#and that's just my lifetime the 90s-2020s it was already going that way in the 70s and 80s easily

[sunspira]

If you need to explain to people why antisemitic conspiracy theories are bullshit. but also trying to understand and acknowledge how the Holocaust is given some preferential treatment in american politics over so many others, especially african and indigenous people. remember it's nothing to do with Jewish people having some special secret Jewish Power

it's because

1. America's political and economic rivals committed the genocide.

2. America didn't do it!

3. America's political and economic allies didn't do it.

4. America's political and economic allies condemn it.

5. Bonus: the victims were europeans

that's generally it. that's all it takes. i would suggest looking at how japans war crimes and colonialist atrocities were originally quite well known and weaponized in the american public discourse. conjured quickly as a retroactive excuse for why the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki was fair and warranted. today as the economic and political allegiance between the united states and japan has become more and more profitable and valuable, look how the american public and political discourse has shifted to give leeway to japans own genocide denial. especially as america took over the helm of colonizing and exploiting korea, and as the political and economic allegiance with china soured, suddenly japans crimes in korea and china are less and less talked about. each generation of americans knows less and less about the racist & imperialist social issues & history of japan and more and more about buying japanese products and media. theres a reason for that and it's not some stupid superstition nazis are still trying to push. its just because 1. there's no enemy of america doing it that we can weaponize as convenient propaganda 2. America is taking part in it now, 3. our allies did it or are doing it, and 4. our allies do not condemn it and instead deny it so we play along. 5. bonus: the victims aren't european.

#i love japanese products and media im just saying it's less of a talking point the past 30 years for a reason #this might be difficult to observe if you're younger but the way conservative america has warmed to japan during my lifetime is remarkable #and that's just my lifetime the 90s-2020s it was already going that way in the 70s and 80s easily #i don't hate japan or japanese people or anything like that don't get me wrong im talkin war. politics. the big leagues

[gloombeauty]

Lana lost every Grammy she was nominated for. To Taylor, Billie and a stupid band with a stupid name like Boygenius. I guess Lana didn't bribe the Grammy voters committee hard enough. Or didn't buy them $100,000 gifts. She looked so broken trying to fake smile through the whole show. Then Taylor literally dragged her on stage. Lana didn't want that. She looked humiliated and broken up there. Even the way she was dressed looked like she was going to a funeral. I don't think Lana should ever entertain the Grammy's ever again. 💔

Sit down, this will be long.

My love and admiration for Lana Del Rey and Olivia Rodrigo grew even more after what I witnessed at the Grammy's this year.

1 - It's a known fact that the Grammys are trophies that are usually bought by the artists and the labels. They call it "gifts" but it's accurately described as "bribes." That's what it is - bribes. "Gifts" bought for these fucking Grammy committee of voters so that you have a chance to get that Grammy nom and even better - the trophy.

These committees are people straight from the music industry. Usually men. It wasn't so obvious back in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's or even in the early 2000's - but by 2009, it was obvious how the game went. Many artists back in the day won by merit and talent. Many are criminally ignored. Led Zeppelin never won a Grammy. They got a Lifetime Achievement award from the Grammys in 2005. That shit doesn't count but whatever. They were ignored for over 30 years. Michael Jackson lost to that guy who sang "Don't Worry Be Happy." Jethro Tull won for best Metal Recording over Metallica.

So, you see -

2 - Look at the artists who keep winning every fucking year. Taylor Swift. Beyonce. Billie Eilish. Adele. Do the math. It's not a coincidence. Billie acting all goofy and shocked when she wins is all an act. She's an industry plant who's been in the industry thanks to her parents. That stupid act she pulls every single time she wins is tiresome and old. The same exact way it's an act when Taylor feigns shock that she won yet another award. You two conniving bitches paid for your award wins. Cut the fake shock/surprised act.

3 - Speaking of Taylor Swift, she is a demon within the industry itself. Even her own fans said Midnights wasn't that great, but here she is winning "Album Of The Year" (again!) over Ocean Blvd and Guts. Both albums being miles better then Midnights.

4 - Speaking of, shout out to Lana and Olivia Rodrigo for their class and dignity. Having to fake smile for hours while Taylor and Billie were swiping all those trophies was hard to watch. Even Olivia, who's usually her sweet cheery self, had moments last night where she looked done. Lana was already done by the time she hit the red carpet. She had lost to Boygenius twice by that time. Phoebe Bridgers was already a Grammy sweetheart having been nominated for several Grammys for her solo work in 2020. She knew how to play the Grammy game this time around.

But the first sickening part of the night was when Olivia Rodrigo was performing Vampire and Taylor Swift was the only person standing and dancing - while Olivia performed. What fucking shit was that? Taylor, being a monstrous egotistical narcissist, had to stand up during Olivia's moment to shine. She had to fucking dance to a song that wasn't even a fucking dance song. For what? Just to show the world "look! no hate between me and Olivia! All is good! No beef! I support all women! look at me! look at me!"

Let me repeat:

Taylor Swift was literally the only asshole dancing while everyone respectfully sat and watched Olivia perform. For what? To steal Olivia's moment. Plain and simple. She's a narcissist after all.

The way Olivia carried herself the whole night is commendable. I saw Olivia having to fake smile her way every time Taylor beat her in some of the nominations. The camera would pan right up to Olivia's face. This girl is so much better then me. I would have just sat there drinking my wine, but Olivia is smart. Any other reaction from her would have had the Swifties sending her death threats online. They are already attacking her on X for not clapping harder when Taylor won. The maniacal delusions of the Swifteys. They are worst then the Barbz and the Beehive.

In the end, Taylor got what she wanted. The camera panning at her as Olivia was on stage singing and then beating Olivia in several of the categories she was nominated for.

5 - Another moment of disgust at the Grammys was Taylor Swift obligating Lana to join her on stage. Like, that was fucking soul crushing to watch. It was bad enough Lana lost to Taylor - but the kick to the stomach was dragging Lana on stage. She didn't want to go on stage. She shook her head, said no and pulled away. Taylor wouldn't have any of that. She grabbed Lana's arm and dragged her on stage. And for what? As a favor for Lana? So Lana can feel what it's like to stand on a Grammy stage? What was the point? All those nice things Taylor said about Lana's legacy could have been easily said while Lana sat in her seat in the audience.

Lana standing on that stage looked defeated. She didn't want to be there. It was written all over her face. She's not as good as Olivia when it comes to faking a smile. That poor woman looked sad, broken and defeated.

Meanwhile, Taylor is up there being a smiley giddy cunt, accepting her award and demanding Lana, Jack and his wife to stand right next to her. That is some insane mindfucking. I have seen some mindfucking in my time, but what Taylor did last night takes the fucking cake.

I'm glad Lana stayed behind and didn't stand next to Taylor. She was holding on to dear life to the guy standing next to her on stage. This was just too cruel and humiliating to watch.

Lana was already heartbroken by the time she hit the red carpet. That thing on stage just broke her even more. Expect in the next few days a revised version of the questioning of the culture. Expect her IG to be deactivated. Expect her to explode, implode and snap. It's coming.

Don't even get me into Taylor completely ignoring Celine Dion. Not a single hug or kiss for our Celine. Nope. Nothing. After everything Celine has been going through this year.

It's telling that Olivia took so many pictures with other artists that were at the Grammys. Not one single picture with Taylor Swift.

Yeah, no beef. Yeah right.

I know Swifteys are like "she was OnLy trying to be NiCe to LaNa you hater!!!" - like, spare me. Pick up a book and learn to observe what is in front of you.

I hope that Lana cut all ties with the Grammys. That she no longer submits albums/songs to their committee. I feel like what happened last night was incredibly cruel and done on purpose. Lana must have pissed off a Grammy voter(s), maybe refusing a date? Perhaps she refused sexual favors? It's not that farfetched. This is the music industry after all - one of the most insidious industries. Just ask Ashanti.

I hope Lana boycotts the Grammys.

I hope she works with a different producer. I'm sick of Jack Antonoff.

I also hope she cut ties with Taylor. That shit she pulled last night was fucked.

That's all I have to say on this subject.

#lana del rey #olivia rodrigo #taylor swift

[memoleather]

BDSM and kink DO belong in Pride celebrations. This is why.

I've read a column on The Independent trying to explain why BDSM and Kink don't belong in Pride celebrations. What I found interesting is not only the lack of knowledge from the author, but the way he can contradict himself in the same article. I'll try to explain why based on my personal experience as a Leatherman.

Before anything I'd like to perfectly make myself clear: in the US (country where I live) showing your genitals or anus in public is illegal.

In the column, the autor tries to explain that BDSM and Kink aren't of good taste or decent enough for the public. And that could potentially alienate possible allies we could need in the LGBTQ movement. A lot of this type of arguments against the same LGBTQ community have been heard thorough our contemporary history, and most of the times have been used to attack and suppress us.

But contrary to what most of the readers think is the main error in the column, which is the wrongful denial of the presence of the BDSM and Kink collective based on their clothing or what they're doing in public, I think the main error lies deeper within the column.

The author tries to make a separation between sexual orientation and sexual preference. He states that where sexual orientation is of a permanent state, a sexual preference is a choice that can change. The author couldn't be any more wrong with this argument: BDSM and Kink people have both perfectly attached one to the other.

In my personal case as a Leatherman who has met diverse type of Leathermen around the globe, most of them coincide with what I think: a gay Leatherman can only be attracted to other gay Leathermen. That is the main characteristic of a fetish tied to a sexual preference. I cannot have sexual intercourse with a woman dressed in leather, or with a man dressed in casual clothing. My sexual orientation and preference are intimately tied one to each other.

The author makes a reference to his lack of knowledge from the subject when he tries to dismiss Leathermen, and most likely all Kinksters (rubbermen, pups, Levi, balloons, diapers, etc) and practicioners of BDSM to a simple case of a "preference", or a choice. He considers that at a certain point in my life I was given the option of liking Leathermen, a thing that never happened. There was a time when I was growing up (probably around when I was 6 or 7 years old) when I discovered that I like men dressed in leather. Before knowing that I was gay, or what being gay is, I was already a kinkster and I already had a defined sexual preference. If the author of the column had a minimum knowledge of the topic, he would have known that most fetish people are born with their fetishes in their blood: we cannot choose whether to accept or dismiss our fetishes, we have to practice them in order to be in peace with ourselves, to be our own true selves. In all my life I've met several diverse Leathermen and fetish people that cannot have a sexual hookup or a meaningful relationship with a person who does not share their sexual preference, or their fetish. That has happened to me. I've tried several times without success to have sex with a person who does not share my fetish. Having a shared fetish or kink is a basic requirement for me to have a good time with a man.

From that wrong argument on, the whole column loses its value. Thanks to his wrongful reasoning, the author falls into the same rhetoric that conservatives from the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's, 2010's and 2020's have long used to attack us: the BDSM and Kink collective (or replacing those with the LGBTQ acronym), which is nothing more than a bunch of people that CHOSE to get dressed in leather that day (or a bunch of people that CHOSE to love a person from the same sex) is not of good taste to mingle in a Pride celebration, or with the rest of the society in general. Other proof of his ignorance of the Kink and BDSM world can be seen in the same column: when the author mentions that he's practiced a fetish but no longer does. That implies that for him the fetish is nothing more than a costume he uses to make sex "more fun" and when he's over, he hangs it back in the closet and forgets about it until he needs it again. Unlike the author, I wear leather because that is who I am: a Leatherman. I consider that I use a costume when I go to work using casual clothes in a job that doesn't allow to wear leather garments.

Now I'd like to ask the author the specific type of Pride he's been going where showing genitals or anuses is allowed. Never in my lifetime as Leatherman I've been to a pride where people shows those. Any gay person (at least in the US) independently of whether if they participate in a collective or not, knows that showing the genitals or anuses in public is illegal. No matter how proud of being a Leatherman I am, I'd never do it, nor I ever will. I know the places where I can do that. Now, if his comments regarding the so called "sexual intercourses" he witness, or imagines, when assisting to a Pride event stems from the way we dress or act there, then I have the next words for him: stop reflecting your insecurities on us. I dress the way I do and act the way I do because that is what I want, that is who I am. If you have a problem with it, then that problem is yours and yours only to solve. I don't have to change my persona, nor I ever will, to accommodate to your insecurities.

Instead of attacking me, or the BDSM / Kink collective, the author should try to know me/us. He would get shocked to know that despite my preferences, I am a human being just like him: I have a job just like him, I go back home just like him, I go to bed just like him, and if someone attacks me I bleed, just like him. Maybe if he devoted more time to know us, or the different facets of the LGBTQ movement, he would spend less time attacking us. The attack to one of us does not minimize it's impact: an attack to one of us is an attack to all of us.

I also have some words for The Independent: shame on you for trying to legitimize voices of people that have no idea or knowledge of a topic you agree to publish. Rather than demonstrating the lack of knowledge and ignorance from the author, you're showing the null capacity from your editorial board to choose quality writers for your publication.

Lastly, I'd like to tell to my beloved LGBTqia+ / BDSM / Kink community: this month celebrate the freedom of being however you really are. We have a long history of fighting against what society tells us how we should be. Now is not the time to give up, nor to take a small break. And the best way to celebrate is this: if you're a Femdom, be a proud Femdom in the bank. If you're a Leatherman, be a proud Leatherman in the bus. If you're Queer, be a proud Queer in an art gallery. Gather together with your kinky friends, or just your friends and mingle with the rest of the society in your best gear. Let's build bridges of communication between our BDSM / kink world and the people that don't know us. Because what's better than a day, a week, a month or even a year of celebrations, is a lifetime of Pride.

#gay #gayleather #pride #happypride #leatherpride #bdsmpride #kinkypride

[goodgirlsfanficawards]

Happy Monday! Start your week off right with five angsty authors who wrote their first Good Girls fic since 1 April 2020 and we can’t wait to read more.

Cinnamon_schnapps started posting in June and since then has completed one 18 chapter fic and started two more. Their fics feature heavy topics, crime, unplanned pregnancy, marriage, and everyone’s favourite: jealous Rio. 

Risky Business

Completed 09 Nov 2020, E, 60K, 18/18, 262 kudos

When single bachelor Rio has an itch he frequents local strip clubs to find someone to scratch it, leaving all attachments beyond the physical dormant. One night he meets a woman who makes him change his mind about everything.

Loving and Losing You.

Updated 11 Nov 2020, M, 28K, 6/8, 145 kudos

One day Christopher “Rio” Martinez made a mistake at the heat of the moment that caused him to loose the most important woman in his life. It will take them years to reconnect but will a lie threaten their happy reunion?

See you soon, yeah?

Updated 27 Sept 2020, E, 10K, 4/?, 130 kudos

When Elizabeth Marquez’s husband disappears leaving her a widow, and single mother of two young children she has to figure out the life he left behind in order to survive ruthless criminals and shady business dealings.

alittlemystery posted their first fic in September and have written three more since then. They write hurt/comfort set in/around season 3.

Maybe It’s Karma

Updated 27 Oct 2020, M, 7.2K, 4/5, 380 kudos

The blood spurts out of her mouth and down her chin, she tries to cough, to catch her breath but that just makes it worse. She can hear someone yelling at her, over her, touching her. She tries to focus on it but they sound underwater, her sight all hazy, numbness spreading throughout her body.

What Happened?

20 Oct 2020, T, 934, 1/?, 158 kudos

Beth is found unconscious. Inspired from a behind the scenes photo. “So I’m not the only one thinking it right, Rio found you and brought you here?” Annie concludes “Or he was already with you” Ruby suggests

A Matter Of Time

20 Oct 2020, M, 1.5K, 1/1, 242 kudos

He was back, and he was going to kill her, but what if… what if she tried to beat him to it? - Beth tries to take matters into her own hands, again. And not in a way he expected. Set somewhere during early season 3.

Kithi1 first started their currently five part series featuring Rio POV, a number of missing scenes and a full WIP s3 rewrite in November. 

His Elizabeth Boland

27 Nov 2020, T, 927, 1/1, 30 kudos

Part 1 of His Elizabeth Boland series

Based on season 3,ep 3 (egg roll) Rio comes back from 'the dead' and confronts beth at the bar with intention to off her. This scene plays out from rio's POV. And I gotta tell you, he's not a happy camper. He's here to cap a bitch!

Remembrance

28 Nov 2020, M, 2.1K, 1/1, 40 kudos

Part 2 of His Elizabeth Boland series

So when Beth Boland told Rio that she was pregnant, what did he do? I mean, did he just go home all comfy and what-not? Where's that scene? Also, what happened in Beth's bedroom with Rio; when he "hit it while her husband was at work." 😀 (God! That man is petty! Love to see it.) Like Ruby, I just wanted to know: how was it? was it good? Missing scenes and flashbacks from Rio's POV.

Him, Her, Them.

01 Dec 2020, M, 5.1K, 3/3, 42 kudos

Part 3 of His Elizabeth Boland series

Dear Reader, these 2 have feelings. But they're idiots. Idiots in love. Okay, so beth told Rio that she was pregnant. Season 3, ep 3 and then she came home from grocery shopping and he was waiting to take her on a little ride. (the way he says, "hey, now" gives me shivers. Damn!) So they took a little ride. How did that go. I think it was fraught with all kinds of tension. Emotional tension, sexual tension; knife. Amiright? They would probably like to keep those thoughts/feelings to themselves. Can't have that now! And plus the golden gun may or may not be in play. 😋😋 Oh and eyefucking. *blush. Soooooo much of it. And we all know how well they do do that. I'm living vicariously through them and fully intend on going down with this ship.

lopezuuus ( @riveramour​ ) starting posting in November. They write angsty headcanons and reminiscences, sometimes with sad endings and a fic about Beth and Rio embracing his dark side during sex.

a lifetime of firsts

26 Dec 2020, M, 10K, 1/1, 90 kudos

Rio reminisces about his and Beth's firsts.

Natural Habitat

Updated 14 Dec 2020, E, 28K, 7/?, 329 kudos

Part 1 of prompts and headcanons series

A collection of headcanons and prompts about Beth and Rio, because I can't get enough of them. Prompts are 99% of time unrelated to each other.

murder on my mind

30 Nov 2020, E, 2.6K, 1/1, 88 kudos

Beth gets off on Rio murdering people.

elizabethmarks only has one fic for Good Girls so far. It’s a dark WIP with a lot of angst and hurt/comfort but a promise of a happy ending.

My Girl

Updated 26 Nov 2020, M, 9.8K, 5/?, 260 kudos

Another Brio fic. ❤️ A lot of dark. And a lot of light. A lot of feels. Thank you for reading! Read notes for trigger warnings.

If you know of anyone’s tumblr/twitter and we haven’t found it or tagged incorrectly, please send us an ask to let us know.

#good girls nbc #nbc good girls #good girls fanfiction #good girls fanfic #beth x rio #brio fanfiction #brio fanfic #good girls fic #brio fic #motivation monday

[pitiless-achilles-wept]

2020 Can Take My Hair, But Not My Hope

My hair started falling out on election night.

I thought at first it might be the anxiety, that I was literally pulling my hair out with worry over numbers I already knew were not going to be definitive before the night wore into morning but which I stayed up until 3:30am watching anyway. I tweeted rapidly, reassuring my jittery timeline that not only had we all known that the night would bring no results but that we had even expected Trump to lead in key states because of the greater number of mail-in ballots from urban areas that would largely count for Biden. We knew. We all knew. But we were all terrified, flashing back to 2016 and already dreading another four years of living life on high alert, in constant survival mode.

I posted a selfie with a tweet that read, "Could be the last presidential election I vote in (blah blah stage 4 cancer blah blah) and I wish it were better and clearer than this but it's a crucial privilege to have voted. Remember, whatever the outcome, the last thing they can take from you is your hope."

To me that last sentence has been a mantra for these years and for my treatment. I have consistently refused, despite overwhelmingly terrible odds, to lose hope. The story of Pandora's Box tells us that the very last thing left inside was Hope--that even once all the demons were out in the world there was that tiny, feathered creature left to hang on to. It hasn't been easy, but I am one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet (and if you doubt this just ask anyone who's ever fought me on anything!) and it has turned out to be a saving grace rather than an irritating personality trait. Feeling like the world was trying to take my hope away made me angry. And when I get angry I will fight back.

I know I'm not alone in feeling like we entered some kind of alternate nightmare timeline on election night 2016. To that point, despite periods of immense personal difficulty, nothing truly terrible had happened to me. Then, in short order, my marriage ended and I was diagnosed with and began being treated for a terminal illness, all against the backdrop of a regime so deliberately hateful that it was truly incomprehensible to me. Then, a global pandemic and national crisis swept away the small consolations I'd found in my new life with cancer. The temptation to feel hopeless was strong and I struggled with it, particularly in the isolation of quarantine. I'm struggling with it now, facing a winter of further lockdowns, social isolation, continued chemo, and the added indignity (and chilliness!) of not having any hair. But somehow the coincidence of my hair loss with election night seemed like a good omen for the future, if a sad thing for the present.

I heard the news that they had called Pennsylvania for Biden at a peaceful Airbnb in the Catskills after stepping out of a shower where lost hair in handfuls. It felt oddly like a sacrifice I had made personally. I joked about this with friends on the text chains that lit up and that (despite my promise to myself and my writing partner that we'd "go off the grid") I responded to immediately. Instant replies, with emojis and GIFs, participated in the fiction: "Thank you for your service!!!"; "We ALL appreciate your sacrifice!"; "Who among us would NOT give up their hair for no more Trump?". The feeling was real for me, though. It was as though the good news demanded some kind of karmic offering. You never get something for nothing, I thought, and really it was a small price to pay.

The rest of the weekend passed too quickly, with absorption in the novel I plan (madly, given that I also work full-time) to work on for "National Novel Writing Month" (NaNoWriMo), walks in the unseasonably warm woods, and nighttime drinks on the back deck under the stars, watching my hair blow off in fine strands and drift through the sodium porch light. My friend and I read tarot and both our layouts contained The Tower, the card for new beginnings from total annihilation, the moment of destruction in which (as the novel's title says) everything is illuminated. "This might sound dumb," he said, "but maybe yours is about your hair." It did not sound dumb.

[shaved heads, the 2020 election, and a couple pics under the cut]

There is probably no more iconic visual shorthand for cancer than hair loss. It happens because chemo agents target fast-proliferating cells, which tend to inhabit things that grow rapidly by nature (hair, fingernails), or that we need to replenish often (cells in the gut), as well as out-of-control cancer cells. But not all cancer treatments, not even all chemotherapies, cause hair loss. In my 20 months of being treated for cancer and my three previous treatments (four, if you count the surgery I had) nothing had yet affected my hair beyond a bit of thinning. This despite the fact that my first-ever treatment (Taxol) was widely known to cause hair loss for "everyone." I had been fortunate with this particular side effect in a narrow way that I have absolutely not been on a broader scale. "Maybe," I had let myself think, "I can have this one thing." The odds were in my favor too; only 38% of people in clinical trials being treated with Saci lost their hair. I liked the odds of being in the 62% who didn't. But--as we all felt deep in our gut while they counted votes in battleground states--odds aren't everything.

I had come to treat the "strength" of my hair as a kind of relative consolation (though as with everything cancer "strength," "weakness," and the rhetoric of battle have nothing to do with outcomes). I treasured still having it, not just out of vanity (though I have always loved my hair whatever length, style, or color it has been) but because it allowed me to pass among regular people as one of them. I had no visible markers of the illness that is killing me, concealed as first the tumor and then the scars were by my clothing. "You look wonderful," people would tell me, even when I suffered from stress fractures from nothing more than running or sneezing; muscle spasms in my shoulder and nerve death in my fingertips; nausea that I swallowed with swigs from my water bottle that just made me look all the more like a hydration-conscious athlete; and profound, constant, and debilitating fatigue. Invisible illness had its own perils but I would take them--take all of them at once if necessary!--if only I could keep my hair and look normal.

It was not to be. A part of me had known this, since a lifetime with metastatic cancer means a lifetime of treatments a solid proportion of which result in hair loss. But I had hoped. And I had liked the odds.

The hardest thing for me is having to give up this particular consolation before knowing whether or not my new treatment is also working on my cancer. Unfortunately, there really isn't a correlation between side effects like hair loss and effectiveness of treatment. If it is working then I will feel that--like the election to which I felt I had karmically contributed--it was all completely worth it. Yet, even in this best case scenario, there's a new reality for me which is that while I am on this treatment I will stay bald. When you are a chronic patient you hope for a treatment that will work well with manageable side effects. And if this treatment works--and if the other side effects are as ok-ish as they are now--then I will remain on it.

It's that future that I am furious about more than anything else. I want to continue to live my life, of course, but I don't want to have to do it bald! In part that is because I don't want to register to people constantly as an archetypal "cancer patient" when I know that I am so much more. It is also in part because I don't want to think of myself as being ill, and living every day having to disguise my absent hair will make that all the tougher. I have already noticed that I feel, physically, as though I am sicker because of my constantly shedding hair. How could I not, in some ways, when every move I make and every glance at myself (including in endless Zoom windows) shows me this highly visible change?

For that reason, I'm shaving my remaining hair tomorrow (Wednesday). It's a way to feel less disempowered--less like hair loss is happening to me--and wrest control of the situation back. I will try to find agreeable things about it: wigs, scarves, cozy caps, bright lipstick, statement earrings, and a general punk/Mad Max vibe that is appropriate to 2020. But I don't want anyone to think for a second that I find this agreeable, or even acceptable, or that I don't mind. I mind a whole hell of a lot. My hair was my consolation prize, my camouflage, my vanity, my folly, and my battle cry.

I dyed it purple when I was first diagnosed because I knew (or thought I knew) that I would be losing it soon. I didn't, and I came to cherish it as a symbol of my boldness in the face of circumstances trying to oppress me, to make me shrink, to tempt me to become invisible. I refused and used it to "shout" all the louder in response. Because of what it came to mean to me, I'm nearly as sad about losing the purple as I am about losing the hair itself. It both symbolized the weight I was carrying and also that I would not let that weight grind me down. It was my act of resistance and my sign resilience all at once.

I sent a text to my friends, explaining this and offering, as an idea, that I could "pass the purple" to them in some way, small or large. It would feel more like handing off a torch or a weight (or the One Ring) than anyone shaving their head in solidarity. (After all, if they did that it would just remind me as I watched theirs grow back that, in fact, our positions were very different.) You're welcome to do it if you'd like too, internet friends, with temporary or permanent dye or a wig or a headband or one of those terrible 90s hairwraps or whatever. But I don't require that anyone do it because I feel support from you all in myriad ways, all the time. (But if you do, please send me pictures!)

It's November 2020. The election is over and Joe Biden has won. I still have cancer and I'll be bald tomorrow. I hope it's a turning point, both personal and global, because it feels like one. We've given up a lot in the last four years and I cannot say that I feel in any way peaceful or accepting about having to give up yet one more thing. But in losing my hair I absolutely refuse to also give up my hope.

(On our walk we did also seem to find a version of The Tower, all that was left of an abandoned house)

#life update #my life as a cancer patient #stage 4 #mbc #metastatic breast cancer #losing my hair #unfair things #election 2020 #I just have a lot of feelings #the tower #us politics

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2020

I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.

GARBAGE

93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.

That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.

92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.

91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?

90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?

On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.

89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.

88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.

87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.

  ADMIRABLE FAILURES

86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.

85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.

I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.

84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.

83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.

So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?

Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.

82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.

There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."

81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.

80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.

Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.

79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?

The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.  

To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.

78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.  

Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.

77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.  

At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?

76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.

Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.

75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.

The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.

My daughter loved it.

74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.

*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.

73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.

72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.

Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.

71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.

70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".

69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.

68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.

If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.

67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.

For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.

ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.

Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.

65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.

I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.

64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.

The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.

63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!

62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought." "America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!" "At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience." "Fifty percent, Captain!" "The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext." "No subtext to be found, sir!"

  61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.

Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.

60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)- "You live inside your head." "Doesn't everybody?"

As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.

59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.

That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.

58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.  

Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.

57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.

Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?

56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.

Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.

55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.  

Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.

54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.

53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.

Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."

There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.

There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.

51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.

But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.

50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.

I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.

49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")

What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.

48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.

To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.

47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.

46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.

45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)

If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.

44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?

When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.

43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.  

I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.

42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.

The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.

41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.

Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.

40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.

A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.

  GOOD MOVIES

39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?

At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.

38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.

By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.

That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.

37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.

36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.

Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."

35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.

34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.

In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.

33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."

This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.

I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?

32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."

Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.

31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.

*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson

30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.

I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.

29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.

As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.

28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.

27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.

Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.

26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.

25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.

It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.

24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.

(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)

23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)

But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.

I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.

22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.

You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.

21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.

20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.

Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.

19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.

18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.

17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.

GREAT MOVIES

16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.

Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.

15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)

  Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.

14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.

  This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.

13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.

I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.

12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.

It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.

11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.

10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.

To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.

If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.

9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.

Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.

But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.

8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.

Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.

7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.

In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.

6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.

If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.

5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.

In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.

  Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.

  4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.

3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.

  An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)

Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.

INSTANT CLASSICS

2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.

Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.

There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.

A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.

[96thdayofrage]

It’s a privilege earned over 68 years, as the oldest and longest-serving juvenile lifer in the country. He’s been imprisoned since 1953, when he was just 15 years old.

“I guess you accumulate a lot of stuff in 68 years,” said Bradley Bridge, a lawyer with the Defender Association of Philadelphia who’s represented Ligon since 2006. Having taken on the mission of getting Ligon home — first legally, then logistically — he had to scramble to fit the materials into his car, commandeering a reporter’s trunk for the overflow.

Ligon, now 82, received his life term for taking part in a spree of robbery and assaults in which two people died. Ligon admits participating in the crime with a group of drunk teens, but denies killing anyone.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that automatic life terms for kids are cruel and unusual, he was one of more than 500 Pennsylvania prisoners all resentenced to terms contingent on lifetime parole.

But Ligon, resentenced to 35 years to life in 2017, rejected the very idea of parole after nearly seven decades in prison.

“I like to be free,” he said. “With parole, you got to see the parole people every so often. You can’t leave the city without permission from parole. That’s part of freedom for me.”

Other prisoners tried to coax him out into the free world. John Pace, a former juvenile lifer and now a re-entry coordinator for the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP), recalled a fruitless visit to the prison with a group of other ex-lifers. “If you want to fight, fight it when you get out,” he counseled Ligon at the time.

But Ligon refused to apply for parole, let alone take any required programs.

So Bridge fought three more years to get him released with time served — and won a victory that has given hope to hundreds of other juvenile lifers still on parole.

In federal court, he argued that Ligon’s mandatory maximum sentence of life was unconstitutional.

“The constitution requires that the entire sentence, both the minimum and maximum terms imposed on a juvenile, be individualized — and a one size fits all cannot pass constitutional muster,” he wrote. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office agreed. And, on Nov. 13, 2020, Anita B. Brody, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, ordered Ligon resentenced or released within 90 days.

“That was no sad day for me,” Ligon said. He only wished his mother, his father, and his brother could have been there to see it.

The 90-day clock expired Thursday. So, for the first time, Ligon left behind prison walls and visited the public defenders’ Center City office, where files on his case take up an entire room. He seemed unfazed as he placed his face close to a high-tech temperature scanner, then cruised by elevator up to the eighth floor.

Peering out the window, he saw a city transformed.

“I’m looking at all the tall buildings,” he said. “This is all new to me. This never existed.”

He found it unsettling that Eastern State Penitentiary, where he was once imprisoned, is now a museum and Halloween attraction. “That don’t suit my tastes,” he said. He had declined to be included in an exhibit. He feared it would imply “that I’m such a dangerous man, which I’m not.”

He grew up in a different world: a farm in Alabama, where he abandoned school in the third or fourth grade — he said he couldn’t stand being in big groups — much as he would reject educational offerings in prison.

“I’m just a stubborn type of person,” Ligon said. “I was born that way.”

His parents enrolled him in school in Philadelphia when he was 13, but he couldn’t keep up. He was still illiterate when he was arrested at age 15. He believes he was scapegoated as the new kid, the outsider.

A loner, he grew to pride himself on his janitorial skills. In Graterford prison, he learned to read and write. He trained as a boxer there, developing a military-style workout regimen he continues to this day, despite his arthritis.

He never applied for commutation, though he could have had a strong chance at clemency in the 1970s, when hundreds of Pennsylvania lifers were released. Instead, he put his faith in Bridge and waited for the day he’d be released. To prepare himself for modern society, he watched world news on a small TV in his cell.

“I like my chances,” he said Thursday. “I really like my chances in terms of surviving.”

His road to release, though, was riddled with obstacles. After the U.S. Supreme Court banned mandatory life terms for minors in 2012, Pennsylvania refused to apply the ruling retroactively. Another ruling in 2016 ordered the state and others to do so.

Then, mitigation specialists had to prepare for his resentencing, tracking down school transcripts and prison records spanning more than half a century. “Every infraction, every transfer, that was the way to put his [biography] together,” said Billi Charron, who was tasked with compiling his history and a home plan.

Ligon’s aversion to parole kept him locked up for years after that, until the November ruling set the 90-day deadline for his release.

That left Ligon’s supporters scrambling to line up everything he’d need to come home.

Charron, Pace and Eleanor Myers, a senior advisor at YSRP, volunteered to assist — a process that ultimately included support from 10 city agencies, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and various nonprofit organizations. Philadelphia’s Reentry Coalition directed Myers to Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, which found Ligon a place in domiciliary care, a foster-care-like accommodation with a family in Philadelphia.

“Then we had to figure out how to pay for it,” said Myers. The Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services agreed to cover the first year, while a benefits specialist is helping to get Social Security lined up after that. A modest crowdfunding campaign helped cover incidentals.

“We have this extraordinary community that has rallied to make this happen,” Myers said.

Pace, meanwhile, picked out sweaters and socks he thought Ligon would like. He found a phone with no data plan, figuring Ligon won’t need it. He drove around the neighborhood where Ligon will be staying, checking out the parks and other attractions so he can show Ligon around. And, he solicited advice from other long-serving former lifers. “Just take it slow with Joe,” they advised.

When Pace, 52, first came home nearly four years ago, he felt physically ill from the overstimulation — a sort of emotional equivalent of the bends. “Let’s say mine was on a two, his is going to be on a 10,” Pace said. “He’s been locked up so long, everything changed.”

At the back of his mind, for now, is whether the legal victory in Ligon’s case could be his own pathway off of lifetime parole.

The ruling does not set binding precedent. Nonetheless, Bridge said he’s already been contacted by numerous juvenile lifers hoping to challenge their lifetime parole terms as well. So far, he said, he’s filed similar petitions for three juvenile lifers.

To Bridge, Ligon’s case is a powerful example of punishment taken to senseless extremes.

“We waste people’s lives by over-incarcerating and we waste money by over-incarcerating. His case graphically demonstrates the absurdity of wasting each,” Bridge said Thursday, before dropping Ligon off at his new home. “Hopefully his release, and the release of the juvenile lifers in general, will cause a reevaluation of the way we incarcerate people.”

[popwasabi]

“The Matrix Reloaded” deserves a re-watch in 2020

Here’s a burning hot take for, y’all; “The Matrix Reloaded” is not bad actually!

In fact, it’s more than not bad, it’s actually pretty good and perhaps a bit misunderstood by the fans.

Now, I’m not here to tell you it’s the best Matrix film. That honor will remain always and forever with the first movie, as it remains not just one of the best action films of all-time but one of the best science fiction films ever, period. It’s a classic and simply one of my all-time favorite films.

(Not to mention turned me into a Rage Against The Machine fan.)

But somehow, over the course of my lifetime, you know what movie I have watched exponentially more than “The Matrix?” The fucking “Matrix Reloaded!”

I used to think maybe it was an ironic infatuation. To a certain extent, I think it still is, as its overly indulgent action, bad lines at times, cringey new characters, and over the top moments can make it about as comical as many so bad it’s good movies. But growing up time can change perceptions, sometimes for the better, and can help you see things in new ways that you didn’t before and “The Matrix Reloaded,” especially this year, was one of them for me.

(My plans vs 2020)

I could defend the much controversial sequel by going in on its ambitious action film-making (the car chase is still my all-time favorite in any movie), pulse-pounding score, or its eye-popping cinematography that, honestly, holds up even to today’s standards but I think these are all things that even the film’s detractors generally agree on. 

No, I’m going to defend this film by talking about its most controversial scene: The Architect room.

I can hear the groans already and I don’t blame you. I found this scene preposterous and mightily confusing when I first saw it.

“The One is actually a part of the Machines’ system?? WTF!?”

(I remember having a similar feeling after playing Mass Effect 3...)

To be fair, its set up is a bit muddled, given the clunky script and pacing issues of the movie but when you start thinking about the message more deeply, given current events, and its relation to the real world it hits about as hard and fits as neatly as the first film’s more positive message.

The first Matrix film has a pretty dark setup, obviously. Neo finds out that he’s a part of gigantic computer program meant to create the illusion of free will for humanity while they are quite literally eaten for power by the Machines like cattle. Of course, Neo discovers he’s more than just another human connected to The Matrix but a prophesized messiah who has the ability to combat the system beyond its considerable control. By the end of the film he fulfills his destiny by becoming The One and beginning a new revolution against the Machines that control the human race.

(And looking fucking cool and totally 90s while doing it!)

It’s a pretty positive and uplifting story when you really break it down. It shows the viewer the lengths at which power tries to maintain its control and the Machines are a worthy avatar for this metaphor, but it also shows that power can be fought against when someone begins to empower themselves. When Neo says he will “show you a world where anything is possible” at the end its an earned moment of catharsis for not just him but the audience as well. We begin to start to believe in hope and beating the system too.

“The Matrix Reloaded” however goes several steps further showing that power can maintain its control in far more nefarious ways. Throughout the film Neo is told about the illusion of control and choice by characters like The Oracle and the, admittedly cringey, Merovingian. It feels strange at first because Neo is supposedly someone who is above the system but you can tell there is sense of jadedness, with some optimism of course, when The Oracle explains his role in saving Zion, like someone who has seen someone try to do this before, and The Merovingian simply mocks him for being another in a long line of “predecessors” who is completely “out of control.”

But then Neo finally does get to the Architect after being led there by The Key Maker and it’s here he learns his true nature; that he is the sixth in a long line of previous “Ones” in the Matrix and a part of The Machine’s control. He is less a prophet and more just another cog in the machine meant to lead humanity in one direction over and over again in order to create an illusion of free will for the resistance, the same way The Matrix does its human cattle.

Neo was a part of their plan and had been from the start.

(In case y’all need a refresher...)

There were tons of fans, including myself at one point, who couldn’t square with this strange narrative turn. Like Morpheus at the end of the film, there was refusal to believe it. It seemingly rewrote how one could view the first film and Neo’s role in it.

It changed the way a lot of people could see the positivity of the first film and understandably that could, and did, make a lot of people upset. Neo wasn’t sent to save humanity; he was there to keep them in line. It was like saying “actually Emperor Palpatine always wanted Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star.”

(I mean he does say this a lot though...)

But “The Matrix” was always about the lengths at which power works to maintain its control over the masses and “Reloaded” asks how can a corrupt and evil system be a part of the solution? How can it be reformed?

It can’t.

Way back in 2008, I cast my first vote as an eligible American for Barack Obama for president. Like many millennials at the time I found his mantra of “hope and change” sincere and uplifting and I truly felt the country was going to take a turn for the better the night he was inaugurated. For a moment it really did feel like things would be different after eight years of Bush.

Fast forward to 2011 however, and things changed dramatically for myself when I found out about the drones.

I’m aware of the fact that in leadership positions hard choices are made but after spending the previous decade vociferously calling out the Bush Administration for what they did in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars this was a truly rude awakening for me. Combine this with finding out about him continuing Bush era tax cuts, re-upping the Patriot Act, the mass deportations, the major corporate donors, his mishandling of Flint, and The Standing Rock Crisis it became clear Obama was just as much a part of the machine as Bush was.

(Also, no matter how much you hate Trump, DO NOT participate in the the gas-lighting of this man’s record...) 

Now, I can already hear the pitchforks picking up and I’m not here to tell you that the Obama presidency didn’t have its moments or that it was worse than what we have now BUT this does not excuse what would be considered awful behavior by liberals under any conservative president.

Each Democratic presidency or nomination I’ve seen in my lifetime, from Clinton to Obama, has always touted themselves as a chance to “fix America” and bring “hope and change” to a largely corrupt system. But neither of these presidencies really changed much of what the previous conservative administrations did, in fact in some ways they got worse. Minimum wage hasn’t risen in over a decade, we still have the world’s largest prison population by far, the wealth gap has only INCREASED regardless of who held the White House, and need I remind some of you Black Lives Matter started under the Obama administration.

At some point the problem goes beyond just conservative stonewalling and political impasse. You can’t blame everything on Mitch McConnell (though a lot of it can too, admittedly). The system is behaving exactly as its supposed to because corrupt people hold power.

(They’re not laughing with you, they are laughing AT you...)

The extremely cynical Biden-Harris ticket we got going right now is being pitched, more or less, the same way as a "fight to fix everything terrible” that Trump has done. Look, I’m not going to tell you Trump hasn’t been terrible because that should be obvious to EVERYONE at this point, but when you have Wall Street goons actively cheering the announcement of the Democratic party nomination, a DNC that is running more conservative speakers in its first day than Latinx across the entire event, you have to wonder to yourself if they are really “The One.”

(A reminder that “Never Trump” Republicans are not your friends either...)

Again, I’m not saying things can’t be “better” right now under a Democratic White House or that some communities would benefit greatly from a change in leadership BUT the bar is FUCKING LOW and the truth of the matter is people WILL be hurt under the next administration regardless of who it is and framing it as “privileged” to think otherwise is actually quite privileged itself.

There are people who can’t wait for medicare for all. There are people who can’t wait for sentencing and prison reform. There are people who cannot survive another wave of US imperialism overseas.

We are being guided to the same predetermined destination that The Architect gives Neo and its what makes all this so aggravating for many.

“The Matrix Reloaded” shows Neo that he is simply another system of control for the afflicted masses but what makes the final moments of the film important is that he chooses to stop playing its game. When The Architect gives him the choice of the door that guarantees the “salvation” of the human race but in bonded servitude to the Machines and the door to make the supposed “selfish” decision to save Trinity from death but doom humanity to extinction, he does this fully expecting Neo to make the same choice every other One did before him did.

But Neo doesn’t, he goes through the door to save Trinity and for a chance to destroy the system in another way. Neo decides to break the cycle even if it might have catastrophic consequences. He challenges The Architect on whether he would be willing to allow Neo any chance at any other outcome and calls his bluff. It’s what makes him a hero and in a strange way gives “Reloaded” a positive ending as well.

(And again, just looking cool as hell while doing it.)

Now, with the way the next movie ends you could make the argument that the cycle continues and this theme gets contradicted but I would argue it’s a bit more ambiguous than that and with the fourth film supposedly on its way in the coming years there is a chance for a more conclusive and satisfying ending. This write-up is strictly arguing the message of the second film anyways.

What a viewer should get on further review of “The Matrix Reloaded” is that corrupt systems have more insidious ways of maintaining control than we may be able to accept. Wall Street goons wouldn’t allow a consistent formidable opposition party to run against them every year, it’s why they are deep in both red AND blue pockets. It’s why campaign financing is out of control. It’s why ultimately both wings of our government are pro-surveillance, pro-big money donors, pro-US exceptionalism/imperialism and the only real difference comes down to mostly minor minutia between the two to maintain their illusion of choice.

In the end to a certain extent, I still believe in the system, given that I donate money and support various leftist causes, progressive primary challenges, and reelections around the country in hopes they run a real left wing someday. However, each year, and frankly each month at the rate we’re going, I’ve grown more cynical about it. At best it is incremental change and at worst its ultimately empty power against the larger juggernaut of corrupt politics throughout our government.

(Me desperately trying to avoid the relentless bullshit of this year.)

“Reloaded” deposits that in order to break the cycle you have to make a choice not accounted for by the system. That in order to truly change anything, as silly and as obvious as it sounds, you have to do something different. Voting for people who better represent your beliefs much more fully and refusing to vote for ones who don’t is one way but as I stated in my “Black Sails” write-up the more active third option should never be off the table.

Changing the world shouldn’t come down to a false binary choice like the ones the Machines gave Neo at the end of “Reloaded.” And while, for the record, I’m not necessarily against people making the lesser of two evils choice again, people need to stop ignoring the ways in which corruption keeps its power and start having honest looks at those who call themselves “The One” who will make things right.

If this entire year hasn’t convinced you of that yet, I don’t know what will and the sooner we understand this the sooner we can start a real “revolution” in this country’s cynical politics.

Until then The Machines will continue to win...

*Me getting away from the liberal bullshit that will likely be tossed at me over this*

#The Matrix #The Matrix Reloaded #the matrix revolutions #Matrix #the wachowskis #The Wachowski sisters #Trans rights #LGBTQ #politics #George floyd #black lives matter #BLM #leftist #black sails #keanu reeve #carrie anne moss #laurence fishburne #agent smith #movie #film #review #Pop Wasabi #essay #obama #bush #clinton #mass effect #mass effect 3

[darealpatyu]

DLSU’s Strategic Plan is Lit

First Impressions

DLSU’s strategic plan is nothing short of brilliant. I don’t mean to compare our school to other schools (I actually do mean to), but I think that compared to The Areneo, DLSU has really thought through well their plans for the future, keeping in mind the well-being of key stakeholders. The strategic plan does not only cover the improvement of system processes for the welfare of the students; it also covers the localization of SDG projects to embody our school’s value of zeal for service, which I really, really admire.

Reader, if you would be so kind as to allow me to digress and say that it’s no wonder that DLSU was not a proponent of the academic freeze that students were clamoring for a while back. This strategic plan tells me that the administration has things under control. Things might have started out rocky, but they’ve managed pretty well so far, and now, their plans make me believe that things are only going to get better.

Let’s Talk Strategy

The ANIMO strategies -- albeit a little cheesy and let’s be honest, the words were obviously forced to fit into the words ANIMO – address student concerns, the uncertain future, and the larger social environment comprehensively. Although these strategies have yet to materialize, their ambitious plans convey DLSU’s goal to be the top university in the Philippines; even when everything else is uncertain, DLSU’s service hasn’t wavered. Their Accompaniment (A) strategy is the one I like best, and it is one of the reasons why DLSU will maintain its status as one of the best universities in the PH. Their accompaniment strategy stresses the importance of making sure that student workload is manageable and “authentic,” to quote the speaker. Making workload authentic is honestly something I like because students need to do assessments and activities that actually matter. The pandemic has revealed the proverbial truth that students have their own lives apart from school. We have our own problems; so, when teachers give assessments, it has to be something that will benefit us. None of that “make a brochure” or “do a creative skit” stuff. Also, encouraging a manageable workload is a great way of showing students that the system cares for their mental health. Yassss, we aren’t robots, thanks for acknowledging that, DLSU!

The A strategy also entails strengthening student support and reimagining the student life cycle to fit the new world we’ve been thrown into. The A strategy basically encompasses almost all the community needs that were brought up by the survey respondents; these needs were E-reliability, Abatement, Innovation, and Support. By responding to the needs of stakeholders, DLSU effectively maintains its position as a top university!

To me, the strategy that establishes DLSU’s international prestige is, surprisingly, the Opening (O) strategy. The O strategy is focused on creating policies for when the uncertain future comes. This establishes DLSU’s international reputation as a university that can adapt to changing times; there’s honestly nothing worse than a school that is so conservative that they end up being an enemy to progress. By staying relevant through progressive policies, and by acknowledging that there is a need for permanent change for when face-to-face classes will be allowed, DLSU stays relevant with its prestige and everythang.

A Little SWOT, please?

A drum roll for the SWOT analysis, please! I actually have some fancy bullet points for you all, so you can visualize things a little better.

Strengths

·            Open to change

·            Already started online learning even before the pandemic started

·            Listens to stakeholders

·            Research efforts continue

·            Is one of the top universities

Weaknesses

·            Some professors are old-school and are not tech-savvy

·            Internal processes are not optimal

·            Student support is not useful enough to be relevant

Opportunities

·            No other university adjusted to the new normal as quickly as DLSU

Threats

·            Intermittent wi-fi  (E V E R Y W H E R E)

·            Government policies ineffective and arbitrary*

·            Typhoons

Based on this very primitive SWOT analysis, I would say that DLSU’s success rate in implementing its strategies would be 90%. I am quite hopeful for the future because they’ve exhibited several strengths that, to me, outweigh all the weaknesses. When you have the strength of being open to change, which is the most important strength in this VUCA world (Miss Sarmiento, are you proud of me? I just quoted you :D), you can essentially take on anything. The weaknesses are very annoying to us now, but I know that along the way, DLSU will address them. The weaknesses are just glitches in the plan that can be smoothed out along the way.

With the way things are going right now, there aren’t many opportunities that the institution can maximize (from my perspective, at least), and there’s a load of threats that are beyond the institution’s control. This is why I am only 90% confident that DLSU can effectively implement its strategies. The wi-fi issue is especially the worst. Wi-fi in the Philippines is the biggest party pooper of all time. The government is another issue because DLSU can’t fulfill its plan of fully resuming campus access in 2022 if the government keeps up its antics. Hence, it is likely that these uncontrollable factors will hinder the success of the more ambitious key strategies, such as the localization of SDG projects and the campus redesign.

*An example of government policy:

The Ideal Business Leader Cares

I do believe that the strategic plan promotes the objectives in the Vocation of the Business Leader. First of all, DLSU’s strategic plan fulfills the Good Goods because of the mere fact that they plan to continue operating the school even in a pandemic. Their service continues to create students who are the critical thinkers of society. So, it’s fulfilling this service even when times are hard, which is the exact embodiment of the Good Goods if you ask me. DLSU also fulfills the second goal of the Good Goods, which is to maintain solidarity with the poor. La Salle schools literally started as schools for the poor. Now, DLSU continues to give out great, comprehensive scholarship grants, and as a scholar of DLSU myself, I can say that DLSU invests a lot of money in its scholarship programs, which is honestly so nice it makes me want to cry; education is the greatest equalizer and will last a lifetime, and I am really happy that the poor are receiving it just as I am. DLSU has even made arrangements with telecommunication companies, so that struggling students, faculty, and staff have access to pocket Wi-Fi.*

Now, let’s move on to Good Work. DLSU promotes the objectives of this principle through its Impact strategy, which seeks to ensure a pipeline of research outputs. This priority towards the pursuit of knowledge is one that embodies the value of human work. People should work not just to make money and live, but to improve themselves and the world we live in. Work should not just be the thing we do to survive; it must also be the way that provides meaning to our lives. That is what DLSU provides for its faculty through its strategic plan. And that’s what I’ve seen with all the professors in DLSU. They’re always the best in their fields because they’ve been allowed to grow in the workplace. Lastly, DLSU promotes Good Wealth through its planned SDG localization projects. They plan to give back to society, which fulfills the objective of just distribution of wealth.

I think that these objectives are a reflection of how a good business leader must be. This strategic plan has made me realize that a good business leader thinks for the present and the future. She looks at the needs of the community and answers them with care and with the common good in mind. She makes decisions, knowing full well that those decisions impact other people other than herself. She promotes a humane workplace, one where compassion and empathy rule over individualistic, “bahala ka diyan” mindsets. She invests in the development of others and society. And most of all, she proves to the public that she is worth trusting – that she is capable of being held accountable for the health and well-being of stakeholders. All of these are embodied in DLSU’s strategic plan. To quote Socrates, virtue is knowledge; because DLSU sets an example of caring for the larger society, I too have the duty to continue this mission.

*Reference to DLSU arranging to give out pocket Wi-Fis: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2020/05/02/dlsu-provides-financial-psychological-and-connectivity-support-during-covid-19/

Where do I fit into this strategic plan?

Answering this question is second nature to me. My unique contribution to the success of the university’s objectives is to be a compassionate and empathetic person to myself, my classmates, and my teachers; to be stringent, unrelenting, and selfish during these trying times is to become an opposing force to the strategies. These strategies depend on our ability to adapt along with the university; hence, we must do our part and be kind. We must understand each other, become a support system for those struggling, and do our best to help each other stay sane. When the university reaches its objectives, I expect that we will be receiving education of the best quality when compared to other Philippine universities. We will be receiving an education that is flexible to our circumstances, and an education that will make us want to give back and innovate for society – the way that DLSU has given back to this country these past few months.

Before I get sentimental and become a puddle of tears while writing this blog, I’d like my readers to know that I have fallen in love with DLSU. I stand by its values and fervently respect all the decisions it’s made during this pandemic. I am the (self-proclaimed) critical-thinking, well-rounded student I am today because of this institution. As a scholar of DLSU, I’ve learned that quality education is not a privilege, but a right and I dream of the day when the Filipino is able to learn what I learn, see what I see, and feel the same passion that I feel when I think of this country.

That’s all, readers. See you next time!

#dlsu #cobibmo #yey

[airadam]

Episode 142 : ...If You Hear Me

"We all need...some fresh air."

- Tobe

This month has been pretty exhausting, but I did have some good ideas for this episode, and once I hit stride with the recording I decided to try and keep the pace up and get it released on a weekend day! The selection has turned out to be heavy on artists who are no longer with us, but left us some great music to remember them by. Get yourself comfortable and press "play"...

Twitter : @airadam13

Twitch : @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Evidence ft. Raekwon and Ras Kass : The Red Carpet

How is this track ten years old already? Time has flown since the 2011 release of "Cats & Dogs", the second solo Evidence album after four LPs as part of Dilated Peoples. While Evidence is an excellent producer in his own right, the reins here are taken by his future partner in The Step Brothers, The Alchemist. He further shows his confidence by bringing in California's Ras Kass and Raekwon from the Wu to guest, both legendary MCs, and holds his own next to both. A great collection of talent to kick off the show!

[DJ Premier] Gang Starr : What's Real? (Instrumental)

I just had to go back to "One Of The Best Yet" for another Preemo beat! Definitely get the instrumental release if you can, especially as you get the previously-unreleased "Glowing Mic" as a bonus cut.

The Notorious B.I.G ft. DMC : My Downfall

As I say on the voiceover, it feels weird playing a good chunk of Biggie's catalogue given how he ultimately died. This track from "Life After Death" is a perfect example, and feels like a mix of the creative writing he was famed for and maybe a realisation of exactly how much negativity swirled around him even after he had made the transition from the streets to the music industry. The legendary DMC of RUN DMC guests, only on the hook - but he does it well.

Agallah : Slaughter

Just a few bars, just a taste, as I needed something to bridge a track with no instrumental outro and the other with no open bars on the intro! Big respect to Agallah though, who has been putting in work since the mid-90s and will probably have yet another new project out by the time I finish typing this sentence. Find this beat on "Propain Campain Presents Agalllah - The Instrumental Vol. 1".

Sean Price and Small Professor (ft. Rock and DJ Revolution) : Refrigerator P

Heavy business! Ruck (Sean Price) and Rock, formerly the duo Heltah Skeltah, reunite on this killer from the "86 Witness" LP. Small Professor makes the beat dramatic, and DJ Revolution seasons the mix with his trademark super-sharp cuts.

Fred The Godson : Presidents

The Bronx-born-and-bred MC Fred The Godson sadly passed away last April at just 35 - one of the relatively early US casualties of COVID-19. During his lifetime, his catalogue consisted of some highly-rated mixtapes, but only after his death do we finally hear his debut album, "Ascension".  This track of course is built (by Hesami) around the same sample as Jay-Z's "Dead Presidents" as Fred expounds on the drug game.

Broke 'n' English : Tryin' (Calibre Mix)

"Tryin'" was one of the standouts on the 2007 debut LP "Subject 2 Status" from this respected Manchester crew. Both Strategy and DRS have a long-standing history in the drum & bass scene, and so it made sense that the remix of this track would be handled by someone like Calibre. Sharp, crisp drum action and a smooth bassline drive this one along, with DRS' vocals being woven in as a refrain. You can hear in this one track how DRS then went on to make several excellent D&B albums - his vocal versatility allows him to shine on any production.

Marco Polo : Cindy

The "MP On The MP" (see what he did there?) beat tape is inspired by a Youtube series he was doing, and features a host of new and unreleased beats. Marco Polo is one keeping this style of production alive, which I'm thankful for.  I still think of him as a "new" producer, but he's a veteran with over fifteen years in the industry!

Le$ : Out To Cali

Le$ is a great MC to go to if you want lyrics about just living life and having fun - almost like a Curren$y, but without the extreme high-end references. Right here, he's going to Cali, buying some weed, riding around, and enjoying the view - sometimes it doesn't need to be more lofty than that. Mr.Rogers goes to a familiar sample as a basis for the beat, and if you want more, the whole "Summer Madness" will give you these vibes - and exercise your speakers in the process.

O.C. : What I Need (Keelay Remix)

The "Smoke & Mirrors" LP is a bit of a forgotten one for many, but I really enjoyed it, and when acapellas became available, it was expertly remixed by the Sole Vibe crew out of San Francisco. The classic soul sample (which you may recognise from tracks like "Deeper" by Bo$$) is the foundation, with a heavy kick and skipping hi-hats providing the rhythm. O.C. never lost a step from his first LP, and he's never afraid to put his feelings out there on wax.

Sadat X : Stages & Lights

This is one of those tracks I was stunned to realised I hadn't already played on the podcast, so here it is at last! This Showbiz-produced cut from the 1996 "Wild Cowboys" LP, Sadat's solo debut, was also a B-side on the "Hang 'Em High" single - but definitely stole the show. If you ever find the original sample, you'll be amazed at how Show plucked that one small piece for this beat!

Phife Dawg : Thought U Wuz Nice

Killer B-side action from Phife Dawg, on the flip of the Superrappin "Bend Ova" 12", with J Dilla on the bouncy production. Still can't quite believe that both of these icons are no longer with us.

Saib : Beyond Clouds

The Chillhop label seems to put out endless amounts of beats from producers specialising in sounds inspired by greats like J Dilla and Nujabes, but with their own spin. This one comes from the "Chillhop Essentials Fall 2020" compilation, one of any number that are perfect for soundtracking study, work, or just a lazy day!

213 : Run On Up

That beat by Tha Chill and the delivery of "Shut the f********ck up and ruuuu-uuu-uuuun" by the late great Nate Dogg is enough to make this an absolute classic in my ears, but the full picture is even better. Way before "Doggystyle", "The Chronic", or even "Deep Cover", 213 was the group formed in Long Beach by Nate Dogg, Warren G, and Snoop, before any of them had got their big breaks. Years later, after all of them had become stars in their own rights, it was heart-warming to see them reform for the "The Hard Way" LP, from which this is taken.

Sporty Thievz : Angel

The Sporty Thievz deserve to be remembered for more than "No Pigeons", as much as we enjoyed the whole thing at the time. The "Street Cinema" album may not have quite lived up to the name, but there were some solid cuts on there, and this was one. Produced by King Kirk of the group alongside Ski, this track has all the foreboding, and while the singing on the hook may not be Marvin Gaye level, it absolutely works here.

Jean Grae : My Crew

One of the great underrated MCs - not because her skills are in question, but simply because not enough people know her! She's in fine early 2000s form on this cut from the "Bootleg of the Bootleg EP", produced by China Black. Straight boom-bap, and she cuts through with clarity and dexterity. Jean Grae raps, sings, produces, acts...one of the true talent of the culture.

Bronx Slang : Just Say No

New single from Jerry Beeks and Ollie Miggs, who have really been on a hot streak the last couple of years. It's nice to hear some protest music in an era that really calls for it, and if this is a marker of how good the upcoming second album is going to be, then you need to reserve a space in your crates right now! Jadell on production brings an appropriate heaviness to the track, no lightness on the beat!

[Ron Browz] Big L : The Heist (Instrumental)

All these years and I'd never looked to see who produced this beat from Big L's posthumously-released LP "The Big Picture" - come to find out it's one of Ron Browz' first credits. He's much better known for "Ether" by Nas, which came in 2001. The vocal version of this track is what the name suggests, a robbery tale, and you can hear the sound effects that punctuate the narrative still here in the instrumental.

Tobe Nwigwe : Fresh Air

Tobe Nwigwe and his collective (including his wife Fat and his producer Nell) have been quietly on the rise for a while, but in very recent times their profile has elevated noticeably. "The Pandemic Project" is a short six-track album from last year, and another quality addition to the catalogue. This man is an amazing MC, and Nell's often-unconventional beats are the perfect canvas. Don't sleep! 

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!

[andrewuttaro]

American Christianity’s Death by Trump

This conversation could’ve very easily been had before January 6th, 2021. It should’ve happened on a massive scale in 2016. Some of us have had this conversation in small groups and through blog posts exchanged on forums. Some whole Churches have even put out statements and memorandums and even condemnations. Not enough. After that date, this conversation is imperative for everyone who considers themselves a Christian in the United States of America.

I know you read the title. If you bothered to read this post, you must believe there is something sincere and worthy here. I don’t think its hard to see. Do you? Is American Christianity dying because of the influence of President Donald Trump? If you don’t think that’s true you probably don’t think its even remotely true. I’ll get to you in a minute; but if you’re someone who maybe even endeavors to wear a cross or crucifix around your neck and you don’t think he’s the death of us, but you’re close to thinking that… how does this image make you feel?

Used? I know Christians who tell me this event in June 2020 made them feel used. Yeah, the ones I’m thinking of voted for him before and after this event. If you don’t think he’s the death of us, then you probably have a couple words about Abortion or “religious liberty” on deck. Sure, as a practicing Catholic I can attest to voting in this country as a double-edged sword. Two dominant political parties: neither represents the entirety of our beliefs, no nationally viable party here probably ever will. We all vote for a candidate in spite of their disagreements with us on certain beliefs. It’s been the Christian way since the rise of modern democracy.

But save your abortion and religious liberty defenses. They’re not enough. Not now, if they ever were. Not with this man. Only God will finally judge his soul, but tell me honestly: do you think he’d ever been inside that Church? Do you think he knew where it was before the day he ordered the tear gas to clear his way there? Do you think he saw that book he held aloft as anything more than a political weapon? Does he know Christian faith as anything more than a political tool? And let’s not pretend its just about the man himself. Trump World, all those who support him including a broad swath of the Christian religious elite in this country, has turned a blind eye to the more authoritarian actions for what? Political expediency? We can now abandon any religious principle for what, desire to follow a political leader? That thinking has now made publicly professed Christians into accomplices in an Insurrection.

One last thought to the crowd who feels he’s not the death of us but not by a lot. Perhaps you think him, and his movement are a passing torment; and true followers of Christ will soon come to their senses to how they were swindled by this great swindler of American history. Even if Jesus-following Americans see the light of a Post-Trump world (if such a thing will exist anytime soon) would our revival matter to anyone beyond us? What has this President, who overwhelmingly carried at least one Christian demographic group in both his elections, done to our credibility, our witness to Jesus Christ? What has he done to our mission? Nothing we will be able to repair in my lifetime, not in the public life of this country.

Now for you folks who, if you’re still reading, are cringing at my dramatics: I won’t address American Evangelicals here or the myriad low-liturgy Protestants who effectively belong to that group as well; I don’t know your life experience the way I know the Catholic life experience in this country. So, here’s some thoughts on that: 48% of American Catholics identify as Republicans, 47% as Democrats according to a recent Pew Research Report. You may look at those numbers and say religion doesn’t really matter to most Catholics in their political lives if there isn’t a consensus, right? Well, apart from American Evangelicals who voted for Trump in both of his elections at rates at or above 90%, every Christian religious group in this country is split nearly down the center like Catholics. What should we gather from this: perhaps the Gospel goes different ways in different places? That’s probably right but this is different.

The Gospel doesn’t go any way with this man. If you call him the sinful doer of God’s Will please then also give that title to the far more respectful man succeeding him; a man who has been inside a Church for something other than a funeral recently. Yes, we Christians must discern our vote and often finally do the democratic duty in spite of half our beliefs; but this man occupies a whole different eschatological plain than the average politician. Christians need to respond a certain way to politicians like this. An Insurrection of the same caliber consisting of predominately non-white dissidents would’ve been a bloodbath and I don’t think you have a leg to stand on disagreeing with that considering this past summer. How do our black and brown brothers and sisters hear our witness to the Gospel after this crowd gets waved into the Capitol and take selfies with the police like some kind of anti-democratic festival? The President of the United States incited an Insurrection that law enforcement gave preferential treatment to and you still want to defend whoever American Conservatism tells you to in the name of Jesus?

Call all politicians liars, cheats and sinners if you want. I won’t argue against that point. But no leader of the free world in modern history has so decisively and shamelessly used Christianity and its place in American history and contemporary life as a weapon like Donald Trump has. That tear gas bible scene was just the most obvious incarnation of it. If this man’s public life has even inclined a single soul toward the Gospel of Jesus Christ than it is truly God’s miraculous doing. He breathes no sincere word of Jesus’ message and no number of my fellow Catholics can be confirmed to the Supreme Court to further God’s will under this man’s reign. If he is not the modern Nero, enjoying musical accompaniment as Rome burns, then nobody is. If any Christian stands by a political demagogue of this caliber they do so at the detriment of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Before the Insurrection, the biggest media conglomerate bearing the title of “Catholic”, Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), was already silencing any voice that went against their idol in Donald Trump and his agenda. Right-Wing Catholicism in this nation has seen prominent Priests and Bishops support America’s authoritarian to the point of calling on Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church, to resign! Anyone who doesn’t adhere to Trump, the secular icon of neo-conservatism, evidently isn’t good enough to even lead a religious institution. America’s most well-known Catholic Bishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Arch-Diocese of New York, has slow peddled any criticism of Trump to this point and still only tacitly criticizes him in the aftermath of this attack on American Democracy. What has become of us Americans who also venture to call ourselves Christians?

The only reason there are any self-identifying Christians supporting him is by way of cultural comfort. Some find it easy to support him given their place in this nation’s socio-religious structure. Some find it advantageous to support him for a variety of reasons that find there way back to the love of money. Finally, still others support him for the sinister dreams of the perversion of the Gospel best called Christian-Nationalism. I know it for fact that members of that last group broke into the Capitol. Those who do not identify as Christians are watching and nothing this man has done has made their hearts softer to the message of the Gospel. If you can’t recognize that you are only deceiving yourself now; and indeed, the Gospel isn’t truly your highest priority.

I will turn 27 years of age this, our Lord’s year 2021. My generation has as many who identify as agnostic, atheist or nonreligious as we do all religious. For my generation, the Christian faith is not growing; and the wisdom of old age will not restore it for the millions of us who never knew it in the first place. This ugly episode has certainly converted none of us. I acutely remember the day after he was first elected: I was a Youth Minister and sat in a staff meeting as we all looked down at our hands dumbfounded. How would we ever teach the faith with this cloud hanging over our heads? How would we even be credible? My fears that day in 2016 were fully confirmed on January 6th, 2021.

American Christianity will not die because of Donald Trump. Yes, Christianity will sure enough persist in this country for as long as it lives. Religion is always culturally entrenched, and the religion of Jesus Christ will likely always be somewhere entrenched in the life of this nation. But if the Christians of this country stand by or, worse more, cheer on future authoritarians like Donald Trump, our witness to the Gospel of Jesus will be void of all meaningful mission and bankrupt on a moral level that would alienate us from the face of God.  Such a fate is tantamount to the death of the Christian faith in this country and the sooner we realize this sooner we can envision someday when we begin to make it right.

#Trump #Christianity #catholic #blog

[alifeenhanced]

The Journey Begins . . .

So what is this journey all about?

  I am Terry Jenkins, a father of 4 grown-up children, now living with my partner and her teenage son, in the north-east of England.

I am a full-time carer for my partner, Andie, and at the time of starting this journey (September 2020), living off government benefits.

I am on benefits because I have to care for Andie throughout the day, which means I don’t have the time to have a job.

Having previously run a myriad of self-employed ventures and having 25 years of experience in the IT industry (plus I have also lectured in IT for a brief period in the not-so-distant past), being on benefits doesn’t come easy to me.

  The Journey Begins

So having cared for Andie for a couple of years now, I feel the time is right for me to venture back into the world of self-employment and see if I can ease the government of the burden of looking after us.

Now, some days, time isn’t always easy to find if Andie is having a rough time of it. Her condition means I get to do most of the stuff around the house, which limits my available time.

  Nevertheless, I do have time across the day and find myself on the computer a lot (old habits die hard), especially in the afternoons and evenings.

So I got to thinking that maybe I could start earning some cash, as I do detest being on benefits. I don’t have any problem with people who are on benefits, but I have worked all my life and am not one for just sitting around and relaxing. If you see me on the beach, I’m the one typing on the laptop!

  Mapping Out The Journey

So, coming off benefits – how do I do it?

Well, it was obvious that I couldn’t do anything that took me out of the house and the ad hoc nature of my caring duties meant I couldn’t really have clients if I wanted to offer them the service I would expect. So my only option was to build a business making money online.

In some ways this decision was obvious. When I gave up my bricks and mortar business back in 2014 I spent a lot of time doing self-development training and studying internet marketing, affiliate marketing, and even a touch of network marketing.

Even during my first 2 years of caring for Andie, I still watched the odd training course or YouTube video to keep up with the latest trends online.

In those 6 years after giving up my Post Office and shop, I had come a long way in my personal development and I knew a bit about making money online.

  The Journey Of A Wise Man?

    Now I’m no fool, I know the majority of people do not make a go of making money online. If you don’t believe me, look up the figures. It’s a very small percentage of people who build a good income online.

But my goals aren’t massive. I am not looking to buy an 8-bed mansion and drive a Ferrari. For one thing, it’s not really my style. Nevertheless, I did want to replace the income we are getting on benefits, plus a little more to make life more comfortable (for Andie more than myself).

So I set myself 2 goals. One for 90 days and one for 12 months.

You see, I am 60 in October 2021, so I have roughly 13 months before I start to get the pensions I built up when I was younger.

So my first goal was to ensure the business was self-sufficient by the end of 2020. The second goal was to be earning around £2700 per month (around $3000) by October 2021.

Allowing 1 month (September 2020) to get everything in place to run the business, meant these targets nicely fitted the 90-day and 12-month time slots.

  How Much Is A Ticket?

  As for the start-up budget, being on benefits for so long doesn’t leave a lot of elbow room, but using other knowledge I had (more on this later), I managed to have a little tax-free start-up money to invest in the business.

This start-up budget would pay for training courses and other packages (hosting, domain names, autoresponders, etc) to ensure I had the knowledge and digital assets I needed to succeed.

So how does this journey touch your life I hear you say? Well, my aim is to journal my journey as I go, sharing my experiences and my financial statements.

I also want to help others who want to tackle the same journey by providing training and information along the way.

I also want to provide honest reviews of training and other products in the Internet Marketing arena. There are a plethora of reviews out there for these products, which get released daily. These reviews all have one thing in mind, to get you to buy using their affiliate link, so they can make money from your purchase.

Now don’t get me wrong, I will be doing affiliate marketing, but I will only recommend products I intend on buying and using myself or products I would purchase if I didn’t already have something to do the job.

I am fully expectant that most of my reviews will say ‘don’t buy’.

  Looking In The Rear-View Mirror

    I have recently been going through the myriad of training and online tools I purchased since 2014 (Google ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’), mainly because a lot of them were registered against an email I no longer use. The domain is coming up for re-registration and I don’t want to pay for it anymore, so I wanted to change the registered email address.

I was absolutely shocked by how many of these products no longer exist!

Many of the domain names they were registered against are now available to purchase again.

In Internet Marketing, a lifetime account means absolutely nothing. I was appalled by how many of these purchases were a total waste of money and I was thankful I hadn’t built a business reliant on using any of them.

I was also shocked that some ‘Lifetime Membership’ offers I had bought still existed, but they had changed the domain name (from .net to .com in some instances) and if you wanted the latest access you needed to repurchase another lifetime account – go figure.

These weren’t inexpensive purchases either. We are taking multiple hundreds of dollars for the original purchase and a similar figure to purchase another ‘lifetime’ access. This second purchase would give you what you laughingly assumed you had purchased the first time around.

Plus, I was shocked by the ‘Internet Gurus’ who had undertaken this shady practice.

These were people I had previously trusted and looked up to!

Anyway, I am starting to rant now and that is never a good thing (hide the sharp knives).

Fortunately, I did discover a decent amount of good quality tools and training I can use in my new venture. Plus, I have good experience of whom to trust and whom not to trust with my money.

  A Journey Alone?

So my question to you is, ‘Do you want to follow in my footsteps?’

You can just follow from afar by dropping in occasionally (although this may make you feel like a peeping tom – joking), or you can sign up to get on my email list and receive updates on my progress.

Or, if you are feeling particularly brave, you can go one step further and join my journey. My intention is to have some pretty affordable membership websites available to teach you the steps I am taking and inform you of the products I am purchasing and how I intend to use them.

  I Am Up For It, Are You?

If so, get on the mailing list and I will keep you informed of my journey step by step.

If this is a parting of ways, I thank you for reading this far and I wish you success on your chosen path.

If you are up for a wild journey, then you are more than welcome my friend. I look forward to guiding and teaching you more over the coming months.

  To your continued success,

Terry Jenkins

[vintage-royalty]

I haven’t said anything about Wallis in a long time because I was sick of the misconceptions and the drama and just everything, but I saw this article on a different site and it made me so frustrated I figured I’d come back and say my piece on it. Not really here to argue about how any of y’all feel about Wallis or Meghan but rather the inaccuracies and disingenuous comparisons made in this article. 

Part of the reason I even clicked the link is that I recently finished Anna Pasternak’s biography of Wallis. And I liked it. It was actually a very good, balanced, book. Not a particularly deep exploration of her life, but she debunked some of the false stories and it seemed pretty well researched and written and I probably agreed with 90% of her conclusions as someone who knows Wallis’s life backwards and forwards. It was also, as far as royal biographies go, a relatively feminist interpretation of Wallis’s life. 

So, I was expecting this article to be about the media’s sexist mistreatment of Meghan and that perhaps the headline was a bit clickbaity but the actual article would be good. Tragically, I was mistaken. 

“This sexist scapegoating is probably as unfair today as it was in 1936, as both Edward VIII and Prince Harry were ambivalent about their royal responsibilities before their marriages. But there are lessons in history.”

I agreed with this part: I had been hoping that perhaps she would articulate what I’ve felt but rarely seen spelled out in the media: that like the Abdication was unfairly blamed on Wallis even though she had nothing to do with it, that “Megxit” was clearly something Harry had wanted to do for some time and that it was more Harry’s decision than Meghan’s and it’s extremely sexist that everyone is baselessly assuming it was her idea. There also seems to naturally be a 100% overlap in the demographics of people who think Harry leaving is a horrible betrayal of his family and dereliction of duty and people who are inclined to be sexist and racist towards Meghan either way. 

“It became his life’s aim for the world to know and adore Wallis as much as he did. Alas, this festering emotional sore was not lanced during his lifetime. Will this become Harry’s angry preoccupation, too?

It’s agonising, as Edward Windsor discovered, when the world misguidedly mistrusts your wife. Yet the solution is not to fight back, but to retreat and enjoy the private tenderness you have, together.”

This is fake news. The Windsors did fight back against false media stories, starting in 1937 when they sued the publisher of Coronation Commentary by Geoffrey Dennis. They also did numerous interviews over the years, they each wrote a book, and wrote articles defending themselves. 

“Unlike Meghan, Wallis understood the royal creed. While it appears Meghan seeks to control her public narrative, allegedly encouraging friends to speak out and now trying to censor her press, Wallis resigned herself to the mute impossibility of her situation.After the abdication in 1936, she wrote plainly to Edward: “The world is against me and me alone. Not a paper has said a kind thing for me.” 

Admirably, instead of openly bleating about her situation, Wallis schooled herself to survive the shadow side of infamy. This she summed up as “to have one’s character day after day laid bare, dissected and flayed by mischievous and merciless hands”.Wallis contained her suffering with laudable resolve. Meghan would do well to learn from her predecessor, who triumphed with a “kind of private arrangement with oneself – an understanding of the heart and mind – that one’s life and purposes are essentially good, and that nothing from the outside must be allowed to impair that understanding”.”

These are all real quotes but none of them say what Pasternak is suggesting they do. Wallis didn’t just lay back and accept the fact that everyone hated her. She did push back on numerous occasions, though admittedly not as much at first. Meghan is also not trying to censor the press, she is just very smartly refusing to grant access to publications that have treated her unfairly. The Sussexes are not the first celebrities, or likely even the first royals, to make this decision, they are just choosing to be more transparent about it and making it clear that they will no longer dignify nonsense from racist tabloids with a response. In some ways, when you think about it, that’s doing exactly what Pasternak is saying Meghan should be doing. The Sussexes are choosing to not even comment on articles from tabloids that have a history of treating them unfairly. 

“If Meghan were more emotionally contained – which is not the same as having a stiff upper lip – might she earn our respect? There is great merit in stoic dignity, as the Duchesses of Windsor, Cambridge and Cornwall can attest.”

Wallis tried being emotionally contained and she also tried being more emotionally open. She got criticized intensely for both. And eighty years ago there was a lot more to be gained by “stoic dignity” as she calls it, that just doesn’t apply at all in today’s culture. She doesn’t mention Princess Diana, who was much more emotionally open, and significantly more popular than all the people she does mention. 

Then she goes on about how Wallis tried to repair David’s relationship with his family, with quotes to back up her claim, and contrasts it to Meghan, without anything at all to back up her claim Meghan is acting differently. We know basically nothing about what’s gone on behind closed doors between Meghan and the royal family. Anna Pasternak is making exactly the same kinds of baseless assumptions about Meghan that the media made about Wallis that, once we had more information, turned out to be completely wrong. David was the one who made demands, and behind the scenes Wallis generally tried to discourage him. The royal family blamed Wallis without knowing or caring who was really behind it. We have literally zero information about these dynamics regarding Harry and Meghan and the royal family. 

“Wallis did keep Edward happy – he adored her until the last – but nothing changed for her. Everything can still change for Meghan.”

So Pasternak’s advice for Meghan is that she should try doing things that didn’t work for Wallis because maybe they’ll work for her? She does not at any point make an argument as to how the media culture has changed that might make things work better for Meghan, which I suppose would be a legitimate argument she could make. No, her argument is basically: follow in the footsteps of a woman who everyone in Britain always hated and still hates or else you may be hated even more. Not to mention she is oversimplifying Wallis’s relationship with the press and her handling of the royal family to a ridiculous degree. 

“If she restrains her husband from ill-advised outbursts, if she accepts her own press and if her marriage is as long and devoted as the Windsors’ was, then she will prove, just like Wallis did, that the sacrifice was worth it. And we may come to love and admire her as Harry does.”

I’m mainly going to focus on the first part here because this is exactly the sort of sexist bullshit she specifically tried to debunk in her book on Wallis. Wallis couldn’t control her man, and he did and said much more damaging shit than Harry has done. It’s not the responsibility of a man’s wife to keep him from making bad choices, and Meghan, like Wallis, has already been baselessly attacked as a domineering control freak who has her husband pussywhipped. Read the comments on any article about the Sussexes: people blame Meghan for anything Harry does they don’t like and give her absolutely no credit when he does something they do like. I’m sure Meghan shares her opinions with Harry, and we don’t know if she agreed or disagreed with his recent comments, but he is a grown man who makes his own decisions. Furthermore, if Meghan wants to pick a fight with her husband and demand to look over his shoulder every time he talks to the press, she’s going to significantly reduce her chances of making their marriage work. Which, according to Pasternak, is also something she needs to devote her energy to.

This article not only feels extremely unfair towards Meghan, it’s not accurate about Wallis, and it’s entire thesis is based on assumptions about what Meghan is saying and doing behind closed doors. It’s also a missed opportunity: there’s a lot Meghan could learn from Wallis’s story, though unfortunately more of it is about what not to do than what she should be doing. 

#Duchess of Sussex #Duchess of Windsor

[another-bedeviled-murdock]

Fair warning, this post gets rlly personal and emotional. You have been warned.

Gods.....one time a friend told me that as a form of self therapy, I should write myself a letter to help settle my head. I decided to do that today, and I found the only other letter I ever wrote, dated almost exactly one year ago. And guys........I've come so far. I didn't even know how far I'd come. For reference, these are the two letters, almost exactly one year apart.

--------------------

March 9 2019

So, I guessed I'd try the whole letter writing thing to settle my head. Cohen is pissed because he misheard me. Emily is upset because I got upset when she told on me. I don't know why Sami is mad at me. It feels awful, like I'm right back in that fucking house. Like I'm three inches tall and invisible. And it makes me feel sick inside, like this tar is just bubbling up in my rib cage and slowly suffocating me, poisoning me. And to make it worse, Jerome invited me along with him and his mom. And that's wonderful, it makes me feel wanted and whole and clean again for a while. But then it comes back. That desperate, god awful need to just be enough, to be worthy enough to even stand a chance with him. But I know I never will. I'm too broken for that. But all I want is to lean over and simply coexist. Just....be. I'd rather sit in a threadbare settee watching The Ranch for the rest of my life than go home. I'd be happy then. I'd feel...complete.

-----------------

Not a great letter to self. Here's the second one.

--------------------------

March 2, 2020

I gave up on the letters for a long time, but it's almost two in the morning, and I just feel.....melancholy. Not depressed or sad, just......meh. Mostly, it's still because of Jerome. It's just this......this scar, I guess. Like a scab that I think is healed and then all of the sudden it'll pull and I'll bleed and bleed and bleed. I miss him. A lot. I don't know why he stopped talking to me so suddenly, and I don't think I'll ever get an answer. And I'd like to say that's okay, I really would, but I know that it'll always be that...scab. I still love him, and I don't know how to stop. He was the only one that really made me feel...safe. Contended. Enough. Like I was.....I suppose the best word would be 'human'. I've come a long way in the year since the last letter. I stopped talking to Elijah, I've learned to get over a lot of my trauma, and I've grown a lot as a person....but it just makes me so incredibly sad that he'll never know. He'll never know how much what he did meant to me. If I'd never met Jerome, I would have never realised what life could be like. I would have never known just what situation I was really in, how much pain was hiding in me. He showed me what it felt like, for hours at a time, to be unburdened. How light it feels. How beautiful the world can be. How happy I can be over the smallest things. The world is new. I dance in the kitchen when I do the dishes. I sing to love songs and wear stupid clothes. I dye my hair and I do what makes me happy. I plaster myself everywhere I can, and am happy with what I am. I listen to songs about joy and I know what they mean. I've learned to set boundaries, to know my worth, because he treated me like I was worth something. And I am, I know that now, but I'd never been treated like that before. Like who I was was enough. It wasn't, but it taught me that I can feel that way. Before he showed me what I could be, I was more broken than I had ever realised. I'm still broken. I've got things I still need to get over, I know that. But now I know that I can. I can climb these mountains and reach the sky. I've already tasted the clouds. But he'll never know. In the beginning, I changed for him. I wanted to be better because I hoped that he would see, and he would love me. Now I know that I don't owe anybody who I am. I stand strong in what I believe in. I speak up for what I want more often. I don't just drift around anymore, lost in the fog. I stand, tall and firm as a tree, rooted deep into who I know I am. I still miss him though. I wish I could show him what good he's done. He didn't save me, not by a long shot. But he sure did get things started. Even if I could only speak to him once, all I want to say I thank you. I'll always love Jerome Brown, at least a little bit. If not for who he is, then for who he helped me become. I just want to tell him so. Since I can't tell him, I'll just put it here.

Thank you. I love you. I love myself.

--------------------------

My all I cannot comprehend the difference. I'd known I've been making progress the last year, but I had no real basis of comparison. I just found it, and I'm so proud of myself and how far I've come. In ONE YEAR, ONE GODDAMN YEAR, I have:

Come out as trans, to friends, to family, to new acquaintances

Cut ties with my lifetime abuser

Established personal boundaries and rules for myself and how I let people treat me. Which I should add, went from allowing myself to be used and abused frequently to CUTTING TIES WITH TOXIS PEOPLE IN MY LIFE

Realised my self worth

Started therapy, and on that note, learned to identify what kind of therapist I need, what kind of therapist I want, and sought out trans specific resources for mental health

STOOD UP FOR MYSELF AGAINST AOMEONE WHO ATTEMPTED TO BECOME MY NEW ABUSER, at the cost of my biological father, who I've been searching for since my literal birth

Learned to speak up about my chronic pain and health problems

SUCCESSFULY GOTTEN OVER A LOT OF THE ABUSE IVE SUFFERED

Learned to recognise my feelings and actually deal with them instead of dissociating

STOPPED SELF HARMING, WHICH I DID FOR EIGHT YEARS. EIGHT GODDAMN YEARS AND IVE FINALLY KICKED THE HABIT

Done away with my shame over my body and unlearned 90% of the fatphobia I had internalised

Re established ties with my mother and my sister

Found myself a stable and loving home

Recognised that yes, I AM neurodivergent. There is a high likelihood of ADHD and autism present, and that DOESNT MAKE ME ANY LESS THAN WORTHY OF LOVE OR CARE OR PATIENCE

And finally, and most importantly, I learned to LOVE MYSELF. Unashamedly, proudly, loudly. I love myself. I love who I am, I love what I am. I am out and proud as trans, non binary, Pan, and neurodivergent.

I'm.....I'm honestly cryin in the club Rn over this guys. To SEE the actual proof of growth is just astounding to me.

So here's to me and my growth, to all the things that I've learned and unlearned in a year, to all the changes I've made, and to all the changes I will make in the future. Cheers, lads. Love ya.

#personal #emotional post #personal growth #letters to self #mental health #abuse #abuse tw #self harm #self harm tw

[all-good-things-dot-dot-dot]

All Good Things… What’s Age Gotta Do, Gotta Do With It?

#Blog #Bloggerstribe #AllGoodThings… 8th June 2020

Hello, Chaps and Chapettes,

Happy Monday! What’s left of it, anyway. Tell you what, it’s been one of those days when you cannot help but reflect on the past. It had been coming all weekend actually, what with friends discussing everything from the Pick n Mix at Woolworths, films like Land Before Time and American Tail, TV shows like the Rugrats and Doug, and those funny attachable showers you could get for bathtub taps where, if you turned the tap on too fast, it would force off and spray you with devilishly cold or hot water.

(photo: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Betterware-Double-Tap-Shower-Attachment/dp/B006UCW57I )

It’s strange to me to think that there are adults today who have never experienced the same childhood as me. The 90s still feel like they were less than ten years ago, we’re already into a new decade far beyond it. However, you may also be from a generation beyond mine, in the distant past where moon boots and tall hair were the crazes, or teddy boy hairstyles and swinging music. You might even remember when steam locomotives didn’t belong solely at museums and expensive day trips or when rations were still an important part of life. At the rate we are going, little brown books and stamps may make a resurgence in my lifetime too…

This might seem like old nostalgia, better left for people in the past while ours is the culture for always moving forward. Yet, so many still hold the years they’ve spent on the clock from day dot as a badge of honor, sometimes using it to lord over others. That goes for all generations, not simply old or young or in the ugly middle bit. How often do you hear, “they don’t know how good they’ve got it...”, or “back in my day…” or “it’s different these days…” or the now famous, “OK, Boomer.”

These things have come from each generational side not realizing that the other has had different experiences, challenges, and seen changes in many different ways. Our elders can reveal wisdom from their years to us, while our newest generations are seeing things with new eyes and thus providing perspectives without the rose-tinted fingerprint-smudged glasses affecting their visions. What occurs on all sides, is what Captain in ‘Cool Hand Luke’ called a “failure to communicate.” Yet, drastic measures are not required to help impact this for a positive change.

(Photo: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/88006/15-hardboiled-facts-about-cool-hand-luke )

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Part of what can make things less strained and more helpful for all generations to work together is if we are all prepared to listen to each other. That means everybody, the young’uns have to accept that the folks with a few more miles on their clocks than them have some important pearls of wisdom. Equally, those of us who have had a few rotations of the sun should be willing to hear what our kids and their kids have to say. Sometimes they do think of things that you haven’t thought of and give you a great deal of food for thought. Let’s not forget as well, they’re the ones picking a care home out for us one day, so a few niceties don’t go amiss.

The other part is the willingness to teach. That word there is TEACH. T.E.A.C.H. Not lecture. Not argue. Everyone must care enough about how to help each other that they gladly give the metaphorical keys that unlock the door of knowledge. Everyone learns something new every day, so long as they are open to doing so. Education is not over once you leave school to get busy earning a paycheck, or graduate, or however, you escape the school buildings. Learning can come to each of us in many forms, whether it is from hard knocks or a family member showing us the ropes. The deal is if you learn then you must also teach, but teach respectfully.

When those we want to teach are unwilling, it can seem frustrating. It can lead to us trying to force a lesson. This will not help resolve the fact that the listening has shut down, in fact, it will aggravate it. There are several ways to resolve this, all of which I could write a blog on alone (which I probably will do at a later date) but for now, here are my suggestions.

(Photo: Matt Brooks)

Firstly, listen to those you are attempting to teach. You might think their points are wrong but listening shows you are willing and open to their views, not closed off and demanding. This will ease those tensions. Next, try a Socratic approach. Ask questions of them, understand their view, this will help to advise on how your view might be beneficial to them. Finally, accept that they may not get your point straight away or may have to experience for themselves what your message was before they can understand it. This has certainly happened to me more than once, to the point that I loathed saying “oh no, mum was right again.”

My time here is up for another night, so I will finish with this question. What was the coolest thing you can remember from your past and what was the biggest bummer? When we take steps ahead into the bright or mysterious unknown, we shouldn’t forget to check where we’ve come from. It’s just important to recall not to look so far back that we start to return and ruin all the hard work we’ve done.    

All good things, Love, Scaramouche. x

#blog #bog #generation gap #boomer #millenial #all good things

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What website is it easy to spend too much time on? Reddit. I used to spend hours on end on Reddit back when I had just discovered it and saw how many subreddits I can check out, but I’ve toned down these days. I mostly use scroll through the popular tag to help me fall asleep, but I still spend a lot of time on it nonetheless. What's been bothering you lately? One of my classes is a subject I never really wanted to venture into because it will demand me to be insanely extroverted, but I didn’t have a choice but to take it and now I’m worried for my sanity for the next four months. Do you ever get cravings for cheese? Yeah but I’m not as crazy for cheese as most girls around me seem to be lolol. Cheese is ayts. I mostly like it as a dip for Korean barbecue, and I don’t really like the more challenging/funky cheeses. Do you ever crave affection? Yep, sometimes I act needy towards my girlfriend. Would you name your baby after someone or give him/her his or her own name? Their main name would be their own, but I wouldn’t be opposed to having their second name be a tribute to somebody important to me. For instance, if I have a son I’ve always thought of giving him Owen as a second name as an homage to Owen Hart.

Do you think boys can wear pink and girls can wear blue? It’s 2020. We’re way past pink vs. blue now lmfao. But yes, of course. Which hair curlers have you had the best luck with? I don’t use those. What is the best way to curl your hair? In like the four times I’ve had my hair curled, the stylists always used a flat iron. Don't you hate it when people act like idiots just to make you mad? That’s a different level of assholery, but yep I imagine that would piss me off. If you were thrown into a lion's den, would you trust God to save you? Nope, I’ll be saying goodbye to all my loved ones in my head. Do you wish you could call the police on the police? Not in this country, because most police are abusive and dicks. Do you write in cursive or print more? Print. My penmanship is nicer that way, because my writing usually comes out in messy scribbles when I try to write in script. But I always regularly practice my high school’s unique cursive anyway so that I never forget it/get rusty at it. Were you alive before the Internet came out? No, I think the Internet was already kind of a thing by 1998. Do you like that trends from the 90's are coming back in style? Yeah tbh I’m a fan. I love the simple t-shirt/mom jeans combo because it looks so effortless, and because it’s pieces I already have in my closet lmao. ....or would you rather have the trends stay the same as the last decade? Not really, I’m pretty good with all the 90s stuff coming back. Some kids ruined it by wearing chunky sneakers too much, but I like all the other trends that came with it, like bucket hats and belts. What was a horrible trend when you were in high school? I honestly didn’t know much about the trends when I was in high school because 1) we wore our school uniforms every single day, so imagine having one outfit 5/7 days a week, and 2) being from a Catholic school, we had a very strict dress code so it’s not like we could wear whatever the trends were. I do remember never being impressed with Roshes though. What is a horrible trend now? Hype/street clothes like DBTK. What would you do differently if you were God? Not make people suffer. Have you ever met anyone who claimed to be God? No. If I did, I’d run far far away from them. If you had to leave the US and never come back, where would you move? First of all, I have to live in the US before I can leave the US. Would you buy a castle if you could afford one? Sure, whatever. What is something you aren't ok with? My default answer would be homophobia. Do you know anyone who isn't fake? Sure. I know more not-fake people than those who are. Name five people you know who aren't fake. Laurice, Aya, Tina, Danika, Amanda. Do you fully trust anyone? Yes. How many true Christians do you know? Do you know any? What does being a ‘true’ Christian even mean? Do you think someone's value is based on how much money they have or make? No. Would you rather be an aborted baby or a victim of child abuse? Wow THIS IS THE WORST QUESTION EVER. What's one trend you're behind the times on? Tiktok. I do nooooooot understand it for the life of me and do not wish to. Do idiots act like know-it-alls a lot around you? I think know-it-alls act like know-it-alls regardless of who they’re with. Do you think it's ok to call an idiot an idiot? Not to their face, but yes I’ve used that word occasionally.

If you had a child with down's syndrome, would you keep him/her? I’m honestly not sure, and I don’t really like stressing about that kind of stuff this early. Don't you wish people who weren't qualified would stop getting handed leadership positions? Obviously. But there’s little we can do, with the key word there being ‘handed.’ Who is the worst plagiarizer you know? People in high school would copy-paste whole paragraphs from websites or textbooks onto group papers and I hate those people to this day. If someone tried to murder your child, do you think it would be wrong to expose them publicly and talk about it on social media? It wouldn’t be the best and smartest way to go, especially if it was the first thing I planned on doing. ...Why do you think people think this is wrong? Because I would be putting vulnerable people under limelight they never asked for, and because I’d be talking about confidential stuff, especially if the whole ordeal is currently going through a legal process, which is stupid. Is there a toxic person that you miss? You know, despite how close I was with Athenna, I’ve never missed her. Are you still contemplating going back to someone you shouldn't? Nope. What do you need right now? I’m gonna need a higher inner morale for my business reporting class, which is the class I’m really scared about. When was the last time you had a new crush? December 2013. Do you know any "Christians" who are rude and judgmental? Almost all the Christians I know are rude and judgmental. What would you do if your Bible was falling apart? I dunno. Leave it wherever it’s always been. Do you have coffee with Jesus every morning? Groan. Do you pretend to be someone you're not on facebook? Why or why not? No because I have no reason to do that. Do you know anyone who pretends to be a Christian to get attention? Ooooh interesting haha, but no. I’m sure in this time and place they’d get called out almost immediately. Do you want Jesus to come back soon? I’m gonna paraphrase a quote from Friends and say “I know you’re asking me a lot of Jesus questions, but all I hear is blahhhhhblahhhhhhhhhblahhhhhhhhhh.” Do you believe that Jesus is going to come back in your lifetime? Holy shit. Would you rather wear blue jeans or jeggings? Blue jeans. I’ve never owned jeggings. What is the most comfortable type of pants ever? Anything but skinny jeans. What is something you can't wear because of your body type? I can’t wear dresses that are loose around the chest area. Stuff like those are loose because the boobs are meant to hold them up and give someone a flattering figure, but if I tried to wear those, the dress would drop down all the way to my stomach lmao. If you have curves, do you like them? I have some curves, but I’m generally skinny. I do like the ones I have though. What is the curviest part of your body? Butt. Have you ever been punished for doing the right thing? I don’t think so. How often do you cry? One or two times a week would be a good guess. How many Christians do you know who actually care? This is very vague. Is Tumblr all that it's hyped up to be? But it’s not hyped at all these days... Tumblr definitely already peaked a few years ago, and I don’t know what people are saying about it now. At what age do you think someone is old enough to give advice? I don’t think there’s an age requirement for advice. Have you ever worn matching pajamas with someone? No. What helps you fall asleep? When I’m alone, I need it to be quiet or at the very most have white noise around, like the buzz of an aircon or the whir of the electric fan. When I’m sleeping with my girlfriend I have to be cuddled and I have to fall asleep first, or else I’ll keep waking up and twist and turn through the night. I’m a difficult person to fall asleep with huhuh sorry Gab :’( Do you have a nighttime routine? No. I just scroll through social media until my eyes get tired enough to fall asleep within seconds. What was the last mountain you climbed? Not sure, but it was in Sagada. Who is the fakest Christian you know? One of my titas, although I love her to death, is a very devout Christian but had a meltdown/breakdown when her daughter (my cousin) revealed she was dating a black guy. I was stunned when my mom told me all about the ‘drama’ and it took every cell in my body not to explode and give a sermon to everyone else in my family who was upset about it. Just for context, Filipinos are among the MOST RACIST PEOPLE ON THE PLANET so stuff like this WILL be a big deal, especially among our traditional Gen X/Boomer population. Who are the fakest friends you've had? Athenna and Fern. Who's the most narcissistic person you know? I don’t know anyone like this, fortunately. Maybe me because I like taking these surveys??? Jk :((( Who gives the best hugs? Laurice!!! Who was the last person you hugged? My girlfriend.

#survey #surveys