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The Joy of Listening to Music (some ramblings)

I have always loved music. Since I was young, I remember listening to Celine Dion and many other artists in the car. Somehow Celine’s voice took me to another world, and I loved her vocal range. Some of my favorite songs were “Because You Loved Me,” “The Power of Love” and “Love Can Move Mountains.” I remember going on my way to school, listening in the car to her singing on the radio station. The soaring choir at the beginning of “Love Can Move Mountains” always gives me goosebumps because it is so powerful, and the song just has a beautiful and uplifting rhythm. It is hard to describe music in articulate words because there are so many feelings when I listen to music that I struggle to express. My music tastes have expanded over the years, and I remember when I was around eighth of ninth grade, I found a playlist station on Yahoo Music called “Coffeehouse Music,” and there were some notable songs I listened to on that station. One of them was Sia’s “Soon We’ll Be Found,” and it had a beautiful music video. It was my first time hearing Sia’s music, and after that I fell in love with her music and listened to her album Some People Have Real Problems. Another song on the Coffeehouse station came up, and it was Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” I really loved the music video that went with the song, too. Honestly, I miss Amy Winehouse. The day I found out that she passed away, I was heartbroken, and I can’t remember how many weeks I cried but it was painful. In middle and high school, Amy Winehouse was one of those artists whose music I really loved. In seventh grade, I struggled a lot with self-esteem and fitting in, so music was always a sort of refuge for me. I remember being young and when I was starting out with a bad Internet addiction, in particular to YouTube, I watched music videos from this artist named K.T. Tunstall. I listened to her album Eye of the Telescope, and absolutely loved it. I really loved her song “Other Side of the World” because it was so beautiful, and I love her voice. Somehow her music made me think of coffee shops and reading books. When I was in my freshman year of high school, I did a science experiment where I had people listen to music while they played cards and they had to memorize the cards, and I wanted to see if playing music helped with memorizing things. I am fuzzy about the particular details of the experiment, but I just remember it was just so much fun for me because I got to go to the library and check out all these CDs (I must have brought home at least twenty-five.) The ones I remember most was Snoop Dogg’s album Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Boss and The Very Best of Aretha Franklin- The ’60s. One of the songs I really loved on the Aretha Franklin album was “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” I was listening to it today and I love it, especially the parts with the piano. Her voice is so powerful, and I love the piano parts, too. I love the rhythm and feel of the music. There is just something so powerful about Aretha Franklin’s music that I really love.

One of the songs from Snoop Dogg’s album that I held onto was “Beautiful,” by him and Pharrell. There is a very cool rhythm to it, and I didn’t listen to much hip-hop before that, other than what was played at middle school social events, but then I started listening to hip-hop more after listening to Snoop Dogg’s album. The summer before my ninth-grade year, I didn’t go to summer school and instead decided to watch MTV, eat waffles and knit scarves and hats. I loved watching MTV because they had a lot of great artists on the channel, and I loved the music videos.

I started to get more into hip-hop around college, because I took an African-American Studies class on Black culture, and one of the units in the class was on music. We listened to music from the 1960s to the present, and we listened to and analyzed songs such as Erykah Badu’s “Green Eyes” and “Orange Moon,” and “We Don’t Need It” by Lil’ Kim feat. Junior M.A.F.I.A. I remember when we listened to “We Don’t Need It,” everyone exchanged glances in the classroom and everyone’s eyes got big, like, Wait, they said what? (the song is very sexually explicit) I remember for my final project in the class I did research on the banjo in African-American music traditions, and I looked up information about Black country musicians. I told my professor that I was inspired to do this research after we had the music unit in the course, and because I saw the movie Last Holiday and there is a part where Queen Latifah’s character, Georgia, is calling her sister and her sister tells her that she is going to follow her dreams and become a country music singer. Georgia tells her “there is no such thing as a Black country music singer,” and at the time I thought it was funny, but then I remembered Black country musicians do exist, notably Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish. To be honest, I only listened to a few hits by Hootie and the Blowfish and I didn’t know that Darius Rucker is African-American. But then I started listening to more of his solo music and I really loved it. He has a song I ended up listening to a lot while studying in the library called “Alright” and it really cheered me up whenever I listened to it. It was like my music comfort food. I also discovered a band called the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and they perform a lot of bluegrass music. That sophomore year of college was seriously a year of musical exploration for me. I took a couple of music courses that year and both of them were on the same day in the morning, the first at 8 am and the second at 10 am. The first class was a classical music course on music history from the pre-Classical period to modern music. It mostly covered classical music and the professor had us listen to classical music from different time periods. My favorite period of classical music, to be honest, will always be the Romantic-era music. I love Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Brahms, and one of the pieces I worked on during that year was a cello sonata by Johannes Brahms. I went to a summer camp one time in high school and I heard an undergraduate student play the Cello Sonata in E Minor by Brahms for a master class, and it immediately hooked me. It was such a beautiful piece and I love E minor because it’s such a stormy and powerful key. We had to check out CDs from the performing arts library and listen to them, and then we had to write papers analyzing the style, the tone and the other different elements of the piece.

I am going to be honest, I love music, but I have only taken a couple of music theory classes, so to get into the nitty-gritty of the music would take me some practice. In my senior year of high school, I took a class called AP (Advanced Placement) music theory. And I bombed the AP exam. I remember having to ask a lot of questions in class and it was quite challenging, and then years later during 2020 when I was in quarantine, I took an online course on music fundamentals. And I bombed that one, too. I remember after failing music theory in high school, I was scared to take a course in music fundamentals. In general, I have a really irrational fear of failure. But I think a class in music theory would have done me some good. I really loved the African Popular Music class I took (it was the 10 am class) because I hadn’t listened to a lot of music by artists from Africa, other than Angelique Kidjo. But we listened to Fela Kuti, E.T. Mensah, and many other artists. For the final project, I collaborated with a classmate, and we researched the music of this artist named K’Naan, who is a Somali-Canadian artist. During the summer I was watching MTV there was a music video by K’Naan called “Strugglin'” and I loved the flow and rhythm of the song. Doing research on K’Naan and listening to his music gave me a deeper appreciation for hip-hop, because it helped me understand that hip-hop can be used to create social change and raise awareness about issues such as global warming, civil war and poverty. I decided to go back and listen to K’Naan’s album Troubadour, and he has a song called “Fire in Freetown” that I really love. A couple of students did a presentation for the class on the music of Die Antwoord, a rap rave group from South Africa. It was a pretty intense music listening experience, and it took some getting used to when I listened to the songs. There was a music video for a song called “Evil Boy,” and I ended up closing my eyes during the video because the presenters warned us it was explicit, and I am pretty sensitive about what content I take in. But I guess that is part of the music experience, in retrospect. You might like different songs and others not so much, but it all exposes you to new styles of music and new ways of listening to music. When I was in the classical music course, we listened to 20th century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez and it was a new music experience for me because I was so used to classical music having this linear structure where I could predict the time signatures, the rhythms and the style of the music, but there were a lot of experimental elements in the 20th century music and it was very new to my ears. I really loved the final project for the course because I ended up writing about Dmitri Shostakovich, who was a composer from the Soviet Union, and how he navigated being a composer during the era of Joseph Stalin, when music faced heavy government censorship. I listened to his String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, and it was very powerful.

In college I really loved listening to the music I grew up with, so that included Phil Collins and a lot of Weird Al. I remember very vividly one evening I was studying in the music library, and I was super homesick and stressed with finals. I broke down in tears, but I was listening to Genesis’ ‘Land of Confusion” and somehow listening to the song made me feel better. I really loved Genesis as a kid; they have a song called “In Too Deep” and it is a sad song but so beautiful. In the summer of 2013, I took a class at a local college and fell in love with a young man who was tall, had beautiful brown eyes and had gone to school in Uganda for three years. There was something so attractive about him and during the time we worked together as students we developed a nice platonic emotional bond, and I filled my journal with fantasies about us getting married and having beautiful children together. Of course, fantasies are just that: fantasies. When I ran into him a few months after the course, I found out he was dating someone else. I was both happy to meet his girlfriend and also heartbroken inside because I had waited for so many months for him to reply to my email (I didn’t have Facebook at the time, but he did) and just kept entertaining these ideas of us getting together and having children together. I often listened to the song “Follow You Follow Me” by Genesis whenever I thought about him. It is such a warm and tender song, and I remember I was still thinking about my crush on the guy, and one fall day during my sophomore year the song “Follow You Follow Me” came on the speaker in the CVS pharmacy store, and I found myself falling in love all over again in the middle of CVS while grabbing batteries/ toothpaste/ whatever the hell I was buying that day. I think I had listened to that song during my time in the college class, whenever I had a private moment in my room and was listening to music. I still love this song, even if I have long gotten over my crush on this young man.

TV Show Review: Succession (continued)

I haven’t finished watching the show Succession yet, but it is really good so far. I am currently on the second season. I was watching the Golden Globes and saw it had received a lot of awards and nominations, and so I became curious about the show. I was seeing it advertised on commercials for HBO, and so I finally decided to watch it a couple of weeks ago. And to be honest, I am hooked. The acting is so good. I also enjoy satire, so I really love this show. I was kind of nervous to begin watching it because I have a lot of anxiety around vomit scenes in movies and TV, and so I read some trigger warnings for the show and saw there was a vomit scene at the beginning of the first episode. However, because I had read about it beforehand, I knew when it was coming so I was able to close my eyes. And I am glad that my impending fear of this scene didn’t prevent me from watching the full show, because I would have missed out. I also really love the music in the show. I have heard Nicholas Britell’s music in movies, namely Moonlight and Vice, and especially the score for Moonlight was absolutely brilliant. I love the opening theme music for the show. It has these strings and the piano and I also love the percussive beats. It gives the show its theme, which is power, and a very Wall-Street New York City sort of mood (the show does take place in New York City).

I really love the acting in this show. I haven’t seen many of Brian Cox’s previous works, but he really acted the heck out of his role as Logan Roy. Even though the show is a drama, it incorporates elements of humor. And the dialogue is really witty. Greg Hirsch and Tom Wambsgans have an interesting dynamic. Tom is from the Midwest, but he marries into the Roy family and becomes wealthy. Greg, however, is always asking his mom for money and doesn’t have his own place to live. He also has a job being a mascot at a Waystar theme park (Waystar is the media conglomerate that the Roy family owns) but he does marijuana before his gig and then vomits, getting him fired from the park (if anyone is squeamish about vomit scenes, it is around the part where Greg is walking through the theme park in his mascot costume. I closed my eyes around that part.) His mom has him reach out to Logan, who is his great-uncle, and so he visits the Roy family. He is an outsider at first because even though his mom belongs to the Roy family, he sticks out like a sore thumb because he comes to the father’s birthday celebration wearing a baggy jacket and worn shoes and he has a very friendly personality. Tom gangs up on him and makes fun of him for being the new kid to join the party, and he continues to bully Greg. There was one scene in particular where he approaches Greg in the break room in the office building, and finds Greg stuffing cookies in a dog poop bag, and he insults him for wearing the wrong shoes and using a dog poop bag to put his snacks in. Greg is intimidated by Tom but in season 2 I really saw how Tom bottled up so many of his insecurities and that he was also dealing with a lot of his own personal stuff and needed someone to take it out on. There is a scene where Tom is having dinner with Shiv, Roman and Tabitha, and Tom talks about his work in the ATN news department and how he is digitizing its algorithm, and they all are happy for him, but Roman then pokes fun at Tom’s humble roots as a Midwesterner who grew up in the corn fields and how funny his suits look. Shiv also joins in on the fun, but Tom tells her to fuck off because he is really hurt that everyone is making fun of him. Tom wanted to show that he had moved up from being an average person and wanted to show people that he was an upper class person with status.

There is another scene that always sticks out for me, and it’s when Greg and Tom are talking in the office, and Greg says that he got his first paycheck and Tom congratulates him and says they should go out to eat. Greg is super happy, and he suggests that they go to California Pizza Kitchen. Tom snorts and giggles and tells him that California Pizza Kitchen isn’t great food, and Greg tries to reason that they make his favorite dish, cajun chicken linguine, and Tom makes fun of Greg for having what he calls an “undereducated palate,” and he tells Greg that he will take him out and teach him how to be rich. To be honest, my first reaction to Tom dissing California Pizza Kitchen was “WTF?!?” And as I was drafting this blog post and scribbling my thoughts on the first season, I wrote a long paragraph about how I would have loved to go with Greg to eat at California Pizza Kitchen. To be honest, I am lactose intolerant and vegan, so the last time I went to California Pizza Kitchen in 2019 I got a pizza that didn’t have cheese (it was pretty good, not going to lie, and the crust was slammin’. Also, I actually was in California eating at California Pizza Kitchen so it was pretty special and made me feel like a little kid again, which I loved. It was a dream come true.) As an ovo-lacto pescetarian kid, California Pizza Kitchen was my jam, and we went a lot when I was younger. The split pea soup was my favorite, as was the cheese pizza and the ice cream sundae for dessert (oh, and don’t forget the Shirley Temple!) So when Greg suggested California Pizza Kitchen, I was pretty pumped, and I kind of deflated when Tom dissed California Pizza Kitchen. Tom ends up taking Greg out to this fancy restaurant where they eat roast songbirds. Greg is really hesitant to eat the songbirds, but Tom has him put his napkin over his face as they eat. Early on, Greg’s grandpa, Ewan, takes Greg to get noodle soup at a restaurant downtown, and Ewan loads his son up on soup, so by the time Greg gets to the fancy restaurant with Tom, he is full and he tells Tom that his grandpa took him out to dinner already. There is another scene where Tom calls Greg and tells him he has an assignment for him to do over the Thanksgiving break, but Greg is driving in the car with Ewan. Greg tells Tom he is driving with his grandpa so he can’t come into the office to complete the assignment for Tom (Ewan lives in Canada, so Greg has to drive from Canada to New York for the Roy family Thanksgiving) and Tom insults Ewan over speakerphone. Ewan gives Greg a side-eye like “What did he just say to me?!?” and Greg is fumbling over his words, and Tom is telling him to hurry up. Ewan is not as enthused as Greg is to see the Roy family, and there is one scene that evening where Logan is showing off these veteran medals he collects, and Ewan points out that unlike him, Roy never served in the war. Ewan calls out the Roy family for being dishonest and corrupt people. Honestly, I gave the same side-eye that Ewan gave to Greg when Tom said, “Fuck your grandpa, Greg!” Like “Sir, you do not cuss out James Cromwell!” (James Cromwell is the actor who plays Ewan. I knew of him from the movie Babe: Pig in the City. Also, I just found out it’s James Cromwell’s birthday today.)

Greg is really inexperienced, and he wants to be part of the higher ups, but he hasn’t gotten there yet, and he still has to earn Logan Roy’s respect to get to the top. The Roy kids also pick on Greg and ignore him. When they are eating at the restaurant, Ewan warns Greg that he needs to steer clear of this family because they are a bunch of vipers who will eat him alive. However, Greg continues to get involved with the Roy family and curry favor with Logan so he can get out of working in the amusement parks division at Waystar Royco. But when he goes to Hungary with the family for one of Logan’s business deals, he almost gets in trouble because early in the episode he spoke with this biographer named Michelle Pantsil, who was planning to write a biography about the Roy family. Greg is nervous and tells her that he doesn’t want to disclose any information, but Michelle tells him he should have told her when he signed an agreement to meet with her that he wanted to remain an anonymous source. On the plane to Hungary, Logan is scouting out the person who spoke to Pantsil, and Tom is even scared of Logan at this point. During dinner, where everyone is eating the roast boars they hunted and killed, Logan forces everyone to play a cruel game called Boar on the Floor, where he has Greg, Tom and Karl fight each other for sausages and calls them “piggies.” He does this so that someone in the room will confess that they spoke to the biographer. I feel really bad, to be honest, that I initially thought the scene was funny, because when I read an article about the actors’ experiences with this scene, it was humiliating and stressful for all the actors to go through this Boar on the Floor scene. There have been times when I have laughed at someone for going through some problem, and then I go through my own experiences of humiliation and shame and realize, Wow, feeling these things isn’t fun for anyone. I really love reading Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown because she unpacks a lot of these emotional experiences that humans can feel at any time, and it really has expanded my view on emotions beyond just sad, happy, mad, and glad. There is a part in the book where she talks about experiences we have when we fall short, and one of these experiences is the feeling of humiliation, which is defined as “the intensely painful feeling that we’ve been unjustly degraded, ridiculed, or put down and that our identity has been demeaned or devalued.” (Atlas of the Heart, page 147) Reading this entry on humiliation helped me understand why the Boar on the Floor game was so terrible for everyone, and why many viewers found the scene unsettling. The day after Logan forces them to play that game, Tom goes to breakfast and says good morning to some of the people at breakfast, as if he is hoping to leave that experience in the past, but people chuckle when he comes in and the room is really silent because everyone is thinking about how horrible that game was. One of the people there that night, Syd, says good morning to Tom and offers him some breakfast sausage but he quietly declines. Greg is sitting by himself, processing the humiliation he felt after having an old man throw sausages at him and call him a “piggie,” but Tom joins him for breakfast because he, too, is feeling humiliated after what he had to go through. Greg thanks him for not telling Logan about him meeting with Pantsil, and Tom quietly rubs his arm in a quiet gesture of sweetness. Of course, he doesn’t suddenly become nice to Greg after that and he continues to be mean to him, but it was that one scene that showed me that both of them went through that painful experience of humiliation, so now that Tom knew how it felt to be made fun of, he could understand how Greg felt.

TV Show Review: Succession season 1 (some thoughts, part 1)

Written a couple of weeks ago when I first started watching the show. I don’t remember when that was but it was probably the week of January 15th.

So I decided to watch the show Succession after hearing a lot of buzz about it. I wasn’t super hip to the show when it first came out, but I saw it advertised all the time. When I watched the Golden Globe Awards this past Sunday I saw it kept getting all these nominations and awards, and I was like, Wow, this show must be really, really good. And as stressful as these first few episodes have been, it is quite good.

To be honest, I was really nervous to watch the show at first because I was reading the parent’s guide on IMDB and they mentioned that there is a scene where a character vomits. I have emetophobia, so I am pretty sensitive to vomiting scenes in movies. But I read on some other sites that have trigger warnings, such as Does the Dog Die and a tumblr dedicated to emetophobia warnings in movies and TV shows, about the scene, and after a while, even though my heart was racing and I was getting pretty nervous about watching the scene, I thought, It is literally just one scene. I don’t want that to make me not watch the show. And thankfully, I knew that the minute Greg goes to the theme park I could close my eyes and not have to watch the scene, which didn’t last super long.

The first episode, titled “Celebration” opens up with an elderly man waking up and walking through the house. He urinates and has to get the assistance of the lady who is helping him. The show opens with an incredible theme song by Nicholas Britell. It conveyed a lot of the power and prestige that runs throughout the show, and I love how he uses the strings and piano. I really love Nicholas Britell’s music. I remember he composed the music for the movies Moonlight and Vice, both movies I really enjoyed watching. Seeing the footage of the Roy family was also really intriguing, just seeing them grow up in this wealthy lifestyle. I was also excited to see that actor Will Ferrell was one of the producers on the show.

There were a few scenes from the Celebration episode that stuck with me. One is when Greg meets the Roy family for the first time when he goes to Logan’s birthday celebration, and everyone pretty much ignores him. He is the only one not wearing a fancy suit; he is wearing baggy clothes and he stands out. Greg has a really unlucky gig at an amusement park when a bunch of kids jump all over him and he vomits. When he gets fired he has to contact his great-uncle Roy (Greg’s mom is connected to the Roy family) for a job, and when he arrives it’s like the family treats him with a cold distance. There is also another scene where Conner, who is the firstborn of Logan Roy, gets Logan a sourdough starter but Logan calls it “gunk” and dismisses it, which frustrates Conner because he just wanted to get his dad something to make him happy. There is another scene where someone gives Logan a really nice watch as a gift but then when they are playing ball in the park as a family, Logan gives the watch to a family that is nearby. I also saw how Roman’s character was, because Roman promises this kid in the park that he will give him one million dollars if he hits a home run, and when the kid doesn’t win the game, Roman acts cruel and tears up the one million dollar check he was going to make out to him, prompting his sister, Shiv, to knock it off. Throughout the show, Roman comes off as overconfident and thinks that when he becomes the Chief Operating Officer of Waystar Royco he is going to get this prestige but he is unaware that it is going to be much more than a job to him. He also does something wild. He goes into one of the offices, unzips his pants and starts jerking off against the window. He cleans up his mess, but it kind of showed me how this power and influence can go to people’s heads.

What books do I want to read?

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What books do you want to read?

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Right now I am trying to finish a couple of books, one being Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and the other being Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. I haven’t made much progress but I am determined to finish them. I haven’t finished Bleak House by Charles Dickens but I may need to start over because I don’t really remember the plot very well. There are also some books by an author named Daisaku Ikeda where he has dialogues with different global figures, so I want to get around to reading those as well. There are still a lot of books I want to explore and read that have been sitting on my shelf unread. I have mostly been watching a lot of movies and TV shows, so my book reading has been taking a back seat. I have mostly been doing a lot of Buddhist study, so I have been reading The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin a lot each day (it’s a book of letters that a Buddhist reformer named Nichiren Daishonin wrote to his followers during the 1200s.) I also want to read Emma because I checked out the film from the library but I love reading the book before seeing the movie, but I might just watch the movie even if I haven’t read the book yet because it’s due back to the library soon.

Movie Review: You Hurt My Feelings and Some Personal Thoughts about Failure, Criticism and Self-Worth

Yesterday I watched a movie called You Hurt My Feelings. I really love movies distributed by a film company called A24, and I really loved the trailer, so I was excited to watch this movie. I haven’t seen much of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s other work, to be honest, except for a sketch she did on Inside Amy Schumer called “Last Fuckable Day.” If you haven’t seen that sketch, by the way, it is absolutely hilarious and calls out a lot of ageism and sexism in Hollywood.

You Hurt My Feelings is about an author named Beth who is also a creative writing professor. Her husband, Don, is a therapist who struggles to connect with his patients, and her son, Eliot, works at a weed shop and is having a hard time moving forward in life. He is a writer like his mom but doesn’t believe in his work. Beth has a sister named Sarah who is an interior designer and volunteers with her at a local church by giving away clothing, and Sarah is married to Mark, a struggling actor. Beth is working on a novel and has written several drafts of her manuscript, and she is rightfully proud of herself, and her husband seems to think that her story is good. And on the surface, she is happy in her marriage with Don and they celebrate their anniversary on a happy note. She is encouraging to her students and celebrates their ideas for stories even if they don’t seem that great. But things go downhill when Beth meets with a publisher and the publisher tells her that her manuscript wasn’t that great, and this crushes Beth’s self-esteem. And the ultimate blow for Beth is when she and Sarah are out and about and they run into Mark and Don talking at a department store. Beth overhears Don telling Mark that he doesn’t actually like Beth’s novel, and she runs out of the store in a panic, feeling betrayed that Don lied to her face about liking her book. Sarah tries to calm Beth down, but Beth’s life and marriage is already shattered. The movie shows how Beth tries to regain her self-worth after finding out her husband, whose opinion she valued so highly, doesn’t actually like her book.

The movie shows how difficult it can be to give one’s honest opinion about something because you are worried about hurting the other person, but it can hurt worse when you lie about liking someone’s work and not give them your honest opinion from the get-go. The film explores how rejection and failure impact how the characters see themselves in relation to their work and careers. Mark is in a store with Don and someone approaches him and says he recognized Mark from this movie where he played a pumpkin. Mark is ecstatic that he got recognized for something, but when he asks the guy if he can take a selfie with him, the guy hesitates and they declines, leaving Mark feeling dejected. Mark reveals to Sarah one day that he is uncertain about why he is pursuing acting, and he realizes that he did it because he wanted to become famous. She encourages him to do it because he loves it, not because it brings him fame. I resonated with this because when I first started auditioning for professional orchestras and pursuing a music career, I had this idea that I was going to become famous and make a lot of money and that everyone was going to respect me. But I think as I dug deeper into my Buddhist practice, I saw over time how I based so much of my self-worth on having this prestigious career, so I had to take a step back and really ask myself why I wanted a career in music. I still love to play my cello, but I am realizing that whether I have a prestigious career in music or not, it doesn’t determine my worth as a human being. When I based my self-worth on my success as a musician, I think it became really hard to handle stuff like rejection and disappointment, and over time I had to understand that rejection, disappointment and failure are a part of any career, and that the important thing was to not give up on myself. I think that is why I love reading the Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda’s works because he reminds me that my life is a treasure and that I have inherent worth regardless of whether I am facing success or failure in life. It is still a daily struggle to believe in my worth, but as I continue this journey of awakening to my self-worth, I have become a much stronger person, and I am able to encourage other people who struggle with low self-worth.

The movie also reminded me of another film I saw called The Wife with Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. In the movie, they play a couple named Joan and Joe Castleman who are excited because Joe won the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, as the movie progresses, it is clear that there is a rather sinister backstory to Joe’s success as a writer, namely that his wife wrote most of his work and he didn’t give her credit for it. Joe is not a great character, and he basks in praise while his wife is just seen as, well, his wife. Their son, David, wants to become a writer, too, but when he asks his dad if he read his story, Joe hedges and doesn’t want to share his honest opinion about David’s story. It’s not until they meet at a bar that Joe shares his honest criticism about David’s story, but David wants to hear that he did a good job, not that the story was bad, and he gets angry with his father for not telling him that he did a good job. Joan encourages David because she believes that everyone needs validation, but Joe says that getting external validation won’t help David grow in his writing career, so he is hard on him. This leaves David feeling terrible about himself throughout the movie. In You Hurt My Feelings, after Beth finds out that Don didn’t like her book, she goes through each page of the manuscript saying “Shit for brains” over and over. The novel is based on her childhood and dealing with a lot of verbal abuse from her father, and in real life, Beth’s father would call her “Shit for brains” and “stupid” her whole life, so this made her feel very poorly about herself. Don told Beth for years that he loved her work, especially because she wrote about twenty drafts of the manuscript, but to hear that he actually didn’t like it, after years of lying to her and telling her that he did so that he wouldn’t hurt her feelings, took a blow to her self-worth as a writer.

This reminded me of a scene in The Wife when Joan is having a flashback to her 20s, when she was a student at Smith College in the 1950s and she fell in love with Joe, who was a married professor with kids. Joe has an affair with Joan and loses his job (and also his wife, who divorces him) and they are happy together at first. Joan is an aspiring writer and seeks advice from a famous female writer named Elaine Mozell. Joan thinks Elaine is going to tell her “Yeah, girl, go for your dreams! The sky’s the limit.” But Elaine gives her pessimistic advice on having a career as an author, telling her that her works, like Elaine’s, will end up on shelves unread because it was a male-dominated field where female authors often didn’t get their works recognized or published, so Joan is better off not pursuing a writing career so that she doesn’t have to deal with disappointment or rejection. Joan sees firsthand how rejection can really take a blow to someone’s self-esteem, in this case her husband’s. Joe has Joan read her manuscript, and even though he asks for her feedback, she tells him her honest opinion, that she doesn’t think it is that good. That is not the feedback he wants to hear. He wants her to validate that he is a good writer because he cannot handle the rejection that comes with it, and he gets angry and threatens to divorce her if she doesn’t tell him that he is a great writer. He projects so many of his deepest insecurities onto her at that moment, telling her that if he doesn’t make it as a writer, he is going to have to go back to being a professor at a “second rate college” and making brisket (at first I rolled my eyes and was like, Oh boo-hoo, but then I had to remember that this was the 1950s and women still had to follow these societal expectations that they would stay home and let the men become successful in their careers while they held onto their unfulfilled dreams.)

Honestly, as much as I loathed Joe’s character and how he treated his wife and his son and crushed every last ounce of their writing dreams so that he could fulfill his, I somehow could relate to his struggle with self-worth and this idea that your career defines your worth as a human being and that if you fail or fuck up, it means you are a failure for the rest of your life and you will never recover. I remember when I worked really hard for this one audition for a symphony orchestra, and when I got on the list of substitute cellists, I felt my ego take a boost. But then my sister and dad asked me to do chores, and I had to get off my high horse for a while, and that somehow made me mad, so I lashed out at them and threatened to kill myself (I was a real nut.) I continued to define my worth by having this prestigious career for years after that. I worked at Starbucks and thought that working there instead of playing for the symphony meant that I had failed, and so I felt really ashamed going into these classical music circles and academic circles and telling people I worked at Starbucks because I thought they would see me as less than. I would tell people at work that I was going to be this successful musician and then I auditioned for another professional orchestra, but I got rejected and I just broke down crying. I think holding onto these unrealistic ideas about success and inflated self-worth made it hard for me to do my best where I was, because I was always thinking, When I quit food service, when I get this music career, when I play with these famous musicians, then I will finally feel like I made it and I will finally feel good about myself and I will finally feel worthy. I felt like every time I faced rejection or disappointment, it took a blow to my self-worth and so I constantly vacillated about whether or not I could make it as a musician. There was one time I went to a professor’s house to audition for a spot in his advanced chamber music ensemble, and I was so nervous because I really wanted this person to like me. I wanted him to think highly of me, so I tried to avoid talking about how I was paying off my student loans and working at Starbucks. But I honestly couldn’t B.S. anything. At the end of the day, I was just me and I couldn’t meet this man’s expectations no matter how much I tried to put on airs or be someone I wasn’t. I just wasn’t at the skill level he wanted me to be at, and this really made it hard for me to feel good about myself. But after I chanted about it for a while (key word: a while. It wasn’t overnight) I realized I needed to stop worrying about being rejected by this guy and focus on my efforts to pay off my student loans and do my best work at Starbucks. I also had to appreciate that I was with a really good music teacher and he and I worked very well, and he helped me do a lot of inner transformation, or human revolution, in overcoming my arrogance. I really thought I was hot shit as a musician, but that is because my ego was so huge. I realized that I didn’t need to think less of myself, I just had to change the way I thought about this career. When I actually met with professional musicians, I began to realize that this career wasn’t just about me-me-me. I would still need to learn to work with others and acknowledge that there will always be people with more credentials than me, and that is an opportunity to learn from people. It took a really long time to get to that realization, though, because I had to do a lot of human revolution, or inner transformation, where I developed greater self-worth and started to focus on doing my best and making sincere efforts rather than solely focusing on winning the audition.

It is still a challenge for me to take criticism and feedback well, to be honest. An I think that is why You Hurt My Feelings resonated with me so much because it showed me that it can be really hard to face honest criticism from those closest to us. I still find myself getting defensive or upset when I receive negative feedback, or when I don’t get a response after sending in a job application. No matter how politely the rejection email is worded, the rejection still stings, but then it’s like I have to keep reminding myself to use the rejection as an opportunity to improve and get better. And I really resonated with Beth’s struggle with self-esteem. I grew up with supportive people in my life and I think I felt pretty comfortable in my skin, but then I went to a new school and I really struggled with low self-esteem because I struggled academically, and this was new to me because people always praised me as this smart kid. But my self-esteem took a real hit when they chose some of the smart kids for a Gifted and Talented program, and I wasn’t selected, and it really hurt. It’s silly to be thirty and still thinking about that stuff. It’s like, Get over it, that was twenty years ago! But at that point in my life I really suffered from low self-confidence. I often wrote in my notebook that I was stupid, that I was ugly, that I was worthless, that no one liked me. And the reality is, no one was calling me these things. But I often said those negative things about myself because I wanted people to tell me, No, no, that’s not true. You’re smart, you’re capable. It’s because I didn’t believe those things myself, so I was constantly wanting the people around me to affirm that I was worthy and beautiful and smart. Of course, wanting validation is totally normal and human, but when I started doing a lot of inner work on myself, I realized that it’s important to develop my own confidence. That was the hardest to do for so many years because I wanted people to affirm that I was enough because I didn’t want to believe myself that I was enough. I had really supportive family growing up, so I’m sure it was painful for them to hear me say these awful things about myself because they never called me stupid, ugly or weird. Looking back I also remember being around a lot of kids who also had low self-esteem even though they were talented and smart, but at the time it seemed that everyone else had it together on the surface. This perception of my environment carried on into middle school, high school, college and even after college, and it is still something I have to remind myself is just my perception. Because we are all human and we all struggle with something.

What I can do differently is

Daily writing prompt

What could you do differently?

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Be a better listener

Have more self-compassion

Learn from my mistakes

Set healthier boundaries and respect others’ boundaries

what makes me feel nostalgic?

Daily writing prompt

What makes you feel nostalgic?

View all responses

When I listen to music from the 1990s and early 2000s, I get really nostalgic. In fact, I have been listening to a lot of old Britney Spears and NSYNC as of late, and also a lot of Celine Dion and Seal because that is what I loved as a kid.

Movie Review: Parallel Mothers

I really wanted to watch this movie called Parallel Mothers, which was directed by Pedro Almodovar. I saw his 2007 film Volver, which stars Penelope Cruz, and I was so blown away by the acting that I wanted to watch another movie of his. I remember having a leftover ballot from the 2022 Academy Awards, and Parallel Mothers was on the list of nominations, specifically for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Penelope Cruz.) The movie is pretty intense like Volver, but the acting was incredible. Penelope Cruz is an amazing actress and I really liked Pedro Almodovar’s directing style because it is just so unique. As someone who is trying to improve my Spanish, watching this movie with English subtitles and hearing the dialogue really helped.

The movie takes place in Madrid, Spain and opens with a photo shoot. Janis is a professional photographer, and she is working closely with an archaeologist named Arturo. She is trying to dig deeper into her family history and so she enlists Arturo to help her. Many of her family members were killed during the regime of Nationalist leader Francisco Franco and she wants to uncover what happened to her relatives. Arturo agrees to help her out and they end up hooking up one day. The next scene cuts to when Janis is going into labor and she is in the same room as a young woman named Ana. They talk and find out they share a lot in common even though Janis is in her 40s and Ana is a teenager. The main thing they share is that they are both single and unmarried, but while Janis has no regrets about becoming pregnant and becoming a mom, Ana does have regrets, and we find out why when we meet her mother, Teresa, who is an accomplished actress. After they give birth and are recovering in the hospital, Janis and Ana exchange numbers and promise to stay in touch. Time passes and they are taking care of the babies and navigating the challenges of motherhood. However, when Janis meets with Arturo he tells her that he may not be the biological father of her baby, so Janis takes a paternity test and finds out that she in fact is not the biological mother of her newborn daughter, Cecilia. Meanwhile, Teresa is going on tour, and she has to leave Madrid, leaving Ana on her own for an extended period of time. Ana hears Teresa arguing over the phone about her father leaving Teresa to take care of Ana by herself, and she becomes even more resentful of her mother, which prompts her to leave home and start a new life by herself.

When Janis comes to the cafe that Ana is working at, they reconnect and agree to meet at Janis’s house. When they meet, they get to see Cecilia (Ana still doesn’t know about the paternity test results) and when Janis asks about Ana’s daughter, Anita, Ana tells her that Anita died from crib death and the two of them grieve the loss of Anita. Janis and Ana start to spend more time together as Janis and Arturo start to get farther apart, and they end up sleeping together after getting drunk to Janis Joplin, but Janis still carries a heavy burden from not telling Ana about how she (Janis) isn’t Cecilia’s biological mother. Janis starts to meet up more often with Arturo to talk about the excavation project and Arturo confesses that he separated from his wife after she recovered from cancer so he can be with Janis, but now Janis is not sure where she stands with Arturo and she’s not sure if she’s romantically interested in Ana, either. After asking Janis why she is becoming so distant from her, Janis finally lets Ana see the results of the maternity test and Ana finds out that she is Cecilia’s real mother and Janis’s daughter, Anita, died of crib death. (Long story short, their babies were switched at birth.) Ana walks out on Janis because she feels betrayed that Janis had her daughter and that she had to deal with this painful grief when in reality, her actual daughter was alive and well. However, they somehow end up patching things up and Arturo helps Janis excavate the remains of her family members and everyone has a memorial for them. The movie in a lot of ways reminded me of Volver because both films deal with grief and the consequences of keeping secrets from people. In Volver, two women, Raimunda and Sole, are grieving the loss of their parents in a fire that happened in a village a few years ago. But their neighbor, Agustina, suspects that their mother might actually be alive, and not only that but Agustina’s mom had an affair with Raimunda’s father. Sure enough, when Sole is driving her car home, she finds her mother, Irene, hiding in the trunk, alive and well. Sole, however, decides to not tell Raimunda that her daughter that Irene is still alive, so it’s not surprising that when Raimunda finds out that Irene is alive, she feels really hurt that her mother lied about her death and that Sole kept her mother’s real story from her for years, leaving Raimunda to carry a lot of unprocessed hurt and resentment towards her family for years. It’s not until Irene tells Raimunda everything about what happened to her and her father that Raimunda is able to heal from a lot of deep wounds and trauma that she carried for so many years. It was painful to learn that Raimunda’s father sexually abused her and got her pregnant with Isabella, it really showed me how deeply rooted a lot of this sexual abuse and trauma was in Raimunda and Sole’s family. Not only that, but it was painful for Raimunda at first to learn that her father was having an affair with Agustina’s mother, prompting Irene to set fire to the hut that they were sleeping in. Irene also carried a lot of emotional luggage and she also had not processed it, and the sad part is that she didn’t find out about Raimunda’s father’s sexual abuse until Aunt Paula told her, so Irene carried this guilt and shame for not doing something to stop the abuse and at the same time Raimunda was carrying around a lot of pain and shame in silence, so she wasn’t communicating with her family. Like Raimunda, Janis suffers in silence by keeping it a secret from Ana about their babies being switched, and Ana feels betrayed that Janis kept it a secret from her for so long. At the beginning, it seemed that Ana and Janis were becoming fast friends because they shared so much in common, especially because they were giving birth in the same room together, but they end up having a very complicated relationship later on the more they open up to each other and it really hurts Ana that Janis didn’t tell her that she wasn’t Cecilia’s biological mother and that Ana actually was. Ana doesn’t really have anyone she can lean on or trust. Her mother is away on tour, her father won’t communicate with her, and she opens up to Janis that at a high school party, a guy and her had sex and her classmates filmed in, and two of her male classmates raped her and she got pregnant by one of the guys at the party. Janis seems to empathize with what Ana is going through and especially when they are giving birth, it’s a lonely and painful experience so Ana feels like she doesn’t have to go through her painful labor alone because there is another woman going through it with her. But Janis still hadn’t resolved her situation with Arturo so she wasn’t able to commit to Ana in the way Ana wanted her to. There is a flashback to where Janis is telling Arturo that she is pregnant and Arturo is telling her she doesn’t have to have the baby and reveals that it wouldn’t be the best time to tell his wife that he was having an affair with Janis and got her pregnant, especially because his wife had cancer. However, Janis is in her 40s and has wanted to be a mom for a really long time, so she decides to have the baby and cut off contact with Arturo. But Arturo keeps popping back into Janis’s life, and even though he is her colleague and they are working on a project together, they still were interested in each other and Arturo decides to tell his wife about his affair and separate from her so that he can be with Janis, but by this point Janis and Ana have fallen in love, so Janis really isn’t sure who she truly loves and she doesn’t really want to commit. I think that is where the movie left me hanging, but maybe it wasn’t supposed to be neatly tied up. The ending of Almodovar’s movie Julieta didn’t end neatly, and neither did Volver. I was still left with a lot of burning questions after each film. But I think that is what I love about watching all these different films and getting to read more about them, is because each director has their own unique directing style. I think getting to watch Pedro Almodovar’s films has helped me appreciate his unique approach to making movies. I remember I wasn’t used to Yorgos Lanthimos’s directing style at first; the opening scene of The Lobster features a woman randomly shooting a donkey and killing it, and at first, I found this upsetting and found myself thinking, What the actual fuck?!? That poor donkey wasn’t hurting anybody. But then I got to know the struggles of each character in the film, and I started to feel connected to Colin Farrell’s character in the movie, who struggles to fit in in a society that doesn’t accept being single or unmarried. Seeing how single people were being poorly treated and discriminated against throughout the movie was pretty disturbing, but in real life single people do face a lot of stigma and often feel pressured to get married or have children. Probably not to the extent that there is an actual dystopian society where singles get turned into animals if they don’t find a life partner, but definitely enough to make single people feel like they are broken or incomplete for being themselves. Then I saw Yorgos’ other film, The Favourite, and I started to get slightly more familiar with his directing style, and watching the featurette at the end of the film helped me understand how the director worked with actors, what it was like directing different scenes, how the costume department made all the different clothes, and so many other elements of the movie that I wouldn’t have known based on my own interpretation of the movie alone. The Favourite was a bold film that, like Parallel Mothers, made it a point to explore sexual fluidity and love. At first it seems that Rachel Weisz’s character, Sarah, is the favorite of Queen Anne, and they are in love with each other. But then Emma Stone’s character, Abigail, who is Sarah’s cousin, comes to work as a servant for Queen Anne and she ends up being Queen Anne’s confidant and lover, pushing Sarah to the side. However, the movie shows how Queen Anne is really playing both of these ladies and pitting them against each other, making them compete for her approval and love. Olivia Coleman won an Academy Award for her role as Queen Anne and seriously, she deserved it because her acting was fierce and just so…incredible. Parallel Mothers also challenged my ideas about love and relationships, because Janis wasn’t committed to being with one person, and she was able to explore her feelings for Ana that went deeper than their first meeting in the hospital room. Even after they fight and Janis breaks her heart, Ana continues to be with her. This challenged this idea that I had about relationships, because as someone with very limited romantic relationship experience, it seemed that love and romance was very black and white. You fall in love at first sight, you commit to someone, you get married and you grow old and die together. And when you break up with someone, you just get over the person and find someone new. But watching this movie showed me that relationships are pretty complicated and messy and you never fully disentangle yourself from the person even after separating with them. Arturo continued to come back into Janis’ life even after she told him they needed to stop communicating, and even after Ana left Janis’s house, they still stayed close. Honestly it was really interesting seeing how these relationships were so deeply connected to one another.

One scene I found it hard to get through was the scene where Janis and Ana were giving birth. As someone who has never delivered babies or given birth, it was pretty painful to watch Janis and Ana deliver the babies because they were in so much pain. It reminded me of the episode in this show I am watching called Lessons in Chemistry because at the beginning, Elizabeth Zott gives birth to her daughter, Mad, and she is in so much pain even when they give her an epidural. She imagines her late husband, Calvin, encouraging her through the labor, but when she is actually giving birth, I had to remember that she is still pushing a full-sized human out of her body, and it is painful. I am not ruling out having children, but watching the scenes made me appreciate the women (and also people of other genders who conceive and have children) who go through the process of labor and childbirth, because it doesn’t look easy. I remember as a kid watching this series on Oxygen called Birth Stories, and it showed women going through labor and childbirth. It was fascinating to watch but also as a kid it was pretty intense to witness. I think that is what I appreciate about this movie, Parallel Mothers, because it challenged a lot of my perspective on motherhood. Like, how would I feel if I gave birth in the same room as a woman who I felt an emotional connection with, but it turned out that our babies got switched and I was raising her baby as my own? I am sure it has happened in real life, but it made for a very intriguing and emotionally charged film.

Parallel Mothers. 2021. Thriller/ Drama. Runtime: 2 hours. Rated R for some sexuality.

TV Show Review: Lessons in Chemistry, season 1, episodes 1 and 2

Discretion: In this review I briefly mention a scene of sexual assault that takes place in one of the episodes, so please take care while reading.

Yesterday evening I watched a new show on Apple TV called Lessons in Chemistry, which is the TV adaptation of the novel Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. And honestly, I think the actress Brie Larson was perfect for this role. She just embodied Elizabeth Zott’s mannerisms so well.

The show takes place in 1950s California, and at the beginning of the show Elizabeth Zott is seen hosting a cooking show. She doesn’t smile, but instead works with a serious expression on the show while women in the audience are furiously taking notes. The catchphrase she often uses to end the show are “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.” Elizabeth is intent on shaking up social norms and outmoded ideas about how women should think, act and behave. But we haven’t gotten to that part yet. We find out how she got to the cooking show in the first place. Elizabeth Zott is a lab tech working at a prestigious science institution and she has to put up with sexism and also condescending remarks and gossip from the other women on her team, namely a secretary at the university named Miss Frask. Miss Frask constantly pesters Elizabeth to join the beauty pageant, but she is not interested. Still, Miss Frask has her participate in the pageant anyway. While doing her own research, Elizabeth deals with condescending comments from her male colleagues, who always ask her to make them coffee and clean up after them simply because she is a woman and they see her as nothing more than that. Calvin Evans is an introverted and socially awkward scientist at the university who works by himself, and one day Elizabeth goes into his lab to get the chemical ribose for one of her experiments. Miss Frask sees her through the door when everyone is gone, and the next day she rats out Elizabeth for going into Calvin’s lab and taking the ribose without his permission. He accuses Elizabeth of being arrogant and full of herself, and she retorts by telling him to check himself. At first, they don’t really get that close and remain colleagues.

But one evening during the pageant, that all changes. Miss Frask wants Elizabeth to smile and look pretty for everyone (she names her “Miss Aminos” for the competition) but Elizabeth doesn’t care about hanging with the other girls and instead goes over to one of the scientists who is being teased by his colleagues, and she tells him that he shouldn’t let them pick on him. He laughs and acts like it is no big deal that the other chemists make fun of him and his research, but she takes it seriously, I think because she herself faces being bullied and ostracized all the time. Calvin sees Elizabeth across the room, and he gradually becomes more interested in her because like him, she doesn’t care about being at the pageant. Elizabeth walks out in the middle of the pageant because she is tired of being humiliated by everyone, and Calvin walks out because he has a severe allergic reaction to the perfume that the woman at his table is wearing, and he leaves the pageant. When he bumps into Elizabeth, he accidentally vomits because he is so sick from smelling that perfume, and she takes him home. He apologizes to her for getting upset with her about taking his ribose, but she forgives him and makes him a cup of tea and gets him settled back at home before going home.

One part of this episode I actually really love is seeing Elizabeth cooking herself meals to bring to work during lunchtime. She prepares them with so much care and attention to detail that it looks like a five-star restaurant made the meal, and instead of simply using cups and basic measurements she takes notes on the chemical composition of each ingredient. As I was reading the book and how she describes how she combines her education in chemistry with cooking, I honestly developed a deeper appreciation for cooking and food. And even though I am vegan, I watched how she made the lasagna and it looked delicious. Calvin thinks so, too. When Calvin comes to sit with her (she is sitting by herself), she offers him some lasagna and he declines, saying he has almonds and saltines handy for snacking. But he changes his mind and has a bite of her lasagna, and he is in heaven. Over the course of the next several weeks, she prepares delicious meals and brings them to lunch so Calvin can eat them with her. Meanwhile, Miss Frask gets angry with Elizabeth for walking out of the pageant without telling anyone, and she also digs at Elizabeth for agreeing to work with Calvin in his lab.

Episode 2 opens with a warning that the episode contains a scene of sexual assault. In the book, one of the professors at the university approaches Elizabeth and closes the door of her office and sexually assaults her. Honestly, even though I know what happened because I read the book, it was still incredibly scary and painful to watch. Elizabeth ends up stabbing the professor with her pencil to defend herself. He lives but she gets accused of wrongdoing while he gets off scot-free for what he did, and when she is asked if she regretted stabbing the professor with the pencil, she answers that she only regrets not having more pencils on supply to defend herself. The sexual assault scene is important because before that Calvin closes the door to his office so he and Elizabeth can work in private, and because he is used to keeping the door closed while he is working (his door has several “Do Not Disturb” and “Do Not Enter” signs) and she panics when he closes the door and starts having flashbacks to the professor closing the door and then raping her. She runs out of his office and says that they can’t work together anymore and that doing so was a bad idea. When she gets home at one point, she finds a very fluffy and cute dog eating the vegetable scraps from her trash can, and she takes him in. She calls him Six Thirty because that is the time he wakes her up in the morning (I looked up what breed Six Thirty was and it looks like he is a Goldendoodle.) Elizabeth goes over to Calvin, and she finds him practicing his rowing technique in his garage (like Elizabeth, Calvin lives by himself) and she apologizes for running off when he closed the door but doesn’t tell him the reason why it triggered her because what happened was deeply traumatic and she doesn’t know how he is going to handle knowing what happened to her. But instead of pressuring her to tell him, he doesn’t ask why she ran off and instead promises to respect her boundaries. In the male-dominated environment she worked in, it was really rare to hear a male colleague of hers respect her space and privacy, probably because he himself is a private person who values his own space and boundaries. He then offers to teach Elizabeth some rowing lessons, but she declines because she doesn’t know how to swim, but he insists on teaching her. She tries to row but she is terrified of the water and not having control over the oars and the boat, and they capsize into the lake. They are sitting with Six Thirty on the dock and Calvin confesses to having romantic feelings for Elizabeth but says he understands if she wants to keep their relationship professional. Elizabeth kisses him and they share a sweet kiss. Honestly, I loved seeing the chemistry between these two. They just found love in the purest, most authentic way, and they respect each other as individuals. I am not sure when I will be ready to be in a relationship with someone, but if I find someone I want to be in a relationship with respectful boundaries and where I and the other person are secure in who we are. It will take time, but I need to work on myself first in order to attract someone like that.

Meanwhile, Harriet, Calvin’s neighbor, is at a town hall meeting because the city is going to build a highway through her neighborhood. However, Harriet is Black and she lives at a time when, even with a friendly white neighbor like Calvin, she and the other Black residents of her neighborhood face racial discrimination. She asks him if he can come to support because Calvin is white and she wants him to be there so the court can at least see a white person who is advocating for her and the other residents. However, Calvin doesn’t show up at the town hall meeting, and not just that but he also doesn’t show up to a board meeting with members on the university board, prompting them to cancel the meeting. Instead, Calvin is hanging out with Elizabeth, and they eventually decide to move in together. During Christmas, everyone at the university is going home to spend time with their families, but neither Calvin nor Elizabeth have family they can spend the holidays with, so they decide to work in the lab over the holiday break together. While on the steps in the lobby, they talk about their family history and why neither of them is going home for the holidays. Most of Calvin’s family is dead. Elizabeth’s brother is dead, and she doesn’t speak with her parents (they explain later in the book why she doesn’t speak to her parents much) Calvin has Elizabeth meet him in the cafeteria in a couple hours, and she comes in and finds a table and candles and a delicious turkey that Calvin prepared for her and him. Elizabeth gives Calvin a leash as a present because she knows he loves jogging outside and so he can take Six Thirty on his morning run. Honestly, because I read the book and remembered this part about the leash, I kind of groaned because it was a pretty foreboding moment for the series. When Calvin approaches Harriet, she ignores him and declines to let her help him. She doesn’t have to explain why she is angry and disappointed with him, but he knows that he skipped the meeting and so he apologizes, but she doesn’t forgive him because she really trusted him to be there to support her. Calvin is one of the few white people at the point in the show who Harriet is able to trust to supervise her kids. He doesn’t disrespect her or her family, and listens when she talks with him, so the fact that he missed the meeting really made her lose trust in him because it sent the message that he didn’t care about what she was fighting for.

Elizabeth and Calvin are in bed together, and Calvin proposes that they get married one day, but Elizabeth is very firm about not wanting to get married. Calvin is sad but he decides to respect her decision because he wants her to be happy. Elizabeth’s life changes forever though one day when Calvin and Six Thirty go on their morning run. Calvin has Six Thirty by the leash and they are going outside, running like normal, but then when Calvin is about to cross the street, Six Thirty whimpers and pulls at the leash because he sees a big truck is coming and he warns Calvin to stop, but when Calvin tugs at the leash, it breaks and the minute Calvin crosses the street, a big truck zooms through and hits him, killing him in an instant while Six Thirty is trying to process the sudden shock and how to tell Elizabeth what happened. I almost teared up, even though I had read the book and knew what happened. Honestly this scene is why I had a hard time getting through the first part of the book. The minute I read about Calvin’s sudden death, I cried and thought, I need to stop reading because this is so painful and shocking. But my parents told me to keep reading because the plot gets better even though it was indeed a sad and shocking part. And I really appreciate they did, because once I got through that horrific scene, which I was still reeling from because I wanted Calvin to live, I couldn’t put the rest of the book down and devoured it.

I am really looking forward to watching the next episode. It will be emotionally difficult to get through, but I want to know what happens so I am determined to finish the show. Also, Brie Larson is an amazing actress. I saw her in this drama film called Room, which was adapted from a novel by Irish author Emma Donoghue. I don’t know if I can see the movie again because it was pretty rough and like the book, it is pretty much engrained in my memory because it was so harrowing to read about and witness the hell that the two characters went through, but Brie Larson played the mom in the film so well and along with actor Jacob Tremblay, who played her son, I was emotionally dehydrated after watching the movie. I was a mess of tears and snot and the film shook me to my core.

Movie Review: Being the Ricardos

Yesterday I watched a really good movie that is on Amazon Prime called Being the Ricardos. It stars Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz, who was Lucy’s husband and co-star of the hit show I Love Lucy. The movie takes place during a specific point in Lucy’s life in the 1950s, when Lucy faced allegations of being a member of the Communist Party, and the week leading up to the allegations. The film’s dialogue is incredibly smart and quick, and so watching this movie a second time helped me better understand points in the dialogue I didn’t get at first. Like so many people, I really loved I Love Lucy as a kid and watched it on TV Land a lot. One of my favorites is the “Vitameatavegamin” episode where Lucy gets drunk from tasting several spoonfuls of Vitameatavegamin while filming a commercial for the product. I really didn’t know much about Lucy and Desi’s personal life, though, to be honest. I only remembered them as Lucy and Ricky, but this movie, whose executive producers are Lucy and Ricky’s two children, Desi and Lucy, really showed me a side of their life that was really interesting.

The movie also shows the thought and detail that went into even writing the script for each episode, and as someone who doesn’t work in television or screenwriting seeing this process gave me a deeper appreciation for a lot of the work that goes into writing a show. During a table read, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, the writers of the show, go over the script with Lucy and Desi. However, Lucy interrupts to find weaknesses in the script and what could be better about certain scenes. In one particular scene, Lucy is supposed to be setting the dinner table while Ricky Ricardo (Desi) is supposed to walk in and put his hand over her eyes, and she is supposed to guess who he is. She lists off eight different names of men before finding out that the person behind her is Ricky, but Lucy questions during the table read why Lucy even needs to guess eight different men when she clearly knows it is Desi. She also wants to add in a bit where she arranges and cuts flowers for a vase, but Jess Oppenheimer, the producer, doesn’t think they will have time for that part so he insists that they cut it and move on. When meeting with the executives at CBS, Desi and Lucy also made a decision that the executives thought was too controversial: letting Lucy be pregnant on the show. The reactions that Madelyn, Jess and Bob give Lucy and Desi when they announce they are expecting their second child are not super joyful, because they think that if viewers watch Lucy’s pregnancy it will be too controversial and they won’t want to watch the show anymore. Jess also informs Lucy and Desi that they can’t even use the word “pregnant” on the show, so Desi writes a telegram to the head of Phillip Morris, a tobacco company that sponsors the show, to allow Lucy’s pregnancy to be written into the show. I remember watching the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel one time and on one of the episodes in season 2 she is pulled off stage for using the word “pregnancy” in one of her acts. I think I still see a lot of this today, where if an actress is pregnant, the showrunners will have to cover up her pregnancy especially if the character they play isn’t pregnant. In season 3 of the show Brooklyn 99, Amy Santiago has to play a pregnant prison inmate and honestly, I thought she was wearing a prosthetic belly, but in reality, Melissa Fumero was actually pregnant. I remember Gina Linetti, another character on the show, was also pregnant in one of the episodes, and Chelsea Peretti, who plays Gina, was pregnant in real life. This is a topic I would love to look into more though, because it doesn’t seem like a big deal to me that the character would be pregnant, but to the people running the show and the actors, it requires making a lot of decisions about how to write the pregnancy into the show or hide it.

Another important point they talk about in Being the Ricardos is the character of Ethel Mertz. Vivian Vance, the actress who plays Ethel, is very physically attractive, but her character is supposed to be frumpy and unappealing compared to Lucy’s curvy attractive character. Towards the beginning, Vivian is seen wearing a beautiful cocktail dress to wear during the dinner party scene of the show, and Lucy confronts her about it, telling her that Ethel isn’t supposed to look attractive in the show, implying that she should wear something less flattering. Vivian is also on a diet and is trying to lose weight, and Madelyn brings her French toast, sausages and orange juice, but Vivian politely turns breakfast down because she is on a diet, prompting Madelyn to make a comment about her weight loss. When Vivian asks Madelyn who sent her to brin her breakfast, Madelyn lies and tells her it was Tino, the waiter, but Vivian doesn’t believe her. Lucy comes to Vivian’s dressing room and apologizes for the way she has been treating her on the show, and Vivian asks her if it was really her who sent Madelyn to get her breakfast (the show writers don’t normally bring breakfast to the actors) and send the message that she needs to put on weight for Ethel’s character. Lucy tries to reason with Vivian that the diet she is on is unhealthy, but Vivian tells her that she needs to basically back off because this is my diet and my life and just because the writers made the character look a certain way doesn’t mean I need to do that. This puts a strain on Vivian and Lucy’s friendship, especially when Lucy tells Vivian that they need to make Ethel overweight and frumpy because most American women look like Ethel, not like Lucy, who is thin and attractive, so most women will see themselves in Ethel. Lucy later apologizes after Vivian tells Lucy that the comment she made about Vivian’s body was hurtful, but this scene still stuck with me because it showed how there was still a lot of stigma when it came to talking about body image and weight loss. It also showed how frustrating it must have been for Vivian to play Ethel because jokes are constantly being made at the expense of Ethel and that really hurts Vivian.

This movie made me think a lot about the TV show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which was also produced by Amazon. Throughout the show, Miriam “Midge” Maisel, challenges a lot of deeply rooted ideas about womanhood, and she faces a lot of discrimination for being a female comic. At first she was going to see her ex-husband, Joel, do stand-up comedy and stay in the background while she brought the homemade brisket. However, after he cheats on her, she goes to the Gaslight club and drunkenly does her own standup about how her husband cheated on her and how she stayed in this marriage and realized how deeply unhappy and unfulfilled she was. Comedy provides her an outlet to express her authentic self at a time when comedy was dominated by white men, and with the help of her manager, Susie, she makes serious breakthroughs in the world of comedy and learns so much about the profession along the way. She faces a lot of challenges, including sexual harassment, erratic scheduling, bad relationships, divorce, and disapproval from her family for wanting to go after her dreams. But seeing how she grows and develops so much confidence even with all the rejection and criticism she faces really encouraged me. There is one episode in season 1, where she meets a famous female comedian named Sophie Lennon, who plays a character called “Sophie from Queens.” Sophie from Queens is from a low-income background and is overweight and boisterous, and Midge thinks that Sophie is really the character she is playing and starts to think this woman could be her mentor because she is so down-to-earth. But when Sophie has Midge come to her house, Midge is surprised to find that Sophie lives an affluent life of luxury and is also not the very warm and kind-hearted person that she plays onstage. Instead, Sophie is incredibly condescending to Midge, and even makes fun of her for wanting to see the kitchen of her house, which Sophie hadn’t set foot in because Sophie has lots of butlers to bring her food and things. Sophie also admits that she wears a fat suit to play Sophie From Queens. When Sophie asks Midge what her gimmick is, Midge is confused because she just shows up as herself when performing and seems okay with it. However, Sophie, being of a different generation, tells her that men want to fuck her, they don’t want to laugh with her, and that she needs to put on a gimmick just as she had done as Sophie from Queens in order to make it in the comedy world. I thought Sophie was going to be a mentor and role model to Midge because they were both female comedians trying to survive in a cutthroat male-dominated industry, but instead Sophie crushes Midge’s dreams and tells her to give up on comedy. Instead of letting that discourage her, Midge decides to still be true to herself and even calls out Sophie in one of her acts for being a fraud. Throughout the show, Sophie does everything she can to bring Midge down as revenge for Midge telling everyone that Sophie was a phony and wore a fat suit to play her role, but Midge refuses to back down and she ends up following her own path as a comic.

Being the Ricardos also kind of reminded me of a movie I saw called Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Throughout Being the Ricardos, Lucy is adamant about putting in scenes that the producer doesn’t want and even at 2:00 AM calls Vivian and Bill, who play Ethel and Fred in the show, to redo one of the scenes. They think she is being ridiculous for doing this, but Lucy insists that they put her changes in the script and that Vivian and Bill redo the dinner scene. She tells them that she wanted to do this show so that it would help bring her and her husband closer because he was always performing at the club (Desi was a bandleader) or playing cards on the boat, and he was secretly cheating on her with other women. Bill tells her that Desi is acting this way because he feels threatened that Lucy is making so many of the creative decisions. It was really groundbreaking for Lucy to make so many creative decisions and run the show because this was during the 1950s, where ideas of womanhood still weren’t progressive. Lucy tells Bill that she has to deal with male egos constantly, and that she is still committed to her marriage to Desi even though deep down she was really unhappy with her marriage. Lucy’s desire to make a lot of the creative decisions on the show reminded me of Ma Rainey (played by Viola Davis.) In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Ma Rainey insists on having full and complete control of her creative process and fights the white executives of the recording studio to death when they attempt to exploit her voice for profit. She knows that as a Black woman, the white recording executives wouldn’t give her credit and would make her produce her music without her or her band getting any royalties or pay. She knows her worth and she insists on getting the respect she deserves. She comes in late to recording sessions, and it’s a summer day in Chicago, so the recording studio was hot with no A/C, so she demands that someone get her a Coca-Cola from the store. When she gets what she wants, she records the music for them. I think because she had the confidence to believe in herself, she could also stand up for her nephew when Levy, one of the bandmembers, picked on him for having a speech impediment. They have to record her nephew’s introduction several times, and the executives nearly give up, but Ma insists they re-record it several times until he gets the introduction right. When he finally does, they are blown away and her nephew also regains his confidence that he was able to confidently record the introduction. This reminded me of in Being the Ricardos when Lucy insisted they do the scenes over and over even when the producer and crew wanted to move on and even when her writing staff was sick and tired of her and Desi making so many changes to the scripts. Lucy knew that if she didn’t speak up, that she was going to lose her power and was going to let Jess, the producer, control all of the creative decisions for the show, and she wanted to have a say in the script. She also faced a really difficult time in her career, when RKO dropped her acting contract and refused to give her movie work, and instead gave her gigs in radio. She felt that radio was not where she was supposed to be, and it wasn’t until some producers from television came and asked her to be in a TV show because they liked her distinct voice and style of humor that she was able to chart that new path for herself. Even still, she knew that she was dealing with a bunch of men who wanted to exploit her talent for profit, so she insisted on having artistic control. When meeting with the TV executives, Lucy agrees to do the show but insists on her real-life husband, Desi, playing her husband in the show. The executives are extremely reluctant to let Lucy, a white American woman, let her husband, who is Cuban, to play her husband on screen. I had to remember that this movie took place before the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia court decision, which struck down laws that prohibited interracial marriage (if you haven’t seen the movie Loving, which shows how this case went to the court, it is incredible), and so these white male executives thought that they would get in trouble for showing an interracial couple on the air. However, Lucy pushes back, reminding them that yes, Desi is from Cuba, but he fought in the U.S. Army and has strong ties to America. This reminded me of how the music executives tried to tell Ma Rainey what to do, but she refused to let them exploit her music or her in any way, shape or form. If she hadn’t pushed back, she would have suffered the same fate as one of the members of her band, Levy. Levy wrote his own music and thought that these white recording executives were going to pay him fairly for his music, but the white executives ended up stealing his music without giving him credit even when they lied and told him it wasn’t the music they were looking for. This reminded me how Black musicians faced a serious uphill battle in the music industry to be fairly compensated and respected as human beings.

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