Well, I intended to get up early today and get a job on it, but I stayed up later than I intended and I was very comfortable–I even got up to feed Sparky and went right back to bed like a lag-a-bed–and so I figured what the hell and stayed in bed relaxing and napping until finally I got up. I stayed up too late watching Connor Storrie on Saturday Night Live–intending to see the monologue and then either watch the whole show or clips this morning. Yet I stayed up, watching, and next thing we knew it was midnight and we’d watched the entire show for the first time in decades. This will always be a Heated Rivalry and everything related to it fan account; it’s a show that brings me joy, and the endless enthusiasm worldwide for the show and everything connected to it also brings me joy. I’ll talk more about last night’s episode, and everything that goes along with that a bit later on.
Dan Simmons, a writer I used to admire, died recently. I had read some of his works in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night, Children of the Night) and I really enjoyed the books. I had also read both Song of Kali and Fires of Eden, which I enjoyed but made me very uncomfortable–they reminded me of early twentieth century books about “exoticized” locations and peoples; Song of Kali even seemed like a “means well but still offensive” juvenile series book for kids written pre-1970–and having been to Hawaii, Fires of Eden was an interesting take, I thought at the time, on the old Hawaiian gods; now being more aware than I was when I was a clueless dolt, it’s probably deeply offensive to indigenous Hawaiians. I stopped reading Simmons when I moved away from reading horror to reading exclusively crime and/or queer lit; I’d even forgotten about him entirely until I was judging an award one year and his novel Flashback was entered. “Oh, Dan Simmons! I love his work and had forgotten about it” only to read and see that all it was just a lengthy diatribe that’s message was nearly as conservative and ignorant as anything written by Ayn Rand. The main character is a former college liberal arts professor in a dystopian world ruined by things like free health care and everyone granted a guaranteed income, which naturally led to the collapse of everything good and decent and meaningful in the world–and there was a lot of talk how electing a Black president in 2008 was the beginning of the end. I gave it a zero rating on my judging form, threw it in the garbage, and vowed to never read, or reread, anything he wrote ever again. I don’t give my money to homophobes. I did like the television mini-series of his novel The Terror, despite its blatant homophobia (of course the gay sailor is the villain, because of course), but I was also amused that the second season was a slap in Simmons’ face, focused on the internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war–I’m sure he was a fan of those camps, given his politics. I did feel a bit of a pang when I heard he’d died (one of those too bad he wasted his talent by becoming a fascist), but he really was a good writer, and yes, a shame that happened to him.
Oh, well. It’s a nice day outside today, too!
Yesterday was a pretty good day, overall. I got some much-needed rest, did some chores around here, ran some errands, and was a kitty bed for Sparky for a good while. I have some more chores to do this morning, of course, and I am not really going to plan to do anything today. Plans don’t always seem to happen the way I want them to on the weekends, and making plans and announcing them publicly isn’t really the smart way to go here, because then I have to come here and make excuses for myself, or admit to not operating as efficiently as I like to think of myself being. Which, now that I think about it, is definitely a me thing, a holdover from the anxiety and my youthful training to not be lazy–as though taking it easy and resting and relaxing is somehow a bad thing. I keep finding all these habits and mental things that are all coping mechanisms I built up over the years to handle the anxiety, or try to manage it, at any rate.
We also watched Reality Check, about Tyra Banks and America’s Next Top Model, which we used to watch back in the day, and really, none of what they depicted in the documentary came as a surprise. I saw how they treated the bigger girls, I saw how they slut-shamed Shandi, and so forth. We didn’t watch the show as it aired, but would watch the marathons cable channels would run on the weekends, so it was comfort watching while recovering from going out the night before–lying on the couch, ordering a pizza, no energy, etc.–and everyone excused everything by saying “yes, well, this is the industry”–instead of “we should be fighting to change this.” The world and culture is very different now than it was when the show first started airing, but I’m not precisely sure when we stopped watching; probably when the weekend marathons were discontinued. Even with all the new attention the show has gotten this decade (people found it during lockdown), Tyra still seems to think she didn’t do anything bad or anything wrong, there’s no real accountability other than “I wouldn’t do that now.” (She also wasn’t the first Black supermodel, so I don’t know why she is fine with erasing Naomi Sims? I don’t know modeling that well (it’s not something I’ve ever cared enough about, frankly, to pay much attention to), so maybe there were others before Tyra that I don’t know or remember, but I am pretty damned sure Naomi Sims was before Tyra. I could be wrong.
I really enjoyed watching Saturday Night Live, and while some of the skits didn’t hit, he certainly did. He was terrific on live television! I also loved that they used his old skit from clown school–stripper hit by a car on the way to a bachelorette party–and he was terrific at the physical comedy it required (plus, we got to see him in a bikini, but it wasn’t gratuitous or sexy, which was a lovely flip and a metaphor about always have to deliver for fans), and his monologue was terrific. Like everyone, I was a little bothered by CAA and NBC (hockey AND the Olympics) using his luster and star power to rehabilitate the boys’ team’s image–horribly unfair, especially given how new his star is and not even considering the damage it could cause his image–but the quiet, polite applause when the NFL’s “chosen sacrificial lambs came on stage, and their awkward faces was perfect. They looked like two little boys who wanted to be anywhere else rather than where they were, sorry they got caught and sorry they had to be there, but if they didn’t want to lose Internet privileges they had to do this. They also didn’t look ashamed or sorry, either. But the looks on their faces when Hilary Knight and Megan Keller got long, sustained applause and cheers–something they didn’t get, and never will now outside of a hockey arena–their little bubble finally pierced and they realized oh man we really did fuck up those cheers would have been for US had we not fucked up and I think I watched Toothless Jack die a bit inside. Once again, the women have to clean up after the men, after the men not only laughed at their accomplishments with a rapist pedo and turned the entire conversation about the women’s gold medal into “about what the men did”–you not only buried the national pride in your own medal but built up at the women at your own expense. I also loved how Tkachuk was cornered into admitting his god-king used and embarrassed him on the global stage–I also love how clips of him getting absolutely drilled on the ice are going viral every time it happens. Close the Northern border indeed.
Schadenfreude and her sister karma are bitches indeed.
It was also exciting that Hudson Williams showed up, too!
And yes, I know what’s going on in the Middle East, but don’t have words to express how apoplectic my anger and rage is. Give me time.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back before work tomorrow morning.
Queer and Loathing in America 