PicoBlog

If we’ve met once, you probably already know how I feel about Disney World. I’ve ranted about the sky high prices, I’ve called it a cultural forgery (I’m sorry!) and I once, as a 40-year-old mother of three, had an epic meltdown in Disney Springs. (It was the very end of a very long day and I couldn’t find the Uber pickup spot. My three young daughters watched me cry in silent confusion, a moment I hope they’ll work through in therapy someday.

I hope you’re having an enjoyable Bonfire night weekend and that Storm Ciaran has not washed away your fireworks display. If you’ve had to cancel because of storms, I’ve written you a little history of the gunpowder plot to read instead. The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a failed assassination attempt against King James I and the members of both houses of Parliament, including the House of Lords where I work.

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains some spoilers for the finale of season 6 of “Love Is Blind.” The Charlotte-based “Love Is Blind” season that started out so promisingly is looking pretty diminished by the finale — at least when you’re counting couples. Season 6 ended up being as short on weddings as season 5, and similarly gave us more mess than romance. But the finale was no less rich of an episode because of the smaller number of weddings, opening with a scorched-earth fight between Chelsea and Jimmy and reaching a crescendo with a wedding that was more about the riveting intergenerational drama of Clay’s family than it was about the couple.

This all started innocently enough, with a typically odd and old Noah Smith tweet: Now at the time I didn’t really think the analogy held, but I am enough of a nerd to also think, “wait, this is silly, the Star Destroyer would obviously win!” And then I really started to think. And what with the release of Andor and the coming release of a refurbished, 4K edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it seems worth spelling out my thinking at greater length.

Hey there. Today I am officially 50 years old! I’ve really been looking forward to this milestone birthday. My 30s were better than my 20s, my 40s were even better than my 30s, so I can only imagine my 50s will be the best yet. To celebrate, my kids are making 7-layer dip (I know that’s an odd birthday request, but that’s what I am in the mood for!), and we’re going to my favorite second-hand shop to look for some little containers to help me organize our newly put together Workroom at the Tall House.

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The voice cut through the glazed darkness of a theater that just rolled the credits on a movie I can’t even completely remember, but it was as right as rain. Calvin Wilson saw the blitzed expression on my face, chuckling as he walked away after asking me a question we both weren’t prepared to answer. Wilson filled the quota of a “film critic,” someone who could criticize film without being afraid of the immediate backlash.

Every great hero needs an even greater heel to oppose them. In every sense of the entertainment value for a movie, that was the proverbial setup-especially in a Sylvester Stallone film. Any fan of the first four Rocky films would agree that it’s Carl Weathers’ portrayal of Apollo Creed that helps make the films so rich. On paper, he was the popular yet bored champion who pulls a nobody out of obscurity for a boxing match; a rich classically trained pugilist against a rugged southpaw from the Philadelphia docks.

In the two weeks since Trump supporters stormed the U.S. capitol building, political commentators have been grasping around for historical precedents. There are plenty to choose from. The reactionary mob violence of late Reconstruction might be a good starting point, as my friend Baynard Woods argued in the Washington Post. Aggrieved white Americans were once again employing terror tactics to override the will of Black voters, and Sen. Ted Cruz had even invoked the explicitly racist Compromise of 1877 as precedent for throwing out election results.