![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Spring Season: Week 11
Uuuuuugh. I'm so goddamn tired. BUT THIS IS MY LIFE NOW, SO WE SHAN'T DWELL. Honestly, if I'd updated this thing on Monday like I meant to, this would have read more like 'I TAKE IT ALL BACK, I LOVE SHIFTWORK NOW and I know that is a gross exaggeration but I DON'T CARE', but that didn't happen, so here we are. It just felt weird trying to write an update at home, like I was wasting valuable home time that could be better spent on other things? I don't know, either way, THAT WEEK OFF WORK IS REALLY GODDAMN AWESOME, Y'ALL. Awesome enough to be worth spending every other week in a state of constant sleep deprivation (still averaging 2/3 hours per night, which remains... insufficient but better than nothing) while busting my ass at work? Honestly? Maybe. Ask me again in a month??
Work is... a little oof at the moment, but I suspect that's because my weeks are going to be frontloaded, due to catching up on a week's worth of warranty work that nobody else here knows how to do for some reason. I mean, I guess it's good that I've managed to get myself into a position where they can't easily replace me, but cramming a week's worth of my prior workload into as few twelve-hour shifts as possible so I can stay on top of it all the rest of the time (while being customer-facing throughout) is... A Lot. But the week isn't even half over and I THINK I can get through this mountain of filing by the end of tomorrow at the latest, so... hooray? I've lost all sense of what is and isn't a victory anymore. Also of what day it is! I finally get to experience that whole aspect of quarantine living that I'd been missing out on this whole time! WHY DOES OUR WORK WEEK START ON WEDNESDAY, IT'S SO DAMN CONFUSING.
Slowly fashioning my sad, unused office in the back into a delightful little lunch cave where I can sit in the dark for half an hour and eat overpriced delivery food with my stories. THE WORK READS:
It was my mom's birthday yesterday, and her coworkers all threw her a really nice party, with pizza and cupcakes and ice cream cake, which made me feel somewhat better about only being able to come home from work and throw some stuff that I got off her Amazon wish list at her. She seems to have had a good day! Next year she turns 50 and I have no goddamn clue what I'm going to do!
Okay, anyway, I had a whole week off work so I watched a whole ton of movies:
Turbo Charged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003): Truly essential viewing. How else would we know how Brian got to Miami??? SPOILERS: he drove there
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003): Roman is the most relatable character in film history. I, too, am always hongry.
The Slender Thread (1965): Really good, but I couldn't help but wonder about a version of the movie where Anne Bancroft is never actually seen on camera, just remains a voice on the end of the line throughout and we stay in the room with Poitier and co. all the way. She was really good, don't get me wrong, I just... think it would have been neater? Anyway, my favourite genre of movie is ones where a woman tries to drown herself by walking into the ocean and also Telly Savalas is there, what's yours.
La sirène du Mississipi (1969): Love is complicated! Sometimes it comes in unexpected forms and sometimes it takes all your money and sometimes you murder innocent people for it anyway and sometimes it tries to rat poison you but that's okay! That's love! It's beautiful, really! I have no idea what the actual message here is, but gosh, Belmondo and Deneuve are both so pretty.
The Decameron (1971): I have to assume this stuff was funnier in the 1300s. Not horrible, but I made the mistake of watching Pasolini's entire Trilogy of Life in one day and uuuuuuugh I was so over it all by the end. Every single story is about fucking! It gets really goddamn tedious after a while! Even with the stupid poop jokes!
The Canterbury Tales (1972): Pasolini is Chaucer this time, and it worked for me a LOT better than The Decameron did. I actually found it pretty funny in places (she farts right in his face! I'm not made of stone!), and it did more interesting stuff with the anthology format than just horny nonsense (THERE WAS LOTS OF HORNY NONSENSE TOO, THOUGH). Sooooo many period-inappropriate tan lines. But the whole Chaplin/Keystone Kops pastiche was great (even with all the random naked ladies at the end for no reason), and the final hell sequence was BONKERS in all the best ways.
Arabian Nights (1974): Aaaaaand we're back to the stories being about nothing but sex, usually involving fifteen-year-olds this time! Hooray! Go to horny jail, Pasolini, I am done with you (sorry you got murdered tho).
Ghost World (2001): Peak millennial coming-of-age ennui. I love this shit, I just can't help it.
Art School Confidential (2006): I want to watch the version of this movie where Matt Keeslar's character is the star, because I feel like it would be amazing.
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981): Man, I dunno. It's pretty good, but I just can't truck with movies whose whole conceit involves constantly reminding me that I'm watching actors playing roles on a set (see also: Vanya on 42nd Street), it just takes me right out of BOTH stories.
River of Grass (1994), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek's Cutoff (2010): A trio of Reichardt rewatches while I organized my shelves. I really like her shit, and should really get around to checking out Old Joy already.
The Out-of-Towners (1970): Oh goody, it's every irrational travel anxiety I've ever had, all wrapped up in a comedy! If I hadn't seen Neil Simon's credit, I'd have known he wrote it within about thirty seconds, anyway. Pretty fun, although the final moral didn't really seem to jive with the rest of the movie. How is this about urban life vs. rural life?? It was a cosmically shitty trip, every day wouldn't be like that if they moved to New York!!
Targets (1968): Holy SHIT was this my jam. I love how the trailer promises some deep dive into the heart of a killer when the clean-cut white mass gunman gets NO motivation or inner life whatsoever, he's just some piece of shit movie monster who doesn't deserve any more consideration than that because none of this is actually about him at all, fuck that guy. Really wish that aspect of the plot wasn't still so relevant, though! Anyway, what a fantastic turn from Karloff; even if he's literally just playing himself, it's SO nice to see him get a straight dramatic role like that so late in his career, the stuff where it's just him and Bogdanovich shooting the shit in his hotel room is just delightful and that ENDING. Tense and dramatic and just instantly iconic, I really liked this movie, wow!
In Cold Blood (1967): Took me the better part of an hour to really get into what it was doing, but after that, yeah, it's kinda brilliant? Meandering but so deliberate about it, and the hunting lodge speech at the end absolutely destroyed me. Also, Scott Wilson is one of those actors that I only ever knew as an old man (Sam Braun, baby!), so getting used to him being so young here fucked me UP.
$ (1971): It's like... a wacky caper heist movie, but played entirely straight the entire time. SO strange and SO fun.
A Dandy in Aspic (1968): Not bad, but kinda dry for a Cold War thriller. Don't understand what the hell the title means, and I don't care enough to look it up.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969): Man, I like this movie even more on the rewatch. All four of them manage to be so utterly insufferable while also being really endearing, and I don't understand how! It still makes me uncomfortable how hot I find Elliott Gould in it!
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006): This movie opens on a street race against Brad from Home Improvement set to Kid Rock and that is all I have to say about that. HAN, THOUGH.
Cactus Flower (1969): Man, people win Oscars for some of the strangest shit, huh? Anyway, this is an entire movie of FAKE MARRIAGE TROPE where the AGE-APPROPRIATE ROMANCES end up being the endgame ones, so it is aces in my book, even with all the problematic shit along the way.
Mackenna's Gold (1969): Fun little treasure hunt of a western with an absolutely STACKED cast of mostly cannon fodder (Burgess Meredith! Lee J. Cobb! Eli Wallach! Edward G. Robinson and his big weird head! Raymond Massey! All blown away after like five minutes! What the hell!), a whole lot of dodgy yet VERY ambitious special effects, extremely questionable physics, way too many white people playing otherwise, and some really fun POV shots along the way. My biggest problem with it was that Peck's character was so bland as the lead, I wound up rooting for Omar Sharif every step of the way. You'll make it to Paris one day, buddy, I believe in you!
The Anderson Tapes (1971): Truly bombastic heist flick by way of surveillance paranoia farce? What is even the point of the tapes? I don't know, but it's lots of really silly fun. INTRODUCING CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, my god. Campy gay Martin Balsam absolutely steals the show.
The Deadly Affair (1966): Putting a character who's constantly dozing off in a le Carré adaptation feels like a personal attack.
Kill the Umpire (1950): The tale of an alcoholic with rage issues who successfully gaslights his family into believing baseball is the reason he can't hold down a job. Dark stuff. (IT'S ACTUALLY A VERY STUPID COMEDY ABOUT A GUY WHO HATES UMPIRES THEN HAS TO BECOME ONE)
Fail Safe (1964): So, uh, turns out Dr. Strangelove wasn't actually that much of a satire, huh? Even played deadly fucking straight, this shit is ridiculous, good goddamn. This was great, making the absolute most of its stripped down everything, tense with solidly understated performances and that ENDING. WOOF. Really happy that I went into it not knowing much beyond "it's that OTHER bomb movie from 1964".
Okay, just a few hours left and then... four more days of this. I can do this. Aaaaand go!
Work is... a little oof at the moment, but I suspect that's because my weeks are going to be frontloaded, due to catching up on a week's worth of warranty work that nobody else here knows how to do for some reason. I mean, I guess it's good that I've managed to get myself into a position where they can't easily replace me, but cramming a week's worth of my prior workload into as few twelve-hour shifts as possible so I can stay on top of it all the rest of the time (while being customer-facing throughout) is... A Lot. But the week isn't even half over and I THINK I can get through this mountain of filing by the end of tomorrow at the latest, so... hooray? I've lost all sense of what is and isn't a victory anymore. Also of what day it is! I finally get to experience that whole aspect of quarantine living that I'd been missing out on this whole time! WHY DOES OUR WORK WEEK START ON WEDNESDAY, IT'S SO DAMN CONFUSING.
Slowly fashioning my sad, unused office in the back into a delightful little lunch cave where I can sit in the dark for half an hour and eat overpriced delivery food with my stories. THE WORK READS:
- Inside the Athletic: The Start-Up That Changed Journalism Forever (GQ)
- DrDrunkenstein's Reign of Terror (Slate)
- 2/26: The Oral History (Buzzfeed)
- Inside the World of Extreme Metal Logos (Kerrang!)
- Hideo Kojima's Strange, Unforgettable Video-Game Worlds (New York Times)
- Shell is Looking Forward (Intelligencer)
- There's an Entire Industry Dedicated to Making Foods Crispy, and It Is WILD (Bon Appetit)
- My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s (Gwern Branwyn)
- The Invisible City: How a Homeless Man Built a Life Underground (Guardian)
It was my mom's birthday yesterday, and her coworkers all threw her a really nice party, with pizza and cupcakes and ice cream cake, which made me feel somewhat better about only being able to come home from work and throw some stuff that I got off her Amazon wish list at her. She seems to have had a good day! Next year she turns 50 and I have no goddamn clue what I'm going to do!
Okay, anyway, I had a whole week off work so I watched a whole ton of movies:
Turbo Charged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003): Truly essential viewing. How else would we know how Brian got to Miami??? SPOILERS: he drove there
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003): Roman is the most relatable character in film history. I, too, am always hongry.
The Slender Thread (1965): Really good, but I couldn't help but wonder about a version of the movie where Anne Bancroft is never actually seen on camera, just remains a voice on the end of the line throughout and we stay in the room with Poitier and co. all the way. She was really good, don't get me wrong, I just... think it would have been neater? Anyway, my favourite genre of movie is ones where a woman tries to drown herself by walking into the ocean and also Telly Savalas is there, what's yours.
La sirène du Mississipi (1969): Love is complicated! Sometimes it comes in unexpected forms and sometimes it takes all your money and sometimes you murder innocent people for it anyway and sometimes it tries to rat poison you but that's okay! That's love! It's beautiful, really! I have no idea what the actual message here is, but gosh, Belmondo and Deneuve are both so pretty.
The Decameron (1971): I have to assume this stuff was funnier in the 1300s. Not horrible, but I made the mistake of watching Pasolini's entire Trilogy of Life in one day and uuuuuuugh I was so over it all by the end. Every single story is about fucking! It gets really goddamn tedious after a while! Even with the stupid poop jokes!
The Canterbury Tales (1972): Pasolini is Chaucer this time, and it worked for me a LOT better than The Decameron did. I actually found it pretty funny in places (she farts right in his face! I'm not made of stone!), and it did more interesting stuff with the anthology format than just horny nonsense (THERE WAS LOTS OF HORNY NONSENSE TOO, THOUGH). Sooooo many period-inappropriate tan lines. But the whole Chaplin/Keystone Kops pastiche was great (even with all the random naked ladies at the end for no reason), and the final hell sequence was BONKERS in all the best ways.
Arabian Nights (1974): Aaaaaand we're back to the stories being about nothing but sex, usually involving fifteen-year-olds this time! Hooray! Go to horny jail, Pasolini, I am done with you (sorry you got murdered tho).
Ghost World (2001): Peak millennial coming-of-age ennui. I love this shit, I just can't help it.
Art School Confidential (2006): I want to watch the version of this movie where Matt Keeslar's character is the star, because I feel like it would be amazing.
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981): Man, I dunno. It's pretty good, but I just can't truck with movies whose whole conceit involves constantly reminding me that I'm watching actors playing roles on a set (see also: Vanya on 42nd Street), it just takes me right out of BOTH stories.
River of Grass (1994), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek's Cutoff (2010): A trio of Reichardt rewatches while I organized my shelves. I really like her shit, and should really get around to checking out Old Joy already.
The Out-of-Towners (1970): Oh goody, it's every irrational travel anxiety I've ever had, all wrapped up in a comedy! If I hadn't seen Neil Simon's credit, I'd have known he wrote it within about thirty seconds, anyway. Pretty fun, although the final moral didn't really seem to jive with the rest of the movie. How is this about urban life vs. rural life?? It was a cosmically shitty trip, every day wouldn't be like that if they moved to New York!!
Targets (1968): Holy SHIT was this my jam. I love how the trailer promises some deep dive into the heart of a killer when the clean-cut white mass gunman gets NO motivation or inner life whatsoever, he's just some piece of shit movie monster who doesn't deserve any more consideration than that because none of this is actually about him at all, fuck that guy. Really wish that aspect of the plot wasn't still so relevant, though! Anyway, what a fantastic turn from Karloff; even if he's literally just playing himself, it's SO nice to see him get a straight dramatic role like that so late in his career, the stuff where it's just him and Bogdanovich shooting the shit in his hotel room is just delightful and that ENDING. Tense and dramatic and just instantly iconic, I really liked this movie, wow!
In Cold Blood (1967): Took me the better part of an hour to really get into what it was doing, but after that, yeah, it's kinda brilliant? Meandering but so deliberate about it, and the hunting lodge speech at the end absolutely destroyed me. Also, Scott Wilson is one of those actors that I only ever knew as an old man (Sam Braun, baby!), so getting used to him being so young here fucked me UP.
$ (1971): It's like... a wacky caper heist movie, but played entirely straight the entire time. SO strange and SO fun.
A Dandy in Aspic (1968): Not bad, but kinda dry for a Cold War thriller. Don't understand what the hell the title means, and I don't care enough to look it up.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969): Man, I like this movie even more on the rewatch. All four of them manage to be so utterly insufferable while also being really endearing, and I don't understand how! It still makes me uncomfortable how hot I find Elliott Gould in it!
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006): This movie opens on a street race against Brad from Home Improvement set to Kid Rock and that is all I have to say about that. HAN, THOUGH.
Cactus Flower (1969): Man, people win Oscars for some of the strangest shit, huh? Anyway, this is an entire movie of FAKE MARRIAGE TROPE where the AGE-APPROPRIATE ROMANCES end up being the endgame ones, so it is aces in my book, even with all the problematic shit along the way.
Mackenna's Gold (1969): Fun little treasure hunt of a western with an absolutely STACKED cast of mostly cannon fodder (Burgess Meredith! Lee J. Cobb! Eli Wallach! Edward G. Robinson and his big weird head! Raymond Massey! All blown away after like five minutes! What the hell!), a whole lot of dodgy yet VERY ambitious special effects, extremely questionable physics, way too many white people playing otherwise, and some really fun POV shots along the way. My biggest problem with it was that Peck's character was so bland as the lead, I wound up rooting for Omar Sharif every step of the way. You'll make it to Paris one day, buddy, I believe in you!
The Anderson Tapes (1971): Truly bombastic heist flick by way of surveillance paranoia farce? What is even the point of the tapes? I don't know, but it's lots of really silly fun. INTRODUCING CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, my god. Campy gay Martin Balsam absolutely steals the show.
The Deadly Affair (1966): Putting a character who's constantly dozing off in a le Carré adaptation feels like a personal attack.
Kill the Umpire (1950): The tale of an alcoholic with rage issues who successfully gaslights his family into believing baseball is the reason he can't hold down a job. Dark stuff. (IT'S ACTUALLY A VERY STUPID COMEDY ABOUT A GUY WHO HATES UMPIRES THEN HAS TO BECOME ONE)
Fail Safe (1964): So, uh, turns out Dr. Strangelove wasn't actually that much of a satire, huh? Even played deadly fucking straight, this shit is ridiculous, good goddamn. This was great, making the absolute most of its stripped down everything, tense with solidly understated performances and that ENDING. WOOF. Really happy that I went into it not knowing much beyond "it's that OTHER bomb movie from 1964".
Okay, just a few hours left and then... four more days of this. I can do this. Aaaaand go!