EPISODE 424: MY HEART WILL NOT GO ON IF I HAVE TO SPEND ONE MORE MINUTE ON THIS TRAIN
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Short one this week, because I spent most of the weekend on a train from Portland to Los Angeles, a decision that makes me realize once again that Past Me is well and truly an evil monster who seduces me with the thought of interesting experiences that are actually absolutely terrible ideas, apparently so that he can cackle wildly in some secret antechamber he goes to when I sleep in the past while Present Me loses his mind.
For those who are train people, apologies. I thought I could become one of you. I think if I had been with someone else it probably could have been fun, for a while. I loved/survived-as-a-result-of the Sky Car, as I called it, which had seats facing the windows and lots of light that definitely helped me forget the fact that I felt like I was trapped in a casket for 31 hours. But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play, basically.
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(It’s also true that I have been on the road more than half the time the last three months (another brilliant scheme on the part of Past Me) and I really miss just being home. I’ve got a solid month in LA now without a single move to be made, and I am clutching onto that like Rose clinging to the remains of that door while Jack slowly froze to death beside her.
And if you had “Titanic Reference” in the Season 4 PCSW Bingo, congratulations. I’m pretty sure that is the only time I have mentioned it, ever.)
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I had high hopes for Portland, but in the end I spent most of it working in coffee shops or wandering around trying to find the fictitious city I had imagined, the details of which I can’t really describe other than by saying I expected something different, which is not helpful.
I will say this: the thing that threw me the most, and also intrigued me the most, was the way that restaurants and shops seemed so interwoven into neighborhoods. You’d be walking down a street that seemed mostly residential – a slightly busier street, maybe, but still just one lane each way, definitely neighborhood stroll material – and then all of a sudden behind some foliage you’d find a couple restaurants. Nice places, too. And then you’d be back to residential for a while, and then you’d have three blocks of businesses.
For the life of me I can’t remember any place I’ve ever lived that blends homes and shops like that. Honestly, it made me feel like Portland is actually set 2000 years in the future, after all kinds of crazy things have happened to the world, and we’re sort of post-post apocalypse, and local communities have exploded all around like wildflowers after a storm, and businesses have had to find a place amongst them to fit in.
Also: Portland has a lot of beer. And food trucks. And both were excellent.
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Yes I polished off the last season of Jessica Jones in a weekend (and mostly in a day, don’t look at me that way, you have things you do too), yes it’s worth a look, but it does take maybe a bit more patience than the first season. If you can stay with it, the endgame is a doozy—somewhere the series has been heading all along and yet I was still totally surprised when we got there.
I also tried to survive my 31 hours in captivity by watching Netflix’s four part series When They See Us, the Ava DuVernay docudrama about the Central Park Five. I knew almost nothing about the story before watching it, other than it was about five African American boys who were wrongfully convicted of raping a white girl in Central Park. As you might imagine, it’s an upsetting and powerful story. Very well told.
And I saw X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and there were about ten of us in the theater on a Monday night, and that’s too bad, because it’s actually a pretty good movie. So much better than the aptly named X-Men: Apocalypse. Sophie Turner does such a great job.
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I came across this poem for Father’s Day, which reminded me a lot of my dad.
Sign for my Father, Who Stressed the Bunt
On the rough diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict technique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.
Years passed, three leagues of organized ball,
no few lives. I could homer
into the left-field lot of Carmichael Motors,
and still you stressed the same technique,
the crouch and spring, the lead arm absorbing
just enough impact. That whole tiresome pitch
about basics never changing,
and I never learned what you were laying down.
Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap,
let this be the sign
I’m getting a grip on the sacrifice.
David Bottoms
Happy Father’s Day, Dads!
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Oh I also saw the first episode of the new season of Big Little Lies, wherein this happened:
You need sound to fully understand what an amazing moment of reality that is. But yeah—BLL Season 2, taking it all to a whole other level.
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I dare you to read this article about how awesome it would be to vacation on Titan and feel like it would be awesome to vacation on Titan.
This article systematically ridicules every conversation I have ever had about the weather and I am pretty sure I deserve it.
This article about the Central Park Five is a set of interviews that includes both the five now adult men who went through that terrible injustice and the five young men tasked with playing them. They each have pretty incredible things to say.
In Portland I went into a comic book store where one of the employees was telling the other a story about his friend the aerialist, which got interrupted when the other employee freaked out over a text that her roommate had moved one of her plants. "I swear to God I told him, that plant is EXPLETIVES DELETED sensitive!"
From the outside probably most of our lives seem like Fred Armisen-ready clichés. But you know what, who cares? Freak out over your plant, hang out with aerialists, go your own way. The only beautiful life is the one you let yourself live.
See you next week.