Hey guys, it's Laurel Ann. Can you believe
that
it's already summer basically? Because
I can't. I love summer. I truly feel like
I'm most myself in the summer. Although I
 do have to say I'm not that excited to
be on the east coast
for summer, because it is way hotter
and more humid than in the climates that
I've
been living in for the last four years. I
also don't like air conditioning.
Is summer my favorite season? Anyway, that
whole tangent aside,
as you know i kind of like to round out
every season with a little favorites
video where I kind of
summarize some of the things that I've
been consuming and enjoying
over the last three months, so
that's what this is. My spring favorites.
What have I loved this spring?
stay tuned to find out.
Hi guys. I filmed
this video a few weeks ago,
and I really just didn't feel
comfortable posting it without
acknowledging the ongoing human rights
crisis. So before I take you to my
favorites, I just wanted to offer
three resources on race and civic action
that you can read
right now for free. This of course is by
no means an exhaustive list, and
I don't want to present myself as some
kind of authority.
It's just three really accessible
writings that I think could serve as a
really good starting point if you're
looking to educate yourself,
and they're all things that I've found
immensely helpful
over the years. These will all be linked
below, and I will also link to a page
that has three, I think, publishers that
have titles
on policing in America that are
available for free download right now
as well. I've not read those, which is
why I'm not talking about them today,
but I do plan to read at least one of
them. So I just thought I would
stick that down there, because it's, again,
another really good free resource
that's really relevant right now. First
we have Martin Luther King's Letter From
Birmingham Jail. He wrote this in 1963 in
response to clergymen who were publicly
criticizing his actions and questioning
his methods.
This is a super foundational text, and
when I first read it in college, I found
it very helpful,
and it was very formative sort of at the
beginning of my progressive journey. This
letter will help you see a different
side to Dr. King,
and it's also really interesting to see
how many of the concerns that he's
addressing are the exact same arguments
that we're seeing today from
conservatives
and moderates. I think this can be really
helpful in informing
your rhetoric when responding to people
who are dubious about this current wave
of activism, and you may also find that
he confronts some of your own
conceptions. If you haven't read this
before, it really really is
a must. It's very short and very
informative,
very important, and even if you have read
it before, I really urge you to read it
again if you have not
already. Next, I want to recommend "Loving
blackness as
political resistance" by bell hooks. This
is the first essay in her book
Black Looks: Race and representation,
which you can also read in its entirety
at the link I've provided,
but I've chosen this essay in particular
because
I think it really concisely describes
the lived experience
of internalized racism and
really gracefully exposes the way in
which white people and even white
liberals
actively reinforce it.
Ugh, sorry if you
can hear the neighbor's lawn mower.
I can't close the window because
there's a cat in it.
The idea of anti-racism has really shot
into the mainstream lately, and I think
that's really great,
but I don't think you can really
manifest anti-racism unless
you yourself are aware of the ways in
which
you perpetuate these ideas. So I think
this is a really good
place to help you kind of confront these
things in yourself, and it also is very
short. It has a lot of really juicy
quotes in it
that again might be helpful in your sort
of, um,
social media fights that you may or may
not be having.
And finally, I have
Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis. This is a
really interesting one
because its core argument is one that I
think is a little bit more radical than
what a lot of liberals might be used to
engaging with.
Even if you don't come away agreeing
completely with prison abolition,
you can learn a lot from this book. She
really concisely summarizes
other 19th and 20th century abolition
movements,
and she also really deftly explains
how slavery was allowed to continue in
the South
long after the Civil War through tools
like the Black Codes
and the convict lease system, and
she kind of exposes how the current
trend--or the
trend from the 80s and 90s--of prison
privatization
is really just an extension or
reincarnation
of those earlier tools. This is also a
really good example of true
intersectionality, because it allows you
to really see
how white supremacy and capitalism
really work together to
oppress people of color. This obviously
is a little bit longer because it's a
whole book,
but it's really not particularly time-consuming. I reread it just this morning
to make sure that
i did want to recommend it in this video,
um, and I'm really glad I did because
it definitely hit differently today than
it did when i was an undergrad.
I think that even if you feel like
you're really engaged in this moment, you
can still
learn a lot from Angela Davis, so I
really highly recommend this one as well.
Obviously. The whole point is that I'm
recommending these resources.
So that's all. I really really hope you
guys check these out.
And now, on to the rest of the video.
TV has definitely been a little bit hit
and miss for me
over the last few months. Is it just me,
or is the "golden age of television" over?
I think it might be over. A lot of
television seems to be
bad now. But a show that has been a great
surprise to me
is Lovesick, formerly known as Scrotal
Recall, which I think is a Channel 4
show in the UK, but Netflix has the
global distribution rights so they get
to claim that it's a Netflix original
even though it's not, which I think is a
little bit shady, but
whatever. I don't know anything about the
politics
of the television industry. What am I
doing with my hands? This is a sitcom
about three 20-something best friends,
led by Dylan who finds out in the pilot
that he has chlamydia,
so he has to systematically contact all
the women who he's had sex with
over the last couple of years. And so
each episode, for the first couple
seasons at least,
is a different woman. And so you get to
see
a vignette of their relationship,
and you also slowly learn more about his
history with his friends
and also kind of how the relationships
with his friends have progressed over
the years,
because you kind of jump back to the
present. It's quite funny, and it's
surprisingly sweet as well. It's also
filmed and set in Glasgow, Scotland, and I
think it does a really good job
of making Glasgow look like a really
beautiful city, and I think that's a
really nice thing, because
that's a city that is kind of
undervalued in the UK.
The only thing that bugs me about it is
that, even though they're in Glasgow,
pretty much every character is English.
They've had like
three named Scottish characters in
the whole show that i've seen, and it
just--it just bugs me that
the uk is so against having
non-Southern English accents on
television, other than like reality TV.
Like, let's get some real Northerners, and
let's get some real Scottish people
please.
My sister was here for her spring
break during the first week
in March, and as a little surprise i took
her up to New York. She told me while we
were there that she had not been there
since high school, so I really enjoyed
getting to show her around and showing
her
some of my favorite spots in the city.
I'm by no means a New York expert, I just
like to visit it sometimes. And I also
took her to see
Six the Musical. It was my second time
seeing it in three months. A
girl she went to high school with is
playing Catherine Parr,
so it was just like really cool to
see her. Like, I saw her in
in her shows in high school and now
she's on Broadway! And then
a week after that was when the world
shut down and Broadway got canceled
forever,
so I'm just really really grateful that
I got to have that little
experience, um before...
before before quarantine! Oh, and we also
went to MoMA, which is one of my
favorite ways to spend a day in the
entire world. And as a bonus,
neither of us got coronavirus!
One thing
that I am certainly grateful for
all the time, but especially right now, is
podcasts. I've just been
super enjoying them lately, so I have a
couple to recommend to you today.
One is called Wind of Change. This is
just an eight episode
series. I binged this over the course of
like two or three days.
It's hosted by New Yorker writer Patrick
Radden Keefe, who
years ago heard a rumor through a friend
that this song Wind Of Change was
written by the CIA.
Wind Of Change is this kind of
corny pop rock ballad from the 80s
that you might not know if you're
American, but it's very very popular
in Europe. I know I heard it all the time
when i lived in the Czech Republic, but I
didn't know what it was, so,
you know. It was kind of kind of fun to
put a name to the face, so to speak.
And this is a song that inspired a lot
of people
pretty much right at the end of the Cold
War
and the time that the Berlin Wall fell
and everything.
Sorry, I saw something flying around in
the corner and it startled me. So
Patrick goes on this journey to
Germany and Ukraine, and he talks to all
these
CIA people to try and discover
whether or not this rumor is true--
whether or not the CIA
wrote this song. And the answer to that
question
actually ends up being kind of secondary,
and it really becomes more about
the nature of propaganda and the
history of the CIA and the US State
Department sort of
intervening in pop culture. It was a very
fun and entertaining ride, but I also
felt like I learned a lot about it. And
it also
was not too, like...
it didn't glorify the CIA too much, in my
opinion.
I think that's kind of
a tricky tight rope to walk. You know,
like you want to tell these cool stories
about things that they've done, but you
also don't want to overlook the fact
that they've
staged a lot of coups in other
countries, which is not that cool. If
you're into like
any kind of conspiracy theories or just
like weird stories,
i think you would probably definitely
like this. And it's also just really
well-produced and well-reported.
And then on kind of the opposite end of the
spectrum, I have been
loving The Scaredy Cats Horror Show,
which is hosted by
PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman, who are also
the hosts of
Reply All, which is one of my favorite
podcasts of all time. The story behind
this
podcast is that Alex loves horror movies,
which I also do, and PJ
is absolutely terrified of them and
can't watch anything remotely scary
without having nightmares. So every two
weeks,
Alex assigns PJ a horror movie to watch,
and
ostensibly they're moving from kind of
unscary
to more scary. I don't know how successful
that's been, given that the
first one was The Exorcist, which a lot
of people find very scary. But anyway,
every week, at least so far, they've had a
different guest on.
The first week was Jason Mantzoukas,
who
I love. I've also been watching along
with the movies, which has been a lot of
fun.
I actually just watched Nightmare on
Elm Street for the first time
because of the podcast.
My favorite film
is also the last film I saw in cinemas
possibly ever, and that is the new
adaptation of
Emma. It is cast with some truly
impeccable actors.
It fantastically and fabulously
captures the humor of Jane Austen's Emma,
and is also just
so stylish and sumptuous to look at. The
costumes are, like,
are to die for, quite frankly. I think
Leena Norms
said in a video that she made on her
channel that this
is the Emma adaptation that Jane Austen
would have made,
and I feel like that is extremely
accurate.
Like, I really think that it
perfectly captures Jane Austen's
sense of humor and sense of satire. I
just ordered it
on dvd, and
I'm just--I'm so excited to watch it
again. It's also available on demand from
amazon and those other folks as well. So
if you haven't seen it yet, I highly
highly highly recommend it! And I say
that as somebody who
loves Emma the book, so I think it's a
perfect adaptation, and i could not say
more about it.
I've read a lot of really good books
this spring, but I think my favorite
would have to be How To Be Both by Ali
Smith. This has kind of been
the year of Ali Smith for me, and
I do think that this is probably my
favorite that I've read so far. I love
the seasonal books as well, but this one
I think just like spoke to me on a more
personal level.
And yeah, I loved it. I'm not gonna go too
much into it here, because I haven't
wrapped it up yet, so
I'm just gonna wait to talk about it
then, but
Ali Smith is my new girlfriend.
I am just kind of obsessed with this
video essay that Jack saint made on his
channel about
Cars, the Pixar movie, and eugenics. I
think it's called
"Oops, Disney's Cars Did Eugenics," or
something. He also has another earlier
video
about how Sky High is actually eugenics
propaganda. I think he does a really good
job
in his sort of children's media video
essays
of mixing really profound and
well thought-out analysis with a humor
that sort of
exposes the absurdity of the positions
that he's taking.
I will link the video below. I think you
should all watch it
for a laugh, and also maybe to get your
mind...
your mind wheels turnin a little.
I have been baking homemade bagels,
and this is something that I never
really even considered
attempting because...I don't know why!
I've been making bread for about a year
now, but homemade bagels just seemed like a step
too far. But I finally tried them, because
what else have we got to do? And they're
so good. They're just as good as the ones
from the bagel shops
in New Jersey and New York that I
usually only have once or twice a year,
so
I'm just really happy that I can have
them in my home. But I'm sad
that I did not discover that this was a
skill I had
when I lived in the UK, where bagels
are disgusting. I'll leave the recipe
that I've been using
in the below box. Description.
And if you are interested in making
bagels, I recommend trying it. It's really
not as hard
as it sounds.
So, a few weeks ago, my mom
and I--
it kind of finally finally sunk in that
this summer
we were probably going to be stuck in
this house. So we decided we want to make
our outdoor deck
just like the cozy oasis that
it was born to be, so we splurged on this
amazing outdoor sectional,
and I just love spending time out there
in the morning
and in the evening, and I'm really
really happy that we did that. And it
makes me feel very fancy. All right, so
those are just some of the things iIve
been liking. I would love your
recommendations
for stuff. You guys, I think, know my taste,
so if you know of anything that you
think I would like,
please tell me, because I'm consuming
loads of media.
Loads and loads. Okay bye!
