Today is a grand day for it is release day for Furious 7. Fingers crossed that finally, a film in this franchise wins an Oscar for Best Picture. Here, I am on the Sideshow podcast, talking about this amazing set of films. Yes, I sure did link to that. I did.
Six winters ago, I took a break from college to live in Rock Creek, West Virginia, in a house an acquaintance had rented for a couple hundred dollars. The house was poorly insulated, and so, during the coldest months, we slept in the living room around a woodstove that piped most of its smoke, though not all of it, through a flue cut crudely into the ceiling. I did not last long in this house. In the spring, a trio of young vagabonds arrived by coal train and set up camp in the rhododendrons. They strung tarps from the branches and laid their bedrolls on the dirt. They had dogs and drank heavily, and though I wished they would leave, I admired their resourcefulness. Once, having neither firewood nor briquettes, they hauled an old couch into the yard, lit it on fire, and when it had burned to almost nothing, grilled chicken on the coals.
This past weekend I went back to my home state of Indiana to watch two of the best people I know get married. It was a bit of a miracle that I made it, and I loathed to return for a few different reasons. One of the big ones was that the Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, had just signed a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. You may have heard of it. It’s the bill that many say would give businesses a license to discriminate against LGBT people.
I am not normally one for April Fool’s Day pranks but Rihanna pulled a pretty amazing prank on Jimmy Kimmel because she is excellent.
Speaking of Rihanna, does she offer us a prosperity gospel?
Money is unclean. Cash flows; as it slips constantly out of debtor’s hands into creditor’s, fingerprints, stains, emotional and moral significations muck up the paper—over time, cash even builds up its own scent. That musk rarely transfers onto polite women anymore, who rarely touch dollar bills in the age of Venmo and sugar baby feminism. Rihanna still wants it in cash. Bad Gal, unmoored and uninspired by American dichotomies of cleanliness and defilement as she is, prefers her payment liquid and solid to the touch.
RICH PEOPLE!
Being buried alive in a grain silo is one of many ways I do not want to die.
Once in a while, I am lucky enough to read an essay that takes my breath away. “Reckoning” by Lisa Mecham, is one such essay.
May Day
Last day of freshman year, mirror screwed crookedly into the back of my locked door. I see us, or rather you. Wetting my lips with your tongue. Pale back sprouted with curly, black hairs. My flowered sheets, stuffed animals, talismans of childhood; a homesickness I thought I’d outgrown. We were too young for blueprints. Then my hands slinking up, grasping, pulling you into me. A ritual. From the window, voices soaked in spring, a Frisbee tossed outside the dorm. Limbs, dreams, futures flailed about. A few wondered where I was. Then you. Maybe one or two wondered if we were together. Truth is, we’d been doing this for most of the year. Late at night, your roommate gone, or mine. For some reason, you wanted no one to know. To be secret is to be chosen, and to be chosen is to be loved. A week earlier, you’d taken another girl to your fraternity dance. I pretended not to care. And so laid out the path we would follow.
On hip hop and poetry.
I was born in 1989 at the end of hip-hop’s infancy. By the time I dropped into being, hip-hop had a Grammy and platinum records. Reagan had already wreaked his brand of havoc on the American underclasses and crack was well integrated into our communities. By the time I came of age, much of the cultural context for hip-hop was already in motion — drug war, mass incarceration, neoliberalism, post-Civil Rights respectability politics, urban divestment and subsequent repatriating gentrification, zero tolerance schooling and
policing. I don’t have a particular moment when I “discovered” hip-hop or saw it take over the world. For folks of my age bracket (born in the late eighties to early nineties) hip-hop was a central part of the zeitgeist; the rapper was just as viable a musical star as the singer. I was a child when hip-hop surpassed country as America’s biggest selling music genre. The centrality of hip-hop to cultural identity isn’t an argument to me so much as it’s the up that is sky.
Hennessy has a Tumblr. This makes me giggle so so much.
Outlander returns to Starz this weekend. I am just making sure you know because Outlander is awesome. I will be recapping the show for The Butter. Yes! I will!
There is a new Mountain Goats album you can listen to at NPR.
At Autostraddle, Gabrielle Rivera offers some beauty product recommendations. I met her at a reading in New York. She is very dapper.
Chris Hayes doing the shmoney dance? YUP. It’s Friday! Everybody shmoney dance.
Harry seems to be nursing a head that dealt with one too many cognacs.
That soap sounds great!
Harry awakes to yet another tequila sunrise
Oh Roxane, I am SOOO delighted you’re going to be recapping Outlander here! I loved your recaps of the first half of the season, but those commenters did NOT get what you were laying down.
I am so excited for this very, very pretty show to come back. Although I’m in a bit of a pickle because the person I was mooching Starz Play from got rid of all their premium channels and I might now have to resort to piracy. If anyone has recommendations for places I could safely watch the new episodes without downloading a mega virus, please tell me!
Thanks for posting the Ashley Ford article. It says all the things I feel.
I cannot WAIT for Outlander to return. Get that show in my eyeballs.
I’ve been putting off finishing the newest book in the series because I don’t want it to be over… and then I remember that I could always just reread it from the beginning.
How many books are there *going* to be? Cause there’s already like 8 books right? Is there an end in sight? I’ve considered reading them, but I don’t necessarily want to get sucked into a neverending franchise. Is this like a GRRM situation where it started out as a trilogy, then grew into a 5, THEN 7 part series?
There’s 8 books in the series as of now; I know DG’s announced there will at least be one more since she’s in the middle of writing it, but she does tend to be a little more prolific than GRRM in terms of how quickly she can turn around another book. Not sure if there’ll be another one after this ninth one (she basically said she had more to the story to tell).
FURIOUS 7.
My whole life has been leading up to this day.
I like to consider myself a person with relatively simple tastes, but whenever an F&F movie comes out I realize that I love BIG GIANT EXPLOSIVE SPECTACLES THAT ASSAULT MY EYEBALLS AND MAKE SWEATY, EARNEST AND PILE-DRIVING LOVE TO MY BRAIN.
And if may I ask, where is it leading you?
YAAAAAY OUTLANDER. I am very excited for the pretty to be back on my television, but less than excited for certain events coming up in the book. Which were one of the big reasons I stopped reading. Fingers crossed that my faith in RDM is well placed for how they will adapt things…
I think I may be even more excited for Mad Men to be back and finishing up. I blame Tom and Lorenzo for teasing us with a countdown over the past few days. ALL I WANT IS GOOD THINGS FOR PEGGY AND JOAN (and Pete, God help me).
I was hoping we could start a mini-Mad Men thread! I just rewatched the last episode of the first half of the season, and I’m ready. No idea what the future holds. Only a few more episodes to resolve it ALL.
But there is also a part of me that is not excited, just resigned. I want to find out what happens to these characters. I want a Parks and Rec-style glimpse into the future (our present!) that I doubt we’ll get. But I stopped loving the show sometime in Season 6; it’s now just a vehicle to bring me Joan and Peggy.
I always love Mad Men returning because, among other things, it brings back ’80s Don Draper on Twitter.
EDIT: There he is!!! “People want a glove that will stop them from feeling powerless.”
https://twitter.com/80sDonDraper
Everything I read about grain silos makes me horrified. And then every time someone brings up how idyllic country life and/or farm life is, I want to point them towards the enormous number of farmers who have suffered some kind of grievous injury and employ child labour, etc. etc., etc.
Also, HEY TOAST it’s a stat holiday today in Ontario so I got to SLEEP IN and cook breakfast and now I’m lying on the couch drinking licorice tea while my husband plays Final Fantasy and everything is AWESOME on the beginning of this three-day weekend!
“Witness” taught us that silos are bad news.
YES. Still traumatized by that scene in that movie.
I think it was my dad’s cousin or uncle who died after the grain in the grain silo collapsed onto him. And my grandfather also died in a farming accident. It’s definitely not the most carefree profession, but you wouldn’t know that to hear my dad or most of his relatives talk about farming. It’s fascinating to listen to them, and to realize that behind their wistfulness and pride is a whole heaping ton of caution and meticulousness that goes unspoken.
I get a FOUR DAY (paid) weekend because I work for Catholics, and it is glorious and I just bought Story of Seasons yesterday and I am going to spend all weekend wooing Klaus, the perfumer who looks EXACTLY like Mamoru from Sailor Moon.
Very jealous of everyone who’s home today, sigh. The building I’m in is literally half-shuttered (giant gates down over the main entrances), but we still have to be here.
I’m only home today because I’m working tomorrow. Apparently I also have to go to a family function on Sunday.
Huzzah.
When we were kids, my great-aunt would point to her husband’s left middle finger, missing above the first joint, and warn us about the consequences of nose-picking. Not sure when I realized it was a farm accident from before I was born, and whether that’s better or worse.
Yes to the farmers getting terrible injuries. My dad is from Manitoba and once in conversation he casually mentioned that a relative (perhaps cousin?) of his died because his arm go caught in a machine that then pulled him in and chopped him to pieces. Apparently his (son? brother?) saw this happen. Wonderful.
Oh my god that’s so much worse than the mild mangling I just described. Hyperventilating a little now.
My dad is a farmer. Once when I was little I asked him why he was married but didn’t wear a wedding ring, and he told me cheerfully that one of his farmer friend’s wedding ring got caught in some machinery and his hand was mangled. That was a vivid image for a child who loved farm chores.
Happy three-day weekend!
The number one thing I learned working as a cashier in a rural area– holy shit do a lot of people have missing fingers!
My husband is the son and grandson of farmers. I had no idea how dangerous farms are until I started dating him lo these many years ago. My brother-in-law had a couple of near-death experiences as a child on the farm, and my father-in-law saved 3 people from carbon monoxide poisoning in a corn silo, not by rushing in to try to save them (which would not have worked), but by turning on the blower to get some oxygen in there.
My in-laws never encouraged their sons to follow the family business, and I don’t blame them at all. It’s a totally necessary business, but man, a thousand tragedies around every corner.
My dad “learned” to drive when he was 10, and had to drive his grandfather to the hospital after a hay-baling incident.
I approve of venture capitalists and start-up founders getting into auto racing, and I hope they expand their interests to solo climbing, freediving, train surfing, and street luge.
And bear poking.
Now imagining Tom Perkins and Larry Ellison careening down Lombard Street on a homemade street luge go-kart, and it is making my day.
Small plane chicken
Yay, Mountain Goats! I really like the sound on this album. It’s still recognizably Mountain Goats-y, but a lot more . . . um, orchestrated? It sounds like a movie. I don’t really know how to talk about music, haha.
I’m unsure how I feel about it yet. It’s enjoyable, I also like the orchestration, and I really enjoy singing ‘bop bop bop, I’m gonna stab you in the eye with a foreign object, bop bop bop!” But his albums have gotten a bit repetitive over the years. Transcendental Youth was really refreshing in that regard and I feel like he’s lapsed a bit again. I STILL LOVE YOU THOUGH JOHN. 4EVA.
I love this new album. It has been giving me life all week long. The chunk of songs from “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” to “Heel Turn 2” is unbelievable.
His delivery of “I hated all of Chavo’s enemies/ I would pray nightly for their deaths” in The Legend of Chavo Guerrero has been making me smile all week.
Do you think that this album would be a good place to get into the Mountain Goats, then? I’ve never really listened to him much at all, although I’ve always heard good things about him and his music. And Heel Turn 2 was in an episode of Welcome to Night Vale a few weeks ago, and I thought it was really pretty and I liked it, but that’s the extent of my Mountain Goats knowledge. With this new album streaming on NPR, I’m thinking about giving it a listen, but do you think it would be better to start with some of his older stuff?
If you liked “Heel Turn 2”, this or their other more recent albums would be a good place to jump in. The older albums are great (I will be listening to All Hail West Texas on my deathbed), but there’s a huge stylistic change between AHWT and Tallahassee. AHWT and everything before it was recorded solo on a boombox, while Tallahassee and everything after it was recorded in the studio, usually with collaborators. There are amazing albums on both sides of the change, but many people who love one of his styles don’t love the other as much.
Thanks for the info! I’ll have to sample a little bit on both sides of the divide, but I’ll probably start with this album. 🙂
There is no wrong way to get into the Mountain Goats.
Oh man the Audubon Society is LAYING IT DOWN: https://www.audubon.org/news/friends-these
“Perhaps these are omissions born of ignorance; maybe, for instance, despite his declaration that he had been “following” the Vikings stadium brouhaha, Franzen somehow managed to overlook the prominent mentions of Audubon’s advocacy that crop up in pretty much all media coverage of the issue. If so, though, Franzen could have easily addressed that deficiency by availing himself of that most timeworn of reportorial tools: He could have picked up the phone and spoken to someone—anyone!—at the organization whose work he so crassly demeans.”
The thing is, what is Franzen doing to help birds? Don’t tear something down when you’re not doing anything to fix the problem that something is working on fixing.
Apparently he’s on the fundraising board of another bird conservation group! But…yeah, this is not helping. Creating division and problems where there are none is not helping at all.
Oh so he’s just trying to trash Audobon to get money for his own group????????? Um, is there a disclaimer of that somewhere in his article which I refuse to click on?
Nope! Why bother mentioning things when you’re Jonathan Franzen? Clearly your word should be taken as-is, because you are above such foolish things as integrity or ethics or…I dunno, common sense.
And why didn’t they actually get a scientist to write about this is beyond me. America’s most annoying birder indeed.
YESSSSS I LOVED YOUR OUTLANDER RECAPS AT VULTURE SO MUCH. (Ugh Vulture commenters though.)
Hahaha I just read the full headline for that Silicon Valley auto racing piece and yelled, “EW!!!”
Roxane, I am so happy for new Outlander recaps. Thank you. 😀
Vin Diesel named his daughter after Paul Walker: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/20/entertainment/vin-d…
i cried a lot
I have been doing an unsettling amount of crying leading up to the release of this movie. Watched Fast 6, cried the whole time. See a preview for the new movie, start crying again. Pauline? Oh, you can bet I started crying at work.
I don’t know how I am going to watch Furious 7!
Who was it that first said that all these Rich People lifestyle articles are just designed to foment a class war?
You mean here in the comments? It was me! I stole it from my Dad though.
That seems so disturbingly plausible sometimes. It’s one of those conspiracy theories that I want to be true.
Yes! I definitely have an idyllic image of farm life…then I remember the only farmer I’ve known, my uncle (farmer/math teacher, actually). He has two or three missing fingers (down to the second knuckle) from when his hand got caught in a combine. Yeah. Neither of my cousins on that side are farmers.
Yeah, I just think about my dad’s stories of growing up on a farm: the time he got trapped in the corn crib, the time the silo door blew off in the wind and took him with it, chunks of rabbit/skunk/woodchuck/barn cat spraying out from under the combine, etc.
I had a wonderful Classics professor who lived a double life as a goat farmer (after we read the Iliad and the Odyssey he wanted to invite the whole class to his farm to sacrifice a goat and burn its legbones just like they do in the epics but SOME TERRIBLE PEOPLE in the class found that distasteful) and he had a glass eye due to a carpentry accident. He was he best.
My love of Vin Diesel, like space, has no edge. It is boundless, formless, and neverending. I can’t explain it, I just feel it. ILU VIN.
I love Rihanna, and I clicked that prosperity article expecting a fluff piece, but damn.
Gabi Rivera! I went to college with her, she is awesome. I didn’t know she was writing; off to Google.
New Mountain Goats? My life is complete.
Anyone know what that song Chris Hayes is dancing to is? I love it and I’ve only heard two bars!
In case anyone reads the Lisa Mecham piece, and you should, this is a nice companion (its an audio storytelling session ft. Lisa; its lovely on its own, but also, for me, brought additional depth to the written piece.) Thanks for introducing me, Roxanne! https://soundcloud.com/themonti/podcast-episode-6…
That Autostraddle piece by Gabrielle is hella cute!
On the flip side, they also published this piece of Gabrielle’s that’s one hell of a gut punch about growing up queer, family, and salsa music: “Salsa y La Naturaleza: How a Willie Colón Song Taught Me About Queerness and Love” http://www.autostraddle.com/salsa-y-la-naturaleza…
(also features beautiful illustrations, also may make you cry)
That Franzen article was (as Audubon points out) both misguided and dishonest. In addition to what the Audubon rebuts in terms of getting their position and actions wrong, he totally botches the science. He gives the impression that birds will be just fine. They'll just move north! Or up the mountain! Or they are already used to warm temperatures! At least, our excellent North American birds will be. The tropical ones can go fuck themselves or move to a mountain top or something. Plus, he says that preserving entire ecosystems doesn't matter, as long as there's a bunch of different species there. He backs none of these things up with science, probably because there's ample science to show he's got his head up his ass.
I wonder what his pet conservancy group, American Bird Conservancy, thinks about this given that they list consider climate change an important threat to birds.
Nope! Why bother mentioning things when you're Jonathan Franzen? Clearly your word should be taken as-is, because you are above such foolish things as integrity or ethics or…I dunno, common sense.
Thank you for linking this and the rebuttal.
But really, gentle yet exfoliating soap would be useful.
“What is happening to my skin?” http://grooveshark.com/s/Air/HFmKn?src=5
But really, gentle yet exfoliating soap would be useful.
"What is happening to my skin?" http://grooveshark.com/s/Air/HFmKn?src=5
Everything I read about grain silos makes me horrified. And then every time someone brings up how idyllic country life and/or farm life is, I want to point them towards the enormous number of farmers who have suffered some kind of grievous injury and employ child labour, etc. etc., etc.
Also, HEY TOAST it’s a stat holiday today in Ontario so I got to SLEEP IN and cook breakfast and now I’m lying on the couch drinking licorice tea while my husband plays Final Fantasy and everything is AWESOME on the beginning of this three-day weekend!
https://www.facebook.com/Nero2015Platinumfreedown…
Nice roundup! What did you think of Furious 7? I thought it was a good end to the franchise…until they announced that they’re doing an 8th film. Now the whole thing just seems ridiculous. Anyhow, I love the anecdote about Rhianna. The girl’s got a solid head on her shoulders.