(Source: arresteddownton, via nicolemarietherese)

Never Let Go

I just explained to Kevin how Leonardo DiCaprio’s desperation for an Oscar is exactly like when one of your friends is really desperate for a boyfriend, and you’re just like, “Girl, if you just chill out and be yourself, it will happen.” 

Calling All Adult Readers of Books for Teenagers (i.e., Everybody):

I’m pretty sure this is the best—possibly the only—place to ask the following question, which would assist me very much in convincing the professor of my last class of my graduate school career to let me write a paper about young adult dystopian novels*: what are some noteworthy contemporary young adult dystopian novels with female protagonists (besides, of course, the Hunger Games trilogy)? If you feel they have a particularly feminist slant, all the better, but I am open to all.

*The class is Utopian and Dystopian Literature, just in case you think this is one of those writing-a-paper-about-Twilight-that-doesn’t-really-reflect-the-syllabus-of-the-course-but-whatever-I-got-an-A-on-that situations.

"Don’t pick me up [from the airport], I don’t want you to miss the pre pre pre show coverage for the Golden Globes."

He just gets me.

Ever Just the Same, Ever a Surprise

Today at the 4:30 p.m. showing of Beauty and the Beast in 3D that I attended as a 25-year-old, the little girl beside us, who was wearing a winter hat made to resemble a polar bear’s head, whispered—cryptically, triumphantly, as Belle descended the staircase in her golden ball gown—”I’M HER,” and I totally knew how she felt. 

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I liked this movie (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) a lot; I think it’s extremely well done, and Gary Oldman in particular is great. But at one point a character passes some graffiti that reads “The Future Is Female” and I realized that the only woman with any significant screen time in this film gets shot in the head. I’m not holding this against Tinker Tailor, because I would bet anything that it’s an extremely accurate depiction of the male-dominated world of international espionage in the 1970s; I’m just saying that there would never, ever be a movie like this with women as the main characters. A dramatic story about women over 40 working, and spying, and keeping all their clothes on. I’m just saying that’s kind of a problem, for me and the rest of my gender and a fictional graffiti artist.

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We watched Fish Tank last night and I have been thinking about it a lot. Like, a lot. It really moved me and I’d like to just put that out there to the world and know if you’ve seen it and if it moved you too. Katie Jarvis, the lead, is absolutely incredible. There’s a horse in it. There’s a really sexy cover of “California Dreamin’” by Bobby Womack featured prominently in ways that strip it of its sexiness. It’s just a really rich, vibrant, true depiction of adolescent girlhood. And if you’re into that kind of thing, there’s Michael Fassbender, and when I say “that kind of thing,” I do in fact mean “talented people who I can’t really appreciate fully because of that time they (allegedly) beat the shit out their ex-girlfriend.”

Here’s a really good* story about exercise.

I started using the pilates DVDs on Netflix this week because, you know, it’s a New Year, and I’m a cliché, and I don’t want to die before I turn 30 and at the rate that I consume buffalo chicken products, that is an increasing possibility, but I didn’t want to go to gym because I don’t know; I just hate it there; I hate staring at CNN reports of Kardashian goings-on while I ride a bicycle that goes nowhere; it’s too good of a metaphor. I should probably note here that I have only been to a gym twice, and they were both in the last year. All of my experience exerting energy for the sake of fitness before last year came via watching Mousercise when I was in kindergarten. Anyway, I also don’t like to go to a gym because why is everyone there already so fit and good-looking? And so much younger than me with eyes so full of promise and lungs so full of oxygen? And sweatpants with writing on the butts? You can’t help but feel pathetic in those rooms, like everyone’s staring at you, like they notice that you only spent 8 minutes on that elliptical before you had to stop, but of course they don’t notice that; that’s just the panopticon talking, and also did you know that I only understood what the theory of the panopticon actually was within the last two weeks, when I read the young adult novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks? I am jealous of all the teenagers who are going to be able to throw that word around in their high school English classes. Kevin challenged me to use it naturally in conversation over New Years weekend with our friends in the woods; he would have given me $10 if I’d done it but I failed. This is all to say, though, that exercising in front of a television is, as “Kellyn” knew so many years ago, the most ideal of all situations, because I’m pretty sure in real pilates classes, they don’t appreciate you shouting “Nope!” at the teacher when the move is too difficult, nor are you exactly encouraged to say, “Shut up!” and “You smug bitch!” every time they cut to the (silent) blonde lady in a yellow sports bra whose ribs are plenty and countable, who is able to perform every maneuver without losing her white, white, white smile. Fitness!

*Bad

Look, I’m just being honest here:

In the last two weeks or so, every time I’ve heard about anyone I know having professional success of any variety, to any degree, I’ve wanted to stick rusty nails into my own eyeballs.

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michelledean:

lifeaquatic:

natashavc:

tmills:

3. Today’s drawing was supposed to be heartbreak but I went with insufferable instead.

Boy oh boy.