...but Richard III is such a Nice Guy!

[Content Note: violence against women, misogyny]

A couple of weeks ago, I caught Richard III at Trafalgar Studios in London, starring Martin Freeman in the title role. Directed by Jaimie Lloyd, it’s an often witty, often disturbing production set mainly in a 1970's era political office/bunker. And while I wouldn’t exactly call it a feminist production, it’s one that puts misogyny firmly at the heart of Richard’s viciousness.

From the beginning, Martin Freeman plays Richard as a clever, charming, and utterly inhumane manipulator. His “everyman” persona is here turned into the funny fellow that we just can’t believe would do those awful things, at least in the beginning. The way Freeman breaks up the lines, finding a way to insert sarcastic or ironic humor to Richard's insincerity, makes for the funniest Richard III I’ve ever really seen before. He’s so witty. He’s so wry. And that Nice Guy ™ persona made him, for me, an extraordinarily chilling villain.

I’ve always found Richard III’s supposed seductions a little hard to buy. He’s supposed to woo Anne Neville as she grieves over the body of her dead husband and, while I’ve seen productions where it works dramatically, it never feels emotionally right to me.

But Freeman’s Richard, the Nice Guy, isn’t a grand seducer. He’s really asking Anne, more or less, for a pity fuck. A Nice Guy who’s just so darn vulnerable. A Nice Guy who’s made dramatic gestures (okay, in the form of war and murder) all to impress her. Doesn't he deserve a chance? Isn't he entitled to one?

Yeah, you know. That guy.

Lauren O’Neil’s Lady Anne struck me as put off balance by Richard, not sexually drawn to him. It’s a reaction that many women have had to the Nice Guy ™. You reach a point where you don’t want to hurt his feelings, even when you’re still angry with him. Where you decide that "to be fair" he needs a chance. And that vulnerability is exactly what he’s counting on. Maybe he's sincere about his attraction; maybe he's cynical. It doesn't really matter to his victim, who's now put in the position of the bad guy if she refuses to give in to his pleas for attention.

Writing in The Telegraph, Charles Spencer complains about this aspect of Freeman’s performance: “…his seduction of Lady Anne, which is normally so creepily erotic, has hardly a spark of sex about it.” Well, yeah. "Creepy” isn’t erotic. It’s CREEPY. It’s not seductive, but it does work sometimes as technique to throw a vulnerable woman off-balance and make her easier to victimize.

Played like this, Richard’s later decision to cold-bloodedly murder Anne comes as the logical conclusion to an abuser’s grooming. No, there’s nothing erotic in their interactions, from beginning to violent end (an end which is played out, terrifyingly, gruesomely, on the stage). The audience is forced to admit that the Nice Guy™ we’ve been chuckling along with is really a violent, murderous fuckhead.

Similarly, instead of Richard trying to seductively charm Queen Elizabeth (Gina McKee) into marrying her daughter to him, Freeman’s Richard is straightforward. His minions tape her to an office chair and force her to listen. At this point in the play, Richard’s villainy has become obvious to everyone, and I’ve always found the idea that Elizabeth responds to him even a little very weird—he has, after all, just had her sons murdered. Here, the physical restraint and McKee’s well-played terror make it very clear: she is simply telling Richard what he wants to hear in order to escape and safeguard her last remaining child. Only Richard’s massive sense of entitlement allows him to believe otherwise.

In the production notes, director Jaimie Lloyd references some current events that affected rehearsals. Among these are Elliot Rodger’s horrific crimes, which he links to Richard’s mindset: “…since I cannot prove a lover/to entertain these fair well-spoken days/I am determined to prove a villain.” In the end that’s what made it so scary-real to me: I’ve known this Richard III. He’s come on to me, he’s appealed to my pity, he’s made me uncomfortable, and he’s damn scary when rejected. And his violence needs to be taken seriously, even if he is such a very, very Nice Guy.

[Note: This post is not intended as a full review, nor as a full discussion of the gender politics in the script/this production.]

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: War on agency] Andrea Grimes continues her terrific coverage of the hearings on Texas' omnibus abortion bill: "Texas Abortion Providers Testify of Struggles in Wake of HB 2."

[CN: War; terrorism] In Iraq: "Tens of thousands of members of one of Iraq's oldest minorities have been stranded on a mountain in the country's north-west, facing slaughter at the hands of jihadists surrounding them below if they flee, or death by dehydration if they stay. UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark. At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades. Sinjar itself has been all but emptied of its 300,000 residents since jihadists stormed the city late on Saturday, but an estimated 25,000 people remain. 'We are being told to convert, or to lose our heads,' said Khuldoon Atyas, who has stayed behind to guard his family's crops. 'There is no one coming to help.'" I don't even have words. I am ashamed that my government created, with a manufactured war of choice, the chaos in which this is happening.

[CN: Homophobia] Welp, just days after Uganda's Constitutional Court ruled the nation's "Anti-Homosexuality Act" null on a technicality: "Members of the Ugandan parliament held a press conference yesterday to announce their plan to bypass rules of procedure in order to vote on and reinstate the anti-homosexuality act." Absolutely vile.

Yesterday, the San Antonio Spurs (basketball) "made a historic hire" by "tapping WNBA player Becky Hammon as an assistant coach—the team's first woman to assume that role, only the second female ever on an NBA coaching staff, and the first woman to be hired full-time." Congratulations, Becky Hammon!

OMGOMGOMG HILLARY CLINTON IS TOTES RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT BECAUSE SHE RENTED OFFICE SPACE! Or not. *thatface*

[CN: Racism; misogyny] Craig Ferguson, host of CBS' Late Late Show, announced he would be leaving soon, and his replacement will be another white dude! Because of course.

And finally! This is an incredible video of a man in Australia whose leg fell through the gap between a train and the platform as he was boarding. He got stuck, and attempts to pull him up were futile. So everyone got off the busy commuter train, lined up, and PUSHED THE TRAIN TO ONE SIDE so he could be safely untrapped. AMAZING. Good job, everyone!

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The Haves and the Have-Nots

[Content Note: Class warfare.]

This is a good piece on a new report by S&P which has found that "an unequal distribution in incomes is making it harder for the nation to recover from the recession and achieve the kind of growth that was commonplace in decades past."

"From my research and some of the analysis I saw from others, when you have extreme levels of inequality, it can hurt the economy," [Beth Ann Bovino, the chief US economist at S&P] said.

Because the affluent tend to save more of what they earn rather than spend it, as more and more of the nation's income goes to people at the top income brackets, there isn't enough demand for goods and services to maintain strong growth, and attempts to bridge that gap with debt feed a boom-bust cycle of crises, the report argues. High inequality can feed on itself, as the wealthy use their resources to influence the political system toward policies that help maintain that advantage, like low tax rates on high incomes and low estate taxes, and underinvestment in education and infrastructure.

This is something that it doesn't take a degree in economics to understand. Anyone who has lived paycheck to paycheck, without a social or personal safety net on which to fall back, knows that when you don't have money to spare, you don't save money. And thus the opposite is true: People with money to spare are the people who save money that they don't need to spend.

"Money doesn't buy happiness" is a thing we're told, a thing we say. And there's certainly some truth in that. But many of us who are not independently wealthy, especially those of us who have been broke and have been financially okay at different times, have probably had some version of this conversation: Sure, money doesn't buy happiness, but there is something valuable, something that feels a lot like happiness, in having enough money to meet all your basic needs.

There is a huge psychological freedom in having enough money to meet your basic needs. Call that happiness, call it contentment, call it a lack of anxiety, call it whatever feels right for you, but that feeling is the thing that money buys.

Because money buys food and shelter and clothes and healthcare and toiletries and transportation.

Money buys survival.

And if you're lucky enough to have enough money to buy your survival, then money also buys the ability to thrive a bit. Money buys education and access and opportunities.

And if you've got those bases covered, then maybe you've got some money to buy some luxury. Some relaxation. Some ability to make your life a little easier and to take time away to recuperate and rebalance.

Maybe, depending on your priorities, and your individual demands (like whether you have children), you might start saving before you consider spending on a holiday, no matter how needed it may be.

This is the place where one starts balancing whether to spend or save. Because, for the first time, you have options.

Meaningful options. Not the sort of options like: I can eat lunch today, or I can buy this magazine—because just treating myself to anything, even a stupid magazine, to make me feel like I'm worth something and that life isn't all just drudgery and survival, seems more important than an empty belly right now.

Money buys choices that don't involve empty bellies.

Once you have enough money to be making those sorts of choices, money has bought you something very important indeed. But well beyond that point, at the point where sustained affluence can make you say something like "Money doesn't buy happiness" with the jejune arrogance of a person who imagines that "this new financial adviser isn't making my money enough money" is a relatable subversion of happiness, there is too much money to be spent to buy anything meaningful anymore.

Once you can buy multiple yachts and still have plenty of money to spare, once money can buy you everything you ever wanted and then some, money loses its capacity to buy anything (for you) except more money.

The only thing left to do (besides give it away—yuck!) is hoard it. And see how much you can accumulate before the clock runs out.

That's always going to be true. And the more wealth disparity there is, the more that the middle class is eroded, the more we're left with two extremes—people who don't have money to spend, and people who have more money than they can spend.

We're increasingly a nation of people who aren't even paid a livable wage and people who are basically dragons sleeping on a giant pile of gold.

And we don't—or shouldn't—need reports to tell us the truth about what that means for our economy.

Of course wealth inequality makes recovery impossible. Of course it does.

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No Loyalty, Just Profits

[Content Note: Exploitation.]

One of the things I've written many times before (ex. here) is that corporations have no loyalty. They may have been deemed persons, but they are not patriots. And they will move on to the next emergent empire as soon as they've bled this one dry. Or at the slightest hint of an expectation that they have some responsibility toward sustaining the country that has sustained them:

Washington policymakers are bracing for a wave of corporations to renounce their U.S. citizenship over the next few months, depriving the federal government of billions of dollars in tax revenue and stoking public outrage ahead of the Nov. 4 congressional elections.

So far this year, about a dozen U.S. companies — including such well-known brands as Medtronic medical devices and Chiquita bananas — have merged with foreign firms and shifted their headquarters offshore to avoid U.S. taxes, analysts say.

Dozens of additional deals are in the works, according to administration and congressional officials, and other companies are quietly contemplating the move. Last month, CVS Caremark chief executive Larry Merlo met with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and urged him to act to stop the rash of expatriations. Otherwise, Schumer said that Merlo warned him, CVS "might be forced to do it, too," to duck a total tax bill expected this year to approach 40 percent.

"There's a huge number coming," Schumer said in an interview. "We hear there are going to be several big announcements in August."

The maneuver, known as tax "inversion," has been around for decades, but the pace has accelerated in recent years as U.S. firms have expanded overseas and other nations have adopted lower tax rates. At the same time, company executives have grown increasingly frustrated with Washington, where political gridlock has stymied efforts to reduce a 35 percent federal corporate tax rate that is higher than in any other advanced economy.

"What we're seeing is one more manifestation of why the business tax structure needs to be fixed," said John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives at some of the nation's largest corporations. "We're the proverbial frog that's being boiled in the water, and a few frogs have decided to jump out."

Last month, President Obama loudly questioned the patriotism of inverted companies, calling them "corporate deserters" who are abandoning their country "just to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. ...My attitude is, I don't care if it's legal. It's wrong."

So let's say we decrease the corporate tax rate. What's next? If corporations complain that workers just have too gosh darn many rights in the US, making them marginally more difficult to exploit than in another country, do we erode workers' rights even further? If corporations complain that other countries don't force them to contribute to paying for workers' healthcare at all, do we agree to that?

And this isn't about these companies' abilities to continue to pay (or even continue to employ) their employees. Of course it isn't. It's about their ability to pay their shareholders a nice percentage of an ever increasing mountain of profit. It's not like most of these companies are at risk of going out of business; it's that their businesses might be worth slightly less.

Shareholders will make money no matter where they go.

The free market solves everything, we're told. Sure it does. And right now, the invisible hand of the market is packing a suitcase.

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Um

Another massive hacking operation, in which "1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses" were stolen "from 420,000 websites," has been discovered, but we can't know about it, because there are still security vulnerabilities.

Hold Security would not name the victims, citing nondisclosure agreements and a reluctance to name companies whose sites remained vulnerable. At the request of The New York Times, a security expert not affiliated with Hold Security analyzed the database of stolen credentials and confirmed it was authentic. Another computer crime expert who had reviewed the data, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly, said some big companies were aware that their records were among the stolen information.

Terrific.

I mean, I'm pretty sure there's a way to let people know their shit has been stolen besides a public announcement, right? YOU'VE GOT OUR EMAILS.

I get that changing one's password while there's still a vulnerability is pretty useless, but it does give people the opportunity to protect themselves a little better—pay closer attention to their accounts, remove any stored credit card info, etc.

Of course, I also get that corporate PR is the priority here, not people's lives getting fucked with.

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Open Thread

Hosted by pot-bellied piglets.

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Question of the Day

Is there a word (or phrase) that a family member, or other person influential in your young life, mispronounced either accidentally or deliberately for comedic effect, which you now mispronounce to this day, always or in certain situations?

When my grandmother was especially sleepy, she always used to say, "I'm ti-red!"—pronouncing the second syllable like the color. Ti-RED. Ti-red is for when regular old tired won't do.

To this day, when I am totally exhausted, I will announce that I'm ti-red as I'm climbing the stairs to bed.

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This Guy

Actor Jeff Bridges was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Dodgers home game against the Cubs a few days ago, and here's what happened:

Jeff Bridges stands off the pitch wearing a baseball mitt on his head, holding a baseball and smiling for some cameras. He's introduced and walks out onto the pitcher's mound, stretching his shoulders. He removes the mitt from his head and puts it on his left hand. He carefully steps into place, winds up, then takes a few quick steps toward home and underhands the ball along the ground as if he's bowling. The crowd laughs and cheers, and he raises his arm in celebration.

He then mouths to the catcher, "Give me one more try," and the catcher tosses him the ball. He winds up, then pitches the ball back to the catcher. The crowd cheers as he runs toward home and handshake-hugs the catcher, who gives him the ball to keep. They pose together for a photographer, then Bridges runs back off the pitch.

LOLOLOLOL. That was some Lebowski bowling magic, right there.

[Previously: An Observation.]

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Photo of the Day

The new Research Institute playset from Lego, featuring three female scientists.
The new set, which Lego commissioned to be created with input from geophysicist Ellen Kooijman after 7-year-old Charlotte Benjamin wrote to the company complaining about the gender disparity in their playsets, is now available for purchase and costs $20.

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Sounds Great!

[Content Note: War on agency; homophobia.]

I'm sure you are going to have a lot of luck with this, and you definitely deserve it, because this plan sounds amazing:

Steve Baldwin, a former California lawmaker and onetime executive director of the Council for National Policy, believes that Tea Party and Religious Right activists should form a third party to "do to the GOP what the GOP did to the Whig Party 150 years ago."

"I believe a coalition between social and fiscal conservatives could be formed around the issue of eliminating all federal abortion funding, reversing Roe vs. Wade (let the states fight it out), and prohibiting the Federal government from granting special rights to people based upon sexual behavior (laws that almost always infringe on our religious, property, and freedom of association rights). I believe such a platform would unite all factions of conservatives and libertarians," Baldwin writes in BarbWire today.

And he already knows who he would like to lead the party: Sarah Palin.

There is much more about his strategy for building such a coalition online at the link.

Now, first let me say that anyone who ever underestimates the extreme rightwing's ability to pull some shit is a fool. The extreme rightwing has an awful lot of patience, and an awful lot of deference to both authority and conformity, which makes a dangerous and effective combination.

But I think Baldwin is fooling himself if he imagines that the people with the big money currently funding the Republican Party give a tiny shit about abortion politics and gay rights beyond their usefulness in convincing poor white conservatives to continually vote against their own best economic interests.

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Utah AG Petitions SCOTUS on Marriage

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

Last week, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted that the Court would take up the issue of same-sex marriage the next time a case was brought to them, and we're about to see if she's right, because here we go:

Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in a bid to preserve the state's same-sex marriage ban.

Reyes bluntly spelled out the stakes.

"It comes down to this," the petition states. "Thousands of couples are being unconstitutionally denied the right to marry, or millions of voters are being disenfranchised of their vote to define marriage. Either way, the court's review is necessary, and this case is the right vehicle to do so."

Calling it, without exaggeration, an "immensely important question," Utah's petition seeks review of a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that struck down the state's marriage restrictions.

"The issue has been percolating for 40 years," the petition notes. "Dozens of cases are challenging state marriage laws, and erratic use of stays has created legal chaos."

That's pretty much the same argument that supporters of same-sex marriage make, even though Reyes is an opponent of same-sex marriage—if not personally then by way of defending his state's right to empower voters with the denial of civil rights to a minority population.

The fact that both sides are simultaneously arguing that the current state of affairs is untenable means that now is the time for a decisive federal ruling on the constitutionality of marriage bans.

I desperately hope the Supreme Court is decent enough to rule in favor of equality.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Dudley, the dog who was once terrified of me getting anywhere close to him, is now a major cuddle-head, and one of his favorite things is to hop up beside me on the sofa so I can rub him vigorously with my foot while making any one of a number of goofy sounds. He pants and grins happily while I'm doing it, but if I stop, he is hilariously passive-aggressive, closing his mouth and/or turning his face away.

Dudley sits at the other end of the sofa from me; my leg is outstretched, so I can rub his shoulder with my foot. In a low voice, I say, "Hubbababababa! Hubbababababa!" Dudley grins with his tongue lolling out. I stop and move my foot away. Dudley looks away, then closes his mouth, giving me the side-eye. I reach my foot back out and start rubbing him while making the same silly noise. He grins again. I stop; he licks his lips and looks at me, then closes his mouth. From the right side of the screen, Sophie's head pops into view.

I go back to rubbing and making the silly noise. Dudley grins and leans into my foot. I stop, and he turns his head away from me. Sophie mews and walks across me right in front of the camera. As she passes, Dudley is revealed once again, hanging his head. I go back to rubbing him. He lifts his head and grins. "Dudley!" I say, and his ears perk up as he looks at me. "Who's got a cute face?" Sophie walks past again in the other direction. "Who does?" I ask. "You?" He looks at me. I go back to rubbing him. "Hubbababababa! Hubbababababa!" He leans hard against my foot.

I stop. He looks away. I start again, jostling him, and he looks back at me, grinning.

After both of us had had enough of this, I swung around in the other direction and wrapped my arms around his neck. He flopped against me, resting his head on my shoulder, and I stroked his long giraffe neck until we both dozed off.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

ABBA: "Dancing Queen"

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: War; death] A 72-hour ceasefire started today in Israel and Gaza, which will be followed by talks in Egypt to negotiate a definitive end to the war. "The likelihood of Israel agreeing to a longer-term ceasefire appeared to increase on Tuesday as Israeli radio stations reported that ground forces had completed their main Gaza war mission of destroying cross-border tunnels. At least 32 of the underground passages and dozens of access shafts had been located and blown up, Israel Radio and Army Radio said. A member of the Hamas delegation in Cairo, Bassam Salhi, said it was 'clear now that the interest of all parties is to have a ceasefire. It's going to be tough negotiations because Israel has demands too.'" Israel has reportedly withdrawn its military from Gaza, which is a good sign.

[CN: War; death] In Afghanistan, a man in an Afghan army uniform "opened fire on international troops [at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University in Kabul], killing at least one U.S. officer, in what appears to be the country's latest so-called 'insider attack,' according to a U.S. official and the German military. ...[A]nother 15 international soldiers, including several Americans, were wounded in the attack."

[CN: Guns] RIP James Brady, who, after surviving being shot during an assassination attempt on former President Ronald Reagan, advocated for better gun laws.

[CN: War on agency] Andrea Grimes details the goings-on during hearings in federal court where expert witnesses have testified how "HB 2, Texas' omnibus anti-abortion law, has negatively affected the ability of pregnant people who live in south and west Texas to access legal abortion care."

(I really don't want to get too hopeful that the tide is turning in the war on agency, but I am hesitantly encouraged by some signs that the tide is beginning to turn. Just barely.)

[CN: Transphobia; rape; dehumanization] At the Advocate, Julia Serano rebuts that heinous "What Is a Woman?" article the New Yorker published last week. (I'm not going to link directly to the original article, but there is a link in Serano's rebuttal, if you're inclined to read it.)

[CN: Sexual violence; exploitation] Aljazeera America has a two-part video series on US Olympic hopefuls who are sexually abused by their coaches and discuss how they have "been abandoned by a system that values winning over protecting children against rape." Part One is here; Part Two is here.

[CN: Extreme weather] Hurricane Iselle is headed for Hawaii, "with forecasters warning that the islands could face a one-two punch as Tropical Storm Julio is trailing not far behind. It is extremely rare to have such major storms in such quick succession, according to Weather Channel lead meteorologist Kevin Roth. He said the most recent example was in 1982 when two significantly weaker tropical storms and depressions hit ten days apart. 'In 75 years of reliable data you only have one case where they were even 10 days apart,' he said. And for Hawaii to be facing two spaced just two to three days apart? 'This is unprecedented in the satellite era,' Roth added." Fuck.

[CN: Transphobia; carcerality; sexual violence] Sign the petition here to ask the US Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release Marichuy Leal Gamino, "a transgender woman who has been detained by ICE for over a year at the for-profit private Eloy detention center in Arizona. At Eloy, she has been imprisoned with men and was recently raped by her cellmate." If they cannot protect her, they need to free her. It's that simple.

Sylvester Stallone is still making Expendables movies, and is now planning an all-female spin-off titled The Expendabelles. Epic eyeroll. Wait, it gets worse: "The only potential castmember named was Sigourney Weaver, whom Stallone said he would love to see lead The Expendabelles as his onscreen wife. 'We've got a situation where we're in unchartered waters. Do we put all women actresses together, would that really work? Or do we have some women who are actually really known to be tough fighters,' he said, hinting that the plot could see Weaver get half The Expendables team as part of a messy divorce. 'So she'd get the house, the kids and my mercenaries!'" Would it really work to put "all women actresses" together? Good grief.

Here is a great story about Pilots N Paws, an organization that helps deliver pets in need of new homes to rescue organizations that are willing to take them. Giant Paw Prints rescue and Smoochie Pooch grooming are both local to me (and I know the terrific owner of Smoochie Pooch), and they do such good work in this community. ♥

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: War on agency; anti-choice terrorism.]

"The court is convinced that, if this requirement would not, in the face of all the evidence in the record, constitute an impermissible undue burden, then almost no regulation, short of those imposing an outright prohibition on abortion, would."—US Judge Myron H. Thompson, in his opinion which struck down and declared unconstitutional Alabama's Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law which would have required abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges at local hospitals.

In his decision, Thompson explicitly cited the violence and intimidation of anti-choice extremists as a key part of the reason for his ruling.

Thompson's opinion included an exhaustive history of violence against abortion providers, including in Alabama.

"The first abortion doctor in the nation to be murdered, Dr. David Gunn, provided abortions at the Montgomery clinic, among other clinics. He was murdered in 1993," Thompson noted. "A now-closed clinic in Birmingham was bombed, killing an off-duty police officer serving as a security guard and wounding a nurse. Not long after, the Tuscaloosa clinic was essentially destroyed by an arson. That clinic was later attacked by a driver who ran his car into the front of the building. There were other incidents of violence as well."

Thompson said that violence had to be considered as a backdrop to the law, partially because it explained both hospitals' reluctance to help the doctors comply with the law and also the barriers that women already face in accessing abortion. "Against the backdrop of this history of violence, abortion providers and women seeking abortions in Alabama today live and work in a climate of extreme hostility to the practice of abortion," he wrote.

In addition to Irin Carmon's piece linked above, this piece on the decision by Pamela Willis Watters is also great.

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YES PLEASE

I suspect that a lot of you will be as excited about this as I am!

Jennifer Lee, who co-wrote and directed "Frozen" with Chris Buck, has chosen her next project: "A Wrinkle in Time."

Lee will write the bigscreen adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's book for Disney in which children travel through time and visit strange worlds in order to find their missing scientist father.

Published in 1962, "A Wrinkle in Time" was one of Lee's favorite novels as a child, and she impressed Disney executives with her take on the project, which emphasizes a strong female-driven narrative and creatively approaches the science fiction and world-building elements of the book.

..."A Wrinkle in Time" is the first book in L'Engle's "Time Quartet" series that also includes "A Wind in the Door," "Many Waters," and "A Swiftly Tilting Planet."

The item notes that Lee won't be directing, and there's no director yet attached. Who directs will obviously make a big difference in whether it's as terrific as it could be.

I hope Lee and Disney are imaginative and brave enough (which is, like, barely imaginative and brave, btw) to conceive of a way to make changes so that the Murray family is not all white. Or not white at all. A family of color, a blended family through remarriage, a family of adopted kids, whatever. This is a story that will only be made stronger by diversity of the adventurers.

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RickPAC

Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry has formed a political action committee, because he is definitely planning to run for president and totally lose again, and, no, I am not making up that it is called RickPAC:

Perry filed the paperwork for RickPAC with the Federal Election Commission. It was processed Thursday. PAC spokesman Mark Miner told Bloomberg News on Monday that the political action committee would help "elect Republicans to office who share the governor's philosophy of low taxes, limited government, border security, and job creation."

That is the weaksauciest dodge to avoid saying, "Yes, he's running for president" ever. I can practically hear his strategists giggling in a shittily appointed conference room: "Technically it's true! RickPAC will help elect Republicans who share the governor's philosophy—LIKE THE GOVERNOR!" Giggles.

Perry, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, hasn't been shy about letting people know that he's considering another run. He's slated to make August appearances in key 2016 states, including Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

So get ready, Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina! Rick Perry's coming to town! And you know what that means—mildly inconvenient traffic delays to accommodate terrible speechmaking and ice cream eatin' photo ops!

RickPAC! Jazzhands!

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Open Thread

Hosted by a pencil.

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Wordaddict: What's your all-female Ghostbuster fantasy casting?

I love this question! And here is my fantasy casting:

Dr. Petra Venkman: Laura Dern.

Dr. Ramona Stantz: Stephanie Beatriz.

Dr. Edna Spengler: Tig Notaro.

Winnie Zeddmore: Aidy Bryant.

Dana Barrett: Jon Hamm. (This was Wordaddict's suggestion, and now I can't imagine anyone else!)

Louise Tully: Uzo Aduba.

Janine Melnitz: Jennifer Coolidge.

(Please feel welcome to change up the genders of the supporting characters however you like. Dana Barrett, for instance, could still be a woman, thus adding a lesbian romance to the film!)

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Photo of the Day

[Content Note: Climate change; pollutants.]

A sample glass of Lake Erie water is photographed near the City of Toledo water intake crib, Sunday, August 3, 2014, in Lake Erie, about 2.5 miles off the shore of Curtice, Ohio. [AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari/photo via]

Lake Erie's water is green because of an algae bloom, caused in part by "excess phosphorus runoff from urban and industrial agricultural lands, as well as from waste water from sewage treatment plants," and exacerbated by climate change.

The algae produced a toxin called microcystin, which is dangerous to people, pets, livestock, and fish and other marine life in the water.

Today, a ban on drinking water in Toledo, Ohio, was lifted, and the mayor even drank a glass of water to show that the water is safe again.

Ah, I ain't gonna blame ya if you stick with the bottled water for awhile longer.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!