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Off in the corner doing poet's work
New York got our nor'easter. In Boston it snowed lightly this morning, sullenly rained for a couple hours more, drizzled off into an ordinary chilly spring day. On the one hand, I am disappointed. On the other, had we gotten yesterday's predicted foot of snow the Brattle would almost certainly have canceled its 35 mm screening of Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky (1982) and I loved that movie so much, I can live with a near-miss storm. For years I thought there were only two members of the Bowie-Swinton species on this planet. I revised my opinion following Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). But when Anne Carlisle masked in luminescent paint declares, "And I am no less androgynous than David Bowie himself," she doesn't just mean it, we believe her, and not just because she plays both male and female roles in this strung-out, neon-lit, no-wave New York feminist sci-fi/horror. I add it to the ever-lengthening list of movies I someday want to sleep enough to write about. I don't see a lot of movies that feel like the performance art baby of Derek Jarman and Tanith Lee. The public access synth score is amazing.
1. If you are on Twitter and enjoying Jeannelle M. Ferreira's The Covert Captain, you may wish to follow its author @JeannelleWrites.
2. I like this poem: Jill Talbot, "Questions for Stephen Hawking."
3. Speaking of Tom Hiddleston, I would pay good money to see him play a peat bog ghost, thank you.
4. I am sad to see the negative reviews of Steven S. DeKnight's Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) both because the trailers looked so promising and because I really loved del Toro's Pacific Rim (2013). I worry they broke one of the elements of the original film that made it stand out and really mattered to me.
5. I wish I'd had this article on Linda Sarsour available when I ran into that person on Facebook with a hate-on for her.
I did not expect yesterday to focus around a new book announcement. I am having to readjust my self-esteem for the fact that a couple hundred people on two different social media platforms have been saying nice things to me ever since. I think on some level I really believed maybe five people besides me would think it was cool. Pay attention, Tiny Wittgenstein.
1. If you are on Twitter and enjoying Jeannelle M. Ferreira's The Covert Captain, you may wish to follow its author @JeannelleWrites.
2. I like this poem: Jill Talbot, "Questions for Stephen Hawking."
3. Speaking of Tom Hiddleston, I would pay good money to see him play a peat bog ghost, thank you.
4. I am sad to see the negative reviews of Steven S. DeKnight's Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) both because the trailers looked so promising and because I really loved del Toro's Pacific Rim (2013). I worry they broke one of the elements of the original film that made it stand out and really mattered to me.
5. I wish I'd had this article on Linda Sarsour available when I ran into that person on Facebook with a hate-on for her.
I did not expect yesterday to focus around a new book announcement. I am having to readjust my self-esteem for the fact that a couple hundred people on two different social media platforms have been saying nice things to me ever since. I think on some level I really believed maybe five people besides me would think it was cool. Pay attention, Tiny Wittgenstein.
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Seriously: you are well-known and well-loved and admired (AS YOU SHOULD BE) It's just that Tiny Wittgenstein uses all his evil demon-philospher wiles to say just the right undermining things.
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Thank you.
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I don't even think it's malice, just gloom.
Thank you.
*hugs*
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I'm doing my best to impress it!
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Always bring Ralph Richardson!
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We'll always have the Shatterdome.
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*discards nice clean orderly shell pile*
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LUDWIG I TOLD YOU NOT TO BOTHER THE SEAL.
*hugs*
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*hugs*
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We had at least 6 inches of snow just north of DC, but by this evening, most of it had melted: patches in the middle of lawns and unhappy-looking ridges between the sidewalk and the street were all that was left. I don't mind, because I only like snow while it's falling.
You write beautifully, and I plan to get the book.
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I like snow on the ground in season. I start to side-eye it when it's actually supposed to be melting.
You write beautifully, and I plan to get the book.
Thank you. In advance, I very much hope you enjoy it!
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You can get it on Blu-Ray now if you are so inclined. On 35 mm, a well-preserved but scratchy original print with fluctuating green lines and occasional skips, it was incredible.
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an image. It’s just the silence that
occurs between neurons firing,
putting what was upside-down
right-side up. You can only protest
death once it’s already in the room,
taking up all the silent space.
Thank you. These days most of my poetry comes from your links; I am grateful.
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You're very welcome. I am happy to be a vector of poetry.
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"And they call me beautiful, and I kill with my cunt. Isn't it fashionable?"
I loved it. I had been hearing about it for years in a sort of secondhand cult fashion; I think it must have kicked into mainstream movie news with the recent Blu-Ray release, so I knew as soon as the Brattle announced a screening that I wanted to see it, but I didn't know that much about it—I'd heard genderbending and trippiness and the early '80's fashion/music scene. No one told me about the heroin aliens. I knew I'd have loved it years ago if I'd found it then. I think it would have done much the same to my brain as Tanith Lee's Paradys, of which Liquid Sky really feels like the New York counterpart.
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Aw.
And I wish I could be The Friend for you as well as your friend, but seriously: You are so great. You are just so great. Please believe it.
Thank you. I'm really working on it.
You're a good friend.
*hugs*
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“I’d like to give you a million dollars, And make you King of France, with your own vassals.”
“Hell no!” (CHORUS)
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So I saw Pacific Rim: Now With More Kaiju this evening, after cautiously checking three reviews, and it was actually better than what it said on the tin. The plot makes no sense. Well, there is the kind of sense of "we need a battle on an ice sheet with glaciers" and "this bit is in Japan I want to include Mt Fuji for pretty", but not any other kind of sense where consequences follow actions, particularly much, unless they lead to More Jägers Hit Kaiju. The director has a singular vision, and it was shared by the editor: this is a surprisingly tightly edited film. del Toro kept a credit for art direction, as well as producer, and it shows; this is very much the same visual universe as the last one. What did work are the people. This is a movie that needed to handle a transition to a new near-teenage cast, and it does it better than Star Wars managed, by leaving out the sulking. There is a complete lack of discussion of any philosophy of the Drift; it seems to fit, these are late-teens not undergrads, after all. Hermann & Newt are very much themselves. There is a pleasing lack of Hollywood lazy-stereotype easy outs. It's not the layered depths of movie of its predecessor, but it is short and does credit to the genre, and had me wanting to see the next one.
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Thank you!
Hermann & Newt are very much themselves. There is a pleasing lack of Hollywood lazy-stereotype easy outs. It's not the layered depths of movie of its predecessor, but it is short and does credit to the genre, and had me wanting to see the next one.
I'm glad to hear it. Thank you for providing a countervailing point of view! It was sounding as though the sequel did everything the original had avoided, which was a demoralizing prospect.
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I saw Liquid Sky when I was a freshman in high school. A new-to-town friend's father was somehow connected to the production (possibly just in lending Tsukerman money) and had a copy of it. My friend told me that he was concerned about what my parents would think if he let us watch it and I assured him a) that I wouldn't tell them, and b) that they were actually not big on gatekeeping my media consumption. But I think that added to the illicit charm of the experience.
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Thank you!
My friend told me that he was concerned about what my parents would think if he let us watch it and I assured him a) that I wouldn't tell them, and b) that they were actually not big on gatekeeping my media consumption. But I think that added to the illicit charm of the experience.
That's wonderful.