June 2012
Church stories: cursed creed →
“It no longer occurs to me to query the use of four-letter words, even when they...”
– Mary Norris on profanity in The New Yorker: http://nyr.kr/OArE2z (via newyorker)
A lovely thing in general, but very much agreed on the specifics. Stop putting asterisks in things or coming up with euphemisms. Just say it already. There aren’t a lot of writing things that drive me more nuts than to...
1 tag
Girl-child: exhausted, are you?
Me: very. I've been listening to you talk for three hours.
Girl-child: that's not a lot. A thousand is a lot.
“Individualism and individuality have to be separated. Individualism can take a...”
– —Jacob Needleman, from the On Being show “The Inward Word of Democracy”
Tom Hanks: Remembering Writer and Director Nora... →
Aww, Tom Hanks.
“Good health is a prerequisite to the enjoyment of ‘pursuit of happiness.’...”
– President Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress on Urgent Health Needs, 2/27/62 (via jfklibrary)
“Full House. I want it to slowly become clear that our show is the prequel to...”
– HIMYM Creator Carter Bays when asked what show he’d like to crossover with. | Vulture (via popculturebrain)
Basset hound aficionados Julie Klausner and Ted... →
<p>Klausner, Leo, and a whole lot of hounds</p>
The Whipple family is a basset family, so know that this is the best video to ever happen to the Internet. (Related: I already made that claim once today.)
Girl-child: Well, what do you want to be when you're a grown up?
Me: A teacher and a writer
Girl-child: Well, that's not doing anything helpful.
For Everyone Complaining about Aaron Sorkin's...
ecantwell:
Show me an artist/writer who has not re-used dialogue or images or music or gestures and I will show you an artist who has no obsessions—aka, a pretty shitty artist. You know who was an awesome writer and wrote kickass dialogue? Shakespeare.
From Hamlet:
POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord? HAMLET: Words, words, words.
From Troilus and Cressida:
PANDARUS: What says she there?...
WatchNick Offerman, is it even possible for you not to be funny?
Sally Steenland: 10 Things You Need to Know About... →
What Nora Ephron Taught Me About Love In The... →
“Waffles
The concept of waffles”
– Lists of Note, “What I Won’t and Will Miss,” Nora Ephron
(Clearly, waffles and the concept of waffles are things she will miss.) (Won’t we all?)
Writing on Empty →
I have 1500 books in my apartment. Sometimes I am given to hours of staring at the spines (all properly alphabetized and edged as two library jobs and one bookstore job will not go to waste) and doing nothing other than thinking about the books—their titles, their authors, places I’ve read them, conversations I’ve had about them, and whatever other manner of associations float...
A convoluted request: memoirs that are thematic, but not labeled as essay collections, and do not build off of a narrative through-line (such as how illness memoirs tend to take a chronological structure). What I’m thinking is maybe along the lines of Richard Rodriguez’s Brown and Joan Didion’s Where I Was From. Any ideas? Please and thank you!
Flavorwire » The Teachings of Ron Swanson: 25... →
The Truth in Transgender: Will the Episcopal... →
Bob Dole: Great American →
Wherein Jeanne Marie Laskas writes about Bob Dole.
What are Opossums? ‹ Bittel Me This →
Do y’all read Bittel Me This? Do yourselves a favor and hop-to. Sell point: Jason Bittel makes me care about nature.
Taboo Revival: Talking Private Parts In Public... →
“I mean, why does everything have to be an [effing] pool party? Why? Why? Why...”
– One half of a sublime cell phone conversation overheard in the Columbia Heights Target this morning. Set it to music and make it a song of summer.
A tempest in my soul: A son's secret brings a... →
“Rejecting evolution expresses more than an inability to think critically; it...”
– Creationism requires a global conspiracy of lying scientists and/or a lying God
“Designing Women, The Bionic Woman, Police Woman, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman,...”
– How do you feel about “girls”? Plus bitches, liars, housewives, and TV’s other names for women
I’m writing about “lady television” every month for this great group blog my friend set up.
(via dianeshipley)
In which my daughter wants to lose weight | Sarah... →
John Green's tumblr: hollyblack: “When you are a... →
hollyblack:
“When you are a woman or a girl or female no one says to you Look, artists who are great take without asking and take and take and do not apologize because when you are a woman or a girl or female the only thing you are supposed to take is a lot of other people’s shit. No one…
AVC: You wrote and directed the finale. In the scene where Leslie goes into the polling booth to vote for herself, what was your direction to Amy Poehler in that scene?
Mike Schur: I gave her almost none. It was a very hard scene, and I gave her almost no direction in part because the entire scene was written in stage directions. There’s no dialogue. So I had written what I wanted to write, and I didn’t see any point to giving her a lot of direction. I think the only direction I gave for that entire scene, as many takes as we did, was about camera placement. It was for the operators and not for the actors. There was no need. I figured when I was writing it that, ordinarily, without anything going on in her personal life, this would be the most significant moment of Leslie’s life: walking into a voting booth and punching her own name on a ballot. That would be incredibly meaningful and emotional and complex and everything else. Add to it that right before she goes in, her boyfriend with whom she’s completely in love, tells her that he might be leaving her for six months to go work with this shark in Washington. I didn’t for one second think that Amy wouldn’t know how to do that. It’s the culmination of a lot of years of playing this character. It was that scene and the one where she finds out the results of the election from Ann—that’s the whole year! That’s the whole year, and that’s the whole character from the very beginning all the way to this point.
coffee-and-rainsticks:
“It’s funny, when you date someone it’s like you’re taking one, long course in who that person is, and then when you break up all that stuff becomes useless. It’s the emotional equivalent of an English degree.”
[for my sister]
Magazine - Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - The... →
I cannot say enough good things about this.
The Late Movies: Bill Cosby, Himself - Mental... →
Because these were a continual soundtrack to my childhood. (And they make me happy.)
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My inner WASP and I fight pretty frequently. See, the thing is, I love my jobs. All of them. But my inner WASP is all like, if you love it, and it doesn’t really feel like work, then it must not be work. Ergo, you are not trying hard enough. Ergo, failure. So, basically, I’m having a crisis because I love my life. That’s special.
“I want to abide in moments of grace: My husband concentrating on his knitting....”
– Still Life 