Torg Life – Bill Torgerson

10 Books We Want to Read

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5 Books Bill Wants to Read

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence–Before It’s Too Late by Cory Doctorow

Heard about this book when Cory was a guest on the Jon Stewart Podcast
How people knew the freelance writer used GenAI: We know this is true for two reasons. First, because ten of the fifteen books on the list were nonexistent. They were AI “hallucinations” (a term that AI boosters use because it sounds sexier than “errors”). Second, because Buscaglia confessed to using a chatbot, in an interview with the veteran tech reporter Jason Koebler, who cofounded the journalist-owned news site 404 Media.
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino

I like this because of where you live and my memory of walking this area a couple of times: The Sunset Strip was famous for its rock clubs (the Whisky a Go Go, the London Fog, Pandora’s Box).* And right there among the rock clubs and across the street from Ben Frank’s Coffee Shop sat the Tiffany Theater. The Tiffany didn’t show films like Oliver!, Airport, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Love Bug, or even Thunderball. The Tiffany was the home of Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, Yellow Submarine, Alice’s Restaurant, Andy Warhol’s Trash, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, and Robert Downey’s Pound.
Causes me to check out a trailer from a movie such as Bullitt starring Steve McQueen: Bullitt is about action, atmosphere, San Francisco, Yates’ great location photography, Lalo Schifrin’s jazzy score, and Steve McQueen, his haircut and wardrobe. Nothing else matters.
Click here for Bullitt trailer.
Click here for Amazon affiliate link.

A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper (novel)

More LA Anne! This is the narrator talking to his audience as he drives and livestreams his driving: He tells them, “LA is a Frankenstein’s monster—all these felonies sewn together into something like a city. Stolen land gulping stolen water. Streets paved with corpses. We even went and massacred the sky: smog strangles the air; light pollution buries the stars.” He tilts the dashcam to show the starless night. A plane coming in for a landing at LAX swoops down low and huge—you could reach up and touch it. It slices through the shot like he planned it. Gooseflesh blooms; clap emojis scroll up the comment bar on the laptop riding shotgun.
I’ve watched Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler twice. The novel references that here: They used to call it nightcrawling, like in that movie—driving LA at high speed, looking for footage, looking for blood on the streets, broken glass, car fires, and corpses. Back then you’d sell the footage to the local TV news departments for Los Angeles to wake up to—murder and mayhem as part of a healthy breakfast. It used to be a living, back before everybody in the world had a phone with a camera. Nowadays footage is cheap; nowadays tragedy is a buyer’s market.
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott

The opening of the book: Here we are, older, scared, numb on some days, enraged on others, with even less trust than we had a year ago. The devastating pandemic, and the federal government’s confused and deadly response, was simply the final straw to a few years of crushing developments. A UN report on climate catastrophe was published months before my wedding in 2019, the report of the extinction of one million species three weeks after. Major buzzkill.
I’ve just barely started watching and not only listening to podcasts. Heard her on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast. Liked it so much showed it to Megan. Megan liked it so much she wanted to start buying her books.
Click here for Amazon affiliate link.

Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris

From Cleveland to Vermont to grad school. Thought about marrying a cattle guy but instead this: I made up my mind to move to New York in the fall of 1977. I drove there in my 1965 Plymouth Fury II, with my cat, my books pared down to the bare essentials, and two hundred dollars.
Anne, makes me wonder about the day and week after you left for LA.
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

Anne’s 5 Books She Wants to Read

Eternity Street by John Mack Faragher

This is about 19th century Los Angeles
Heard it recommended by this TikTok creator who talks about history of LA landmarks.
Murder and mayhem! Also interested about the history of LA
I have this on hold in the LA library.
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Fiction. Saw this book on some recommendation list, currently have it on hold at the LA library
The summary: The narrator is a hospital nurse in Nigeria and her younger sister has a habit of killing her boyfriends and claiming self-defence.
I like a thriller and I think Nigeria is a new setting for me and I am interested to read about how that looks.
It is also supposed to have good dark humor
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution, A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson

This seems like it can help my understanding of how modern day Iran was founded.
I have a very limited view of the revolution and am interested in the events that led to it, how the US was involved in the regime that was overthrown
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

38 Londres Street by Phillipe Sands

Traces the intertwined stories of Nazi commander Walter Rauff and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
I know little of this, never even heard of Rauff, I am interested Nazi-South America links.
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

The Secret History of Gold by Dominic Frisby

I saw this when googling best history books of 2026, and it is something I never considered.
Why gold? Where does gold come from? When did humans attach value to it?
How has it shaped our financial markets?
Click here for the Amazon affiliate link.

Honorable Mentions: The Women of Troy & The Voyage Home by Pat Barker, this is continuing the series of the book I read earlier this summer – a women’s point of view in classical history. The Death of Trotsky by Josh Ireland. The Blood in Winter by Jonathan Healey (Charles 1 – English Civil war), The Rule of Lies by Jamison R. Firestone (Putin)

Thanks for checking out this Torg Stories post. We appreciate you!

From the Hospital to the Rehab Facility

Dad broke his hip on a Thursday, had surgery the next day, and by Sunday afternoon the hospital staff wanted to know where we wanted him to go for rehab. It seemed that there was a whole set of protocols already in place that would send him off to one of the closest places to our house with an available bed. I was told a social worker would check in soon. I wondered how many facilities were around. Were they that different? Did I need to go visit them?

In thinking about what dad might need in a facility, I thought back to what he was like at our house. He had a hospital bed on which we’d raised the side rails and lowered the bed. This kept him in place at night and minimized his risk of falling. Mom had been sleeping right next to Dad and even though she did not hear well with her hearing aids in and took them out at night, most times she would realize when Dad started moving around. Dad was awake a lot at night. Really, his whole way of living was to be up for short periods of time followed by long naps. This was of course exhausting for Mom, and to a lesser degree me in that I was always half listening for Dad to fall. I’d wake several times every night in a panic thinking I’d heard something. Most times, he hadn’t fallen and I’d just dreamed or imagined he did. It reminded me a bit of when our daughters were babies. Back then, at least part of our consciousness was always listening for a signal of trouble.

The social worker came by dad’s room on Tuesday and gave me a list of nearby facilities and asked me to rank my preferences. She was ready to send out what she called bed requests. We could send out as many as we wanted and then make a choice among those who had availability. The best I could understand was that Medicare would cover dad’s stay at a rehab facility for up to twenty days as long as he was showing progress. There was another time period of something like twenty-one to one hundred days where dad’s supplemental insurance plus Medicare would cover some of the cost. It was terrible that dad had broke his hip and been in so much pain, but there was also a positive side that mom could get a break from caring for dad and that he could be cared for by a team of professionals instead of just mom and whatever additional help I could offer. The list of facilities the social worker gave me had star ratings. At least one of the facilities received less than two stars out of five. The social worker mentioned I could visit these places, no appointment needed. I left the hospital right away and headed for the facility that was closest to our house.

The first facility was just over eleven miles from our house toward Banner Elk, North Carolina. Our house is about halfway between Boone and Banner Elk. Appearance-wise the facility looked just like what I expected. It was one level and made of brick with an awning to shield people from the weather if they were being dropped off. There was a small bus out front with the facilities name on it. The office was in the middle with a wing going out on each side. The building also would have been believable as a small rural mountain elementary school.

The woman who worked at the front desk was extremely nice and spoke with a strong Southern accent. I’m a Midwesterner myself, and sometimes we Midwesterners and Southerners have a little trouble understanding each other. The facility was older and the carpet and furnishings were a little rundown. At this point, the bar for the care I expected was pretty low and that low expectation had come from what I’d heard from families about how difficult it was to find good care. A director came to the front desk to show me around. It was really a pretty small place. Maybe there were twelve rooms in each wing, two residents to a room. I suspected that mom would spend several hours if not most of the day with dad and there certainly wasn’t anywhere for a visitor to sit in the room. There was one television and a curtain that could be pulled between the two beds for a little bit of privacy. Even though dad sometimes had animated conversations with friends who had long ago passed away, he also had enough of his mental facilities that he had a strong preference that the news be on television, that he wanted to be at home and not in a facility, and that he didn’t like the food.

When came to dad’s care, he needed to be able to hit a button to call for someone to help him, especially to use the restroom. To raise his bedrails or to lower the bed past a certain point were both considered restraints and not allowed. I did not think dad would ask for help and even though he had surgery on his hip, I felt pretty sure he would try to get out of bed. The rehab space was small without much equipment, but I think with the right therapist dad probably didn’t need much equipment. There were some bean bags and I was told sometimes the patients would enjoy making a game out of trying to throw beanbags into baskets. This was one of the highly rated facilities. The rooms were pretty small, and they only had one open bed. What I felt best about was that the staff at the facility were going to do their best with the resources they had and cheerfully care to dad’s needs. I liked that the facility was pretty close to home, but I wondered if any of the other ones might at least have a chair next to the bed for visitors.

When I got home, I decided I’d try to see if there were any other facilities in the area. In order to look, I did what I do when looking for a place to stay on vacation. I used Google Maps, put rehab facilities in the search box, and started moving the map around to find places and click on websites. I would find each facility on the map and then drop that little Google figure onto the map to check out the area. I looked to see what might be on the way or near the facility. For example, I could imagine myself getting done with a basketball practice, grabbing dinner, and going out to visit dad.

I came across a place called Margate with lots of good reviews and that looked good in pictures. It was thirty-three miles away from our house and approximately a forty-five-minute drive. This was pretty far but I thought maybe worth it in that it looked like all of the rehab patients had their own rooms and that there were nice chairs next to the beds. Because I thought Mom would probably be driving to the facility a fair amount on her own, it was important the drive be pretty simple. Mom was able to drive herself to the grocery store, to the pharmacy to pick up meds, and to her hair appointments. If she had to drive anywhere unfamiliar, she was at risk of getting lost. That had happened one time, but we’d had her location on Life 360 and been able to help her get home.

I called up the facility on the phone, and even though it was almost five o’clock, the director told me she would stay late to meet me. I thought that was really generous of her. To reach Margate, there were really only three turns once you got to Boone. I felt confident mom could get herself to Boone. Her hairdresser was over on the east side of town on Highway 421 so I thought she could get there no problem. After that, there was an exit off of Highway 421, one more exit to where the facility was, and then a final turn to go up the hill and behind Ashe Memorial Hospital.

When I reached the Margate facility, I was struck by how much larger and newer it was. It had the feel of a recreation center where you might go to the gym for a workout. There were a lot more people coming and going and that felt good. When I was welcomed into the office, what I remember most is talking to the director about how she’d recently lost her mother who’d had dementia. I asked her about some of the pictures on her desk, and she told me that one of her family members had been deployed and just been shot. He was supposed to recover, and he was on his way back to the United States. I was reminded of all of the challenges that we all have going on at any given time.

After I met with the director, she showed me around the facility. Margate was much like the Watauga Medical Center in that Dad would have a private room at least for the time he was rehabbing from surgery, there was a nice chair for visitors that could be reclined for sleeping, and everything had a clean and new feel to it. The gym up front was used for all sorts of rehabilitation and so there would be more people of all ages and stages of rehab coming and going. That made the place feel livelier than if it was only a small group of elderly patients. Although Margate was much further away from where we lived, I thought it was the right place. I took a short video on my phone of the room that would be Dad’s room and sent it out to Mom, my sister Anne, and my wife Megan. They all agreed this looked like the spot for Dad. It would be a much better place for Mom to spend time visiting dad. In Margate, I was choosing a living space for Dad that accommodated mom staying for the day, gave him more privacy, and was a sunnier and more cheerful place over something closer to our house.

The day after I visited Margate, Dad was taken there by ambulance. The facility and especially its staff met all of our hopeful expectations in that they were friendly, patient with Dad, and they checked in on him as best they could. I remember one of the nurses saying, what a cute old man. In the weeks that followed, mom drove out to see Dad almost every morning. On the days she didn’t go, I tried to visit. Dad always seemed glad to see me. I’d ask him about his day. One time, he told me two huge tough guys had come into his room and took him away. He said they’d roughed him up, and he didn’t even know what information they wanted from him. At first, I thought Dad had hallucinated. That was certainly a symptom of Parkinson’s, but I realized that he was talking about his physical therapy. He’d mistaken his physical therapy session for a physical interrogation.

A Little Bit Better on the Emotional Front

On the day of Dad’s surgery to fix his broken hip, I arrived at Watauga Medical Center before 8:00 am. Even though I’d been told the night before that nothing would happen with Dad before 9:00 am, he’d already been moved from his room downstairs to be prepped for surgery. I joined Mom and Dad in a room that had been created by being curtained off within a much larger room. It was a giant space, like my old high school cafeteria or a conference room at a convention center, and curtains hung everywhere. We could see lots of other patients and their families waiting for surgery. Doctors came in to stop by and visit with each patient. Dad’s surgeon explained he would put a rod in to connect the upper femur to the hip area. He explained the break wasn’t technically the hip, but they still called it the hip. I asked him about what we could expect for a hospital stay after the surgery and where Dad might go next. The surgeon thought three to five days in the hospital and then added that it wasn’t his area of expertise, but he thought Medicare would pay for at least twenty-one days in a skilled nursing facility. The doctor said to just let the hospital know where we wanted Dad to go.

This need for us to know where Dad was going next came fast. Of course I had no idea where we wanted him to go. I actually couldn’t name a facility, couldn’t even imagine where one was. Shortly after the surgeon visited, the anesthesiologist stopped by. He explained Dad would receive a spinal block. I took this to be like a woman might receive before delivering a baby. I think the idea was the block would minimize risk and potential further cognitive decline. I thought about one of the tough choices I’d expected: whether or not Dad would have the surgery. It seemed like it was so obvious that he would have it that no one asked. Mom signed the paperwork for it, but there had been no discussion. There had really been no decision. Looking back, I think that was right, and I have no regrets.

In our history as a family, we Torgersons haven’t been very open or expressive emotionally. I don’t ever remember telling either of my parents that I loved them in high school, and I don’t remember them telling me. For sure, it was clear both mom and dad loved me; it just wasn’t something we expressed with words or hugs. When Dad was in his fifties, he had a procedure to put a stent in his heart. The surgery had been in Indianapolis, and I remember that my sister Anne, my Mom, and me were there with Dad when they wheeled him out of the room. Back then, we’d only been able to muster words to wish him luck and to tell him we’d see him in a few hours. After Dad had been wheeled away, a silence hung over the room like the eye of a hurricane. I remember my sister Anne breaking the silence saying, “We’re such freaks.” I took this to be her observation that we were completely unable to express ourselves emotionally. No I love you’s. No talking through potentially being afraid. Just silence and off you go Dad to have something placed in your coronary artery.

This time in Boone with Dad’s hip surgery, we did a little better on the emotional talking front. The dam that held all of our emotions in side had cracked a little when I was married and divorced in less than three years in my twenties. I had started to tell my family I loved them, and they had sometimes reciprocated it. Dad told Mom what a great wife she was and how appreciative he was for all the years she’d taken care of him. He told me how proud he was of the father I’d become and that he wished he’d been more like me. Dad expressed regret to me about all the years he’d spent in gyms coaching other people’s kids and all of the time he’d spent on the golf course when we were growing up. Dad was able to say all of that eloquently even though sometimes he thought we were living back in Winamac, and he often forgot the name of the disease he had. “Isn’t that the darndest thing?” he’d say, “I can’t even remember the disease I have.”

I pointed out to Dad all of the things he did right as a father. After all, he had been an English teacher, a manic preparer for whatever job it was he had to do, and a basketball coach. I was all of those things too, and I thanked him for the example of high character, especially when it came to keeping his word, meeting his responsibilities, and working hard each day. With my Mom and Dad, there were no mental health days from school. Since they were both teachers, we all went to school if it was at all possible. As a coach and teacher’s kid, I was to exceed all of the expectations placed on students and athletes. Dad once called the head basketball coach to report that I had arrived home two minutes after curfew. This time in the Watauga Hospital, we all told each other we loved one another. When Dad was wheeled out for surgery, I texted my wife Megan and my sister Anne that it felt like we had just said our goodbyes to Dad. We were told we could go up to Dad’s hospital room to wait for the procedure to be over, and that someone would be in touch to tell us how it went.

Dad’s hospital room at the Watauga Medical Center in Boone was really nice. There were two comfortable chairs, one of which could be converted to a bed and that Mom had slept on the night before. It was a private room with a television and a large window with a view of the south side of town and of the mountains beyond. It felt a little closer to a hotel room than most of the hospital rooms I’d ever been in before. Dad’s surgery took much less time than I expected, less than two hours. The surgeon told us the bones came together nicely.

Dad arrived back to his room via a hospital bed that whooshed as he was pushed down the hall. “Did I just ride a train?” he asked as he rolled in. It took me a second to realize he thought the hospital bed he’d ridden back to the room was the train he was talking about. The bed really did make a kind of whooshing chug, chug sound. Dad seemed to be under the impression he’d ridden a train from his hometown of Winamac, Indiana. His high school friends and basketball teammates Vic Heater and Bob March were mentioned as passengers on the train. Dad also named his friend Joe, who’d been killed over fifty years before when he was hit by a train. My middle name was Joseph because of Dad’s friend and my daughter Charlotte’s middle name is Josephine after me.

Dad experienced impressions of things such as trains and lots of people from the past. His stories reminded me a bit of the James Thurber story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” in which the character has many daydream adventures. When dad had come back from his CT scan the day before, he’d mentioned Russia’s Putin and told me that Putin had loaded him into a nuclear warhead. Dad was so relieved that for whatever reason Putin had decided not to launch the rocket he’d been loaded into. I realized that especially from Dad’s point of view, the machine that took the scan must have looked like a warhead. What a life: Dad used to teach classes and enjoy golf and morel foraging in his free time, and now he rode trains and was loaded into nuclear warheads.

Thanks for checking out this Torg Stories post! This is an excerpt from a longer piece I am writing about dad’s passing and Hurricane Helene’s arrival to my home near Boone, North Carolina.

Workspace Setups, Good Podcast Hangs, & The Future of the Pod | Ted Lasso S4E3

Sure, having three offices is a blessing, but I also struggle to get them all organized and decorated. In this episode, my sister Anne and I dive into the puzzle of workspace setups and talk through the ways we fail—and occasionally succeed—at organizing our lives. Plus, Anne shares a few podcast recommendations, and we make a big decision about the future direction of the show (starting with Ted Lasso S4E3).

Click above to listen to the podcast episode

Workspace Setups & Staying (Un)Organized

Inspired by Keeley’s bold, all-pink office in Ted Lasso, Anne and I take a look at our own desk setups—and the systems we use (or fail to use) to keep our daily lives on track.

The Dream Setup: If you could design an office with zero constraints, what would it look like? I don’t even know! We’d love to hear yours!
Systems vs. Chaos: How do you actually remember to do what you need to do? From calendar alerts to pure luck, we discuss whether we adapt our schedules for the people around us—or expect the world to adapt to us. I think the situation I describe might be hopeless!

What Makes a “Good Podcast Hang”?

We spend time talking about the media we consume, so we broke down what keeps us coming back to our absolute favorite shows.

Here are some of our favorite shows:

Doughboys (Anne) Link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doughboys/id996151267
L is for Losers (Anne) Link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/l-is-for-losers-preview/id1580151789
Fluently Forward (Anne) Link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fluentlyforward/id1589952385
The Rewatchables (Bill) Link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rewatchables/id1268527882
Good Hang with Amy Poehler (Bill) Link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-hang-with-amy-poehler/id1795483480

Host Chemistry: Feeling like you’re sitting in a room with long-time friends.
Clever Angles: Top-5 lists, obscure movie deep dives, and unexpected debate topics.
The ‘Slice of Life’ Feel: Mini-narratives that balance humor with actually learning something new.

Ted Lasso S4E3: “Richmond’s Got Talent”

This week’s episode sparked a great debate on where we draw the line on story credulity:

What Worked: The emotional weight of the women’s team getting their own locker room, the rapid-fire pun density, and the callback to the shareholder report. Plus, the new coaching staff dynamic is officially clicking.
The Suspended Disbelief Problem: A D-II American football coach landing a Premier League job works great for comedy. But middle school girls sewing uniforms for a professional team? We debate where the line between “fun absurdism” and “too ridiculous” really lies.

What’s Next for Torg Stories?

If you’ve noticed our numbers fluctuating or wondered where the show is headed, we address it head-on in this episode.

Focusing on a single TV show every single week limits the kind of stories and discussion questions we can bring to you. Since we built this podcast on sharing what we’re reading and discovering together, we are returning to our core format starting next week!

Support the Podcast & What’s Coming Up Next:

(We are an Amazon Affiliate and purchases below help support the pod)

Grab a copy of my book Love on the Big Screen (currently just 99 cents!).
This is Anne’s go to protein bar.

Next Week: Anne and I will each be sharing 5 book recommendations, complete with quotes and questions meant to spark conversation. See you then!

Ted Lasso Season 4 and College Road Trip to University of Utah

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 2 titled “Curiouser and Curiouser!” inspires conversation about feminism, inequality in men’s and women’s sports, and we cover a road trip to take Izzy to college that spanned from Boone, NC to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 2 and Road Trip to University of Utah

What would you say was the “big news” of this episode?

Beard is back! Also, Beard was looking like Big Foot and something happened with him and Jane. What do you think? Chicago’s “You’re the Meaning in My Life Scene.”

Close-up portrait of a man with long, curly hair and a full beard, wearing a maroon baseball cap with the text 'KC Sines' Original'. — Coach Beard appears to have let himself go in Ted’s absence

Beard refers to himself as Mr. Gladstone as a movie reference to the 1967 classic film The Graduate, where it is the fake name used by Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) for clandestine hotel meetings.

Ted meets the players. I was pleasantly surprised!
The women got a new locker room!
Chilton decides to stay. Why do you think so?
What was Ted’s gift to her? Do you think we’ll ever find out?

Best line/s:

For a sport that asks you to be light on your feet, women’s football sure does seem to have a lot of weight around it.
On couples on the team: Ted: You don’t get a lot of that in men’s football. Chilton: Not that you know of.
I think keeping people apart who belong together is bad for everybody. -Keeley about Beard to Roy
What’s the point in life if you’re not feeling? – the goalie who didn’t wear gloves, who doesn’t take novocaine at the dentist
You can polish a turd but all you are left with is a rag that smells like dookie.

What are themes you see this season dealing with?

Feminism

Do you fault Rebecca for not interviewing any women for the head coaching position?
bell hooks work introduced
Chilton challenges Rebecca
Rebecca’s mom hopes she isn’t a feminist
Title IX: Title IX states “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance[.]” All federal agencies that provide grants of financial assistance are required to enforce Title IX’s nondiscrimination mandate.

Stigma from men to other men about coaching girls
Analytics with origin stories
ACL injuries:

Females injure ACL about 3.5 times more than males in basketball. In hs girls soccer, there are 13.3 tears per 100,000 athletes vs. 4.9 in boys.
Athletes who suffer an ACL injury are 15x more likely to tear one of them again as athletes who have never torn one.
In my 6 years at Watauga I can remember four players who tore ACLs and two of those tore theirs 2x.

As the episode wrapped, what questions do you have about what is coming up? What has you interested?

What new characters stood out to you?

Caroline Seaward the physiologist
Tanya Reynolds as Coach Alice Chilton

From the LA Times: A week after sending in the tape, “Ted Lasso” co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis asked Reynolds to hop on a Zoom call. “I assumed it was part of the audition process,” she says. “We had a chat and then at the end he was like, ‘Well, we’d love you to do it if you want.’ I went away and watched all three seasons, and I loved it. It’s the kind of telly I seek — light and soft and heartwarming and optimistic.”
Sudeikis wouldn’t give her any scripts. He did tell her the character arc and he said he hadn’t done that before.
Standing up to Hannah Waddington / Rebecca: “I remember filming that scene and trying to be intimidating to Hannah Waddingham,” Reynolds says. “I was looking up at her and trying to square my shoulders and feeling like a worm in a tracksuit. I was trying so hard to be tough and to be a bulldog. And Alice is trying to be tough and taken seriously, but actually she’s wobbly, like I was.”
Click here for the LA Times article on Tanya Reynolds.

Goalie who doesn’t wear gloves

Craft Observations:

We hear an episode before we see it. This time we heard an Elton John song.
Rhetorical device of “This Morning” television show. (think it’s a real show)

bell hooks quotes:

It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism’, to focus on the fact that to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression. – Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, 1981
All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity. – Killing Rage: Ending Racism, 1995
The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible. – Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, 2012

Road Trip to Salt Lake City to take My Daughter Izzy to College

University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Road Trip, Vedauwoo, Lake Marie, 130, Mirror Lake, dorms — from Boone, NC to Salt Lake City, UT

On Izzy’s leaving:

18 years. Every minute of 5 days and then she’s gone.
Most of what made Izzy’s room hers is not in there. It looks empty an plain.
That room, in that building, on that campus, in that city is a really exciting and fun moment for her.
Very proud of who she has become that she wants to go away on this adventure by herself.

Impressions of University of Utah:

Modern lodge feel to the campus. 1400 people in her residence hall. Has a food court, recreation areas, a computer lab, sophisticated Amazon delivery, and lots of meeting spaces.
Izzy is within a mile of her classrooms, library, pool, arena, and football stadium.
The amount of money that goes into keeping the campus looking like that.
Light rail right outside the residence hall that goes downtown and one train change to the airport.
Clean and safe city.
Mountains surround the whole campus.

Some of the most memorable sights:

The University of Missouri felt like IU, UNC, and UK to me.
Bleakness of Western Nebraska. Sandy flat ground with scrub brush.
Vedauwoo climbing area 30 minutes west of Cheyenne.
Snowy Range Scenic Byway / 130 West of Cheyenne: Mirror Lake and Lake Marie (I think winner of most beautiful spot I saw on the trip)
Snowbird
Terrain went from super light brown sandy mountains, to Grand Canyon Looking, to Red Rocks, to the Rocky Mountains of Glennsprings and Vail.
Glennsprings, casual fun, huge mineral pools, ride to the top of the mountain to amusement park to activities on the river.
Vail’s closed alpine looking streets.

I have some complaints:

Poison ivy, midnight bedtimes and 6 am wake ups, driving most of the day, sleeping in strange beds, 6 out of 7 days packing and then unpacking my suitcase each day

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Category: Torg Life

10 Books We Want to Read

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From the Hospital to the Rehab Facility

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A Little Bit Better on the Emotional Front

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