five questions, answered!
Hey so ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pts asked me five questions, and here are the answers!
• So you went to a pretty famous and well-known higher education institute! What is something about the experience that was really great that you didn't anticipate, or that people might not think of or associate with it?
You know, it's a college. So all the people who've gone to my college for the past 375 or so years, they were just idiot 19-year-olds as much as I was. That can be surprising, the long history of pranks and ridiculousness that went on, like the decades-old butter pat stains on the ceiling of the Freshman Union, or the divots in the brick sidewalks from 19th-century students chucking cannonballs out of their windows in the spring (they'd been sitting in the fireplaces, giving off radiant heat overnight in a time before central heating). Or how Teddy K. got caught cheating by his Spanish prof because he was seen by said prof getting a sandwich at Elsie's when he was supposed to be taking an exam he'd paid another student to take for him. Or that day I spent with my roommates going from party to party where we managed to stay at least a little drunk from about 3pm until nearly 3am.
There's a sort of comfort in knowing that there have been hundreds of years of people doing exactly the same thing you're doing right now, and if they got through then you can, too. I remember I was flying to FL for spring break one year and I had with me The Autobiography of Henry Adams and my seatmate, an older man, said, "oh, I know what college you go to; that's the only place anyone ever reads that book." We otherwise wouldn't have had anything at all in common, but we had that. And thanks to a certain sister school for the ladies, women have been on the campus since 1879, so there are buildings named after women, and so many famous ones were students—there's that story where Gertrude Stein was in William James's class, I think, and she was in her final exam (a spring one, clearly) and all she wrote in her blue book was, "It is far too nice a day to be taking this exam" and he gave her an A and said she understood the topic very well. Me, I was in my American literature discussion section and suddenly we went from Bartleby the Scrivener to Stop Making Sense—it was all about Why the Big Suit but I don't really remember the connection. Or the hockey player in my section who said that all the really boring passages in Moby-Dick were there to make us feel like we were on the boat, because when there was no whale there was nothing going on. Oh and, that you could be walking out of your philosophy class and hear these large athlete guys talking about Kant.
So yeah. I'm not sure how coherent that was, but it was like, it was just a really really old college, and would go on forever, world without end, amen.
• What's one aspect or fact or narrative about American history that you wish more people would understand and internalize?
Reconstruction. I wish people understood what it actually was supposed to do and how and why it failed and what that failure meant, because people often think, oh, civil war's over, no more slaves, everyone's equal now! When that super, super isn't what happened and there are entire areas of the country where that doesn't get taught. It's the central tragedy of American life and it shaped general race practices with Native Americans and Asians and Hispanics as well.
Just, everyone go read A Short History of Reconstruction by Eric Foner, right now. And if you want something more rigorous (though don't say I didn't warn you) then read his longer book, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution.
• Remember that one time Clint and Coulson were roadtripping across the country and they pulled over to camp somewhere out in the middle of the Nevada desert, and they set up some beer bottles to do target shooting and Clint was being a real mouthy brat about Coulson's constant missing? HOW DID COULSON FINALLY SHUT HAWKEYE'S STUPID MOUTH?!?!
(my apologies to a certain scene in s1 Castle)
Most of the time, when Clint gets like this, Phil just counts to ten, bites his tongue, and remembers that when they're on the clock Clint actually does do everything that Phil tells him to, so there has to be some balancing. And it isn't like they haven't spent large amounts of mostly tedious time together; that's how this all got started in the first place. Generally Phil lets Clint drive and choose their meals, and it all works out in the end. But there's an edginess to Clint today, a little extra something that isn't getting burned off in driving 100 mph down nearly empty dessert highways or pulling over to little Ma-and-Pa shacks for whatever local specialty they're dishing out today, and Phil suspects it has to do with their recent change in status. He prepares to dig in and wait it out.
They get to the closest safe house around 4pm—not that they need to be in a safe house, but Phil swung the time off by merging the meandering cross-country road trip Clint wanted with an inspection tour of SHIELD's domestic safe houses, any of which are nicer to stay in than some no-name motel. It isn't much more than a bungalow sitting low and unobtrusively among some scrub brush, but it means that Clint can make them something relatively healthy for dinner, which he's eager to do. The house is clean enough, so the San Francisco office is on top of it, though Phil makes a note for them to stock more sheets and towels—nine times out of ten at least one person at a safe house is injured, so there can never be too many clean linens. And while there's no trash, there's an appalling number of empties in the pantry, which Clint eyes greedily.
"There's a wall out back," he says.
"Sure," Phil replies as he pulls out another bug and crushes it under his heel. Four, not bad really, and he wouldn't bother except that SHIELD really doesn't need audio of what he and Clint are going to get up to.
They head straight for the local Wal-Mart and Phil is weirdly proud of the diversity of their cart: veggies and a rather nice steak plus a half dozen eggs and some fruit for breakfast; some postcards because Clint likes to carry them around and send them out-of-context (on this trip he's using a bunch he grabbed in Tashkent a few years back); a case of small water bottles for the car; charcoal briquets; cinnamon toothpaste; a small cooler and some blue ice so they can buy more fresh food; a six-pack of something local; and of course some ammo. The cashier doesn't flinch at any of this, nor the fact that the man pushing the cart bares a close resemblance to one of the action figures upstairs.
Clint puts the steak into a quick marinade of lemon and garlic and while the coals heat up in their chimney the two of them work up an appetite fucking in the shade on the back porch. They dine on steak and tomatoes and while Phil cleans up Clint arranges beer and whiskey bottles and soda cans on that back wall.
"Best two out of three?" Clint asks.
"No," Phil replies, because there's a difference between being a very good shot and being the best shot in the world, and besides he's better at assessing situations quickly and doing what's required than standing still and making a shot with nothing at stake. But he humors Clint, because the shooting is putting him into a better mood, which these days Phil supposes is more his responsibility.
(A few days before, they'd had the pre-ceremony fight that Maria had warned him about. Phil was worried that the ring would be uncomfortable for Clint in the field and after about an hour of Phil thinking of all the possibilities and Clint accounting for all of them, the other man finally exploded and let Phil know in no uncertain terms that the entire point, as far as he was concerned, was to make it public.
"I want to wear it," he'd said. "Jesus, I would change my name if you asked me to. I want everyone to know."
Phil had just blinked, because he hadn't really expected that. "Okay," he'd replied, and that was that.)
Clint's holding his gun in two hands, his ring glinting yellow-orange in the setting sun, and he picks off a row of Dr Pepper cans easily. Phil goes three for five on the whiskey bottles, and Clint smirks even though Phil shoots the other two on his second try.
"You can do better than that," he says, walking closer and shooting bottles all the while, almost without looking. "I've seen it."
Phil shrugs and goes for the Sprite cans, getting most of them. He feels Clint behind him.
"I could help you with your stance, sir."
"You don't need to make cheap excuses to cop a feel anymore," Phil replies.
"Yeah but it's more fun that way." He's snickering now, not exactly fair, and close enough that Phil can feel his breath against his ear when he speaks. "Unless I'm distracting you."
"No more than usual," Phil says, and shoots three glass Coke bottles to prove it.
"Tell you what," Clint says, backing off a little. "You get the rest of the beer bottles, and you can do whatever you want to me tonight."
Phil turns, an eyebrow raised. "You mean that?"
"Well, something we've already done," he qualifies, "and remember we'll be sitting in the car all day tomorrow."
Phil checks the wall and sees nine bottles left, stranded at various points with a cluster of them just in front of him. He reloads and blasts each one in quick succession.
"That's the man I married," Clint says, grinning.
"All right you, inside," Phil says, "and I'll give that smart mouth of yours something else to do."
• What's your favorite underrated-for-bullshit-reasons album? By that mean I an album or artist who for any number of facile reasons doesn't get to be taken seriously by people who consider themselves tastemakers.
Erotica by Madonna is the first thing that comes to mind, mostly because so much other stuff has been re-examined by now. It got overshadowed by all the blah blah over the Sex book, which was released at the same time, as well as the very overt sexual references in the eponymous first single. But that means people forget all the great songs that were also on that album, like her "girl I'll house you" cover of "Fever" and "Bad Girl" with that whole weird video that's sort of like Looking for Mr. Goodbar and "Thief of Hearts" where she incorporates an actual cheer and "Rain" and one of her best songs ever, "Deeper and Deeper." It was her first proper studio album since Like a Virgin and it got a little over-scrutinized, but it's a very successful effort I think.
Bedtime Stories is also really good, and paves the way for Ray of Light. I'm just saying, she didn't need a comeback that much when Ray of Light came out, and the sounds on it didn't come out of nowhere.
• I remember you talking about Inglourious Basterds as a birthday present just for you. Are there any other media items or events that hit that perfect spot of feeling like, for whatever reason, they were made just for you?
This question is more responsible for the delay than the story above; I couldn't quite think my way around it until they did this as a feature on PCHH and then I suddenly got it. So, a few things.
pts asked me five questions, and here are the answers!• So you went to a pretty famous and well-known higher education institute! What is something about the experience that was really great that you didn't anticipate, or that people might not think of or associate with it?
You know, it's a college. So all the people who've gone to my college for the past 375 or so years, they were just idiot 19-year-olds as much as I was. That can be surprising, the long history of pranks and ridiculousness that went on, like the decades-old butter pat stains on the ceiling of the Freshman Union, or the divots in the brick sidewalks from 19th-century students chucking cannonballs out of their windows in the spring (they'd been sitting in the fireplaces, giving off radiant heat overnight in a time before central heating). Or how Teddy K. got caught cheating by his Spanish prof because he was seen by said prof getting a sandwich at Elsie's when he was supposed to be taking an exam he'd paid another student to take for him. Or that day I spent with my roommates going from party to party where we managed to stay at least a little drunk from about 3pm until nearly 3am.
There's a sort of comfort in knowing that there have been hundreds of years of people doing exactly the same thing you're doing right now, and if they got through then you can, too. I remember I was flying to FL for spring break one year and I had with me The Autobiography of Henry Adams and my seatmate, an older man, said, "oh, I know what college you go to; that's the only place anyone ever reads that book." We otherwise wouldn't have had anything at all in common, but we had that. And thanks to a certain sister school for the ladies, women have been on the campus since 1879, so there are buildings named after women, and so many famous ones were students—there's that story where Gertrude Stein was in William James's class, I think, and she was in her final exam (a spring one, clearly) and all she wrote in her blue book was, "It is far too nice a day to be taking this exam" and he gave her an A and said she understood the topic very well. Me, I was in my American literature discussion section and suddenly we went from Bartleby the Scrivener to Stop Making Sense—it was all about Why the Big Suit but I don't really remember the connection. Or the hockey player in my section who said that all the really boring passages in Moby-Dick were there to make us feel like we were on the boat, because when there was no whale there was nothing going on. Oh and, that you could be walking out of your philosophy class and hear these large athlete guys talking about Kant.
So yeah. I'm not sure how coherent that was, but it was like, it was just a really really old college, and would go on forever, world without end, amen.
• What's one aspect or fact or narrative about American history that you wish more people would understand and internalize?
Reconstruction. I wish people understood what it actually was supposed to do and how and why it failed and what that failure meant, because people often think, oh, civil war's over, no more slaves, everyone's equal now! When that super, super isn't what happened and there are entire areas of the country where that doesn't get taught. It's the central tragedy of American life and it shaped general race practices with Native Americans and Asians and Hispanics as well.
Just, everyone go read A Short History of Reconstruction by Eric Foner, right now. And if you want something more rigorous (though don't say I didn't warn you) then read his longer book, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution.
• Remember that one time Clint and Coulson were roadtripping across the country and they pulled over to camp somewhere out in the middle of the Nevada desert, and they set up some beer bottles to do target shooting and Clint was being a real mouthy brat about Coulson's constant missing? HOW DID COULSON FINALLY SHUT HAWKEYE'S STUPID MOUTH?!?!
(my apologies to a certain scene in s1 Castle)
Most of the time, when Clint gets like this, Phil just counts to ten, bites his tongue, and remembers that when they're on the clock Clint actually does do everything that Phil tells him to, so there has to be some balancing. And it isn't like they haven't spent large amounts of mostly tedious time together; that's how this all got started in the first place. Generally Phil lets Clint drive and choose their meals, and it all works out in the end. But there's an edginess to Clint today, a little extra something that isn't getting burned off in driving 100 mph down nearly empty dessert highways or pulling over to little Ma-and-Pa shacks for whatever local specialty they're dishing out today, and Phil suspects it has to do with their recent change in status. He prepares to dig in and wait it out.
They get to the closest safe house around 4pm—not that they need to be in a safe house, but Phil swung the time off by merging the meandering cross-country road trip Clint wanted with an inspection tour of SHIELD's domestic safe houses, any of which are nicer to stay in than some no-name motel. It isn't much more than a bungalow sitting low and unobtrusively among some scrub brush, but it means that Clint can make them something relatively healthy for dinner, which he's eager to do. The house is clean enough, so the San Francisco office is on top of it, though Phil makes a note for them to stock more sheets and towels—nine times out of ten at least one person at a safe house is injured, so there can never be too many clean linens. And while there's no trash, there's an appalling number of empties in the pantry, which Clint eyes greedily.
"There's a wall out back," he says.
"Sure," Phil replies as he pulls out another bug and crushes it under his heel. Four, not bad really, and he wouldn't bother except that SHIELD really doesn't need audio of what he and Clint are going to get up to.
They head straight for the local Wal-Mart and Phil is weirdly proud of the diversity of their cart: veggies and a rather nice steak plus a half dozen eggs and some fruit for breakfast; some postcards because Clint likes to carry them around and send them out-of-context (on this trip he's using a bunch he grabbed in Tashkent a few years back); a case of small water bottles for the car; charcoal briquets; cinnamon toothpaste; a small cooler and some blue ice so they can buy more fresh food; a six-pack of something local; and of course some ammo. The cashier doesn't flinch at any of this, nor the fact that the man pushing the cart bares a close resemblance to one of the action figures upstairs.
Clint puts the steak into a quick marinade of lemon and garlic and while the coals heat up in their chimney the two of them work up an appetite fucking in the shade on the back porch. They dine on steak and tomatoes and while Phil cleans up Clint arranges beer and whiskey bottles and soda cans on that back wall.
"Best two out of three?" Clint asks.
"No," Phil replies, because there's a difference between being a very good shot and being the best shot in the world, and besides he's better at assessing situations quickly and doing what's required than standing still and making a shot with nothing at stake. But he humors Clint, because the shooting is putting him into a better mood, which these days Phil supposes is more his responsibility.
(A few days before, they'd had the pre-ceremony fight that Maria had warned him about. Phil was worried that the ring would be uncomfortable for Clint in the field and after about an hour of Phil thinking of all the possibilities and Clint accounting for all of them, the other man finally exploded and let Phil know in no uncertain terms that the entire point, as far as he was concerned, was to make it public.
"I want to wear it," he'd said. "Jesus, I would change my name if you asked me to. I want everyone to know."
Phil had just blinked, because he hadn't really expected that. "Okay," he'd replied, and that was that.)
Clint's holding his gun in two hands, his ring glinting yellow-orange in the setting sun, and he picks off a row of Dr Pepper cans easily. Phil goes three for five on the whiskey bottles, and Clint smirks even though Phil shoots the other two on his second try.
"You can do better than that," he says, walking closer and shooting bottles all the while, almost without looking. "I've seen it."
Phil shrugs and goes for the Sprite cans, getting most of them. He feels Clint behind him.
"I could help you with your stance, sir."
"You don't need to make cheap excuses to cop a feel anymore," Phil replies.
"Yeah but it's more fun that way." He's snickering now, not exactly fair, and close enough that Phil can feel his breath against his ear when he speaks. "Unless I'm distracting you."
"No more than usual," Phil says, and shoots three glass Coke bottles to prove it.
"Tell you what," Clint says, backing off a little. "You get the rest of the beer bottles, and you can do whatever you want to me tonight."
Phil turns, an eyebrow raised. "You mean that?"
"Well, something we've already done," he qualifies, "and remember we'll be sitting in the car all day tomorrow."
Phil checks the wall and sees nine bottles left, stranded at various points with a cluster of them just in front of him. He reloads and blasts each one in quick succession.
"That's the man I married," Clint says, grinning.
"All right you, inside," Phil says, "and I'll give that smart mouth of yours something else to do."
• What's your favorite underrated-for-bullshit-reasons album? By that mean I an album or artist who for any number of facile reasons doesn't get to be taken seriously by people who consider themselves tastemakers.
Erotica by Madonna is the first thing that comes to mind, mostly because so much other stuff has been re-examined by now. It got overshadowed by all the blah blah over the Sex book, which was released at the same time, as well as the very overt sexual references in the eponymous first single. But that means people forget all the great songs that were also on that album, like her "girl I'll house you" cover of "Fever" and "Bad Girl" with that whole weird video that's sort of like Looking for Mr. Goodbar and "Thief of Hearts" where she incorporates an actual cheer and "Rain" and one of her best songs ever, "Deeper and Deeper." It was her first proper studio album since Like a Virgin and it got a little over-scrutinized, but it's a very successful effort I think.
Bedtime Stories is also really good, and paves the way for Ray of Light. I'm just saying, she didn't need a comeback that much when Ray of Light came out, and the sounds on it didn't come out of nowhere.
• I remember you talking about Inglourious Basterds as a birthday present just for you. Are there any other media items or events that hit that perfect spot of feeling like, for whatever reason, they were made just for you?
This question is more responsible for the delay than the story above; I couldn't quite think my way around it until they did this as a feature on PCHH and then I suddenly got it. So, a few things.
- Fiona Apple's second album, When the Pawn …, because most of the songs are "did you read my diary?" moments and they're really, really good to sing (she and I have a similar range) and it's very well produced and I just like female singer-songwriters, generally.
- The AfroPunk festival for 2011 if it had happened. Kenna AND Santigold AND Janelle Monae AND Cee Lo AND I would have discovered a bunch of other stuff I'm sure. (sadface, stupid hurricane)
- The entire romance-mystery genre, including:
- Films: Laura, The Thin Man, American Dreamer
- Books: all of the Lord Peter-Harriet Vane books by Dorothy L. Sayers: Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman's Honeymoon, and then a huge pile of paperback mysteries I read in my twenties including The Thin Woman
- TV: Castle and Remington Steele.
- Films: Laura, The Thin Man, American Dreamer