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Sep. 26th, 2011 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* Good news from Saudi Arabia. It's not enough, but still a huge step forward into the 20th century: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15052030
* "On the gay porn "revelations" of dictators and terrorists:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2011/09/on-gay-porn-revelations-of-dictators.html
* Today my Mother mentioned that my father was roommates with one of the brother's of the Dalai Lama, back when my father was a beatnik college student!!! My Mother had him over to Grammy and Granddad's for dinner once and they fed him pork, sauerkraut, and baked potatoes. He reciprocated by having mom over for stir fried chicken. I just kept repeating, "Dad! The Dalai Lama's brother's roommate!" she says, of all the people she'd mentioned it to, I'm the only one who responded with the appropriate amount of interest and enthusiasm.
* My Uncle is not doing well. We are worried about him.
* Hector would neither eat nor settle and insisted on howling whenever i tried to lie down. The anti-anxiety meds seem to have cut back the over grooming a little at least, and he fed himself while locked out. He kept Squirrel up instead of me with the howling, so this isn't really a solution. They protested by making a mess in the hall and barfing all over the living room. I had the immense luxury of a whole seven hours of sleep though. I needed it.
* I've been reading Chains. It does the harsh work of talking about the cruel irony of our our revolution, that people fighting for their freedom denied it to even slaves who helped them. The nasty truth smoothed over in the textbooks most children read in school. It's beautifully written, painful, and utterly engrossing. We deify the founders, forgetting often what it must have felt like to be one of those for whom the freedom was a lie and the high flown statements of principle a taunt. I love that at a time when politicians are openly pining for the days of slavery, this book is out there reminding people that even a comparatively kind slave owner is still a slave owner, and not owed a cookie.
In my head, reading it, I remember the smell of colonial kitchens, wood smoke, stone, baking bread, stew, and herbs. I remember my grandmother's hands chopping vegetables and kneading dough. I remember her using the big paddles to pull the bread from the oven. I imagine the kitchen in the book smelled that way, the comfort of that unique smell contrasting with the cruelty of an unforgivable institution. I think of all those women's hands, free and unfree, over the centuries, chopping and plucking and scaling and kneading dough to feed generation after generation of those in power and taking what bits of freedom and sustenance they could for themselves and doing the things needing doing because someone in the end must.
Chains came out after I finished teaching, but I hope they are reading it in schools now. We feed the middle school kids Johnny Tremaine and "The midnight ride of Paul Revere." Seems like their ought to be a rebuttal.
* I liked One Salt Sea. It was a fast read and I liked a chance to see a different part of faerie and see how Toby is coping with her new position and it's implications. I have a creeping suspicion about what might be happening next. I admit, the romance elements made me squirm rather, but I'm pleased we're staying firmly urban fantasy instead of swimming the porny seas of supernatural romance.
* They've been rebroadcasting an old stand up comedy show my family used to watch from the late 70's-early '80's. My interest is mostly anthropological at this point. even though I actually remember many of the episodes, hardly anything in there is still funny. It's not a matter of me lacking cultural references, as I have them. It's just that it's very old fashioned. The first thing I noticed was how overwhelmingly white and male this show is. I've been watching two episode blocks for several weeks. Tonight was the second and third time I saw a non-white comedian on there. It was also the first time I saw a comedian not born in North America on their. Think how odd that is from a twenty first century perspective. The "humor" is often racist, sexist, or wildly offensive for other reasons. (There was a guy tonight who's whole schtick seemed to be saying incredibly rude things about weight. I wanted to reach across the decades and smack him one.) There are also true impressionists on there. We still have folks who do impressions, but modern impressionists don't get out makeup and costumes and try this hard to look and sound exactly right unless they are on sketch comedy shows. The joke is often how well they are "doing" so and so, rather than suggesting the person they are loosely imitating and a real joke with a punch line. Very 1950's really.
The thing that makes it seem the most dated is not any of these things, though those contribute. No, it's that event though Lenny Bruce had been dead nearly two decades, nearly all of them are still doing pre-Lenny Bruce style routines instead of the more free form ebb and flow of a modern comic like Eddie Izzard, Dave Chapelle, Ron White, or Gabriel Iglasias. I know Pryor was out there kicking butt with post Lenny Bruce style work, but this show gives no indication that folks like Richard Pryor or Bill Cosby exist. (Yes, they had very different material, but they are both modern style comics). This show is 90% vaudeville and Borscht Belt with an experimental or modern style act thrown in now or then.
It fascinates me how much this aspect of show business has changed in my lifetime. As in many things in life, it's not enough, but it's something.
* Wuthering Heights Cartoons: http://beatonna.livejournal.com/151323.html
* The Clutch:
* "On the gay porn "revelations" of dictators and terrorists:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2011/09/on-gay-porn-revelations-of-dictators.html
* Today my Mother mentioned that my father was roommates with one of the brother's of the Dalai Lama, back when my father was a beatnik college student!!! My Mother had him over to Grammy and Granddad's for dinner once and they fed him pork, sauerkraut, and baked potatoes. He reciprocated by having mom over for stir fried chicken. I just kept repeating, "Dad! The Dalai Lama's brother's roommate!" she says, of all the people she'd mentioned it to, I'm the only one who responded with the appropriate amount of interest and enthusiasm.
* My Uncle is not doing well. We are worried about him.
* Hector would neither eat nor settle and insisted on howling whenever i tried to lie down. The anti-anxiety meds seem to have cut back the over grooming a little at least, and he fed himself while locked out. He kept Squirrel up instead of me with the howling, so this isn't really a solution. They protested by making a mess in the hall and barfing all over the living room. I had the immense luxury of a whole seven hours of sleep though. I needed it.
* I've been reading Chains. It does the harsh work of talking about the cruel irony of our our revolution, that people fighting for their freedom denied it to even slaves who helped them. The nasty truth smoothed over in the textbooks most children read in school. It's beautifully written, painful, and utterly engrossing. We deify the founders, forgetting often what it must have felt like to be one of those for whom the freedom was a lie and the high flown statements of principle a taunt. I love that at a time when politicians are openly pining for the days of slavery, this book is out there reminding people that even a comparatively kind slave owner is still a slave owner, and not owed a cookie.
In my head, reading it, I remember the smell of colonial kitchens, wood smoke, stone, baking bread, stew, and herbs. I remember my grandmother's hands chopping vegetables and kneading dough. I remember her using the big paddles to pull the bread from the oven. I imagine the kitchen in the book smelled that way, the comfort of that unique smell contrasting with the cruelty of an unforgivable institution. I think of all those women's hands, free and unfree, over the centuries, chopping and plucking and scaling and kneading dough to feed generation after generation of those in power and taking what bits of freedom and sustenance they could for themselves and doing the things needing doing because someone in the end must.
Chains came out after I finished teaching, but I hope they are reading it in schools now. We feed the middle school kids Johnny Tremaine and "The midnight ride of Paul Revere." Seems like their ought to be a rebuttal.
* I liked One Salt Sea. It was a fast read and I liked a chance to see a different part of faerie and see how Toby is coping with her new position and it's implications. I have a creeping suspicion about what might be happening next. I admit, the romance elements made me squirm rather, but I'm pleased we're staying firmly urban fantasy instead of swimming the porny seas of supernatural romance.
* They've been rebroadcasting an old stand up comedy show my family used to watch from the late 70's-early '80's. My interest is mostly anthropological at this point. even though I actually remember many of the episodes, hardly anything in there is still funny. It's not a matter of me lacking cultural references, as I have them. It's just that it's very old fashioned. The first thing I noticed was how overwhelmingly white and male this show is. I've been watching two episode blocks for several weeks. Tonight was the second and third time I saw a non-white comedian on there. It was also the first time I saw a comedian not born in North America on their. Think how odd that is from a twenty first century perspective. The "humor" is often racist, sexist, or wildly offensive for other reasons. (There was a guy tonight who's whole schtick seemed to be saying incredibly rude things about weight. I wanted to reach across the decades and smack him one.) There are also true impressionists on there. We still have folks who do impressions, but modern impressionists don't get out makeup and costumes and try this hard to look and sound exactly right unless they are on sketch comedy shows. The joke is often how well they are "doing" so and so, rather than suggesting the person they are loosely imitating and a real joke with a punch line. Very 1950's really.
The thing that makes it seem the most dated is not any of these things, though those contribute. No, it's that event though Lenny Bruce had been dead nearly two decades, nearly all of them are still doing pre-Lenny Bruce style routines instead of the more free form ebb and flow of a modern comic like Eddie Izzard, Dave Chapelle, Ron White, or Gabriel Iglasias. I know Pryor was out there kicking butt with post Lenny Bruce style work, but this show gives no indication that folks like Richard Pryor or Bill Cosby exist. (Yes, they had very different material, but they are both modern style comics). This show is 90% vaudeville and Borscht Belt with an experimental or modern style act thrown in now or then.
It fascinates me how much this aspect of show business has changed in my lifetime. As in many things in life, it's not enough, but it's something.
* Wuthering Heights Cartoons: http://beatonna.livejournal.com/151323.html
* The Clutch:
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Date: 2011-09-26 02:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-26 10:36 pm (UTC)