Fourth Friday: February

Forget terrible month. Forget terrible week, even. It’s been a terrible 48 hours. It just. doesn’t. stop.

But there’s also been some pretty great stuff lately. Like Stanley Tucci taking the Olympic gold-winning U.S. women’s hockey team to his favourite restaurant in Milan, for instance. Or Alysa Liu’s whole deal. I guess my examples are mostly Olympics-related, which is funny because I generally don’t watch the Olympics.

I mean, obviously I cried watching this. I’m not made of stone.

Saturday is the anniversary of me losing my job of seven years, which means we’re also close to the anniversary of me deciding to actively protect time for my writing career. And, honestly, the anniversary of me saying “my writing career”! I’ll be writing about all the anniversary-related feelings in the next week or so, so stay tuned.

And now for all the dope things I wrote, read, and watched to get me through this awful month!

Contents include: lots of ANTM coverage; the case against friction-maxxing; my latest “hear me out”; another feast for the Hawke Heads; and another entry in the “Rachel McAdams wears hideous pants” canon.

• I complained about how dull people are bringing their sports fan energy to the Oscars conversation.

• Our Valentine’s Day Terrible Tuesday and the first movie on this list I’ve never been able to finish was The Ugly Truth. Do not watch.

• I watched the America’s Next Top Model streaming doc, and Tyra’s relationship with the Black contestants really stuck with me.

  

• And then reality TV expert and Emmy winner Ali and I talked about America’s Next Top Model’s legacy!

• We’re not watching Scream 7 in this household, due to solidarity with Melissa Barerra and Palestine; but I do love the Scream franchise down, so of course I have ranked all its non-7 movies.

• I didn’t watch the State of the Union, because I love myself and my nervous system, but, as ever, I trust Jamelle Bouie’s analysis of it.

• The “I love my husband (who hates me)” trope disturbs the hell out of me, frankly! Because it’s not just an individual issue, it’s a whole society that reinforces this dynamic as the most superior one.