"if Someone Called Me 'Regular,", I'd Jump Off A Building...

 

It’s not fully weird that “In The Dark” Feels like kid stuff—it ran on the CW for years before I stumbled on it on Netflix this week. It’s a little weird for me as Gen X that kid stuff has broadened to include a main character who befriends drug dealers and opens the show having anonymous sex, but it’s a bold choice, especially for disability-inflected TV.(Does she even enjoy these dudes, even momentarily, or are they a big part of the self- destructive trolling project that main character Murphy’s life has turned into? Why doesn’t she use a more- permanent birth-control method? Still trying to keep her options open? I know more about the now almost ubiquitous disability protest of the casting of sighted lead actress with great hair Perry Mattfield than I really know about this protagonist so far, but it’s kind of nice to enjoy a new fictional show that is not secretly designed to be cherished, but just wants to provide a quick hit of emotion or excitement, which it does ably enough. The blind crime witness who isn’t exactly sure what she witnessed is kind of an established trope, but “In the Dark” provides a few modern touches and some softer emotion (coupled with gentle comedy) that’s usually not seen in noir. Also, cute service dogs.  I don’t have a service dog, myself, not exactly familiar with the customs or etiquette, but occasionally they do things on this show that remind me of when Actual Mom used to get annoyed watching them “park” the teams of horses on “Little House on The Prairie” when your Bohemian Crip was but a cripling, who, it would appear, came by certain traits naturally.  “Those horses are a homesteader’s fucking life…they feed the family; they would eat first.”

https://ncdj.org/2019/04/letusplayus-blind-americans-protest-new-cw-television-series-in-the-dark/

Yes, I believe every effort should have been made to find a blind actress with great hair (and I do believe the actually-blind presence on “In the Dark” expands in later seasons, but I’ve not seen this yet, unless junior- high aged Chloe is actually blind.  I suppose protestors-which is a right that I fully support and embrace- have to threaten to cancel shows and have people fired to get attention for their cause, but I also think that’s both a little sick in terms of the need to raise the stakes every time, and a move that would be unlikely to lead to the creation of programs with disability themes.
For now, I like this enough to keep watching it

Maybe we're All The Last Showgirl...

 Only with different American shows that are ending--Capitalism, much? and I have to tell you, about the only soft landing being a disabled woman has ever afforded me is that I'm not messed up trying to navigate my world without my first flush of youthful hotness.(It *might* have helped,maybe only slightly, of course, if she'd picked a more modern accompaniment for her audition dance, the better not to remind anyone that she could have danced that same dance decades before, but the casting guy was pretty harsh.  Maybe it wouldn't.)

In fact, to the extent that there is any hotness, it's more present as I write this than in my most "barely legal" days. It's taken me a long time to bring things together, and still the closest I've ever come to leaving a trail of broken hearts is my own, multiple times.

Frozen Is Crip Culture...

 

The Frozen Musical Is Crip Culture

I know that people may fight me on this, because Elsa is lovely and magical and can actually make stuff happen, which can be things that abled people do not associate with disability. And I I could Let It Gobut, yeah, that’ll happen.  (Even knowing there’s a certain inevitability to writing this, doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a thought to share.  Also, this is a really good time to imagine being cold-record heat and stuff) But think about it: Elsa and Anna start growing up together, but end up with really separate lives for reasons their parents mystify and the girls themselves didn’t really understand.

Elsa feels pressure to hide her true nature. (Does your Bohemian Crip identify, here? Sometimes, although her condition doesn’t allow for real masking.  But it’s hard to be honest about your life when it makes people always express sympathy in ways that make you realize they don’t even understand why you might need some.)

I’m sure there are other groups where it’s “dangerous to dream”, but it’s written into the disability system, hard-core.

Love the non-traditional casting that might turn MAGA as white as their sheets.

Modifications Don't Have To Be Ugly, and More Queer Eye Revelations...

 

 

 

As Kurt Cobain wrote years ago, “I’ve got a new complaint,”, and when that happens, I swear there’s a part of me that wishes there’s a big “Gratitude” emoji or some kind of court reporter that could pop out and, you know, stipulate to all the ways I’m you know, #blessed, even as I see all the ways that it and I, could be better all the time. And, like, maybe this one is crazy-shallow, but I do think aesthetics can be a reflection of who matters, who gets to leave a mark—who gets to look and who gets to look back, blah, blah,(If you  went to college you’ve heard these things….again, #blessed(Ish?)

My modified bathroom(Again, a gift that young people starting out can’t be thinking “Of course,” because austerity comes more than Ron Jeremy in his heyday) is really fucking ugly.  Like Texaco at midnight fugly, despite all the women’s touches Actual Mom and I put out to put lipstick on this pig.  But, you know, I didn’t pay for it except with my dignity and a truly inhospitable renovation process—it’s been long enough and tumultuous enough that sometimes I hope those guys died in a 4-car pileup with the guidance counselor that mixed me up with the mathlete in the Rascal I never even met. We learn to accept “kind of works”—doorways you only fit through if you’re up on fiber and meditation, having to fit your whole life on three shelves that are arms’length, and it’s not enough.  Even with long arms. And, you know, both the blessing and the curse of Queer Eye” is the gentle way it assures you that you, yes, you, are living in a hovel right now, and it’s not fucking great.(But it could be fab.) Years ago, they did some work for a very cool guy who’d been through a lot, namedSpeedy , and it was a revelation.

Nothing they did was ugly.(Although they saw four apartments before they could find one to modify, it should be noted…housing crisis, right?)

Nobody said “Somebody will be there to help in the kitchen.(One of the million reasons I can’t cook, and I’m over fifty.)

What would it be like if we all got modifications from people who cared? Speedy deserved it, but what if we all did? What if we all stopped buying shower chairs that were band-aid colored? 

* This post was edited to add a link.  I'm not sure how great it looks because I would never do insta because photos of me? Yikes.