“I believe I left my shoe here, thank you.”
okay but will this mean we get more places that offer delivery, bc right now I can only get Domino’s, and only if it isn’t snowing:
Weber’s office is not in Silicon Valley. It’s not even in California. Instructure, along with over 5,000 other tech companies, is located in Utah. Specifically, it’s in a corporate park in Cottonwood Heights, a northwest neighborhood of Salt Lake City — when Coates nearly lit his staff on fire with a flamethrower, he didn’t do it amid the low-lying scrubland of Santa Clara or Palo Alto, but against the backdrop of the regal Wasatch Mountains. But sitting in a massive conference room talking about open floor plans, a war for developer talent, and the benefits of offering unlimited vacation days, it’s easy to believe Weber when he looks you in the eye and says, “Utah and San Francisco are more similar than people realize.”
Indeed, Utah — once a home home for religious pioneers, perpetually the seat of a sort of conservative wholesomeness in the popular imagination — is changing fast.
I got lost for about an hour in this strange little collection of bits of information about LA bars and clubs and restaurants and hotels in the classic Hollywood era, which has been a great starting point for research for our own John Leavitt, who would be GREAT at recommending a good gay bar for you if you found yourself in 1945 suddenly.
The oral history of RENT (it is so dorky and overwrought when I listen to it now, but this reminded me how I felt about it in the late 1990s):
Leslie Odom Jr. (actor, Hamilton): I went to my local HMV — the cast recording had just come out — and I thought I’d listen to part of the album at one of the listening stations. I put it on, and I couldn’t move — I listened to the whole thing. There wasn’t a whole lot of art that looked like me and my friends.
James: There was this Rent line you could wait in to get cheap tickets each day.
McCollum: We decided, let’s make the cheap tickets the ones for the seats in the first two rows. At first it was first-come first-served, and it was a great visual — all these young people waiting on the street.
Seller: Within a year, the lines were so long that on Friday night you’d have three lines going: one for Friday night, people starting the line for the Saturday matinee, and the other people for Saturday night.
McCollum: It became a little Lord of the Flies — some people were getting robbed on the street. So we said, let’s do a lottery instead.
my dad sent me this article:
A pilot project out of the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and the Kroschel Wildlife Center aims to replace rescue dogs with rescue wolverines in the search for those buried under the snow.
Clocking in at about the size of a standard poodle, the stocky animals are known mainly for their ferocious natures and remarkable hunting abilities – deer, caribou, and lynx are standards on the wolverine menu, and there have been reported incidents of the creatures tussling with black bears over kills. All in all, it might not sound like the furry face you want to see digging you out of a snowbank, but it’s partly the tenacious predator’s hunting skill that makes it a good candidate for rescue duty.
I am really, really excited for The Handmaid’s Tale:
Hulu has made a straight-to-series order for an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale with Moss set to star as Offred, the titular handmaid. Like the novel, the series will take place in a dystopian version of the United States known as Gilead.
Hell, I’LL take the job (I am not eligible for the job), but you won’t like it:
It’s a time-honored tradition for politicians to deny any interest in the vice presidency. But this year, with the possibility of Donald J. Trump as the Republican nominee, they really mean it.
“Never,” said Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who is still running against Mr. Trump. “No chance.”
“Hahahahahahahahaha,” wrote Sally Bradshaw, a senior adviser to Jeb Bush, when asked if he would consider it.
“Scott Walker has a visceral negative reaction to Trump’s character,” said Ed Goeas, a longtime adviser to the Wisconsin governor.
Or, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, “That’s like buying a ticket on the Titanic.”
I impulse-bought tix to Beyonce’s Toronto show in late May, having realized I was ALREADY GOING TO BE IN CANADA and have literally doubled my workouts so that my body is ready for all the jumping I need to do.
I’ve linked to stuff about Canada’s willingness to accept Vietnamese refugees during this era and the benefits it brought to all concerned, but here’s an American story:
Four days before the end of the American Vietnam War on April 30, 1975, my mother and sister were swept into a military cargo aircraft leaving from Tan Son Nhat Airport in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). Along with thousands of others fleeing the country, she spent weeks in refugee camps in the Philippines and Guam before arriving in Arkansas. Eventually she reached a new home in Madison, Wisconsin, where she saw snow for the first time. She would go on to work as a material analyst and systems engineer for 34 years, and have four children who would grow up to go to college, become engineers, designers, and writers, buy cars and homes, and themselves have three children.
Today the 1.3 million immigrants from Vietnam and their 300,000 or so children, along with their culture and cuisine, are just one more inextricable strand of the American fabric. But it’s worth remembering that this wasn’t always a given. Back in the 1970s, the American public’s opposition to letting in Vietnamese refugees was even higher than today’s opposition to Syrian asylum-seekers, both in the US and in much of Europe.
oh man those poor fuckers who bothered to acquire The Knowledge, I genuinely feel for them (I was the researcher-writer for Let’s Go: London a thousand years ago, and never once took a black cab bc they were SO spendy, but also they paid me like four cents an hour, so):
Since UberX came to London, it has actually been very difficult to objectively measure its impact on the black cab trade. “The one thing I can’t answer, and which I would love to be able to answer, is to what extent have they grown the market, versus to what extent have they taken work away from the traditional sectors,” said Garrett Emmerson, who is in charge of surface transport at Transport for London. Since 2013, Emmerson pointed out, the number of taxis on the road has stayed steady, as has the number of those taking the Knowledge. (There were 892 new taxi drivers last year, compared with 760 in 2010.) But the view through the windscreen is different. Judging on the evidence of his own eyes, O’Reilly, like most black cab drivers, has come to believe that the threat of Uber is mortal. In 2015, he watched the number of people coming to his weekly introductory talk on the Knowledge drop from 60 to six. (At the end of the year, the school moved to a smaller premises around the corner). A 20-minute, two-mile trip in a black cab costs £14. An Uber will get you there for £8. “I genuinely believe their aim is to wipe us out,” O’Reilly told me, “Starve black taxis into submission and then run riot with that marketplace.”
WHOA, this guy is amazing:
The students know that he lived through World War II, that he speaks several languages. And yet he has left that history a bit vague. “He has talked about his experience in the war in Paris, and how he had to flee, but he doesn’t really get into the full details,” said Vikramaditya Joshi, 19, who pressed Dr. Rosenberg to come further out of retirement and be his adviser.
The details are worth knowing. Justus (pronounced YOO-stice) Rosenberg is thought to be the last remaining member of an extralegal team assembled by the journalist Varian Fry in 1940 to provide safe passage out of Vichy France to anti-fascist intellectuals and cultural figures fleeing the Nazis. Mr. Fry was something of a Raoul Wallenberg for artists: Two thousand men and women, including Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall and André Breton, were shepherded to safety by Mr. Fry’s network.
Speaking of important, fascinating lives, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan has died, and I personally believe he is probably trying to unionize heaven right now:
In 1980, he and his brother Philip were instrumental in forming the Plowshares Movement, a loose coalition of pacifists who were often arrested for acts of civil disobedience at military bases and other sites, including a nuclear-missile facility in Pennsylvania.
Among those jailed was actor Martin Sheen, who has said, “Mother Teresa drove me back to Catholicism, but Daniel Berrigan keeps me there.”
In 1965, Cardinal Francis Spellman, a supporter of the Vietnam War, told Father Berrigan’s Jesuit superiors to get the agitator out of New York City. Berrigan was sent to South America, but seeing the conditions in the slums of Peru and Brazil made him more militant, not less. He believed that the Catholic Church too often sided with the rich, and he criticized a U.S. foreign policy that included the sale of weapons to rightist military regimes.
yeah I guess there’s no question that a wolverine could find you in a snowbank, I feel like the issue at stake is getting it to not just chew your face off when it got there.
Maybe they’re banking on you just popping out of the snow of your own accord. “Show yourself or we’re coming for you with a wolverine” is a strong motivator.
“ugh I’m so cold and tired and my leg is broken, maybe I should just lay down in this snowbank and die…”
A NEARBY RESCUE WOLVERINE: SNARRGGLLRR SNUFFLE GRARGRARGLE
“AH no I’m okay I’m fine here, here I am!”
I am very impressed that I read that with a mouth full of coffee and none of it got on my monitor. It was a challenge.
I’d be dazed and think, “Ohh, I get to be rescued by Hugh Jackman!” Then I’d end up disappointed AND face-chewed.
“… the wolverine’s natural instincts makes it well-suited to search and rescue, saying they’d been known to search for animals buried along avalanche lines as a source for a quick meal…” (emphasis mine)
“the wolverine’s natural instincts as a relentless, unstoppable predator that feasts on the flesh of the living and the dead make it ideal for rescuing injured hikers”
Or at least salvaging them as part of the food chain.
“Salvaging them as part of the food chain”: THAT’s the angle I was missing. Now it all makes sense!
In the area where I spent an Alaskan summer learning I didn’t want to be an archaeologist, the traditional trappers would have feasts to honor wolverines they trapped, complete with dressing the dead wolverines in special clothes and posing them in prominent positions while the whole village celebrated. One very old woman talked about finding a wolverine in her winter trap line; it had died with all four limbs outstretched, frozen solid, so when she packed it out, the claws kept snagging on trees and underbrush and hampering her attempts to get back home. “Still fighting!” she said admiringly. “Dead, but that’s not much of an obstacle to a wolverine!”
“Dead, but that’s not much of an obstacle” is now a new contender for my tombstone, thanks.
This story is delightful and now I really want to know what kind of clothes they put the wolverines in.
I was imagining like a little German alpine outfit with the lederhosen and the little cap? But I am pretty sure that is not right.
If memory holds a seat in this distracted globe (50-50 odds), the locals said it was usually done with a pair of wolverines dressed as a bride and groom; sadly, I don’t know what Athabaskan wedding clothes involve, whether they were bespoke for each new furry ferocious totemic couple or whether there was a wolverdrobe kept on hand, or really anything that would, in its dull factuality, put off anyone interested in doing a thesis on Wolverine Lore of the Yukon.
On a more serious note, recording those traditions remains a race against time, and if it takes a wolverine to get people interested in sustaining Holikachuk culture, well, stranger things have happened.
WOLVERDROBE
This is actually making me want to write that thesis, even though, after the dissertation, you’d think I’d’ve had enough.
Professor: I would like…..
European Immigrant: [ in thick accent ] I would like….
Professor: ….to feed your fingertips….
European Immigrant: [ in thick accent] ….to feed yur fingerteeps….
Professor: …to the wolverines.
European Immigrant: [ in thick accent ] ….to de wolver-eenes.
(from the very first SNL sketch)
So glad I’m not the only one who walks around repeating that.
TBH I’d be perfectly willing to have my face chewed off if I got to meet a wolverine.
brb flying to Alaska to find an avalanche to get caught in
Obama’s last Correspondents Dinner was goddamn phenomenal. Teach them how to say goodbye with a literal mic drop.
“The only way you can date Michelle in photos, is by looking at me.” And then they showed that freaking skeleton and I choked on my drink.
Hey now, you can also date her by the subtle changes to her hairstyle. But yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Also, her arms get progressively more magnificent.
Right? I have been enjoying our no-fucks-to-give President SO much.
Giving no fucks Barry is best Barry
“Journalists focus on facts in a world increasingly focused on denying objective reality and ignoring scientific fact. In this climate, the services of our reporting men and women are increasingly vital. Y’know, about whatever facts are being denied, despite all of the science. Hypothetically.”
but I don’t WANT to say goodbyeeeee 🙁
And fanboying over Helen Mirren! I’d almost forgotten that until somebody mentioned Helen Mirren today.
Well between Rent and Fr. Berrigan and the Plowshares, I am here for this link round up. Mine is a varied life.
i don’t know where i stand on uber vs black cabs, so i will continue my practice of taking neither and sometimes using addison lee to transport all my belongings from one flat to another
Yes, I have no smartphone, so Uber is out, and hate spending money and interacting with people, which rules out black cabs as well. Walking/Underground only for me!
The thing that immediately occurs to me is that black cabs are wheelchair accessible and normal cars aren’t. Given how rubbish the tube is for anyone with mobility difficulties, I think it’d be properly shit if black cabs dos get pushed off the road.
I get taxis about 6 times a week for work, and I split about equally between Hackney cabs and minicabs. Never used Uber. I don’t pay for them, though, so I can prioritise convenience over cost.
As someone who cycles to work in London*, about 10% of black cab drivers are a polite delight who will stop to chat at the red light, and the remaining 90% seem to be entitled, arrogant, dangerous-driver dicks. Though I admit that learning The Knowledge is a huge mental achievement.
*woooo new cycle superhighways!
The Handmaid’s Tale. The Handmaid’s Tale. The Handmaid’s Tale.
It doesn’t feel real. I keep reading headlines about it, I keep wanting to believe it, but it doesn’t feel real.
Maybe you could get me interested in it? My english teacher had me read it for my independent study in grade 9 and I viscerally didn’t like it. I remember some parts quite clearly, but I’ve never had the desire to go back and re-read it (partially fuelled by my high school dislike of other Margaret Atwood books). What is it you found in it that makes you excited for an adaptation? I feel like I might have a vastly different understanding of it now, with fifteen years of personal growth added.
I think Handmaid is particularly intense as an adult NOW. Reading it in high school as a child of very active political parents I found it creepy, but being aware of the current social and political climate now…makes it downright terrifying.
Yeah, as a kid, it was definitely easier for me to see it as “SCARY DYSTOPIAN FUTURE (that isn’t actually going to happen)”. Now I look at lots of states (Missouri and/or Kansas, for example, because I have family there) and between the blend of jingoism, forced-birth advocacy, and extremist religious views, it feels like some people read The Handmaid’s Tale and saw it as a handbook for what society should look like.
I was reading the wikipedia summary recently and it was terrifying how easily I could see the events happening IRL in today’s society.
I wonder if Margaret Atwood doesn’t look at current headlines and snarl, “Dammit, people, it wasn’t written as a how-to manual!”
I think for me it’s honestly just the terrifying reality of it – the question of power and who gets to keep it and what happens to women. I’m also fascinated by the idea of living through the transition from current society to a dystopian one and what it would actually feel like to suddenly lose access to everything important in your life – to have things taken from you and not be allowed to fight back, and to try to find sanity in that.
I’ve always been a huge fan of dystopian/speculative literature and I feel like what Atwood does really well is show how we get from A to B – which is always the hard part to explain, and often completely glossed over. I think especially in the current US election cycle with the extreme religious conservatism and the hypocrisy that seems to go hand-in-hand with it, it feels especially prescient.
Which may not do a thing to sell you on it (because frankly, this election is horrifying enough without diving into a book that only makes me more terrified of what’s to come), but I am blown away by it every time I re-read it.
Hmm, that’s a good perspective. I think what I mostly focused on when I read it was the day-to-day of what the main character went through. I wasn’t particularly focused on the how or why of it. (as 14 year old me was wont to do)
(as a Canadian, I’m observing the American election with a sort of fascinated horror, I honestly really hope that the best possible outcome happens. Not only for the sake of Americans, but because Canada does tend to follow America in certain political things)
Thanks for your input! I’ll have to add it into my (ever-growing, never shrinking) to-read pile. 😀
To me the terrifying part was how fast it happens–there aren’t dates, but you can make some inferences. And how quickly the limits on financial access shut down everything else.
(Also, I think I read it maybe a year or two after The Bean Trees, and the whole “child of abused/oppressed people taken away to be raised into the oppressor class” was a big thing for me, in terms of trying to fit ideas too big for me in my teenage head.)
Honestly, I viscerally didn’t like it either but in the way that it just made me SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE and probably only would do so even more today, so I highly doubt I’ll watch it on TV. Just thinking about the premise gives me shudders still.
I recently listened to the audiobook read by Claire Danes, and I think she did an amazing job narrating. The best audio version I’ve a book I think I’ve heard.
Honestly, it’s not a book I enjoyed, exactly–I run kind of hot and cold on Atwood. It’s been several years, but I think that there’s some opacity/flatness to the voice in a lot of places which is stylistically purposeful, but is going to have to be done very differently in a dramatic form.
(Like, even when I read it I don’t think I felt the kind of personal connection to Offred that I usually do to main characters in books I find powerful, but I’m not sure I’m even supposed to–I think it’s arguably part of Atwood’s intention. Much as I’m usually a Death of the Author kind of girl. It’s very, very rare for me to be more compelled/haunted by setting/worldbuilding than characters. This is probably why I constantly forget to describe places when I write! There’s people talking! Assume a couch or something!)
It’s very, very rare for me to be more compelled/haunted by setting/worldbuilding than characters. This is probably why I constantly forget to describe places when I write! There’s people talking! Assume a couch or something!
Hahahahaha, yes, that is my writing problem exactly!
“But packedsuitcase, what does it LOOK like?”
“I dunno, a house? Look, they’re in the middle of a fight and everything is really tense, does it matter what colour the freaking throw pillows are?”
“So there ARE throw pillows, then?”
As a book, every time I read it, I fall into it. I don’t even particularly mean to, but when I finish it I have to spend several minutes reminding myself that we do NOT live in Offfred’s world, or at least, not yet.
I know I’ve been waiting for a legit version since the book was issued.
Every day, we get nearer to its being a reality.
Every day, we get nearer to its being a reality.
I don’t think you meant this line the way I read it, but boy howdy is it still accurate.
I’m pretty sure I read that exactly as you did and I’m slightly terrified now.
I don’t know. I’ve always had problems with The Handmaid’s Tale, from the first time I read it at 14 and went, wait, did she really just say that the black people in the US got shipped off to toxic waste sites? All of them? And I’m supposed to be worried about this lady?
You know those times you come face to face with your blinding privilege? I literally remember nothing about that.
Damn. Yeah, Offred is not really the person to worry about.
That’s a good point. I’m guessing this show will most likely be all-white, which, while it’s kind of the point, is too much of a default already.
This has also been my reaction to a lot of the YA dystopia-lite that is trendy these days. The gaping holes in their demographics imply events way more horrifying than a feisty “not exactly pretty but intriguing” white girl being forced to get a makeover and be in a love triangle.
I mean, your future-USA appears to have 1 person of generic!Asian descent and zero other people of color in it,and I’m supposed to feel for the heroine who is a little bit less blond than 18 of the other 19 girls in the Marry-the-Prince Games?
The super-stratified bio-engineered society of our post-apocalyptic solar system draws exclusively on Greco-Roman antiquity out of the entirety of human history and culture on earth,and the travails of a white dude struggling to get to the top/heroically overturn the system is the most important story you can think of to tell about this future?
Paolo Baciagalupi (I may have misspelled that) is really good for YA dystopia that’s both based on real things happening now AND noticing that often the worst of those things are visited on communities of color. I read two of his for work and both times finished wanting to learn a lot more about the realities behind the fiction.
I did not know Bacigalupi had written YA! I love the 2 books if his I’ve read – Windup Girl and Water Knife. I fervently love Water Knife actually, I tell everyone about it. It’s such realistic near-future SF, I feel like that’s our actual literal future. There’s a really hot, grimy breath-play sex scene in it too, so DEFINITELY not YA.
I recently read Stranger by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, a post-apocalypse set a ways in the future; and I think every single major character was a POC. I read a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff, and this is one of the very very few that wasn’t filled by central white people casting. (Incidentally, this is also the book that the authors said when they first approached a major publishing company with it, they were told that the only way the publisher would do the book is if they removed all references to one of the main characters being gay, or else get rid of the character completely. The authors refused and had to shop the book around for a bit before finding a new publisher.)
The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson has racial politics as a big part of its overall dystopia in future floating-city post-Brazil, and while it does have a love triangle, at least it’s the girl, her male best friend, and the guy they’re both in love with.
I was 14 in 1986, a year after AHT was published. It was very, very easy at that time to read it as a logical extension of the crap that was happening in the US at that time, which included a lot of negations of women’s bodily autonomy and also a shitload of racism. So I didn’t read it so much as Atwood discarding non-whites out of hand, but Atwood taking a clear look at the US patriarchal religious nutjobs and thinking “taking this thinking to its logical extreme, where do we arrive?” And then writing her novel in that place. The nutjobs would have wanted to rebuild their society with white babies, so the only women of any value would then be women capable of producing white babies.
Re: the production of white babies, this reminds me a lot of the default whiteness in Orphan Black. Tatiana Maslany is a tremendous actress but there’s also something really disheartening about the fact that you know they never would have even considered a woman of colour for the role because eugenicists would only ever want to clone white people…
I think Elizabeth Moss is well-cast for Offred, but I’m not sure I feel the need for a tv adaptation?
I guess it would be interesting for people who haven’t read the book, but having read it, I feel like there would be nothing holding my interest since I already know what happens.
The only thing I could think of that might make it more interesting is if they build on the history of the book’s universe–delve more into what happened in the years before we meet Offred. But I don’t really know how they would do that without having Atwood’s input.
Guess this means I have to read it now. I’m guessing that maternity leave after having a third boy may not be the ideal time, though.
This sums up my feelings about it today:
“It won’t matter if Miller hires only women to work on the series; that would be great, but it doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, all of them would answer to a white man, however benevolent.”
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/apr/…
“At a bar in Utah, it’s not possible to buy a draft beer with an ABV higher than 4%”
wat. WAT.
I actually interviewed with Instructure a few weeks ago. They passed on me. Didn’t realize they were this SV-ish. I hate that shit; the best thing about my current job is that things are fairly serious at work, which I appreciate more and more when I see stuff like that.
I feel bad for those London cabbies, but at the same time, $20 to go two miles in 20 minutes is crazy. I hate Uber as a company, but the industry they’re attacking is one of the few that is so terrible that they almost balance out (at least, it is here in the US; UK toasties, are your taxi companies as terrible as ours?).
I don’t take taxis much. I do use Uber, mainly because it’s so much cheaper and you can get one in the middle of nowhere/the night. However I’ve had drivers get totally, stupidly lost, and I have so much respect for the Knowledge. Black cabs are much bigger, and wheelchair accessible, which Ubers aren’t. I have a friend who is genuinely terrified of having to get around London in her wheelchair if cabs die out… Both are pretty rubbish but not awful?
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I didn’t realize the black cabs were that big – I thought they were just slightly stylized sedans.
I have spent a grand total of three days in London, and we mostly took the Tube around, but did black cabs a couple of times and I was ASTONISHED by The Knowledge. Going from a train station to a tiny B&B on a crescent by the British Museum that no one has ever heard of? No problem. I don’t remember the name of the theatre but we’re seeing Ralph Fiennes in The Tempest? Sure thing, get you there in ten minutes. HOW DO THEY DO IT.
…as someone who lives next to a crescent full of tiny B&Bs near the British Museum, isn’t it amazing? Every uber I’ve taken home (even the ones with satnav) has gotten lost on the Euston Road. NO problems for cabbies. It’s the best and I am in awe forever. This is why they get free stuff everywhere!
It’s incredible! I legitimately don’t get how the human brain can hold that much data and integrate it so fully. And it isn’t just that they know where everything is physically, or how to get there, it’s that in the process of point A to point B, they will also tell you the history of the place and where the best pub grub on the block is. Depth and breadth of knowledge is literally unparalleled.
(We stayed at The George, A+ would repeat)
The brain actually undergoes structural changes in people who’ve successfully completed The Knowledge, is how! More gray matter in the posterior hippocampus versus non-Knowledge and failed-Knowledge controls.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-982…
This is incredible.
Wow, honestly, if I knew I would never have to attempt to give directions again (I never know! I don’t know which way you should take! This is one of the reasons I don’t drive!) I would consider that a premium worth paying for!
See, that’s the thing. We’d recently had to give a cabbie directions to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, which… it isn’t a hard place to find, but we are Oh My God So Not New Yorkers (So Why Are You Asking Us These Questions), and he was completely flummoxed by it, even with a loud satnav system next to his head, and to then have our next taxi interaction be with a London cabbie who could find our microscopic hotel without batting an eye was a complete revelation. It was so, so, SO worth the money.
The Knowledge is seriously so impressive. I was in London last fall for a work conference, and afterwards we had to get from Earl’s Court to St. Pancras in the midst of a terrible traffic jam. Our cab driver negotiated us around it with no difficulty, and we all made it to our trains out of the city with time to spare. Magic.
According to this National Geographic article, learning The Knowledge takes about five years of studying. So… it’s like a master’s degree in London geography.
To qualify for that elusive green badge, you need to learn by heart all 320 sample runs that are listed in the Blue Book, the would-be cabbie’s bible. You will also have to commit to memory the 25,000 streets, roads, avenues, courts, lanes, crescents, places, mews, yards, hills, and alleys that lie within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.
Add to that the locations of another 20,000 landmarks and points of interest—pubs, clubs, museums, parks, monuments, railway stations, tube stations, hospitals, schools, police stations, government buildings, embassies, cemeteries, churches, guild halls, theaters, cinemas—any place, in other words, a fare-paying passenger might conceivably ask to be taken or an examiner might challenge you to find.
You’ll need to know your way around so well that, when asked, you can calculate the most direct legal route between any two addresses anywhere in the entire 113-square-mile (293-square-kilometer) metropolitan area within seconds, without looking at a map, and be able to rattle off the precise sequence of streets, junctions, roundabouts, and left- and right-hand turns necessary to complete such a journey.
And you’ll have to be able to do this consistently, not just once or twice, but in a potentially endless series of one-on-one oral exams, called “appearances,” taken at regular intervals until the examiners are satisfied that you do indeed possess The Knowledge.
I like how The Knowledge is capitalised, but I still feel like that last sentence should have even more emphasis: “[…] until the examiners are satisfied that you do indeed possess… The Knowledge.” I mean, TWENTY THOUSAND LANDMARKS, TWENTYFIVE THOUSAND STREETS. That should earn you not only caps but also italics.
So to continue the analogy, if London cabbies with The Knowledge are PhD.s, what does that make Uber drivers?
Extension course completion certificate?
A really clever PhD student who is nevertheless basically keeping one chapter ahead of the kids in the master’s seminar they’ve been put in charge of.
I was going to link to this article too – cabbie brains are actually changed by the. Neural pathways they develop. I’m not an uber fan but I will use them for journeys outside the centre because it’s that or a minicab of similar stripe.
I don’t massively use black cabs because I’ve mostly not had spare cash to justify them when a bus or tube or walking is an option. Objectively I think they are amazing but it doesn’t stop me immediately feeling like I know a better route when I do hop in one.
It’s so fun when a driver really surprised you with a great route.
And they must have to constantly monitor traffic stoppages and construction projects, right?
if you’re hiring a someone to chauffeur you a whole two miles, and you don’t actually need a mobility van or something, you can pay $20 for it. There is no ‘but’, that’s an awful argument for destroying one of the last semiskilled trades that hasn’t already been handed off to Chinese slave labor and replacing it with marginally paid contract hitchhiking for a bunch of guys who wanna Disrupt labor laws.
Especially if it’s taking 20 minutes. That’s only $60 an hour if they get back-to-back fares constantly, which seems unlikely. By the time you factor in car payments and maintenance and gas and insurance, that’s not going to leave you with a particularly high wage, and London is not a particularly cheap place to live.
Utah drinking laws are nuts. I was in Salt Lake for the first time earlier this year and had three regular-size gin and tonics. You know, served in a rocks glass, filled to the brim, looked like the standard double you get in any sensible bar.
I didn’t feel a thing.
So I texted my friend who is a local and works in a restaurant, because I was wondering if the cocktails were somehow Different or if I was just that messed up from travel, and he replied, “Oh… I forgot to tell you. They can’t legally serve you a double here. You’re drinking singles with extra tonic.”
I don’t hate Uber, but I am pro-union and also not really into how unregulated all these app-y startups are, but anecdotally the other day I bartended a private wedding party in a house and when it was over, everybody was pretty sleepy and it obviously would be best for me to leave (I mean, they were cool with it, but they also wanted to go to sleep). My uber app wasn’t working so I called a cab company and when I asked what time estimate they could give me, they said “idk, call back in 5 or 10 minutes and see if we’ve sent someone”. I got my uber app working in that time, had an uber there in 4 minutes, and called the cab co. back to cancel.
I hate that I’m part of the system, but…I’m not really down to fight for the cab companies when they don’t work for me, you know?
I LOVE WOLVERINES. Except in our household they are called by their true name, catdogbearfoxferret.
I am shocked that according to this, wolverines are the size of a standard poodle?? Either wolverines are much bigger than I think or poodles are much smaller. Hoping it’s the latter because the former is terrifying.
I have a feeling the author meant “standard” as in “that little kind everyone has,” not as in the actual breed of “Standard Poodle.” At least, this is what I’m telling myself to feel safe in the woods.
So I looked this up and apparently adult wolverines can range from 20-70 pounds. So what the author actually meant is maybe “Okay, imagine a poodle. Whatever kind of poodle you might be imagining, know that there exists a wolverine of the same size.”
In Mexican Spanish a wolverine is a glotón, literally glutton.
In German it’s Vielfraß, which means much the same thing but is one of those great German compound words: “much-eater.”
The Buzzfeed piece on the Wasatch Front as the next Silicon Valley is fascinating, although in the end not too surprising to me–utopian projects mostly populated by white men is kind of a long-standing local phenomenon–but also WHAT Cottonwood Heights is a “northwest neighborhood of Salt Lake City,” it’s on the East Bench, it’s AT LEAST 60th S and 23rd E, are you JOKING BUZZFEED?
The tech revolution has displaced the Salt Lake grid system’s point of reference from Temple Square to the Draper IKEA; wow, have I been underestimating the disruption power of Silicon Valley.
Being able to rock a dance floor for 4 hours straight is, like, 95% of why I workout, yes, that is a solid life choice.
I’d say about 65% for me is to survive the zombie apocalypse – I’m not gonna make it very long if I can’t even lift my own body weight.
But! The zombocalypse is a maybe. Dance parties are for life 😉
Good point! 😉
That taxi article is why I avoid using uber in my city (where the taxi’s aren’t horrible to begin with, I have to add). Sure it’s all fun and cheap until they run the licensed taxis out of business. I also wouldn’t trust them to do anything if you got in an accident.
Also, we have a taxi company that is 100 percent reliable about having a cab there when you need them. We’ve ordered cabs to get us to the train or airport at Stupid O’Clock in the morning, and that text comes like clockwork. I appreciate that a lot.
i
Here in Sacramento it’s kind of crazy that Uber has made the local taxis way better. You used to call for a cab and they’d spend the next 2 hours responding to your increasingly frantic phone calls with “oh the driver will be there in 15 minutes!”. Now they actually turn up.
Did you hear how an Uber left Neil Gaiman stranded right before he had to catch a flight, because the driver didn’t want to go to the airport? Seriously. And he just cancelled the ride, so Neil couldn’t even leave a review.
I also try not to use Uber, unless I’m in a location where I can’t hail a taxi. The challenge to this resolve is UberPool, which actually has made Uber cheaper than taxis – before they added that service, UberX and regular yellow/green cabs (clearly I am in NYC) were basically the same price.
I take taxis instead of Uber or Lyft because I want to live in a world where there will still be real live hailable taxis even when my phone battery is dead.
(Before I jump in, a couple people had asked if I was posting these elsewhere, in case they missed some, or so they didn’t have to go hunt. So I created a wordpress blog where I’m also gonna post them each day, just to have like an archive. All the past ones are there, as well as shorter ones for the weekend. The blog is: femhistory on WordPress. Also I got a little carried away with today’s, whoops.)
Today in (Feminist) History!!
On this day in 1536, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was arrested and imprisoned on (false) charges of incest, treason, adultery, and witchcraft. In truth, Anne Boleyn was essentially arrested because she could not give King Henry VIII a son; after three miscarriages, and with Henry courting Jane Seymour, Anne was simply in the way. True, the fact of Anne Boleyn being arrested on this day is not really a positive “feminist” fact, but she is important for numerous reasons: Firstly of course, because she was the mother of Queen Elizabeth I of England, who would go on to rule England for almost 45 years, ushering in their Golden Age. Secondly, however, because Anne Boleyn’s life, history, and character has over the years been thoroughly tarnished by the standards of a patriarchal society.
Thanks to both the patriarchal society of the time, and the patriarchal lens through which she is still viewed today, there is a tendency to portray her as a seductress who used her sensuality to lure Henry VIII into falling in love with her, and essentially convinced him with her womanly wiles to divorce his wife Katherine. However it is far more likely that Anne Boleyn was a woman who made the best of what she was essentially forced into. A woman who had no real capability within the society of the time to resist the King’s urges. A woman who told him no again and again, even fleeing with her mother to a safe distance, only to find herself still pursued. A woman who in reality, had no legal or social recourse against him, and thus no choice when it came to accepting his advances; if she continued to deny him any more forcefully, he could easily ruin both her life (by preventing her from ever finding another spouse) and that of her entire family.
“Pursued by a king whose advances she at first resisted, she turned the lust from which she could not escape into a means of achieving power for herself: captured, she became herself the captor. Even in defeat, she was never fully Henry’s. Like the falcon she chose as her emblem, she was a wild creature used, curtailed, but never truly tamed; she was a sexual woman whose vitality belongs only to herself. For years Henry tried vainly to control that vitality; finally, unable to mold it to his purposes, he killed her.” – Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, by Karen Lindsey.
In the end, Anne did what she could, turning the situation around so that at least she could become Queen, rather than just a mistress who would eventually be tossed aside like all his other mistresses. And for that, she is branded forever a seductress, a witch, an adulterer, etc. Because patriarchy.
(But I like to think that Queen Elizabeth I, her daughter who reigned even longer and far more successfully than her husband, was her last laugh.)
Also on this day:
• In 1250, Shajar al-Durr, widow of the Ayyubid Sultan As-Salih Ayyub, becomes Sultana of Egypt.
• In 1999, Mireya Moscoso becomes the first woman to be elected President of Panama.
These are so amazing. Thank you for doing this.
Awww, you’re welcome, I’m glad you guys like them so much! It’s really fun researching and writing them.
Love these! Thank you!
I recently read the Karen Lindsey book quoted above because of Toast comment recommendations and it does not disappoint. Also, I can finally keep my Katherines/Catharines and Anns/Annes straight.
You’re welcome, I’m glad you love them!
And oooh yes! I was probably one of the people recommending it, I love that book. I recently got my copy back from my sister, it’s so good! Honestly that book is where a lot of my Anne Boleyn feelings come from, haha. (That and I’m a big Elizabeth I enthusiast.)
This should be a tinyletter! I would /totally/ subscribe.
These are all so great! I’ve added the blog to my feed reader in case I ever miss the post in the LR!
i do so very much appreciate these <3 thank you.
I mean, you could be Vice President, Nicole, you just need to get someone to repeal the Twelfth Amendment first, and then there’s the minor issue that you won’t be able to do the one defining feature of the job. But who knows, if Trump runs out of other options, maybe he’ll consider you! (Lets be real, though, he’s going to pick Donald Junior.)
I am really amused by the idea of Kasich agreeing to be Trump’s VP, and then a week after the inauguration Trump has a sudden and mysterious heart attack and Kasich is all like, “well he must have eaten too many Trump steaks” and then turns to the camera and gives a big ol’ wink.
It must be a serious issue for Trump, though. I mean, he has to find someone who is not murderously inclined towards him at all. Good luck with that!
I have a friend who’s been saying for months that Trump would pick Sanders as a running mate specifically so that he (Trump) could resign a day after inauguration and get Sanders into the Presidency.
I would actually find that almost as horrifying as Trump being president, since it frankly would confirm alllllll of my nebulous fears that Sanders acts in bad faith. 😐
It amazes me how some people still think Trump isn’t exactly what he’s telling everyone he is, through actions and words, nearly a year now. No, it’s a secret conspiracy to make Bernie president! WTF.
LOL WHAT.
He is legitimately kidding about this, so y’all know, he absolutely doesn’t believe it, but did mention it as a like… here is the level of trolling that Trump would not surprise me by doing, sort of thing, if that makes sense.
I mean, I have literally heard people floating theories that Trump is somehow running as part of a long con to get Hillary into office, so I think we are at peak conspiracy theory right now.
The number of times I have heard this beggars belief.
It makes more sense than most conspiracy theories: he’s trouncing all other candidates, so it’s coming down to Trump or Hillary, and at the last the People go “Oh shit, no” and vote in Hillary. So he can’t lose: if she wins, the plan succeeds and if he wins then becoming President of the United States is pretty good as a consolation prize. For him, you know.
Not that I expect it’s true, but it makes narrative sense.
At least Mallory is a born American, right?
I remember that one of the compelling arguments against John McCain was that it would mean America was one old man with a heart condition away from Sarah Palin being leader of the free world.
I remember when Dan Quayle was VP and my dad used to always trot out some late–night-host-type joke in which the five scariest words in DC were supposed to be Barb, I’m not feeling well.
Anyone else watch the 20/20 interview with David Miscavage’s father?
According the the Scientology lawyer, any legit above board religion will release a public statement trashing you if you leave. Gee, I wonder what the Lutherans are going to do to me
They’re gonna bury you in jello salad.
…I think I would almost take being shunned and harassed over that.
What kind?
Probably the insidious jello with shredded carrots. There should be a law…
Eh…. that’s not ideal.
Oh come now, these are civilized times. It would at the very least be the kind with mandarin oranges.
Rule 34
If you are going to another church and ask them to, they will probably send your new congregation a nice letter of transfer.
If you are not, they will probably not do anything.
It would have been great if there had been a formal excommunication ceremony when I left the church, something with a priest chanting Latin imprecations on the steps of a cathedral while a chorus of nuns cried out, “Shame, shame!” Of course, then I would have felt compelled to get a spiffy black cape to swirl around myself as I cackled diabolically while climbing into a hotrod with flames coming out of the exhausts being driven by a she-devil in a leather jacket… yeah, still no downside.
…this is great. And I’m going to be ordained.
Coffeeboarding.
Like waterboarding, only lukewarm and burnt smelling.
Like, in retrospect I’m like “pay your fucking rent you guys,” but when I first heard Rent at age ~13 it was mind-blowing, and I will always have a soft spot for it in my heart and sometimes when I’m in an angsty mood I’ll listen to the soundtrack and it makes me feel better.
Also, sometimes I desperately wish I could hire Angel to make my neighbor’s yappy dogs disappear, because those little beasts will bark for hours on end and it drives me crazy.
Yeah, same. I realized I was An Old when I was like “hm you know it’s actually kind of unreasonable to expect to live somewhere rent free forever…..”
Yeah, it mattered A LOT to me when I was younger – it blew my tiny little raised-on-Rodgers-and-Hammerstein mind – and while I know it has a ton of flaws it still holds a place in my heart. (Telling us you don’t like Rent is not a bold or unpopular opinion at this point.) I loved that show so much.
Actually, though, in “You’ll See,” Roger and Mark tell Benny that he broke his word (and I think in dialogue, they say something about how Benny had told them that they wouldn’t have to pay rent after he bought the building.) So, like, they do have a reason to be upset with Benny about the whole rent thing?
Not that I have the whole musical memorized or anything.
Oh yeah, trust me, I know, I’ve got it memorized too. But then Benny says “There is one way you won’t have to pay” and offers them this amazing production studio, or whatever it was, with continued free rent as long as they get Maureen to cancel her protest. It’s totally manipulative of him, but frankly I’d have paid good money to never have to hear the trainwreck that is “Over the Moon,” so, you know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For freaking real! They would have been doing the entire neighborhood a favor, really, if they had stopped Over the Moon from happening!
Yeah, fair enough. I mean, I get why they turned down the offer because it came down to their principles and selling Maureen down the river would be kind of like how Benny screwed them over. So, it’s not just about rent but also about the kind of person you want to be?
Also, that their production studio would involve evicting all the other squatters in the building who had nowhere else to go. And the destruction of the tent city. I do think Mark and Roger made the issue more black-and-white than it really was but I get why they turned Benny down. (Even though there is an undertone of “you have to suffer for your art” which is pretentious crap that I don’t have any patience for)
Yeah, but like, it’s also about gentrification, right? Building a state of the art production studio would be really great for Roger and Mark, but what about all the homeless people who would inevitably be pushed out of the neighborhood as it became a place for fancy, high tech productions? And a studio would open the door for other business to come in and push out the ones that were already there (THE CAT SCRATCH CLUB).
What makes me sad is that, in the end, Benny actually does win. Even the Life Cafe shut down a year or two ago.
THE LIFE CAFE SHUT DOWN?
(That said, it was pretty shitty… and I only ate there once, during my first week living in new york, then never again. I think it’s just for tourists?)
Yes!! I agree that it’s generally unreasonable to expect to live rent-free, but if your friend the building owner tells you you can live rent-free then you can expect he won’t suddenly come around trying to collect?
Also I think they did have a point about the tent city.
I also feel like the characters don’t have to be objectively right about paying rent for Rent to be a good show. Maybe they will have to knuckle under to capitalism soon, but it’s not unreasonable to tell a story about characters who wish they didn’t have to do that, even if that wish is self-centered and unrealistic. It’s okay to tell a story about people who believe unrealistic things.
I have A Theory. I do not believe that Benny ever actually told Mark and Roger that they didn’t have to pay rent. “You’re golden” was what they said he’d told them. Which could mean a lot of things depending on the context of the conversation. What they heard was, “Benny is a pal! He’s going to let us live here free forever!” and what Benny meant was, “If you’re late with the rent here and there, I’ll let it slide and I won’t raise it.” And then I think they completely blew off any hints or prior attempts he made to collect the fucking rent. So, Benny is justifiably pissed and he knows they are never going to pay the rent, so he figures he might as well get SOMETHING out of these freeloaders and thus asks them to cancel the protest. And he KNOWS they will break back in, and I think he’s kind of resigned himself to it on New Years. He’s got too much of a heart to kick out the dying guy and I think he’s hoping Mark has enough talent to eventually get himself out of there (or make enough money that a shakedown would actually, you know, get him some money).
I base all of this on the fact that he doesn’t seem to be so much of an asshole through the rest of the play/movie as to kick people out on Christmas without there being PLENTY of lead up and the fact that Mark clearly does not give a shit about other people’s time or money (I cannot forgive his cavalier attitude towards the waiter at the Life Cafe).
This is my official headcanon, anyhow.
Hey, I’d believe it.
(I cannot forgive his cavalier attitude towards the waiter at the Life Cafe)
AHHHH THIS. Why are you such an asshole to the waiter?! Waiters depend on tips! Many of them are also writers, musicians, actors, etc! They are your people, don’t make their lives miserable!
Also how Mark clearly comes from a background of privilege but is fully invested in the idea of his identity as a struggling artist. Like, dude, if Benny really did kick you out, you would not be on the streets, you could ABSOLUTELY go back to Scarsdale and crash with your parents for awhile. But sure, maybe keep being shitty to your mom and not returning her phone calls because she’s too suburban and boring for your edgy lifestyle. (I bet you never thanked her for the hot plate either.)
Actor-waiters are legion. I pretty much dated them exclusively in my 20s.
Starving Artists who treat wait staff badly, on film or in life, fill me with unquenchable rage.
Oh my god I remember this! Yes, this is why I hated Rent. I hated Mark with every fiber of my being and the power of that memory is flooding through me AS I TYPE wow damn
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t channel Angel at least weekly thanks to my neighbors.
My mom’s response upon seeing the movie was “well, they’re not reality-based.” I was indignant, but by the time the movie came out it already was also a long time after high school and my initial obsession, and so inwardly I had to admit that maybe she had a point…
Well, with the movie it also turns into this whole other thing since it’s the same cast a decade or so later. It’s one thing if you’re squatting in a building with no heat and ~suffering for your art~ in your early 20s, but once you hit your mid-30s there’s a very different dynamic underlying it.
I was watching it with a friend and she said “So, is Jesse L. Martin undercover from Law and Order in this version?”
I DON’T ENDORSE THIS MESSAGE BUT:
http://www.pajiba.com/miscellaneous/in-defense-of…
But rent strikes were hardly invented by Jonathan Larson, rent strikes are a real organizing tool still used today. They’re standing against a new wave of new york gentrification. Where are they supposed to go exactly? I’m sure the shelter system would be super fun for a group of hiv+ addicts many of whom are queer. Their lives and their autonomy is more important that Benny making a buck on condos. Nobody cared about their alphabet city squatting for years before, the city had all but abandoned it. They should at least have been offered section 8 vouchers to stay put. I know the movie gives the impression they’re living in a fab loft but they still don’t have electricity or running water most of the time.
Yes, also, this — this building DEFINITELY was not fit for habitation, and it would’ve been illegal for Benny to collect rent on it.
RENT is the first story of gentrification I evet experienced. I remember reading the word gentrification for the first time and thinking about RENT. Here’s a story told from the perspective of vulnerable people who got pushed out of central NYC neighborhoods. Are they perfect martyr figures? No! They’re kind of self righteous and Roger’s song does suck and Maureen is being obnoxious but doing it for the right reasons. That’s the point! Everyone deserves love (measure your life in love) and dignified living conditions even if they’re queer/addicted/positive/whatever.
I mean, the entire show is permanently embedded into my brain from repeated listening at age 14 or so. So no matter how much I am now Team Benny, I still kind of love it.
If your roommate buys your building and promises you can live rent free, you don’t owe rent.
(a) It was a gratuitous promise; as near as I can tell, he got no consideration; and
(b) Even if he did (courts are usually reluctant to find a lack of consideration), in NY a lease of more than a year comes under the Statute of Frauds and must be in writing. So they would be set for 364 days. After that, they need some paper.
So, legally, no. (I consider the fact that legally he shouldn’t be collecting rent on an uninhabitable building to be effectively cancelled out by the fact that they shouldn’t be LIVING in an uninhabitable building. The end result is still eviction for the residents.) Even ethically, you have to think about whether it’s really reasonable to expect a dude to give his friends free housing for life based on something he said as a young adult.
RESCUE WOLVERINES is the name of my new band
Is a tiny chibi wolverine your logo?
And now I just googled “chibi wolverine”, so my day just got a LOT better ^_^
Full name, “littlehuntingcreek and the Rescue Wolverines”. Damn fine!
Has anybody seen this article re: Stephanie Tanner yet? I’m kind of loving it (but possibly because I fill the Stephanie Tanner role in my friend group).
So on the road to work this morning, I passed a sign saying, “Concert at [nearby university] 5/3. Delays expected 3 PM-11 PM. Consider alternate route.”
This was strange, because I was already on what might be considered the alternate route. Also, because 8 hours of delays?! 8 hours?! Plenty of famous people have performed there before, and I’ve never seen delay warnings for that range of time. Who on earth could it be?
I’m ashamed to admit I did not immediately realize it was Beyoncé, but now it all makes sense. And I need to find an alternate alternate route home.
The Beyoncé Effect: Recommended precaution if one finds themselves anywhere within a 20 mile radius of the Beyoncé epicenter at any given time.
She’s like a planet- she has her own gravity. If you’re within range of her gravitational pull you won’t be able to escape it. Maybe you can try that gravity assist maneuver to slingshot yourself home faster though?
Ahhh I’ve been thinking about signing up for Hulu for awhile now, and this is going to be the thing that gets me to do it. So excited for this adaptation, so excited Elizabeth Moss is on board.
I would now be happy to accept recommendations for additional excellent TV that can be only or primarily found on Hulu.
Hulu has all of Brooklyn Nine Nine, the first two seasons of Please Like Me, and the first season of You’re The Worst! And a ton of Criterion collection movies, if you’re like me and like to pepper your queue with fancy movies you’re probably never going to watch (except Eyes Without A Face, that movie is the shit).
Although, watch whatever Criterion stuff from Hulu that you want to watch soon; it’s going away soon.
Scott & Bailey!
Did you watch the new one? It was al great until they suddenly got bored and finished the whole thing in a minute and a half.
I love Chris O’Dowd’s show, Moone Boy.
Moone Boy is the best!!!
I love Moone Boy, but the episode where they were all tolerant of homosexuality without mentioning that it was frigging illegal if you were male was not classy.
The Mindy Project is now only on Hulu, which I understand isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I really enjoyed this last season!
Also the only place to get your Daria fix. I pay extra each month for commercial-free Hulu, and watching uninterrupted Daria is a teenage dream come true.
There is Broad City, Empire, and I highly recommend all the episodes of Prime Suspect (UK police procedural starring Helen Mirren, excellent!)
PRIME SUSPECT
I suppose this is as good a place as any to admit I never liked or appreciated RENT. So for all the people who don’t get why we’re so worked up over Hamilton? I understand. It’s a good reminder that it’s okay to not dig the same things. Except Fury Road or the Jump Street movies. I side-eye those people hard.
Right there with you. I saw Rent too late in life (which is to say, I saw it after I moved out of my mom’s house and got a job) and have never enjoyed it.
My Mom rented (heh) it for me when I was home sick from school, age 16, and I was like ‘wtf are you on about?’ (to the movie, not to Mom). I had been working odd jobs since about 12, but I don’t think it was even that, I just didn’t like the plotline very much. Of COURSE the next year our ‘class song’ at HS graduation was the ‘fivehundredsixtyblergmmmmfour MI-NUTES’ song. My apologies to those that like it, it’s just not my cup of tea.
Me too. I liked it, but it felt pretty dated pretty fast.
RENT seems a lot like In The Heights — the work of someone who is clearly going places but only the very first step on that road.
Maybe that’s why I appreciated Hamilton so much the first time I heard it. It felt indifferent, and certainly influenced by current times, but I feel like it’s going to hold up better. I guess time will tell!
I like that 521,600 Minutes song, but otherwise yeah, I never really got into RENT. You’d think I’d have been super into it because I first saw it in my high school baby queer times, but… nah, everyone was kind of a jerk in that show so I wasn’t into it.
My bff keeps telling me that I need to listen to Rent, and . . . . I kinda don’t want to? And now I feel that this thread is telling me . . that’s ok, you don’t have to.
Well, you definitely don’t have to like it, that’s for sure!
I was in theatre school from 1997 to 2000, and I was one of the only people who couldn’t sing, so I hate it. For four years I was constantly surrounded by people more attractive than I singing in their lovely voices about however fucking many minutes. And also it sounds saccharine? I don’t know, I never really watched it.
La Boheme is pretty good though.
And also it sounds saccharine?
SAME. Don’t get me wrong, I love some fuckin’ angst, but it seemed a bit twee to my already-in-the-work-force 24-year-old self.
yes. i went to see it in, must have been 1996 or 1997– my theatre-director best friend talked me into staying all night on the street to get front row tickets. and i was emotional and sleepless and had peed in the port authority at like 4:30 in the morning and that is fucking DARK, so i cried through the whole thing.
but i was also like, guys? have you ever seen a heroin addict? they almost never jump onto tables and burst into song. just FYI. it was like a weird combination of jazz hands and grunge that just didn’t sit right with me.
HAMILTON on the other hand is PERFECTION in ALL WAYS.
my theatre-director best friend talked me into staying all night on the street to get front row tickets. and i was emotional and sleepless and had peed in the port authority at like 4:30 in the morning
OH MY GOD HONEY
My Dad doesn’t like Fury Road. I’m not quite sure what to do with this information because he is my DAD and normally he has GOOD TASTE IN MOVIES WITH EXPLOSIONS IN THEM and HOW CAN HE NOT UNDERSTAND THE PERFECTION THAT IS FURIOSA, but at the same time, he is my Dad and I know him, so when he said he didn’t like it I made a few incoherent outraged sounds and then my brain caught up and I said “is it because it’s basically a giant chase scene?” and he said “YES THAT’S EXACTLY WHY”, because my Dad hates chase scenes, so I guess the wonder of Furiosa and the Doof Warrior and the general EVERYTHINGNESS of this movie couldn’t win out over that. Which I can respect. He’s still wrong though.
I too went through a RENT phase-it was the later years of high school and was particularly intense immediately pre- and post-movie. I ended a new-ish friendship because after we left the movies after seeing it we were talking and she said that she didn’t get why everyone was so upset because OF COURSE they all got AIDS. They were gay and drug addicts, that’s just what you get.
I may have told her I hoped she got HIV so she’d have some sympathy for other human beings. It was an asshole thing to say, but I regret it slightly less than I should.
I’m not sure it was that much less asshole-ish than what she said in the first place, though?
A++ response. i absolve you of any lingering regret *waves wand*
My first job ever was selling ice-creams and taking tickets at the West End Rent production when I was 16. The GLAMOUR, you guys. But actually, kind of the Glamour. All the other ticket-takers were musical theatre students (this is often the case on B-way and in the West End) and every night they would be doing a sort of silent, sketchy shadow-Rent at the back of the stalls.
I also remember holding my breath every time Angel jumped down from the fire escape in her high high heels. THEATRE!
The inside of my head is like this “!!!!!!”. How did you survive being surrounded by theater kids? (I love them, I am one, but I would imagine it’s like everyone having to eat the garlic so you’re all inoculated).
I loved it so much – I knew they were not my People, but they were so hardworking and bitchy and emosh! I was a bit speccy and I think they put up with me because I was wide-eyed and thought they were v cosmopolitan and I laughed at all their jokes.
If you were impressed by them even a little bit you were their favorite person ever.
Chuck Tingle’s response to being spite-nominated for a Hugo award was to write a book about it. I kind of hope he wins now.
“After a year stationed on planet Zorbus, astronaut Lance Tanner and his raptor lover Orion return home to find that they are not greeted as heroes, but as villains.
Unbeknownst to Lance, his space travels have been funded by the villainous Scoundrels Inc, a corporation that has deep ties to the illegal trade of unicorn tears and a destructive mining project at the core of the earth. Now Lance is on trial for a number of false charges; from having connections to the wicked Scoundrels, to being too strange for space.
The opposing lawyer argues that space is only for serious astronauts, and that love between a raptor and a man is giving space travel a bad name. Lance is arguing that there’s room to be weird in space. More importantly, Lance is arguing for the idea of love itself; that just because something comes out of darkness doesn’t mean it can’t become a beacon of light. ”
http://www.amazon.com/Space-Raptor-Redemption-Chu…
Two books: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01EUC93RE/ref=mp_s…
Also, it turns out that Space Raptor Redemption is a sequel to the specific book that was nominated for the Hugo.
Chuck Tingle did an AMA (or his son did)! https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3vz1x7/iam…
Guys, I’m going to make a controversial confession: I can’t stand Rent. And, in fact, I couldn’t stand rent when it came out when I was twelve. You aren’t entitled to live somewhere for free guys! Those homeless people aren’t there for your artistic fulfillment, Maureen! In fact, the characters overall seem pretty insensitive to the actual poor and working people around them. Also, Roger’s song is terrible, and the only characters I like are Joanne and that homeless woman yells at them for filming her.
Okay, now everyone can tell me how wrong I am.
Yes, and also I could never view Benny as the villain he’s supposed to be. He spends the entire musical trying to find reasonable compromises
I mean, I get the criticisms /now/. I definitely don’t strongly identify with any of the main protagonists from Rent anymore.
But also hearing that there was a famous musical with lesbians in it in middle school, in a conservative part of the country surrounded by (mostly white) people who were not OK with gayness of any kind, but some people liked this musical? Rent was my first exposure to any kind of LGBTQ qualities in the mainstream and I will always appreciate it for that. I think that’s probably why I loved it so much.
That’s totally fair. And I’ll admit, part of my own cynicism probably stems from the fact that the first people I knew who loved it were very spoiled, very wealthy girls who completely romanticized poverty, but were very much, “Ew, poor/gay people!” in real life.
that’s fair too! If those had been the people who had been my first “in” to Rent I probably would have had a very different response. I think works that represent people who aren’t often represented in media don’t have to appeal to everyone, and can be flawed art, but that doesn’t make their representation less important especially if they’re telling stories that aren’t being told elsewhere.
also isn’t there an entire subplot where the guy is trying to sabotage the virtual reality lab at NYU or something? I feel like I remember that, he was trying to tell people not to live in virtual reality?
is that what Tom Collins is supposed to be doing? I could never figure out what he meant in his little speech about how people need “Actual Reality”. I think I just assumed he was talking about whatever he lectured about in the college.
I am advised that he hacked the MIT virtual reality lab to say something like Actual Reality! Act Up! Fight AIDS! and then it exploded so he got fired and got a job at NYU instead.
Somehow I think this part of the play doesn’t get discussed enough when people talk about it.
Also am interested in how the woman with the solo performance act where she is a cow somehow saves the Youth Center or something?
also also, A+ that every one of these guys’ idea of “live for today!” is “have unprotected sex with each other.”
Uh, there is literally no evidence to support that, in fact the inclusion of “rubber” in Contact implies pretty strongly the opposite, and implying that Roger and Mimi getting together as a couple just MEANS sex is…like? Dude? Do you have any idea how messed up and victim-blaming this sounds in the context of this going on during the AIDS crisis??? I am incredibly uncomfortable.
1. That’s an unnecessarily cynical reading of the musical, I think.
2. Considering it’s a musical about AIDS, and considering what people said about AIDS and the populations that tend to get it, this comment is really coming across to me as somewhere between victim blaming and actively homophobic.
Hm. I’m not sure I can accept this. The musical isn’t the AIDS crisis, and it’s not a documentary about the AIDS crisis. Criticising the motivations of the characters in the play as being shallow and superficial by virtue of being ill-considered and poorly-rendered I don’t think is the same thing as criticising the motivations of actual human beings who suffered terribly during this time. There are plenty of people who have spoken very well and very clearly on their experience during this crisis, and I don’t necessarily consider that feeling that the character renderings in RENT don’t do them justice is automatically an indictment of the real people that they exist in reference to.
No, it’s not a documentary about the AIDS crisis. It is, however, heavily informed by, inspired by, set during, whatever phrase you want to call it, the AIDS crisis, starring people who got HIV via sex and drugs (versus the heavily-scarequoted “innocent” people who got HIV via blood transfusions, etc). Some of the songs in the musical (frex, “Will I?”) were pulled from real life events the playwright went to.
You’re right that the characters aren’t real and can’t be hurt by homophobic stereotyping, but speaking as a Real Life Queer? Yeah, I gotta say, I’m not exactly crazy about seeing a message about embracing being alive and loving one another, even though you may be sick or dying, even though you may be actively rejected by society, being boiled down to “these weirdos wanna fuck each other without condoms”. Especially since, once again, in the context this play was written in, gay men getting it on without condoms were blamed for their own deaths.
All right, I can understand that. I apologize.
Okay, but as we both pointed out, your statement isn’t based on the motivations of the characters in the play. If you would provide some support for how “every one of these guys’ idea of ‘live for today!’ is have unprotected sex with each other'”, perhaps we could parse that further. I vehemently disagree, however, that criticizing characters in the exact same circumstances as real people is not the same thing as criticizing those real people. You didn’t say that “character renderings in RENT don’t do [people who suffered terribly during the AIDS crisis] justice.” You said “A+ that every one of these guys’ idea of “live for today!” is ‘have unprotected sex with each other.'” LOTS of real people had unprotected sex with each other (particularly gay men) prior to the AIDS crisis, because prior to the AIDS crisis the education just wasn’t there. And sure, not all of them did it because of credos like “no day but today” but even if they did, that’s nothing to judge them for. While I definitely give you the benefit of the doubt that your mark wasn’t meant to be malicious, regardless of intent, it was thoughtless and perpetuates the homophobic/victim blaming culture that still exists around AIDS today.
That sounds a lot like judging the past by the standards of today. Like, I don’t know the exact timelines in the US, but if it’s set in the late eighties, the people have known about HIV/AIDS for barely five or six years, and the major campaigns promoting condom use have only been out for a year or two at the most. Nobody knows anything about getting infected with different strains of HIV for years yet.
Before HIV, why WOULDN’T gay men have unprotected sex? You can’t get pregnant, and gonorrhoea and syphilus respond to antibiotics. Condoms are an old-fashioned firm of birth control that a few straight couples use, which aren’t designed for anal sex anyway. How quickly do you think queer men should have adapted?
I love Joanne so much and she deserved so much better than Maureen.
I like to think that a now middle-aged Joanne looks back on that entire period of her life with a combination of nostalgia and embarrassment.
I bought a CD of “The Best of Rent” and listened to those songs a million times and sort of filled in the plot blanks with what I thought was happening and loooooved it. When I actually looked it up online and read the stuff that happened in between the songs, it was a disappointment. Still, one of those disappointments that happens because it’s the only thing of its kind you’ve ever encountered and you’re so excited about it.
I remember watching it live and realising that I somehow was never the right age to enjoy RENT.
I was also the kid who thought Romeo and Juliet was stupid, when I read it in 8th grade. (I can appreciate it a bit more when I’m older and looking back, but I was just not that kind of 13 year old so I couldn’t relate to them. I think if I’d had meaner parents, it might have meant a bit more to me)
Fistbump. I felt exactly like this the first time I saw Rent in my teens, too. The only clear memory I have of the play itself is when the homeless woman yells at them for filming her, because they clearly thought she would be grateful to them and she was just like “WHATEVER.” She’s my fav.
Mark and Roger are both That Guy in Your MFA.
I think Collins might actually be That Guy in Your MFA. Mark is That Guy in Your Film Studies Class.
I think Collins is That Guy in the Philosophy Department.
I’ve never seen “Rent”, but I believe it’s supposed to be very loosely based on the opera “La Boheme”.
That’s definitely a theme in the opera– i.e., middle-class guys playing at being poor artists, while actually having a safety net (in the form of relatives with real jobs who send allowances), and being confounded when confronted by people who are actually poor (who have problems like TB as a result).
Not by my book. I was either too old for it or too conscious of how it was basically a West Side Storification of La Boheme, putting a cute little frame around some pretty awful historical realities.
GOT SPOILERS in reply
Jon Snow is alive Jon Snow is alive Jon Snow is alive Jon Snow is alive Jon Snow is alive Jon Snow is alive Jon Snow is alive Jon Snow is alive JON SNOW IS ALIVE
Okay, that was one of television’s most obvious reveals ever but who cares? This boy is alive, and we may have caught our first glimpse of his mother.
I am very bouncy this morning over this. Anyone else?
It was an obvious reveal, but at the same time, I almost expected it not to work. Because it was so obvious. Also, I loved how his consciousness was apparently in Ghost’s mind, since he only woke up when Ghost woke up.
I was pumped last night and couldn’t go to sleep. Other than poor Walda and her baby and the dogs, I loved the episode. Even the part at the Iron Islands was cool, if a bit off topic.
I was pumped too. Last season was so bad it became almost unwatchable, and last night’s episode was the first that had shades of the older seasons of GoT. Maybe I was just allergic to D&D’s take on the Dorne subplot.
The whole episode felt like a series of television’s most obvious reveals- Jon Snow is alive! Ramsey is the worst! Tyrion is good at everything! Etc.
My thoughts on the episode: Finally some character development for Melisandre, I’m looking forward to seeing where she goes next week. I hope Bri has the foresight to make Sansa drink some nasty tea or whatever they do for abortion in Westeros because if Sansa is pregnant I will scream. And finally Balon Greyjoy = Peggy Schuyler.
I did not expect Tyrion to be good at dragons. Could he be the third person to ride the dragon? Cause we have 2 obvious people, but I’ve had no idea who the third is. (In the show, the book at least introduces a potential third with Targaryen blood).
I remember reading theories a while back that he would be the third rider. I am watching prior seasons for the first time right now, and there is a part about Tywin saying to Tyrion “I could never prove you weren’t my son,” but it seems too much to have another secret Targaryen floating aroung.
I expected Tyrion to be good at dragons… but only because of the books. It seems like the show did a poor job of introducing that story line. D&D’s 30-second monologue about how he always wanted to touch a dragon does not really do justice to the level of foreshadowing GRRM wrote for this plot.
That, and the weirdly short, out-of-nowhere intro to Euron, were my only real quibbles about this episode. I’ve read some reviews of this season that criticize it for being “off to a slow start” and I really don’t know where they’re getting that from, because so far we’ve resolved or at least, revisited, about 8-10 story lines introduced in previous seasons.
I completely missed the foreshadowing around Tyrion in the books, but I believe you. Ramsay and the dogs was gruesome, and unnecessary. Use that time to explain who the hell Euron is, c’mon.
I spent most of that scene yelling at the TV, “okay, we GET IT, you’re a bad dude, you’re going to kill them, GET ON WITH IT.”
I was so happy he was actually good at dragons. I feel like all I’ve wanted was for one freaking thing to go his way and now he got to touch a dragon! They were nice to him and didn’t char him to a crisp (I actually paused it to tell my roommate I was done with GoT if dragons killed Tyrion) and they knew he was helping them and I just really like dragons, okay?
It’s Tyrion. He’s almost certainly Daenerys’s half-brother, since the books heavily allude to King Aerys being obsessed with Tywin’s wife Joanna.
The Tyrion Targaryen theory is bad and you should feel bad.
It’s bad, and I think it’s cheap, but I also think it’s true.
If it’s true, I’ll eat all my ASOIAF books.
How do you feel about the Cersei Targaryen theory?
Worse! Also The World of Ice and Fire provides a timeline that confirms Joanna was at Casterly Rock when Jaime and Cersei were conceived, so it’s impossible.
I like to hope that Sansa isn’t, because of book things that I won’t go into detail about, if there are people who might want to read. Sansa’s story is extremely different there, but pregnancy isn’t an option for her there, and I feel like that would be too big of a change for the show to make. Right? Please.
(she isn’t raped in the books! why did the show feel the need to add that?? jeeesus chriiiisto)
I’m giggling internally at the thought at “Euron! Vic-TAR-ion! ..and Balon” version of the Greyjoy Brothers.
I was happy to hear reference of Bran coming back into the thick of things. I couldn’t tell from the books if he was just going to stay in the roots and grow old there. I assuming now that some of the flashbacks of Jon’s parentage will be Bran’s visions? Will Bran make the reveal?
Hopefully that’s where we’re going with him. It would make Bran’s story line pay off in a huge way.
Well, based on the preview for next week we’ll be seeing the Tower of Joy, which should go a way towards proving that things aren’t what they seem with the Bastard of Winterfell. I think they’re going to start setting that up next episode with Bran, and then when Jon takes Winterfell back towards the end of this season he’s going to go down to the crypts and open Lyanna’s tomb and emerge Jon Targaryen (or Baratheon? I have lots of thoughts about this.)
TOWER OF JOY I’M SO EXCITED
Still riding the Jon Snow is alive wave. It is good.
My partner and I predicted that last scene pretty accurately, yet that did not stop us from yelping in surprise when Jon finally opened his eyes.
The cat’s tail was super puffy for at least half an hour afterwards.
I am a little surprised that Roose got killed and no one else is as shocked as I am. I don’t care that Ramsay is a freaking psychopath, Roose’s whole thing was that he was a Smarter Sociopath who was carefully using his son’s crazy ways to his own ends. Like Book!Roose would’ve been wearing armor the entire time his wife is in the middle of childbirth because he was expecting stabbings from his psychotic son. Also, he probably would’ve arranged for Ramsay to be far, far away from the castle or some shit. Blech.
WTF
I don’t even like Roose, I’m just a cranky book reader.
Also, not sure why Theon has a pressing need to go to Pyke (aside from the KINGSMOOT) because I thought his whole fucking story arc was “the Greyjoys don’t give a shit about you (aside from Asha/Yara), the Starks are your real family, don’t be fooled asshole.”
I am feeling like D&D just wants to wrap this shit up (admittedly in 23 episodes) and GTFO. I can’t blame them, but there’s been a lot of.. stuff the past two episodes and it’s throwing me off.
I know, I am weirdly upset about Roose! He’s smarter than that and would 100% should have expected Ramsay to make a power play sooner or later. At first I actually thought he was the one stabbing Ramsay, and was like “…eh, I guess he has a replacement son now, he doesn’t need this loose-cannon one.” But then that turned out not to be the case.
When Sansa asks Theon where he’s going does he actually specify Pyke? I was thinking he said “home” but I honestly don’t remember. I wouldn’t put tricky wording past the writers- after all the talk about how much of an ass Theon was to the Starks I almost think he could be headed on a suicide mission back to Winterfell to try to covertly take out the Boltons and Make Things Right.
He just said “home,” and I was assuming he meant the Iron Islands, but now you have me worried. :/
I think Theon is going to Pyke to seek forgiveness from the Drowned God or from Asha/Yara for ruining her rescue attempt? He really can’t go anywhere else and he knows Yara was looking for him.
He doesn’t feel even close to worthy enough to be with the Starks yet, he doesn’t even think he deserves to be in the Night’s Watch with literal criminals. He probably would have gone with Sansa to the ends of the Earth if Brienne hadn’t shown up and been like the perfect example of what he’s not. He must think she deserves a “real knight” and he should just get out of the picture for how many times he’s messed up.
I have a lot of feelings about Theon.
Also book!Roose strikes me as the kind of guy who wears chain mail 24/7 since the Red Wedding. He don’t mess around.
Moreover, why on earth are the Karstarks behind Bastard McCrazypants? If I were Lord Karstark and saw that, I would’ve noped my way out of that situation and started my own bid for Warden of the North.
I can complain about Rent as much as anyone, but I will still listen to and enjoy the music as much as ever. If a production of it was being performed near me, I’d go.
“Glory” sticks with me which isn’t what I expected at the time. (“525,600” is terrific but I’ve got to go another decade before I can stand to hear it again, thank you.)
Don’t you mean another 5,256,000 minutes?
That doesn’t sound long enough frankly. I now understand how my mother feels about Blowin’ in the Wind.”
One of my friends is directing it in my old town and ngl, this is the second time I’ve considered moving towns to do a production of it. Irritatingly, I have managed to miss living in the right town twice in six years; in 2010, the theater in my current town put it up, and this year, the theater in the town I moved to in 2010 is doing it.
Am I the only person who liked The Handmaid’s Tale but dislikes Elisabeth Moss so am going to skip this one out thanks? I feel like I’m the only person who just doesn’t like Moss, didn’t like her as Peggy, didn’t like her in Top of the Lake, didn’t like her on TWW.
I have no problems with Moss, but when I saw that the show is being made by dudes I was like “hard pass.” I mean, seriously? We can’t even let women make The freaking Handmaid’s Tale??
I don’t have a big problem with Elisabeth Moss, but her bad accent in Top of Lake really distracted me.
All I can think about in regards to “A Handmaid’s Tale” TV show is “What will the fanfic be like?”
Will it even be popular enough to HAVE fanfic?
Will there be an Alpha/Omega style offshoot, reviled by the rest of the fanfic community, where people ignore all the feminism in favor of writing about the gendered power plays?
Will there be Christian conservatives who take it seriously and allow their daughters to read it when they wouldn’t allow them to read, say, Harry Potter?
Either way… *makes popcorn*
Or as a cautionary tale of a different color for the Quiverfull movement children. “See, this is why we have to increase our numbers now!”
::SHUDDER::
Oh, man, I seriously can’t wait for the people who don’t realize it’s a dystopia.
My parents wouldn’t let me read books with obvious lesbians as a kid/preteen. BUT HANDMAID’S TALE WAS FINE. Thus began my descent into too witches.
That being said, I have so many feelings about the epilogue for that book, I want to tear my hair out.
A+ use of too witches
Other rescue animal proposals from the Kroschel Wildlife Center:
Rescue hyenas
Rescue vultures
Rescue crocodiles
Rescue piranhas
Rescue anacondas
Rescue killer bees
Rescue insane gorillas with leprosy
Well, circling vultures ARE a really good sign that there’s a carcass nearby…
I would def send a rescue hyena to my ex bf
Are we absolutely sure the wolverines aren’t volunteering to be in rescue parties just so they get easy access to refrigerated meat?
Sent link to husband, who responded with “I can’t believe that guy has been duped by hungry wolverines.”
“This is the only person, then?”
*wolverine nods*
“I could’ve swore I heard more than one voice.”
*wolverine shrugs, shakes his head*
“It seems like you’re trying to hide something underneath those branches….very human shaped”
*wolverine attacks handler*
Nicole, I went to Beyoncé last night, and confirm that much jumping will be done. Also crying. Much crying.
Entirely OT, but has anyone else downloaded The Rock Clock? He sings Good Morning Sunshine to wake you up and now I actually want it to be morning even though I hate mornings with a passion.
How is this the first I’ve heard of it??
He released it this morning! It is AMAZING.
Ha, I was just coming here to make sure everyone saw it, too. It was just released today!
I saw that the Rock posted about this on FB… so curious to try it! No snooze button!!!
I have now.
i am super looking forward to waking up tomorrow now?!?!
Thank you for bringing this into my life! #morecod
I chose The Roar! No greater motivator than the fear of disappointing an entire crowd of chanting people.
I downloaded it but have not checked it out yet!!
I will forever be in your debt.
Anyway, the first time I heard or saw Rent was as an adult in my thirties, and my opinion is that that play is actually bad.
As a few others have said, the musical is exceptional for its revolutionary content (LGBT people, AIDS, drugs and addiction, the reality of money being a big fucking deal AND the whole theme of “fuck capitalism”) at the time, and songs that can be a hell of an ear worm, rather than its story quality. Looking back on it at 2016, it doesn’t look like a big deal, but it definitely was in the ’90s. And I support anything that inspired Lin-Manuel.
(My friends were more way more into Rent than I was. I liked some of the songs for a while and saw the movie version, but Wicked was a much bigger deal in my book. Also I’d rather punch myself in the ear than listen to “Take Me or Leave Me” again, PERSONAL NIGHTMARE.)
I think it can be both exceptional and bad.
See also: silent films by Oscar Micheaux.
I love the wolverine trainers who say
“It’ll be EASY! We get the kits young so they imprint on us, and train them!”
Completely forgetting how wolves brought up by humans do not turn into dogs, how whales and dolphins aren’t really tamed…etc
It takes thousands of years to domesticate an animal
“Is it dangerous to use a wolverine for search and rescue?”
“Oh don’t worry, he’s imprinted on me and thinks of me as his mother.”
::wolverine eats the face of an injured hiker::
“Oh yeah I guess I should have anticipated this.”
“OK, we feel this program is ready for a real world test.”
“What was that noise?”
“What noise?
“I could almost swear I heard one of the wolverines….snicker?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
*wolverine, to buddy* “Dude. Do NOT screw this up for us.”
It takes generations, but it doesn’t have to take thousands of years! The domesticated foxes in Russia are a good example of how it can happen in a relatively short time.
Foxes are not as hardcore badass as wolverines. I feel like wolverines will take longer.
Hey maybe the wolverine handlers might try honey badgers next!
Handler, to honey badger: Okay, boy, time to find that hiker!
Honey Badger: HEY FUCK YOU MAN *kicks a baby, skateboards away*
Uber is the new Wal-mart and here to push down wages, push out regulated transportation, turn employees into contractors, and push for the privatization of public transit. Then the top brass of the company will cash in while we wonder why we don’t have public transit anymore (because we stopped investing in it) and why we don’t have sustainable employment anymore (because the drivers are contract workers and lack of investment in public transit means people go unemployed for lack of access to the locations where jobs are). Why people don’t see this is beyond me.
Ahem. Apparently I Have Opinions on this.
In some ways it worse than Walmart. As far as I know Walmart has always been profitable, it has always had a price floor defined by their need to make money at the end of the day. Uber is still being bank rolled (to the tune of billions) by people who think losing money is a good business strategy. So it’s very apparent that they’ll start having to jack up their rates as soon as they think they’re secure.
On the other hand Walmart is low class while Uber involves smartphones and yuppies and new cars, so one’s terrible and exploitative and the other’s terrible and exploitative but idunno, they’ve got a point guys
I totally agree. I thought this was a pretty good overview of why.
they see it, but pretty much 90% of the middle class will instantly drop any pretensions of giving a shit about labor rights or public services if it means they can get to the Starbucks a dollar cheaper and receive the deference of the desperate
The lack of a general agreement on the definition of middle class complicates this statement.
I do think Uber’s drivers should be classified as employees as a matter of labor law, so we are in agreement there. I do understand why in certain cities, NYC for instance, Uber is popular. Ubers will actually take you to the outer boroughs without complaining and moaning and will pick up black people.
Yes, this exactly. I understand the problems with Uber, and I absolutely think that their drivers should be considered employees. But I have repeatedly heard black people say that they use Uber because they can’t get cabs and I know that cabs here in DC frequently refuse to take people across the river (to predominantly black neighborhoods like Anacostia) or to Maryland.
Yes, this is a problem that we’ve only recently recognized as a political, even a civil rights, problem. But I don’t know how much political will there is to change things for the better. I mean, here’s an article which covers some of the problems: http://project.wnyc.org/backofthebus/
Yeah, I have mixed feelings on the business as a whole, but the cabs in my city are notoriously unreliable (late if they show up at all, likely to take longer routes than needed so you pay double or more than expected) and investment in public transportation has never been great (bus system only makes sense for people that live central – those that can’t afford either to live central or get a car spend hours – not an hour, several hours – getting anywhere). And parking’s a clusterfuck in a significant portion of the city. I appreciate the option of a Lyft.
I do think that anyone doing it full time should be classified as an employee and provided the proper benefits of such, but most of the drivers I’ve encountered do it on the side to make extra money on top of other types of work they do. As a freelancer, I see a real benefit to having that as an option without having to commit to set hours and a 40-hour week.
I’d honestly never even considered the implications of Uber in terms of a larger picture public transit issue. I admit that I use and love Uber, primarily because any city I’ve ever lived in I’ve had terrible experiences with cab drivers – taking longer routes, overcharging mercilessly, and arguing the flat fare with me EVERY time I get a cab home from the airport, even when I show them their own website which clearly states the zone prices. It really stresses me out. Uber is cheaper, more pleasant, and more convenient, so I’m sad to hear the wider implications of its existence.
I totally agree with you, but for a lot of people (especially in mid-size cities), there really isn’t much of an alternative if you want to go somewhere and can’t drive yourself. It’s not so much a question of not having public transport in the future as of not having it now. The last bus that runs past my apartment is before 10 pm. 7:30 pm on Sundays, and it only comes every hour on weekends, anyway. And the neighborhood I live in is probably one of the best-served in the city.
I also have many feelings about Uber (and similar ‘we don’t feel like the regulations and/or labor laws that surround these services ought to apply to us’ businesses like Airbnb). Regulations on these types of services exist for really good reasons and trying to dodge them and undermine the businesses that make the effort to meet them is incredibly sketchy and not something that I am wiling to support.
(That said, I understand that cabs are often awful, and will go way out of my way to avoid having to use them. And I understand that in some places Uber provides a service that just was not available otherwise, but I don’t know that that makes up for their business practices.)
I never understand the “now that I’m older I don’t get why they thought they didn’t have to pay Rent” argument. He said they didn’t have to pay rent! Why wouldn’t they believe him? Why would they believe him when he offers it AGAIN in exchange for not staging a protest/trying to get media attention toward what he’s doing (which indicates that he knows its wrong?) I just don’t get why people start sympathizing with the dude who wants to displace homeless people on Christmas Eve, like, it’s frightening to me that people do that. Am I missing something? Can someone explain?
The cranky cynical part of me says that it’s because RENT has become cool to hate, so people parroting “pay your damn rent! Team Benny!” don’t actually know what Benny’s trying to do.
I’m with you on this. I don’t think that the characters have an entitled, “we shouldn’t have to pay rent” attitude. Instead, these are young people living in a horribly overpriced city who have been promised by a friend that they can live rent-free while they make art. They don’t have day jobs because they believe (maybe naively, but as many young people do) that they can eventually make enough money from their art to pay the rent.
The alternative for them, if their friend backs out on the deal, is homelessness. Why is that something that we can’t sympathize with when we get older?
Look, I’m not of the “you must have a job to be a meaningful human being” camp, and I’m very sympathetic to the pain of not being able to devote yourself to the work you love. But it’s not like “not having a day job” is a permanent and unalterable condition. (IIRC Mark does take a job offer at one point!) The alternative (at least, for those well enough) to sponging off a friend indefinitely is getting a job to support yourself once you realize you need it, and moving somewhere you can afford to live on the proceeds of that job. They’re not going to die of working at a bar and having to live on Avenue Q instead of in Manhattan. Basically, my sympathy for the yearning to devote yourself to art ends when you start demanding long-term subsidies for it.
(And I’m not at all sure they would even have had to move out of the neighborhood. We’re talking about the East Village in 1989. It was…ah…a little different rental situation than it is today.)
I think this is basically what I feel but also that it’s not evident in the way other people are saying that the alternative to continuing to squat in Benny’s building is homelessness. Most of the characters are more or less able-bodied and could likely find paying work I they wanted. Mark’s family seems to still care for him and I don’t think we’re ever told what his ish with them is aside from how I dunno they think maybe it’s better to have a job and a safe place to live than not and that’s so like capitalist or whatever.
Mark does take a job offer, but then DRAMATICALLY QUITS because he doesn’t want to be a sell-out. Which, I just cannot. Just because you do a paying gig that doesn’t speak to the depths of your soul doesn’t mean you are no longer an artist! Very few people are able to make a living off their art alone! It just means you’re an artist who now maybe has some extra money to put toward making your own stuff.
I don’t know. I mean, I do think there’s room to talk about how both Mark and Maureen use the homeless population for their own gain (but it is called out in the show so I don’t think we’re supposed to be giving them a free pass there) but to act like Benny is this benevolent dude who is giving Mark and Roger a great offer with no strings attached is to ignore everything Benny says or does.
Like, Rent takes people with HIV and makes them the heroes of the story. That’s revolutionary, especially when you take into account when it was written. And they don’t have to be 100% in the right to be worth rooting for or to believe that they deserve the right to live and not starve or freeze to death.
I want to embroider that last sentence on a throw pillow and then promptly start throwing it at people.
Right but they probably shouldn’t be introduced as “Angel just killed a dog and bought us vodka with the proceeds, skål”.
For me, I think the weirdness of it is that their refusal to pay rent is… turned into an anthem? Like, these dudes specifically were told they would not have to pay rent, so it makes sense that they’d refuse to pay. But then it gets universalized, and the whole company sings along that they’re not gonna pay rent because everything is rent… man, idk. It works for me when I’m in the moment, but when I think about it later, I’m like, ehhh….
Something I’ve wondered a lot about is whether Allison being told about Mimi and subsequently pulling Benny out of development in that location is… actually a good thing? I mean, sure, he broke his (probable) word to let them live rent-free in the building, but any new owner who comes in certainly isn’t going to let them live there for free, either. Plus, didn’t that jeopardize Mimi’s safety, since he was the one paying for her treatment? (IIRC, it’s not clear what transpired for her between Angel’s funeral and being found by Joanne and Maureen that winter.)
Even discounting all the emotional connections, and the fact that she is 19, if my husband were having an affair with an HIV+ heroin addict, I’d want to know.
Well, right—It’s not that Allison deserves to be lied to/cheated on, it’s just that the show kind of treats the fact that she found out and that Benny is now out of the picture as an unequivocally good thing for the main cast. Like, “whee, problem solved!” And for Allison, it’s certainly better that she knows. But even if Mark, Roger, and Collins find it emotionally satisfying, they don’t seem to consider that it might have made Mimi’s situation much worse, and it’s not like they ever gave a shit about Allison to begin with.
There’s some combination of times changing (I can’t imagine anyone assuming “Our rich friend owns this building and told us he wouldn’t charge us rent!” to mean “we can DEFINITELY live in New York rent-free FOREVER!!” nowadays where that might have been a more reasonable expectation at the time) mixed up with more personality-driven critiques like a lot of the main characters romanticizing being a starving artist (it doesn’t make your art more ~~pure~~ or w/e when you’re constantly losing a nights work due to the power going out MARK no wonder it’s taking you so long to make anything jeez) along with them (mostly) not really seeming to care about the people who are worse off than them (unless they happen to intersect with their social circle and/or if acting “for” them can benefit themselves personally) (which, honestly, that is true for a lot of people, and it’s not like Benny is gonna do any better, but the show does go out of its way to specifically call them out on it). (You can also make a case that at least initially Benny does think he’s doing the right thing and he’s offered all of them positions in his new techno-art thing along with the ability to have like power 24/7 and little things like that so like they theoretically could just stay put and keep doing what they’re currently doing with a small amount of rent but apparently that’s too much to ask? I mean, this ignores all the gentrification issues as well as Benny’s progressively indefensible actions as the show goes on but at the start you would think the proposition would provoke a little debate as opposed to a dramatic and immediate HELL NO.)
Are Benny’s actions progressively indefensible? I mean, he does pay for Angel’s funeral.
Doesn’t he also offer to pay for Mimi to go to rehab?
True, that was bad wording on my part.
Clearly the one time I listened to this musical was not enough because I didn’t remember that it was on Christmas OR that the original agreement was that they’d be living someplace rent-free for a while.
So, because I saw an article about it being Rent’s 20 year anniversary, I watched it for the first time. I watched the 2008 Broadway show on YouTube, then watched the movie on Netflix. And I have a whole lot of thoughts about it (primary is that I don’t actually believe Benny ever told them they could live there rent-free).
The main thing I wanted to share here was, though, that at the end, when Mimi is dying, and what’s-his-name-Roger grabbed his guitar, I was like, “OH MY GOD, HE’S PLAYING HIS GUITAR AT HER. This is something straight from Mallory Ortberg painting captions! He is fucking playing his guitar at her.” And then later, I was like, “And they won’t even let her die to get away from it. You have got to be kidding me. Now he’s going to think he can go around playing his guitar at everyone.”
Anyway, here’s Wonderwall
Apparently someone has been writing astoundingly prescient Cordelia/Aral/Jole fic since 2010, and I’m having so much fun reading Foz Meadow’s comparison between fic and canon.
I honestly think Bujold cackles with glee as she imagines our brains exploding across the world as we read this. I love her.
Yes! And oh my, she shows up in the comments and is perfectly lovely!
I read The Warrior’s Apprentice when I was 14, and then all the Bujold I could get my hands on.
And then I went to college, and dorky guy after dorky guy tried to convince me that they were like Miles Vorkosigan.
I sort of feel that GJ&tRQ is a gift to readers like me, to wave at guys like that.
I finally got to the end of the post, and found this:
The stories of mothers are not erased by the stories of their sons; the two are intertwined. It’s only habit that lets us fade the one into the background, foregrounding the other, forgetting which came first. Likewise, the stories of wives do not end with the deaths of their husbands; they go on, as they went on before – as Alys and Ekaterin and Cordelia go on – just in a new direction.
Which is also why I get so freaking emotional about Eliza’s arc in Hamilton. <3
I knew they were together. Did people not know they were together? Wasn’t it on tvtropes?
I hadn’t known! Was it mentioned somewhere in the books? It’s totally possible I missed it.
Just wanted to let folks know I mailed my Toast Post on Friday and also RECEIVED my first two TPs on Friday and Saturday. That’s a pretty well-engineered ROI, so thank you thank you. Mail is nice.
I just got my ToastPost matches and I am SO EXCITED to address some mail!
Guys, I’m too witches to care about work today.
You don’t want to hear it’s a bank holiday here and I’ve spent all day in my pyjamas watching iZombie, do you?
I’ve spent most of the bank holiday weekend trying to sleep off a cold/virusy thing that waited for a day off to strike. Probably not gonna make it in to work tomorrow, since my main symptom seems to be exhaustion and nooo reserves for social graces, which is not great in a customer=facing job.
My PARTNER has been in her pyjamas or in bed all day, because she stayed out until 2.30am last night. Meanwhile, *I* have been looking after the toddler.
She owwwwes me.
SAME. Am leaving at 1:45 for a potentially awful dermatologist appointment, and have had no work ethic whatsoever today. The loooooooong Monday meeting certainly didn’t help.
Saaaaaaaaaaame
My first two hours in the office were spent in a state of heightened tension because I had to be ready to buy concert tickets the second preorders opened at 10:00 (Blink-182 with Matt Skiba! It truly is the fulfillment of my forever-young pop-punk heart’s deepest desires; they were so expensive it makes me sick, but I am also so excited it makes me sick, so it all evens out). Anyway, then Ticketmaster actually worked for me, and all went smoothly, and so by 10:08 I had my tickets and now I’m just like: *looks blankly at objects on desk* what the fuck do I do for the rest of the day
My parents sponsored a Vietnamese “boat” family to resettle in Colorado in the 70’s. Our families ended up co-mingling holidays and family events for a generation, which as a child I thought was kind of annoying (weird food instead of turkey) but exciting as well (Vietnamese wedding splendor). As an adult I realize what a step it was for my small town parents (not hippies, but children of the Depression who were deep into social justice issues) to take.
That’s complex and terrific x
Omg, just THINKING about Rent makes me verklempt. I wasn’t a musicals person growing up at all, but back in 2011, I was teaching high school English, and a couple of teachers decided we needed a theater program, and that we would put on Rent. Our school was one of those (terrible) zero-tolerance charter schools with mostly black/latinx kids who would get suspended for things like pulling out a cell phone in class, and there just wasn’t a whole lot of arts-based programming. I had never seen Rent, but the first year of teaching was grinding my soul and I jumped at the chance to do something that would feel fun.
So we held auditions, and put together a rag-tag cast of 10-12 kids, and worked with them for months and months, and swung wildly from “oh my god these kids are so fucking amazing” to “no one knows their lines and the show is opening in 3 days.”
Guys, the four performances that we did — truly one of the shining, most brilliant moments of my life, watching the audience get totally wowed by our kids, seeing them belt their vulnerable little hearts out. Rent was back off-Broadway back then, and so we raised money and surprised the kids with a trip to NYC to see the play, and again, just top 10 life moments watching them meet their counterparts after the show.
I was freshly out of college and going through a really, really hard breakup, and I’m pretty sure the only thing that kept me afloat in those months was those kids and that play. NOSTALGIC SIGH.
SORRY what were saying about OVERWROUGHT (everything about this period of my life brings out the Peak Cheesiness in me, and I AM NOT ASHAMED).
OT – thanks for all the well wishes friends! My breast reduction on Friday went super well, and I’m feeling great!
Yay, I’m so glad!
I’m so glad you’re feeling well. Heal fast!
Hooray! *thumbs up*
OK, the main worry I have about The Handmaid’s Tale is that IT WILL GIVE THEM IDEAS…. you know… THEM!!
*hides behind sofa forever*
It’s appropriate that the Captain America movie is coming out next week, because Justus Rosenberg (Doctor Justice!) sounds like he was a real-life Howling Commando.
I don’t care for “Rent” to be honest, and I didn’t care for it even as a Youth; that being said, I’ll happily defend it if nothing else because it shows people with AIDS as the heroes.
Even now, people (even lefty liberals who pretend they know better!) act like anybody who gets AIDS is “guilty” of something, as though a slow death is an appropriate punishment for the sins of being gay, addicted to drugs, promiscuous, a sex worker, certain races, certain classes, etc. It’s deeply frustrating to me.
And even among liberals there is some measure of support for the criminalization of non-disclosure, which has only been ramped up in the last decade despite all the evidence showing it’s scientifically unsound, targets marginalized women and does nothing to protect public heath etc.
It’s so infuriating that even after decades of activism and education there are still people out there whose solution is to blame people living with HIV/AIDS for transmission instead of encouraging people to take responsibility for safer sex and working to dismantle social barriers to safer sex/sexual agency.
It’s the right day for one of my favorite Dar Williams songs.
I expected this would be referenced immediately in the comments! It’s such a Toasty song.
I’m blaming all of you later when my wife asks me how I got “525,600 minutes” stuck in my head.
There’s kind of an “assorted strands of RENT” battling with Dar Williams’s “I Had No Right” in my head right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_kohxiPiPQ
(Also, that Dar Williams album came out right before I started college, and like three weeks later I picked up my tray in the cafeteria and someone had written a Daniel Berrigan quote on it.)
Yeah I’ve had Dar stuck in my head since I heard yesterday.
I’m genuinely suprised it took this long for “I Had No Right” to be mentioned today. Could there _be_ a Toastier song?
Speaking of rent, mine is going up over $300/ month this year and I’m dyyyying. Silicon Valley, how do I live? Do I move to Utah and the new you?
D: That is AWFUL, and really puts my $50/month increase in perspective. I don’t know how I would cope with that, I would legit freak out. And then move to a hut.
Fun fact! I took a class with Justus Rosenberg last semester… and complained about him non stop. He’s a was a nice guy, but always repeating lesson plans & going off on wildly unrelated tangents. Needless to say, I felt like a real shit when I heard later on about all the amazing stuff he did. But don’t worry, everyone and my mother linked me that article, going like, THIS is that guy you complained about??
This is incredibly late to post and I may post it on tomorrow’s link roundup but I just found out and I’m very excited…
EIGHT different leaders of different student feminist clubs from a number of different high schools have created a FEMINISM CONFERENCE for TEENAGERS in my city and there are workshops on gender and sexuality and intersectionality and just all kinds of rad stuff and IT IS FREE and I am just so proud of the Seattle youth. The Kids Are All Right.
The above is correct, and also, transactions in real estate are only enforceable if they're in writing, b/c real property is not fungible.
I'd be dazed and think, "Ohh, I get to be rescued by Hugh Jackman!" Then I'd end up disappointed AND face-chewed.
So glad I'm not the only one who walks around repeating that.