marisa carroll

Happy Mother’s Day to this stylish broad. In Rome, 1990.

GREAT DEAL ALERT: 3 ft tall framed Spice Girls poster available at the Salvation Army on Jerome

Rosemary (in NYBG pot) and friend

springy

Today I went to the Bronx Zoo and learned a lot.

Mmm…girly springtime clothes plus a cutely designed book jacket. Oh wait, it’s for…LOLITA?!

This is super disturbing! I asked my little sister why she reblogged this (which is how I saw it) and she said “Oh, I didn’t notice the book I just liked the clothes,” which is why I assume most of the 12,596 other people reblogged this. Is whoever created this naive or are they trolling teen girls on Tumblr?

Completed my research. Have a horrible cold. Presenting my research later today. It is raining.

This has been a post.

Updated with Context: I will be talking about my research about YouTube beauty gurus, “Guru Girls: YouTube and the Construction of Popular Feminine Selves,” this evening at 5:30pm in Duane Library at Fordham. You are invited!

Last year I took a great class about the space race (and, in order to get there, Nazi rockets, Life Magazines wives, space dogs, etc). There, I developed a love of moon landing conspiracy theories. Teasing out why we believe the things we do is so juicy, and playing with why some believe moon landing conspiracy theories is all fun, no foul: there’s no risk of discrediting a genocide survivor’s experience, for instance.

A recent favorite is one my friend Meghan picked up while doing research in Kosovo. According to a recent documentary and widely held national belief, NASA bought the technology to go to the moon from Tito in 1961. Perfect! Of couse. Slow down, rocket Nazis employed by NASA—this Yugoslavian dictator has it covered.

I ran into another theory this evening in Room 237, my favorite documentary since Queen of Versailles. Roughly, Room 237 is about conspiracy theories surrounding Kubrik’s The Shining. In my reading, though, it’s more about obsession and how we read film today—that is, over and over and over on DVD—than it is about Kubrik. Very Errol Morris. Fast Cheap & Out of Control is one of my faves, and I saw a lot of it in Room 237.

Anyway, the moon theory in Room 237 is delightfully complicated and kooky. Stanley Kubrik was hired by “the government” (I want more detail! Was it the White House or NASA? Who wanted Kubrik?) to fake the moon landing footage. Not the moon landing, mind you, just the footage for PR purposes. Kubrik had to hide this job from his wife, lie about it to his fellow artists, and felt terrible about his complicity. The Shining is Kubrik working through his guilt about faking the moon landing. Basically, Kubrik’s psyche as Jack Nicholson. Kubrik planted clues throughout the Shining about Apollo, this theory goes, but he had to keep them very subtle to avoid government retribution. He even planted a visual fuck you to Stephen King just to throw viewers off the Apollo scent.

Yes, please.

This has been a public service announcement to see Room 237 and email me you favorite moon landing theories because it’s what makes me happy.

For a decade, there was nothing in the world I wanted more than goofy bedding from the DeLiA*s catalogue.

“…It came true…”

What does your father think of Enlightened?

I think he cries at every episode. In a way, it’s a bit of an anthem for him. My dad is an activist and Amy is kind of an activist. My dad spent so much of his life trying to assimilate into the world he thought he was supposed to be part of, and it made him crazy. When he came out, it was really important for him to get in every person’s face about his sexuality and the politics behind it. I remember in my teens being like, “Ugh, god! Can we just get through the day without an awkward interaction with some stranger or old friend?” At the same time, I realized that’s how true change happens, from people who are willing to risk being unpopular or unlikeable or create these awkward interactions. When Amy’s being strident and in somebody’s face, she may be unlikeable. But at the same time, that’s somebody who’s gonna do something.

-Mike White interviewed in Out