Have you seen the recent trailer for Crimson Peak? I wish October was tomorrow. Victorian garbed TH *sigh*

Thumbs up for Emperor of Maladies! Fascinating read & so well written.
I'm working my way thru Memoirs of Hadrian, slowly but surely :-)

Happy weekend everyone.

Has everyone read this yet? (Link is below) Gorgeous, witty, dynamic, beautiful wife & mother; Maggie Gyllenhaal was deemed unsuitable to play opposite a 55yo lead due to her age. At 37yo she was "too old" for the part. WTF!!! Shout out to The Honorable Woman which if you haven't yet seen please open up your Netflix & savor w/ a great glass of red wine. My favorite Maggie performance since Secretary :-)

I'm not naive, Hollywood has been & always will be an ultra sexist environment. An actress' shelf life is ridiculously shorter than their male counterparts by decades. It's the nature of the beast & most women going into the profession are well aware of it.
However the level & intensity of sexism towards women in Hollywood seems to have reached new heights. I'm not sure if it's become more apparent because more & more women are stepping forward & vocalizing their frustrations in public. Maybe it's become so glaring we can no longer ignore it. Either way the spill over effect is massive. The rise in sexual assault, the inability to respect women's boundaries, the crude "humor" used to discuss women, basically everything Amy Schumer has brought up this season, is a testament to that.

I'm not a pessimistic person, but if none too bright (adolescent) males (those in the hallowed 18-35 demo) whose only exposure to interacting w/ women is thru the crap Hollywood & the media in general feeds them, then I'm ready to say hell with this and decamp to a neo Amazonian colony (some men are allowed but where the man child will be dealt with severely).
http://www.thewrap.com/maggie-gyllenhaal-on-holly...

Omg me too!!!! Excitement, trepidation, fear; so many mixed feelings. I really hope they're not going to F it up and go with the latest crop of Disney starlets. Only glimmer of hope is its being produced by Amy Pascal (newly demoted cuz of the Sony hack) who has a history of promoting women in Hollywood. Fingers X.
But Clair Danes will FOREVER be Beth in my mind. Greatest deathbed actress ever!!!!!!

Ooh ooh ooh my favorite Sondheim song is Finishing The Hat as performed by Mandy Patinkin.
However I absolutely adore the lyrics to Anyone Can Whistle. It's pure poetry and I find myself quoting "relax, let go, let fly" often. The songs in Company are pretty hard to beat as well. "One for Mahler" being one of my faves too.

Happy SPRING!!!!!
It's been a LONG wait here in my neck of the woods.
In anticipation of summer I've been learning Wing Chun from my boyfriend.
I'm just learning to perfect the basics right now but so far so good.

Fun fact: according to legend Wing Chun was developed by a woman who in turn learned martial arts from a Buddhist nun from the famous Shaolin sect. The woman decided to learn martial arts to protect herself & her fathers business from harassment from the local warlord who wanted to marry her.
Women learning self defense to ware off unwanted advances, not much have changed in 200 yrs.

What is everyone else doing fitness wise to get ready for summer?

Reciprocal Hug to you as well. Thank you for the comments. There does seem to be very few support systems in place for family members.
It is immensely difficult to care for a mentally ill family member well.
Bf is an amazing person and the strength and love he showed to his bro is even more amazing.
I would love to talk about this in greater depth. It's a very fascinating topic.

Thank you for the recommendation.
Bf & his brother are very close and there is a very strong trust & bond between them. That was definitely essential to him getting thru to his brother.

Happy Friday toasties!!!

Boy is it good to be back. It's f'ing cold day here in Ann Arbor and I just read a blurb that climate change denial Senator from where else, Oklahoma, brought in a snowball to the Senate floor to debate the validity of climate change. This makes me both sad & rofl.

Switching over to a serious topic: mental illness.
My boyfriend's younger brother is schizophrenic, he's been on Meds for awhile now and it has helped tremendously. However recently he stopped taking his Meds w/o the family realizing until my bf notice the odd behaviors that were surfacing. Long story short, it took a whole weekend (I'm talking all day & nite) for him to get thru to his brother. Bf even tried to analyze each of the various voices inside bro's head to help get thru to him and to help him make sense of it all. Needless to say it was a extremely long and exhausting weekend emotionally, physically and spiritually.

I've never dealt this closely with such serious mental illness and witnessing firsthand the toll it takes on family members caring for loved ones with the illness has been eye opening and deeply moving.

Any stories, advice, personal experiences, etc you guys want to share are welcomed.

Thank you so much for relating your personal experience with vaginismus and the helpful info as well.
Your success in dealing with it is definitely reassuring. Thanks again for the advice.