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Spring Season: Week 10
Let me tell you guys something, there is a real specific kind of dystopian vibe to starting out every shift of your 80-hour work week by receiving your daily water ration.
Ha ha I'm so exhausted! I'm cold all of the time and my eyes hurt for no reason! Also I'm starting this entry in the morning and will probably just pick at it all day, so it will probably be more of a mess than usual! My emotions are on an absolute hair trigger (I cried SO much when I found out double rainbow guy died) and fluctuate wildly from one minute to the next! The tiniest of work stressors can set me off, seemingly at random! This is fine! Everything is fine! EVERYTHING IS NOT FINE.
I've been averaging about 2-3 hours of sleep a night, which is better than nothing, and Saturday was the exception, because I crashed HARD and got 10 solid hours. If that tipping point comes right smack in the middle of the work week, that seems like a good thing? I guess? Or at least like this MIGHT be sustainable long term, as long as I get that one catch-up night? At least the water rations are a nice reminder to hydrate; we get three bottles, so it's real easy to break my day into four-hour chunks with them (though I should really be bringing my own from home to supplement them). Lunches are proving... difficult. I only get half an hour so I can't go home for lunch anymore and have just been kinda sadly scrounging for sustenance where I can. Sometimes mom gives me pieces of her lunches on my way out the door, since I leave about fifteen minutes before she does. I may just have to bite the bullet and start ordering out every day. If I stick to the places with free delivery, it should actually wind up being cheaper than when I was at my 'ordering out every work night' peak; 20-25 dollars a day, seven out of fourteen days, for ALL of my food until evening? Could be worse, especially since it'll still be at LEAST a few more months before I'll have Movie Night Wednesdays to budget for again.
Irrationally stressed out by falling behind on all of my podcasts. There's so many of them! How will I ever catch up if I can't listen to at least a few of them at work (I'm customer-facing for the entire shift with no office hours until this is over)?? Though I HAVE been using my downtime to start digging into my gigantic pile of interesting articles that I saved to Evernote and never got around to reading in their entirety, so that's something I guess. Hell, I think I'll even make a note of them all in here just because, HAVE A NEW REGULAR SECTION, THE WORK READS:
Every morning, I dutifully log into Dreamwidth and crack open my inbox, and every night, I close it back down again, having tagged absolutely nothing. I may just have to give up the ghost and accept that any sort of written creativity is going to be beyond me in my seven-ons and hope people will still be down to tag with me if I take every other week off entirely.
Didn't do anything for Mother's Day and feel kinda bad about that but I'm just. So tired. Hopefully she understands. Also her birthday is in ten days, right at the beginning of my NEXT seven-on, so, uh, fuck.
The last couple of mornings have been cold enough to make me take my winter jacket BACK out for the walk to work, which is v. disappointing. Also some of the touch sensors on the bottom edge of my phone seem to have died, which is EXTREMELY frustrating. ALSO I'm so goddamn staticky today for some reason, and every time I touch the debit machine it shorts out for a second which kinda makes me feel like a mutant which is kinda neat actually, never mind, I retract that last one from the Komplaint Korner. Moving on!
It's almost lunchtime. I think I'm going to try making a habit of ordering from Freshii; free delivery, and also it's good, healthyish food that I don't actually... like all that much? So I won't be tempted to overeat out of boredom/stress/sleepiness, which would only make these days that much worse, so. And who knows, maybe I'll come to enjoy it after a while, like that bullshit article about the Google employees (not that I think it's bullshit bullshit, but it definitely kinda struck me as having a big smack of the future not being evenly distributed about it)!
And now, to the (ever-so-slightly truncated) movie spoiler zone...
Murder on the Orient Express (1974): Man, this movie's just so fun. That CAST. That SCORE. That PARLOUR ROOM SCENE. Finney's Poirot is a little too goofy to really click with me, but god, it's just FUN. Anthony Perkins' weird tic-filled Jimmy Stewart THING that he's doing, Sean Connery and his 'peep cleaner' bit, every single goddamn time Vanessa Redgrave winks, I LOVE IT ALL.
The Forest for the Trees (2003): What if Blackboard Jungle was 80 minutes of excruciating German cringe? Probably quite good, but almost physically painful to watch in the lead character's social awkwardness. I'm sure this speaks really beautifully to a whole lot of people's insecurities (like mine!) but also OH MY GOD, JUST LEAVE THAT POOR WOMAN ALONE SHE DOESN'T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND ANYMORE YOU ARE SO WEIRD. Also seemingly filmed on a potato. History has not been kind to the early-00s advent of digital ubiquity.
Scarlet Street (1945): Oh, WOW. It's like Fritz Lang somehow made both our universe's and another universe's version of the same movie, because this is just The Woman in the Window (same exact cast, very similar plot elements) but somehow completely skewed and it's GREAT. Really solidly depressing character stuff, Edward G. Robinson and his big weird head just shattering my heart into little bitty pieces with his seeming total lack of guile in the standard 'old man falls for sketchy young woman' setup, and then the last twenty minutes are just a TOTAL trip, an absolute punch in the face of an ending, SO good. IT'S GOT ASMR GHOSTS FFS. Watch this movie.
Of Human Bondage (1934): BETTE FREAKING DAVIS. I think this movie was a little overhyped for me going in, since I went so ham on her early stuff a couple of months back and this is the movie that's kinda known for her becoming BETTE FREAKING DAVIS, but it was pretty solid for what it was. Watching her and her nutso Cockney accent transform into BETTE FREAKING DAVIS right in front of my eyes was pretty rad, though, That One Speech is every bit as horrific and amazing as promised. Mostly it just made me want to rewatch The Petrified Forest, because it must make her and Leslie Howard's weird-ass relationship in that movie EVEN WEIRDER to watch.
Hell's House (1932): Another early Davis joint, and she's good, but also more of an afterthought here. Mostly it's about teaching kids not to narc, which is always an important lesson, but Pat O'Brien ends up stealing every single scene he's in.
Mauvais Sang (1986): Continuing the trend of Leos Carax movies that I don't particularly like (that whole 'love AIDS' angle, eeeeeech, and Julie Delpy is uncomfortably young) save ONE SPECIFIC SHOT/SCENE which I end up LOVING TO THE POINT OF OBSESSION. In Holy Motors, it was Kylie's song; in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, it was the bit with the burning posters in the subway; here, it's pretty fucking obviously the Modern Love scene. I may not get most of what Carax does, but I will never be confused by his obsession with Denis Lavant, just... good goddamn.
Elles (2011): All I knew about this movie was the title and that Juliette Binoche was in it, and as I started it, I thought to myself 'I bet this is gonna have really graphic sex scenes' and then it opened on a blowjob, so. This felt like it THINKS it's being a lot more sympathetic to sex workers than it actually is? Also probably thinks it's being a lot more interesting than it is. If the whole thing had been as neat and weird as the dinner scene at the end, I might have liked it more? Those two girls were pretty great, though.
Separate Tables (1958): Conflicting! There's some really tasty drama in here, and the performances are pretty across-the-board excellent: David Niven making a sexual predator somehow endearing and sympathetic, Burt Lancaster being a charming drunk and smacking his ex-wife around in such a way as to somehow make them BOTH seem horrible, Wendy Hiller BUT I'LL GET BACK TO HER, etc. But the dodgy subject matter (are we supposed to be... rooting for the horrifically toxic couple to get back together? fucking WHY, because they're hot?? they are AWFUL together and he will probably end up murdering her!) and the way the two main plots are barely connected and just kinda dance around each other with a shared cast kept me from really connecting with a lot of it. Wendy Hiller was fucking GREAT, though, she just DESTROYS everyone else in this movie and it is fucking BAFFLING to me the bullshit Hollywood politics that must have gone into somehow saying Niven and Kerr were leads in this thing while she was only supporting (though her and Niven being the ones to actually win Oscars for it was 100% the right call, so I guess it all worked out in the end). Worth a watch!
They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970): It's like... what if The Departed got a sequel, but it was directed by, like, Neil Burger and it was just a procedural about Mark Wahlberg's character solving a crime, with no reference to the events of the first film other than the title being I'm the Guy Who Does His Job? THAT WOULD BE PRETTY WEIRD, RIGHT? THIS MOVIE IS PRETTY WEIRD. I mean, it's not BAD, it's got two of the best parts of In the Heat of the Night (Sidney Poitier and a bangin' Quincy Jones score), but completely divorced from the broader context of that movie (not to mention the southern setting), it's just... why?
Murder on the Orient Express (1974): So I meant to watch 2 Fast 2 Furious last night, but Separate Tables made me fall so completely in love with Wendy Hiller that I needed to go back and revisit this to stan properly this time.
Okay my food is here so I'm gonna hit post on this bish.
Just one more day of this. One more day of this and I can sleep.
Ha ha I'm so exhausted! I'm cold all of the time and my eyes hurt for no reason! Also I'm starting this entry in the morning and will probably just pick at it all day, so it will probably be more of a mess than usual! My emotions are on an absolute hair trigger (I cried SO much when I found out double rainbow guy died) and fluctuate wildly from one minute to the next! The tiniest of work stressors can set me off, seemingly at random! This is fine! Everything is fine! EVERYTHING IS NOT FINE.
I've been averaging about 2-3 hours of sleep a night, which is better than nothing, and Saturday was the exception, because I crashed HARD and got 10 solid hours. If that tipping point comes right smack in the middle of the work week, that seems like a good thing? I guess? Or at least like this MIGHT be sustainable long term, as long as I get that one catch-up night? At least the water rations are a nice reminder to hydrate; we get three bottles, so it's real easy to break my day into four-hour chunks with them (though I should really be bringing my own from home to supplement them). Lunches are proving... difficult. I only get half an hour so I can't go home for lunch anymore and have just been kinda sadly scrounging for sustenance where I can. Sometimes mom gives me pieces of her lunches on my way out the door, since I leave about fifteen minutes before she does. I may just have to bite the bullet and start ordering out every day. If I stick to the places with free delivery, it should actually wind up being cheaper than when I was at my 'ordering out every work night' peak; 20-25 dollars a day, seven out of fourteen days, for ALL of my food until evening? Could be worse, especially since it'll still be at LEAST a few more months before I'll have Movie Night Wednesdays to budget for again.
Irrationally stressed out by falling behind on all of my podcasts. There's so many of them! How will I ever catch up if I can't listen to at least a few of them at work (I'm customer-facing for the entire shift with no office hours until this is over)?? Though I HAVE been using my downtime to start digging into my gigantic pile of interesting articles that I saved to Evernote and never got around to reading in their entirety, so that's something I guess. Hell, I think I'll even make a note of them all in here just because, HAVE A NEW REGULAR SECTION, THE WORK READS:
- How Hard Will the Robots Make Us Work? (The Verge)
- The Future is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed and Also It Sucks (OneZero)
- Poverty Isn't a Lack of Character. It's a Lack of Cash. (The Correspondent)
- A Week in Manila with Manny Pacquiao: Senator, Boxer... and Future President? (ESPN)
- This Brand is Late Capitalism (The Baffler)
- The Tyranny of Terrazzo: Will the Millennial Aesthetic Ever End? (The Cut)
- It Doesn't Matter If Anyone Exists or Not (The Atlantic)
- Ticked Off: What Happens When TikTok Fame Fades (Vox)
- The American Restaurant is on Life Support (The Counter)
- How Google Got Its Employees to Eat Their Vegetables (OneZero)
Every morning, I dutifully log into Dreamwidth and crack open my inbox, and every night, I close it back down again, having tagged absolutely nothing. I may just have to give up the ghost and accept that any sort of written creativity is going to be beyond me in my seven-ons and hope people will still be down to tag with me if I take every other week off entirely.
Didn't do anything for Mother's Day and feel kinda bad about that but I'm just. So tired. Hopefully she understands. Also her birthday is in ten days, right at the beginning of my NEXT seven-on, so, uh, fuck.
The last couple of mornings have been cold enough to make me take my winter jacket BACK out for the walk to work, which is v. disappointing. Also some of the touch sensors on the bottom edge of my phone seem to have died, which is EXTREMELY frustrating. ALSO I'm so goddamn staticky today for some reason, and every time I touch the debit machine it shorts out for a second which kinda makes me feel like a mutant which is kinda neat actually, never mind, I retract that last one from the Komplaint Korner. Moving on!
It's almost lunchtime. I think I'm going to try making a habit of ordering from Freshii; free delivery, and also it's good, healthyish food that I don't actually... like all that much? So I won't be tempted to overeat out of boredom/stress/sleepiness, which would only make these days that much worse, so. And who knows, maybe I'll come to enjoy it after a while, like that bullshit article about the Google employees (not that I think it's bullshit bullshit, but it definitely kinda struck me as having a big smack of the future not being evenly distributed about it)!
And now, to the (ever-so-slightly truncated) movie spoiler zone...
Murder on the Orient Express (1974): Man, this movie's just so fun. That CAST. That SCORE. That PARLOUR ROOM SCENE. Finney's Poirot is a little too goofy to really click with me, but god, it's just FUN. Anthony Perkins' weird tic-filled Jimmy Stewart THING that he's doing, Sean Connery and his 'peep cleaner' bit, every single goddamn time Vanessa Redgrave winks, I LOVE IT ALL.
The Forest for the Trees (2003): What if Blackboard Jungle was 80 minutes of excruciating German cringe? Probably quite good, but almost physically painful to watch in the lead character's social awkwardness. I'm sure this speaks really beautifully to a whole lot of people's insecurities (like mine!) but also OH MY GOD, JUST LEAVE THAT POOR WOMAN ALONE SHE DOESN'T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND ANYMORE YOU ARE SO WEIRD. Also seemingly filmed on a potato. History has not been kind to the early-00s advent of digital ubiquity.
Scarlet Street (1945): Oh, WOW. It's like Fritz Lang somehow made both our universe's and another universe's version of the same movie, because this is just The Woman in the Window (same exact cast, very similar plot elements) but somehow completely skewed and it's GREAT. Really solidly depressing character stuff, Edward G. Robinson and his big weird head just shattering my heart into little bitty pieces with his seeming total lack of guile in the standard 'old man falls for sketchy young woman' setup, and then the last twenty minutes are just a TOTAL trip, an absolute punch in the face of an ending, SO good. IT'S GOT ASMR GHOSTS FFS. Watch this movie.
Of Human Bondage (1934): BETTE FREAKING DAVIS. I think this movie was a little overhyped for me going in, since I went so ham on her early stuff a couple of months back and this is the movie that's kinda known for her becoming BETTE FREAKING DAVIS, but it was pretty solid for what it was. Watching her and her nutso Cockney accent transform into BETTE FREAKING DAVIS right in front of my eyes was pretty rad, though, That One Speech is every bit as horrific and amazing as promised. Mostly it just made me want to rewatch The Petrified Forest, because it must make her and Leslie Howard's weird-ass relationship in that movie EVEN WEIRDER to watch.
Hell's House (1932): Another early Davis joint, and she's good, but also more of an afterthought here. Mostly it's about teaching kids not to narc, which is always an important lesson, but Pat O'Brien ends up stealing every single scene he's in.
Mauvais Sang (1986): Continuing the trend of Leos Carax movies that I don't particularly like (that whole 'love AIDS' angle, eeeeeech, and Julie Delpy is uncomfortably young) save ONE SPECIFIC SHOT/SCENE which I end up LOVING TO THE POINT OF OBSESSION. In Holy Motors, it was Kylie's song; in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, it was the bit with the burning posters in the subway; here, it's pretty fucking obviously the Modern Love scene. I may not get most of what Carax does, but I will never be confused by his obsession with Denis Lavant, just... good goddamn.
Elles (2011): All I knew about this movie was the title and that Juliette Binoche was in it, and as I started it, I thought to myself 'I bet this is gonna have really graphic sex scenes' and then it opened on a blowjob, so. This felt like it THINKS it's being a lot more sympathetic to sex workers than it actually is? Also probably thinks it's being a lot more interesting than it is. If the whole thing had been as neat and weird as the dinner scene at the end, I might have liked it more? Those two girls were pretty great, though.
Separate Tables (1958): Conflicting! There's some really tasty drama in here, and the performances are pretty across-the-board excellent: David Niven making a sexual predator somehow endearing and sympathetic, Burt Lancaster being a charming drunk and smacking his ex-wife around in such a way as to somehow make them BOTH seem horrible, Wendy Hiller BUT I'LL GET BACK TO HER, etc. But the dodgy subject matter (are we supposed to be... rooting for the horrifically toxic couple to get back together? fucking WHY, because they're hot?? they are AWFUL together and he will probably end up murdering her!) and the way the two main plots are barely connected and just kinda dance around each other with a shared cast kept me from really connecting with a lot of it. Wendy Hiller was fucking GREAT, though, she just DESTROYS everyone else in this movie and it is fucking BAFFLING to me the bullshit Hollywood politics that must have gone into somehow saying Niven and Kerr were leads in this thing while she was only supporting (though her and Niven being the ones to actually win Oscars for it was 100% the right call, so I guess it all worked out in the end). Worth a watch!
They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970): It's like... what if The Departed got a sequel, but it was directed by, like, Neil Burger and it was just a procedural about Mark Wahlberg's character solving a crime, with no reference to the events of the first film other than the title being I'm the Guy Who Does His Job? THAT WOULD BE PRETTY WEIRD, RIGHT? THIS MOVIE IS PRETTY WEIRD. I mean, it's not BAD, it's got two of the best parts of In the Heat of the Night (Sidney Poitier and a bangin' Quincy Jones score), but completely divorced from the broader context of that movie (not to mention the southern setting), it's just... why?
Murder on the Orient Express (1974): So I meant to watch 2 Fast 2 Furious last night, but Separate Tables made me fall so completely in love with Wendy Hiller that I needed to go back and revisit this to stan properly this time.
Okay my food is here so I'm gonna hit post on this bish.
Just one more day of this. One more day of this and I can sleep.
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THIS IS ALL INSANE, I'M SORRY YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT
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