Peter's Place

It's not often that I write movie or book reviews, and for good reason: I struggle to come up with meaningful insight that portrays the essence of the medium, and my thoughts and feelings about it, without giving away any spoilers. I was asked to review a new, independent film made by friends of a friend, and I reluctantly agreed. It has taken me over two weeks to put my thoughts together because I honestly didn't know where to start. The film completely blew me away, in pretty much every aspect. There is just so much I want to say about it ... but I found it difficult to start because I didn't know which of the myriad thoughts floating around in my mind should be brought up first. I also worried about how I could do justice to such an important work of art that does what all great artistic masterpieces do best: provoke and trigger public discourse. To review the film, I was given a private link where it is hosted on a password-protected server—and no, I'm not giv...

Yaaaaaaaaasssssssssss!!!!!!!! Down with gender-based stereotypes; there's no reason to have labels such as "Girls' Toys" and "Boys' Toys" There's long been a reason I've much preferred Target over Walmart as the "big box discount store." Descriptive labels such as "Dolls" or "Toy Cars" and "Stuffed Aminiminals" not only alleviate some of the anxiety and pressure kids face to fit into antiquated gender roles but are so much more helpful to the shopper! Adults often force certain toys on kids based on perceived gender stereotypes. I played with dolls as a child, as well as trucks and cars, as did my sister. We played with each other's toys and we never thought anything wrong with or bad about that. Thankfully, our grandparents understood we were playing together as brother and sister, and there wasn't anything wrong with my playing house just as there wasn't anything wrong with my sister p...