So sleepy.
When the New York City Public Schools catalog arrived in the mail one day that spring, with information about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new universal prekindergarten program, I told Faraji that I wanted to enroll Najya in a segregated, low-income school. Faraji’s eyes widened as I explained that if we removed Najya, whose name we chose because it means “liberated” and “free” in Swahili, from the experience of most black and Latino children, we would be part of the problem. Saying my child deserved access to “good” public schools felt like implying that children in “bad” schools deserved the schools they got, too. I understood that so much of school segregation is structural — a result of decades of housing discrimination, of political calculations and the machinations of policy makers, of simple inertia. But I also believed that it is the choices of individual parents that uphold the system, and I was determined not to do what I’d seen so many others do when their values about integration collided with the reality of where to send their own children to school.
One family, or even a few families, cannot transform a segregated school, but if none of us were willing to go into them, nothing would change. Putting our child into a segregated school would not integrate it racially, but we are middle-class and would, at least, help to integrate it economically. As a reporter, I’d witnessed how the presence of even a handful of middle-class families made it less likely that a school would be neglected. I also knew that we would be able to make up for Najya anything the school was lacking.
THIS IS HORRIFYING and also pretty rough to read, just FYI:
Early in the rehearsal process, Rick Gilbert and David Bareford of R&D Choreography were brought in to work out ways to make it appear as though Cox was beating the crap out of Benson and Kevin Bigley, who played the Smith son, Chris, in the climactic final scene, without actually hurting them. Gilbert and Bareford would be nominated for a Jeff Award for their work on Killer Joe. But by the time the play opened, after Gilbert and Bareford had left the rehearsal room, much of that choreography had been tweaked beyond recognition without the choreographers’ knowledge. “I didn’t see any indication of the kinds of things that I later found out were going on,” Gilbert says now.
According to Rieck, Cox told the cast that since the theater was so small, the violence needed to be palpable. As stage manager, Rieck’s job was to serve as the liaison between the director and the cast and crew and keep everything running smoothly. Whenever she approached Snyder, the director, with questions about the fight choreography, she says, “I just kind of got treated like I was being too involved or whatever, or I was overstepping my bounds.” Snyder declined to comment for this story.
it’s not me, just FYI:
To support his case, Ketcham refers to and quotes an unnamed editor of an unnamed “major progressive website” who secretly supports Trump:
During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me. GoogleX is the company’s “moonshot factory,” devoted to projects, such as self-driving cars, that are difficult to build but might have monumental impact. Hooli, a multibillion-dollar company on “Silicon Valley,” bears a singular resemblance to Google. (The Google founder Larry Page, in Fortune: “We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.” Hooli’s C.E.O., in season two: “I don’t want to live in a world where someone makes the world a better place better than we do.”) The previous season, Hooli had launched HooliXYZ, its own “moonshot factory,” whose experiments were slapstick absurdities: monkeys who use bionic arms to masturbate; powerful cannons for launching potatoes across a room. “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he referred many times to specific things that had happened on the show,” Kemper said. “His message was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.’ ” (Teller could not be reached for comment.)
Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”
ALL THE KEY AND PEELE SKETCHES INCLUDING UNRELEASED ONES ARE NOW ONLINE
honestly my fav kind of stunt journalism is this kind (also I tweeted about it a lot and now ELLE is trying to figure out what male superhero workout/eating I can take on for them):
All told, I made several dishes for dinner and they were all unsuccessful in different ways. Joanne’s Swiss Chard Summer Rolls were just a series of chopped vegetables held together by Swiss Chard. Joanne’s Pineapple Cucumber Gazpacho was ruined by my pineapple allergy (I swapped in watermelon, mistake). Joanne’s Creamy Coconut noodles were pretty soupy and flavorless, and Joanne’s Coconut Mango Cream Pie wasn’t ready until the next morning. This was pretty unhealthy for the Brady family, too. Look at all the fruit these foods contain! Still, I went to bed so hungry I had a pain in my stomach the next morning. I felt like Tom Brady’s dad, also named Tom Brady, who once said, “Sometimes we’ll go over to Tom and Gisele’s house for dinner … and then I’ll say afterward, ‘Where are we going for dinner?’”
In conclusion, living like Tom and Gisele is hard. You have to live in Boston and you have to eat nothing. You have to do yoga in a tree, you have to take pictures of yourself doing yoga in a tree, you have to wear Uggs everywhere because it’s so cold, like a wind tunnel, and also because you are an Uggs spokesman. But the benefits are also manifold: your house is awesome, you look like gods, St. Francis of Assisi is your personal trainer, and most importantly, Boston.com loves you! This was the top story two days ago!
The Best Of Nikki made me cry.
Leveraging his connections to media executives, Kushner also leaned upon his friendship with media mogul Rupert Murdoch to improve the campaign’s strained relationship with the Fox News Channel. And on policy, Kushner had a large hand in crafting a well-received address to American Israel Public Affairs Committee earlier this year. The speech was also reviewed by the Observer’s editor, Ken Kurson, prompting political reporters at the paper to call for a firewall between the paper and any activities for the campaign.
Kurson told The Associated Press that Kushner has “no role” in the Observer’s content.
“We talk often and share many world views. We disagree about some things as well but are always able to discuss respectfully,” Kurson said, describing him as a calm presence.
Kushner took over his family’s New Jersey-based real estate firm in 2004 around the time his father was sentenced to two years in prison in March 2005 according to the terms of a plea deal negotiated by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a prominent Trump backer who previously served as a federal prosecutor.
YES:
In April 1930, the Los Angeles Times began publishing what would end up being months’ worth of eye-popping details from an exceedingly strange court case. It involved a “comely” woman named Dolly, her murdered husband, and her lover, a man known as the “garret ghost” who, at Dolly’s behest, lived a “bat-like life in hidden rooms.”
The story of how the three were intertwined is worthy of the era’s most lurid pulp novels.
Melissa Gira Grant on Boston’s Combat Zone, money, stripping, and the past:
This kind of club experience is a world away from the Naked i and the clubs like it today that remain on the outskirts of the city. Here there are no neighbors, no all-night cafes—no anything, except a bit of neon signifying something still recognizable against a suburban highway. Dancers may have worked for wages back in the days of the Zone; today they are working for tips, and in many cases, they are paying management to work—“tipping out” sometimes hundreds of dollars per shift. Regarding dancers as independent contractors may have been legit in the pre-chain era, when dancers could just hop from club to club without being fined, could choose a costume without worrying if it violated a dubious workplace contract forbidding anything not “classy,” could select their own music, could leave a shift if the club was dead. Clubs save—which is to say, make—loads more money when they are just skimming it off of dancers’ tips, bossing them around like employees while denying them a wage.
It is precisely because a club chain like Rick’s had placed so many restrictions on dancers’ work that it lost lawsuit after lawsuit brought by dancers, over employee misclassification and tip theft. As clubs have tried to go more legit, they’ve just systematized the kinds of tactics we see clearly now in the Uber age, as they skirt their duties as employers. Strippers have faced this kind of “it’s not a job, it’s just a platform” stuff for a lot longer than other recruits to the so-called “sharing economy.” It’s not a coincidence that Shannon Liss-Riordan, the plaintiff’s attorney who filed the class action Uber suit in California was, years ago, taking the same kinds of cases from dancers.
Dear Prudence,
After a lot of soul-searching, I’ve decided to divorce my wife of five years. All we did was fight, and we had little in the way of sexual intimacy. The problem is that my soon-to-be ex-wife just had a baby a few weeks ago. I was thinking about divorce when I found out she was pregnant but decided to stay for the sake of the baby. It’s four weeks after the birth, and things are worse. We fight constantly and we haven’t had sex for almost four months, so last week I finally got the courage to break ties and move into an apartment.
The problem? My friends and family say I’m horrible—that my wife just had a baby; that we’re in the miserable newborn stage and of course we’d fight; that she’s not even cleared by the doctor for sex yet, so of course we’re not sleeping together. Even my brother says I’m being selfish. What do I say to these people? My wife stopped being the woman I loved almost a year ago, but I only hung around because she got pregnant.
—Sympathy for the Devil
The Swedish Tourist Association recently announced a new service called The Swedish Number. People who dial +46 771 793 336 will be connected with a random participating Swede.
We talked to about a dozen of those Swedes with one question in mind: What happened on September 3rd, 1967?
Those who were alive and in-country during that time took little time to respond. That day was a national holiday of sorts: Dagen H (or “H-Day”), short for Högertrafikomläggningen (“the right-hand traffic diversion”). On that day, millions of Swedes switched from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right.
All I want to is to be connected to a random participating Swede.
There was a segment on the radio earlier this week where a CBC host called a random Swede and he apologized for being “quite drunk.”
The dream.
All I want to be
Is someone who gets to speak
To a random participating Swede
Oh I know it’ll be great
And I just can’t wait
To hear all about
Their opinions regarding Lutefisk
What about their opinions on giant women? (Steven Universe has the best music)
If they give it a chance,
It’ll be a nordic romance,
because they are a random participating Swede
They might even like talking about the weather,
and if they don’t it won’t be forever,
but if it were me, I’d really wanna succeed,
with a random participating Swede
THIS is all I ever wanted, tbh
Am I recalling correctly that they also had a national twitter account that was managed by a different random Swede every day? And that they had to shut it down after they randomly selected a neo-nazi?
Whoa, I missed this! They still have the account (I follow and love it) — and it’s currently being run by an awesome 81-year-old lady who works on getting seniors access to the Internet.
Do you have a link? I need to witness this glorious account
It’s @sweden on twitter!
“Dagen-H” makes me think of Haagen-Dazs.
That asshole letter-writer on yesterday’s Dear Prudence gave me MAJOR flames on my face. All day long.
This is way lower on the importance scale but where is the love for Mallory’s sick fake naming skills from the co-worker-ghosted letter? Admire with me “Charmathon, I know we went on a few dates that never went anywhere…”
CHARMATHON
it made me think of pokemons.
Me, too!
Mallory’s answer was brilliant, though, because it’s so easy to get sidetracked by “horribly insensitive timing” issues when discussing divorces, when the timing isn’t really the point.
He sounds like an utter louse, mind you.
His soon-to-be-ex-wife didn’t “have a baby”, your coworker “has a baby”, THEY had a baby. There is nothing in that letter that indicates that he accepts that he HAS BECOME A FATHER. He literally talks about the baby as if she was diagnosed with cancer and he’s stuck around to help her through the chemo.
HAAAAHAHAHAAAAA like he would stick around for cancer even. I’m guessing if she was sallow and ill and losing her hair the major complaint would be that she’s not even desirable anymore, how can he cope with not *wanting* to have sex with her, he’s not a saint. And she might die, then who could he have sex with?
YES! I logged on to say just that. That phrasing is so creepy and detached. It says so much about this guy.
About the four month dry spell… he sort of buries the lede re: the fact that these were the LAST FOUR MONTHS OF PREGNANCY.
RIGHT? Like, yeah of course everyone thinks you’re an asshole when you’re complaining about four months of not having any sex WITH YOUR WIFE WHO WAS IN HER THIRD TRIMESTER AND THEN *HAD A NEWBORN TO CARE ABOUT,* he even had the nerve to bring up the fact that people are telling him “she’s not even cleared for sex medically yet” as if it’s a PROBLEM that HER BODY NEEDS TO RECOVER.
Burn this man at the stake.
I was so, so, so angry reading that letter. Did you notice how this douchecanoe never actually claims the child as his? It’s all “my wife got pregnant” (gee, wonder how that happened?!) and “she just had a baby” (YOUR kid, buddy, she gave birth to a child that is 50-50 you and her.)
He’s worried about what to say to people who think he’s a selfish asshole? I’m worried about the child who has this guy as a parent. Ugh. UGH.
This is an excellent point. If it’s such a problem that people think badly of him maybe everyone would be better off if he simply left now and found a new life. Somewhere far from people, perhaps? He’s an excellent candidate for a hermit if I thought he could look after himself.
As someone whose parents got divorced when I was a baby, and who only figured out 40 years later that her dad is incredibly selfish, self-centered, and unable to even imagine things from other people’s point of view, I endorse this sentiment. Distance could be great for this child.
“He’s an excellent candidate for a hermit if I thought he could look after himself.”
Putting that one in my back pocket for SURE.
It’s about as close as I can come to wishing someone dead. I just want them to stop making problems for people. If that takes them dying well, that’s their problem for being a sub-standard hermit.
Cause of death: terminal inadequacy
Whatever he does with his life that will be the cause of death.
I expected him to explain that she had an affair, but nope. Weird how she got pregnant without ever having sex. She should divorce him and sue him for every penny.
I really appreciated how a big chunk of Mallory’s response was “you are a parent now. whatever happens with your wife, you need to figure out how you will parent your child”.
YES. (How much of that just went right over this guy’s head, do we think?)
all of it. all. of. it.
And I’m worried about the poor woman who didn’t know she was signing up to be a single mother of a newborn. I’m sure he was no great shakes as a partner/co-parent, but as someone who gave birth within the last year, the idea of having to be a parent to a newborn, ALONE, without having prepared for that, is one of the scariest things I can think of. It is so fucking hard and all consuming even with a partner.
And then to have to try to find a lawyer, and advocate for yourself and your child to make sure you don’t get utterly screwed by the divorce? While exhausted, alone, and utterly drained? I can’t put into words how hard that would be.
My manager has just done that. My daughter is only 6 months older than her son, and even though she is managing brilliantly I spend 90% of all of all our interactions just wanting to give her a hug.
“his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades.”
Gold.
my kingdom to see that Vine
My kingdom to see 10 hours of that looped on Youtube. Just Astro, struggling to storm out. With only the clacking of the wheels as soundtrack.
But isn’t your kingdom closing down in July?
I snort-laughed so hard it hurt my throat.
It’s things like that that make fiction writers lie awake sweating in the night- nothing they write can ever be as beautifully, perfectly absurd as real people doing their people things.
A nickel for every time I’ve toned something down to make it believable would buy me a house, even in this economy.
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive]
On this day in 1833 was the birth of Pauline Cushman, an actress and a Union spy during the Civil War. She was born Harriet Wood in New Orleans, Louisiana, and moved to Michigan as a young girl, where her parents set up a trading post with Native Americans. At a young age, most of Pauline’s friends were little girls from the Native American tribe, who called her “Laughing Breeze”. From a young age, Pauline was also very considerate and caring, and would invite members of the tribe into her home to give them food and shelter. However at the age of 18 she struck out on her own, heading back to New Orleans and then to New York City to start a career in acting. Luckily she had a quick start, thanks to her beauty and gracefulness, and as she began to earn roles in plays, she took the stage name Pauline Cushman in honor of her idol Charlotte Cushman (an actress).
In 1853, Pauline married Charles Dickinson (a musician) and moved with him to Cleveland, Ohio, where they had a son and a daughter. However Charles, who caught dysentery in the army and was sent home, eventually died of his illness. After his death, Pauline left her children to be cared for by their family, and returned to acting. She was on tour in Union-controlled Kentucky, performing a play at a theater, when two Confederate sympathizers tried to pay her money to give a toast to the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Pauline was a supporter of the Union, however, and she quickly reported the incident to Louisville’s Union provost marshal. Instead of putting a stop to it, the marshal saw the possibility for ingratiation, and told Pauline to accept the offer.
When she gave the toast to the Confederacy, the Union-supporting theater she was working in fired her– but she earned the trust of the Confederates and became one of their darlings. Under the instruction of Union Colonel William Truesdail (Chief of Army Police), she began to travel behind Confederate lines to learn whatever she could, gaining the confidence of high-level Confederate officers and spying on their conversations. Pauline had been warned of the risks should she be caught, but she persisted. Sometimes she would do her spy work dressed as a woman, but other times she would disguise herself as a young gentleman. In June of 1862, however, she was visiting the camp of General Braxton Bragg and discovered his battle plans and hid them within her shoe. But she aroused their suspicion and was arrested, and though she very nearly escaped using her feminine wiles (and acting skills), the battle plans were discovered and she was tried and convicted– despite the General’s hesitance to try a woman.
Pauline was convicted of hanging, but managed to delay her execution by faking sickness (or faking the intensity of her illness, as she may actually have been sick). She was saved three days before her hanging by Union troops who invaded the area. Following her rescue, she was awarded the rank of Brevet Major by General James A. Garfield, and commended for her service to the cause by President Abraham Lincoln.
For much of her life after that, she was known as “Miss Major Pauline Cushman”, and she toured the country telling stories of her spy days, before eventually marrying twice more (first to August Fichtner, and then after she was widowed to James Fryer). Eventually separating from her husband, she spent the last few years of her life in a boarding house in San Francisco, where she worked as a charwoman and a seamstress. Suffering from pain due to arthritis and rheumatism, she died of an overdose of morphine in December of 1893 and was buried in the Officer’s Circle at the Presidio’s National Cemetery in San Francisco. Her gravestone reads simply: “Pauline C. Fryer, Union Spy”.
(If you’re interested in a longer read, here is a story-like version: Abe Lincoln’s Loveliest Spy.)
ALSO look at this picture of her on tour after her spy work, dressed up as a male soldier, HELLO:
This is extremely relevant to my interests.
swoon
Oh, now *there’s* a mezzo in trousers. Unf.
As with many incredible women and extraordinary military people, she deserved a better dotage than that.
Good morning, Toasties! A bunch of witches got together and hexed Brock Turner and it makes me really happy.
Hex the patriarchy.
http://www.papermag.com/stanford-rapist-brock-tur…
(Sorry for the repeat postings on slack, Reddit, etc. This is just too witches not to put everywhere.)
It’s too bad that Ayn Rand isn’t around anymore; I hear her dick hexes are pretty powerful.
This made my *day.* Thank you, witches. You are truly too witches.
Thanks for sharing, I cannot handle how PERFECT this is. Peak too witches. I hope they do Trump next.
I was just coming here to post this, as well! It’s too witches not to be shared by multiple people on multiple platforms.
My own personal conspiracy theory is that Silicon Valley is a secret false flag operation designed to discredit white men in tech, bc you canNOT watch three seasons of it and come away thinking they should be allowed to run a lemonade stand without supervision.
And I can’t even get enough! I love those clueless goofballs.
I could read all day about journalists doing dumb celebrity shit. Amazing.
TOASTIES, this morning I slept in and then wandered around early-morning Halifax while eating a fresh croissant AND a pain au chocolat and drinking chai. It was lovely and I am ready to go home to Ontario now.
That sounds so lovely. Have a safe trip home!
jsyk i thought for a minute you were eating both at the same time with the chai and wondered how you managed with only two hands, but then i realized you could alternate bites in a single hand and i don’t care if you ate them separately, this is my vision and it is gloriously indulgent and I’m so glad you had a lovely morning!
Well now I’m imagining some sort of two-pronged pastry holder for those of us who need to eat multiple pastries at once while not putting their hot beverage down.
Oh not necessary! Each pastry comes in its own paper envelope and you just squish them together in one hand, is how I do it when I can’t decide which one I want and my other hand is busy with my tea or a book or something!
And then you can alternate bites and it’s great. It’s especially bemusing that I didn’t even think of my own solution to the problem at first, and imagined 3 hands. Or a dedicated pastry/tea valet shadowing her through the town.
Changing my dating profile to “seeking pastry valet to manage my croissants.”
Your post from a few days back inspired me to walk around my own little downtown and nose through a used bookstore. Sometimes I forget those things are possible and helpful! Glad to hear you’ve been enjoying Halifax, it sounds perfect (though I;m mostly basing that on the pastries).
A+ Link Roundup from which I got entirely distracted by the fact that Sweden has a dial-a-Swede number?? brb buying some international calling cards
Guyyys anyone else gonna try to buy Hamilton tix this weekend when the new block goes on sale after the Tonys? May the odds be ever on our favor!
No, but I’m already planning to take the morning off of work June 21 to wait in line for the first day the Chicago tickets go on sale. I’m so excited!
Me too! When they announced the date yesterday my hands got all shaky. My daughter, husband and I are all going to sit at our laptops and try to buy four tickets each, and if more than one of us is successful we’ll re-sell the extra tickets WITH NO MARKUP because we are not monsters.
I thought we were going to get more warning (no idea why I thought that), and now my boyfriend and I have to figure out if we’re going to try and buy tickets (which…would be a financial stretch) and then arrange our trip to Chicago around whatever date we get, or if we’re gonna shrug and then plan our Chicago trip later and try the lottery instead.
When do they go on sale??!
Sunday night! http://www.ticketmaster.com/Hamilton-NY-tickets/a….
Wait, can you explain this? “When the new block goes on sale”? My family and I have been planning on taking a trip up to see it whenever we could get tickets, we just…can’t get tickets.
Guys guys guys! New block goes on sale Sunday at 11:10 pm, right after the Tonys! It’s for January 31 to May 21, 2017.
http://www.ticketmaster.com/Hamilton-NY-tickets/a…
We have GOT to change the way we fund schools in this country. The fact that anyone thinks it is OK to let some kids attend horrifically underfunded schools because they live in an area of low property values is absolutely despicable. Funds need to be, at the bare minimum, on a state level and distributed according to need and the number of students attending. Becki and Carolyyn don’t deserve a better PUBLIC education just because their parents are lawyers and stockbrokers.
Having to explain to my british classmates how Americans fund their schools was one of the best/worst moments of my life. They just refused to believe that it was true.
There is damn near a whole genre of posts on tumblr that could be described as “the rest of the world is shocked by the United States,” like that we have to pay for ambulance rides, or how insanely expensive our hospitals are, or that we have so few trains, or how big the country is (well, the Australians and Russians aren’t shocked, but most of the Europeans are).
I saw a Tumblr post about train lines in America a few weeks ago and was genuinely shocked (as I was when I saw someone on the internet talking about when it was worth calling an ambulance, as they were so expensive). It really is jarring.
All schools receive the same amount of funding per child in England (and the same amount per child in Scotland, Wales and NI, but I don’t know if it’s the same amount across the whole UK), with premiums for kids with special educational needs or from defined low-income families. But it still works out as really unequal, because at a wealthier school you say, “You need to get a scientific calculator for GCSE maths” and spend the funding on the library, and in a poorer school you spend it on 300 scientific calculators.
I was ranting about this to my partner just last night, oh my god. It seems like such an obvious solution, and yet it doesn’t seem to ever be considered seriously.
Having school funding at a state level doesn’t always turn out as well as you might like, though. I live in one of the few school districts in Iowa that is expanding (rather than contracting), and we cannot get the state legislature to fund us adequately. We have high class sizes, and support positions (paras, librarians) are being cut because there is just not enough money.
Or, hell. Just look at Kansas.
Yeah I don’t know what’s worse– putting these things under the control of a byzantine network of local interests, or putting it in the hands of a state legislature. Even if you live in a state where your reps aren’t hell-bent on total destruction, you still end up competing against other communities in your state, and the “funding formulas” are so complex that no average citizen could make sense of them. (enrollment– and particularly high-need enrollment like ESL — is way up in Des Moines schools in the decade since I graduated from that district, so I don’t know why they keep laying people off. I know a lot of teachers in the area and it’s nuts. I thought we could do better)
At least our reps are only moderately bent on moderate destruction?
“We’re not Kansas!” <– the world’s saddest declaration of accomplishment
“We aren’t actively working to destroy our children’s future!”
These are two schools in the same district, though. I would not be surprised to learn that, on average, PS 307 gets *more* funding per pupil than PS 8 (the article mentions that PS 307 parents feared losing supplemental federal funding if the school’s household income rose). The problem here is much more subtle and insidious. Rich parents, and especially rich white parents, bring more resources–more money, more social capital, more political clout–to all aspects of their children’s lives. You could fund every school in NYC with the exact same funding per pupil and the results would be the same: high-income and especially white high-income children will, on average, outperform students of color. This is why the article is pushing the importance of integration as against just “strengthening urban schools.” Minority children in integrated schools benefit from the resources the white parents invest in those schools.
They added a season of Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting to Netflix, and it is exactly what I needed right before bedtime. He’s so soft and gentle and encouraging and forgiving. Highly recommended for your sad days.
the first video with those squirrels! It is my FAVORITE THING.
He LOVES those little rascals!
Bob Ross is a treasure. All I want is a world where I can paint with Bob, read with LeVar, and have lovely therapeutic chats with Mr. Rogers over a cup of tea.
And cat therapy with Jackson Galaxy, too.
This Canadian would sub in drawing or craft time with Mr. Dressup in place of Mr. Rogers.
But otherwise yes.
All of the above, plus helping Julia Child cook things.
Bob Ross! <3 I used to watch his show as a kid for exactly the reason you say — so soothing. Also fascinating, for young me anyway! I remember the time I saw him using WHITE PAINT to make water show up on a dark background, even though water is TRANSPARENT in real life, and my MIND WAS BLOWN.
I stopped living in the US a long time ago, so I don’t get many opportunities to think or talk about him anymore.
We’ve been watching it all this week! Nothing else, only Bob Ross. It’s the most soothing television.
My husband and I are planning on buying some paint and canvases, just to see how long it would actually paint one of Bob’s paintings.
I posted this on Facebook and a friend replied WITH A FREAKING IRISH VERSION!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th8G9sCI0WA
See? There is his cousins! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnjRVxxyAjw
Nicole! You use Sublime Text! A+++
That would be my husband, but yes!
That was the first thing I noticed, too! Sorry, Sansa.
That house says it is in West Hollywood but I am 90% sure those are just the pictures we took of my dad’s childhood home in PA before we forced my grandmother into a senior community and had the place burned down.
Something about that Dear Prudence letter just tickles me. Even his brother!! thinks he’s selfish! Even his brother.
Per the listing:
“Features
Flooring: Other”
On my.
The colour of the kitchen and those cabinets tho. *heart eyes emoji*
No way that house doesn’t contain a body or six.
I mean, if it is like my grandmother’s house, there’s a surprise possum* in every strata of crap.
*or skunk!
I’m pretty sure I can SEE a body in the first picture. That big pink bloody thing wrapped in plastic. That’s a body.
Nightmares forever.
I don’t understand why they included pictures at all, if they’re just selling it for the land?
I think the pics are just to make really sure no one tries to set foot on the property without a helmet, maybe? So they know the realtor is serious about land value?
That poor house.
To really bring home the message that people should “not attempt to go on the property, drive by only. The owner did pass away in the house.”
“She did pass away in the house, so…” *shrug*
Great point. Show us the yard (where the bodies are buried?).
Question: with the impending closure of The Toast, have you given any consideration to adding a “Random” link, similar to “Surprise me!” on AAM? I would really love to be able to peruse hidden/forgotten gems of toasty goodness when you’re not posting here regularly anymore.
OOOH, I like this idea! This would be fun!
This is a very cool idea!
Also, very important question: am I right that archives will still be here, so I don’t have to read all of them in the next 3 weeks or lose my chance forever? I’ve been reading a lot of them, but there is so much wonderfulness from before I learned about the Toast, and only so much time
I think it was confirmed that the archives will still be around but I could be wrong
Nicole’s phrasing was “until the heat death of the universe” – worry not, I trust she keeps her word.
That dear prudence why does this man keep calling his kid “the baby”
LIKE, it is YOUR BABY, motherfucker! This weak-ass she had a baby nonsense. YOUR BABY.
Exactly.
focus on being a good dad cause you aren’t starting strong rn
WHAT BABY
Because he’s an asshat.
He may be my ex. He tried to leave when I was on morphine in the ER from a miscarriage of a sabotaged-contraception pregnancy, and they suspected I also had a brain tumor. This article is upsetting me more than I expected it to. My ex used to not feed the kids if I was at work. Toddlers. He “didn’t know how”.
Oh my dear god. I am so glad he’s your ex and I hope he steps on nothing but legos for the rest of his life. Just. I want to give you so many nice things for having to deal with that.
Its…like I only recognized that he wasn’t just hurtful to me, he was demonstrably an objective asshole, while reading this. It’s like going back and looking at it from the clouds. Like, that happened to a totally different human.
um, that’s not just being an asshole. That’s being a criminal. Child negligence is a crime.
What it was was a very effective way to keep me from leaving the house.
Which is, of course, abuse. I’m so sorry that happened to you, and hope that you do not have to deal with him at all anymore (and that he pays his child support.)
I read your current stuff about your ex and think “that sounds so hard, that dude is the worst” but I never thought about how bad it was before he was you ex. I’m glad you have less of him on your life. I’m glad that weird attic wife attempt was your last straw.
It’s weird that you should use that phrase! My daughter asked me to stay up with her until she turned 13 at midnight last night, and asked me to explain “The Madwoman in the Attic” to her!
Oh my god. What an unmitigated asshole.
Holy shit, what a fuckstain.
Oh wow, that hurts to read, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live through. Huge love to you.
I’m working from home today, and therefore don’t have to worry about controlling my reactions to anything, and therefore said ‘Oh yessss’ out loud in Hollywood Golden Age style purr when I saw the extract from that Atlas Obscura article. Now to read it.
That home listing is amazing. I particularly like the “Flooring: Other”. Is it human skin? We don’t know. (I am also not sure what “– baths” means, but am intrigued.)
I have to admit, despite everything (the price; the terrifying photos; the fact that it is in a country in which I do not live and have no visa for), I am almost tempted by that house. The adorable (filthy) green kitchen! Last remodelled in 1924! In West Hollywood, which the internet assures me is super gay! Even the fact that it might be a murder house of some sort does not put me off.
congrats on living with at least seven ghosts at all times then!!!
It’s fine, I’ll be like Cordelia Chase!
My late car (smashed by a drunk driver three months ago) developed an electrical issue wherein the doors locked automatically and randomly. I always said out loud, “Thank you, Dennis” and patted the dashboard.
People who rode to work with me just rolled with it.
…I liked the pink bathroom.
::scuttles away::
It would not be a bad place for a bunch of us Toasties to go and live our too witches lives together, just sayin.
I particularly like the words “Learn how to appear as the agent above” under the “contact agent” sidebar. Are they going to teach me the dark rituals needed to wear the agent’s face over my own? Is this some sort of multi-generational curse where you’re bound to live as The Agent until you dupe someone into buying the haunted property, thereby winning back your freedom and your original appearance?
I like the kitchen too! I mean, I am in no way going to pay $1million+ for a garbage heap full of corpses, but the kitchen was real cute once upon a time… (note: I am not going to spend a million dollars on anything, because I do not have a million dollars.)
“Please do not attempt to go on the property”*
*You will most definitely be sucked into a nightmare wormhole/portal of doom
$1.15 million for a trash-filled, falling-apart, almost certainly haunted house. I thought New York real estate was the worst, but I officially withdraw my complaints now. (j/k, “complaining about real estate” is to New Yorkers what “talking about the weather” is to everyone else.)
London is very similar to New York in that respect.
The pictures give a real sense of “This was her last communication, except for a message a month later reading ‘too late now’.”
“I stayed because she got pregnant.” Yeah, dude. You had nothing to do with that at all, right? Spontaneous event, there.
And I’m sure his presence was a soothing balm to her soul, and that he in no way made her last trimester more frustrating and tiring than it already was.
Am I the only one who instantly suspected Donald Trump’s son-in-law to be a time-traveling Matthew McConaughey?
Sansaaa let me snuggle you please.
The article the gawker trump piece linked to is literally nothing but nonsense buzzwords strung together with some conjunctions.
I’m pretty sure that’s everything Trump-related.
I’m pretty sure that’s Trump
I love this part of Mallory’s reponse to monstrous divorcing guy: “I’m not enormously sympathetic to your four-month-long dry spell, but I’ll take you at your word that sex had been infrequent long before this particular jab of celibacy.” I once had an argument with a friend of a friend on Facebook who argued that it wasn’t an intrinsic right of people not to have sex if they didn’t want to, and that if you’re in a relationship you sometimes should have sex even if you don’t feel like it to keep your partner happy; he was waiting for marriage so had not had sex himself, but when he was married, if he and his wife hadn’t had sex for two weeks he would consider himself within his rights to demand sex (generously, she could demand the same of him if she liked). As someone who has been in a relationship with the same person for seven years, the thought of two weeks without sex being some sort of high-water mark of unreasonable behaviour just made me want to laugh and laugh.
(Obviously different people have different needs, and i don’t want to be all “you have never had sex, therefore you clearly know nothing”, but I really don’t think the majority of people would consider two weeks without sex so unbearable that they had to grab their partner and growl, “I must have you this instant, no matter what your wishes are; it’s been a whole fourteen days and without instant sexual release I will die”. Right?)
I mean, I haven’t had sex in almost 3 years, and I have yet to die (although there have been days where I’ve genuinely thought I might explode).
(Also: if I will die without sexual release, I have the power to resolve that issue for myself.)
…or cry and cry for any woman this marital-rapist-in-training ends up with.
Yes, there is that. I had hoped that once in an actual relationship he might realise how ridiculous such a viewpoint was, but considering how common rape is I might have been being too optimistic.
and look at the timeline – the four months are when she was heavily pregnant, and then just after giving birth, which doesn’t do good things to your sexing parts. (Hey, didn’t Nicole once write a how-to about having sex after giving birth? Because it’s not that fucking easy!)
Did she really? Can someone link to it?
http://the-toast.net/2015/06/22/the-secret-to-hav…
Despite being unpartnered and childless, that post makes me feel really affirmed and supported.
I’m assuming here that your Friend of Friend on Facebook was waiting for marriage because of religious reasons, which may not be true, but this is why it creeps me out that certain religious groups focus so much on waiting for marriage and so little on CONSENT and consideration for your partner. Like you can just…earn the right to sex by not having it for long enough?
Yes, he was a Christian (and I think he did say something like “it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that people have a right to not have sex with their partners if their partners want it!”, which was chilling).
Good LORD, can’t we just hold some truths to be self-evident? I’m pretty sure the Bible doesn’t explicitly condemn every awful thing people can possibly do to each other. Just try to work out the details from a general principle of Not Being an Asshole.
I know! The Bible may not explicitly use the phrase “bodily autonomy”, but there’s quite a bit of “treat others as you would wish to be treated” in there (although I think he’s using that to say that that’s why people should have sex with their partners if the partner wants it – if you wanted to have sex, wouldn’t you want someone to have sex with you?). But in his world, not having to have sex unless you really want to is not a fundamental right, and he’s surprised that so many people seem to think it is. Terrifying.
The fact that monstrous divorcing guy’s “four month dry spell” accounts for her third trimester of pregnancy and the first month home with a newborn just sends molten lava heat fingers out of my eyes into the internet in the hopes that they find their way out his own computer monitor to melt his brain as he’s reading whatever he likes to read online.
Like, you CAN’T, right??? You’re not cleared for sex for at least 6 weeks, right???? She’s not PHYSICALLY ABLE TO YET, asshole — even if she did MIRACULOUSLY FEEL LIKE IT.
Yeah he even mentions that his friends pointed that out in the “things they said while calling me an asshole” list and I’m like HELLO, ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE RIGHT, YOU /ARE/ AN ASSHOLE.
Oh, you’re probably physically able to, it’s just… perhaps you are feeling horny enough to throw caution to the winds and give it a go, BUT IT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.
My marriage encompassed a long celibacy because of placenta previa, and a subsequent long celibacy because of breast cancer treatment (chemo is not good for the sexing parts, no matter the location of the cancer). Dude’s four month dry spell just makes me think he’s a jackass.
I am six months postpartum and have had sex like four times in the last six months. I assume it will get better so we aren’t freaking out. But the combination of a vaginal delivery, sleep deprivation, and the hormonal changes that accompany breastfeeding have taken their toll. Guess I’m lucky my partner isn’t a complete asshole and isn’t planning on leaving me and our new baby to go get some. (Grrrrr.)
OT: my iPad suddenly won’t let me log in to intensedebate. Any tips, toastfolk?
Right. And I, conversely, do totally think being on the same page sexually is an important part of a relationship, and being sexually unsatisfied is a completely legit reason to break up or redefine things or whatever, but…dude, you guys just had a kid.
Like, in the most sympathetic-to-him scenario–okay, let’s say she’s awful in general, and then makes all reconcile-y and gets “surprise” pregnant–which I am sort of dubious about actually happening in real life, but even with that hypothetical…what, you can stay for all nine months but not long enough for the kid to sleep through the night?
Oh, yeah, being happy with your sex life and being able to discuss it with your partner and change things if either of you is unhappy is super important. But the amount of detatchment this person is exhibiting regarding HIS BABY is bizarre.
Isn’t it, though?
I’m wondering if he actually doesn’t think the kid is his, or if he’s just an asshole, and I’m leaning strongly toward “asshole.”
ETA: Not that it’d be okay to be all “my DNA isn’t involved so to hell with this child”, but it’d be an entirely different *type* of Not Okay.
That public school piece is incredible. I’m going to need to read it a few more times to digest; I think it’s an important topic. I don’t plan on having kids, but if I did, I’ve always said I would send them to public school– I went to public school (in Wisconsin, which is a very different can of worms from NYC) and really believe in it. So I appreciated the cautious optimism of the piece– yes, public schools are built on broken foundations, and it is absolutely insidious how parental “protectiveness” allows people to turn against their better nature (the scenes where the white parents were arguing for the classrooms to surpass 28 kids rather than go to a segregated school?? Oh my god.), but I was heartened by the author’s conviction that community involvement can make a difference. I hope she’s right! Even if I don’t have kids, I plan on donating my time to local public schools to help where I can.
And now, totally OT: I know we have some climbers at the Toast– if you want to fill out a survey on gender and climbing, you can do so here and be entered to win a cute tank top. My gym is promoting the survey, but you don’t have to belong to any specific gym to take it.
That article about Profiles is terrifying. I want to send it to every theater-adjacent person I know, then shrivel up and blow away
I don’t know if I can finish it. It’s so disgusting. No art is worth abuse.
It ends with people banding together to fight for better working conditions in non-equity theaters and stop this nonsense, so the ending is worth it. Maybe just skip to the end. The rest is so hard to read.
Yeah, it’s making the rounds in the theater world, and everyone is horrified. I have a friend who was in Chicago at the time and saw Killer Joe. She said that the violence was so real it made her uncomfortable, but she figured it was just really realistic fight choreography. Her intern, though, was driven to tears and insisted it must be real. My friend says she wishes she’d listened to the intern.
It’s been a couple years since I did anything theater, but I put the article on facebook and linked every theater person I know.
Also, I have a couple friends who were planning on putting on a production of Killer Joe (they didn’t) and were spellbound by it’s “fucked-upness”, and now I’m giving them cross-country side-eye and wondering if the misogyny of it was just magnetic to them.
Isn’t it amazing how many plays fit into that “edgy violent misogynist antihero” paradigm? SO MANY.
What’s interesting is how much Neil LaBute they did. They clearly missed the point of what LaBute is trying to say (I think) most of the time, which is that Men Are The Worst. I was in a production of “Some Girl(s)”, which is all about a writer who’s engaged tracking down his old girlfriends to get them to meet with him so he can write a big thinkpiece about it, and then they one by one relentlessly, brutally, beautifully call him out on his bullshit (and he learns nothing, of course).
I hope LaBute stops letting this dangerous assclown produce his plays.
Oh I think LaBute is a big-ass misogynist. He has a long relationship with the theater, and I faintly recall that he would come to Chicago and participate in talkbacks, etc. Perfect environment for his vile plays.
The worst is that review where the guy’s like “every play involves Abusive Douche as a troubled antihero surrounded by hot young women who take off their clothes and are obsessed with him BUT IT’S CHILL NO WORRIES”
no
Here’s a follow-up piece by a Chicago theater critic, apologizing for not seeing the obvious signs, or wanting to believe them:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/201…
I LOVED that he mentioned the fact that Profiles did a lot of misogynistic plays and no one commented. This is part of the problem.
WHY DOES NO ONE WORRY ABOUT THAT? THAT IS INHERENTLY CONCERNING, IF NOT WORRYING
I went to the Profiles website and of course, the glowing accolades for The Glory of Living are from like 15 male critics and one female critic. Are you fucking kidding me?!
The banner on their homepage might as well read “Are you an impotent, afraid, and angry white man? We have a play for that! “
I read it and I probably shouldn’t have, honestly. I feel gross and like I need another shower because of that dude. It definitely brought up some stuff for me.
I’m glad people are speaking out and working towards changes in the scene around Profiles, but it infuriates me that it happened and that other folks still feel unsafe about speaking out.
Ugh.
(on top of all that, reading the descriptions of the shows they put on, using the words “edgy” and “gritty” made me want to throw up, honestly. Because abuse of women (and children!), sexual and physical and emotional, is edgy and “real” when it’s all about the anti-hero-man’s personhood. This is why I don’t watch gonzo films or shows.)
I’m definitely over “realness=boilerplate misogyny with some cultishness thrown in”. Who even writes a play like that? If they worship at the altar of “white male realness” then why don’t they do something like fix a truck or go be a cowboy or some more benign nonsense. A play is the least real thing one could make with their time.
The piece brought that up for me too. When we say “gritty” “realistic” and “edgy” what are we really talking about?
I kind of want to send it to my sister who’s studying acting in college because it seems relevant to her as a young woman in the theater community who’s probably going to find situations in which she’ll have to advocate for herself, but at the same time I don’t really know how to present something like this to her.
Send it to her, 100%. I’m an actress in Chicago and shared the article on my facebook page (as we all did) and roughly 30 of my actress or former-actress friends have shared specific comments male teachers or directors have directed to them, as “jokes” or “helpful advice.” Mostly comments about how they needed to lose weight, wear less, act sexier, lighten up, relax, let themselves be “mentored” by an older man. It’s important that she knows how to protect herself and what her rights are, especially if she doesn’t have the protection of the union. When you’re first out of school you quickly find yourself more eager to please than you ever thought you were just for the chance to be seen. She and her friends should read it, and her professors should discuss it. Best of luck to her!
Reverse link round up? Link requests?
I need good emotional labor/self-care articles that aren’t too witches. My MIL has so much on her plate right now, and in the last 3 years, her own support network has passed away. Mr. Editor and I want to plant the seed that what she’s taking on is real work & that she needs to nourish herself in order to do it (and that sometimes “care” is getting people to take of their own emotions). Her sensibilities are a little conservative & very New English, and a lot of what I found was directed at millennial business ladies.
Any thoughts Toasts?
No specific link, but I bet Carolyn Hax might have something relevant.
Perhaps instead of presenting it as witchy/woo-woo self-care, you can send her medical study type stuff about adrenal fatigue and the health complications of emotional stress? Fluffy pieces about “you can’t care for others if you don’t care for yourself” are well and good but let me tell you, nothing hits home like hearing you’re setting yourself up for early/earlier death if you don’t take a fuckin’ break for yourself once in a while. I don’t have any links (any I would have for when I was learning this lesson myself are years out of date), but current ones shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Good luck.
Oh yeah the first time I heard the phrase “self-care” it was in a context where all the suggestions were like “meditate! Burn incense while you center your presence! Be forgiving to your soul!” Which at the time just made me think “nah, I’d rather keep smoking a pack a day and not sleeping.” It wasn’t until I started reading about the risks associated with exhaustion etc. that I got serious about it.
This is not quite what you are looking for, but a lot of older New English ladies I know find Mary Oliver’s poetry to be very comforting.
This probably isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, especially as it’s aimed for women with chronic illnesses, but Chronic Babe has some great resources about self-care and also how to deal with situations where you’re not getting enough self-care. I find her very helpful and reassuring, without being condescending or overly precious.
She does a weekly video series called “As Well As Possible Wednesday (AWAP)” that usually focus on items related to self-care principles.
Thanks! She’s actually caring for a chronically sick person (who is being a bit of a stinker, making deliberately poor health choices for himself). Maybe there’s some stuff for the both of them!
I wonder if the ring theory of dealing with crisis would be helpful to her? Comfort in, stress goes out.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/07/opinion/l…
Can we talk about the massive sinkhole in downtown Ottawa? More specifically, can we talk about the car that fell into the sinkhole and has since been encased in concrete and “left in place for future generations to discover”?
Some archeologist in the year 5000 is going to have a field day with this, if the planet is still habitable for humans by 5000.
I am still shocked that this happened in Ottawa and not Montreal, where our infrastructure is expected to behave like this.
I’ve lived in Ottawa for 5 years and this is at least the 3rd sinkhole that’s occurred in that time. I don’t know what it is about this town. But Montreal will always be the queen of crumbling highway interchanges!
Neeeeever visiting Ottawa, then. I have a very intense fear of sinkholes. Whenever I hear about one, I cross the place it occurred off my list of places to go. I’m fully aware that I’m not rational about it.
I just can’t stop laughing at this. Every time I look at it I laugh again.
That is hilarious.
Omg, I’m sharing that with my whole office.
Truth: when I saw the headline pop up I genuinely thought they were referring to one of the older sinkholes. I don’t think that says anything good about Ottawa’s traditional infrastructure.
I’m a bit offended you thought we were just coasting on the sinkholes of the past. Ottawa is at the forefront of sinkhole innovation.
I wonder, is Toronto peeved that they don’t have one of their own?
It was quite interesting to follow live. CBC had a field day with it on twitter. I feel really bad for the all the businesses at rideau centre and around the area that had to close up for the day (especially the local ones). I think some still don’t have power or water.
Yes, I quite enjoyed Hallie Cotnam’s poorly phrased Tweet about it.
I’ve had to walk to work because I usually take the bus at the stop on the other side of the Rideau Centre, but so much of downtown is cordoned off that the detour to get to the station is almost as long as just walking directly to the office from my place. So I guess I’m benefiting from the sinkhole because I’m getting a lot of low-impact cardio?
Did you see the two twitter accounts for the sinkhole? They had a couple good gems.
I’m lucky to work across the river so I wasn’t inconvenienced by it, but my coworker who takes STO (gatineau bus system) left work early because of the hole mess.
ALSO, I used to find Twitter pretty boring, but then I started following like 100 Toasties and it’s like a neverending slumber party full of smart, interesting people. My twitter handle is the same as here and I post pictures of dog butts and wild rabbits and stuff. Let’s all be friends!
I agree! I’m JuliaNapier
I just followed you guys — my Twitter handle is my real name, so don’t be alarmed by the stranger-follow 🙂
Agreed! (@phillyfilly) please follow me!
Random stranger request coming your way.
Ooh, my Twitter handle is the same as my name here, and I’m about to follow you all! I just joined a few weeks ago, so I’m still not great at tweeting, but I will enthusiastically favorite every animal picture or bit of misandry that anyone posts!
Yay! I’m @solarsister but I keep forgetting I have a Twitter account so I pretty much never tweet.
Don’t forget you can glom onto a ton of Toasties by going through the Toast Connections Spreadsheet (and also enter your own info if you’re so inclined.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_26MiL9WN…
This is THE BEST spreadsheet ever.
Sending out so many friend requests, thank you!
The Toastie Twitter list by embryoconcepts – https://twitter.com/embryoconcepts/lists/toasties
I’m @goingtheretosee! Please come follow me, I need Toasties everywhere in life.
Perfect description. I’m much more engaged since following so many Toasties. I love laughing at a tweet, “thinking who is this person?” then realizing of course… too witches! I am another real-name twitter handle that for reasons have not connected to this handle.
@sybbys here!
I like this strategy! I’m @holdouttrout
Thanks for posting the Reader article. I’m an actor in Chicago and our community is reeling. The climate at Profiles has been an open secret for years, and it’s really satisfying to see them finally get called out for this bullshit. Petitions are going around to shut them down, take away their awards, etc. A LOT of women and some men are coming forward with similar stories of being emotionally abused, harassed and generally made to feel ugly, weak and useless. We’ve known it’s wrong for years but the fear of being “blacklisted” is REAL, especially in a small community. Hopefully some real action will be taken -it’s important that this article is shared outside our community as well. Thanks again.
Former stage manager from Chicago. I’m so glad that Chicago theater community is reeling about it. It’s so hard being a nonequity stage manager or actor and having no protections and I hope this article helps change the atmosphere of “nonequity= we can ignore rules and standards of behavior.”
It’s especially scary in Chicago because so many of my colleagues (myself included) are actively trying to avoid joining AEA so we can work more. Stage managers are so frequently our best advocates, but you guys can only do so much, too. Ugh, I hate this.
Also I am LOVING the Brady diet piece. That is the second shadiest piece about Boston I’ve read this week, the first being that “Why Do People Die On Mount Washington” article.
The comments are great too. Especially the one where someone says Tom Brady looks like a creepy math teacher. 😀
Ooh, I didn’t read the comments (because internet comments) but I am pleased to hear someone else doesn’t find his Stepford-quarterback not-quite-resolved-as-a-face face “handsome.” He creeps me out!
I can recognize that he has decent facial features, but he’s such a disgusting person that for me it overshadows his appearance.
I am sure that Tom Brady is a cyborg, and will not be convinced otherwise.
Dear Prudie bad dad doesn’t like it that everyone thinks he’s a selfish bad person now. Guess what? You are a selfish bad person. Think of the right thing to do for “your” baby (not “the” baby) and grow up.
Don’t like people thinking you’re a selfish, bad person? Be less bad and selfish, and most of them will probably stop thinking that!
OT: Last night when I let my dog out there were 2 enormous raccoons in my neighbor’s tree (we share a wall) spying on us. I tried to stare them down, but they didn’t seem intimidated. They calmly walked across a branch to jump onto the roof over my neighbor’s second floor, and now the thumps I’ve been hearing at night are making more sense.
Change your locks, just in case.
So, I’m a stage actor in the PacNW, and I gotta say, that piece on Profiles Theatre simultaneously floored me and did not surprise me one little bit. Often, theatre outsiders are shocked at how little oversight there is in non-union theatres (somewhere around 90% of theatre companies are non-union); I honestly have made it a habit of talking to actors who have worked with a theatre previously before deciding if I want to audition for them. I cancelled an audition based on some bad vines I got from an actor who described a director as “violently passionate.” Dude wound up punching a hole in a set wall during that rehearsal process. It’s horrible how little power non-union actors have throughout the audition, rehearsal and production process; unfortunately, establishment and enforcement of a baseline code of conduct would take money that non-Union theatres just don’t have.
Re: Dear Prudence
You pull shit like that, you better be ready to start over on friends, unless you have a stash of d-bag a-holes that step up to your level. What a piece of work. Even after having left his wife and a four week old, he’s pretty much just worried about damage control.
At least everyone else will hopefully be better off without him
oh hey, props on the TWEWY userpic
=D Thank you. You’re actually the first person who’s ever commented on it
Yay Key and Peele! Perfect for entertaining one’s self on a slow Friday at work (which is all the Fridays, really).
The Married Woman Attic bat Man thing! when I read “The couple settled in Milwaukee but marital bliss was elusive—Fred drank too much and Dolly was sexually unsatisfied. “Her eyes and her appetites would bring a long line of men into her life—and send one to his death,”” I thought “Yeah, that would be me if I lived in a more sexually restricted time period” but no. No, I would not do anything this woman did. Why is there not a movie made of this? I would watch that movie.
YES. I was all ready to be sympathetic, but then she seduced a 17-year-old and ended up keeping him in her attic for sex. Whaaaaaat.
and covered up murder! and then was very not-smart about keeping it covered!
OT: I have a birth control question. I’m in my mid-20s, started taking hormonal birth control (the generic form of Yaz) for the first time recently to try to minimize my PMS lethargy. I’m only two weeks into my first pack and my face is breaking out. I am not prone to acne–I’ll break out a little before I get my period but it’s never this bad.
I know birth control is supposed to help acne, not cause it, and I don’t see it listed as a possible side effect. Is this just a bizarre coincidence? I haven’t been using anything new on my face (my worst acne ever was caused by a face wash), the only new foods in my diet are beets and barley…I just really don’t know.
I’ve heard that hormonal birth control can make acne worse in some folks (I’ve always had terrible acne before, during, and after so I can’t speak one way or another from personal experience). I don’t know if it’s something that evens out once you’ve been on it awhile. Hormones are so weird with how they do X to some women and Y to others. I know I had to switch to the lowest low dose I could get because progesterone is not my friend. Give it time and if the acne stays, maybe talk about switching. It’s not uncommon to have to try out two or three before you find one that works for you.
Give it a month or so, and then if it doesn’t settle down, ask your OB for a different prescription. Hormonal birth control isn’t for everyone–any form of it gives me horrible migraines–but there can be quite a difference in side effects with the different formulations, so be prepared to experiment. Good luck.
Hormonal birth control (especially the kind designed to only give you a period every 3 months, forget the name) causes HORRIBLE cystic acne for me. I now use non-hormonal BC and have no acne whatsoever… BUT my period cramps are sometimes debilitating. Sooooo….
I’ve been on hormonal BC both for acne and pregnancy prevention for years (Trinessa Lo right now, have used Yaz and Ortho-TriCyclen Lo in the past) and truthfully it’s sometimes just a matter of figuring out which hormones in certain pills work for your body. I’d definitely give it another pack or so before you decide anything (I’ve broken out when starting a new kind before), but if it’s a continual thing go back to the doc and see if you an try another kind.
FWIW, my insurance made me switch to Trinessa Lo recently from the Ortho and I was really angry about it, but it’s actually working with my body chemistry a lot better.
Thank you! I feel a lot better. No one warned me that I might break out and I really hate it because I’m bad at not picking at my face. Luckily, I have some Aczone left over from the face wash incident. I hope it’s enough to keep the acne under control while I wait to see what happens.
Yeah, from my experience, any time you mess with hormones there’s a bit of an adjustment period for your body and that can manifest in a lot of different ways. Glad I could help! Also, your username fits perfectly with this question and I really appreciate it. 🙂
i love Aczone!
I have been taking Ortho Cyclen for years and though it is supposed to be one of the best pills to also help prevent acne, it doesn’t do that for me. Not sure if it causes or worsens my acne, but the Aczone has really cleared me up.
i agree with all the other posters. it can take time to give your body a little bit to adjust/regulate. but if you’re really unhappy, don’t hesitate to ask for a new combination!
tangentially, figuring out which combo of hormonal birth control works for each individual person is it’s own worst kind of hell. you can’t really yelp it. you can’t ask friends which works for them because our biochem makeups are totally different. you can’t even really count on relatives experiences. your obgyn uses the “guess and check” method for going through a million and a half different options, never mind that all those different variants of hormones have all sorts of oddball effects while you’re figuring it out. and I feel like it’s not even a significant part of the mainstream conversation when we talk about reproductive rights. i want this to be a bigger conversation in reproductive rights.
I totally agree that it should be talked about so much more. However, because I’m only taking this to combat PMS-related lethargy, if this doesn’t work or the side effects are too annoying my GYN says antidepressants would be the next step.
I’m one of those people who suffered depression and panic attacks due to Yaz (along with other side effects like unexplained stomach pain, intense muscle cramps, and utter utter exhaustion) but my skin looked glowing and amazing. I hope that you having the opposite skin reaction also means you don’t exp tie ce those other things but just not Yaz has some intense reactions so track how you are feeling so you can adjust as needed.
Extra note IMPORTANT!!!!
While you’re experimenting to see which formulation works for you, USE OTHER BIRTH CONTROL. Seriously, take no chances.
Tangentially related: Cristen and Caroline at Stuff Mom Never Told You did a podcast on adult acne. It’s been a while, but I seem to recall it had a lot of info on the relationship between birth control and acne. Apparently there’a a lot of misinformation on the subject, even among doctors. I don’t know if I can drop a link, but if you search for the keywords it’ll turn up.
Ooh, thanks! I’ll definitely check it out.
Apparently there’a a lot of misinformation on the subject, even among doctors
Yeah, I was worried that if I called up my doctor she’d just be like that’s not a thing.
Piggybacking on her question–I just started taking seasonale to not get bad xramps from endo and twice-monthly migraines. I’m in week 6 and instead of not having a period, I’ve had mine (with cramps) for two weeks now. Does this go away if I stay on it longer ? Please tell me something encouraging, because my skin is clearing up and I only had one migraine instead of two. No migraines and no cramps eventually would be worth waiting this out for a while, but right now I’m crampy and unhappy.
Hello! This is super late but I take Ocella, the generic form of Yasmin (so maybe also of Yaz??? Not sure) and I wanted to echo what others have said– it made my acne noticeably worse for approx. two months, then my body adjusted and my skin improved to better-than-pre-bc conditions.
I’m so glad it isn’t you! IS IT MALLORY THO.
It doesn’t say, like, head editor. It could be Nikki.
She would never.
TOASTS
I can’t post much because my battery is about to run out, but Gordie Howe (Mr. Hockey!) has passed away. I’ve been trying not to get super sad about all of the celebrity deaths this year, but I am very sad today.
RIP, you legend.
I’m here with you.
I’m hoping somebody gets a Gordie Howe hat trick on Sunday in his honor.
oh noooooooo 🙁
“Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed ‘too hacky to use on the show’.” S A V A G E
GUYS I JUST GOT HAMILTON TIX A FRIEND GOT A PRESALE CODE AND GAVE IT TO ME IT’S ALL HAPPENING WHOOOOOO!!!
how did your friend get a presale code?!?!?
also CONGRATS!!!!!
He was one of the first people to sign up for the website newsletter, so they sent him one.
oh man, not the point of the Combat Zone piece but:
“… what the “public interest research group” at 29 Temple Place had hired me to do: canvass the residents of the Boston metro area in order to extract $50 contributions for “the environment.” ”
SOUNDS FAMILIAR. I did this exact thing! 15ish years after the author, getting driven out to the suburbs to ask for donations for an environmental interest group – except I did get an hourly wage and the office was on Winter Street, not Temple. I lasted all of two days at it, haha. And there were no strip clubs left downtown. I’m a little bit sad that I only really know this new, post-Big Dig, redeveloped Boston.
Same. My parents and aunts and uncles (who are mostly creative types) have great stories about how cool it was living here in the 80s, but now it just seems like the vitality is being slowly drained away and replaced by cookie cutter rich people things. Even 10 years ago Newbury St. and Harvard Square were very different than they are today.
oh, for sure. the day the fairy store closes on Newbury will be the day I mourn the loss of my own teenage Boston.
&& when I was 14 and just starting to travel into the city, my mom used to warn me about the drug dealers in Harvard Square! “Don’t hang out in the Pit” and all, and then it turned out a girl from school WAS hanging out in the pit, doing drugs and going to punk shows with much older men. That’s not even close to a thing these days.
Wait I was one of those people working on that street who got canvassed and had to elbow my way past the enthusiastic canvasser. Real life meets The Toast.
well, close! this wasn’t street canvassing, it was going door to door in the wealthy neighborhoods of Newton and Lexington soliciting donations. We met at the headquarters downtown and then drove out to the suburbs to take advantage of their high income levels.
It was… still pretty awful, though, and now I’m overly sympathetic to sidewalk canvassers- aka a sucker- which is how I ended up giving $30 a month to this help-the-children type org….
Hi Toasties, I’m reporting live from Louisville Kentucky where the Muhammad Ali funeral procession is currently working its way through town. I work downtown and the few of us that came in are going to walk down and watch the process pass by later this afternoon. Glad to be a part of this moment in honoring Muhammad Ali today. <3
I’m intrigued by the fact that the scary house is being sold for ‘”land value” but there are no pictures of the exterior or the actual land/property, just the disgusting interior. Maybe they’re reallyyyy trying to convince potential buyers that the actual house needs to be torn down. “Nobody should actually live here! Please don’t try! Here’s proof!”
This is what I said upthread. I don’t get it! Where I live real estate ads for tear-downs are like, “Builders wanted! Property sold as-is” and then some pictures of the outside (so you can see what the lot looks like, I guess?).
I suppose they really want to hammer home you don’t want to keep the house and you don’t want to go on the property
It’s either that or the yard is somehow worse, which I don’t even want to think about. Even if the actual property isn’t that great it has to be better than the inside of that house.
There are definitely tombstones and at least one old well where you can sometimes hear an eerie, distant voice
I’m thinking full-on portal to hell, complete with a sign that says HELL IS THIS WAY.
Do yourselves a delightful favor and listen to Håll dig till höger, Svensson (“Stick to the Right, Svensson”) by the Telstars – in that Swedish article. It is exactly the bouncy 1967 treasure you’d expect from Swedes singing about traffic protocol changes.
My father’s been trying to get me to call Dial A Swede for ages now. His Sweden obsession only got worse after the Army sent him there and now he’s only a viking hat and an ABBA song away from removing himself permanently to the fatherland. Anyway, I have to assume that this is what I’d get if I did call Dial A Swede… https://youtu.be/ZTHiPs4Hms8?t=2
This is my West Hollywood lifestyle…whatever?
Of course there is such a thing as a dial-a-Swede. Of course.
Raw lasagne. Honestly.
I looked up pictures, because I hate myself. Some of them looked not entirely awful.
But did they look rawful?
– Pretty sure that the “major progressive website” that they’re talking about is Salon, which might also explain their own imminent demise.
– I may have caught Mallory being incorrect about something, in that same Pru column: “I have to confess: A question like this reminds me of my human limitations. I’m a mortal woman, not a wizard.” This has not been my experience.
I 100% believe it’s Salon, they’ve been hemorrhaging money for a while and have gotten progressively clickbaitier to the Bernie or Bust crowd as this has gone on.
I think Mallory just didn’t want to show off and make people feel bad that they’re mortal humans and not wizards like her, you know? It would come across badly in an advice column.
I’m making good progress on emailing out care package matches, but about 270 people signed up, so if you have not received yours yet, I thank you for your patience. Again, I tried to mostly match people in their same countries when possible, unless you seemed really into mailing internationally. So I hope people won’t be disappointed by matches that are close by. -__-;;
Thanks again for doing this! I know it’s a huge project, but I’m really excited to see what excellent witchy things I get 🙂
You guys. This is like, the most important thing I’ve read in…a year? Two?
http://bostonreview.net/world/alex-de-waal-writin…
Fascinating. Thanks for posting that!
Hi Nicole, I’m a Chicago actor here seconding the thanks for linking to the Reader article about Profiles. I’m part of Not In Our House, and I knew the article was coming, but even I gasped when I saw the cover. It took my breath away to see it so starkly in print after all the years of rumors and secrecy. I hope it makes a huge fucking difference in the non-Eq scene, especially for young people hoping to get a big break. Young actors get told how competitive acting is, and how they need to step up and do what it takes, and push themselves as performers and humans, and really stretched the bounds of their craft, and push for realness, and immediacy, and blah blah blah, and they could work on a show that gets major press and awards and people from Steppenwolf come and, hey, you could get invited to Tracy Letts’ house! and that is exactly how this shit happens. It’s awful. (Side note, I hope this helps crush that stupid Suicide Squad movie, after all the puerile nonsense Jared Leto did to be “in character” and “intense.” Fuck you, sending people used condoms is sexual harassment at the very least, and it sure as hell isn’t acting. Sorry you aren’t good enough to make a movie without the crutch of gimmicks like that, but hopefully people will stop reporting it as “the lengths he went to get into character.” Fuck off, man. Try acting.) Many, many of us have a feeling of “There but for the grace of God…” about Profiles, and some really gut-sinking realizations about shit that happened to us at other theatres. I hope there’s a revolution and they burn the place to the ground. Also, women are amazing: This is all entirely thanks to the bravery of two major actors in town, Lori and Laura, who listened to things their younger castmastes were saying, and said, “hold on, stop, what the fuck?” They used their influence to start this whole thing nearly single handedly, and I honestly think they’re going to save lives. They’re fucking heroes. The show I’m doing this fall is with one of the NIOH pilot companies, and I’m already so encouraged by the process, from day one of auditions. And on a final note, we’re all taking a real, real hard look at the kind of plays we’re doing and how we market them. Those images in the Reader article would have been called over-the-top if they’d been created just for this piece. It’s chilling, utterly devastating, to realize that they are all Profiles’ own publicity images over the years, and we all just said, “sure, they do gritty stuff, nothing to see here.” Looking at them now is horrifying. People tell you who they are. They told us for years. We should have listened.
Thank you so much for the amazing work you’re doing with Not In Our House. I hope chapters open up in every major theater city.
Toasties! Elizabeth Warren was AMAAAAZING last night to the point where I opened a bottle of sparkling wine and cheered at the TV. But for my personal mental state, I deleted FB off my phone and have decided to respond to all frothing “establishment superpac sellout devils” nonsense with this gif:
I love this gif so much. So much.
If I’d reread all the posts linked The Best of Nikki would for sure have made me cry, but I fixated on one line from the Korean dramas piece and am now trying to invent a game called Phonochle, played like Pinochle only instead of cards you’re dealt a handful of Samsung Galaxies.
That Zillow listing for the house off Melrose!! “The owner did pass away in the house” D:
along with FLOORING: OTHER, too D:
“Do not attempt to go on the property, drive by only” –> BOMB/EXORCISE FROM SPACE. But man, 6,000 square feet off Melrose? Someone brave who has like, 2 million dollars could probably triple their money.
I saw that “talk to a random Swede” thing a while ago and have been strongly considering calling it for a while now. I’m so glad this is now on The Toast, so that people can of course tell me to not do it and give me at least one good reason why.
Bahahaha the article about Tom and Gisele has me in stitches. It is true. We Bostonians worship at their feet and would even eat swiss-chard pretending to be gluten if it would make us feel closer to them.
I'm just glad I'm from a country where I can join any union I feel like (within reasonable bounds), and they will represent me at ANY workplace.
I don't know how Equity works, but this thing about "union" workplace and "non-union" workplace seems very old-fashioned to me. In NZ, workers have independent contracts with their employers, but they can state that they wish for a union to represent them during negotiations. You can have a union represent you any time for health and safety and general workplace complaints.
Australia has a slightly different system, where industry unions are involved with negotiating "enterprise agreements" – these set wage conditions on an industry basis for salaried workers – but you can also choose to belong or not belong to the union(s) that represent the workplace. There's also some other stuff about being able to go on an individual workplace agreement, but it's all fuzzy around the edges for me as a kiwi.
In both countries, the workplace does not need to be "unionised" for me as an individual to be represented by a union.
This other group that is being set up to tackle the conditions in non-Equity theatres is exactly the way that unions were originally set up – to improve conditions for their workers.
Nobody’s going to see this because I’m 2 days late, but:
THE OWNER OF THAT HOUSE WAS A REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER WHO PREYED ON CHILDREN.
http://www.sorarchive.com/directory/CA/G/Michael_…
Nobody's going to see this because I'm 2 days late, but:
THE OWNER OF THAT HOUSE WAS A REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER WHO PREYED ON CHILDREN.
http://www.sorarchive.com/directory/CA/G/Michael_…