, while Friend was laughing/crying/gagging on skunk smell and knowing the whole experience at least had the makings of a good story.
Hahahahahaha I am giggling so much over here, that is an excellent story.
This is wonderful!
The happiest dog I’ve ever seen was playing keep-away with his owners and 2/3 of a carp carcass.
Bonus stinkiness points for fractional fish, alliteration, and assonance – what a happy dog he must have been!
It was made even more hilarious by the amusement of the entire rest of the beach, vs the indignant irritation of the owners.
Shhh, don’t give her any ideas.
My dog once rolled in sewage. She was thrilled. It was VILE.
A+ stinking!
I love how most dogs will delicately sniff other dogs’ poops but otherwise leave them alone because yuck. Yet anything that emerged from the back end of a fox, horse, badger, bird, or, sigh, human (don’t ask how I know…) is fair game for eating or rolling in.
Dogs – how is your own species’ poop so disgusting but the poop of every other species so fragrant and/or delicious? How does that work?
I read somewhere that they are attracted to strong, exotic smells of all kinds and roll in them to bring them back to the pack as useful information about potential food sources. So, they are being good dogs, literally, doing something they are pretty hard-wired to do and we get mad at them about it and purge all the delicious, delicious info. They worked SO HARD to share. Humans and dogs have some agenda conflicts, for sure…
Dunno, my friend’s dog gleefully eats her other dog’s poop.
My dogs do not eat dog poop, just every other kind of poop. One of my sister’s dogs, on the other hand, will eat any poop. This dog has been known to poop and then turn right around and eat it. Efficient, yes, but so, so gross.
My dog manages to find/roll-in human feces on average twice a summer…we live near a green-belt that features drinking parties and folks sleeping rough (in summer!). Once she did it the same morning my cat had killed a mouse and smeared its blood over every cm of my kitchen linoleum…had to clean all of the grossness before work. Was not a happy pet owner that day, I tell ya…
I learned what love was the day I first cleaned human poop off my deliriously happy dog’s beard and moustache and then had to pick up the rest once it had travelled, not particularly effectively, through her digestive system. You have my sympathies.
Once, when we were camping, my dog rolled in beaver shit…it’s oily AND sticky…we had to bathe her in the river with camp soap and tie her up to prevent an immediate re-roll. We had camped near a beaver lodge. At five the next morning, I woke to the unmistakable sounds of a dog about to barf and DOVE to unzip the tent so she wouldn’t puke beaver shit all over the inside of the tent/our sleeping bags. I succeeded in getting her out in time, but broke the tent zipper of course. The next night we were eaten alive by mosquitoes. She’s a great dog, though…
My dog just consumed, rolled in, and then slept upon cat vomit. He really dislikes baths, poor thing.
It is a humbling thing when two species cooperate to achieve next-level stink.
What the hell is girl-about-town lipstick?
I see others have the same question…
Toasties, I got my first Toast Post this week and it was lovely & totally made my day. The only wrinkle: no return address, so no way to thank my new one-sided pen pal. Instead, imma just go ahead & thank you collectively for being the awesome, kind community that you are, making this kind of thing possible. All the internet hugs!!
I got mine too and it was so exciting to get REAL MAIL! (it was opened though, which made me wonder – am I on some kind of watch list? do the border authorities think I’m getting drugs shipped to me from new jersey? why would I do that, our weed is so much better.)
I got my first one this week too! I still have not sent mine out yet (sorry guys) but I’m excited to do that as soon as I remember to buy stamps.
Same here! Thanks Smallpistacio and major thanks to the person who is coordinating all of the toast post!!
I put mine out in today’s mail and had a great time putting it all together, so here’s hoping things arrive safely.
I’m happy that people are getting theirs – I mailed mine out like maybe two weeks ago and I’m assuming it got there OK. I actually wondered about the return address – I think I did end up putting mine on there.
If there were illustrations, you’re welcome! If not…uh…it’s coming!
There were a couple of smiley toasts and hearts! Are you my toastposter? This is so cool, thank you! :3
Thank you, Sansa. I now have the phrase “unspeakably vile” rolling about in my head, and, really, is there a better phrase in the English language?
Linda says it best:
http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lq1f0yftpO1r11l…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hN91E6v0HE
HOLD UP WHERE IS MALK BEING SOLD I NEED SOME
Judging by the price labels: Whole Foods.
A little sad I know that.
Whole Foods, and also some smaller places. I bought mine at this tiny store: http://farmtoforkfoods.com/
As someone who has a dairy allergy and is also allergic to soy and rice and oats and has a bad reaction to all the commercial milks (flax, hemp, I’ve tried them all), I was veeeeeeeeeerrrrryyyy excited to buy their pecan milk.
I am in the same boat– allergic to almost every alternative milk out there, either bc of the base (soy or almond) or because of the stabilizers/other add-ins. I keep seeing this brand on instagram and while I know a lot of people find it crazy/trendy, I’m dying to try it bc they have cashew milk AND it’s the same ingredients that if I made it at home (except I don’t have the time or energy). Plus, for something this fresh/ well made, I think their prices are competitive.
High five for being allergic to stabilizers/add-ins! Why are corn derivatives in eeeeeeeverything?
Once while in line at Whole Foods I got in a conversation with a nutritionist about what stuff came from corn (her: isn’t citric acid from citrus? Me: nope, usually corn. Her: ascorbic acid is just vitamin C. Me: it’s a synthetic form that’s made from corn). I get that the general American public doesn’t know how much corn they eat on any given day, but I’d expect a nutritionist to have more information.
I would seriously send you some Malk if you’d like to try it? I like to help out the other people in my boat.
I didn’t even know it was all corn! I kept telling all my doctors about it and they were just like “yeah, ok, you’re allergic to another thing”. You have no idea how helpful this comment is!!
I only know I’m allergic because I try these “milks” and start gagging/choking, and it took me a long time to realize what it was (and a lot of wasted cash on alternative dairy products). But I never really “sourced” what those ingredients derive from.
Also I would love to try, but I am moving in a bit to the epicenter of rich hippies, so I am hopeful they will have it there? Thank you so much for offering though, that is so thoughtful <3
You’re so welcome! If you want to try cutting some stuff out to confirm it’s corn, here is a list of ingredients that can be (but are not always) derived from corn: http://www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-l…
It’s pretty hard to adjust to (even salt on the ingredients list can be a sign of corn), so it might be hard to get yourself to avoid it all until you know for sure that’s the problem. Hopefully if it is the problem, you can tolerate small amounts. I’d start just by eliminating anything with natural or artificial flavors listed, as well as any chemical-sounding names (to the extent you can–it’s difficult).
I have a sneaking suspicion if this is my problem, then it is the same as my soy allergy. I can tolerate edamame fine, but any sort of “soy product” (tofu, milk, all those fake meats) I cannot deal with. It doesn’t really make sense to me, and I’m wondering if edamame may not cause an obvious reaction, but it might cause an inflammation?
I can eat fresh corn and even tortillas (well… it’s been a while actually, and a lot of my allergies have been adult-onset) but I wouldn’t be surprised if I can’t deal with any sort of “corn byproduct”. This is so so helpful!
I am still laughing at that tweet. I love that this exists.
Can we get some kind of poetry of Tom Friedman like the sestinas for David Brooks. Because jfc this is ridiculous even for him, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/opinion/out-of-… How can someone write this with a straight face.
Out of Africa Part III
“You can learn everything you need to know about the main challenges facing Africa today by talking to just two people in Senegal: the rapper and the weatherman. They’ve never met, but I could imagine them doing an amazing duet one day — words and weather predictions — on the future of Africa.”
JUST TWO PEOPLE
He truly is a treasure. Are you familiar with the http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/ ? Make your own to enjoy today!
!!!
If the sentence were “the main challenges facing Senegal today,” it would be an acceptable form of exaggeration. But WOW, way to hold up the idiotic American misconception of Africa as one country. I can’t believe this dude has a reputation as an expert.
Never ceases to amaze me the extent to which people talk as if Egypt, Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa are all one place, as though they are not thousands of miles apart, with different languages, histories and everything.
I mean, seriously.
Bonus: the “weatherman” is a Ph.D. climatologist who has worked in extraordinary ways to connect with farmers across Senegal. Friedman on Africa is the WORST. http://www.edwardrcarr.com/opentheechochamber/201…
WAIT HOW IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT HAMILTODD
just standing here with a big stupid grin on my face flailing and babbling
everyone please share my joy eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Too busy watching on repeat? Or is that just me?
On yesterday’s LR I expressed my profound appreciation for Daveed moving in untucked white shirt / tight vest.
Today I’d like to add: Oak. Forearms. Shirt sleeves rolled up.
I think I’ve watched it at least twenty times since yesterday. AT LEAST.
I want that cast so badly now, especially Anthony as Anthony. His big dopey grin!
Oh man. That NYT piece. One of the most surprisingly difficult things about become A Real Adult was coming to grips with the fact that, unlike on TV, you don’t just hang out at the bar with your friends every night after work.
I mean, now it seems obvious. But after years of watching shows like Cheers, Friends, and Happy Endings, I had started to believe that’s what adulthood would be. After 8 hours of work, you go to the bar to have drinks with friends for a couple of hours, then you go home. Little did I know how prohibitively expensive that lifestyle is, even in mid-Michigan, let alone Manhattan or Chicago.
One of my coworkers lives that life. We make the exact same amount. She goes out every night but lives paycheck to paycheck. I saved enough for the down payment on my house but rarely go out. We both (respectfully) think the other is crazy.
Geez…
My family was always comfortable (but not to say that we weren’t practical–my mom and I are coupon wizards, not to that extreme couponing show level because that’s impossible in New York state, but I mean we saved $45 off a $120 Target bill once and I still fondly reminisce about it) so I haven’t lived paycheck to paycheck, and I never want to if I can avoid it.
Part of that stems from a potentially irrational fear that I will never earn more money than I am earning now, so if I blow my money now, I’m never going to have a chance to recoup it, and will have to work at Walmart when I’m 70.
I read something once from an American living abroad, China I think. He said that they were all firmly convinced that Americans live just like the characters in Seinfeld and Friends, a different hot girl/boyfriend every single week, and refused to believe him when he said he’d been with his girlfriend for 2 years. They probably think we all have lots of money to spend and just hang out all the time too.
As someone who has never watched a single episode of Friends, it’s been startling to spend time abroad and realize how much some folks are basing their idea of America on that show.
Hear, hear.
Sad thing is that I feel like most of my friends are living that life and excluding me 🙁 but I think that’s just FOMO and unemployment anxiety and PMS talking… right?
I actually do spend a good amount of time hanging out at a bar after work, but it’s like once, maaaybe twice a week, and it’s two or three Miller Lites in the basement dive bar near my office, not cocktails at the hot new club.
Also like it wouldn’t be that fun? You would be hungover every day and I LIKE my house, I like sitting on the couch and watching tv and just hangin with my person. At least they did a lot of that on Friends. How I Met Your Mother is really horrifying to think about it in terms of sheer consumption and cost.
How would I keep up with Netflix?? Total non-starter.
Hey, at least the US Olympic Team uniforms weren’t designed by douchebros who not long ago paraded out a reprehensibly-appropriative fashion line, the name of which contained a RACIAL SLUR for effs sake. (I’m looking at us, Canada.)
I like Korea’s idea of incorporating a mosquito repellant. Since they’re going to be swimming in sewer water maybe they could design swimsuits that will inoculate you against E. coli?
Diarrhea diapers and barf bags in everyone’s national colors, stat!
Also those tropical worm-fish-things that swim up men’s urethras.
HDTGM + John Mulaney! Hell yes, happy Friday, Toast folk!! Solarbabies sounds totally bonkers.
http://earwolf.com/episode/solarbabies-live/
I’ve never heard of that movie, I am not a listener to this podcast (my tank is full, podcast makers!) but I love John Mulaney so much I might have to give this episode a listen.
OMG, I LOVED SOLARBABIES. And yes, it is bonkers, but it’s dystopian and pretty people and a glowing ball named Bohdi, and I love it dearly still.
Must listen to this!
I am left with some questions about the library code of conduct in Kingston. They are –
1. How involved were the actual librarians in creating this code? Boards can be pretty awful about excluding the actual professionals from these conversations, never mind the fact that the professionals often bear the brunt of their bad ideas.
2. It is very good and correct that these people showed up to insist that libraries are for everyone. Are they now going to support that sentiment with enough funding so that the library/librarians have proper resources to support patrons who are trying to use the library to replace underfunded social services?
Our board ran a $360k study to discuss the possibility of changing our name and logo, talked about accessibility to underserved populations, then only put the survey about it online and in English. Our fastest-growing communities speak Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali, and Amharic, and don’t have internet access at home. The survey was also not optimized for mobile. They got reamed in the press, and rightly, but it meant that librarians got it from patrons for a month before they decided it wasn’t worth the additional $3m to redo everything.
Ah, a fellow Seattle librarian! I recall discussing this disaster with about ten other librarians over drinks, none of whom worked for SPL. Finally, we sighed and raised a glass to you all.
I don’t have the words to fully express my deep and intense displeasure with our board without resorting to swearing and throwing things. You know what $360k could have done? SOCIAL WORKERS. MORE HOURS. SECURITY. PROGRAMMING. FUNDING TRAVEL (for librarians, not just managment).
High-five to you for this post. The “library replaces underfunded social services” argument gets left out way too much.
No tops that cover the midriff? No high-waisted shorts? So: “We need to see your midriff to check if you’re thin enough to be one of us.” Ugh.
– Minor correction to the Mississippi open-container article: Desoto County isn’t “a beer-and-half drive from Memphis”, it’s directly adjacent to it (the city limits extend all the way to the state line). One of the interesting things about Desoto Co. is that gambling isn’t allowed there, but it is in neighboring Tunica County; when Memphis’ Peabody Hotel (noted for the ducks that live in the lobby fountain) tried to get approval for a casino in the county, it was defeated by an interesting coalition: fundamentalists who didn’t want gambling to spread to another county, and the Tunica casinos, who liked their monopoly on gambling traffic from the Memphis MSA. So, some of the patchwork differences in open-container laws probably benefit the ticket-writing operations of the municipalities that have the traffic to and from the casinos running through them.
– I think that Daredevil is another example of the jarring discrepancy between a TV character’s income and his lifestyle; even though a lot of Matt Murdock’s clients pay him in things like coffee cake, his apartment is fantastic.
– That’s good news for the library that changed its policies. I especially liked this bit: “marginalized people are actually more vulnerable, and sexual assaults are more likely to be committed by people with status like teachers, priests, coaches, and celebrities.” And some of them even become Speaker of the House of Representatives!
Related to Daredevil, I remember my roommate and I marveled over how big Jessica Jones’ apartment is. (Realistically messy, which I appreciated, but how do you afford that much space in NY as an independent PI? You sure can’t do it in Seattle.)
They’re definitely working off of some really outdated picture of Hell’s Kitchen, that’s for sure.
That made me so angry about Jessica Jones, too! She supposedly lives in a bad apartment in a bad neighborhood, but her actually living space is huge and gorgeous.
Yeah, they try to address it by saying the destruction of the first Avengers movie caused real estate prices and the local economy to tank, but realistically those properties would have been snatched up and converted to luxury condos in a heartbeat. In the second series, I was very amused at the thought of an honest to god biker bar, with bikes parked outside, peopled by criminal bikers (as opposed to hedge fund managers pretending to be bikers) actually existing in Manhattan.
I was just re-watching Daredevil from the beginning, and in like the third episode he revealed that he got his place super cheap because the windows face a giant advertising screen that is on at all hours. He says something about the landlord being desperate to rent it.
That was actually in the pilot, because I remember that bit and it’s all I’ve seen.
Thank you so much for keeping up with the Sansa pix! They always make my day!
On class, cops and TV, I feel the need to point out that Cagney and Lacey did a good job of this. Part of the central thread woven through the show was that Cagney was higher class than Lacey and had money and a nicer place. She was also in her late thirties and then over forty and single, though, so great in other ways.
I found this absurd parable on r/relationships
https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/4…
And the comments linked to a story of a dude who actually pooped himself while driving with his GF.
This is too much inexplicable horror too early in the day.
Oh my god, I remember that guy! The girlfriend was not NEARLY as horrified as she should have been. Her phrasing was more like, “Hmm, this is probably a bad sign, right? Should I be mad at him?”
Malk-A good source of vitamin R
Here to recommend GQ’s “The 11-month-old boy injected with HIV by his father and his 24-year battle for survival”. http://www.gq.com/story/son-survives-hiv-injected…
What a fascinating story, thanks for sharing.
Did they photoshop the sports bra neckline? It looks low enough to prevent the sports bra providing any noticeable support. Also there is something weird about her chest above the sports bra, but that could maybe be compression artifacts, because all of the pasted in cheerleader part of the image looks compression-artifact-y to me.
I would say it looks like they either lowered the neckline or photoshopped out visible cleavage above it. (I have a sports bra that hits about that low, and it is effectively supportive, but a lot of that support comes from compressing everything in toward the center, so it also produces MAJOR visible cleavage.)
Yeah, the lack of cleavage is definitely a big part of the weirdness. Especially since if you look at her side, she doesn’t look like she has a particularly small bust.
One of my favorite stories about my library is one that Daniel Handler bitches about: he had some time to kill in the city and decided to come and sit in the children’s area at the central library. We have signs EVERYWHERE that adults in the kids’ area must be accompanied by children. He was asked to leave because he wasn’t accompanied by a child, and his complaint was “I was in a suit!” and he left a Lemony Snicket card as he walked out.
Dude, there are plenty of people in this world who can tell stories of being assaulted and/or molested by well-known men in suits, I’m PROUD of us for enforcing the rules. 99/100 times the folks who are homeless are dealing with mental health and addiction issues and they aren’t out to assault anyone. I distrust a self-righteous white guy by himself in the kids’ area a lot more than I distrust someone who’s clearly unstably housed and in need of help.
I read this HOURS ago, but I have to come back to capslock about the infuriating irony of this anecdote.
DANIEL HANDLER, YOU WROTE AN EXCELLENT SERIES ABOUT THE VULNERABILITY AND POWERLESSNESS OF CHILDREN. DO YOU REMEMBER THE VILLAIN’S MAIN STRENGTH AND SKILL? WEARING DISGUISES THAT FOOLED OTHER ADULTS. INCLUDING SUITS.
This explains why the gas station by my grandmother’s house in Hattiesburg sold beer and had a churchkey tied to the counter where you paid….
I’m so sorry to hear about Jenny Diski’s death. I just read her new memoir “In Gratitude.”
Gutted about Jenny Diski, though we all knew it was coming. I hope she went as easily as she could, and so glad she got to see her book in time.
THANK YOU for linking to the Diski LRB archive. I had no idea they’d opened it, and there are articles I’ve wanted to read there for years.
I’m really confused about the Mississippi open-container laws because I thought you wouldn’t get federal funding for any kind of road stuff whatsoever if you weren’t cooperating with the drinking and driving laws. (full disclosure: I don’t drive, don’t really drink or pay attention to alcohol laws due to the aforementioned don’t really drink, live in Florida, and have a rather embarrassing lack of knowledge about interstate funding)
also how anyone gets on the road when they know people are zooming around in screaming metal death traps while INTOXICATED or with SEVERELY INTOXICATED CARMATES WHO MAY GET DRUNKEN INCLINATIONS TO DO DANGEROUS STUFF is beyond me. absolutely beyond me. especially with the lack of road maintenance. like…is having a beer while you drive SO important to your regional culture that you are at all okay with people getting killed by drunk drivers OR dying because your roads are falling apart and the BRIDGES DO NOT WORK ANYMORE?!?
I recently drove from my home state to Jackson, Mississippi then onto the Gulf. That article explains A LOT about the driving we were seeing there and that yes, we were indeed seeing people drinking while driving. So glad we brought our kids. : /
Formation was my least favourite on the album, so if the sound of that one isn't your cup of tea, the others may suit more. (I find Beyonce's albums are very love or hate, I liked all of hers up til 'Beyonce', which didn't do it for me at all; but Lemonade is almost flawless.)