sundries

[rm]

Hey all. For the USians it's Thanksgiving, and later I'm going to give thanks for some stuff. But first it's worth thinking about how your thanksgiving meal got to your table (and I don't just mean you in the kitchen) and knowing the details of the many, many parts of the whole Thanksgiving thing which are big, toxic myths. Aside from the fact that knowing the proper history is the least you can do, it's also interesting, and you should probably be angry you weren't taught this in school.

Given Nkosi is an up and coming opera singer from South Africa. His first language in Xulu and as a kid he never took singing seriously, because he never thought he'd get a chance to actually study it.

Nostalgia via barbershops in NYC. I am a huge fan of nostalgia, and of hanging onto things trying to pass out of the world, but the acuteness of our national fixation with same actually troubles me lately. Can we hold on to the lost world and move forward. I know, I know, I'm getting like this over barber shops.

Eighth grade used to be a bit more challenging.

Traveller of the day: Thembi the therapy hedgehog. As per usual, don't read the comments.

The Dallas Morning News is _not_ a minor paper. Like at all. Major market paper here! But they won't print wedding announcements from gay couples married legally.

Last night I started rereading The Great Gatsby for the first time since high school. Initial thoughts: wow, I hate all these people; oh, I totally see what bodlon was saying about me; dude, so little have things changed; Luhrmann better make this as utterly dark as it is. Because it's dark. Miserably dark. And also fascinating for the intensity of gender, and the worshipfulness of the narrator towards the intensity of gender, in all its characters. Oh, please let this film be as twisted as I want it to be. But, wow, not bedtime reading. Ever. Ever again.

Aside from Thanksposting, I'll also try to do Theater Thursdays (and/or catch up on Wicked Wednesdays) today. Being off in the UK, on holiday has everything turned around for me. Right now thought I need to go buy more stuff to cook.

Finally, on multiple nearly-related notes, I'm almost morally obligated to acknowledge the existence of Burlesque, which is apparently bad and boring.

Comments

[xturncoatxiii.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I really want a therapy hedgehog now. SO CUTE~

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

Did you see this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/21/carey-mulligan-baz-luhrmann-gatsby (from Sunday's Observer)? Gives some detail on when Baz first met Carey.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh yes.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Another reason to miss the Dallas Times-Herald, which used to be the other Dallas newspaper.

[esper3k.livejournal.com]

The article about the Thanksgiving myths was really interesting! I think many of us already kind of know those things, but the details were neat. I also think it's interesting to see all the propaganda that we grow up with/get taught to the kids in a different light.

[4hour-ramona.livejournal.com]

"In the new burlesque, women not only control their images (that’s the idea, anyway), but they also redefine what alluring looks like with sometimes proudly fleshy bodies."

sentences like this make me stabby.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Floyd's 99 started in Denver in 2001 and has the whole old barbershop thing going - big vintage chairs, low prices, you even get a shoulder massage with one of those things that straps on the back of the barber's hand afterwards. More rock-and-roll, though - I guess the rockabilly kids have had the "retro nostalgia" market cornered until recently. They cut my hair for most of the time I lived in Denver.

[forest-rose.livejournal.com]

I want a therapy hedgehog! I can totally see that that would be a good idea; my old health psychology lecturer (on whom I had an enormous crush) did pet therapy in hospitals and it was amazing.

I wonder if he had to be patted down? That, I suspect, would not be a popular job :-)

[lllvis.livejournal.com]

The Dallas Moaning Snooze may not be a minor paper, but it's been headed that way for awhile...

I can't remember the last time I read it. But then where I'm at, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is far more relevant.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

I recently reread Gatsby and enjoyed spending time with those people no more than I had in 11th grade American Studies. It felt fascinating and bleak and cold and I was relieved when it was all over.

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

The questions on the eighth-grade exam from the 1930s may be genuine, but the .pdf is almost certainly a fake. The text appears to have been created electronically and Photoshopped to look old. Also, compare the typesetting to the folds and creases in the paper backing it. Only on the second page do they correspond at all. On p. 3, I would hope that the examiner would know that noon is 12:00 P.M., and not A.M.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

That 8th grade test was interesting. In thinking back to my 8th grade years, I don't remember anything that seemed to teach things in the context of how to fit them into the world at large. I wonder if the Thanksgiving myths are making their way into the curriculum these days.