I can’t wait any longer, I want a thread in which we can discuss The Sound of Music Live, and how Audra should have played all roles, male and female alike. Also, even Liesl is Team Baroness. RIP, Baroness the First.
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Rebecca Mead and her unworthy male husband treat us to “Book-Club Guide for a Remaindered Book”:
11. Did the author’s wife know that the book was doomed from the start? If so, why did she nurture in the author the crazed delusion that it would “find its audience”? Is she now, in some sense, more responsible for its failure than the author is, as the author has argued in some imaginary interviews he has conducted with himself?
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“Why I Believe Jameis Winston’s Accuser”
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This is one of the most beautiful poems about the loss of a loved one I’ve ever read.
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Our own Molly Minturn (gasp) SPOKE to Tina Fey and then wrote about her for their mutual college magazine:
“His work is so finished,” she said [of Stephen Sondheim]. “His parents were in the dressmaking business, and I feel like you can tell—it’s like his work is stitched together perfectly,” she said. “We tried to exercise that kind of care at 30 Rock. We would proof our pages like they were going to the Smithsonian. We would check every detail on a set, because it’s your work! It doesn’t matter if it’s a school play or a dumb TV show—it’s your work.”
Here, people started to clap. “You should care about it so much that people get annoyed with you!” Fey cried, and the crowd of students, faculty and artists cheered back.
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If you read between the lines here, Cord Jefferson wants to put a baby in you so he can have a Christmas tree, and only a monster would refuse him.
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Emily Nussbaum talks about her televisual 2013:
Here are shows I watched consistently but wouldn’t put on any lists: “Nashville,” “Glee” (the New York parts were surprisingly good), “The Mindy Project” (a mess but I love it anyway), “House of Cards” (hypnotic, highbrow, empty calories), and “The Newsroom,” because once I pan a show that harshly, I feel obliged to keep watching it, in case it improves and I am forced to apologize (nope).
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“Even her name, Dasani, speaks of a certain reach. The bottled water had come to Brooklyn’s bodegas just before she was born, catching the fancy of her mother, who could not afford such indulgences. It hinted at a different, upwardly mobile clientele, a set of newcomers who over the next decade would transform the borough.”
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Oof. That Jameis Winston piece. I realized as I was reading it that I connected strongly to it from personal experience, and then I wondered how many women reading it have personal experiences similar as well. And then I had to try not to cry.
That Marie Howe poem is beautiful. I feel I have to link to my favorite Marie Howe poem, Practicing, also one of my favorite poems ever: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/242166
I believe either you or Mallory said here that it was our duty to be as queer as we could possibly be, and since I’m in a long-term heterosexual relationship, that might just mean reading this poem over and over and over again.
Marie Howe is the best, and “What the Living Do” never stops breaking my heart.
What the Living Do is one of the all-time most important books to me. If it were a person, I would marry it and then make it hot tea every day.
I was in a poetry mood this morning, and that Marie Howe poem is just settling right in next to me. More poems to keep me company today, please.
Also, re: the homeless piece. I am fascinating with names and their significance, especially as that significance relates to factors like class and socio-economics. It’s just so interesting to me. And that article is (appropriately) brutal. So many feels today.
Working my way through it now, and my current reaction is BURN DOWN THE CHARTER SCHOOL MOVEMENT. SET IT ON FIRE.
“For all of McKinney’s pluck, its burdens are great. In the last six years, the city has cut the school’s budget by a quarter as its population declined. Fewer teachers share a greater load. After-school resources have thinned, but not the needs of students whose families are torn apart by gun violence and drug use. McKinney’s staff psychologist shuttles between three schools like a firefighter.
And now, a charter school is angling to move in. If successful, it will eventually claim McKinney’s treasured top floor, home to its theater class, dance studio and art lab. Teachers and parents are bracing for battle, announced by fliers warning against the “apartheid” effects of a charter co-location.”
I have a box of matches here…
As the child of a public school teacher who was so anti the No Child Left Behind movement and charter schools, I am always dismayed/enraged when they gain a foothold in communities that need help and opportunities, not more barriers.
And just to keep stoking the rape-anger flames, I was forwarded this today: http://elitedaily.com/news/world/dangerous-colleg…
and the only take-away I had was “WHAT IN THE HOLY FUCK IS FORCEABLE RAPE VS. NON-FORCEABLE RAPE?!?”
Please? anyone?
I just tried to google to see which dumbass US Congress person used that phrase (the first time I’d heard it) and the 4th google result was porn. So I think that’s it for me and the internet today.
🙁
(My university uses “forcible” and “non-forcible” in their crime stats as well. It makes me so furious and so sad.)
I think they use it in reference to non-consensual sex (forcible) vs. statutory rape (non-forcible), but I’m not sure. I’m not sure why the distinction matters, since both are illegal.
I thought that might be it too, but then it shows “0” as the total number of forcible rapes at a number of the most dangerous universities (and the number of non-forcible as very high), which I have a hard time believing.
Maybe “forcible” includes the use of a weapon? Even then, I would think the numbers would be higher.
“Forcible” means the perpetrator used physical force. It’s contrasted with statutory rape, coercive rape, and incapacitated rape (sometimes also called drug-facilitated rape). It’s SUPER bullshit how “forcible rape” ends up meaning “rape-rape”, especially since most perpetrators rely on coercion and intoxicants, but it is a useful distinction for understanding patterns and motivations in rape perpetration and being able to design effective rape prevention.
I was so frustrated by the hate-tweeting during Sound of Music Live. PEOPLE. It was a MUSICAL before it was the BEST CHILDHOOD FILM EVER. Asserting that poor Carrie Underwood had anything to do with the song arrangements…..well, blasphemy.
Agreed that Audra should’ve been everyone, including the German officer that kept laughing and flubbing lines.
Carrie can do a yodel, though. Her acting was terrible.
ALSO
I read Dasani’s story yesterday and cried and cried. Then I saw this response to the Dave Ramsay post going around FB and then I read the Dave Ramsay post and wanted to bury my head in the sand forever: http://benirwin.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/20-thing…
That Irwin post, numbers 7 and 8: those are things I intellectually know, but will never not feel the wind sucked out of me whenever I actually see numbers.
Cord Jefferson can pull my Christmas tree from my cold, dead hands.
Agreed. Also, geez, way to be Scroogier than Scrooge.
This is the first year I’ve put one up of my own, rather than just going home and helping my parents decorate theirs, and it is so, so great. I keep sitting on the couch and admiring it over and over.
This isn’t relevant to any of the links above, but more people should watch Dessa’s Tiny Desk Concert
I have watched Audra sing Climb Ev’ry Mountain an unhealthy number of times. When she puts her hand over Carrie’s heart, I just want to roll myself up in the warm fuzzy feelings and never leave.
Ha ha ha we actually aren’t getting a Christmas tree *because* we have a child. I have no idea how anyone keeps a toddler away from the “LIGHT!” and “BALL!” on a Christmas tree. This year it’s been the menorah (on oh god a very high shelf because she tried to STICK HER TINY FINGERS in the flames) and lights and stockings on the bookcase; next year maybe a tree. Maybe.
Can we talk about the Dasani article? It was like reading a train wreck. I don’t even know where to start but I’d love to have someone to discuss it with.
First and foremost, we have plenty of money for starting wars but not enough to make sure that a shelter for hundreds of people has more than two microwaves and provides cribs that don’t kill babies.
What struck me was how much energy the system spends on stupid shit vs. energy spent on actual things that would improve people’s lives. Like, take the energy/time/resources you’re spending searching residents for canned goods (why?) or inspecting rooms for microwaves (again, why?) and instead use that energy to fix the decrepit conditions in the building.
And wasn’t there a part in there where they searched the room and left it open, only to have others in the building steal the family’s birth certificates and Social Security cards? Or when they threw away her mother’s ASHES???? At that point, it’s like, why even bother trying to have a better life?
I’ll admit, my extremely white, upper-middle-class, small-town Midwestern upbringing has really failed to give me the resources I need to process a story like this. I can’t even. (And yet at the same time, I still have to help silence those awful voices from my background that say these people are doing this to themselves with the drugs and all the kids and deserve everything they get. Amazing that people think that blaming the parents will somehow make the future better for the kids.)
I could not believe the part about all of the reports of sexual abuse. So, so sad/infuriating.
Also striking: how completely and totally Bloomberg’s “pull yerself up by your bootstraps homeless people!!” policies failed. Ugh. UGH.
Not going to lie I’m pretty grossed out by the depiction of New York after that article. I know the wealth imbalance is everywhere nowadays, but NYC is for some reason an especially egregious example.
I try to keep up with this stuff, but I had no idea that nearly half of New Yorkers live in or near poverty. And if someone who tries to pay attention didn’t know that, I cannot imagine what people who stick their fingers in their ears think is going on.
Yeah and it’s not just an outer borough issue, I think half of Manhattan makes less than 47k. And while that is a deceptively high salary it’s important to remember that that’s household income (as opposed to individual or family income) so it includes a two parent one child household where each parent makes 23k or a single mom with two kids or any other combination like that. And that’s just the median income, who knows how many people are well below that (like 20k and down) as opposed to slightly below that (ex. 45k).
An update to my previous comment, for Manhattan alone, according to wikipedia: “About 17.6% of families and 20% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.8% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over”. So, not quite as bad as all of NYC but probably only because high rents and the killing of rent stabilization forced everyone out to the rest of the city.
And yet we still have so called “progressives” like Matthew Yglesias saying that what New York really needs is more housing for billionaires. I wasn’t aware of the shortage. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/billion_to…
Ahhhhh that is the worst. I think Anthony Weiner was like that too, if I remember correctly? Pretending to progressive but he also helped deregulate a bunch of stabilized apartments, or make it harder for people to keep/increase rent stabilization. Which is the worst because in a city with like a 1% housing shortage and the average apartment price being way higher than the average (pre-tax!) salary rent stabilization is the best thing we could do. And I don’t just say that because I live in a rent stabilized apartment (which, is not that much lower than the market rate one’s, but the fact that they can’t randomly raise my rate 40% like they did to my coworker is amazing).
Apparently Bill deBlasio is/was one of the people who spoke out against those horrible policies so hopefully there will be change in the future (soon I hope)
Meant to include this in my previous comment but I accidentally hit submit too soon. This has just been my experience but I’ve seen this stuff happen in many many cities in the US. I don’t mean to let NYC off the hook in anyway, and Bloomberg’s horrible stance on homelessness (and anyone who wasn’t rich really) definitely exacerbates things but I think this is a growing problem in all cities across America, it just stands out more in a city that also has so many rich people.
And that part where Dasani’s sister gets $11 for her birthday, and then Supreme borrows $5? HEART. BREAKING. And then she gives the last $1 to Chanel on Mother’s Day? TOO MUCH.
This article should be required reading for anyone who thinks the fast-food workers strike/minimum wage isn’t A REAL CONVERSATION we need to be having, and for anyone who didn’t understand this article: http://tressiemc.com/2013/10/29/the-logic-of-stup… (“stupid poor people”)
The NYTimes article had such a lovely point that when people are in EXTREME POVERTY that the only counterbalance in this wacky US culture is EXTREME SUCCESS- i.e. children aspiring to be rap stars or reality-tv kids instead of getting a good education and an entry-level $35K a year job.
I am from a neighborhood of ill repute in a large city and I saw this happen all the time. You would ask the kids in 6th year high-school as 20-something year olds what they wanted to do, and they said “lawyer,” “doctor,” or “rapper.” And I never understood why that line of thinking was reasonable until I read that NYTimes sentence.
We need to help them. But what can we (I) do? This is what plagues me 24 hours after finishing the article.
Also just got to the part about Supreme and his baby sister. Glad the office is empty so no one can see me crying. He’s obviously not a perfect parent, but he didn’t have them, either.
That’s the Reagan Revolution for you! Throw the mentally ill out into the streets, cut off those Cadillac-driving welfare queens and the “strapping young bucks” who really know how to “work the system,” and by all means, cut the poor oppressed rich people’s taxes and then throw whatever money is left at defense contractors so we can build space lasers to shoot at the godless commies. (Oh, what’s that, we have a deficit? THAT’S OKAY, deficits don’t matter when they’re caused by overturning legitimately elected governments in Central America, only when they’re caused by feeding starving children.)
The Republicans (and the Democrats that are trying to be Republican Lite) just keep beating the same drum, decade after decade now — supply side! bootstraps! it’s government that’s the problem not the solution! They may as well just come out and say it — they could not give less of a shit about the lives of children like Dasani and her siblings.
Sorry, but it’s my firm opinion that that NYT article on Dasani/homeless children belongs at THE VERY TOP of dis list. And I shamelessly livetweeted Sound of Music Live and love love love everything about that glorious trainwreck of a thing (obvi most of all Audra, mic-dropping queen).
But that NYT piece…holy balls. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever read. Everyone must read it.
For the entirety of Sound of Music, I felt like the directing was just one long series of marks to hit. Look confused on THIS mark. Now realize it’s okay, and smile on THIS beat. Now move to this place on stage. Now turn and look at the children. Now smile affectionately at the smallest child. Now emote. Now gesture. Now look dramatically into the distance.
Also, Carrie Underwood can clearly belt to the rafters and all, but did anyone else find her voice kind of . . . I don’t know what the quality is. Not sharp, but thin? It didn’t have that roundness I associate with musical theatre, and it made her songs painful to listen to even though she was hitting all the notes properly.
Girlfran’s voice was Strained with a capital S in the upper range, and it was so apparent in the beginning alongside Audra. She is a good belter and I thought she killed it on Lonely Goatherd, but yeah, she was missing that “roundness”, which is mainly a breath control issue.
Well, since you brought it up, how DO you solve a problem like Maria? Certainly, as per the guiding principles of my strict, self-imposed, knapsack-unpacking, humanity-restoring cultural-recovering regimen now up and running in my thread spaces, there will be NO SHAME-BLAMING THE VICTIM HERE! However, I would love comment in a Toast-provided safe-space on the uproarious new American Idol reality-singing/acting TV parody of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical theatre masterwork—aka THE SOUND OF MUSIC—recently broadcast over the bandwidths of the MSM via network TV. A few thoughts after the jump, as the lindy-hoppers say:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/568309#i1,p4,d1
First of all, you want to know why this scene works? As I’m sure the esteemed Enchilada Taco above will concur cause, it’s because AUDRA MCDONALD IS IN IT! You want to know why it doesn’t work at the same time? NOT because Carrie Underwood has neither chops nor creds (who the fuck is paying any attention to her when Audra McDonald is rockin’ the People’s House?) No, because no one in TV land knows how to light BLACK people! OR WHITE PEOPLE! Sheesh.
That is a great fucking point. Lighting changes lives 🙂
I was unaware that one had to provide proof of a child in the home to buy a Christmas tree. I had trees when I was a college student, when I was single, and married and we did not have a child for six years. Cord Jefferson is an idiot. Do what makes you happy.
My Christmas tree is the best thing that’s happened to me for months. And there is just me and the Tall Man, no children. Although Goddaughter was also pretty taken with it.
Christmas trees are so gloriously pagan.
Yeah, I live alone and I totally had a tree, and a stocking and it was amazing. And, yeah, I invited my family over so I could put their presents under it but this year that’s not happening and I’m still going to decorate the hell out of my place (although I might do some sort of potted tree, only because I’m going on vacation and wont be home to keep it from rotting).
Trees are for people who like wonderful christmas decorations and who enjoy the scent of pine. If anything, small children make maintaining a tree harder.
"Forcible" means the perpetrator used physical force. It's contrasted with statutory rape, coercive rape, and incapacitated rape (sometimes also called drug-facilitated rape). It's SUPER bullshit how "forcible rape" ends up meaning "rape-rape", especially since most perpetrators rely on coercion and intoxicants, but it is a useful distinction for understanding patterns and motivations in rape perpetration and being able to design effective rape prevention.