hereliescorri

[hereliescorri]

I read something recently where someone was describing the common neurodivergent relationship to rules. And to be clear, I’m pretty sure this was like, a screenshot of a tumblr post and not from a peer-reviewed psychology journal or anything like that. But anyway, they talked about how ND folk basically have two modes when it comes to rules. If a rule doesn’t make sense and seems arbitrary, like it has no function except to just be a rule, we’ll blow it the fuck off. Hard pass. Not interested. At least in our heads anyway. I’m sure there’s plenty of ND people who’s fear of getting in trouble is stronger than they’re loathing of arbitrary rules, but mentally it’s a big middle finger. 

On the other hand, if a rule makes sense to us and we can justify it, we will absolutely follow it, and other people not following a perfectly reasonable and necessary rule (as we perceive it), will throw us into a rage — again, at least mentally. There will be an internal hissy fit, if not an external one. 

This very much resonated me, and it’s never more apparent than when traveling. People lose their ever-loving minds in transit, and it drives me up the wall. If you listen, you are constantly provided exact instructions on what you should do and where you should go, and people either don’t listen or just decide those rules don’t apply to them. It’s the little things, like the woman today who walked halfway up the walk side of the escalator and then just… stopped, causing everyone behind her to have to come to a sudden halt. Guess she was looking for the most comfortable step? Or there’s the people when the plane is landing that the flight attendants have to go tell to put their seat backs and tray tables up after it’s been said over the loudspeaker several times. The guy sitting adjacent to me not only had to be told that, but then as we were descending and even the flight attendants had to take their seats, he decided to get up and take his kid to the bathroom. We are about to slam into the ground at a bajillion miles per hour, sir. What are you, some kind of maniac?

It’s also worth noting that this man was traveling with his wife and four children, and when he realized we were able to exit out the back of the plane, he booked it out the door with his oldest teen son and onto the shuttle, where he placed his luggage in the middle of the aisle, sat down in the one available seat, and spread his newspaper out in front of him. Not gonna lie, I kicked the luggage out of the way so I could get by. As the shuttle doors closed, his son pointed toward the plane and said something in Icelandic — clearly, uh, dad, you fuck, you left the entire rest of the family on the airplane. Why are people like this?

When it comes to travel, there are a whole bunch of spoken and unspoken rules we are meant to abide by both to make things go smoothly and because the actual process of traveling fucking sucks and we want it to be the least painful it can be for everyone. But a large chunk of folks can only conceive of it being better for themselves, so they cut in lines, they take their time putting their bags in overhead bins while everyone queues for their seats behind them, they ignore instructions from flight staff, they play their videos without headphones, they cough into their hands or into the air. The lady next to me on the flight I just got off of kept shoving her elbows into my side and resting her newspaper on my face (apparently Brits and Europeans are still very much into newspapers??), then turning her head to cough on my tray table so she wouldn’t cough on her friend. 

My entire body protests. Some rules aren’t arbitrary. WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY. 

[hereliescorri]

I just learned that "shelling peas" is a British-ism for having babies in quick succession. "Popping 'em out," as Mark explained, pantomiming the act of popping peas out of a pod. Absolutely delightful.

[hereliescorri]

Weekend in Knoxville

An unintended side effect of moving back to the East Coast has been getting the chance to explore the South more than I ever really had before. My friend Lian and I went to Arkansas in ninth grade. I went to Austin once a year to see my friend Chelsea in the Beforetimes. And like everyone else, I’ve had many a layover in Atlanta. Someone joked this weekend, in fact, that when you die, your first stop on your way to the afterlife is Atlanta. That’s pretty much the entirety of my Southern experience, though, aside from last year when I also got to travel out to West Virginia to research the Mothman.

Thus, it’s been delightful to be able to journey to Knoxville, TN two years in a row for the Dead and Lovely podcast meetup. The 10.5 hour drive there is a fun opportunity to see other states we don’t have much experience with. Or, well, rather it’s mostly an opportunity to see a fuckload of Virginia, because that state goes FOREVER. I’ll make a separate post. But anyway.

Like last year, it was a magical time with phenomenal people. I have always found the sort of happenstance ways in which we meet folks who become super important to us fascinating. I met Mark, for example, when he tweeted about Krampus before everyone and their mom knew who Krampus was. Someone must’ve (manually) RT’d him into my timeline, and now hundreds of people listen to us talk shit every week.

Similarly, I somehow came across Dead and Lovely in my search for horror podcasts, stuck with it, joined their social groups, and in my lockdown loneliness, decided to dive into their Friday night Discord chats. And now I have amazing friends. Sometimes the Internet rules. Which feels like an absurd thing to say the week that Apartheid Clyde is systematically dismantling the only social network I’ve ever truly loved since Livejournal, but I guess I’m taking this opportunity to bask in the nostalgia of what was and what could have been.

Anyway, Knoxville is a cool ass city, if also a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive to stay there. This year we managed to find the tiniest of AirBnBs for a marginally reasonable rate — $208 for two nights in a full bed in a room the size of a large closet with a check-in time of 5pm. Hotels in the city under $150 a night are hard to come by, and most are considerably more than that, especially once they hit you with the fees. It’s bizarre because the city itself isn’t a hugely expensive place. At least not compared to up here in NYC. Everyone you meet who moved there from out of town is eager to tell you how much bang they get for their buck, but as a tourist, fuckin yikes.

This also brings up one of the other downsides of Knoxville. It’s pretty conservative, and if you do meet someone who moved there from elsewhere, there’s a solid chance they’re an asshole. Like, they moved from wherever they were specifically to be in one of the most conservative states they could find, which doesn’t bode well. On this trip, we were particularly unfortunate to end up with an Uber driver from Seattle who simply could not be dissuaded from expounding upon the tyranny of “the shot.” Even after I explained we’re “huge leftists” and despite the fact that I was wearing a mask in her car, no matter what topic we tried to shift to, she had some way to bring it back to the evils of the COVID vaccine. It was… exhausting.

We also had a girl on the street attempt to pray with us for an Astros win in Game 6 of the World Series which like, a) hard pass. Fuck the Astros, and b) did not go over well with the table of goths she’d accosted. When Kate told her we don’t believe in her god, she was clearly quite shaken and scooted off in a hurry, like it had never occurred to her such people existed in the real world and she was realizing for the first time that her pastor’s warnings were correct.

That said, there’s clearly a vibrant community of liberals and leftists in town and plenty of warm and welcoming places to go for a good time. In fact, I noticed several women around town wearing pro-Roe shirts and sweatshirts — a fairly ballsy move in a state with trigger laws that essentially outlawed abortion. Wearing pro-abortion apparel in North Jersey is no big ‘cause the vast majority of people probably agree with you. It takes some gumption to roll up to a bar full of folks getting drunk and watching a big football game rocking pro-choice garb. Respect.

Those little caveats aside, though, Knoxville is a delight, and Steve and Ben are well-connected to the scene and know the hoppin’ spots. Or the less hoppin’ ones for when we all notice we’re old and exhausted and just want to sit quietly and sip an old fashioned.

Some highlights:

Merchants of Beer

The ol’ standby, if you will. Great big patio. Full bar. Food truck with INCREDIBLE pulled jackfruit. Listen, it is not always easy to find vegetarian options in the South. We went to one spot in Virginia on the way back with only salad and nachos on the menu without meat, and they were out of lettuce. The food truck here let you substitute any of the meats with jackfruit. I got jackfruit mac and it was a goddamn revelation. Plus, there was so much of it, I ate part, Anna ate part, and there was still plenty left over. They’ve got cornhole and games and whatnot, and a zillion beers. It was a lovely joint to hit up two nights in a row, especially so that Steve could watch the sportsball while the rest of us sat in the corner like high school misfits.

Central Cinema

Ummmm, this place rules. It was started by the folks who created the Knoxville Horror Film Fest, and it’s basically a giant ode to horror culture. Tons of memorabilia, DVDs and even VHS tapes of horror movies, horror soundtracks on vinyl, kitschy little decorations, and an absolutely glorious amount of Jaws related art. We watched Psycho Goreman together, and seeing it on the big screen was next level. Their snack selection is also off the charts. This is what every movie theater should be like.

Rami’s Cafe

Just a cute little diner that was about an eight minute walk from our rental. It was absolutely poppin’ in there with folks decked out in orange for the UT game. We went straight to the counter and sat down where a lovely server took care of us immediately. I had an omelet with potatoes in it, and I swear to you, I will be dreaming about it. Obviously my whole point in writing any of this down is to remember for next time I go, and holy shit. Rami’s, I’ll be back for you and your soft, perfectly seasoned potatoes.

That’s probably enough rambling to myself about Knoxville. Proud of me for remembering to write shit down.

[hereliescorri]

On Barbarian and hating things

I found this movie deeply disappointing, but also everyone is loving it so I don’t want to yuck everybody’s yum by going off about it. But that just means I can’t talk about it. And then I realized, wait, I have a blog no one reads that I made specifically just to talk about and remember my thoughts, feelings and experiences.

So yeah.

This movie was disappointing as fuck. And when I saw it in the theater, I REALLY tried to convince myself I was enjoying it — a thing I do when, a) I was super excited about something and don’t want to acknowledge I had a bad time, and b) know that not liking it is going to put me at odds with other people. Despite how it may come across, it makes me deeply uncomfortable to hate things that other people like. Or, to be more precise, to hate things other people like when I don’t feel like we can talk about it. The cool mix of neurodivergence and childhood trauma from an abusive household means that I feel the need to explain myself so I don’t seem like an asshole… but most people find it asshole-ish if you expand on why you don’t like a thing. Then they feel like you’re telling them they’re dumb or wrong, when really it’s an attempt at explaining your feelings. And that whole childhood thing makes me super paranoid about my feelings, too, since mine were never valid, and having any would get me yelled at or punished. So, bit of a double-edged sword. I feel the need to explain myself when I hate something so I can be understood, but I also think everyone hates me and is mad at me if I explain myself when I hate something.

All that to say, the whole movie I had that sinking feeling that I wasn’t having a good time, but deeply NEEDED to so I wouldn’t have to tell everyone I hate another movie they like.

But it was ass.

The lead makes the dumbest decisions possible at every single point in this movie. You get one or two bad decisions to move a plot along. If the plot relies on a character always doing the thing no person would actually do, FOH. There is no peril in this movie that Tess does not cause herself. And once I’m at the point where I’m like, this person has chosen poorly too many times, I do not care whether they live or die. I remember there being a moment where I crossed over into that, where I was just like, “Fuck’s sake. Kill her then.”

The movie tries to say something about men and misogyny I guess, but it feels thown in. Like they wrote a movie and then were like, oh wait, everything needs a blatant message now. It’s about… rape culture? But it’s not about rape culture. While Justin Long’s character is a vile casual rapist who gets his comeuppance, the monster in the film is a victim of generations of rape and incest that leave her deformed and unable to speak. We’re supposed to see her as grotesque. The sagging breasts, the barren gums, the bulbous belly. How terrifying, the body of a severely abused and disabled woman! (I’ve seen The Shining and IT btw, so you’re gonna hafta go harder than that to shock me) What’s worse, we get the classic rape reversal, where we get catharsis from seeing a rapist be sexually violated by having her gross tit shoved in his mouth. We’ve been criticizing movies for the casual sexual assault of men for ages, and yet here it is going all Wedding Crashers on us.

As a side note, I find it very corny that the movie is called Barbarian and all she can say is “bar bar bar bar.” If you’re familiar with the etymology of the word barbarian, it’s said to have come from the ancient Greeks not being able to understand foreigners and thinking their languages sounded like “bar bar bar bar.” Perhaps we’re supposed to take something out of that about how she’s just misunderstood, but I suspect they just thought they were being clever. After all, I know that because I’m a nerd. I can’t imagine they expect the audience to make that connection.

Anyway, there’s also some kind of commentary about urban blight here that is completely stranded, with a little ACAB side quest as well. And while cops and urban blight are bad, they have nothing to do with anything in this movie. I suppose it just gives a reason why this woman would be able to wander the neighborhood. And to let us know this is happening, we’re introduced to an expository Black man; a wise and all-knowing homeless dude who exists solely to tell us what’s going on and then be unceremoniously ripped to pieces in a jump scare. Booooo. Not here for it.

In that scene we’re also told that she’s not the worst thing down there, which leads to anticipation of an even bigger big bad. What kind of showdown could we be in for?? None. No showdown. No bigger big bad. Turns out the abusive rapist dad is down there, but he’s on his deathbed, and instead of being a threat, as soon as we meet him, he kills himself. Okay? Again, I can maybe see what they were going for — the guy who made the monster is worse than the monster. But we’re promised escalation, and it never comes. If he’d been dead already, it would have changed nothing about the movie. This is also why the flashback feels like an afterthought, and one that doesn’t work. Sure, I can get behind the idea that our monster is misunderstood, and she’s become this way as a result of horrific abuse. But this movie doesn’t have the tone to pull that off. Everything is framed as funny and/or shocking. There is nothing in the tone until the very last scene to even vaguely humanize the monster. I have seen only one person come out of this movie talking about receiving a moving message from it. The vast majority of responses are HOLY FUCK THAT WAS INSANE! The tone of the movie tells you you should be grossed out, you should cringe, you should laugh. So the idea that it’s saying something profound about abuse and the unheard is just silly. Especially since she still gets ganked in the end.

I think the best execution of any of the themes in the movie is when AJ throws Tess off the tower to save himself. That is his character. That is a perfect encapsulation of all the cancel culture dweebs who claim to be very sorry and to have changed and then are mad when everyone doesn’t take them back with open arms. It’s absolutely what a guy like him would do, and for a movie to go there is both surprising and hilarious. You can’t help but startle laugh. Why wasn’t this the focus of the movie? Why explain the monster? Why try to tackle a half dozen other social issues? Why do we even need Tess’s job interview? Simply to go, “Oh, white people. Always scared of the city?” So, so much unnecessary message that bogs down the movie.

And all so we can watch a severely abused woman die. Pass. The hardest of passes.

So when the movie ended I was like, “It’s fine! Three stars!” But I was lying to myself for all the reasons I outlined above. I don’t think Barbarian is good or fine. I think it’s shit. And I think it’s okay that I think it’s shit. And it’s okay that it worked for other people. But when you’re used to people being dicks about disagreement, or feeling like you’re attacking them personally, or perhaps worst of all, dimissing you outright, it can feel like it’s not okay. Probably some film PhD anger lingering there, too, with dudes constantly telling me I was wrong or had childish taste for not liking their artsy bullshit.

Having a podcast where I can disagree with someone has been helpful and therapeutic in some ways, and I’ve got a wider circle of people I feel like I can chat about these things with without judgment. Still, sometimes I worry that everyone just sees me as some know-it-all who has to be right, and that’s not the character I’m trying to play.

[hereliescorri]

Memories

Like most people my age, I got on Facebook in 2004. Back when it was basically just a list of your friends and how many of them went to whatever university. There was no timeline, no likes, no comments. That last part makes looking back at old posts super confusing because when you were having a conversation with someone, you’d post on their profile, and then they’d go to your profile and respond. Since there is no thread of the conversation to follow, a lot of those out of context posts look incredibly unhinged nearly twenty years later. Then again, they might have been just as unhinged then. Anyway, I lived through “flair” and Honesty Box and the unfortunate moment they unveiled the newsfeed and a popular couple at my small, Christian school had just broken up so it was the very first thing everyone saw when they logged on. I was super on board when they created the timeline, where initially you could look at your profile and see what you’d posted by year. It was fun to click some time past and see what I was up to. Now there’s Facebook memories for that, but it’s not quite the same. After all, the memories feature has been known to dredge up some, err, less pleasant throwbacks, the algorithm seeming to not understand one might not want to revisit anniversaries of deaths and divorces unbidden.

Obviously, that’s not my main complaint about Facebook. My main complaint is, y’know, that it’s evil. And I guess I mean “meta,” natch. Meta is an unmitigated dystopian nightmare and needs to be crushed. So, while out of necessity, I visit for my podcast group, I don’t post there anymore. And I don’t miss it at all, which would surprise the me of a decade ago, but the problem is that I also don’t remember shit anymore. It used to be that if I went out and something funny or interesting happened to me, I’d pop it up on my status. And then the Memories algorithm would do its work and show it to me again later on. There’s something so delightful about revisiting the mundane. Without Facebook, though, I simply stopped cataloguing any of it.

I also travel a lot, and every now and again in my travels I’ll remember to sit down and journal, and then I’ll stop. Then I find the few pages I did write and I’m like, WOW. I REMEMBER ZERO OF THESE THINGS HAPPENING. And that’s a bummer because, while I’m a big fan of living in the moment, I’d also love to remember what I did with all those moments I lived in.

So, I dunno, I’m gonna try to remember to write things down. The mundane interactions, the travels, the particularly good walks in the park. We’ll see how I do.