Baller Moves & Best Winks of The Week
DAMES NATION! For you, today, we have a call to action!
Oh, hi.
Our cherished pals Rosie & Jessica Fletcher (the very first people we ever trusted to guest-edit Two Bossy Dames) have just launched a Patreon of their own, to support their A+++ podcast, Rosie and Jessica’s Day of Fun. We, your Dames, passionately love this show, so of course we donated immediately. What we’d love from you:
If you, too, already know and love Rosie & Jessica’s Day Of Fun, kick in totheir Patreon if you can, and share the campaign so others hear of both their great show AND their chance to support it.
If you don’t know their show, do yourself a favor and give a listen toEpisode 74, Backpacks & Dragons, which is great & captures their vivacity & charm very well.
If you like the episode OR show as much as we do, take a minute in iTunes to rate it (we suggest 5 stars, but follow your hearts), review it, and -- of course! -- subscribe.
This will situate you ideally to catch our debut on the show sometime this spring! We are sorting out recording times as we speak.
Thank you for taking a minute to help our British Allies defeat the Axis of Hard Work for No Money.
And stay down!
Dame M's Linky Goodness!
hahahahahaNOPE.
Articles don’t get much more MARGARET BAIT than “'Broad City' and the Triumph of the Platonic Rom-Com”, which is perfect in every possible way.
That said, #DamesPal Rachel’s amazing map of how locations mentioned in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale correspond to real places in Cambridge and Allston is… just as much Margaret Bait as that first item, if not even more so. It includes maybe my favorite part of the whole book, which is a description of my #1 favorite movie theater in Boston after it has become a clothing store called Lilies of the Field: "In front of us, to the right, is the store where we order dresses. Some people call them habits, a good word for them. Habits are hard to break. The store has a huge wooden sign outside it, in the shape of a golden lily; Lilies of the Field, it's called….Lilies used to be a movie theater, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their own minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice. I don't know when they stopped having the festival. I must have been grown up. So I didn't notice." If you haven’t read the book, this could well make you want to. If you HAVE, it will add creepy, interesting resonances -- especially if you, too, live in or know that part of Cambridge.
Jennifer Garner read Go The F-ck To Sleep aloud, on video, for Vanity Fair, which is a STRAIGHT-UP BALLER MOVE for all the reasons detailed here by the inimitable Lainey Gossip. (h/t to #DamesPal Liz for this one!)
It’s a GREAT week for music, y’all. Some highlights:
NPR Music has released Stephen Thompson’s annual Austin 100, a FREE selection of 100 FULLY DOWNLOADABLE songs from new/emerging artists playing at the 2016 South by Southwest Festival. In previous iterations of this mix have introduced me to favorites like Laura Stevenson, Kishi Bashi, and Daveed Diggs, so YOU CAN IMAGINE my joy at having another to delve into.
Two of my FOREVER FAVORITES, Neko Case and Laura Veirsannounced that they have been secretly collaborating on an album called case/lang/veirs with k.d. lang (whose work I don’t know-- where should I start, Dames Nation? [I like Ingenue a great deal & her cover of Cole Porter's "So In Love" will rip your heart out and make you like it -- Dame S.]). The first single, “Atomic Number” is IN.CRED.I.BLE!!!!!!
And! Lucius' new album, Good Grief, is streaming at NPR Music’s First Listen series and both it and the accompanying essay from #DamesPal Mike Katzif are rendering me very, very THIS.
Finally, let me briefly give a shout to the great podcast episodes that made my rough week way, way easier: my own Appointment Television (yes, I’m a megalomaniac, hi, have we met?), Can I Pet Your Dog? (only IN PART because it mentions me!), The Worst Bestsellers (featuring #DamesPals Ally& Katelyn!), You Must Remember This, and Pop Culture Happy Hour. Basically just THANK GOD FOR PODCASTS, y’all.
Dame Sophie’s Cultural Thoughts Smorgasbord 
It me.
What do The New York Review of Books, once-great Philadelphia radio stations, Eloise, Reversal of Fortune, and #SlatePitches have in common? They're all tools I used to make beloved #DamesPals Craig & Andrew, aka the hosts of Overdue, giggle a lot, in the service of discussing proto-Internet troll/treasure Renata Adler's debut novel, Speedboat! It's basically devoid of plot & I loved discussing it with these favorite bros of ours.
Kesha’s case against Dr. Luke is a queasy callback to the piece on David Bowie’s sexual relationships with very young fans that we discussed a few weeks ago, and to the highly problematic issue of agunot ("chained women"), whose husbands withhold the religious divorce they need to move on fully with their lives (h/t #DamesPal Marjorie). The only way out of rape culture is through. #FreeKesha, indeed.
And now, a hard left turn into Twee As Hell palate-cleanser territory. Are there children in your life? If not, how about a love of tunes? Former Belle & Sebastian trumpeter Mick Cooke's Top 10 Songs for Children are for you!
Oh, my giddy aunt. From the Mixed-Up Files of Dear God In Heaven, How Are People So Very, Very Foolish, comes the sad & lamentable tragedie of Jonathan Safran Foer, marital nincompoop. Look, if you, a successful and also married author, are going to develop a crush on a famous person, Natalie Portman is as good a crush object as any. She is beautiful, she is smart, she is talented. Fine, whatever. But why would you make it weird, by not only telling your wife that your marriage is over (???), but also by not bothering to communicate any of your deep feelings with Ms. Portman before blowing your relationship to smithereens? Friends, behold: The Smart Dummy. He can craft the hell out of a sentence, but the generally accepted laws of human interaction & social contracts are beyond him.
A conversation with my darling Dame M., about how Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” is one of our shared all-time favorite car karaoke jams, led me down a rabbit hole during which it suddenly became vitally important for me to re-view most of La M’s 1995-2005 videos. They are all works of MTV sorcery & genius, of course, and I’m not here to pick an absolute favorite, but I would be very remiss not to mention the Tom Tom Club-quoting amusement park delights of “Fantasy” (fun to re-watch in counterpoint with Beyonce’s “XO”), the iconic pink crocheted crop top of “Heartbreaker”, and the Tommy Mottola-shading glories of “We Belong Together” (featuring unchanged-in-foxiness-since-2005 Wentworth Miller and, per #DamesPal Alicia, Mariah’s original wedding gown!). For a bonus round, please enjoy this perfect heartache ballad she name-checks in “We Belong Together”. A song that can transport me back to the awkward high school dances of my boy-crazy youth is a powerful one, indeed. This has been your Turn of the Naughty Oughties Jam Corner!
Aw, li'l baby Leonard Snart. Too deep!
This Week in Hamilton
As you may know, Hamilton started out in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mind as a thematic mixtape, eventually becoming a musical. Now he & Questlove are masterminding a reverse-engineered mixtape (with cover versions & interpolations & new material) with artists like Chance the Rapper, Ben Folds, Queen Latifah, Busta Rhymes and more!
Mo Willems saw Hamilton, is now drafting sure-to-win-Geisel-Awards picture book, Don’t Let The Pigeon Control Post-Colonial Monetary Policy!
An initially gender-blind casting notice for the Hamilton touring company was amended pretty quickly to not be gender-blind, but we live in hope of a female or gender non-conforming Aaron Burr someday! Meanwhile, we have the ladies of Hamilton having a blast while performing feminist quotes, and some thoughts about an Elizabeth Hamilton musical to sustain us.
BREAKING NEWS: Lin-Manuel Miranda & Jonathan Groff are still trying to seduce and murder us all with their combined charm & cuteness. This time, their chosen method is a mini-performance of “Magic Dance”, as originally performed by David Bowie in Labyrinth. Which does you in worse/better: Lin’s Jareth-channeling smoulder or their combined joyous muppet-flailing at the 9-second mark? (PS if you aten’t ded yet, this compilation video of their A-DOR-ABLE shenanigans will surely do you in, h/t #DamesPal Alyce).
We leave you with the two Best Winks of the Week, Mark Ruffalo at the Oscars and Kate McKinnon in the new Ghostbusters trailer.
Splendid tuxedo work, sir!
We also look with favor upon your salt & peppery temples.
It’s not just you, we’re all blushing furiously under her gaze.