observation
My dash is, like, 78% Teen Wolf gifs. You guys are FANS, huh?
fshklr
fshk. Writer. Editor. Brooklynite. Cat lady. Nerd. Twitter. Interests include: mustaches, dinosaurs, baseball, baseball players with mustaches
Hi, tumblr! Hi! I have been a sporadic user of you all summer, but I have some things to say in long form, so I’m back, bitches, at least for today!
The first Calvin Klein ad featuring Alexander Skarsgård for the men’s fragrance “Encounter” has been found in the September 2012 issue of Details magazine. (Jake Gyllenhaal is on the cover).
I actually just had some sort of fit. Nobody really looks like that, do they?
Um. Wow. I’ve been DVRing True Blood in favor of watching Olympics, so there hasn’t been enough ASkars in my life lately. *fans self*
I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off.
To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.
We Want More of Erin: The ML’s Guide to Writing in New York
I’m totally famous, you guys.
Erin is one of our fantastic Municipal Liaisons in New York City, and has been leading the NaNoWriMo charge there since 2003. We asked her to give us the Wrimo’s Guide to noveling in NYC, and boy, did she deliver.
If you find yourself wondering where to write in the Empire City, let Erin regale you with tales of the “Desperation Libation”, typing in front of the Flatiron Building like the Wrimos above, and where to get the best latte:
Superstar on Broadway
Last night, I went to see the Broadway revival of Jesus Christ Superstar; I give it 3.5 stars.
There was nothing new or different about this production, and the cast is all unknowns. (I would take the time to look up their names, but I’m lazy.) A rundown:
This production seems determined to play up the Judas-Jesus-Mary love triangle (altering the score slightly to do so—for example, Judas sings Peter’s lines at the end of “Could We Start Again Please?” which got a rise out of my theater companion, and not in a good way.) The three actors are on stage together frequently. None of them have much chemistry with each other, which I think is why the production is like, “LOVE TRIANGLE, GEDDIT?!” so much.
The guy playing Jesus was a little flat for me. In terms of affect, I mean. He came across not so much as “serene” as “asleep” in some scenes. Also, that part requires some vocal acrobatics for which this actor was not up to the task; he screamed his way through “Gethsemane,” which was not so great.
Mary was kind of aggressive. The actress did this weird pigeon head-bob thing when she was trying to make a point through song, so when she tells Jesus not to worry, it seems like she’s yelling at him rather than trying to soothe him. So that was a little weird.
There was an understudy Herod who opted to play the part super gay, which is… a choice. Actually, I liked “Herod’s Song,” it was probably the splashiest number in the production.
The ensemble was pretty great, too, but I would have liked to see more dancing. There was a lot of just standing on stage and singing. (Also a lot of Les Miz-style marching across the stage. Kind of expected them to break out into, “Do You Hear the People Sing?”)
I did think the guy playing Judas was pretty fantastic, though. Great voice, a tendency toward scene-chewing in a way the part requires. Unfortunately, “Superstar” lacked the glitter and panache it really requires (largely because of bland staging and costuming) and that was my one great disappointment with the show. The consequence is that the whole last twenty minutes of the musical end up being super anticlimactic.
Summary: this is one of my favorite musicals ever, so I’m being especially nit-picky. Overall, it was fine and enjoyable but not spectacular.
Also, hey, what’s up, tumblr. I’ve been too busy to pay much attention to you for the last couple of weeks and I miss my dashboard, which is pretty much all hot guys, romance novels, baseball, and dinosaurs all the time. THE BEST, in other words. The long winter of work sucking out my soul is hopefully ending soon, and then I will be back, and all shall love me and despair.
Jezebel: The Thrill Of a Trashy, Juicy Retro Read
I have a love/hate (really more hate than love recently) relationship with Jezebel, but I was so thrilled to see their ode to Judith Krantz’s novel Scruples. I read it for the first time when I was 13, and I quickly followed it up with every other Krantz novel. But Scruples is still my hands-down favorite.
Last spring, I was talking to a few friends over Twitter about “the books that taught us about sex”—you know, the first book you read that didn’t fade to black, the one that made you go, “Oh, so that’s how that works!” Several of my friends named Harlequins. I never read Harlequins growing up. No, the book that taught me about sex was Scruples.
I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing, so I decided to reread it during my summer vacation. I reminded all of the basics of the plot, but I had totally forgotten just how graphic the sex scenes were. I remember being very confused when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, which would have been right around the same time as my Krantz phase, so I suspect that a lot of the mechanics went right over my head.
But here’s the great thing about Scruples, and I know I didn’t pick up on this at the time: it is fantastically sex positive and feminist. As Jezebel describes, the protagonist, Billy, and her amazingly awesome roommate Jessica, have tons of casual sex, and there’s literally no slut-shaming. All of the women are really sexually aggressive, unlike the heroines of most Harlequins that were published in the same period. And they masturbate all the time. I’ve known a lot of young women who never masturbated until they were older, or found it incredibly shameful, but that tidbit about how Billy ducks into the bathroom during school to get herself off has always stuck with me. And I mean that in a good way. Rereading the novel, I felt really fortunate that it was the book that taught me about sex instead of one of those rapey romance novels.
Granted, it leaves out some kind of important stuff around safe sex (uh, birth control? condoms? STDs? I know this was all pre-AIDS, but geez). But still, I can almost see myself, some years down the line, just having a really short birds-and-bees talk with my daughter and then handing her a copy of Scruples.
I am obviously pro reading old romance novels. I don’t recall what my first one was, but I do remember reading a Danielle Steel novel when I was maybe sixteen that has a scene where the very suave movie producer hero goes down on an actress, and I remember thinking, “Ew, why would anyone do that?” and was so shocked that it has stayed in my mind all this time, but LIVE AND LEARN, am I right, ladies?
(via mythicgeek)
![imwithkanye:
There’s no reason NOT to have this on my blog.
[Previously in Magic Mike news]
(h/t BarebackContessa)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m57l2wTzcK1qanm80o1_250.gif)
There’s no reason NOT to have this on my blog.
[Previously in Magic Mike news]
(h/t BarebackContessa)
