I did a “Things I Loved This Year” post for 2013, and here’s another one of sorts for this year. One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m consuming fewer and fewer things that I dislike. I think I’ve just gotten better at realizing what I like. Every book I read this year got at least three stars on Goodreads. I only saw a few new movies and didn’t hate the ones I did see. If I wasn’t getting into a show, I didn’t continue watching it—I stopped watching How to Get Away with Murder after five episodes and didn’t make it past the pilot of The Leftovers. (I did stick with Season 3 of Homeland to see how it ended, but didn’t continue with Season 4.)
Books
If I finish the book I’m currently reading by tomorrow, I’ll have read sixty books this year. I’m going to post more about the books of this past year in future posts, but some highlights were Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, and Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas. All YA, interestingly enough. Also, at book signings, I met both Ann M. Martin and Neil Patrick Harris!
Movies
You know, I haven’t seen that many movies yet. All the Oscar movies are coming out now, though, so I’m sure that will change over the next couple of months. So far, I’ve enjoyed Gone Girl and The Fault in Our Stars, both of which are based on books I’ve read.
TV Shows The Good Wife was a big highlight. So was Jane the Virgin, which is hilarious and adorable. Gina Rodriguez is just really sweet and relatable in the title role, and it reminds me a lot of Ugly Betty. I’ve recently started watching Community, too, and am enjoying it.
Theater LES MIS. Freaking fantastic. I also saw a production of Into the Woods that got me interested in the movie that just came out (haven’t seen the movie yet), and Finding Neverland when it was in Cambridge—I liked it but didn’t love it. My friends and I also saw both The Book of Mormon and The Lion King in Boston, both great.
Music
I never disliked her, but this year I’ve started to like Taylor Swift more than I anticipated. I think part of it is a backlash-to-the-backlash thing—I’ve never really understood why some people who don’t like her are so vicious towards her. If you don’t like her music, fine, but what has she, as a person, ever done that’s so bad? So I put a lot of energy into defending her, but it was really only this year that I started to like her music.
I also really enjoyed Ramin Karimloo’s solo CD. Speaking of which…
Celebrities
I still love Jon Hamm and Aaron Paul, but Ramin is one of my new favorites. And a late-breaking addition: Trevor Noah, the new Daily Show correspondent, whom I can already tell I’m going to love.
Food
I discovered that almond butter fudge—really just almond butter mixed with coconut oil and frozen—is awesome and healthier than most other desserts. I also started making this awesome cinnamon-apple smoothie.
I bought a Roku a little over a year ago and that was a really good decision. I hate watching TV on my laptop (I know, what a terrible problem), so streaming things on my TV was a welcome change. I joined Netflix, have sporadically paid for Hulu Plus, and bought whatever I couldn’t get anywhere else on Amazon Instant Video.
And thus began a dangerous new era of binge watching. I made a list of shows I hadn’t yet seen but wanted to and still have a lot more I want to see. But here are the shows I’ve watched since the advent of the Roku:
Parks and Recreation
I love it and I like it. I can’t believe I wasn’t already watching this show. This show is wonderful, and not just because Amy Poehler is hilarious. (One of my biggest regrets about college is that I didn’t see Amy, a fellow BC alum, when she came to campus my senior year—I’m not a huge SNL fan and at the time I didn’t really know who she was.)
I’m glad I stuck with it, because the first season actually isn’t that great. It’s created by the same people who did The Office, and I think at the beginning the shows were a bit too similar. Leslie kind of comes off as a ditz in Season 1, but as the show goes on it’s clearer that she actually is very smart and capable—she’s just a bit naïve and doesn’t always go about things the right way. But it starts to hit its stride in Season 2, and with the addition of a couple of new characters, Season 3 becomes even better.
It’s not only funny but also really upbeat, happy, and sweet—the constant making fun of Jerry notwithstanding (it’s okay, apparently, because he has a great home life and a wife played by Christie Brinkley), the characters are all nice people. I am not ashamed to say I cried when Ben and Leslie got engaged and then again when they got married. Rashida Jones has left the show now, but I really loved Leslie and Ann’s friendship. There’s one episode where Mark, Leslie’s ex-fling she still has feelings for, asks Ann out. Ann says no out of respect for Leslie and tells Leslie about it in the interest of honesty. Leslie is grateful, but eventually tells Ann that she can date Mark if she wants to. It’s exactly the right way to handle a situation like this, but I can’t remember any other show doing it—most shows would have turned it into a catfight. Ron Swanson, too, aside from being hysterical, is unique among TV characters for being a hyper-masculine, meat-loving Libertarian who also respects and appreciates strong women. Other shows could take lessons from the way Parks and Rec does feminism.
Plus, it gave us Lil Sebastian and his memorial song, Galentine’s Day, and “Treat yo’ self.” And also, much like me, Leslie Knope has a special love for waffles with lots of whipped cream on top. I didn’t realize until I saw this show how much I was needing a waffles-and-whipped-cream-loving character in my life.
The X-Files
I didn’t watch the whole show, just some of my favorite episodes out of order. It does hold up, I have to say. Speaking of Gillian Anderson…
The Fall
I love her, so I was excited for this British show about a serial killer in Belfast. Gillian stars as the detective trying to solve the case. Unfortunately, the first two episodes just didn’t draw me in, so I didn’t watch the rest.
Moone Boy
I heard of this show after reading this Slate article about it, and it piqued my interest right away. Chris O’Dowd, Ireland, feminism—all things I like. It’s a cute family sitcom set in Ireland in the late eighties/early nineties and while it’s not something that would ever become an obsession, it’s enjoyable and, with only six episodes per season, goes by quickly.
Orange Is the New Black
I’d heard so many good things about this show, and in anticipation of seeing it, I read the memoir it’s based on. I wonder if I would have liked it more if I hadn’t read it, because after seeing the first season (still haven’t seen the second and I’m not sure if I will), I came to the conclusion that I like the idea of this show better than the show itself. It’s all about women, it tells a lot of interesting and diverse stories, it sheds light on America’s incredibly flawed prison system, and the acting is universally fantastic. And yet…it doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it’s because I had read the book and was bugged by how many things had been changed for dramatic purposes and how both Piper and Larry come off on the show—Piper Chapman is really bratty, while the real Piper doesn’t come across that way to me at all, and all you have to do is read this article by Larry Smith to see how different he is from Larry Bloom. There are also a lot of details that are inaccurate—Piper should be in a minimum security federal prison, which means she’d never be incarcerated with someone in for violent crime, like Pennsatucky. But the main reason I can’t get into it, I think, is that as interesting as all the characters and their stories are, there’s no one I connect to personally and nothing I can really relate to. I think the one time I had a flash of recognition was when Piper tries to explain how people misinterpret “The Road Less Traveled” to blank stares– that’s totally the kind of thing I would do. But– and I do realize this says more about me than about the show– I had a really hard time relating to virtually anything else that happens.
Breaking Bad
Wow. I don’t like Family Guy, but this clip here? There’s a lot of truth to it.
It only took me about two-and-a-half weeks to finish this show. I kept finding myself thinking, “Okay, I’ve got this much time…how many episodes of Breaking Bad can I get in?” And when it was over, all I wanted to do was talk about it and tell everyone else to watch it. It’s like a fifty-hour movie. Previously, I knew the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, from when he used to write for The X-Files, and he was famous in the XF fandom for his attention to continuity as well as how he always snuck references to his girlfriend Holly into episodes. He does both of those things on Breaking Bad, too—lots of little things you’ve forgotten about come back later and turn out to be important, and Holly references get in here, too!
The acting is just incredible. Bryan Cranston does an amazing job keeping your attention as a regular guy becoming increasingly evil—even when you can’t sympathize with him anymore, you still want to know what will happen to him. But Aaron Paul as his sidekick Jesse Pinkman is my favorite part of the show. Even when he does terrible things, Jesse quite never loses his humanity, and he’s the character I remember most. My second-favorite character, though, is Skyler, a character a lot of people inexplicably hate. I agree with everything Anna Gunn wrote in her New York Times op-ed—I’ll give you that she’s a little annoying in the pilot, before she actually has a good reason to be mad, but after that, I completely understand why she does everything she does, and nothing she does is as bad as what Walt and Jesse do.
Seriously. I haven’t seen The Wire yet, but I do feel compelled to recommend Breaking Bad to everyone I know.
House of Cards
…I don’t like this show. At all. I think I’m the only one. I saw the first three episodes and could not get into it. I’m fine with unlikeable characters (I did just rave over Breaking Bad, after all), but from what I can tell, there’s not a single character with even one redeeming quality on this show. It’s just way too cynical for me, although it’s not hard to believe that there are people this awful in Washington. What I have the hardest time believing, though, is that Frank is a Democrat from South Carolina.
I have seen a gif of the death at the beginning of Season 2, though, and I did enjoy that. But that’s it.
Veep
While I’d never call this a favorite, it is very funny in a cringe-y way. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is fantastic as the incredibly narcissistic vice president and the rest of the cast is great, too. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I’d like House of Cards if it was rewritten as a comedy.
Veronica Mars
Rewatched in anticipation of the movie that came out in March. Upon rewatch, it was even better than I remembered. You should see it if you haven’t and rewatch it if you have. And also read the Snark Squad recaps of it.
True Detective
I don’t think it quite lived up to the hype, but this was definitely worth a watch. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are both great, and while I spent most of the show expecting a big twist that never came, I did end up finding the ending satisfying. Random side note: it takes place in Louisiana, but Woody Harrelson’s character is named Marty Hart—I REALLY think they should have saved that name for a show set in Boston.
Louie
I mentioned in a previous post that I don’t like stand-up comedy. Well, there’s always an exception—I’ve found that I actually do enjoy Louis CK’s standup a lot. His show, on the other hand? Not my thing. I saw a few episodes, including some that were supposed to be among the best ones, and I just did not find them funny.
The Americans
Is this the kind of thing that gets better after the pilot? If so, let me know, because although I’d heard that this was a great show, I saw the pilot and was not impressed. If you’re going to make me care about undercover Soviet spies in the 80s, you need to make them way more interesting characters than they are in this episode.
Homeland
Seasons 1 and 2 are fantastic. Season 3, on the other hand?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9gC1GiSDDA
Season 1, especially, is fast-paced and unpredictable and features fantastic acting (and an epic cryface) from Claire Danes and excellent work from Damien Lewis and Mandy Patinkin as well. Season 2 is almost as good. In Season 3, on the other hand, the lack of new ideas once the initial premise dried up becomes sadly clear, and I’m not even watching Season 4. Also, Dana Brody, the daughter of the Damien Lewis character, might be my least favorite character in the history of TV. She’s that annoying. I kept wishing SHE’D get blown up by a terrorist.
A Young Doctor’s Notebook
Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe.
I repeat, JON HAMM AND DANIEL RADCLIFFE.
That’s all you need to know.
The Good Wife
Note to self: never start watching a network drama so late in the game ever again. This is currently in its sixth season, and since it’s a drama on CBS, it’s 22 hour-long episodes in a season. So it took forever for me to get caught up with this one, but it was totally worth it.
It’s funny, because while I think this is one of the best shows on TV right now, it goes against all of the popular wisdom about what works in this day and age. It’s on a major network rather than cable, it’s got a lead character who’s a good person rather than an antihero, and while it’s basically a serial drama, because it deals with court cases, it has elements of a procedural. But it does what it does incredibly well. Shows like Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Mad Men,Dexter, etc. all have terrible people at the center of them, but the titular good wife, Alicia Florrick, has quickly become one of my favorite characters because she’s refreshingly likeable without being Mary Sue-ish. The title is kind of ironic—she’s cast in the role of “the good wife” after her husband, a state’s attorney in Chicago, is jailed following a corruption and prostitution scandal and, after thirteen years out of the workforce raising her two kids, she has to go back to work as a lawyer. I can’t be the only one who’s seen real-life political sex scandals play out and been infuriated at how the wives are always forced to stand there supporting the husbands who’ve betrayed them, but Alicia is anything but a passive, wronged wife. She’s smart, excellent at her job, and a great mother to her two teenagers, but she also has a tendency to stress-drink red wine and has a penchant for comebacks like, “Die choking on your own blood, please.” And while you might not want her to remain married to her husband, their relationship is clearly very complicated and not as black and white as staying vs. leaving.
Alicia is far from the only appealing character on the show, too. I’m particular fond of Kalinda, the somewhat mysterious and occasionally violent in-house investigator at Alicia’s firm. Aside from the other lawyers at the firm, all appealing characters in their own right, the show has a fantastic lineup of recurring characters who play lawyers they go up against. Michael J. Fox is especially memorable as a shady but oddly charismatic lawyer, and I would totally watch a spinoff about Elsbeth Tascioni, a kooky attorney whom Carrie Preston won a Best Guest Actress Emmy for playing. Mamie Gummer, Rita Wilson, Matthew Perry, and Martha Plimpton have all had great guest roles. I also really like Alicia’s kids, who are written as much more well-rounded characters than dramas focusing on adults typically write teenagers—Homeland and Nashville should take lessons from The Good Wife’s writers.
A lot’s been happening with me recently, and I thought I’d take a minute to recount it here.
If I’m being honest, I have to admit that lately I’ve felt really, really lonely. It seems like it’s been weeks since I had a real, honest conversation with someone.
So for now, I’ll write about some of the good things that have been happening.
First, I bought a car!
Even though I’m thirty, this is actually the first car I’ve ever owned. I had a car as a teenager, but it was only “mine” for a year, since it became my sister’s after I went to college. I also don’t really enjoy driving and don’t need to drive to get to most places I need to go. But sometimes I do need to get out of the city and I was sick of depending on other people for rides. So now I have this car! I mostly just drive to chorus every week and I drove to Marblehead a few weeks ago to meet my cousin’s cute new baby. But it’s nice having the option to drive places if I have to.
Second, I finished my fourth half-marathon!
Even writing that is weird. How did I become the kind of person who does four half-marathons? I still do not think of myself as a runner. I’m not an athlete and I’m actually kind of lazy about exercise most of the time. And yet…I just did this fourth half-marathon (the Bay State Half Marathon in Lowell) and got a really good time for me. This is a really flat course (there’s a marathon at the same time, and since it’s so flat, people use it to qualify for Boston- even their advertisements say so) and the weather was perfect and autumn-y, so that’s part of where the good time came from. But I also just feel faster, and while it might be awhile before I do another half, I kind of want to try again and maybe break two hours. It feels possible!
Third, I’ve had a couple of fun experiences at book signings lately. The first one was with none other than Neil Patrick Harris! He was doing a signing of his new memoir at Brookline Booksmith, so I got a ticket. None of my friends ended up going, but I made friends with the people around me in line. (Although two of them, who actually ended up being pretty cool once I talked to them, started off their time in line having this really graphic conversation about how someone they knew had an infection and I was dying to say, “Guys, I JUST ATE.”) They were hurrying everyone through the HUGE line as quickly as they could, so there wasn’t time to take a picture with him, but my new line-friends and I took each other’s pictures and sent them to each other.
I had all these things I was going to say to NPH, like, “Congratulations on the Oscars! Are you going for a hosting EGOT?” (They’d just announced the day before that he was going to be the Oscar host.) Or, “Will you sing ‘The Confrontation’ with me?” But they all flew out of my head and I just ended up saying something like, “Thank you for being here!” and that I liked what I’d read of the book while standing in line. So I don’t think I left much of an impression on NPH, but I’m glad I went.
The other book signing experience was last weekend at the Boston Book Festival. You remember my post about the book series I loved as a kid? Well, I was really excited when I learned that Ann M. Martin, the creator of The Baby-Sitters Club, would be there. So of course I went to her panel and got her autograph and a picture with her afterwards! Ten-year-old Katie is so jealous of thirty-year-old Katie. (I met some cool people in that line, too. Lots of interesting people to meet at book signings.)
I always try to do NaNoWriMo and never succeed. I do have a new idea this year, though, so we’ll see how I do. Some writing completed is always better than nothing, after all. You can friend me there if you want—purebrightfire is my name there.
This is going to be a little more involved than your average Playlist of the Moment post, so bear with me here.
I mentioned in the previous post that I’d be guest-posting a recap of The O.C. on Snark Squad. Voila. Writing it was a lot of fun, and both that and just reading Snark Squad’s O.C. posts in general made a bit nostalgic, so I’ve been re-watching some episodes of the show that I have on DVD.
I was first introduced to the show my senior year of college by my roommate Steph. That was Season 3, and I caught up with the previous seasons with Steph’s DVDs and bonded with my roommates over the show.
If you’ve never seen it, here’s the Reader’s Digest version: teenager Ryan Atwood, from Chino, California, gets arrested after he and his brother steal a car. Shortly thereafter, Ryan’s mother abandons him, so he calls his public defender, Sandy Cohen. Sandy lives in Orange County with his son Seth, who’s Ryan’s age, and his wife Kirsten, a rich real estate developer whose father owns most of the O.C. By the end of the third episode, the Cohens have become Ryan’s legal guardians. Over four seasons, we see all kinds of soap opera drama unfolding, particularly with Ryan and Seth’s love lives (Ryan has a tumultuous relationship with their drama queen next-door neighbor, Marissa, while Seth’s long-term crush on Marissa’s best friend Summer eventually turns into something real), but it’s also about family. It’s one of the only teen shows where the parents are not only a huge part of the show but also really good parents. You don’t have to be a poor kid from Chino with a neglectful, drunk mother to want Sandy and Kirsten Cohen to adopt you- and although I think the network intended it to be more of a Dawson’s Creek-esque teen relationship drama, the most interesting part of the show for me was always Ryan’s relationship with the Cohens. The moments that moved me the most and that were the most memorable for me were always about the love between this tough, fish-out-of-water kid and his adoptive family. This article explains everything really well.
The O.C. is kind of the perfect show for a site like Snark Squad or the late, sometimes great Television Without Pity because there is plenty to snark on (the episode I just recapped had a character faking a miscarriage and another character having a ridiculous screaming meltdown) BUT it’s also genuinely enjoyable most of the time. I feel like most statements you could make about The O.C. have a BUT in the middle of them. It’s a teenage drama BUT it’s also about the parents and the rest of the family. It’s a trashy nighttime soap BUT it also has a lot of moments that are truly moving. It’s kind of like Dawson’s Creek BUT the characters are a zillion times more likeable- a lot of characters on The O.C. start off as villains and gradually become more three-dimensional.
During the first year I blogged, The O.C. was in its final season, and although ratings had dropped, the show was having a series of fantastic episodes. You might recall theseposts, where I tried to convince people to watch it so it wouldn’t get canceled. I was unsuccessful, unfortunately, but falling headlong into an obsession with a show was exactly what I needed during that crazy first year out of college. (I was living with Christiana Krump at the time, and I’m pretty sure at some point she threatened to fake-divorce me from our fake marriage over The O.C.)
Anyway! Another great thing about The O.C. was its music. It introduced me to a lot of awesome songs that to this day are among my most-played. So here’s my playlist with some of my favorite songs that have been played on the show. Some highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHvJE1XU7E
Alexi Murdoch, “Orange Sky.” I can’t remember if I knew this song before I heard it on the show or not, but either way, I adore it. It’s so soothing I swear it lowers my blood pressure. “In your love, my salvation lies in your love.”
Patrick Park, “Something Pretty.” Aptly titled. “And I’ve known ugliness, now show me something pretty.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBlAdApfK9U
Placebo, “Running Up That Hill.” This show also had a lot of great covers- in fact, one of their six soundtrack albums is nothing but covers. This one, of a Kate Bush song, I like just as much, if not more than, the original.
Here’s the playlist. It’s not comprehensive, but it is a bunch of songs I like that were on the show. Welcome to my O.C. Playlist, bitch!
It’s been awhile since I did a post about other blogs, so time to remedy that! It’s weird looking at these twoother posts I made about other blogs- I have the hardest time remembering that there was a time when I liked Jezebel, which is now one of my least favorite places on the web. There are some other blogs I mentioned that I don’t read anymore or that are defunct, so here’s an updated list of blogs I’m loving lately:
Written by Cassie Paton, a journalism student in LA who has a wonderful writing style and a great personality. She has a “Beer with a Blogger” series, which I will do my best to partake in if I’m ever in LA!
Karie doesn’t update as often as she used to, but you should absolutely follow her and catch up with her archives. She started the blog after her husband was wounded by an IED in Iraq and continued it after he died of an overdose of his pain medication. She’s been through more pain at age 29 than anyone should ever have to, but it’s hard not to be inspired by how she’s persevered and thrived in the face of unimaginable loss. She’s a fantastic writer and she’s currently working on a memoir, which I would love to read!
Kirsti, aka Melbourne on my Mind, is a blogger whose posts I always look forward to. She’s Australian, a bibliophile (I’m a pretty voracious reader, but Kirsti reads over a hundred books per year!), and completely adorable. When I read her, I just think, Man, I wish I was in Australia hanging out with her right now.
A new-ish blog that took off very quickly. The author, Katherine Fritz, is a theatrical costume designer in Philadelphia, and she hooked me with this post. She’s hilarious and culturally relevant and all-around awesome. She also writes Ladypockets, an awesome spoof on how the media covers women and fashion.
Ally, who lives with her wife in Tennessee and manages a bar, is hilarious and claims to be “personally responsible for how dirty the South is.” She’s a Sox fan, too, so I hope she’s also responsible for recruiting more fans. After this past Sox season, we might need them.
I’ve enjoyed Lorraine (which is actually a pseudonym) ever since I joined 20sb. Her writing can crack me up or break my heart and always leaves me wishing we could hang out.
Emily is so enthusiastic about everything she loves, and it’s contagious. Like me, she loves books, writing, musical theater, cute dogs (especially hers, Bandit), and Disney movies, and her posts always make me smile.
The girl from Matilda, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Miracle on 34th Street eventually quit acting, grew up, and started a blog. And from what I can tell, she’s a pretty smart, cool person.
I did recommend this site back when it was still called Childhood Trauma and mostly focused on the book series you read as a kid. Now they’ve expanded their focus- they did a post on each chapter of 50 Shades of Grey and its sequels and are also covering several TV shows, past and present. They’ve already snarked through Joss Whedon’s shows and are currently doing The O.C., Dawson’s Creek, Veronica Mars, Orphan Black, and How to Get Away with Murder, among others. It reminds me of all the best things about the dearly departed Television Without Pity. The previously mentioned Lorraine and Kirsti, as well as Sweeney and Sara, whom I included in the older post, are among the Snark Ladies. And I’m super excited that I’ll have a guest post on an O.C. episode up on Snark Squad next week!
I love this blog for how diverse and interesting it is. The author, Sarah Von Bargen, writes about all kinds of things. Tips on traveling to different countries. Interviews with people who’ve experienced unusual things. Connecting people who are looking for a favor or have a favor to offer through her “Network of Nice.” Recipes that go along with books. The new things she’s trying to do. Many different topics, but always enjoyable and always fun.
You’ve heard about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge by now, if you or your friends haven’t done it. Unfortunately, by now you’ve already probably heard some of the backlash against it. I know I’ve been reading a lot of negative articles about it, seeing people rain on the parade on Facebook, and hearing friends and coworkers be cynical about it. Let’s see if I can sum up the Debbie Downers of the world’s thoughts on it:
It’s a stupid gimmick and people should just donate to ALS research and skip the ice.
Why are you only supposed to donate if you don’t do the ice bucket? Donating shouldn’t be the consolation prize.
People are doing it for the wrong reasons—for attention or because it’s trendy, not because they care about ALS.
People were doing it anyway before it became about ALS.
It’s taking attention away from other worthy causes.
Did I miss anything?
I’m sick of hearing all this, and I’m more than happy to be part of the backlash-to-the-backlash, as New York magazine would put it.
The Ice Bucket Challenge first started popping up on my newsfeed a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn’t my first time hearing about Pete Frates. I don’t know Pete, but he was at Boston College when I was, and I’ve been hearing about him and his battle with ALS through the BC alumni community for a while now. At first, it was just people from college doing the challenge, and I was thinking it was mainly a BC thing. But I was surprised by how quickly it spread. I saw friends I knew from places other than college start to do it, and, well, the rest is history—everyone from Justin Timberlake to Bill Gates to Ethel Kennedy has done it by now.
Can you donate to ALS research without throwing ice water on your head? Of course you can. You can also donate to charity without running a marathon (or any other road race or bike race or swim race or triathlon or walkathon) or attending a gala. And dousing yourself in ice water, unlike those things, is free. But athletic events, galas, and ice bucket challenges get people to pay attention in ways that simple discussion of a cause doesn’t—a basic marketing principle. Those of you arguing that it’s taking money away from other causes, why don’t you just find a better way to draw attention to your cause? This certainly shows that it’s possible for charity to go viral.
I do understand skepticism about social media gimmicks to raise awareness. The Facebook trend where women were posting the colors of their bras without context, ostensibly to raise awareness about breast cancer (a disease I can’t imagine anyone being unaware of), was beyond pointless. But ALS is a disease that could certainly benefit from greater awareness, and this challenge is about raising money as well as awareness.
And if you want to talk about money, here are some numbers for you:
That should be the end of the argument right there. ALS is a horrible, progressive, incurable disease that causes its sufferers to lose control of their bodies. Maybe one day there will be a cure, but cures are found through research, and research needs money. Now there’s $5.5 million more going towards that research.
So who cares how or why that money was donated? It’s not even the ends justifying the means—more like the ends justifying the motive, even if that motive was less than altruistic. Yes, there are people who are only doing it for attention or because it’s trendy and haven’t given ALS a second thought. Even so—$5.5 million. It’s hard to argue with that. And by my own unscientific analysis, I believe that most people who do the challenge are donating anyway, even if technically the rules say that you only have to donate if you don’t do it.
There are so many terrible, sad things going on in the world right now. The fighting in Gaza, the Iraq crisis, the Ebola outbreak, the killing of Mike Brown and its aftermath in Missouri, the suicide of Robin Williams. It’s beyond me why anyone would want to turn people raising millions of dollars for an extremely worthy cause, something I’d consider unambiguously positive, into something to complain about.
I myself got tagged by my friend Erin on Monday. I had to wait until yesterday to film it (turns out there are unforeseen challenges to living alone, like not having anyone to hold the camera when you want to make a video!), but I would have donated even if I’d done it within twenty-four hours.
And so should you. Enjoy this video of me throwing ice water on myself, then visit www.petefrates.com and donate. I tagged my friends Christina, Jon, and Steph in the video, but if you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged!
Since I’m still single, obviously, turning thirty is not a good thing. But I’m not going to focus on that.
It’s funny, the things you think will make you an adult, or make you feel like an adult. Back when I wrote this post, buying property seemed absolutely unattainable. Now, while I still rent instead of own…let’s just say owning is a much more realistic goal now. I live alone now, and while it’s awesome, it doesn’t really make me feel like an adult, either. And even though I have a full-time job and have steadily advanced in my company over the seven years I’ve worked there, that does nothing to make me feel adult, either.
But you know what does? The fact that I now sometimes sign my name with a scribble. When I was a kid, I hated it when adults did that and swore I never would. And now I do it.
There are plenty of things I thought I’d outgrow that I never did, though.
I never got to like coffee. I’ve tried and I just don’t like the way it tastes.
I still order chicken fingers in restaurants all the time.
I love Disney movies and Disney in general and have lately been dying to go back to Disney World.
Actually, I love amusement parks in general. Even kid rides like the merry-go-round.
I still have stuffed animals on my bed. I can’t part with them.
I can’t part with my basket full of Beanie Babies, either. They’re too cute.
I’m super-nostalgic for all the TV shows I loved in my childhood. I sometimes watch Sesame Street clips on YouTube and I have Ghostwriter on DVD.
Girl Meets World is on my DVR.
Early to bed/early to rise is still not my thing. I’d much rather sleep until noon on weekends.
Blowing bubbles and flying a kite outside sounds wonderful to me.
I still hate shopping for clothes.
However, I’ve been known to go into toy stores just to look around.
I never manage to do laundry/put away laundry in an efficient manner.
I still don’t have a nice watch. I wear this cheap waterproof digital watch from Target.
Many nights I’d rather play board games than go out to a bar.
The weird thing I’ve noticed about getting older is that there are plenty of times when you feel old. You can’t understand why teenagers like some weird thing (like the Yo app—seriously, why?). You realize that you’re working with people born in the 90s. You realize you started high school sixteen years ago. But even if you feel old…you still might not feel like an adult.
Do you ever? Is this something that will never really happen and you just think it will?
Welcome to Pure Bright Fire! It’s taken me a bit longer than I anticipated to make some of the changes I wanted to, but if you got here by trying to visit Struggling Single Twenty-Something or if this showed up in your reader’s feeds, then yea! You are now on my new blog, Pure Bright Fire!
I’m still trying to get everything settled here and make it look prettier and what not, but for now, join me as I blog through my thirties!
I have now been blogging for almost eight years. And I have to say, I’m quite proud of myself for continuing to blog regularly. I decided early on that I’d post at least once a month, and for eight years I’ve stuck to that—and I almost always blog more than once a month.
I read a ton of blogs, so many that I can’t use The Old Reader without paying for it. And within the last year, I’ve noticed a lot of the bloggers I read have either stopped blogging, taken long hiatuses and then come back, or contemplated quitting blogging. There was this article at the end of last year (Lorraine alerted me to it) that declared the blog dead. I certainly hope that’s not true—for someone who reads as many blogs as I do, that would be a tragedy.
I, for one, have absolutely no intention of quitting blogging. I love blogging. My blog may change forms over the years (in fact, changes are soon coming to this blog, the least of which is its name—I turn thirty in nine days, so “Struggling Single Twenty-Something” is obviously a name that can’t last forever), but I hope I will never stop updating it.
But with so many blogs slowing down or stopping, it does beg the question of why. People stop blogging for all kinds of reasons—they’re too busy, they’ve run out of things to say, they’re not getting the audience they want, they’d rather just use Twitter or Tumblr (ugh), they just aren’t feeling it anymore.
That’s why they stop—but why blog, or why continue to blog? I’ve heard all kinds of reasons for that, too. Some people blog to document their lives, either for themselves or for people who know them. Or because they’re writing a book and want to build an online audience first. Or because they want to promote their business. Or because they have some kind of expertise that could help other people. Or because they want to start a conversation on some kind of topic of interest to them.
I thought recently about why I blog, and the answer I came up with is actually very simple.
I blog because I love to write.
Do I want people to read what I write? Well, obviously. If I didn’t, I’d be writing all of this stuff in a private journal instead. And I have really enjoyed getting to know other bloggers through 20sb and Boston Blogger meetups. But even if I’m just shouting into a void, even if no one ever reads this, even if I’m the last blog left on the Internet…well, I’m still writing. And I really enjoy writing. Having an audience is nice, but in truth, it’s just…the candy on top of the frosting on the cake. (I didn’t want to say “the frosting on the cake” because that’s one misguided metaphor—the frosting, in in my opinion, is the main reason to eat the cake.)
So I’ll keep blogging. “Struggling Single Twenty-Something” will become something new within the next week, but as long as I love to write, which I’ve loved all my life, I will also love blogging.
The Emmy nominations come out on Thursday, and being a bit of a TV junkie, I’m looking forward to hearing them. And there are a few people I’m particularly hoping will get nominated.
Before I give you this list, there are a few things I need to make clear. First, there are some shows I love that have already been honored. Breaking Bad will totally deserve any nominations and wins it gets for the final half of its last season, but since the show, Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Anna Gunn have already won, I don’t feel super strongly about it. Similarly, the show Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and all the supporting actors are all great, but again, they’ve been honored already. Second, I don’t watch Game of Thrones or The Big Bang Theory, couldn’t get into Louie or Girls, liked the first two seasons of Homeland but not the most recent one, and don’t like House of Cards at all. Third, I think everyone from Orange is the New Black is great and many of them should get nominations, but while I acknowledge that the show is very well-done, it’s just not one of my favorites. I feel the same way about True Detective.
So here we go:
Cristin Milioti, Best Guest Actress in a Comedy, How I Met Your Mother
As disappointing as the ending was, Cristin Milioti’s performance as the mother (Tracy) was never disappointing. She was adorable, sweet, and interesting, and in the episode “How Your Mother Met Me,” which is told from her point of view, she was particularly impressive.
Jennifer Carpenter, Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, Dexter
The last season of Dexterwas an absolute mess, but Jennifer Carpenter as Dexter’s foul-mouthed sister Deb has always been the best thing about the show, and I have no idea why she’s never gotten an Emmy nomination. Even when the material she was working with sucked, she’s always done an incredible job with it. I’ve said for a long time that she should have her own show, so I’m really disappointed that a pilot she filmed wasn’t picked up!
Cat Deeley, Best Reality Show Host, So You Think You Can Dance
Okay, I may be a bit biased because SYTYCD is the only reality show I’m currently watching, but Cat Deeley is freaking awesome. She’s either very warm, funny, and genuine or really good at pretending that she is, and I can’t imagine the show without her. She’s been nominated a few times but has never won.
Tatiana Maslany, Best Actress in a Drama, Orphan Black
Tatiana Maslany is the best actor on any TV show right now, period. I feel totally comfortable making that sweeping statement, which makes it even more outrageous that she wasn’t nominated last year. I talked about her here, but for a quick summary, she plays several clones who are all very different from each other and does so pretty much flawlessly. Wake up, Emmy voters. Tatiana rules the universe.
Joanne Froggatt, Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, Downton Abbey
I have mixed feelings about the most recent season of Downton Abbey, but no mixed feelings about Joanne Froggatt’s work this past season. Her upsetting but sadly believable storyline involved her character, a lady’s maid named Anna, being violently raped by a visiting servant. Watching her dealing with the rape and its aftermath was devastating, but Froggatt was excellent with difficult material.
Kiernan Shipka, Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, Mad Men
Here comes another sweeping statement: Kiernan Shipka is the best child actor on TV today, period. She’s wonderful on Mad Men as Don and Betty’s daughter Sally, whom we’ve watched grow up over the course of the series. Sally’s growth as a character has been one of the most rewarding storylines on Mad Men, and I can’t wait to see where things go with her in as the show wraps up.
Jon Hamm, Best Actor in a Drama, Mad Men
I have made no secret of how much I love Jon Hamm or how brilliant an actor I think he is. I’m really afraid that Matthew McConaughey or Woody Harrelson will keep him out of the running this year for the Emmy he deserves so much. Can he at least get a win for Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries for A Young Doctor’s Notebookif that happens?
Amy Poehler, Best Actress in a Comedy, Parks and Recreation
Last year at the Emmys, Amy Poehler and Jon Hamm had a party for the Emmy losers—winners could only attend if they donated to charity. They were the perfect people to host that party, seeing as they’ve both been nominated several times but never won. So I really hope this is Amy’s year, and I’m encouraged by the fact that she finally won a Golden Globe this year.
Nick Offerman, Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Parks and Recreation
If I’m mystified that Amy Poehler has never won for Parks and Rec, I’m even more mystified that Nick Offerman has never been nominated. Ron Swanson is such an awesome character, and Nick Offerman is just perfect playing him. There have been some great Ron Swanson moments this past season, too—I particularly love the episode where he introduces his colleagues to his new baby, John [middle name redacted] Swanson.
Ed O’Neill and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Modern Family
I think there’s been a bit of a backlash toward Modern Family after it won Best Comedy Series four years in a row…but you know what? The show is still good and I still love it. Half of the adults on the show have won Emmys now, but Ed O’Neill and Jesse Tyler Ferguson are still waiting. (So is Sofia Vergara, but nothing she did this past season really stood out to me.) The storyline that came to a head at the end of the season—Cam and Mitchell’s impending wedding brought up some old resentments about Jay’s discomfort with Mitchell being gay, ultimately resolved when Jay comes to the rescue after a series of misfortunes befall the wedding—allowed both of them to do some great work.
