Whitney FI’s Reviews > Beautyland > Status Update

Every time Adina brings up that ET was the first movie she saw in the theater I think, “me too!” Then she tells her boyfriend and he’s like, “It was everybody our age’s first film in a theater.” And I was like, “Oh.”

The flight attendant’s voice startles her. He has returned to crouch beside her. “After reaching cruising altitude,” he says, “nothing can force a plane out of the sky. So what are you afraid of? Wind or engine failure?” “Staying the same forever,” she says. “And wind.”

Human beings, Adina faxes, did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters. A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track. Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their days off.

When it was time to decide the official food of movie-watching, human beings did not go for Fig Newtons or caramel, foods that are silent, but popcorn, the loudest sound on Earth.

There is no reason to have a swing. This makes the swing an anomaly because in addition to its intended purpose every object in the apartment must also function in two or three other ways. Everything repurposed, everything salvaged. Even she, the child, was meant to fulfill several things at once: to be silent, useful, hardworking, a credit to her father.