How the hell is this happening again? Honestly I don't have anything else. We'll probably have a better picture in the next couple of weeks how this happened once every vote is counted and all the data is analyzed. Though I do have theories that I'm not brave enough at this moment to share.
We have four more years of fighting like hell in front of us. But right now, I'm just numb.
The WNBA draft is upon us, after an electric and record breaking Women’s March Madness. This was the first year I really paid attention to the tournament, after only watching last year’s championship. I watched as much of this year as I could, watched both Final Four games. I didn’t end up watching the final because I had tickets to the final performance of Spamalot on Broadway. I contain multitudes.
I had a lot of time on my hands thanks to the dual strikes this year. So, I ended up having a lot of time to watch movies, especially movies that I had managed to miss up until this year.
Here's what I watched. Check me out on Letterboxd.
I do not like the Disney live action remakes. The only one that really added to the original and felt like there was true artistic merit in its creation was Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella. The others have largely been overstuffed retreads of the original films, with what they added not bring anything interesting to the table, ultimately giving us movies with no life. And while The Little Mermaid is a retread, it has life and it's fun. But, the details they added to flesh out the story, while they worked, I thought they were too interesting for this movie. Ultimately, I wished they scrapped The Little Mermaid and just made a brand new mermaid movie.
The new details that were added were little allusions to Prince Eric being someone who washed up on shore as a baby and taken in by the King and Queen, the death of Ariel's mother at the hand of a human, and the history of animosity between the surface world and under the sea. That could be the basis of a really interesting fantasy movie, and you can still keep the Ariel and Eric star-crossed lovers thing to add in some romance. Romeo & Juliet, but with a mermaid!
And honestly, that makes me hate these live action remakes even more. They had the seeds of a new story buried inside the shell of something they had done before. Disney can make original movies, but it seems like they're just too scared of them not making money so they're pumping out surefire box office hits, and sacrificing quality art in the process.
For the last couple years, my start time for work has been 5:30-6:00 am, for 10-12 hour days. Yeah. So that has altered my sleep cycle. I started going to be at 8:30-9:00 pm so my brain can turn off at night since sometimes it takes a while to do that. But now, I am currently out of work, and I can finally have the sleep schedule of a normal person.
The hard part is actually making that adjustment. My first plan of attack was to stay up as late as I can to force my body to not wake up automatically at 4:30 am. It did not work. I just got even less sleep. That sucked. It was like morning the of the living dead when I would wake up. Compounded by me not being immediately active like I usually would be that early in the morning. Not even doing my morning routine as normal would get rid of the tired feeling that made my limbs feel like lead. Cause I’m not leaving my place before sunrise unless I have to because, one: safety first, and two: nothing is really open for me to go. So I just lay in bed, which makes it worse. At midday, once I shake off the dead, I go walk for an hour in the park. Get some outdoors and fresh air, see some nature. Sometimes I'm too tired to walk for the full hour I force myself to and just find a bench. It's not exercise, but it's still outdoors, so I'll take it.
It also didn't help that the first two weeks of trying to do this, it's been raining. Now, a light drizzle where you can still be comfortably outside. No, it'd been afternoons of down pouring rain. Soaked to your socks, umbrella pretty much only keeping your head dry, rain. Great weather to venture into the outdoors in.
In my third week of unemployment, I think I've recalibrated. I'm now waking up at about 8:00 am and going to be at 11, and I feel normal. If I had this sleep schedule during the broadcast television season, I could have watched all those shows live instead of playing never ending catch up like I'm doing now. (P.S. #paywriters) The sun is out, the weather isn't unbearably hot yet, and I am going out into the world like a functioning human.
What is the point of cover letters in applying for jobs anymore? What am I going to write that is going to be substantially different than the hundreds of others that the hiring manager or robots are reading?
I'm a hard worker who shows up every day and works hard. I am very well organized and a great multitasker. I have a lot of experience with [insert skill here]. I know how to use Microsoft Office and Google Suites. I look forward to being part of your team and learning from everyone.
Obviously you fluff it up, and maybe tell a personal anecdote. But, unless you're asking for something specific to be written, it feels like you'd be getting variations on a theme.
There's also the issue that I hate writing about myself. I can give thoughts and opinions on stuff, which I hope I've demonstrated throughout this blog. Give me movies, television, music, whatever, I will talk about it. But puffing myself and my skills up I just can't do. It feels weird and gross and blegh. Because I am all these things. But how do you write that without sounding like everybody else?
Normally at the end of something like this there's an answer, but I don't have an answer for this. So, yeah. I'm just gonna do my best and grin and bear it.
Filter face needs to stop.
I don't think I need to explain filter face because every time I've dropped this descriptor to people, they understand, but I think I'll do it anyway. Filter face is when a person gets work done to make it look they're in an Instagram filter. If you need a visual aid, just go watch most reality shows, and you'll be able to spot it. I would recommend Love Island, for reference.
What I keep imagining is what happens to your face as you age with all of that work done to it. Faces are supposed to change as you age, not stay frozen at 25. Age gives you character, and that makes me think of character actors. Actors who show up in supporting roles and steal the show because they don't look as glamorous of the leads. And how strange would it be to see those glamorous leads who've had work done in a period piece? That's not very historically accurate.
Now this isn't to diminish plastic surgery as a specialty, because there are countless examples of plastic surgery being used to save and/or better lives. There's a story my dad tells about a company picnic years ago where the 19 year-old assistant got hit by a car and was left with a huge gash on her face, and at the ER, he told the doctors there to get a plastic surgeon to sew up her face so she wouldn't have a nasty scar.
I just think we are losing the "unconventional" beauty with all these cosmetic procedures taking over the images we see every day.
Copyright Kerry Archbold. Designed by Georgia Lou Studios