the fatling

[thefatling]

This one’s for all my pro-Ana followers, you made me who I am today. H/t to @natashamuse

[bitch-media]

In 1982, David Bowie called out MTV on-air for not airing enough videos by Black artists. 

Transcript of this interview via Tech Insider. 

[atmidnightcc]

Thanks for letting #InternetABook through your blocker last night! One of these Top 10 will be on tonight’s show as Tweet of the Day!

[thefatling]

WELCOME TO FAME. POPULATION: ME

[courtingcomedy]

Help. Consent Culture in The Comedy Community Is Serious.

I know I’m complicit in rape culture. Something said, or not said, made someone uncomfortable, made mistakes, a moment of betrayal for myself or my connections, shame defanged by the lack of visible damage, the lack of “consequence”, delusion. There’s a lot of things I’ve convinced myself to detract from my guilt: I was young, I didn’t know better; I was tipsy, I didn’t know better; I’m not as bad as this person or that person; nobody got hurt; it wasn’t that bad; it was all in good fun; I’ve apologized; no one remembers/knows/confronted.

I’m not defined by these instances. It’s not apart of, as far as I know, how I’m perceived publicly. But I KNOW what happened. I know who I am, what I represent, my own moral compass and know when that has been compromised. Even though it’s difficult to deal with or talk about, to encourage others to open up and take action, I know I have to be authentic. I’ve been complicit in rape culture, and I can’t bullshit about it anymore. I need help.

Keep reading

[courtingcomedy]

Journal: 424 or So Days Later: Lessons Learned From Quitting Comedy

Of course I was looking at the comments of a link to my blog. Of course it was a mistake. I was in emotional distress, still processing a difficult, life-altering decision, distraught and vulnerable. But I needed artistic validation, that my words were well received. And, as you could expect, I found—and focused on—what I didn’t want to find. I remember that I didn’t have to work hard to see the positive feedback: a lot of people admired and appreciated my work and its sentiments. But, amid the loving farewells and “you’ll be back”s, there was a comment from comedian Ian Karmel that simply said, “Meh”. Disarming at the time, hilarious in hindsight. “Meh”. Meh? 

I’ve never met Ian. I’ve seen him live handful of times, heard him on a few podcasts, read some articles about him, and, for all intents and purposes, I felt and still feel favorable towards Ian Karmel. But “meh”! What does it even mean? Was it even mean? So neutral and concise that I overanalyzed and internalized a single word from a notorious stranger. Was he brushing off my writing ability? Or was it that I was reporting to lose faith in the belief we once shared? “Meh” is so bluntly ambiguous. Or is it ambiguously blunt?

Q: Why did you quit comedy? A: Depression!

— OJ Patterson (@OJPATTERSON)

July 11, 2014

“I quit comedy on July 7th 2014. It was glorious.” No it wasn’t. It was devastating. I thought, as a reaction to a new full-time job that exhausted my energy and eradicated my ability to host my beloved Storking Comedy as well as hit mics/showcases/far-away one-nighters with the gusto to get better, I should end my stand-up career, and, in turn, turn “stop joking” into a joke. It became my identity, I made memes; I even tried to establish a hashtag! Apparently the joke was extremely thin, one note. Not a lot of takers on the “I’m forgoing my dreams” shtick. Half of the people thought I was super serious, sending condolences like an athlete with a torn meniscus; others didn’t believe me at all, assuming that I’d be back. The rest just got bummed out. They missed me, as I them, but comedy would go on, as it does, regardless of who, when, and why somebody excuses themselves.

A year and change later: there’s a part of me that doesn’t regret quitting comedy, hence, words. I think I continue to live incomplete, for the same reason I embarked on the endeavor: I wanted to see if I could do it. I knew the lifestyle of going out most nights, hanging out at shows, trying to make my way up an invisible ladder to nowhere, letting my diluted creativity congeal into the crevices of a constricted schedule. I have a model for a metered output, doing sets every once in a while, opportunities given as a product of tenure. I hypothesized the abandon of cutting all ties to hunt prestige, living subhuman, hustling, grinding, comedy or bust. What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t imagine, what I was afraid of but inspired to take on, was the opposite, the inverse, the life unknown of love, comfort and sustainability. I didn’t want to be limited by fear, I didn’t want my obsession of comedy to handicap or sabotage my perceived self worth. I wanted to learn myself freely… and learn I did!

Now, truthfully, there’s a full concession that this could just be blowing smoke, an attempt to enable a masochistic stubbornness. This risks being completely self-serving, weightless delusion with a false humility reduction. This is probably more catharsis than advocating caution, elaborating causality or reaching a satisfying conclusion. This could be meh, or it could be meh. I mean, come on, this is a comedy website, not a diary. And what’s with “424″? That’s not a proper anniversary? I know, doubtful brain-demons, I know. Bear with me.

Keep reading

[thefatling]

I love OJ.

[courtingcomedy]

Five Ways to Condescend Your Fellow Comics

You’re a comic! You’re awesome! Your life has brought you to telling jokes into microphone in front of audience! High five! 

Depending on where you are in your career, you may or may have not accrued benefits and privileges by performing stand-up comedy, one of which, access and acceptance into a comedy community featuring a lot of fascinating, intelligent, and wily individuals. These people are your peers, your rivals, your gatekeepers, your benefactors, your resources, your family, and your friends. And, because you’re a comic and you’re awesome, and, depending on where you are in your career, you may have the opportunity to exploit these relationships! 

From talking shit, to making money off your colleagues’ friends, you have a slew of options to take advantage of poor boundaries. Condescendence is your best option! It’s the feeling of superiority you get from an implicit hierarchy generated from a false meritocracy that validates any kind of feeling as fact — kinda like this very post. ::pretentious wink:: 

Keep reading

[fromthedeskofdom]

My bestie from another westie, Kelly Anneken stopped by for a panel recording and agreed to a pic. Huzzah!

[thefatling]

Look at these nerds.

[charlesandhistypewriter]

This should be a Happy Day, but it’s a been a helluva Two Weeks.

A part of me has always wished that the US would celebrate Juneteenth the way it celebrates the Fourth of July. Lord knows the events marked by both days are of equal importance to American history. What’s more, Juneteenth opens up the opportunity to both celebrate Black culture and have necessary conversations about race that would push the country forward.

Unfortunately, I’m also a realist and know that such a specifically race-based American celebration would most likely be observed by the mainstream in a cringe-inducing fashion.

But if we really want a few regrettable reminders of how little progress this country has made in terms of racial dialogue, one need only look at the news over the past two weeks. In that time we have seen:

A White woman caught in her long con of pretending to be Black. When caught red-handed, the media created a bullshit euphemism in an attempt to justify her actions Because America has a problem discussing both race and White privilege.

The government Dominican Republic has decided that its citizens of Haitian heritage - specifically citizens born and raised in the Dominican Republic - are to be stripped of their citizenship and deported to Haiti. This story has gone largely unnoticed by mainstream America news outlets. Because America has a problem discussing both race and immigration.

A pool party in McKinney, TX took a turn for the frightening when White residents called the police on the Black kids having the party; said Black kids also being residents. The call resulted in one police officer - with a history of race-based misconduct - attacking the unarmed kids and even pulling his gun on them. Although he was forced to resign and lawsuits are pending, he’s been praised as a hero by the White citizenship of McKinney. Because America has a problem discussing race and police brutality.

Barely a week later, cops in Fairfield, OH were called to public swimming pool to remove a group of Black kids whom employees say were in violation of the dress code. The cops - and one overzealous White patron - manhandled and injured the kids as they screamed and cried. Because America still has a problem discussing race and police brutality.

Just two nights ago, a White supremacist in South Carolina committed an unforgivable act of domestic terrorism and killed nine members of one of the country’s oldest Black churches in an attempt to “start a race war”. Although he’s been arrested, apologists have attempted to shift the blame by having an NRA board member blame the church’s pastor, by right-wing politicians attempting to turn the conversation away from race, and attempting to identify the shooter as a victim of mental illness rather than the racist perpetrator of premeditated terrorism and cold-blooded murder. Instead, the South Carolina state building flew its Confederate flag high (the same racist flag the killer has on his car’s plates) as the other flags - actual American flags - flew half-mast. Because America has a problem discussing race, guns, and symbol of hatred that is the Confederate flag.

For all the great things about the United States - and there are far too many to name here - it has a great many problems that should have been addressed long ago. Instead, it’s more popular to live in a state of denial and claim that the people who see the problems just people who hate “the greatest nation on Earth”. The level of denial is such that starts to resemble another harmful condition: addiction.

The US is addicted to guns because of paranoia, so it remains convinced that it must hoard each and everyone before they’re taken away by some invisible boogeyman. The US is addicted to the Confederate flag because of ignorance, so they fly it proudly in spite of the fact that when the US defeated Germany in World War II, they forbade them from ever flying, using, or in any way revering the swastika flag ever again. That was 70 years ago. The American Civil War ended some 150 years ago, yet the Confederate flag still flies.

And that’s part of the problem: a lack of forward progression. People still don’t want to acknowledge that not only did the Civil War end, but that the losing side did in fact lose.

That’s where a great day like Juneteenth would do the most good. It shouldn’t be a day of “Slavery ended, get over it!”, but a day of “Let’s celebrate the fact that we’ll never make a mistake as bad as slavery ever again.”

I’d really love for that to be the case. But, as I said, I’m a realist.

[thefatling]

This is great and it gutted me.

[oldmanweldon-deactivated2018121]

1. Popular Youtube acts with no live performance experience getting booked on big shows 2. The marginalization of not-white performers into “specialty acts”, thus segregating important new voices away from mainstream communities that could use the infusion of newness 3. Audience members...

[beckybloomwood-archived]

[thefatling]

This is what zero fucks looks like.

[thefatling]

It is a constant source of amusement to me that I have more followers on Instagram than on Tumblr.

[thefatling]

The Fatling’s CRB Review No. 9: Vox by Nicholson Baker

“How did your beads get broken?”

Erotica is basically the only form of pornography I use, and even that, only rarely. My standard line is that I’m not interested in sex I’m not having, and given my default position, I’m still not sure how I feel about this book. I am deeply amused that the author has also written a book about a six-year-old girl as well as two volumes of erotica. I liked the former, The Everlasting Story of Nory, and so I was inclined to enjoy Vox.

For me, Vox functions better as a snapshot of American life in the early 90s than it does as smut. The entire thing feels quaint, with its references to elaborate stereo systems, terrestrial radio, renting porn on videotapes, and of course the central focus—phone sex on a landline.

The book is an extended conversation between Abby and Jim, who meet on a party line advertised in Juggs magazine. Abby gets there via a slightly more respectable publication, but the name escapes me. I found myself charmed by Abby, a quirky indie girl in the style of O’Hara’s Gloria Wandrous, but irritated by Jim, a Nice Guy similarly ahead of his time. Still, the book subtly titilates. I found myself well and truly aroused by the climax of the phone call, which doubtlessly couldn’t have happened if the naughty stories Jim and Abby swap weren’t also effectively sexy. The book is clever and well-written—a nice gift for people who’ve graduated from the clunky prose and specious gender politics of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Speaking of gender politics, let’s take a look at the character of Jim. Jim’s a grade-A creep, in my opinion. He’s the type of guy who’s just so concerned for women, you guys. He reminded me of Scott Aaronson, the MIT prof who, last year, caused a ruckus by whining that feminism had made it virtually impossible to express himself sexually because he was just so worried about oppressing women by accident. In one of his extended sexual riffs, Jim tells the story of his obsessive infatuation with a woman who uses him as her emotional dumpster. She’s in love with her married co-worker, who treats her like garbage, and Jim is always there to comfort her, and of course, always hoping she’ll accidentally fall onto his dick and realize that he’s been the perfect man for her all along. The climax of this story is weird, wherein the co-worker helps Jim fulfill an elaborate non-penetrative sexual fantasy, and while it is oddly sexy, Jim’s declaration that it’s the most erotic moment of his life to date is just depressing. Although Jim has no particular incentive to lie to Abby, something about this story doesn’t quite ring true.

I recognize that penetrative sex is not the be-all, end-all for every sexually active person, but Jim’s interaction with his co-worker is so devoid of real intimacy as to be off-putting. Abby’s excuse for using a dirty phone call to get off is refreshingly biological—intercourse triggers persistent yeast infections for her, so if she’s going to have good old p-in-v, it’s going to be on her terms. Jim, on the other hand, is just another dude who’s decided to blame women for his own insecurities by aggressively not blaming them, viewing himself as fundamentally broken and unworthy of the entire gender he’s resentfully put on a pedestal, all the while presenting himself as a gee whiz, aw shucks type guy who’d never do something creepy like anonymously send you a pair of sexy stockings for no legitimate reason. There’s a thin layer of bitterness underlying Jim’s speech throughout the book, whereas Abby approaches the interaction far more whimsically. It is Jim, after all, who presses Abby to call him on his private phone number, and she does eventually take it down at the end of the book. Here’s hoping she never calls him back.

[thefatling]

The Fatling’s CBR7 Review No. 6/7/8: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, & A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle

I am reviewing these all together, because how else could I do it?

I’ve been a huge Madeleine L’Engle fan for most of my life. For Christmas two years ago, I received a gorgeous box set of the “Time Quintet,” reissued by Square Fish (a Macmillan imprint, I am told). I was surprised by the “quintet” bit, since I had always thought of the books as a quartet—the three listed here, plus Many Waters, which I love so much that it warrants its own review.

I read and re-read a lot of L’Engle’s books over the years, but I generally focused my attention on Many Waters, the Polly O’Keefe books, and certain of the Vicky Austin books, primarily because they had more sex in them (Zachary Gray, be still my beating, masochistic heart), and I read a lot of L’Engle’s adult fiction as a teen for the same reason. Meg Murry and A Wrinkle in Time were my introduction to this world, but I very rarely re-read these three books.

A Wrinkle in Time

"Stay angry, little Meg," Mrs. Whatsit whispered. "You will need all your anger now." 

At a time when everyone is arguing whether having Strong Female Characters is enough for young girls, Meg Murry is both the heroine we need and the heroine we deserve. There is nothing easy about Meg—she is an indifferent student, a brilliant mathematician, an object of a boy’s affection, a fiercely loyal daughter and sister, and she throws a wicked punch at anyone who gets in her way. She’s prickly and unpleasant and challenging. She’s perpetually pissed off. She’s impatient. She is not pretty.

Did you read that? She is not pretty. Not in the least. This changes later in the series (as it changes for most gawky youths who learn to tame their bodies and show them off to their best advantage), but it’s incredibly refreshing, and a pity there haven’t been more YA heroines like Meg since the book’s publication in 1962. Meg’s a total screw-up, but that doesn’t mean she can’t save the world.

The plot is fairly well-known, so I won’t belabor it here. Meg’s physicist father has disappeared on a top-secret mission for the US government, leaving her mother alone to fend for herself, Meg, Sandy & Dennys (the “normal” Murry kids), and Charles Wallace, a precocious 6-year-old with telepathic abilities. Meg and Charles Wallace, along with Calvin O’Keefe (Meg’s future husband and helpmeet), travel through space and time via a tessaract to liberate Dr. Murry from his imprisonment on Camazotz, the central location for The Dark Thing, the evil shadow that plunges planets and solar systems into total futility and despair.

L’Engle’s Christian universalism is on full display even here, her first novel, citing both scientific, artistic, and religious figures as messengers of the fundamental spiritual truth that binds us all together (L’Engle’s view, not mine, though I appreciate it more as an adult than I could as a child). The author’s view of heaven is a vast system of galaxies where the stars sing in breathtaking harmonies and all is right with everyone until The Dark Thing interferes.

This is where L’Engle gets herself into a bit of trouble, at least for the earthbound denizens of her world. Much is made of the troubled times humanity lives in, and it’s explicitly cited that the Doctors Murry fled the cities they had formerly lived and worked in for the bucolic New England countryside to escape the rampant drugs and crime. There’s a pervasive sense that anyone who is party to crime is simply not open to the pure goodness of the universe’s song, as if L’Engle can comprehend the extraterrestrial systems that govern our spiritual lives, but not the quotidian matrix of poverty, racism, sexism and classism that creates criminals. There’s a whiff of white flight and smug self-congratulation about the whole thing, and that attitude not only pervades all of her writing, it becomes more pronounced in the books she publishes during the Reagan 80s.

A Wind in the Door

She cried out, “I hold you! I love you, I Name you. I Name you, Echthroi. You are not nothing. You are.”

Published a full eleven years after A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door catches up with Meg and Charles Wallace and things get weird. The plot revolves around Charles Wallace’s mitochondritis, essentially an illness of cellular energy, caused in this instance by the fictional farandolae—organisms that live within each cell in the human body and provide the mitochondrial energy source. Confused? Read the book, it’s a pretty clever little device that is really hard to explain out of context.

At any rate, the Universe gets the band back together, sending first a cherubim named Proginoskes (initially mistaken for a dragon) and then a mysterious Teacher named Blajeny who charges Calvin, Meg, and Charles Wallace with a bizarre curriculum, the completion of which will defeat the evil Echthroi, who behave within The Dark Thing in much the same way as farandolae behave within mitochondria. They learn the psychic communication kything, a sort of empathetic mind-meld, and pick up another classmate in Mr. Jenkins, Meg’s hated former teacher and Charles Wallace’s current principal at the village elementary school, where Charles Wallace gets the living shit kicked out of him every single day. L’Engle includes this pervasive peer abuse almost casually, even though nowadays the brutal, daily beatings Charles Wallace is subjected to would inspire a plethora of It Gets Better Videos. I’m not sure how accurate a depiction of 1970s bullying this is, though, given her outsized claims that 10 year olds in this rural Connecticut farming community regularly push “hard drugs.” 

Charles Wallace accepts this undeserved punishment with his typical precocious equanimity, the same way he accepts his impending death by indolent farandolae (it turns out that his farandolae are basically just refusing to do their job after succumbing to the influence of the Echthroi.) He’s like a manic pixie dream brother, always full of wisdom, but still needing to be saved by his big sister. His fatal flaw—arrogance—is the only thing that prevents him from being wholly insufferable.

I never cared for this volume of the series, so I was surprised at how effective it remains despite the bloat of biological nonsense. It benches Charles Wallace pretty quickly, which is a huge help, because a little Charles Wallace goes a long way. The back and forth between Meg and Progo (as she affectionately nicknames the cherubim) develops organically, and it’s probably the most complete relationship we ever see Meg engage in (sorry, Calvin). However, Meg’s eventual love and acceptance of Mr. Jenkins and the introduction of Dr. Louise Colubra and her namesake, the delightful snake Louise the Larger (who both figure in An Acceptable Time in a big way) hold up nicely. It moves Meg’s relationship with Calvin forward and is a worthy successor to A Wrinkle in Time.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man’s heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time.

I think I read this book several times, hoping each and every time that it would suddenly be something I enjoyed, but it never worked. This re-read was no different, even though on paper it looks great—the threat of nuclear war, time travel, psychic communication, love triangles! All my favorite stuff! But it’s presented in a slipshod manner and foolishly foregrounds Charles Wallace, who should only ever be used as a garnish in L’Engle’s world, not a main course.

Published in 1978, A Swiftly Tilting Planet leaps nine years ahead. Charles Wallace is fifteen, and Meg is married to Calvin. She is expecting their first child (the awkwardly named Polyhymnia  O’Keefe. The 70s, amirite?) and is back home for Thanksgiving dinner. Sandy and Dennys are in law and medical school, respectively, and the family has invited Calvin’s elderly, taciturn mother to join them. The Doctors Murry lay out a fine New England spread for the holiday, but a damper falls over the holiday with a call from the president. Meg’s father is informed that the fictonal Vespugian dictator Mag Dog Branzillo plans to launch a nuclear attack. The news causes Mom O’Keefe to lose her damn mind and she begins shouting orders at “Chuck” (Charles Wallace) to use her grandmother’s ancient rune to stop Branzillo.

This being a L’Engle book, Mom’s outburst isn’t, of course, just the ravings of a broken-down old woman. Charles Wallace goes for a walk and encounters the unicorn Gaudior, who tells him that once again, the Universe has drafted him into service. This time, he must travel through time and space to alter the course of history in order to prevent Branzillo’s attack. Meg plays along from home, too pregnant to tesser around the galaxy, but perfectly capable of kything with Charles Wallace, possibly with the help of Ananda, the first of several stray dogs who just show up at momentous Murry family occasions.

Where Meg’s relationship with Proginoskes was in turns contentious, cooperative, and finally tender, Charles Wallace never quite achieves the same rapport with Gaudior. It doesn’t help that Gaudior is an awful lot like Charles Wallace—arrogant, imperious, and fatally two-dimensional. The two can’t get along, to the point that they’re nearly killed by those pesky Echthroi on multiple occasions. 

The conceit of the journey is compelling—Charles Wallace must kythe deeply into various ancestors of Branzillo, injecting history with empathy and understanding rather than hatred and violence, from the ancient tribe of People of the Wind to early Puritan settlers to the Civil War, culminating in an interaction with Mom O’Keefe herself, who coincidentally happens to be a distant relative of Branzillo herself. The book is most effective in these flashbacks, as it erases Charles Wallace and Meg almost entirely. I think I’d prefer to read the novel written by the character Matthew Maddox about the same events and his personal correspondance rather than be subjected to the sniping between Gaudior and Charles Wallace or the convenient L’Engleian device of having some random person be an expert on whatever weirdness happens to be going down (in this case, the dubious honor falls to Sandy, the most crushworthy Murry). Charles Wallace and Gaudior do reach something approaching an affectionate relationship, though it never feels earned, and of course, once again, the power of love conquers the power of evil. 

I think where I feel most cheated by these books is the total elision of Meg and Calvin’s courtship. These are two kids who essentially fall in love as teenagers (and in Meg’s case, as a very young teenager) due to sharing a completely mind-bending trauma, similar to the relationships between Lyra and Will in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, or, more contemporaneously, Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games. I completely buy this as a valid entry point to a lasting relationship, but I’m curious if everyone else in the O’Keefe’s lives accepted their coupling as a foregone conclusion. Did they ever try to date anyone else? We know, of course, that Meg eventually bows out of the academic mathematical community to essentially assist her husband and bear him seven children. L’Engle did a really beautiful job illustrating an adult courtship and the everyday struggles of marriage in her follow-up to Camilla, A Live Coal in the Sea, and it’s a shame we’ll never get to read a similar account of the O’Keefe’s relationship that explains their journey.

Summary

Overall, revisiting these books was a great idea. Two out of the three are still fantastic, and even though I have major issues with A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the conclusion will never fail to move me to tears. I’ll be revisiting Many Waters and An Acceptable Time whenever I manage to carve out the time, so stay tuned.

[thefatling]

Comedy Isn't Fun

Or, "Chewing Glass."

When people find out that I do standup comedy, they usually say, "Oh, wow, that must be fun."

It's not.

I mean, it is. It can be. At least the performance part. But mostly it's work.

I've spent this week making new jokes. The way I make jokes is this.

I have an idea. A perfect idea. A beautiful, funny idea. It explodes out of my head and smashes into a thousand pieces, like a dropped glass. My job is to pick up all those pieces and keep them safe somewhere--my phone's notepad app, the back of a stray envelope, one of a half-dozen notebooks. Then I take them out and I try to put them back together, in sort of a glass-like shape. But it's not a perfect, beautiful, funny idea again yet. The glass has a lot of visible cracks and chunks missing, and there's only one way to truly fix it.

That's when I have to find some stage somewhere that there are people who've never seen or heard my idea before. They don't know about how I drop it and smash it and piece it back together. Before I get onstage, I have to put the whole idea in my mouth, which is awkward and weird. Then I have to get in front of all those strangers and chew the glass.

It hurts. A lot. Sometimes I get lucky and the glass isn't as shattered as I thought. But mostly I have to go up over and over and chew the same glass. I have to go home and tongue those cuts on the roof of my mouth and wonder where I went wrong--thinking I could put this particular idea back together, or thinking that I had the power to chew glass in the first place.

But I keep going, because this is the way I make jokes.

And then one night, it happens. One minute I have a mouthful of bloody shards, and the next, my perfect, beautiful, funny idea shoots back out. My cuts instantly heal. It hangs in the air for a moment, where everyone can see and hear it, and it's the best feeling. It's a good idea, and everybody knows it, and they laugh. It's whatever kind of glass they like best for a little while before it breaks again.

It's different this time.

This time, it breaks into a bunch of tiny versions of that idea, shaped exactly the way each person remembers the glass. They get to take it home with them. Some of them will put it on a shelf or in a cupboard and forget about it forever. Some of them will just think about it occasionally. Others will tell more people about my idea, and still others, people who collect ideas and the people who make them, might offer me a new chance to get better at making jokes, so that more people will pay to watch me chew the glass and spit it back out.

But no matter what anyone else does, I get to keep my tiny perfect glass, and I get to break it and share it over and over, because now I know how to do it without hurting myself. That's the fun part.

The fun part isn't why I do it. I don't do it because I'm in love with my perfect, beautiful, funny ideas. I do it to break the glass and solve the puzzle.

I do it because people who do work are the best people.

People who chew glass are the best people.

[thefatling]

The Fatling’s CBR7 Review No. 5: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

More of a pleasure than she remembered.

I've been meaning to read this book for a while on the recommendation of a friend. I tried to buy it at my favorite local bookstore, and they were sold out. Now, having finished it, I understand why they have difficulty keeping it on their shelves.

This is one of the most beautiful, lyrical books I've read. It's possibly supplanted Atwood's Maddadam trilogy as my favorite post-ap fiction, and in fact, it strips the ham-handed satirical elements from society's collapse and adds the technical literary ability of a David Foster Wallace (again, leaving the broad strokes satire behind). There were passages in Station Eleven that moved me to tears despite not describing anything particularly emotional.

The novel tells the story of a pandemic (IMO, the most plausible doomsday scenario), the Georgia Flu, which guts the human population in record time. But, naturally, it's far more than that. The hub connecting the many different characters throughout the initial panic and aftermath is actor Arthur Leander, a boy from a rural Canadian island who made good, first in Toronto, then in New York, and finally in Los Angeles. That the post-apocalyptic interactions between an EMT who tends to him, his child co-star, his son, two of his ex-wives, and his best friend never feel overly coincidental is a testament to Mandel's talent and restraint as a writer.

I didn't quite appreciate the third-act reveal of a major character's sexual orientation, but it's possible it was alluded to earlier and I missed it. The only other thing I found to be less than superb (and I wonder if it was this that cost the novel the National Book Award) is the explanation of the phrase "Because survival is insufficient." It's a line from Star Trek Voyager, and it's inked on erstwhile protagonist Kirsten's arm, as well as painted on the side of the caravan of the Travelling Symphony, the Shakespearean acting troupe/orchestra Kirsten throws in with following the death of her brother. The scene feels like something that insipred Mandel at some point early in the process, and no editor could convince her to kill that particular darling.  Of course "survival is insufficient!" That's why postapocalyptic fiction exists in the first place--to reassure us that some things, the good things, about humanity are hard-wired in somehow.

My favorite moments in the book were spent with Miranda, Arthur's first wife. She leaves behind an artistic inclincation to work in shipping, marry a film star, and then work in shipping again. She does, however, spend her spare time working on the titular Station Eleven, a story of refugees from Earth trapped on a space station that has become little more than a prison. While her attitude toward the Spaceman Spiff-inspired comics is somewhat dismissive, Miranda herself is the character I felt most drawn to, if for no other reason than her quietness and dedication to her work (both artistic and not) with no desire for huge recognition. I don't understand it, but it seems attractive. Her arc is one of my favorites, and I only wish I could get my hands on a copy of Station Eleven (the comic).

Book Feel: This book feels phenomenal. The jacket feels almost micro-pebbled (is that a thing?) for maximum grip, and it doesn't feel oily or slick in any way. It feels water-repellent. The book is printed on medium weight paper, so it's not too heavy, and the small size is ideal for travel reading. This is the one to beat so far in 2015.

[thefatling]

Broke the Lookin' Glass

I'm a really superstitious person.

Five or six years ago, my friend Martha gave me an Evil Eye to hang up in my apartment. Martha was (and presumably still is) Greek with a capital GREEK, and she had to explain the Evil Eye to me. "You hang it up and it absorbs negative energy. Once it's absorbed as much negativity as it can, it will break, and then you get a new one."

I loved the idea of having something in my home other than my brain to handle all the negativity that was swirling around me at the time. Plus, the evil eye was a beautiful cobalt blue that went perfectly with the carpet in my hallway, and I'm a sucker for unified interior decor.  I hung it in the tiny telephone alcove at the end of the hall, a vintage architectural quirk in my 1920s building. I burn candles and incense on the tiny shelf and often have to talk myself out of buying a fake phone to display on it since I don't have a land line.

Shortly after Martha gave the Evil Eye to me, I cast the primary source of negative energy in my life out of my sphere. I started using Tarot to manage my unruly anxiety, a natural extension of my lifelong obsession with astrology. Things weren't great, but they were under control.

I bought a pair of new glasses, the same cobalt hue as my Evil Eye. They were big frames that seemed to widen my eyes and made me look "cool."  Almost as soon as I'd had them fitted, my entire life improved. This was in the spring of 2012, as far as I can tell. Where I'd felt worthless and stagnant before, I now felt confident and dynamic. My careers and relationships improved. And I credited all of that to the new glasses whenever people complimented them.  "Great glasses, Kelly!" "Thanks! They've really improved my life in every area."

I'm sure people thought I was joking, and I was--sort of. I know correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, but at the time, it sure felt like it. And overall, my life's been pretty great for the past 2-point-whatever years, and I genuinely think changing up my look had something to do with that.

But a few weeks ago, while visiting family for the holidays, I was watching a movie on my laptop with my husband, and the right side earpiece of my glasses just fell off. No impact or anything. Initially, this was just inconvenient--I'd only packed three pairs of contact lenses, and the break was clearly unfixable. I spent the rest of the trip applying and reapplying scotch tape to the hinge of my glasses so I could see.  I also spent a lot of time researching whether or not those specific frames are still available anywhere online.

When I got back home, I called my optometrist and left a message about coming in to get a new pair of frames. They never called me back and I keep forgetting to try again. In the meantime, I'm wearing contacts and hyperventilating about what it would meeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaannnnn to switch back to contacts full time.

I feel emotionally naked without my specs, like all of my feelings are floating right there on my corneas for everyone to see. I feel like my face looks boring now. I feel more obligated to wear makeup to give my face some kind of dimension. I feel like I'm really not ready for anything in my life to change, even though a lot of things have changed in pretty rapid succession since my glasses broke.

The consensus among my peers is that I look great without my glasses. They say I look more "approachable" now, and I'm not sure if that's a thing I want to be. One person asked if I'd lost weight. The feedback is good, but I can't stop thinking about that Evil Eye.

The Evil Eye is still intact. It's still hanging in my hallway, looking great and presumably sucking up the negative energy like it's supposed to. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it was my glasses that were doing that. I got them when I needed a talisman against the world so I could force myself to get out there and DO something with my life. And maybe all that negativity got sucked into my specs. And maybe now it's time to do something else. Maybe be less superstitious and trust in myself to get the things I want, not because I have magical frames on my face, but because I am a competent, good person who occasionally needs to endow objects with qualities I'm too insecure to admit I possess. Maybe it's time to look a different way, think about things from a different angle, and open myself up to possibilities I've never considered.

Fingers crossed...

[thefatling]

The Fatling’s CBR7 Review No: 4 Song of Spider-Man by Glen Berger

Great Responsibility

Glen Berger is a slippery dude. Improbably drafted by Julie Taymor, Bono, and Edge to write the book for the now-infamous megamusical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, his account of his time in the web-slung trenches suffers from a second act plot issue strikingly similar to the second act plot issue that plagued the show itself.  Over and over, other collaborators on the show ask Berger "what happens in Act II?"  The question never quite gets resolved, onstage or off.

Berger is SUCH a playwright the entire time, and the inherent insufferability of his personality keeps the book from being a true pleasure. I found myself rooting against our hapless narrator, if for no other reason than his constant dithering and refusal to choose a direction creatively while working on Turn Off the Dark. Still, the story is juicy, and a glimpse into the utter madness that is Julie Taymor. That woman is cuckoo bananas, and getting the chance to peek behind the curtain and tally the cost of genius is well worth putting up with Berger for 300+ (admittedly easy to read) pages.

I also really enjoyed getting a sense of Bono and Edge's working relationship. U2's longevity certainly owes a lot to Bono's endless gladhanding and Edge's quiet, well-reasoned backseat leadership, and the portrait Berger paints of these two men surfing the treacherous artistic waves of this project is nearly as interesting as Taymor's outsize declarations and nuclear takedowns of colleagues who dare to cross her.

So, narratively, it isn't clear to me what exactly happened to Berger after the shit finally hit the fan on Turn Off the Dark--the endless actor injuries, the eventual firing of Julie Taymor, lawsuits galore. The way the story unfolds, it seems like he was functionally fired, but no one involved on the project could figure out how to tell him.  Either that, or Berger is equally as crazy as Taymor and simply blocked out all memory of being fired, even as a new creative team crowds in around him.  Eventually, things kind of work out for everyone, and people stop getting injured.  Happy ending?

I was most fascinated by the impact of the death of the show's original producer, Tony Adams, had on the entire process.  Producers are responsible for balancing the interests of investors with the vision of creators and preventing either side from drawing blood in disputes.  Adams' business partner, David Garfinkle, is not flexible or resilient enough to rein in Taymor's excesses, and eleventh-hour financier/producer Michael Cohl is similarly in over his head as he is tasked with completely overhauling the production in the midst of levels of media scrutiny that are shocking for a Broadway production.  Had Adams not died of a stroke very early on in the process, Turn Off the Dark may not have become a ghastly punchline.

Finally, I cannot understand why Taymor & Co hired Glen Berger in the first place. I've seen his one successful play, Underneath the Lintel, a one-man show about a nebbish librarian who probably looks exactly like Glen Berger, and it's fine or whatever. His primary gig is writing for PBS Kids cartoons, and he managed to get a backdoor tryout for Spider-Man from a friend who was working as Taymor's assistant. He caught Taymor's attention by submitting one of the ostentatious "instead of doing the assignment, I'm going to explain in great detail why I can't possibly do the assignment" pieces of writing that consistently got me an A minus in high school. It's just disappointing that someone like Taymor would be susceptible to such bush league tactics, particularly when the project really required ONE member of the creative team to be a Spider-Man expert. No one was a fan of Spider-Man or comic books, and a lot of disasters probably would have been averted if Marvel had been more aggressively protective of their brand.

Book Feel: I think the book is only available in hardcover, and the pages are thin, the same feel as a cheap trade paperback.  The book jacket boasts clever graphic design and nice grip, although the matte surface picks up fingerprints like nobody's business.