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Oct. 31st, 2015 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Well kudos to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for showing or reminding me of why me and yoga are unmixy things. The second episode shows how yoga is taught in most suburban gyms and YMCA's across the country. When I was 15, I had the experience depicted below, then again at 22, and again at 35. Gave up finally.
If I take it up again -- I'll do it through a Yoga place that practices the religion/spiritual aspects not just the poses. Which by the way are very dangerous - if taught incorrectly as well, just aerobic activity.
Here's the video:
It's a weird sitcom - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I'm on the fence about it. But it does have some great moments.
2. Supergirl was better than expected. I like it in some respects better than The Flash. The lead is quite likable. But I wish we didn't have the male Covert Agency boss of the women. Sort of undermines the feminist message at the heart of the series. But still, a breath of fresh air, particularly when none of the female characters come across as male fantasy icons. No push-up bras in sight. Also, a diverse or pseudo diverse cast, with an African-American cast as Jimmy Olson, one of Kara's love interests.
3. Watching the World Series - the Mets won 9/3 last night. We were watching it or half-watching during book club. MD told me that I was clearly not a true Mets fan -- in that, a) I only watch if I know they have a chance of winning, and b) I'm somewhat torn, because I also like Royals. (And well at one point I was a Phillies fan -- back when I was about 10. I've lived in multiple places or rather multiple states, folks. Pennsylvania, Colorado, Kansas, New York, and Illinois.
It appears to be what my dad would call - a pitcher's game. There's some stealing of bases, but mainly the game has been determined by the pitching staff. Both sides have made some major mistakes.
And they are evenly matched.
4. Book club selected one book on my list, and two...that I had mixed feelings about.
So...after Cloud Atlas...it is :
The Pope's Daughter by Dario Fo
Here's an excerpt from the NY Times review:
ast year, at the venerable age of 88, the Italian comic Dario Fo took on a new creative challenge. The veteran of more than 60 years as an actor, painter, director, stage designer and playwright (as well as the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature), he had in recent years begun to deliver delightful public lectures on artists — Giotto, Leonardo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Picasso — and architecture, including the Romanesque cathedral of Modena. But up to 2014, he had never written a novel. That changed with “The Pope’s Daughter,” now translated into English, although needless to say for this wild man of the theater, the word “novel” is not quite enough to encompass his lightly fictional labor of love for, of all people, Lucrezia Borgia. “The Pope’s Daughter” is also a picture book, illustrated with some of Fo’s own colorful paintings, most based on Renaissance originals. It has since become a full-blown theatrical script.
Hmm...I'm going to have to by the print version, not sure that will work as a Kindle book. Pictures don't work unless it's on my ipad.
Then it's Just Kids by Patti Smith - which I'm not sure about. I'd marked it as a maybe or a no on my list.
Here's an excerpt from NY Times review:
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were both born in 1946, at a time when “the iceman” and “the last of the horse-drawn wagons” could still be seen on city streets. Ms. Smith points this out at the start of her tenderly evocative memoir, “Just Kids,” but there is even stronger evidence that this book dates back a long time.
“Just Kids” captures a moment when Ms. Smith and Mapplethorpe were young, inseparable, perfectly bohemian and completely unknown, to the point in which a touristy couple in Washington Square Park spied them in the early autumn of 1967 and argued about whether they were worth a snapshot. The woman thought they looked like artists. The man disagreed, saying dismissively, “They’re just kids.”
And finally Euphoria by Lily King. This one was on my list of books to read.
Here's the NY Times review excerpt:
As a public icon, Margaret Mead has grown fusty — more respected than read, scarred by potshots (remember the critic who tried to prove that she’d been duped by her Samoan informants?) and sidelined in anthropology by a new dispensation, fluent in evolutionary biology, that makes Mead’s “culture and personality” approach look quaint. It’s hard to conceive of the shock caused in 1928 by her depiction, in “Coming of Age in Samoa,” of sexual freedom as key to a happy adolescence, or of the scope of her influence, decades later, as an unflagging champion of progressive causes, from women’s rights to the legalization of marijuana. For most of us, Mead’s name no longer automatically conjures what one biographer termed “steamy things that happened in torrid, languid jungles.” But her life was rich with incident and, on one occasion at least, may have conformed to this description.
In “Euphoria,” the novelist Lily King has taken the known details of that occasion — a 1933 field trip to the Sepik River, in New Guinea, during which Mead and her second husband, Reo Fortune, briefly collaborated with the man who would become her third husband, the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson — and blended them into a story of her own devising. The result is as uncanny as it is transporting. “Euphoria” is a meticulously researched homage to Mead’s restless mind and a considered portrait of Western anthropology in its primitivist heyday. It’s also a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace — a love triangle in extremis.
So basically two fictionalized accounts of the lives of real people (aka Real Person fanfic or historical fiction), and one memoir. Neither of which are my favorite genre, actually they are the only genres that tend to irritate me. I don't like real person fanfic, I find it exploitative and unimaginative. And memoirs...I tend to find to be disingenuous. Or dishonest. Not to mention highly self-indulgent.
Although...admittedly, Lily King's Euphoria intrigues the frustrated anthropology major inside me. I studied Magaret Mead in college, and find the character and her work fascinating. And, Dario Fo sounds like an interesting writer. Also, I'm admittedly curious about Robert Mapplethorp -- and that period in NYC counter-culture syncs with my sisinlaw's early childhood and her parents lives in NYC at the same time.
So we shall see.
5.) I think my problem with the X-Files was two-fold. 1) I don't tend to like scary or horror all that much. Which was the X-Files. Actually the X-Files and Doctor Who have that in common, as does Grimm, and 2) I think the premise that the government is involved in a elaborate conspiracy about alien life is unbelievable and ridiculous. I work for the government, the government is incapable of that sort of thing. Bureaucracy alone would shut it down. It's organized chaos folks. Government conspiracy's - an overused television and movie trope - tend to throw me out of the story, because I find the concept ludicrous.
As a result, I liked the stand-alone episodes of the X-Files, but the serialized or the mythology, I just couldn't take seriously. The scariest episodes were the stand-alone episodes, actually, which is why I couldn't watch the series.
US television has some frightening anthology series. Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, The X-Files, Fringe,
Kojak - The Night Stalker, Night Gallery...And, ahem, I've watched most of them. So, when I say O don't like Horror, it's a bit like saying I don't like watching sporting events. It depends on my mood.
If I take it up again -- I'll do it through a Yoga place that practices the religion/spiritual aspects not just the poses. Which by the way are very dangerous - if taught incorrectly as well, just aerobic activity.
Here's the video:
It's a weird sitcom - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I'm on the fence about it. But it does have some great moments.
2. Supergirl was better than expected. I like it in some respects better than The Flash. The lead is quite likable. But I wish we didn't have the male Covert Agency boss of the women. Sort of undermines the feminist message at the heart of the series. But still, a breath of fresh air, particularly when none of the female characters come across as male fantasy icons. No push-up bras in sight. Also, a diverse or pseudo diverse cast, with an African-American cast as Jimmy Olson, one of Kara's love interests.
3. Watching the World Series - the Mets won 9/3 last night. We were watching it or half-watching during book club. MD told me that I was clearly not a true Mets fan -- in that, a) I only watch if I know they have a chance of winning, and b) I'm somewhat torn, because I also like Royals. (And well at one point I was a Phillies fan -- back when I was about 10. I've lived in multiple places or rather multiple states, folks. Pennsylvania, Colorado, Kansas, New York, and Illinois.
It appears to be what my dad would call - a pitcher's game. There's some stealing of bases, but mainly the game has been determined by the pitching staff. Both sides have made some major mistakes.
And they are evenly matched.
4. Book club selected one book on my list, and two...that I had mixed feelings about.
So...after Cloud Atlas...it is :
The Pope's Daughter by Dario Fo
Here's an excerpt from the NY Times review:
ast year, at the venerable age of 88, the Italian comic Dario Fo took on a new creative challenge. The veteran of more than 60 years as an actor, painter, director, stage designer and playwright (as well as the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature), he had in recent years begun to deliver delightful public lectures on artists — Giotto, Leonardo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Picasso — and architecture, including the Romanesque cathedral of Modena. But up to 2014, he had never written a novel. That changed with “The Pope’s Daughter,” now translated into English, although needless to say for this wild man of the theater, the word “novel” is not quite enough to encompass his lightly fictional labor of love for, of all people, Lucrezia Borgia. “The Pope’s Daughter” is also a picture book, illustrated with some of Fo’s own colorful paintings, most based on Renaissance originals. It has since become a full-blown theatrical script.
Hmm...I'm going to have to by the print version, not sure that will work as a Kindle book. Pictures don't work unless it's on my ipad.
Then it's Just Kids by Patti Smith - which I'm not sure about. I'd marked it as a maybe or a no on my list.
Here's an excerpt from NY Times review:
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were both born in 1946, at a time when “the iceman” and “the last of the horse-drawn wagons” could still be seen on city streets. Ms. Smith points this out at the start of her tenderly evocative memoir, “Just Kids,” but there is even stronger evidence that this book dates back a long time.
“Just Kids” captures a moment when Ms. Smith and Mapplethorpe were young, inseparable, perfectly bohemian and completely unknown, to the point in which a touristy couple in Washington Square Park spied them in the early autumn of 1967 and argued about whether they were worth a snapshot. The woman thought they looked like artists. The man disagreed, saying dismissively, “They’re just kids.”
And finally Euphoria by Lily King. This one was on my list of books to read.
Here's the NY Times review excerpt:
As a public icon, Margaret Mead has grown fusty — more respected than read, scarred by potshots (remember the critic who tried to prove that she’d been duped by her Samoan informants?) and sidelined in anthropology by a new dispensation, fluent in evolutionary biology, that makes Mead’s “culture and personality” approach look quaint. It’s hard to conceive of the shock caused in 1928 by her depiction, in “Coming of Age in Samoa,” of sexual freedom as key to a happy adolescence, or of the scope of her influence, decades later, as an unflagging champion of progressive causes, from women’s rights to the legalization of marijuana. For most of us, Mead’s name no longer automatically conjures what one biographer termed “steamy things that happened in torrid, languid jungles.” But her life was rich with incident and, on one occasion at least, may have conformed to this description.
In “Euphoria,” the novelist Lily King has taken the known details of that occasion — a 1933 field trip to the Sepik River, in New Guinea, during which Mead and her second husband, Reo Fortune, briefly collaborated with the man who would become her third husband, the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson — and blended them into a story of her own devising. The result is as uncanny as it is transporting. “Euphoria” is a meticulously researched homage to Mead’s restless mind and a considered portrait of Western anthropology in its primitivist heyday. It’s also a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace — a love triangle in extremis.
So basically two fictionalized accounts of the lives of real people (aka Real Person fanfic or historical fiction), and one memoir. Neither of which are my favorite genre, actually they are the only genres that tend to irritate me. I don't like real person fanfic, I find it exploitative and unimaginative. And memoirs...I tend to find to be disingenuous. Or dishonest. Not to mention highly self-indulgent.
Although...admittedly, Lily King's Euphoria intrigues the frustrated anthropology major inside me. I studied Magaret Mead in college, and find the character and her work fascinating. And, Dario Fo sounds like an interesting writer. Also, I'm admittedly curious about Robert Mapplethorp -- and that period in NYC counter-culture syncs with my sisinlaw's early childhood and her parents lives in NYC at the same time.
So we shall see.
5.) I think my problem with the X-Files was two-fold. 1) I don't tend to like scary or horror all that much. Which was the X-Files. Actually the X-Files and Doctor Who have that in common, as does Grimm, and 2) I think the premise that the government is involved in a elaborate conspiracy about alien life is unbelievable and ridiculous. I work for the government, the government is incapable of that sort of thing. Bureaucracy alone would shut it down. It's organized chaos folks. Government conspiracy's - an overused television and movie trope - tend to throw me out of the story, because I find the concept ludicrous.
As a result, I liked the stand-alone episodes of the X-Files, but the serialized or the mythology, I just couldn't take seriously. The scariest episodes were the stand-alone episodes, actually, which is why I couldn't watch the series.
US television has some frightening anthology series. Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, The X-Files, Fringe,
Kojak - The Night Stalker, Night Gallery...And, ahem, I've watched most of them. So, when I say O don't like Horror, it's a bit like saying I don't like watching sporting events. It depends on my mood.
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Date: 2015-11-01 09:43 am (UTC)I suspect that's to make it an overt feminist message when the covert agency inevitably turns out to be evil and fascist by the end of the season.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-01 02:39 pm (UTC)The fact that these covert government agencies are so organized, and operate without any governmental bureaucracies....sort of makes it hard to take them seriously....sigh, why is it that television writers, comic book writers, and various movie screen writers feel a need to romanticize government agencies? Clearly these people have never worked for a government agency or the ones that have don't remember the experience?
no subject
Date: 2015-11-01 10:06 am (UTC)Never watched Arrow because I heard bad things, never watched Constantine in spite of being intrigued because I heard bad things, and never watched The Flash because it's apparently made by the same people as Arrow. But I did at least check out the trailer for Supergirl....
So, just wondering, the bit where she's questioning "why SuperGIRL?" Her horrible boss, played by Ally McBeal, saying "I'm a girl!" Did that convince anyone? Isn't THAT kind of undermining the feminist message that she's a mid-20s to early 30s woman wearing a skirt to fight crime and being labelled a girl? Couldn't she just say "I'm Superwoman" during one of her in-costume appearances to solve this? (Or she could give herself a completely different non-gendered name if she wanted to, like Captain Liberty (from "The Tick") (http://www.thetick.ws/images/pTick%20Captain%20Liberty%20and%20Arthur.jpg).) Okay, so they are not changing the name because the show's called "Supergirl", but do they find a good way to deal with the reluctance of the protagonist to take that name? That felt like a sticking point to me.
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Date: 2015-11-01 08:50 pm (UTC)Okay, so they are not changing the name because the show's called "Supergirl", but do they find a good way to deal with the reluctance of the protagonist to take that name? That felt like a sticking point to me.
Not really, she sort of gets bullied by her boss into accepting it. The boss does the whole, "I'm a girl" and "hot, and successful, and powerful", and identify myself as a "girl" so what's your problem. And by the way, you're fired for even daring to question me on this.
Jimmy Olson saunters in at this point and magically produces a clean shot of Supergirl, claiming that Kara Danvers is directly responsible for it. (Which she sort of is in a way just not in the way he's claiming or her boss is assuming.)
Her job is saved.
So...to answer you're question? No. They didn't find a good way of dealing with it. If it's a major sticking point for you, you may want to skip. The show slides more towards The Flash in concept, than Daredevil or even Smallville, which are better written.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-01 11:15 pm (UTC)Will probably give it a miss. Unless my friend who recommends me these things insists that I need to watch it. He insisted that I watch to the end of season one of Agents of SHIELD and it didn't quite feel worth it, but so far I've watched the first few eps of season two and Simmonds working for Hydra seemed fun enough that I think I might watch a little longer... (Fitz and Simmonds are totally the only thing I like about that show.)