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windandwater · 2 months ago

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dispatches from new orleans:

my family kept a lid on politics, mostly. at one point my uncle started ranting about how he doesn't understand how east germany could end up like that he'd do anything rather than be a slave and I felt all the mean words build up inside me and that's when my mom and I left. and my grandmother remembered she's supposed to not talk politics around us so she didn't.

the thing that kind of. makes me crazy. is that all of them are smart people who on and individual level love having people from different cultures and backgrounds and identities around. so I mostly feel deeply sad that they've been preyed on. because they have. news reports and headlines have taught them to fear people who they interact with every day and they aren't able to put the dots together that they're the same people.

they were terrified of us going into new orleans, as always, and as always, it was not just fine but completely fine. my mom always tries to justify their (fake fake fake) fear by citing the news reports they've read or maybe places really are dangerous and every year I come away thinking they really are just being terrorized by news headlines and inclined to believe them because nola has black people in it and god forbid we go listen to their music for a night.

my brother's girlfriend shut it down so easily though. "that sounds like their feelings that they have to manage on their own." and I said you know what. you're right. I'm not spending any more energy on this.

but it was incredible. it was fucking incredible. we went straight to Frenchman Street and we also took my cousin who is 23 now but the last time I saw her she was 15 and she's one of the babies of the family so my grandma had no idea her big city cousins were taking her bar hopping in big bad new orleans (the most we drank was coke and a couple mocktails lmao we are not drinkers). but it was beyond fun. brother's gf had been pushing for us to find a band/bar ahead of time (we need a plan!!) and I kept saying that's not how this town works, we just walk down the street and go wherever we want.

I was of course right because my memory isn't that bad. that's how it's always worked. god it was so fun. we found a grateful dead store and a queer bookstore and a huuuuge brass band playing on the corner and we only had time to hit two bars (we were driving out early the next day, this was not our most responsible plan). and I want my cousin to come to new york and visit so badly, I adore her. I also had one of the best po'boys I've ever had in my life out of a dive we picked at random. I fucking love new orleans. I want to go back sometime in secret and just explore the town with no family.

but they did behave. I got to know my younger cousins better and they are the fucking best. I hope I am giving cool wise city vibes and not know it all. I hope I can mentor not preach. I adore them. I want them to find their way away from their parents but still with a good relationship, like I did. I think it's possible and I'm so goddamn proud of them already. we went shopping a bit and got ice cream and food away from the adults and I'm like fuck y'all are already cool. having your baby cousin drive you around would have been humiliating a few years ago for me but my coworker in her 40s just got her permit last week so I'm just sitting there like I'm a whole personality category, my whole city hates driving and won't do it. come at me. not in an aggressive way. I just refuse to be embarrassed.

I got to show the rest of the family pictures, mine and their own baby pictures, which I have plans to send them on backup drives and CDs. they never got their dads photos but my dad scanned them all and he had intended to organize them more but never got to it in all the other things going on. so I'll just send them out to everyone.

I showed my uncle who isn't the most demonstrative emotionally but he has my brother's smirk. he had it on very wide when I showed him his pictures. and then he sat down and started telling me about everything about the house which only my mom has ever done, and *then* my mom kneeled down next to him and started telling me things too with him and it was like seeing them as siblings for one of the first times ever; I normally only see her with her sisters joking with each other. and his wife loved them all.

I saw my cousin who I've never gotten along with but has always liked my brother and we're finally building a relationship especially after the funeral. she's always cared so much what other people think while aggressively saying she doesn't. that always got on my last damn nerve as someone with actually nothing to prove and someone who rebelled or didn't when I wanted to or didn't. but she's grown up a lot and she was really kind last year (after a brief moment when I had to get her to shut the hell up). we have a lot of health shit in common and if there's one thing my family loves it's talking about health shit.

idk. it was a good visit. but I will be sneaking back there at some point to spend time with none of them and only listen to music and bum around the swamp to get eaten by an alligator. I've been so often but I've barely seen any of it. gotta fix it that. I'm here in Tennessee wishing I was there again.

#adventures in text posts

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theworstbob · 8 years ago

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the thing journal, 5.14.2017-5.27.2017

the pop culture things i took in over the last week, and also the week before that this week because last week i couldn’t make a post. last week: american ultra, take this waltz, freddie gibbs, direct hit!, the wild reeds, jackie kashian, rory scovel, sam outlaw. this week: mary j. blige, diet cig, smino, shalewa sharpe, bad suns, room, groundhog day (the musical), brooklyn nine-nine s3, in transit, interstellar

1) American Ultra, dir. Nima Nourizadeh: This film wanted to be like five things all at once. It wanted to be a stoner comedy, it wanted to be a send-up of action thrillers, it wanted to be just a straight-up action thriller, it wanted to be an epic romance, it wanted to be an indictment of the surveillance state. I don't think it was any of those things. It was a largely enjoyable hodgepodge of ideas. There were moments it took seriously that could have been served with some comedy, there were moments it seemed like it was making fun of the stupid idiot characters when it needed to be there with them, like, I'm not gonna call it a failure because I never felt like it was wasting my time or like it was aggressively awful, but I couldn't get a handle on what I was supposed to be getting out of this film. It tried to be so many things and ended up feeling like nothing. If it had stuck with one idea -- if it were JUST a movie about this stoner idiot who suddenly sees everyday objects as instruments of death, and it was just about him and his idiot girlfriend running from the CIA and there wasn't this whole other plotline involving drama at the CIA, if it could have just been THAT, they might've had something, but they had this, which was fine, but it wasn't something.

2) Take This Waltz, dir. Sarah Polley: I discussed this on the Fall Out Boy blog, but that scene on the ride at the theme park is such a cool scene. I can see how an older Bob or a younger Bob might think this movie's kinda bullshit, it is very much a Pretty White People with Problems movie, but it's also a movie about being in your late 20s and only just realizing, oh shit, I HAVE to be an adult now, the things I do today might be the things I do forever, I need to figure out what I really want while it's still permissible for me to figure things out, and it really speaks to me. Sarah Polley's a rather dope director! Let's see if sh -- oh okay cool one more movie, wellllllllllp.

3) You Only Live 2wice, by Freddie Gibbs: Y'know what if this gets billed as an album, I'm gonna treat it like an album, length be damned. Eight songs is enough to be considered a thing IT WORKED FOR KENDRICK AND CARLY RAE DAMNIT. The opening track has maybe my favorite lyric ever: "No sleep, bags under my eyes are designer." I am going to remember that lyric for the rest of my life. It seems like a fine enough intro to Freddie Gibbs, who is a thing I am given to understand I would enjoy, and I'm excited to get into his meatier offerings.

4) Wasted Mind, by Direct Hit!: ...So remember how my computer got partially zapped last week and I lost Internet access and thus the motivation to do Internet-related things such as write my assigned blogs? Yeah so I completely forgot about this. I vaguely recall it being fine. I sort of recall it dealing with alcoholism, or lyrics relating to alcoholism, and wanting to structure this capsule around how this songwriter is recounting his pain and struggle through the thing he is best at doing, and my reaction to it is "You get a B!" but, like, I listened to this on a bus ride home ten days ago, and I wasn't too into it as I was listening to it. Only so much room, ya know? If I remembered every (pop/)punk album I ever listened to, I wouldn't remember all the tennis fun facts. And those are much more valuable. Tennis fun facts could conceivably be answers to bar trivia questions. No one was asking for this capsule.

5) The World We Built, by The Wild Reeds: The harmonies on this album are fucking nuts. This is an album I've listened to three times in the last couple weeks, and I liked it more with each listen, found new things to dig with each spin, some music thing I'm not smart enough to relay, some lyrical twist I was too preoccupied to notice. I'm sitting down with all these capsules on a Saturday night, trying to hammer a bunch of these out so I can get this sweet hot content to y'all as promised, but I kinda wanna shove this deep inside my wormholes again Sunday morning just so I have it fresh in my mind what makes this album so awesome. If you're reading these words, then of course I said "nah" and wrote my Saturday night post, which is "dope af country girl group plays songs that are hella good," and while I think the statement itself has merit, it could use a few more points of support.

6) I'm Not the Hero of This Story, by Jackie Kashian: Definitely my favorite unit of comedy released in 2017 so far. Like, the beginning, "I'm not a political comedian, but uh, I guess I have to be now?" is among the best opening bits I've ever heard. And the political comedy doesn’t feel forced, feels of a whole with the material prepared before we all went to hell. Like, the joke about being told by a minority friend trying to assuage her post-election fears, “Jesus, have you never been disappointed before?” is as much about her Midwestern emotional unavailability as the jokes about visiting her father in the hospital. (I might be over-analyzing this. Everything is either over-analyzed or under-analyzed here. ONE DAY I’LL ACHIEVE BALANCE.) It’s a strong album.

7) Dilation, by Rory Scovel: I think this was fine! As far as something I listened to because I recognized the name from Competitive Erotic Fan-Fiction goes, it was greatly enjoyable. I'm not sure how much value can be derived from a deep critical look at a six-year-old album by a dude who may or may not still be active, but if you need 40 minutes of comedy, and you've exhausted all the known brands and don't wanna revisit something you've already heard, this will provide adequate amusement.

8) Tenderheart, by Sam Outlaw: Definitely more Tender than Outlaw. I sort of shied away from Sam Outlaw for a little while because he has a stupid fucking name, but I always knew him as a dude I'd like if I gave him a chance, so I gave him a chance. My instinct was right. It's not a bad album? It's just, I dunno, soft. And that's OK. I can see it was intended to be soft, and it is not its fault I prefer to be hit with a sledgehammer than with a pillow. It did its thing, and it's a mostly good thing, and it's a thing better than 99% of the country music offerings. It just didn't do my thing.

9) Strength of a Woman, by Mary J. Blige: I think in YAS I mentioned that I appreciated Shakira's latest thing because it was specifically Shakira on the track; it was a Latin pop music veteran making a Latin pop song, and the floor on that sort of thing is insanely high. I got a similar sort of vibe from this album. I knew going in that this wouldn't get anything lower than a B+ from me, because the name attached to this album is such a strong name that it would have to take an extremely weird departure for me not to be into this, like a Metal Machine Music-level noise experiment for me to go "enh, I don't know." This kinda sounds backhanded, I think sometimes I use high floor when I mean low ceiling, but trust I loved every second I spent with this album, like this album is legit great, I listened to it twice over the Internetless weekend, I guess I just took 100 words or whatever to tell you that this thing you can tell is great from the artist turned out to be great.

10) Swear I'm Good at This, by Diet Cig: I thought this was nice? It's a nice indie/punk album about being young in 2017. I think, when I mention the floor of a Mary J. Blige album, I'm discussing the floor as it relates to the general population; there isn't a soul alive who'd come away from a Mary J. Blige album and not give it a B+. (Well, OK, there are, it's called Strength of a Woman for a reason.) For me, the floor for this sort of album is a B+, and it rests comfortably on that floor, sprawled out under a sunbeam like an adorable kitty cat. I love this! I can understand for a lot of people this would be nothing. It's slight, a little wispy punk thing, not the statement of purpose provided by The Bombpops or Bad Cop/Bad Cop, but by gum, if Amazon is going to tell me I'll like something because I enjoyed Paramore, by gum, I'm going to enjoy it.

11) blkswn, by Smino: This dude can do some crazy things with his voice. I usually check my phone to see what the song title is when I listen to an album (I like to know where I am), but I had to turn the screen on multiple times during each of this dude's songs just to make sure there weren't any features. I don't know about his range, I'm not here to discuss the technical aspect of singing, but he has this wide array of voices he can channel, so you never know quite what you're gonna get from song to song apart from a surprise. This is a talented kid. I'm excited to see him harness that.

12) Stay Eating Cookies, Shalewa Sharpe: So, I was raised on Comedy Central Presents specials, right? So many of the big names in comedy, I became first acquainted with via their half hours on Comedy Central. Does this mean there was a time when I thought Mitch Hedberg and Dane Cook were equally funny? Of course. But it also means I forged a deep enough love for the medium that I could eventually suss out who was Good and who was Bad. And this is what I love about 2 Dope Queens: it's positioned to be Comedy Central for a generation that has little use for cable, to fill for dorky kids the same role Comedy Central filled for me, except better, because they're going to be a tad more diverse. There's so many cool comics I might not have heard about without 2 Dope Queens; I think I listened to the Michelle Buteau album after I started the thing journal and loved it, and I haven't been able to get Kevin Yee's "I Fucked Your Dad" out of my head since I heard it. But this. Holy shit. Shalewa Sharpe is the best comic so far I've come to by way of 2 Dope Queens. I'm legitimately angry this woman's outlook has only been in my life for six days. Like, she has one line, one throwaway line, that elicited a noise from me I legit have never made in fifteen+ years of being aware I enjoyed comedy. This is the best unit of stand-up I've taken in this year, and y'all need to get up on it.

13) Disappear Here, Bad Suns: It makes me happy to know there's always going to be dudes making music like this. This sounds like someone gave Jimmy Eat World a more adventurous rhythm section. So like, my usual mode of consumption when I listen to music on the bus is, I'll queue up an album, and when that album finishes, I'll look for something else. I try not to have anything queued up, because I don't want to spend time with the thing I'm currently listening to wondering what I'll listen to next. (I think this was something they discussed on my beloved, departed Nothing to Write Home About, how from the second you purchase/add an album online, your preferred streaming service is already telling you to move on and buy the next thing, and I try to catch myself in those moments where I'm a distracted listener. Everything deserves my attention, and for the most part, everything gets it, even if half these capsules are more about how I take in pop culture than about the actual item of pop culture.) I put this album on repeat, because I wanted to spend another 50 minutes with these songs. It's not the same reaction I had to The World We Built, where I wanted to catch all the things I missed. I knew what in this album worked for me, it was emo-tinged post/punk about depression that absolutely grooved, I just wanted to be with this album longer.

14) Room, dir. Lenny Abrahamson: I was a little uncomfortable with this movie, because while I think they coaxed a great performance out of the kid, I don't know how aware the kid was of what he was doing? Like, when a horse wins the Kentucky Derby, the horse has no fucking clue it won the Kentucky Derby, it's just a fucking horse standing there, and it makes me uncomfortable to watch an event where the principal players aren't aware of what they're doing. The kid is more aware of his surroundings than the average horse, I'm sure, but is he going to watch this movie in 11 years and be proud of what he did? I dunno, I think every film should be animated, I'm going to mention this again when we get to Interstellar, THIS MOVIE WAS GOOD NONETHELESS. As someone who didn't have the greatest childhood, this movie was dealing with parenthood in a way I thought was powerful: it was asking, "How does a parent justify to their child the decisions they made when raising them?" It's a question the mom is asking herself all throughout the movie, and she's so lost in looking for the answer that when other people ask her questions along those lines she hits her low point, but it also asks, "How do kids accept the decisions their parents made?" The kid is obviously five years old and isn't totally aware of his surroundings, but he does have some vague cognizance that his situation prior to the events of the film was pretty fucked up; the film never jumps forward in time to when the kid is an angtsy goth looking for pot outside the mall, so we don't see how he deals with the full realization of his parentage and his upbringing, but he has some clue, and the film shows that kid accepting his situation as best he can while learning earlier than most of us that his mom is a flawed person. I loved a ton about this film, though, real talk, if I had known my computer could stream movies in 1080p without ever buffering, I might have picked a more technically impressive feature. "Wow, first time watching a film in HD, let's see this indie drama about familial relationships! You can see every detail in the shed!" (Also, that scene where the best cop in the world figures out how to extricate Ma from the shed with like seven words from the kid was so well done.)

15) Groundhog Day, from Tim Minchin et a;: This didn't land for me. It's more than the fact they wrote out Ned Ryerson, though OBVIOUSLY that didn't help. I think Groundhog Day is just... Like, that's a hard film to write, and in film, you get the luxury of being able to cast a Bill Murray as an irascible gentleman. You can't be irascible on Broadway. It's hard to be sarcastic when you're projecting. I think they did an admirable job of trying to adapt the film, which truly does not lend itself to a musical, into a musical, but they shouldn't have been asked to do that very stupid job. Of all the films. There's barely music in it.

16) Brooklyn Nine-Nine s3, cr. Michael Schur & Dan Goor: For 3/4 or so of this season, I was having a chill time, if not a great one. I thought it had set their sights on "enjoyable cop hang-out sitcom," and I can get behind that, if not necessarily be stoked on a potential s4. And then they added the Jason Mantzoukas character, and the show found a gear I would never have guessed it had. The mob storyline is EXACTLY WHAT THIS SHOW SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS WHOLE TIME, a Hot Fuzz-esque parody of cop movies/shows told with love for both the genre and the characters. It let the characters be good cops, like in the final two episodes where they have to foil the mafia and the FBI, but it allowed just enough room for them to be adorable dum-dums, like in "Cheddar," easily my favorite episode in the series to date. ("Cheddar" had so much, not the least of which was Boyle finding his home as an actual Mr. Magoo for 20 hot minutes.) Plus, at one point, Andre Braugher says "I can't even," and he manages to find the exact syllables in that phrase on which to put these subtle but undeniably incorrect inflections. Like, even when the show was settling for B-s, it was worth sticking with just for Andre Braugher (and Terry Crews and Stephanie Beatriz). The end to s3 was so strong, I'm psyched to see how they take s4.

17) In Transit, by Kristen Anderson-Lopez et al: So here's what's cool about In Transit, right? So like, I was never into Hamilton, but I do love the concept about a hip-hop musical about a Founding Father, because what better way to recount a nation's origin than through a genre of music which originated from the nation? The a capella musical takes a similar tack: it's a musical about a mass of people in New York, being sung by a mass of people. Like, none of the stories are really new: someone has anxiety about the future, other people have anxiety about relationships, this dude needs to come out of the closet but hasn't, it's all been done, but the a capella arrangements seem to indicate that the writers know these are things everyone goes through, so they have everyone sing them. It's not just the lead who's frustrated by the arc of her professional and creative careers, it's everyone in the office lamenting that they work in an office and not where they want to work, and the fact there's a chorus of people having these problems helps make this musical something more than "we're in New York and don't know what we're doing," which isn't my preferred thing to listen to. I don't know if that was the intent, it might not be given that I implied the stories being told were generic and unambitious (like I've said what I wanted about Hamilton, but that's a musical with chutzpah far beyond just the hip-hop influence)? But it feels bigger than it does.

18) Interstellar, dir. Christopher Nolan: I was always gonna watch this film, but no doubt the impetus behind adding this to the end of the week was, OK, NOW let's christen the new computer. Let's get this Christopher Nolan sci-fi epic, and let's see the true power of HD. (HD, surprisingly, looks a lot like regular TV but slightly fancier. I do wanna watch Kubo and the Three Strings again tho.) First of all, this did not need to be three hours long. I did not need to devote three hours of my life to this film. At the same time, though, I'm not sure what you cut from the film; it's over-long, but it never felt bloated, it at least felt like every scene had purpose. And while I'm never THAT into films where actors are acting at things that aren't there, I think there was enough of a human element established that I never felt unmoored from the film's world(s); there was always Matthew McConaughey's relationship with his daughter keeping this film grounded, even in the scenes where the characters recited science at each other. (I do wish the film hadn't asked me to believe Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain were the same age. The age gap is narrower than I would have expected from Hollywood, but eight years is STILL A FUCKING LONG TIME.) And, man, it is rough times watching a movie about the earth beind destroyed and science being devalued in 2017. It's kind of amazing that this dystopian society being imagined in 2014 is, like, today's society, we are ten years away from only eating corn and failing to find new planets because we stopped being curious and started hyper-farming.

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