Following is a list, by no means complete, of erroneous opinions, reconsidered thoughts, and retracted statements belonging to yours truly:
- Carbohydrates. They are delicious. Paleo works like a top to keep me lithe(ish) and supple(ish), but there is just no substitute for tortellini with pesto.
- Dungeons and Dragons-themed games. Specifically, Lords of Waterdeep, which is fun and easy to play, and has a level of mystical nerdiness that's still accessible if you don't happen to be a middle-school dork.
- How I Met Your Mother. That show, along with Friends, has aged horribly. It's sexist, transphobic, misogynist, commitment-phobic, and worst of all, it gave the world Barney Stinson. I'm sure that Neil Patrick Harris is a peach IRL, but Barney Stinson was a woman-loathing manchild Lothario in a nice suit. (It should be noted that Ted Mosby also sucked, but in a completely different way.) I hate that, for a while in the mid-2000s, Barney Stinson became a cultural touchstone, and that I was initially sucked in by this show.
- Los Angeles is hot, sunny, easy to navigate, attractive, and has great food trucks. I think too much early exposure to Woody Allen had convinced me otherwise.
- Woody Allen in general, come to think of it.
- I stand by my opinion that space colonization is morally wrong (I'll get into it someday, but basically: we're not entitled to any damn planet we can get our grubby hands on; we have no way of knowing if our presence on another planet would be devastating to another species [or devastate the conditions that would allow another species to grow and evolve]; and the money, time and resources that we put into getting to and terraforming another planet would be much better spent on earth, for things like alternative energies, birth control, and hunger relief), but I will admit that seeing Pluto was pretty cool. If it's possible to be for space exploration and against space colonization, I choose that.
- Though I can't watch Hannibal because it gives me the fear-barfs, the show is beautifully shot and artfully produced. The odd episode that I've seen since I swore it off after season one has been gorgeous, and its insistence on both tactile glamour and Carrie-levels of gore is super weird for a prime-time network show. And honestly, it's only gotten more baroque and insane as the seasons went on, which made it the perfect counter-balance to all the by-the-book crime dramas that seem to run for hundreds of thousands of seasons. To all the people who embraced Hannibal with their whole, sick hearts: I'm sorry for your loss.
- People who say "we're pregnant" aren't total monsters, probably.
- The second season of True Detective is just not living up to its potential. (Insert "disappointed high school vice-principal sigh" here.) I miss Cary Fukunaga! I miss Woody Harrelson! I'm glad Rachel McAdams is there, and that Bird-Mask is around, because they seem fun. But good goddamn, I do not care at all about Taylor Kitsch's 1980s-era cartoon tortured-gay-guy character, and Colin Farell leaves me cold, and without Woody Harrelson around as an eye-rolling audience proxy, Nic Pizzolatto's the-world-is-a-vampire schtick, delivered this season from Vince Vaughan's unconvincing maw, reveals itself to be grating and pretentious. I believe that this season can turn it around; I don't thing it'll live up to the art of season one, and I think the potential to develop it into something truly cool—which, on paper, with the gangsters and the high-speed trains and LA's seedy underbelly and the promise of the occult, it definitely had—is rapidly running out of time.
- Chicken hearts. When you grill them, they're like tiny hot dogs. Who doesn't want tiny hot dogs?
- The mesh shirt that I bought from Value Village as a joke, which I never thought I would wear out of the house, which has been a godsend to me on hot days, and which has forced me to confront and celebrate my body—which, despite its flaws, I find myself being amazed by. Through the mesh. Through the raver-adjacent, too-young-for-me, inappropriate-everywhere mesh. I love this stupid mesh shirt.
