What I watched: Spiderman: No Way Home. This is one of the better post-Endgame Marvel films. I went into it with very low expectations but was pleasantly surprised at how well they integrated all of the various and sundry other Spiderman characters—and especially appreciated that they didn’t attempt to de-age Tobey Maguire, and just had his character at the age he would have been anyway. Nicely done. Would watch again.
What I read: What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. This is a memoir of Stephanie’s struggles with CPTSD and the various and sundry treatment modalities available. The first half is straight personal narrative, and the second half is a combination of narrative and investigative journalism into the treatments. You may remember her from This American Life, so she is a professional and handles the subject matter very well. The first half is a tough read, but worth it to get to the second half.
What I listened to: Marcus King is uglier than homemade sin, but he’s a great musician. His latest album came out last year.
Peacock is killing it with its original content this year from Pokerface to Mrs. Davis and now Twisted Metal! I do not regret my subscription at all. I can barely say that about the rest of my streaming services (Netflix, Max, Hulu, Paramount+, Amazon Prime).
Twisted Metal is fucking hilarious. It’s based on the video game series of the same name. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be familiar with the game to enjoy it. The show is perfectly cast. The more famous actors are Anthony Mackie, Neve Campbell, Will Arnett and Thomas Haden Church. It’s full of Easter eggs, 90’s nostalgia, music from the 90/00’s ( @luigivuoto your favorite shower ballad is highlighted in E2). I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of watching Anthony Mackie be funny before. He’s fantastic! Stephanie Beatriz’s deadpan personality reminds me of Aubrey Plaza. She’s the perfect contrast to Mackie’s chatterbox character. They play well off each other. I’m three episodes in and my adrenaline is pumping but I’m also already feeling sad that there’s only seven episodes left. There’s got to be a German word for that high-low combo feeling.
TL;DR It’s like Mad Max meets Deadpool. All cars and guns and jokes.
You’ll get a feel for the humor and action without too many spoilers if you watch the trailer until about 1:15.
I’m sure @farscythe will also enjoy this show, if he can get his hands on it.
i cant…no peacock here….and all my good torrenting sites are russian…and as such totally fucking nuked over here…..unless i decide to pay for a vpn….which i dont wanna….coz money
the fuck is the point of pirating things if i have to pay to do it?
I had six books drop on the same day, so I am all about the reading.
I watched the first couple of episodes of Los Espookys on
HBO Max Zaslav’s FollyMax.It’s about some Hispanic friends who start a business staging fake supernatural events for things like parties or fake exorcisms.
I want to like it, but Fred Armisen has a big role and there’s something about him I find really offputting.
I feel the same way about him! He gives off sociopathic vibes or just seems like he is mean and a bully.
Miley Cyrus released her latest song Used to Be Young. I hate that I like her music. Since I don’t believe that we should separate artist from art, let’s add in some context as penance. She is a white privileged nepo baby with no self awareness. While I can relate to the sentiments of this song, she has yet to acknowledge that she benefited from co-opting and appropriating Black culture and people for the past decade as this article from 2017 points out.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/miley-cyrus-rightful-backlash-past-cultural-appropriation
It’s racist that she is positioning herself as having grown up and out of a phase of youth and rebellion when her version of that phase was all about Black culture. As if Black culture is immature and dangerous and not for respectable adults.
On a lighter note, I’m not sure what’s going on with the out of sync lip singing. Are her veneers making it more obvious or is it purposely done for some artsy meaning which escapes me?
…so…while I was off pretending the internet wasn’t a thing I did manage to watch a couple of things…like the barbie movie which I thoroughly enjoyed being an excuse for a cousin’s kid to go see again…it’s generally fabulous but AI was not prepared for the 2001: a space odyssey pastiche it more or less opens with & may have laughed more than she did for most of it?
…& someone on here mentioned “they cloned tyrone”…which I also saw & would say nice things about (…see, I’m getting caught up on my homework)
…but until I get something sorted out to fill in for the maybe-fixable TV that turned its toes up on me before I went to far flung places for a few weeks I’m holding off on bingeing my way through the recent season of strange new worlds…& a couple of other things
…netflix seems to have a new animated monkey kind movie, so I shall probably succumb to that sooner or later…but after their write up above I’m thinking I need to add twisted metal to more of poker face, which I saw a couple of episodes of while staying with someone with the right subscription?
…oh, also…I read a kind of odd but quite fun book…it’s called “there is no antimimetics division” & by a guy who goes by qntm as a handle that’s online & also on his books
…the premise involves trying to combat the influence of things that intrinsically possess the property of making you forget they exist…so it’s a little convoluted in places but on the whole manages to keep it together enough for the story to make sense?
I’m sorry, what did you just write? It somehow completely slipped my mind.
…now imagine it goes for things that have been around for a really long time…or are of huge significance…like places…or people…or…indeed…your career as the head of an antimemetics division that’s currently losing a multi-generational war
…honestly, it’s rather good that way…even if you’re not partial to the characters or narrative there’s some interesting ideas about ideas & our ideas about them that are fun to think about…in a hopefully less apocalyptic context?
i…somewhat predictably have not read or watched anything….and am currently somewhat in shock at kylie minogue being in the charts again
havent heard from her since like….2005 ish
this hasnt been stuck in my head for a couple days now at all….nope…no sirree
What My Bones Know was such a good book! I recommended it to a bunch of friends!
I enjoyed No Way Home too. I found it sad that he had to
I enjoyed the Spidey -verse movies more though.