Showing up with my love goggles and my sparkles to celebrate just being ALIVE. It's been a very long year.

Posted on 15 July 2021 at 12:45 PM in #savemylife, Holistic Health, LOVE!, Talking to the Universe | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: #SaveBritney, Aditi Shah, Alex Toussaint, Ally Love, Bootcamp, Cardio, Chelsea Jackson Roberts, Cody Rigsby, Cycling, Denis Morton, Emma Lovewell, Fitness, Hard Core On The Floor, Home Fitness, Jess King, Kendall Toole, Meditation, Mental Health, Olivia Omato, Peloton, Robin Arzon, Running, Sam Yo, Spin Classes, Strength, Tunde Oyeneyin, Vegan, Walking, Yoga
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The Nakedjen Film Festival (#NJFF) started over 20 years ago as my way of avoiding the Feast of the Cash Register.
Christmas Day, as many of us know, can be fraught with family of origin drama or even with the horrors of non-family of origin drama and there was no better way in my own mind to avoid all of this than to go sit in the dark with a bunch of misfit toy friends and watch stories unfold on a big screen. The kindness of Hollywood meant that they understood this even better than I did and so they saved their best Oscar hopefuls for a Christmas day opening. I'd spend the week before pouring over the scheduled films, choosing which ones to see when, smuggling in yummy snacks to share and including a break in there somewhere for all of us to gather at a Chinese restaurant to nosh and laugh and, yes, talk about the films.
The Nakedjen Film Festival is a marathon from start to finish, but it is honestly, the best way to spend the holiday if you need to avoid the trappings of Christmas.
In the year of our Pandemic, 2020, Hollywood (who has never actually known they're participating in the Nakedjen Film Festival) is delivering the #NJFF directly to a couch near you and I could not be happier. It means that should you like to participate the films are as close as your remote control. I realize that not everyone has access to all of these streaming services and that makes me a tiny bit bonkers. In my perfect world, these services would give us a CHRISTMAS MIRACLE and allow you to stream these films FOR FREE at least for the holidays. Capitalism still rules the day, however. The studios have not been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present or Future, I suppose and so, well, while I can share with you where you can see these films, I must admit that they're not free. Of course they would not be free if we were gathering together in a proper theatre, either. We need to remember that.
Please remember that these films are simply a suggestion, as always. Programming for the Nakedjen Film Festival is always done with a nod to both entertainment, but also to films that make you really think and perhaps even go huh?!? I like to sit and the dark and escape, to be taken on an adventure, to be told a story that I never would have been told otherwise. Films for me have always been my refuge, my safe space.
I hope you'll make yourself something truly delicious, share it with your #pandemic pod, plop yourselves on the couch in comfy clothes and let the magic unfold and carry you away.
Happy Festival. May the story that you find be the one that is written on your own heart. xo
Festival Schedule
Wonder Woman
Available on HBO MAX
I feel like we have all been waiting ten years for this film. We haven't, we may feel that way after watching it? Who knows? But it's coming to your couch, so you can watch and decide for yourself.
SOUL
Available on Disney +
PIXAR. Questlove and Daveed Diggs. I swear I'm getting a Disney + sub just for this! Souls in training...yes. xo
KAJILLIONAIRE
Available on Amazon Prime
It's Miranda July. Yes, it's been out a while. I missed it at Sundance, so I'm including it for my own Christmas present.
THE MIDNIGHT SKY
Available on Netflix
Would we be able to call it a festival if we did not have some sort of blockbuster that dealt with the apocalypse? No. So here we go. And we get George Clooney. The end.
MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM
Available on NETFLIX
Viola Davis. Chadwick Boseman. The esteemed August Wilson. Do I really need to say anything else? This film was made to drop on Christmas. This one is like going to Church.
LET THEM ALL TALK
Available on HBO MAX
An Amuse Bouche from our friend, Steven Soderbergh. Starring Meryl Streep. Alternatively, you can stream THE PROM with Meryl and her friends on NETFLIX. Or go all in and stream them both. It's like Meryl decided to show up for you both in your stocking and under the tree!!
WOLFWALKERS
Available on APPLE TV
Irish folklore, animation, it's actually fun for the whole family. Maybe a great bedtime story?
A VERY MURRAY CHRISTMAS
Available on NETFLIX
I'm not me if Mr. Murray if not making an appearance. Hot dogs are on him. May your holidays be merry and bright. xo
Posted on 20 December 2020 at 02:34 PM in festival, Film, Talking to the Universe | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Bill Murray, Chinese food, Daveed Diggs, Disney , documentaries, Film Festival, George Clooney, HBO MAX, Holidays, Hot dogs, Ma Rainey, Movies, Nakedjen, Netflix, PIXAR, Questlove, SOUL, Streaming, Viola Davis, Wonder Woman, WW84
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Pandemic Times call for cookies. Clyde's Cookies.
Here's the recipe.
Here's the recipe:
RECIPE
1 cup dates (soak in hot water if using medjool)
1 cup almond flour
1/2 cup walnuts
2 Tbs Vanilla Extract
Vegan Chocolate Chips
METHOD Pulse dates and Almond flour together in food processor to make dough. Transfer to mixing bowl and add in chocolate chips and vanilla extract and walnuts (if you want those things), combine. Using a tablespoon, drop and press out on a cookie tray. Bake at 345 degrees for about 10 minutes (watch them carefully). Let rest and then EAT!
Posted on 03 December 2020 at 02:02 PM in #SLC, Clyde, Vegetarian/Vegan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: baking, chocolate chip cookies, COVID, dates, Great British Baking Show, pandemic, vanilla, vegan
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A whole lot of things for you to read because other people are writing far better than I can at the moment.
Food as a form of Protest and Justice for all.
The consequences of this uprising are too many to count. The case that the police bring danger, escalation, and expense to many situations rather than peace and resolution is now far more widely accepted.
“History repeats,” Marty told me. “Unless we do something.”
Finally, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the history of Juneteenth, some history for all of us as well as ways White people can show up for Black people not just right now, not just today, but every day.
Posted on 19 June 2020 at 02:00 PM in 5 minute post, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Atlanta, Black Lives Matter, Chicago, City Bureau, Curfew, Food Justice, Food Protest, George Floyd, Juneteenth, Lit Hub, New York City, New Yorker, Protest, Rayshard Brooks, Rebecca Solnit
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My heart is wobbly and I'm completely overwhelmed.
Our President dared to just mention George Floyd in a speech at the White House. Not with condolences, mind you, just to puff himself up per usual.
He failed to mention Breonna Taylor, of course. That isn't part of his narrative today. Or Ahmaud Arbery. Why bother? He isn't working or alive or can't possibly vote for him.
There was not a single word about the 110,713 Americans who have died from COVID19. Over 1000 of them just yesterday. A larger percentage of those POC.
Still not a single word of condolence from our President.
Not one word.
Oh, but yes, the ECONOMY. It's bouncing right back.
And wouldn't George Floyd be looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that's happening for our country!
Then...this happened....
And I decided that the best thing for me to do was just to step away from the Internet and walk around the real world and smile behind my mask at everyone I could. The world needs us. To show up. With love.
Posted on 05 June 2020 at 04:37 PM in #savemylife, 5 minute post, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: #savemylife, Black Lives Matter, Covid19, George Floyd, Trump, White House Correspondents, Yamiche Alcindor
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What We Want Now! What We Believe
To those poor souls who don’t know Black history, the beliefs and desires of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense may seem unreasonable. To Black people, the ten points covered are absolutely essential to survival. We have listened to the riot producing words “these things take time” for 400 years. The Black Panther Party knows what Black people want and need. Black unity and self defense will make these demands a reality.
What We Want
What We Believe
Posted on 04 June 2020 at 01:24 PM in 5 minute post, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Black Lives Matter, BPP, Education, Employment, Equality, Healthcare, Housing, Police Brutality, Reparations
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They said she was just trying to sell books, inexperienced and too full of mystical bullshit.
Yet, Marianne was the one who told us over a year ago that this country desperately needed radical truth-telling about race and that our President was a fascist.
She was the only candidate that called for reparations, a Department of Peace, and a Department of Children and Youth to address the chronic trauma of millions of children more likely to end up in prison than at high school graduation. She is also the only candidate who I wholeheartedly supported with my dollars and my time and my boots on the ground.
Our collective voices and our hearts are still stronger than the demonic madness pushing all of us down. Love is a superpower and all of us have it.
Keep your foot on the gas. xo
Posted on 03 June 2020 at 06:01 PM in #savemylife, 5 minute post | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I was in danger of verbalizing my
moral impulses out of existence.
--Daniel Berrigan, on trial in Baltimore
1. My neighbor, a scientist and art-collector, telephones me in a state of violent emotion. He tells me that my son and
his, aged eleven and twelve, have on the last day of school burned a mathematics textbook in the backyard. He has
forbidden my son to come to his house for a week, and has forbidden his own son to leave the house during that time.
"The burning of a book," he says, "arouses terrible sensations in me, memories of Hitler; there are few things that upset
me so much as the idea of burning a book."
Back there: the library, walled
with green Britannicas
Looking again
in Durer's Complete Works
for MELANCOLIA, the baffled woman
the crocodiles in Herodotus
the Book of the Dead
the Trial of Jeanne d'Arc, so blue
I think, It is her color
and they take the book away
because I dream of her too often
love and fear in a house
knowledge of the oppressor
I know it hurts to burn
2. To imagine a time of silence
or few words
a time of chemistry and music
the hollows above your buttocks
traced by my hand
or, hair is like flesh, you said
an age of long silence
relief
from this tongue this slab of limestone
or reinforced concrete
fanatics and traders
dumped on this coast wildgreen clayred
that breathed once
in signals of smoke
sweep of the wind
knowledge of the oppressor
this is the oppressor's language
yet I need it to talk to you
3. People suffer highly in poverty and it takes dignity and intelligence to overcome this suffering. Some of the suffering
are: a child did not had dinner last night: a child steal because he did not have money to buy it: to hear a mother say
she do not have money to buy food for her children and to see a child without cloth it will make tears in your eyes.
(the fracture of order
the repair of speech
to overcome this suffering)
4. We lie under the sheet
after making love, speaking
of loneliness
relieved in a book
relived in a book
so on that page
the clot and fissure
of it appears
words of a man
in pain
a naked word
entering the clot
a hand grasping
through bars:
deliverance
What happens between us
has happened for centuries
we know it from literature
still it happens
sexual jealousy
outflung hand
beating bed
dryness of mouth
after panting
there are books that describe all this
and they are useless
You walk into the woods behind a house
there in that country
you find a temple
built eighteen hundred years ago
you enter without knowing
what it is you enter
so it is with us
no one knows what may happen
though the books tell everything
burn the texts said Artaud
5. I am composing on the typewriter late at night, thinking of today. How well we all spoke. A language is a map of our
failures. Frederick Douglass wrote an English purer than Milton's. People suffer highly in poverty. There are methods but
we do not use them. Joan, who could not read, spoke some peasant form of French. Some of the suffering are: it is hard
to tell the truth; this is America; I cannot touch you now. In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You
are in danger. The burning of a book arouses no sensation in me. I know it hurts to burn. There are flames of napalm in
Catonsville, Maryland. I know it hurts to burn. The typewriter is overheated, my mouth is burning. I cannot touch you and
this is the oppressor's language.

Posted on 01 June 2020 at 04:01 PM in #savemylife, 5 minute post, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: #savemylife, adrienne rich, BLM, burning , pandemic, poverty, protest
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I have privilege as a white person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice:
I can go birding (#ChristianCooper)
I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery)
I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean and #AtatianaJefferson)
I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride)
I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark)
I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards)
I can play loud music (#JordanDavis)
I can sell CDs (#AltonSterling)
I can sleep (#AiyanaJones)
I can walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown)
I can play cops and robbers (#TamirRice)
I can go to church (#Charleston9)
I can walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin)
I can hold a hair brush while leaving my own bachelor party (#SeanBell)
I can party on New Years (#OscarGrant)
I can get a normal traffic ticket (#SandraBland)
I can lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile)
I can break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones)
I can shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford)
I can have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher)
I can read a book in my own car (#KeithScott)
I can be a 10yr old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover)
I can decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese)
I can ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans)
I can cash a check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood)
I can take out my wallet (#AmadouDiallo)
I can run (#WalterScott)
I can breathe (#EricGarner)
I can live (#FreddieGray)
I can sleep in my own bed (#BreonnaTaylor)
I CAN BE ARRESTED WITHOUT THE FEAR OF BEING MURDERED (#GeorgeFloyd)
White privilege is real. Take a minute to consider a Black person’s experience today.
#BlackLivesMatter
Posted on 29 May 2020 at 12:07 PM in 5 minute post, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: #BlackLivesMatter, George Floyd, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Revolution, Revolution, Riot
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Posted on 28 May 2020 at 02:26 PM in 5 minute post, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: #racism , Compassion, George Floyd, Minnesota, White Privilege
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I woke up cocooned in comforters and the weight of a large black labrador this morning.
I could already hear the traffic from I-15. Cars and trucks going north and south and east and west. Enough to make all the noise that cars and trucks make on a Monday morning to allow you to know that life is moving faster than you want it to move and that business is happening and that soon the clear blue skies will be filled with smog again.
We could see the mountains across the valley and marvelled that we could also see the Great Salt Lake. That was our prize for sheltering in place. For staying at home. For not visiting our friends and for making sure there were six feet between me and between you. For not driving all the cars. For walks with the dogs. For checking on our neighbors. For eating dinner at home and getting to know our families as the humans that they happen to actually be.
Today, though, the code color is yellow and yellow means go in our part of the world.
Back to work, back to school, back to the playgrounds and the gyms and the pools and the office and the restaurants and the hair salons and the sporting events.
Back instead of forward. BACK. We are going back when we had so many chances to go anywhere else.
Smog is going to envelop us and our lungs will get heavy with coughs and we'll wonder is it the virus or is it bad air? Have we ever really cared?
We won't be able to tell the difference as we sit on patios and eat our pizza and drink our beer and toast that we won the god damn war!
Won.
Did we? Did you?
We only win if we're still alive.
Posted on 18 May 2020 at 06:15 PM in 5 minute post, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: #savemylife, COVID19, Open, Salt Lake City, smog, Utah, Virus, Yellow
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