This Is Beautiful: Crocheting

 So I picked up a new hobby lately, I started crocheting granny squares to turn into a blanket! I'm trying to make a pride flag blanket, I'm currently on the black stripe. Honestly I've been really chugging my way through this, I want to have two rows of black squares and I'm about a row and a half in. The thing of yarn that I bought is looking quite deflated, and I've only had it for about a week!

I did already put in an order for lots more yarn, so don't worry about me, I'll just be here crocheting away. It's good to have a hobby I feel this excited about again.

“So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo

This is another recommendation from my partner, he leant it to me after hearing that I have never read it! Honestly that is a pretty high recommendation right there. He has also leant this out to other coworkers as well, it is a much loved copy of this book. And I really cannot agree more, this book is a wonderful resource for anyone who wants to discuss race or fight racism in the world.

Oluo makes this book so accessible and easy to read. She is writing for everyone, not just white people, even though parts of the book are aimed at specifically white people. She never talks down to the reader and addresses all qualms a reader might have with clear language that explain complicated concepts really well. She excellently captures the nuance in ideas like cultural appropriation, tone policing, and affirmative action, and couples all of these with anecdotes from her own life.

The best aspect of this book though is how practical it all is. As indicated in the title, she gives various step-by-step guides on how to discuss these issues and how to react to racism when you see it out in the world. And even though talking is in the title and the focus of the book, in the final chapter she takes us to task and reminds us that talking can not be the end all be all of our anti-racism work. We must turn these words into actions in order to actually make a change.

This book is wonderful, it is captivating and really makes you think about yourself and how you interact with racial issues. I have been reading about race for a while now and I learned so much from it. I am certain that I will be implementing her strategies in future interactions regarding race.

This Is Beautiful: Instant Pot

 Ok not going to lie, this past week sucked. It was rough at work, I had a lot put on me, and there was the Atlanta terrorist attack exactly a week ago. I was so busy that I didn't really have much to fall back on in terms of hobbies or anything. But lately I've been cooking a lot with an Instant Pot I received for my birthday. It's great, it cooks things super fast! I've had a lot of fun trying out new recipes. And for some reason food was what I decided to latch onto this week as the world has just been falling apart. You need something to grab onto sometimes. Like beef and barley stew. It's really good, would recommend.

“The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan

As you can guess from my last post, the next installment in me rereading old books through my library is the Percy Jackson series. I loved these books when I was in high school, it’s a great combination of Ancient Greek myths and contemporary young adult fiction. Who didn’t have a myths phase in their life? This book allows you to imagine that you’re the child of a Greek god and have to train to fight monsters.

The most amazing thing about this book is how he updates the myths to fit modern life. The idea is that the Greek gods are real and they sometimes have children with mortals, leading to the existence of half-blood heroes. Riordan hypothesizes that any famous humans basically are all half-bloods utilizing their godlike powers. Which I find a little suspect, but that phenomenon isn’t unique to this series. I mean, can’t any normal humans do things? We aren’t all idiots. But anyways, that isn’t an important point.

Percy finds out that he is the son of the sea god, Poseidon, the first to be born in many years. Poseidon is one of the most powerful gods, meaning that Percy has a high affinity for monsters while in the mortal world. To complicate things, someone stole Zeus’ master lightning bolt and they are very eager to blame it on Percy. To clear his name, Percy goes on a quest to find the master bolt, all while still learning about himself and this new world that he has been thrown into.

If you grew up with Greek myths, then this book can be a really fun game of hide and seek to see what aspects of the myths you can find in the plots. There’s Medusa and Persephone and of course the heroes all come up like Hercules and Perseus. Riordan clearly loves the original myths, you can tell that thinking of clever ways to insert them was a lot of fun for him.

To be honest, it is hard to not judge this book based on what I know happens later on with the series and with Riordan’s other books. I think it is an excellent way to set the stage for everything that comes later though. On this reading, I picked up that when Percy asks Chiron about God (capital G God) Chiron’s response is along the lines of “we do not deal with the metaphysical here” to sort of sidestep that question. I just love this detail so much, that Riordan leaves room open for other religions and other gods to be out there. Because of course he is going to get into all of that later!

I’m excited to revisit the rest of the series, this was such a great intro and I’m sure that the rest holds up just as well.

This Is Beautiful: Percy Jackson

 So now that I have a library card I've started rereading the Percy Jackson series as ebooks through the library. I'm certainly going to be writing about it, but it's nice reading something nostalgic these days. It's been a while since I've been this excited about reading a book. And I don't think I've reread this series since high school, so it has been a while. 

Rick Riordan, the author of the series, has written so many books since then as well. And I haven't read them all, but I've heard really good things about the queer representation he puts in. I'm so excited to get through these!

Raya and the Last Dragon

 This past weekend I was able to watch a screening of the new Disney movie, "Raya and the Last Dragon." I absolutely loved it! I thought it was incredible, Raya is probably my new favorite Disney princess. The visuals are stunning, the acting is incredible, and the story is heartwarming. It's pretty much everything you'd want in an animated movie. 

First the animation. The movie looks so beautiful. And it highlights plenty of different animation styles. There is one for the main story, one for the flashback to tell the history of the kingdom, and another one for when characters tell stories. Honestly you could probably break that last category down even further, but I only saw the movie once and can't remember all the small differences. But they all looked really good, and it's a neat way to highlight the skills of the animation team. And a lot of them are inspired by East Asian art, since that is the region that the movie is based on.

So many people on the production team as Asian as well. And a number of the actors! There has been some pushback that they aren't all East Asian, which is entirely reasonable. I think that there does need to be a balance between an ideal world and what would best promote the movie today. A lot of the stars in the movie are really good actors, and definitely treat the material respectfully. I especially loved the voice of Raya. While I'm discussing the characters, this movie is definitely the closest that Disney could get right now to a queer character. So much of Raya and Namaari's relationship is queer coded, from Namaari's undercut to how they track each other for years. Raya's voice actor has come out very vocally and insisting that Raya is queer, and had romantic feelings for Namaari. Which I appreciate immensely, since there's no way that Disney would explicitly put that into the script.

Finally there's the story. Most of the movie focuses on Raya and how she has become mistrustful of others since humans caused a mysterious plague that turns people into stone to resurface. Then she meets Sisu, an ancient dragon who is a little too trusting of others. Raya and Sisu have to travel around, searching for gem pieces that will cure the plague. Raya tries to teach Sisu street smarts, but Sisu ends up teaching Raya to trust and help others. There are so many things that I love about this. It's very relatable, talking about trust, because I think part of growing up means that you become mistrustful. It's also about finding common humanity with others, Raya has to learn to trust and care for humans who come from different areas of the kingdom in the process. And the thing about trust is in the end, it means that you have faith in others to do the right thing. That's a core concept of it. The movie illustrates this so well, the ending comes with Namaari (who might have been the bad guy) putting together the gem and saving the world. Not Raya. It both illustrates trust and how powerful teamwork can be. Putting the hero to the side at the last minute is a powerful choice and the writers used it so well here. The final thing I want to highlight is that there is not really a villain. Namaari ends up being good in the end. So much of the conflict is humans being scared and confused rather than evil. Even the strange plague is said to have been born from human discord. It is essentially their distrust personified within the movie. So well written and so cohesive.

The movie "Raya and the Last Dragon" is wonderful. It has so many aspects of a really wonderful movie. The story is excellently written so that it all flows into one unifying message, the visuals are stunning, and the actors are wonderful. If you can see it, definitely do so, if you can see it without paying Disney, more power to you!

This Is Beautiful: Sun!

 Last week we had over a foot of snow in Michigan, this week it has started warming up. All of that snow has nearly melted, the sun is out, it feels like we did a massive U-turn from winter straight into spring. It's just incredible how much the weather affects my mood, I feel happier and lighter and as though things are looking up. Sunlight! It's so good! That's all I've really got, get some sun folks.

“Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs” by Chuck Klosterman

This book, oddly enough, was mentioned to me by my therapist. Having read it I am still a little confused by the suggestion but we can roll with it. Klosterman describes this as a “low cultural manifesto” which describes it pretty well, he essentially takes aspects of everyday life and writes about them and their significance to society. A sort of layman’s cultural criticism or philosophy of the everyday.

You can also sum up this book with what Klosterman writes in the middle of his chapter on basketball, “this is why men need to become obsessed with things: It’s an extroverted way to pursue solipsism. We are able to study something that defines who we are; therefore, we are able to study ourselves.” (p. 123) A good amount of the book is just Klosterman taking some aspect of culture and demonstrating how this explains a larger part of culture. Sometimes this is obvious, like his chapter on The Sims or tribute rock bands and what they say about music, other times it seems like he’s really reaching. Like the aforementioned chapter on basketball, for instance.

A lot of his comparisons I found to be really interesting. The first chapter is how romantic movies have essentially destroyed any hope that any of us can truly be happy with another person. Essentially we always want a soul mate and for things to work out perfectly, when really we are all just normal people looking for another normal, decent human to share the rent with. There were a couple chapters on music that I also liked, such as the tribute bands one or the Billy Joel chapter.

Overall though, I’m struck by how dated this book is. It was published in 2003, and it definitely reads like a white man wrote this in 2003 with very little research being done. A lot of the cultural references I did not understand or simply aren’t relevant anymore. There’s an entire chapter on MTV’s The Real World and I have never seen an episode of it, let alone can realize it’s impact on life.

It’s also just, men writing essays like these. Clearly Klosterman isn’t a feminist. At one point he remarks that people are always saying that women who have sex are called sluts while men who have sex are called studs, but apparently he’s heard that observation made much more often then he hears people call women sluts or men studs. Meanwhile he included an entire chapter on porn where he calls A LOT of women sluts. There’s another part where he insists that a woman calling the music industry “sexist” is detached from the rest of the world, and while he does notice that the porn industry (same previously mentioned porn chapter) revolves around men’s interests, he doesn’t go further than that. It’s just so frustrating to read at times.

If anything, I’m glad that I read this so that I can remind myself why I hate talking to self-assured men. And how good I am at picking up on their bullshit these days. And yes there are decent parts, but I’m not sure if that was worth the whole experience.

This is Beautiful: A Very Potter Musicals

 Ok so my partner and I also have rewatched the Very Potter Musicals. If you haven't heard of these, they are productions that a student run musical group put on at the University of Michigan in the early 2010s. They were super popular when I was in high school and honestly, they hold up really well. You can find them all on YouTube! I'd highly recommend them all.

-A Very Potter Musical: The first one is definitely the best. It has the most iconic music ("Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts") and some really great gags. Ron constantly eating on stage and Malfoy rolling around on the floor are my favorites, but the physical humor with Voldemort strapped to Quirrel's back are incredible too. The decision to start with their second year at Hogwarts I think was an excellent choice, it means that we're already familiar with the world and time doesn't have to be wasted explaining magic and things. Which of course everyone in the audience already knows, I have no idea why you'd watch this is you weren't a Harry Potter fan.

-A Very Potter Sequel: It does have its moments, but it does feel like they were trying to capture the original and do it all again. The music definitely isn't as good, and the decision to go back to their first year does make it pretty obvious that they wanted to include characters that died in the first musical. Having said that, I love the Red Vines gags, and a lot of the technical elements improved with better sets and props. Still worth the watch, but a step down.

-A Very Potter Senior Year: This one was more of a staged reading at Leaky Con years after the other two were made. So technical elements aren't as good, but that isn't the purpose of this one so I'm going to ignore it. Other than the scenes where they clearly lean into the fact that this is never going to be an actual show so they put ridiculous things in the stage directions. The music is much better than the Very Potter Sequel for sure, and it was made my fans so the plot is an interesting statement about the impact of Harry Potter's story more than anything else. 

Overall I love how they modify the plot of the books to make these stories. There's aspects of all the books that have been remixed to fit their plot ideas. Additionally the villains are much more sympathetic here. Part of this is that scenes are from their point of view, the books are entirely Harry's perspective. But the result is that there isn't a truly hateful character in the musicals, they're all super fun. Also they have aged really well, I think the writers here were the first to realize that calling a character Cho Chang is SUPER racist. So they have her cast as a girl with a Southern accent.

It's a great watch, I'm glad that we went back to revisit them.