Church at Dusk
29 Likes, 4 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Church at dusk"
The Queen Bee in the Corner Office
Read Olga Khazan's "Why Do Women Bully Each Other at Work?" It's an interesting, insightful, and illuminating investigation of how women relate at work -- in ways that are not infrequently toxic.
Large surveys by Pew and Gallup as well as several academic studies show that when women have a preference as to the gender of their bosses and colleagues, that preference is largely for men. A 2009 study published in the journal Gender in Management found, for example, that although women believe other women make good managers, “the female workers did not actually want to work for them.” The longer a woman had been in the workforce, the less likely she was to want a female boss.
Calling
33 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "💖"
The other night I volunteered for Planned Parenthood. Usually, I'm an escort for those who are going to the clinic to have abortions. This time, I went to a house where maybe 40 or so mostly women were trying to stop one of this red state's senators from voting for legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. Typically, I would've joined the group of folks writing letters to the senator, but because I had recently read this article, by a guy who chose phone calls over emails and discovered a greater intimacy, I decided to stand on the back patio in the heavy humidity and call people to ask them to call the Senator and tell him they stand with Planned Parenthood and they don't appreciate his attempt to defund it. I actually haven't really done anything like this before. Sure, I've cold called, but this was more like chilly calling. Some numbers had since been changed. Sometimes, I left a message. Occasionally, I got a person. My favorite response on the no end of the spectrum was: "Honey, I'm 90 -- click." Clearly, she had better things to do. Sometimes, you got an enthusiastic response. More often than not, that was from a woman. Yes, she would call. Clearly, she was delighted to hear from Planned Parenthood. She understood that this was a call to action. She was ready to go.
The Mooch: A XXX Parody
I had fun writing a new post for my Forbes blog in which I asked porn industry insiders if Anthony Scaramucci has a future in being paid homage in a XXX movie. You can read that story here.
In Scaramucci and his graphic diatribe, Myers saw the potential for a sex parody that would be right at home alongside his long line of other successful pop culture parodies: "Game of Bones," "The Big Lebowski: A XXX Parody," and "Spongeknob Squarenuts" among them. He even went so far as to reach out to Tommy Pistol, a porn actor from Astoria, Queens, who has a background in sketch comedy, with the goal of casting him as Scaramucci. Pistol has been performing in adult movies for the last 12 years. "I think that was like the shoo-in for me," Pistol recounts of getting the call, "being a New Yorker and being able to act."
The Last Tycoon
I've been watching Amazon's "The Last Tycoon." It's not perfect, but it holds the attention. It's Old Hollywood, and lots of drama, and it's very easy on the eyes. Two standout performances from Kelsey Grammer in the role of Executive Blowhard and Jennifer Beals as A Woman with a Secret. The series is based on F. Scott's Fitzgerald's last and unfinished novel of the same name. Beals is the show's shining star, and her storyline, which is based in truth, is really interesting, and, I think, deftly handled. Lily Collins has really impressive eyebrows that tend to be scene-stealers. What the series does best is paint Hollywood as a complicated, rough, siren-esque place where dreams can be made and dashed all in the course of a day on a movie lot.
That Ghost Story
"A Ghost Story." Annoying hipster horror-ish movie or intriguing meditation of the meaninglessness of life? You've got to see it if you want the answer. The Other Affleck plays a dead guy under a finely draped sheet. That Girl With Those Cheekbones plays his widow. Neither of their faces are on camera for long. Shooting location: Austin, Texas. How very Malick of you, dude. The guy dies, the girl is sad, and time whizzes past us. There's a note, but in the end, you'll never know what it says. (I guess that's a spoiler.) I admire the intellectual reaching, but I feel like this movie ghosted me. That said, I enjoyed much of it. So, see it ... maybe?
The Bird
56 Likes, 3 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: ""You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the..."
Atomic Blonde Bombshell
I liked "Atomic Blonde," but there's just something missing. What is it? Hm. Maybe ... backstory! Which, apparently, Charlize did. not. want. And maybe if it's a Charlize movie, Charlize gets what Charlize wants. I don't really get the Bond/Bourne comparisons, in a way, because this chick is a true cypher. Why so inscrutable, Lorraine? Maybe because a dude wrote her. Perhaps the sequel will be written by a woman! Here's hoping the box office returns dictate a "Lady John Wick 2." Read my review and thoughts on Forbes.
No Filter Life
40 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "No filter life 💙"
It's right there, as long as you: leave the house, park the car, walk through the sand, move past the guys throwing fishing nets, turn your head, mentally pause while your feet keep moving, walk up the stairs, make your way down the path, and keep checking, yep, it's still there, and later, yes, it's still there, and, still again, it's all right there, hovering on the edge of the world, changing shape, until you realize, you are, too.
What I'm Reading
0 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "📚👮🏻♀️🚓💉🏙 #whatimreadingnow #whatimreading #summerreading #summerread #summerreads #donwinslow..."
Typically, I wouldn't read a book like Don Winslow's The Force, yet here I am. I read someone writing about it somewhere, and they described it as in some way Joycean, so there you go. It's about a dirty cop, and a city in disorder, and the blurry line between the supposed good guys and the purported bad guys. It's long and engrossing and a suitable summer read.
Here's a snippet:
"A strong wind finds its way through every crack, into the project stairwells, the tenement heroin mills, the social club back rooms, the new-money condos, the old-money penthouses. From Columbus Circle to the Henry Hudson Bridge, Riverside Park to the Harlem River, up Broadway and Amsterdam, down Lenox and St. Nicholas, on the numbered streets that spanned the Upper West Side, Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood, if there was a secret Da Force didn't know about, it was because it hadn't been whispered about or even thought of yet."
Your Monday Quote
0 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "🌅 "You are the sky. Everything else -- it's just the weather." -- Pema Chodron"
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Meet Mr. Porn
Earlier this week, I interviewed Greg Lansky. You can read about our conversation here. One question that didn't make it into the final version: "What's artistic about a girl with a dick up her ass?" I can't remember the answer. I suppose, as ever, the art is in the eye of the beholder. Or, in this case, the eye of the pornographer.
"It is art because you make someone feel something," he says. "When you create performance art, people feel something about it. You going to tell me people don't feel something when they watch my art? They feel something."
Vegetarians Need Not Apply
41 Likes, 2 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Meaty. Buying my copy of @recoilmagazine's new #carnivore at #walmart 🔪🐗💀🔥🍽 #meat #magazine..."
The editor of this magazine and I talked about me writing something for the magazine, and while that didn't work out, I was excited to see it on the newsstand. I love the title -- CARNIVORE -- and I love the cover: the chef's coat, the rifle in hand, the slab of raw meat. It's all very visceral. This magazine is for you if you enjoy hunting, you enjoy eating what you hunt, and you want to join the call to arms of the FIELD TO TABLE REVOLUTION. Also: you can learn how to make a wild boar patty melt, and who hasn't been pining for a boar melt lately?
The Thing
The Ice House
Image via Imbibe
Here's a great story about -- well, whatever you want to call it: intuition, luck, the brilliance of stupidity. Found via my friend Sarah's Twitter feed, read CJR's "Writers Dish on Scoops That Slipped Away." Make sure you read the last one. It's a doozy and a genius life lesson.
I was pretty new. I had been there maybe a month, and I was doing weekend cop shop. There was a story in which three 14-year-old boys went out and attempted to rape, and ultimately murdered, a classmate’s mom. A huge story. A capital crime. I just got beaten like a drum the whole weekend. Every step of the way, the News reporter, Bill Hendricks—the longtime cop reporter with all the sources—was just getting everything that I wasn’t getting. It was so bad that my bosses couldn’t even be mad at me. They treated me as if I were developmentally disabled.
Let's Ride
The other day, I paid a visit to a nearly $5M LaFerrari. I got to sit in it, but not drive it. Read all about it in the latest post on my Forbes blog: "For $4.35 Million, This Gently Used 2015 Ferrari LaFerrari Can Be Yours."
Song to Song to Wait, What?
In the last few years, I've seen several Terrence Malick movies: "The Tree of Life," "To the Wonder," "Knight of Cups." In order to enjoy them, one must be open-minded or at least in a Terrence Malick kind of mood. What are Malick's movies about? Everything and nothing. What is the plot? Good luck. How is the dialogue? Um. These movies are collagist, impressionistic, dreamscapes in which love/pain/desire/rejection/rebirth/death/ecstasy all coexist, interweave, and pulse with a curious kind of life that makes, well, the act of living seem more alive on the screen than in reality. His latest, "Song to Song," could be said to be about the Austin music scene, or a study of several men and several women whose love lives intersect, or a fucking mess. It all depends on you. Manohla Dargis has it right: Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman deliver the standout performances while Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara sometimes appear to be engaging in acting exercises. What does that mean? It's hard to say. Malick likes to linger on Mara's hip bones, pour over vignettes in which lovers' bodies intertwine in unmet longing, open wide to bear witness to grand landscapes in which the awesome beauty of the universe consumes the smallness of us attempting to find one another in it. There's a brief and tragically lovely appearance by Cate Blanchett. The homes in which these beautiful people wander are striking glass boxes that attempt to contain the fragility of their occupants. There's some hot lesbian groping. What does it all mean? I have no idea. The alternative is one more phony plot with stilted dialogue that's supposed to capture the human experience but does little more than package it into something that feels like Spam.
Got $5M?
1 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Got $5M? 🚘💰🏁 #laferrari #ferrari #ferrarifans #ferrarifanatics #red #naples #naplesflorida"
That Wonder Woman Thing
I remain perplexed as to why "Wonder Woman" draws such intense reactions. Case in point, my latest on Forbes: "I Thought I Was the Only Person Who Didn't Like 'Wonder Woman.' I Was Wrong.'" Commenters are having strong feelings over there. Who knew, Lady Lasso?
Don't get my wrong. I liked Gadot's show of strength. I enjoyed vicariously visiting an island populated by Amazon warriors. I had a good time learning how a chick can skillfully hide her sword in her evening gown. But despite "Wonder Woman"'s show of female strength, in spite of its being (finally!) a big budget movie with a leading lady superhero, I didn't, well, love it. It didn't move me to tears. It moved me to nothing.
I Am Not Beguiled
"The Beguiled." I am not a fan. Admission: I loved "Somewhere." I have watched it many times and will watch it many times again. I liked "The Virgin Suicides" when it came out, but I suppose it was a bit too twee for me. "Marie Antoinette" was interesting and ravishing but a bit cringey and awkward. "Lost in Translation" I like a lot. So, I suppose you could say I like Sofia Coppola's "floaters" -- the movies where nothing's happening, nothing's supposed to happen, nothing's going to happen. Sofia: Stay away from plot. Perhaps that is the problem she encountered with "The Beguiled," a remake. She got preoccupied with diaphanous dresses, moody shots under Spanish moss-hung trees, the brooding despair of the South. She forgot that if you start with something happening, people are going to think something else is going to happen, and you can't just expect us to stare at a group of women staring at Colin Farrell for 94 minutes and leave feeling satisfied. I wanted a lot because I had Nicole Kidman, and Elle Fanning, and Kirsten Dunst. Instead, I got a shrug-off of slavery, a couple gruesome scenes, and a third act that was entirely MIA. At the end, when the final shot was happening, I was like, this isn't the end, is it? I mean, the conclusion landed like a queef in yoga class. Anyway, watch it if you want. I can't stop you. I might have to go watch "Somewhere" again to get the taste of this misfire out of my mouth.