Ancient Grains Archive
Lines That Would Work On Any Shonda Rhimes Show
Ancient Grains, Television
Sep 30, 2013
"I like you a lot, but the things I don't like about you...I hate."
[To offscreen character] "Hi, Mom."
[eight seconds of shocked silence, pan for reactions]
[fade to black]
Attractive But Deeply Disturbed Businesswoman: "Did you do this for me because I slept with you?"
Charmingly Irresponsible, Rakish and Rugged Male Authority Figure: "Yes."
ABDDB: "Really?"
CIRRMAF: "No."
ABDDB: "Do
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A Randian Reading of High School Musical 2
Ancient Grains, Politics
Sep 30, 2013
Sharpay Evans: [to Fulton] I told you to hire Troy Bolton, not the entire East High student body!
"It is fear that drives [the hippies] to seek the warmth, the protection, the safety of a herd. When they speak of merging themselves into a "greater whole," it is their fear that they hope to
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This Week in Reading: Masha Gessen and Stephen King
Ancient Grains, Books
Sep 30, 2013
Previous installments of This Week in Reading can be found here. Most recently: Books That Should Be Banned.
I read two terrifying books this week, gang. One was about Vladimir Putin, and the other was about a traveling posse of polyester-wearing ex-humans who feed off the steam released by torturing psychic
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Am I My Hair? A Journey To Self-Love
Ancient Grains, Beauty
Sep 30, 2013
As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a complicated relationship with self-confidence.
When I was very young, people in church lobbies and in long grocery store lines would often smile and jokingly ask whether I was wearing eye makeup, and compliment my thick eyelashes and eyebrows. I said thank you because
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Interview With the Founders of Qu.ee/r Magazine
Ancient Grains, Interviews, LGBT
Sep 30, 2013
"Forget genre jails. Forget the gay-bashing scene that still manages to be treacly. Forget furtive college kisses. Brilliant queer fiction the way fiction was meant to get writ.
Socrates did the meditative and philosophical. Baldwin did the engaged and enraged. Turing did it by the numbers. We’re doing it all—smart nonfiction, fresh and
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Bad Sex in Romance Novels
Ancient Grains, Books
Sep 30, 2013
Not all romance novels feature multi-orgasmic brides and perpetually tumescent men coupling in positions of dubious feasibility.
Depictions of sex in the genre have come a long way since the days of questionable consent and improbable enthusiasm. Jennifer Crusie's Welcome to Temptation and Faking It, published in the early aughts, contain classic examples
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Questions For Baggage Claim
Ancient Grains, Movies
Sep 30, 2013
Baggage Claim, why weren't you amazing? You had Jill Scott in a little pink neckerchief. You should have been amazing. Baggage Claim, why won't you let me love you?
When Paula Patton first sees Langdon (Taye Diggs) on a flight, he's seated one row in front of another one of her exes (Curtis, I
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Monday Morning Link Round-Up
Ancient Grains, News
Sep 30, 2013
EJ Graff asks: what's next for the gay rights movement? Spoiler: "breaking the nation out of its gender straitjacket."
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I made this for dinner last night (a comical marital misunderstanding having left boneless, SKINLESS chicken breasts in my fridge, ...Read More