Just Some Things I’m Really Excited About Right Now?!
1. Saturday was the one year anniversary of when Beyoncé Beyoncé-d all over us and dropped her secret album on iTunes in the dead of night. This is a serious question: do you think the album has changed you? I think it has, for me; we can all agree, I think, that Beyonce’s feminism is fraught, but it’s there, and this was the first mainstream album I can remember listening to and being able to relate it back to the same fears and anxieties I had because of my gender. It inspired, actually, my first ever article for the Hairpin; up until then, I never considered myself a Grown Woman, but after the Beyonce album, I suspected I might be. Thank you, Bey.
2. Sunday was the finale of The Newsroom, the best worst show on television, which I have watched doggedly and religiously since I got my first HBOGO password, because at the core of it, all they want is to tell the news. Here are some things that happened on series finale of The Newsroom that I wrote for you because I love you:
A dead man’s bowtie is gifted, then regifted
A white man sits on the floor of an empty apartment with his only friend: his guitar
A grown man serenades small boys following a funeral. Another grown man walks in, wordlessly, picks up an instrument, and starts singing along
A eulogy doubled as a press release
The opening theme music was played during the episode, which was really confusing
A young woman under 100 years old used the word ‘sensational,’ and meant it
A man finally tells a woman that he loves her, but smoothly, making us think that, perhaps, he planned it this way all along
28793092380910909812913 million eyes welled up with tears, including my own
May it rest in peace.
3. This Thursday is the last episode of Serial, the podcast that’s got this country up in arms. I don’t have much to say about it other than this MailKimp remix is my jam (AND THAT JAY AND ADNAN TOTALLY DID IT TOGETHER AND STEPHANIE KNEW IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!!!!!).
4. I saw Top Five, the Chris Rock movie; I will talk to you about it to death in the comments but, if you haven’t seen it, just know this: it is so rare that I can call a movie a “black movie” and mean it. Not in the denigrating way, like a studio exec does when he or she thinks that a film will attract a “certain audience” and “not be marketable,” but it’s a black movie in that it’s a me movie, a movie where I saw myself reflected in the cast. The star was black. His friends were black. His manager was black. His wife was black. The jokes were black. The music was black. The references were black. (Seriously, the only major white people in the movie were Jerry Seinfeld and Adam Sandler, which — — ok, if you’re going to have some white people in your black movie, they should be the funniest white people around. Seinfeld and Sandler are the proverbial cream of the crop, if you will.) It was a black movie through and through, and between seeing that and Beyond the Lights two weeks ago, it made me so happy to see a film where I could see people who looked like me do more than be in chains or play the wacky best friend. The whole movie felt like being welcomed home. It’s what I imagine white people feel like all the time. It’s also funny as shit. Go see it. (Rosario Dawson also had the dopest undercut ever.)
5. I bought a jumpsuit and I look fantastic in it.
Anyway, those are the things I’m feeling at the start of this Monday. What’s good with you? Please tell me about all of your enthusiasms, no matter how petty.