EPISODE 541 MK. 2: YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF (OR EMAIL MAY DEVOUR YOU)
Same as it ever was. (This line actually lands way better now that I'm having to resend this.)
So, it appears that pretty much no one got the last issue of the newsletter. I don’t know what happened. I’m sure it’s my fault. I’m sorry. I am a broken human.
What you’ll find below is what I thought I sent. I think it’s still fine-ish? You tell me? If it’s a bit of tl;dr (which is actually my name in text form), I highly recommend the supermarket musical and the David Byrne songs. So good!
(The image at the top, btw, from the newest New Yorker, is called “Hope Again”.)
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
The last month I’ve watched probably a couple dozen horror films – three Halloweens, two Friday the 13ths (that first movie is so much better than I expected…), three George Romero Living Deads, and a wide assortment of more recent films. I found a couple absolutely fantastic (go find A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Deeper You Dig right now). But I can’t say that any of them frightened me.
Then tonight on a whim I watched Zodiac, the 2007 David Fincher film about the Zodiac killer. The film is not a horror movie. In fact I’d say it’s Ocean’s 11 with detectives – big cast of great actors in a variety of roles, and a loose storytelling style that just lets the tale unspool on its own. Even with the subject matter being so awful it’s a very satisfying movie to watch. So well done.
But near the end the guy who brings the case home starts getting phone calls with a heavy breather on the end, which is the M.O. of the Zodiac killer. And when the film was over I suddenly realized I was really spooked by it.
As someone who is obsessed with seeing how storytellers do their magic tricks, I loved that happening. And I’ve been thinking, in a way Zodiac is kind of like The Exorcist or the Paranormal Activity films. It’s about an unseen and terrifying force suddenly turning its eye toward some good, normal person. And because we can’t see them, we’re absolutely exposed. And, for me anyway, that is as terrifying as it comes.
Other than in 2020, of course. For those who like David Fincher movies, 2020 is basically Se7en, and Tuesday is the last scene of the movie. It seems like everything’s over, but there’s a box waiting for us, and it’s not at all clear what’s inside.
I have fantasies about what I’ll do if things don’t go well. Most of them, I’m embarrassed to say, amount to just a very long and sour set of tweets excoriating portions of the electorate. I might have told this story before: when I was in high school I had a physics teacher who invited us to call him by a “cool prof” nickname and gave us his home number for when we had trouble. But then it turned out he was kind of a nasty guy, and so one weekend my friends and I decided to egg his car.
Except then we got to his house and I thought, won’t that trash his paint job? So then we were going to egg his house, but again there were questions of damage. So in the end, I kid you not, we settled on throwing a couple eggs in his empty mailbox and considered ourselves Animal House-level rebels.
At school the following Monday I dined out on even the slightest disgust in his facial expression. Oh he definitely got the egg, I told myself.
So yeah, I’m not exactly creative when it comes to outrage. (If you are looking for some spleen-venting, I’m going to do some stand up tomorrow at 8pm EST/5pm PST on my Facebook page (which is open to the public). No idea if it will be more funny or “Whoa, Priest Rage”. Come and see for yourself…
I know a lot of people are worried about what the state of the country might be in the days to come. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have those anxieties, but for now all we have is today.
I said last week I was going to try and watch some movies about America this week. That didn’t happen exactly. I got way more into the horror, maybe trying to prepare myself.
But along the way I did stumble upon some really wonderful things, which I am now giving you to keep with your survival gear for the next few weeks.
First, if you have HBO, you really should check out this David Byrne show American Utopia. It’s a concert of sorts of a bunch of his songs, but it’s kind of got a story to it too? And there are some really powerful numbers, particularly this cover of a Janelle Monáe song.
Then there’s this great speech from the end of the movie Milk, where Milk talks about no bigotry can ever remove the words of hope and promise from the Statue of Liberty. Milk has this powerful refusal to despair, no matter what.
Vanity Fair also did a great profile of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
And I found these two great poems about America and/or life right now, Sunset on 14th Street, and this incredible piece from Deborah A. Miranda:
How to Love the Burning World
…is it still possible to face the gathering darkness, and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world? – Barry Lopez
Tell yourself it’s like sitting at the bedside
of your mother; scorched with cancer,
her hand is already almost ash in yours,
her words already smoke so thick
it obscures your vision of the future
without her. You want to look away.
You want to find a cave, drink yourself
into oblivion, sleep through smoldering ugliness.
Admit it. You want someone else to tend
the deathwatch. Instead, moisten her tongue
with a sponge; bathe her dry skin
with lavender cream; braid her hair
with tender, trembling fingers. Take care
not to pull on knots. Stay in the room:
let the last thing she hears
be your voice, thanking her
for every single time she didn’t
kill you, for the eons she waited
for you to realize her brilliance,
her wisdom, all the days she bit
her tongue, let you think you had
the last bloody word.
You aren’t required to love the flames.
But love the burning world.
You owe her that. Fear is no dishonor.
Her fever so hot even metaphors
melt at a touch. Memorize her.
Praise each scar on her body;
her beauty ablaze.
Pray for a clean ending, a phoenix
purification. Pray for mercy. Pray
for the only thing that can save us now:
everything she ever taught us
about the sweet, bitter grace
of transformation.
And for when you need a break from politics – and I hope you take frequent breaks this next week – here’s three other things to enjoy.
1) The Internet Being So Wonderful: A Thread You Have To Watch.
2) SNL doing Hitchcock right.
3) Snails doing…stuff.
A goofy kid from the intergalatic version of Kansas blew up the Death Star. His sister later watched everything they had fought for fall to pieces, until there were just a handful of people left, and still she didn’t give up, and they found a way to escape.
These are not true stories. But on another level, they are.
It’s not that far, that one fine day.
Be gentle with yourself and others these days. I’ll see you next week.