April 2011
1 tag
WatchReading about my girl Gilda this afternoon. It’s been a wild three years. Off into the world we go!
About the day I was born
Mom: You were not amused
Me: I imagine not. I don't deal well with transitions.
“I turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all the way to town. I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle. There were Miss Maudie’s, Miss Stephanie’s — there was our house, I could see the porch swing — Miss Rachel’s house was beyond us, plainly visible. I could even see Mrs. Dubose’s….Atticus was right. One time he said you...
You guys, school’s over. Like, for real this time.
On the drive to the very last day of class
(which will incidentally be in the same room with the same professor as the very first day of class)
(on purpose, duh) “Flashdance” - Irene Cara
(on shuffle) “Virginia Woolf” - Indigo Girls, “Better Things” - Dar Williams, “Northern Girl” - Cheryl Wheeler
“Ford’s Theatre announces new initiative to focus on tolerance”
– Best headline I’ve ever read. (Thanks, Washington Post)
“Actually, I did read the first hundred pages of Booth’s very thick and...”
– Steve Almond, “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt,” Not That You Asked
“It’s just your typical sitcom two-minute-long discussion about...”
– Tina Fey about sexy baby types and the “TGS Hates Women” episode of 30 Rock
I worry pretty constantly about not writing after graduation, but, in my sick-stupor this afternoon, I still felt compelled to hit pause on Ally McBeal long enough to find my TV notebook so I could write Very Important Notes about twenty-somethings. Also, I spent the last hour writing the sleep-preventing mumblings of a short story. Let’s assume this all bodes well for my future. (And, while...
The Heroic Lie: A Brief Inquiry into the Fake... →
My definition of creative non-fiction is simple. It is a radically subjective account of events that objectively took place.
The moment you start making up events that you know did not take place, you’re doing another sort of work. It’s called fiction.
“My mother said we all have our cross to bear. She paraded hers like a medieval...”
– Jeanette Winterson, Weight
Texts with Vincent
Me: i'm shaking my head
Vincent: The kids use 'smh' for that, which coincidentally turns into Amy on autocorrect
Vincent: So meta.
The 'Girl Writer' Behind 'I Love Lucy' Dies →
Madelyn Pugh Davis, pioneering television writer, author, and role model for women everywhere, has passed away at the age of 90
5 Myths About the 'Information Age' - The... →
Click here for some girl-on-girl action →
So just to be absolutely clear here, Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan takes time out of her Wall Street Journal victory lap to call three of her most distinguished, best-selling female colleagues derivative and banal. Classy, Jennifer. Very classy.
Is it part of what Debby Edelstein calls PhD syndrome – Pull Her Down syndrome? This is a learned behaviour on the part of certain women to be...
Nervous Nellies →
Cultural pressure to be young and beautiful or whatever have their place in gendered anxiety, I’m sure, but I’m surprised this article doesn’t get into, I don’t know, the culture of fear. I grew up in a lovely suburb and the very first thing my female friends and I learned from our mothers when we learned to drive was how to hold your keys so you could stab a predator in...
The Bible Is Dead; Long Live the Bible →
There is a widely held, simplistic definition of faith as firm belief. To many, especially nonreligious people, faith is seen as absolute certainty despite or without regard to observed facts or evidence. Yet, as anyone trying to live faithfully in this world knows full well, there is no faith without doubt. Doubt is faith’s other side, its dark night. Indeed, in an atheisting match,...
100 Classic '30 Rock' Quotes →
“Hey, nerds! Who’s got two thumbs, speaks limited French, and hasn’t cried once today? This moi.” - Liz
JML: You should celebrate!
Me: I did!
JML: With people?
Pearls Before Swine - April 17, 2011 →
Things I miss: my mom making crosses out of dried palms (which, until today, was the only kind I assumed to exist).
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Jenna: We just need to hire some of those ugly people who have the paper and change the shapes on it.
Jack: Writers?
A little more than five years ago, I met these two women in passing who wound up helping me make this tremendous shift in my life even though we didn’t cross paths again for another three plus years.
In this time of great uncertainty, I’m trying to remember that you just never know. And that in never knowing, some really cool stuff happens.
“I know it’s immature, but I don’t care. Sometimes you need your best...”
– John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
“Well, I do feel an obligation to work at the top of my intelligence — even...”
– Tina Fey
“You know, in America, everybody thinks there’s an answer to every question....”
– P. L. Travers (via Paris Review)
“Once, when I was in the United States, I went to see a psychologist. It was...”
– P. L. Travers (via Paris Review)
“Southerners do have, they’ve inherited, a narrative sense of human destiny. This...”
– Eudora Welty (via Paris Review)
“Bossypants came under fire from Jezebel.com founder Anna Holmes, who claimed it...”
– Dayna Evans (via This Recording)
“‘I guess it depends how you define best,’ she says eventually....”
– Tim Adams, interview with Karen Green
WatchThis is probably where I am most my father’s daughter, which is probably one of the greatest benefits to being my father’s daughter.
Dammit, Tina Fey, you gave me something to seriously think about, and I need to go to bed, but I’m not because I’m fucking thinking.
“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write...”
– E. B. White (via Paris Review)
“It’s both. I feel that the broad tradition is mine; it has to be because I claim...”
– Jeanette Winterson (via Paris Review)
“I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before...”
– P.G. Wodehouse (via Paris Review)
The Ageless Appeal of Beverly Cleary →
Beverly Cleary! (That’s description enough, right?)
1 tag
The least bossy moment
You guys, all these books! Fresh off of Sweet Valley Confidential has been a much-delayed reading of Portia de Rossi’s Unbearable Lightness. And then today, instead of doing anything that I actually needed to be doing, the ridiculously anticipated reading of Bossypants (which means I lied to my pastor inside a church about promising to read the books she lent me before embarking on Tina Fey’s...
Well, my 88-year-old grandma is telling me about Grey’s Anatomy.
1 tag
“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by the word. It is...”
– William Faulkner (via Paris Review)
Dan Savage Is Coming For—For! Not On!—Your... →
Marjorie Garber's The Use and Abuse of... →
Kevin Kline →
Let’s just take a moment to appreciate my absolutely favorite actor.
“They all told me the same thing: you’re overqualified, you’re...”
– Roseanne Roseannadanna
