Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Come on, Kate, that’s a little kooky, but certainly it’s not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory.” Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.
The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.
It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it’s a cheap joke. But there’s something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.
And then there’s this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.
Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don’t think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.
A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.
Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they’re not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.
At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house’s most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.
And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God’s sitting.
CREW Directed by: Charlie Todd Executive Producers: Justin Ayers, Andrew Soltys, and Charlie Todd Producer: Andrew Soltys Production Manager: Jordan Drake Associate Producer: Stephanie Roush Key PA: Kristin Kirkley Production Assistants: Aspen Nelson, Jackson Griffin, Mecca McDonald, Elvis Minaya Technical Director: Justin Ayers Camera Operators: Ces Tayo, Corey Noll, Sofia Chavez, Jake Hachey, Mike Doyle, Marius Becker, Gabriel Stanley Assistant Camera: Jenna Cleveland, Katie Voss Camera PA: Antone Axten Sound Mixer: Brett Van Deusen Art Director: Steve Phelps Music: Tyler Walker Post Sound: Mat Guido Editor: Ryan Spears
For our latest mission, we surprised temp workers with the most epic office party ever. We built a fake room in the middle of our production studio in New York. From the inside, it looked like a boring conference room, but we secretly rigged it with hidden cameras and special effects. We hired real temp workers to come in for a day’s worth of work. They had no idea that everyone else in the office was an actor or what was about to go down.
Using Craigslist and TaskRabbit, we hired people to come in for a one-day gig of envelope stuffing. The temps first reported to a reception area and then were brought to the fake conference room by Agent Cody Lindquist, playing our fake company’s HR Manager. Agent Ken McGraw was already seated and working in the conference room, pretending to be another temp.
Enjoy the video above first, and then check out the behind-the-scenes below.
Special thanks to Flashtalking for their collaboration.
Outlining the fake room in our studio.
We found the most boring, generic carpet possible.
Surrounding the exterior door with walls.
The drop ceiling coming together.
Our Technical Director Justin Ayers working on the projectors embedded in the ceiling.
Disco ball trap door!
We installed two air dancers (AKA wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men), cutting holes in the walls and hiding them behind paintings that slid on a track.
We even had ducting for air conditioning in our little fake room.
We had full control of all of the lighting in the room. While the ceiling lights looked light fluorescent tubes, they were LEDs that could change to any color.
Four projectors installed in the ceiling were able to light up every wall with custom graphics during the party.
Dress rehearsal with cast.
Robotic hidden camera operators were right on the other side of the wall.
Our robotic hidden cameras were placed behind two way mirrors throughout the room.
The view from the control room.
Enjoy the video above to see how it all went down! Thank you to all of the temp workers who were all excellent sports about the surprise.
Mission Accomplished
OTHER RESOURCES:
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I’ve slowly been chipping away at drawing scenes from that imaginary Muppet retelling of the Princess Bride, figured it was about time to share what I’ve drawn on Tumblr!
Fondly remembering the time that a cat owner casually entered their calico Maine Coon in a cat fancier’s competition and the judges lost their minds because the cat was 1) male and 2) able to bear children
Anyway here’s Dawntreader Texas Calboy as a silly lil kitten
Here’s an excerpt from one of the articles about the drama his entry caused among the Cat Fanciers that I thought was very earnest and sweet <3
I was about to say he would technically be an intersex king (not because I dislike the concept of trans cats, just bc intersex rep is sorely needed too) but I did some more reading on this icon and actually found the article OP referenced.
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He’s not your usual male calico kitty as it turns out. That’s already cool and rare, but he’s even cooler and rarer than that!
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Calboy is a chimera!! Which is really fucking cool of you ask me. The chances of having a male calico this way are slim to none, but the mad lad still exists! What an icon. I would die for Calboy.
Everyone in the tags of this post @ cat show judges
Originally I was looking for an adult picture of Calboy
(He’s so pretty 🥰)
But I also found a source for the article screenshotted above! And folks it’s WILD. It’s an incredibly interesting read if you happen to love hearing about niche hobby drama. It’s also just a fantastically written article!
The parts I find the most interesting are about how conservative the cat fanciers association is. This isn’t even all of the parts that talk about that.
People are so mad about this cat spefically because he has female colors. An animal who couldn’t choose how it was born. This is happening in Texas by the way. Hm. I wonder how they treat trans people over there?
Reblogging again for this crucial addition
wait i’m sorry
people are being transphobic. towards a cat.
what the actual fuck.
Also, not to derail, but “You know, we don’t let three-legged cats in here either”
Well, to put it politely, “Screw you and every single one of you who make that sort of decision”
As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.
Both options are great.
Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their ‘You’re Too Emotionally Immature To Understand’ cannon.
What they aren’t expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:
Are you okay?
That’s not the kind of language I was raised to use with others.
Do you need a moment to think on why that wasn’t acceptable?
This is no way to engage in intelligent conversation. Please try that again in a kinder tone if you’d like this to continue. (I really like this one because it lets you turn their public-shame rhetoric around)
For those of you who’d are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:
What’s happening in your life to cause you this much anger? I can’t imagine hurting so badly that I need to hurt other people.
Who taught you it was acceptable to treat other people this way? Certainly not the Jesus I remember.
Whatever happened to 'judge not lest ye be judged’?
If I talked like that in front of my parents or grandparents I would be ashamed.
I think there’s something you need to pray on before we try and have this conversation.
And my all time favorite:
“It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart.”
(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)
TLDR: It’s much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren’t expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don’t get angry, get spitefully polite! :)
So Australia has a yearly tradition going back over 20 years, that every Australia Day we all gather round our screens to watch an ad for a certain product. It’s so ingrained in our consciousness that the ads don’t even really relate to what they’re supposed to sell anymore, we all just know.
This year the ad broke containment, and non-Australians are having their brains melted by this bizarre tradition, so international followers, lets see if you can work out what this is trying to sell before the last few seconds.
OK, so I was going to rb this later, but this is too fantastic not to share. Key take aways:
I'm afraid not. They are barely in it. Crowley dies in the beginning of Season 3 tragically, because of pies, and Aziraphale also dies in Season 3 but hilariously, because of falling in a hole.
The rest of Season 3 is a story about three little rabbits who go to the big city to open a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, and their family's involvement with the East German secret police in the early 1960s.
Neil Gaiman and Roz Kaveney at the British Library event Why We Need Fantasy 20.11.2023 :) ❤
Neil: I don’t remember if it was you or John M. Ford, the late Mike Ford, who pointed out to me first that there is a thing that I do that I was not aware of doing. And it was.. and I remember this being pointed out to me at the time of the publication of American Gods. Or possibly even before it was published, when I sent it out a manuscript. Because it was pointed out to me that one way that you can tell that you’re entering the third act of a Neil Gaiman story is there is always a kiss that sort of ends the second act. And it’s never a sort of romantic kiss. It’s always a kiss that is unexpected and a little bit wrong, but it symbolizes where we’re going to go next.
Roz: Yeah, that was Mike, it’s too smart for me.
Neil: That was Mike. And I remember arguing with him and then him pointing out that all the places I’d done it. And then I did it again in the Anansi Boys and didn’t realize that I’d done it.And then I forget about this thing. And I saw somebody on Tumblr had found an interview with me from 2002 where I’m talking about this and the kiss, and they’re like, ’Still doing it then’.
:)) Yep, Neil is still doing it :D <3 (this is the tumblr post)
I made a gif for everyone who needs to send away 2023 or unfrighteningly welcome 2024 (yeah I admit, I might have watched too much ofmd Izzy recently :D <3)
On the list of things ABSOLUTELY NOBODY HAS EVER ASKED ME FOR. Here’s the dialogue from the TV show that the Young family are watching in Episode 3, before Adam heads off for an early night.
From 2019. I just ran across this on the hard drive looking for something else, and wondered if it had ever been posted anywhere…
do any other gomens fans end up in a situation where you have to explain gomens to someone who doesn’t know jack shit about it and are faced with the reality that you have no fucking clue how to explain the shitshow that your brain has become
It's astonishing how often couples don't look at the camera and say "for purposes of clarity we actually are a couple" in real life or in drama. Things like that are often left up to the viewer to figure out.
Funny you should ask me that. As an obsessive reader of Good Omens Season 3 fanfiction I was amazed to see how much they have right including:
Sadie and Dottie's boarding home for indigent chinchillas.
Crowley's sad death after eating too many pies.
Who stole Mr Wimble's Magic Hat (how they got this one I will never know).
Why Aziraphale wasn't in the gorilla suit, and also
The Herring Problem.
Frankly I'm not sure why we're even going to make Season 3 any more. You people are already so far ahead of us. Although I suppose that the pies were a bit obvious.
Male Scifi and Fantasy writers: Look at this !Strong! female character! She can fight and solve puzzles, and ends up with the sidekick not the hero! Isn’t she a great character?
Everyone: No, she’s one-dimensional and still only exists to please the hero’s ego
Male scifi and fantasy writers: You’re never happy! This is how characters are written! Besides, it’s much harder for us to write women because we are men!
Terry Pratchett: *creates a female character who is literally the embodyment of a dog, sets her up to be the love interest of Protagonist Hero Man.* *writes her as clever, emotionally tortured, lonely and powerful* *uses her to explore difficulties of bisexuality and masculine dominated workforces*
Terry Pratchett: *Creates a pair of old witches, one of whom is a virgin and the other who has slept with lots of men.* *makes them best friends, never dismisses one lifestyle of the other, explains lifestyle choices based on characters history and personality, uses this to develop each character as the books progress*
Terry Pratchett: *Writes Sybil Rankin* *makes the powerful rich lady heavy set but beautiful, never plays her by her looks, develops her as she ages, acknowledges the way society views such people and then spits on their attitudes* *does it again with Agnes*
Terry Pratchett: *Writes a book about an entire army secretly being women, creates complex female relationships, introduces same sex relationships completely naturally*
Terry Pratchett: *takes old joke about female dwarves and uses it to explore gender identity without making it seem forced or unnatural, carefully discusses some of the issues and complextities whilst still making funny and witty observasions and maintaining genuine fantasy tropes*
Terry Pratchett: *DOES THIS ALL OVER AND OVER AGAIN, DEVELOPING CHARACTERS AS HIS VEIW OF THE WORLD DEVELOPS AND CAREFULLY APOLOGIZES FOR EARLY MISTAKES*
Everything you've heard about Season 3 of Good Omens is always true, because if there's one thing we love doing on Good Omens, it's telling everyone the plot years ahead of time.
Aziraphale will be a villain called The Snaffler, a costumed super-thief out to steal the famed Jet Jaguar diamond in order to power his world-destroying laser beam gun. Only his wife the lovely and hilarious Sadie, a bumbling Spanish Police Inspector with a moustache, and a man in a gorilla suit stand between him and his goal.
Here’s a funny little joke Here’s something that you can tell is a joke but don’t get and will only figure out five years later Here’s a surprisingly cool fantasy concept Here’s a unique and well written simile Here’s a lil guy Here’s something that has aged depressingly well into the modern day Here’s something that has aged remarkably queer into the modern day Here’s a character that you can barely understand what he’s saying Here is the most terrifying and deeply disturbing concept you have ever heard, casually mentioned Here is the dumbest fucking pun you’ve ever heard but in the best way Here is a quote so profound that it makes you view morality and the world in a different way Here is a plot twist that you can’t tell if it’s genius or stupid Congratulations! You’ve finished the book! It has fundamentally changed you as a person and you will never be the same!
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