Nothing, Nowhere, At A Bunch of Different Times

Helllllooooo, blogosphere. I've missed you. Let's kick off Awards Season!   Throughout 2022, I have mostly been ignoring the movies of 2022. I've been instead watching, as I tend to do, movies from my various projects, many of which these days are "Movies That Won Best Director But Not Best Picture" or "India's Submissions for Foreign Language Film" and other such lists that send me scurrying mostly to previous decades. I've seen just a handful of films in theatres and an even less full hand of new streamed films this year. But it's Awards Season now, so I've plunged in with a theatrical viewing the other day of The Whale, and a streaming viewing last night of Everything Everywhere All At Once.  

Now. 

I do remember when EEAAO came out a few months back and a lot of people posted about it, and I got a kind of general sense of its strangeness and the idea that it might elicit strong opinions, garner devoted fans, and also create a group of people who just didn't get it. I really wasn't paying attention to the details, though. IMPORTANT NOTE: I have not been paying attention to a lot of details anymore this year because Entertainment Weekly abruptly and devastatingly ceased to publish a print edition this year, cutting off my key lifeline, my favorite source of pop culture entertainment news.  

Do I get E-W (pronounced, as you well truly know by now, ee-dub) newsletters via email? OF course, and I have for years. Do I open them and read them and read the EW.com site as devotedly as I read every issue cover to cover for three decades?  Hell, no.  I liked the magazine, E-W is dead, and I am out of the loop on some things on which I would have been in the loop had E-W not betrayed us readers in this manner. Specifically, in this case, Daniels. 

A few years back, Daniels, these two boys (and I fear I really do mean that, boys) Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who are both named Daniel, decided to stylize themselves as filmmakers as the entity Daniels, but that's the least of our problems here. The far greater problems are the film they released a few years ago called Swiss Army Man, and the film they released this year, EEAAO. I remember that when Swiss Army Man came out, I read about Daniel Radcliffe (not a Daniel in Daniels, evidently, but just a Daniels-adjacent Daniel) and I had the good sense not to go see this film in which he plays a flatulent corpse, despite it playing at Chicago's Music Box Theatre or getting "acclaim" from "film buffs" or whatever other enticements anyone could come up with, because I read about it, and I had the self-respect and sense the godz gave a goose to prevent myself from going to see it. Easy decision. 

This year, thanks to E-W's betrayal and abandonment, my focus on many other mostly older films to view, and the fact that I Am Very Busy, I didn't really realize that this Everything Everywhere All At Once that Everybody jabbered about briefly was another "cinematic" offering from Daniels. Had I known, I could have proceeded with more caution last night. Of course, I still would have had to see it, because I do have SOME awareness of what's happening Oscar-talk-wise as we head deeper into Awards Season (what do you take me for, someone who thinks the Oscars aren't important?!?! Get out) and I knew and, sadly, know that EEAAO is going to get nominations and, terrifyingly and frighteningly, likely some awards. 

The movie is terrible. The Editing, I might add, is fantastic. That's the category it should win. Assembling that film from the footage of seventy billion separate universes in the way that they did,  where within scenes it's flitting back and forth every few seconds, was a truly commendable, phenomenal feat. I applaud the Editing and cannot overstate how remarkably done that aspect is. 

The movie sucks.  (Have I mentioned that? I will a few more times.)  It's a mess, it's boring, it's endless, it's a vulgar fever dream, it thinks highly of itself, it's not worth the 2-hour investment, etc. etc. But here's the question is opened up for me to think about: 

Whence this obsession with multiverses / the multiverse / multiple universes, of late?  I now have a theory. 

Because I live under a rock, and that rock is called I Don't Care About The Thing You Are All Jabbering About Rock, I've seen only a few of the Marvel (MCU) movies. Definitely fewer than half of them. Maybe about 7. However, because I occasionally come out from under my Rock to get an iced coffee, I am aware of the current Cinematic trend/fad/obsession/storyline/prism through which to view the world that is the multiverse in those films, and I actually rather enjoyed the Spider-Man one last year where they all met up.  (Spoiler alert? Probably not. Sigh, whatever.)   Also, in the real world, so to speak, I have read A Brief History of Time and  I have seen clips where Stephen Hawking said there are probably other universes and whatnot, so I know the multiverse is a whole thing, in philosophy, quantum physics, and thought, not just in theme parks movies. 

But. It reeeeeeallllly is a big thing in Movie World right now.  A Letterboxd review of EEAAO mentioned that multiple universes are "having a moment,"  and while I was watching EEAAO, that was in fact the question I asked out loud at one point (to the living room):  WHAT IS WITH THIS WHOLE MULTIPLE UNIVERSES thing that is everywhere (all at once) now? 

I think that it's because as secular as people think they are, they aren't. At all. 

More and more people, we hear, don't go to church, aren't religious, don't describe themselves as religious, don't identify as Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Sikh/Jain etc. prefer "spiritual" to "religious," don't believe in God(s), answer "unsure" on the surveys, and so forth.

More every year! lament the old-guard religious types.  More every year! enthuse the good-riddance secular/agnostic types.  

I'm usually in the latter category, and, what's more, I happily threw the spiritual/personal god/agnostic/there-must-be-an-afterlife baby out with the religious bathwater and went full on atheist.  I don't believe in god(s) anymore than I believe in ghosts, poltergeists, fairies, unicorns, vampires, or werewolves.  I do believe they all make for wonderful stories, mythologies, literature, and art, and even community and communal storytelling, song, and service. None of it should be taken literally. 

I have found, however, that many "secular" and even "atheist" people who have abandoned the Organized Religion ship can't quite let go of a comforting ideology. While they no longer cling to "God" they desperately want to fill that god-shaped hole with an idea of Something More, even when they have a hard time admitting this to themselves. 

 

I am now starting to see how the popularity of multiple universes really works for them.  Imagine! Instead of this life being it ("so depressing!" the religious folk often characterize it), imagine that you are actually living a whooooooole bunch of other lives!  Except they're not really you, but also they are. And maybe, someday, like Evelyn in EEAAO, you will get to meet your husband and daughter and frenemy from some of the other universes and sort of catapult among them for a few hours and save the world. 

Maybe, you don't have to accept the mistakes you have made and the limitations you have reached and the ticking clock of your time in this life running out because you can just be all, Wheeeee! I have a bunch of other lives - somewhere - out there. 

As my man Keating would say in Dead Poets Society, "Excrement."  That's what he thought of Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, and that's what I think of this once-again letting-yourselves-off-the-hook of living a meaningful life right here, right now, in this one - this ONLY one. 

As my man Keating would go on to say, CARPE DIEM. Because "we are food for worms, lads." 

In real life (i.e. not Dead Poets Society), I had an English professor in college who taught Biblical Backgrounds in Literature. We read basically the entire Bible as literature and studied its words and influence. It was a fascinating class. He steadfastly avoided answering ANY students' questions/queries/pleas about his own personal religious beliefs for the entire semester. On the very last day, he finally answered, telling us that he did not believe in the Bible God or any other God, and that he found life infinitely more rewarding and precious for knowing that it would come to a definitive, irrevocable end.  

I agree. 

I think there are a lot of people who agree, deep down, but are terrified -- I mean 100% flat-out terrified -- to admit that.  That this life is it.  And what are you doing with it? 

"What would you do with it?  What did I do with it?" as Tim McGraw sings. 

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" as Mary Oliver asks. 

Multiverse, schmultiverse. 

You're not living everywhere all at once.  And you're not off the hook. 

Live here. Now. 

Not milk?

I am once again asking you to, when presented with a complaint about the problem of paying a 75-cent or even one-damn-dollar upcharge for a non-dairy milk, not reply with something oversimplified and inaccurate about the "cost" of non-dairy milks. 

It's different from, for example, adding an espresso shot, which might cost 50 more cents of espresso. First of all, in latte situations, when someone gets oat latte instead of cow latte, you may be adding ("costing more") oat milk but you are ALSO SUBTRACTING the cow milk. Did you account for that in your "cost"? 

Secondly, when we're talking about adding a splash of soy milk to coffee, it should be far less than using the latte amount of the soy milk . Starbucks is correct to not charge for a soy splash. Dunkin' needs to get itself together on this. 

Third, the alt-milk per-drink "costs" at all coffee shops, chain and independents, are nonsense.  I can buy an almond or soy or whatever milk carton for $3 in any store retail -- and that amount of milk is way the heck more than 3 drinks, but you want to charge a third of that carton price for adding non-dairy to ONE drink? AND, coffee shops get a lesser-per-carton wholesale price to begin with. 

Furthermore, dairy milk is environmentally less sustainable, plus nightmarishly cruel to calves and mother cows, yanking away a newborn baby. So the ethical, morally sound thing to do would be to upcharge for dairy even if there were some accurate "cost." (Plus the dairy milk does have a financial cost, but it is massively produced and subsidized and powerfully lobbied. You aren't paying the true cost of cow milk. Also, in addition to the heavily subsidized dairy lobby finances, there is very much a greater "cost" for cow milk, but you are paying it with the Earth, desperate cows, tortured calves, and your soul.) 

Finally, even if the coffee shop charges a b.s. dollar for oat milk normally, a free drink should be a free drink. When we redeem our points, the oat/almond/soy whatever should be completely and totally $0.00 free of charge, but some locations upcharge for the alt-milks in a "free" rewards drink.  That is terrible. There really is a lot more going on here than "oh it costs more." 

I've noted before that when I find a coffee shop who gives free soy, almond, etc. and instead upcharges for dairy, they will have my business forever. 

Oh yeah, and, humans? If you aren't at the VERY dang least using a non-dairy milk in your cereal now, you need to make this life correction immediately. It is unconscionable to continue to buy rip-the-calf-away milk for your cereal, no matter how whiny you are about needing dairy milk for baking, coffee, and taste, or in your delusional "nutrition" uses. If you "don't like" the taste of non-dairy milk in cereal, you are eating. the. wrong. cereal. -- you should be tasting the cereal, not the milk. 

Feel free to share my words with your coffee shops and everyone you know. 

Do better. 
#upchargefordairy 

Do I even remember how to blog?

 I seriously don't know! 

But what I do know is that throughout the past decade I have offered up my thoughts, consistently, on the Book of Face, and where does that get me? Shares, likes, and peeks into the lives of people I haven't seen in years are all fun and algorithm games -- until suddenly it's not as fun anymore. It seems that fb is trying to steer us more into groups; why is that? Can anyone explain it to me from the monetary perspective?  Sure, I could quit all my fb groups and then fb would have to show me individual fbriends (amid the ads) but, thing is, I WANT the group info, just not at the cost of the people. Also, I am quite curious about things I can never know, like whether fewer people are seeing my posts since I started posting gender critical rants, which is my totally unconfirmed suspicion. And the flip side of that coin being how very many individuals who have swallowed the prevailing not-wisdom public discourse about various ideologies are less fun to interact with in the first place with their repeat-the-catechism politics. The trumptydumpty era was awful and consumed so much of my book of face even when I refused to type his name. I want us to make it better and fun again...but I don't know if that's likely to happen as big tech works toward its data-grabbing post-human singularity or whatever. 

On that note, I still am not a TV watcher  (and still not a binge-er) but Silicon Valley remains a thing that I love and that makes me laugh out loudest with both a sense of maddening absurdity and recognition. I have also got a season or two into The Good Place, whose philosophy I was assured I would very much love, and it's true! I do! I am more like Chidi than anyone I have ever met. And the ways I am not like Chidi? Are the ways I'm like Eleanor. I love that show. 

See, this is making me sad.  I wish I had spent the pandemic blogging instead of facebooking. 

Things I should have blogged about instead of posting to the book of face: 

1. My 100 Days of Nature Walks -- now with 10% more walking! (Because I ended up doing 110 days)  I spent last summer taking a walk outside every day in a different park/nature preserve/hike from my 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles - Chicago book/other outdoor nature walking locale. It was an amazing streak! 

2. Quarantine life -- WHICH I LOVE. And no, I did not make any sourdough or watch your stupid T*ger K*ng. I did not binge anything.  I did not get bored. I thoroughly enjoyed ceasing commuting, came to appreciate teaching online, and discovered the greatness of working remotely is working from various locations around the country. 

3. Black Lives Matter. Our nation's long overdue reckoning with white privilege matters. 

4. I reached my escape velocity from Chicago and flew South for the winter, where I am enjoying my #Atlantaresidency. Why am I not blogging about it? 

5. Recent film projects! 

At some point in quarantine summer, I finished watching all of the Best Picture Oscar Winners! One of my many-years-in-the-making off-and-on projects! I even talked about it on the O.C.C.: Oscar Category Completist podcast episode #35: all-Time Oscar Completist -- Best Picture with Linda Napikoski. 

Then, over the winter I finished up the AFI Top 100 original list of 100 Years...100 Movies that I have been slooowly sporadically working on since 1998. I had a lot of opinions about some of these flicks!  

And then, during this most recent awards season, I did not step foot in a movie theaters but I watched Every. Single. Oscar. Nominee. In my living room. What an interesting year! 

Why should only people who are on fb with me get to hear about these things? 😅

So, I say, let's remember how to blog. 

Of course I have questions. Among them : 

Who's still blogging? 

What blogs and web sites do you read regularly?  

What questions do you have? 

The Twelve Days of Oscar, Day 1: Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay

I mean, not that I've blogged whatsoever in the past nine months, and not that I've been anything but scrambling to get my Oscar nominees viewing situation under control, but anyway, here we are! Let's see if we can't blather about the Oscars each of these next twelve glorious days as we slide into ceremony Sunday; what do ya say?

Welcome back to my Twelve Days of Oscar, in which I will (attempt to) blog about two categories per day each of these twelve days! I will mostly do the categories in a seemingly super-random order that is actually based on what I've completed seeing, but I'll justify it somehow, never fear.

For example, today it totally makes sense to look at Supporting Actress, because why not talk about this award early on, just as it's given out so early in the show sometimes (and then, some argue, the winner is promptly forgotten for all time...?)   And since that category overlaps in nominations this year with screenplay categories, why not lump'em together and do a screenplay category today as well? Except it'll have to be Adapted Screenplay, because that's the one for which I've already seen all five.

Actress in a Supporting RoleThe nominees are:
Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Marina de Tavira, Roma
Rachel Weisz, The Favourite
Emma Stone, The Favourite
Amy Adams, Vice

In just what order did I list those names, above? In my order of preference? In order of how much I liked the movie? When I saw the movie? Who has the best chance to win? No, no, no, and no. I listed them in order, from most accurate to least accurate, of which roles could properly be described as Supporting Actress roles. Amy Adams' role, the presumed favorite to win, clearly should not be considered supporting. Alas and alack, we have to go through this rigmarole every year of marketing an actress who stars in a film as "supporting" so she has a "better chance" to win her Oscar. Never mind the "This-is-what-Lead-Roles-look-like" aspect of this misogyny, it is such an unfair charade and to know me is to know that it is one of the (very few!) things I hate about the Oscars. Tiresome.

So, no, I don't think that Amy Adams should win, in that I don't think she should win in THIS category. If she were being considered for Lead, as she should be, as Viola Davis should have been for Fences, and as Alicia Vikander should have been for The Danish Girl, and so on and so forth, then maybe. The other mildly annoying factor to consider here is that she's gonna get some make-up Oscar/"lifetime" achievement (I mean, she's still young) votes because people want to finally reward her with an Academy win after nominating her a whole bunch over the last decade plus of awards seasons.

Speaking of that, so Amy Adams has been Oscar-nominated five previous times, with Vice being her sixth. Can you name the other five films? Answers will appear below at the bottom of this post, so make your guess before scrolling down. Hint: four were for Supporting (actual supporting) roles, and one was for Lead.

What about this year's other nominated actresses? Any previous nominees among them? You bet! There are even previous winners! Our other redhead, Emma Stone -- wait, is Marina de Tavira a redhead? Roma was in black and white, so who knows? -  has two previous nods, one Supporting for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (ugh) and one Lead for La La Land (massive ugh, but she won) (the film didn't, though! ha ha ha, remember that?!)  And Rachel Weisz won for Supporting for The Constant Gardener, her only previous acting Oscar nom.

Meanwhile, Regina King was really good in If Beale Street Could Talk, which I think was just a sublime and incredible film, and I really think she should be rewarded, but I guess she'll have to be honored just to be nominated, because frankly, Amy Adams' competition might actually come from Marina de Tavira, who by the way y'all I think might indeed have red hair, but maybe only sometimes, dyed, which means she's not actually a redhead,  in Roma. This is because everyone (in Hollywood) (the industry, not the city) not only loves Roma but is super-proud of themselves for loving Roma, the little Netfllix-produced film that could (upset the notion that only traditional major studios or at least indies with lots of cool connections, but not online streaming services, can produce Best Picture Winners).

Need another hint about Amy Adams? Two of her noms were for films with one-word titles and two were for films with The [Something] two-word titles.

Oh yeah, I forgot to give my opinion about the actresses in The Favourite, who probably won't win because if anything they'll split the vote. Um... it was a weird movie. It gave me anxiety to watch it because the whole time I was freaking out about the caged rabbits. They were good performances and all, but... meh. It's just not my Favourite.

Adapted Screenplay The nominees are:
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
If Beale Street Could Talk
A Star Is Born
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
BlacKkKlansman

Zero question here, folks, because I want BlacKkKlansman to win everything it was nominated for. This is always a tricky category for me when I haven't read all the books/consumed the previously published material from which these screenplays were adapted. That's right, I've never seen any of the previous Stars who were Born, and I've not yet read the James Baldwin nor the Lee Israel nor the Ron Stallworth books. And what the hell is The Ballad of Buster Scruggs based on? The Coen Brothers' latest fever dream?  Oh, look, I just checked, and basically, yes: it's based on short stories written by the Coens over a bunch of years. Yeah, I knew watching it that those vignettes came from their weird imaginative brains, and by the way for those who haven't yet seen it, they are kind of grisly and effed up. And I have a strong case to make that it isn't really a movie at all, just a series of unconnected vignettes. (Connection = "the Old West."  Connection = the Coens want another Oscar contender, so let's not make this just a streaming Netflix series.)  Anyway, as I was saying, BlacKkKlansman is great and one of my top films of the year and I want it to win everything, so that's my pick in this category, although I did like Can You Ever Forgive Me? and If Beale Street Could Talk a lot, and I couldn't look away from A Star Is Born, really, no matter what else around me might have tried to distract me, as it was just this glorious train wreck of Bradley Cooper-dom and the downward spiral of the rich and famous and some not-too-shabby Gaga and lots of bits about songwriting, and boy was it compelling viewing.

Although I personally want BlacKkKlansman to win, I don't know that it will. Beale Street could possibly take this award; it was so beautifully rendered. I would feel wrong if Can You Ever Forgive Me? won because it's so weird to have a writer in the first place writing a "true" account about stuff she made up... I just don't know how I feel about that to begin with. And Buster Scruggs  needs to just, no.

So there we have it! I'm rooting for Regina and BlacKkKlansman and my hopes will probably be dashed. Who are your picks?

Supporting Actress Answer: Amy Adams was previously nominated for Junebug, Doubt, The Fighter, The Master, and American Hustle. That last one was a Lead Actress nomination.

Birthday Bloggage: Reflection Time!

Tomorrow, yikes!, is my birthday. I don't want to say I've been depressed, exactly, about this approaching birthday, but I have at least been nigh on discomfited, mostly along the lines of "why the !@#$%&* haven't I accomplished everything I wanted to have accomplished by now?!"

But that's never a really useful birthday-approaching thought process, now is it?

So I decided to give myself some good advice: "Accentuate the positive!" (so original, I know), and to take said good advice from myself, that is to say, to think about things that I DID do during the past year.

Some things I did while I was (*) years old:

• Worked on the writing of three new books -- yes, I now have three books in active progress.
  Negative spin: I have so many works in progress and haven't finished any of them.
  Positive spin: I have put into action THREE new book ideas and made progress on all of them! 
• Wrote a bunch of songs.
  Negative spin: What am I going to do with them? And they might all be terrible.
  Positive spin: Holy shite I've been writing songs! Like, lots of songs! I've discovered this whole new part of myself over the past nine months. It's incredible and I seriously don't know what to make of it, but I'm digging it. 
• Traveled all around the Midwest and even some other parts of the U.S., with no small number of road trips during the last year, having driven to: Iowa (twice), Nebraska, Wisconsin (several times), Michigan, Indiana, and we mustn't forget St. Louis for the total solar eclipse which was AWESOME and, related to the point above, was the genesis of the first song I wrote, an eclipse metaphor about the universe/love/life that just kind of poured out of my brain while I was sitting on the highway in post-eclipse traffic trying to drive back to Chicago.
  Negative spin: I didn't get to go on the Habitat for Humanity trip to Prince Edward Island I'd been planning to attend. Positive spin: So f-ing what? I got to see family, friends, three weddings, and the super-cool eclipse event that was apparently the opening of a new chapter in my life. 
• Lost weight - I finally shed all those back-in-the-U.S.A pounds.
  Negative spin: Don't really have one. Except that so many of my clothes are too unwearably big, ha! 
• Took even more classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music aka my second home these days, adding to my regular weekly guitar class several more including guitar fingerboard theory, vocal techniques (twice), songwriting (see above!), and perhaps foremost in my joy the Modern Country Ensemble, which I enjoy so thoroughly that I am now taking it for a fifth session in a row. It is a joy and a treasure, and every sixteen weeks we perform a real live gig. My Monday nights at the Old Town School are such a given, and now Tuesdays too...
  Negative spin: I'm busy. Positive spin: I love it. 
• Became a regular volunteer at the Old Town School of Folk Music, which enables me to afford everything I just mentioned in the previous point.
  Negative spin: Yup, really busy. Positive spin: I love it. 
• Made new friends. Building community is hard enough when adults stay put, and I gallivant about the world so much that I may have had it even harder, plus I actually really need solitude and seriously carve out time each week to be alone, but whether it was the whole staying-in-one-place-for-three+-years thing, or the whole hanging-out-with-music-people and hanging-out-with-books-people and hanging-out-with-yoga-people things, I have definitely made actual new friends during the past year, which is interesting and nice. I mean, I'm disgusted with so much of humanity (negativity!) that it's rather nice if rare when I find humans I like (positivity, check it!) 
• Finished my Prez Bio reading up through Dubya, which technically is the completion of my Prez Bios reading project, which you'll recall was launched during Dubya's administration and was called Reading a Biography of Every President In Order, To See Where We Went Wrong. Of course, since then we have gone even wronger, and I am going to also read books about Obama (after which point the presidency dies and my project dies with it so don't you even dare suggest...) but I did technically make it to the "end" of what I set out to do. Finally!
  Negative spin: What took me so long? Positive spin: I did that! 
• Speaking of books, some of the great ones I read this past year: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe et. al., Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Enlightenment by Robert Wright, American Plays of the New Woman ed. by Keith Newlin, and La vida util de Pilo Polilla  by Vivian Mansour Manzur, along with a bunch of other good and some not-so-good ones, AND I recently led in my local store the book group discussion of The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, which was the inaugural selection of the Barnes & Noble nationwide book club. 
• Found interesting English/ESL teaching work with some non-profits, mostly teaching immigrants, which led me to discover how much more enjoyable it is to teach these classes as opposed to the for-profit school for which I'd been working (and which I swear drove me to drink) the previous couple of years here in Chicago. That was interesting to learn.
  Negative spin: I seriously didn't want to go back to the classroom at all... Positive spin: Work. Work earns money. Work accomplishes things. Work it. 
• Speaking of work, at all three of the part-time jobs that I had one year ago and still have, I have had my accomplishments recognized with different positions/training/new responsibilities kind of things. Negative spin: They weren't promotions to full-time massive-money-making career ops. Positive spin: Employers recognize that I am smart and do things.

And ya know, those are just a.) the easily listable things b.)that I'm willing to discuss on a public blog. I have also done other things on philosophical, personal, introspective, and psychological levels that either aren't as quantifiable or easy to notate or don't really need to be delineated here or whatever. But my point is - it was quite a year, now that I stop to think about it.

AND I saw Indigo Girls perform four times during it, plus Emily Saliers' solo show. So there. Not to mention dozens of other bands and singers, and totally I didn't mention how much new music I came to know about because of Spotify. I even succumbed to Spotify Premium this year. Consider me thoroughly Spotified. . 

AND I saw a bunch of good movies. 

AND I spent so much quality time with my kittens like you would not believe. 

AND I de-cluttered my closet and got rid of clothes I don't wear anymore and got rid of some other stuff around the house, too.

AND I continued to discover new restaurants and happy hours and hiking (walking) spots around Chicago and to look at the Lake on a regular basis. 

So although I did not in fact really conquer life, the universe, and everything in the ways I had planned to do... I did other things instead! 

Let's see what the next year brings. 

A Brief History of My Week

What happened was, on Tuesday night I was on Facebook, engaged in multiple conversations on my and others' pages/status update threads, about three horrible things that had all happened, to wit: #trumptydumpty firing Tillerson and all the retaliation goin' on in the #trumpsterfire, plus the dog killed in the overhead bin of a flight, plus the 7,000 pairs of shoes outside the Capitol calling for gun sense. None of these conversations was a pleasant conversation. Even with people who agreed with me on whatever aspect of the topic, the discussions were filling me with outrage, because there was so much, well, outrageous behavior that had happened on Tuesday on the part of humans. So I spent a long time Tuesday night, up too late for sure, feeling increasing outrage and disgust, pretty much all directed at humanity out there.

Over and over in the comments of these various anger-inducing conversations, Fb-friends (or, as I call them, Fbriends) made comments along the lines of, "Well, people are stupid." "Yeah, people are terrible." "Humans don't deserve what they've got/" "Humans are the worst." And so forth. 

Which, frankly, I feel is all true. But it was making me feel awful, and I had SO much outrage. More, even, than the usual outrage felt on any given day since 2016.  

Amid all that, the only other news story piercing these swirling topics of doom was another sad story, that Stephen Hawking had died. 

That reminded me: there are some really smart people in the world. Geniuses, in fact. Why, then, was I wasting my time fretting so fiercely about all the stupid people? 

Why was I engaged in fruitless arguments, dealing with the nonsense babble of #trumptydumpty supporters and other hideous specimens... why? When I could be reading the words of smart people instead? 

Wednesday I found myself in a Barnes & Noble, where I picked up a copy of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and resolved not to go back on Facebook until after I had read it. Simply, replacing the stupidity with the smarts. 

Boy, it's been a nice four days! 

Some unanswered questions that I will try to answer: 

Q: Why hadn't I read A Brief History of Time before now? 

A: Seriously, have you seen my to-read piles? Egad. But it is now proudly shelved in "read" -- and "finally." 

Q: Didn't I hate being "that guy/gal" reading it the week he had died? 

A: Well, duh. But I got an excuse note from a supervisory book related figure in my life who understood the nature of my predicament (the outrage, the step away from Fb, the normally-I-wouldn't-do-this ... and oh yeah, p.s., also the uh, we're not exactly worried people will think we're not smart). 

Q: So...did I like the book? 

A: Hell yeah! So funny and personable! So the story of the universe! So worth reading, y'all seriously. It won't even take you four days -- you'll be able to return from your Brief History of Facebreak much faster than I did, if you have anything resembling free time/a normal life, which I do not. 

Q: Is it hard? 

A: Well, the universe is hard. So there's that.

Q: What is a singularity? Is time travel possible? Will we ever have a Grand Unified Theory? Is the weak anthropic principle a valid outlook? What's a gluon? What would happen to an astronaut falling into a black hole? Can we really know the mind of God?  

A: Uh, guess who tackles these questions? Not me! That would be, our boy Stephen. Come on, go buy the book folks. AT A BOOKSTORE, PLEASE, THANKS. 

I recommend the illustrated version. 

You are not in my future light cone, #TrumptyDumpty. You are in my elsewhere, and you can damn well stay there. 

DST: Daylight Saving Time, or Demanding Sloth Time?

And so we have sprung forward once again, completing this silliest of human rituals, advancing our clocks one hour so as to have "extra" daylight in the evenings. On this Monday, a day often seen as the start of a new week, a day in which many people will think something like, "Wow, it's still so light!" upon leaving their traditional workplaces, I'll quickly summarize something I've realized about daylight saving time cheerleaders. Beyond the absurdity of semi-annual clock changing and the nonsensical extending of DST to eight months of the year so that it now lasts even longer than standard time, I now see that DST enthusiasm reveals how simultaneously lazy and demanding humans are. 

And if you know me, you know I loathe the combination of lazy (or helpless) + demanding. I firmly believe you should pick one or the other. If you're lazy or helpless, fine, but when people do stuff for you, you'd best not complain about how it's done. If you're demanding, fine, but then you'd best get on top of things and get your stuff done, not whine that it has to be done a certain way but then expect someone else to do it. 

Think about it, though. You hear a lot of positive comments in these early days after the spring forward time change along the lines of, "Wow, it's light until 7 p.m.!" or whatever. But...

1. Demanding. More light - uh, this is how summer works. This is just how our planet works: as summer approaches, the days get longer -- that is to say, there are more hours of daylight and fewer of darkness. Everyone knows this, and for the most part everyone understands why (loony-tunes-flat-earthers notwithstanding). (There are a bunch of absurd things about Daylight Saving Time but one that has always baffled me is this, that the days are getting longer anyway -- and this is the season you choose to change your clocks for?) Springing forward is a weird attempt to make it happen sooner. Like, the functioning universe isn't enough for you people -- you just have to speed things up and instead of passing through each March, April, May day with sunset getting later and later, you have to accelerate the process with this jolt, because you want light at 7:00 in the evening NOW and not in April when it would come along. "Hey universe we know you have this whole sun, light, and changing seasons thing totally worked out, but we're just gonna come along and demand a little improvement, 'k?"  Seriously, what is WRONG with humans? 

2. Lazy. And yet... lest we forget the main absurdity of DST to begin with, namely that there is no extra daylight when you move your clocks forward, just a shifted hour of daylight, these demanding humans simultaneously reveal themselves to be lazy as sin. You want more daylight? You want to enjoy that "extra" hour of sun? All you have to do is get your sorry slug self up out of bed in the morning when a little thing called sunrise happens. I mean, my everloving gods, humans are seriously a terrible species, we know that, but this really takes the cake. You want to enjoy this hour of light but are convinced that you are incapable of doing so in the morning when it happens. You'd rather create a system of semi-annual clock changing rather than just get your lazy bones out of your bed in the morning. What. The. Actual. 

Demanding and lazy. Bunch of sloths - no offense to the sloths, who are nowhere near as demanding and absurd. 

Twelve Days of Oscars, Day 12: Foreign Language Film and the Big One You've All Been Waiting For

Oscars Day is here!

It has been a busy and complicated time for me, and sadly I was not able to make it through my entire checklist of 34 films before today, but I am definitely ahead of, you know, some people who aren't obsessed with such things. And of COURSE I've seen all of the nominees for Best Picture, silly. What do you take me for?

Best Picture: Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Foreign Language Film: A Fantastic Woman, Loveless, The Insult, On Body and Soul, The Square

Foreign Language Film is kind of like a Best Picture award, too. I love the Foreign Language category - and I'm aware that there are those among you who basically never see anything from it ever - so it's fun for me to pair it with the Best Picture category that everybody pays attention to. I love watching foreign films and I do pretty well getting to all the nominees eventually, but there are sometimes a few hard to come by in any given year that won't be released in the U.S. until after the ceremony. This year, I've seen four out of five, including the most recent I watched, Loveless, which opened at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago just  two days ago, Friday. You know I don't normally go to movies on their opening weekends or any movies on Friday nights, but I made an exception for a totally dismal bleak some-(all)-might-say-depressing Russian film nominated in the foreign language category playing at the ever cool Music Box. Needless to say, I loved the film. I love me some dark Russian art portraying the misery of the human experience. So good. Does the plot even matter? In this one, a divorcing couple who absolutely hate each other are too busy fighting to notice their suffering 12-year-old son, who goes missing. It's so damn good.

Also really good? The Insult. That one's from Lebanon, and has all my favorite themes (that aren't the dismal bleak Russian summation of our pathetic human existence - but on a grand scale) such as redemption, human rights, a feminist lawyer, family, grievances, forgiveness, international conflict resolution, all the good stuff. Loved it.

Didn't like as much: A Fantastic Woman, but I fear it could win because people are going to be proud of themselves to vote for its depiction of the cruelty toward a trans woman. I wish trendy factors like that weren't a factor, but they are, which annoys me. The film is kind of weirdly cliched with heavy-handed symbolism at parts, but it was good - I just don't think it was the best. And I hated The Square. If that wins, I will throw things at the television. If On Body and Soul  wins I won't do anything except remember that I still need to watch it.

All right then. Best Picture!

Man, I did not know, until I saw Call Me By Your Name, if I was going to think any of the nominees was most triumphant. I enjoyed The Post, Dunkirk, and Darkest Hour in many ways, but each of them had a bit of formula in their cinematic trajectories and Post and Darkest Hour had very specific flawed scenes where you're just like, really? He *had* to step into the street and be startled and almost hit by a car because he's in awe of The New York Times? Pointless. Dumb. Really? He had to go conquer his Underground fears and find the common people? No, obviously, in real life, not exactly like that on the way to that meeting. He apparently did some stuff like that, but not in such ...storytelling climactic style. Dumb. (If not pointless.) I enjoyed Get Out a lot but didn't think it was the best of the year. Ditto Lady Bird - I think the outsized reaction to it (i.e. "There's never been anything like it!") is utterly baffling. I did like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and don't totally agree with the backlash against it, as I get what Martin McDonagh does/is trying to do, but it still wasn't my "oh-my-god-so-good-#1-pick!" And I don't care for The Shape of Water (as I've mentioned on many, many other Days of Oscars) despite my recognition of Guillermo del Toro realizing his vision, and I hated Phantom Thread. Really, though. Ugh. But Call Me By Your Name  was lush and engrossing and pretty and full of intellectual people who like to read and be in different countries and have fun and even though it was male, it achieves a stunning brilliance during a certain emotional monologue delivered by Michael Stuhlbarg that I could just watch forever on an endless loop.

And so there you have it.  Picks: I'm on Team Call Me By Your Name.  But I think something else will win. If it's The Shape of Water I will want to throw things (though it's a bit late in the night by then for throwing things,  the ceremony ending) so I'm just going to stick with my theory that Get Out is the second or third favorite of everyone who doesn't have it as their top pick so through preferential voting it will triumph. Maybe.
Foreign: I want Loveless. It might be A Fantastic Woman, ugh ugh ugh.

But I want to know what YOU  think! What's going to win?
What's your pick for Best Pic?
Or any other category?
Did you join an Oscar pool? Are you confident in your choices?

OSCARS DAY IS HERE!!!