Smooth, right? If it looks anything like a Patrick Nagel piece, I love it. The weather has been turning towards spring here in Denver, and I feel like I’ve gotten back on top of my reading. Whew! I’m not sure what I’ll be doing for St. Patrick’s Day, beyond going to go see Frozen at the mall, but I imagine Lucky Charms will be involved somehow.
Links
Daylight Savings Time is so weird. This YouTube video explains why.
Corpus Libris is a tumblr devoted to images of people holding books over their bodies. Charming!
BBC America is producing The Real History of Science Fiction, a four-part miniseries about major themes in science fiction featuring everyone you have ever loved and also Steven Moffat. (Both Uhuras! Anthony Daniels! Christopher Lloyd!) It’ll air on April 19th, which I will assume means BBC America is giving me a belated birthday present. Thanks!
ladybusiness’ newest project: The Friendship Zone, a tumblr devoted to women being friends with women. It’s so awesome!
RuPaul’s Drag Race is back! While pursuing the AV Club comments on last week’s episode, conversation inevitably turned to who is going to play who on Snatch Game. Someone proposed that Bianca Del Rio should do Nancy Reagan, which left me in hysterics, but another commentator mentioned that John Hodgeman should judge in character as Ayn Rand. I went to investigate and discovered the greatest Ayn Rand impression ever.
GeekFire Labs makes handmade scented lip balms inspired by pop culture. A red velvet cake Harley Quinn lip balm is everything I have ever wanted.
Everyone’s favorite whiny vampire rock star Lestat will be coming back; Anne Rice has revealed that she will be writing a new installment in The Vampire Chronicles. I am terrifically fond of Lestat, particularly Tom Cruise’s version of him, but I never did get that far into the series.
XKCD creator Randall Munroe also does What If?, a column where he answers absurd columns with science. And it’s going to become a book! Huzzah! We must buy it in droves, because Munroe is an awesome human being.
Rooney Mara will play Tiger Lily in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Peter Pan. You exhaust me with your stupid, Hollywood. People have such fits over racebending characters in order to remotely look like the world we live in, but when we have a character whose ethnicity cannot be disputed, this happens. Gah.
Beyond Clueless is a documentary about teen films that premiered at SXSW this year. Given that I just saw Clueless for the first time, I’m interested to see adolescence perpetuated on screen en masse.
Rumors have been circulating that Hillary Clinton might be considering a presidential run in 2016. That makes this 1992 Vanity Fair article, “What Hillary Wants,” very fascinating. It looks at Clinton’s role in her husband’s political career, her own accomplishments and ambitions, and the Clintons’ marriage. I learned a lot about both Clintons and the early nineties reading it.
Back to the Future is going to be this summer’s fashion template. I’m more of a Ducky myself, but nonetheless, my time has come.
Karen Gillan’s new ABC sitcom Selfie is a modern update of My Fair Lady, featuring a woman whose horrible break-up becomes a viral video and decides to undergo image training by her own Professor Higgins. Said Professor Higgins will be played by John Cho. I am usually never okay with Higgins and Eliza getting together, but I want it and the show hasn’t even started. (As long as he can still guest on Sleepy Hollow as Andy.)
Female Armor Bingo has been making the rounds lately, but I find Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo much more intriguing, because it breaks down all the nonreasons for illogical female armor to exist. (The whole blog, Bikini Armor Battle Damage, is genius and well worth an archive binge.)
In the same vein, tumblr user thetrekkiehasthephonebox explains exactly why the female uniforms in the Star Trek reboots are kind of useless, since they don’t show rank.
Bryan Singer has confirmed that X-Men: Apocalypse will be set in the eighties. POUND. THE. ALARM. ALL OF MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE. BRING ME DAZZLER. And I thought I wasn’t emotionally ready for Days of Future Past! Quick, pass me a paper bag, I need to hyperventilate.
Reddit AMAs are great, but they’re not exactly the neatest format to read. Interviewly takes those interviews and puts them into a much more readable format, saving you from digging through unanswered questions to get all the meat off the bone.
The Dominique Ansel Bakery, home of the Cronut, has concocted a milk shot that is served in a shot glass made out of a chocolate chip cookie. (There’s a glaze to keep it from getting soggy if you, unlike me, are able to nurse food.) I’ve already decided that I’m going to move to New York by the end of the year, but this just confirms my resolve.
Keeley Hawes will be joining Doctor Who as a villainous banker named Ms. Delphox. She’s also a redhead with eye wear, which makes me suspect Moffat has a pattern going. Did I say pattern? I meant type.
Lupita Nyong’o has met with J. J. Abrams about a role in Star Wars VII. I pounded the alarm so hard it broke for eighties X-Men, but this is just as exciting. Plus, she might be playing a descendant of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s. (Obi-Wan had a brother named Owen in the Extended Universe, so I’m assuming it’s that. Well, it’s either that or let my dormant Obi-Wan/Padme feels rise to the surface.
The first kiss on film is between two ladies—for Victorian reasons, but still. Cute!
The Nerds of Color propose that Iron Fist, a Marvel superhero coming soon to Netflix, be cast as Asian-American to make his story less problematic and more relevant. I love how it removes the white savior trope for Iron Fist and provides a narrative of cultural reconnection, not appropriation. Sign the petition!
At GQ, Michael Paterniti writes about the burrneshas of Albania. The pronoun work is a little scattershot (one burrnesha uses female and male pronouns, which Paterniti compresses into “he-she” instead of reaching for “they” or any other gender neutral pronoun), but it raises a lot of interesting questions about third genders in otherwise rigid gender binaries and how the oath of the burrnesha is about agency, not gender, which says a lot about culture.
Okay, this is an IKEA ad from Singapore, but it’s also a great mix of a pretty friendly and dedicated cosplayer and organization porn. DELIGHTFUL.
Acquisitions:
Purchased: None
Added: Sugar Rush by Julie Burchill (via Buzzfeed Rewind), Teenage by Jon Savage (via The Dissolve), Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns (via Crave)
The Literary Omnivore 
Totally buying Munroe’s book 😀
I adore Lestat too – the books and the movie were such a huge formative influence on me. But I hated the last Vampire Chronicles book, Blood Canticle, with a fierce passion, and I don’t think I can work up the courage to pick up this one after that. Maybe I’ll wait and see what trusted friends say?
I think wait and see is a good idea. I stopped after the first three books (well, I say stopped, I mean I got distracted), so I don’t know how the series has gone.
I dropped my face into my hands at this news about Tiger Lily. Why are people like this. Also, Peter Pan is racist to begin with and maybe we shouldn’t make a bunch more adaptations of it because it is, yeah, pretty racist.
I think there’s space to adapt racist texts—if you’re making them not racist. Peter Pan has been played with fast and loose for decades; it’s time for someone to have the wild idea that Tiger Lily can be transformed into an awesome character. Barf barf barf.
How cool would it be to have a Peter Pan adaptation that’s ABOUT Tiger Lily? That would be so fun, right?
So fun! I vote for this.
It’s interesting that in Pygmalion (the original version of My Fair Lady), there’s no real suggestion that Eliza ends up with Higgins. He mocks her stated intention of marrying Freddy Eynsford-Hill, but she doesn’t agree with his suggestion that she just carry on living in his house (not getting married, mind you) along with Colonel Pickering. Pygmalion is actually a lot more feminist than My Fair Lady is, IMO.
Thanks for all those other links – I like the post about rank for female officers in the new reboot of Star Trek – that is shocking.
EXACTLY. I haven’t read or seen Pygmalion, but I tend to like it a little better for that. Plus: Eliza and Freddy are so cute together! How can anyone not ship them?
Yeah. That article just goes to show how differently the new powers that be of Star Trek treat the franchise. It’s really disheartening.