Throughout human history, older people always complain that the younger generation lacks the common sense and life skills they learned growing up. Then, when the younger generation gets older they judge the one that came after them.
It’s a dance that’s been happening for centuries. However, this time the old folks may be right.
Studies show that younger Americans are incredibly tech-savvy and great at academics but aren’t quite up to snuff when it comes to basic life skills. Studies show they are much more likely to order take out than to cook for themselves.
They also don’t know how to check their tire pressure, sew, make basic home repairs or drive a manual transmission.
So they’re stuck having to pay people to perform basic tasks that they should have learned at some point in their first twenty-some-odd years on Earth.
Parenting coach Oona Hanson and her husband Paul, have decided to reverse this trend in their family by sending their two children, daughter, Gwendolyn, 17, and son, Harris, 12, to Camp Common Sense.
Due to social distancing, the camp has two campers, two counselors and takes place in the Hanson’s home.
The camp has eight themed weeks that include kitchen confidence, anti-racism, DIY, laundry and cleaning, safety and emergency preparedness, personal finance, city savvy, and social skills.
Oona says she teaches the topics to her kids through a mixture of “direct instruction, independent research, and hands-on practice.” They also watch movies that support to the themes to further drive home the message.
The family uses Catherine Newman’s book “How to Be a Person: 65 Hugely Useful, Super-Important Skills to Learn Before You’ve Grown Up” as a basic camp manual.
“I chose to use this book as a guideline because it’s written and illustrated with charm and joy and infused with humor and empathy,” Oona told Today. “It’s not an adult talking down to kids; it’s an adult inviting kids into the world and explaining how you function in daily life.”
The Hansons saw quarantine as the perfect time to teach their kids the skills they always planned to “someday.”
“It always seems like we’re going to get around to teaching them these things ‘someday,'” she said. “There’s that fantasy that before they go to college, they’re going to learn these thousand skills that actually take time to learn and practice. Right now, we have the time it never seems we have to do it.”
Camp days aren’t all work and no play though. The kids still get time for physical activity, arts and crafts, and a little screen time.
The Hansons hope the lessons they teach now will pay dividends over the long haul.
“I’m OK if the kids are rolling their eyes at us now if later they can look back and say, ‘I’m so glad I know how to make pancakes for 12 people.’ That will bring so much joy and connection,” Oona said.
Mere hours after news broke that Jenny Slate was stepping down as Missy, the biracial character she voiced for four seasons (one still forthcoming) of Big Mouth, similar news broke about another animated show: According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kristen Bell will stop voicing Molly, who is also biracial, on Central Park, the new show co-created by Bob’s Burger’s Loren Bouchard.
The decision according to THR, some time in the offing. In a statement, Bouchard and his fellow creative team members, Josh Gad, Nora Smith, Halsted Sullivan and Sanjay Shah, wrote, “Kristen Bell is an extraordinarily talented actress who joined the cast of Central Park from nearly the first day of the show’s development — before there was even a character for her to play — and she has since delivered a funny, heartfelt, and beautiful performance.” They continued:
“But after reflection, Kristen, along with the entire creative team, recognizes that the casting of the character of Molly is an opportunity to get representation right — to cast a Black or mixed race actress and give Molly a voice that resonates with all of the nuance and experiences of the character as we’ve drawn her. Kristen will continue to be a part of the heart of the show in a new role but we will find a new actress to lend her voice to Molly.”
Bell gave her blessing to the re-casting, taking to Instagram to write the following:
“This is a time to acknowledge our acts of complicity. Here is one of mine. Playing the character of Molly on <em>Central Park</em> shows a lack of awareness of my pervasive privilege. Casting a mixed race character with a white actress undermines the specificity of the mixed race and Black American experience. It was wrong and we, on the <em>Central Park</em> team, are pledging to make it right. I am happy to relinquish this role to someone who can give a much more accurate portrayal and I will commit to learning, growing and doing my part for equality and inclusion.”
Even before the Black Lives Matter protests, which were born out of anger over the killing of George Floyd, prompted serious discussions about racial issues in America, there had been major pushback about casting white performers in non-white roles in animation. Hank Azaria stepped down from his lengthy gig, voicing Apu on The Simpsons. And then there’s the character of Diane Nguyen on BoJack Horseman, a Vietnamese character voiced by the white Alison Brie, which prompted creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg to admit he may have made a mistake, saying his intention was to “write AWAY from stereotypes and create an Asian American character who wasn’t defined solely by her race. But I went too far in the other direction.”
HBO Max’s hipster murder mystery comedy, Search Party, is gearing up to drop its years-in-the-waiting third season this month and because the hiatus has been decades – or just two and a half years but really, what even is time? – we figured fans (and newcomers) might need a quick catch up before the trial of the century begins.
The genre-bending show is a darkly comedic take on the restlessness and emptiness of an entire generation wrapped in a deliciously twisted true-crime saga. Alia Shawkat, John Early, Meredith Hagner, and John Reynolds play a group of millennial Brooklynites caught up in a tragedy of their own making, and each season has followed the group as they try to spin and manipulate and wiggle their way out of the consequences of their shared morally bankrupt existence.
Things look to come to a head in season three with Dory (Shawkat) and ex-boyfriend Drew (Reynolds) facing murder charges with their friends Elliott (Early) and Portia (Hagner) being forced to chose sides.
Now that opening statements are out of the way, let’s get to the facts of why this cult comedy series needs to be your next binge-watch.
HBO Max
The Case
Each season of Search Party leans into a different genre. Season one took on a murder mystery vibe with Dory and her friends trying to find Chantal Witherbottom. Dory satisfied her true crime itch but at a pretty steep price – she ended up participating in the murder of a legitimate private eye named Keith (Ron Livingston), who she also happened to be hooking up with because … searching for missing girls is her specific kink? We really don’t know.
Season two switched gears as Dory enlisted Elliott, Portia, and Drew’s help in hiding Keith’s body and covering their tracks. Unfortunately, someone got wind of their murderous indiscretion and the story took on a thriller-type tone, with the crew desperately trying to figure out who was blackmailing them.
This leads us to the show’s long-awaited third season – a courtroom drama on psychedelic steroids. Dory and Drew are being tried for Keith’s murder – Drew knocked him a little too hard with a decorative statue after he believed Keith was attacking her. Turns out, Keith probably just wanted to chat about the reward money for finding Chantal but Dory panicked, tased him, and accidentally engineered his death. Instead of just calling the police, Dory, Drew, and Elliott decided that risking Canadian prison was just too terrifying a prospect, so they bought the gaudiest zebra-striped luggage carrier they could find and stuffed Keith’s decaying corpse inside, while Portia, Chantal, and a grumpy Frenchman were getting high in the living room and playing “Johnny Whoops.” (“Johnny Whoops” is, sadly, not some weird sex game.)
Portia was eventually dragged into the mess (proving FOMO really can destroy your life0, helping to bury the body and come up with a false narrative to explain Chantal’s whereabouts. So, though Drew and Dory are on trial for murder here, the whole group is held under a microscope and the cracks begin to show in season three as Dory tries to convince a jury, the public, and herself, that she had nothing to do with Keith’s death.
TBS
The Criminals
Think of a modern-day Scooby Gang. Now kill Scooby and make everyone else in the group vapid, incompetent, and narcissistic and you’ll come close to understanding the dynamics of the core cast on Search Party. Dory is the de-facto ring leader – a bright college grad who’s unfulfilled with her life as an assistant to a rich divorcee. She goes searching for Chantal – a fellow coed she met literally once before the tragedy – partly because in finding Chantal, she hopes she’ll find herself, or at least find something she’s actually good at.
Dory’s stuck and her relationship with long-term boyfriend Drew doesn’t help things. Drew’s a doormat. He goes to business school. He owns a ukelele and plays it, unironically. Really, there’s not much more to say about him except that he constantly seems to resent Dory’s friend group, and he at least attempts to do the right thing. He’s quickly talked out of it though, which is why he’s now an accused murderer.
Elliott and Portia round out the main crew. Both are equally shallow, fame-obsessed millennials but they share a strange bond with Dory, helping her to hide a body despite the probable repercussions. Portia is an aspiring actress with mommy issues who can’t seem to live up to her family’s expectations or impress them with recurring gigs on crime soap operas. Elliott is a wannabe influencer who once lied about surviving Stage IV lymphoma and nearly scored a book deal because of the ruse. He convinced both Dory and Drew to hide Keith’s body in season two because the optics – a man killing the guy banging his girlfriend with a blow to the back of the head – didn’t look good. Fair enough. He’s also set to be married as the trial heats up so, you know, that’s annoying.
HBO Max
Their Records
Drew, Portia, and Elliott are fairly tame in terms of their criminal exploits. Being a pathological liar isn’t illegal so, while Elliott may be a terrible person for trying to profit off his fake cancer scare, he’s never committed a felony until he helps Dory jigsaw puzzle a body in a carry-on. He and Portia scheme with Dory and Drew to take down their blackmailer in season two, but again, they stay mostly on the sidelines when it comes to the hardcore action.
It’s Drew and Dory who do most of the misbehaving in season two and beyond – breaking into their neighbor’s apartment, attempting to blackmail politicians and shoving mentally unwell women off the Brooklyn ferry. No, really. Dory ends season two by killing another person caught in her web – her next-door neighbor April, who claimed to have a taped confession and threatened to go to the police with it if Dory didn’t give her $500,000. Thin walls. They’ll ruin even the best murder coverups.
To keep April quiet, Dory meets with her on the ferry where, in a fit of rage, she pushes her to her assumed death. It’s not the murder she’s on trial for. But it is murder. So …
HBO Max
The New Players
One of Search Party’s greatest strengths is its constantly-surprising rotating list of guest actors. That track record continues in season three with Louie Anderson, Michaela Watkins, and Shalita Grant joining the show for a legal showdown that’s fairly ridiculous. Anderson plays Drew’s crusty old defense attorney who comes out of retirement to take on his case and enjoys a good nap wherever he can get it. Watkins plays the District Attorney prosecuting Dory and Drew and doggedly trying to prove what kind of terrible people they are to a public increasingly fascinated by the twists and turns in the case.
But it’s Shalita Grant, who plays Dory’s lawyer – a relatively untested courtroom rookie who scores the job because her wealthy father posts Dory’s bail – who steals the season playing an equally clueless millennial with a different perspective on the case.
On Monday, word broke that four episodes of 30 Rockhad been removed from various streamers because they featured blackface. It wasn’t the first show to undergo that change as protests continue to erupt all over the nation, and it won’t be the last. Indeed, as per Deadline, Scrubs is receiving similar treatment by Hulu.
Three episodes from the beloved aughts hospital comedy have left the service: the Season 3 episode “My Fifteen Seconds,” and two from Season 5, namely “My Jiggly Ball” and “My Chopped Liver.” The episodes feature blackface appearances from stars Zach Braff and Sarah Chalke.
The move came a day after Bill Lawrence, who created Scrubs, replied to someone on Twitter, reacting to news of the pulled 30 Rock episodes, asked that the same happen to his own program. He wrote “Agreed. Already in the works.”
The killing of George Floyd in late May has inspired a nationwide reckoning over not only what is seen as police brutality aimed unequally at black people, but also at racial inequality in general. That’s caused people to dig up old movies, shows, sketch comedy bits, and television appearances that feature racially insensitive material. It also inspired Jenny Slate, who is white, to retire from voicing the character Missy, who is biracial, on Netflix’s animated comedy Big Mouth, saying, “Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.”
Two weeks ago, HBO Max pulled one of its most famous titles — the long-contested 1939 classic Gone with the Wind, about a plantation-owning Southern family circa the Civil War — from their services, seemingly prompted by the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted all over the nation. They said it wasn’t a permanent ban, that they would bring it back, with a video introduction that shows its complicated history. And lo and behold, as per Variety, on Wednesday it was already back online.
There are actually three videos that now accompany the epic film. There’s the promised one, which features film scholar Jacqueline Stewart, who argues for “why this 1939 epic drama should be viewed in its original form, contextualized and discussed.” The second is an hour-long discussion entitled “The Complicated Legacy of ‘Gone With the Wind,’” which hails from the TCM Classic Film Festival in April 2019, and was moderated by noted historian Donald Bogle. The last is a five-minute profile of supporting player Hattie McDaniel, who, as Tara servant Mammy, became the first black person to win an Oscar.
When they first announced the film would be temporarily removed from their coffers, HBO Max said in a statement that the film was a “product of its time” that “depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society.” At the same time, they admitted that to permanently ban the film “would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”
Gone with the Wind, which won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as its three explanatory extras are now live.
Much of the world’s entertainment industry is still on pause, but not in New Zealand, it seems. The southwestern Pacific nation is one of the few countries to get the coronavirus under control and, as such, they’re back to prepping for their next big production: Amazon’s costly Lord of the Rings TV show. And judging from a new casting call, it sounds…pretty weird, even for a show about tiny people with hairy feet.
This comes from ScreenCrush, who noticed a new Facebook post seeking “talent” for the in-the-works show, which focuses on the events leading up to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s not based on any specific Tolkien work, but the casting call suggests something like a loose adaptation. Yes, they’re looking for short people and tall people, but also circus performers who can juggle and stilt walk, dancers, old timers with lots of wrinkles, Eurasian people, Latinx people, redheads, and, of course, “HAIR HAIR HAIR.” Also on the call sheet: bikers. In Middle-earth?
Here’s the complete list of types they’re seeking:
1. short people under 4 foot 12 (we know that 4 foot 12 is 5 foot)
If this is you please call Evelina on 021-398-727
2. Tall people over 6 foot 5 – If this is you please call Evelina on 021 – 398-727 now.
3. Character faces, wrinkles and lots of them please 🙂
4. Androgynous men and women
5. Hairy hairy people of all ages and ethnicities
6. Tall, Long Lithe dancers
7. Circus performers who can juggle, stilt walk!
8. Stocky mean-looking bikers
9. Eurasian people of all ages.
10. Hispanic – Latino, Mexican, South American – HOLA
11. Red heads all ages, shapes and sizes.
12.HAIR HAIR HAIR – if you natural red hair, white hair, or lots and lots of freckles.
If you’re a fit with any of them, there’s one drawback: You have to be from New Zealand. Because New Zealand doesn’t need any contagious non-New Zealanders destroying their efficient work at battling pandemics.
You can see the Facebook post, which also features a video, right here.
A communications professor I had in college once shared an analogy about friendship that has stuck with me for over 20 years: friends are like tools in a toolbox, there are different people for different jobs.
There are some friends that are great to party with but may not be there for you when you need a shoulder to cry on. There are those you text with about pop culture or politics but may not see very often in person.
There are drinking buddies, workout friends, and those that you may only talk to about one shared interest. There’s also that coworker you hung out with every day at lunch then never saw them again after changing jobs.
Then there are also those lifelong friends that are like part of your family.
These friends are all part of the toolbox we carry with us throughout life.
Sadly, we don’t take all of our friends along for the entire journey. There are some we realize aren’t really friends at all but it takes a while to come to the realization. Before the big defriending there are always hints along the way that things just aren’t right.
Reddit user dragonxgal, asked people on the askReddit subforum “What are red flags in a friendship most people brush away?” Their candid answers provide a great way to identify the people we think are friends, but really aren’t.
“When you hang out with them it feels like you’re defusing a bomb when theres nothing going on right then.” — The DialupGamer
“Friends that only care to talk about their own success and aren’t genuinely happy for you and yours unless it amounts to less than their own.” — 313JoJo
“Friends who are good to you when one on one but constantly put you down In group settings. This is a big sign of insecurity/jealousy. Other signs: inappropriate attention seeking behaviors, trying to twist the situation on you when confronted about things, not respecting your boundaries, is super friendly with new people but in a disingenuous “I wanna be liked the most” way, constant gaslighting, getting mad at you for not going by the exact same moral playbook as them, when in group settings they get really uncomfortable and try to change the subject or put you down extra if attention is on you, acting they like can take constructive feedback but actually taking it out on you in small ways throughout the rest of the day.” — -MattTheRat-
“Continually feeling like you want to say something but should hold your tongue.” — WilletteKinoshita
“Friends who gossip excessively. If they’re talking about other people, chances are they’re talking about you.” — Jalaphi23
“Always asking for favours but never there when you need them to return one.” — ayeblondie
“Inability or unwillingness to apologize when he or she does something wrong. It’s symptomatic of an ego issue that will eventually infect every aspect of your friendship.” — ohShrub
“Having their damn phone in their face the whole time. If they do that, they don’t want a friend, they want company. It’s not the same.” _splug
“Friends that are a one way street. I was always the one to message, call, or make plans with them. I was always the one to check up on them to see if they were okay. I always offered a helping hand and be there for them.
“I decided to stop to see if they would reach out to me, but we never spoke to me again. Oh, well.” — llunagirl
“When you realize that you are more yourself when they’re not around.” — kdizzleswizzle
“If you have had a friend for a long time, but you only seem to be able to talk about memories in the past.
“Each time you get together or exchange messages, it’s ‘Remember in high school….’ or ‘Remember that time when….’ – Could be a sign that you both have grown apart and do not have much in common today that you can connect on.” — Intersectaquire
“When they cancel plans, they always do it last-minute.” — TheRodgerizer
“If you think about them when you read this post.” — FloatingwithObrien
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