Reel Village @reelvillage - Tumblr Blog

The Life Of A Writer, a play in two acts.

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

tastefullyoffensive

Video: Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt Take Turns Insult Each Other

did-you-know

There were only 28 women directors involved in Hollywood’s top 700 films from 2007 to 2014. Of those films, only 11% had a gender-balanced cast, and only 3 out of every 10 speaking characters were women. Source

reelvillage

How is still still happening?

justseventeen

September 1969. ‘Listening Tent: to shelter you, drape you, cushion you in sound, right in a cozy corner of your room.’

reelvillage

I want to live in this picture right now.

rollingstone

Watch Justin Timberlake and the cast of Trolls get their groove on to “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” his first new song since 2013.

robalyn

the highlighted area is where Jason Derulo knows what the girls want. london to taiwan.

kittiesinqueerland

new york to haiti

glowcloud-archive-deactivated20

greenland is right out

venusian--eye-deactivated201606

ummm no offense but new york to haiti should be measured as the area between the two latitudes, not the longitudes. this graph is incorrect and vastly underestimates the total region of the earth in which Jason Derulo knows what the girls want

queerqueerspawn

Even measuring that way, Greenland remains right out, as does the entirity of Brazil.

enthralled-by-victor-blog-b-blo

Have we considered measuring by neither latitude nor longitude but in all area that would extend perpendicular from the diagonal of the two places? There are many different interpretations of the data, and until more is available, we ought not conclude anything at this point.

queerqueerspawn

In light of that, I posit this alternative map of regions where Jason Derulo is potentially claiming where he knows what girls want:

As we can see, if we assume that model, the vast majority of the area where Jason Derulo knows what girls want is either open ocean (the Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea) or sparsely populated (the northern Sahara, the northern Arabian Desert, various desert portions of Iran and Afghanistan, and the southern Tibetan Plateau). Four of the ten most populated countries on the planet have no territory in it (Nigeria, Brazil, Japan, and Indonesia), and two which do have relatively little territory in it (the US and Russia). It is suggested that for all his boasting, Jason Derulo does not know what a probable majority of the world’s girls want.

shitshilarious

Perhaps Jason Derulo’s intention was never to proclaim to be omnipotent to the interests of the female gender. Perhaps he was instead expressing his humanity, or the limits of his knowledge. I applaud Jason Derulo. Jason Derulo is not just another 2 dimensional character. Jason Derulo has depth.Jason Derulo has limitations and has come to terms with them. Jason Derulo knows Jason Derulo. Thats why he makes it a point to say his name so much.

reelvillage

This is my favorite Tumblr post.

todayinhistory

April 3rd 1911: Emily Davison found in Parliament

On this day in 1911, suffragette Emily Wilding Davison was discovered in a broom cupboard in the chapel crypt of the Houses of Parliament. She hid during the night of April 2nd - the night of the 1911 census - so that she could officially record her place of residence as ‘the House of Commons’. Ths stunt was intended to promote the suffragette cause, and emphasise the fact that disenfranchised women were excluded from participating in the British political system. The former teacher dedicated herself to the campaign for women’s rights and female suffrage, even being subjected to force feeding while on hunger strike in prison. Davison often committed acts of civil disobedience, including hiding in Parliament overnight, burning post boxes, and throwing rocks at the carriage of chancellor David Lloyd George. Two years after the Parliament incident, at the Epsom Derby, Davison ran out in front of King George V’s horse Anmer; she was trampled by the horse, and later died from her injuries. She appears to have been attempting to attach a suffragette flag to the King’s horse, though it has also been suggested she was trying to pull down the horse. Others believed she had been aiming to commit suicide and become a martyr for the suffragette cause, but the fact she had purchased a return rail ticket that day appears to suggest otherwise. Davison’s extraordinary devotion to the suffragette cause demonstrates the lengths to which women would go to fight for their political rights. Her daring foray into Parliament is today commemorated with a plaque in the place she hid overnight.

reelvillage

Badass!

sjavftusifuj

GOD PLEASE WATCH THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT

topherchris

Three simple things we all know

1. Mass shootings are a daily occurrence. We only hear about the most “newsworthy” incidents. The Mass Shooting Tracker keeps a log, and it’s horrific to take in.

2. This level of gun violence is completely preventable. We absolutely already know that gun control saves lives, no matter what a politician has told you.

3. The government can’t seriously work on this problem because the National Rifle Association will not allow it.

But we should investigate Planned Parenthood some more.

Actress Nina Millin’s ‘Beyoncélogues’ were a smash success. Now she’s taken on two T. Swift classics in honor of her five-night run at the Staples Center.

Nina Millin is not only a dear friend, but she is a genius. Her dramatic performances of Beyonce songs (The Beyoncelogues) showed the world what a lot of us already knew...she is the industry’s best kept secret. Not for long. She’s back...but this time, she’s uncovering the often-overlooked depth in Taylor Swift’s lyrics.

#taylor swift #Swiftalogues #Nina Millin #Beyoncelogues #TSwift #swifty

thedaddycomplex

Okay. I’ve alluded to this before, but here’s the full news. And it is related to parenting.

Season 2 of Laughs premieres this Saturday on Fox (in select cities). The show ends with a segment called So Then There’s This, which I produce.

You see, I’ve been doing social media and other stuff for a few shows, one of which was Laughs. That show spun off the web series So Then There’s This. A network exec saw my Discussing News stuff and asked if I wanted to take over the series as producer. Then shortly after I took over, they announced that the series would appear within episodes of Laughs for the new season.

To recap, here’s the chain of events, all in a row:

I became a dad

I started a dad blog and associated social media accounts

That experience helped me get a social media job at a charity

That experience helped me get a social media job in television

The series I do with my kids, plus my work for the TV show led to a job producing a web series

That web series will now be on TV

So basically, I’m a producer now and I have my kids to thank. What a strange ride.

(Oh, and since this is a parenting site, I’ll go ahead and apologize now to all the moms who’ll be offended by what Tom says in the premiere episode of So Then There’s This.)