Pitch Perfect: actually a little off-key.

(Sorry not sorry for the title.)

There's not much point in writing out all the reasons I was disappointed in Pitch Perfect, a movie that came out two years ago and has been widely loved ever since by every single human being I know. In fact, I'm probably setting myself up for some half-hearted argument over the merits of a movie that, overall, I enjoyed and would readily watch again, but was simply let down by this first time.

There's no need to pity me for having gone so long without seeing Pitch Perfect. While everyone was learning the clapping routine to accompany "The Cup Song/When I'm Gone" (which I already knew and helped teach to a group for a student leadership conference talent show, no big deal), I was compiling YouTube playlists of college a capella group covers of songs whose original recordings I didn't even particularly like until I understood their true majesty in translation. I was listening to Straight No Chaser's two Christmas albums on repeat. I was watching old episodes of The Sing-Off and lamenting that the SoCal Vocals didn't make it farther in the competition than they did. I was auditioning for a fledgling women's a capella group on campus with my take on Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," and although they passed on me, they also, to my knowledge, only ever had a handful of unimpressive rehearsals and never performed once before fizzling out. I sometimes tweeted links to particularly impressive a capella videos back and forth with a friend using the hashtag #acapellapals. What I'm saying is I didn't need a blockbuster movie to teach me the gospel of a capella.

The vocal performances in Pitch Perfect were catchy and exhilarating in the way Glee's best musical numbers were, or at least how I remember them being before I stopped watching the show, embarrassed on its behalf for the caricature it eventually became. I think I felt my soul flutter during the "riff-off" scene, and Anna Kendrick's voice is pretty but powerful in a way that my church choir voice only wishes it could be. As for Jesse's singing, suffice it to say that watching the movie with my best friend induced a lot of "oh my god i love him so much" commentary. And Benji's stage debut! What a scene-stealer. What a heartbreaker. Well done with all that, Pitch Perfect. I have to wonder, though, if any other a capella fans felt a little deflated at how crisp and obviously studio-recorded all the songs sounded: watching the Treblemakers's mouths move on stage in an auditorium seating hundreds while listening to polished, professional, soundtrack-ready recordings was an experience as painful to me as watching music videos of '90s pop stars who never quite got the hang of lip-syncing. A capella is so dynamic largely because of the spaces it takes place in: acoustics matter, and the sound of singing to a crowd and the sound of singing in a recording booth are totally, distractingly different.

Back to Jesse, though: he was kind of the Paul Rudd character, right? Cute but not super hot, confident but thoughtful and sweet and a major dork. I sarcastically guessed that he was going to be the love interest from the minute he appeared on screen, and the best friend sarcastically shot back, "How did you figure that one out?" Which is a good question, actually, because that first interaction between Jesse and Becca made no sense: he's in the backseat of a car, presumably his parents', acting like a massive goofball and that's all it takes for standoffish alterna-girl Becca to decide he's a keeper? And what, did he just pick the first pretty girl on campus to sing to and happen to get lucky by actually being into her personality? And then they turn out to be the two radio station interns on the entire campus, despite Jesse having no established musical inclinations prior to calling a capella groups "organized nerd singing." I dunnoooo.

Speaking of Jesse's interests, he's into film, okay. But what is he studying? What is Becca studying? What are any of them in college for? Is the quad so crowded with students sitting on the grass because all of them are cutting class all the time to do stuff like drink juice pouches with their not-boyfriends? I've never seen a less convincing college setting in any movie, and I'm counting videos people filmed on their point-and-shoot cameras for a class project. Becca's dad may teach Comparative Literature, but those tweed jackets were way too warm for that weather, which reminds me: the passing of time?? It was move-in day, the Bellas practiced two hours a day for seven days a week, they wore jackets outside at night in one scene, then it was time for spring break. I don't think I passed out for part of the movie, but the chronology makes as much sense as if I had.

Becca's mom isn't dead, just divorced and elsewhere? Estranged? By whose choice? Of course she hates the stepmonster; that's a given, even if not a single detail is given about what makes her dad's second wife so abhorrent besides the fact that Becca's still emotionally 11 years old. That was a pretty weak way to justify her tendency to "push away people who care about you" or whatever Jesse chastised her for, especially because as far as I could tell, she definitely did not push him away when they were watching the end of The Breakfast Club on her couch in the dark. I don't blame him for getting fed up with her constantly pulling that nonsense about him not being her boyfriend, but he was definitely her boyfriend and maybe they should have come to some kind of agreement about that. It's possible to be too respectful of someone's space, Jesse.

What the hell is Aubrey's deal? Her dad is a military guy and she definitely votes Republican, but did we ever get a suitable explanation for her ability to projectile vomit by sheer force of will? Who died the previous year and made her Barden Bellas queen, especially over Chloe, who is generally much more chill and likely to be voted into a position of leadership? More importantly, why is she the lead soloist when she sounds...the way she sounds? There's no way in hell the Bellas would have made it past Regionals with their dead-eyed 1950s airline stewardess routine, let alone all the way to the International Championship of Collegiate A Capella at Lincoln Center, no matter how pretty they all looked in their Stepford Wives uniforms. Nothing in the world can cause me to suspend my disbelief to that extent.

I did love all the other characters -- to the extent that I knew anything whatsoever about them, including their names. Stacie who has a lot of sex, Lilly who was harboring sick beatboxing skills the whole time, Cynthia Rose with the gambling problem, and of course Fat Amy/Patricia: they were all so lovable, but so limited. Sexy Stacie couldn't even sing during auditions, but suddenly she's facing off against Donald at the riff-off and holding it down, the same way Lilly's speaking voice rose to an audible level at the last minute for no discernible reason other than that the plot called for it. Cynthia Rose was a lesbian, which was funny because...? Someone please fill in that blank for me, because I honestly must have missed the punchline. The only thing wrong with Fat Amy was that there wasn't enough Fat Amy.

Let's not talk about the vomit, except to agree that the movie could've done without it and it's best to pretend it never happened.

The choreography was super weird.

Wasn't it convenient that the one guy from the second-place a capella group at Regionals was a high school ringer, and that Benji noticed the tote bag and connected the dots and reported it and that the officials personally followed up with an investigation, then disqualified the entire group, leaving a spot open for the Bellas to compete?
Wasn't it lucky that the loss of Chloe's "nodes" only led to the loss of her vocal range above a G-sharp, but didn't prevent her from singing her established solo parts as well as contributing a deep bass beat that set the Bellas apart from all previous all-female groups?
Wasn't it just the darndest thing that Bumper got that call from John Mayer close enough to ICCAs that the Trebles panicked, but far enough away from performance day that the group could perfect an arrangement featuring Jesse and Benji, who had never sung with the group before the week of the competition?

Okay. I'm sorry. I started writing this at 5:00 a.m. this morning and it probably sounds nuts. I did like the movie, I swear! To make up for being a grump, here's one of my favorite a capella performances ever, and may all you Pitch Perfect superfans forgive me:

Joan Rivers, and not settling for women who are "good enough."

I understand the injunction not to speak ill of the dead, I do. Death doesn't occur in isolation, and the loss of a loved one leaves friends and family in mourning. In the case of a fondly remembered public figure, such as the recently passed Robin Williams, the number of those left grieving expands beyond an immediate circle of acquaintances to people who felt they nearly knew the deceased, and whose emotional lives are affected accordingly. Not speaking ill of the dead, in most instances, is a reminder not to let petty quarrels disrupt mourners in fragile states, to whom some small debt or slight pales in comparison to the enormity of their sadness. If a co-worker dies of cancer, it's in decidedly poor taste to remark that at least they won't be stealing your sandwiches from the fridge in the break room anymore; that much restraint, I don't think, is too much to ask.

To preempt accusations that I'm dancing on Joan Rivers's grave even before it's been dug, I'll say this: I'm not happy that a woman who loved and was loved is gone, but I'm not sad that a celebrity who built her fame by throwing marginalized people under the bus in the name of comedy can no longer continue to do so. In this case, exhortations not to "speak ill" of the dead have the potential to silence those who might speak up amidst the wave of hagiographic tributes to remind Rivers's admirers of the poison she injected into the entertainment industry; in this case, shushing Joan Rivers detractors for the sake of not speaking ill of the dead speaks of a willfulness to brush her significant wrongdoings under a rug indefinitely, for the sake of painting as a saint a woman who was anything but. Prioritizing a narrative of Joan Rivers as pioneering female comedian over Joan Rivers as unapologetic, harsh-tongued critic of other women, minorities, the LGBTQ population, et cetera (and there's a lot of et cetera there) means posthumously forgiving her for a lifetime of cruelty masquerading as humor. Some people aren't ready to do that, and I don't blame them.

Time Magazine was quick to hit the hyperbole button with their coverage of Rivers's death, calling her a "groundbreaking feminist icon." Personally, I read those words and heard a loud record scratching noise, hoping that Time Magazine now publishes satirical news pieces; unfortunately, not so. Someone's rebuttal was that Joan Rivers is a woman of historical significance in the same way Margaret Thatcher was: the first of her kind, but not the best and, arguably, one of the worst. The trend towards labeling all influential women "feminists" is one that increasingly worries me, not because I feel the need to jealously guard the label as an honorific to be earned, but because lumping together the likes of Margaret Thatcher with Michelle Obama and Joan Rivers with Amy Poehler, Jessica Williams, and Mindy Kaling demeans the very notion of women rising to the top by virtue of talent rather than gender. The word "groundbreaking" is fair enough to ascribe to Thatcher and Rivers, as they were certainly the first women to make significant inroads in Western politics and mainstream comedy, but being female and being a "feminist icon" are not at all one and the same. To heap too much praise upon Joan Rivers for being the "first female comedian" doesn't only serve to state that she did it, but implies that she was the only one who could have done it -- that had she not made her culturally altering appearance on the comedy scene, no other woman could have. That's an insult to all women. Rivers was the first, but she didn't necessarily have to be; she simply happened to be, albeit through hard work and determination, but also through a coincidence of timing.

Moreover, Rivers herself disclaimed the title of feminist, and at least in doing so, her actions aligned with her words. A quick search on any form of social media right now will net a wealth of Joan Rivers "jokes" of the variety that people found funny and of the variety people found offensive; most of the time, they overlapped. Just a very limited sampling of such instances:

• Used the occasion of Adele's Oscar win for "Skyfall" to make a fat joke about her statuette wearing Spanx
• Took a posthumous shot at Amy Winehouse, two years after her death by alcohol intoxication, by remarking that it was "the longest she ever went without a drink"
• Called Kim Kardashian's baby, a mixed-race six-month-old child, "ugly" and "desperately in need of a waxing"
• Thought it appropriate to respond to Rihanna's confession that she still loved Chris Brown, who brutally beat her within the context of their relationship, with the words, "Idiot! Now it's MY turn to slap her!" She later followed up with faux concern, telling Rihanna that if he hit her once, he was likely to hit her again -- as if Rihanna needed Joan Rivers to tell her that.
• Compared staying in her daughter's Malibu guest bedroom to the plight of the three women (Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight) Ariel Castro kidnapped and locked in his basement for ten years, and followed it up with, "There is nothing to apologize for. I made a joke. That's what I do" -- as if making jokes were an action entirely without consequence.
• Supported fellow offensive person, Alec Baldwin, by letting loose a string of slurs: "Everybody just relax. Everybody’s either a w*p, a n###a, a k!ke, a ch%nk, a f@iry, a m$ck — everybody’s something so why don’t we all just. Calm. Down." She then helpfully clarified that this applies especially to "the Indians — both dot and feather!"
• Used the n-word liberally, then railed against how "PC" the world is for censoring/censuring her.
• Insulted Gwyneth Paltrow's appearance while making a Helen Keller joke -- an impressive two-in-one feat, really.
• Demeaned Palestinians on multiple occasions, claiming they "deserve to be dead," calling those who didn't "get out" when told to get out (reminder that it's just about impossible for Palestinians to leave Gaza!) "idiots," and rejoicing that "at least the ones that were killed were the ones with low IQs." She blamed the election of Hamas on a population of "very stupid people that don't even own a pencil." She never apologized.

These are not frivolous complaints. To stopper up criticism of words that hurt people -- because no, jokes are never just jokes when one person is laughing and another is crying -- is to reinforce a hierarchy in which rich, famous, white women like Joan Rivers get to enjoy indemnity for causing genuine distress to the very people who most need laughter to heal them. Joan Rivers's family and friends will not be swayed in their sadness by online commentary on their mother's/cousin's/friend's despicable treatment of others, but the people who were the butt of her jokes will have their pain compounded by a flood of those who say their pain matters less than one mean old woman's mocking laughter. I'm not thrilled that Joan Rivers is dead, but I look forward to the day when her cruel legacy joins her in the grave.

Listen, fellow feminists: we don't have to settle for women like Joan Rivers as our icons, no matter what Time Magazine tells us. She was a woman, and she did great things (in magnitude, if not in beneficence), but we need to set higher standards for ourselves than that. There are so many great women in this world who uplift their fellow women, who understand the intersectionality of oppression and the value of empathy, who use their platforms -- whether in politics, the arts, science, fashion, media, entertainment -- to do more good than harm. It should surprise no one that some of these women can even be funny! And that's the kicker here: we don't have to settle for the Joan Riverses of the world, who are female without being feminist. We can make it known that women who are funny, but for whom "problematic" is an understatement, aren't good enough anymore, because there are better women out there. Let's raise the bar.

Recommended Reading: Silly, Serious, and Somewhere in Between.

To say I spent a lot of time on the internet is an understatement. A functioning wireless router enables me to do my research, keep abreast of the news, stay in touch with friends, watch four seasons of Bob's Burgers in three weeks, and do whatever it is I spend so many hours doing on Tumblr. Without internet access, I would spend a significant portion of my day lying in bed, glaring at the ceiling and wondering what other people with internet access are doing.

My browser history isn't all online shopping and social media, though. A significant amount of my bandwidth usage goes toward digital reading material that's undoubtedly wreaking havoc on my eyesight, but hopefully makes up for the headaches by providing some intangible sort of cultural enrichment, or at least fodder for the next time I have a conversation with an actual human being that doesn't live inside a small box on my laptop screen. I'm always wary of deluging my unfortunate Facebook friends and Twitter followers with too many links to articles they may not be interested in, so I'm experimenting with a weekly reader's digest of sorts here, instead, where anyone can elect to read (or not read) what I've been reading lately. Reading reading reading.

I haven't decided yet what day of the week would be best to commit to this feature; Sunday night is probably the worst, since everyone has school and work to get to the next day, but I forgot to do this yesterday and I want to start the week fresh. (Let me know if there's a certain day you would most appreciate seeing these published!) This first set of articles ranges from a little bit frivolous to significant and worth sharing; they may not all be to one person's taste (unless that one person is me), but they're all pieces I think are worth featuring.

All article titles are clickable, and all links will open in a new tab.

Playing with privilege: the invisible benefits of gaming while male by Jonathan McIntosh, Polygon
     I was glad this piece received some attention when I first linked to it on Facebook, where I called it a well-written introduction to certain advantages men who play video games might take for granted, not even realizing how much worse the gaming experience can be for "girl gamers." As the title suggests, it takes inspiration from Peggy McIntosh's classic piece on "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," in that both pieces attempt to deconstruct ways in which the author's belonging to a dominant group makes life easier for them in ways that an underprivileged population does not experience. It's especially salient to discuss "male gaming privilege" now, when recent statistics from the Entertainment Software Association show that adult women have overtaken teenage boys as the largest demographic in video games, and yet women who play, discuss, or even make video games are subject to derision, sexual harassment, and even death threats for daring to enter supposedly male spaces. Jonathan McIntosh's checklist of invisible benefits of gaming while male sheds welcome light on male privileges that should, in a happier future, be applicable to all.

The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel, GQ
     This is a longer piece, but "strange and curious" sums up the reasons for reading it pretty well: a man lived alone in the woods of Maine for almost 30 years, surviving on stolen goods from nearby cabins, with no desire to re-enter society at any point. This account seems to be the closest anyone will ever get to understanding his choices from his point of view.

I Ate 2,346 Calories of Chocolate in My Sleep Last Night and I Don't Remember Any of It by Philippa Willitts, XOJane
     Explaining that this is an article about the consequences of one woman's sleep-walking doesn't ruin her fascinating and sad account of what it's like to live with such an unpredictable, often frightening condition.

It Took Me Two Years to Realize My Boyfriend Was Racist by Tiffany Tsai, Everyday Feminism
     I met my first boyfriend's parents just a few weeks into our relationship, and it would be a lie to say I wasn't nervous about it. Not only was I his first "real" girlfriend, but I was also very much not white in the home of blue-eyed Brits and a mother raised in the American South. I was lucky: they're a wonderfully kind family, who went out of their way to make me feel welcome on that first visit and during every interaction that followed. Though I occasionally teased that "half-American" boyfriend about his late, beloved, Fox-News-watching grandparents, our interracial couple status was a non-issue, and he was always quick to listen and sympathize with accounts of non-white experiences. Tiffany Tsai's piece reminds me to be grateful for that.

I was taking pictures of my daughters. A stranger thought I was exploiting them. by Jeff Gates, Washington Post
     Transracial adoption is a sticky subject that I'm not particularly educated about, but the idea of a white family going overseas to adopt Chinese babies when there are so many foster children in need of homes in their own country does give me pause. However, that doesn't stop me from being upset at this white adoptive father's story of how a man saw him with his teenage Asian-American daughters and assumed the worst. Human trafficking is a serious problem, but so is the assumption that good-looking young girls with foreign features must not belong here, must somehow be victims, can't possibly be happy American citizens on vacation with their loving, white parents. Plenty of people think "better safe than sorry," but that's probably cold comfort to those two girls.

Experience: I gave birth on a plane at 30,000ft by Debbie Owen, The Guardian
     And the baby was okay! Phew.

My Week on the All-Emoji Diet by Kelsey Rexroat, The Atlantic
     I was mostly excited about this because I finally learned what those unfamiliar Japanese food emojis represent. Fish cakes, rice crackers, and "sweet dumplings made from rice flour and often filled with red bean paste" -- now those symbols don't have to haunt me with their unfamiliarity.

I read many, many more articles this week, but I only thought to start collecting them about two days ago. Future weekly editions of Recommended Reading will have even more, um, recommendations. Get ready.

10 books.

I've never been able to pick favorites. It's not for lack of strong opinions (go on, ask me whether nuts belong in brownie sundaes: they don't); it's that I'm reluctant to declare one thing unquestionably "better" than another without any context. My favorites are circumstantial: favorite food can depend on the season, its availability, whether or not I have to cook it myself, the last thing I ate, and how hungry I am at any given moment; favorite band can depend on the definition of "band," what mood I'm in, who's asking, and whether or not I'm trying to impress them; favorite scarf depends on the weather; favorite book is impossible. To a reader, being asked to choose a single favorite book is an outrage akin to being asked to choose a favorite...well, nothing else, really. Film fans might disagree, but books are arguably a category unto their own, so infinitely diverse and carrying such a range of implications about the readers who choose them that being asked to decide on just one feels like an insult.

When well-meaning and/or nosy adults asked bookish little me what my "favorite book of all" was, I used to lie and name the last thing I'd finished simply to get them to leave me to whatever current thing I was reading, or if I was feeling particularly annoyed at the intrusion, I would name a great classic that I knew would both impress them and get them to abruptly end the conversation themselves. It was particularly effective if the title sounded bleak: Crime and Punishment and The Plague worked well. As I've gotten older and even more impatient with the impertinence of the favorite book question, I've resorted to bluntness: "I don't have a favorite book." It's true enough that I don't make many friends with that answer, but then I wouldn't be likely to enjoy the company of anyone who asked me that anyway.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I was horrified to see that my friend Molly had tagged me in one of those "answer these questions and pass it on to someone else" posts about books. I felt betrayed, because Molly is one of those people who I believed would know better, would understand that a person can't simply list their 10 favorite books at the drop of a hat and move on as if the decision were final. Sorry I doubted you, Molly, because the "rules" of this game turned out to be more nuanced than that:

List ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you.

Oh. Okay. I can do that.

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
2. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
3. The Catcher in the Rye/Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
4. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
5. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
6. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
7. I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere by Anna Gavalda
8. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
9. The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
10. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

My list skews heavily towards books I first read years ago, some of which are considered children's/young adult titles. I did think twice about publicly laying claim to some of them, but what is more touching than the book that all my friends passed around to each other when boyfriends were nothing more than fictional devices, or the ones whose screen adaptations lured us to midnight premieres where we clutched each other's hands when our emotions got to be too much? What has stayed with me more than the book I packed first of all when I left for college, or the one I read alone in bed after I'd arrived at school when no other words made sense? I don't even feel the need to justify the three that made me seriously consider my own mortality.

If you want to ask me about books, don't ask me about favorites. Ask me which ones made me feel a certain way; which ones changed my mind or shaped my beliefs; which ones I'd recommend to a friend and which ones a friend recommended to me; ask me what I was doing when I read a book and what I did after. Then tell me about your books.

My matching set of Salingers.

Men of Tinder.

In a particularly man-hating mood, I thought it might be a fun indulgence to download Tinder and swipe left for (i.e. reject) every single person, reveling in my opportunity to turn guys down with absolutely zero consequences except the possibility that they might have wanted to message me but won't get the chance; so like I said, zero consequences. It was super fun! And then it was depressing, because men of Tinder: you are all the same, and you're all pretty lame.

Here are some sure-fire ways to make sure I never even bother to look through the rest of your pictures or read your Twitter-length profile, all based on actual profile pictures I encountered in the very brief period of time before amusement turned to horror:

• Be shirtless.
• Be shirtless by the pool.
• Be shirtless in bed.
• Be half-shirtless, i.e. wearing a shirt but lifting it up to show your abs.
• Be naked on a sailboat, facing out towards the water, butt towards the camera.
• Be naked sitting on the toilet, because what?!
• Hold a cup of beer.
• Hold a can of beer.
• Be surrounded by a bunch of empty cans of beer.
• Wear a stupid hat that's supposed to be ironic.
• Wear a stupid hat that isn't supposed to be ironic (I really hate hats).
• Have super-short hair -- just a personal preference.
• Conversely, have your hair covering most of your face, because then I'm just suspicious.
• Button all the buttons on your polo shirt.
• Have your hoodie unzipped with no shirt underneath.
• Smoke a cigarette while looking away disinterestedly even though it's obviously a selfie.
• Smoke anything.
• Have your arm around a girl; come on, this is basic.
• Take a mirror selfie with your phone visible in the frame. It's not 2012 anymore.
• Take a selfie on the toilet. Seriously, why the toilet?
• Be named Djonathan because I can't take that seriously, even if it's not your fault.
• Look like the Hulk, because I couldn't care less about how much you can lift, but I'm sure you'd tell me anyway.
• Use a group picture, because I don't want to click through for more pictures and discover you're not the member of the group I hoped you were.

Long story short, I uninstalled Tinder.