All posts tagged: Bell

Dennis Haskins dead: Actor known for ‘Saved by the Bell’ was 75

Dennis Haskins dead: Actor known for ‘Saved by the Bell’ was 75

Published by Sam Flores

Dennis Haskins, an actor known best for playing Principal Richard Belding on the 1990s high school sitcom “Saved by the Bell,” died on Sunday night. He was 75. Haskins’ friend and longtime caretaker, Kimberly Snow, confirmed the actor’s death. A cause of death is unknown, but Haskins had quietly battled Parkinson’s disease and was candid about other health issues. According to Snow, the actor died around 11 p.m. in a Burbank assisted living facility. Snow, a former manager of Burbank’s since-shuttered Dimples Karaoke, shared the news of the actor’s death on Instagram, writing that Haskins was a staple at the joint, so much so that many of the patrons thought he owned it. “A lot of people thought he owned it, but he didn’t,” the tribute read. “He just loved the place and its people. He enjoyed singing for people, meeting them, and taking selfies with his fans. Dimples closed down about 11 years ago, and people still associate him with his beloved ‘second home.’ He was known to most as Mr. Belding from Saved …

Woodstock, Lilith Fair, and Taco Bell Rolled Into One

Woodstock, Lilith Fair, and Taco Bell Rolled Into One

Published by Sam Flores

Early Saturday afternoon at the Daisy Chain Fields festival, in Irvine, California, the 25-year-old singer Eli twirled in a tank top emblazoned with a cartoon guitar while singing songs whose plasticky violins recalled the kind of music played on the Disney Channel in 2004. Dancers waved poles with dresses attached to them as if they were flags. She took out her phone, whose case was shaped like a cute bear, and read some thoughts she’d jotted down. “This journal entry is to show you my fundamental belief that we must redistribute wealth,” she said. “We must love our neighbors no matter what they believe or don’t. We must unite with each other and radicalize. Eat the identity politics that deceive and divide us all, as well as”—here she broke into a ragged moan—“eating the rich!” Eli is a campy artist of questionable earnestness, but her statement was in line with the mood of Daisy Chain—a place where girlish aesthetics that are so often seen as frivolous could accompany calls for revolution. Organized by the 23-year-old …

Kristen Bell, Stoicism, and People-Pleasing

Kristen Bell, Stoicism, and People-Pleasing

Published by Jenni Sidey

At a recent leadership summit, thoughtful actor Kristen Bell was interviewed by psychologist Adam Grant. The topic was people-pleasing. Bell describes herself as a people pleaser, hypervigilant about how other people are feeling and wanting to contribute to their feeling better. It can feel pretty terrible to be a people pleaser. Bell offers an example by acting out a scenario where she cannot get herself to explain that she wants a second coffee but without two creams. She cannot get the words out because she feels so bad about how it will come across. Because Bell is so charming, her experience is especially revealing. A people-pleasing attitude can interfere with even the most socially skilled person’s ability to voice a simple preference. What is behind this? Grant and Bell analyze the phenomenon together. What is people-pleasing really about? Bell explains how much she has thought about people-pleasing. She has begun to notice the energy wasted by it and how it only leads to pointless non-interactions with others. She has been considering whether she knows what …

But, Is She (bell hooks) a Philosopher?

But, Is She (bell hooks) a Philosopher?

Published by Jenni Sidey

This essay draws inspiration from the various traditions of Black feminist philosophy, in particular the works of bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins. Collins and hooks, respectively, write about how being situated at the margin(s) for Black women is not simply a site of deprivation; margin(s) can also be sites of radical possibility, places from which one can see both/and the center and the periphery in ways unavailable to those whose positionality places them at the center alone. As a Black woman professional philosopher, my experiences within the profession and discipline have been neatly situated at the margin(s): often (un)seen, (mis)categorized, (under/de)valued, sexualized, minoritized, Other(ed), and and and…in ways that reveal the discipline’s and professions intramural investments in whiteness and maleness as (pre)requisites for philosophical legitimacy. These experiences, represented as “rememory” to borrow from Toni Morrison’s theorization in Beloved, are not mine alone; they highlight a broader pattern that shapes Black women’s lives across various contexts and geographies characterized by “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” as hooks frames it. Conference (mis)recognition, rememory one: The elevator …

Drawn to the Void | Julian Bell

Drawn to the Void | Julian Bell

Published by Jenni Sidey

Before there were balloons made of rubber, there were bladders. You tied up one of the exits of the sac of elastic membrane extracted from the butchered pig, you poked a straw in the other, and you blew. The inflated globe was light and buoyant. If clad with leather, it became a ball to kick. Whether passed between hands or feet, it drew players together, a magnet for their eyes and energies. And we welcome what draws us together. Or do we curse it? Why do people team up around an emptiness, so much spent breath? All too easily it maddens them. Authorities have forever linked soccer with the misrule of the mob: What bounces is at best frivolous, at worst dangerous. Two boys tussling over a bladder in a three-foot-high canvas painted by Joseph Wright of Derby in the late 1760s snarl up in a whirlpool of pain, each twisting the other’s right ear. Their struggle has upturned the tabletop candle that illuminates the scene and any moment will surely extinguish it, effacing the …