(echoes first half of first paragraph at own newsfeed)
Some have lamented about the increasingly bitter and acrimonious fight going on right now about #BlackLivesMatter and the Bernie Sanders campaign. It’s true that this is a classic left-wing circular firing squad. And it has certainly brought out the worst in performative white anti-racism, the kind where people care more about being perceived as one of the good white people than they do about actually ending systemic racism. (Half of my Facebook feed now is Sanders-related posts that would be more honest if they just said “I’m the white guy who’s really down with black people!”) At the same time, working through these issues is important. I concede that there are healthier ways to have this conversation, but that’s life and politics ain’t beanbag. I don’t have to agree with how everyone is doing the work to still recognize that they’re doing the work.
Either way, I hope people understand: a year from now, everyone on the genuine left will be looking back on this time fondly as a moment when the national Democratic party, in a primary season with a left-wing challenger, deigned for awhile to care about black people and the left. Because in a year, when Hillary Clinton is fighting desperately to keep Pennsylvania and Ohio from Scott Walker, I promise you, she won’t be shouting “black lives matter” from the stage. The Democrats did not suddenly stop being the party of triangulation and moderate centrism. This is an important battle with big philosophical and political ramifications for the American left; it’s also an activist squabble within what are numerically very small groups. Influential yes, and for good reason, given all of the amazing organizing and publicizing that BLM has done, and how the Sanders campaign has reinvigorated Democratic politics. But 72% of the 2012 electorate was white, and they broke for the GOP by 20%. A politician and party as ruthless as Hillary and the Dems are won’t let past promises get in the way of clawing out those electoral votes.
A preliminary thought on the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2016 election: I wonder what the end game is when the objective seems to be getting the leading candidates running of the Democratic Party to produce robust plans detailing how they will address the issues of the Black Lives Matter movement? What does it mean for either Sanders or Clinton to produce more campaign platforms concerning “racial justice” when they remain in a political party that is complicit and invested in the destruction of Black neighborhoods through the instruments of privatization. The Democratic Party on a mayoral and local representation level has driven the process of mass school closures in Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit and Philadelphia. In Detroit, the Democratic Party leads the assault on Black people’s access to water as a basic human right. The examples are endless and yet there is a great deal of focus being narrowed down to what the Democratic presidential candidates are putting in their platforms as the basis of ultimately endorsing or passively supporting them.
The hashtag and slogan “earn our vote” implies, if not forthrightly declares, that there is a particular combination of planks the Democratic Party can put together to win the vote of the movement. Malcolm X once said that when we put the Democrats first, they put us dead last. Nothing has changed in the fifty years since he said this. This Party that has never in its entire history done anything for Black people that mass movements and violent rebellions did not make it do. It has not all of sudden seen the light and is ready to join the fight for Black liberation. They will say and do anything to get elected and abandon this movement the second they are in office. The Democratic Party does not deserve the support of the Black movement under any circumstances.
So yes, pressure Bernie Sanders. If you allow that effort to amount to support for Hillary Clinton or Martin O’Malley, I think that’s misguided, given their terrible records on race. But definitely, pressure away. But let’s remember: the president is going to have very little impact on the lived experience of anti-black racism; Clinton is more likely to be the nominee; and what consumes our attention in August of 2015 will look like a footnote in September of 2016. The Democratic nominee breaking rightward for the general is about as predictable as it gets in politics. The next stage of action will be reminding the Democrats of their commitments when they’re in the general election, making their appeals to the vast white throngs that are underrepresented on lefty Twitter but overrepresented in our political process. Maybe then, we can finally come together as a movement.
He’s an English ginger who supports conservation efforts and he recently just got a giant tattoo on his chest in honor of the slain lion, Cecil. So who is he?
It’s none other than singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran.
Sheeran is known to have an affinity for tattoos, but this one ups the ante.
Sharing the top picture on Instagram, Sheeran wrote, “Halfway and ouch.”
Previously, Sheeran remarked that his tattoos mainly had to do with his career: “It’s all memories of what’s happened in my career so far. It might look like gibberish to you.”
Though there’s no doubt that Sheeran’s latest tattoo will be anything but gibberish to the thousands outraged over the murder of Cecil the Lion.
Comedians aren’t usually great at relationships. We’re hyper-introspective, natural loners who live in a perpetual state of mild discontent. When we’re around other people, we’re thinking about being alone and how nice that will be. When we’re alone, we miss the feedback of an audience and wonder if we’ll ever have one again. It seems […]
The image shows the "dark side" of the Moon, which we can't see from Earth because it's always pointed away from us.
The lunar far side lacks the large, dark, basaltic plains, or maria, that are so prominent on the Earth-facing side. The largest far side features are Mare Moscoviense in the upper left and Tsiolkovskiy crater in the lower left. A thin sliver of shadowed area of moon is visible on its right side.
"It is surprising how much brighter Earth is than the moon," said Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Our planet is a truly brilliant object in dark space compared to the lunar surface."
I don't know why, but this image gives me chills up my spine! Is anyone else freaking out about this?
There’s a lot of stuff about “personality type” going around! I have not bothered to look at what any of them mean, until now! What I found is really surprising.
My neighborhood is too rich to get gentrified! BOOYA
Some questions seem so complex. Like gentrification. If you move to one of the few neighborhoods you can afford and, in so doing, unintentionally contribute to the raising of rents in your area, are you a gentrifier? Or is gentrification not the effect of individuals but rather the byproduct of larger capitalist forces acting on us all?
No, you don’t need to love wine bars, dog parks, and bike lanes to be a gentrifier. (And anyone can love these things!) To the people who study gentrification, it’s more about where you live and how much you earn. Gentrifiers are people with medium or high incomes moving into low-income neighborhoods, attracting new business but raising rents, and often contributing to tensions between new and long-term residents. Sociologists coined the term, which alludes to the European gentry—and which has only become more loaded at a time of skyrocketing rents and profound demographic changes in American cities.
But are you a gentrifier? With the help of an urban policy expert, we devised a calculator that determines if you are based on your income and neighborhood.
With a gulp, I entered my information and checked out the results.
“Your neighborhood is too rich to be gentrified.” Now that’s what I like to hear!
I think I may have gotten off on a technicality. The quiz shouldn’t have asked me how much my household makes now; it should have asked how much we made when we first moved into the area. At that point, our income was higher and the average income was probably lower.
Three and a half years makes a big difference in the fate of a brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood. The people around me are richer than they were and the stores are correspondingly turning over to cater to the aristocrats. Gone are the old dry cleaners, locksmiths, hardware stores, wacky cute secondhand clothes boutiques, and purveyors of homemade hummus. Replacement stores offer up eco-friendly sustainable fish, upscale cupcakes, artisanal mayo, artisanal olive oil, artisanal donuts, kids’ clothes and toys, and high-end nail art. There was a “dessert speakeasy” too, but it closed. I think the mayo store closed too. Good effort, guys!
I’m not making any of this up.
It doesn’t matter, though. We bought the best apartment in the best neighborhood that we could afford, and if you had spit in my face and called me a gentrifier three times in a row for doing it, I probably still would have gone ahead. Now I guess I’ll spend the next hour pondering how bad I should feel about that.
If you want a second opinion on the question of whether you are a gentrifier, other sites have addressed the issue in recent years. Or if you simply want advice on how to be a good neighbor regardless, Alternet has got you covered.
Cherv has bullied me into watching this show and it is AWESOME
Season Two of the surrealist sci-fi animated series Rick and Morty just premiered on Adult Swim and it’s funnier and more insane than ever. The first episode of the second season, “A Rickle in Time,” picked up where we last left off, amidst a six month post-party time freeze that presents some mind-boggling space-time continuum/multiverse […]
A San Diego bride recently surprised guests at her wedding reception with a bouquet toss to a male friend that ended with tears, cheers, a marriage proposal and one very sweet kiss.
The wedding reception took place at San Diego’s El Cortez reception hall.
The bride (as yet unidentified) was about to toss the bouquet to her family and friends. For the uninitiated, the bouquet toss is a traditional game of sorts where women vie to catch the bouquet in the hopes that they’ll be the next in line to wed.
Of course, not everyone is down for this.
However, at this particular wedding, the bride had something much better than a ‘traditional’ bouquet toss up her sleeve. As she turned around to throw the bouquet, she shrieked with delight and ran over to a male friend to give him the bouquet. That cued that man’s boyfriend to swoop in and pop the question.
He even got down on one knee.
The scene was clearly emotional. One woman in the crowd could not even handle the proposal.
Could. Not. Handle.
The man being proposed to was also overwrought with emotion, clearly surprised by his boyfriend’s proposal.
Watch the full video of the too cute proposal, posted by Joe Jervis, below:
Killing lions right outside of park boundaries seems like a systemic problem, not just a one-off instance:
Between 1999 and 2004 we undertook an ecological study of African lions (Panthera leo) in Hwange National Park, western Zimbabwe to measure the impact of sport-hunting beyond the park on the lion population within the park, using radio-telemetry and direct observation. 34 of 62 tagged lions died during the study (of which 24 were shot by sport hunters: 13 adult males, 5 adult females, 6 sub-adult males). Sport hunters in the safari areas surrounding the park killed 72% of tagged adult males from the study area. Over 30% of all males shot were sub-adult (<4 years). Hunting off-take of male lions doubled during 2001-2003 compared to levels in the three preceding years, which caused a decline in numbers of adult males in the population (from an adult sex ratio of 1:3 to 1:6 in favour of adult females). Home ranges made vacant by removal of adult males were filled by immigration of males from the park core. Infanticide was observed when new males entered prides. The proportion of male cubs increased between 1999 and 2004, which may have occurred to compensate for high adult male mortality.
The 2007 paper is here (pdf), by Loveridge, Searle, Murindagamo, and MacDonald, via Hollis Robbins.
In 1981, ABC's news program 20/20 aired a segment on the rising phenomenon of rap music called Rappin' to the Beat. It is painful to watch in parts, but ultimately worth it for the footage of street scenes and artist performances.
July 22nd, 2015: Happy pi approximation day! Hey, this is unrelated to that, but did you see my NINE shirt designs available for two weeks only? HOPEFULLY YOU DID??
We Won Marriage Equality And Now What Do We Do: The Future of the Gay Rights Movement /s
(but also this is kind of very interesting dirty laundry about infighting if your newsfeed doesn't look like mine)
Glasgow calling to cancel, Jinkx! Kelly O
Free Pride was formed in Glasgow after the group that organizes the city's main pride celebration—Glasgow Pride—announced that they would have to start charging a small entrance fee for the post-parade party. This weekend, Free Pride announced that their August 22 event, which takes place on the same day as Glasgow Pride, will not only be free of charge but free of drag as well. Free Pride announced their discriminatory policy with this Orwellian tweet...
At Free Pride we hope to create a safe space for all people within the LGBTQIA+ community. We understand that sometimes this will disappoint some people within the community, however our priority is always to put the needs of the most marginalised groups within our community first. This is why, after much discussion, the trans and non binary caucus decided not to have drag acts perform at the event. This does not mean that people of any gender can’t wear what they want to the event, we simply won’t be having any self-described drag acts perform at our Free Pride Event on the 22nd August. We hope people can understand and support our decision. However we feel it important to fully explain why we came this decision.
Free Pride aims "to represent those underrepresented in our community, including but not limited to trans and non-binary people, women, people of colour, intersex people, asexual people and people with disabilities." To that end the group's "trans and non-binary caucus" voted to ban drag acts in order to protect "transgender individuals who were uncomfortable with having drag performances at the event," and because drag acts "might make some of those who were transgender or questioning their gender uncomfortable."
Let's set aside the fact that drag is often a way for people questioning their gender to express themselves—I know several trans men who were drag kings before transitioning—and focus instead on the criteria Free Pride used to exclude drag acts:
1. Putting the needs of the most marginalized groups within the community first.
2. When individuals from a less marginalized group make individuals from a more marginalized group feel uncomfortable—or if they might make them feel uncomfortable—the individuals from the less marginalized group can and should be excluded for the comfort of individuals from the more marginalized group.
Free Pride's criteria for excluding drag acts could be used to exclude a lots of individuals and groups from performing at—or even attending—queer pride events. Leather/fetish/BDSM communities are marginalized, it's true, but individuals who've survived abusive and/or controlling relationships are arguably more marginalized and they might feel uncomfortable sharing a space with individuals who eroticize power dynamics—so, hey, queers who show up to pride events wearing harnesses and dog collars will be sent home. Why stop there? Individuals from privileged religious organizations might make individuals who've endured conversion therapy and other forms of spiritual abuse feel uncomfortable—send them home too. Taut-bodied twinks in sequined Speedos might make their more-marginalized, less-taut LGBT elders feel uncomfortable; monosexual individuals—gays and lesbians and straights—might make more marginalized bisexual individuals feel uncomfortable; middle-class individuals might make poor and working-class individuals feel uncomfortable; sexual individuals might make asexual individuals feel uncomfortable; individuals who freely choose to do sex work might make individuals who were forced into doing sex work feel uncomfortable; drunk individuals might make clean-and-sober individuals feel uncomfortable—and on and on it goes until there's no one left at pride.
The dingbats running Free Pride don't seem to understand what pride parades and protests are about: demanding that the straight majority learn to tolerate our presence. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." But if we can't get used to each other—if certain segments of the queer community can't tolerate certain other segments of the queer community—what kind of a message does that send the straight majority?
And do we really want to suggest to the straight majority that people who make other people feel uncomfortable can and should be excluded? Free Pride is trying to make a virtue of this exclusionary bullshit by framing it as concern for more marginalized members of the queer community. I promise you this nuance will be lost on Glasgow's straight majority. The takeaway will be this: "If queer people can kick other queer people out of a pride celebration for making other queers uncomfortable... shouldn't we be able to kick out queer people who make us uncomfortable, too?"
After getting a little outraged feedback, some of which violated Free Pride's "safe space" policies (boo hoo hoo), Free Pride announced their new-and-improved policy on drag acts: Drag performers who are "trans and non-binary" will be welcome to perform at Free Pride, but the ban remains on cis drag performers. (So, hey, now their policy isn't just exclusionary—it's discriminatory, too.) Gay Times:
First of all, we would like to confirm that after a further consultation trans drag performers will be invited to perform at Free Pride on the 22nd August. If you are a trans drag performer and would like to perform on the day, please get in touch by sending a message to the Free Pride page.
The trans caucus and Free Pride as a whole thought protecting the privacy of trans drag performers was the most important thing, but trans drag performers have let us know that letting them perform is more important to them. People appeared to understand that we attempted to communicate that trans drag performers' rights are secondary to other trans people's rights. We did not mean to send this message and apologise to trans drag performers for unintentionally doing so. Unfortunately this also appears to have offended trans drag performers. We did not in any way mean to equate cis (who are often seen as transmisogynistic by some portions of the Trans community) drag performers with trans drag performers. We would like to explicitly state that while we attempt to include everyone, we have always, and will always aim to put the needs and voices of the most marginalised first.
Free Pride has apologized—but just to trans drag performers. Cis drag performers can go fuck themselves. And Free Pride wants everyone to feel welcome at their big celebration—except for cis drag performers, all of whom are cordially invited to go fuck themselves because "some members" of the trans community view them as problematic. Trans and non-binary drag performers, on the other hand, are incapable of being problematic.
And Free Pride wants you to know that they support equality for all—it's just that some drag queens are more equal than others.
Rachel and I have a running discussion topic of those awful pieces that are like DON'T TALK LIKE A GIRL (vocal fry, filler words, 'just', etc) and I relate to all of those at a very personal level and I think this is going to be a great documentary. It's out now in a lot of places!!
David Thorpe and Dan Savage discussing the gay voice
This past weekend David Thorpe’s soul-searching documentary DO I SOUND GAY?, which has already prompted much discussion in New York, moved west with additional theaters and Q&As in Los Angeles.
As documentary topics go, it doesn’t come much punchier than this. I recently sat down to discuss the reception of the movie with its writer/star. We quickly bonded over pets — I proudly self describe as a “crazy cat lady” and Thorpe’s cats “Bruno” and “Rocket” are scene stealers as he performs vocal exercises — and a mutual hope that the film’s issues will one day feel alien as younger generations grow up with less stigma about their homosexuality.
But for now the title question remains provocative, so we talked about the film’s public reception, roping in celebrities for talking-head duties and the balancing act of the film’s self confessional nature with the broader political implications of ‘the gay voice.’
NATHANIEL ROGERS: It’s amply evident in the documentary that this was a cathartic journey for you but what were you hoping the audience would take away from it?
DAVID THORPE: I was hoping a number of things. I was certainly hoping that non-gay people would have a better sense of how internalized homophobia works and how you don’t just come out, snap your fingers and love yourself. For a lot of us it takes time to counteract the messages that we grew up with that being gay was wrong. But I think a lot of non-gay people actually don’t know that. That’s been borne out from straight people who’ve seen the film. They just were not aware that gay men could remain with feelings of shame. I think I wanted people to ask themselves hard questions that maybe they weren’t asking because that’s how I managed to grow.
Did you ever worry that this was a little narcisstic as a subject?
It’s about me but it’s also a prism for a much wider scope of issues. So I look at Hollywood, linguistics, sociological aspects of culture.
That’s definitely true. I know this is a particular challenge for documentarians though… subjects tend to grow and grow. Did you have to cut anything out?
I shaved off two threads that I thought would end up in the film. Originally there was more about the guy that I broke up with that kicks off the story. But we did rough cut screenings and audiences reacted negatively to that. They wanted to see me find self-acceptance and felt that the boyfriend thing was a distraction. I think they were right. The other thing I had to leave out, which I loved, was about “Molly houses” in the UK and that the media started identifying the stereotype of a gay sounding man as early as the early 18th century. But that was a little too academic and a little too far from my story.
Were you influenced by other docs in making this both personal and political?
That’s the tightrope I tried to walk. Supersize Me. AndChris Rock’s Good Hair is a great film which really showed that you could balance a personal story with a political story and that you can also take on serious issues through comedy. And you know, I didn’t fail to notice that Good Hair had a lot of celebrities. It’s one thing if I say something about hating myself. It’s quite another if David Sedaris says that sometimes he feels good when people thinks he’s straight.
How long did it take to make?
That’s a funny question. I don’t know where it begins. Where do you measure your penis from?
[Laughter]
I don’t know. Let’s say four years.
Were people immediately receptive?
Yes and that spurred me to keep going. 10 out of 10 people were interested in the topic. There’s a reason for that. It just touches on a lot of issues in a seemingly condensed form because the voice says so much about people, gender and sexuality. I cold e-mailed Dan Savage and he said yes. David Sedaris was also a cold call.
One of the things that gave me a lot of boldness in reaching out to celebrities is that I knew that, even though they’re celebrities, they know what it’s like to be gay. I thought they might be more inclined to participate in a project that’s really about deepening our understanding of ourselves.
One of the most fascinating threads in the film is on “code-switching” My boyfriend and I were discussing this after the movie. I worked a corporate job for several years and my friends still rib me about it ‘Do your work voice!’ because they thought it was so different (“deeper and sexier”) but I can’t do it on command as I genuinely had no idea I was doing anything different. But the doc seems to suggest that this is not as subconscious as my experience?
I think there’s both — some is involuntary and totally natural. But for me I was code-switching because I was ashamed to just sound gay or be gay or be myself. One of the general questions that I hope is floating around the film is when are we changing because it is just natural and who we are and when are we changing because we don’t like who we are?
I stand in awe of my effeminate gay male friends who do not code-switch, who are just as queeny when they talk to the guy fixing their car as when they’re kiki-ing about Barbra Streisand. I think that’s incredibly brave. If I was going to embrace my gay voice, I wanted to embrace it wholeheartedly .
And after making this movie have you felt… I mean it’s one thing to say…
‘I’VE CHANGED!’ [Laughter]
Do you think the film’s lesson has really carried over into your life?
I’ve definitely changed over the making of the film and the subsequent reception. I’d be lying if I said i didn’t still have reflexive moments of self-consciousness about sounding gay. But I’m much better at batting that feeling away and telling myself that I don’t have to be a certain way to please anybody.
The nicest thing that happened for me doing the vocal exercises (which I don’t do anymore) and the research was a general physical reconnection with my voice. When I’m comfortable my larynx relaxes where it’s supposed to be, a vocal home base. I know that’s my voice. It’s so nice to feel that. I just always though my voice was in my head and I told myself what to say but your voice is actually produced physically by your body and your physicality has a great deal to do with your sense of self — I have hazel eyes or I’m 6’1”.
You’re a couple of weeks into the movie’s theatrical run. How have audience reactions been for you?
Overwhelming positive. I’m sure that there are things about the film that not everybody likes or that don’t work for everyone. But I’d like to think I put enough of myself out there that people at least appreciate the depth or the multi-layered quality. I tried not to hide anything. I tried to say as much I could.
You know, It’s hard to tell a story on film but many people come up to me afterwards and say, ‘This is my story. Thank you’ Moms of gay kids, people of all backgrounds… ‘I think a lot about ‘Do I l sound too black at work?’ or ‘I’m Latino and I code-switch all the time.’
Do you think it’s made anyone uncomfortable?
The film does air some dirty laundry about being gay. Dan Savage talks about the fear of being effeminate coming from misogyny. And there’s a guy on the beach who says ‘When I’m in bed I want to be with someone who sounds like a man.’ There are some things that maybe people didn’t necessarily want put out there but I think we’re really past the point in gay life where we have to be super careful about our image. I think it’s actually a good time to talk about the realities of our lives.
Part of what happened when I made this film was finding that I wasn’t alone. Lots of other gay men have lingering internalized homophobia. God bless anyone of us who has no shame. That’s why I went to Dan Savage. He genuinely has never felt shame about being gay.
He is very evolved in that sense.
I would be lucky to feel so evolved but I’m working on getting there!
Nathaniel Rogers would live in the movie theater but for the lack of wifi, blogs daily at the Film Experience. Follow him on Twitter @nathanielr.
The slate article they linked to made my palms sweaty. I am DEFINITELY not going to see Brian again, and I went to his wedding TWICE (Seattle wedding, CT reception)
If there’s one thing we know about weddings, it’s that they’re your day.
No, wait, maybe they’re a day for you and your partner to publicly affirm your committment to each other.
No, hang on, weddings are for parents to celebrate their children’s transition into a new phase of life.
Maybe weddings are a chance to throw a big party with friends who have known you and your partner for years. Or they’re a way for two families to get to know each other, all the way down to the cousins and grandchildren. Or, as Slate’s David Plotz once wrote, they’re a way to say goodbye to a bunch of people who have been part of your past but probably won’t be included in your future.
What better way to end a friendship than with joy? What better than to have your final memory of each other be of your best, happiest wedding selves?
With so many different definitions of what a wedding is and who a wedding is for, your wedding is bound to raise the ire of at least one of your wedding guests, who will no doubt consider you selfish for not hosting a wedding that matches their personal vision of what a wedding should be. We’ve previously looked at the selfishness of child-free weddings; now we have two more wedding guests who are so angry at the invitations they’ve received that they wrote in to Carolyn Hax to complain.
Complainant #1 believes it is selfish to insist guests attend weddings that require (multiple!) planes:
My friend is having a destination wedding—by which I mean many, many, many hours in the air. We have small children, which would make the travel very difficult, and we have nobody to leave them with at home for the trip. And while we could technically afford it, it would set us back more than we are comfortable with—it’s our “if something bad happens, we need this” pot.
We do not question our decision to send our regrets. The problem is that our friend is taking this personally, and the guilt trips, while relatively mild, are persistent. I really think if you have a wedding that requires (multiple!) planes, you need to recognize your guest list may shrink and not blame guests who are unable to make the trip.
I’m not sure if The Billfold has an official stance on whether people should spend emergency funds on destination weddings, but I support this letter writer’s decision to not attend this wedding. So does Carolyn Hax:
Next time Friend cranks out the guilt: “Multiple planes + small kids (equal sign) non-starter. You seem to be taking this personally; am I hearing you correctly?”
Part of me really hopes Letter Writer and Friend have this conversation, complete with the equals sign. Just drop it in a text, add a few emoji (listening ear, frowny face, smiling poop), and send. What could go wrong?
Complainant #2 thinks it is selfish to have a small, family-only wedding followed by a larger reception for friends:
If this were my friend’s actual wedding, I would go no matter what. But for a party, I don’t want to take on the hassle involved in finding a way there. I’ve often used your wedding advice as a guide, but I don’t know what you would think about a pseudo-wedding.
This time, Hax lays the smack down:
Scoff much? This isn’t a “re-enactment” or “pseudo-wedding,” it’s a reception, apparently announced as such. […] I often advise an after-the-fact reception as a reasonable solution to many problems that plague weddings—including but not limited to high costs, planning hassles, problematic family members, loved ones who live far from a wedding site, and a desire for an intimate wedding but an inclusive celebration.
Also, some bonus advice from me: if you are thinking of your friend’s wedding reception as a hassle, it is okay not to go! You’re probably not thinking of that friend as someone you’re particularly close to, or someone you hope to spend a lot of time with in the future, so follow David Plotz’s advice and let this wedding be your last significant interaction as friends. Skip the reception, send a lovely card and something inexpensive off the registry, and ghost out of each other’s lives as your best selves.
“An article on Saturday about a lawsuit challenging Seattle’s new trash policy misstated the mathematical formula in the plaintiff’s lawsuit to determine whether more than 10 percent of a garbage can’s contents should have been placed in another bin. The formula is: The height of the bin and the square of the radius multiplied by Pi, and then divided by 10; it is not the radius and twice the height of the can multiplied by Pi and then divided by 10.”
Some questions seem so complex. Like gentrification. If you move to one of the few neighborhoods you can afford and, in so doing, unintentionally contribute to the raising of rents in your area, are you a gentrifier? Or is gentrification not the effect of individuals but rather the byproduct of larger capitalist forces acting on us all?
As documentary topics go, it doesn’t come much punchier than this. I recently sat down to discuss the reception of the movie with its writer/star. We quickly bonded over pets — I proudly self describe as a “crazy cat lady” and Thorpe’s cats “Bruno” and “Rocket” are scene stealers as he performs vocal exercises — and a mutual hope that the film’s issues will one day feel alien as younger generations grow up with less stigma about their homosexuality.
