JULY 31
apparently this is a monthly newsletter now, because once a month I have to tell you what zine I’ve made? or at least that is the rhythm that’s working for the summer.
ZINE CLUB
This month’s zine is called This is Just to Meme: William Carlos Williams Remixed and Mimicked by Participatory Internet Culture. It is the best thing I wrote in grad school wrapped in a very cool risographed cover, because Boneshaker has a risograph machine and I just learned how to use it. It’s super cool! Color printing! A joy! You can sign up to get it here. (Or, if you ever want a specific issue, just let me know, and we can figure something out.)
PICTURE OF THE CAT
I didn’t want to interrupt his snacking to make him model.
WHAT I WATCHED
I watched the new documentary Rock Hudson: All that Heaven Allowed, which I appreciated a lot. It was gossipy and kind, and did a good job presenting the contrast between his private life and his public persona. It did make me want to rewatch Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, which is a much weirder take on a similar subject. In that film an actor pretending to be Rock narrates over clips from his films to bring out the hidden gay subtext. All that Heaven Allowed has sequences that do something similar, but in a much more refined way, because it’s a glossy documentary on HBO, not a product of 90s queer cinema. The video quality is much nicer, but the commentary is less cutting. After watching this I was like, maybe I’ll watch a lot of old Rock Hudson films. Maybe this is when I get into Douglas Sirk. But then that didn’t happen. Eventually…
I watched Giant when we were living in Chicago and all I was doing was watching movies. I knew almost nothing about it beyond the cast list and that it was very long, and it absolutely knocked my socks off. I think that’s the only Rock Hudson film I’ve seen, but I’d reccommend it, and Rock Hudson’s Home Movies much more than All that Heaven Allowed, which is a perfectly fine documentary that doesn’t do anything worth really getting excited about.
I watched The War Room, because it had ended up on my letterboxd watchlist, and it was on HBOmax, and it was not that long. I get why this was an important film, but also feel like this —> The West Wing —> Crooked Media and our current culture where Democrats think they can win by saying something the right way, a general school of thought that is making the world worse. I’m not blaming this film in particular, and I am not knowledgable to parse out all of the factors, but I’m not into it.
I rewatched John Carptenter’s The Fog because it was like 90 degrees and I was hanging out with a friend and we wanted to watch something fun. Still very fond of this movie! It’s not one of Carptenter’s best, it’s too casual for that, but it’s a very nice spooky time.
I saw Asteroid City and it was great! I keep a ranked list of Wes Anderson films and this is tentatively my fourth favorite, although I need to watch it many more times to catch up on everything that’s going on. I thought all of the layers of structure were very fun. I liked how densely referential it was. Seeing Jason Schwartzman as the lead in a Wes Anderson film again was neat, made me think about time. I saw it with my dad at the Main, and we walked home from the theater through downtown, and I’ve seen a lot of Wes Anderson movies with my dad over the years. In theaters we saw Darjeeling Unlimited at the Heights, which was my first time at the Heights, and they had an organist before the show. We saw Moonrise Kingdom at the Lagoon on Father’s Day because it was raining so we couldn’t do our original plan of a picnic. My dad loves Bill Murray, but not in Wes Anderson films because he doesn’t really get to do Bill Murray things, and I can’t really argue. It was a nice night.
I watched Lynn Shelton’s Humpday because it was discussed in a book I was reading, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men by Jane Ward. Ward basically argues that straight white men create all of these situations where they need to have sex with each other, creating excuses for why their behavior isn’t gay. She argues that heterosexuality has more to do with loyalty to heteronormativity than it does with exclusively heterosexual acts, which is a great argument! She looks at how women’s sexual fluidity is perceived compared to men’s, and how men’s sexual fluidity is minimized because of their investment in heteronormativity. The choice to look specifically at straight white men, who are able to mobilize all of this privilege to dictate what parts of their actions influence their identity, was really smart. I am still thinking my way through this book, but it made my brain buzz in the way that exciting academic work does, and if that’s your kind of thing I do recommend it.
Humpday is an indie mulblecore-y movie about two college friends whose lives have grown apart who decide they need to have sex and film it because of reasons. The film is them getting into the situation where they decide this needs to happen, and then continuing to not back down. One of the guys is married and has to attempt to explain why doing this is important to him to do this. They’re friends, there’s nothing romantic, but the relationship between them is intimate and important. It’s a pretty slight movie, but the conversations they have are really interesting. SPOILER: I would have liked it more if they didn’t chicken out at the last minute. You need to be committed to the bit! How the film presents their failure is interesting, but does feel like a dodge.
I am going to see Barbie tomorrow night, so you’ll have to wait like a month to get my take on that.
SONG OF THE DAY
the main problem with doing this newsletter much more sporadically is that I get to share much less songs with you. I don’t have something interesting to say everyday, but I could easily pick a song I’ve been into! so here’s a selection of things I’ve been into lately.
I have really enjoyed the new Youth Lagoon album. It’s great mood music, I’ve listened to it on repeat for days.
My dad and I saw Jeffery Lewis! It was a super cool show! He has so much music, I have listened to only some of it. This is a song that he played live that I had never heard before that I have been listening to a bunch since then.
I am SO INTO Joanna Sternberg’s new album. It sounds like the kind of folk music I could have grown up with while also being very fresh and exciting.