Good morning, there, friend, how are you today? What is today? Thursday, oh wow, that is exciting. We are at four whole weeks without nicotine. Isn’t that something. I still get nic fits at least once a day, which is crazy. But they are diminishing, and I’m not thinking about them much anymore. I’m actually kind of shocked at how “easy” this is, for how many years I was consuming that stuff. Still, though. I was reading this 100 Gecs interview in Pitchfork (because I am cool, hip, and “with it,” very excited for their new album) and it passingly mentions Laura using her cherry vape pen and I thought “OH MY GOD I WANT ONE OF THOSE RIGHT NOW THOSE ARE THE BEST.” And I thought about it all day. And I still kinda am.
Got some sweet new self-adhesive bandages for my wound, so I don’t have to deal with those metal clamps that you only ever see in Tim Burton films anymore and it is so much more comfortable. Bruise has almost faded from the original wound area, but the galloping bruise is only showing the teeeniest, tinyest signs of fading. Mobility is much improved, though. I think at this rate I would consider jogging in, like, two-three more weeks? Ish? Maybe?
Heard from some old friends yesterday and it made me all nostalgic, that was nice. I was talking with one friend and I realized I don’t think I have a single friend in their 20s anymore? It got me thinking about who my youngest friend is, right now, outside of work (there are still some 20-somethings at work) and the youngest person I could think of is in their mid-30s now. Isn’t that something. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Was talking to another old friend about movies, and how they politely disagreed with my assessment of the Wachowskis, and we got to talking about film criticism in general, and whether it’s better to be default negative or positive on these things, and I laid out some of my positions on films that I think are worth repeating here, lightly edited:
The way I got back to [not being so critical] was through project management. Every film is a miracle. Thousands of people working on them. It’s just insane. They are marvels of human project management. Look at the credits of any film, imagine all those people, all their lives. It is just… man you start think everything is amazing through that prism.
And then there’s the financing, through my time in the VC world, and my friends in hollywood and how god damn hard it is to get money for ANYTHING original, even if you’re the Wachowskis. There’s a reason they’re doing another Matrix, I’d wager: it’s basically all they could get funded at this point.
I’ve also been watching all these Adam Savage talks with this guy Fon Davis, who makes old school models for films, talking about the models and all the work they did just to make, like, a fuel tank in the background of Galaxy Quest or something [NB: It was Terminator 3].
Relatedly, a friend in Hollywood said to me on my last pre-covid trip there: “This town is the greatest assemblage of craftspeople the world has ever known.” And I realized she’s so right: model makers, set decorators, fashion designers, seamstresses, armorers, animal wranglers, brick layers, sculptors, masons. It’s just amazing how many crafts these films keep in business.
[Regarding Cloud Atlas]: Those two, the Wachowskis, took their clout and took an absolutely impossible book and did something amazing, or, to your point, at least something unlike any other Hollywood film. And gave thousands of people super rewarding jobs in the meantime!
I have this old employee. Very nice. But she seemed pretty unhappy. Now she works for Disney and worked for three years of her life toiling away on Raya and the Last Dragon and my god she seems SO HAPPY it’s insane.
Films are magical your younger self was right! :)
I regret so profoundly not going into the film business. I used to be madly in love with this woman in Boston, she was a librarian or something, worked in corporate, hated her job. One day she said “screw it I’m going to be a seamstress for theater” and off she left to go to college in Pittsburgh. At the time I thought that was kinda a naive thing. I admired her pursuit of her dream but figured it probably wasn’t going to work out.
I was so, so wrong. She has since worked on, in order: Ugly Betty, My Name is Earl, Criminal Minds, Jonas, 90210, Harry’s Law, House of Lies, Dancing with the Stars, The East, True Blood, American Hustle, The Hunger Games, Into the Woods, Man in the High Castle, The Hateful Eight, X-Men Apocalypse, Alice through Looking Glass, Miss Peregrine, Live By Night, Hostiles, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Bulblebee, Vice, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Legion, Ford V Ferrari and is now working on the new Scorcese film.
I think about this all the time. I think about the people in my childhood who told me — who tell every kid — that the dream of working in the movies is impossible. Amelia made me realize they were full of shit. It’s one thing to go to Hollywood and think “I’m going to be the biggest star in the land.” It’s another thing to go to Hollywood and think “I’m going to make a living here” and parents should be responsible about explaining the distinction to their kids.
Of course, Hollywood is in California and California is going to fall into the ocean, flooding while burning, but I suppose the same logic applies to the New York film scene.
Finished re-watching Josie and the Pussycats last night, it mostly holds up, fun film, absurdist and charming. I forgot Tara Reid was a pleasant human being at one point. I tweeted this last night, but I want to see a sequel of Josie and the Pussycats, I think it could work, why not, Riverdale kept the dream alive, right? Plus Rachel Leigh Cook is acting again in a remake of She’s all That (see this wonderful profile in the New York Times from last week) so why not a Josie sequel?
I had a line in there that Wyatt worked at Facebook now but it was a cheap shot so I took it out. Wyatt would obviously work at either Spotify or a publishing financialization firm. Shit he probably was the one brokering the deal with Paulo. That could be the high drama of the first episode.
I’ve probably lost most of you here, huh. Veering into some Young Southpaw territory with my obscurism and non-sequitur references.
My spell-checker tells me “obscurism” is not a word. It is so, so wrong.
My friend Graydon got Drake to make a rhyme and I think we should all pause and admire this fantastic accomplishment:
He even came back to confirm it. My god. That really is something. Haven’t listened to the new Drake yet. It’s hard for me to listen to Hip Hop while working. Demands my full attention. Hopefully today.
But seriously. What an accomplishment.
My book on the history of America from 1815-1848 last night finished up with the Second Great Awakening, and I finished up with the part about Charles Grandison Finney, and I kinda got a little choked up? He went on to be part of the founding of Oberlin College, which was very noble in its progressive roots but also kind of a mix-up because they spun off of another very non-racist college, accusing it of racism, because the founder Calvin Stowe of the college, the Lane Theological Seminary, was out of town and the board of regents made a few boneheaded policy decisions while he was gone. So he comes home and he realizes his lieutenants have completely bunked his non-racist college, getting it tarred with a racist brush, and he has lost a bunch of his most talented students and teachers to the new Oberlin. Oberlin forever outshines Lane, and Stowe spent most of the remainder of his life cleaning up the mess. There’s a management parable in there somewhere. Anyway, the founders of Oberlin invite Finney to come and help out, because they were disciples of Finney’s, and ultimately Finney ends up being the second (or third) president of Oberlin. Oberlin was then, as now, insanely progressive, a stop on the Underground Railroad, devoutly abolitionist, integrated between the sexes.
I almost went to Oberlin, I got a decent scholarship from there, went and visited the campus. It was really nice, but it was too rural for what I was looking for, leaving Alaska, trying to get to someplace that felt like modern society. I did buy the original pressing of the Joy Division Peel Sessions vol 1 and 2 at the record store across the street, though. But, man. Reading What Hath God Wrought, about Oberlin, it made me sort of regret not going there.
And, more alarmingly, for a hot second I thought to myself “man, being a christian devoted to actual justice sounds kind of cool.” But I caught myself, because, LOL. I mean, that’s not fair, the Methodists are trying — to the point of schism — and there are smaller christian religions in the US that still care about justice, but, man. Talk about a dying breed. I found this pretty amazing and helpful website last night from Pew on religion in America:
You can expand and contract each grouping, see how all the religions in America are related to each other. Seems a bit christian-centric, feels like the Jeiwsh, Buddhist and Muslim groupings should have subsets too, but, then, their percentage of the population is so small. Mildly surprised there are so few Jews in america. Congrats on the Wiccans getting 0.3%, making good progress.
You can group by state, too, which is interesting but also terrifying. Witness how 60%+ of North Carolinians don’t actually believe in evolution:
Don’t laugh, Massachusettsans: It’s over 40% in your state.
I guess nearly 40% in the agnostic/atheistic/spiritual-but-not-religious/i-have-my-own-beliefs/nothing-in-particular camp isn’t terrible.
Also the entire chart adds up to 116%. No idea. I guess some people are multiple things. Whitman would be thrilled.
Watched a film on Hulu last night: Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies that was… well, part of it suffered from most of the ills of the modern documentary, but it had a lot of interviews with women actors who did nude scenes in films throughout history. Seriously, some of these women were in their 90’s now. That was by far the most interesting part. It did a sort-of okay job of addressing the abuses of the practice in Hollywood — it talked about Me-Too and the rise of intimacy coordinators and the changed rules around nudity in modern Hollywood, but it pussyfooted around the worst offenses of the casting couch, and its Me-Too segment was… a bit light? I don’t know, maybe I’m being too harsh. There was one very sharp woman film critic from Variety to offset the like eight white-dude film historians and of course, aside from the actors, she stole the show. I could also quibble with the doc’s lumping of all of Europe into its own thing, not mentioning Emmanuelle at all, or Just Jaeckin or Radley Metzger, but at least Tinto Brass got a mention. Mostly a Hollywood focus. Still, though. Learned a lot. The actor interviews saved it. So fascinating their different perspectives on the experience, even now.
Okay let’s do a mix!
Today’s mix is just a mix. Added Lonely Days to this mix just this morning because John O’Leary mentioned it on Facebook and it was the first thing I read this morning and it reminded me how much I love that song. Iw as going to put 100,000 Fireflies on here by the Magnetic Fields because I learned from Y Mike this morning that the vocalist, Susan Anway, passed away recently, which is super sad. But 100,000 Fireflies belongs on a different mix, and it’s there now, waiting for its day in the sun. Soon. But these two events combined make it a very Magnetic Fields morning. RIP Susan.
Other than that, we have the current oldies obsessions Sparks, Billy Suier and Momentary-era Floyd, as well as Roy Orbison. Just listened to a six-disc box set of Roy’s the other day. Man he has such a beautiful voice. Also he did this song as the end credits to Zabriskie Point. Lotsa new things courtesy my friend Jen who introduced me to the Amoeba Records Vinyl Club, which is just an endless font of new bands. My god you could spend your whole life listening to new music there is so much good new music it’s ridiculous.
OK! Wow running a bit behind today time to go get Jane! YAY! Breakfast! Let’s find a new way to stall on putting the waffle on the tray!
That's nuts that there are as many Wiccans as there are Anabaptists. Huh. I just looked it up, and there are only 672,000 Mennonites in north America. I always thought there were more. I guess groups seem bigger if you're part of them maybe. Ethnically Mennonite atheist, went to Mennonite church as a kid, etc.