The Week in Review

In case you missed it, here’s what was on the blog this week.

• Monday, August 28: I recently wrote two big, serious posts: One about sexism and one about racism.
• Wednesday, August 30: On YouTube, I spoke about my love for Debbie Harry while educating folks about designer Stephen Sprouse and the origins of rap music. Yes, all those things are connected.

• Thursday,  August 31: One of my vintage Stephen Sprouse skirts.
• Friday, September 1: My other vintage Stephen Sprouse skirt.
• Saturday, September 2: Congratulations to newlyweds Eryn and Donnie!

On my business Instagram, I was looking either a tad jaded …

… or much too excited.

I need to settle on a happy medium one of these days.

On my personal Instagram, I had a good time creating collages of the many times I’ve worn my pink Stephen Sprouse skirt.

Click to view on Instagram.

There was no better moment to learn via Twitter that Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has worn the same sweater for 30 years.

Hamill tweeted back!

Now it’s time to catch up on some other pop-culture odds and ends.

Before Taylor Swift’s video for “Look What You Made Me Do” came out last week, it was teased with a scene that was so reminiscent of Beyoncé’s “Formation” that people wondered if the whole thing was going to be a straight-up Bey knockoff. It wasn’t. It’s more of a mix: A few seconds of “Formation,” a bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a dash of something from Rihanna’s wardrobe, a hint of Lady Gaga, a splash of Britney Spears, and a bunch of moves from a 1980s Jane Fonda workout tape. The end of the video, where all of Taylor’s previous video personae (plus the new snake-lady Taylor) stood around and sniped at each other, made me laugh for a moment. Most of the Taylors comment on Taylor’s reputation (“You can’t possibly be that surprised all the time.””There she goes playing the victim, again.”), while Snake Taylor hisses. But then the scene went on too long. I mean, anything more than a couple of seconds was going to be too long. I felt like I was watching a chicken-fight scene from Family Guy.

Instead of feeling like Swift was in on the joke, I wound up thinking, “Wow, you’re really sure you’re the center of the universe, aren’t you?” Though why shouldn’t she feel that way? When your video for a mediocre, creepy song has the biggest debut of any video in YouTube’s history — 43.2 million views in 24 hours — it might be natural to believe you’re the sun, the moon, and the stars.

In the same post in which I wrote about the Taylor Swift video, I wrote about Game of Thrones. Then I watched the Season 7 finale. The showrunners sure have the story moving at lightspeed. Remember the good old days of Season 3, when we lingered over Ramsay Bolton flaying the skin off Theon Greyjoy for multiple episodes? Now journeys that used to take whole seasons for one person are made in a flash by entire armies. When it comes to travel logistics, I know some diehard show fans are like, “It’s fantasy! Suspend disbelief!” but I need to assign my suspended disbelief to important things like dragons, ice zombies, and this javelin throw by the Night King.

A laughable time frame and a plot that doesn’t make sense isn’t on my suspended-disbelief list.

As for the finale episode in particular, re-watch that and tell me when Cersei and Euron could have arranged for him to pretend to abandon her cause after seeing a White Walker, and instead embark upon a long ocean crossing in order to pick up a giant army. The Lannister side didn’t even know it was going to see a White Walker! (Plus Cersei didn’t believe stories about the walking dead. She could believe in dragons, winters that last for years, and incest, but walking dead? That’s taking it too far.) Is there a deleted scene somewhere where Cersei told Euron, “Whatever they say, use it as an excuse to walk out and get the army. Don’t forget to sexually harass Daenerys Targaryen on the way out.” I don’t think Euron is smart enough to ad lib like that.

Why did they need the White Walker to convince Cersei anyway? It was such a long shot and the effort to catch one in the previous episode was ridiculous from the start. After making a big deal about nabbing the dragon glass from Daenerys, the always-unknowing Jon Snow seemed to have packed light on the stuff. How long were they facing off with the dead on the ice anyway? Well, long enough for one guy to freeze to death while others didn’t consistently wear hats or hoods. Damn, Luke Skywalker got packed into a smelly, dead Tauntaun in similar weather in the Empire Strikes Back.

Having seen the Night King raise the dead, and the zombie horses, and a zombie bear, you’d expect Jon Snow would have lost his damn mind over the fact that they got a dragon killed during this dumb quest. Obviously a dead dragon could be used against them. Oh wait! He, like the audience, probably didn’t know that the White Walkers would get massive chains out of nowhere in order to pull the dead dragon out of the water. Also, as we were reminded in the finale, White Walkers don’t swim so how would they get the chains on the dragon? Maybe Jon Snow was counting on this:

Whatever Jon Snow knew or didn’t know is clearly beside the point which was that HBO had budgeted for the spectacular scene where the zombie dragon takes down the eons-old wall. If it took swimming White Walkers and mystery chains to get to that scene, so be it.

Meanwhile, I hope and pray that Tyrion has been working on betraying Daenerys; otherwise he’s suddenly become very stupid. All of his plans for defeating the Lannisters — his own family, who he knows better than anyone — have been so easily thwarted. When even Jaime gets the best of you, you need to rethink your strategy. Tyrion’s side gambled the well-being of the whole continent on the off-chance that a single captured monster would make a Big Bad like Cersei do the “right” thing. Big Bads thrive on chaos and destruction. Look at real life. People have been screaming about climate change for decades, the 100-year and 500-year storms are multiplying, people are drowning in their homes, and we’re rolling back environmental protections based on the greed of a few, assisted by the racism of the many. In fact, Congress wants to cut money for disaster recovery in order to build a wall that we provably don’t need. My conclusion is that evil people are evil, always. Show them something scary, and they’ll have an evil response, not a righteous one. Get it together, Tyrion! And Congress: You need to get it together too.