Some things I wanted to show you

I canceled a preorder and got a couple weeks of a bit of a break before all the deadlines start up again now. It has been so lovely and relatively restful and even though it’s just been a tiny glimpse, it has definitely made me feel like things are coming together and I have a peaceful, stable, easy life ahead of me (fingers crossed). I am upgrading my life and everything always works out for me.

I spent a few days in Ohio (Lake Erie) with my mom, and read in bed for hours and went to the movies with Spencer and finally (finally) am getting my business finances organized and got my gutters cleaned and repaired and idk what else. Rest and space.

In praise of carpenters : “Making buildings is hard work, but is also full of magic, spontaneous improvisational genius, and transformation. Carpenters do their work in a world that isn’t square, level, or plumb when they get there, but is (mostly) when they leave. They are mechanics in the old, esteemed sense of the word.”

Ever behind the sunset (7min video) and the documentary of making it : “In his beautiful and poignant work Ever Behind the Sunset, the US artist and filmmaker Jason Mitcham pays tribute to his childhood home in North Carolina, which today exists only in memory. Working from maps, family VHS tapes and photographs, he creates moving images thick with paint in an elegy to the quiet and untamed slice of Earth where he grew up, which since 2011 has been seized, partitioned, paved over, developed into suburban sprawl, marketed and sold.”

How Stephen King Made The Shining Even Scarier : “In an extended scene in the equipment shed, Jack ponders his options. The part of him that the evil spirits have been getting to wants to stay, but the other part of him knows that Wendy is right. He picks up a roque mallet and reflects: ‘He frowned a little, then smiled. Yes, it was a schizo sort of game at that. The mallet expressed that perfectly. A soft end and a hard end.’ He almost gets the Ski-Doo in driving shape, putting in the spark plugs and finding its battery. But by the end of the scene, the hard end has won: He flings the snowmobile’s battery into the deep snow and strands them all there together. When shall we three meet again?”

Spider-Man vs Broicism : (SPOILERS ABOUND) “Frank Castle is living that isolation taken all the way to its end point. The Punisher is alone, armed, and cut off from everyone who ever loved him. And when Peter tries to compare their lives at one point, like they’re the same kind of tough guy, Frank completely shuts that down. The guy whose icon is on a thousand pick up truck windows next to blue lives matter stickers because people have the media literacy of as a turnip is the one warning the hero away from becoming him. The most misunderstood thing about the Punisher is that he hates what he’s become. Nobody should aspire to be the Punisher. He’s a tragedy formed out of the tragedy of losing his family, and this movie hits that beat beautifully, and quietly.”

The Greek tragedy behind Suddenly Last Summer : (Highly recommend that movie, btw) “‘Most readings maintain this focus on the role of Sebastian as a repressed homosexual—variously martyr, saint, and sadist—and on the implications of that sexuality for his relationships with his cousin Catharine and his mother,’ writes Irene Morra in The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, proposing an interpretation of the play as a reelaboration of The Bacchae in a more metatheatrical way, rather than as a realistic depiction of queerness and its consequences. ‘The majority of critical receptions continue to read Suddenly Last Summer in psychosexual, biographical terms. This reading, however, risks overlooking the extent to which the play offers a concerted aesthetic response to the negative reception of Orpheus Descending.’”1

WATCHING:

Prisoners* (one of Spencer’s faves); Rope* (underrated Hitchcock2); Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed S1 (dark and funny and so good); Spider-Man: Brand New Day (def lives up to the hype); Memento* (first rewatch in ~15+ years, kinda fun to remember almost zero about it)

READING:

Unreliable Narrator* (creepy and sad and interesting); Breathing Lessons* (Tyler astounds me); Anne’s House of Dreams* (continuing Spencer reading me the series); Lake Effect* (my fave from this author, I think); Wellness* (Nathan Hill is a must-read for me)

( *these are affiliate links. If you make a purchase through any of these links I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you )