My first reaction: sheer frustration. And then I thought, well, clearly she DOES think of things in terms of guys vs. girls, because apparently there's this scale of hard work atop which the men sit, and we ladies must aspire to that if we want to be treated equally. And then I felt bad for her, because if that's what her parents taught her--well. It sucks to grow up believing that something so damaging is right when it's clearly wrong.
The woman who introduced him at the reading I attended pointed out that George Saunders has garnered the acclaim he has (including that NYT Magazine article with the headline "George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You'll Read This Year") without having written a single novel. I think that bodes well for the state of short stories.
(Also, I love "Jon"! But I love them all, so. Maybe my opinion of individual Saunders stories isn't that meaningful.)
I love George Saunders so much. I saw him speak/read a couple of weeks ago, and he is one of the only authors I've seen who has not disappointed me by appearing to be a pretentious asshole. He seems legitimately humble, which is surprising because he's such a great writer and also so celebrated. He was nice and hilarious and he read only a small selection from a story, because--as he told the audience--a driver once told him, "Don't read for too long. No one ever leaves a reading saying, 'I wish that guy had read more.'" But the consensus among everyone I knew who went to that reading was that we all did wish he had read more, because he is The Best.
Also, maybe his books aren't good for a pick-me-up, but I think they're good for the soul (or whatever) insofar as they advocate compassion and being a better human in general.
What I wonder about these two specifically is what do they even talk about? Their favorite diamonds? Summering on the moon? (I don't know what rich people talk about.)
It was totally, disgustingly, shamefully racist. "Starbucks employees screw up names" was a perfectly serviceable joke. They didn't need to turn it into "black people have funny names and are bad at customer service."
For crying out loud, How I Met Your Mother based an episode around that concept without veering into racist territory, and HIMYM is no paragon of liberty or class. Ugh, SNL. Ugh.
Yes! It was an unaired episode from season 2 that ABC decided to throw in now, to meet their twice-a-week quota for hastening the show's untimely death. Fuck ABC.
Did Chris Brown bet someone all his money that his every public act could indeed cement his reputation as The Worst? How can someone be so consistently abhorrent?
My question about Downton Abbey is: Did Bates actually kill his wife? Because only a soapy twist like that, revealed after Anna finally proves his innocence and gets him out of jail, would make watching that snoozefest of a plot line worthwhile.
I like that Up All Night news! I miss multi-cam sitcoms. And live audiences. I just want to watch a funny, inconsequential, 30-minute televised play every week. And I do NOT want to watch 2 1/2 Men or The Big Bang Theory.
It's 70 degrees and sunny outside here. I'm at work, wondering how much of an asshole I am for wishing we got the day off in solidarity with our friends in the northeast. (But really I hope you guys are okay!)
The Hobbit was the first summer reading assignment that I just didn't finish. (The second, and only other, was The Scarlet Letter. Can I get an UGH?) I was just so bored! But it was okay, because on the first day back, we watched the cartoon(?!), and I'm pretty sure that was the only Hobbit-related classwork(?!) we did all year.
So for days I have been hearing this high-pitched beep, like the (loud) electronic equivalent of a faucet leaking, at random intervals in the middle of the night. And I was CONVINCED it was some awful Paranormal Activity bullshit going on--so convinced that as I lay awake at 4 a.m., awaiting the next terrifying beep, I would imagine placing the camera on the dresser, recording through the night, and watching it the next day only to find myself levitating and standing unmoving beside the bed for hours, beeping. THE BEEP IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE ME! But then this morning I realized it was a smoke detector of which I was heretofore unaware. Yay, I'm sleeping tonight! But not if I keep thinking about Paranormal Activity, I guess.
I for one am not ready to see Stefon go. I thought the lines pretty funny this time, and they shook things up a little with the bit about his Halloween schedule. BUT I do wish that Hader had the composure to look at/flirt with Seth Meyers like he usually does.
Me too! During this Jean K. Jean bit I asked my boyfriend (who was laughing), "Do you remember Pierre Escargot?" And he was like, "..." I almost put Pierre Escargot back in the dusty attic toybox of my mind but now I think I'm going to google him and watch videos instead.
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