The Friday Article Roundup
Gas, grass, or some of this week's best pop culture writing.
Hop in! And scoot over to make room for:
Thanks to Not David Lynch, Dave Sutton, and Bridgett for providing fuel this week. Send articles throughout the next week to ploughmanplods [at] gmail , post articles from the past week below for discussion, and Have a Happy Friday!
For the LA Times, Laura Dern remembers David Lynch:
I had been raised by actors, bearing witness to collaborations that I watched my parents find. It was in those friendships, with a language understood only by them and their maestros, that had me fall in love with acting as a dream profession. When I met you, I knew I had found mine. I just never imagined when I was a teenager that I would be so blessed to spend all these years shapeshifting and growing, directed by your guidance on the life ride of art. You gave me an opportunity to explore every aspect of the female psyche, to play out archetypes and then shatter any former understanding of them. You pushed me toward fearlessness. You brought me to haunted spaces of terror, also holy ones, and you even helped me find the hilarious in tragedy. You made me believe in all that is good in our country and fear all that lies beneath.
Speaking of Lynch, Scott Tobias revisits Lynch’s career outlier (or is it?) The Straight Story for The Reveal:
The Straight Storyย is the polar opposite of an action movie. Yet Lynchโs ability to turn the pace to his advantage leads to perhaps the single best shot in the movie, where the camera starts at road level, with the mowerโs front tire rolling over the yellow lines (a favorite Lynch trope), then panning all the way up to the sky and back down again, only to reveal just how short a distance Alvin has gone. Youโve heard ofย termite art. This is tortoise art.ย
Erick Bradshaw considers the life and times of indie rockers Railroad Jerk at Bandcamp:
In 1995, Beavis and Butt-Head was the channelโs most popular show. One of its side effects was getting new eyes and ears on videos that MTV wouldnโt slot in regular rotation even if it got some air time on the weekly โalternativeโ program 120 Minutes. As the metalheads watch Railroad Jerkโs โRollerkoasterโ video, they poke fun at the bandโs vintage coats while comparing [guitarist Marcellus] Hall to Conan OโBrien. Much like a current TikTok clip, two minutes of screentime on Beavis and Butt-Head trumps even heavy college radio airplay. For his part, Lee was stoked that โwe didnโt get beat up by them, which was good.โ
Jessa Crispin opines on the wider problems of the book industry in the wake of the Gaiman accusations:
Even taking into consideration their years of exploitation and abuse, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer remain models of artistic success in the 21st century. Gaiman created an extremely sellable brand โ affable, โoh goodness,โ harmless Britishness wrapped up in a โI have read a lot of booksโ kind of storytelling โ and the publishing industry used that not only to sell a lot of his books but that of his friends as well. Amanda Palmer has crowdsourced her way into a perfect little Patreon pyramid scheme, where all money flows to her and she gives back vibes and requests for domestic labor. This is the ideal artistic arrangement these days, where stars receive 95% of Patreon/Substack/other crowdsourced forms of income and everyone else competes for scraps. Both are reliant on a dedicated, servile audience, willing to turn over their time and bodies and cash to get a piece of that bohemian existence that only millionaires can manage these days. Itโs the bohemianism not of Weimar, which Palmer constantly references, but the bohemianism of contemporary Burning Man, full of tech billionaires wearing the worst outfits youโve ever seen in your life.
At The Nation, Ethan Iverson examines an overlooked jazz scene and the forgotten bar that powered it:
Perhaps because of its lower visibility in the historical record, this style of 20th-century music has never really been given a name. โModal jazz,โ which means working with a scale or sequence of scales as opposed to conventional cycles of chords, is a contender, although thereโs a lot more going on than that. …Whatever you call it, something was happening. Those fortunate enough to have been at Slugsโ still speak of it as hallowed ground. One such listener was the trumpeter and composer Steve Lampert, who was just a kid when he started going there in 1967. โIt was absolutely explosive,โ he says of a band he saw there led by [pianist McCoy] Tyner. โWaves of energyโit raised you out of your chair and did something healing to your heart.โ
At RogerEbert.com, Robert Daniels writes an earnest plea for keeping movies alive by watching and reviewing the ones that don’t necessarily get all the attention:
Now, to be fair, there are systemic barriers that restrict critics from watching more off-the-beaten path works, especially from relative unknowns, up-and-comers, and underrepresented voices. Budgets at outlets have been slashed and burned. Places that once prided themselves on covering everything now need to wield their resources to take a bigger bite out of tentpole releases. It feels like outlets are shuttering every day. Sometimes it feels like the job is less about discovering and more about surviving. But if weโre not doing the former, then what environment are we surviving for?
About the writer
C. D. Ploughman
The weary Ploughman is a writer and filmmaker, focusing these days on documentary and educational projects. He obsesses over movies with his very patient wife and children.
C. D. Ploughmanโs ProfileTags for this article
More articles by C. D. Ploughman
The life and career of a man who found the extraordinary in the ordinary.
The Friday Article Roundup
An assembly line of this week's pop culture writing from around the Internet.
Lunch Links
State of the art special effects, little attention paid to plot - what's changed over the past 120 years?
And It is a material presenter of this week's pop culture writing from around the Internet.
The Friday Article Roundup
A catty roundup of great pop culture writing from the past week.
Department of
Conversation
Year of the Month update:
Coming in February, you can sign up to write about anything from 2016 along with these fine folks:
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rogue One
TBD: Cori Domschot: Ghostbusters, Hidden Figures, and/or Sing
Tentative: Sam Scott: The Neon Demon
Feb 7th: Gillian Nelson: Queen of Katwe
Feb. 11th: Lauren James: Inside
Feb. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Milo Murphyโs Law
Feb. 18th: JRoberts548: Silence
Feb. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Peteโs Dragon
And hereโs how weโre wrapping up 1947:
TBD: John Anderson: T-Men
Jan. 27th: Cliffy73: Miracle on 34th Street
Jan. 31st: Plutoโs Blue Note
Sent you an email, Sam.
What Did We Watch?
The Avengers, “The Winged Avenger” – Someone dressed like a comic book character is going around killing businessmen, and others. A pretty so so story with some nice effects to demonstrate anti-gravity boots on a ceiling, and a tip of the hat to Batman ’66 in the closing fight. The highlight is the comic art in the story is by Frank Bellamy, a highly regarded illustrator of the time.
Frasier, “Death Becomes Him” – Frasier is floored when a colleague of his brother’s, a stranger but Frasier’s age, drops dead, and obsesses over death. Which leads him to accidentally pay a shiva call to the man’s widow. The script gets more things right about shiva than not and strikes the right tone of an encounter between the very not Jewish Frasier and the mourners. But overall the tone is unsteady since we go rapidly from cartoonish Fraiser to more human Frasier.
I think Bellamy did work for Radio Times or BBC doing promotional illustrations for Dr. Who.
Indeed. (I didn’t know much about him, but I am that weirdo who always looks up stuff after watching things.)
The Bikeriders – I always enjoy Jeff Nichols’ films but this one fell a little short of the usual standard for me. It has some fun performances (and accents) and generally solid vibes but the rise-and-foll storyline just feels a little too familiar and leaves it open to some unflattering comparisons. Still had a pretty good time, but felt a little underwhelmed.
I feel like I’m only able to get online to make these comments on Friday, so here’s the week in watching:
La Musica (1966) – A French film about a couple meeting up to settle final divorce documents after separating three years before. Well observed, and a great character study. Uses close-ups to try to separate it from the play it’s based on. I enjoyed it.
The Brutalist (2024) – A film about art, compromises, trauma, and how it all comes together. The epilogue is so important to understanding the rest of the film. Also, the scene with the train crash is so much more impactful if you know Jewish prayers at all. The short version is that the service that Lazslo was at was Yom Kippur, and the prayer the congregation was reciting was a confession of the past year’s sins. Every year, Jews say this prayer that’s a confession before God, hoping he will forgive you and write you in the Book of Life. That this is being intercut with the event that essentially ends his life’s work is fascinating.
Babygirl (2024) – If you want to like this film, you really need to see it as a wish fulfillment fantasy. A woman with a mediocre sex life has an affair with someone who knows exactly what she wants and needs, and when she gets found out, not only does she not get a divorce, but her husband learns how to satisfy her. There’s probably commentary on the nature of the patriarchy and girlboss feminism that I’m not smart enough to make, but I can’t quite give the film a rave because it feels like the plot is a pickup artist’s fantasy as well. The thorny balance between showing a woman who needs help to achieve satisfaction and showing a creepy dude dominating a powerful woman is hard to figure out, and so I tend to leave this to smarter people than me.
Hard Truths (2024) – Bleak. It’s a tough watch. A meditation on cycles of trauma and abuse, but much more gentle than those tend to be. Hurt people hurt people. And Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays a woman who has been psychologically injured by her mother and also is in physical pain constantly. The resilience of Michele Austin as Jean-Baptiste’s sister, and the way she consistently reaches out with kindness, is heartwarming and the best bit of optimism you’ll see in a film all year.
There’s a lot of comparisons to be made between Babygirl and Eyes Wide Shut (extramarital fantasies involving Nicole Kidman during Christmastime), but I think it’s most interesting that both movies (SPOILER) end with a very similar prescription for their married couples. The exact act and expression of it is what differs, and maybe that’s the practical lesson to be taken away here (and the difference between having a man or woman directing).
Modern Family complete – Finished the series and like so many long-running shows with consistent characters, it’s sad to see it go. Maybe didn’t have the instant classic highs of the great comedies (although one Vegas-set episode is a wonderful example of a Rube Goldberg sitcom contraption) but it had a shockingly high floor for a family-based show that went on for a decade. The show retained its key creatives and cast – you watch the kids grow up to become adults and (in most cases) really find their footing as actors, eat your heart out Richard Linklater – and the sane environment in which it was made (short days with room for improv) really showed in each episode. It’s too bad the spin-off series which would have brough Eric Stonestreet back to Kansas City (or more likely an LA backlot approximation) got nixed by covid. Ty Burrell is the MVP both for his facility with verbal and physical comedy and for being a team player after popping early, but really the cast is great top to bottom. Kudos for the showrunners recognizing the resources they had and opting to nurture them rather than mine, would have been easy to squeeze the most out of the emotion or the most recognizable cast members and run dry after a few seasons.
Black Dog – Lang, perhaps unwisely, comes back to his hometown after serving time for manslaughter. The crime family whose member he killed isn’t thrilled about his return and the town’s being overrun with feral dogs. During his job as a dog wrangling task force, he befriends public canine enemy number one, a sleek black dog that might be rabid. There is absolutely no connection to be made between a silent lone animal with unknown internal dangers and this dog.
Wait, now that I think about it – there is! And there’s a fine tale told about it. More back-and-forth and revisiting of beats and locations than necessary, but an okay crime picture overall. If you’re into lone wolves of two varieties, here’s one for you. Special recognition for setting up a motorcycle stunt that’s better than expected when the rider eats it.
Stephen? Fritz? *suspiciously but intrigued* k.d.?
k.d. lang gets revenge on a crime boss with her wild dog sidekick? Would watch.
It was so cool for so long to hate on Modern Family, but seeing clips of it circulate online, it’s writing is surprisingly sharp. It stands out as laugh-out-loud funnier than most shows today – I think it’s going to age well.
Shลgun, “Tomorrow Is Tomorrow”
I love fucking people over by denying them a quorum: last episode, Ishido realized Toranaga saw the rest of the regents as bureaucrats, and here, Toranaga deals out a bureaucratic blow by proxy, something that lands, and beautifully, only because of the shared reality of rules they’re all working with. (You could not pull this shit on Yabushige.) Fantastic Toranaga-Yabushige conversation here, too, where Toranaga both confronts and bargains with him, much to his more idealistic son’s dismay. Very intrigued by the developing relationship between Toranaga and Blackthorne, as Toranaga moves from seeing him as an expedient tool to a potential building block in a longer-term plan … and as Blackthorne’s nascent loyalty to him (and willingness to exist in Toranaga’s context rather than his own) is complicated by the fact that his own survival is still his top priority and at the forefront of his mind. Really hope we get more of Kiri no Kata, because she’s a delight. Lots of fascinating Mariko material in this episode, with some especially strong and subtle acting from Anna Sawai–her talking with Blackthorne about the sea is the “bigger” moment, but my favorite bit is where you can see her carefully choosing her words to describe her husband in a way that’s both truthful and dutiful, and all she can do is talk about who he is to other people.
Tank
Saving most of my thoughts for a formal write-up, because this is the mid-’80s action-comedy we need right now: when will James Garner roll up in tank and avenge us all? A healing film to watch in these troubled times. Also, I want a tank.
Not only does Tank sound like a balm aesthetically, it also appears to offer political praxis via an alternate universe where Mike Dukakis won the presidency.
I love the way the show handles interpretation – hearing what one character says and then they way Mariko passes along the translation, what she leaves out or adjusts and her motives for doing so (and of course we’re getting a translation of that translation in the subtitles, yet another layer).
The adjustments in translation are one of my favorite details, because the details are always so telling, even when they’re minute alterations. And of course, here she makes her biggest–and most personally guided–omission yet in not translating what Blackthorne says about not really being qualified to teach military tactics.
NYPD Blue — for multiple episodes Medavoy’s lesbian buddy has clearly been building up to ask him for his sperm, if subsequent episode titles are anything to go by (“Emission Impossible,” oh NYPD Blue writers) this will continue to be a running subplot. And why? Gordon Clapp is good as Medavoy but as a character he has a ceiling that Simone and Sipowicz do not and his comic relief bits do not work well stretched out* — he’s a lot better using sympathy to extort a confession from a murderer, I thought that was the show’s raison d’etre as opposed to jizz anxiety. This prelude to a pud pull takes up far more time than Lucy Liu, accidental infanticide, a much thornier crime story (it is technically possible this could have been based on the Louise Woodward case but I think the writing must predate it) that could’ve carried an episode instead of being relegated to the sidelines, but presumably space needed to made for Simone and Diane to go see Jerry Maguire and quote “show me the money,” if nothing else this is depressingly accurate to the time.
*he does have a priceless moment of asking “is that a vagina on the wall?” at the lesbian couple’s apartment, which is indeed decorated with vagina art as all lesbian apartments are
I agree this stuff between Clapp and Turco is interminable, but heโs great in that scene in the apartment.
I think the apartment scene would’ve worked better for me if it was the only scene for this. The minute Turco asked him out to dinner last episode I twigged to what was going on here, sperm-wise, so it not happening then was annoying. But surely the dinner scene would be when this moves along! Nope. Very frustrating, because “straight guy learns lesbians exist” is fairly stale in the 90s to begin with and draggggggggging it out doesn’t do it any favors. But I did enjoy the sea shanty!
Ahahaha, it’s funny and it’s true. All couples decorate so as to express their sex life. That’s why all lesbian apartments have vagina art, all gay domiciles have phalluses, all hetero homes have bees pollinating flowers, and married couples put up pictures of their sexlife-ruining children.
This is why the vibe of Eraserhead is so unsettling, the viewer expects to see that last in Henry’s apartment but instead it’s full of phallic tree stubs. How do we process this?!
That is the weirdest, maybe the only weird thing, about Eraserhead.
ETA – It wouldn’t have fit the tone at all, but to see a portrait of the baby with the little knit hospital hat hanging on the wall would have been great.
Haha, “Emission Impossible” is also the name of an early Family Guy episode, and I think any commentary I can offer on the title beyond that would be redundant.
Mars Express – Bladerunner, Ghost In The Shell and Asimov comparisons abound in this animated French SF feature. A futuristic noir heavy on worldbuilding in a Moebius style is both philosophical and pulpy calling back to its influences but pushing into some interesting androids-are-people-too ideas of its own. The best animated feature of 2024 is the only animated feature of 2024 Iโve seen.
TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY
Football
The UEFA Champions League returned with a bang. Atlรฉtico Madrid came back from 0-1 while down a man at halftime and won it at home 2-1 in the final minute, yet another incredible win I get to celebrate this season. Inter Milan got a dull 0-1 win away at Sparta Prague, but that’s all it needed to virtually clinch a direct berth into the Round of 16.
Looking at the teams I don’t root for, there was plenty of fun too. Celtic Glasgow had three disallowed goals, missed a penalty, got a shambolic own goal from Young Boys, recieved a a red card, and still won 1-0, clinching a spot in the play-in round. That’s football. And I don’t like French moneybags Paris Saint-Germain but it was cool how they came back from down 0-2 to English moneybags Manchester City to beat them 4-2, extending City’s miserable season and leaving them complete outside the playoff picture, at least for now. The final league phase matchday in next Wednesday, with all 18 matches taking place at the same time. That’s football.
A new play by Philly playwright Michael Hollinger called Holy Grail of Memphis at the Arden Theater. I’ll save my thoughts for the upcoming Broad Street Review, uh, review, but while it’s a little underdeveloped and loves banter a bit too much, the ending packs a real whallop.
The Shield, โMoney Shotโ and โGenocideโ
Hey, another case where Billings gives a shit! And one where Tina finally gets a signature cop one-liner!
Also, these two episodes make a great case for Vic Mackey, Father of the Year. Aside, Cassidy is actually a pretty good investigator!
I keep forgetting how totally wild Vicโs entire scheme through these episodes is. Also hilarious that Julien keeps putting a wrench in his plans just by being a straightforward, effective cop.
Oh, hey, itโs Lloyd!
St. Denis Medical, โGimme the Scuttlebuttโ
After she accidentally takes the camera crew in on two employees having sex in the on-call room, Joyce is frustrated at being left out of all the office gossip. When everyoneโs talking about their sex lives, Alex accidentally discloses how infrequently she has sex and her co-workers push her to set up a sex date with her husband (Kyle Bornheimer! Heโs gained some weight). Val is back. Bruce acts ridiculous and Ron goads him on, which is very funny. Maybe not quite as funny as the last two episodes, but Caroline Siede had a sharp observation in her interview: โthe show smartly remembers itโs not just pulling from the history of medical dramas, but from the legacy of workplace sitcoms too.โ Thereโs hardly a patient in sight this episode, as it focuses more on interpersonal relationships. It still works pretty well, and itโs good to see the show can already do both modes at this early stage. (Now extended to an 18-episode first season!)
High Potential, โChutes and Murdersโ
Ken Marino! Eliza Coupe! The murder is of a nanny found on the playground. I dunno that thereโs much in the way of detail in this episode on the case worth getting into– or, at least, that wouldnโt just spoil the case– but Marinoโs goofy performance as a PI with a limp is hilarious. Also, Morgan is worried her son Elliot doesnโt have friends, and that Ava is spending too much time on her phone with her boyfriend.
Abbott Elementary, โStrikeโ
โWait, youโre on the side of labor?โ
โYeah. I hate bosses. Thatโs why I got a job where I donโt have any.โ
โYou have bosses.โ
โPoint to them.โ
The SEPTA strike (which I donโt think was entirely due to Jacobโs behavior, although it would be funnier if it was) is forcing the teachers to have to find workarounds, as many of the parents canโt get their kids to school, and remote learning comes with its own challenges.
Pretty solid episode. Also, Gregory and OโShon start playing pickup ball together. (And as far as the tag goes, if Janine razzed me about my game like she does Gregory here, Iโd do the same thing he did.)
American Dad!, โThe Clearview Motelโ
LOST? Stop in for a free map
โI could use a map. A map of my emotions.โ
The Clearview Motel: LOST in a more existential way? We could help!
โRoger, how would you feel if we hid out at a motel for a few nights?โ
โReborn, maybe? Or suicidal? I donโt know, letโs just try it.โ
You may remember โRabbit Ears.โ This time, itโs Francineโs turn for a journey into supernatural horror.
And since I donโt think we can post images here (maybe we can, I havenโt tried), all Iโll say isโฆ I donโt know if god exists, but this episode, specifically, being the first one to air after David Lynch died is pushing me a little more in that direction. (He was on The Cleveland Show, but since thatโs long been cancelled I guess he canโt speak to us through it now.) The owls are not what they seem.
(If you want to see some images, you can look here.)
This is weird to read because SEPTA just barely averted a strike here (and getting a slashed budget).
What Did We Read?
After a good run to finish the year (55 books read in 2024! Possibly a record for me), lots of false starts for me so far in January.
Making my way through Pratchett’s Maskerade for the first time in ages. The two storylines not merging till halfway through the book slows things down a lot for a Pratchett book, and even when Nanny and Granny get to the opera house, it’s a lot more scattered than other Witches books. I feel like PTerry wants to have fun both lampooning opera and showing his love for it, but those opposing impulses don’t mesh. I do however like his attempt to write a believable and sympathetic plus sized character in Agnes.
Also had a glitch on the e-reader and had to scroll across huge chunks of the book to get to where I was because PTerry didn’t use chapters. I wonder if the reason he started to add them at the end of his life is because someone tell him it would be easier to find your place again on an e-reader.
Maskerade is very much lesser Pratchett for me, I don’t know or really care for opera so I guess that was likely anyway but I think you’re right about how those impulses never mesh. The Discworlds that specifically focus on the arts are generally considered lesser, right? Odd dynamic. And I recall Agnes being a lot better in Carpe Jugulum than she is here.
Soul Music and Moving Pictures benefit from being gag fests more than anything else. The stories are slight but the in jokes and puns are pretty funny.
Ah, I keep forgetting I bought a huge Pratchett e-book collection when it was on sale. Maybe I’ll have to finally crack into them. They use some weird app, though, and that’s part of why I haven’t. (That and my reading time these days is pretty slim.) I can’t even remember the damn name of the app.
Finished The Good Lord Bird and loved it, looking forward to checking out Ethan Hawke in the adaptation.
Started Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves and not far enough into it to say much, but look forward to me being an asshole about the way you buy and store your groceries in the near future.
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett — a reread. It’s funny seeing the mysteries play out here, Hammett largely plays fair with the reader in terms of providing information that can be used to solve whodunnit but he does so in a brusque and hardboiled way, the data is present but you need to have the Op’s processing ability to understand/extrapolate. And the Op himself gets off-kilter — it’s pretty funny that he openly shoots one of the crooked cops in order to get tight with a gang and no one, least of all the police chief, gives a shit, but he ices the chief himself with some well-chosen words and it is brutal business. But he’s fucking mad! And yet he never goes Vengeance Mode, the end of the book is darkly funny in that after all this he just gets chewed out by his boss, this points toward similar conclusions down the line and the really grim theme that this is the job and the job doesn’t care beyond the job. Anyway, always strange to read this as something that was written and created instead of a story that has always existed and that will always exist as long as there are bad towns and bad men.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, by Jane Smiley
This was a hugely important book for me, but it had been a few years since I’d read it. It’s nonfiction–Smiley, mired in writer’s block, decided to read a hundred novels and write about both them specifically (in concise essays towards the back) and about the kaleidoscopic portrait they created of the history and meaning of the novel in general. Sometimes I disagree with her (and that’s not what “protagonist” means! That’s literally the wrong etymology! How did no one catch that in editing? We were still properly editing books back when this came out!), but even when I’m arguing with the text, it’s saying interesting things. (And I like her expression of Zola’s philosophy: “It was though he were saying, ‘Even these sorts of persons are interesting to me, and I can make them interesting to you.'” Gotta read Thรฉrรจse Raquin.)
One of the more intriguing bits in terms of thinking about the form as a whole is her breakdown of novels as drawing from earlier forms of prose both public and private–travel, history, biography, tale, joke, gossip, diary/letter, confession, polemic, essay, epic, and romance–and theorizing that every novel is assembled of a handful of these elements, which have their own rewards and implicit contracts with the reader. I’d include poetry and drama, personally, but if you’re going to stick with only the form’s prose antecedents–and if you view drama as fundamentally performed rather than fundamentally written written–then this is an interesting and useful set of influences, and it’s fun to play Smiley’s game and try to figure out which models a particular work is drawing on.
Basketful of Heads, by Joe Hill (art by Leomacs)
A self-contained horror-action-crime graphic novel that, given its lack of sprawl, can’t match Hill’s Locke and Key as far as sheer inventiveness goes. And after a while, you can predict how some scenes will go–gotta keep collecting those heads, after all–which saps some of the tension. But it’s still an enjoyable and fairly propulsive “one crazy night” story, with June and her borrowed Viking axe forced into a desperate fight for 1) her life and 2) some sense of moral clarity in a corrupt world. Very good art. And the payoff for the Sting joke alone makes this worth the price of admission.
I like Smiley’s take on the novel as assembled parts. One of the things I really enjoy about crime fiction is how the plot offers an excuse for the novelist to throw in observations — history, essays, polemics — about the larger theme or just small stuff along the way, when this is done well it’s a joy. Donald Westlake was a master at this, Reginald Hill was very good too. This can also go down bad paths, thinking of Dennis Lehane busting out his opinions on race relations in early 90s Kenzie/Genaro and wishing I could just back away.
I have a 20, 000 page goal right now! And I’m on Story Graph (superior Goodreads alt) if anyone else is.
Tree of Smoke by Dennis Johnson – I’m a little baffled by the hype. This is a lot of great prose and ideas in search of a cohesive narrative, which it does by borrowing from several sources, including Apocalypse Now, Pynchon, and Full Metal Jacket (which reviews at the time even acknowledged). Still a GOOD book, but it’s definitely not a five star classic or “the definitive Vietnam novel.”
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte – Halfway in. This actually makes more sense in terms of hype, “The Feminist” especially being a great depiction of the Nice Guy who is actually a psychopath, baffled that he can’t get laid by simply following the rules of feminism even though he’s a tedious, awful person. However, this does have the Ari Aster problem, or the Shut Up Nerd problem: I want the author, or their characters, to shut the fuck up and go to therapy. Doesn’t help that the three main characters of each short story so far are all terminally online, neurotic, and their fantasies build into either madness or violence. Probably written for magazines so it feels repetitive in order.
Reading the original Black Narcissus novel. I can see why the author didn’t like the movie, heh. The very shallow take I have is that the movie is mostly focused on how the women shouldn’t be in Mopu and the book is mostly focused on how the women shouldn’t be nuns. This is very much a reductive hot take but…yeah.
Hey Friends, Whatโs Up?
We got blindsided by my new insurance plan. The Trulicity that cost us nothing last year will cost a lot more than that now. Enough that it’s possible we will end up worse off than we would have been had I stayed with the old plan, price hike and all. Can you guess what company we are with now? This will not break the bank but my wife is going to ask her GP about cheaper alternatives, and this rules out me considering Ozempic.
Meanwhile the person I am filling in for will be back next month as scheduled. And I think not a moment too soon. I am glad to know I can handle an executive assistant role. I am glad I can stop doing it.
And speaking of Trulicity, my wife has fallen into a pattern of getting sick to her stomach two days after the shot. The GP has prescribed an anti-nausea med, but I feel like this is the best solution. We will see.
Bleh, good luck, insurance stuff is the worst.
It’s really windy.
Four year old is sick. Taking her to the doctor this afternoon. If she has something serious, then we have to cancel dropping the kids off with my parents. Hoping that the fever is just “she’s four and this is how she processes a cold.”
Good luck. Likely thatโs all it is.
Pretty muted week here with school out (again) on Monday for MLK Day. We sorta made a day of service of it, or at least a couple hours of service via a program at the library, but I need to research a more helpful way we can spend it next year. I don’t really want to discuss my wife’s job in too much detail, but suffice to say the stupidity is starting to roll in. Jury’s still out on how much will be benign barking at nothing, how much will make the job unnecessarily more difficult but still doable, and how much will be detrimental to the cause. But then that’s kind of the way for everybody right now, isn’t it? It sounds like her newly appointed boss is solidly qualified, so that gives hope for things functioning on a local level (which is really the only level you can hope for things to function on under most any circumstances).
SNOW. South Louisiana has had flurries before, but we had almost 12″ of snow on Monday! Just light and powdery and fluffy. And after several more days of freezing weather, it’s still on the ground. Literal blizzard warnings on the gulf coast. I can see why living with this is a pain, but for a few days, it’s been magical. Also set a new record low temp of 4* F.
On the downside, a casual-ish relationship just fell through. And a lot of it is on me – insecurities, blind spots, some false assumptions, etc. She was completely right about a fair amount. However – one of the downsides of trying to think more critically and with nuance is that you also can’t defend yourself without looking like a litigious jackass. It’s not my fault if analyzing the situation reveals unsavory things about yourself or people you look up to!
It’s been a long, tiring, stressful, occasionally frustrating two weeks. I guess I’d have a lot more to say about it, except it’s so damn late no one is going to read this (except you, if you get email notifications for replies). Maybe next week!
Always watchingโฆ
From reporting, Palmer seems to have been awfully complicit in Gaimanโs exploitation and sexual abuse of women.
But that is a separate issue from the complaint referenced above, which is that she uses her charisma and celebrity to surf on a wave of goodwill. And complaints about this always seem like sour grapes to me. The people that gave Palmer the shirts off their backs (the ones that didnโt get assaulted, anyway) I think are mostly happy to have done so, and if they arenโt, they can stop doing it. The problem with the new publishing/artistic economy is not that Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are better at navigating it than you are. Itโs that nobody buys books or records anymore! Thatโs not the publishersโ fault, either. (Also, pretty ooky that you find out a popular author raped a bunch of women and you see that as the opening to write your article about how you dislike his ex-wifeโs business practice.)
I don’t think that’s quite right, because expecting people to work for beer and hugs means that they only have been and hugs when things go wrong. Gaiman very specifically exploited his victims economically and the Gaiman-Palmer refusal to hire people and pay people meant it was easier to victimize them.
Iโm glad people seem to be rediscovering The Straight Story. Itโs such a good movie. Itโs not only unlike other David Lynch movies, itโs unlike any movie Iโve ever seen.
It really is something special. I want to show it to my kids (rated G and all), but I don’t think they’ll probably appreciate it yet.
I think it came out when I was 19, so maybe mid-to-late teens would be a good time to show them. Or if your daughter is a bit more mature, it might be a good movie to throw on in the background of a sweet sixteen party .
Lol, hey kids! I know given the theme here youโve all got aging on the mind. I think youโll really get a kick out of this.
Another Lynch piece — a really good critical/personal review by Vikram Murthi at The Nation:
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/david-lynchs-essay/
Yesterday’s news announced thatThe Righteous Gemstones will be returning in March, and season 4 will be the last.
Here’s an interview with Danny McBride on the topic.