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Apr. 19th, 2014 09:24 pmCan't remember if I said it when I first reviewed Austenland, but the movie really brings out the inherent creepiness of the fact that this is a brothel. It's pointed out in the book that despite all of the official talk about authenticity it's actually quite flimsy just behind the scenes, but the visuals make it even clearer that the whole premise of "live in the Regency/a Jane Austen novel" is just a screen for the fact that she invites rich women to spend a lot of money to be paired with a man who is paid to pretend to love them, eg. emotional prostitution. It skeeves me out so much that even not very far into the book I was noping right out of the concept.
Mom and I drove down to Ron's family farm down in Delhi yesterday after lunch, and had dinner with his parents before they left to go to ... Florida? I'm not sure. It's always an interesting experience to come down here. For one thing, I've lived in a very rural area for most of my life, but never on a farm. I know that farming is very hard daily work, that farms are dirty, FFA and 4H, etc. but it's different to experience ... okay, not experience, there's an understanding that I've come because I need to see Ron's parents every once in a while and we're staying here to go see Gramma afterward, and therefore I'm not expected to do farm work. (Also, my arm is in a brace.) But it's different to be with people who are spending all day working on the farm.
But the other thing is frustrating. Ron's parents never really wanted to run the farm, or the apartments attached to it (in the 30s-40s-50s, it was a pretty successful boarding house, especially for summer visitors - now they're full apartments), and so they've really let them go. They charge 1970s prices and the rooms haven't been done since the 1970s either, so the tenants don't respect them and treat the shitty rooms like shit. There's a no pets rule, but when someone is coming and says they have a cat, they allow it, so the larger building stinks of cat pee. (It makes me nostalgic for the city!) They don't charge tenants for heat, so it gets cranked up and they end up paying more than they get in rent. Right now, Mom and Ron are living in the upper floor of the smaller building and renovating the lower floor. They said the walls and ceiling of the bathroom were totally brown with cigarette residue. It's pretty awful, and the downstairs was just as bad if not worse. (Mainly what I remember are the hole in and scribbles on the wall, the chemically fogged-up window, and the folding plastic doors.)
They need to jack up the rents and fix up the whole place so that those new rents are appropriate, but they're not really interested in it and Ron can't convince them because they don't want to basically kick the people out, even though half the reason the apartments are terrible is because the people who live in them let their cats run wild and stick things in the walls and so on.
But a calf was born today! It's pretty adorable, I'm glad I saw it.
Mom and I drove down to Ron's family farm down in Delhi yesterday after lunch, and had dinner with his parents before they left to go to ... Florida? I'm not sure. It's always an interesting experience to come down here. For one thing, I've lived in a very rural area for most of my life, but never on a farm. I know that farming is very hard daily work, that farms are dirty, FFA and 4H, etc. but it's different to experience ... okay, not experience, there's an understanding that I've come because I need to see Ron's parents every once in a while and we're staying here to go see Gramma afterward, and therefore I'm not expected to do farm work. (Also, my arm is in a brace.) But it's different to be with people who are spending all day working on the farm.
But the other thing is frustrating. Ron's parents never really wanted to run the farm, or the apartments attached to it (in the 30s-40s-50s, it was a pretty successful boarding house, especially for summer visitors - now they're full apartments), and so they've really let them go. They charge 1970s prices and the rooms haven't been done since the 1970s either, so the tenants don't respect them and treat the shitty rooms like shit. There's a no pets rule, but when someone is coming and says they have a cat, they allow it, so the larger building stinks of cat pee. (It makes me nostalgic for the city!) They don't charge tenants for heat, so it gets cranked up and they end up paying more than they get in rent. Right now, Mom and Ron are living in the upper floor of the smaller building and renovating the lower floor. They said the walls and ceiling of the bathroom were totally brown with cigarette residue. It's pretty awful, and the downstairs was just as bad if not worse. (Mainly what I remember are the hole in and scribbles on the wall, the chemically fogged-up window, and the folding plastic doors.)
They need to jack up the rents and fix up the whole place so that those new rents are appropriate, but they're not really interested in it and Ron can't convince them because they don't want to basically kick the people out, even though half the reason the apartments are terrible is because the people who live in them let their cats run wild and stick things in the walls and so on.
But a calf was born today! It's pretty adorable, I'm glad I saw it.
