Treasures In A Trash Week
Dames Classic: Let's Talk About Gloomvember
In which Your Dames share a relevant rerun in the opening segment!
(A visual representation of what it's been like in your Dames' hearts lately.)
Last week was the first full week back on Standard Time and here in the Northeast, where both your Dames live, it was Officially Way Too Gloomy. Rainy, overcast, dark at 4:30 pm, just...totally unacceptable. So we came up with a plan: The Gloomvember Remediation Act, and although neither of us is presently active in any legislative body governing any sovereign land, we hope that some enterprising legislator will take it up, because something clearly needs to be done.
Basically, in states experiencing Gloomvember weather conditions, as described above, residents may be permitted to stay in bed, or on the couch, futon or other lounging furniture of their choice, wearing the loungewear of their choice, under as many blankets as necessary, reading whatever they want and/or live-tweeting the latest episodes of Miss Fisher's Mysteries or other similar, mutually agreed-upon-with-their-pals activities. Absences from school and/or work will be excused due to Gloomvember, and states in the Sunshine Belt will be levied an extra Gloomvember Remediation Tax (only during peak Gloomtime months from November to March) to pay for it all. This is the time for our brothers and sisters in High Sunshine Index areas of the country to join in support of their fellow citizens in states where they have already had 6+ inches of snow and full-blown SAD during the first week of November.
Can Brookover & Willison count on your support for this important initiative? We are open to friendly amendments, but attempts at filibustering will not be tolerated. Come on, people. Solidarity and twinkle lights for all!
Dame Sophie’s Sweater Weather Hijinks
Me, thinking about what SNL will be like this week
Darling Dame Sir Lord Harold Elizabeth Styles (popularly known by his nom du stage as Harry Styles) announced North American and European tour dates this week and that is maybe the best news of the week, non-impeachment hearings division. The tour is called Love On Tour, which we’re meant to understand as a progression from his previous one, Live On Tour, but all I can think about is the silly cover of “Love On Top” he will perform occasionally where he changes the lyrics to be “Love On Tour” and that’s exactly the kind of endearingly stupid nonsense I am here for. He’s in New York this week preparing to both host and be the musical performer on Saturday Night Live, and the aggressively charming promotional video he recorded with Kenan Thompson did exactly nothing to temper my expectations of this episode. Sweater weather hijinks, indeed! He also stepped out one evening in a lovely blue sweater vest featuring little sheep knitted into it with angora yarn to make them extra-fluffy. I later learned that it’s a callback to a very similar sweater worn by Princess Diana in the mid-80s. This was a popular enough style at the time that even I, a very non-Gucci-wearing tween in New Jersey, had a reasonably-priced knockoff back in ye olden times, and I’m placing my request to the universe now for a decent dupe I can snag on sale at Nordstrom sometime soon. For the crafty among you who don’t mind working with angora or something similarly fluffy, there are a bunch of knitting patterns out there. The two sheep-incorporating patterns I saw that look the most promising are, slightly annoyingly, ones you’d have to adapt for use in a sweater or scarf situation, because they are, respectively, a throw blanket and a tea cozy. Perhaps a pattern inspired by this one will surface on Ravelry soon? We can hope!
Two Things That Made Me Cry, But In A Good Way: this NYTimes Tom Hanks profile and this conversation between Lena Waithe & Robyn Crawford. Tom Hanks is one of those people so famously kind and decent that you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s kind of boring? Maybe? This profile makes a strong case for the notion that we should expand our notions of kindness and decency as being part of a more complex psychology. It does what Tom Hanks himself so frequently does onscreen: makes you smile, makes you think, makes you treat yourself & your fellow humans with a tiny bit more care & gentleness than you woke up inclined to provide. I really love it & hope you will, too. Speaking of the complexities of the human heart, Robyn Crawford speaking about her romance with Whitney Houston, a relationship she agreed to end and sublimate into a consigliere-type support role in order to maintain a place in Whitney’s life, is profoundly moving. She seems to have arrived at a place of peace about it, and to have a lovely, joyous life with her wife and their children. When Dame Margaret & I went to see the documentary Whitney, we both left with the overwhelming feeling that the only person who was truly there for her was Crawford, so it’s particularly good to hear her recollections of their time together, though I’m left thinking she may be too circumspect about the sexual abuse it seems very likely Whitney experienced at the hands of her cousin Dee Dee Warwick.
Two Things In Vulture That Made Me Grin In A Very Understandably Goofy Way: darling Kathryn VanArendonk’s profile of Tobias Menzies in Vulture and mine own Q&A with Denny Love, who stole everyone’s heart with his outstanding performance as the Colonel in Hulu’s recent Looking For Alaska adaptation (which I also recapped for Vulture). Denny Love is every bit as delightful in conversation as he is on screen, and it was such a treat to talk to him about how he brought his athletic ability to his role and his thoughts on the set design of the Colonel & Pudge’s dorm room.
Kathryn & I have long co-hosted a pretend podcast called The Tobias Menzies Yelling Hour, which, if it existed, would consist of us hopping on the mic any time Tobias Menzies casting news was announced and just yelling “Tobias!! Menzies!!!!!” really loud and then maybe mentioning the casting news or what have you. 5 minutes of enthusiasm, on an as-needed basis. Kathryn’s piece is much, much better than The Tobias Menzies Yelling Hour: it’s insightful and whip-smart, and highlights an unexpected fact about Mr. Compelling Vertical Facial Lines, which is that before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he really wanted to be a mime. This makes a weird kind of sense, since he seems most at home in roles where he isn’t saying much, instead coiling himself into a tightly coiled spring of taciturnity and conversational restraint, adjusting to very fine-tuned settings of various intense emotions we get glimmers of. As The Crown’s steadiest and most faithful servant, who casually sports House of Windsor-themed scarves and even a replica of the navy pullover Prince Philip wears in the episode where he’s in Antarctica at Christmas, I am very pleased that Season Three is going to hit Netflix on Sunday.
If a Corgi Took Human Form, Part 1
If A Corgi Took Human Form, Part 2, Or: Me On Sunday When The Crown Is Available
Dame Margaret Needs Your Love and She’s Going to Get it with CULTURE
Not my favorite Emma Thompson crying gif, but the most seasonal!
This week, you guys! It wasn’t great for me!! Not merely because, as I discussed on Pop Culture Happy Hour, the Emma Thompson (and Bryony Kimmings)-scripted Last Christmas failed to contain much in the way of either rom or com for, although that was certainly disappointing, my week’s badness was not culturally based. The cure for it, however, was— at least in part. I turned to Twitter for confidence like Sally Fields showing up at a New Jersey mall to sign autographs in Soapdish and asked people to share with me some things they loved that they’d found through my writing. And you know what, it was really satisfying! So I am going to chase that feeling by sharing a quick list of things I think should be widely beloved in the hopes that some of you check one or more out this week and return to share your love of it with me.
Emma Thompson’s filming diary from Sense & Sensibility, perhaps the most adorable she has been or will ever be.
The out-of-print but beloved by all who’ve read it YA novel Quest for a Maid by Frances Marie Hendry(based on the old Scottish ballad “Sir Patrick Spens”)
The wry California beach town detective show Terriers, tragically not streaming anywhere for free, but easily purchasable and worth every penny.
The YA mystery series The Agency by Y.S. Lee, which puts its empowered female lead into Victorian London as a part of the servant class and then shows how incredibly complicated her path forward would actually be, but without ever being a bummer.
Laura Mvula with the Metropole Orkest, the perfect Christmas-y but not Christmas music for those of you who want to respect this between time, but still get a l’il festive.
If you have not read Helene Hanff’s memoir-in-letters 84 Charing Cross Road,it will take you less than an hour, and it is perfect. I have a hard time imagining anyone who likes our newsletter failing to adore it. If you have, but have not delved further into her work, please try her memoir-in-memoir, Underfoot in Show Business. They will make you very nostalgic for a time when poverty could still be genteel in New York City.
The mystery novels of Josephine Tey, starting either with stand-alone Brat Farrar (like The Talented Mr. Ripley, but with clear morality) or the fourth in her Inspector Alan Grant series, To Love and Be Wise (trust me, I do not recommend non-sequential reading lightly).
Any of my dearly beloved Candian singer-songwriters, written about previously, still adored by me, but overlooked by so many of the rest.
The gone-before-its-time newsroom/espionage period drama The Hour. It ends on a hideous cliffhanger, but for Lix Storm alone it is so worth it, and it just got added to Acorn TV’s streaming options.
The crush you will get on her— it will destroy you.
Two Bossy Dames is brought to you by:
Dan Levy’s murderously good taste in suits,
Roger Stone’s conviciton on all seven counts against him and @spookperson’s immortal thread absolutely roasting his Inaugural fashion choices,
This timely reminder that you are not your accomplishments!
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