Friday Catch Up

Has it been raining a lot where you are?-It's been raining here more than it did last year and it's beautiful. We didn't get snow until what felt like late December, so everything was that post apocalyptic sepia and grey. Now it's lush, verdant green-the flowering trees have exploded in blossoms, and the birds seem braver now. Unfortunately the clover we planted in our front yard seems like it died (I think it had a finite amount of time it would come back) and our yard is half dandelion. Which isn't bad in the grand scheme of things, it's just sort of different, and the rabbits (hares?) still come to chill in our yard. In spite of everything, life in an urban hellscape persists and so do we.

Things are still hard, harder than they ought to be, and I know it'll get better. It's just the waiting, the persisting, and the endearing that's annoying, my dear friends. But not everything blooms in every season, so maybe this is just a longer fallow season for me. Perhaps it's the snow in fake Spring, and if I endure (maybe also you) Spring will be here for us.

This week's Catch Up is a little more indulgent than some other weeks. To quote John Waters: to understand bad taste one must have very good taste. Good bad taste can be creatively nauseating but must, at the same time, appeal to the especially twisted sense of humor, which is anything but universal.

What I've Been Watching

The Unsleeping City season 2 is so good and still incredibly relevant in it’s overall themes. It was filmed during the first year of the pandemic (you can tell because Murph has a shaved head, and Siobhan has home dyed blue hair) so a huge theme is that of social isolation/loneliness, even if you have a community. For me, this season shows just how much of a role collaborative storytelling plays is in tabletop role playing games and the trust you need from your table to tell really cool stories. We’re about halfway through season (Kugrash’s legacy lives on his sons: Wally Santa Claus and David the vampire) which means this is the part where the emotional/thematic stakes are chugging along like a rollercoaster going up that first hill.

When you were a kid and sick, did your parents (or grandparents) let you watch the Jerry Springer Show (or Maury) and their soaps while you were supposed to be recovering? Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar hits that niche in my 30s as the movie version of canned Campbells condensed chicken soup, and Canada Dry ginger ale. It is absurd from the beginning, the premise is completely ridiculous, the musical numbers are flamboyant and self indulgent and yet it feels like balm. I love how it’s a wonderful almost two hour break from having to think about things critically or be aware of just how much we are living in a hellscape to enjoy the journey of two middle aged, midwestern ladies getting their groove back and Jamie Dornan. It is so terrible, it’s such a bad movie however it just loops around to being a kinda okay movie.

Ryan Gosling finally gets to be real boy again! (the last two movies I’ve seen him in are Blade Runner 2049 and Barbie). Again this is another movie that doesn’t pretend to be more than what it actually is: it’s a boy likes girl, boy fucks things up/becomes recluse, and then boy and girl get back together movie. In the context of being a movie within a movie, so there’s really cool meta humour and the way it’s cut is divine. So yeah, I’ve been a little more into escapist media lately that’s fun, and that’s okay. The Fall Guy is a rolling, almost rom com x action hybrid that’s visually pleasing and I am absolutely about watching Ryan Gosling being an emotionally wounded dude crying to Taylor Swift in truck. It’s fun. It’s catchy, it’s ridiculous.

I am curious about this. Generally I’m a little leery about prequels but this seems pretty cool. The song choice for the theatrical trailer is a longer whisper-y, angsty cover of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World. Which has interesting implications especially with the Vuvalini and the Wives conversations from Fury Road. Also Chris Hemsworth as one of the many baddies is exciting, the last time he was an extraordinary baddie was in Bad Times at the El Royale (he was fucking amazing in it).

I didn’t know I wanted a Babymetal X Electric Callboy collab. This is way more enjoyable than I thought it could be.

What I've Been Reading

You know, when I was a kid, I wasn’t good at anything really. My grades weren’t great, I was a daydreamer, I couldn’t run, no good at football or baseball, all the things my old man excelled at. House full of trophies and photos. He met my mother at a baseball game in college; his skills are the reason I exist. I only wanted to be outside catching bugs and studying them under the cheap dissecting scope my aunt bought me—she was a good sport about kids not being what they were expected to be.

Premee Mohamed's beautiful short story Imagine Yourself Happy is about a researcher's last minutes alive. I keep coming back to read this incredibly short, poignant story about the last couple of minutes a researcher gets. If you like this check out Becky Chambers novel To Be Taught, If Fortunate because it has a similar kind of feel.

Between 1951 and 2000, 3M produced at least 100 million pounds of PFOS and chemicals that degrade into PFOS. This is roughly the weight of the Titanic. After the late ’70s, when 3M scientists established that the chemical was toxic in animals and was accumulating in humans, it produced millions of pounds per year. Scientists are still struggling to grasp all the biological consequences. They have learned, just as Johnson did decades ago, that proteins in the body bind to PFOS. It enters our cells and organs, where even tiny amounts can cause stress and interfere with basic biological functions. It contributes to diseases that take many years to develop; at the time of a diagnosis, one’s PFOS level may have fallen, making it difficult to establish causation with any certainty.

An amazing, terrible article by Sharon Lerner Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe. Whenever I read stories about DuPont and 3M they’re always fucking horrifying and this is no different. At the same time, whenever new revelations come out about 3M, I can’t help but see the parallels between it and the tarsands here. I know it’s a really long read but Lerner crafts the story so wonderfully.

That bees are notably important pollinators of our ecosystems and many of our food crops explains the recent intense public interest in “saving” them. Their perceived value is bound up in their ability to perform ecosystem services for us: we must save the bees to save ourselves. The intrinsic value of bees as wildlife species with unique natural histories is rarely mentioned, even though it is clear that the wild species are those most at risk of disappearing.

Bees! So Many Bees! There are so many cool native bees (like the rust-patched bumble bee or mason bees, or the green metallic sweat bee) that don’t get as much hype as European bumblebees. This is a neat little article by Sheila Colla called The Truth About Bees.

When I worked as a critic, I tried to hold in my brain something that Matt Zoller Seitz said to me very early in my career, which was that nobody sets out to make the worst movie ever, so even if they do, it's worth treating their work with a certain degree of respect. That doesn't mean you don't savage it (it's the worst movie ever made!), but you do try to remember the people who made it are human beings with lofty goals that fell disastrously short. It was a North Star I tried to point myself toward, and though I sometimes failed, I like to think I wasn't bad at it.

Emily St. James is such a brilliant critic and I love her writing on the difference between critic and creating. This is her The difference between creation and criticism.

Small Mammal Update

Zorya (the sweetest little torbie ever) has found herself like a hermit crab without a shell. We've been re arranging the living room, so many of her normal haunts are suddenly gone, and now she has to go test every hidey hole to see if she fits or if it's good. For now she's settled on the covered shelter at the base of a cat tree however she's sort of adapted a new attitude or mindset. She just lays on the carpet like a little cat carcass and would be a tripping hazard (like Potema) if she wasn't afraid of being seen.

What I've Been Working On

Making small changes to the Marginalia and trying to establish a do able posting schedule with grad school picking up again. I think the weekend/Friday Catch Up and one other writing every other week is a sustainable schedule. Well in theory. I'll see if it works in practice.

But yeah. Making small changes to the Marginalia in terms of establishing why I created it and what it's purpose is.