#and then I go to my library and it has two copies of the dvd

[larkiethings]

shudder is the best streaming service bc they make dvds of their movies. ironically makes me want to subscribe more.

[flagbridge]

Q&A: The Phantom Broadway Proshot

Happy 36th Birthday to Phantom of the Opera's opening night on Broadway! We should be celebrating at the Majestic. The show never should have closed.

In order to create "new" ish POTO Broadway content, @or-what-you-will and I promised to answer your questions about the proshot on POTO Broadway's birthday. Find our summary of the Proshot here.

We got dozens of questions, which we've consolidated into 14 questions. Read them all past the cut!

Wait, what’s the Phantom Proshot?

The Phantom Proshot is an archival copy of the original Broadway cast and production of Phantom of the Opera, filmed at the evening performance with a live audience on May 25, 1988. The New York Public Library, Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center has archival copies of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Regional theater going back to 1970. You can’t view currently running shows, so since Phantom ran for so long, it was under lock and key.

2. How do I see the Pro-Shot? 

Pretty simple how to guide here on the NYPL website. 

We are both NYPL cardholders and made a reservation in advance. You are required to state why you are accessing the recording as they exist for archival and research purpose. Both of us are published authors and researchers under our real names. 

Here's a picture of the room we were in from NYPL's website. We had an appointment and were set up in a room with lots of monitors. We were seated at monitors next to each other with two sets of headphones and had one set of controls to pause/rewind etc. There are 20 monitors in the room and it was pretty full that day. This was not my first time at the TOFT and it’s always had a good number of people around. 

3. Can someone get a boot of it/send me the link to it? Pleeeeease? 

No. Seriously, stop asking about this. Stop joking about this. It’s not online, and never will be. All of the recordings are on digital media (videodiscs or DvDs) in the basement and only library staff get to touch them. Don’t be the person who tried to do this and ruins the archive for everyone else. You can’t even bring electronic devices into the room.

4. Why won’t they release it to the public? And who the heck does it benefit to keep this locked away?

It isn’t. It was locked away when the show was actually running. It is available to the public. We are the public! We have library cards and went to a public library and watched it for $0! It’s owned by the library so the public can see it! At the library! 

The availability of us to access it now that the show has closed is what constitutes public release. There were several other phans, members of the public there to see it after us, and the library allowed them to max out the number of monitors the library allows people to view on. They had a later appointment and were watching disc one when we were on disc two. I’m sure there was someone after them too. Were we all wearing Phantom gear? Also yes. 

(@or-what-you-will here) The library is not allowed to show recordings of anything currently running on Broadway, presumably because of fears about economic loss from those who own the rights to the musicals. The library does not own the rights to the musicals in the archive, and there are likely a lot of stipulations the library has to follow to be able to have recordings like this. 

As someone who works in a library doing digitization work, libraries and the media they contain are very complicated. TOFT likely has the rights to show it under a very limited license, and to make copies for preservation purposes only, but things like this mean they would not be able to do anything like put it online or charge for it or do anything that would be them acting as though they owned the copyright (as opposed to the physical media). This is why when a library or archive has a book or tapes they don’t usually have the right to photocopy the entire book or digitize the entire tape and put it online (unless it is in public domain), however, if you go in person you can see it all you want. Someone else (usually the creator) owns the right to distribute or copy, and libraries and archives can get in a lot of trouble for violating it. 

The copyright is still owned by the holders of each respective musical’s copyright. It’s essentially like when you buy a DVD and you are technically not supposed to copy that DVD but you can invite your friends over to watch it at your house. Copying it and distributing it violates copyright. Putting it online violates copyright. If the library violated copyright it would likely lose the ability to archive musicals altogether. If you copied the DVD it would be a lot harder to find out who put it up because the DVD is owned by lots of people, though you could still be prosecuted by the law. If the library did, they would know immediately who did it because they are presumably the only ones with a copy of this recording. 

Likewise if someone took a bootleg recording of a show and distributed it, the copyright holders wouldn’t know it existed. If they found out that individual would then be eligible to be prosecuted under the law. Because the library is a public institution, if they were found out to be doing this, it would be the library itself that would get in trouble and it would damage their reputation, their funding, and quite possibly the funding and reputation of libraries around the world. A lot of this is done on trust. The copyright holders trust the library as a public institution and the library has a lot more stakes in the game than a single person recording the show and distributing it.

It’s a very tenuous agreement at times, and likely the library is only allowed to even record because there are so many protections in place and they have a history of enforcing these rules. These agreements also usually cover digitization and preservation, but again, violating them could have those abilities taken away as well. It’s all tied up in copyright law and the library has no control over that. I have talked to archivists where I live who have to record performances with tape over the lens because it’s considered for preservation and they want to make sure it cannot be possible to profit off of it in any way. 

When the show goes into public domain they will be able to put it online all they want without fear of repercussions, but until then, unless those agreements change, we are all limited by the whim of the copyright holders.

5. Hello! Is the pro shot you watched what this clip is from https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cp2_80CJqI3/?igsh=MWNja2wwYWw4OHUwbw== ?

I know all of us here on Tumblr were freaking out that they maybe had a copy of the pro shot when this came out. Thank you! (@imstillhere-butallislost)

Not the proshot, it's a press reel. It has its own cool story though! Answered this here.

6. How good of a shot was it? I know you said ProShot but is it a ProShot like Hamilton or just a camera recording the whole stage at once?

I’d definitely say it was Hamilton pro-shot quality as to what was available at the time between image quality and mixing up of close ups and wide shots. I’ve watched other proshots and many just park a camera in the back of the orchestra and call it good. Cats in particular had multiple cameras but just did close-ups when they felt like it, not when it made sense or added anything. As @or-what-you-will explained in their re-blog, Phantom was one of the first proshots where they had a soundboard plug in, and let me tell you, with the exception of a few moments in Act 1 where Sarah Brightman maxes out her mic, the sound was delicious. Have we talked about how Judy Kaye is singing over the overture (yes, that’s Judy Kaye, original Carlotta, warming up!)? Or that you can hear every single word of Notes I and Prima Donna and Notes II, which usually just sounds garbled because everyone is singing over one another? Actually hearing words that I sort of know exist changed my experience of the show for me. 

7. How did the tempo seem, compared to the pace of the show at the end of its run? I saw the show a few times in the last few years, and the music seemed significantly faster in person than it sounded on the London cast recording. I’ve always wondered if that was just a difference between the London and NY productions, or if the tempo just sped up over the years.

Uh…normal pace??? I’ve watched a lot of boots and most solidly clock in 2:15 of run time. This was no different. There are definitely some that run a little faster. London during Earl Carpenter’s 2023 run was notorious as he had to catch a train. It does seem to have settled back out. I will say, the music does always feel more intense in person because the whole place just vibrates. 

8. I'm curious about the comment about the Ratcatcher? I think I remember that character from a film adaptation, but was he ever in the ALW musical? (@lord-valery-mimes)

Yes, Ratcatcher is still in the musical, even now. It’s a blink or you miss it type of moment. If you hear a thud and a scream right before Madame Giry tells Raoul “He lives across the Lake, Monsieur”, the thud is the ratcatcher running across the travelator.

9. Does Christine really recognize the Phantom in PONR from his boner? 

No, but at this point she probably already know it’s him and has been trying to get through the scene, but definitely acts surprised because, well, that’s surprising. But it’s definitely the moment where the Vibes Are Officially Off. 

10. Can Sarah Brightman act? 

Yes! All three of the trio have far more nuanced performances on stage. Sarah doesn’t act the way that we do see many later Christines (including late 80s and early 90s Christines), but she absolutely created the blueprint for the role. Her “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” is missing some soul, but at the end of the day she was one of a kind, and she made some very strong acting choices. 

11. there anything unexpected? Any interpretation that stood out to you and particularly striking but didn’t stick around as others took on the roles and put their own spin on things?

Guys, I want to talk about Steve Barton as Raoul. The man made choice, after choice, after choice. And yet we have had so many Raoul’s that are kind of just strutting about looking pretty. Some seem to even forget they’re onstage during Final Lair. It can be such a juicy role if the actors choose to make it that way but so few do. 

Besides some small details I mentioned, the show did maintain its integrity through its 35 year run, which is truly remarkable. 

(@or-what-you-will here) Seconding what Flag said, Steve Barton brought so much more to the role than I’m used to seeing, and it really opened my mind to what Raoul could be. 

The blocking in PONR did surprise me, I knew they had changed it but I hadn’t realized how much. I always found the kind of pinwheeling arm thing Christine does with the phantom strange, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that they didn’t do that at all, the embrace from behind made more sense to me.

I also found after she took his hood off no one really ran out, the phantom and Christine got to have their moment. The blocking where they (the managers and Raoul) run out and tell Christine to stay makes no sense with their motivations to stop him. The more recent blocking where Christine motions them to stay in place as the phantom sings the All I Ask of You Reprise makes way more sense with the characters’ motives and matches this original blocking much more. 

12. Also are you truly working on a research project? If so, how is progress and where might we find your final results when it’s complete?

To quote Dr. Who, “Spoilers.” Yes, always. Both of us have day jobs that have us doing research, but I can’t promise I’ll put it on here when complete since I keep fandom and real life separate. Sorry to dodge this one but getting into specifics about this starts to identify us. 

(@or-what-you-will here) Seconding what Flag said. 

13. Hi there, I was wondering if I could ask you a general question about the NPL’s archive. Something about the language on their website made it sound like viewers could only watch a recording “once”. I wasn’t sure if that meant “once per visit” (i.e. you can’t sit there for 8 hours restarting the tape every time it ends) or “once” as in forever (like, once you’ve watched a recording you are never allowed to request it again). Did you have any clarification? I wasn't sure if the librarians explain the policies when you arrive at your appointment. Thank you for providing so many details about the Phantom pro-shot and offering to answer our questions! That's really kind of you!

You’re welcome! So if there’s nobody after you, you can hang out with the media as long as you want. However, we did have another group come in about 90 minutes after us. That gave us enough time to watch both acts with all the rewinds we wanted. We watched PONR and parts of Final Lair like five times. On a previous TOFT trip I watched two shows and was there for like six hours.  The prohibition is on coming back and watching the recording again. I have no idea how strict they are about this, although I suspect it’s to keep people from monopolizing certain media. Would I want to try to watch the proshot again in the future? Probably! I know there’s stuff I missed, or I’d see something different depending on what I’m working on. The TOFT is also an absolutely incredible resource and I have so many other shows I’d like to check out. 

(Will here) They do log on your library account when you visit that you visited and what you saw. However, if you have accessibility needs that would require you to watch in multiple viewings or something along those lines, I would talk to them about it, because I’m sure they’d be able to work with you to figure out something so you wouldn’t have to sit through the whole thing in one shot.

14. > Barton Raoul’s “There is no Phantom of the Opera” comes off more as “Christine this is just some dude” vs “he doesn’t exist at all.” 

Could you elaborate on this part? I'm having trouble imagining how that would be conveyed. (also, thanks for sharing your notes on the procast!) @clutzyangel

You're welcome! Yes, he's telling Christine that the Phantom is a human, flesh-and-blood man, not some fantastical creature. I've seen many Raouls who seem to try to convince Christine that the Phantom doesn't exist at all. Barton's Raoul seems to understand that he's a man with ulterior motives possibly duping Christine.

And he's not wrong.

[babybluebanshee]

Stuff I've had to deal with as a city librarian - Halloween Spooktacular

Hello again boils, ghouls, and nonbinary werewolves! Your old buddy Blue has a backlog of whack-ass stories from her travels as a humble library clerk, so here's a big post fulla laughs, drama, and maybe a few bodily fluids tossed in for flair.

Seriously though, tw for bodily fluids, bugs, and PTSD

*A woman came up to the front desk and asked if we had a quiet area where she could make a zoom call and not disturb anyone. No prob, have people asking that all the time. The study rooms were all full, so she was pointed in the direction of the cafe. A few minutes go by, and suddenly everyone at the desk and the page in the shelves beyond it hears loud ass shouting coming from the cafe. Julie heads down to inspect, hoping it's not a fight she has to break up. Nope, as it turns out, the lady on the zoom call is leading an exercise class. She has a mat and everything, and was leading her class in aerobics when Julie got down there. We quickly moved her to a more out-of-the-way conference room.

*A children's board book was return to us with a bite taken out of it. The area was still wet. We do not know if it was child or beast that took the bite. We had to throw it away regardless.

*We had to bake almost all our DVD cases because we found two with bed bug eggs in them.

*A woman printed out some color pictures and asked if I could check to make sure they came out. I picked up the stack and the first one on top was of an angry-looking woman with her tits out. My surprise must have been pretty evident because the woman I was helping immediately turned red and told me they were for a court case.

*Like everywhere else in this god-forsaken country, homeschooling has been on the rise in these parts. As such, we get parents all the time coming in with printed copies of the curriculum they chose and asking if we have the books recommended by them. Whatever we don't have, we can usually get through inter library loan, but the catch with that is you can only have five going at a time. One day, we had a mother come in with a list of three hundred books her curriculum recommended, and she had us check out catalogue for all of them. Branson started helping her, but her shift ended in the middle of it, so I had to do the rest. It took forever, and we ended up only having about fifty of them because I guess this homeschooling curriculum hasn't been updated since the mid-2000s. To her credit, the mother was very exasperated with homeschooling in general and knows that her daughter doesn't want to do it anymore. Her husband is adamant that their kid not go to public school, however. I fought every urge to say that was fine for him to say when he clearly wasn't doing a goddamn thing to help her.

*There's a patron that comes in whom we know nothing about except that he's had multiple heart attacks and has massive anxiety about potentially having another. We know this because he tells us every time the library gets too loud for him, because he believes the noise will somehow "trigger" another heart attack. Normally, we would have no problem with that; heart attacks are scary, he has every right to be anxious about it and request quiet spots to hang out. However, the problem is that he takes it upon himself to police other patrons in the library who he thinks are being too loud near him. Some children were nearby, working on a puzzle and started getting a little rambunctious, and the dude yelled at the top of his voice for them to shut up and get away from him. We had to speak louder for a patron who was hard of hearing, and the death glare he gave us was chilling. He snaps at anyone who forgets to shut the sound off on their phone. The director finally had to tell him he can't harass patrons and to tell us if he has a problem with someone's volume. He's been better behaved since then, but any time we see him, we're instantly worried he's gonna flip out again.

*A little boy in a wheelchair came in with his family, and my god, that kid could zip around fast. His mom mentioned that she forgot to grab a book for his sister, so he rolled into the kid's area to grab it for her. He was back faster than a patron who could just walk in. And you could tell he was very proud of that fact.

*Shae gave me a Sylveon card about a year ago, and I wear it laminated on my lanyard (because I was originally gonna hang it from my rearview mirror but forgot). It's always a big hit with kids. One little girl, however, liked it so much she asked if she could have it. I chuckled and told her sorry, it was a gift from a friend. She merely replied, "no, I want it" and started making a grab for it. Luckily, she was on the other side of the counter and couldn't reach it, but it was still weird. Especially because her mother was right there and made no move to stop or reprimand her.

*My coworker Branson had to clean...something off the bathroom floor one night. She's adamant it wasn't poop, but also said it was so dried out she had to use a putty knife to scrape it off. Our best guess is vomit.

*I was working on a display at the desk and a little black girl came up to watch me work. We chatted for a little, her asking me all the usual little kid questions. Eventually, she asked me if I had kids. I said no, I liked being an auntie better. Plus, I wasn't married, so I couldn't have kids. She thought for a moment, then said "why don't you just buy one?" Branson was nearby and I heard her choke on a laugh. I was pretty close to losing it myself, and said, "I don't think it's very nice to buy a person." Luckily, her dad came up and they left shortly after, so Branson and I could finally laugh about it.

*A patron and his family got taken to court for not returning almost $200 worth of books and DVDS, after ignoring the four warnings we give people before we actually take that step (because at that point you're actively stealing city property). The patron was ordered by a judge to either bring the items to court or pay to replace them, so he brought them to the courthouse. The clerk was going to take them and the whole thing would have been over and done...except he wouldn't give them to her without a library employee present. He never gave a real reason except he was concerned the clerk would "do something" with the items. So without contacting the library or judge the clerk told him he could bring the books directly to the library. When the judge found out what she'd done, he called the library and told us what was happening, and to hopefully expect the guy in there that night. Predictably, we haven't seen him. This was almost a month ago.

*Branson got a phone call from the county jail, which is actually pretty common for libraries. Patrons get arrested and want to make sure their accounts are clear so they don't potentially get into further trouble with outstanding items. Branson goes through all the hold music and questions to finally get the patron on the line...and he'd dialed the wrong number. Branson felt so bad for him.

*A guy came in to use the computers. Donna was getting him set up, sitting at the desk, so she can only see him from about his torso up. He ended up needing help printing something, so I help him, and finally see the sidearm he's got in a holster on his belt. I tell him the library doesn't allow firearms of any kind, no, I do not care that he has a conceal carry, he can't have a weapon in a municipal building. He's kinda testy about it, asking why we don't have a sign. I tell him we do. He had to walk by it to get in the building. In fact, we have one at all three entrances. He smugly asks me to show him, because he didn't see them. Me, petty bitch that I am, make this fucker walk to all three entrances and show him each sign, then tell him as politely as I can to get rid of the gun before he comes back in. He huffily complies.

*I came into work one day and the director immediately called me to the back. He informed me that a couple was having a loud, angry argument on the patio outside the kid's area, and they called the cops for a wellness check because the woman sounded to be in legit distress. Like, rocking back and forth and screaming swears distress. Cop comes and presumably sends them on their way. We don't know for sure because he came, went out to talk to them, and just...left.

*A guy came in to pick up an inter library loan, and when Branson asked for his card, he said he didn't have one. Like, he wasn't a patron. Never mind how the hell he managed to get a fulfilled ILL without one. Branson informs him he has to get a card before he can check out the book, but it's going to cost him $15 since he lives outside city limits. He tries to pay with a check made out to him from someone else. We tell him that won't work. He leaves to get cash, but then immediately turns around and asks if he can just buy the book. I tell him no, since a) it's not our book to sell and b) we're not in the habit of selling books in the collection anyway. I ask if he'd like me to find it on Amazon for him, and he says no. He leaves and doesn't come back. Bonnie sent the ILL back, and we haven't seen him since.

*A lot of our patrons have conspiracy theory brain rot, so you can only imagine the fanciful tales we heard about the emergency test signal. There were theories it would "activate the nanites" in the covid vaccine and either kill everyone who got one or turn them into liberal zombies. My director had someone 100% seriously call it "the Satan signal". It would have been funny if it weren't so stupid.

[the-rewatch-rewind]

The most underrated 1980s teen movie

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number 10 on my list: Embassy Pictures and Monument Pictures’ 1985 adventure romantic comedy The Sure Thing, directed by Rob Reiner, written by Steve Bloom and Jonathan Roberts, and starring John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga.

In his first term at a small northeastern college, Walter Gibson (known as “Gib”, played by John Cusack) is frustrated with his sex life, or rather, lack thereof. So when his high school best friend Lance (Anthony Edwards) sends him a picture from UCLA of a beautiful woman (Nicollette Sheridan) and promises that she’s a “sure thing” – no questions asked, no strings attached, no guilt involved – Gib takes the first ride he can find to California for winter break, even though that means traveling with Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga), who has already rejected his underhanded advances and is on her way to visit her boyfriend (Boyd Gaines). Gib and Alison’s constant fighting finally pushes the driver (“Gary Cooper, but not the Gary Cooper that’s dead,” played by Tim Robbins) to abandon them on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, and they are forced to find their own way to LA. Their adventures prompt them both to learn from each other and start to change for the better.

I remember not being very interested in this movie when my mom first got it from the library, and her really having to talk me into watching it. I think I was pleasantly surprised the first time, but it wasn’t until I rewatched it a couple years later that I truly appreciated it and became kind of obsessed for a while. I saw it for the first time in 2004, then eight times in 2006, three times in 2007, once in 2009, three times in 2010, once in 2011, once in 2012, once in 2013, once in 2015, once in 2016, twice in 2019, and twice in 2022. I would have watched it more in recent years, but for a while I only had it on VHS (my sister’s had it on DVD for several years but since we don’t live near each other I don’t have many options to watch her copy, so I did finally get my own DVD of it last year) and it’s very rarely available on streaming services. There was a major boom of teen movies in the 1980s, many of which are still considered classics now, but hardly anybody ever talks about The Sure Thing, and I have no idea why because it is truly delightful.

Most of the people involved in this movie were just starting their careers. Rob Reiner had only directed one movie (This is Spinal Tap) prior to this, and it was both writers’ first feature film, and it was John Cusack’s first starring role. So The Sure Thing has the charms of a low-budget project that everybody’s making because they want to, not because they think they’re going to get rich and famous from it, with the added bonus that many of the actors did become rich and famous later, so you can watch it and go, “Oh look, it’s Dr. Mark Greene from ER back when he had hair” or “Wow, is that a very young Tim Robbins?” But even if none of them had made anything else, this would still be a fun movie to watch because the writing and acting are incredible, especially when it comes to the two main characters’ arcs.

I know the dynamic of a buttoned-down, over-organized control freak paired with a spontaneous, go-with-the-flow goofball has been done to death, but no movie does it better than The Sure Thing. The characters of Gib and Alison are so well developed that they feel like real people rather than a tired trope. Even though it’s fairly obvious from the moment Alison enters the story that she and Gib are ultimately going to end up together, their journey toward that predictable conclusion is never dull. Part of that is because of the obstacles they encounter on their journey across the country, but the main reason is because they were perfectly cast. Apparently both John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga were a lot like their respective characters at the time and therefore brought a lot of themselves to their roles. The whole “shotgunning a beer” bit was added because Cusack mentioned that was something he could do, and that became an important way to show the evolution of their characters and relationship. Initially, Rob Reiner didn’t even want to consider Cusack for the part of Gib because he was a minor, but the casting directors talked him into giving the then 16-year-old a chance, and Cusack’s audition convinced the director that he was the perfect Gib. Producer Roger Birnbaum went to court to have John Cusack emancipated and served as his legal guardian during filming. It is a little uncomfortable to know that Cusack was only 17 at the time of filming while his love interests were 20 and 21 – like, I know the age gap is only a few years, but he was technically a minor and they were technically adults, although their characters were all meant to be 18 or 19, so it’s not like the movie is promoting inappropriate relationships. Yes, it definitely would have been better to cast someone who was over 18, but at the same time, John Cusack does such an incredible job playing this character that I totally understand why they went ahead and cast him anyway. He plays Gib with the perfect balance of kind of a jerk but still kind of sweet that keeps the audience rooting for him while still criticizing his bad behavior. And the way he and Zuniga play off each other is endlessly compelling.

One of my favorite scenes, not just in this movie but in any movie, is after Gib and Alison have been kicked out of the car and accidentally left all their cash in a hotel room, and they’re sitting on the side of a deserted road at night hoping to hitch a ride. Alison finds a stick of gum in her purse, unwraps it, and the second she’s about to put it in her mouth, Gib says, “I’m starving.” So Alison dutifully breaks the gum in half and splits it with him. Then he starts listing other complaints until she can’t take it anymore and snaps, “Can’t you try to look on the bright side?” which of course is the sky’s cue to start pouring rain. In their desperate search for shelter, they find a trailer, but there’s a padlock on the door. Gib starts frantically pounding at the lock, and Alison thinks she might have a nail file in her purse, so she starts searching, and suddenly finds something much better. She tells Gib, “I have a credit card!” He’s so focused on getting into the trailer that at first he doesn’t understand the implications of what she said, and his immediate response is, “Credit cards work on a completely different kind of lock!” And Alison says, “I don’t think you understand: I have a credit card!” “You have a credit card?” “I have a credit card.” “You have a credit card.” And then her face falls as she remembers: “Oh. My dad told me specifically that I can only use it in case of an emergency.” And he just looks at her, soaked from the pouring rain, and deadpans, “Well, maybe one will come up.” And it’s just…so good. The comedic timing between the two of them is utter perfection.

And they’re also very good at having serious moments together. Like right after that scene, when they’re in a fancy restaurant because it was the only place they could find that would take a credit card – oh how times have changed – Gib opens up about where his interest in outer space came from. Earlier in the movie, both with Alison and with other girls, he’s tried to use his knowledge of space and astronomy to impress/seduce women – not very effectively – but here he’s being vulnerable and genuine, and Alison’s reactions show that she recognizes and appreciates that. And then when they finally get to LA and separate, they both do such a great job of showing how much they have changed, while still remaining true to who their characters have been from the beginning. Alison starts to realize that her boyfriend Jason, whose idea of a good time is staying home, playing cards, and admiring the special hangers and flannel sheets, is not nearly as fun to be around as Gib. And after making such a deep personal connection with Alison, Gib starts to question whether an emotionless sexual encounter with the Sure Thing is really what he’s looking for. Neither of them say these things in so many words, but they make it abundantly clear how they’re feeling, and it’s very rewarding as an audience member to see the characters we’ve become so invested in reach that point in their journeys. But they’re also very mad at each other, mostly because they’ve fallen for each other against their will, and it isn’t until they somehow get back to the east coast (we never see how that happens, but I guess it’s not important) that they resolve this tension. And the way they reconcile through a paper that Gib has their English professor (played by Viveca Lindfors) read to the class is an amazing way end the movie. So basically, this is a story about two very well-written, perfectly cast characters who go on an extremely satisfying journey that is just as fun to watch the 20th time as the first.

Now, if you’ve listened to other episodes, or even just read the description of this podcast, you might be a little confused right now. “But Jane,” I can imagine you thinking, “Aren’t you aromantic and asexual? Isn’t this movie all about a character pursuing sex, and then coming to the very amatonormative conclusion that he should commit romantically and sexually to the one person he’s had an emotional connection with? Why would a movie like that be in your top 10?” And you know, those are fair questions. They’re the kinds of questions I asked myself a few years ago, when I suspected I might be aroace but wasn’t completely convinced. And an important step on my path to recognizing that that label truly described me was when I realized that I appreciate this movie from a very aroace perspective. For one thing, it always irked me that the movie ends with Gib and Alison kissing. “Why can’t they end up as friends?” my obliviously aromantic teenage self would lament during the years when I was watching this movie the most. But on the other hand, I had always appreciated the message that forming a genuine emotional connection with someone is more fulfilling than casual hookups with people you’ve lied to and manipulated to get them to sleep with you. So I liked the part about “sex isn’t actually the end all be all of human experience” but I disliked that the conclusion was “but finding a romantic partner is” – could there be a more aroace response to this movie?

And as I thought about it even more, I realized that, even though I’m positive that this was not the intention of any of the filmmakers, there is a way to interpret the character of Gib as being on the asexual spectrum. In the first half of the movie, he does appear to be in constant pursuit of sex, at least at first glance, but a lot of his attempts are kind of halfhearted. You get the feeling that he wants to be able to say he’s slept with a lot of people because his friends and society tell him that’s what will make him cool. He seems a lot happier and more comfortable when he’s stopped trying to seduce Alison, and ultimately, even though the Sure Thing is definitely willing to sleep with him, he decides he doesn’t want that anymore, despite having travelled across the country specifically to have sex with her. Obviously, there are a lot of different conclusions that could be drawn from this. I think a big one is that people who are socialized as boys, regardless of whether they’re asexual or not, are often given a very toxic and unhealthy message about what their sex lives should be like, including the idea that women are objects to be tricked into providing momentary pleasure, and that having lots of sex is what makes you a real man. So it’s rather refreshing to see a coming of age story that shows a young man maturing by actively choosing not to have sex with a woman who is given no name, and is only identified by her willingness to put out. And in some ways I don’t want to encourage the headcanon that Gib is asexual because I think it’s important to show that allosexual men are allowed to say “no” when it doesn’t feel right, and that that doesn’t make them less of a man. But I also think the disconnect between how Gib is expected to feel about the Sure Thing and how he actually feels when he meets her is very relatable to asexual people. Society’s messages about how “normal” people feel about sex and sexual attraction are very confusing to people who don’t feel that way. And I guess what this movie is trying to say is that some of those messages don’t apply even to allosexual people. I just wish it didn’t perpetuate the amatonormative message that sex and romance are vital aspects of the most important relationship in everyone’s lives. In the story that Gib writes to reveal to Alison that he didn’t sleep with the Sure Thing, he reveals that she asked, “Do you love me?” and that for the first time in his life, he knew that those were more than just words, and that if he said it, it would be a lie, so he said no and left. And again, part of that feels very amatonormative, but at the same time, the whole idea of being true to yourself and honest with any prospective partners is a good message for people of all romantic and sexual orientations.

I still hope to find a movie about a journey like this in which the leading man and woman explicitly end up as friends (let me know if you’re aware of one), but I can almost be content imagining that soon after the events of this movie, Gib and Alison realize that they don’t actually like kissing each other but remain BFFs. Hey, it could happen! But that was definitely not the intent, and if you like cute 80s teen romance movies, The Sure Thing is definitely one to check out – if you can track it down. Don’t let my weird aromantic headcanon ruin your appreciation for this romance. I’m not saying this movie was made for aroace people by any means; my point is that realizing I was enjoying this movie in a very aroace way helped me come to the conclusion that I am aroace. And it’s also a great movie aside from all that, as one would expect from this director and cast.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched films. The Sure Thing was the only movie I watched exactly 26 times in the 20 years I was tracking, and I didn’t watch any exactly 27 times, so next week I will be talking about the movie I watched 28 times, which is widely – and extremely incorrectly – regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. So that should be a fun episode. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Forget ‘herb.’ I never heard of a hit that had the word ‘herb’ in it.”

[bluejaysandblackbats]

Daily Planet Classifieds

Fandom: DC Comics, Superfam, Young Justice 98, Titans

Summary: Laney Hausler is currently attending classes at Metropolis University when he sees a boy with his face in the library. At first, he thinks he's seeing things. Later, he starts to realize something strange is going on.

Conner Kent lives off-campus with his friends, but he sees a boy who eerily resembles him, and he hires a private investigator to look into the life of his doppelganger.

Chapters: 7/?

Characters: Jonathan Lane Kent, Conner Kent, Eddie Bloomberg, Rose Wilson, Bart Allen, Cassie Sandsmark, Cissie King-Jones, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Meloni Thawne, Vic Sage, Slade Wilson

Relationships: Past KonBart, Clois

Additional Tags: Father-Son Relationship, Father-Daughter Relationship, No Powers AU, Found Family, Family Secrets, No Powers AU, No Capes AU, Complicated Relationships, University AU, Roommates, Private Investigator, Twins, Multiple POV, First Person POV, Psychological Drama, Complicated Relationships, Unrequited Love, Platonic Relationships

Chapter Seven: The Family Video (Laney's POV)

Eddie returned with popcorn, candy, pretzels, chips, soda, and hotdogs. “Oh my god, Eddie… We’re not putting him down. We’re christening the TV,” Rose laughed. I didn’t understand the joke, but I was amused by the time and energy they put into making me happy. 

“I wanted to give him the whole movie experience. Lane, wait—. Do you know any movie titles off the top of your head?” Eddie asked. “Anything that you’d like to see?” 

I scratched my head. “Oh, Eddie… I don’t know anything about movies at all,” I replied. 

“Lane, he’s gonna bring out the bin,” Rose whispered. 

“What’s the bin?” I questioned. 

“I’m so glad you asked! Stay here,” Eddie smiled. I sat on the couch with Rose while he went to his room. Eddie’s room was the thing of fairytales. Between his plants, movie posters, and weird animatronic creations strewn about his room, his room was a forest for the peculiar. I liked sitting in his room and drawing the strange things that came to mind. Rose brushed a stray eyelash from my cheek with her finger. I delighted in the intimacy of her gesture. “One sec!” 

“Okay!” Rose and I answered at the same time. Rose chuckled and punched my shoulder. 

Eddie dragged a storage bin into the living room. “Come on. Come look,” Eddie replied. I walked toward the bin and looked at Eddie’s VHS tapes and DVDs. 

“They made a movie for To Kill A Mockingbird?” I questioned. 

Eddie smiled at me. “Do you want to watch that first?” Eddie asked. 

I shook my head as I dug through his movies. There were so many. I didn’t know where to start. “What is Scream?” I questioned. 

Rose and Eddie nodded. “You hafta watch Scream,” Eddie replied. I nodded. 

“Yeah, okay. Let’s do it,” I smiled. My phone rang. “Oh, hold on. It’s my father.” They nodded, and I stepped away to answer the call privately. 

“Hi, Father. How are you?” I asked. 

“I’m well. How are your classes?” Father asked. 

“Oh! They’re amazing. I went to a Neurology symposium last week and sent you a copy of my notes with my letter… I’m so happy here, Father,” I replied. 

“Are your roommates treating you well?” Father questioned. 

“Oh, they’re wonderful people. Eddie builds such strange and beautiful things in his room… Rose and I plan to start Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes together next weekend,” I answered, “I’m about to watch a movie with them.”

“Well, I hope you have a lovely time. It sounds like this has been an enriching experience for you so far,” Father replied. 

“It has. I love you, Father. I hope we can talk again soon,” I smiled. 

“Of course. I have two surgeries this morning, so I can’t call you back today… But I’ll text you my schedule later. I love you too,” Father replied, “Goodbye, Laney.”

“Goodbye, Father,” I answered before hanging up. I returned to the living room and sat on the couch while Rose and Eddie shut the curtains and made popcorn. 

“Was that your dad?” Eddie asked. I nodded and smiled at him. “How’s Dr. Hausler doing?” 

“He has two surgeries this morning, so he’s staying busy,” I answered. 

“Is your dad divorced? I never hear you talk about your mom,” Rose replied. I didn’t mind her asking because I knew about her mom. She told me one night when Eddie was out. 

“I don’t know anything about my mother. We never talked about her when I was young. I have the faintest picture of a woman in my mind, but Father says—. I used to draw a couple. Blue eyes, dark hair, warm smiles. I thought my mother left my father for this man, but Father says the people I remember were a patient and her husband,” I explained, “I don’t know anything about my mother… I’m afraid I can’t tell you if she’s alive or dead.” 

Rose and Eddie fell silent, and Rose hugged herself. “It’s okay… I had a great childhood,” I reassured. 

“You draw a lot, but we never see your work,” Eddie replied. He wanted to lighten the mood, and I was grateful. “Is it personal?”

“Oh, no… I just—. No one’s ever asked. My sketchbook’s in my bedroom… Would you like to see it?” I asked. They nodded. I went to my room and grabbed the leather sketchbook my father gave me for the trip to Metropolis. I brought it to the living room, and Eddie and Rose sat beside me, patiently waiting for me to reveal my drawings. I’d never had friends to share my drawings with, but I was eager to see what they thought. I flipped my book open, and it landed on a picture of the woman. 

“That’s the news reporter for The Daily Planet,” Eddie replied. I squinted at him. “You’ve seen her before?” 

“I must have… What’s the woman’s name?” I asked. 

“Lois Lane. Your dad did brain surgery on Lois Lane?” Rose questioned. I shook my head. The name seemed familiar. 

“I drew my home, too,” I whispered. The popcorn popped in the background, distracting both of us for a moment. “This is the dock in front of my house.” 

“Laney, this is beautiful,” Rose whispered. 

“You lived on a lake?” Eddie asked. 

“Uh-huh… We took a boat across in the morning, but I could swim the length of the lake in the summertime, but the garden was out back,” I explained. Lois Lane’s name plastered itself in my head as Eddie grabbed the popcorn from the microwave. Rose put the movie in the DVD player, and Eddie gave me the popcorn bowl and ran to his room. He returned with a video camera, and Rose shook her head. 

“Eddie, not the camera—.” 

“It’s his first movie. We can show the video to his dad on family week,” Eddie interrupted. I laughed and covered my face. Rose and Eddie playfully grabbed my arms to get me to look into the camera. “Come on. Smile for the camera, Laney.” 

I grinned nice and big for him, and Eddie turned the camera toward the three of us. “We’re about to watch Scream with Lane. It’s his first movie, so we’re all a little excited. Should we press play?” Eddie questioned. Rose waved with the remote in hand. I nodded. Rose turned the TV on, and the DVD menu had four options. Rose pressed play. 

** 

“Rose! I had no idea she would die when I said she reminded me of you. I’m so sorry,” I apologized. Rose laughed into my shoulder. 

“No, it’s okay. Tatum was hot, so it makes up for it,” Rose chuckled, “RIP to an icon.” 

Eddie got up to make more snacks while I watched the movie. Rose took the camera and pointed it at Eddie. “Edward Michael Bloomberg—.” “Nope. My middle name’s not Michael,” Eddie replied.

“Rudolph?” Rose asked.

“Wha—? No! It’s Allan,” Eddie answered indignantly. 

“Allan? Are you serious?” Rose chuckled. I giggled.

“And what are your middle names? Rose Wilson and Lane Hausler,” Eddie scoffed. 

“Don’t have one… And legally, it’s Rose Worth. Not Wilson,” Rose replied. 

“Lane’s my middle name,” I answered.

“What’s your first name?” Eddie and Rose questioned. 

“Jonathan… My father’s called me Laney my whole life,” I answered. It was strange. I hadn’t thought about it much. I realized something that day. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew it’d change my life forever.

[naradreamscape]

Any tips on media storage? I gotta backup files on my aging laptop better but idk what to shop for when it comes to external hard drives.

I need to get a second hard drive myself, actually...I currently have a 1TB WD My Passport for device and computer backups, and some larger downloads. (I actually bought it about a decade ago so I could download a complete Mystery Science Theatre 3000 torrent onto it.) The average person might need around 500GB for their average computer and device use, but if you're preserving a lot of media, like doing VHS captures, you'll want to start at at least 1 terabyte.

External hard drives aren't forever, per se (heavy use can sometimes wear down the internal drive) but they're way more reliable as long-term storage format than USB drives. Keep them away from magnets or anywhere they can be dropped or bumped against, though...I remember one of the teams in my high school film class losing three short films they were working on, because they had their hard drive connected between two computers - thus placing the drive on the floor - and someone walked in without looking, and accidentally punted it across the room.

USB drives are fine for smaller storage (i.e. documents and photos, but their portability and open design leaves them open to collecting dust or moisture. They should be kept in a cool, dry place, and if you're transporting a USB often, try to look for one with a cap, or keep it in some sort of clean container.

For videos or .ISOs, you can also burn them to a disc, and store them either in a CD binder or plastic cases. Again, discs are fairly reliable long-term storage, but you'll want to keep them away from dust or scratching. Paper sleeves are fine for short-term storage, but they're prone to rubbing against the glossy side of the disc. I keep my burnt discs in a zipper binder with polypropylene pages, and replica DVDs I've burnt in plastic cases. (It's also fun to make case sleeves for them when they go into my library.) If you really like a movie, try to go for an official physical release of it; pressed discs (i.e. made in a factory rather than burnt at home) can last for decades with careful storage and use!

Finally, you'll want to keep precious files in two places - i.e. putting phone photo backups on your computer and on a CD/drive, or keeping a file on your computer and uploaded to Archive.org/Dropbox. But never rely solely on online file hosting. The deletions of MegaUpload and Geocities taught most of my generation that vast sources of data can, and will, vanish into the ether when we least expect it. Having two sources for precious media means that if one fails, you can always replace it from the other. For example, when I capture a DVD/VHS and really care about its contents, I will also keep the physical copy in my video library in case I need to reduplicate it someday.

I hope some of this can help! Digital archiving and storage is a fairly recent practice, but this is some of what has worked for me.

[felicereviews]

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) Rated R, 90 Minutes

Next up in this cult series is the perfect 80's black comedy, How to Get Ahead in Advertising. It's a name you can't forget and while it's not as easy to rent as it once was (I first saw it in the mid-90's) - it's not impossible to locate. I found a DVD copy at my local library.

As you know I am working my way through two books on cult films and a box set of 52 cult drive-in movies. Well, this film is in NONE of those. But sometimes the selection in the book or in the box set leads me to another place and I just had to bring How to Get Ahead in Advertising to your attention. Have you seen it?

It's about a successful ad man who is stuck on a pimple cream ad campaign. He can't sleep and chain smokes and eventually grows a boil himself. The boil then grows a face and begins to speak to him. It's wildly funny and that's what I remembered about the movie. How funny the boil was. I did not remember the cutting remarks on modern society's need to be told what to buy and why they need it nor did I remember the way the film seemed to loath the 80's descent into consumerism.

In some ways the main character of this film reminded me of Don Draper from Mad Men (if Don Draper had been allowed to go outright nuts). Richard E. Grant plays the lead - I haven't seen him in a movie where I didn't like his character. I mean even in this one he is rather detestable at times but lovable also. His wife is played by Rachel Ward of 80's cinema fame (Against All Odds). And it's just sweet to see her be the straight man in this farcical bit of insanity.

I want to mention the writer/director Bruce Robinson. We haven't seen him do too much lately - but what he did in the 80's was pretty great. He wrote The Killing Fields and was nominated for an Oscar for it. The Killing Fields was one of the first R rated movies I saw in the theater without an adult. We thought we were so cool buying our tickets like we were getting away with something. 'Ha!', we thought, 'we must look so mature'. Only to find out it's a war movie and terribly sad. But I'll never forget it! He also wrote and directed Richard E. Grant in Withnail & I which has been on my watch list for a bit. I think Robinson had a good eye and was one of those artists who just couldn't tolerate the film industry and so didn't make a lot of movies.

Which leads me back around to the film that was next in line in the book '100 Cult Films' that I decided NOT to blog about. That film is Brazil. I watched it. I watched it twice actually - once with the director's commentary on and once with it off. And I can only tell you that I didn't enjoy the movie enough to include it on my list of cult film classics. I didn't find enough to relate to or hope for in the movie. It wasn't bad but not my cup of tea. But why I am mentioning it at all is that Terry Gilliam directed and wrote Brazil which was rather his magnum opus and Gilliam was another bloke who did not suffer the film industry well.

So there you have it. Sometimes we get real artists who want to make movies and they don't care whether we like them or not.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Wishful thinking

It's no secret that the powers that be are moving away from allowing us to keep copies of TV shows and movies on our bookshelves. While of course there are still many TV shows and movies being released to DVD, Blu-ray and 4K, these days - especially if a series is made for streaming - it's getting rarer to get a permanent media release.

Which is sad for collectors of certain performers or TV shows. For example, the first two seasons of The Orville, which aired on Fox, are available on disc. Season 3, which aired on streaming service Hulu, is unlikely to get the same treatment; with it likely being that show's final season, that means people who want discs of the whole series pretty much need to bootleg their own.

Of course there are exceptions. The current generation of Star Trek series, despite being made for streaming, are still reliably getting disc release (even the cancelled Prodigy).

And in some parts of the world, you will still see even streaming shows released. Jenna Coleman's The Serpent got a DVD issue in the UK because it aired on the BBC. Here in North America, where it was on Netflix, no release is expected. The Cry was out on DVD in the UK within a couple weeks of its BBC broadcast; in North America it was streamed so we had to wait more than a year.

So I don't have a lot of hope at seeing Wilderness getting a release on DVD or Blu-ray (despite a recent article about deleted scenes teasing of them maybe appearing on a DVD). Likewise, with the confirmation that Klokkenluider is going to streaming in North America, and strong hints Jackdaw will likely do the same, I don't really have an expectation of finding either film in my local Walmart (unlike Victoria, Me Before You, Doctor Who and even The Cry).

BUT, then came the news that, despite being a Netflix series, The Sandman Season 1 is scheduled for DVD release next month. And then, just a few days ago, I was in a DVD shop and saw a set (a steelbook, yet) for Marvel's Loki Season 1 - the first time I've seen a Disney+ series on disc. (I have since learned that some of the Disney+ Star Wars spinoff series like Andor and Mandalorian are also getting disc release)

So I guess never say never. Though I have no illusion that Wilderness is at all on the same level as a TV show based on a famous comic book and what is arguably the most popular TV series to date based on the MCU, and, well, Star Wars, the fact permanent releases for streaming have not been completely abandoned has given me a little hope that one day the Jenna Coleman Library (except for Room at the Top; we don't talk about Room at the Top LOL) might one day be complete.

[wingsy-keeper-of-songs]

15 Questions for 15 Mutuals

Tagged by: @alphedhel

If you're not comfortable with answering, just say "I plead the 5th." I find it hilarious

1. Are you named after anyone?

I was going to be named after my uncle if I was a boy, but that didn't work out. She didn't like the female version, so she went with something Christmas-y since I was born so close to Christmas.

2. When was the last time you cried?

Today, as a matter of fact. In a fit of rage while trying to dispose of a very stubborn and very rude cottonwood sapling.

3. Do you have kids?

No, but if I were in the right headspace and had a partner who wanted them and we were financially secure, I wouldn't mind adopting or fostering a couple.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

It's one of my love languages. But I will admit to needing to lay off the snark once in a while.

5. What sports do you play/have you played?

I was a hockey player as a kid and I played soccer (football for you Europeans). Now, I take long walks with two obnoxious dogs and my parents. I'm not very sports oriented anymore due to a back injury.

6. What’s the first thing you notice about other people?

If they have a dog or not. I'm an anxious person and I don't like looking at people out of habit, but if there's a dog, I'm asking to pet it.

7. Eye Color?

Green. The only 1% I'm part of is the percentage of the population with natural red hair and green eyes

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

(Spanish girl "why not both?" meme)

I love happy endings and horror movies. And when a horror film has a happy ending? Even better.

9. Any Special talents?

I can unnerve a voice teacher with an unusual vocal range, maybe? My usual speaking voice is considered really low and normally shouldn't be able to clear three octaves. But my singing range is about four and a half octaves to five.

10. Where were you born?

Alaska and I have been stuck here for nearly thirty years. It's a beautiful state, don't get me wrong, but egads I want to leave. And no, we cannot see Russia from our house. That's in Wasilla and that's because of all the crystal meth they cook.

11. Free space (there was no 11 on the prompt I received)

My favorite movie of all time is the Princess Bride. I watched it so much as a kid that I wore out the old VHS tape. My mom got a copy of the DVD and we quote it at the screen when we watch it sometimes to annoy my dad. (he loves it)

12. Do you have any pets?

Two dogs named Luka and Rosie and two cats named Selina and Brucie.

13. How tall are you?

About 5'7 or 5'8, depends on the doctor

14. Favorite subject in school?

English and Social Studies. I was one of those kids who loved every book we read in class and would read ahead because I wanted to know what happened next. I read during class and got in trouble when I supposed to be doing work. And I'd read ahead in my history book to find out cool shit and then look that up in the library. The other kids thought I was weird as fuck. Wouldn't find out until I was 13 that I had The Autism™

15. Dream Job?

Used to be Disney World, but the Mouse destroyed my dreams and crushed my soul like a grape. Now it's something involving wild animal rehabilitation or something like that. I like critters and I want to help restore habitats and endangered species and things like that.

[agentbeeswrites]

This is going to be a rant about shows being cancelled and the state of streaming services and media.

I'm mad about Warrior Nun being canceled. I'm mad about First Kiss. I'm mad about Gentleman Jack, Legends of Tomorrow (and the whole lot of DC shows), The Owl House, Charmed. Older canceled shows like One Day at a Time, Dark Matter, Wonderfalls, Sweet/Vicious, the Hulu & Freeform Marvel shows (The Runaways, Cloak & Dagger), Teenage Bounty Hunters, Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Wynonna Earp. Carnival. Warehouse 13. STUMPTOWN! I'm never going to stop screaming about the tragedy of that one. There are tons more. I don't have hours to list them all.

It sucks when a good show gets canceled. It sucks when you look for more content, and all you can find is the same show starring the same kind of tough, cishet, white dude that's in its seventh season and has three spinoffs. There is never an abundance of queer content. It feels like there is when we get lucky enough to have multiple shows in a year, but it's nothing compared to cishet content.

Things began to change with Netflix a few years before COVID. I want to point to COVID and blame it for everything, and it certainly did have a big impact on production costs, but the fact is that Netflix (specifically) has been reluctant to have any show last for more than two or three seasons because then it has to pay everyone more. They'd rather cancel and start up a new show.

There's a problem with streaming services and access in general, though. You've probably started to watch an older show on Netflix (one that they license) and found that it would be leaving the service at the end of the month. It might be available on another service, or it might not be available anywhere.

And then there's the issue of licensing.

If you have a physical copy because the company who produced it included selling physical media in the deal or budget for the show, you can always rewatch it and relive the good times. But if it's a streaming-only show, there's a very low chance it will ever be legally sold on physical media.

Remember the Marvel shows on Netflix? I want to own more than one season of Jessica Jones. Guess how many seasons were released on disc? If you guessed "one," then you are correct. Even Daredevil only had two seasons released on disc, and it was a breakout hit.

Remember Wynonna Earp? IDW used Kickstarter to fund the box sets. They didn't even go through a major distributor.

I'll never see Sweet/Vicious on disc. I'll never own She-Ra on blu-ray. The Runaways, Cloak & Dagger (I know it's not queer, but I love that show, ok?), Sense8, Arcane, Dead to Me, Derry Girls, Paper Girls, ALOTO, Gentleman Jack - I'll probably never be able to buy any of them legally.

Yes, I know that the first three seasons of SPOP were released on DVD. Where's the rest of it? Where's my blu-ray release?

The best and worst thing the digital age has given us has been streaming services. You have a huge library of content at your fingertips that can be taken away at any moment.

Just look at the shit show that is HBO Max after the Warner/Discovery merger. Shows are getting cut from that service faster than I can keep track of. Shows that may never see the light of day again (or ever, in the case of per-release properties) because WB/D holds the rights and is shoving them into storage in an attic. We are watching shows become lost media.

I'm getting tired of my shows being canceled. I'm getting tired of them being locked behind one particular service in a landscape where every company has to have its own platform. Streaming was supposed to be the alternative to cable, but they're squeezing us for more and more and giving us less and less for it.

But I'm tired of there being fewer and fewer legal ways to consume content offline. Even in the 90s and early 2000s when shows were cut down at alarming rates, we still had physical media. For example, Shout Factory was well known for putting out obscure or classic shows and movies with a big enough fan base.

(Note to self: buy that Facts of Life set before it disappears for another 20 years.)

We may need to go back to smaller companies making their own content. I don't know. It feels like the streaming wonderland is collapsing, and I don't know what system will rise from the ashes.

I used to joke that knowing me was getting to experience a list of shows that were canceled before their time. It's still true.

[drybranmuffin]

tagged by @cosmicrhetoric to share my top ten films... i am possibly the worst person to share my taste in cinema. but you asked for it babe i’m sorry i warned you. in no meaningful order, here we go:

1. WEIRD: the al yankovic story (2022): saw this movie the night it came out (11/4) and am STILL thinking about it. it’s (guess what) a really uh, strange film and not at all what i expected--or actually kind of wanted??? bc i do really like Actual “Boring” Al--but i thought it was a lot of fun!! and the re-records are fantastic. the entire rocky road scene makes me so happy.

2. baby driver (2017): hey look i know i know half this cast is absolutely terrible and they should’ve gotten run over with a car in real life but the first time i saw this movie i was in kansas visiting my freshman college roommate for her wedding and it was only like. the third time i’d ever been stoned and it was incredible. literally was the most incredible and life changing experience. made me want to become a stunt driver. i cannot legally operate a motor vehicle at 24 so that isn’t happening but it was a nice feeling while it lasted.

3. dead poets society (1989): i rented this movie the first weekend at college--literally got a library card just to check out the physical DVD copy of this movie because i did not have netflix yet. i was so dramatic and 18 about majoring in something i didn’t want to do, at a college i didn’t want to be at in the first place, that watching dps immediately made me cry. also mr. keating’s little speech of “Mr. Anderson thinks that everything inside of him is worthless and embarrassing” haunts me every day.

4. how to survive a plague (2012): idk if this counts but this is my favorite documentary. it always makes me cry but i think it is such an important and informative documentary. but also it tells the whole story of all the people involved so well. like the way people’s voices stop appearing as voiceovers as the years go on. like you MISS THEM you FEEL the loss of all those people from the queer community in the 80s and 90s. it’s just so fantastic.

5. rocketman (2019): i don’t think i can accurately describe how much i love this movie. elton john is such a cornerstone of my childhood and feeling at home. and the performances in it are so incredible. i watch the crocodile rock scene whenever i’m close to losing my mind. it contains curing and healing properties.

6. glass onion (2022): not to be like i finally watched a modern, relevant movie and fuck people were right it IS GOOD but. guess what i watched a modern, relevant movie and fuck people were right it was very good and i had a lot of fun watching it. also blanc’s outfits made me feel so goddamn envious. the linen pants COME ON!!!

7. ghostbusters II (1989): not to say i don’t also love gb1 but the the “higher and higher” sequence, baby oscar, sigourney weaver being a cellist, “boys, you’re scaring the straights.”, “no, i believe it's one of the fettucinis...”, like c’mon. this movie is amazing. okay i’m realizing that i really need to make you watch ghostbusters II with me. even if you haven’t seen the first one i don’t care we’re watching the guys imply that egon has fucked the goo.

8. groundhog day (1993): okay so maybe i’m just a guy that really likes a certain era of bill murray movies??? ironically this is a movie that, i’ve found, i can really watch again and again and again. like: credits roll, start it again. andie macdowell’s blue coat has been on my mind since i was eleven and saw this movie for the first time. i love the town it looks so delightful--and actually was reminded a lot of it when i was in vermont recently--but it has destroyed me to know that the set was not in punxsutawney but actually somewhere in illinois... boo.

9. beetlejuice (1988): i’m saying beetlejuice as a stand in for like all tim burton movies from 1982-1993 (& like, two in 2005). but i remember watching this movie as a kid and literally not being able to regurgitate the plot at all. like, jump in the line is playing and i’m like “i have no idea what anyone’s name is and don’t know what’s going on. but that lady’s dress [barbara] was nice!!” haven’t changed much but now i at least know what’s happening. also: know that me listing this movie is also me saying that anything danny elfman touches is amazing and i love the soundtrack to this movie so much i wrote a paper on it in undergrad [music in film class] and made my professor read ten pages about the genius of danny elfman making the film’s main melody motif be three. notes.

10. barbie as rapunzel (2002): best for last. i don’t need to explain myself here. the movie is like: 20 minutes of experiencing the horrors of both servitude and otto, 5 minutes of the best dress montage of your life, 10 minutes of being like “oh my god is the prince really that stupid?”, 10 minutes of “yes, he is...”, 15 minutes being confused by the romantic pasts of the kings and gothel, 15 minutes of family therapy between two talking dragons, and 3 minutes of crying over “I know Rapunzel's secret. She painted what she dreamed.” “When you do that you’ll never be wrong.” and it deserved an oscar.

[cur1e]

THIS.

People give me crap because I like buying physical media. Why? because even if there's DRM on it (DVD, Blu-ray) I have access to programs that can bypass or break the DRM and extract the content on the physical disc to make a back up copy. (that right is enshrined in the US copyright laws, despite the recording industry ASS of america and the motion picture ASS of america's continual efforts to rip it out.)

after I've ripped the disc, it gets put back into it's case, and surprise! Now it's the backup copy, and I run the ripped content through Handbrake to transcode the raw, extracted content down to something a bit more palatable to store on the multiple drives I keep my media library on.

Now, I will admit to becoming a touch lazy and buying a fair amount of music via iTunes; the bulk of it is not DRM encumbered, and what little that IS can be un-encumbered by some lossy transcoding from Apple's DRM format to the (defacto) industry default of MP3, at which point the media also gets mirrored to the multiple drives that comprise my media library. because I've seen first hand that Apple will cheerfully go "oh, you had that song, but I won't let you play it because for whatever reason you are suddenly listing as coming from a country where you aren't allowed to have that track", which is aggravating as all fuck.

And while I'm going to be running up the Jolly roger to capture a movie that was only released on Netflix and not to physical media, I do intend on rewarding the content's creator for their efforts.(1) Additionally, there is content that you simply cannot obtain via 'normal' means, because the IP owner holds it hostage (*coughs HBO/Disney/nintendo/sony*wheeze*) or no longer exists(obsolete computer and/or gaming systems).

If you can't own the content you desire but can only rent it, then It is morally correct to pirate it, especially when the company has the ability to make it vanish into thin air at a whim.

(It's also why I hate streaming services.)

(1) Not Netflix, but the IP's owner directly through merch or patreon or such. I did pay Netflix ~two months worth of subscription in order to watch the content prior, so there is that as well.

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument �� then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remote, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over and anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[crisis-aversion]

I feel the need to elaborate on this. Mostly because it’s kinda funny

Of the theatrical releases (that I am aware of) I have seen:

The Phantom Menace 1 1/13 times

Attack Of The Clones 1 time

Revenge Of The Sith 1/7 times

A New Hope 2 times

Empire Strikes Back 1 time

Return Of The Jedi 0 times

The Force Awakens 2 1/13 times

The Last Jedi 2 1/3 times

The Rise Of Skywalker 2 times

Rogue One 2 times

Solo 1 time

The main reason I never finished the OG Trilogy is that the first time we tried to watch SW through, when I was like. 12. We started at the beginning

Chronologically

So with two movies before we got to ANH (we didn’t own ROTS at the time, and in fact I don’t believe we do even now), we got distracted before we actually watched ESB

This is how movie marathons usually go in the family. We make it a few movies in and get distracted, so usually we never make it through the whole series. Or at minimum I’ve lost the ability to pay full attention to the third in a trilogy

To be fair we did watch a trilogy that time. It just wasn’t the correct three movies

Dad found ROTS at the library, but I had also borrowed the Marvel Encyclopedia at the same time (12 year old me loved Marvel). So I was too busy reading that to pay attention to ROTS. I only actually paid attention to a small handful of scenes

I didn’t have the same problem of not finishing the trilogy with the sequels, but it may have been because I didn’t watch them back to back because the dvds came from different christmases (I don’t remember whether I got them all at once or roughly in the same years they came out in). I half shipped Reylo after the first time I watched the sequels, mostly bc I love enemies to lovers and liked Kylo

Solo was one I got on dvd for Christmas roughly the same year as release

Rogue One is one of the few movies I’ve seen in theater when it was originally playing, and I own it on Blu-ray so I’ve seen it twice (though I wasn’t paying too much attention the second time, dad wanted to watch it and I was distracted by something I don’t remember)

The second time we attempted to watch the og trilogy we made (technically) more progress then the first time. We started on ANH so we wouldn’t have the series burn out but we still never managed to make it to the third movie

The second time we watched the sequels was bc I randomly found some sequel fics while reading SW stuff in AO3 and realized I barely remembered who these characters are and declared an impromptu binge. Somehow we made it all the way through for once, but that was mostly because I had somehow obtained a hyperfixation on Hux from fanfic despite not remembering who Hux even was other than a vague memory from the first time I watched the sequels of going “he’s hot” *not that long after* “oh no”

I found Reylo (and especially Rey) boring the second time around and have come to actively hate it due to the inability to kriffing find sequels fan content that doesn’t have it unless you manually filter it out

Not that long after that I rewatched approximately the last ten minutes of TFA and 50 minutes or so of TLJ because they were on Cable when I was visiting my grandparents and I still had a hyperfixation (why my SW fixation is specifically on the sequels, one specific book probably no one has heard of, and a parasocial relationship with the clones through my one friend and fanfic is beyond me. No one ever said I have taste)

I’d finish watching the og trilogy, but the tv and VCR aren’t compatible and the DVD player we connected them through died. So I physically can’t until we either find dvd/blu-ray copies thrifting or get to the library

For reference, the copies we own are as follows:

Phantom Menace: a VHS recorded off (presumably) a tv broadcast (incidentally how I came to rewatch the first ten minutes of it during our Matrix binge in 2020, because it was immediately after the first one and dad wanted a nap before we started the rest of the trilogy)

Attack Of The Clones: thrifted dvd (somehow, twice. Presumably mom or I forgot it was ROTS not AOTC we didn’t own yet)

Revenge Of The Sith: none, to my knowledge

A New Hope/Empire Strikes Back/Return Of The Jedi: VHS, in a box set. I don’t know how or when dad came into possession of it

Sequels and Solo: dvds, brand new

Rogue One: blu-ray, brand new

[lastchancevillagegreen]

Thursday, 29 February 2024:

The Unsustainable Library Library Project Part 6:

Live Sexy MF Prince and The New Power Generation (On Tour) (released in 1993, Italian import)

Wanting to ignore the almost 30 books on sports in my Special Book cart that needed a price check and rarity check, I opted instead to go into the storage room in search of new DVDs/ Blu Rays to replace the endless amounts of Spider-Man 1, 2 and 3, Matrix and Martix Reloaded, the endless parade of Harry Potter and Pirates of The Caribbean movies that clog our shelves. I believe the people want choices, not 25 copies of the same thing taking up space. I know how bored I would get as a customer searching for new movies and seeing the same old crap on the shelf, so I pulled all duplicates off the shelves and put them in the sorting room. Now I want to get them out of the sorting room and into boxes, but first I want replacement movies. So, into the storage room I went. Alas, I found but a few DVDs but I did discover two massive boxes of CDs that contained upwards of 600 CDs. I went through them just out of curiosity and lo and behold! The discoveries I made.

This live Prince bootleg has undoubtedly been floundering in a taped up box inside our storage room with hundreds of other boxes full of who knows what (mostly children's books and romance novels as well as an endless parade of Special Books that will ultimately steal my soul in my quest to sell them). But this set wasn't going to languish much longer. There was a point in the '90s when I owned a dozen or more Prince bootlegs. Today, I own at least eight, maybe nine, but this was coming home with me even if the front of the box doesn't look the best. After all, this was a mere one dollar bill. (There are two more Prince bootlegs there that will be coming home with me come next Wednesday.)

This set was recorded live at The Fox Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia on Friday March 12th 1993. Above you see the front of the slipcover and then the back of said slipcover. I've arranged the slipcover so it is readable. After you open the slipcover, you pull out a CD holder and you can see the front of it below.

The next photo shows the gatefold of the above CD holder.

Here is the back of that CD holder.

There is a small insert that lists the titles of the songs. Someone kept it, but pushed it partially underneath one of the black inlay trays that held the CDs, hence, it was bent. You can see it below.

The final two shots are of the two CDs that contain this live performance.

And for the record, I did price all those sport books as well. Virtually none of which warranted Special Book status.

[the-cat-chat]

October 14, 2023

Jennifer's Body (2009)

A newly-possessed high-school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

JayBell: I saw this movie once a long time ago, so I was really excited to finally rewatch it. And honestly for a semi-teenage drama horror movie, it holds up pretty well. Some of the jokes are kind of outdated, but not so much that it ruins the enjoyment of the movie.

Megan Fox's character says some of the stupidest things in this movie and I love it. And Amanda Seyfried plays the best counterpart to Megan Fox's mean girl type character. I think there is a surprising amount of serious themes and concepts explored in this movie, both on the surface and in subtext. The relationship between the two leads is so much more complicated and interesting compared to how female relationships are usually shown in movies like this.

I do want to say that Amanda Seyfried's character's boyfriend was just blah. Like she calls him crying about this very tragic and traumatic thing she's been through and he's like, "Do you want me to come over?" Like duh??? Ugh I just didn't like looking at his stupid face.

But also Amanda Seyfried's character is not spared my criticism. She seems totally obsessed with her friend and dependent on her. So after Megan Fox's character gets caught in the fire and is acting totally out of it, it is unbelievable that she would just let her get carried away in a van full of adult males without making a huge fuss about it. She surprisingly just lets her go away with them, and I find this too out of character. I know it's necessary for the plot, but at least have her get knocked out or lost in the commotion or something.

P.S. I really like the ending of the movie. Very cathartic in a strange way.

Rating: 7/10 cats 🐈

Anzie: When I was in my emo angst phase and Panic! At The Disco’s “New Perspective” was my entire identity for a whole summer and probably fall? Yes. Did I wait like a rabid animal to get the dvd copy of this from the public library. Yes Again. Should my mother have been more concerned? Definitely, probably, maybe? That being said, I haven’t watched this in a verrrry long time and felt this spooky season was the perfect time to recapture part of my soul with this besties flick.

Is it cringe nearly 15 years later? Yes. But is it iconic? Yes! I loved pretty much all of this movie back in the day and I still do love it, but for different reasons. And I think I can appreciate it more now that I’m older. One glaring new thing is how absurd Needy’s character reacts to everything? And I loved Chip but…woof man. Back then I did notice all the weirdness and just ick of the relationships, but now it’s something entirely different. But that also feels very important to the story? Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox are just absolutely perfect in their roles and I don’t know if it would have worked with anyone else. I like to how on the surface you can take it as just this fun, ridiculous story that is just insane and bizarre, but actually does touch on the bigger concept of sexuality as women, and how it can be a double-sided coin,(needless to say how treacherously ick that is as a teenager while simultaneously being empowering???) and the dynamics of female friendships. Plus it has some killer lines. I will forever remember lime green jello for all my days.

Alsooo “Through the Trees” is the best friendship breakup song ever. And it can still make me cry and I still feel it in my soul.

L-O-V-E Adam Brody as a kind of knock off/ Satan loving Brandon Flowers. 💕

Rating: darrreee I say 8/10 Demons 👹

[cynfuldelights]

Depression sucks because it makes the days that were obviously pretty good feel so washed out in hindsight. Yesterday spent my first day with a car again and did the most stuff i've done in months but i feel so lukewarm about it. Really sucks. So, in the spirit of trying to cherish what made today good, I'll list out what I did. Maybe then i'll feel a little better about it.

Getting out of my place: I've spent a lot of the past 8 months inside due to a lack of a car. Getting away from here helps me clear my mind and feel less like a layabout which is really nice.

Went driving by myself: I earnestly do like driving cars, something my internalized hatred of masc shit made hard to appreciate for a long time. Being behind the wheel again has been liberating especially since im getting over a wreck i got in last year.

Took a walk in a park: I love this little local park near by place. It has two ponds that attract lots of duckies and turtles. Summer's my favorite season so I'm really enjoying getting some sun. It helps my mood and eases the boothell of depression on my thoughts.

Went to the library: I used to go to the library a lot when I was a kid and I'm gaining a newfound appreciation for it in my adulthood. I'm currently working through Shigeru Mizuki's Showa: A History of Japan series which I stumbled across in their catalogues and I'm loving them. They also have buttloads of really recent movies on DVD, something a bit easier to deal with than trying to find a good stream or torrent of whatever movie you wanna watch.

Went bargain hunting at a game store/goodwill: At my local game store I ended up finding a 8$ used copy of Eldritch Horror (normally retails for like 50$~) and at Goodwill I found some belts and a bracelet I liked for less than 10$. I really love board games and as a goth girl I've felt ashamed at my lack of belts. So now I get to play cool games and look cool!

Hung out with my roommate: My roommate and I haven't had a lot of chances to hangout over the past while and we got to today. We chatted, watched some anime she had on dvd that we realized was by a director we really like, had a really good time. Hopefully we'll watch more tomorrow/today.

Cooked a hella good dinner: My grandmother (who i'm fighting with rn but w/e) gave us some food and ingredients this past week. I made some mac & cheese with pan fried cheddar sausage and green onion along with some spicy mixed veggies and it was bomb as hell. My gf liked it a lot and said I was really good at cooking and she has enough for lunch for a day or two. I feel really good about making her something she likes.

Watched The Menu with my gf: Sick movie. It was a suspenseful thriller with an expert grip on when to build tension and when to ease it off. It also had a lot to say about the commodification of art by the rich, the ways capitalism's addiction to consumption often tramples the values of the artist, and has really clever and subtle characterization. Anya Taylor-Joy kills it in her role and I'm in love with her outfit in the movie.

That's everything. So... yeah looking at all that it was a good day. A really good day. I think I can go to sleep a lil easier now