PRINCE | While My Guitar Gently Weeps
That time Prince stepped on stage and slayed the guitar solo for George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It’s all about minute 3:28.
THIS STAGE OF LIFE? IT’S HARD. | austin.citymomsblog.com
To the mom in her early to mid-30s with young kids anywhere between newborn to 8 years old, struggling with the guilt of having a career or the guilt of giving up her career, this one’s for you…“This stage of life is less and less about watching your friends get married and have babies, and more and more about standing by and witnessing your friends struggle in their marriage, and even get divorced. It’s a stage where you’ve got to put in the time and the effort and the work and the energy to make sure your OWN marriage stays healthy. And that’s good, but it’s hard, too. At this point, you or someone you know has experienced infertility. Miscarriages. Loss of a child.”
MY WORST NIGHTMARE — WHAT IF I ACCIDENTALLY RAISE THE BULLY? | huffingtonpost.com
A mother realizes her worst nightmare, she is raising the kind of daughter that would have bullied her in grade school…“Smack dab in the middle of my brood of five kids, was a charismatic, sassy, leggy, blonde, dance-y, athletic girl oozing confidence … and apparently annoyance, directed towards another little girl that wasn’t lucky enough to be her. Inconveniently for my daughter, her own mother WAS Bethany in grade school. Freckled of face and frizzy of hair, I was an Army brat, always the new girl clamoring for a friend, drawn to the natural confidence of girls like my daughter. This conversation found me vacillating between heartache and fury, but one thing I knew for sure: Mama was about to put her money where her mouth had been all these years.”
WOMAN LEAVING MEETING WORRIED SHE CAME OFF AS TOO COMPETENT | theonion.com
A woman kicks herself for revealing her true colors: total competency and confidence…“Oh God, I never should have corrected [department manager] Bill [Tomlinson]’s mistake on the Q2 figures—what was I thinking?” Manning reportedly said to herself, wincing as she remembered looking directly at one of her male coworkers and confidently stating her suggestion for generating more customer leads. “And I just listed off the status of our accounts with our major clients without hesitating or second-guessing myself even once. Jeez, I think they might have been able to tell that I had a thorough handle on all parts of my job. What a disaster. I hope no one felt uncomfortable.”
‘WHITE SAVIOR BARBIE’ HILARIOUSLY PARODIES VOLUNTEER SELFIES IN AMERICA | huffingtonpost.com
The trending Instagram account created by two white twenty-something women with regrets about some of their “White Savior days” poke fun at white voluntourists who capture their sacrifice in a self-congratulatory way…“Of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing volunteer work in Africa — it’s wonderful when people take the time and energy to make a difference for those who may be less fortunate. But the makers of the account say what they’re trying to do is shine a light on the people who fetishize and over-sentimentalize the experience of visiting Africa: The people who turn smiling African school kids into living photo-ops, who talk about how “happy everybody is even though they’re so poor!” and who never seem to specify exactly what country in Africa they actually visited (because, you know, Africa is a country).”
THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY: GENDER AS A CREATIVE FORCE, NOT A CONSTRAINT | onbeing.com
A feminist and new mother can’t resist finding out the sex of her baby even though she knows sex is a malleable force. Still, it is through learning the sex of her baby that she begins to form her first attachments.“…[Anne Fausto-Sterling wrote] ‘sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of even five categories.’ I love that. I believe that. And yet, when I was carrying my first child, and again with my second, I gave in to the temptation to find out the sex of my baby, at least according to medical estimates based on a binary. Though I’ve done my best not to take that information and overlay it with a bunch of expectations, I would be lying if I said I didn’t relate to it as a fixed category to some extent. In part, this is because the pragmatic side of me knows that the world still works that way.”
SOME SUNDAY ZEN | COLORFUL KINETIC INSTALLATION OF TOY SPHERES | Nils Völker
WHERE’S THE MAGIC IN FAMILY DINNER? | well.blogs.nytimes.com
A mother makes the argument that it is not so much about what happens at the dinner table, but that you make it to the table…”Like many families, we strive to eat dinner together as often as possible. And when my husband and I meet our tween and her younger sister at the table, we sometimes have worthwhile conversations or manage to crack each other up. But, at least as often, dinner devolves into a failing effort to find out what happened at school or a nag-fest over mealtime manners. After an especially short or harried supper, I can find myself wondering how the family gathering that just transpired could possibly help to raise my daughters’ grades, improve their psychological well-being or lower their risk of substance abuse.”
MOTHERHOOD KICKS FEAR’S ASS | rokimom.com
A mother of two who has struggled with anxiety for 10+ years makes a list of the fears fueling her anxiety that have been put to the test through motherhood…“After my first daughter was born it got really intense. I remember after my husband went back to work and the visitors slowed down I would get up with her in the morning and just freeze. I did not know what to do with my day. I all of a sudden had all of these new and strange responsibilities and I felt so much on my shoulders that I was literally paralyzed. It was so bad my milk almost completely dried up (which ended up being fine because breastfeeding was not going well anyways and then I could get back on my anxiety medicine). Then I was scared to tell people I wasn’t breastfeeding. I was scared to tell my Mom I wanted and needed to go back to work. And all the fear just fed the Anxiety.”
LA families looking for an awesome artisanal craft fair, mark your calendars for the Echo Park Craft Fair May 7 & 8 (Mother’s Day weekend).
For LA cinema, IMAX’s new documentary A Beautiful Planet, narrated by Jennifer Lawrence, comes out on April 29th. For New Yorkers, who have not yet seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, be sure to line up early on April 27th at Manhattan Beach Park in Brooklyn for a free outdoor screening.
With this year marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, be sure to catch plenty of Shakespeare starting with Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum lineup. Also for LA theatre, check out Gruesome Playground Injuries at the Hudson Backstage in Hollywood, “pitch-black” comedy Dinner At Home Between Deaths at the Odyssey and be on the lookout for Eugene O’Neill’s Hairy Ape opening May 14 at the Odyssey. Interested in dance? Watch for are Hubbard Street Dance Chicago coming to Irvine Barclay on April 28th and New York-based Bryn Cohn + Artists Dance Company making their Los Angeles debut May 6 & 7.
