March 29, 2022

I had acting class last night. My scene partner and I did our showing last week, so I just sat and watched others perform yesterday. The professor is tough and doesn't pull punches, but he's also fair and insightful. I like listening to his feedback because to me he seems right on. Granted, I don't know anything about acting really. He just seems to be right about what's important in story telling. What's important in engaging an audience. What's necessary to make things seem real and feel like they matter. 

We watched a scene from Agnes of God between a psychiatrist and the titular Agnes. The woman who played the psychiatrist hadn't memorized the lines very well and English wasn't her first language. But more than that, she was playing psychiatrist like indifferent psychiatrist. When our professor talked to her about it, she said she found the character boring more or less. Our prof talked about how if the actor is not interested in the character, the scene, her scene partner, the audience feels that and isn't going to be interested either. He encouraged her to be curious about the character and to make a choice that was interesting to her. 

I'm applying this thinking to my recent -- and now several-months-long -- malaise about writing (trying to write) in the film industry. I have not felt excited about it. It seems impossible and frivolous. How can one build one's life on it, either practically or philosophically? I've had a hopper of screenplay ideas for a several years. This morning I was thinking that maybe part of my problem is that those ideas don't stir me anymore. Maybe what I need is not to bonk out of writing altogether but to make a stronger choice within my writing. Okay, so these screenplay ideas don't seem to matter? Make a stronger choice. Feel around for a story idea that does seem to matter. Something that will get me off my psychological butt. There's interesting, stirring stuff out there. I just need to do the work to find it. 

(Maybe.)  

March 24, 2022

Thinking a bit about the benefit of negative feelings -- anxiety, grumpiness, pessimism, unhappiness. Cultish (which I'll BLog about below) partially prompted these thoughts. Montell talks about how grumpy people are less likely to join a cult because they're more likely to call bullshit. I think maybe we make decisions based not on the choices at hand but how we're feeling at that moment. This might just go down to my impulsiveness, but the choice of marriage felt impossible to me, back when I was 22 and my boyfriend (now husband, spoiler) wanted to get married. I told him no way, I wasn't ready to think about it. But then we were out one night at a happy hour, and I had a few beers and some garlic fries and, feeling good, figured Eh, why not? So I got married. In Chicago, my husband and I were having brunch and bottomless mimosas. I knew I wanted to move to LA, but I figured we'd give it one more year in Chicago. But we were feeling good that morning, and we both thought Eh, why not? Basically, maybe it's a bad idea to drink any alcohol or allow yourself to relax and feel good if you've got a big decision on deck. 

Okay, BLog time. I'm going to post this on Goodreads! We'll see how that goes. 

Montell, Amanda – CULTISH

Published: 2021

Read: 3/2022

Cultish analyzed the language and special vocabularies that Cults (like Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate) and cults (Soul Cycle, MLAs, CrossFit) use to create in-group/out-group dynamics, cultivate belonging, and curtail skepticism or critique. Actually, it’s part analyses and part authorial anecdote. Montell’s father grew up in the Synanon cult in Santa Monica. She also talks about her online experience with multi-level marketing schemes and her exposure to cult-y exercise trends ever present in her home city of Los Angeles. (She mentions that she lives in LA a lot.) She talks about how groups can use platitudes – termed “thought-ending clichés” – as a way to shut down critical thought. I have a friend who will often reach for the phrase “It is what it is” as a kind of thought-ending cliché. It soothes his anxiety a little bit, but it also shuts down his problem-solving drive. Anxieties and doubts are unpleasant to feel, but they can help drive us to necessary action – like, for example, leaving a cult. Montell applies the phrase “thought-ending cliché” so often, however, that it itself started to feel like a thought-ending cliché. I enjoyed learning about some of the intricacies of these popular cult-like work out communities. It’s pretty incredible to me the lengths to which people will go to lose weight. Although, of course the book points out how belonging to a community is a huge draw as well. She doesn’t want the reader to be suspicious of all groups, and she acknowledges the benefits of belonging to a community, even maybe communities that can be harmful in some ways. Her distinction between Cult and cult is that cults allow you to step away from ritual time. You get on your Soul Cycle bike for an hour, and you push and scream and cry or whatever it is. You buy that fancy matching exercise get up. But then you go home. You unclip and get back to your life. And if you bonk out of Soul Cycle, nobody’s going to try to ruin your life over it. 

This book left me with some good things to think about. I’ll be noticing the language groups use a bit more acutely, I think. Looking out for those obscure acronyms or neologism. For that expectation to talk in a certain way or to refer back to simple mantras. I also was surprised to learn about the kind of people Cults attract. I figured it would be mainly really depressed and vulnerable people, but the book argues that it tends to be optimists, activists, idealists. People with open minds who want more for themselves or for the world, who are willing to take a risk on something. (People like me… yikes!) On the other hand, the writing style was uneven. Montell writes in a internet-y style for most of it and now and then throws in a bookish word to let us know she’s smart. Her anecdotes weren’t very deep or all that interesting – I would have liked to have seen the memoir-ish angle developed better or cut entirely. Overall, it was a book! Worth a read. 

Rating: ★★★

March 23, 2022

My husband and I bought airline tickets to London last night. We're leaving in late July, with any luck. This is the trip we were planning on taking for our tenth anniversary in 2020. Now it'll be in celebration of our twelfth anniversary unless the world closes again or one of us gets sick with COVID at an inopportune time. I'm excited, though. we're going to fly into London and have seven hours to go from Heathrow to Gatwick airports. (I hope we can stop and grab a pint somewhere.) Then we're flying into Oslo, late, and hopefully catching the last train up to Hamar. Getting in a bit after midnight. We'll stay with our friend from college for a few days and then take the train across Norway to Bergen, on the west coast. We'll stay two nights in Bergen, giving us one day to hike around and eat cinnamon buns. Then we'll fly out in the morning to Edinburgh, rent a car, and drive to Glasgow for the rest of the day/night. We'll spend the next two days driving around the Scottish countryside, checking out whiskey distilleries hopefully, and then on the third day we'll drive back to Edinburgh and drop off the car. We're staying for four nights in a dorm room at Edinburgh University so that we can experience the Fringe Festival. When we're done there, we're going to London -- or wherever Arsenal is playing that weekend -- and then we'll fly from London back to LA. 

I was supposed to work on my script today but got distracted with the trip planning instead. Both have to get done, I guess. It's amazing how much better just planning this trip has made me feel. I'm going to get out! In college at Whitworth my freshman year, I had an unfortunate and consuming crush on a junior in my dorm. It went on for a year and a half, and I hated it but couldn't get, like, my body to stop walking me towards him. I went to Europe for the month of January my sophomore year. I rode public transportation for the first time, I exchanged currencies, I went to those museums, I got through my first pint of beer, and I learned about Western Philosophy (because that was the class). I got back and never needed to hang out with that guy again. I guess I'm sort of hoping that will happen this time. I'll go get some perspective, figure Hey! the world is big and cool, then be in a better place to go about conducting my business. 

Something else -- I think I'm going to start posting my BookLogs (BLogs for those in the know) on Goodreads. Maybe that will be a better social media platform for me, and I write the posts anyways. I'd polish them up a bit before posting to Goodreads. Take out spoilers and stuff. But otherwise they're good to go. 

I was supposed to BLog about Cultish today, but I was really distracted. Tomorrow! 

March 22, 2022

My fitness goal this quarter (I just started a new Panda Planner) is strength, speed, and flexibility. I know how I'm going to try and improve the strength and flexibility, but I'm not sure about speed. Maybe I'll jump rope? It's honestly a stretch, but it would be nice to be faster in basketball. 

My scene partner and I did our first showing last night. We did alright, I think. It's just Acting 1, but the teacher is pretty tough. I didn't get the brunt of the criticism -- he went pretty hard on the first group who performed -- so I can't say this with 100% certainty, but I like his toughness, I think. It's refreshing to get straight forward notes that aren't wrapped in false praise. 

I'm still having a one-sided conversation with that guy on Instagram. It's weird that I haven't let it go... I guess I still see good potential upside? I'm also impulsive, and I'll be feeling good and think of something to say... then I'll just say it. Then he won't respond, and I'll remember, Oh yeah, he hates me or something. I'm listening to a book called Cultish as research for the script I'm working on with my writing partner, and it says that impulsive people are more likely to join cults. So I should probably watch out for that. Impulsive people are probably more likely to do everything. 

MLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

THE BATMAN

2022

Directed by: Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) 

Written by: Matt Reeves, Peter Craig (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Parts 1 & 2)

Watched: 3/18/22

Robert Pattinson is the new young-ish Batman. He has a gothic mansion that seems mostly underground – it must be UK interiors, come to think of it – and saves boatloads on the electricity bill. (It’s very dark.) He’s been doing his vigilante thing, crushed and enraged by the death of his parents. A new menace is attacking the elites of the city, starting with the sitting mayor during his bid for reelection. The mayor has a son who’s the same age Batman was when his own father died. Officer Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) brings Batman along to the crime scene because the perpetrator – the Riddler (Paul Dano) – left a card addressed to him. The card contains clues revealing the word “drive.” Batman goes to the mayor’s garage and finds a thumb drive (with the mayor’s severed thumb attached) that contains images of the mayor with a woman from the Iceberg Lounge, an underground club operated by The Penguin (Colin Farrell). There, Batman meets Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz). The woman in the photographs is her lover. Catwoman goes to the mayor’s house to get the woman’s passport – is confronted by Batman – but when she gets back home, the woman is gone and it looks like there’s been a struggle. Catwoman wants to get this lady back. Batman wants to get the Riddler. Catwoman goes into the secret club with Batman running surveillance. The whole DA team is down there doing a drug called drops. The Riddler later puts a bomb collar on the DA’s neck and has him crash into the mayor’s funeral. Batman is looking for the rat on a big drug bust case. Anyway, the Riddler targets Bruce Wayne, sending a letter bomb which hits Alfred. Batman figures out the rat is crime boss Falcone (John Turturro) and drags him out of the club. The Riddler snipes him. The Riddler is caught and brought to Arkam. He wants to see Batman. Batman thinks the Riddler is going to unmask him but then realizes that the Riddler thinks he and Batman are on the same team, both vigilantes, both battling corruption. The Riddler then blows up the Gotham seawall and the whole place floods. His followers from online gather to shoot people, and Batman and Catwoman fight them off. 

I liked this movie. The cinematography and the action sequences were cool. Paul Dano was great as the Riddler. Batman comes across as deranged, which is nice. Like, he’s really unhealthy and isolated. The candidate running against the mayor asks Bruce Wayne why he’s not honored his parents’ commitments financially. He’s fallen off on the philanthropy end, and Real thinks he could do a lot to help the city. It’s a really nice critique of the whole premise of Batman – is it really violence that’s going to help the city? Batman beating up thieves? He’s a billionaire. He could be working on the structures and conditions that are allowing crime to look appealing to people. Batman winds up, in the end, helping people in a fireman sort of way. Clearing debris, loading people onto helicopters, lighting the way. It’s rare in a superhero film, where guys most commonly “help” through punching. 

One complaint I have is that The Riddler’s motivation breaks down in the end. He’s targeting powerful men very specifically, enacting vengeance on these men’s corruptions and how they’ve harmed the city. But then he just kills lots and lots of people by flood and wants to kill the next mayoral candidate… I guess because she’s a politician? It’s what separates him from Batman, and it’s too bad because it doesn’t really follow. Riddler seems actually principled until he doesn’t. But up to that point his principles seem genuine as opposed to a cover for something else – megalomania, racism, something. It’s reminiscent of the January 6th attack on the capital, accept we’re not given a reason. The final plan is against someone who hasn’t even been elected yet, someone who wasn’t part of the corrupted drug bust, someone who doesn’t have power. It just breaks down, which is too bad because I think the question of what’s so different between Batman and Riddler is a good one. 

Another kind of annoying thing is how quickly Batman is solving the Riddler’s riddles. As far as I know, Batman is not supposed to be some very clever verbal guy. I’ve barely heard the riddle and Batman has already answered it. It’s kind of weird how in these macho movies, the protagonist isn’t allowed to struggle with anything. They have to be top notch proficient at all things, even when those things go against character. I supposed watching Batman’s face for five minutes while he tries to think of the answer to a riddle isn’t that cinematic, but still. (He could fight fight while he thinks. Sometimes that’s good for problem solving.) 

The cinematography was great in this movie. Dark, noir-like, with cool angles and experimental lighting – there’s a whole sequence in a hallway that’s only lit by gun blasts. The cinematography and the score were what made this whole movie work. The most recent iterations of Batman are so somber that it feels like one accidental joke would make the whole thing crumble. Like letting in an ounce of light would tip the whole thing into revelry. The moodiness makes the characters’ actions palatable. It creates the whole world. 

Some stills:

 

 

Gorgeous. 

Rating: ★★★

March 15, 2022

Probably as a way of procrastinating getting to my list of tasks -- make grocery list, fill out March Madness bracket, read Baby Teeth, do Rabbit Hole character analysis -- but I pulled up a research publication on social media use and mental wellbeing. I'm in the weeds a bit on my use of Instagram. I'm constantly checking it, and I've been posting a lot. I'm worried I'm depressed. (I wonder if that's a mental health condition in itself, not being depressed but being so worried about depression that you're basically depressed.) Anyway, the article is refreshing in that it's findings are basically It depends. Social media can augment in-person relationships, promote feelings of connection and support, allow people to express their identity -- I'll add creativity. Social media can also exacerbate maladaptive tendencies (I just learned that term) and work against mental wellbeing based on emotional contagion -- wow -- and social comparison. It can accentuate the differences between people who are doing well and those who aren't. Impacting self esteem probably. Anyhow, the article seems even-handed and a bit obvious, but in a good way. In a Oh, of course that's how it is way. It seems helpful to keep this in mind when I approach Instagram. Am I posting something that will benefit my audience -- I guess you could call them "friends" lol --? Will it spark conversation? Will it express my identity in a way that will help others know and connect to me? Or am I posting out of a sense of comparison. Look how good I am. Look how many friends I have. Look at how interesting and successful things over here are. Oof, the distinction isn't that easy to make now that I think of it. Put more generally, am I contributing to a nice social media environment? Can I make a habit of thinking in those terms instead of just focusing on how others might see me? It's an environment just like the physical environment. Am I fouling it up or not? 

MLog Time

**SPOILERS**

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

1986

Directed by: John Carpenter

Written by: Gary Goldman, David Z. Weinstein

Adapted by: W.D. Richter

Watched: 3/11/2022

I like this description on Wikipedia: Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, a cocky, wise-cracking truck driver who gets involved in an ancient battle between Good and Evil when he makes a delivery to Chinatown, San Francisco. That’s pretty much the plot. Jack goes to Chinatown and gets embroiled in a street gang war. His friend Wang’s fiancé is stolen because she has green eyes. A white lady is involved in the scene, Gracie Law (a young Kim Cattrall!). She’s rescuing women from this gang, but she also has green eyes. The big bad is an ancient man with no skin who’s alive but doesn’t have physical form. He needs to marry and sacrifice a woman with green eyes in order to regain his body. He decides to marry both Gracie and Miao Yin (Wang’s fiancé), kill one and keep the other as his wife. Jack, Wang, a sorcerer who drives a tour bus, and the good street gang guys storm the bad guy’s fortress and end up being able to save everybody. In the end, Jack gets his truck back and drives away – not even kissing Gracie goodbye! 

This movie is pretty silly. Kurt Russell is great as always. Kim Cattrall is a stunner. The set design is awesome. There’s fun fighting all over the place. Goofy stunts galore. The music was good too. Something that biases me against this movie a little bit is how much I liked The Thing. I like comedy in movies, don’t get me wrong, but it felt like the comedy was too much. I know Carpenter can deliver something as riveting as The Thing, and this felt like a cop out in comparison. Like he was letting it slide. The tension wasn’t ratcheted up enough to earn the comedic moments for me. Still a good time, though. Worth the watch. 

Rating: ★★★

March 14, 2022

I've been having a busy social time lately, especially compared to the last couple of COVID years. I go skating with a few women and I attend lyra classes where afterwards we talk/get a beer. I've been feeling uninteresting during these times, at a loss for what to talk about. At the same time, in settings like class at SMC, I've been consciously trying to go in low/easy. Listen more, be present in my body, pay attention to the people and dynamics around me before I jump to any course of action. Hang back, essentially. I've always done that, but in a shy/panicked way. My head's been too full of terror to let in information like, Oh that person's nervous. Or: those two seem to like each other. Or: that person seems smart and pleasant to be around. I'm wondering if that strategy is at all good within a small group of people, who already know each other, who are already friends. Should I be wracking my brain for questions in order to get a conversation going? Should I practice being okay with that silence -- not stress it, see if anything spools out? I'm ready to except a large number of small failures in other areas of my life -- I expect it. Is it okay to expect some failed conversations in this social context? Or is the risk there of tanking/losing those connections forever? Is that kind of failure, the awkward silence, the lull, the fear that I might not have anything interesting to say as a person in general, so painful that it must be avoided at all costs? Will it always be remembered and henceforth avoided? Worth experimenting with, probably. (But of course it's not like I design theses "experiments" with any kind of rigor. There are no controls, no isolated variables. The results I get are happenstance and vague at best. Plus of course it's as damaging to one's sense of reality to learn the wrong lesson as it is to persistently learn no lessons at all.) 

BLog Time! 

Hagen, Sofie – HAPPY FAT

Published: 2019

Read: 3/2022

I listened to Richard Herring interview Sofie Hagen in a retro RHLSTP. It was the first time I’d ever heard of Hagen, and I liked her enough that I got her book from the library. Happy Fat is a memoir/collection of essays on being fat and on fat liberation. I’ve read similar books to this – Shrill by Lindy West comes to mind, also Hunger by Roxane Gay – but I figured it would be okay for me to tread some old ground. This book had lots of explanatory footnotes for terms that people might not be familiar with. I appreciated that even though (or especially because) the tendency in a lot of these kinds of books is, I’ve done a whole lot of labor already (says the author) why don’t you just google whatever terms you don’t know. Fair enough. But it was also nice to just have Hagen explain it to me (or to confirm my understanding of whatever it was). 

I am not a fat woman, but I’ve been preoccupied with the idea of fatness since I was a child. I wrote a journal entry when I was a first grader complaining about how my tights made me look fat. (Also, I wore tights in first grade? Fancy.) When I look in the mirror, I have eagle eyes for it. Evidence of fat. Small swellings of fat. Reading Hagen’s book made me a little self conscious; I thought, well being thin is the only thing I have going for me aesthetically. If being thin doesn’t matter, then I’m ugly indeed. That’s not nice, or the intended message, I’m sure. I could always change other things up: clothes, hair, makeup. Get some foundation under these old eye bags. I’m not a fat woman, but the idea of fat acceptance still sunk in a bit. I did lyra on Sunday and it was too hot for the outfit that I was wearing so I did it in just my sports bra. I posted that video, because it was a good one, on Instagram. Is that anything, I wonder? I mean is it anything political, as it’s coming from not a fat woman? I’m also far from a model. It’s not a perfect or filtered body that I’m putting out on the internet. It feels to me just like a factual thing, kind of dull. Maybe to some extent, I’m meant to be in it instead of look at it, my body I mean. There are all these lenses through which we can see things. See bodies. Through the lens of a magazine, airbrushed being the expectation. Through the lens of a lover, a critic, a historian just looking for body counts. As a product of evolution. Through the lens of a scientist. Of a parent or sibling. There isn’t really a stand-alone lens of the self. How to view the body through the lens of the self. It’s as if we need to borrow another one, an outside one, in order to start looking. 

Rating: ★★★

March 8, 2022

I'm in an acting class at SMC. Jerry Springer is mentioned in the script I'm working on with my scene partner. She told me that when she was in high school, her mom went on the Howard Stern show to beg for breast implants. It was embarrassing. All her classmates knew about it. Her mom went on TV for that shit. Amazing. 

MLog Time! 

HARVEY

1950

Directed by: Henry Koster

Written by: Mary Chase, Oscar Brodney

Watched: 3/1/22

Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart) lives with his sister Veta (Josephine Hull) and niece, Myrtle Mae (Victoria Horne), who are trying to get him out of the house so they can entertain a group of society women. It’s Myrtle Mae’s time to be introduced into society and to try to find a husband, but the problem is that ever since Elwood and Veta’s mother died, Elwood has been walking around with an invisible six-foot 3 ½ in tall rabbit named Harvey. The ladies can’t afford to let people know that Elwood is nuts. It would ruin Myrtle Mae’s chances. Elwood goes to the same bar every day and orders drinks for himself and for Harvey. Elwood drinks constantly. Veta, at her wits end, tries to commit Elwood to a sanatorium, but when she tells the doctor about Elwood’s condition, she admits to sometimes seeing Harvey, and gets locked up herself. Trying to rectify this mistake, the staff at the sanatorium tries desperately to retrieve Elwood, but every time they do, they end up having a nice time and sort of forgetting what they were on about and getting drunk and believing in the rabbit themselves. Elwood explains that Harvey is a pooka, a kind of sprite from Celtic mythology bent on fun and mischief. The head doctor ends up fully believing in Harvey and wanting Harvey for a companion for himself. The other doctors are finally able to retrieve Elwood and offer to give him a serum called “Formula 977” which will stop him from seeing the rabbit. Veta wants them to do it. But at first she’s unable to find money to pay the cabby, so she has to stop the procedure to ask Elwood for cash. Then the cab driver says what wonderful passengers come to the sanatorium, but after the treatment they go away miserable. He warns Veta that Elwood will become "just a normal human being, and you know what stinkers they are." Veta stops the procedure. Veta, Myrtle Mae, Elwood, and Harvey walk together into the sunset. 

People fall in love along the way, facilitated by Elwood’s pleasant battishness. I watched this movie because John Green talked about it in the Anthropocene Review. When he was in his 20s, newly dumped, and having a mental breakdown, he had to move back in with his parents for a little while. His boss told him to take some time but that he didn’t have to quit. He left him a note that said, “Now, more than ever, watch Harvey.” A good quote: “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh-so-smart or -oh-so-pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me.” By the end, the movie seems to suggest – with Harvey opening doors on his own and such – that Harvey is real. While the beginning of the movie lines Harvey up, in my viewing, as a response to Elwood’s trauma of losing his mother. The drinking maybe is the actual trauma response and the rabbit real. The movie seems to suggest the benefits in letting things slide, in keeping it blurry, in not fighting so hard anymore. That premise reminds me of Another Round. It would be interesting to watch/discuss these two movies together. Harvey is way whimsical for my taste, generally, but I think that the actual darkness of life grounds it. And not dramatic darkness, just the everyday mundane hardships. The stuff grinding grinding you down. The loss of a parent, the most common thing in the world. The judgment of strangers. The pressure to perform. The toll of the whole thing and the desire – like the head doctor – to just lie under a tree and have a beautiful woman stroke your hair and say, “Poor dear… poor dear…” Yeah.

Rating: ★★★1/2

March 4, 2022

I want to talk about the Aesop fable I heard on a recent Blindboy podcast episode at some point. But today, I'm going to just paste into here an email I sent to my book club (to which only two people have actually show up so far, ha). I liked it: 

Hello! 

In case it's of interest, I wanted to tell you a little bit about why I chose Villette for the next book club. Maybe I can sell you on giving it a shot. 

I first heard of Villette when I read How To Suppress Women's Writing (1983) by Joanna Russ. The relevant chapter, "She Only Wrote One Good Book," is available here. (As a side note, Russ's novelette We Who Are About To is *eye emoji* *eye emoji*.) 

An excerpt for TLDR: 

"I think it no accident that the myth of the isolated achievement so often promotes women writers’ less good work as their best work. For example, Jane Eyre exists, as of this writing, on the graduate reading list of the Department of English at the University of Washington. (This is the only PhD reading list to which I have access at the moment. I mention it not as a horrid example, but because it is respectable, substantial, and probably typical of first-rate institutions across this country.) Villette does not appear on the list. How could it? Jane Eyre is a love story and women ought to write love stories; Villette, “a book too subversive to be popular,” is described by Kate Millett as “one long meditation on a prison break.”"

Well, if Kate Millett likes it... eh? eh? 

Also, I liked the last book club book (The Argonauts) which includes stuff on Dodie Bellamy's The Buddhist, which I really liked. And I read an interview with Bellamy where she says, "Fans of the buddhist should read Charlotte Brontë’s Villette[....]"

So here we are. 

Happy reading, 

Amy

Okay, now BLog Time! 

Babitz, Eve – SEX AND RAGE 

Published: 1979

Read: 02/2022

This “novel” is about a woman named Jacaranda Levin, a stand-in for Eve, who’s a party girl and hangs around with a bunch of rich and stylish monsters. She calls this crew “the barge.” She realizes she’s an alcoholic. She’s off the barge. She gets a book deal. She gets sober. She goes to New York for a week. She comes out of it alive. Her main adversary is a man named Max, who she’s at first very close with and then very afraid of. I found it useful to be reading Hollywood’s Eve by Lili Anolik at the same time. She decodes some of the characters. Max is a man named Earl who put Eve off visual arts forever with the spare remark, “Is that the blue you’re using?”

I was disappointed in this book, especially compared to Eve’s Hollywood. I felt a sliding who cares.  Just read this New Yorker article by Jia Tolentino on it. And she drops some of the following really quite good quotes: “luck is like beauty or diamond earrings: people who have it cannot simply stay home.” “Along with the opium, champagne, brandy, and cocaine, Jacaranda and Etienne would clash by night, sometimes till dawn, when they’d walk along the dewy lawns (she never knew whether he owned or rented this paradise) towards the view and watch L.A. turn blush-pink, then yellow, then smog.”

        Tolentino here, with the quotes from Eve: She starts imagining that she and her new friends all live on a “drifting, opulent barge.” One night, she has fourteen of “some cocktail called a White Lady” and starts to feel like she might be doomed. “So many of the ones like her, the ones who were brought aboard to amuse the barge, disappeared,” Babitz writes. “They O.D.’d on Quaaludes or Tuinals or got hepatitis and had to retire forever, or they became like Marianne, a zombie girl she’d known, who would drop her purse in public and have to spend an hour finding the things and putting them back in.”

        And: Jacaranda imagines how Max sees her: “a rare enough thing—a native-born Angeleno grown up at the edge of America with her feet in the ocean and her head in the breaking waves.” She has a full bookcase, “no sense of ‘sin’ and no manners.” 

Her memoirs and essays are bettttter. 

Rating: ★★

March 2, 2022

I'm still feeling a little out of it because of the wisdom teeth. I think I have a low-grade fever. A short scene, if Someone were to ask--

Someone: How are you feeling? 

Amy: Not too bad. I think I have a fever. 

End scene. 

Or alternatively: 

Amy: Not too bad. I want my mouth to be healed now. 

End scene. 

But my lower jaw is so slight and recessed in general that having this swelling makes me look genuinely cute. Like a different person, but still cute. 

MLOG Time! 

I'm behind on these, you'll see. 

DEATH ON THE NILE

2022

Directed by: Kenneth Branagh

Written by: Michael Green

Watched: 2/15/22

We start with a scene from Poirot’s past. He’s a soldier in WWI and he gallantly rescues his men by noticing the bird’s behavior – it means that the winds are calm. So the unit advances and overtakes the enemy in a situation where they otherwise would almost certainly die. However, a booby trap on a bridge is tripped and the explosion scars one side of Poirot’s face. It turns out this is why he wears such a giant mustache. He has a love, there to tend to him or to visit or something, who accepts him anyway, scar and all. Present day, Poirot is vacationing in Egypt where he meets his friend Bouc, who is on the honeymoon trip for Linnet (Gal Godot) and Simon. Poirot has seen Linnet before and we flash back to a night club, where Poirot orders one of every desert. He sees Simon there with Louise, Linnet’s cousin. Simon and Louise are engaged to be married, but Louise introduces Simon to Linnet (her very rich cousin) and the two hit it off. Now, Louise is following the honeymooning couple everywhere, and it’s stressing Linnet out. What’s more, Linnet doesn’t feel safe with any of the guests. While they’re in Egypt, someone dislodges a bolder from up above which nearly hits Linnet. Eventually, Louise shoots Simon in the leg. Louise is taken with the nurse and given sedatives. The doctor attends to Simon’s injuries. In the morning, Linnet is found dead, shot through the head. What else… oh the maid is found dead in the water, her throat cut. And Bouc is shot in the head while Poirot and Simon are questioning him. In the end, it’s revealed that Simon and Louise were in on it together. Louise shoots Simon with a blank. Simon acts injured. Left alone, he runs and shoots Linnet then runs back and shoots himself in the leg (for real) before the doctor gets to him. Simon was planning on inheriting Linnets money and running away with Louise. Oh shoot – and Louise’s actual name is Jackie. Louise is the maid. 

I thought this movie was okay. There were lots of CGI animal intercuts – like crocodiles eating fish and stuff – I think to try enhance the mood, but it didn’t really work for me. Also, I think I feel negatively about making Poirot a kind of romantic hero. In the books, as far as I’m aware, he keeps his huge mustache out of vanity. He’s a ridiculous figure and he’s also very dangerous. I don’t know, wouldn’t that also play for a movie? Both he and Miss Marple are more effective because people underestimate them and because they are outsiders. Why not let the audience underestimate them? Why not let us ask, we’re really watching a movie about this guy? Both he and Miss Marple are frivolous. Until they’re not. I like that about the books. It’s kind of the reoccurring thesis – shame on you for being so sure. So sure about Poirot, so sure about your aims that you’re willing to commit murder, so sure a woman can’t be a writer (okay, I’m filling in that last one). But maybe. Kenneth Branagh did BELFAST and that’s supposed to be good. But I don’t know, this movie was kind of a miss. 

Rating: ★★

March 1, 2022

I got my wisdom teeth out this morning. I went under what they called "twilight" general anesthesia... or twilight local anesthesia? Twilight was in the name. Last night I was pretty worried about it. I've been under anesthesia before -- when I got my ACL surgery and when my broken arm was set before they cast it -- and I wasn't worried about it then. I think it was because I was younger and trusted the world and adults more than I do now. This time, I was just about as worried about the anesthesia as I was about the teeth extraction itself. 

I got my top two (non-impacted) wisdom teeth taken out the summer before college. I walked in and the dentist was like, "Hi, I'm Adam." Not Doctor Such-and-Such. Just Adam. He was young too. I only had local anesthesia that time, was wide awake. It took forever, and I swear they went in there with one of those clacky tools you use to crush crab legs. My lips hurt from being stretched so much, and the corners of my mouth got sores. It was not good. 

So I opted for the anesthesia for the bottom two. They're impacted, so I figured much worse. Plus the dentist recommended it. (I'm still a little loopy.) I really have lost my train of thought here. Here are some pictures: