Category: Nonessential Thoughts

  • F1 The Movie The Review

    F1 The Movie The Review

    Once you enter the space of F1: The Movie, you can’t escape! It’ll have you under its control, and you’ll want to return again and again. When you see F1 shift into high gear, you’ll hardly be able to function, and you’ll want to strap yourself into that driver’s seat and turn the key. Bored? No way!

    Excitement? Thrills? Put ’em on my tab! It’s not an option: I command every cinema lover, looking out their windows and wanting to insert themselves into a more invigorating alt life, to run, don’t walk to the theater! Put on your movie-watching caps, lock down those tickets, and go!

    Don’t be content to sit at home with social media and mindlessly scroll. Lock yourself into an adventure with so much power, you’ll never want it to end!

    If sitting in a two-and-a-half-hour-long movie about car racing gives you pause, put those worries on mute! You’ll have plenty of back space, since you’ll be watching the whole movie from the edge of your seat! And you’ll spend the whole time remembering the pulse-pounding danger of the previous track, while looking forward to even more action on the next track! (If you’re worried about bringing the little ones: none of the characters curse or get into uncomfortable sexual situations).

    I almost feel bad for the editors slash trailer creators, since I can’t think of a single senses-shattering moment I’d want to delete! Plus, you can take a screenshot of the screenplay and scan any page up and down, and you’ll find quote-able dialogue without equal, period. This is the kind of positive story you simply can’t find in print. Screen it immediately!

    It’s clear that this is a movie you’ll want to watch at full brightness and maximum volume, no ?. Multi- -ate Brad Pitt is 100% the best in his [] @ what he does, & he has a # of 24-^ gold scenes that grab you and don’t let go ~ movie’s end. (+, with his -ing good looks, even @ 62 he’s still a * you’ll want to ! in the :. | down, naysayers, Brad Pitt is \ he never left!)

    If F1 is this thrilling, I can’t wait for F2 through F12!

    The author of this post received no financial compensation for this review, and he clearly couldn’t be bothered to spend 155 minutes of his life watching a film about a sport he has no interest in, even though by most accounts it’s pretty good and entertaining. This review of F1 should not be interpreted as a cry for help.

  • Pride vs Grace

    Pride vs Grace

    For the past few years, I’ve tried to start out the month of June by reconsidering the concept of “pride” and what exactly it means to me. This year in particular, it’s become pretty clear-cut, since so many politicians and public figures have stopped even trying to pretend to be decent human beings, and they’re now shamelessly persecuting trans men, women, and children.

    As somebody who’s not transgender, but has just a basic level of human empathy and decency, I think it’s appalling, disgraceful, and inexcusable. As somebody who’s gay, and who has mostly kept my mouth shut because I can’t and shouldn’t claim to speak for anyone else, I think it’s especially disgusting to see people trying to drive a wedge between trans people and the rest of the LGBQs.

    It’s shameless, because they’re using the exact same arguments against trans people that they used against gays and lesbians during the years of fighting for marriage equality. Now they’re attacking people’s identities — demonizing people not for who they love, but for who they are. When a professional flatulating asshole like JK Rowling claims to have lesbian and gay allies, her hope isn’t just to legitimize her own bigotry, but to encourage now-properly-assimilated lesbians and gay men to join in the attacks on a new minority. “Whew, we’re safe. Who can we persecute next?”

    Instead, what it’s done is clarify just how cartoonishly empty and meritless the attacks have been all along. They’ve always been attacking people’s identities. It’s always been disingenuous, bad-faith bullshit. And for me personally, it’s made me regret all the times I tried in the past to treat it as if it were in good faith.

    Since I came out, my philosophy around gay rights and marriage equality in particular has always been to stand your ground, but extend grace to the people who want to understand. After all, it took me many years to get comfortable with the idea of coming out, so why should I expect anyone else to just “get it” immediately? Don’t accept anything less than full equality at the governmental/societal level, but be patient at the personal level.

    At the time, it seemed to make sense. Even after the political issue is resolved, we’ve all got an entire lifetime left to live around each other. Doesn’t it make sense to try and help people understand where you’re coming from, and how it’s just the most basic question of fairness and justice, instead of letting any question of “legislation from the bench” or “forced tolerance under penalty of law” linger in the background, waiting to cause problems again at some point in the future, as soon as it becomes politically convenient for someone?

    The obvious problem with that line of thinking: being patient and trying to make sure that people were comfortable with the idea of tolerance is exactly why it took me so long to come out in the first place. For years, I said that I wished I’d come out in my 20s, but for practical reasons. I could’ve had a lot more life experience by the time I started getting into serious relationships. But now, I wish I’d come out in my 20s because it would’ve given me more years to shed all of the impulses that kept me in the closet.

    Which of course is one of the key ideas behind Pride. Having the strength of conviction to declare “this is who I am,” without having to first wait for anybody else’s approval. It requires the realization and acceptance that you will never be good enough. The people who want to find fault with you will always find a way to find fault with you. And the people who actually matter will never think of you as just “good enough.”

    That means being a person of integrity, standing up for yourself, and standing up for other people who are being treated unjustly. In my case, it means not staying silent because it’s not my place and I don’t know what it’s like to be trans, but speaking up because I know what it’s like to be human. And it is my place, because a lot of cartoonishly unnecessary bullshit is making life worse for several people I care about.

    Back when marriage equality was the wedge issue being used to make people miserable for the purpose of votes and money, we heard an awful lot of clowns complaining about the gay agenda being “shoved down people’s throats.” And we’d mock it, because it was obvious bullshit, but also patiently try to explain in firm but easily-understandable language how that simply wan’t true. People want to be themselves and live in happiness, it doesn’t affect anyone else in any way, and they’re not trying to “shove it down your throat.”

    Now, it’s been several years since marriage equality and laws against anti-gay discrimination have spread over the United States. And it’s been proven that it was such a complete non-issue that only the shittiest and least-effectual politicians are even attempting to dredge it back up again as a wedge issue. And yet we’re seeing the exact same bullshit arguments lodged against trans people, with the exact same false claims about “protecting children” from people who don’t give a shit about children, and the exact same capitulation from the Democratic party who still treat basic human decency as a political hot potato that they’re unwilling to touch. So I think it’s long past time for patience or grace for people who don’t deserve it.

    I think now, if you’re being true to your identity and someone accuses you of “shoving it down their throat,” the correct response is “Choke on it, asshole.”

  • Your Taste, Should You Choose to Accept It

    Your Taste, Should You Choose to Accept It

    Apparently there’s a new Mission: Impossible movie out? Who knew? You’d think they’d have at least put up a poster or something.

    I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world, but at least in Los Angeles, the advertising is inescapable. The other day I went to a mall that’s not even attached to a theater, and coming out into the atrium, I was confronted with a positively gigantic LED screen, 25 feet tall at least, showing Tom Cruise’s face squinting out over his domain. It was like being in a modern update of 1984 where a bunch of Hollywood producers had said, “Well of course our main objective is to stay true to Orwell’s original vision but also we think obviously, Big Brother should be more handsome.”

    I had plans to see the new movie, but was feeling an odd combination of gastrointestinal distress and extreme lack of interest. It seemed more or less guaranteed to be an entertaining action movie with some stunts that take full advantage of the IMAX screen, but I’ve been unable to work up even the smallest bit of enthusiasm for it.

    But heading into the weekend, I felt like I needed to do some prep work to get the full effect. I’ve still only ever seen the first three movies in the series, after all. (Or in other words, I stopped right before they started to get good, by most accounts). But then I saw a recap of the franchise that made me realize I actually had seen at least one of the other ones, but had forgotten everything about them. But then I realized that all the details have blurred together, and while I think I remember seeing a scene of Henry Cavill beating the hell out of somebody in a bathroom, it might’ve been The Man From UNCLE or Casino Royale or maybe it was when he was wailing on me, in one of those dreams I’m not supposed to mention in polite company?

    Whatever the case, the Mission: Impossible movies just don’t resonate with me at all, and I’ve been talking a lot of shit about them on social media lately. So much so that I’ve been concerned it comes across as the type of person who is super-quick to volunteer that they have no interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Where I’m never quite sure how we’re supposed to react. Congratulations on your sophisticated and refined tastes, I guess?

    So it’s important to be clear that whatever it is that makes Mission: Impossible movies pass through my like fiber, it’s solely a matter of preference, and no value judgment is expressed or implied. (Except for the second movie, which is just not good). I love a high-budget, well-made action movie, and I love a summer blockbuster that everybody can enjoy at the same time as a Big Event. I have less than no interest in letting my obnoxious, pretentious movie snob come back to life after I’ve done such a good job of silencing him over the past several years.

    Which is something I’ve been very wary of, since I’ve gotten back into Letterboxd. I like their YouTube videos, I like the social media aspect of it, and I especially like the idea of having a movie-watching diary that doesn’t require me to devote a couple of hours to farting out a post on this blog. What I don’t like is that it keeps reminding me of everything I hated about film school and about online film and popular media commentary.

    And I start to waste time thinking about stupid stuff I absolutely don’t need to think about, like whether this movie “deserves” three stars, or do I bump it down to two and a half? Do I need to add a review to clarify my rating, even if I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say? Would it be fun to write something nasty about a movie I strongly dislike, instead of just ignoring it?

    It’s all in danger of becoming performative instead of participatory. Like not just wanting to engage in interesting conversation about a movie (whether positive or negative), but needing to have your tastes recognized and validated. Where it’s not a celebration, like it should be, but a challenge that you can and most likely will fail at.

    For example: choosing the four favorite movies that will go at the top of your Letterboxd profile, which is part of the site’s branding, since they ask celebrities on red carpets to list their four favorites. Mine are shown at the top of this post — The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Miller’s Crossing, and Rear Window. I mean, obviously.

    But I’m gradually getting the impression that the rules for choosing these are more complex than I ever imagined, and I’ve done it wrong. For instance: I’ve just outed myself as basic. You’re supposed to choose something under-appreciated, to demonstrate that you’ve got more eclectic tastes. Ideally, something that is obscure enough that few others will have chosen it, but popular enough to dispel any sense that you specifically chose the most obscure and pretentious movie that you could think of.

    “What’s wrong with Empire or Raiders?!” I protest, making even clearer that I’m missing the point. It’s not that people dislike them; it’s that so many people like them that it says nothing to list them as your favorites. You want to pick something that says, “this choice tells you something specifically about me.”

    But each of those movies does say something specifically about me, to the point that it almost feels like a victory. For one thing, my memory is absolutely terrible, but I still vividly remember seeing each one for the first time1At Phipps Plaza for the Atlanta premiere, at Septum Cinemas in my hometown for a birthday party, at the Tate Center at University of Georgia, and in a cinema studies class at NYU and realizing I was seeing something that was unlike anything I’d seen before. For another, each one changed how I think about art and what I value in it. Two of them obviously played a big part in my moving to California. Rear Window was like a light bulb going off2No pun intended; not a flash bulb and changed the way I interpret movies. And Miller’s Crossing carried itself like both an art film and a gangster action movie, suggesting the distinction wasn’t as rigid as I’d always assumed.

    And for about as long as those have been my favorite movies, I’ve gone through cycles of being a pretentious snob, to rejecting pretentious snobbery and becoming an arrogant snob instead, to just being kind of a self-righteous contrarian, to trashing stuff if I thought it would be funny, to whatever phase I’m in now. And honestly, it just feels like a victory to realize I just can’t get that concerned about highbrow vs lowbrow, knowing that I’ve seen a lot more blockbusters that resonated with me than “art” films have.

    It feels like a victory to grow up feeling like a nerd, seeing all my nerd favorites become enormously successful business to the point that you were a weirdo if you didn’t like them, and then seeing that whole fandom fracture again. It feels like a victory to know that I’ve grown out of my arrogant phase where I scoffed at Stephen Spielberg as being too “corny” or “maudlin.” And it feels like a victory to realize that absolutely none of this matters at all, but I can still find a way to try and turn it into an introspective metaphor for self-discovery and growth or whatever.

    But the most valuable reminder, at least for me, is just to remember why we’re fans of stuff in the first place. Ostensibly it’s to celebrate the stuff we love, instead of knocking down the stuff we hate. To discover new details about our favorites, or to discover new favorites. And resist the urge to let out the inner arrogant film critic, and instead just choose to enjoy things and let other people enjoy things.

    • 1
      At Phipps Plaza for the Atlanta premiere, at Septum Cinemas in my hometown for a birthday party, at the Tate Center at University of Georgia, and in a cinema studies class at NYU
    • 2
      No pun intended; not a flash bulb
  • The Love We (Choose To) Give

    The Love We (Choose To) Give

    One of the reasons Bloom worked so well for me is that I was already terrified before I even opened the book. I had no idea what to expect, but I was sure that it was going to turn viscerally gruesome. And as it turns out, the adrenaline-rush I’m in danger! feeling of a horror story is all but indistinguishable from the adrenaline-rush I’m in danger! feeling of falling hard for someone.

    The only other thing I’ve read by Delilah Dawson was a Star Wars novel based on a theme park expansion, and it had passages with a character flashing back to torture scenes.1That were, apparently, referencing scenes from her earlier novel Phasma. It was nothing beyond the pale, or anything, but it did surprise me to see the shift in tone. I was worried how far things would go when the author wasn’t bound by the constraints of licensed material.

    So I figured that it was worth the risk of spoiling Bloom for myself by doing a quick Google search on the overall vibe of the book. I didn’t find anything particularly revealing, but I did find people on Reddit doing what people on Reddit do best: having absolutely dogshit takes on fictional characters.2If you don’t use Reddit, reviews on Goodreads are a good substitute for the worst possible takes. There were tons of variations on the sentiment that “Ro had it coming” or “I wouldn’t have ignored all the red flags” or “It was implausible how long she ignored the obvious.”

    I guess I feel bad for people who’ve never had an intense crush, or otherwise they’d know that falling in love makes you stupid. Blissfully, deliriously stupid. My take on Bloom was that that was a key part of the suspense: readers spend the bulk of the book yelling “don’t go into that dark basement!” figuratively, until we’re yelling “don’t go into that dark basement!” literally, while the protagonist is spending the entire time coming up with somewhat-reasonable justifications for everything.

    One thing I particularly liked about the ending of Bloom, though, was that Dawson resisted any attempts to throw in an unnecessary But I still love her! complication. Once the protagonist realizes the situation she’s in, the infatuation is immediately broken. She runs off a checklist of all the red flags she either didn’t see or deliberately ignored, and then instead of beating herself up over it, she simply sets to work trying to get out of the situation. It was a smart way to handle a character who becomes instantly aware of exactly the type of story she’s in.

    (I was especially happy to see it after reading Dawson say that one of her primary inspirations was Hannibal, because I’m still bitter about the absolute character assassination Thomas Harris did to Clarice Starling in that book).

    While I was still thinking of Bloom, I happened to see a video about the movie Companion (which is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year). The hosts liked it as much as I do, but they had an interpretation that I completely disagree with when it comes to one of the main plot points. They said that the relationship between Patrick and Eli was different from the one between Iris and Josh, because Eli really loved Patrick.

    The reason I disagree so strongly is because it goes against what I think is the most interesting idea in Companion: that we own the love we feel for other people, and the love we choose to give them. No matter what happens afterwards, that feeling is still ours. Regardless of whether they felt the same way.

    Two of the main things I took away from Companion: 1) All the human characters are garbage, and 2) It doesn’t matter that the moments when the robots fell in love with their partners were chosen arbitrarily from a pre-generated list of cute meetings. They’re still real, because they’re real to them. Patrick was able to overwrite his programming because he still had such a vivid memory of first falling in love with Eli. And Iris says repeatedly in voice-over that the two moments of clarity in her life were meeting Josh and killing him. Even with everything she’s learned, that first memory was special to her.

    It’s such a great idea for a movie that deals with ideas about autonomy, control, and self-realization. That’s a big part of why I think the scene where Josh has Iris tied up and is explaining the situation is so important: he’s insisting on exerting control one last time, to say that this is all that their “relationship” ever was, and that it was never real.

    In context, it feels like exposition. But later, after we’ve learned more about the extent of Iris’s self-awareness, and the extent of a semi-sci-fi story using love robots as a metaphor, it’s easier to recognize it as the way that controlling people and narcissists prefer to end relationships (assuming they’re not cowardly enough to just leave the other person ghosted). To redirect all of the responsibility and blame on the other person, rewind time, and insist that nothing that they believed in was ever true.

    Iris’s autonomy and Patrick’s autonomy both involve taking back that first memory, and realizing that nothing that happened afterwards can erase how they felt in that moment.

    It’s worth calling out because it’s an idea that I hardly ever see emphasized in fiction, much less in real life. And it’s not just limited to romantic relationships, but friendships, working relationships, even the more mundane choices we make. We can get fixated on the idea that we can control what happens to us by learning from our mistakes and being wary of repeating them. But I think we have more control over our own lives when we give up that feeling of certainty and (false) security. When we accept that we can’t control everything that happens to us, but we absolutely can control how we respond to it, and how we think about it afterwards.

    Speaking for myself, it’s just nice to finally be able to look back at choices I’ve made with peace instead of regret. To think about crushes I’ve had that were unreturned, friendships that eventually went sour, trust in people that turned out to be undeserved, and instead of feeling embarrassed about getting myself into those situations, to be happy that I had the courage to put myself out there.

    Edit: In case the preamble didn’t make it clear, this was prompted solely by a movie I watched and a book I read, not by any real-life current events! Everything’s good!

    • 1
      That were, apparently, referencing scenes from her earlier novel Phasma.
    • 2
      If you don’t use Reddit, reviews on Goodreads are a good substitute for the worst possible takes.
  • The Future: Beef

    The Future: Beef

    There is exactly one moment in Phantom of the Paradise that works for me, without any kind of reservation or qualification. It’s the press conference where our villain Swan introduces the world to his new performer. “Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the future: Beef.” The camera pans over to a coffin, which is opened to reveal a curly-haired glam rocker in makeup, who looks to the camera and snarls.

    Paul Williams plays it completely straight-faced — as does the movie itself — and even though the previous scene went through a line-up of possible replacements for the nostalgia band that the new act was replacing, the revelation of Beef still came as a surprise to me. It’s a weird, genuinely funny moment that still works over 50 years later.

    My enchantment with Beef didn’t last long, since the very next scene shows him to be a stereotype of a queer man that honestly feels too lazy to be offensive. I was going to include a YouTube clip I’d found of Beef’s introduction, but I hadn’t noticed that the description of the video itself has the f-slur. Is it just homophobic, or is it a queer fan of the movie “taking it back?” I don’t care!

    I did find an interview with Gerrit Graham talking about the process of coming up with the character, where “process” meant Brian De Palma trying to find euphemisms for what he wanted without actually saying “gay”1Including “like Little Richard,” which is almost charming, and Graham doing the first thing he could think of, and then sticking with that for his entire performance.2Don’t get too attached to Beef; he doesn’t last long (spoiler?).

    It felt gratifying to hear that from someone who was involved in the production — instead of someone writing about the movie long after it’d achieved whatever “cult classic” status it has now — because it fit in with the overall impression I had of the movie: ultimately, it doesn’t really warrant all the re-interpretation and analysis it’s gotten over the years, because it’s just hell of corny. It feels like a comedy made by people who don’t have a very sophisticated sense of humor, that happens to include queer characters without actually knowing any queer people.

    Beef’s big musical number seemed to me to be what you get if a bunch of extremely straight people tried to make The Rocky Horror Picture Show.3So basically, I guess: KISS. I’d initially thought it was derivative, but Paradise came out a year before Rocky Horror, but a year after the stage production that became the movie. So instead of going too far down that rabbit hole to figure out the specifics, I’m content to just conclude that they were two projects drawing from a lot of the same inspirations, made with very different mindsets.

    The most obvious is that the musical in Paradise is on a set inspired by German expressionist movies, while Rocky Horror pointedly bases itself on more modern B-movies. Brian De Palma was a movie fan making movies filled with references to his favorite styles and directors, making a goofy slapstick comedy musical version of Faust. The glam rock elements were included not because of any higher-minded agenda, but simply because that was the flavor of the moment in 1974, just like Sha Na Na-style nostalgia bands had been previously.

    Really, the whole idea of my trying to categorize everything into groups of Gross And Offensive, Fun But Dated Camp, or Genuinely Funny Absurdism is itself a post-Twitter phenomenon. That’s when I started trying to analyze whether I was enjoying stuff at the expense of other people, which most often takes the form of being offended on other people’s behalf.

    (more…)
    • 1
      Including “like Little Richard,” which is almost charming
    • 2
      Don’t get too attached to Beef; he doesn’t last long (spoiler?).
    • 3
      So basically, I guess: KISS.
  • Survivor: Nope Island

    Survivor: Nope Island

    I was excited to see a poster and trailer for the upcoming reality series Got to Get Out on Hulu, hosted by a disappointingly shirt-wearing Simu Liu.

    There’s a frustrating sense that reality TV is playing it too safe, so I’m glad someone had the stones to Go There and make a series about a bunch of white people competing to be the first to take over a younger black person’s body.

    This will be a good sequel to the producers’ earlier cooking competition, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

  • Relatable One

    Relatable One

    I’m a few weeks into my social media hiatus, and I have to say it’s been very nice. A month without Instagram is surprisingly calming, and I’ve only checked into Bluesky and Mastodon to confirm my auto-posting is working and then immediately signed off. I can totally see myself making this shift permanent.

    The only downside to not having a Dumb Thoughts Collector always an app away is that I can’t share stupid observations like this one:

    I still haven’t seen the first season of Andor, and I feel like I’m essentially at the point where I’m throwing a tantrum and refusing to watch it. Just because I keep reading people online say that this is what Star Wars should be, and that rubs me the wrong way. I don’t look to Star Wars for moral ambiguity or parables of real-world political issues or nuanced takes on complex topics; I like it pulpy and referential. To act as if there’s clearly a superior take on the source material, and the others are somehow inferior or more juvenile, seems to be unnecessarily arrogant. Especially considering that the source material is space wizards. Rogue One left me cold, and there’s nothing about the character of Cassian Andor that has me excited to watch.

    Until this morning, when I opened YouTube and saw a thumbnail for the upcoming season. And it makes Andor infinitely more relatable to me to find out that he’s the kind of guy who thinks a lot about pizza.

  • Falling into Booktube

    Falling into Booktube

    While I was looking all over for reviews of a new ebook reader, I was inadvertently training the algorithms to recognize that I’m totally super into books now. As a result, all of the theme park trip reports, video essays about Star Wars and the MCU, and video game reviews have fallen out of my recommendations, to be replaced with tons and tons of dispatches from Booktube.

    A positive example is Good Books Lately, a YouTube channel and podcast hosted by a married couple chatting about what they’ve read and are looking forward to reading. They’ve also got a video giving attention to other people making book-centric videos. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would’ve hoped for, people talking about what interests them and giving recommendations for new stuff to read.

    Like with everything else on the internet, there’s another side to “Booktube” and its darker, more-attention-deficient cousin “Booktok.” It blurs the divisions between earnest, low-budget projects from people wanting to share what they’re into; slick projects from influencers trying to sell books and book-adjacent projects; and slick projects trying to pass themselves off as earnest, low-budget projects. And as with so many things on the internet, it blurs the divisions to the point that I’m no longer sure the divisions are even relevant anymore.

    But I seem to be more sensitive to crossing the streams of art and commerce when it comes to books than with other media. I don’t usually balk at theme park fans, video gamers, or amateur movie critics pulling in some cash by making unofficial-but-sanctioned advertising. Especially since it’s not always calculated, and it can happen even when you don’t mean it to.

    This blog got a slightly higher than normal amount of attention1Although still laughably low if I were someone who cared about internet analytics. for that post about the Kobo ereader, just because my interests happened to intersect with something people were looking for. But it still hypocritically makes me uncomfortable to see a page full of thumbnails with people all reviewing, say, How to Solve Your Own Murder than it does with people reviewing a new episode of The Mandalorian or the Captain America movie.

    I’ve been thinking about it since I re-read my post about How to Solve Your Own Murder and realized it sounds a lot more negative than it should. It’s a really good book! It takes a lot of talent to make something that even flows well and holds together structurally, much less something that’s engrossing enough to make an adult stay up way past his bedtime to finish. My issue was that it was jarring to see a book so fully committed to its protagonist being an aspiring mystery writer anxious about getting responses to her first submitted manuscript, and have it end with setting up the sequel(s) and giving thanks to literary agents and people who’d sold the film rights.

    I already acknowledged that there’s a good amount of sexism and hypocrisy there. Not the least of which is the obvious fact that having a literary agent doesn’t mean that you’ve never been in the position of anxiously awaiting feedback on your early material. That’s how you got an agent and a book deal in the first place. All of this and more will be addressed in my upcoming book How to Unpack Your Own Prejudices.

    The reason I found this particular instance jarring was because I’m holding onto an overly-romanticized image of authors and the process of getting a book published. It’s hard to shake the image of someone locking themselves in a room alone to pound out a manuscript, bravely letting it loose into the world, and then being rewarded for their brilliance. Even though it should be obvious that a book can’t sell itself any more than any other piece of media can. It’s not just naive to treat the commercial side of book publishing as if it were inexcusably gauche, it perpetuates the harmful idea that commercial success is a reflection of nothing but inherent quality.

    But even so, I still think of it as the most direct and intimate form of media. It’s still a solitary author directly addressing a single reader. Even if they’re writing the most plot-driven of genre fiction or purely commercial franchise installment, even if they’re layering on unreliable narrators and unsympathetic protagonists, it’s unavoidable that they’re sharing at least a part of their true self with you.

    And I think that’s why I irrationally make a stink-face when confronted with the idea of books meant to sell instead of books meant to communicate. And book recommendations that are chasing whatever is trending and popular, as opposed to reacting to books that you read because they were already trending and popular.

    Another side effect of Booktube is it’s a reminder of just how vast the publishing industry is. Every time I get hyper-fixated on reading, I invariably overflow with the unearned confidence of the White American Man and start to think, I should write a novel! And when it’s just a solo reader and a solo writer in a room typing away at a keyboard, it feels attainable, like dipping my toe into a pond. When I see just how much stuff is already out there, from people who actually have something to say, it feels like stripping naked and blindly diving into Lake Michigan.

    • 1
      Although still laughably low if I were someone who cared about internet analytics.
  • Somehow, irony feels good in a place like this

    Somehow, irony feels good in a place like this

    Achieving the coveted status of A*Lister — please, no need to bow, I’m really just a regular person like you are — means that I get to see Nicole Kidman’s pre-show ad a lot.

    It’s become only semi-ironically “iconic,” with way too many obvious parodies, and an increasingly-less-amusing ritual in the theaters. Back when it was still fresh, I was at a screening of Glass Onion where a couple of guys gave the ad a standing ovation as soon as it started, and that was delightful. Now, at least here in Los Angeles, the ad still always gets a round of applause, which is still cute I guess?

    Anyway, there is one part of the ad that is still consistently funny, every time. Kidman describes, “that indescribable feeling we get when the lights go dim, and we go somewhere we’ve never been before.”

    And every time, it cuts to a shot of the gate opening in Jurassic World. A movie that is literally, explicitly, about people choosing to go back to a place where we’ve been before.

    Last night before Mickey 17, they showed the ad again, and I was a little disappointed to discover that they’ve “fixed” this in the version of the ad that runs currently. When Kidman talks about going somewhere that we’ve never been before, it no longer shows Jurassic World.

    Now it shows Pandora, the planet they go back to in Avatar: The Way of Water.

  • Like the Before Times

    Like the Before Times

    For the month of March, I’m trying an experiment where I’ve deleted all of the social media apps from my phone, and I’m pledging to stay off of them for the duration. (I have auto-posting set up from my blog to Mastodon and Bluesky, so that I don’t completely disappear from consciousness).

    That means staying away from any platform I don’t “own”and treating the internet like it was 2006. I deactivated my Facebook account a while ago. So that left me with having to swear off Instagram, Mastodon, and Bluesky. Unlike 2006, I no longer use Flickr, and I don’t have the Straight Dope Message Board as an outlet, so the recreation of my pre-Twitter internet footprint won’t be entirely accurate. But I’m hoping it will be healthier.

    My Mastodon account isn’t owned by evil people (as far as I’m aware), and I’ve also curated my Bluesky Feed to the point that it’s about as benign as I can get it. But I’ve become increasingly convinced that “Stop doomscrolling” isn’t enough. I feel like the whole Twitter model is toxic. At least for me; your mileage may vary.

    In my experience, any app that presents an infinite list of updated content is inherently built around the idea of engagement, not information/enlightenment/social interaction. Even if there’s not an algorithm pushing users in ways that benefit the platform instead of the users themselves, it’s still at its core taking away from our ability to be present.

    Years ago, I could already tell that my brain had been rewired into the Twitter mindset, since I had been almost subconsciously re-formatting my idle thoughts to be suitable for that audience. And my most toxic relationship with social media has probably been with Instagram, if I’m being honest. It’s great that it’s encouraged me to take more photos to remember important moments. It’s not great that I’m often not present in those moments, because I’m already thinking of how I’m going to caption them to present them to other people.

    I’ve noticed that even this blog has altered the way that I experience things. I started using the “One Thing I Like” format in an effort to get me to focus, to write shorter posts, and to acknowledge that art is complex and open to multiple interpretations. But now it’s backfired somewhat, since I go into a movie or TV show looking for the one thing I’m going to call out.

    Even without any higher-minded goals of changing how I interact with art and entertainment, I’m simply hoping that the experiment gives me more free time. I often find myself complaining that I don’t have time for anything anymore, even while I’m well aware of losing 30 minutes to an hour here and there, just idly scrolling through feeds.

    The other thing I’m trying to address is the feeling that my brain stopped working correctly at some point in the last two years, feeling as if the gears have gotten gunked up and slowly ground to a halt. It’s been difficult to concentrate on anything, and I’ve missed the self-imposed deadline on my Playdate game by over a year.

    One of the things I’ve started doing to re-frame and re-focus my idle time is to get back on AMC’s “A-List” subscription program. I’ve tried it before and failed to get my money’s worth, but at this point, individual tickets have gotten so expensive that a single IMAX screening is the cost of a month’s subscription. It makes sense in the weird dream logic of late-stage capitalism, I guess?

    In any case, the appeal of going to movies more often isn’t simply that it’s a reminder of the Before Times, when I felt more cultured. It’s also simply to force me out of the house and force me to focus on something other than my phone for at least an hour and a half.

    The other big resolution is to focus on more constructive reading. Always have at least one book in progress, and any time I would’ve been scrolling through the apps, read a few chapters of a book instead. I’ve invested in a Kobo ereader in the hopes I can get more literate without giving any more money to Jeff Bezos.

    It’s also a great opportunity to get back into RSS feeds. I haven’t been able to get comfortable with the new version of the Reeder app, but the previous is still available as “Reeder Classic,” and it’s excellent. More people are getting back to blogging on their own sites, and I’m pledging to try harder to be part of a community, promoting blogs I find interesting.

    One more weird thing I’m trying: writing these blog posts longhand on the aforementioned iPad mini. The idea here is, again, to be more present — slowing down to think about what I’m writing, instead of letting my fingers type so fast that I’m well into a paragraph before realizing I’ve lost my train of thought. Plus it feels more like keeping a journal than writing articles for an audience. (Sometimes I read posts from several years ago and I have absolutely no idea what the hell I was talking about, because I was either trying to be circumspect or I was actively avoiding spoilers, as if I had a huge audience).

    That experiment is ongoing; my first couple of attempts with Apple Notes had all kinds of difficulty converting to text, and they also burned up half the iPad’s battery for some reason. This post is my first attempt using Goodnotes, so if it’s even more filled with gibberish than my usual, that’s my excuse.

    If nothing else, it lets me enjoy the romantic image of a man writing thoughtfully into his cherished, time-worn notebook. Suck it, Atrus!

    Overall, I think my problems with social media platforms stem from assuming that we were all observing the same social contract. Yes, they tend to be exploitative, and they have customers generating content that profits the
    companies with little compensation for the customers themselves. But I always felt that that was built into the figurative contract that you sign onto when you start using these platforms. Acknowledge that they’re extracting time and attention and effort from you, but also acknowledge how you benefit from it. And the moment it ever gets to the point where you feel like the platform isn’t benefitting you any more, hit the bricks!

    What’s happened to me is that I’ve let myself get so dependent on them as social and creative outlets (and, let’s be honest, easy ways to procrastinate) that by the time I noticed that the terms of the “contract” had changed, and I was no longer getting enough value from them to be worth the psychic damage, it was already too late.

    So stay tuned for updates on my progress, likely in the form of a lot of barely-intelligible blog posts!

  • Things I Know to be True Right Now

    Things I Know to be True Right Now

    It has been an absolutely beautiful day in my section of Los Angeles today. I went up to the roof for a while and enjoyed the sun and a very nice breeze, while appreciating the view around my house. Seeing mountains and palm trees all around is still such a novelty for me, and I hope I never get tired of it. There are two tall palm trees (which are perfectly framed by my office window) that have become a symbol of serenity for me.

    I should’ve known after my experience with smoking, but giving up anything cold turkey just doesn’t work for me. So instead of being able to change my focus and priorities all at once, I should probably expect sporadic bursts of I Have A Take On Politics That I Must Share With The Internet.

    I can’t know for sure, obviously, but I have a strong suspicion that many of the people I spent years aligning myself with online, who’d talk about equality and rejecting classism and capitalism, etc, are people who never talk to their Uber drivers.

    That’s not purely a condemnation, by the way. I have a lot of scorn for hypocrites and snobs, but I also need to acknowledge that I’m out of touch with people. In the case of ride-sharing, even if I weren’t an introvert, I don’t think anybody doing their job should be obligated to make conversation if they don’t want to. And it’s inherently a deeply unfair situation, more than a taxi, because the company that doesn’t give them benefits still holds them accountable to driver ratings. You’re unlikely to get a candid conversation that will build bridges. But when I’ve been in a ride with a particularly gregarious driver, or an extroverted passenger, it’s been a reminder that I very rarely talk to people whose jobs and economic situations are different from my own.

    Speaking of smoking: over the past few days, my brain keeps asking “What would it even matter?” if I had a cigarette. But I haven’t had one yet. And in the days since I last tried one and hated it, I haven’t been that interested in getting one. I’ve noticed I think of myself as a non-smoker now, too: whenever I do get the urge to have a cigarette, I think of it as a novelty, instead of going back to my default state of always having a pack on me. Plus the memory of my last one is still really gross. I have a ton of sympathy for people battling addictions.

    While I was up on the roof today, I was reminded that I hardly ever go up there, and in fact have spent entire days without going outside. Worse, instead of being outside in the sun with a great view, I’m most often indoors on my phone looking at things that make me angry or sad, which I have no control over and no influence to do anything about. It drove home the fact that I’m not actually just being lazy and using social media or the news to procrastinate, as I’ve always assumed, but I’m actively choosing to look at it instead of doing something healthy.

    I was reminded today that one of the best TV series of all time, The Good Place, ran from 2016 to 2020. It seems fitting for a series that was all about ethical behavior in a world that made ethics seem like an impossible luxury. The thing that I love most about the series was that it was so full of grace: never saccharine sentimentality, never compromising on its core values, but still understanding that there’s so much complexity in what makes a person good or bad.

    Another thing I thought about while I was on my roof was how grateful I am to have that place to go to. It’s a luxury that I’ve been embarrassed to even talk about, since it often feels like I don’t deserve it. And if you spend too much time online, like I have, you’ll be constantly subjected to crucial ideas of societal injustice and inequity being used as a bludgeon, making a convincing case that you don’t deserve anything.

    Today I reminded myself that although I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate, benefiting from the hard work of my parents, the incredible kindness of friends, and just plain good luck, that it’s not just luck and privilege. I’ve worked hard, made thoughtful choices, and set priorities. But the most important thing is the simplest: I’ve tried to be humble, kind, generous, and fair, always. And even when I haven’t succeeded, I’ve tried to be the kind of person that people want to work with. It’s always seemed like the bare minimum, but lately as I’ve been filled with despair at seeing arrogance, selfishness, and unkindness succeed, I’ve realized just how valuable humility and kindness can be.

  • On Second Thought, Maybe Not

    On Second Thought, Maybe Not

    The internet doesn’t need to know the details, but my reaction to the election results last night and this morning were enough — and were physiological enough — to convince me that I haven’t been keeping it together as well as I’d thought. And I’d thought I’d been doing pretty bad at it.

    So while it’d be better if I could share something meaningful about resistance and defiance and strength and resolve in the face of evil, that’s just not me, realistically. For about as long as I can remember, people have been yelling that it’s selfish and irresponsible not to be deeply concerned about politics, and I’ve believed them. Social media has amplified that, blurring the line of what constitutes genuine activism, and loading us all with more stress than I think any of us are equipped to handle. Maybe it is selfish and irresponsible, but I prefer to think that it’s simply being more conscious of the tremendous gap between awareness and influence. It accomplishes nothing for any of us to be filled with concern and anxiety over something that we have no control over.

    I don’t feel naive, or regret the couple of months I let myself feel hopeful because of the Harris/Walz campaign. I’m grateful for it. It was a great feeling, after years of feeling my hope just dwindle and flicker, to let it flare up again, to say this is what I believe in, this is what I value. They did so much to fight cynicism. And I believe it worked, for me at least, because what I’m feeling isn’t rooted in blame, or second-guessing, or suspicion. I got the chance to declare what I believe in. And there’s no longer any need to give other voters the benefit of the doubt — they clearly chose what they believe in, and they said that the things I value don’t matter.

    Unlike 2016, when people like me tried to find sages online who could explain exactly what went wrong, where the Democrats failed, and what we could all do better next time, I don’t feel any need to look at post mortems. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz connected with people, and they had so much support that they’d raised over a billion dollars. And it somehow still wasn’t enough. The message there isn’t to try harder; it’s that the current system simply isn’t working.

    And I hope I can finally just come to terms with the fact that I don’t have an answer, and I don’t have to have an opinion. I’ve spent the last few months formulating and clarifying my opinions and putting my money behind the people I want to support, and keeping up to date on the news because it was encouraging again, and it’s been at the expense of everything else in my life, that’s actually important.

    My life was so much better before Twitter existed. I haven’t actually used Twitter in several years, but its influence has lingered on, not just in other social media, but in the way my brain is wired now to have a take on everything. I used to make things. I used to spend my free time working on projects, and enjoying movies and television and games and books, and writing about them on here to think in more depth about how they worked. I’ve seen several people today saying that times of crisis and uncertainty are when it’s most important to make art — I agree, although I think that overstates the inherent importance of art works by quite a lot.

    There is value in the work, but the greatest value is the part of your life you dedicate to creating it. Pouring yourself into the creation of something simply because it can’t possibly exist otherwise, the diametric opposite of creating “content” to fill the space between ad slots.

    So if nothing else, I’m artfully excusing myself from politics indefinitely, apart from giving help to people who are threatened, and concentrating on smaller, more local topics that can actually benefit from my efforts. And I’m pledging to drastically change my relationship with social media. Focusing only on what I control, like this blog; or the parts that actually constitute community.

    For most of today, it’s felt like my light was finally extinguished, after years of sputtering in naive hopefulness. I’m resolving to change how I think about it: drawing in and hunkering down to re-ignite it, to be more protective of it, to keep it from being blown out for good.