I drafted an introduction to Thubrina in July and started working on the project proper a couple weeks before the album’s release on August 29 when the only lyrics available were to the lead single. (“Manchild,” my version of which was particularly time consuming and particularly mindless.)
I started in earnest working on the project after the lyrics were released and in total I spent, gosh, at least twenty hours on it all? Maybe a lot more than that? I don’t know. Longer than I expected but not long enough to feel bad when I don’t get Pulitzer consideration.
Perhaps because this was a music-based project for music I didn’t have access to, but sometime on maybe the fourth day working on it I realized that it was interesting (to me at least) what music I was listening to and I started to keep track for a note in the appendix. Of course, once I decided to do that, it became difficult to listen to what was natural and not what I wanted people to know I was listening to, but I think I did as well as possible.
Now that I look back at the final list of music-listened-to, I can make some statistical observations. For instance:
Male artist / male-fronted band: 2
Female artist / male-fronted band: 9
Band alternatively fronted by a man and a woman: 2
Female artist but I only listened to an instrumental album: 1
This is about what you would expect, given my history. I know who I am.
I’m a little surprised that there are two in the man-and-woman category as I don’t think of that as a particularly common category. But I didn’t listen to Arcade Fire or Belle & Sebastian or Shovels & Rope or The Beautiful South and somehow still ended up with two. That suggests to me it’s perhaps not as rare a category as I tend to think.
Anyway, as you may recall, I did release a playlist to support Thubrina recently. Those tracks are suggested to accompany each of the new pieces in my collection. Sometimes the track is inspired by Sabrina Carpenter’s lyrics, sometimes by my own version, sometime just because it felt right. I’ll share it again now:
And now the big news! As promised yesterday, I’ve finally listened to Man’s Best Friend!
Honestly, I liked it a lot more than I expected. It’s not terribly interesting or anything, but it was a pleasant little pop journey and while I probably won’t listen to it again, I’m perfectly happy with the time we spent together.
"Manchild" comes first and the opening notes have a fun 80s vibe. The lyrics and delivery seem like some later Taylor Swift.
I'm not expert in Taylor's work either but I do live with people who sometimes listen to her, so I can at least recognize her voice and name a couple songs I like.
If we can count that as a guitar solo, that's the first one to break the top ten since some Nickelback song twenty years ago. Something to think about.
I'll admit now this isn't what I was expecting. I was expecting more Beyonce than Taylor. I expected something too now to pass as being from anything longer than ten years ago, but this song has a chance as a time traveller.
Long fadeout. Something Gen X Producer is always weirded out by.
Tears
If (thanks to Thubrina) I didn't already know all the lyrics I would not be picking up on how deeply horny this song is.
This feels like a novelty song from 2003.
This is true of a lot of her lyrics, but she's having to cram a lot of syllables into certain corners of the song....
My Man on Willpower
"My Man on Willpower" like "Manchild" but not like the song about getting wet when I think of you and tears running down my thighs is EXPLICIT.
Too bad about the explicitness. The arrangements and her performance are very cute and sound kidfriendly.
This feels like a generic burner. The sort of song that makes people feel inchoate but SO IMPORTANT emotions no matter what year it comes out. The sort of song old people roll their eyes at and young people, when they get old, are nostalgic for. It's Sabrina's Journey song.
Sugar Talking
Although it's all heavily processed, it has a weirdly acoustic feel. Is one feeling I have. The other is that this song sounds like 90s Kpop.
Hang on. IS THIS A BRIDGE??? IN 2025?????
Given that all these songs are in the Top 20, it seems likely I'll eventually hear one or more again but so far they're . . . not very memorable. I'm honestly not sure I'll recognize any of them (so far) two weeks from now.
But I can see being 14 and this being IMPORTANT and having this entire record engraved upon my soul.
Also, when you know your audience is largely kids, why the "your paragraphs mean shit to me" type lines. It feels lazy and irresponsible.
We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night
"We Almost Broke Up Again" isn't any better lyrically but the musical swells feel more honest. Until the end of the chorus. That felt like a copout.
The start of the chorus is great, though. Honestly.
I rewrote this one, incidentally, but pulling out two lines and building a villanelle out of them. Listening to this song, I'm impressed I was able to salvage that much. I think maybe we've taken the cult of the singer-songwriter archetype too, too far.
Nobody's Son
This intimate conversational opening reminds me of what Zooey Deschanel's good at.
In my rewrite, this became a working man's anthem. Sort of a Depression-era memory rerendered.
It was tough though because I was trying match scansion and her use of meter is . . . creative.
I like the fun sort of fruit-flavored, bouncy melody.
Not lyrics to sing along with though....
Never Getting Laid
"Never Getting Laid" getting loungy on us.
This rewrite was one of the more fun ones.
She has a knack for the moving to small verse to big expansive chorus. She's definitely a student of 80s ballads.
I suppose this might explain the childish-but-sex lyrics (eg, "the girl with big tits"). They don't require much thought to ingest but they're saying something that is becoming real when you're, say, 16.
The musical change around minute three isn't just a lyrical reference to The Wizard of Oz---it's also a musical reference! This is like if Lana Del Rey did Dorothy.
When Did You Get Hot?
"When Did You Get Hot?" is ready for the club. It's the beatiest song so far. This is more what I expected them all to be like. It's kinda like some of Heather Nova's more beat-heavy tracks. Yet somehow even less subtle lyrically.
Yeah, it's like a mix of Heather Nova, Taylor Swift, with some nice attitude overlaid.
I suppose if I were interested in defending her album cover, I'd say this is her evening out the male gaze of the cover with some carnivorous female gaze here.
Go Go Juice
I turned "Go Go Juice" into a scifi story. Her version is much more grounded. It wouldn't take much to change this into a late-70s to mid-80s country (drinking) song.
Given the earthiness of the lyrics and I'm surprised she's still mostly spending her time as an ethereal specter.
It's nice to hear in the chorus that she can get her hands dirty though. Overall, in this album, sounds like she might float away.
think this might be my favorite so far. It's musical layers are more interesting and seem more like something that invites the listener to participate in.
Of course, that WOULD be the drinking song. π
Don't Worry I'll Make You Worry
"Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry" I wrote by deleting three words from each line then going back later and adding three words like. Astonishing, really, how different our two versions ended up.
This is me again thinking about Sabrina Carpenter in terms of Lana Del Rey. Clearly a big influence.
This feels like a Driving a Socal Freeway song. Honestly, a genre I love.
This is a dreamy build up here at the end. They should've gone even bigger. Like, an entire WALL of sound....
House Tour
After "getting wet" and "when did you get hot," "House Tour" is out last "nonexplicit" song.
So many ""s required to say all that.
Oh ho ho.
NOW we're in the 80s FOR SURE
Like . . . 1988, I'm guessing?
Although the lyrics are much more modern conversational than 80s finetuned. And the spoken asides are super Taylor.
I suppose that's not the sort of thing you can copyright/trademark.
Except for the Taylory bits, I think if I just heard this, I'd assume it was by someone trying to horn in on Paula Abdul's territory.
Goodbye
I'm bringing in expectations for a title like this
This does feel like if the Von Trapps were escaping in 2020, this is what they'd sing as they went up the stairs. Except for the punching and ass parts
Now that we're here at the end, I can say that album is musically coherent. We're getting some Beatlesesque sound design in “Goodbye” (mariachi! sfx! noise!), but overall it's the same sound we've had along: sweet and pretty, unpretentious and safe.
Tell your library to get Thubrina on their Libby/Overdrive! (Coming to Hoopla soon.)
Lady Steed and I were at Target recently and saw a big vinyl this which stopped her cold:
And rightly so. Although the fans on Genius may argue that this image “pokes fun at the male gaze” or “highlight[s] Sabrina’s satirical brand” or “challenges misogynistic views,” at it’s core it’s a woman on her knees being dominated by a man. So Poe’s Law is in full effect here, making the image a very 2025 phenomenon. Some people will revel in the debasing of a female celebrity. Others will treat her ironic debasing as a victory for women. Third- and fourth-wave feminism meet in this image and explode, is what happens.
Anyway, Lady Steed was appalled. Women winning the right to receive abuse seems a pyrrhic victory at best.
I’m also appalled looking at her hand in the carpet. What happened to it? Did someone finetune this image with AI?
Anyway, in making the cover of Thubrina, my reference was to one of the alternate image covers. (You need lots of different physical versions of music in 2025 to maximize profits.)
This is Sabrina’s “approved by God” image. I didn’t attempt anything more than the hair and being black and white because let’s be honest: I didn’t spend my teenage years looking into the mirror working on my sultriness. Faces funny and scary were much more me.
Anyway, Thubrina is now available at most ebook outlets. Print will show up eventually for those who think five dollars is an insufficiently absurd amount to spend on a goofy little project like this.
Where you will not find it is on Amazon. This isn’t some big moral stance I’m taking (though perhaps I should claim so?); they just rejected it. I’m not sure why. They rejected Eternities of Cats for strange but clear reasons, viz., they apparently don’t carry multi-author works that include previously published work. Never mind that we could all make a list of exceptions you can buy on Amazon right now, but at least they gave me a reason. No reason for Thubrina. Is it part of some new quest to cut out plagiarism? Well, this isn’t plagiarism and I don’t know how it could have reached that conclusion instantly anyway. Is it because I noted there was some adult content? I doubt it. Otherwise, how did certain congressional candidates get their work on Amazon? Or Sabrina this exceedingly horny album? So it’s a mystery. But at least you can (now or soon) get Thubrina via your local library. Good on America.
AS PROMISED, having finished the publication process, I will now listen to Man’s Best Friend. I am about to do that right now, starting here in just a few minutes. Head on over to Bluesky if you want to follow along. Tomorrow’s Thubrina post will republish (some? all?) of this live commentary, but if you care and want to be part of the conversation, head on over now.
In honor of The Sound of Music being in theater’s this weekend, let’s start at the beginning (a very good place to start). While I’ll be promoting Thubrina with posts all this week, why not start with it’s own introduction?
Of course, this should have been released days rather than weeks after August 29, the day Sabrina Carpenter released her album Man’s Best Friend but I stupidly held off on getting the photograph done until I had access to her lyrics. That was silly. And then of course it takes a while for it to roll out to the various places you can buy or borrow books. (Still waiting on paper, but look: Barnes & Noble!)
Anyway, here we are, seventeen days late.
Alas.
But finally, here are the cover and the introduction:
Naturally, when I want to visit Thubstack, I start typing thubs into my browser, but if I foolishly assume that by now surely my browser knows where I’m going and just hit enter rather than deliberately choosing thmazing.substack.com, Firefox will helpfully suggest I watch the video for Sabrina Carpenter’s “Thumbs,” a song I know only from this context. (I did finally listen to “Thumbs” once, just to see what Firefox thought I should be giving my attention to, but I can’t remember anything about it now.) I have heard her “Espresso” enough times that I could probably recognize it (probably?), but that’s the extent of my knowledge regarding Miss Carpenter’s catalogue. This isn’t me being a snob or anything. I just figure she gets enough love from enough people that she doesn’t need me listening to her on Spotify in order to make her car payment. Perhaps I am wrong and her Range Rover is getting repossessed as we speak because I insist on being a hipster. If so, I apologize.
Anyway, in early June I was with some twenty-somethings and they were expressing amazement that Sabrina Carpenter was already releasing a new album and how could she possibly a) have anything new to say or b) the time to develop new aspects to her musical vocabulary. They were looking forward to discovering answers to these questions.
Me, since I knew nothing about her previous work, had no way to hypothesize regarding her new work. But then it occurred to me: Just as countless millions searching for Thubstack have been redirected to “Thumbs” and thus become Sabrina Carpenter fans, perhaps she owes me and I should redirect some of her traffic to me. And so this small volume in which I rewrite her new album Man’s Best Friend, song by song.
I’ve taken a number of different tacks while rewriting, which you can read about in the appendix.
Like Sabrina, Jesus was a carpenter, and he was born before me, even. So to make her and I seem more like contemporaries, I’ve illustrated this collection with details from oldtimey black-and-white life-of-Jesus illustrations.
Anyway, come for the Sabrina, stay for the Theric (or the Jesus, if you prefer).
Next week expect a bounty of content on my new book Thubrina, but right now I just want to pitch the very idea of doing cool and interesting things in your space, whatever that is. It's the only way cool and interesting things happen.
This is some of the worst writing I've read in a while. Even at a mere 108 pages (comics pages!) it was difficult to finish. The main character and her boyfriend are supposedly two years into a relationship but they talk like they're on week two. I mean—he sucks from first appearance. We're supposed to believe she hasn't noticed / he's been able to disguise his suckiness for two whole years? And his racist parents are strange. The father barely says or does anything. When he even appears he's difficult to distinguish from the boyfriend. The mother's face is the embodiment of an internet troll. You can't look at that face and believe for a moment that she's a real person. And their nonstop racism is so grotesque as to turn into self-parody.
There are occasional pages where there's narration about how to deal with racist people but it's usually thrice-chewed pablum and sometimes not even internally consistent. For instance, one page reads, "People will Only [sic] see racism when it's at its most extreme... / But racism is more than just slurs and violent acts. | I think it's important to be true to yourself. | If something feels wrong you should speak up."
What?
I mean, those are fine sentiments, but how do they connect together? How do they build into a coherent argument?
The colors were good.
two days
069) The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Lynn Solotaroff), finished August 23
Knowing Ikiru was based on this novella, I expected more of the same, but really they're quite different. They have similar attitudes, similar tones. The main character works for the government and has a terminal illness. He has some sort of redemptive arc. That's about it, though. Ilyich's arc begins and ends in the final paragraphs while Watanabe's are the bulk of the film. Ilyich's story takes place, at first, in his social situation, then moves inside his body. We barely deal with Watanabe's death so directly.
And yet—
They both tell us to do something different with our life. Even if the world inside the story looks the other way.
If you'd asked me to make a Japanese connection to Death of and I hadn't known Ikiru was inspired-by, I would have gone to Silence. Like that novel, some of the most important moments occur when a mystical conversation breaks through God's silence.
Anyway, even though Ivan dies four years before my current age, I didn't quite have the flooring experience I was promised. I'll have to try again when I have the flu or something. Because I certainly see how, at the right moment, this novella could really beat you up.
two days
070) The Village Beyond the Mist by Sachiko Kashiwaba (translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa), finished August 23
It's funny to have read this over the same two days I read Ivan Ilyich—both of them are so different from the classic movies based on them! This one "inspired" Spirited Away but it's hard to argue Spirited Away was any more inspired by this story than by Alice in Wonderland—they are, all three, about young girls who end up in strange places and cope marvelously.
(Also, I'm not at all sure Miyazaki would agree that his movie was, ultimately, based on the novel: "There is a book for children, Kirino Mukouno Fushigina Machi [A Mysterious Town Over the Mist]. It was published in 1980 [actually 1975], and I wondered if I could make a movie based on it. This was before we started work on Mononoke Hime. There is a staff member who loved this book when s/he was in fifth grade, and s/he read it many times. But I couldn't understand why it was so interesting; I was mortified, and I really wanted to know why. So, I wrote a project proposal [based on the book], but it was rejected in the end.")
Regardless, it should be judged on its own merits.
And it's okay. Not surprised to learn it's her first novel. It has a great ending but it's just sort of a minipicaresque for kids as the hero helps out in one store after another in a little town peopled by the descendants of sorcerers.
It's actually a great deal like the of novel for English-speaking kids published in the decades before and after. It's very much of its time.
I can see loving this book as a child. I got my 8yrold started on it. Maybe she'll be one who does.
(Oh: the new illustrations by Miho Satake are clearly inspired by Spirited Away, I assume to emphasize the tentative connection.)
One of my favorite titles of the last few years. The cover's pretty good too.
This is a very short book, just over a hundred pages, but it took me a long time to read. Every page seemed vitally important and I would often put it down to think and not be ready to pick it up again for a long time. But in the days after reading, it wouldn't be unusually for me to throw a couple bombs in stake council or to reinterpret important aspects of Pride and Prejudice for my students.
Pack takes meritocracy to task, utterly dismantling it for the blasphemous heresy it is. In doing to, he forces me to reconsider such words as self-reliance, dependence and independence, and even work. No question we as a society are wresting scripture to our destruction, but it's startling to see it laid so bare.
I also learned a great deal about early Christian cultures, relevant rabbinical teachings, ancient gift cultures—some of this stuff sent me on paths of thought that, for instance, rather rewired by thoughts about the Garden of Eden. There's good soil here and you can plant a lot of seeds you already have in its ground.
To tell you all my thoughts I'd have to quote half the book and then write twice as much on top of it. And I'm not writing my own book.
I certainly need to keep studying this topic. I have another book I started then mislaid then never went back to, and another that just came in the mail this week. The Book of Mormon was written for our day and these are the issues it is most concerned with: being rich at the expense of the poor, becoming Zion, accepting Christ.
The purpose of becoming spiritually and temporally self-reliant is to better serve the Lord and care for others. The Savior invites us all to act, to stand independent, and to become as He is. He will help us. He has promised: “It is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine. But it must needs be done in mine own way.”
The wild thing is, if you read that scripture in context, that is, without ending it mid-sentence, it actually says this:
And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine. But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low.
It kind of reminds me of Buster Keaton's Cops if it were a work of German Expressionism with a lot more sex, a lot fewer jokes, and a strong aroma of religious allegory.
I read this was a parody of God's Man but it would be more accurate to say it's a parody of the wordless-novel genre writ large. Although one of the bigger laughs was when his female lead suddenly appeared in full Lynd Ward–style glory:
And speaking of silent, films, I have to believe that Hundreds of Beavers was influenced at least a tad by the early scenes of this book. The middle scenes seems equal parts Chaplin and the parodied novels. The last act is parody of parodies of melodramas, down to the villain ties people to logs and feeding them to the sawmill. The ending provides a happy-ending coincidence of Dickensian proportions and all is well.
Although it may not be a direct commentary on God's Man, reading them back to back was kind of wonderful.
(Although it may be worth noting that the race-humor bits in He Done Her Wrong have, shall we say, aged less gracefully than the book as a whole.)
I'm reading through all my old woodcut novels because I'm on the hunt for one that can be read quickly and several times profitably by15yrolds.
This one is non-narrative, which is disqualifying on its own. But it's also about the city—largely how awful the city is. There are a couple mystical moments, some lovely moments, and it ends on a bit of grace, but the bulk is death and violence and abuse.
I need to find a nonparody sans nipples. Still looking!
So if I'm counting correctly, this is my fourth Palahniuk novel. I read Invisible Monsters and Lullaby (such a good cover) in my post-BYU Utah years (2002–04) and listened to Survivorin 2017 while driving solo to Scout Camp. I also read or listened to most or all of his collection Stranger than Fiction (probably) during the 2005–06 school year. That's it. I own a copy of Choke I haven't read. I think I'd call myself a fan, but perhaps it's more that I appreciate what he's good at.
And while he likes playing with language and his tales are rich in meaning, part of what he is good at is grotesquerie. What I remember most clearly from Lullaby, for instance, is the description of three-bean salad and the sex with dead people.
I picked up The Invention of Sound because I love foley—I hope some version of me out there in the multiverse has discovered that walking on popcorn while my feet are wrapped in prosciutto is exactly what some cinematic monster's breathing sounds like. I hope so.
Anyway, this is a book about a foley artist and everything from here on out is spoilers, so walk away if this 2020 novel is currently on your nightstand.
There are two primary threads. The first is the foley artist who specializes in exquisite screams that she, as per the family business's long tradition, obtains through torture and murder. The second is a fellow whose daughter was once murdered by the family business. These two threads will slowly come together. In the meantime, we get some of the most disturbing sex I've read in a while (perhaps since my last Palahniuk novel?), some nice jabs at elites, a wild conspiracy that's hard to piece together let alone believe, a decent look at madness, some very good side characters and couple less good ones, and elements of the weird: a doctor who can channel the dead, for instance.
Palahniuk is a good writer. He's messing with sentences a bit much here, but he's looking for things that work and he's using his status as a bestseller to try things. Let him fail, I say. It's good for all of us.
Meanwhile, on the thematic level, he's firing on all cylinders. While I don't always agree with his choices, no question they work and they build. He wields violence and the unpleasant like a size 2/0 sable brush—exquisite detail revealing large truths.
It is important that we see the ugly so that we can appreciate the beautiful.
Perhaps, after you wipe the blood out of your eyes, that is what will happen here.
I was expecting that the silent-movie comparison would be Sunrise. And it's not bad, but it's ultimately not right either. That image is from the center of the book and a misleading detail. This story has it not-terrible moments but they are few. To call this novel Destiny probably hurt Destiny's feelings.
Anyway, we pass through a house of ill-repute and thus my no-nipple quest remains unfulfilled. Plus, it's too long and a bit hard to follow. The quest continues.
I've read Fences probably twenty times. Seen the movie half a dozen times. Seen it live once. Yet, somehow, nothing else of August Wilson's. I've had this copy of The Piano Lesson for ages but I finally picked it up because I bought tickets to Two Tickets Running. Which we saw tonight. So I've tripled my Wilson today.
The Cycle plays, I have a lot to go. The Lower Bottom Playaz are also doing King Hedley II later this year. I should go again.
Anyway, having now read The Piano Lesson and seen Two Trains Running, I can see some things Wilson likes doing. There are lines almost repeated between Fences and Two Trains Running. There are similar disabled characters in Fences and Trains. In all three plays (!) there is an off-stage white man whose name starts with St–. I could go on, but you get the point.
This isn't a knock on Wilson. He's showing one place change over a hundred years. There should be echos. And, I mean come on, Shakespeare didn't rely on stock characters and situations? These things are not crimes of any sort.
(Though it does make me wonder if my own work may feel more repetitious than I realize.)
Anyway, The Piano Lesson set up what seemed like an intractable conflict between a brother and a sister. It seemed it could only end in tragedy. But the strange and supernatural elements combine into some escape that somehow—magically—works.
I am left with the sense that Fences is the best of the three, but no wonder I would think that, given my intimacy with the text. Who am I to say they all don't stand up to that kind of scrutiny?
Well, this was the most nipplous yet. Perhaps this quest is hopeless. Anyway, this is the penultimate in my collection. I'll give the wordless novels one last chance to enter my classroom.
I know Thomas Mann loved this one, but in a way it feels almost like a parody of realist fiction.
Our hero cannot be restrained. He loves, he travels, he carouses. He feels delight and amazement. He has his heart broken. Then, towards the end, realism it left behind. He's a hundred stories tall and peeing on the city. He is weeping at the feet of the crucified Christ. He is walking through a forest of towering flowers. And then he is dead. He goes from eternally twenty-something to dead. But even death cannot restrain him. He carries on.
I mean—I like it well enough. But I wouldn't want to spend a month here.
I think I like Ward's intricate art style better than his European counterparts. But you know whose opinion I'd really love on Ward? Edgar Allen Poe's. I really think Poe would have dug this one in particular.
It begins with an evil slaver. Between panels he murders and African man and steals his drum. He then steals his relatives and takes them over the ocean where the sale of their living flesh makes him a wealthy man.
His son takes down the drum at some point to play, but his father beats him and pushes him toward books. That seems to go well but then . . . I mean, it's hard to say. It's not always easy to keep characters straight in these books. But we get three generations of men who, each in his own special way, fails to escape evil.
But, oh the art.
I have to say, even though I don't always find it easy to know what's going on, I am impressed by the confidence of these artists. They never add little captions saying something like Mr Johnson's wife is also some sort of lunatic. They trust us to puzzle our way through. I like this.
But if you were hoping this means I found a book without nipples, think again.
In the spring I saw Ben's new play Shut Up, Sherlock (which was terrific) and that led to a series of conversations that ended up with me having a pdf of this play.
I remember reading an interview with Neil Gaiman once around the time MirrorMask came out. If you don't remember, MirrorMask was written by Gaimain and crafted visually by his frequent collaborator Dave McKean. Anyway, in the interview, Gaiman said that he was writing scenes and taking them to McKean to see if they could afford them and that what could be afforded was not always intuitive to Gaiman. One simple scene set in a classroom would be too costly because kids are expensive, but a scene where a whole opens in the universe and all of time and space drain away can be done on the cheap because it's just cg.
Anyway, I mention this because Murder Mystery Mystery Murder is kind of the opposite. It has TWENTY-ONE speaking parts, an insane number hardly any modern company working on a budget would ever touch. But this was written for a high-school troupe and the one thing they had in abundance was cheap actors. Otherwise, this is a pretty simple one-set production, but the piles of chaos from having so many characters interacting with each other gives MMMM a unique charm. It's like Clue somehow cranked even higher and madder. But also, in the end, friendlier. It's great.
I still have (at least) one edit to do, the formatting to do, the cover shoot to pull off, the illustrations to finalize—in other words, it’s not ready yet—but expect a new short book from me soon.
While you wait, I put together a little soundtrack to accompany it.
(Can you guess which song, 24 hours after scheduling this post, while listening to the list, I discovered isn't as good as I remembered? I'll give you a hint: it's the one song of the fourteen that isn't freaking awesome.)
I don't know why, every month, when I post one of these, I judge the quality of my life by how many movies I watched. Why do I do that? Does it make sense? Do I need therapy?
I don't remember exactly how I became convinced I MUST see this movie even though it couldn't've been more than three weeks ago. Anyway, now I've seen it and holy connoli what in the world.
The main story is about a cowboy who rides into town and becomes the protector of a poor widder women and her young son. Western themes will continue throughout. But there is also a gangster subplot (mostly involving him and his moll engaged in some kinky food stuff) and a number of other vignettes (all food-related) that we happen to pass through en route. Among other events, we'll see an old woman abusing a peach, a man's life saved with a vacuum cleaner, over-the-top food foley, an orgasmic egg yolk (raw), how to eat spaghettic, a woman die, some sort of commentary on contemporaneous Japanese misogyny, and so much more.
I laughed quite a lot. More often out of amazement than sheer hilarity, but I did laugh.
And it ends with the Magnificent Seven breaking up and our hero driving off into a metaphorical sunset.
Side note: Did not expect to learn that the young Ken Watanabe in comic mode is the spitting image of James Acaster. If you doubt me, all I can say is: Do your own research. It's uncanny.
Forced the kids to watch this with me on my birthday. It's not quite the masterpiece I remember but I still quite like it. I mean—Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburns and a zillion twists and turns. What's not to like?
The teenagers were underwhelmed and the 8yrold enjoyed it a lot but didn't really understand it.
I'm 100% confident, however, that my fondness of it will remain intact. There's really nothing not to like and so much to like. Maybe I'm just sad you can only see it once for the first time.
I'm on record saying that the usefulness and relevance of Dr. Strangelove has diminished with time to the point where it hardly matters now. I might be wrong. I certainly would be if I said the same of its doppelgangerFail Safe.
Strangelove was necessary in 1964 to break the tension. The great problem today is we've lost the tension. The Cold War ended when I was a kid and anyone younger much than me has no memory of it all. Which means we need stories that create the tension. This one does it and how.
Basic Cold War hijinks lead to one set of bombers out to bomb Moscow. All the stuff set up to prevent accidents also end up preventing the abortion of an accident. It's awful. Will it be possible to save the world? And if so, what will the cost be?
Funny to see Walter Matthau again less than twenty-four hours after Charade. Crazy to see a young Larry Hagman. I never noticed before that Henry Fonda and David Lynch kinda have the same accent.
In short, though, this is an excellent film. And it's shouting a message we still need in a language 2025 can understand.
Additional shoutouts to the lighting crew, the animators, the credits team, the astonishing countdown sequence, the unsettling opening dream, the execution of quieter moments, and the blocking.
I saw this film at my cousin's house, as we spent the night with him halfway through our move from Utah to California. We hadn't even been parents a year at that point and I think that might be part of the reason the film hits differently now. I still think it's quite good (not as good as, say, Babe, but what is?) though I feel I remember being completely gaga over it back then.
Anyway, lots more magic than I remembered though once I got over its actual existence I appreciated its restraint.
This is about as far from us as it is from Date Night, a movie we think we remember liking. Anyway, we like Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams about as much as Steve Carrell and Tina Fey (you know: more or less) and the mad escalation in this film is a lot of fun. The cast is great, the characters are good, and we even get a taste of Jeffrey Wright.
This is the sort of movie the everything-that's-wrong-with crowd could nitpick to death (that blood loss!) but that's not the point. Do you like the people we're hanging out with? Are they in madcap situations? Are the jokes landing? Okay then. Let's have fun.
I'm sure you know the gist of this film—two teenage girls befriend Richard Nixon and then become Deep Throat. I don't remember what the reviews of the time were, but as time goes on, the small mentions of it all trend positive. Not sure why I finally decided to watch it, but I did and I'll tell you: No regrets.
Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams (who I still, even now that the movie's over, have a hard time recognizing) play the girls who get waylaid in a school trip to the White House, hear something they shouldn't, and get made official dogwalkers. The girls are played way over the top but it's prett delightful regardless. The contrasts in their personalities gives them balance and makes their friendship feel true and thus realistic, even if they aren't quite as individuals. They end up touching many pieces of history while their going to the White House, but eventually they learn Dick isn't who they thought—and they have to act. Though not quite for the reasons America assumes of Deep Throat.
Woodward and Bernstein and played by SNL and Kids in the Hall alums (as is much of the cast), and their scenes play more like an SNL sketch than the rest of the movie. They actually open the film and set a tone that lets the following highjinks seem grounded by comparison.
Even though the film is consistently funny, at times it is paced and shot like a Seventies paranoia thriller, and the Woodward and Bernstein scenes can look straight out of All the President's Men. Related to that, I don't know how funny this film would be to Gen Z without, say, watching All the President's Men first. And even watching that won't tell them who Kissinger is. I think it's a real open question, how funny it is when you don't know the stuff being lampooned.
My guess is still fun and funny but half the jokes'll go whooshing over your head. I imagine some did mine. Let me know, young people!
Remarkable how these earlier movies have all the DNA of the later films but smack a bit harder (or more straightforwardly?) of metaphor and are more freewheeling with slapstick silliness.
Pretty sure I last watched this movie in 2005, so it's been a long time; I have no real memory of what I thought then. But certain images (the floating girl, that robot) linger.
Most of the missionary movies we've seen, says Lady Steed, are kinda silly. Humor-forward, shall we say. Which is part of why she likes this one more. ALthough it's also worth adding that this one doesn't need crises of faith or violence or anything to make what happens matters. It is, in other words, just the sort of stuff that happens. And that can only work when your lead can be compelling even without those oversized beats. Erin Chambers is up to the task. I've already written about my long admiration of her craft so I won't repeat this here except to say maybe I should seek out more of her work. Maybe the X-Files episode she starred in (In a season that for some reason is not on Hulu?)
Anyway, not a perfect movie but aesthetically compelling and so dang real. This is a good view of what serving a mission is really like.
There are things I don't like about this movie, for instance the nondiegetic songs, most of which make little sense in context, but man alive do I find it effective. I cry at movies all the time but usually by that I mean that my eyes got wet enough I needed to blot them, but this "mere" confection left my entire face and my eyes raw.
No, it'll never make the Sight & Sound 100, and rightly so, but by no means can this movie be dismissed as lesser. It's wonderful.
The weakest parts of this movie are the fan-service bits of sequelitis. Overall, it's very smart—it makes a different girl the VO protagonist, it doesn't retroactively convert the previous lead, etc. It does move the girls to Utah for some reason (I would have assumed movie one was in Utah if I hadn't just rewatched it), but my only real complaint is . . . all the other first-movie girls. It doesn't overuse them, which is smart, but by not giving them lots of screentime, they're basically charicatures of their former selves. Which is to say they haven't grown at all in the last—I think two-and-a-half years?
Anyway, other than that, the film is pretty great. (It does a better job with the music than the first movie, for one thing.) WHat's most impressive is that it keeps us on the hook all the way to the end. Our protagonist has a choice in front of her but it's really unclear how things are going to actually work out. I have more to say and I can see there's not way to say it without diving into spoiler territory, so here we go. You've been warned.
This is a comedy. And the first rule of comedy is it provides a happy ending. The corrollary to this (cf Shakespeare) is comedies end in marriage. But it is deeply unclear whether the marriage is a happy ending or not. He's a good guy who will become a good man—but he's not a good man yet. He's rich but also he has all the negative side effects that growing up rich can bestow. (These two sentences are related.) And he's clearly not over his ex. And he's still more attached to his parents than his fiancee, with little evidence that he even recognizes that as any sort of problem.
Meanwhile, she's sacrificing dreams for him right and left. And because the movie is so conservative in most ways, we're just not sure what lesson the movie is thinking to convey. Not until it's all over.
It's a good example though—everyone should know you can break off your wedding, even hours before. People told me this several times during my own engagement—and I believed them—obviously, painful/awkward/embarrassing/problemcausing as it may be, a broken engagement is still better than a divorce—but I don't know that I would have had the courage had it been the right thing to do.
But this movie and its protagonist did have the courage. And I'm so glad they did.
No doubt, a rewatch of this movie would be a completely different experience. Even though I saw all the breadcrumbs during first watch, I didn't know which way I was walking through the woods. Next time, it'll be easier to settle in and just walk the path.
It arrives a decade after Brassed Off and Full Monty, and half a decade after Billy Elliot (and no doubt a bunch more I don't remember / never saw), but this is obviously intended to be the Japanese version of the same. And it won best film, best director, best screenplay, best supporting actress, and most popular film at the Japan Academy Film Prizes, which is my way of saying that this is just the kind of movie people were really really into over that decade. Because Hula Girls isn't that good. Unless you find particular joy in seeing coal miners finding a new life in rough times through art, there's not much here.
It feels kinda like some people only a bit familiar with film were sat down with all those English movies and told to take notes and then some other people with marginal familiarity with film made a movie.
The only parts of the movie that really work are the dead dad (because that's something that can be understood), the train-station sequence (which was actually built to), and the final sequence (which, alas, goes on way too long). The rest of the movie is attempting to signify some stuff through traditional movie beats but we never really understand how characters understand one another, how or why they change, etc. The movie doesn't get people and it's asking its audience to do most of the work.
Anyway. I'm disappointed. Kinda wish it was the documentary I thought it was going to be,
I was reminded a lot of Longlegs and Barbarian. Barbarian of course is the same writer/director. I heard him joke about putting in another down-to-the-basement scene, but there are many more similarities than that. A couple of the bads have obvious physical similarities, the nature of light and movement are related, Justin Long appears.
But Longlegs is the more obvious parallel and not just because it's almost exactly a year since I watched it. And, honestly, haven't really thought about it since until watching Weapons as they are doing similar things with creepy old "ladies" doing black magic and controlling people and being all mysterious and jumpscary and stuff. There's even a certain type of violence that's repeated. For the record, I like Weapons better. But Barbarian is better still.
I've heard a bit of buzz about What This Movie Is About and perhaps I'll read more now, but the main theories I've heard (school shootings, politics these days) aren't very convincing. I'm sitting here having finished it twenty minutes ago and honestly I don't really know what it's supposed to be about. I could force interpretations, but I'm hoping a clearer meaning slots itself into place as the movie settles into my subconscious. We'll see.
One small complaint. Nothing against the guy, but every time Eric Jepson gets a role (he's amusing here) he messes up my Google Alerts. Could someone talk to him about this? Thanks.
I've never actually read this Dahl novel, but Lady Steed and the girl read it together rather recently. The girl says it's not as good as the book; Lady Steed says it is, however, a good interpretation of the book: the interpretations of the dreams, Quentin Blake's illustrations. It does tone down the awfulness of the giants.
The cg was rather weightless. Nothing ever got that believable. In my unread opinion, a perhaps noble yet ultimately failed experiment.
This is such a delightfully weird movie. I remember when I first saw it (the only time I'd seen it, until tonight) I thought it was another Ghibli masterpiece on the level of my absolute favorites. I guess I still feel that way, but it's not at all clear to me where it fits in. It's as confusing as The Boy and the Heron, as delightful as Totoro, madder than Spirited Away but just as strange and beautiful. I know it's based on "The Little Mermaid" but it feels more of a spirit with Alice. Granted, Spirited Away is in form more like Alice but emotionally and in terms of age and attitude: Alice.
Anyway, a bonkers movie but grounded as Miyazaki always finds a way to be. In short, wonderful.
Also, I just learned that Joe Hisaishi has scored all but one of Miyazaki's movies and so all that amazing we can thank him for. Thanks, Joe!
Somehow, Lady Steed's never seen this before. She didn't watch it me either the first or second time, but when Son #2 wanted to go to the theater (and brought it up regularly for about a month) she came with us and loved it.
It's hard to do all the reading the movie wants you to do (and it would be nice if there were more—one character's English is barely intelligible), but the basic dive into government and courage and giant monsters is just so well done. I think this one might be evergreen.
Everything in this film is trapped in-between. Is it the Nineties or the Oughts? Are these people teenagers or in their late twenties? Why are there so many jokes that only Latter-day Saints would get when so many things about Latter-day Saints are so sloppily presented that an LDS audience should spend the runtime rolling their eyes?
Now, the acting's actually pretty good considering the script is so incoherent I don't know how the cast can be expected to create decent characters. And the soundtrack's great even though it's too loud and too frequent and never relevant. And some stuff happens, I'm guessing, because the filmmakers knew somebody? Like, why else the biplane?
Anyway, there are a couple moments that work pretty well and I guess hs why people who like the movie like it. I don't regret watching it. But neither shall I watch it again.
Delightful. I expelled air to express my amusement several times.
a day or two
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065) Jumping Jenny by Anthony Berkeley, finished August 13
Before I get into how much I liked this book I'd like to note that I'm not sure I've taken many such pure doses of misogyny. I mean—this is a book where it's okay to murder a woman if she's annoying enough. A book where even the best women are silly and doltish. Even the very best woman of all who is intelligent, witty, and excellent in every way, demonstrates her true female superiority by not asking a lot of pesky questions.
That's out of the way.
What I loved though is we see the murder up front. It's a brilliant murder—certain to be ruled a suicide—but then the people at the party get to suspecting each other. And because they suspect each other they work to cover it up so no one gets in trouble. Until they all learn it was actually a suicide. Even the Great Detective, the one who got too smart in the first place, is convinced.
And so the murderer gets away with it.
And then there is a twist in the very last scene that weirdly reemphasizes the okayness of murdering one woman by negating the novel's misogyny via another—no doubt accidentally. I doubt very much that Berkeley had set up a novel-length shaggy-dog story just to point out misogyny is dumb at the same moment he was once again litigating the lowness of women.
Anyway, the structure of the story and the detective's efforts and reasonings were unique in my experience and worth the read. Lots you can do in the mystery genre.
(One other thing: Berkeley likes to let his characters talk over multiple paragraphs. But it's confusing in this edition [link above] because each parapraph ends with a closing ". Don't know if this was some overconfident proofer at the new publisher or a trait of British publishing 90 years ago? If the latter, I feel like I would have seen it before?)
Been a while since I've read a novel doing much the same things I'm up to. A touch of the bizarre, real human emotions, other people say it's "laugh-out-loud funny"—which I have come to interpret as "wit makes it to the sentence level." Those are all things I'm attracted to in my own writing.
Plus, the wealthy don't come off well, which I'm also in favor of. As a society, we need to see the cancer of inequality for the disaster it is.
Anyway, woman invited by rich friend to care for her step-children who, ah, occasionally spontaneously combust.
The biggest surprises for me in reading this were how calmly the book treats the kids' combustion and how fully formed the kids themselves were. When a book is loudly proclaimed A COMEDY you worry (expect) that the weird things will be treated like big jokes and that the characters most closely connected to the weird things will be walking punchlines. Not so here. The kids have real pathos. And the other kid, who seems like a placehholder, becomes real and interesting as well. This is the kind of comedy we should be rewarding. So I'm glad Wilson is putting sales on the board. Good for him.
under a week except maybe i read the first couple pages last month
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