this past sunday was, i realized, the first day on which i've seen every member of my immediate family in 14 years (when my sister got married in san francisco). we weren't all in the same place: i woke up at my mother's house, went down to tiburon with that sister for my cousin's celebration of life (and we saw our father and other sister), then swooped back up to mom's. that's...better, honestly; i don't know that there's much to be gained by rounding all of us up, though it would be wonderful to have to consider it when, say, my niece or one of my nephews gets married one day. my niece, speaking of, asked at dinner the other night if we thought the robot apocalypse was nigh, and what did we think the world would be like in 30 years? she's latched onto the idea that the ozone layer repairing itself means that ecological disaster isn't nigh, and her mother does not wish to disabuse her of that notion. her father offered that he thinks there won't be any cars, and i predicted that humans would clot in denser living arrangements and free up more contiguous green space. i also more or less admitted that i expect her to grow up into a postapocalyptic warrior-chieftain who rules gently-parented peon-followers with an iron fist, which she seemed to take in stride; she noted that she thinks she's ready to see the terminator, and i warned her that she's going to have to deal with arnold schwarzenegger's bare ass if so. i guess that if a macho 11-year-old girl is going to experience an ass, that one is relatively benign?
on apocalypses, we saw m3gan 2.0 last night and i was prepared to be disappointed after learning that, as in terminator 2, the titular killer robot is repurposed to defend the very fleshbags it was once intent on annihilating. i'd forgotten how much i enjoy allison williams's unexpectedly-legit comic delivery, and kate bush is deployed delightfully. i'm not all that interested in talking about AI, but that was a pleasant riff on the end times.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
01.01.25
2025: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
i sprayed rubbing alcohol on a tree.
i cut the sleeves and hem off of a tee shirt.
i ran five miles.
i texted my college roommates.
i refilled my water bottle.
i sang to the cats.
i set an alarm for 6:45 pm.
i sent an email to myself.
i rinsed out a plastic container.
i watched death bed: the bed that eats.
i sprayed rubbing alcohol on a tree.
i cut the sleeves and hem off of a tee shirt.
i ran five miles.
i texted my college roommates.
i refilled my water bottle.
i sang to the cats.
i set an alarm for 6:45 pm.
i sent an email to myself.
i rinsed out a plastic container.
i watched death bed: the bed that eats.
05.25.24 [on the F train]
i was thinking as i shuffled down east broadway this morning that maybe apocalypse movies (and horror?) are my versions of Soothing Media à la cozy mysteries, or when someone is murdered in a bucolic oxfordshire village and the townsfolk (and a key outsider??) have to jump into their cardigans and figure it all out over digestive biscuits. that is probably a pseudo-insight i unthinkingly took in from an old new yorker piece about how YA readers love disaster books because adolescence is a disaster anyway, i don't know. there's a silver lining in my near-total inability to get through my magazine stack lately: no more wondering if, "maybe she's born with it/ maybe it's david remnick!" anyway we saw the furiosa prequel last night and i thought it was pretty wonderful. having gotten a taste of eco- and psychological australian devastation on my trip to tasmania a few years ago i get george miller a lot more than i did when fury road—which i might in fact have only mostly seen—came out back in 2015. the end of the world almost always boils down to resource wars unless you're emily st. john mandel, but miller really makes that cabbage feel precious, to say nothing of the gasoline. i loved the first chase scene and how each suddenly-available motorcycle got scavanged mid-pursuit—i mean, obviously, but i bet NASCAR pit crews love the mad max family of products. i personally would favor them for the hair and makeup alone, but throw in attacking paragliders and the fact that gender inequality and sexual violence inform the story in a way that doesn't devolve into mere titillation or shock and well done, australia. also i was yesterday years old when i realized tina turner was singing "all we want is life beyond thunderdome" in "we don't need another hero" (i thought it was "all we want is to be young"? listen, i haven't seen that movie).
on cozy mysteries, i just finished both my name is barbra—which kept going so ferociously that i was half-sure gnomes were sneaking to my bedside and writing more of it each night and read like emily dickinson journaling between bong rips, definitely no ghostwriter there—and the hunter, an actual mystery i failed to realize was a sequel to another tana french book about mysterious death in remote small-town ireland. that's fine re: the hunter, one reads tana french for vibes and emotional pointillism rather than for jaw-dropping reveals, and it'll probably be at least a few years before i remember to go back and read the book that came before it.
barbra was more like broadway pointillism, which increased my understanding of show tunes and how one arranges and phrases them by about 5000% (i have never seen funny girl or gypsy, much less i can get it for you wholesale). i read it because i love memoirs, and because i wanted to dig around in barbra's account of the perfectionism that has made her so notorious, and becuase i wanted to know more about why she cloned her dogs and has a personal ice ream shop in her basement. i can't say i know much more about the dogs or the basement, but it does seem like she gets savaged for working practices that would be fairly unremarkable for male directors. she's pretty shameless about being late all the time, which is unfortunate in the context of what she asks of other people, but i am also late all the time and i don't have a presidential medal of freedom.
on cozy mysteries, i just finished both my name is barbra—which kept going so ferociously that i was half-sure gnomes were sneaking to my bedside and writing more of it each night and read like emily dickinson journaling between bong rips, definitely no ghostwriter there—and the hunter, an actual mystery i failed to realize was a sequel to another tana french book about mysterious death in remote small-town ireland. that's fine re: the hunter, one reads tana french for vibes and emotional pointillism rather than for jaw-dropping reveals, and it'll probably be at least a few years before i remember to go back and read the book that came before it.
barbra was more like broadway pointillism, which increased my understanding of show tunes and how one arranges and phrases them by about 5000% (i have never seen funny girl or gypsy, much less i can get it for you wholesale). i read it because i love memoirs, and because i wanted to dig around in barbra's account of the perfectionism that has made her so notorious, and becuase i wanted to know more about why she cloned her dogs and has a personal ice ream shop in her basement. i can't say i know much more about the dogs or the basement, but it does seem like she gets savaged for working practices that would be fairly unremarkable for male directors. she's pretty shameless about being late all the time, which is unfortunate in the context of what she asks of other people, but i am also late all the time and i don't have a presidential medal of freedom.
12.23.23 [on the F train]
it is too early to make good decisions! the anti-abortion extremists who harass patients outside the far-flung clinic to which i am en route would never yell something like that and i'm not about to suggest it, but–they wouldn't be incorrect? i nearly grabbed the wrong train just now as i was congratulating myself for waking up without my alarm for this morning's escorting shift. of course, i'll never rise naturally because birdsong summons and the sun warms my bones or whatever; worry is the only thing that gets me up without assistance. i don't mind that so much, as it sort of means that the worst moments of my day are inevitably the very first ones. once i know i won't sleep late i can pose for the river with the cats and contemplate late-stage capitalism with my microwaved day-old coffee. we are staying put for the holidays as we usually do, and it's even lower-impact than in previous years: we'll go out to a movie on christmas eve but aren't doing one of the fancy dinners i invariably hate. i still haven't figured out how to strike a balance between joe's interest in complicated-food-and-drink-related celebration and mine in comparative frugality (in that context, at least) and temperance, but i hope we're getting better at meeting each other halfway.
i didn't think i was going to have much free time here at the end of the year, but work is mostly done? i have to turn in a revised draft of my MUSHROOMS IN SPACE! essay back in over the first week of january, but it feels like the tweaks my editor and i talked about aren't going to break my head. i'm hemming and hawing over what my next passion projects (or at least the ones that i pitch instead of just accepting) will be and...meh? it was humbling to eat it with my first new yorker humor submission, though my dad made a valiant attempt to console me with the repeated story of how some friend of his has submitted hundreds of thousands of cartoons to them and is still waiting for a nod. i appreciate his point, but i am a very special girl and this is totally different.
speaking of special girls, my favorite former staffer from the bird hospital, a woman i haven't seen in person since well before the pandemic, popped up in my instagram feed as a full-fledged (heh) urban ranger in central park. i have absolutely nothing to do with that, but hot damn did it activate my proud-auntie parasympathetic system! one day you're swooning at the smell of crow blood in front of a gal and the next she's in your phone delivering a totally polished minilecture about weird duck season. i'm very curious to know if she's blown the whistle on mouse park, i.e. the spot where we'd sneak behind some trees and release the mice we'd caught nibbling on bird seed in the hospital's basement treatment room, but my feeling is that i should let sleeping liberated rodents lie. god i'm happy for her.
i didn't think i was going to have much free time here at the end of the year, but work is mostly done? i have to turn in a revised draft of my MUSHROOMS IN SPACE! essay back in over the first week of january, but it feels like the tweaks my editor and i talked about aren't going to break my head. i'm hemming and hawing over what my next passion projects (or at least the ones that i pitch instead of just accepting) will be and...meh? it was humbling to eat it with my first new yorker humor submission, though my dad made a valiant attempt to console me with the repeated story of how some friend of his has submitted hundreds of thousands of cartoons to them and is still waiting for a nod. i appreciate his point, but i am a very special girl and this is totally different.
speaking of special girls, my favorite former staffer from the bird hospital, a woman i haven't seen in person since well before the pandemic, popped up in my instagram feed as a full-fledged (heh) urban ranger in central park. i have absolutely nothing to do with that, but hot damn did it activate my proud-auntie parasympathetic system! one day you're swooning at the smell of crow blood in front of a gal and the next she's in your phone delivering a totally polished minilecture about weird duck season. i'm very curious to know if she's blown the whistle on mouse park, i.e. the spot where we'd sneak behind some trees and release the mice we'd caught nibbling on bird seed in the hospital's basement treatment room, but my feeling is that i should let sleeping liberated rodents lie. god i'm happy for her.
07.08.23 [on the J train]
i'm still having the sort of seasonal trouble sleeping that doesn't afford me enough clarity to read as i have through every other wee hour of unexpected wakefulness in my life. i appear to be able to shop just fine, though, which isn't that unfortunate–i'm acquiring small-ticket stuff, pretty much–but it's weird. a few weeks ago i acquired a high-concept "sports bra" that addresses breasts like those layered ship's-sail-lookin' patio shades that don't shield much of anything (it would have been perfect for a pride parade, or a memphis group mermaid getup in coney island). earlier this week it was a set of tiny spring-mounted lips for kissing bugs without hurting them; last night / this morning it was a COME BACK SPACEMAN asteroid city tee. i have been thinking about asteroid city a lot since we saw it a few weeks ago–i think it's my favorite wes anderson movie, though one could argue that one's first has to be one's favorite (if one likes wes anderson movies as a general proposition, that is, and i respect that plenty don't) because it's just so surprising and delightful to go where he finds himself. i was going to say "to his dimension," but that could be the one scrawny cup of coffee in me talking. anyway, this one has a gorgeous melancholy-in-isolation that really got under my skin; there are plenty of explicitly sad things there, like tom hanks's characters interactions with his dead daughter's widower, but there are more delicate ones like the way the precocious children look at the sky, or the stop-motion alien looks at humans, or the way the humans look back at him. it felt even more elegiac to me than the french dispatch did, and that was all about my actual world! (i'm not the next william shawn or anything, but you know what i mean.)
one of my assigning editors just got swept up in the latest round of layoffs at her ever-more-merger-happy parent company, and i met her, a fellow media casualty, and one of her other regular freelancers for lunch this week. i'd known she'd be in new york and told her to ping me if she had a moment so i could buy her a drink, but i didn't see her middle-of-the-night text until the next morning, so i barely had time to worry about whether or not my human suit was on straight before i headed up to little spain. it was legitimately lovely to see her and meet the other two; since i don't network and haven't been on a press trip since before the pandemic, it's been a long time since i've interacted with people who've played our particular bullshit game of musical chairs. as someone who's been sitting on her own haunches more or less contentedly for nearly a decade now, i actually felt like i had a bit of zen to offer, though i think all of them would rather find another full-time salaried gig than, say, ping-pong between stressful underpaid highbrow vanity gigs and the bread-and-butter-offered-to-me stuff i've started calling, with an unfortunate case of nominative determinism, "problem sets." i talked way too much and suspect they all think i'm a blowhard, but maybe they had a good time also and i should just be more aggressive in my bedtime melatonin explorations?
i broke my own rule of not engaging famous people i encounter in person when i saw julio torres on the subway the other day. he debarked and switched trains at the same place i did, so i had a few minutes to contemplate the back of his head and think about greetings that wouldn't be an imposition. i settled on "we don't know each other, i just wanted to tell you i think you're brilliant and i'm forgetting her name because i'm nervous but your nugget is really elegant." he smiled and thank me and said he'd tell her, and i excused myself and dove into a westbound L train across the platform. it was okay!
it looks like i actually do have a press trip coming up at long last; i was invited to bring a guest (provided i covered their airfare) on a comparatively-small-boat expedition up around eastern canada. i told myself i wouldn't cruise again after the press trip joe and i took years ago–there's just no way to justify that environmental impact, and our personal guide in akureyri when we were in iceland a few months ago told us in no uncertain terms that big ships were smothering his country's ports–but i decided i think there are things for me to report on here, and that if cruising is to continue to happen, it's got to happen at this scale (that is, boats a fraction of the size of ye olde floating megaresorts, with sustainable features and meaningful partnerships with scientists and conservationists). we haven't officially booked yet, but it's in the water.
one of my assigning editors just got swept up in the latest round of layoffs at her ever-more-merger-happy parent company, and i met her, a fellow media casualty, and one of her other regular freelancers for lunch this week. i'd known she'd be in new york and told her to ping me if she had a moment so i could buy her a drink, but i didn't see her middle-of-the-night text until the next morning, so i barely had time to worry about whether or not my human suit was on straight before i headed up to little spain. it was legitimately lovely to see her and meet the other two; since i don't network and haven't been on a press trip since before the pandemic, it's been a long time since i've interacted with people who've played our particular bullshit game of musical chairs. as someone who's been sitting on her own haunches more or less contentedly for nearly a decade now, i actually felt like i had a bit of zen to offer, though i think all of them would rather find another full-time salaried gig than, say, ping-pong between stressful underpaid highbrow vanity gigs and the bread-and-butter-offered-to-me stuff i've started calling, with an unfortunate case of nominative determinism, "problem sets." i talked way too much and suspect they all think i'm a blowhard, but maybe they had a good time also and i should just be more aggressive in my bedtime melatonin explorations?
i broke my own rule of not engaging famous people i encounter in person when i saw julio torres on the subway the other day. he debarked and switched trains at the same place i did, so i had a few minutes to contemplate the back of his head and think about greetings that wouldn't be an imposition. i settled on "we don't know each other, i just wanted to tell you i think you're brilliant and i'm forgetting her name because i'm nervous but your nugget is really elegant." he smiled and thank me and said he'd tell her, and i excused myself and dove into a westbound L train across the platform. it was okay!
it looks like i actually do have a press trip coming up at long last; i was invited to bring a guest (provided i covered their airfare) on a comparatively-small-boat expedition up around eastern canada. i told myself i wouldn't cruise again after the press trip joe and i took years ago–there's just no way to justify that environmental impact, and our personal guide in akureyri when we were in iceland a few months ago told us in no uncertain terms that big ships were smothering his country's ports–but i decided i think there are things for me to report on here, and that if cruising is to continue to happen, it's got to happen at this scale (that is, boats a fraction of the size of ye olde floating megaresorts, with sustainable features and meaningful partnerships with scientists and conservationists). we haven't officially booked yet, but it's in the water.
03.18.23 [on the F train]
after a year and a half of these crack-of-dawn journeys i can affirm that no one is on the subway at this hour for a good reason. it's not like buses in san francisco, where the 7 AM'ers were like actively casting spells to pry open the gates of hell and accelerate the end of the world, but the collective ugh up in here is palpable. i do these abortion clinic escort shifts once a month and was considering going again next weekend so i'd feel okay about skipping april, when my schedule is tricksier than usual because we'll be in iceland for two weeks, but back-to-back daybreak shenanigans would be too much for me. i do appreciate the community i feel on mornings like this one, as we wait to hear what that trump appointee out in amarillo will rule about mailing mifepristone, and everyone is grateful to have like-minded, action-oriented company, but my seasoning as a human shield wears thin with overuse, and the catharsis of confrontation just gets corrosive in big doses.
on horse pills, we saw our, i don't know, sixth play of the year on thursday. it was love, set in a temporary housing center in england, and it was wonderful. in another month or so it will probably start feeling like too much to have two or three artsy nights out per week, but for now it's excellent. all of the new york city, right in the kisser, go ahead! tonight we're headed up to the philharmonic, and i will disco nap hard enough this afternoon that i definitely won't fall asleep in the middle of the program. it helps that i crammed in a tár viewing right before the oscars last week; cate blanchett is MSG for me when i don't have a taste for something on my own, though even her formidable work in i'm not there couldn't make me care about bob dylan. in a year in which michelle yeoh didn't win everything, CB would have won another oscar; instead she just floated around in a cocoon of louis vuitton ecosilk like the gracious technolympian she is. i doubt she was bothered.
both the editor and the freelancer who fact checked my draft have written to say how much they love my robot cat essay, which has been a real relief; i didn't want to make a big deal about how much it means to me, but as i've said, i'm trying to break their hearts. that feedback is nipping at me to plot out another weird passion project, but i'm not very good at premeditating those–certain kinds of writing are like throwing up. afterward you're usually able to piece together what happened to get you to that point and you're grateful to be on the other side, but it's generally an unhealthy thing to get into on purpose.
on intimate fluids, i gave blood for the first time in ages yesterday, and my iron levels were totally unremarkable. at last, i am iron woman! is it sobriety-related? did the random daily multivitamins some PR person mailed me work better than all the others i've tried? did the blood bank get so desperate that they relaxed their guidelines for this along with everything else (the cooling-off period for donations after tattoos is now just three months–or no months, if you get tattooed in new jersey)? i won't look a gift needle in the mouth, but i will start donating platelets as often as i can. getting to read for two hours while watching my blood cycle through a machine, then drinking cranberry juice and feeling smugly helpful without actually having to interact with anyone? delectable. if they brought back those little bags of cheez-its for the are-you-going-to-faint-or-what tables it would be perfect.
on horse pills, we saw our, i don't know, sixth play of the year on thursday. it was love, set in a temporary housing center in england, and it was wonderful. in another month or so it will probably start feeling like too much to have two or three artsy nights out per week, but for now it's excellent. all of the new york city, right in the kisser, go ahead! tonight we're headed up to the philharmonic, and i will disco nap hard enough this afternoon that i definitely won't fall asleep in the middle of the program. it helps that i crammed in a tár viewing right before the oscars last week; cate blanchett is MSG for me when i don't have a taste for something on my own, though even her formidable work in i'm not there couldn't make me care about bob dylan. in a year in which michelle yeoh didn't win everything, CB would have won another oscar; instead she just floated around in a cocoon of louis vuitton ecosilk like the gracious technolympian she is. i doubt she was bothered.
both the editor and the freelancer who fact checked my draft have written to say how much they love my robot cat essay, which has been a real relief; i didn't want to make a big deal about how much it means to me, but as i've said, i'm trying to break their hearts. that feedback is nipping at me to plot out another weird passion project, but i'm not very good at premeditating those–certain kinds of writing are like throwing up. afterward you're usually able to piece together what happened to get you to that point and you're grateful to be on the other side, but it's generally an unhealthy thing to get into on purpose.
on intimate fluids, i gave blood for the first time in ages yesterday, and my iron levels were totally unremarkable. at last, i am iron woman! is it sobriety-related? did the random daily multivitamins some PR person mailed me work better than all the others i've tried? did the blood bank get so desperate that they relaxed their guidelines for this along with everything else (the cooling-off period for donations after tattoos is now just three months–or no months, if you get tattooed in new jersey)? i won't look a gift needle in the mouth, but i will start donating platelets as often as i can. getting to read for two hours while watching my blood cycle through a machine, then drinking cranberry juice and feeling smugly helpful without actually having to interact with anyone? delectable. if they brought back those little bags of cheez-its for the are-you-going-to-faint-or-what tables it would be perfect.
02.08.23
i forgot to tell you about the only winter course that matters, stanford's english 239:
the only interview that matters, in turn, is the hollywood reporter's harrison ford cover story. it unfolds as TED talks would if i had my way, and on a day that has otherwise been overwhelmingly fucking awful it has brought me peace.
In this course, we will read the three culminating novels of Henry James's 'major phase': The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl. These are among the greatest and most profound novels in English. Many people also find them boring or unreadable. Unquestionably, their prose is difficult, with sentences so complex, wandering, and ambiguous, that the sense may be hard to construe. While very little action occurs, topics illuminated include love, money, sex-gender-sexuality, and evil. These three novels, taken seriously, have unusual powers to illuminate your future life, but also perhaps to mislead or ruin it. All are microscopic studies of social interaction, psychology, and selves. Recommended for very advanced and searching students and readers. Please enroll only if you find difficult prose manageable and rewarding, and you anticipate that these particular novels may speak to you at this stage of your life.two of my dearest friends and i took a...memorable henry james class at stanford. one of us might have been a teen polymath who composed music while taking breezy notes; another might have celebrated the end of the term by writing a mass email about their and henry james's long-awaited breakup. i think we all still refer to the grad student who'd switch languages in the middle of statement-questions as the white worm. all course descriptions should roll like this.
the only interview that matters, in turn, is the hollywood reporter's harrison ford cover story. it unfolds as TED talks would if i had my way, and on a day that has otherwise been overwhelmingly fucking awful it has brought me peace.
When asked what he’d want written on his tombstone, Ford replies: “I wouldn’t want it to be ‘Harrison Ford, blah-blah-blah, actor.’ I’d settle for ‘Was Useful.’ ” I point out that’s a particularly reductive way to sum up a life, and Ford shoots back: “Well, there’s not a lot of space on a tombstone.”
[...]
You’ve also rescued several people with your helicopter. How do stranded hikers react when they’re rescued by Harrison Ford?
Well, one time we picked up this woman who was hypothermic on the mountain. She barfed in my cowboy hat but didn’t know who I was until the next day. I stopped doing it because we would be lucky enough to find somebody and then they’d be on Good Morning America talking about “a hero pilot.” It’s nothing fucking like that. It’s a team effort. It’s lame to think about it that way.
[...]
[Shrinking co-creator Bill] Lawrence made it sound like you have a boyish and youthful side that’s very different, and suggested it’s more the real you than what people tend to see.
Do you fish?
No. I mean, not since I was a kid.
There’s this thing called “match the hatch.” It’s when there’s a natural bug in the air the fish are eating and you use an artificial fly that’s the same color. I have a protective coloration. I try to blend in. That’s what I do. When I’m getting dressed, if people are going to be wearing a suit, I wear a suit. If people are wearing blue jeans, I’m wearing blue jeans. I’m comfortable in all kinds of company. If they’re serious, I’m serious. They’re not serious, I’m not serious. And if they’re too fucking serious, I’m not serious. (Laughs.) I don’t know why people have an expectation of me. I come in all colors. I don’t know who’s going to show up. But it’s usually me and it looks familiar.
One of your majors in college was philosophy. Has any of that stayed with you?
Yeah. There’s a Protestant theologian named Paul Tillich who wrote that if you have trouble with the word “God,” take whatever is central and most meaningful to your life and call that God. My mother was Jewish, my father was Catholic, and I was raised Democrat — my moral purpose was being a Democrat with the big D. But it didn’t apply to a political point of view so much as it applied to nature. I didn’t have any religious construct, but I think nature and God are the same thing. The mysterious origin of life — science tells us how it happened, prophecy tells us another story. I found that everything in nature — the complexity, the biodiversity, the symbiotic relationships — is the same thing other people attribute to God. … Now aren’t you glad you asked that question? You want to get back to the funny shit?
I am glad I asked. I haven’t heard you say that before.
I’ve been saving it just for you, man.
01.23.23
CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
fancy soap (late-stage capitalism).
duross & langel chai madness: vegan, long-lasting, a spicy scent that primarily perfumes one's shower and doesn't linger. i load up on this stuff at the brick and mortar store when we go to philly. their candles are understated and lovely, too; we're burning this one right now and i'm already excited about what i'll plant in the vessel once it's kicked.
goatboy soaps irish tweed: like a benevolent old librarian, the kind with fantastic eyebrows. the folks at the union square greenmarket who sell ultra-local honey also sell this goat's milk soap, and i imagine i'll test-drive a bunch of scents over the next few months.
kalastyle halló iceland moss: our all-time favorite, and that's not just the iceland fetish talking. it's made with (and smells like) hand-harvested moss! i also appreciate the halló iceland volcanic ash and kelp soaps; haven't tried the angelica. moss is the absolute banger, though.
wonder valley hinoki: at the far end of the fanciness spectrum, and a good gifting choice; the packaging is exquisite. the hinoki is subtle but there, and the super-high-quality olive oil gives the bar fantastic texture. good lather. is it three times better than our icelandic standby? no. can cleansing ourselves with the finest things before the sea takes us make a difference, in the final analysis? maybe.
our country (play). i have now had four live theatre experiences this year, three of them today (the fourth was that participatory thing at the library two weeks ago – also, like today's hat trick, part of the public's 2023 under the radar festival), and i've never felt so alive! i haven't felt so alive recently, anyway; it also helped that joe and i ran through the rain to dinner between today's second and third shows. this wonderfully experimental performance combined ancient theatre, recorded interviews, choreography, shadow puppetry, sleight of hand, feats of strength, audience interviews and even blanket forts to create a composite portrait of a sibling dynamic that was genuinely exciting; the shared and individual histories co-creator/performer annie saunders and her acting partner shared were interesting, but i mean that the way all of those things developed that history got me excited about telling stories of my own. our country is sort of about individualism and the frontier; it's also a wild mishmash of antigone and girl, interrupted, and it's one of the most vivid explorations of sibling interactions i've seen in a long time. "my brother has a criminal history. he’s actually great now. but for many, many years, that was the dynamic. i spent a few days with my brother in the summer of 2016 and made about 10 hours of tape of us talking to each other about 'antigone,' our childhood, criminality, the law. that became a major part of the show," saunders told the times at the beginning of the festival. she told us at the beginning of this performance that it might be the show's last, ever, and i really, really hope that it isn't; it's the most interesting theatre i've seen since the first time i saw annie baker's the flick a decade ago.
skinamarink (film). joe says that a couple of people walked out of our theater when we saw this, but i didn't notice; i was clenched in my seat with my hand hovering over my face and an obscure, ashy taste in my mouth. if you were a certain kind of lonely child, the kind that spent a couple of years or more than a couple of years desperately scrabbling around for other humans to sleep beside, i suspect this movie will scare the piss out of you, as it did me. it doesn't depict children experiencing a waking nightmare; it recreates the feeling of having a waking nightmare as a child, the unspeakably terrible architecture that reveals itself in certain stretches of the dark. i used to eat ostensibly poisonous things to call adults' bluffs and knock my wind out on the regular for the chance to be the youngest or first kid to use the high dive or fling herself from a jumping rock... and after dark my bravado shriveled into nothing and i used to sneak into my little sisters' room and cower on the floor next to their bunk bed. i still sleep best on my stomach with my head turned to the right and my sheets over my head and pursed around my nose! it's just old habit now, but skinamarink was a spicy meatball for me. if you're the type of horror fan who watches things to sound your own depths, to yell and see what echoes back, it's worth seeing. in other horror news, here is what happens when you look for wasps in figs from trader joe's.
fancy soap (late-stage capitalism).
duross & langel chai madness: vegan, long-lasting, a spicy scent that primarily perfumes one's shower and doesn't linger. i load up on this stuff at the brick and mortar store when we go to philly. their candles are understated and lovely, too; we're burning this one right now and i'm already excited about what i'll plant in the vessel once it's kicked.
goatboy soaps irish tweed: like a benevolent old librarian, the kind with fantastic eyebrows. the folks at the union square greenmarket who sell ultra-local honey also sell this goat's milk soap, and i imagine i'll test-drive a bunch of scents over the next few months.
kalastyle halló iceland moss: our all-time favorite, and that's not just the iceland fetish talking. it's made with (and smells like) hand-harvested moss! i also appreciate the halló iceland volcanic ash and kelp soaps; haven't tried the angelica. moss is the absolute banger, though.
wonder valley hinoki: at the far end of the fanciness spectrum, and a good gifting choice; the packaging is exquisite. the hinoki is subtle but there, and the super-high-quality olive oil gives the bar fantastic texture. good lather. is it three times better than our icelandic standby? no. can cleansing ourselves with the finest things before the sea takes us make a difference, in the final analysis? maybe.
our country (play). i have now had four live theatre experiences this year, three of them today (the fourth was that participatory thing at the library two weeks ago – also, like today's hat trick, part of the public's 2023 under the radar festival), and i've never felt so alive! i haven't felt so alive recently, anyway; it also helped that joe and i ran through the rain to dinner between today's second and third shows. this wonderfully experimental performance combined ancient theatre, recorded interviews, choreography, shadow puppetry, sleight of hand, feats of strength, audience interviews and even blanket forts to create a composite portrait of a sibling dynamic that was genuinely exciting; the shared and individual histories co-creator/performer annie saunders and her acting partner shared were interesting, but i mean that the way all of those things developed that history got me excited about telling stories of my own. our country is sort of about individualism and the frontier; it's also a wild mishmash of antigone and girl, interrupted, and it's one of the most vivid explorations of sibling interactions i've seen in a long time. "my brother has a criminal history. he’s actually great now. but for many, many years, that was the dynamic. i spent a few days with my brother in the summer of 2016 and made about 10 hours of tape of us talking to each other about 'antigone,' our childhood, criminality, the law. that became a major part of the show," saunders told the times at the beginning of the festival. she told us at the beginning of this performance that it might be the show's last, ever, and i really, really hope that it isn't; it's the most interesting theatre i've seen since the first time i saw annie baker's the flick a decade ago.
skinamarink (film). joe says that a couple of people walked out of our theater when we saw this, but i didn't notice; i was clenched in my seat with my hand hovering over my face and an obscure, ashy taste in my mouth. if you were a certain kind of lonely child, the kind that spent a couple of years or more than a couple of years desperately scrabbling around for other humans to sleep beside, i suspect this movie will scare the piss out of you, as it did me. it doesn't depict children experiencing a waking nightmare; it recreates the feeling of having a waking nightmare as a child, the unspeakably terrible architecture that reveals itself in certain stretches of the dark. i used to eat ostensibly poisonous things to call adults' bluffs and knock my wind out on the regular for the chance to be the youngest or first kid to use the high dive or fling herself from a jumping rock... and after dark my bravado shriveled into nothing and i used to sneak into my little sisters' room and cower on the floor next to their bunk bed. i still sleep best on my stomach with my head turned to the right and my sheets over my head and pursed around my nose! it's just old habit now, but skinamarink was a spicy meatball for me. if you're the type of horror fan who watches things to sound your own depths, to yell and see what echoes back, it's worth seeing. in other horror news, here is what happens when you look for wasps in figs from trader joe's.
01.07.23 [on the J train]
if i had taken communications classes in college instead of lurching into and through my current career like an ewok in an imperial walker i would maybe know what to call the unpleasant shiver of self-awareness one experiences when one is revealed to be representative of a particular demographic (pardon the word salad here, i've only been awake and caffeinated for a bit) - you know, like when you're showering at a youth hostel in amsterdam and the guy in the stall next to you turns out to know your ex-boyfriend and also be a regular at the indie coffee shop you favor a few suburbs up the freeway back home in southern california. the unheimlich of realizing you're a type? this is not quite like when your phone correctly predicts what you're about to search for, but there is a flip side of this, a bourgeois relief when you realize strangers (or artificial intelligences, i guess) already know what you want.
this is all a very inelegant ay of saying i was starting to type WHAT POWERS DOES A GHOUL HAVE and my phone leapt to search results about the speaker of the house, which is in fact the other repulsive and luckless being i have been thinking a lot about this week. on the first or second day of unsuccessful kevin mccarthy coronation i was out for a walk and got an "it's hakeem jeffries" text that i initially thought was from joe - holy shit, i thought, six republicans grew consciences and formed a coalition of the comparatively sane with the democrats! - but it was actually a fundraising bot à la all the "nancy pelosis" that u up?'ed me this fall. i had kind of wanted to get a pool together to take bets on how many votes kev and company would shamble through but i couldn't decide what the prize for the most accurate guesser would be (the buy-ins would go to some charity, i hadn't decided which yet. the aclu?) but i live in fear of getting punished for misrepresenting contest rules, an aversion i developed when i got stuck managing back-of-the-book fine print as a magazine editor that might be with me for good. anyway, congratulations, SPINO, i hope your portrait is a corker.
on ghouls, i just finished bones & all the book, and was reminded in the acknowledgements that the author wrote her "eaters" (it is the story of young people who eat people) as ghouls rather than cannibals, a distinction in her mind that involved their being supernatural beings and not twentieth-century donner partiers or something. this comes up both in the piece that interested me in the book in the first place and in a lithub piece that makes an admirable effort to tease apart the difference between ghouls and cannibals (and the former in camille deangelis's 2015 book vs. the latter in luca guadagnino's 2022 movie with david kajganich's screenplay, which for my money deserves an oscar nomination for some killer edits). there's a lot to break down there, no pun intended, and even more if you engage with the idea that deangelis wrote her book around the time that she became vegan and intended it to address the ethical problems with eating flesh - and i don't want to be unkind, but i think that theme doesn't land very well for me at all, though i certainly care about the subject - but one big clunker is that the layers of compulsion and need aren't exposed with much clarity. in the book the only supernatural power the eaters seem to have is that they can devour whole people (per the title) very quickly and leave only scraps, whereas in the movie eaters aren't that efficient but can smell each other from, in some cases, a significant distance? which seems at least preternatural if not supernatural? (this is the trouble with writing on a train.) in the book the ghoulish urges read a bit more like kink: the antihero can only eat people he despises and the antiheroine can only eat people who desire her (except for her babysitter, which is apparently a different case because she ate her when she was a very small child). also, ghouls are pretty universally, canonically repugnant, and scavengers, and...necrovores? is that what i mean? mark rylance's character, sully, only eats people who have died, but unless you're a massive dragon, a particularly gifted vivisectionist, or the water snake i caught and fed a tadpole on a camping trip in mendocino when i was a merciless tween naturalist, you kill things in the process of eating them (the only character in the book or the movie who eats only part of someone is one who eats their own hand or hands like an autophagous fast-food mascot). inconsistent rules is one of my pet peeves in stories of the supernatural; my other is when vampires get all forrest gump-y and traipse through history only meeting famous people and writing shakespeare's plays.
anyway: ghouls! the ghouls in the book are on their supernatural road trip in the late '90s during clinton's impeachment trial, and its musical references suffer accordingly (no joy division here; one charater asks another if they like shania twain). the villain has a backstory that makes him considerably less interesting, and the endings don't land very well. deangelis was super gracious about and appreicative of all of the strenous adaptation kajganich did, to her credit, though even that adaptation left me fuzzy on the moral and practical distinctions between ghoulishness and cannibalism, but for my part, after watching like 36 hours of congressional shenanigans this week i can't even tell you if house republicans are ghouls or cannibals, so i respect people who can put themselves out there as a general proposition.
completely unrelated: dr. john wyatt greenlee's english eel-rents of the 10th-17th centuries! "any eel-rent noted as having one eel due represent a place where the record is unclear about the number of eels due (such as the rent due for the mill at wolvey in 1251, which called for the mill to pay 1/2 of all the fish and eels caught there to ivo de dene). in each of these cases, the actual number of eels due almost certainly exceeded one."
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 are house republicans ghouls or cannibals?
02 how many eels does it cost to live where you live?
03 should i report on the train itself when i'm writing on the train?
on ghouls, i just finished bones & all the book, and was reminded in the acknowledgements that the author wrote her "eaters" (it is the story of young people who eat people) as ghouls rather than cannibals, a distinction in her mind that involved their being supernatural beings and not twentieth-century donner partiers or something. this comes up both in the piece that interested me in the book in the first place and in a lithub piece that makes an admirable effort to tease apart the difference between ghouls and cannibals (and the former in camille deangelis's 2015 book vs. the latter in luca guadagnino's 2022 movie with david kajganich's screenplay, which for my money deserves an oscar nomination for some killer edits). there's a lot to break down there, no pun intended, and even more if you engage with the idea that deangelis wrote her book around the time that she became vegan and intended it to address the ethical problems with eating flesh - and i don't want to be unkind, but i think that theme doesn't land very well for me at all, though i certainly care about the subject - but one big clunker is that the layers of compulsion and need aren't exposed with much clarity. in the book the only supernatural power the eaters seem to have is that they can devour whole people (per the title) very quickly and leave only scraps, whereas in the movie eaters aren't that efficient but can smell each other from, in some cases, a significant distance? which seems at least preternatural if not supernatural? (this is the trouble with writing on a train.) in the book the ghoulish urges read a bit more like kink: the antihero can only eat people he despises and the antiheroine can only eat people who desire her (except for her babysitter, which is apparently a different case because she ate her when she was a very small child). also, ghouls are pretty universally, canonically repugnant, and scavengers, and...necrovores? is that what i mean? mark rylance's character, sully, only eats people who have died, but unless you're a massive dragon, a particularly gifted vivisectionist, or the water snake i caught and fed a tadpole on a camping trip in mendocino when i was a merciless tween naturalist, you kill things in the process of eating them (the only character in the book or the movie who eats only part of someone is one who eats their own hand or hands like an autophagous fast-food mascot). inconsistent rules is one of my pet peeves in stories of the supernatural; my other is when vampires get all forrest gump-y and traipse through history only meeting famous people and writing shakespeare's plays.
anyway: ghouls! the ghouls in the book are on their supernatural road trip in the late '90s during clinton's impeachment trial, and its musical references suffer accordingly (no joy division here; one charater asks another if they like shania twain). the villain has a backstory that makes him considerably less interesting, and the endings don't land very well. deangelis was super gracious about and appreicative of all of the strenous adaptation kajganich did, to her credit, though even that adaptation left me fuzzy on the moral and practical distinctions between ghoulishness and cannibalism, but for my part, after watching like 36 hours of congressional shenanigans this week i can't even tell you if house republicans are ghouls or cannibals, so i respect people who can put themselves out there as a general proposition.
completely unrelated: dr. john wyatt greenlee's english eel-rents of the 10th-17th centuries! "any eel-rent noted as having one eel due represent a place where the record is unclear about the number of eels due (such as the rent due for the mill at wolvey in 1251, which called for the mill to pay 1/2 of all the fish and eels caught there to ivo de dene). in each of these cases, the actual number of eels due almost certainly exceeded one."
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 are house republicans ghouls or cannibals?
02 how many eels does it cost to live where you live?
03 should i report on the train itself when i'm writing on the train?
01.03.23
CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
bones and all (film). i have loved mark rylance's weird magic ever since i saw his shakespeare-on-broadway double-header (twelfth night's viola one night, richard iii's richard the next!) almost a decade ago, so i would have itched to see this knowing only that he was part of it; i also love joy division's "atmosphere," which promos and the film itself use beautifully and, c'mon, timmy chardonnay as a star-crossed cannibal in a luca guadagnino movie? so much to delight. the cinematography is gorgeous, and i loved the little nods to fraught road movies like badlands (which wowed us at a lovely theater in philly when we spent a weekend there for a friend's wedding this fall). as in call me by your name, guadagnino's last set-in-the-'80s doomed love story starring timothée chalamet, the needle drops are fantastic throughout (along with joy division, there's new order, george strait, a-ha's "the sun always shines on tv," a track that should propel every movie henceforth and be recut into all archives*). i'm now reading the camille deangelis YA novel adapted for the movie, which the author herself has said is not her favorite work? digging into how the story changed is entertaining, even though i'm dreadful at fiction and would never write or adapt it myself.
guillermo del toro: crafting pinocchio (exhibit). it would never have occurred to me to see if moma was open on new year's day; why on earth would moma be open on new year's day? hats off to my sister for asking the tough questions so that she could introduce her sons to jackson pollack** and friends; we had two o'clock tickets for the museum on the first and it was delightful. it also would not have occurred to me to go up there for a guillermo del toro show, for while seeing his stuff up close is delightful (i quite enjoyed at home with monsters at lacma back in 2016, also with jo and my older nephew when he was puppet-sized), i sort of figured another exhibit would be more of the same - and i didn't love nightmare alley, his last project i'd seen. but! this joint was organized during film production, and it did a bang-up job of highlighting all the painstaking work that goes into stop-motion animation and del toro's characteristic world-building. jo's sons are six and four, and i think a lot of the show went over their heads, but i think it would blow a crafty tween's mind; if i'd seen that stuff when i was a sprout i'd be a tattoo artist or/and a necromancer today. i also loved the big wall of photos and titles at the end of the exhibition highlighting all of the artisans and technicians that worked on the movie; the whole presentation deconstructs and celebrates passion projects in a way that makes visitors want to make complicated stuff and support other makers. bonus points for making pinocchio about fascist italy! it's time to bring (talking about the horrors of) fascism back.
splat midnight jade (hair dye). my hair has been various shades of platinum-to-plantain blonde and medium-to-light blue for the last few years; since it never gets more than an inch or two long, i bleach and dye all of it without messing around with sectioning and root touchups. i'm pretty good at it! this stuff was supposed to turn my hair an unprecedented dark green, which felt like a festive angle from which to approach the winter. in practice it's vivid cobalt that sizzles into darkness at at the edges, and it runs down my temples and cheekbones when it gets wet two full weeks after application and several enthusiastic shampoos, so when i get caught in the rain i'm a cross between a blue morpho and rudy giuliani (but the good news is that i have some information that will blow the 2020 election wide open). this dye is not the right dye for me! tantalizing teal (and its soul-frying powder bleach) remains the chemical headsuit to beat.
*i really, really love a-ha. it still saddens me that that my trombone champ "take on me" endorsement didn't make it into that new york times newsletter i was talking about two weeks ago, but they did this, and: heh.
**her sons were unimpressed with jackson pollack. they couldn't get enough of yoko ono's film no. 4, though.
bones and all (film). i have loved mark rylance's weird magic ever since i saw his shakespeare-on-broadway double-header (twelfth night's viola one night, richard iii's richard the next!) almost a decade ago, so i would have itched to see this knowing only that he was part of it; i also love joy division's "atmosphere," which promos and the film itself use beautifully and, c'mon, timmy chardonnay as a star-crossed cannibal in a luca guadagnino movie? so much to delight. the cinematography is gorgeous, and i loved the little nods to fraught road movies like badlands (which wowed us at a lovely theater in philly when we spent a weekend there for a friend's wedding this fall). as in call me by your name, guadagnino's last set-in-the-'80s doomed love story starring timothée chalamet, the needle drops are fantastic throughout (along with joy division, there's new order, george strait, a-ha's "the sun always shines on tv," a track that should propel every movie henceforth and be recut into all archives*). i'm now reading the camille deangelis YA novel adapted for the movie, which the author herself has said is not her favorite work? digging into how the story changed is entertaining, even though i'm dreadful at fiction and would never write or adapt it myself.
guillermo del toro: crafting pinocchio (exhibit). it would never have occurred to me to see if moma was open on new year's day; why on earth would moma be open on new year's day? hats off to my sister for asking the tough questions so that she could introduce her sons to jackson pollack** and friends; we had two o'clock tickets for the museum on the first and it was delightful. it also would not have occurred to me to go up there for a guillermo del toro show, for while seeing his stuff up close is delightful (i quite enjoyed at home with monsters at lacma back in 2016, also with jo and my older nephew when he was puppet-sized), i sort of figured another exhibit would be more of the same - and i didn't love nightmare alley, his last project i'd seen. but! this joint was organized during film production, and it did a bang-up job of highlighting all the painstaking work that goes into stop-motion animation and del toro's characteristic world-building. jo's sons are six and four, and i think a lot of the show went over their heads, but i think it would blow a crafty tween's mind; if i'd seen that stuff when i was a sprout i'd be a tattoo artist or/and a necromancer today. i also loved the big wall of photos and titles at the end of the exhibition highlighting all of the artisans and technicians that worked on the movie; the whole presentation deconstructs and celebrates passion projects in a way that makes visitors want to make complicated stuff and support other makers. bonus points for making pinocchio about fascist italy! it's time to bring (talking about the horrors of) fascism back.
splat midnight jade (hair dye). my hair has been various shades of platinum-to-plantain blonde and medium-to-light blue for the last few years; since it never gets more than an inch or two long, i bleach and dye all of it without messing around with sectioning and root touchups. i'm pretty good at it! this stuff was supposed to turn my hair an unprecedented dark green, which felt like a festive angle from which to approach the winter. in practice it's vivid cobalt that sizzles into darkness at at the edges, and it runs down my temples and cheekbones when it gets wet two full weeks after application and several enthusiastic shampoos, so when i get caught in the rain i'm a cross between a blue morpho and rudy giuliani (but the good news is that i have some information that will blow the 2020 election wide open). this dye is not the right dye for me! tantalizing teal (and its soul-frying powder bleach) remains the chemical headsuit to beat.
*i really, really love a-ha. it still saddens me that that my trombone champ "take on me" endorsement didn't make it into that new york times newsletter i was talking about two weeks ago, but they did this, and: heh.
**her sons were unimpressed with jackson pollack. they couldn't get enough of yoko ono's film no. 4, though.
12.25.22
i'm not on a train! i mean, as far as i know i'm not on a train. for all i know i could be an extraterrestrial's in-flight movie, in which case i had better not be an amazon studios project.* now more than ever, fuck those guys.
chouette (book). i wish i could remember where i first heard of this novel. knowing my interests, i probably just perked up when someone said it was the story of a woman who gave birth to an owl-baby? that both is and isn't literal; the narrator's daughter is and is not an owl (i think some review said she seemed most like an eastern screech-owl, but i read a lot about owls and could be remembering that from something else). the maternal urges and feelings she describes are frequently repulsive to me, and once i realized that and started sitting with my discomfort and thinking about how i tend to other [the verb] people who are really into their children, well. claire oshetsky's dust flap bio notes that chouette "draws on her own experiences of motherhood," and i know that she has a child, but it's, ah, safe to say this isn't autofiction. from here, it's a novel about what it is like to be the birthing parent of an uncommon child, and what it is like to disagree fundamentally and strenuously with one's coparent about how to approach an uncommon child, and reading it made me a more compassionate person. i've read a lot of strange books about mothers this year; i prefer this one to rachel yoder's nightbitch, which i also liked, and claire vaye watkins's i love you but i've chosen darkness, which was wild when it fictionalized watkins's experience as the daughter of an especially notorious member of the manson family and also weirdly annoying in its treatment of polyamorous people? i don't feel the need to sit with my annoyance in the same way i recognized and was ashamed of the way i think about parents; i support polyamorous people and wish them all the ease and happiness in the world, i just find the procedures of their love lives boring. i find the procedures of just about everyone's love lives boring! also "joyfriend" is the silliest word in town. chouette is worth reading.
the harbinger (film). i learned of the brooklyn horror film festival's existence just as it started this year and wish i could have seen more, but oh, am i thrilled i got to see this; it's a dream-logic tragedy about the pandemic in new york (and everywhere, really, but especially about new york; it was shot here in 2021, and it got the atmosphere of being here in 2020 just right with all kinds of little touches that were agonizing and therapeutic at the same time?) and mental illness is one of the best things i saw this year. i don't want to say too much about it, but i will say that it was a great relief to see several of the actors and writer/director andy mitton at the q&a afterward, for secret reasons.
katjes (plant-based gummi candy). the day i realized my childhood german friends didn't actually know what they were talking about when they contended that haribo goldbären were made with vegetarian gelatin (not a thing) wasn't one of the worst days of my life, but it wasn't a good one. katjes doesn't use palm oil, either! i spent a lot of time in grocery store candy aisles, for science, when we were in berlin this fall, and am here to say that their rainbow gummies are, like, several orders of magnitude better than veg-friendly haribo. (aside: haribo doesn't use palm oil, and almost all sugar used in the UK is vegan.) anyway, katjes seems to have scored some big stateside distribution deals, and their stuff turns up at duane reade and walgreens every now and again (and at economy candy). exciting and dangerous!
chouette (book). i wish i could remember where i first heard of this novel. knowing my interests, i probably just perked up when someone said it was the story of a woman who gave birth to an owl-baby? that both is and isn't literal; the narrator's daughter is and is not an owl (i think some review said she seemed most like an eastern screech-owl, but i read a lot about owls and could be remembering that from something else). the maternal urges and feelings she describes are frequently repulsive to me, and once i realized that and started sitting with my discomfort and thinking about how i tend to other [the verb] people who are really into their children, well. claire oshetsky's dust flap bio notes that chouette "draws on her own experiences of motherhood," and i know that she has a child, but it's, ah, safe to say this isn't autofiction. from here, it's a novel about what it is like to be the birthing parent of an uncommon child, and what it is like to disagree fundamentally and strenuously with one's coparent about how to approach an uncommon child, and reading it made me a more compassionate person. i've read a lot of strange books about mothers this year; i prefer this one to rachel yoder's nightbitch, which i also liked, and claire vaye watkins's i love you but i've chosen darkness, which was wild when it fictionalized watkins's experience as the daughter of an especially notorious member of the manson family and also weirdly annoying in its treatment of polyamorous people? i don't feel the need to sit with my annoyance in the same way i recognized and was ashamed of the way i think about parents; i support polyamorous people and wish them all the ease and happiness in the world, i just find the procedures of their love lives boring. i find the procedures of just about everyone's love lives boring! also "joyfriend" is the silliest word in town. chouette is worth reading.
the harbinger (film). i learned of the brooklyn horror film festival's existence just as it started this year and wish i could have seen more, but oh, am i thrilled i got to see this; it's a dream-logic tragedy about the pandemic in new york (and everywhere, really, but especially about new york; it was shot here in 2021, and it got the atmosphere of being here in 2020 just right with all kinds of little touches that were agonizing and therapeutic at the same time?) and mental illness is one of the best things i saw this year. i don't want to say too much about it, but i will say that it was a great relief to see several of the actors and writer/director andy mitton at the q&a afterward, for secret reasons.
katjes (plant-based gummi candy). the day i realized my childhood german friends didn't actually know what they were talking about when they contended that haribo goldbären were made with vegetarian gelatin (not a thing) wasn't one of the worst days of my life, but it wasn't a good one. katjes doesn't use palm oil, either! i spent a lot of time in grocery store candy aisles, for science, when we were in berlin this fall, and am here to say that their rainbow gummies are, like, several orders of magnitude better than veg-friendly haribo. (aside: haribo doesn't use palm oil, and almost all sugar used in the UK is vegan.) anyway, katjes seems to have scored some big stateside distribution deals, and their stuff turns up at duane reade and walgreens every now and again (and at economy candy). exciting and dangerous!
*i enjoyed sea of tranquility's handling of the simulation hypothesis, though i didn't enjoy it quite enough to include it in this CONSUMED, apparently. i really enjoyed how a slate writer interviewed emily st. john mandel last week per her twitter request so that she could say that she is not married, have it credibly reported, and then update her time-capsule wikipedia page accordingly. as it happens, earlier this year *i* helped someone update their wikipedia page because they needed information related to the dissolution of their marriage corrected! they have not written any science fiction, as far as i know.
01.30.22
the guy tending the left half of the theater's bar hadn't seen drive my car yet, but he was very excited about seeing it: "i hadn't heard anything about it until like a day or two ago and suddenly everyone's talking about it. and it's three hours long!" dances with murakami, i said. the guy who sat down at my left had just gotten out of the early screening: "have you seen christopher nolan's tenet,* where half of the action goes forward and half of it goes backward? we're like that, meeting in the middle, with me just coming from the experience you're about to have. i won't say anything to spoil it for you, but i liked it."
i asked him if he'd read the short story the film is based on, or any murakami; he hadn't. "i hear murakami is like japan's philip roth** and john steinbeck and [some other dude i don't remember]," he said. i agreed that he was a beast. i had read a lot of murakami, i said, and i thought of him more like japan's jane austen: his stories combine and recombine constants in a way i found soothing to revisit. mysterious women, cats, whiskey, vinyl, jazz, pasta, disappearances, writers... he'd heard that this was the first murakami work that'd been made into a film, or maybe just that murakami was famously tricky to adapt. i thought that was exciting, i said, like how pynchon's, what was it, inherent vice was an unexpectedly killer movie (that can song!). "oh my god, PTA," and we just sat in the acronym for a minute until the carpet split at a previously-invisible seam and we plunged into the center of the earth, even though joe was sitting on the other side of me and probably only heard a third of the conversation.
i asked him if he'd read the short story the film is based on, or any murakami; he hadn't. "i hear murakami is like japan's philip roth** and john steinbeck and [some other dude i don't remember]," he said. i agreed that he was a beast. i had read a lot of murakami, i said, and i thought of him more like japan's jane austen: his stories combine and recombine constants in a way i found soothing to revisit. mysterious women, cats, whiskey, vinyl, jazz, pasta, disappearances, writers... he'd heard that this was the first murakami work that'd been made into a film, or maybe just that murakami was famously tricky to adapt. i thought that was exciting, i said, like how pynchon's, what was it, inherent vice was an unexpectedly killer movie (that can song!). "oh my god, PTA," and we just sat in the acronym for a minute until the carpet split at a previously-invisible seam and we plunged into the center of the earth, even though joe was sitting on the other side of me and probably only heard a third of the conversation.
*our friend lesley loves helen dewitt's the last samurai harder than most people love most things in this world and found tenet impenetrable. tenet daunts me.
**he was really into philip roth, "but not when the novel is really just him thinking about himself," which – i didn't follow up on that, but if i had been lewis carroll's caterpillar at that moment i would have exhaled a smoke ring in the shape of john updike and it would have galloped around the bar once and disappeared. i still miss smoking.
08.07.21
so this comparatively-unknown literary magazine just published this creepy sexual poem named for and about a very well known writer whose bestselling essay collection i read a year or two ago and whose parents, i read last night when i was struggling to fall asleep, were once investigated for human trafficking, as someone discovered last year? (lit twitter and weird twitter and weird lit twitter are all over this, the poem, because it's both unsporting clickbait and because the writing is so bad that it's typically referred to as "the poem," the loose consensus is that one should avoid it if possible, for both reasons).*
when i finally went down around five this morning i dreamed that i went to a new, fancy salon-retail-organic-garden** hybrid place, for i needed a haircut, and my stylist was the writer. i explained to her that i envisioned bangs, but she would have to come up with some way to texturize them because i have a cowlick at my right temple and my hair has always parted like curtains right there. i also wanted a pretty short pixie cut, but skewing femme, please, so go soft at the edges and follow a rounded shape at the back of my head, but otherwise i trusted her to do whatever she thought was right. things started off badly, as she accused me of leaving bleach on for far too long when i prepped for dyeing my hair blue at home (true, i ended up with some little scabs last time after frying myself), and then she kept wandering off. the appointment began in the early afternoon, but by early evening we were under a scraggly live oak in the organic garden and the writer still hadn't gotten to work. i knelt before her as though we were gawain and the green knight*** as she finally, finally, started to razor the back of my neck. "if you had a boob**** that was floating in a vat of fluid, what would you do to make it float higher or lower? that's what you can think about while i do this," she said. one of the dickensian orphans gathered around us piped up: one should add stones to the vat, which would increase the volume of its contents and elevate the boob. that's stupid, i said. i would add a fluid with lower specific gravity than that of the boob-fluid if i wanted the boob to sink, and a fluid with higher specific gravity if i wanted it to rise.
when i finally went down around five this morning i dreamed that i went to a new, fancy salon-retail-organic-garden** hybrid place, for i needed a haircut, and my stylist was the writer. i explained to her that i envisioned bangs, but she would have to come up with some way to texturize them because i have a cowlick at my right temple and my hair has always parted like curtains right there. i also wanted a pretty short pixie cut, but skewing femme, please, so go soft at the edges and follow a rounded shape at the back of my head, but otherwise i trusted her to do whatever she thought was right. things started off badly, as she accused me of leaving bleach on for far too long when i prepped for dyeing my hair blue at home (true, i ended up with some little scabs last time after frying myself), and then she kept wandering off. the appointment began in the early afternoon, but by early evening we were under a scraggly live oak in the organic garden and the writer still hadn't gotten to work. i knelt before her as though we were gawain and the green knight*** as she finally, finally, started to razor the back of my neck. "if you had a boob**** that was floating in a vat of fluid, what would you do to make it float higher or lower? that's what you can think about while i do this," she said. one of the dickensian orphans gathered around us piped up: one should add stones to the vat, which would increase the volume of its contents and elevate the boob. that's stupid, i said. i would add a fluid with lower specific gravity than that of the boob-fluid if i wanted the boob to sink, and a fluid with higher specific gravity if i wanted it to rise.
*i immediately found and read it, and i'm now sorry to have given it a click and to have those lines in my head, but here we are.
**i'm on a nordic-authors kick and halfway through auður ava ólafsdóttir's the greenhouse, which i'm enjoying; her miss iceland is a fascinating look at her country's bro-centric midcentury literary culture.
***we saw that movie yesterday; i thought it was quite grand, particularly alicia vikander's green speech, though the CGI fox wasn't animated very realistically.
****ólafsdóttir's hotel silence, also good, concludes with the recovery of three disembodied breasts. like japanese in translation, icelandic in translation has, i find, a very distinctive/characteristic(?) cadence, and it's soothing.
03.26.21
i read a bunch of reviews of the movie we just watched (another round, a maybe touching and very unexpected exploration of middle age in denmark and other things that concludes with a legitimately spectacular mads mikkelsen dance scene) and eventually got to one with a preface: the writer saw a screener of the film at home and i, the review reader, should think long and hard about whether or not seeing the film in the theater is right for me. what is right for me?
joe got his first and only COVID vaccine shot last weekend and i got my first the weekend before that,* so it's conceivable that we might be seeing movies in the theater before the end of april! i don't yet know how i feel about taking off my mask in mixed company yet; that's something i would want to do if we went to nitehawk, our forever local in williamsburg, but i might need to know that anyone who would bring me a cocktail or popcorn has little or no chance of suffering because they've interacted with me before i think about something like that. will we get to a point where businesses let us know if their workers are vaccinated? will we get to a point where i let those workers know that i'm vaccinated? i consider a scenario in which our apartment complex opens the exercise room back up for people who can demonstrate that they're unlikely to infect one another — some of us paying monthly dues again would be revenue for the building, and maybe it would be enough to justify the building staff going in to clean every once in a while? maybe we could agree to not care if they didn't clean and we could just work our challenges out on filthy recumbent bikes and the one rowing machine? — and then i think about the blood rage that descends on my neighbors when they differ on radio volume or how many ceiling-mounted televisions are tuned to fox news versus like matlock and i know that we won't return to normalcy in half-measures.
i was on a walk along the waterfront last week when a squirrel perked up on its haunches in the way that indicates it's one of the ones that's gotten used to snacks from people walking in the park. one shouldn't feed squirrels in the park or anywhere, what we tend to give them is much less nutritious than what they'd find on their own and they're perfectly capable of foraging, moreover we shouldn't teach them to approach humans for food, but i am a rotten woman and i had the tail end of a bag of walnut chunks in my pocket for just such an occasion. high on the prospect of interacting with a creature i didn't know, i dug into my bag, gave myself a thorough incidental coating of nut dust, and offered a cupped handful of food, six inches from the ground. the squirrel, a squirrel, ventured up and bit my middle finger without malice. "oh, buddy! no, not that." i dumped my nuts on the ground and he figured it out.
there is no record of anyone catching rabies from a squirrel in the united states, per my research; some speculate that they are so small that if a rabid animal bites them, the vast likelihood is that they'll die long before they're able to infect another creature. my finger bled a drop, but the puncture wasn't deep, because: squirrel. the whole incident was comforting, honestly; i haven't been to the wildlife hospital in more than a year, and steve's the only creature biting me these days. he's beyond walnuts.
joe got his first and only COVID vaccine shot last weekend and i got my first the weekend before that,* so it's conceivable that we might be seeing movies in the theater before the end of april! i don't yet know how i feel about taking off my mask in mixed company yet; that's something i would want to do if we went to nitehawk, our forever local in williamsburg, but i might need to know that anyone who would bring me a cocktail or popcorn has little or no chance of suffering because they've interacted with me before i think about something like that. will we get to a point where businesses let us know if their workers are vaccinated? will we get to a point where i let those workers know that i'm vaccinated? i consider a scenario in which our apartment complex opens the exercise room back up for people who can demonstrate that they're unlikely to infect one another — some of us paying monthly dues again would be revenue for the building, and maybe it would be enough to justify the building staff going in to clean every once in a while? maybe we could agree to not care if they didn't clean and we could just work our challenges out on filthy recumbent bikes and the one rowing machine? — and then i think about the blood rage that descends on my neighbors when they differ on radio volume or how many ceiling-mounted televisions are tuned to fox news versus like matlock and i know that we won't return to normalcy in half-measures.
i was on a walk along the waterfront last week when a squirrel perked up on its haunches in the way that indicates it's one of the ones that's gotten used to snacks from people walking in the park. one shouldn't feed squirrels in the park or anywhere, what we tend to give them is much less nutritious than what they'd find on their own and they're perfectly capable of foraging, moreover we shouldn't teach them to approach humans for food, but i am a rotten woman and i had the tail end of a bag of walnut chunks in my pocket for just such an occasion. high on the prospect of interacting with a creature i didn't know, i dug into my bag, gave myself a thorough incidental coating of nut dust, and offered a cupped handful of food, six inches from the ground. the squirrel, a squirrel, ventured up and bit my middle finger without malice. "oh, buddy! no, not that." i dumped my nuts on the ground and he figured it out.
there is no record of anyone catching rabies from a squirrel in the united states, per my research; some speculate that they are so small that if a rabid animal bites them, the vast likelihood is that they'll die long before they're able to infect another creature. my finger bled a drop, but the puncture wasn't deep, because: squirrel. the whole incident was comforting, honestly; i haven't been to the wildlife hospital in more than a year, and steve's the only creature biting me these days. he's beyond walnuts.
*i still haven't figured out how to feel about this. my freakish blood pressure qualified me for vaccination here in new york a while ago, but i didn't feel comfortable signing up for an appointment because my condition was managed with meds, which meant i didn't really have a comorbidity at all, so. then a checkup revealed that my prescriptions weren't enough, my doctor advised me to go get a shot, and i did.
08.07.20
CONSUMED: SOME (MORE) HORROR
the rental. i got over the potential squickiness of staying at strangers' homes via airbnb a long time ago, which is helpful, as i've stayed at a shitload of airbnbs (most of which have been pretty good and a few of which have been spectacular: if americans are allowed into europe before the world ends, you should ask me about the rooftop terrace with a view of st. peter's basilica we scored for my 40th birthday, or the milanese jewel box to which we ended up retreating after the 2016 election). i even write about them for a living! well, i wrote about them for a living. anyway, this is dave franco's directorial debut, and the story of four earnest portland types who head to the coast for a weekend of the sort of disastrous interpersonal conflicts that crop up when you don't establish ground rules about drugs and hiking or acknowledge the fact that anyone who shares screen time with sheila vand (the star of a girl walks home alone at night, ana lily amarpour's exquisite iranian vampire western) will fall hopelessly in love with her. the excellent alison brie (franco's offscreen wife, of glow, who is also exquisite) is here too, but she's no match for vand's gravitational pull, and the non-murdery disasters in store for this quartet are pretty clear from the get-go. there is also a dog—dogs are big in horror right now—and if i found myself in this rental i would have absolutely survived, since i would have rejected the idea of breaking the no-dogs rule and jeopardizing my pristine user rating and refused to show up in the first place. these kids aren't so lucky, and nastiness ensues: it's even more harrowing than when i accidentally peed in our milanese host's bidet. like a number of reviewers, i think the rental would have been better without its final act, but you can't always get what you want. oh! dan stevens (of downton abbey, which i despise) is also in this, though he isn't anywhere near as entertaining as he is in eurovision song contest: the story of fire saga, which you should see immediately. i hope i get to sleep in another building someday, even if there's a hidden camera in the shower.
velvet buzzsaw. dan gilroy (nightcrawler) reunites rene russo and jake gyllenhaal and misses a golden opportunity to give the latter another terrible haircut; where nightcrawler satirized prurient local news, velvet buzzsaw goes after the los angeles art scene (and also ropes in john malkovich, toni collette, and daveed diggs; it's a crazy ensemble cast). an outsider artist dies and leaves instructions for his work to be destroyed; no one listens, so the work destroys everyone. i'm reminded a bit of bliss, another art-world slasher we saw at the tribeca film festival last year, but velvet buzzsaw is more fun; i'm no insider, but i've written a bit of curatorial copy in my time ("...meticulous scissorings, in turn, reveal her subjects’ poetic architecture: a gallery wall revealed in a cut is a caesura, not an absence"), and the silliness of the critical word salad here is entertaining. i feel pretty strongly that most if not all movies should probably end with john malkovich drawing with a stick, and i think that would have worked out rather nicely in the rental. did i ever tell you that my conceptual-artist brother-in-law's site-specific work in an old hospital is the reason kendall jenner painted her house baker-miller pink? true story.
the rental. i got over the potential squickiness of staying at strangers' homes via airbnb a long time ago, which is helpful, as i've stayed at a shitload of airbnbs (most of which have been pretty good and a few of which have been spectacular: if americans are allowed into europe before the world ends, you should ask me about the rooftop terrace with a view of st. peter's basilica we scored for my 40th birthday, or the milanese jewel box to which we ended up retreating after the 2016 election). i even write about them for a living! well, i wrote about them for a living. anyway, this is dave franco's directorial debut, and the story of four earnest portland types who head to the coast for a weekend of the sort of disastrous interpersonal conflicts that crop up when you don't establish ground rules about drugs and hiking or acknowledge the fact that anyone who shares screen time with sheila vand (the star of a girl walks home alone at night, ana lily amarpour's exquisite iranian vampire western) will fall hopelessly in love with her. the excellent alison brie (franco's offscreen wife, of glow, who is also exquisite) is here too, but she's no match for vand's gravitational pull, and the non-murdery disasters in store for this quartet are pretty clear from the get-go. there is also a dog—dogs are big in horror right now—and if i found myself in this rental i would have absolutely survived, since i would have rejected the idea of breaking the no-dogs rule and jeopardizing my pristine user rating and refused to show up in the first place. these kids aren't so lucky, and nastiness ensues: it's even more harrowing than when i accidentally peed in our milanese host's bidet. like a number of reviewers, i think the rental would have been better without its final act, but you can't always get what you want. oh! dan stevens (of downton abbey, which i despise) is also in this, though he isn't anywhere near as entertaining as he is in eurovision song contest: the story of fire saga, which you should see immediately. i hope i get to sleep in another building someday, even if there's a hidden camera in the shower.
velvet buzzsaw. dan gilroy (nightcrawler) reunites rene russo and jake gyllenhaal and misses a golden opportunity to give the latter another terrible haircut; where nightcrawler satirized prurient local news, velvet buzzsaw goes after the los angeles art scene (and also ropes in john malkovich, toni collette, and daveed diggs; it's a crazy ensemble cast). an outsider artist dies and leaves instructions for his work to be destroyed; no one listens, so the work destroys everyone. i'm reminded a bit of bliss, another art-world slasher we saw at the tribeca film festival last year, but velvet buzzsaw is more fun; i'm no insider, but i've written a bit of curatorial copy in my time ("...meticulous scissorings, in turn, reveal her subjects’ poetic architecture: a gallery wall revealed in a cut is a caesura, not an absence"), and the silliness of the critical word salad here is entertaining. i feel pretty strongly that most if not all movies should probably end with john malkovich drawing with a stick, and i think that would have worked out rather nicely in the rental. did i ever tell you that my conceptual-artist brother-in-law's site-specific work in an old hospital is the reason kendall jenner painted her house baker-miller pink? true story.
08.06.20
CONSUMED: SOME HORROR
les affamés. i meant to write about this one three months ago, and i will spare you the tedium between then and now; this is probably the best zombie movie i've seen in a decade? (that's saying something; it's possible that i watch zombie movies more regularly than i vacuum my apartment.) while i can't offer scene-by-scene praise, as my personal horizon has experienced a titan's lifetime of freaky dawns and gloamings in that interim, i can tell you that this québécois take on the genre gets at the existentialism your humble narrator has been experiencing since the before times in an unexpectedly poetic way. (again, there's volume to consider here.) not especially gory, quietly contemplative, and, shot by shot, easily one of the most beautiful additions to the canon i've seen in a long time (or ever?). we're so intent on what the undead have to say to us about biting that we neglect their ikebana (i am serious about this?), and that is a shame.
the blackcoat's daughter. well of course kiernan shipka eventually snagged the title role in chilling adventures of sabrina after this movie; she's stone-cold perfect for will-she-or-won't-she relationship-with-the-devil roles (i have not seen and will not see her in mad men). that said, wow, i am terrible at picking possession movies; despite KS's best efforts and director oz perkins's stabby pedigree (he's anthony perkins's son), this was both too long and weirdly abrupt. i was raised more or less areligiously (southern california protestants, or the ones i knew, at least, cared more about shell necklaces and second base than they did about accidental salutations to satan), but oh boy did the few catholic-school ghost stories my dad shared over the years scare the shit out of me. i thought this movie would keep me awake, but it just left me with faint distastes for pea soup (again?) and turnpikes. which sucks, as pea soup rules and turnpikes are useful.
girl on the third floor. i really, really want to foist this one on my college roommate, as she has renovated multiple ancient homes in chicago (à la the movie's principal), but she is the mother of two young children, and her waking hours have all kinds of demands that don't involve puzzling out why a vengeful collective of long-dead prostitutes decided to exact their revenge on questionable men via ooze and marbles (MARBLES). girl on the third floor is notable because its lead seems, at least initially, like he's going to be a bruce campbell, evil dead-style antihero; it's also the most fluid-soaked horror movie i've seen in some time, on the order of michel faber's the crimson petal and the white (also a long and decidedly viscous story about prostitution). several writers who reviewed this bad boy for major critical franchises thought it was kind of good, which reminds me of how i've snagged several print credits for articles about house plant maintenance and also managed to kill a potted rosemary bush in 48 hours.
the platform. somewhere between the cook, the thief, his wife & her lover (a movie i watched on video with a date who'd seen it before), delicatessen and, like, cube (or saw?), the platform is a spanish skyscraper hellscape that was apparently one of the most popular netflix titles in the world back in march. this makes sense, sort of: atop a vertical sort-of-prison, chefs prepare a lavish smorgasbord that descends slowly through hundreds of levels of concrete cells. the inhabitants of each cell can eat for the few moments the platform pauses, then it descends to the next level, where the inhabitants beneath them eat their leftovers, if there are leftovers, and so on. it's an unsubtle and exceedingly moist allegory, but it also...kind of works, for at least an hour? i am extra-glad i've never eaten a snail. a dachshund meets a messy end, because capitalism.
train to busan. as far as i'm concerned, bong joon-ho is the master of space re: class in recent years: snowpiercer's lateral logic was inspired, and parasite's morality and verticality was almost perfect. yeon sang-ho's train to busan isn't as explicit or as cartesian as either of those movies, but its geometry is almost as compelling, and the stunt work, choreography, and blocking is absolutely incomparable. i have no preference between george-romero-esque shambling zombies and danny-boyle-ish skittering ones — is that a taste one can have? — but i can say that this is the most balletic zombie movie i have ever seen, and that it has emotional heft. it's absolutely at the action end of the horror spectrum, but it nips at your heels. (no dog fatalities.)
les affamés. i meant to write about this one three months ago, and i will spare you the tedium between then and now; this is probably the best zombie movie i've seen in a decade? (that's saying something; it's possible that i watch zombie movies more regularly than i vacuum my apartment.) while i can't offer scene-by-scene praise, as my personal horizon has experienced a titan's lifetime of freaky dawns and gloamings in that interim, i can tell you that this québécois take on the genre gets at the existentialism your humble narrator has been experiencing since the before times in an unexpectedly poetic way. (again, there's volume to consider here.) not especially gory, quietly contemplative, and, shot by shot, easily one of the most beautiful additions to the canon i've seen in a long time (or ever?). we're so intent on what the undead have to say to us about biting that we neglect their ikebana (i am serious about this?), and that is a shame.
the blackcoat's daughter. well of course kiernan shipka eventually snagged the title role in chilling adventures of sabrina after this movie; she's stone-cold perfect for will-she-or-won't-she relationship-with-the-devil roles (i have not seen and will not see her in mad men). that said, wow, i am terrible at picking possession movies; despite KS's best efforts and director oz perkins's stabby pedigree (he's anthony perkins's son), this was both too long and weirdly abrupt. i was raised more or less areligiously (southern california protestants, or the ones i knew, at least, cared more about shell necklaces and second base than they did about accidental salutations to satan), but oh boy did the few catholic-school ghost stories my dad shared over the years scare the shit out of me. i thought this movie would keep me awake, but it just left me with faint distastes for pea soup (again?) and turnpikes. which sucks, as pea soup rules and turnpikes are useful.
girl on the third floor. i really, really want to foist this one on my college roommate, as she has renovated multiple ancient homes in chicago (à la the movie's principal), but she is the mother of two young children, and her waking hours have all kinds of demands that don't involve puzzling out why a vengeful collective of long-dead prostitutes decided to exact their revenge on questionable men via ooze and marbles (MARBLES). girl on the third floor is notable because its lead seems, at least initially, like he's going to be a bruce campbell, evil dead-style antihero; it's also the most fluid-soaked horror movie i've seen in some time, on the order of michel faber's the crimson petal and the white (also a long and decidedly viscous story about prostitution). several writers who reviewed this bad boy for major critical franchises thought it was kind of good, which reminds me of how i've snagged several print credits for articles about house plant maintenance and also managed to kill a potted rosemary bush in 48 hours.
the platform. somewhere between the cook, the thief, his wife & her lover (a movie i watched on video with a date who'd seen it before), delicatessen and, like, cube (or saw?), the platform is a spanish skyscraper hellscape that was apparently one of the most popular netflix titles in the world back in march. this makes sense, sort of: atop a vertical sort-of-prison, chefs prepare a lavish smorgasbord that descends slowly through hundreds of levels of concrete cells. the inhabitants of each cell can eat for the few moments the platform pauses, then it descends to the next level, where the inhabitants beneath them eat their leftovers, if there are leftovers, and so on. it's an unsubtle and exceedingly moist allegory, but it also...kind of works, for at least an hour? i am extra-glad i've never eaten a snail. a dachshund meets a messy end, because capitalism.
train to busan. as far as i'm concerned, bong joon-ho is the master of space re: class in recent years: snowpiercer's lateral logic was inspired, and parasite's morality and verticality was almost perfect. yeon sang-ho's train to busan isn't as explicit or as cartesian as either of those movies, but its geometry is almost as compelling, and the stunt work, choreography, and blocking is absolutely incomparable. i have no preference between george-romero-esque shambling zombies and danny-boyle-ish skittering ones — is that a taste one can have? — but i can say that this is the most balletic zombie movie i have ever seen, and that it has emotional heft. it's absolutely at the action end of the horror spectrum, but it nips at your heels. (no dog fatalities.)
04.18.20
CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
black leopard, red wolf (book). the last four fantasy novels i've read have all begun with some variation on "those who appear in this account" lists of dramatis personae. that could seem cute or superfluous, as the maps that frequently accompany them often are (the maps in this book, speaking of, are pretty unnecessary), but without a robust character list black leopard, red wolf would be confusing as hell. in fact, it is confusing as hell even when you can flip back to the beginning to remind yourself that the ipundulu is a vampire lightning bird and that sasabonsam (who drinks blood, except when he doesn't) is the winged brother of asanbosam (who eats flesh), and so on. it is also exhausting, as the very stories-within-stories structure and super-intricate world-building that have inspired comparisons to tolkien's middle earth, george r.r. martin's lands of ice and fire, and, like, hieronymus bosch make it extremely slow going. the comparison to george r.r. martin is an important one, for marlon james is equally fixated on sexual violence; it's been a long time since i've read something even more rape-y than a game of thrones, &c. james uses it to make important points about everything from power and exploitation to trauma and identity, and i can appreciate that, but it's rough going. that said, james blends african mythological and storytelling traditions with magical realism and surrealism to create something both ancient and new. i have absolutely no idea if it would appeal to the majority of fantasy readers, but i know i'm going to head back and read james's a brief history of seven killings, and i'll read the sequel to black leopard, red wolf when he writes it. i'm budgeting a month for it, though.
the invisible man (film). if you're the sort of person who worries that seeing too many trailers for thrillers will ruin them for you, i have bad news and good news about the invisible man. bad: as a reboot of one of universal's classic monster movies (along with dracula, frankenstein, the mummy, and so on, although most of the reboots were scrapped after the mummy tanked), its premise and basic structure aren't much of a secret even if you didn't see a bunch of previews for it on cable television this month (though this version centers the victim, elisabeth moss, rather than her tormentor*). good: even if you have been marinating in those previews, at least two of the scenes in them—including one so striking that it's featured as a still in the majority of the movie reviews i've seen—aren't in the movie at all! put that in your juul and smoke it! the invisible man was written and directed by leigh whannell (who also wrote saw**), a detail that could have squelched my interest in the movie if i'd known it ahead of time. i did not know it ahead of time, however, and i am glad that i carried on with our friday-night plan of overpaying for a home-premiering new movie and watching it from our sofas as though we were at our beloved nitehawk cinema in williamsburg. we had to make our own snacks, which was unfortunate, but we could get up to pee whenever we wanted without missing anything (the invisible man is, oddly, more than two hours long), which was pretty great. anyway, it was entertaining, especially if you get a kick out of bad things happening to tech zillionaires.
black leopard, red wolf (book). the last four fantasy novels i've read have all begun with some variation on "those who appear in this account" lists of dramatis personae. that could seem cute or superfluous, as the maps that frequently accompany them often are (the maps in this book, speaking of, are pretty unnecessary), but without a robust character list black leopard, red wolf would be confusing as hell. in fact, it is confusing as hell even when you can flip back to the beginning to remind yourself that the ipundulu is a vampire lightning bird and that sasabonsam (who drinks blood, except when he doesn't) is the winged brother of asanbosam (who eats flesh), and so on. it is also exhausting, as the very stories-within-stories structure and super-intricate world-building that have inspired comparisons to tolkien's middle earth, george r.r. martin's lands of ice and fire, and, like, hieronymus bosch make it extremely slow going. the comparison to george r.r. martin is an important one, for marlon james is equally fixated on sexual violence; it's been a long time since i've read something even more rape-y than a game of thrones, &c. james uses it to make important points about everything from power and exploitation to trauma and identity, and i can appreciate that, but it's rough going. that said, james blends african mythological and storytelling traditions with magical realism and surrealism to create something both ancient and new. i have absolutely no idea if it would appeal to the majority of fantasy readers, but i know i'm going to head back and read james's a brief history of seven killings, and i'll read the sequel to black leopard, red wolf when he writes it. i'm budgeting a month for it, though.
the invisible man (film). if you're the sort of person who worries that seeing too many trailers for thrillers will ruin them for you, i have bad news and good news about the invisible man. bad: as a reboot of one of universal's classic monster movies (along with dracula, frankenstein, the mummy, and so on, although most of the reboots were scrapped after the mummy tanked), its premise and basic structure aren't much of a secret even if you didn't see a bunch of previews for it on cable television this month (though this version centers the victim, elisabeth moss, rather than her tormentor*). good: even if you have been marinating in those previews, at least two of the scenes in them—including one so striking that it's featured as a still in the majority of the movie reviews i've seen—aren't in the movie at all! put that in your juul and smoke it! the invisible man was written and directed by leigh whannell (who also wrote saw**), a detail that could have squelched my interest in the movie if i'd known it ahead of time. i did not know it ahead of time, however, and i am glad that i carried on with our friday-night plan of overpaying for a home-premiering new movie and watching it from our sofas as though we were at our beloved nitehawk cinema in williamsburg. we had to make our own snacks, which was unfortunate, but we could get up to pee whenever we wanted without missing anything (the invisible man is, oddly, more than two hours long), which was pretty great. anyway, it was entertaining, especially if you get a kick out of bad things happening to tech zillionaires.
*fun fact: a tormentor is also "a fixed curtain or flat on each side of a theater stage that prevents the audience from seeing into the wings." related: teasers. quarantrivia!
**i couldn't sleep the other night and a twitter thread about cary elwes sent me down an internet rabbit hole that involved reading plot summaries of all of the saw movies. it was a dark time.
04.05.20
CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
bored to death (series). it's entirely possible that i would have been immune to bored to death's charms if i'd seen it when it first aired on hbo a decade ago; it's very wes-anderson-meets-michael-chabon brooklyn-precious, and with the exception of kristen wiig, its female cast doesn't get much in the way of open road. because we're seeing it after i saw ted danson through four seasons of the good place—i really loved the good place—and while the good, the bad, and the brooklyn of this city is largely off-limits to us, i find myself getting misty over, like, scenes at veselka and old town.* creator/writer/nude-cameo jonathan ames distills something very specific about book and magazine publishing at the beginning of this decade, and while i didn't actually live in greenpoint or park slope in those years, i spent rather a lot of time there; i'd say he's gotten them right, too. also, why haven't we been to brighton beach? why haven't we gone to spa castle? mistakes were made in The Time Before. also also, i think i might be putting together some sort of ted danson retrospective over here. anyway, bored to death: the stoner-noir rejoinder to sex and the city i didn't know i needed, even though that ubiquitous pop-fictional-character personality quiz told me i was an 80% match with carrie motherfucking bradshaw.
game night (film). i see movies at weird film festivals, on international flights, and at, like, dine-in theaters in brooklyn, so i was ignorant of game night's existence until my cousin dan recommended it in our neverending twitter direct-message thread; he said it was one of the best comedies of the decade and as he is a comedian, i decided to listen to him. readers, it is an extremely enjoyable movie! from where i'm sitting it's superior to knives out (another quirky-mysterious semi-thriller i considered pretty cheesy, as daniel craig did not work at all for me; please don't tell the dine-in theaters that or they might not let us come back), in fact. casting directors, please hire rachel mcadams and jesse plemons (especially jesse plemons) for all the comic things.
temporary (book). i'm tempted to call temporary the best book i've read this year so far, but i've had the good fortune to read several boss books over the past few months; let's say it's top three for sure. the very last emily books title and hilary leichter's first novel (expanded from a short story published in n+1 in 2012), temporary follows an unnamed female narrator ostensibly in search of "the steadiness," or an end to the increasingly-absurd fill-in work she's been doing since she was a little girl (when she was hired to open and close each of the doors in an empty house at fixed intervals). she is a human barnacle, and a pirate, and a sort-of-host for the cremains of a captain of industry; she sounds a bit like a lewis carroll character, a kelly link character, a helen oyeyemi character (link and oyeyemi both praised the book, unsurprisingly). it's bone-dry, poignant, and very, very funny, and i think about it a lot as i run errands for my shut-in neighbors for free, shoulder to shoulder with the gig workers running errands for a different set of shut-ins, for lousy pay. C told me today that she drove up to tompkins square park and bought some pastries at the farmers' market "because it was outside;" she also told me that she sings a short song to daffodils blooming in the park across the street from our apartments each morning. i have mostly lost the ability to judge anyone for anything, though i remain dead certain that the adults biking recreationally on city sidewalks are domestic terrorists.
bored to death (series). it's entirely possible that i would have been immune to bored to death's charms if i'd seen it when it first aired on hbo a decade ago; it's very wes-anderson-meets-michael-chabon brooklyn-precious, and with the exception of kristen wiig, its female cast doesn't get much in the way of open road. because we're seeing it after i saw ted danson through four seasons of the good place—i really loved the good place—and while the good, the bad, and the brooklyn of this city is largely off-limits to us, i find myself getting misty over, like, scenes at veselka and old town.* creator/writer/nude-cameo jonathan ames distills something very specific about book and magazine publishing at the beginning of this decade, and while i didn't actually live in greenpoint or park slope in those years, i spent rather a lot of time there; i'd say he's gotten them right, too. also, why haven't we been to brighton beach? why haven't we gone to spa castle? mistakes were made in The Time Before. also also, i think i might be putting together some sort of ted danson retrospective over here. anyway, bored to death: the stoner-noir rejoinder to sex and the city i didn't know i needed, even though that ubiquitous pop-fictional-character personality quiz told me i was an 80% match with carrie motherfucking bradshaw.
game night (film). i see movies at weird film festivals, on international flights, and at, like, dine-in theaters in brooklyn, so i was ignorant of game night's existence until my cousin dan recommended it in our neverending twitter direct-message thread; he said it was one of the best comedies of the decade and as he is a comedian, i decided to listen to him. readers, it is an extremely enjoyable movie! from where i'm sitting it's superior to knives out (another quirky-mysterious semi-thriller i considered pretty cheesy, as daniel craig did not work at all for me; please don't tell the dine-in theaters that or they might not let us come back), in fact. casting directors, please hire rachel mcadams and jesse plemons (especially jesse plemons) for all the comic things.
temporary (book). i'm tempted to call temporary the best book i've read this year so far, but i've had the good fortune to read several boss books over the past few months; let's say it's top three for sure. the very last emily books title and hilary leichter's first novel (expanded from a short story published in n+1 in 2012), temporary follows an unnamed female narrator ostensibly in search of "the steadiness," or an end to the increasingly-absurd fill-in work she's been doing since she was a little girl (when she was hired to open and close each of the doors in an empty house at fixed intervals). she is a human barnacle, and a pirate, and a sort-of-host for the cremains of a captain of industry; she sounds a bit like a lewis carroll character, a kelly link character, a helen oyeyemi character (link and oyeyemi both praised the book, unsurprisingly). it's bone-dry, poignant, and very, very funny, and i think about it a lot as i run errands for my shut-in neighbors for free, shoulder to shoulder with the gig workers running errands for a different set of shut-ins, for lousy pay. C told me today that she drove up to tompkins square park and bought some pastries at the farmers' market "because it was outside;" she also told me that she sings a short song to daffodils blooming in the park across the street from our apartments each morning. i have mostly lost the ability to judge anyone for anything, though i remain dead certain that the adults biking recreationally on city sidewalks are domestic terrorists.
*neither of which is in brooklyn, ironically.
02.27.20
so i was watching an *exquisitely* bad supernatural romance last night, and the hero—a very good actor, and the sort of person you'd really dig in to believe if the lines he was delivering were plausible at all—announced in a super-flat voice that he was madly in love, after, oh, three weeks and for the first time in like 1,500 years with the heroine. "same," she more or less said as one would announce that they'd been tagged in an instagram photo of someone's cocktail. this has probably obvious to everyone but me for a very long time, but i feel like i just understood that fictional characters make super-explicit romantic declarations because writers and directors are either not talented enough or too lazy to show them acting on affection for one another the way actual humans do. so people feel less-than when their own lovers don't show up with TO ME YOU ARE PERFECT signs when actually-actually a move like that is just a big failure of art to imitate life. just me? okay. i'm going to keep watching the show, though.
04.10.19
we were chatting about werner herzog's nosferatu the vampyre at ye olde charity bookstore today. "did you know V found him in her bed once?" B asked me. nosferatu?! "no, werner herzog." i made a beeline for V. "well, yes, but he wasn't there for me," she said. "i had an assistant back then, and i came home one day and just found them both in there. i shouted for them to get out, and she whispered to me, 'but V, it's werner herzog.' 'i don't give a shit who it is,' i said." she knows that i'm heading overseas tomorrow, and she asked me to report back on mayhem in the UK this weekend. i, in turn, made her promise to rule the store with an iron fist in my absence. "yes, the corrupt republic of V!" she exclaimed.
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