deep sea gigantism
REVIEWS (KIND OF) THAT INVARIABLY FOCUS ON SOME IRRELEVANT DETAIL
- A music (Juliana Hatfield)
This rocked but she seemed so, so nervous to me. Like it’s okay baby, your audience is for the most part old people and we just like hearing our college songs. I had a little bit of a swoon when she did “I Got No Idols” and at the line “I’m a goddess in your eyes” gave the audience the sort of look/wink/sultry eye-fucking that one would naturally give on stage, were one singing such a line, but it felt like there were so many layers to it! There was “this is ridiculous” and “I felt this way in 1993” and “I sort of feel like this even now at 57 years old, I mean look at this sold-out show” but also “this is extra ridiculous now that I have my grown-up feelings about fame and sex and being a female rock star.” IT WAS A DELICIOUS MOMENT.
I had no idea that one of my friends from work was also at the show, and later he said, “It was good but I kind of forgot how many songs she had about rape” and I was like “it was the ‘90s, there were a lot of songs about rape.” There was Hole if you wanted to yell about it, Bikini Kill if you wanted to yell about it but also feel a little bit superior and more well-read than other girls (guilty), Tori Amos if you wanted to cry about it, and Juliana Hatfield/Belly/etc if you wanted to…I don’t know. Go to college about it?
- A television program (say it in his accent): Alfred Hitchcock Presents
You can watch every single episode on Peacock and I am obsessed! It is so soothing! I was a morbid child with a morbid (in her own way) grandma and I used to love to watch this with her. (She also subscribed to the Alfred Hitchcock magazine, which was all these murder-y short stories? Amazing!) Anyway, I highly recommend revisiting (or first-time) visiting Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The theme song, the weird Hitchcok intro bits, the way he insists on calling the episodes “plays,” his frightening teeth, his straight-up disses to advertisers, the way some really big acting names of the 1950s sneak into the credits all the time.
- Another television program: Barry
I have an oral defense prepared of how Succession is the perfect television show. I could probably make a case for Barry being the second-most perfect.
- This article
I have always been simply mad about Fyodor, and then I saw a link to this article about the time that he spent taking himself and his gambling problem all over the little spa towns of Germany, and how he ended up writing The Gambler on the trip. This article is in the travel section of a major, nationwide newspaper. The writer of the piece (who seems to be living the goddamn dream if you ask me, based on the diversity of topics published under her name) takes the same trip Dostoevsky did, and tries to stay in the same places (not always with success). It is a weird mash-up of travel piece and literary thing, and I would have loved to hear how it was pitched and accepted.
I also had a moment of: how weird! How weird—wonderful, but weird—that this major newspaper has published an article about a noted panicky 19th-century Russian novelist, epileptic, felon, gambler, optimist (I would argue, at least in an existential sense), and weirdo. Like most of America would give a shit. But there are those that do! Like me. Am I a despicable Midwest version of the “coastal elite”? Perhaps!
- A movie, and watch out I’m going to reference Dostoevsky AGAIN: Infinity Pool
I did not care for it as a film, and it was also a waste of an idea. The executed-body-double thing was a cool idea, both in the “what makes you yourself” kind of way and a sort of Dostoevsky-ish (-ian?) way with questions about crime and punishment. What if you experienced both the most severe consequences but also no consequences from doing whatever the fuck you felt like? What would that do to you, psycho-spiritually or whatever? Cronenburg said: wow, yeah, what IF but then breezed right by that in favor of a lot of flashing lights and naked bodies. Mia Goth screaming is always a treat but I could have skipped this one.
Speaking of cinema, Murphy cat did a very main-character thing after his dental cleaning: he woke up from anesthesia at the vet’s office and pulled out his own IV. Clearly Murphy was operating on the action-movie trope that when you wake up in a strange hospital, the premiere move is to start YANKING shit off of your body. Make sure you RIP those electrodes and PULL out that IV and TEAR off that oxygen mask, and then immediately get out of bed and LIMP or STAGGER around the hospital looking for the exit. Murphy was in a cage at the vet so he was not able to accomplish that last bit, but I am sure he howled a plaintive WHERE AM I and UNHAND ME YOU BASTARDS so he is a very good protagonist kitty indeed. With clean teeth.
—mimi smartypants: strange as angels.