The TueDo List: Yoga for Writers, the Echo and Dude Flicks You’ll Dig

By Laurie White

The first ever selfie, Yoga for Writers and Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler

This week’s issue was all about—and mostly by—men. There are lots of things to do this weekend made by or featuring guys that we can all enjoy. So have at it, ladies and gents. And whatever men you happen to hang out with this weekend, may they be of the enlightened variety (and even more so after they hang out with you.)

Yoga—for Writers

I love San Francisco, and nothing makes me want to book a last minute ticket from DC (you know, if I were a millionaire) than Chronicle columnist Mark Morford’s Yoga for Writers class at Yoga Tree on Sunday from 1:15-4:15.

“One part hotly energized yoga class, one part fearless creative writing workshop, taking turns with each, blurring the edges of both. What will emerge? How will your voice change? Can a good backbend scandalize your boring syntax?” Oh yeah. Mark promises dynamic asana sequences interspersed with bursts of creative writing exercises, and the opportunity to fulfill the dream I didn’t know I had of showing up to yoga with a fully charged laptop or a notebook, a mat and a towel. Plus it’s only $45 for three hours that sound way cheaper than, and my kind of, therapy.

The Internet of Things: Echo

The coolness of Amazon’s brand new gadget Echo has nothing to do with gender, so I say I’ll pick one of these up for the men in my life this holiday, but only if they pick one up for me. Echo is like a Siri for your house. Say the “wake word” “Alexa” to it, and it tells you what you want to know—including weather, events, news, directions and general facts. You can probably even tell it your problems, which I’ll admit I’ve tried with Siri, with some hilarious results. Echo is also a high-quality Bluetooth speaker, and it’s connected to the cloud, so it’s always learning. It’s almost like you don’t need a person around at all anymore. (What?)

Echo is available by invitation only right now, and I have no idea how tricky it is to get one, but I hope not too very tricky, because I want it. Now. ($199, $99 for Amazon Prime members for a limited time.)

Photos—and Fotoweek

It turns out that the first selfie ever was a daguerreotype taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839. It’s possible that there may be some more in the collections during FotoWeekDC, starting tomorrow and running through November 16. There are so many events for photographers and photo-lovers it’s difficult to keep track, but the National Geographic #YourShot photo meetup and walk through various neighborhoods in DC sounds pretty great, as does the Portraiture: Staging Yourself exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. There are plenty of goodies online, too—including the Curator’s Picks.

Dude Flicks

Is the opposite of a chick flick a dude flick? Because it’s mostly about the men at the box office this weekend. The Theory of Everything—the story of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane Wilde—features Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as the couple, and I’m interested enough in their portrayals to ignore reviews that say the movie misses the scientific accuracy mark. Big Hero 6—featuring a boy and his robot solving a mystery on the streets of San Fransokyo—is also on deck for Marvel comics fans. Interstellar follows astronaut-of-the-future Matthew McConnaughey and his colleagues as they traveling through a wormhole and out of this solar system. I’m most excited about the promising buzz for Nightcrawler, featuring Jake Gyllenhall as a creepily opportunistic paparazzi for other people’s tragedies. (Sign me up –for watching him, anyway.)

If you’re hanging out at home, your dude-centered film access will not suffer, as Batman and Batman Returns — with Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader — debuted for streaming on Netflix US this week, along with Good Will Hunting and Stand By Me- — two great films about very different kinds of male friendships.

Originally Published November 7, 2014. Updated April 5, 2021.