Tuesday, April 30, 2019

"The Who's Tommy" at the Kennedy Center

I saw the final performance of "The Who's Tommy" as part of the Kennedy Center's Broadway Center Stage program, minimally staged short run productions. 
Content warnings for the show include onstage gunshots, murder, references to child sexual situations, bullying, and a sex worker named G*psy.*
I had seen the movie at some point in my childhood so went in with a vague recollection that that Tommy didn't speak but played pinball. 
The Broadway version dates from the 1990's, but the concept album, and the movie predate that. It is of a piece with something like "Jesus Christ Superstar" in that the songs move forward, expecting the audience to fill in gaps. 
The Broadway Show begins just before World War II when Tommy's parents meet and fall in love. Informed her husband had died in the war, Tommy's mom starts a new relationship. When Tommy's dad discovers this on his arrival home he fights with and then kills Tommy's almost stepdad. Deciding to tell the police it was the almost stepdad with the gun, the parents realize Tommy witnessed everything and tell him to say nothing, that he heard and saw nothing. As a result Tommy stops speaking or responding. Tests are able to determine no cause, and Tommy's essentially non-responsive state leaves him open to much abuse. And then they discover he does respond to pinball. 
The cast of this show was wonderful. This show asks an incredible amount of its ensemble and they were up to it. The choreography was fabulous and energetic. Tommy is played by three actors, and in the first act the younger two's inner dreams and monologue are expressed by the adult Tommy, and then they appear as echoes once adult Tommy is in place. 
The show moves quickly and as such the ideas of justice, or why Tommy chooses and then rejects a public life get short shrift. But Tommy does seem happier at the end and the music is rocking. 
It is always interesting to revisit things one saw as a child, although certainly this is a different form in many ways. As an adult I found this much harder to watch, and yet it's still a good time. 
I always read all the cast bios, and so it was fun to see two locals in the cast, including one who had been in Signature's "Billy Elliot".

*It is my understanding that this character was originally called the Acid Queen. Wow, that change is an interesting choice. 

Monday, April 29, 2019

Writing in Venice

I started writing this post in the Venice airport, after a flight delay left me with a bit more time than planned in the airport. It remains to be seen if I will regret not having taken the earlier flight to Germany originally offered since I am now thinking good thoughts for a swift passport control line. 
But there was something delicious about one last breakfast in the hotel, getting to chat with writing friends old and new, drinking one more hot chocolate (ciocolatta calda) before taking the somewhat leisurely boat to the airport. (And oops, I got in the wrong boarding line and they had to page me. I swear I would have noticed eventually.)
I did the Venice Writer's Retreat with Rachael Herron two years ago and returning was lovely. I explored the city less this year but in a delightful, look I get to go back to this place and that place kind of way. Although I did find a new to me gelato place that was wonderful. I am still figuring out Euros, and there were times I either confused the coins or misunderstood how best to make it easier for them to give me change. 
I wrote pages of words, both from writing prompts and on a fiction piece. I got to recconnect with old friends, make new ones, eat possibly more cheese than was healthy. 
(Also it turns out when you are the last one on the plane and someone has taken your seat they are like, shrug, how about that row.)
I opted in for almost all the group excursions, so did a walking tour where I learned about a cursed house, a boat tour of some of the other islands, rowing with wine and snacks (I was declared an okay rowing student, my boatmates did much better), and screen printing. At the end I was happy sad to leave. There had been so many people, so many food delights, so many writing delights, I was so ready to get back to my computer and to work, and also so sad that the next breakfast would not involve writer friends and hot chocolate. That I would no longer hear Italian seagulls cawing. Of course this means it it likely the exact right amount of time. When you are still happy sad and not yet really over everyone. But like the ciocolatta calda, it is a little bittersweet.
(And I made it through the Munich airport in enough time to get my connecting flight, even with passport control and specialized screening. And back in the US when the passport guy asked if I met up with friends while travelling, my smile was very big.)

Friday, April 26, 2019

7 Posts: Bonus Bonus Bonus Post - The Top Twenty Songs

It's been popular to rank the songs season by season, but I decided to wait for the whole thing and try to come up with a list.  I ranked this on a combination of could I still remember the song, did the song offer some sort of useful commentary and surprise, as well as being fun to couch dance too.  Okay, some of these are not couch dancers.  Some of them are super weird and that's what makes them great. 
-A Boy Band Made Up of Four Joshes - This song is just pure joy in it's 
-A Diagnosis - It's a great song, and a song that survives outside the context of the show, and yet is more meaningful if you've been on this journey with Rebecca. 
- Don't Be A Lawyer - This one falls into the mostly fun side.  It's also the culmination of a journey for Rebecca as we've been watching her struggle to like this job she clearly hates.  
- Dream Ghost - Dream Ghost hits on multiple levels.  It's a fun tune, it pokes fun at a common method of change for fictional characters, and the dream ghost also has great advice.  
-Face Your Fears - This song remains the moment I went from cautiously interested in the show to fully on board.  Much like the "Sexy Getting Ready Song" it makes use of challenging the text within the song to make sure you understand that the metaphor is terrible, but also involves a back up children's choir because why wouldn't it.  
-First Penis I Saw - It's a catchy tune about a moment we all come to recognize has special significance and yet also maybe shouldn't. 
-Friendtopia - It's hard for me to choose between "Friendtopia" and "Let's Generalize About Men" but to me both fall into girl group bonding stuff, and yet, this one is just a little more of a bop.  
-Gettin' Bi - This was a delightful song, and also did a thing that is sadly unexpected it network TV right now.  Darryl realized he was attracted to someone of the same gender and didn't decide he was gay, he decided he was bisexual.  Obviously, all paths are valid, but it was so nice to see a show represent bisexuality as even an option.  Plus it is fun to couch dance too. 
-The Group Mind Has Decided You're in Love - Again I think this works on many levels, although I have some friends who disagree with me.  I think the send up of shipping along with the typical declaration of group peer pressure towards a specific coupling in musicals, the we won't be falling in love (followed of course by the couple always falling in love).
-How to Clean Up - Cracked me up in it's brief simplicity. 
-I Hate Everything But You - It is a delightful song.  Yes, I love snarky dude, as established, but this song is great.  
-I've Always Never Believed in You - I do love a Paula song, but also, I love a song about how you might not really have known if your kid was going to be great, but are glad they kind of did. 
-JAP Battle and the JAP Battle Reprise - Both delightful.  The songs both thread a very careful line of acknowledging and yet not playing into stereotypes.  Besides we all need a good frenemy song. 
-One Indescribable Instant - I swear it's not the Lea Salonga of it all.  Okay, it's totally the Lea Salonga of it, but still, this song again captures these songs that outlast the movies they are from such that you can still hum the song even when your memory of the characters is muddled.  
- Remember That We Suffered - I know there's a lot of love for "Where's the Bathroom?" but for me "Remember That We Suffered"  manged to be both funny and poignant in equal measure. 
-Settle for Me - This song was an early entry, demonstrating character notes, as well as a willingness to use multiple styles.  
-Sex With a Stranger - This song demonstrated some wonderful sex positivity as well as nice balance of concern and excitement, in other ways it felt very real. 
-The Buzzing From the Bathroom - This is one of those things where if I told you there was a "Les Miserables" style song about realizing your spouse has not been getting orgasms from sex with you, but this worked and managed to be funny and tragic.  Well, tragic for Tim.  And his wife.  
-The Moment is Me - Heather hated all of this, but the song rolled on regardless of her feeling about songs about realizing she had everything she needed to move on. 
-The Sexy Getting Ready Song - It's just amazing.  It showed the layered, knowing, and quirky vibe the show was going for.  And captured a very real thing. 

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

7 Posts: Bonus Plus Post - I Had a Theory

The show creators have always been pretty transparent that "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" was a show about someone raised on the rom-coms who tried to take them literally.  Which is to say it's a look at what it would mean if you watched some of the crazy stalkery manipulation that gets passed off as adorable when in pursuit of love.  I listened to a podcast once where two dudes said, unironically, the only difference between a rom-com and a stalker movie is that it's positively received behavior.  And here's the thing, they are not wrong.  But it sounded to me that they were sort of saying if she likes it, then you're cool.  And if she doesn't and you don't back down, then you're wrong.  Not, hey, we shouldn't engage in this behavior ever.  
Over four seasons, Rebecca has upended her life, engaged in terrible behavior, been the victim of terrible behavior, dated three different men for long enough for them to be considered contenders, made new friends, changed her career, gotten into therapy, and worked on her mental health.  In many ways the trajectory of the show had already been a lot and enough.  
I confess, I am often the person who tries not to pick sides, pick ships, especially in a show that had a whole song about shipping people who don't want to be shipped.  It's not because I can't decide, it's that I have often seen shows do things I would not have predicted and they made me believe.  So I kept an open mind as they brought in Greg 2.0, revisited Josh, and Nathan.  I watched people do polls about which she should choose.  But as I mentioned in the post about the rom-com episode, by the end of that episode they almost had me convinced that Nathan should be with Maya, so I try to enjoy the ride.  
But I also wondered.  Early on, Dr. Akopian had said true love doesn't have to be a person.  And I wondered if that was the message.  Not that Rachel doesn't deserve love, but that that love doesn't have to reside in a person.  People often say to me, oh but you read and write romance, you want the happy ending. I do. But I am also well aware that ending a story with characters smooching doesn't always feel like the happiest choice.  
So, yeah, my theory was what if the back and forth between Josh, Greg, and Nathan wasn't the typical final season stuff about drawing out the decision.  What if the point was that this wasn't really the thing that was going to make her happy.  This was the distraction.  
And after going "The Bachelor" style with dates, and choices, Rebecca realized that her true love was the songs.  The thing that had always been there for her.  And that's who she ended up with.  

Monday, April 22, 2019

7 Posts: Bonus Post - The Community Around You

By titling the show "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" it focused on how Rebecca upended her life in pursuit of Josh.  But, of course, the Josh pursuit, was a metaphor. (Sorry, Josh.  You deserve love too!)  Because what Rebecca, and anyone who watched the panic attack caused by success in her prior life, knew, was that her life back in New York had sucked.  And yes, moving across the country to reconnect with your camp boyfriend is not a great choice.  And it won't always work out.  But it is very true, much like that are you emotionally stable enough to get bangs quiz, there are moments when you know something isn't working and you reach out to change something to make it better.  
Regardless of how Rebecca's relationship with Josh did or didn't work out, her life got better in West Covina less because of Josh, but because Rebecca found community (and also, therapy, a diagnosis, and some medication).  Early on it looked like they were quickly wrapping up the folks around Rebecca, much the way that shows often do to get some resolutions out of the way to clear space for the finale.  But they weren't done.  Heather and Hector got married and moved into their own place and figured out how to negotiate life as adults.  Kind of.  Valencia and Beth move to New York, but struggled with being ready for commitment on the same timeline.  (Valencia's joy at realizing she could propose was a thing to behold.) Nathaniel decided to be nice, a thing he told many people, because that's exactly how that works.  Paula passed the bar and sent her kid off to the non-Peace Corps thing.  Greg figured out that West Covina and his dad's restaurant were actually kind of great, and a lot of his negativity had to do with his dad having been a drunk who mishandled the business.  Darryl and white Josh figured out that they were leaning on each other for emotional support too much, and white Josh got back in the dating game and Darryl found April in the hospital waiting room.  
There were further developments in finale episode, but in many ways, despite the decision that Rebecca revealed, the thing she really found by going after the wrong thing in the wrong ways, was a really great community.  (Well, white Josh still isn't sold on her, but really who could blame him.)  

Friday, April 19, 2019

7 Posts: Everything is Under Control

The show makes this point so beautifully, that it almost seems repetitive to discuss it, but I still loved the parallels created in the episode in which both Rebecca and Paula tried to power and/or positive outlook their way through their differing health needs.  In many ways this season, and even the series has looked at the circumstances that allowed Rebecca to get to this part of her life, with plenty of success and sure some failures behind her and not have fully recognized her brain and her were at odds. Paula got married young ended up adjacent to the life she truly wanted and is so, so close to getting it.  In the way of many of us of a certain age, it won't be everything she dreamed, but it's a dream about to be realized, and having had to give up so many dreams she is not willing to listen to people who tell her she looks bad, and she might need to take a rest, and she could take the bar next time.  Paula has seen success come to her when she powers through, so she keeps powering through the sweat, through the fatigue, through the pain, until finally she admits she might need a teeny tiny bit of help and goes to her gynecologist assuming she's experiencing menopause, to discover she is actually having a heart attack.  
Similarly, Rebecca has been doing all the work - going to therapy, having changed her job, and now having done a new thing, entered into a relationship with someone who already knows all the worst things she has done.  So, yes, romance has been a crutch for her before, but not this time, because she has done the work.  And she doesn't need medication because she has done the work.  And yes, also, because she let her mom drug her and it ended badly, so medication is wrapped up in some really bad baggage for her.  And so she gets Greg to go to a water park.  And while Greg looks like a totally different person, he is still Greg.  Water parks and Greg are not going to be a happy joint outing.  And so it doesn't go the way Rebecca had envisioned and so she reverts to alcohol and bad behavior and in a way that was super real to life but less so to TV, the folks she tries to throw her self into realize this is Rebecca in pain not Rebecca in love with them again and they send her on her way.  
Both Rebecca and Paula are forced to realize that sometimes pushing your body and your brain and trying to power through your illness doesn't work.  Sometimes you have to stop, or let the drugs get your brain chemistry closer to where it needs to be, and that's not cheating or slacking, it's just what you need at the moment.  
And I think it's a lesson we all need sometimes.  

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Three Interesting Things

1.  With Chelsea Manning tangentially related to some of last week's news, there were some folks confused about how to refer to her.  Media Matters has a comprehensive guide with examples.  
2. Silvana has some great hockey romance recommendations if playoff season has you jonesing for more hockey
3. I grew up in DC and have always thought water was boring at best.  I went to a retreat with church where the water was so coppery it tasted like someone had stuck pennies in the glass.  Living in a tall building I now get to see the cloudy water phenomenon up close. And the use of chloramine makes me itchy every year. But this "Shark Tank" contestant explained how different city water treatment systems, including DC's require different filtration, aka that's why the one siz fits all filter doesn't change things dramatically. 

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

7 Posts: That Rom-Com Episode

It's not uncommon for shows to to an episode where they dive into a side character.  Within the world of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" we've known who Nathan is since he showed up, and we know who Maya is too.  But this Nathan realizes that Rebecca loves romantic comedies and that perhaps by watching some he could learn something works on a number of levels.  First, learning about something the woman you profess to love has loved and tried to share with you all along well after the fact is in itself rom-commy.  As is dreaming about the thing.  Obviously totally happy and functional couples have interests the other doesn't (see also, water parks, but I digress).  But Nathan wasn't checking out rom-coms to see if by dismissing an entire genre of film, he had missed out on something he might enjoy.  Nathan was looking for research he could use to hijack his way back into Rebecca's life, much the way he had thought about using the diary that her half brother had used.  He was, in fact, using season 1 (and yeah, okay, the other seasons too) Rebecca behavior.  In prior seasons, Trent had been the mirror for how over the top Rebecca's behavior was.  But Nathan also had a lot to learn about being appropriate.  
So, dream Nathan and dream Maya fake dated in order to make both their exes jealous and in a testament to the wonderful writing and acting in the show, by the time they got to the building karaoke scene, even though I knew this was a rom-com set up, and I still knew there were lots of reasons Maya and Nathan were not the appropriate choices for each other, I was kinda ready to buy into it.  
It was a dream, so we don't have to worry about if Nathan is still technically Maya's boss, or the other various power differentials that make this a bad choice.  Instead, we got a dream rom-com.  But that episode also served as a reminder to both the viewers and to Nathan, that it's easy to get swept up in the moment, it's easy to feel like all the forces of the universe must be behind you. It's easy to justify a long line of terrible choices in service of one good ending.  Nothing is ever perfect, but that doesn't mean that bad behavior should be rewarded, even when people sing delightfully about it.  

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

7 Posts: The Sex Ed Chat

"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" from "The Sexy Getting Ready Song" to "Sex With a Stranger" has always been sex positive and sex informative at the same time.  (See, it is possible!)  So, I particularly enjoyed the balance, or "Cats" episode.  To distract herself from what would later be referred to as the love quadrangle of Josh, Greg, and Nathaniel, Rebecca decided to up her exercise and get back on the dating apps.  Valencia warns her about cheap leggings, but Rebecca continues on, only to end up with a yeast infection.  She reschedules her date, but then attempts to overtreat it, and ends up with bacterial vaginosis. 
In an odd parallel Greg and Nathaniel meet at the gym and become buddies, putting white Josh in the uncomfortable position of knowing a thing that would affect their bonding, but not wanting to have his day job infected (pun intended) with Rebecca stuff.  
So Rebecca tries to not tell her date why they can't meet, and white Josh tries to not see what's happening with Greg and Nathaniel, and in the end neither of these strategies work.  Rebecca ends up confessing the infection to Jason, who turns out to be the kid of a gynecologist who would have preferred honesty anyway.  Greg and Nathaniel both decide to declare themselves to Rebecca, and meeting outside her apartment realize they have her in common.  They also run into mostly naked Josh who has also decided to declare himself and the noise outside means Jason discovers the love quadrangle and opts out.  
The show has done a lot of great things to normalize some really common and hopefully uncommon things.  (I wouldn't wish a love quadrangle or a Trent on an enemy.)  But the idea that hiding the truth instead of owning it, while not uncommon in TV shows as a message, is applied here to things like yeast infections in a really lovely way.  

Monday, April 15, 2019

WRW Retreat 2019

The WRW Retreat, aka In the Company of Writers, was this past weekend. Alexis Daria gave the Friday Keynote, talking about writing and also working for and with a writing organization, and moving it to serve everyone. And how slowing down, instead of being reactive can help us focus better on the big goals. 
We had two tracks so I missed some great stuff. (Best of problems to have, right?) I did a critique exchange with folks. Alexis Daria talked building a brand. I went to Cheryl Etchison's workshop on connected series. We had an awards luncheon. Cheryl Etchison also talked pacing. I tried to keep time with the agent/editor pitch sessions (people were very chatty). American Author was fun. Alisha Rai talked about how watching her mother face racism as a doctor helped make her more determined to speak up and speak out. We had our first ever costume contest which was super fun. There was dancing. 
And Angelina Lopez talked highs and lows, and how having been a long term member of WRW meant she knew the bumps in the writing career were par for the course, which didn't make it easier but helped her know to keep looking ahead. 
And we ended with the raffle which was fun. Whether calendars or wine, it's always fun to see what ends up beeping the hot item. 
I raced away from the retreat to head to my book club since we had a special guest, Mia Sosa, who I had also seen Thursday at East City Books with Tracey Livesay and Sally Thorne which was also an amazing (and well attended) event. It is a great problem to have when all the cool things stack up. 

Saturday, April 13, 2019

7 Posts: That Casting Change

"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" did a thing that used to be more common. They brought back a character with a different actor.  Obviously, as adults we know that people have to take jobs and opportunities on the table, and if your show would like you back in a future season, but you book, say a Broadway show, well, we all get it.  But of course, just as a show makes side notes about the new guy this season, season meaning the quarterly one because of course anything else would be a weird way to talk about you life, they weren't going to do it and not talk about it.  
It was time for a high school reunion.  And of course that meant Josh had assigned extra importance to his role as prom king.  And it meant Rebecca pondered - as her friends all made big life changes, if maybe she had overanalyzed and missed out on a true love.  Heather and Valencia both said of course it was Greg, which seemed, maybe not entirely in keeping with Heather and Valencia.  Rebecca said well, except for how they were toxic and brought out the worst in each other, so basically only if he was like an entirely different person.  And then an entirely different person walked through the door.  
It is a credit to many things, casting, writing, and the acting skills of Skylar Astin that by the end of the season (and by this I mean TV season) I had to keep reminding myself that Santino Fontana originated this role.  It isn't that I will ever forget "Settle For Me" or let's get drunk and make fun of people, because I will not. But the show made me believe that sober, getting his life back together Greg looked like Skylar Astin.  

Friday, April 12, 2019

7 Posts: Singing to the Darkness

Early on in "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", the show made it clear that the songs are in Rebecca's head, that she's not even that good at singing in real life.  Nevertheless the songs are a delight.  Even when things are hard, or sad, or everything in between.  The "Sexy Getting Ready Song" was weird and strange, and I've told people over time that it took until "Face Your Fears" to see the vibe that the show was going for, but it was all there from the beginning.  The songs are a sign that Rebecca doesn't see the world clearly, not because they are songs per se, but because the songs contain an awareness, both of realities Rebecca isn't ready to see, but also clues to the larger pop culture landscape.  
"Crazy -Ex-Girlfriend" isn't blaming pop culture per se, but it is taking a look at the behavior that gets held up as romantic, at how these things look different when done by people of different genders or different sexualities.  Whether it's the idea that a woman who truly wants love would of course mold and wax and pluck herself into a better, skinnier, hotter version of herself, that shipping people who have told you they can't make a relationship work, or that folks who are sarcastic and mean might actually need deep therapeutic work and possibly addiction counseling before they are ready for a relationship, and all sorts of things in between, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" has addressed both the deep dark scary stuff and the oh my gosh excitement of bonding with friends through song.  
Certainly many of Rebecca's various coping mechanisms have been shown to be unhealthy, but the singing, real or imagined has helped this show seem wonderful and often bright as it addressed a range of things, many of them dark.  
It's possible you could argue the songs are another mask, but I think the songs provide a useful balance.  Musicals often go places that would be fairly unbearable in pure play form, whether it's failed revolutions or mental health struggles, or more successful revolutions.  I always talk about telling someone I was seeing "Fun Home" and "Hamilton" the same week and they thought "Fun Home" sounded dark, and I was like, but you know lots of people, like lots more people die in "Hamilton" right?  "Fun Home" had songs too, which is honestly part of why I added it to the list.  (In fact it has a very sparkly song, and love song, and a longing song.)  
So, the songs in "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" helped keep the darkness away, even when the songs were about the darkness. 

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Three Interesting Things

1. I waited until after I had watched the first "Fosse/Verdon" episode to read this, and while I enjoyed the show, it's tilt towards misunderstood genius and the woman who brings out the best in him, is at least so far, hard to ignore.  The review of the episodes made available to critics talks about how the source material might have made some of this unavoidable. 
2. This interview with LaQuette took another look at racism and being and writing Black characters in romance. 
3. YA author Megan Shepherd's dog woke her up, which is how she realized her son was having a seizure.  

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

"Junk" at Arena Stage

I'm going to dive right into the content warnings first, and then get to discussion of the play. "Junk" has an onstage suicide (no gore).  It contains a Chinese American character, a Cuban American character, and a few Jewish characters. Each of them is subjected to microaggressions. As far as I recall, only the white non-Jewish male and Black characters escape. There is also a lot of what we might call period appropriate misogyny. And if journalists who sleep with one of their sources is a thing for you, this has that too. At one point the music resembles a high pitched hum. 
All listed up like that it makes the play seem a little harsher than it is. However it is a play about capitalism, specifically capitalism and Wall Street type stuff throughout the 1980's, the after effects we are still dealing with today. If you like plays where there is someone to root for, this play doesn't really give you that. If you like watching people fall deeper into traps, greed traps of their own making, then this is ninety minutes of fun. 
The focus is on a money maker who revolutionized the use of junk bonds to finance takeovers, the other money maker who scoffed at the newfangled way and the company caught in the middle of their fight. 
This is staged in the round. Some of the directorial transitions were wonderful, one causing a full audience chuckle. I did feel, from my vantage point at least, the action angled diagonally just enough that I noticed, but this was a small quibble. 
The cast was wonderful.  The lack of intermission worked well to keep you immersed in the action.  It creates an interesting parallel to "Sweat" which I also saw at Arena, which looked at the death of a steel factory from the point of view of various factory workers, since the company that is the center of this is also in part a Pennsylvania steel company.  It is the kind of play that leaves you thinking about how embedded money is, even as you pass by all the corporate sponsorship logos.  

Tuesday, April 09, 2019

7 Posts: The Mom Resolution

Since it was the final season of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" they had a lot of things to resolve.  One of them was Rebecca's relationship with her mom, a relationship that had often times fed into and exacerbated some of Rebecca's behavior.  The last time Rebecca had seen her mom had ended with Rebecca in the hospital, so, this was a test in many ways of how well Rebecca's therapy and work on herself had been successful.  Mental illness or no, I think we can all sympathize with the idea that this time we are so sure we are grown enough to handle being with our parents, around other adults who still think of us as kids, and who still want to view our lives through a specific marker of success or no. 
So Rebecca has a job she loves, but doesn't sound cool, she's unmarried, she's childless, and yet, for most people having a job and friends and being able to pay rent would be plenty.  But of course, Rebecca's mom is getting an award but it's about who will give it to her, and she has made a huge promise she kind of hasn't been able to live up to and had been hoping that will just come true.  Fortunately for all of them, Valencia is now on the East Coast and makes it happen for them.  So in the end Rebecca's mom gets the night of pretending she had always dreamed of, and Rebecca gets to see her mom happy and sometimes that's the best you can get from family.  

Monday, April 08, 2019

7 Posts: Car Trips

The fourth and final season of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" wrapped last week, so it's time again for 7 Posts.  For those not quite caught up, I'll alert you when I get into finale spoilers.  
I found the car trip episode, well, honestly a little like a car trip with someone you generally haven't been alone in a confined space with for a long stretch in a while.  It was partially an excuse to create usual character pairings.  Paula and Josh have known each other a while.  For a while Paula was so team Josh it was, well it was definitely not healthy.  And in the way of friends, Rebecca and Josh have figured things out and come to a good place, and Paula, the dedicated friend who had fought for him, had felt just as invested in him, but of course got none of the apology directly, was still meh on Josh. 
Rebecca of course hangs out with Darryl all the time.  Her concern here is that Darryl is the best friend to have when you want to dive deep into your feelings and therefore, as she warned him, not the best friend when you want to have a day where you pretend everything is okay.  And of course it was fair for Rebecca to state boundaries, but also endemic of these weird parameters we try to establish to maintain social norms.  Saying let's go on a trip but please don't be yourself is not super fair.  Rebecca is entirely within her rights to establish topics about herself that are off limits.  But they were both asking too much of each other in the end and probably would have both been better off not trying to piece together a trip that was never going to live up to their imagined version of it.  
Nathan and Heather obviously know each other and have mutual friends, but of course, Heather is a straight shooter to say the least, and Nathan is a pretty shallow well most days, so his interest in knowing who Heather was was pretty minimal.  I felt the Nathan turns out to have a deep connection to the nanny the weakest part of this.  It's a challenge because most of the time in this show goes to Rebecca, so Nathan's daddy issues had been clear and he certainly didn't have a good relationship with his mom, and it makes sense given what we know about his family that there would be a nanny. I just found the jerk has a squishy underside not as powerful as I felt like it was supposed to be.  However, it's very possible that this was the point.  Tons of shows have a character who seems mean, or shallow, or whatever suddenly reveal secret pain. ("Grey's Anatomy" even riffed on that, having Alex ask in an early season if he should reveal his secret pain to make everything okay.) 
Nathan then spent several episodes telling people he was nice now.  And the other characters reacted to that with a healthy amount of skepticism. Knowing he had secret depths of emotion for this one person in his life helped, but it didn't address or undo all the other behavior he had engaged in.  And it shouldn't.  
So much like a real car trip, there was good, there was bad, and we learned some things. 

Friday, April 05, 2019

This Wasn't About My Chapter, But It Could Have Been

This Guardian article about racism in the romance industry focused on a different chapter. I meant it when I said I was pushing for change in my local chapter, and we do have some signs of progress. But of course the tests won't stop. As this article notes, the chapter in question had a prior president that was Black. So does mine. So does RWA. So has this country. Each of those was surely a sign of progress but not a sign that the work was done. 
It's easy to talk about how the whole world is racist so the problem is so huge that we can't just fix this chapter or this organization. And I agree, but that's really true about everything in an organization. Members cycle in and out, their needs will change, the industry changes. But we can keep pushing for the change we want. And yes my personal goal is to make it a really uncomfortable place for racists and bigots to be. And that only happens through constant work. I have days where it is discouraging to explain to yet one more person that no, people of all shades and across the gender and sexuality spectrum write romance. They have and still do. Good stuff. 
And look YA isn't off the hook here. Knitting isn't off the hook. Corporate America isn't off the hook. Pushing in as many places as we can will help us all. 

Thursday, April 04, 2019

Three Interesting Things

1. This Ijeoma Oluo piece about how hard it is to center those most harmed by white supremacy in discussions of white supremacy is an important point about why some of our forward progress seems to stall. 
2. Fenty pulled a highlighter with an insensitive name.  I mention this because yes, it made it through layers at the company to get announced as an upcoming product - but the company responded switfly, listening to the criticism, apologizing for their error, and getting all their promo updated to not include it, which is the kind of immediate response I find admirable.  (Warning, at some point that link started autoplaying an ad.) 
3. And booksellers are going to have an Annual Romance Bookstore Day!  I confess, it has been a journey.  In the DC area, Borders was the first actual bookstore I could regularly and reliably buy romance.  Then Barnes and Noble.  And now Borders is gone, Barnes and Noble has just a few locations, the romance in Target is dwindling, but we have six romance friendly independent bookstores.  None of them have huge selections, but the romance audience is a tough target because they tend to read at a higher rate which changes how you buy for them.  But I am excited for this current evolution. 

Tuesday, April 02, 2019

Books - A First Quarter Round Up

So, I decided to try doing quarterly round ups of favorite books, the idea being that then when I do my annual round up, I will be able to select from those.  I'm sure this will make doing an annual roundup up of ten (or fifteenish) much easier and not turn my annual round up into a list of forty.  We shall see.  
Angie Thomas' On the Come Up - I started out reading this and then switched to audio (thanks, library!) and found I really liked listening to it.  All respect to the reader, I'm not sure she has a career ahead in rap, but it helped to animate those sections.  The story is about Bri, who feels like the least helpful member of her struggling family, and is focused on making it big as a rapper so she can change that.  Angie Thomas writes some of the best, layered sibling relationships.  It was also a really modern look at the choices we make about living up to or defying stereotypes.  
Rachel Spangler's Edge of Glory - This is the story of two winter Olympians, a skiier and a snowboarder.  It is a slow burn, but also just a really great look at two athletes who do not have time to be distracted, unless of course, they just are.  
Balli Kaur Jaswal's Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows - This is an enjoyable book, a story about a woman trying to find her real career, and stumbling into this class full of widows who turn out to really want to write sexy stories.  As a romance reader, I would say, the sexy stories are often shown in snippets or they cut away for laughs.  The overall story about the challenge of finding your space as an immigrant, or first gen, even years later, and how freeing having the chance to speak freely can be, was great.  
Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All - I do read non-fiction. I also did this one in audio.  It is a sobering look at how our current capitalistic construction is basically set up to perpetuate the status quo.  
Talia Hibbert's Mating the Huntress - This was a fun werewolf hunter meets werewolf novella that is especially enjoyable if you wondered about some of the issues of fated mates stuff.  
Sara Rees Brennan's In Other Lands - Speaking of riffing off other fantasy tropes, this book made me exceedingly happy as it poked fun at literally every thing I have ever whined about in fantasy.  The main character is super snarky and barges into everything, so you have to be willing to go with that, but I snickered and texted someone halfway through that they had to read it.  
Kris Ripper's Gays of Our Lives - This is the first in a series about a small California town that has an active and social LGBTQ community.  This story features the classic grumpy hero and the ball of sunshine hero, and I just adored it to pieces.  And immediately bought the next one.  
Alyssa Cole's Once Ghosted Twice Shy - This novella has math banter.  And normally I try not to keep recommending books in the same series, but, oh, hello, I literally finished A Princess in Theory and did a Twitter search because I was sure someone had already asked about Likotsi, and they had and I was so, so ready. 
Becky Albertalli's Leah on the Offbeat - This might be my favorite of the series, which probably says something about me.  Perhaps that snarky gloom and doom heroines are my catnip.  Or something.  But I enjoyed Leah and was glad to spend a book with her.  
Mia Garcia's The Resolutions - I read this in one day, specifically New Year's Day.  This book is a wonderful story about four friends who decide to make each other's resolutions.  And one of the characters is so clearly struggling with the burden of living up to this, all while smiling and telling everyone that everything is fine, that I do not think I could have read this over a few days and not really been mad at everyone.  So, for me, the one day read was the way to go.  It does all get resolved and the journey was well worth it.  

Monday, April 01, 2019

NoVa Teen Bookfest 2019

The NoVa Teen Bookfest moved to a new location this year, but was otherwise as fun as before.  The Stand Up and Stand Out panel, has Sara Biren, Olivia Hinebaugh, Ben Philippe, Mark Oshiro, and Emily X. R. Pan talking about writing about pushing back, when there are adults who are good and adults who are not, and how having a good one - fictionally or otherwise - can help you understand the bad ones.  
The Lean on Me panel had Mia Garcia, Kevin Panetta, Carmen Rodrigues, and Jeff Zentner talking about writing friendships and relationships, along with a sidebar into "Titanic".  Mia also said she wrote her book chronologically, even though it hops from person to person.  
There was a lunch break Taboo, with quite a few authors, and some teen volunteers.  
On the Journey to the Past panel, Libba Bray, Katherine Locke, and Robin Talley talked about historical research - how it can help and help you procrastinate,  ways to do it even if you didn't love history in school, and also how history helps illuminate the present.  Robin also talked about how having a dual timeline in "Pulp" meant she was able to specifically ground the contemporary timeline instead of having it try to be out there, some vague time like now, and that that allowed for specific references in the way that you typically wouldn't do in contemporary. 
The Revolution panel had Tracy Bangart, Cinda Williams China, Dhonielle Clayton, Heidi Heilig, and Alex London talking about worldbuilding and figuring out what kind of fantasy world your character might need to fight back or burn down. 
I went to the mini-panel about "Toil and Trouble" with Jessica Spotswood, Robin Talley, and Lindsay Smith.  They talked about the stories they had written for the anthology. Jessica had been chatting on Twitter about how she didn't have time to edit another anthology but would love to see one about witches.  And Tess Sharpe had said she'd love to do one, but didn't know how to curate an anthology.  And their mutual agent had basically been like, yeah team up folks, I can sell this thing.  Both Lindsay and Robin enjoyed working with Jessica, and all three liked writing something that only needed a small amount of plot (compared to novel length).  
The Girls Run the World panel had Jennifer L. Armentrout, E.K. Johnston, L.L. McKinney, and Kristen Simmons talking about writing female protagonists, and how nice it was that there was space that strong female characters didn't always mean has all the weapons.  They also talked about female friendships and how they felt like a lot of media they'd seen growing up portrayed women as rivals, when they had friends they could count on.  Also they talked about how sometimes it's not your character fighting because they've been attacked, but because their loved ones have been.  
Libba Bray was the keynote speaker.  She had a list of twelve things, and I did not take notes but I remember one was "Let's go get pizza" is almost always the right answer.  But she also talked about how in the end the one thing you are surely really good at, is being you, so work on being the best one you can.  
It was a fun event, even with the new location.