Pop culture stuff

1. Flora & Ulysses - this is the adaptation of a best selling graphic novel for children. I gave the book to my niece when she was about seven or eight. She has no memory of it of course, now that she is almost seventeen years of age. (I feel old and weirdly it feels like yesterday to me, but feels like a century ago to my niece. I've not read the book.) It stars a bunch of comedic stars, but focuses mainly on Flora and a live action animated squirrel.

Alyson Hannigan stars as the mother, and one of the actors from Community stars as a animal control officer who is attempting to euthanize the squirrel.

After a bought with a rogue robot vacuum called "Ulysses", a squirrel much to the astonishment and glee of an eight year old girl - is imbued with super-powers. He can type on her mother's ancient typewriter, understand humans, fly, and lift heavy objects. But mainly he's concerned with eating, pleasing Flora, and escaping from animal control.

It's a cute movie - I don't think I'm the right demographic for it. But it is cute. Also, nice twist, in that the eight year old girl is interested in comic books and her father is a failed comic book artist, while her mother is the bread-winner with romance novels.

2. WandaVision

Episode 7:Breaking the Fourth Wall - continues WandaVision homage/satiric parody of situation comedies. She's now, kind of up to date, with 00's breaking the fourth wall version of the sitcom or the meta-narrative sitcom. (This is my least favorite version of the sitcom - mainly because I don't like it when people stop and talk to the camera or get interviewed in the middle of a story as if it some sort of warped documentary. I find it jarring, and it irritates me. Which is why I don't like 90% of the sitcoms that have come out in recent years. I'm apparently in the minority - because most people love this sort of thing. I don't. I like there to be a fourth wall firmly in place, thank you very much. Which made me appreciate the satirization of it all the more - the writers poke fun at the conventions. At one point, Vision stops and says, why in the hell am I sitting her talking about this with imaginary people off-screen - this is stupid. And at another Wanda tells the people off-screen they aren't supposed to talk back.]

Also, it gets across the feeling of being trapped in a kind of mundane suburban existance and unable to get out.

( spoilers )

3. Miss Scarlet and the Duke - enjoying it for the most part, but the banter between the two of them is beginning to get on my nerves. They sound like squabbling siblings. Other than that - the mysteries are fun and the underlying arc entertaining. It's an innovative costume drama mystery series.

4. Palm Springs - film starring Adam Samberg, Cristina Milloti and JK Skinner. It's basically a ground-hog day concept or the idea of being stick inside an internal loop, and unable to get out. In this version - the only way out is to blow yourself up in the middle of the loop and it kicks you out of the box. It's a quantum physics solution apparently. Good deeds don't work, nothing else does. And there's really no root message except to make the best of things.

It felt a bit like a metaphor for the wealthy's tedium of a pandemic. For a majority of the film we watch Sarah and Miles hang out at a wedding neither wish to be at, attempting to deal with the tedium and the prospect of not finding a way out of it. Sarah eventually does, since unlike Miles, the eternal time-loop is impossible for her to deal with.

I was bored. To date the only time loop series or film that's entertained me outside of Ground Hog day is Russian Doll.

Day #339 .....Winter's Day

I think the pandemic is getting to me? I skipped a whole week and had to go back renumber. To be fair no one seemed to notice that I skipped the 30s and went from 329 to 340...so apparently I'm not the only not paying attention to these things and who sucks at counting. You are supposed to catch me on these things. That is your job. You fact check me on everything else...how could you miss the numbering error?

Or maybe you're just used to the fact that I suck at counting and figure why bother?



As you can see, I talked myself into another semi-peaceful walk around Greenwood Cemetery. It would have been more peaceful if there weren't a lot of folks walking together, with baby carriages, and talking on cellphones. But I was able to avoid or steer around the human being obstacle course for the most part - Greenwood it's more possible to do this - than elsewhere.
The sidewalks are impossible to navigate around folks right now - because
they are narrow and there isn't enough room to get around them at certain points. There's also at least ten inches of snow still on the ground. But it is still pretty in Greenwood Cemetery and almost pristine.



With thread bare trees, and their spindly branches cresting the sky. A crystal blue with nary a cloud in sight.



I see people embracing here and there, socializing, and chatting. Some without masks, some with. On the way home from the grocery store, an old gnarled white man was walking his tiny dog without a mask - and a young black man, with a mask on came up to him and embraced him, greeting him.
If it weren't for the mask - you wouldn't know it was a pandemic.

I smiled at both through my mask. The only thing that annoys me now are the bikes on the sidewalks. I've stopped worrying over maskless wonders. Well for the most part. I did stop in the middle of a snowy walk, halfway up the path, to watch a young man on the paved and plowed street below the path pass by, no mask, cell phone plasted to his ear talking up a storm. I'd have continued down the snowy path - but I didn't have the right boots on, and the snow wasn't shoveled or cleared above the cobblestones. So I waited for him to pass before jumping back onto the street.



Talked to mother prior to the walk - she was in a mood. Tired of hurting and being stuck. She fears her leg will never get better and could be confined to a wheelchair, which would result in never seeing my Dad again. Mother is very frustrated. And I don't know what to tell her. Except to make bad jokes and try hard to laugh.

Oh well, they'll get their second doses this week, I think and if all goes well, I'll get my first. Kind of glad I'm scheduled for Friday - that way if I get sick, I've the weekend to recover - not that I expect to, but one never knows.



If you look closely in the above picture - you can the tiny moon or the half moon hanging in a clear sun filled blue sky.

And below...it looks like an angle with wings...made of bushes...




And a final photo to leave you all with, because I find my mind is relatively blank of words today. I'm tired. And tomorrow - I must go back to editing the contract from hell, and worrying over things work related. Not that work ever truly goes away...now that I work remotely and get emails all the time.

The world feels close and far away at the same time. And I feel surrounded by strangers. Who know me not. It's odd the people I've interacted with the most throughout this time - in person, not just remotely, have been co-workers, and the strangers I see in my building, on the street, in the store, and on the pathways to and from and around Greenwood Cemetery, not to mention the grocery store and pharmacy. Yet all at an odd distance. And most, with few exceptions, wearing masks.

I'm a hermit in a city of 8 million people. It's an odd thing. A very odd thing. Alone but not alone.

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1. Hmmm...this is an interesting essay, which I kind of disagree with.
Buffy Revisited Through Whedon Allegations

I honestly think you can analyze anything a certain way if you want to badly enough. I remember my brother and his friend trying to convince me that the soap opera The Guiding Light's - iconic lighthouse was a phallic symbol. (Uh, no. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar folks.)

Here, I'm kind of going yes, okay, possibly, nodding along until I hit this paragraph:
( Read more... )

Also part of the point of Buffy was a critique of toxic male culture in violent westerns and slasher pictures in the 1970s-90s. Buffy started in the 1990s - and in direct reaction to horror films like Scream, which had popped up shortly before it. It was satirizing a lot of that toxic male culture.
With Buffy taking out the male vampires - often a metaphor for sexual violence with a phallic symbol - the stake. It explored the misogynistic nerd as the villains, and their inability to handle women. They were shown as the villains and weak. Notably no male has power in Buffy, unless they become a vampire or are turned into a monster.

The women have the power.

2. I also saw an essay about Xander as the epitome of misogyny. Really? I think you are confusing him with Warren. And there are quite a few women and men loved Xander and did not see him that way. I may have disagreed with them at times, but I can see their perspective. And could defend it. I have defended it - in numerous essays.

Quiet Misogyny in Buffy

Huh? I'm sorry, the writers were blatantly exposing the misogyny in our culture and calling our attention to it. It wasn't celebrating it - just the opposite. Willow's scene in Villains with Warren - dissects misogyny at its base. And in S7 Buffy takes down the bad guy - a misogynist empowered by the First Evil - who has given birth to vampires. The vampires in Whedon's stories are in a part a metaphor for sexual violence and misogyny.

He's showing the reality of it. It's not exploitive or romanticized. It's painful and horrifying. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a horror series, it wasn't a romantic teen soap like the Vampire Diaries and Legacies. It was horror. Horror isn't nice and fuzzy.

They were showing the dark side of human nature and questioning it. There's a lot of good stuff in this series. Don't dismiss it out of hand or review it based on what may have happened twenty years ago to several cast members behind the scenes. I seriously doubt anyone who came forward would want you to view their work or the series in that manner.

SMG pretty much states that, as does everyone else. It was a toxic work environment but the end product is still meaningful. You can separate behavior from a person and from art, it is possible. It just requires a little critical thinking to do so.

3. I think Screen Logic's essay handles it best... A Teachable Moment in Cognitive Dissonance After Joss Whedon

Many People Worked Hard on These Projects Beyond the Disgraced Figures

My answer is simply "Yes." You can still appreciate the art and those involved while tempering who you praise in the process. There was still a final season of House of Cards despite the allegations against star Kevin Spacey, who was fired prior to filming. You can still enjoy the work of the X-Men franchise even after what people found out about Bryan Singer. I don't think it's fair to judge anyone regardless if they support or identify as part of the LGBTQ community if they still love the Harry Potter franchise despite J.K. Rowling's TERF beliefs.

It's hard to keep track of everything because what's done is already done, and nothing is going to erase what's in the can. We can only do things that affect the present and in the future. Obviously, there's a line of which you can't think of things the same way again, but at the same time, a lot of hard-working people put in their soul to create what you love. Can you imagine shuttering away in a vault every single thing that had Harvey Weinstein's name on it? It would deprive such a significant piece of cinema history away that doesn't make any practical sense to punish those who weren't involved. The way we learn and what is a teachable moment is to just speak up while we can and do what we can now because the worst that can happen is nothing is said, and suffering continues.

I agree. I'm not sure it matters right now, what these people did in the past as a pandemic roars in the background. The US is pretty close to the 500,000 death milestone. We've lost 500,000 people to COVID-19 in this country.

And we're addressing toxic workplaces and hunting ways to stop them. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but we are making progress.