Bread and Bread

1. turnips and sugar skulls The other day I caught a lighthearted BBC News Hour story on Halloween. Two reporters with crisp English accents discussed the fact that Halloween had been exported from Ireland and Scotland to North America, altered, then re-exported back to the British Isles. “Pumpkins are a new world vegetable,” one of the reporters said. “If we wanted to truly celebrate a local holiday, we’d be carving turnips.” “Turnips!” the other exclaimed. “Well, that sounds quite mushy.” Turnip spice latte, anyone? Around the same time, I read a Huffington Post piece titled “Dia de los Muertos is Not Halloween,” which included some good (and sadly not obvious?) points like: Dia de los Muertos is about “paying respects to late loved ones, honoring their lives, and acknowledging the fragility of life,” not just painting your face like a calavera and partying. Fair enough. But one (white) activist in my Facebook feed posted a long admonishment to her fellow non-...

I'd spend more time like this if our couch were long enough to lay down on. I broke my No Movies About People In My Demographic rule this weekend to watch Hello I Must Be Going , because the trailer assured me that Melanie Lynskey’s character, Amy, would be sufficiently bummed out as to not stress me out. (Can I just say how refreshing it is that a character allegedly born in 1977 is named Amy? Not Lily or Ruby or Madison, or another name given to humans born circa 2007 and movie characters born in 2012. AK and I have a thing about how trans guys tend to rename themselves, like, Brayden, even when they’re thirty years old. If your female name was Jennifer, your male name should probably be Dave or Brian, not Owen. That is, if you’re going for realism. If you just want a name you like and you don’t mind turning around every time the parents at your hipster coffee shop call their two-year-olds, carry on, Brayden/Owen.) Where was I? Hello I Must Be Going and realism, righ...