Vlogging in Manchester.

Proof that this face does not belong in front of the camera.

 What's going on? Why am I in Manchester? Why is this hotel so fancy? Find out the answers to these deeply unimportant questions by clicking the play button below!

P.S. After actually watching the video myself, I realize I never made it clear why I'm spending the night in luxury I clearly can't afford: there was literally nowhere else available within a 5-mile radius of the airport tonight (so cab fare both ways would have negated the difference in cost), leaving two options: grit my teeth while handing over my weary debit card with at least a plush, spacious bed for the night to look forward to; or try to survive the night in Manchester Airport without being subjected to whatever unspeakable horrors befall young women dozing off alone in empty transit stations. I'd much rather work however many minimum-wage hours it takes to afford this rather than become a sensational tabloid headline tomorrow. Also, this bed is no joke. The ceilings are high enough for me to jump on it if I wanted...not that I would, or anything.

P.P.S. Sorry my hair kept trying to steal the scene. I've been trying for twenty years, but it just can't be tamed.

Recommended Reading: Male Escorts, Hypergiant Stars, and Slushies.

Hello and welcome to the second installment of my weekly Recommended Reading, where I share the best of my recent browser history in hopes that I might inspire others to have more interesting conversations around the water cooler, or whatever it is people with office jobs and less time to click on articles in their Twitter feed do.

“I Went to the Woods So I Could Steal Candy From Children”: The Maine Hermit Is A Terrible Hero To Have by Mallory Ortberg, The Toast
     Last week I recommended an essay about the infamous man who lived in the woods of Maine for almost thirty years, surviving not by hunting and gathering, but by stealing things from nearby cabins in the middle of the night. I maintain that it was a fascinating article about someone whose way of thinking is completely unfathomable to me, but the incomparable Mallory Ortberg points out exactly why all the people who have since idealized the hermit's pseudo-back-to-nature, away-from-humanity mentality are a bunch of morons and, in fact, the hermit was kind of a jerk who kept people from feeling safe in their own homes and has terrible taste in music and is yet another false idol of tortured masculinity in a world that has too many of those. There's a difference between living deliberately and being a selfish leech on the very society one scorns, and at least Henry David Thoreau was a good writer.

Story of a male escort by Will Thorr, The Observer
     I have complicated feelings about prostitution. As a feminist, as a human rights advocate, as a believer in bodily autonomy, as a social liberal, as a sex-positive person to whom the idea of treating sex as yet another purchasable commodity nonetheless does not personally appeal, as a person who worries about large-scale issues like human trafficking and power dynamics and wishes there were a way to ensure sex workers' safety without compromising their ability to make a living and would be concerned, justifiably or not, about the well-being of any friend who entered the industry, I spend a lot of time trying to understand sex work. Accounts like this, told from the perspective of the UK's highest-paid male escort (where "escort" in the US is usually a euphemism for prostitute, here it seems to mean it explicitly), help with that attempt to understand. Josh Brandon's story, of getting into drugs and trouble in school and growing up in a dead-end Welsh town with nothing to look forward to but a job in a grocery store, makes sense to me. It's a rags to riches story with a mostly happy ending, really, only with clients who pay extra for their weird fetishes.

Experience: I was a male escort by Anonymous, The Guardian
    This is an older piece that predates the Josh Brandon article, and was suggested as "related" to it. The anonymous writer gives a similar account of the financial freedom afforded by his escort work on top of a steady job "in the creative industry, in an area rich in job satisfaction if not remuneration," but he's much more conflicted about the moral compromises involved.

How dare anyone criticise British food? Indigestible dinners made this country great by Stuart Heritage, The Guardian
     I enjoy a hearty pub lunch as much as the next alcohol-abstaining expat in England, but there's a hefty pinch of truth to the stereotype that British cuisine consists mostly of beige and brown lumps of varying consistencies but minimal gustatory appeal. Then again, to avoid sounding like an ungrateful foreigner in the country responsible for Cadbury chocolate, I'll let a native poke fun at British food instead.

What Happened to Jennifer Lawrence Was Sexual Assault by Anne Thériault, The Belle Jar
     Callous as it sounds, I am burnt out on coverage of the celebrity photo hacking incident. I'm no less sympathetic to the victims now than I was when the news first broke, but I have much less patience for the abundance of thoughtful, well-intentioned, but ultimately useless think-pieces littering the internet right now. This is an issue on which I have no tolerance for dissenting opinions: the women targeted in this crime didn't deserve such a gross violation of both their privacy and ownership of their own bodies, and anyone who disagrees can very rapidly exit stage left. Again: this was not a "leak" or a "scandal," it was sexual assault.

Diablo Cody Is Known and Loved at Her Local Taco Bell by Siera Tishgart, Grub Street
     The Grub Street Diet is a feature I'm always excited to see cross my newsfeed, so much so that I'll even read ones featuring a famous person/food-eater whose life and work I wasn't previously familiar with. The chance to read someone else's food diary for a week deeply satisfies my desire to become acquainted with other people's most mundane behaviors and preferences, which some might call a voyeuristic instinct, but I prefer to think of as a scholarly absorption with human social behavior. I have a B.A. in Psychology, so I can get away with saying that.
     This particular Grub Street Diet takes a peek at the eating habits of Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno and some other movies (Jennifer's Body, Young Adult) that may be entirely adequate but will never live up to Juno, so I haven't bothered to see them. This is the same woman who wrote the line, "Can you hold on a second, I'm on my hamburger phone," so I had high expectations. Her meals of Five Guys for lunch, "some Special K Pastry Crisps, which are like fake-ass Pop Tarts for self-hating idiots," and most of her son's slice of chocolate cake at a child's birthday party did not disappoint. I won't ruin the final line of the piece for you, but it's killer.

The Columbia Student Carrying a Mattress Everywhere Says Reporters Are Triggering Rape Memories by Katie Van Syckle, The Cut
     Emma Sulkowicz's performance art piece requires a lot of courage to carry out, and while I hate that reporters have so few qualms about harassing her for the sake of a story, I'm glad this is getting so much coverage. This interview is further confirmation that she totally rocks.

Eleanor Catton sets up grant to give writers 'time to read' by Alison Flood, The Guardian
     Eleanor Catton's novel The Luminaries won this year's Booker Prize (and is on my to-buy and to-read list), so in gratitude for the honor, she's putting her prize money towards the establishment of a grant that will provide financial support to young writers, giving them time not to worry about putting words on a page or making ends meet, but simply to read. I love her idea for what to name it: "Catton said that the word which keeps coming to her as a possibility 'is the horoeka, or lancewood, a native tree that begins its life defensively, with sharp rigid leaves and a narrow bearing, and at a certain point transforms into a shape that is confident, open and entirely new – so different, in fact, that the young and old versions of the tree look absolutely unalike. That is what I believe that reading can do.'"

My Parents Have Elder Care Insurance, But Daughters Are Apparently the Next-Best Thing by Marci, XOJane
     "Women appear to provide as much elderly parent care as they can, while men contribute as little as possible." Ugh. Of course.

Wanna renounce your U.S. citizenship? It’s gonna cost you more. by Colby Itkowitz, The Washington Post
     Let's be real: this isn't going to "make it more difficult for tax-evading Americans to hide money in offshore accounts." It's just going to enact a stronger financial penalty for people living and working abroad who decide that not even an American passport is worth paying income tax to two different governments at once. Tax-loving Democrat that I am, I still think that's ridiculous.

The Original Patent for the Slurpee Maker by Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic
    I'm fond of slushies and weird trivia. This has both.

Twenty Days of Harassment and Racism as an American Apparel Employee by "Jane Doe," Gawker
     There are plenty of retailers I avoid for ethical reasons, making various degrees of sacrifice to do so: Wal-Mart, Urban Outfitters, L'Oréal, the company that makes shockingly adequate frozen pad thai meals but sources its shrimp from slave ships. For a long time, I was torn about American Apparel: former CEO Dov Charney has been a notable creep for as long as his company has been around, and his recent dismissal was well overdue, but their commitment to manufacturing products in the United States under reasonable labor conditions is rare and admirable in the garment industry; plus, they do produce some quality basics. I largely avoided brick-and-mortar American Apparel stores before now because I could tell, instinctually, that I wasn't thin or alternative enough to look anything but out of place browsing racks of metallic leggings and spandex crop tops; after reading this hellish account of working in an environment that normalizes racism and sexual harassment while repressing dissent, I have even more reasons to find my solid-colored t-shirts and skater skirts elsewhere.

4 Mind-Blowing Facts About Space by Tim Urban, Wait But Why
     Space is the coolest. I took an astronomy class as my lab science requirement in college, which turned out to be one of my all-time favorite experiences with one of the smartest men I've ever met -- shout-out to Professor Lombardi, Jr. at Allegheny College! -- from which I've retained a surprising amount of information, yet I'll still be engrossed in articles like these about facts I already know because I never get tired of reminders that looking through a telescope is like time traveling, there are 10,000 times more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth, and the entirety of human existence is a speck in the fathomless universe. That's either bleak or inspiring.

You Almost Certainly Have Mites On Your Face by Ed Yong, National Geographic
     Haha, just kidding. I didn't read this because I don't want to know.

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.