Pop culture round-up!
Then people can't look left or right the way they do. They can't mind other people's business. That's the point of the dream: What will people become if they have to mind their own business instead of other people's business? If they can't find others to hate, to kill, to target? What happens if light, music, drugs, sex, everything all disappears and all you have is you? Do you like you? Can you survive you?
LGBTQ people have no rights in Nigeria and in the mostly Muslim northern half of the country, homosexuality can be punished with death by stoning. "Vagabond" is a Nigerian legal term used for not just LGBTQ people, but anyone who chooses to live a life outside of very narrow societal constraints. The novel Vagabonds! is a loosely connected series of stories about different people; not all of them have a "plot" and are kind of just vignettes. Some parts were better than others and it could have done with tighter editing, but it was Osunde's first novel and I would give her another chance if she writes another.
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Justified: City Primeval ended this week. It was kind of uneven and I wish we'd seen more of Detroit--I think they actually filmed it in Chicago--than the insides of courthouses, police stations, and bars. But kudos to Boyd Holbrook for playing a character I've never wanted to see go down in a hail of bullets more. Aunjanue Ellis was great, too. And I can always watch Timothy Olyphant. I think I'll add Santa Clarita Diet to my re-watch list, although I'm going to die mad at Netflix for cancelling it on that cliffhanger.
There was some fan service at the end that got my mother very excited, but I think that's all it was and I don't expect anything will come of it. No spoilers, but if you know, you know.
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I'm almost done with Burn It Down, I'm listening to it on audio and expect I will finish it at work this afternoon. I have to admit, the parts where Ryan comes up with actual solutions to the toxicity of Hollywood isn't as interesting as the chapters where she dishes dirt (with a snow shovel) on specific shows/people. Not because her solutions don't make sense or are unworkable, but because I know they will just get ignored. It's a real fucking bummer!
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Click to viewI watched 2 of the 3 episodes of Telemarketers last night and will probably finish it tonight. It is very funny, in a very dark way, and it was surreal for me personally because I'm 99% certain I worked for this shady scam very briefly when I was 19 or 20. And when I say "briefly", I mean I did a couple of shifts and was like "This is not for me". But I remember it was definitely for one of those sheriff's "benevolent" charities that allegedly raise money for the widows and kids of cops who died on the job. In reality, most of that money wound up stuffed into strippers' thongs.
It's very funny to think of baby me raising money for cops, even dead ones. Apparently I never got the "you get more conservative as you get older" memo.