http://www.theverge.com/users/leahreich/posts http://nymag.com/author/Heather%20Havrilesky/7/ http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2016/7/26/12286758/tim-lincecum-sf-giants

http://emilyvgordon.tumblr.com/post/147711617170/i-really-dont-like-explaining-why-im-upset-it

You need to start taking yourself seriously. Your upsetness is important, even if (and that’s a big if) the things that are making you upset are stupid or small or pointless. That doesn’t mean, mind you, that the rest of the world is required to do what you want when you’re upset, but absolutely your feelings are valid. Valid valid valid, and sometimes you will be right! But being right isn’t the issue. The issue here is that you need to value yourself enough that even if your concerns feel small to you, the fact that they are your concerns makes it important enough. Your feelings are important to the people who care about you. You being hurt means something, even if the other person didn’t mean to, or you’re being silly, or whatever excuse you tell yourself.

While many of us have thought of being a good listener being like a sponge that accurately absorbs what the other person is saying, instead, what these findings show is that good listeners are like trampolines. They are someone you can bounce ideas off of — and rather than absorbing your ideas and energy, they amplify, energize, and clarify your thinking. They make you feel better not merely passively absorbing, but by actively supporting. This lets you gain energy and height, just like someone jumping on a trampoline.

Level 1: The listener creates a safe environment in which difficult, complex, or emotional issues can be discussed. Level 2: The listener clears away distractions like phones and laptops, focusing attention on the other person and making appropriate eye-contact. (This behavior not only affects how you are perceived as the listener; it immediately influences the listener’s own attitudes and inner feelings. Acting the part changes how you feel inside. This in turn makes you a better listener.) Level 3: The listener seeks to understand the substance of what the other person is saying. They capture ideas, ask questions, and restate issues to confirm that their understanding is correct. Level 4: The listener observes nonbverbal cues, such as facial expressions, perspiration, respiration rates, gestures, posture, and numerous other subtle body language signals. It is estimated that 80% of what we communicate comes from these signals. It sounds strange to some, but you listen with your eyes as well as your ears. Level 5: The listener increasingly understands the other person’s emotions and feelings about the topic at hand, and identifies and acknowledges them. The listener empathizes with and validates those feelings in a supportive, nonjudgmental way. Level 6: The listener asks questions that clarify assumptions the other person holds and helps the other person to see the issue in a new light. This could include the listener injecting some thoughts and ideas about the topic that could be useful to the other person. However, good listeners never highjack the conversation so that they or their issues become the subject of the discussion.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/heather-havrileskys-existential-advice

“I used to admire people who could hang with anything. Now the women I admire the most are the women who never pretend to be anything different,” Havrilesky writes to a woman who is “trying to figure out how to be less nice.” She spends most of her columns giving her readers unwavering permission to feel their feelings.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/samantha-bee-full-frontal-republican-democratic-national-convention.html

She ended up sending three producers out to get interviews instead, which she planned to then cut together into a story. It’s a different process than what she used to do at The Daily Show, where the correspondents would go into each convention with “a point of view and definitely stick to the point of view. Here, we’re letting the material dictate. Which is harder to do, actually.” She’s appreciative of the pace of a weekly show, and the time it affords them to incorporate more "nuance" into the show. To me, it sounded like the more female approach, and Bee agreed. “Yeah. We’re literally gathering. We’re literally female gatherers of all of this information and then we can concoct a delicious dinner that the men eat first. And then we just come in after and we eat the scraps and then we can clean up.” Her description of taking time to gather reminded me of some of the struggles I’ve had running New Girl as a first-time female showrunner. “I like to have consensus,” she said. “I like to hear other people’s opinions. I’ll change my mind the day after.” This approach, she admitted, “drives people fucking crazy.” It’s true — I’ve found that any hint of indecisiveness can scare people, especially coming from a woman. It takes time to prove that being thoughtful is not the same as being indecisive. “I think that maybe at the beginning, people thought that I was dithering,” Bee said. “You know what I mean? You seem like you’re dithering, when it’s really wrestling — just tossing things around a little bit.” I did know what she meant. My first week as a showrunner, I lost my voice, and a doctor took one look at my throat and asked: “Have you been drinking a lot of coffee and/or trying to sound authoritative?” At first, Bee felt that she had to change her personality to fit her new job. “There have been a lot of hot showers that I’ve taken where I’ve been like, ‘I should speak more firmly. Like in a meeting. I wonder if everyone would appreciate it if I just made up my mind right away about something?’” But after a while she realized that would be a mistake. “It’s so counterintuitive,” she told me. “Being thoughtful about things is actually really important. Everyone gets used to it. It just takes a minute.”

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a47018/chris-gethard-profile-ucb-dont-think-twice/

Like many who came of age in New Jersey's basement punk scene, Gethard got into Morrissey when he noticed that all his favorite pop-punk and hardcore bands, such as H20 and J Church, kept covering the Smiths. Morrissey connects hardest to the young people who feel like there is something intrinsically and inexorably unlovable about them. For some of those fans, that feeling is always there against all reasonable evidence, pushed away in a corner of the heart, ready to rise at any point and give lie to the happiness they think they've found.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/jill-soloway-i-love-dick-c-v-r.html

As Soloway explained in a suite at the Paisano before the day’s shoot got under way, she identified intensely with Kraus’s decision to use her own name, biography, and, as Soloway put it, her “horribleness.” It helped her, she says, to reframe the shame she herself once felt about her TV writing: “I don’t know how to write about anything other than myself. I can’t write about dragons, I don’t care about crime, I don’t want to write a hospital show. I only want to write about somewhat unlikable Jewish women having really inappropriate ideas about life and sex.”

A couple of hours earlier, Soloway, still working on a takeout breakfast of bacon and eggs, had been huddled with Gubbins and her regular director of photography, Jim Frohna, in a quiet corner of the Paisano, mapping out the camera angles and choreography of the dinner scene. It was the “heart of the show,” Soloway says, the catalyzing moment for the journey of self-realization Chris would go on. The conversation was spirited, high-minded, and abstract, with much talk about femininity and the male gaze, but it came down basically to viewpoint — who was seeing what and by whom, who was telling what and to whom, whose story was being told and by whom. When Soloway came up with a bit of inspired blocking — Chris announces that she’s going to take Dick’s seminar and then sits down at the same time as he stands up, signifying a transfer of power — she and Gubbins started hopping around, doing a little happy dance. Chris was refusing to be silent, to be objectified, to be told whom she could love and what she could write about. “It’s just so powerful for a woman to say, ‘No, I’m not the object of your story,’ ” Soloway says. “I’m not either the Madonna or the whore, I’m not either the woman that you love or the woman that you hate. I’m the subject. Just that simple sentence is enough to upend the entire planet.”

i see you

dreamstakes kari

last worthless evening

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/man-amongst-boys-the-oral-history-of-bryce-harpers-record-setting-junior-college-season http://www.si.com/vault/2009/06/08/105822135/baseballs-lebron

Where Are They Now? Marvin Campbell: Cadet, Las Vegas Fire and Rescue – Las Vegas, Nevada Trent Cook: Sales Representative, GT Sales – Salt Lake City, Utah Ray Daniels: Chiropractic Student at Life West Chiropractic College – Hayward, California Scott Dysinger: Recruit, Henderson Fire Department – Henderson, Nevada Cooper Fouts: Catchers Coach, Pepperdine University – Malibu, California Danny Higa: Towerman for TECHISCO – Las Vegas, Nevada Tyler Iodence: Medical Student at Campbell's University of Osteopathic Medicine – Buies Creek, North Carolina Taylor Jones: Pitching Coach at Juan Diego High School – Salt Lake City, Utah Trevor Kirk: Medical Sales Rep – Las Vegas, Nevada Aaron Kurcz: Triple-A in Oakland Athletics system – Midland, Texas Taylor Larsen: Student at Utah State University – Logan, Utah Sean Larimer: Assistant Coach at College of Southern Nevada – Las Vegas, Nevada Kenny McDowall: As of March 2016, last tried out for the Quebec Capitales of the CanAm League. Matt Medina: Works at Depot Training Center, a crossfit gym – Tooele, Utah Donn Roach: Triple-A in the Seattle Mariners system –Tacoma, Washington Casey Sato: Academic advisor at University of Utah for men's and women's basketball – Salt Lake City, Utah Ryan Scott: Assistant Slot Director, M Resort – Las Vegas, Nevada Burke Seifrit: Carpentry apprentice – Surrey, British Columbia. Kyle 'Kaz' Smith: Private Baseball Coach – Las Vegas, Nevada

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/magazine/the-world-according-to-bojack-horseman.html

The temporary nature of joy is at the root of “BoJack.” It is also at the root of Bob-Waksberg’s sensibility. A few years ago, when he was living in Brooklyn with Adam Conover, a longtime friend who is now Lisa Hanawalt’s partner, he went out on a date, and Conover asked him how it went. “I can’t see myself having grandchildren with her,” he replied, with BoJackian dourness. “I love Raphael,” Conover, who now has his own comedy show on TruTV, told me. “But I’m happy being a Mr. Peanutbutter type, because having that BoJack mentality where you’re constantly processing things can’t be easy.”

http://www.gq.com/story/encyclopedia-of-matt-damon

Martin Scorsese (director, ‘The Departed’): He comes from Boston; he's familiar with that world. When we were cutting The Departed, my editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, used a term to describe Matt's presence on-screen that's stayed with me: He's seated as an actor. He enters a movie grounded and at ease in his character and in the world of the story.

Ledger, Heath Gilliam: Matt is mathematical at times, and that's both a strength and sometimes… I think that's what it maybe was between him and Heath. Because [Heath's] heart was on his sleeve, and that opened up a lot in Matt. Damon: He was too bright for this world. Coming off [The Brothers Grimm, I was] telling everybody that I just worked with the best actor I've ever seen. And people were like, “What are you talking about? The guy from A Knight's Tale?” And I was like, “You just wait. And wait until you see what kind of a director he's gonna be.” There were things that he did where I couldn't have got there in three lifetimes. And there were ways in which he was like a puppy dog. You wanted to protect him. [His death was] just fucking pointless. I called Terry when I found out, and he was like, “I'm sitting here in Vancouver. I'm looking out the window, and it's a beautiful sunny day, and the lights are turning red, and the lights are turning green, and cars are stopping, and cars are driving. I am surrounded by mediocrity. And he's gone.”

pineapple fanta + fish sauce

I can smell dinner before I even walk in the front door. Anne’s making a roast chicken based on a recipe we got from Senator John McCain. I covered his 2000 presidential race, and he had some of the reporters over to his vacation home in Sedona, Arizona. He grills like mad when he entertains — on several grills all lined up. He puts the chicken on the grill covered in Hog’s Breath, a seasoning from a Key West bar. He then bastes the chicken with lemon constantly. It’s delicious. It also works perfectly with pork. It is perhaps my favorite meal that we cook at home. Not the fanciest, and certainly not the most complicated, but when your house is encased in snow and it’s an election year, where sleep and time at home are scarce, it makes it feel like it’s your birthday every time you have it.

http://www.grubstreet.com/2016/01/john-dickerson-grub-street-diet.html

https://medium.com/@wordsbydan/anatomy-of-a-mix-tape-758a1bc8b38#.3bzchfqj4 https://fridaynightsalone.com/

http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/news/a46590/ask-polly-heather-havrilesky-interview/

She argues that most of life's rewards are to be found in the very same overworked, frazzled, messy spaces others eschew. "Love yourself now," she asks of us, "exactly as sad and scared and flawed as you are, and you will grow up and live a rich life and show up for other people, and you'll know exactly how big that is."

You often seem to draw on your own past, with you talking through yourself and to yourself, as if to say, 'Here's what I know now.' There was an era, when I first started writing the column, when I went back to my twenties over and over and over. I just loved reliving my past humiliations. My twenties were dramatically terrible, and lonely, and I drank too much, and I stepped on people's toes. I had this creepy sense that everyone thought I was crazy. People in their twenties have a habit of pathologizing each other's very mundane and common flaws. Everybody's trying to figure out where their boundaries are. Not many people have healthy boundaries. Some people never come out of that. They just shut down, say, 'I'll engage less, and I'll build my wall higher.' Then some inciting factor breaks down the wall, and all of a sudden they're sitting there in the rubble, and all of their feelings are there for the first time that they've bottled up for ten years.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/05/mailbag-1.html

Anyway, the site has you type out famous quotes, and an unexpected side benefit of doing this was realizing at one point that I was speed-typing Montesquieu summing up life: If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

sigh.

http://www.grubstreet.com/2016/06/tim-urban-grub-street-diet.html

My usual eating rule is, “Keep things reasonably healthy until dinner and then whatever happens happens.”

bum/ posey

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/giants/2009/03/02/madison-bumgarner-on-his-success-his-stuff-and-san-jose/

http://www.chatelaine.com/living/ask-polly-heather-havrilesky-advice-for-modern-age/

Why do we feel compelled to give advice when no one really takes it? One of the great joys of writing an advice column is that people are taking my advice for the first time in my life. Your friends call you on the phone and they ask for your advice, but they don’t want it; what they really want is to tell you how they feel. And since most of us had parents who didn’t have the time or energy to truly get us, we’re kind of looking for that experience over and over again. Giving and pretending we want advice is the loose structure by which we seek to understand and be understood.

https://aeon.co/essays/nothing-embodies-powerlessness-quite-like-dirty-laundry http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/10/ask-polly-why-do-you-always-recommend-therapy.html http://www.onbeing.org/blog/courtney-martin-avoiding-the-caricature-trap-listen-beyond-the-words-part-ii/8779 http://www.onbeing.org/blog/courtney-martin-the-conversation-we-must-have-with-our-white-children/8806 http://www.rabbitblog.com/

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/21/be-mine

But he’s wrong: each holds the key to the other’s hidden, better self.

http://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/daily-reads-depression-marriage-and-youre-the-worst-2015-awards-season-respects-its-elders-and-more-126990/

A friend once told me that loving someone else is easy, that it's harder to learn to accept yourself as worthy of being loved. As someone with his own baggage (as we all have), this spoke deeply to me. Loving my wife was easy. Letting myself believe she loved me — even in the worst times — was hard. Once we got there, I could truly help her — not to get rid of the depression but to find her way through the mazes it keeps throwing up. Also, maybe this: Loving someone is seeing the best possible version of her superimposed over the actual person at all times, even when you hate her. I loved my wife for too long not necessarily for who she was, but for who I knew she could be. And maybe that was terribly unfair to her — okay, it was terribly unfair to her — but it was how I stayed and how we made it through the wilderness. Also: Being loved is fearing, on some level, that you are not worthy of that love. It is terrifying and vulnerable, and if you fell in love on the first day of college, it makes a great story so long as you can pretend part of it wasn't a horror movie. But being loved is good when you can trust that the other sees you, yes, but also sees the flaw in the photograph that superimposes your own best self over your rotten, stinking core.

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/15/10111656/depression-marriage http://www.vox.com/2015/3/17/8203507/adoption-children-experiences

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/18/6357147/youre-the-worst-fx-stephen-falk#interview

"I think the ideal of love is to find someone who doesn't judge the bad things in you, the scary, or not so attractive, or embarrassing, or shameful things you might have done in the past or that you might do in the present, or even the bad hat you may put on one day, or the bad haircut you got that should not have judgments from the person you're with, I think, is sort of beautiful, and free use, free deal. And then, what I realized, I find that moment to be the most romantic moment in the show. And I consider the show very romantic. The look on her face of, 'Oh, this guy gives me permission to be me, warts and all.' I think that is beautiful."

http://screencrush.com/monday-morning-critic-youre-the-worst/

There’s not a lot of effort to emulate the show, per se, but I do think there was something really romantic about them. And despite how my show is being sold, and how it plays out on a macro level, in my mind (and in the audience’s mind, hopefully) it’s a deeply romantic show. It’s a show that believes in love even though it acknowledges that it’s essentially impossible. But I think there’s something beautiful about the fact that we know it’s probably going to fail, and yet they keep trying. There’s something beautiful in that. One thing that connects 'Mad About You' and 'You’re The Worst' seems to be a sense that relationships are work, but work is a defining characteristic of relationships rather than an impediment to them. Is that a fair assessment? I think so. I think relationships certainly are hard. But there’s also a quality of playfulness in the Paul/Jamie interactions. Those cold opens where they would just be brushing their teeth, and one spits on the other’s head as they bend down to get water, and they just have the timing wrong…there was something reassuring in the little playful interactions. So yes, relationships are work, and the two really went through stuff as the seasons went on. But the show also reminds you that there’s something beautiful about the daily interactions. It doesn’t have to be boring and fogey-ish. There can also be a fresh approach to interacting as a couple.

bye hulu

kindness / acceptance

Stephen Falk and co. understands that it’s not how much we change, but it’s the ways we change that are important. Jimmy’s frustration with Gretchen’s refusal to take medication stems from his inability to carry her entirely every single time she falters, even though he wants to. Gretchen may think meds will make her lose her edge, but she also acutely understands that the heart is the dumbest dumb of them all, and that she has to share some of the weight if she wants her relationship to flourish. This tension is nowhere near as intense as Jimmy and Gretchen’s emotional separation, but it’s arguably as genuine and grounded. In many ways, You’re The Worst is about letting go of selfishness in favor of spending a life with someone, and part of that means sharing the burdens we carry with others and accepting the consequences that comes with that. Gretchen doesn’t run away when she sees Jimmy drunkenly babble in public; instead, she goes up there, helps him down, and takes care of him. When Gretchen tells Jimmy she’s going to see a doctor, it feels like a huge step forward because it’s an active attempt to lighten his load. “It’s always just been me, you know,” she says. “But now it’s not anymore.” There’s a bond they have together that now goes beyond toxic personalities and self-destructive tendencies. It’s also about healing and companionship. It’s about the good times and the bad. It’s about a shared life, even if it’s only for a short while. It all comes through so well in that last scene as Shakman alternates between close-ups of Jimmy and Gretchen and the two shot of them together in the frame. For so long they were alone, but now they’re together. I’m glad that we’re going to spend more time with these characters, but if the last shot of the series was Jimmy and Gretchen sitting on their steps, sharing a smoke, and secretly smiling to themselves knowing that they love each other, I wouldn’t have minded one bit. Not one bit.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/loose-funny-youre-worst-ends-great-season-high-not-229580

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/women-take-spotlight-weeks-funny-damning-youre-wor-226877#comment-2308197708

KrakenNiz • 9 months ago Gretchen, marry me. Lindsay, drink with me. Jimmy, debate with me. Edgar, counsel me. I need no other quirky comedies for 2015! I am alllllll set with this gem.

ethylene Alana • 9 months ago I don't think he's smiling like that as much as relief that she's not cheating on him or that he did something wrong, basically anything that ends up with they're breaking up. He asked what she wanted, she wanted space. He could do that, so pat on the back, mission accomplished, Jimmy. If she asked for a burrito or a moon rock, he'd try to do that, too. They've tried "sharing" and did not like it. If she wanted him to know she was crying, she would have stayed at home. I really want to see how they deal with this, as the therapist earlier made me pretty sure it'd end up being part of whatever was up. I'd be surprised if she's never seen a therapist, though.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/women-take-spotlight-weeks-funny-damning-youre-wor-226877#comment-2308531315

usvtheman a quiet storm • 8 months ago Yup, she really nailed it in that counter scene. Another great, subtle moment: Sam's song comes on the radio, and everyone agrees that it's a very good song. So what's Gretchen's first thought? That she'll be fired as Sam gets too popular. It goes by so quick, but it really distills the feelings of inadequacy, and conviction that everything will result in the worst possible outcome, that go along with depression. 15 • Reply•Share ›

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/best-episode-youre-worst-features-mouse-marathon-a-227264#comment-2321171418

James Allen Janet Snakehole • 8 months ago They way the 5 of them were randomly dancing towards the end made it look like a Peanuts special.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/best-episode-youre-worst-features-mouse-marathon-a-227264#comment-2321004986

usvtheman James Allen • 8 months ago Your comment makes me think of another brilliant aspect of that scene. It's brutal because Gretchen realizes that Rob has the same doubts and fears that she has. But also, Rob misinterprets Gretchen /the exact same way she misinterprets him/. That is, he assumes that Gretchen and Jimmy are living the ideal life in /his/ mind, carefree, joyful, partying, smoking weed past 10 p.m. Gretchen and Rob are really complete mirrors of each other in that scene. They're so quick to open up to each other because they both think, 'man, here's someone who really gets it.' But the facade's only stripped away for Gretchen.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/phenomenal-youre-worst-takes-hard-look-losing-your-227967#comment-2343706338

Fresh Ninja Lopsidedown • 8 months ago Gretchen actively keeps Jimmy in the dark about the depth of her problems. Sure, he's an oblivious asshole, but that's part of what makes him attractive to Gretchen. She knew what she was getting when she chose him - someone who'd be too self-involved to pester her about a condition she takes great pains to hide behind a facade.

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/phenomenal-youre-worst-takes-hard-look-losing-your-227967#comment-2343924985

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/roo/5660612489.html

and rest.