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Metamorphosis
I’m changing a little. I didn’t notice it at first, but I’m becoming more pragmatic, a little more stressed, a little more comfortable with smiling first and thinking about it later. My surface-level social skills - the things that buoy you along until you figure out whether you actually like someone or not - are developing a little more. I’m not as quiet as I used to be.
So I moved, and I started the new job, and I’m starting to build a life. I have an ache between my shoulderblades now that doesn’t ever really go away - it just fades in and out, depending on how much I’m ignoring my posture at work. I’ve also become more organized, because nothing makes you prioritize your time like being away from home 50 hours a week.
I’ve spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, because maintaining independence on all fronts (psychological, fiscal, organizational) is a) new, b) hard and c) emotionally confusing, but sometimes I stop and think about how lucky I actually am. I have a really nice apartment that’s fifteen minutes away from the beach. I live just down the road from a single-screen cinema that doesn’t rip off customers. I can walk to the train station, Salem is a four minute ride away, and Boston is just over half an hour. There’s a really great taqueria down the road from our apartment.
And I still have access to a catalog of movies, and TV shows, and video games that feels almost limitless. I’m still in love. That alone feels big - Arden and I have weathered some heavy stuff over the last two years, and we’re stronger for it when other relationships might have crumbled. I know that no-one wants to hear about a relationship that’s working, but: it’s working. I’ve heard so many people tell me that the ball-and-chain myth is anything but, that I’ll become just as jaded as them, and I just want to turn around and ask them what happened that meant they ended up feeling that way. How you can love someone and turn up your nose at the sound of their name in the same breath. It doesn’t make sense to me. I hope it never does.
I don’t feel the impulse to write this blog anymore. I wouldn’t say I’m writing this out of a sense of obligation - maybe I’m just writing it because I want my brain to drown out the kids sitting in front of me on the train who are screaming their idiot heads off - but I used to feel guilty when I left this for more than a week.
I still flirt with the idea of writing in general, though. I stopped, essentially. I wrote a few drafts of stories and lost interest. Part of it is purely physical - I’ve been designing the new Bright Wall/Dark Room website more or less constantly, and working at a computer all day, so sometimes the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit at a desk - but also I’m probably too happy, and living a life too uncomplicated, to really delve into dystopian fiction. I don’t have a wealth of unhappy relationships to mine. I can’t write about a dysfunctional white family’s self-destruction, because as strained as things are with my family sometimes, we do still get along. The only thing I’m sometimes drawn to is weird fiction, the kind that often has no real message but assaults your senses and leaves you reeling - writers like China Mieville, and Carlton Mellick, and Jeff VanderMeer. Even then, though, it hasn’t been enough to make me sit down and start scribbling.
But never say never, and one day this website relaunch will be done, and I’ll have a better work/life balance, and the long tail of moving into a new place will finally run out. There are building blocks still slowly grinding into place, and right now I’m content just to see what’s being built.
Happy New Everything
I spent Christmas suffering from a cold. I spent New Year’s Eve suffering from sinusitis. Between these two holidays, I somehow found an apartment. I’m moving on January 11th.
I stopped keeping a journal.
So, okay, I lied about never talking about my job. Here’s what I’m doing now, though I won’t mention the name of the company because a) professionalism and b) Google. I’m manning the reception desk and running operations for a diamond jewelry showroom in Boston. I haven’t really started the job yet. I spent two months in San Francisco training to do the job, and then the last four days of 2015 doing a different job because the showroom wasn’t set up. I start doing the job in two days. I really hope I’m good at it. I like the company, and I like the people I’m working with, but I’m also conscious of the fact that it’s my first stable full-time job. And that I’m moving out at the end of next week.
But I’m doing okay.
It’s funny - I keep surprising myself at how my brain appears to be mostly intact. Because I’m doing okay! Money is always a stressor, and it remains to be seen how well I balance work and life, and this is really the first time that I’m going to be living fully independently, but I’m still holding it together. There’s a part of my brain that keeps trying to tell me that I’m incapable of all of this, that holding down a full-time job and supporting your partner and keeping the rest of your life organized is something that other people do, not me - but it’s quiet, and easy to manage, and only really rears its head when I’m trying to do all of this stuff while feeling sick.
Here are some other things that have been happening:
- I started officially working for Bright Wall/Dark Room, and I’ll be co-ordinating the relaunch of their website in the coming weeks (you know, with all my free time), as well as providing operational support going forward. It’s exciting - BWDR has been part of my life since I met Arden (for different reasons), and to be part of the team running it is really exciting.
- I went to GX3 and helped out at the Love Conquers All Games booth, and met a whole bunch of interesting people who do very different things to me. GX3 was the first time that I winced when someone called me a “science fiction author” - not because I haven’t written science fiction (I have, I think), but because I’m not currently writing anything and I don’t see myself starting anything soon. Life is too busy. I’m secure in the knowledge that I can think creatively if I want to, but it’s only one of a number of things I enjoy doing. There just isn’t space for it right now.
- I spent some time loving San Francisco, and some time hating it. On the one hand, living in the heart of the city and exploring was wonderful. On the other hand, the streets for a three block radius outside my building stank of excrement and urine. On the one hand, the Golden Gate Bridge is beautiful and the views from Coit Tower were amazing and I went on some really nice walks along the waterfront. On the other, the city doesn’t care about its homeless population, and the number of people clearly suffering from a handful of mental health disorders that I encountered walking to and from work was staggering. On the one hand, the weather was mostly lovely. On the other, on the odd occasion that it rains, the drivers forget how to act rationally. I would not want to live there. I mostly enjoyed visiting, though, and met some really nice people.
- I refined my jambalaya recipe a little more. I’m still just as culturally inauthentic.
- I still spent far too much time watching terrible late-night TV clips on YouTube. I’m trying to kick the habit. It’s easier said than done.
Here’s a picture I took from the top of Coit Tower.
I’m moving to Beverly, a town just north of Salem, in just over a week. I will continue being surprised at how well I’m holding everything together. My limits will continue to expand. Life fills in the gaps.
Public Space/Private Life
I started a journal. A private one. It’s actually just a loosely-organized collection of notes in my Evernote account, with some sections encrypted so that there’s no accidental cross-pollination with my work notes, but it’s me writing about my life on a day-to-day basis. So. A journal. I’ve been writing it for about a week.
I’m in a weird state of flux when it comes to this blog. Mostly because I’m doing things again - for the first time in years, I am really busy. I have a full-time job. I’m currently living in San Francisco, training at company headquarters, and when I move back to Boston at Christmas I’ll immediately be looking for apartments in Salem. In addition to that, I’m working at full steam in my newish position as Operations Manger for Bright Wall/Dark Room, figuring out how to approach an adult set of responsibilities and a normal sleep schedule (I’m usually in bed at about 10:30pm these days, which is horrifying, I know), and taking time out to nurture and care for human relationships.
I can hear you rolling your eyes from here.
The more I think about it, though, the more I don’t really know of many full-timers who have blogs - active ones, anyway. I know people who run their own businesses, or freelance, or take appointments on a flexible schedule, but not much aside from that. And part of that is because blogs are perennially going out of fashion, I know, but part of it (I’m seeing) is that there just aren’t enough hours in the day. And. Well.
This is the first job which had a clause about social media in the signing contract. It’s not enough to make me cagey, but it is enough to make me careful, and it means that - for one - I will, as a matter of professional principle, never be talking about my job on this blog. My job, which takes up forty hours a week, forty hours where I’m still a human with thoughts and ideas and feelings, but those thoughts and ideas and feelings need to be private. And I don’t say that to suggest that my company’s draconian when it comes to this stuff - they’re not - but the question comes up of where the line is. And I don’t know. So it’s a blanket blackout.
And then there’s the question of personal matters. If I talk about my personal relationships, where’s the line with that? If I want to talk about politics - and, I know, I rarely do - could that get me in trouble? We’ve already established that I don’t want this to be a pop culture blog. So what is it?
I have quite a long time before this Squarespace account expires - about six months, I think. After that, I don’t know. I’m still going to write - more so than ever, I think. I have an essay out in the upcoming issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room, I’ve been opening up without shame to an encrypted journal that only I’m going to read, and I even scribble the odd fictional thing from time to time. But I’m not sure I’m a blogger anymore. At least not here.
November
This is the last one of these that I’m going to write. I’ve toyed with this whole format for a few months now, and without sounding too melodramatic, it’s starting to feel kind of existentially empty. And don’t get me wrong - I love films, and books, and television, and video games, and there’s a reason that I fill my life with them. It’s just the way I talk about it that doesn’t feel right, and hasn’t felt right for a while.
I think moving away from Tumblr is probably what did it (even though, chances are, you’re probably reading this through that site) - I don’t have as strong an engagement with an audience anymore, and the idea of writing pithy things about every single piece of media I come into contact with just feels kind of redundant. There’s no value in me telling you that something isn’t very good. In fact, this whole quality scale thing just depresses me in general - altogether, I’m more interested in whether something’s interesting or not, and whether there’s a conversation to be had about it. I don’t know. Maybe working for Bright Wall/Dark Room is rubbing off on me.
Of course, that brings up the question of what this blog is going to be for - I need to be somewhat careful with the things I write on the internet, now that I’m working for a company who does a reasonable amount of business online, so there’s a limit to what I can discuss about personal matters. But I’m sure I’ll find something. Better to write nothing at all than to add more noise.
Anyway. One more for the road.
Film
I started November with my last Netflix DVD (for now, anyway) - Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love, an impressionistic piece about a man and woman who discover that their spouses are having an affair, and develop their own connection in the aftermath. It’s brilliantly intimate in the way the relationship develops, and yet entirely dictated by the mores of the social setting - there are no prolonged love scenes, or many open confessions of affection - instead, it’s a romance brought to life by the way the characters look at one another, and the passion for good stories that they share, and the delicate yet lush music that weaves its way through each scene. It’s a fantastic film, and I can’t recommend it enough.
I finally got Arden to watch Wet Hot American Summer, and she went from repeating “I want to die, I want to die” in those horribly awkward opening 20 minutes to laughing at the absurdity of it all. Personally, I’m finding that it’s the sort of film that gets better with repeat viewings, and I noticed one or two quieter jokes that passed me by the first time.
Being by myself in San Francisco (which I’ll discuss properly later) has meant that I have some time to get through my Netflix streaming queue, and I started with Byzantium, a strange film that somewhat defies genre convention - there are elements of thriller and horror, but there’s also something quieter and more melancholic, embodied by Saoirse Ronan’s protagonist, a 200-year-old vampire under the stewardship of her reckless and explosive mother (Gemma Arterton). I couldn’t help but think about It Follows in watching it - they’re both scary films that feature complex women in lead roles, and they’re firmly rooted in their shoes, rather than going for the male gaze. Even scenes that could be exploitative - Arterton’s character opens the film working in a strip club - are filled with a strange chaotic energy that draws your attention to everything else going on, not the sexuality of the main subject.
I also saw Steve Jobs in the cinema, which was very good (but also suffered from acute Sorkinitis, and it felt like the redemption arc between Michael Fassbender’s Jobs and his daughter was bursting at the seams of credibility). I also saw Spotlight at the cinema, which featured an incredible cast (Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery) in some brilliantly controlled performances and a story about Catholic sex abuse that, while common knowledge now, roots you in the time period (2001) in the way that the story feels like something you couldn’t make up. No-one’s vying for attention, and the film’s better as a result.
Television
It was a fortnight of web originals - I started November with Red Oaks, an Amazon series about a student’s (Craig Roberts, delivering an American accent that only slips once or twice) summer job as a tennis coach at an elite country club in the 1980s, and the various escapades and romantic entanglements that result. It’s very unashamed of its influences, and what results is a mixed bag - at times, it’s wildly funny, but suffers most when it refuses to examine teen movies of the eighties with a critical eye - a lot of women are vying for the protagonist’s attention, and while that’s sometimes refreshing (it’s not a dumb loser-makes-good story, at least), most of the female characters could have been plucked from a bargain bin of female archetypes. There’s the hot one with a hidden sweet side, the cougar, the overbearing girlfriend, and the messed-up art kid. It’s all a bit done. That said, I did find myself enjoying it, but it requires a suspension of disbelief from the opening moments.
I also watched Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, which was the best way to make a sequel to the film, largely by delivering more of the same - silly satirical jokes that build to an outright absurd conclusion. Finally, I watched W/ Bob and David, and while it doesn’t share Mr. Show’s name, it’s definitely a sequel to the series by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross that brought them into the public eye. It’s a sketch show, so it’s kind of hit and miss, but there are more hits than misses and it’s 90% hilarious to 10% misdirected and slightly uncomfortable. It’s strange - Mr. Show subverted a lot of sketch comedy tropes, and they’ve been developed somewhat in the last fifteen years, and it seems like Odenkirk and Cross have picked up on some of that development, but not all of it. It’s a throwback and an update, and at times feels lost somewhere in between. But by and large, it’s really funny.
Games
Just one before I left for SF - I played through and enjoyed Batman: Arkham Knight, when I could get it to run. The PC edition’s still marred with stuttering issues and choppy graphics, but it was at least playable - and, when it worked, really fun to play. The big selling point of the Arkham games has always been traversal - swooping and grappling between buildings, taking out enemies from the shadows, staying ahead of enemies by using your brain rather than mashing buttons - and Arkham Knight improves on earlier successes by introducing the Batmobile and a whole city to explore. Just a shame it still needs some polish.
Books
I’m falling behind. The only book I read in the last two weeks was Moriarty, the second in Anthony Horowitz’s continuation of the Sherlock Holmes saga (and, as far as I know, keeping with Arthur Conan Doyle’s original but failed hope that Sherlock Holmes would stay dead). It was really good - period-appropriate but gripping prose, a story that kept me guessing, and a conclusion that was both grimly morbid and immensely satisfying. I need to catch up with reading in general, though. I’m currently a couple of books behind in my self-imposed reading challenge (52 books this year), but I’m hoping I can catch up by the end of this month. We’ll see.
October, Part 2: Books, TV and Music
Books
I read Abandon by Blake Crouch, the author of the books upon which the TV series Wayward Pines is based - it’s a fairly straightforward thriller, but it does some interesting stuff with jumping between times in the same location, and has some great emotional introspection that’s sometimes missing from Pines.
The first two volumes of Rat Queens were great, and kind of read as an absurd all-female D&D campaign (which as far as the letters page indicates, is kind of the point). The characters are all instantly likeable and diverge enough from the usual tropes to keep them vibrant and interesting. It’s also surprisingly sex-positive (I say surprisingly because comics in general tend to have a weird attitude to sex - no judgement on writer Kurtis J Wiebe, who I’m sure is a lovely guy), accepting that the protagonists are into getting it on but not playing it up for the male gaze.
TV
I finally got around to watching Daredevil, and while it was occasionally bumpy (that finale, oof), it was some of the best television I’ve watched in a long time, with some episodes that were incredibly well put-together. It gives me a lot of faith for Jessica Jones (which, given some of the subject matter, could be handled terribly in the wrong hands), which I’m probably going to be a bit more punctual about watching.
Music
I spent a lot of time listening to the debut album from Raury, All We Need, and it’s a fascinating mash-up of folk and hip-hop that somehow transcends both genres to become something altogether different. I’ve also been listening to the new albums from Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, because a little pop music never hurt anyone.
October 2015, Part 2: Games
DmC: Devil May Cry is the modern update to the Devil May Cry series, featuring a boozing, swearing protagonist who lives in a trailer on the pier of a bustling metropolis. It’s so dumb. It’s also very fun. There’s a scene where you and a villain just yell obscenities at each other for a minute. I don’t recommend it. (But also, I do, kind of? It’s a tough thing to unpack.)
We Know The Devil is a short but fascinating visual novel by Aevee Bee set at a summer camp, and largely consists of three people spending a night in the cabin in the woods (but it doesn’t go where you think it’s going - it’s not that sort of plot). It’s the sort of thing that’s best if left unspoiled, and it keeps you thinking for a while after it’s over. There’s a lot of what I guess I’d call emotional shorthand in the way the characters talk to each other, so you find yourself growing closer to them once it’s over and you unpack everything that’s been said.
Tales From The Borderlands ended on a fairly high note (though the best episode of the season was probably the penultimate one), and it’s becoming clear to me that Telltale excels at interactive storytelling and less at the choice and consequence metric, which other adventure game studios have since implemented in far more interesting ways (choice examples: Dreamfall Chapters, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt). Thankfully, plot took a front seat in the last episode and it was better as a result, with some really fun setpieces and a few moments that made me laugh out loud. I’ll almost definitely get season 2 when it turns up.
Finally, I played the last episode of Life is Strange, which started out terrible and eventually clawed its way back. There was a twist at the end of episode four about the real villain of the whole piece, and he’s depressingly cartoonish in his motivations (and gets an equally depressing amount of screentime to voice those dumb motivations). Even so, the game as a self-contained whole is really good, and with every episode factored in it looks like more of a blip than something that ruins the game. As I gather, the ending (which comes down to a binary choice) has divided people, but it’s something that personally brought me to tears. Results may differ, though, and that’s going to be the deciding factor for a lot of people with this game - the whole thing is a heightened, Instagrammed version of what being a teenager in a small town is like, and that’ll be something that some people embrace and others outright reject. I chose to embrace it, and - terrible villains aside - it turned out to be one of the best games I’ve played all year. Just, you know. With some caveats.
October 2015, Part 2: Film
I’m breaking this digest up by media type, because I somehow got through a hell of a lot of stuff over the last couple of weeks.
Cut Bank feels kind of like what I wanted Bad Turn Worse to be - it’s a small-town noir thriller, with an impressive cast (Billy Bob Thornton, John Malkovich and Liam Hemsworth all star), and it’s expertly paced, with some genuinely creepy moments and a sense of unpredictability about it all. Following that was Camp X-Ray, a fairly grim drama set in Guantanamo Bay starring Kristen Stewart and Peyman Moaadi. The interplay between Stewart and Moaadi is the standout here, and it’s mostly played for realism, which would really be the only appropriate way to dramatize something that’s still very much happening.
It’s impressive that the film commits to at least some nuance - the actions of some of the US soldiers are horrifying, and there’s a telling scene early on where someone is told off for referring to the inhabitants of the detention facility as prisoners, but it’s also left up for debate as to the actual guilt of Moaadi’s character - in the opening, he’s seen arranging burner phones on a table and looking nervous, before being forcibly removed from his home. Ultimately, though, the film’s trying to make a point - that no matter how guilty the men in Guantanamo Bay are, their detention only avoids violating the Geneva convention on an issue of semantics and nothing else.
The same commitment to nuance can’t really be said for American Sniper - it’s almost egregiously chest-thumping when it comes to US military tactics, and never really examines the PTSD-riddled Kyle. At one point, a doctor asks Kyle if he regrets any of his actions, and he replies that he only regrets not saving more people, and the film just rolls with it without examining the fact that he literally killed hundreds of people.
All that said, I think it’s less an attempt to be propaganda for the US military, and more of an example of conservative white men saying “let’s keep the politics out of this one, guys”. It’s not barking slogans, but the views of Chris Kyle (upon whose memoir the film is based) and Clint Eastwood worm their way in through the way people in Afghanistan are exclusively presented (as either aggressors or victims of those aggressors), or by the stadium-sized memorial event in Kyle’s honor (using real footage), and the way that Bradley Cooper’s Kyle coyly smiles off the notion of being nicknamed “Legend”. And there are caveats, here - military service is a hell of a thing that I will likely have nothing to do with, but given that the US government has made some utterly terrifying foreign policy decisions that the army has no choice but to blindly accept, it’s hard to watch a film that uncomplicatedly, exclusively portrays America as the good guys.
Sin City: A Dame To Kill For was very pretty, and very stupid. I get what it was going for (episodic graphic novel noir, like the comics upon which it’s based), but it largely manifested as Eva Green getting her boobs out as much as she could and a lot of gratuitous torture. That’s not to say it wasn’t entertaining - it really was - but a 16-year-old would call this film high art and then feel really embarrassed about it a couple of years later.
I saw The Martian in the cinema, which was fine, but way too long and suffered from the same problem as the book - it’s a film of brilliant actors giving brilliant performances about how to advance the plot to its inevitable conclusion. There are no characters - and I was going to say character development, there, but development implies there’s at least a cursory sketch to begin with, not just job descriptions. It’s still fun, and like the book it has the whole “how’s he going to figure this one out” thing going for it, but really that phrase could be “how could anyone figure this one out” and it’s hold exactly the same amount of power.
I finally saw They Live, and now I understand Saints Row 4 a lot more. It’s very silly, and the satire hasn’t aged that well, but the fight scene between Roddy Piper and Keith David is still a great piece of physical comedy and it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Finally, I watched a collection of short animations by Late Night Work Club called Ghost Stories (epilepsy warning for the video content) - it’s mostly charming, and has a lot of quirky and off-beat ideas, and a surprising amount of heart packed into a very dense 40 minutes. At times, it gets a little head-scratchingly experimental, but there are some soaring high notes.
You Breathe In Between
I’m starting a new job. I won’t talk too much about it, because that would be unprofessional, but it’s less physically taxing than my current job (I’ll be behind a desk for the most part), pays significantly better, and means I’ll be training in San Francisco for a month and a half, starting in November.
It’s taking a little while to process fully. This job means responsibility on a scale I’ve never really had before. Arden and I will be moving out in January, probably to Salem, a good two-hour drive from here. I’ll be paying rent. We’re going to have some months where we struggle to get by, but it’ll be struggling within our own means, which is still a novel concept to me. On the one hand, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in having people around me who cushion me and make sure I have food and shelter, but on the other, I think there’s part of me who’s found complacency in that security. I could have been applying for jobs months ago, but I didn’t. My theory at the time was that I should get my driver’s license first. I still don’t have my driver’s license. I don’t know when I’m going to get it. But there are buses in Salem, and trains into Boston, and I’ll be okay.
I feel like the ground underneath me has been uneven the last few days. I’m fumbling my way through this. The idea of a full-time job, commuting, figuring out health insurance, finding a place to live, buying groceries every week - every new challenge is complicated by the shame that I should probably know how to do all of this already. I know people my age who have it all figured out - they moved out months after graduating, started careers, and take lavish vacations with the bonuses they earn from working in much more aggressive industries. I know others who don’t, though. I turned 25 a little over a month ago, and it’s a horribly awkward age. I feel old enough that I should have everything figured out, but too young to really have a proper grasp on how to deal with it all. Likely everyone goes through this at different points in their lives - a generalized feeling of inadequacy in the moments before you actually get your act together.
For now, I get by on the moments of stillness in between each period of chaos, and I’m lucky enough that they’re still there. I’ll take a couple of hours out and watch a movie, or curl up with a book, or just zone out and let the world pass by. Those moments almost feel more valuable when they don’t take up the majority of my life. I watched a movie tonight - I specifically set aside two hours of my time to just decompress in front of the TV - and it felt weirdly blissful in a way that the countless similar occasions preceding it didn’t.
October 2015, Part 1
Movies
I watched the saddest Top Gun sequel ever, Good Kill, starring Ethan Hawke as a former pilot reduced to remotely conducting drone strikes on behalf of the CIA. It’s a bleak story, with no apparent resolution (given that it’s based on real life events that are still continuing), so the decision to make it a human-focused drama that doesn’t shy away from the moral repercussions of the U.S. military’s actions is a fairly sensible one. I can’t stand Ethan Hawke the person (in every interview, he’s incredibly self-serious, and evidently really likes the sound of his own voice), but he gives a hell of a performance here.
I also saw Boulevard, one of the last films Robin Williams made. It’s a little underwhelming, which is a shame, following an overdone narrative about an old gay man trying to come to terms with his sexuality through the medium of a borderline-unwilling younger man. Having said that, Williams puts everything into the performance, and it’s a reminder of what an incredible dramatic actor he was. The supporting cast are all great too, and elevate a below-average script into something that’s at least watchable, with some occasional moments of brilliance.
St. Vincent is a by-the-numbers film about a kid (Jaeden Lieberher) coaxing a grumpy old man (Bill Murray) out of his shell, and it’s occasionally depressingly rote, but still made me cry. In the aftermath, I was a little annoyed at the film, because the way it tugs at the heartstrings is more than a little cynical, but it’s also very effective in doing so, making you feel a little dirty after you’ve wiped away the tears. Still - Murray is always a joy to watch, and it’s nice to see Melissa McCarthy playing a more understated role.
Finally, I saw Magnolia, which was incredible, and probably deserves its own piece at some point. I saw it two days ago and I’m still coming down from it. Needless to say, it’s three hours of brilliance, and has probably the most Tom Cruise-y role I’ve ever seen Tom Cruise play. Paul Thomas Anderson is a genius, but you already knew that - or at least, you should know.
TV
After a recommendation from someone I respect, I blasted my way through Season 1 of You’re The Worst, a sitcom with the relatively simple premise of putting two people who don’t believe in love in a relationship. It’s really funny, and smarter than most sitcoms, and deserves a watch. It also features a blond-haired, blue-eyed, emigrant writer from Manchester in one of the lead roles. So there’s that.
Books
I read The Heart Goes Last, a novel by Margaret Atwood that started out as a serialized publication on the now sadly-defunct site Byliner. It’s not her best work, but it’s still powerful in its satirical style, this time aiming its crosshairs at the corporatization of the US prison industry. At times, it steps over from satire to outright cynicism, and that threw me out a little, but it’s still a great novel, and is at least a few steps above Atwood phoning it in (which, for the record, I would still gladly read).
I also read We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart, a brilliant young adult novel that treats mental illness with sympathy and care while still remaining a fascinating and thrilling story. There are so many strands that Lockhart weaves throughout the book - a critique of wealth, frustration with the taboo around mental health, and the trials and tribulations of navigating your adolescence while the adult world rages along. It’s an excellent book, and probably my strongest recommendation this fortnight.
Games
This is more of a footnote, but I quit playing Fallout: New Vegas for the umpteenth time because I got sick of it crashing all the damn time. One day, I’ll figure out an optimal mod build and actually play the Chris Avellone-led DLC that everyone raved about four years ago. It probably won’t be until after I play Fallout 4, though, so who knows when that’s going to be?
I also played The Beginner’s Guide, an excellent short game by Davey Wreden that every games critic under the sun has already written about, so I won’t. But it’s a wonderful examination of the tension that comes with creating work for an audience, and left me feeling kind of overwhelmed by the time it was over. It’s really something.