Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.
Media Diet
Media Diet

Media Diet

TV I’ve Watched Since the Lockdown…

Or, the last time I wrote about shows that I watched.

American Crime Story (Season 2): The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Tom Ripley true crime, loved it.

Atlanta (Seasons 3-4): I could use one more season of this show. Felt incomplete. Brilliant. Daring. Funny. But incomplete.

Beavis and Butt-Head (Season 9): I didn’t know how much I needed this.

Better Things (Season 5): Easily my favorite show on television at the moment. Absolutely gutted that it is over, even though it left on a high note. I could check in on this family from time to time forever. Always look on the bright side of life, indeed.

Bob’s Burgers (Seasons 10-12): Consistently funny. No pun intended, but comfort food.

Boy Meets World (Seasons 1-7): Still and forever unabashedly love this show.

Bunheads (Season 1): Easy to see why it was cancelled, but I found it enjoyable. Once it gets past its absurd initial premise, it seemed like it was gradually just turning into a Stars Hallow spin-off: Emily is more or less running Miss Patty’s; Sean Gunn’s character becomes more Kirk-like; we also see, among others, Gypsy, Digger, Paris, and Zack in an eyepatch.

Curb Your Enthusiasm (Seasons 10-11): Amusing, but could have ended after season seven.

I Think You Should Leave (Season 2): If you like this sketch, watch this show.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 15): Some funny moments, but its worst season, right?

Hacks (Season 1): Fuck yeah, Jean Smart!

Jeopardy: Love to watch this before bed. There have been some incredible stand-out players as of late. I’ve also watched some random old episodes on Pluto.TV. ’80s Jeopardy is amazing.

Kim’s Convenience (Season 5): It’s a shame this show didn’t get to properly end. I still recommend the show as a whole. It’s funny, lighthearted and charming, and sometimes that is all a show needs to be.

The Mandalorian / The Book of Boba Fett (Seasons 1-2; Season 1): As a whole, my favorite Star Wars thing since the original Star Wars things. Boba Fett dragged, though. Almost think this should have been re-edited as one show.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 4): As funny as ever, still love the Lenny Bruce bits, and I am liking the B/C plots more (spin-off about Village Voice in the ’60s starring Chris, please), but it’s still the Midge and Susie show, as it should be.

Only Murders in the Building (Seasons 1-2): I love Martin Short and Steve Martin (and Selena Gomez!), but didn’t hold my interest. There could have been a 90-minute version of this that I likely would have thoroughly enjoyed.

Pen15 (Season 2): Maya and Anna are so committed to this. I really loved how the second half of season two branched out with Maya’s (real life) mother. They did something really special here. And for those that don’t know, Taylor Nichols, who Anna’s father, was in The Dinner Parting.

Rick and Morty (Seasons 1-5): Like most nerdy things, the fan base kinda ruins it, but this show is too funny and too in my wheelhouse not to love. And quite often, it is just as deep as they say it is.

The Righteous Gemstones (Seasons 1-2): Blasphemous dark comedy. I appreciate that they mock religious hypocrisy over religion, period.

Saturday Night Live (Seasons 46-47): The show is really embracing the weird. This is the most I’ve liked Sunday Afternoon Not Live in a long time (first few episodes of the new season have been clunkers but I am still holding out hope. The Jack Harlow episode had some great moments).

Single Drunk Female (Season 1): Felt very much like I was watching an ABC Family show about alcoholism. Loved the lead, though, and that they have a trans character that’s actually playing a role, and not just an identity, if that makes sense.

Stranger Things (Season 4): Had its moments, of course, but I am ready to be over this.

Squid Game (Season 1): Didn’t dislike it, but how Netflix manages these phenomenons out of thin air, I don’t think I will ever be able to comprehend.

Ted Lasso (Seasons 1-2): Ted and Roy Kent represent the yin and yang of who I want to be as a person.

Welcome to Wrexham (Season 1): So I like heartwarming shows about soccer, sue me.

Winning Time (Season 1): For how much this show had going for it (the actors, the premise), it too felt very incomplete to me.

The Dinner Parting

I haven’t spoken much about this the last two years, but I am pleased to announce that The Dinner Parting, a movie I produced and co-wrote with my longtime collaborator J.W. Andrew, will make its debut at the Cinequest Film Festival. It will start virtually April 1st, and there will be an event in-person this August. My production company, Arts & Cults, is now on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, if you would like to consider following.

“As the night wears on, stories turn ever more elaborate and the get-together goes way off its original three courses. The witty banter gets deliciously served up… in this black-and-white charmer of a throwback to films of yesteryear.”

– Randy Myers, film critic for San Jose’s Mercury News.

The Bustle Booth

Since it’s my birthday and I haven’t really said hi in quite some time, I figured I would answer the same questions The Bustle plans to inflict on celebrities for eternity.

What’s your coffee order?
No.

What are the saved weather locations on your phone?
East Lansing, various other Michigan cities I frequent, the cities I have visited the most (New York, Chicago, San Francisco) and Austin, a city I wish I visited the most.

What’s your sign?
I know it’s Pisces, but I admittedly don’t really know what that is supposed to say about me.

Favorite overused movie quote?
“I once thought I had mono for an entire year, It turned out I was just really bored.”

What’s one movie or TV show you’re currently obsessed with?

A Brighter Summer Day. Saw it last July and still think about it often. A Taiwanese coming-of-age set in the late ‘50s that is as much a T.E. Hinton as the War and Peace one character compares their own life to. A slightly misinterpreted Elvis lyric gives this film its (American) title, a mistake by youngsters in the film attempting to translate and understand one of their many obsessions with U.S. culture. It’s such a beautiful, sad, claustrophobic movie.

I don’t watch too many shows, but my two favorites, which I believe are both ending soon, are back on. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is just as funny as always. Midge and Susie still kill and the B/C plots seem a lot better as of late (or I am less of a curmudgeon than I was during the lockdown when I watched the first three seasons. That’s very likely, too). And Better Things is still just the best.

Who is your celeb idol?
It was Anthony Bourdain, and probably still is.

If you had to be on a reality TV show, what would it be?
I have a secret desire to be a picker, so if it would catapult my career...

Go-to karaoke song?

I would love to belt out an old, melancholy classic, but as such I cannot and therefore do not belt anything. Do like karaoke, though.

What’s something that’s inspiring you lately?
I finally picked up Maus last summer, and I (finally) started reading after this bullshit. I love that said bullshit brought more attention to this book and finally pushed me into reading it. I love the telling of such an incredible story in a unique way. Makes me want to learn more about the Holocaust. I am not jewish but it makes me want to learn more about my grandparents, about my mother, my and my father. I want to read more books, read more comic books, write comic books, and just write in general.

Probably doesn’t get much more inspiring than that.

What is something you would want people to say about you?
That I always did my best.

Werner Herzog on Skateboarding

“I’m not familiar with the scene of skateboarding. At the same time, I had the feeling, yes, that’s kind of my people… You have to accept trial and error…”

Fuck January

You’re coming off the holidays. It’s cold outside. It’s snowing. Not suggesting be outright lazy for a month, but lean into the new year. You’re much more likely to set goals and keep them if you formulate a game plan.

I keep a planner and in the back pages run monthly tasks that I use as a reference as I fill in my “free time” week to week. This year I decided to be realistic and, outside of a few time-sensitive tasks, combine my “to-do” list for January and February.

I know Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today and that means six more weeks of 2020. But if you’ve seen Groundhog Day, you know the final act is when Bill Murray decides to become the man he wants to be.

“He gets to know everybody in the town,” writes Austin Kleon. “He sees what problems there are in the town to solve, and how he can use his powers to help… He also throws himself into his work: he crafts a super eloquent speech for Punxsutawney Phil, which he presumably gives every day. He learns French. He learns how to play the piano. He learns how to sculpt ice. And it’s when he finally masters these things, when he’s turned himself into a person worth loving, it’s then that Rita notices him, and they live happily ever after. Phil learns, as Hugh Macleod says in his book Ignore Everybody, ‘The best way to get approval is to not need it.'”

If you are down on yourself for not getting shit done during the lockdown, or surprised life hasn’t gotten magically better because it is no longer 2020, or embarrassed that you have yet to start your resolutions (or never set any in the first place), I will just say this: Fuck that.

Today Would Have Been Daniel Johnston’s 60th Birthday

He fought mental illness his entire life, and by my estimation was at best a serviceable guitarist, decent pianist and awful singer. One that wrote simple, often naive lyrics. But there is a reason even the most mainstream of alt-rock-kingpins (Cobain, Veddar and Cornell) loved him so dearly. In their simplicity, his songs were haunting and moving. His story and songs will always have a spot in my heart.

Last year, Built to Spill released a cover album of Johnston material and got a bit chided for playing it safe, but I enjoy listening to it and think it serves as a good introduction for those that might not be able to look past Johnston’s rudimentary skills and lo-fi recordings. It ignores some of the obvious choices (notably “Story of An Artist,” previously recorded by M. Ward and used in an Apple advert, and “True Love Will Find You in the End,” covered by both Beck and Wilco), but it’s a solid collection of some of Johnston’s more melancholy and beautiful songs, including “Bloody Rainbow,” “Fish” and “Heart, Mind & Soul,” the latter a retro doo-wop ballad that manages to break my heart every time I hear it.

Happy Birthday, and Rest In Peace, Daniel. Let it be said you killed the monster.

Suntory

Got home from work this evening, put Coltrane’s Love Supreme on the hi-fi and poured a glass of Suntory.

To quote Monk, “Straight, No Chaser.”

Pretty sure this is how I looked about a half hour ago when I was pouring my first drink:

Thinking I need to step up my game a bit though, and track down a bottle of Suntory White to get me through the rest of this winter.

Also stumbled on this deejay set of ’70s Japanese jazz from Turkish DJ Zag Erlat. Gonna let this soundtrack the duration of my early evening.

Michael Apted, Director and Seven Up Documentarian, Dies at 79

From his obituary in The Guardian:

“The film-maker and documentarian was known for films such as Gorillas in the Mist and Coal Miner’s Daughter, as well as his long-running series of Up documentaries. His death has been confirmed by his agency to the Hollywood Reporter. No further details are yet known. Apted’s career started in the 1960s on the small screen, and in 1964, he assisted on the the show Seven Up! as part of the current affairs show World in Action. He helped the director Paul Almond interview 14 seven-year-old children, and continued to independently revisit them every seven years over the course of their lives. The most recent, 63 Up, was released in 2019 and the director referred to it as ‘the most important thing I have ever done.'”

In a piece from The Nation, writer Susan Pederson notes that while the first few installments are flawed, reducing the subjects to stereotypes, there was a profound change in the films, heightened in my opinion by the longevity of the project:

“28 Up (1984) was the tipping point. The first film of the series widely screened in the United States, it was the one Apted considered a breakthrough. Only then did he realize that he wasn’t making ‘a political film about Britain’s social classes,’ but something much more unusual: an ongoing inquiry into how individuals from a wide range of backgrounds sought out meaning and happiness amid the rapid social change of postwar Britain and all the random incidents and accidents that life threw at them.”

Each film is relatively simplistic in structure, short interviews with each subject cut with footage of what they’ve been up to recently. But with each new installment, we see entire lives unfolding. Their lives force us to examine our own. It seems impossible not to watch the Up Series and not think about where you were when you were 7 and 21 and 28, or where you think you will be, or who you want to be, in seven years, in fourteen years, in thirty-five years.

And with the passing of Apted, if you will be.

Profound words: “I want my life to have meant something.”

These words on the (likely) last in the series sum things up nicely:

“The latest installment, 63 Up, is one of the series’ best, in part because the subjects are aware they’re moving into their sunset years, and in part because they also know the 78-year-old Apted may never make another one of these films. He and the people he’s been tracking for more than half a century now interrogate each other in 63 Up, speaking with undisguised emotion about what they’ve all learned from stopping every now and then to publicly take stock of their lives and their desires.”

Force Majeure, Ruben Östlund

Oddly enough after writing about this, I am reminded a year ago today I watched the 2014 dark comedy with the same name:

Pretty fucking funny. The Gods of Carnage turn a routine, man-made avalanche into something that at least looks scarier. Scary enough to knockout assumptions of security and a few gender stereotypes. Scary enough to forever scar some yuppie Swedes and ruin their bourgeois week on the slopes. Like I said, funny. You probably think you’re a better person than Tomas. Maybe you’re not.

Dezron Douglas and Brandee Younger – Force Majeure

Cutting a jazz record is usually done so either live or by “getting the band back together” in a little room and ripping it up. This album, named after the clause in contracts that allows events to be cancelled due to an “act of God,” speaks of that struggle. A compilation of weekly online performances recorded in their Harlem apartment on a single microphone, partners Brandee (harp) and Dezron (bass) make the most of the circumstances, inadvertently highlighting the versatility of the two instruments in the right set(s) of hands. They cover John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, The Jackson Five, Kate Bush and “Sing” from Sesame Street, improvising with their limited resources in very interesting ways. In between songs, they crack wise, seemingly a knee-jerk response to the situation they were in (that so many of us were in), and speak of the uneasiness of now in a very off-the-cuff, honest way. Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters became the quarantine album, but this is a close second, a true representation of 2020.

Pet Semetary

Was on the road a lot for work the last week, and found myself on country roads in thick fog while listening to Michael C. Hall read Pet Semetary on Audible. Now it is late on this rainy autumn evening, just on the heels of Halloween, and I find myself home alone, as is Louis Creed. Even though I know what happens next, I am still terrified, for him as well as myself.

I’ve watched more television in the quarantimes than the last few years combined.

Atlanta (Seasons 1-2): I applaud the ambition, but it didn’t always grab me. Could have been funnier, or at least shown more heart. Stanfield was great, as always, but was most impressed by Brian Tyree Henry’s nuanced performance.

Better Things (Season 4): The small moments have always been the best part of this show. There are so many moments I can relate to, but those I don’t, like a scene when a new husband sings “Martha” to their partner, or when a child recreates a classic Hollywood slapstick routine; those are the ones that make want to live in this world. Other shows make me laugh more, but no other makes me smile, cry or feel as much as Better Things.

#BlackAF (Season 1): I haven’t seen any of Kenya Barris’ other work so I can’t speak to it, but I thought this was funny, honest, insightful, and entirely too long. Read: Redundant. There’s a great movie in there somewhere. Love Rashida Jones, obviously.

Castle Rock (Season 2): I love Stephen King so much (probably too much) that I was intrigued from the start and then… wasn’t. I’ll give it to her though, as bad as this got, Lizzy Caplan was frickin’ committed.

Fleabag (Seasons 1-2): First season seemed kinda obvious. Sincerely don’t know how it could be described as groundbreaking. But I did laugh, a lot. Really liked the direction the second took. Hannah Jane Parkinson says it all a lot better than I can.

High Fidelity (Season 1): Since too many of my friends related a bit too much to Rob Gordon, I appreciated the female role reversal. Mighta been interesting to see future seasons not bound by source material.

Kim’s Convenience (Seasons 1-4): Just delightful. There isn’t a lot of social commentary, but sometimes that is O.K. It seems real. As a straight sitcom, it’s the best one I’ve seen in awhile. It’s that funny.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Seasons 1-3): Very seldom (if ever?) do I care about the B/C stories, but boy am I in love with Midge and Susie. And the stand-up is solid, something I rarely, rarely say about stand-up within shows or film.

Schitt’s Creek (Seasons 1-6): The plot makes little sense, but it’s so funny and has so much heart it doesn’t matter. I bought the final season on Amazon because I couldn’t wait to finish. The finale was a mess, but I was too, a blubbering mess, after watching the documentary at the end. The cast reading the letter from the mothers of thousands of LGBTQ+ kids fucking wrecked me.

The Sopranos (Seasons 1-6): The great rewatch. The greatest rewatch.

Twilight Zone; (Season 1): Thought I was going to love this. At least like it more than I did. The cast is often great (which somehow makes things worse), and some of the plots are interesting, but the episodes usually fail to stick the landings. “The Blue Scorpion” was solid. “A Traveler” seemed the closest to the original series. “Not All Men” and “Replay” were intense and scary. Could have done without the rest, especially the Black Mirror parody, “The Wunderkind.”

The Wonder Years (Seasons 1-6): The great rewatch. The greatest rewatch.

Infinite Jest

If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts…

That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do.

That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from [them]. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.

–David Foster Wallace

Film: Year in Review (Sorta)

Watched 322 films last year that I hadn’t seen before.

I’m usually not qualified to make year-end lists till March or so, but a few from 2019 that stood out to me thus far: Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Uncut Gems, Jojo Rabbit, Knives Out, Parasite, I Heard You Paint Houses, Booksmart, Us and Rolling Thunder Revue.

I made a pledge to watch at least one female-directed film per week that I hadn’t seen prior in 2019. Here they are (roughly ranked, if you’re looking for recommendations).

If you are looking to do the same in the future, or just seeking films directed by women, other favorites include The Virgin Suicides, Lady Bird, Ratcatcher, American Honey and Girlhood.

Story of an Artist

Listen up and I’ll tell a story,
about an artist growing old.
Some would try for fame and glory,
others aren’t so bold.

And everyone in friends and family,
sayin’ “Hey, go get a job.
Why do you only do that only?
Why are you so odd?

“And we don’t really like what you do.
We don’t think anyone ever will.
We think you have a problem,
and this problem’s made you ill.”

63 Up

Realized a day or two ago: 63 Up will be coming out this year and I am tearing up just thinking about it. This series tugs at every heart string. I could barely hold it together (read: could not hold it together) just watching the trailer for the previous installment.

We should also be what, four-five years away from seeing Celine and Jesse again? I hope so. Also hope Linklater has secretly been filming something else.