Ancient Grains Archives

What Would Yellow Ranger Do?

Shing Yin Khor Ancient Grains, Cartoons Jul 02, 2014

This post originally appeared on January 10, 2014.

195 Comments

How to Tell If a Canadian is Mad At You

Nicole and Mallory Advice, Ancient Grains Jul 02, 2014

This post originally appeared on January 7th, 2014.

Previously in Canadian anthropological studies: Facts About Thanksgiving.

1. Guess. It’s as good a strategy as any.

2. They are behaving towards you exactly as they always have, yet you somehow feel strangely guilty.

3. Something has changed in the wind.

107 Comments

Benedict Cumberbatch: The Fan Fiction

Nicole Cliffe Ancient Grains, Beauty Jul 02, 2014

This post was originally published on September 2, 2013.
Year: 2013
Place: London
Smaller place: The English Tea Room at Brown’s
Smallest place: A table for three, with the couple seated next to each other, sweetly, and the reporter across.

REPORTER: What changes these last few years have wrought!

BENEDICT: I can hardly believe it.

NICOLE: Nor I.

REPORTER: How did this all come about? How did such a young Canadian woman manage to become the creator of a relatively-high-production-value television program in the UK while editing a popular ladyblog?

BENEDICT: Wymyn’s blog.

REPORTER: Yes, of course. Wymyn’s power blog.

NICOLE: Oh, it’s all a blur, really. (sips tea) Who knows how it started, at this point? Let’s just pick things up as I began shooting on the first season of Sherlock.

REPORTER: That pilot episode was exquisite.

NICOLE: Thank you.

REPORTER: And the second episode of the first season, which really cemented the show’s popularity, for which you took “The Red-Headed League” as your inspiration…is it true that you scrapped what had been originally planned to run in its stead? A crimson-lit blur of Asian drug smugglers and organized crime which inexplicably represented a significant departure in quality from the rest of the series?

BENEDICT: We spent a LOT of time discussing Orientalism together. We spent an entire weekend in Yorkshire, chastely sharing a crofter’s cottage, making thoughtful and informed creative choices, and decided to fire that writer and write our own script.

REPORTER: So, you were not yet lovers.

BENEDICT AND NICOLE: (staring intently at each other)) Not yet, no.

NICOLE: I thought he was pretty freaky-looking for the whole first season, to be honest.

BENEDICT: That’s pretty common, because I have such a weird-looking face and very little muscle tone.

NICOLE: And, of course, I was devoted to the memory of my late husband.

REPORTER: Yes, how long had he been dead at this point?

NICOLE: (firmly) Thirty years.

42 Comments

Why I Am Leaving New York City

Daniel Mallory Ortberg Ancient Grains, Magic Jul 02, 2014

This post originally appeared on November 25th, 2013.

I have never let the fact that I do not live in New York City keep me from pursuing my dreams, and I am certainly not going to let it stop me from writing a Why I Am Leaving New York essay today. New York, I must take my leave of you, you withered bitch-hearted city, you poison-titted fuckmother, you beautiful sex demon.

I am leaving New York City because of all of these goddamned wizards.

53 Comments

And Now, As Promised, the Miniature Horses

Nicole and Mallory Ancient Grains, Meta Jul 02, 2014

This post originally appeared on October 17th, 2013.

Mallory left this morning. But not before this happened.

74 Comments

Your Third Grade Chinese New Year

Charlene Cheung Ancient Grains, Family Jan 31, 2014

You wake up a little later than normal. You’re not washing your hair today, after all. It’s one of the few days out of the year you don’t wash you hair. In fact, it’s the only day you’re actually not supposed to.

You don’t bother to make your bed, either — not that you make your bed on any other day because you’re pretty lazy. But, for the same reason you aren’t washing your hair, today is the one day you’re actually not supposed to clean. Just like your parents had explained to you long ago, you don’t want to wash or clean away all your good luck. You’re young. And, you don’t know it, yet, but you’re going to need all the luck you can get.

Despite your later start to the morning, or possibly because of it, you are primed for the day. It’s cold and gloomy outside on this late-January to early-February day, but here, inside the house, it’s warm, and the savory aromas from last night’s dinner still linger in the air.

Your feet want to make a run for the kitchen, but, like the good daughter they raised you to be, you go to your parents’ room instead.

Your sister joins you.

“Gung Hay Fat Choy!!”

You don’t know it, yet, but eventually, that will be one of the only phrases you remember how to say in Chinese. You will regret this. You will try to reteach yourself Cantonese in your twenties, but it will be harder the older and, inevitably, dumber you get.

26 Comments

An Interview With Travis Mathews: On Franco and Interior. Leather Bar

Nicole Froio Ancient Grains, Movies Jan 31, 2014

Nicole Froio last wrote for The Toast about violence in the favelas. She saw Interior. Leather Bar at an LGBT film festival in Rio and sat down with Travis Mathews, the film’s director afterwards.

Why did you and James Franco make this movie?

I’ll talk about this but I don’t want to go too deeply into his motivations because I feel like – I don’t want to speak for him. But I can tell you he wanted to revisit Cruising in some capacity; he wanted to do a project with a lot of sex in it that was being explored in like a narrative context. And he didn’t want to do this on his own. He felt like he needed to collaborate with someone. So that was the most he knew he wanted to do when he reached out to me.

And when he reached out to me, that’s all I knew: James Franco, Cruising, sex.

And I didn’t know him or anything, so it was kind of a strange…it’s like one of those stories that happen maybe in a Hollywood movie fifty years ago that never really ever happens.

But, yeah, it was very cool. And I knew immediately before I even talked to him that those three elements–him, Cruising and explicit sex–were going to mean that whatever we created was going to be like a lightning rod of the film, in and of itself.

4 Comments