Happy Weekend, RVA: Hope you like crowds!

There’s one trillion people in between you and your favorite brunch spot this weekend. Best of luck to you!

March 28, 2015; 6:33 AM • by Susan Howson

It’ll be iffy this weekend. I mean, the weather will be–40s and 50s and clouds and sun. What will NOT be iffy is that the city is mobbed with runners and French Film Festivalers (some of whom are ACTUAL FRENCH PEOPLE!). This is not a joke: when picking up my pass on Thursday at the Byrd, a guy walked by on the sidewalk with a shopping bag that had two baguettes sticking out of it. I made a sound that was so excited and amused that it ended up coming out like a weird growl, and all of the beautiful French people around me sighed in unison. Americans. Apparel translation: bleu, blanc, rouge.

In case you missed it

We began TIPS! this week, which’ll be a daily thing that I hope is as much fun to read as it is to write. Said with genuine enthusiasm, please do submit any tips you might have via the form on any TIP! page. We also recommend shouting “TIPS!” every time you talk about them, like we do at the office.

Our Earth Day Guide kicked off this week also, and will be running through Earth Day itself (April 22nd). We have a lot of good stuff lined up for it, and will be extending said theme through a lot of our other content as well. “Earth, it’s where we live in,” as my toddler says.

This guide to the FFF will help you figure out which films you want to go see. I keep using it myself and saying “Hey, thanks, guy,” to myself every time I open it on my phone. Some of us run 10ks, others of us ruin our eyeballs with late-night French-film googling and typing and reading IMDB.

I was fascinated by this piece by Stephanie Ganz (we’ll have more of Josiah Lockhart next week) and I was also fascinated by Stephanie Ganz herself.

And, of course, Kelly Gerow makes many jokes while also delivering useful information.

I don’t know, there’s truly too much good stuff this week, I’m overwhelmed.

Reasons to stay in bed

Oh, my goodness, everyone. Oh, my goodness.

I went to this event at Hermitage High and watched the movie, which I think was supposed to inspire me (and it did, in that there were many teenagers there, learning things they needed to learn), but mostly it made me feel like nothing will ever change and women will always be hated.
And then the next day I saw THIS. I just opened the paper and there it was!¹
And it didn’t end there! I just…don’t know what to do about human beings.
At least there’s some good news! NOPE, JK.

Reasons to get up

All is not lost, though!

I am very inspired by Andy Wichorek to turn my garden into a Virginian paradise.
And I am going to use this amazingly helpful Buzzfeed roundup to guide me. (My mother will also guide me.)
Not that this will help anything, because we are all truly screwed. Ugh, sorry, I circled this back to bad news. I CANNOT HELP THAT THERE IS SO MUCH OF IT!

Off to see a thousand French films. Good luck, runners!

Photo by: Erin Soorenko

This was not actually in a paper. It was on the internet. Don’t get confused, people who weren’t around in the 80s to see this one Circuit City commercial I’m referencing. ↩