February 28, 2021

Missed a post yesterday! Was up at Snow Mountain Ranch with my family. We got a big cabin together and went snowshoeing and tubing. SMR is a YMCA camp and they have a big rec center with basketball and rollerskating. COVID regulations are lighter in Colorado, so we were able to play two-on-two (me and my husband vs my brothers) while wearing masks. Being a year out of shape plus the 9,000 feet altitude plus masks, meant we were sucking wind. It was a little surreal being inside with other people plus playing basketball at all. We did have to sign waivers when we first arrived promising not to sue if we got COVID. 

I wonder if I should dedicate time into getting into basketball shape. Pushups, squats, jump rope. It would make me better at basketball when we come back. But working out is boring, and I'd rather walk and listen to audiobooks. But then again, maybe I wouldn't feel like I was playing in mud. And then there's my gender to defend whenever I step on a coed court. My husband and I beat my brothers two out of three games, but that was mostly thanks to my husband. I'm a spot shooter and always get a few boards by hustling, but I'm not much of a threat right now. 

Will be feeling regret if someone gets COVID because of our weekend trip, but it was nice to be up in the mountains and snow. My dad has gotten his first shot and my mom and husband (teacher) are eligible to schedule their first appointment. 

Last night I kept waking up feeling like I couldn't breathe. I also didn't blog yesterday. I feel like I've lost track of my schedule, of the things on my plate. I had it together and was productive for a few weeks. Feeling like I had turned into Amy 2.0. Hopefully I have, and I'll be able to slip back into it. But maybe dots, family time, and just reversion to the mean will get the better of me. 

February 26, 2021

My dad is in the living room with me, which is not conducive to blog writing because he can't help but talk. This morning it's been serial killers, DNA, the death penalty, early physics, cosmic background radiation. (Yesterday, it was the Nazis, Keyensian economics, and the works of Ken Follett, while he watched American Ninja Warrior.) But my brother just called him -- my brother calls him everyday -- and now they're talking, which leaves me free. 

Last night my mom and I whooped my dad and my husband in Euchre. Whenever we're together we play and always on those teams. It's been a while since my mom and I really thrashed them. A good portion of that game (and especially the games last night) is luck, and it's nice to feel like the world is coming around, giving me good hands and whatnot. 

(Full disclosure: I'm trying to be more chatty like Richard Herring. He can write a long-ass and still interesting post every day. I feel like I run out of stuff fast, and Rich is in quarantine so it's not like his life can be inherently so interesting, I figure. So I'm going to try to pay more attention? Dredge up more stuff? Maybe just blather?) 

Update: my dad is getting another call. Apparently, 9:40AM is a popular time for my dad. 

Second update: it is my dad's birthday, it turns out. That's why he's getting so many calls. (Although, it wasn't why my brother rang him.) 

February 25, 2021

I've started playing Two Dots again. Something about being in the Fort Collins house draws me back to it. That satisfying mental crunch when I connect a square of blue or green or pink. I can go an hour, staring at my phone, and not think or feel anything. In a way, that's all I'm looking for from life. 

The problem is that my phone usage goes from 30-45 minutes a day to 2-4 hours. Having two part time jobs and being part-time self-employed on top of it means that my time management is both difficult and crucial. (Otherwise, I'd be going nowhere in life faster than I already am.) Giving into hours of screen time and zombie brain is potentially a big problem. 

I have (had?) been doing so well. Having great days, mood-wise and as far as focus and productivity. I'd been going to bed on time and actually falling asleep, waking up with time to shower, eat, blog or read before work. But last night, I played Two Dots until 1AM, at which point my phone ran out of juice. 

We'll see if I can resist the siren call of Two Dots or if my high streak was just too good to last.  

February 24, 2021

 Some good things: 

- This soup was excellent last night. It took me longer than it should to make, and we ended up eating around 10pm, but it was worth it. 

- At this house, I charge my phone by the foot of the bed because of where the outlets are arranged. My husband wakes up before me every morning and moves my phone to the bedside table, so I don't have to get out of bed when my alarm goes off. 

- My cat, who tends to be skittish, hangs out in the same room as me when I teach (via Zoom). She sleeps on the bed or the couch a few feet next to me. I think she just wants to be near me as I talk. 

- My brother says I'm good with his kids. He can tell I really like them. 

February 23, 2021

I subscribe to Hot Pod, a podcast newsletter, which has been excellent so far. Podcasts, as small potatoes and DIY as they often are, are also big business. (Obviously, I guess.) Hot Pod is an interesting look into behind the scenes on all that. And anyway, today's newsletter is about an implosion at Reply All regarding a miniseries (which I had already listened to the first two episodes of) covering the toxic and racist work environment at Bon Apetit. Instead of rehashing it myself, you can just read what Nicholas Quah wrote here. 

It's interesting to see these things come out as shocking revelations, when of course the people inside the company knew about it -- they were there. It just comes as a surprise to everyone else. But then again, maybe it is a surprise to people internally because it's easy to overlook advantages, greased wheels due to race, class, education, buddies. 

The newsletter ended with a link to a Twitter threat by Bethel Habte, a staffer at Gimlet. I liked it. 

It’s been a long week.

I’m trying to forge a path forward while reckoning with what’s already happened.

It occurred to me that the difference between saying you’ll do better and actually doing better comes down to asking yourself some questions -critically, constantly: pic.twitter.com/z79phQ18eo

— bethel habte (@bethel_habte) February 20, 2021

Welp, I can't get it to embed correctly. Check out the whole thread here. 

February 22, 2021

 ~~Welcome to All Your Future Yesterdays~~

Here at Time Travel Travel Bureau we know that the past is a different country, just like different countries are different countries. We make sure you're prepared, your colloquialisms chronistic, your currency properly deflated, your hairstyle on point. Why go anywhere when you can go anywhen? Step in a river and see how difference it feels. 

You've of course seen the rise of time backpackers, these Do-It-Yourselfers with no respect for the butterfly effect. With no appreciation of time rending paradox. Don't be one of those people. Join the Time Travel Travel Bureau for a licensed, tempo-friendly, cultural experience that will enrich your mind and leave you changed - in a good way. And if you're the adventurous sort, sign up for one of our excursions into the futures, where you can explore the Earth's many tomorrows. Just remember, when you come back, no spoilers! 

February 21, 2021

Last night, I had a dream that I was accompanying a guy from my high school to a salon. Maybe he was going to be in a movie or something because it was very involved. While I was there, I decided to get my eyebrows done. (It's been a year since the last time with the pandemic and all.) Emmy-winning makeup artist, Kirsten Sage Coleman waxed my eyebrows. (I don't know her, I just follow her on IG in my waking hours.) In her defense, she was a bit distracted because so much going on, but she came back and told me to go to this medical center around the corner. Apparently, she had taken too much skin off my right eyebrow and I needed to get a skin graft. (That's not what she called it, and when I asked her if she meant a skin graft, she just looked at me sadly.) 

So I left my laconic high school friend in the salon and walked to the building around the corner. It was a fancy skyscraper, and I had to take the elevator to the ninth floor. At first, I struggled. There was something weird with the buttons. We stopped on a floor, and a woman stepped in before stepping out again. She wanted to go to the 2 1/2 floor, but the elevator was going up. I started to tell her I wasn't sure, maybe we weren't going up,  but the doors closed. The elevator started to go down but then changed its mind and took me the whole way up. On the ninth floor, the elevator car came up out of the floor and turned into a bench. When it did this, it tilted me into a heap on the floor. 

The staff behind the desk looked mildly amused. I showed them the situation; when I took off the bandage, chunks of skin and fat fell off my face. They conferred. I asked about stitches, they said no -- too ragged for stitches. There was a series of heavy wooden doors behind them, and I was expecting to be led into one of those. I had an idea that they would probably take the skin graft from my butt. 

The waiting room was bustling and no one was wearing masks. That's all I remember. 

February 20, 2021

It's been a pretty good end to the week. I cranked out the second episode of Sarah Someone yesterday. (Had to fix some of the dialogue spots and add in sound effects. I may or may not have actually fixed the dialogue, tbh.) I got a free digital screener for Promising Young Woman from The Hollywood Reporter, and Mitch and I watched it together last night. So it's Mlog time. 

**SPOLIERS**

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

2020

Directed by: Emerald Fennell

Written by: Emerald Fennell

Watched: 2/19/21

        Cassie is a med-school dropout who works at a cafe and, at night, pretends to be super drunk so that guys will take her home and try to take advantage of her. Before they rape her, she snaps out of it, completely sober, and freaks them out. A little disappointingly, she doesn't cause them bodily harm or like steal anything from their apartments. Cassie's all fucked up because her best and childhood friend was raped in front of a party of people at the med school they both attended. Both women dropped out after the allegation/investigation was thrown out on a he-said-she-said basis. (Funny how it's he-said-she-said instead of he-said-he-said. Makes you think that the whole concept sprang from rape allegations and is why it was originally deemed inadmissible.) Cassie's friend, we're to understand, eventually killed herself as a result. 

        Cassie's reintroduced to her old med school cohort, when Ryan shows up at her coffee shop. He's interested in her and the two start dating. Cassie starts taking more pointed revenge on the people who were involved in Nina's case. She discovers that there was actually a video of the rape, and that Ryan is there when it happened. The two break up, and Cassie, dressed like a clown nurse stripper, goes to the bachelor party of the perpetrator. She spikes the drinks of the rest of the guys and handcuffs the groom to the bed. She wants to carve Nina's (her friend's) name into the man's chest so that he will never forget her. But, in the process, he gets one of his hands free and suffocates her with a pillow. When the detectives investigate, Ryan doesn't tell them he knows she went up to the bachelor party. The groom, who had burned Cassie's body in the woods with his best man, holds his wedding ceremony and seems to have gotten away with it, when it's revealed that Cassie had made plans in the case of her own death and had sent the information about her plan and the tape of the rape to someone she trusted. 

        Emerald Fennell sounds like a name I would make up for a character. She also was the show runner for season two of Killing Eve. I wonder how many conversations she had (with herself or other people) about how much harm Cassie would do in her revenge. Especially when she targets one of her female classmates and the Dean of the college, she uses the threat of rape culture as her weapon. She doesn't follow through with it -- no one actually gets raped. But the threat is there. Simply, the threat of being vulnerable -- either by drink or just by age -- around any given man. (Just going to jumble out my thoughts here, I realize.) It's interesting how men in the movie have two sides: on one side, a person, someone to be celebrated, the pride of society, a fragile thing who's precious life could be ruined by a single allegation; and the other side, an uncontrollable agent of violence. There's societal pride and sympathy for the first side and deep lurking fear of the other. It's a potent combination for looking the other way. I think too, the other reason society has for not punishing sexual assault, is that we know the power imbalance between men and women is foundational to our current order. What if any woman could just say that a man assaulted her and that people would take it seriously? Wouldn't that give women far too much power? It would be more power than women have now, that's for sure. And the structure of things would shift. People dislike instability. So for now, in practice, what it comes down to is society choosing between the man -- this entity they admire and fear -- and the promising young woman -- a person they weren't quite sure existed in the first place. 

Rating: ★★★ 1/2 

February 19, 2021

I might be getting a new freelance opportunity! It's not one I especially need, and I really have to finish editing Sarah Someone, but it would be good experience. Plus it's with a company I've worked for before (although in a different capacity), and I really liked them. They paid on time and seemed collaborative and cool. It's weird but nice when stuff from the past loops forward. (Well, I guess it's usually nice... unless the past thing was bad. Insight over here!) 

I left a note for myself to write about Quantum Mechanics and mystery novels. It felt like a need-to-blog thing. Now I'm less excited but will outline my thoughts on it anyway....

One of the kookiest experiments in physics is also one of the simplest ones. It started way back in the early 1800s when Thomas Young made two thin slits in the curtains of his bedroom window. The sun, streaming through the slits, made an interference pattern -- bands of sunlight and shadow -- on his bedroom wall. This type of pattern is only possible for wave behavior. Young showed the light was a wave. In 1905, Einstein showed that light behaved like discrete particles called photons. If one photon at a time were shot at the double slit experiment, each photon would land at a single spot (like a particle), but after you shot many many single photons, you'd come to see that their placement was according to that original wave interference. Basically, each individual photon was somehow carrying the probability of the wave location. This went on to work with other particles, like electrons. 

Niels Bohr and his Copenhagen buddies concluded that light acted like a wave until it was detected, when it would choose a definite position (and other properties like velocity and direction). The screen represents detection, an observer, and it causes the wave function -- that wavelike probability -- to collapse. The photon dumps all its energy at one spot. The particle exists in all the possibilities of a wave until the last second. 

Okay well, mystery novels. In the beginning you know something has happened -- someone's been murdered usually -- the photon is shot out of the laser. For the whole journey of the book, there are many possible outcomes. Anybody could be the killers; although it does seem that there is a range of probability, of likeliness. The photon goes through both slits. It exists as a smear of energy, everywhere, and interacting with itself, making high and low likelihoods. By the end, the possibilities collapse and one person emerges as the culprit. The photon arrives at the screen in a single spot. Forever in that one position, all other possibilities denied. 

February 18, 2021

I've done it again! I've managed to finish a book or movie so that I don't need to root around in my mind for something else to talk about. (Even though, admittedly, that's the point of the whole exercise. Last night, my husband and I played ping-pong. There's a ping-pong table in the basement, which is one of the joys of being here. We play three or four games most nights, and he's beaten me every single game since we've been here. Last night, the scores were closer, which means I started to trash talk. Crowing like he better not get comfortable, I'm gaining on him, this was always going to happen. As if I was really showing him by losing by less. 

See, deep in my heart I believe that I will prevail. Become master of all. This is reinforced when I win once at whatever it is I'm doing. I say, See! That was the ultimate outcome. I'm reminded of how my dad does this too. When we play cards, he's bewildered if he loses. He looks at the cards like his friends have betrayed them or like someone must have switched them out with a faulty deck. When I'm at nine out of the ten points it takes to win, my dad's belief comes to the forefront. He tells me that it's going to be so embarrassing, coming so close to winning and then having to ultimately lose. He could only have two or three points, but he believes he's going to overtake me to win. That this hardly ever happens doesn't dampen his spirits at all, because if it happens once, and he's been crowing about it the whole time, that's the ultimate. 

Okay book time. 

**SPOILERS**

French, Tana -- IN THE WOODS

Published: 2007

Read: 2/2021 

        This author again. So good but so painful. In The Woods is her debut novel and the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. It's from the point of view of Detective Adam "Rob" Ryan. As a kid, he was in the woods in the small Irish town where he grew up, and his two best friends went missing. They found him in deep shock, the back of his t-shirt slashed, and his shoes filled with one of his friend's blood. He had no memory of what happened that day or where they were. Afterwards, his parents send him to boarding school in England. He eventually becomes a detective on the murder squad and gets along great with his new partner, Cassie Maddox. The two get sent on a case in the same village where Rob grew up. It's a child murder, and it's unclear whether or not it might be connected to Rob's old case. No one except Cassie knows that he's the kid who survived, and Rob wants to stay on this case. As they look for the killer of 12-year-old Katy, Rob tries to remember anything he can from the time his friends disappeared. Katy's father was a teenager at the time and lived in the village. For a while, Rob goes after him. As the mystery unfolds, Rob and Cassie's partnership -- the warm heart of the novel -- falls apart. And the reader starts to get a sense for how fucked up Rob really is. In the end, both Cassie and Rob are essentially off the squad. They've found Katy's killer and the psychopath who put him up to it. The psychopath goes free. And it appears that the new case has nothing to do with the old one, which goes unsolved. 

        Tana French writes big books! This one was 20 hours long. I got it from the library on 2/9 and finished it last night. It's so traumatizing, being in the heads of French's characters. There's not the same fun lightness of an Agatha Christie novel. French wants to make sure you feel ever single thing. I'm going to keep reading her stuff and hoping that it doesn't make me more jumpy at night than I already am. Luckily, the next book in the series isn't available at the library until about 6 weeks from now. I'll definitely read it when it comes available, but it'll be good for me to give French's work a little break. 

Rating: ★★★1/2 

February 17, 2021

I watched a movie last night specifically because I was worried I wouldn't have anything to blog about this morning. But now, of course, I can do a Mlog. (Sidenote: How does Richard Herring do this? He's been writing a blog post every morning for over a decade. And many of them are long, involved, and funny. Maybe more things happen to him or he has more opinions or he notices things better? I guess he's just better than me? A revealing project, this daily blog is turning out to be.) 

**SPOILERS**

Okay, a little more preamble. I did not bring my DVDs from Cinefile Video with me to Colorado. Not sure there's a DVD player here, plus I feel like that's just asking for the DVDs to get lost or broken. Fun fact - I have a monthly membership to Cinefile Video. $30/month and you can rent as many movies as you want, granting that you can only take them out four at a time. You can also keep them as long as you want. (Without the membership, the movies are due back within a week.) I had four movies rented out the last time we left LA for Colorado. We stayed for eight weeks. I got a receipt the next time I went back to Cinefile, and it said I owed hundreds of dollars for keeping A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night for so long. They said it was cool, though. I didn't actually owe it. 

But anyway, without a video rental store, I have to cruise Netflix for movies just like a regular person. Sad. 

BONNIE AND CLYDE

1967

Directed by: Arthur Penn

Written by: David Newman, Robert Benton

        Bonnie Parker is so bored in her Depression-era West Dallas hometown. She sees a young man trying to steal her mother's car and she stops him. It's Clyde Barrow. He says he's newly out of prison for armed robbery. She wants him to prove it, and he holds up the grocery store. The two run away together. They become the Barrow gang. They pick up a teen who's good at fixing cars and Clyde's brother Buck and his preacher's-daughter wife, Blanche. The gang gets tons of newspaper coverage for holding up banks all over Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Law enforcement is after them constantly, and shoot outs are incessant. Clyde tells Bonnie early on that he's no lover boy, and Bonnie accepts that even though she wants him and it makes her lonely. Buck is shot by police and Blanche is taken into custody. Bonnie writes a poem about Clyde and the newspapers publish it. Clyde feels that she's gotten him perfectly right and that she's made something of him and preserved his legacy. They finally make love. The couple knows they're doomed to die by police eventually. The time comes when CW Moss's daddy turns them in. On their way back from town, they're ambushed by police and shot one million times. The movie ends abruptly. 

        I thought the movie was okay as it was going along. But I think it has decent staying power. Mostly because Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty look so cool in the roles. They replicate the photographs found of the actual Bonnie and Clyde, and I think it's part of the whole appeal, of the original couple and of the movie. Outlaws doomed and in love is a tantalizing vibe. Plus it seems like a good use of time to just watch light hit the various planes of Faye Dunaway's face for two hours. I'm not going to rate this movie very highly -- the editing seemed bad, maybe it was intentional but a lot of cuts just seemed like mistakes, -- and yet I think that cool vibe will stick with me nonetheless. 

Rating: ★★1/2

February 16, 2021

I thought of a fun thing to write about last night. But now I forget what it was. 

Do you know the word liminal? I came across it for the first time when I was writing the Surrey Ghost Car Episode for Parcast's Unexplained Mysteries.  It means an in-between space. A boarder land. Not an origin, not a destination. I realized that's what I like about all those gloomy late-night photos of gas stations or open roads. Or -- maybe I don't like them because they're liminal -- but liminal fits as a description. Well anyway, after coming across it for that episode, (I found a book that was called like Ghosts of Old Highways, The Liminal Hauntings of Pennsylvania or something like that.) I'm seeing that word everywhere. 

Google says it's on the rise: 

This series by Nadav Kander is an example of some liminal photographs that I like. Putting a few here: 

February 15, 2021

Writing this blog post in the evening, today, because I subbed a class this morning. (It went fine.) I'm listening to Adam Buxton's most recent podcast with guest, Tony Law. (I'm saying this in his voice as I type.) I switched to a ramble chat as a pick-me-up to the book I'm listening to, In The Woods by Tana French. Unmissable but also a huge downer! Like the last book I read by her! How am I falling for this again!? I will definitely finish the 20+ hours of audiobook! 

Law is a comedian from Canada, and if I can't ask him (which I can't) if he knows Deborah DiGiovanni, I think I will burst. Law talks about being 15 and watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time. How it blew him away. It made me think of when I was around that age and saw Predator. I was at Jessica's house for her birthday party. For some reason, the movie was on with the sound off. I watched the whole thing, transfixed, ignoring whatever else might have been going on at the party. (There wasn't even any alcohol or anything, so I did this sober.) After the guests had left -- I was spending the night as a matter of course -- I watched the whole movie again. This time with sound. That night, I had Predator dreams. I was frantically trying to cover myself with mud, and it was all very tense and obliquely sexual. Anyways: great movie. 

February 14, 2021

I don't know what to write about today. Yesterday, my nephews came over and I worked with the three-year-old on hitting a ping-pong ball. He kept trying to hit his dad, which he thought was really funny. He laughs really loud at anything, and he laughed at the right time for one of my jokes. I think it was coincidence, but still it feels nice to get a laugh. 

I got on the NextDoor app yesterday, which was probably a mistake. But a notification came through saying that one of the cats I like has been missing. It's a small sleek gray and brown cat who looks and acts like a little leopard. Because I walk so much, I'm pretty familiar with the cats in my neighborhood. Since I was on the app anyway, I started to scroll. It was discouraging. The posts demonizing a random black guy. Cracks about how it's crazy to talk about defunding the police. The main part of my neighborhood is multimillion dollar houses. They're not mansions or anything. Most look to be 2- or 3-bedroom. But they're nice houses, and it's a nice area, and it's Los Angeles. While I walk, I wonder all the time what these people did to make so much money. If gentrification is bad, then I'm doing the noble thing and trying to do whatever the opposite of that is in my neighborhood. 

There are apartment buildings closer to Santa Monica Blvd. Our building might be the oldest, now that the other old buildings have been torn down and remade into modernistic condos. It's weird being plenty privileged and doing fine financially but still being the scum of the community just because I'm not wealthy. To be "ordinary" in LA, you need to have millions. I like my apartment, though, so for the foreseeable future, I'll walk their sidewalks and keep tabs on their cats. 

February 13, 2021

I hung out with my brother and his family last night. His two little boys are so cuuuuuute. Three and one years old. I've been around enough over the past year that they remember who I am. The older one eagerly asks "Where's Uncle Mitch!?" when I show up alone. But he doesn't resent me for showing up unaccompanied I don't think. He wants to show me all his cars and planes and tell me their names. He shouts at their Alexa to play various animal noises, but he's still got his heavy toddler accent, and she can't understand a word he says. 

I finished another book yesterday. So I'm going to do my Book Log (BLog). I read this one for Roxane Gay's The Audacity bookclub. 

**SPOILERS**

Peters, Torrey -- DETRANSITION, BABY

Published: 2021

Read: 02/2021

        Reese really wants a baby. But as a transgender woman in her thirties this is proving difficult. She's sleeping with a married man (her "Cowboy") who's HIV positive, and they're role playing like giving her the virus is getting her pregnant. Reese's ex, Amy, was a woman for six years before they detransitioned back into a man and is now going by Ames. Ames thinks he is sterile from the hormones he took while he was a woman, but he gets his boss, Katrina, pregnant. Katrina had a miscarriage in her previous marriage and she coming to the end of her childbearing years. If she wants to have a baby at all, this might be it. Ames doesn't want to be a father, he wants to be a parent. He detransitioned out of fear and because of how much easier it is to be a man in society. But being a father is too much. He tells Katrina about his past as a transsexual, and she freaks out. Eventually, Ames brings Katrina around to agreeing to coparent with Reese. All three of them would be the baby's parents. Things are progressing with in a tentative, queer glow until Katrina finds out about the Cowboy. He's her friend's husband. Katrina needs stability and support to raise the baby, and Ames isn't sure he can give that to her. It's highly possible he will transition back into a woman. And Katrina doesn't know if she can rely on Reese. The book ends with the three of them in Katrina's apartment, hours before her abortion appointment, with Katrina trying to decide what to do. 

        I liked the book. I listened to about 6 hours of it on the drive from Los Angeles to Fort Collins. I think this is the first book I've read by about a trans woman or one by a trans woman. I've been thinking about that study I heard about. They were seeing if there was a link between reading fiction and empathy. Their results showed that there was not a link. I've been wondering what kinds of books their subjects were reading. Like if you only really build empathy by reading books about people who are different than you. It's been nice to feel transported to another person's life. Books like Luster, Americanah, Queenie, this book, Limmy, and Ramble Book have done that for me in the past year. I can sometimes get stressed and sad that I don't have time to live every life, work every profession, have every kind of sexual experience, eat everything, live everywhere. It's nice to find that reading can give me a glimpse into different lives. Why hadn't I noticed this earlier? I think it's partially because I've been reading more contemporary fiction/memoirs. Reading the classics of course shows you a window into different lives, but since they're historical lives, it doesn't give me the same sense of possibility. Contemporary fiction makes me think this could all happen now. That's exciting. 

Rating: ★★★

February 12, 2021

I'm reading (listening to) In The Woods by Tana French. I've read one other novel by her, The Witch Elm, and it was really good, but it also bummed me out. The whole thing is one great big descent. Everything goes from good to bad and bad to worse in great detail. The Witch Elm is a standalone novel, while In The Woods is book one of the Dublin Murder Squad series. Plus it was available at the library. Plus I like mysteries. Plus In The Woods at least started a little more likely to have some fun in it and not all just darkness. But I'm 7/17ths of the way through and there are warning signs. The main detective, Rob Ryan, has a gap in his early memory -- the main character in Witch Elm got hit on the head and struggles with memory. He also may well be an unreliable narrator. (Wah!) He says early on, "What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie." He's talking, in that quote, about how detectives sometimes lie in the search for truth. But in the whole scheme of the book it might mean, hey -- don't trust this guy. 

I was hoping that he and his partner Cassie were going to be the detectives that we follow throughout the Dublin Murder Squad series. But that's not really how French rolls, I don't think. Her books seem to focus on the crime part as much as the mystery, and she makes sure you get that crime is real, really devastating, and not at all fun. After listening to the book for a lot of yesterday, I'm regressing to that place where I start to see flashes of movement in rooms where the lights are turned off. Where my ears strain after anything that might sound vaguely like footsteps. In short, it might not be that good for me. Maybe French utterly ruins all of her main characters. We'll see. 

Dropping a couple more quotes I like from the book so far. I had actually intended to write about happiness this morning. My thought being that happiness would be more possible, it seems, if I could block a lot out. Block out expectations of buying a house and saving up for retirement. Worries about growing older or uglier. Concerns that I'm not keeping up with my peers, that I'm never going to "make it" as an artist. When like, my day-to-day life is pretty great. The work is good. The walks are good. The food and accommodations are good. All the little things are good. I will say, lastly, that Detective Ryan has something enviable: purpose. He works in a profession that has a great sense of purpose. He feels fit and right and lucky to be a detective on the murder squad. His days are long and hard and his nights are sociable and close with his team. He's like Remy the rat in Ratatouille. He knows who he is and he's carved out a purpose for himself that he can spend his days pursuing and getting paid for. (None of this side hustle nonsense.) 

"I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better--Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos--so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms."

"Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong."

February 11, 2021

Mood update: I did crash at the end of yesterday. Who knows if that was a delayed laptop bricking reaction or not. Here's maybe an embarrassing thing to say: I feel like I'm helming an alien spaceship that may or may not need repairs. I'm sitting in the cockpit, handling the controls, checking the bright colors and weird symbols in the many monitors. Occasionally, I have to go down to engineering and ask what the fuck is wrong. I know where I want to pilot the alien spaceship and I kind of know how to fly it. But sometimes it refuses to move. A system overheats -- maybe even a system that I didn't know existed. If I fly too fast there are problems, if I don't fly fast enough there are problems. If I don't keep up routine maintenance, I run into problems. But if I spend too much time on maintenance, I fall behind in my mission. All the spaceships around me seem to be flying competently with ease. Like their captains have actually been given the alien spaceship manual. (That's true except for the high school kids I teach. A few of them definitely do not know how to fly their spaceships. They're idling off my starboard doing unintentional barrel rolls, radioing me: "I didn't finish the homework.") 

So I'm trying to get better. To learn what all the flashes on the monitors mean. To get a handle for when a bolt is screwed on too tight and when it's not on there tight enough. To figure out what are useful sub processes and which ones are just slowing the whole thing down. But the technology is complex. And like I said, parts of it might just be broken. Plus I've been flying this thing for 33 years now. Definitely enough time for mastery by Malcolm Gladwell's standards. And I still don't know where they keep the on/off switch. 

February 10, 2021

I tried to instal the MacOS update called Big Sur. It -- I learned this term yesterday -- bricked my laptop. After several hours of trying to get it to work, I called Apple Support, and after another hour on the phone with them, they had me erase my Mac. Delete everything on it. Now it's operating back on Mojave and prompting me once more to update. 

I was proud of myself, though. I didn't throw a tantrum about it. Luckily, my husband brought two lap tops with us to Colorado. So I used his personal one yesterday while he used his work one. Otherwise, I would've been fucked. Also, I work primarily out of Dropbox, Google Drive, and my external hard drive. So, other than the applications I'll have to redownload, I don't think I lost anything important. But even still, I'm surprised my levels of frustration stayed within coping range. 

I've been using a daily mood tracker app on my phone, and before yesterday, I had five "good" days in a row. (The levels are rad, good, meh, bad, and awful.) I think that impacts my response to bricked computer. Although, I will say, even though I concede that the past week or so has been generally good. I don't feel like I'm doing great. In COVID times, the good days are closer to meh than they are to rad. 

I'm trying to get around to saying something about how maybe your last five days make all the difference in the world to how you act today. That maybe it's inaccurate to say that so-and-so would do such-and-such in this-or-that situation without giving the context of what there last week had been like. 

I've still not exactly figured out what makes a day or week a good one or meh one for me. (I rarely say I've had a bad day, but meh feels pretty bad. I don't want a whole life of meh.) That's a big reason I'm using the app -- trying to get some data. But it scares me to think of having a bad week slide. ("Scared" is probably a bit pathetic in this context. What I mean is I worry about my mood slipping out of my control.) It makes each new bump in the road harder to deal with. It can become a spiral. I'm not sure it's possible to spiral in the upwards direction though. Like compounding good breaks into some kind of euphoria. I'll keep you posted. 

February 9, 2021

On the drive here, my husband and I stopped at McDonalds for dinner. I got a hamburger. Just their regular hamburger, nothing fancy, and it was delicious. I've tried their quarter pounder with cheese and the double quarter pounder. Those were okay but maybe a little dry. The meat to pickle ratio a little off, the cheese dulls the flavors. The hamburger is where it's at. With fries obviously. 

I remember my first McDonald's hamburger. I was little -- 6 or 7? maybe earlier -- and it was a revelation. The meatiness, the pickles, the onions, I didn't know food could taste like that. And I wasn't sure why everyone didn't eat McDonald's hamburgers all the time. 

I won a kids' coloring contest put on by the local newspaper. (The coloring sheet was a big castle, and I did every part of it in rainbow.) My prize was a free haircut from Great Clips in the Walmart off of 8th street. I asked them to cut it much shorter. I wanted to get the full value from my prize. Before that, I had only ever really gotten my hair trimmed. Anyway, my mom took us to McDonald's beforehand. She wanted to keep my twin younger brothers happy while they waited. My brother Nick was halfway through his hamburger, when he complained he didn't really like it this time. My mom asked him if there was ketchup or mustard on it. He hates ketchup and mustard, and she had belabored that point at the drive through. "Just pickles, please." My mom took Nick's half eaten burger and opened the bread to look inside. Sure enough: just pickles. But I mean only pickles. A bun and pickles is what he was eating. 

Got to go for the full hamburger. 

February 8, 2021

More about driving from Los Angeles to Colorado -- we were somewhere in Utah, I think. In the mountains, dark, moonless. Wind kicking up fine powdery snow. And the stars were so numerous and bright you could see them all the way down the horizon. I had my husband pull over so we could turn off the car and look, but the wind almost bent the drivers door backwards, and we decided to just head on. 

I read the screenplay for RATATOUILLE for class. I've been keeping a Script Log (a Slog) along with my Mlog and Blog. Going to do that here. 

RATATOUILLE

2007

Written by: Brad Bird

Original Story by: Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird

Read: 2/6/2021

        Remy, a French country rat part of a big and tight-knit colony of rats, has a highly developed sense of smell and taste. He doesn't want to steal garbage anymore. He wants to be a chef like his late idol, Auguste Gusteau, who's cookbook is called "Anyone Can Cook." Remy gets separated from his family and makes his way to Gusteau's restaurant where he starts to do just that. He teams up with Linguini, the newly-hired garbage boy. Remy controls Linguini from under his Toque, like a marionette, and Linguini passes as a human for Remy. The new chef at the restaurant, Skinner, has directed the company in a frozen foods direction, but with Remy cooking, buzz returns. The critics love his food. 

        Eventually the toughest critic of them all, Anton Ego, comes to the restaurant. All the cooks -- except for Colette -- leave when Linguini and Remy's arrangement gets found out. But fortunately, Remy's rat clan comes to his rescue. The rats and Colette cook in the kitchen under Remy's guidance, and Linguini serves the whole restaurant on roller blades. Ego makes it the chef's call, and Remy fixes him Ratatouille, a peasant's stew. The stew immediately brings Ego back to his childhood in rural France. He loves it. The health inspector and Skinner shut down the restaurant. Linguini and Colette tell Ego that the chef is a rat. Ego gives them a great review, and Remy, the rats, Linguini, and Colette open up a smaller restaurant, where Ego has a special table. He's better fed and happier, and the people of Paris love Remy's food. 

        You know how Pixar movies make you cry? This script made me cry. And it's been long enough since I've seen the actual movie that I didn't see it coming. Here are some of the good parts: 

        This is after Remy/Linguini are on the rocks because Linguini is taking the credit for Remy's cooking and not giving him any. Remy gets briefly kidnapped by Skinner to help with the frozen food line, but the other rats free him. 

        I don't know. Something about Remy knowing both what he wants and who he is makes me cry. Like he's not needing to have the conversation about salary and benefits or second guessing if he's good enough or if the market is right for what he has to offer. He goes back to the restaurant because that's who he is and what he needs to do. May we all have that kind of clarity at some point in life. 

        

        Ego eating the Ratatouille: 

        

        The trick of the food sending the critic back to childhood and undoing him -- which checks out, taste and smell being the two senses that connect most directly with our memories -- reminds me of the short story "Bullet In The Brain" by Tobias Wolff. It's about that literary critic who, during a bank robbery, can't help but deride the robber's cliché dialogue: 

"What's so funny, bright boy?" "Nothing." [...] "You think you can fuck with me?" "No." "Fuck with me again, you're history. Capeesh?" Anders burst out laughing. He covered his mouth with both hands and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” then snorted helplessly through his fingers and said, “Capeesh, oh, God, capeesh,” and at that the man with the pistol raised the pistol and shot Anders right in the head.

As the bullet enters the critic's brain, he has a memory from childhood. It happens slowly compared to the speed of the bullet. It reminds him why he became a critic in the first place -- something he's forgotten in his later cynicism. He remembers a baseball game: 

"Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. Anders has never met Coyle’s cousin before and will never see him again. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they’ve chosen sides and Darsch asks the cousin what position he wants to play. “Shortstop,” the boy says. “Short’s the best position they is.” Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat what he’s just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn’t it, not at all—it’s that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.

"The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end, it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can’t be helped. But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is."

        And from Ego's review: 

        

        I like this part both because Remy wins everything and because it seems true. Cooking talent, like artistic talent, can come from anywhere. The movie's premise -- a rat wanting to cook, when of course a rat is the last thing you want near a kitchen -- is in excellent service of this final speech. 

Rating: ★★★★★

February 7, 2021

We drove to Colorado this weekend. My husband and I are still working remotely, so we figured we might as well spend our last (hopefully) COVID hurrah in the Fort Collins house. I'm down to the wire on my homework, so I'm going to go do that. But I didn't want to miss a blog post day -- and now I didn't! 

February 6, 2021

 Mitch and I are going to drive to Colorado today and tomorrow, so this post should probably be short. (Mitch said kind of sneerily that we probably won't leave until noon, and I was like no way! But now, looking at the time and assessing what I still need to do, that's probably accurate. Maybe if we're lucky we can get 11am.) The cat knows something is up. It'll be interesting to see if we can get her into the crate when it's time. 

The drive is always a little dicey. 16-17 hours means a lot of it is in the dark. And it'll be cold and icy probably. Plus the other drivers, the wild animals, and of course the Corona virus. This is the third time we've done the drive in a year, though, so if practice helps at least we have that. 

I'm looking forward to having more space. To seeing my brother and his family. To watching Phryne zoom up and down the stairs. I'll miss LA for the month or so we're gone. I'll miss the weather and the rollerskating especially. (I'm bringing my skates but am not confident that I'll work out a good arrangement.) Time has done this weird collapsing thing over the past year. Now that we're leaving for Colorado, it feels like we've hardly been in LA at all since last time (even though it's been three months). When we arrive in CO it'll feel like we hardly left. And then at the end of our Colorado stay, it'll feel like we were hardly there at all. And when we get back to LA, it'll feel like we've been nowhere else since March of 2020. My brain seems eager to file chunks of time away and then shut the drawer on them. 

I've got a lot to work on. I've got some good books. I'll have plenty to do on the drive and during our time in CO. It's no problem. I'm going to go finish packing. 

February 5, 2021

Last night, I had a table read for my screenplay BREAKING UP IS EASY. I figured I'd use the blog this morning to synthesize the notes, so hopefully whenever I get the chance to rewrite I'll be able to remember what it was I wanted to do. 

- Get to the house sooner, maybe even start there. The beginning of the script drags. Get to the conflict/action right away. 

- Early on could have Leila and George practicing/doing a dress rehearsal for how they want the party to go. Enough that we get the stakes for them, learn about the house, and get a template for what to expect. That way, when things go wrong, the audience really tracks with how reality differs from the plan. Plus more opportunity for visual gags and to make the movie more cinematic and less like a play. 

- Find out what happened to Leila in Houston (the Instagram Live SNAFU that ruined her reputation). George could be partially to blame which is why he's working so hard to redeem himself. (George's dialogue needs to be sorted out too. "yes" not "yeah") 

- Garret seems unrealistically involved since he's just a guy Leila met on the slopes. Call it out more. 

- Round out the characters a little more generally, I think. Even if I don't use some of the backstory info, I'd like to feel like these are real, if exaggerated, people. Watch THE HOUSE OF YES for example of a similar relationship dynamic to Addie/Adam. 

- I'm over explaining in the scene directions a couple of place. Like when George falls off the back of the snowmobile, we know why. We can cut to the glasses and that's plenty of explanation. Don't have to outright say that he's been drugged. 

- I think it's funnier if Uncle Roy just stays sleeping, rather than actually dying. 

- Maybe Addie and Garret start an actual thing. Addie's maybe trying to get over Adam or at least make him jealous but it doesn't work. That way it's even darker when she sells out Garret. I enjoy setting up the expectation of a romantic comedy, that Addie and Garret will wind up together. That Garret's her true love right under her nose -- and he is! But Addie's myopathy is going to prevent her from realizing that.  

- We leave Molly alone in the garage for a while in the last quarter of the script. She probably needs to have something to do. Maybe Leila locks her in there? Although it's unclear why exactly she'd do that. Maybe Leila and George have created some kind of Lifestyle Experience and they want to make sure Molly spends a lot of time enjoying it. 

- Lastly, burying the body is unrealistic when it's that cold outside. They could be dismembering it and breaking holes in the ice that's covering the river and tossing the pieces of Garret in there. 

February 4, 2021

I was caught up with Mlog/Blog but then I watched another movie last night. Man, this has been the suckiest part of quarantine so far. The monotony is crushing. I'm losing the will to juggle my projects, getting to the I'll just see how they sound when they drop phase. The only time it was more acutely worse was in the beginning of the pandemic, when I was grocery shopping in a packed Ralphs, and everything was sold out. The can aisle was empty, the frozen food was all gone, toilet paper, dry goods, everything. I remember thinking "I don't want to get sick." I thought about catching COVID and not having any food in the house. Not being able to get more because of my symptoms and not having anyone who could come and help me out. 

Especially since the shots I don't have that fear any more. But I do worry that Mitch might get sick and that my parents might get sick and die. I also worry my relationships are going to fall apart, that my mental health is going to go under. I've held on this long! I'm not sure how much more I can keep it up. 

Okay, Mlog time. **SPOILERS**

CHINATOWN

1974

Directed by: Roman Polanski

Written by: Robert Towne 

Watched: 2/3/2021

        Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a private detective who's been caught with his pants down. Mrs. Mulwray, the wife of the chief engineer of the department of water and power, hired him to find out if her husband was having an affair. Gittes snaps some photos of Mr. Mulwray out with a young woman. These photos get published in the paper, and then the real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) shows up to sue him. The real Mrs. Mulwray goes on to hire Gittes when her husband turns up dead -- drown in a slough. Los Angeles, at the time, was in severe drought and rations from the reservoir were making farmers and ranchers unhappy. Mr. Mulwray didn't want to build a faulty dam or deprive the LA residents of drinking water. But his old partner, and Mrs. Mulwray's father, saw an opportunity to make a bunch of money -- only Mulwray was standing in the way. So basically Gittes finds this out -- that people were buying up the cheap and droughted land in the valley knowing that soon, water was going to get pumped in there and the land would be worth a fortune. Gittes gets beat up. Gittes sleeps with Mrs. Mulwray. Gittes finds out the missing girl -- the one in the photos with Mulwray and who Mr. Cross (Mrs. Mulwray's father) has hired him to find -- is in Mrs. Mulwray's servant's house. It comes out that this girl is the daughter and sister of Mrs. Mulwray. Gross. Gittes tries to help the two women get away, but the police shoot Mrs. Mulwray in the process and the crooked rapist Mr. Cross swoops in to retrieve his daughter/granddaughter. Tough luck in Chinatown. 

        Is it just me or are noir crime mysteries a bit foggy? Like, was Mr. Mulwray actually having an affair with his wife's sister/daughter? The girl ended up being like 15. Nicholson and Dunaway are great in this, and I really enjoyed seeing all the old Los Angeles locations -- civic buildings with interior wood paneling and exterior stucco arches. LA looks good in this movie. Of course the script is Raymond Chandler inspired -- maybe the whole genre is? But while Gittes is tough, sentimental, and vaguely dangerous -- to a tantalizing degree -- I miss Philip Marlowe's ability to take himself lightly. He spends a good portion of his novels figuring he'll lose and being surprised when he wins. He's a tough guy alright, but he's always a good sport about it. Marlowe is a tough guy with soft exterior. Gittes is more of a soft guy with a hard exterior. It doesn't matter. 

        Like in REPULSION, there's no bottom to the malice men can direct at women in this movie. Gittes is okay, but at the end of the day he's a little bit of a sap (just so disappointed in himself that he keeps getting his lovers killed). Whereas Cross, cunning, confident, unbeatable, is presumably in it to rape his daughter/granddaughter and is going to succeed. 

Rating: ★★★

February 3, 2021

Yikes. This is an afternoon blog post. I hope I'm not losing my early-morning rhythm. Going to be another BLog (Book Log) day, but first... 

A friend of mine has been talking to me about her desire to lose weight and how she feels skeptical of the body positivity and body neutrality movements. Her point is that even if you feel okay about your body, as a fat person society will still treat you worse. My friend wants to make sure she has the same advantageous in dating and in the job market that thin people do. 

I was always the biggest kid in my class growing up. Tallest and heaviest. I found a journal article from first grade where I worry about being fat. And while my height and weight evened out in high school and college relative to my peers -- I'm now a solid medium -- some of that old fear still looms. I don't think there's anything wrong with fat aesthetically, but I do worry about becoming fat and then not being able to succeed in any area in my life. My outlook for success feels precarious enough as it is. 

It's like life is this big wheel. Some people are running along the top of the wheel with relative ease. Other people are under the wheel, getting crushed by life. And if you fall under the wheel, it's very hard to get back on top. I'm constantly afraid of slipping. 

Anyway, it felt nice to have that conversation with my friend. It's an outlook that I don't think I had expressed to anyone before. Afterwards, I felt some release. 

Okay, BLog time. **SPOILERS**

Chandler, Raymond - THE BIG SLEEP

1939

Read: 01/2021

        Private detective Philip Marlowe takes a blackmail case. An old wealthy general has two wild young daughters and someone has some incriminating pictures of the youngest. In addition, the husband of the elder daughter has gone missing, and the old man was fond of him and would like to know what happened. The case takes Marlowe to a rare bookstore that really sells smut, and when he follows the owner home to his mansion, Marlowe hears a gunshot. He runs in to find the man shot dead behind a camera and the youngest daughter posing nude and in shock. Let's see, what else. The family's driver is found dead in a car under water near the docks. Eddie Mars runs a gambling room where the older daughter regularly gambles all night. He's got a guy who kills people, including the new boyfriend of the woman who used to go out with the now dead smut-shop owner. There's a rumor that Eddie's wife ran away with the older daughter's husband. But Marlowe finds her hidden out -- the killer guy keeping an eye on her. She helps Marlowe escape, and later, the youngest daughter tries to kill him down by the oil sump. Turns out, the younger daughter killed her brother-in-law when he declined to sleep with her. The older sister found out and went to Eddie Mars to get rid of the body. Eddie had been blackmailing the older daughter ever since, but had to wait until the old man died to really get money out of her. At the end, Marlowe turns it all over to the police. 

        This is the second time I've read this book and the plot is still a bit confusing. (Like I don't remember why the driver died.) The best part of Chandler is his language and turns of phrase. This line stuck out: "Shake up your business and pour it out. I don't have all day." Marlowe slaps a lot more women than I remembered. Also, he takes a trolley, which is nice. Los Angeles used to have the most trolleys in the world. Reading about Marlowe also always makes me want to drink -- either coffee or cocktails. 

        Marlowe is great as a crime/action protagonist because he's so often under-equipped. He rarely has his gun on him, and he gets manhandled a lot. (Although, he does manage to take guns away from a lot of other people, especially in this book.) He's smart and persuasive, and that gets him out of most things. But at the end of the day he's not on some big macho ego trip. He's just doing his job. 

Rating: ★★★

February 2, 2021

I'm going to keep talking about books and movies until I'm caught up on my Mlog and Blog. But before I get into that, I wanted to say that it was kind of weird at the skating rink yesterday. Granted, maybe Sarah and I talk too loud as we skate slowly round and round the rink. Maybe people are just annoyed with us and our Instagram obscurity. But also, I got the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine five days ago. (It's all I can do to not just say every three seconds, "I'm going to be immune!") I still wear a mask on the rink (one of about the 20% who do). I'm biding my time, acting according to mask guidelines until enough of the general population gets the vaccine. But I feel like running up to people -- I can be like normal around you guys! (Which of course, isn't a normal thing to do.) I want to tell them -- "We can go back to how it was before!" "It was all a dream!" 

Okay, Blog time. Warning SPOILERS. 

Leilani, Raven -- LUSTER

Published: 2020
Read: 01/2021

        Edie is a 23-year-old aspiring painter working in publishing and sleeping with most of the guys in the office. She's been dating a new guy -- Eric, white, 40s, suburban, in an open marriage, -- when she loses the job. Out of money and without parents to support her, (her mother died of suicide and her father is estranged) she moves in with her boyfriend's family, which of course includes his wife and their black adopted daughter. Edie kind of mentors the daughter -- the only other person the black girl has encountered in the whole neighborhood. Eric's wife does autopsies, and she eventually brings Edie with her to paint the cadavers. Edie gradually falls out of love with Eric, and at his wife's insistence, moves out. 

        I thought this novel was a little slow but good. It's worth noting that Leilani studied under Zadie Smith, and the book has some of the same indelible richness while also (for me) moving a bit slow. The most interesting relationship was between Edie and Eric's wife (who's name I think was Catherine? I listened to the audiobook and am bad at remembering character names). I think she was more lonely than Eric. Edie was a threat but also an interest to Catherine -- her paintings, her ability to maybe help their daughter, her youth. Catherine takes Edie to a punk show in the city, and you can feel how hard core she is. A kind of raw energy that has been pent up into competence and industriousness in her suburban life. I'm also a sucker for literary novels that contain a visual artist and describe visual art. (In addition to this book, I'm thinking of Little Fires Everywhere.) Edie takes photos on her phone of everyday objects around the house and then paints them in her room at night. I want to start painting again. I hadn't though of how you can just paint anything. Take a picture. Paint it. Play with light. Cut it out. Remove it from context. Be a voyeur into the domestic center. I've been posting more on Instagram of just random trees and stuff thanks to this book. Not sure the followers appreciate it. 

Rating: ★★★

February 1, 2021

Whoo! Welcome to February. I'm behind on my Mlog and Blog. So for a little while I might be writing about books and movies in here until I catch up. 

I watched 11 movies in January - I counted - all rented from Cinefile video. Making that membership worth it, which is good. I'll write a post on Cinefile one of these days. Renting physical DVDs! I love it. 

**SPOILERS**

PRIMARY COLORS

1998

Directed by: Mike Nichols

Written by: Elaine May

Watched: 1/2021

        Primary Colors is a fictionalized version of Bill Clinton's primary campaign in 1991. John Travolta plays Arkansas Governor Jack Stanton, and Emma Thompson plays his wife. We see the action through Henry Burton's POV. He's an idealist and new to the campaign. He and the other staffers have their work cut out for them trying to keep Jack's philandering in the past. When instead of digging dirt on Jack, preventatively, they dig up something big on his opponent, an intense loyal loony staffer (Kathy Bates) kills herself after the Stantons do the wrong thing with it. Later, in her memory, they give the dirt to the opponent himself, and he chooses to drop out. After that, Jack's path to the nomination is clear. 

        There's more than that that happens, obviously. But I don't feel like rehashing it all. It's funny how much crossover there is between this movie and the book Rodham, which makes sense since they're drawing from the same subject matter. It's interesting how these spins and interpretations can break off and flash in these different lights, like a kaleidoscope. 

        We rented this movie in particular because Elaine May wrote the screenplay. (And Mitch and I liked A New Leaf so much.) My favorite line was when... okay, wait first some set up: Jack is gregarious and pleasure seeking. He genuinely likes meeting people, hearing their story, and eating at all the places politicians are supposed to eat. (He's always getting donuts.) On the other hand, Susan is the actual achiever, the strategist. She's the one talking most often with the campaign manager. Okay so, the line -- Jack and Susan sit down with their campaign manager and the son of one of their opponents. The opponent asks Susan if it's okay that they talk politics. Susan nods and says, "Of course. How else will I learn?" Hell yeah, Elaine May. :) 

        A bit about May and Nichols. They performed together in an improvisational double act for a time that was influential and successful. Their early improv troupe, The Compass Players, were a precursor to Second City in Chicago. Although, I'm not sure whether May and Nichols had anything personally to do with opening Second City. The two also did THE BIRDCAGE together in 1996. 

Rating: ★★★