Trump's victory was inevitable. I felt that way before Harris took over the campaign from Biden. Harris was more qualified than the ailing Biden so I hoped that might turn it around but, let's face it, Harris had lost the primaries when she'd properly run for president and when she became the presidential candidate this time she had a fraction of the time to campaign most candidates get. Trump had at least two traditional edges, being a former president and a man. But he had a lot of uncommon assets, too. He'd survived a public assassination attempt. His followers generally have the sense of him being wrongly persecuted.
It's remarkable that we have a convicted felon for president. Think back to over twenty-five years ago when Democrats fought tooth and tail to argue Bill Clinton didn't deserve to be removed from office for cheating on his wife (the surface argument about him lying was just that, a surface). Expecting the public to go that way on the issue then adopt a different standard for Trump was deranged.
As in 2016, but even more clearly this time, I have the sense this is an election the Democrats lost rather than one Trump won. You're not crazy if you think Trump is obviously unqualified, but the key word for his supporters is not "unqualified" but rather "obvious". Trump's motives are always plain. Even when he doesn't follow through, people excuse him because they understand the motive behind his bluster and hyperbole. Trump is dumb, but he lives in reality. The Democrats have failed to adapt to a culture whose zero fucks for traditional values have been reduced further into the negative range by a steadily diminishing economy. So, yes, people feeling oppressed by grotesquely high rents preferred to vote for a greedy landlord. They're that put off by the obfuscations and radical politics of the Left.
Trump's interview with Joe Rogan really made it clear, contrasted with the Harris interview with Howard Stern. Hardly anyone even deigned to notice the Harris interview with Stern, or Biden's interview with Stern. In the '90s, a presidential candidate going on The Howard Stern Show would have been big news. To-day, it's all but meaningless. Things changed. The Democrats didn't.
Oh, well. Here we go again. Hopefully next time the Democrats can find themselves another Obama. Someone who seems real and qualified.
A woman tests a small town's morality and patience in 1963's Il Demonio. It's a film that avoids giving the audience easy answers and highlights how abominably people can behave in ambiguous situations.
A beautiful young woman called Purif (Daliah Lavi) is passionately obsessed with Antonio (Frank Wolff), a young man of her village. He vigorously rebuffs her as she continues to physically cling to him, but he can't resist a few kisses. Nor can he resist the wine she gives him. After he drinks it, she tells him she mixed her blood into it.
Purif is a practicing witch and as her antics become more severe, she's subjected to religious punishment and exorcism, which inevitably becomes sexual abuse. The spirit of a dead boy seemingly converses with her. There are signs that Purif really is in contact with Satan, yet this actually contributes to a sense of the villagers' diminished moral standing. As their punishments of Purif become excessively cruel and clearly driven by sexual compulsion, Satan starts to look like a fellow of comparatively good integrity. At least Purif has no delusions about who she is or what her motives are. Of course, provoking the town into brazen moral hypocrisy may have been Satan's plan all along.
The film's beautifully shot and Daliah Lavi gives a brave, unrestrained performance. Il Demonio is available on The Criterion Channel.
I've been having some interesting dreams lately but I've been doing a bad job of remembering them. So, a few nights ago, when I woke at 2am after having one, I immediately typed up a description as best I could with eyes that were not quite ready to open and look at my bright computer screen. Here's the description I wrote, typos and all:
Dream about a big yellow dog
girl looking for him
Indoor park
dark street
she stares at tehe camera, short hair, big eyes
Dog is mustard cooour
eats cildren
is sometimes '80s acto
I have no idea what "'80s acto" is supposed to mean. I guess the dream must have been set in the '80s. I do remember the dog seemed dirty, streaked with black and dark green, like egg yolk with black, melted rubber.
Anyway, Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone. It comes early to Japan, where it's unobserved. In America, where people used to not know about it, of course it's election day this year. Quite a confluence since one candidate is accused of inciting a mob that stormed the U.S. capital. I think the left has largely mischaracterised that event but, all the same, I want to urge any Americans reading to vote for Kamala Harris. If you're worried about getting a president manipulated by powerful outside interests, Trump's the one you gotta worry about, not Harris. If the demons spinning yarn around his head can be considered outside interests. I'm not just talking about his bizarre hair style. He's clearly possessed by ideas, recklessly fueled by resentment, possibly also by the inability to cope with his position on the world stage, about his own unrecognised merit. He'll cling foolishly to anyone who flatters him as a consequence. This speaks to the basic lack of the maturity requisite in the leader of a country. Please, don't make us joke again. Or not more of a joke, anyway.
X Sonnet #1895
The heartless robber stole the horse's hoof.
A captive plant would dream of aphid death.
Entire teams were seen on Scrooge's roof.
The track could only lead to Walter Neff.
The clown was routed back to Hades' court.
Reversing time required counter spin.
The game's diminished, it's a console port.
When all the lot would conquer, none could win.
With helpless hands, the gloves discussed a meal.
Without the buns, the burgers changed in shape.
A simple food would prove its health is real.
The flying man would wear a crimson cape.
A whale collision rocked the briny deep.
Pervasive error coos itself to sleep.
A whale collision rocked the briny deep.
Pervasive error coos itself to sleep.
People don't tend to think about how dangerous a crocodile is, but one is certainly bad enough to serve as a horror movie villain. 2007's Black Water shows this quite well, so well that it remains effective despite a kind of ridiculous third act.
Grace (Diana Glenn) and Lee (Maeve Dermody) are on vacation with Grace's husband, Adam (Andy Rodoreda), and decide to take a boat tour through a swamp. Their boat is capsized by a croc, their guide is chomped to bits, and the three of them are forced up a tree.
The film builds tension nicely and the editing is intuitive as we follow their lines of thought about what the best course of action is. Should they try for the boat, should they try hopping from tree to tree, risking short swims here and there? The croc is fast, appears suddenly, and keeps his victims, and the viewer, guessing about his speed, reach, and location.
Then it gets a little silly. Obviously, not everyone can die right away, or there's no movie, but the reasons the movie gives as to why some people survive a croc attack are pretty flimsy. At some point, it's clear the movie's playing by video game rules. But it never becomes truly bad.
I watched this, I supposed you could call it a debate, yesterday. I was fascinated by how one sided it was. I'd heard another conversation between Richard Dawkins and Jordan Peterson, a sort of impromptu meeting at a university, and Dawkins had come off much better than Peterson. Each was respectful of the other but Dawkins had no patience for Peterson's inferences about meaning in recurrent mythological symbols in disparate cultures. This time, though, it was almost like a Jordan Peterson lecture in which Dawkins occasionally spoke to say that he wasn't interested in what Peterson was speaking about. And yet, by the end, incredibly, Peterson seemed to bring Dawkins around.
Peters expresses something I've long thought needed to be brought across to hard line atheists who tend to be so dismissive of religion as to see it as comical. Peterson articulates, and I think finally manages to convince Dawkins of, the importance of religion as an anthropological subject and in many ways a constructive phenomenon, regardless of whether or not one literally believes in a divinity. Peterson finally drags Dawkins into the epiphany via memes and how religious ideas are kinds of memes, which seems like a bit of an appeal to Dawkins' ego. It's basically pointing out to Dawkins that he is interested in the thing because he's most famous actually for rephrasing the thing.
I was a little shocked by Dawkins' admission that he knew little of scientific history and the relationship between Christianity and the development of science as a discipline. It made me wish I were there so I could show him the connexions between the Reformation, the Puritans in England, and the development of the Royal Society, all a continually refining process to find the methodology for determining observable, objective truth to the absolute best of human capability. But surely he must have read all this at some point? I simply can't believe that his education never encompassed that. Hell, if he'd just watched Cosmos, he ought to have some idea. I guess it goes to show atheists are as capable of selective perceptions as anyone. I've often thought that people who believe themselves most immune to unconscious bias and selective memories are the most susceptible to them.
Both Dawkins and the moderator try to get Peterson to definitively answer whether or not he believes in the miracles described by the bible, such as the virgin birth. I'm not the only one who clearly understands why Peterson avoids directly answering the question--I see even some of the commentators on the YouTube video picked up on it. He doesn't want to alienate his Christian fans. But he's certainly not being deceptive when he says such questions are kind of irrelevant, particularly the question as to whether or not Cain and Abel actually existed. As Peterson puts it very well, if Cain and Abel were real people, the characters described in the bible we have to-day would likely bear very little resemblance to them for all the changes and revisions the text went through over the centuries. It isn't important that those two brothers were real, it's important that they represent an obviously real, observable phenomenon in human behaviour. It is really strange that Dawkins, a man who came up with the concept of a meme, wouldn't be interested in stories that survive the centuries due to their enduring utility.
I don't think Peterson's interpretations are as inevitable as he seems to believe they are, though. I think the real debate ought to have been about how religious texts can just as well be utilised for twisted, oppressive interpretations. At the same time as scientific thought was developing in 17th century England, Galileo was imprisoned in Italy for his heretical observations. It was an interesting conversation but strange for a number of omissions.
The two part Agatha All Along finale was good television. Not amazing but nonetheless satisfying and possessed of a storytelling integrity notably lacking in most of the Marvel series on Disney+. I suspect this is something Drew Goddard alluded to in a tweet about the new Daredevil series, that Disney/Marvel is abandoning the "treat series like movies" policy and going back to the format that made the Marvel Netflix series so consistent. Even the weakest of those, Iron Fist, benefited from the lack of the indecisive committee mentality that I think undermined so many big budget Disney+ shows.
The contrast is particularly clear when it comes to the differences between Wanda/Vision and Agatha All Along. Both series were created and ran by Jac Schaeffer but while Wanda/Vision had suspiciously odd plot twists, the most infamous being the Ralph Boehner one, Agatha All Along had elements that were clearly planned from the start and which Schaeffer followed through with in the finish. There was Patti LuPone's mental dislocation last week, and this week we get the reveal that Agatha knew from the start about Wiccan/William and that the Witch's Road was entirely his creation. If one goes back and watches the series again, the reveals at the end will lend new meaning to everything in a way that a Boehner style twist does not.
That's not to say I don't think people making film and television can't change course in the middle of production, that such a thing can't yield good results. I think the motivations behind such course changes matter, though. If it comes from a good storytelling instinct, it can be as interesting as the Darth Vader hallway sequence in Rogue One. But if it's a studio being indecisive over issues of branding and product roll-out, the results tend to be pretty lame.
Agatha All Along sure made good use of that song. Good thing it's a good song. Wanda and Wiccan creating realities, and thus creating narratives, is kind of reflected in Agatha and Nicholas' creation of the song. It's like micro-propaganda; Agatha took a melody crafted with artistic sincerity and then used it as a tool to manipulate her victims (I'm so happy the show didn't try to morally redeem her). It's like the Nazis using Wagner or the Soviets using Eisenstein, just on a micro-level. Of course, it's very Postmodern.
Lately I've been thinking about a trending criticism, the tendency to say some people act like "they're the main characters of their own stories". This one really puzzled me for a while until I realised most peoples' exposure to fiction is much more limited than mine so they assume "main character" is another term for "hero". Naturally, if your life is a story, then you're the main character. If not you, who? Name anyone and you'll sound pretty pathetic. "My boyfriend/my mother/my dog is the main character of my story." Oof. It's Wiccan and Wanda who actually make everyone else be supporting characters in their own stories, a much better way of getting at the egocentrism the criticism is supposed to be aimed at. Agatha may be the main character of this series, but from Wiccan's perspective, she's definitely a supporting character, a morally complicated villain.
One of the things I really liked about Wanda/Vision is that Wanda did not act heroically. Yet there were people who defended her, taken in by the tone of the story and sympathy for Wanda's love for her children. Agatha All Along's superior artistic integrity allows that moral complexity to sit in the minds of the viewers unfiltered, allowing for more interesting debate. I'm happy about that.
Happy Halloween, everyone in the time zones where it's October 31st. It was another lean Halloween for me. It's a good thing I spend the whole month watching horror movies. This past week, though, my internet speed has been shit so streaming services were frequently interrupted by the old spinning loading dot with its little comet trail. I wonder if I added up all the minutes I've spent watching that, how many years it would be.
So I've been watching my DVDs and blu-rays. Coppola's 1992 Dracula, of course. Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow which, despite having a screenplay I really don't like, which deviates from the original story severely, still has beautiful cinematography, costumes, and score. And a great cast. I also watched The Vampire Lovers again, another one with a great cast.
I've found myself really craving 12th Doctor era Doctor Who and I've been watching that. Peter Capaldi is so damned good. I suppose I should try watching that new Amazon series he's on, The Devil's Hour I think it's called. Except, of all the streaming services, my internet hates Amazon the most. Certain sites seem to have a particular brew of cookies that my provider, Softbank, likes to throttle. Amazon and Google are at the top of the list. Whenever I load g-mail, it knocks my internet out for ten minutes half the time. I've taken to only checking e-mail on my phone, which uses the same service provider but always works fine. I guess that goes to show where Softbank's priorities are.
Anyway, last night I watched "The Girl Who Died"/"The Woman Who Lived". I love how most of Twelve's second season are two part episodes. I enjoyed this one a lot more than I did the first time. In particular, the Doctor's interpreting the baby, which I usually found cloying, is ominous and sweet. There's no clips of that on YouTube but here's a nice deleted scene:
Teri Garr passed away on Tuesday. She was 79. Her long career began in the '60s. She made a memorable appearance on the original Star Trek series before her career took off in the '70s when she worked with Mel Brooks and Francis Ford Coppola. She largely disappeared from the beginning of the 2000s, a sadly common fate for actresses famed for youthful beauty, but in her case it was due to the cruelty of nature. She had multiple sclerosis that resulted in a variety of traumatic health problems and eventually her death.
She didn't stop working, though. She had the occasional small role in a film or did voice work. Her role in 2001's Ghost World is so small I had no idea she was in the movie for a long time.
It being Halloween, I imagine a lot of people are going to be watching Young Frankenstein. I imagine a lot of people would be watching it regardless. It is a classic of the season and Garr is an integral part of it. Who doesn't remember the "roll in the hay" or the "knockers"? People used to dismiss the idea that women could be funny because beauty is somehow antithetical to comedy. Garr demonstrates how untrue this is. It's not simply that she happens to be funny and sexy at the same time; that sexiness is a vital component to the comedy, it's why the jokes work. Questions and anxieties about sex are fundamental to the collective human psyche. Of course sex is funny. And Teri Garr made that admirably clear.
X Sonnet #1894
A mindless chuckle pinged connexions weak.
Diffusing cakes became the beef of men.
Discernment split the second mirror peak.
Across the glass, a daughter sought to win.
'Twas bats again the castle cast as staff.
Deserving lords require rarer beef.
Carousing vamps refuse the lonely calf.
Their raucous party filled the steamy bath.
The bouncing word was changed from naught to wax.
With wax we make a clock to pass the time.
A melting dream consorts with heavy Macs.
Another mountain chose a man to climb.
The dodging fly was caught in tangled legs.
The spider people hatch a trillion eggs.
Last night's season finale of Only Murders in the Building was one of the funniest things I've seen in years, following from an exceptionally funny season. I can't remember the last time a movie or show made me laugh so much. The teleplay was by series co-creator John Hoffman and newcomer J.J. Philbin, which sounds like a pseudonym to me but I couldn't guess for whom. Regis Philbin? I doubt it.
The story picks up with Mabel (Selena Gomez) being held hostage by the imposter screenwriter, Marshall P. Pope (Jin Ha), in the apartment across from Charles' (Steve Martin). Mabel tries to stall by criticising a joke Marshall made in his screenplay about America Online. Like many of the effective comedic moments in the episode (not that screenplay), it hinged a lot on the timing of the performers and Jamie Babbit's direction. But there were a lot of clever lines in the script.
Oliver (Martin Short) goes downstairs to meet briefly with his fiancee, Loretta (Meryl Streep), who says the movie she's making is moving production to New Zealand because "the algorithm says it's newer." Streep's delivery on that line was pitch perfect. I'm laughing just thinking about it now. It was one of two digs in the episode at Hollywood studios becoming mindlessly reliant on algorithms.
The second half of the episode felt oddly truncated, being mainly a denouement for this season and setup for the next. There were a few moments I got the distinct impression were edited down from something much longer.
I look forward to next season. Though, if they want to get their ratings up, I think they're going to have to find Mabel another boyfriend or girlfriend.
Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.
What makes someone want to watch other people in private? Michael Powell's 1960 film, Peeping Tom, sheds some light on this problem but it presents such a unique case, one may wonder has useful it could be in analysing the phenomenon as a whole. However, watching it again a few nights ago, for the first time in at least a decade, I was astonished by the seemingly fresh insight it yielded. It almost felt like I was seeing it for the first time. Perhaps it's because I've lived in Japan for almost five years now and Japan, along with other east Asian countries, has a fundamentally different perspective on voyeurism.
I remember once a junior high school student told me that her friend wasn't allowed to masturbate until she passed an upcoming test. Her mother forbade her. I was so astonished both by the student's frankness and by what she had told me that I thought I'd misheard her. I asked her to tell me again but the student became shy and changed the subject. I was deeply disturbed that a parent would violate her 14 year old child's privacy so much as even to regulate a deeply personal act and use it as a tool of manipulation. But the concept of privacy is more or less a western concept. In a collectivist culture like Japan's, the idea that someone has an existence outside of society is considered perverse. Mind you, I live in a very conservative part of the country and from what I gather, ideas of privacy, among others, are closer to western values in Tokyo and Osaka. Is it even right for me to judge, though, coming from such a cultural perspective? Maybe not, but every time I spot a neighbour looking through my window, or hear some other insinuation that my privacy has been compromised by someone who doesn't even believe in the concept, I certainly find it irritating to be on the receiving end of such ethnocentrism.
Morality here seems almost entirely external. So long as the subject remains unaware of what is done to him, anything is permitted. Nothing becomes real unless it's seen and digested by society. And then, even if the subject is evidently aware, community rhetoric will repress awareness of that awareness if the subject's awareness is too inconvenient.
I then think of Mark (Karlheinz Böhm), the main character of Peeping Tom, and what growing up under constant surveillance and manipulation by his father did to him. There's something sweet and innocent about him that coincides with a fundamental disregard for the humanity of others. He fervently watches footage of the latest girl he's killed but in all his conversations with his victims and others, he's always polite, soft spoken, and gentle. The real world exists for him in the camera, his father made sure of that, and he'll use whatever tactics necessary to enable him to film, to quietly disappear and become pure observer.
And yet, Mark's existence as object of observation is a constant parallel reality. When other children were learning how to interact with other people normally, Mark's whole personality was built on being something that is watched. Despite being a serial killer, he takes amazingly little care to prevent detection. He has no locks on his doors, he hides the body of a victim in a prop trunk on set of the movie on which he works as a camera operator. He kills coworkers, making no effort to find victims that can't be traced back to him. It's commonly said that Mark wants to be caught but I don't think that's exactly true. I think it's more like he sees his arrest as an inevitable stitch in the fabric of his reality. He is, of course, continuing his father's study of him as an exhibition of fear, though with no intelligent direction. There's no sense that his "documentary" is to be edited to provide insight in narrative form to any student of psychology. There's an exultation in the control he's able to assert over women who exist in a more liberated realm than he can ever broach and yet that very assertion of dominance and control is part of a pattern inflicted on himself by his own internal observer. Sadism is a device for managing reality he inherited from his father but he has adopted it with less volition than his father presumably had.
Now how much stronger would this continual observation and manipulation be if it were carried on down generations?
Peeping Tom is available on The Criterion Channel.
Jeri Taylor passed away a couple days ago at the age of 86. She wrote the above episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Drumhead", of which she was particularly proud. Not seen in the clip is legendary screen actress Jean Simmons who played a key role in an episode about a witch hunt and subtle racial discrimination.
Taylor wrote for three Star Trek series: Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, the last of which she co-created. Her work was often very thoughtful, political, but not ever, as I recall, truly polemical. I don't remember Voyager very well, I tend not to re-watch it. But her two parter for Deep Space Nine, "The Maquis", introduced the rebel group that remained a part of Star Trek for years afterward. It facilitated many of the show's signature, thought provoking analyses of war and attendant issues of loyalty and retribution. Taylor was certainly integral to what was best about that silver age of the franchise.
X Sonnet #1893
Permission froze the words to mean enough.
The heart cannot escape the metal arm.
The coat was cold from sleeve to ruffled cuff.
Embedded code creates computer smarm.
The hand contains intentions weird and dull.
A ceiling swarm attracts the blinding drunk.
A group of eyes were clustered 'round the hull.
Assorted lives fulfilled the secret trunk.
A secret word was passed amongst the mob.
To threaten ants was normal work for men.
A candy corn erodes the wholesome cob.
The holiday was rife with feinted sin.
The pastry shop displayed imprisoned rolls.
Pervasive fear creates reflexive trolls.
So Donald Trump's interview with Joe Rogan went up on YouTube yesterday, as I write, and has 22 million views, 1.3 million likes and no dislikes. The Howard Stern interview with Kamala Harris went up two weeks ago, has 1.6 million views and likes and dislikes are disabled. That last detail is crucial and key to one's popularity over the other--one at least gives the impression of honesty, of a willingness to take public opinion head on, while the other would put up a barrier.
That's the impression. Is it the truth? I find it hard to believe out of 22 million people, not one would dislike Trump. But maybe they'd think of it as a vote against Rogan. The view count could be bots. I don't really think so. Rogan is wildly popular, Stern really isn't at this point. The true test between the two candidates won't come unless Harris sits down with Rogan. I think she ought to at this point and probably won't. The biggest problem the left faces, and Joe Rogan astutely points this out in the Trump interview, is that everyone can see they're trying to manipulate the truth all the time. Rogan could be in Russia's pocket, he didn't really challenge Trump on his relationship with Putin at all. I don't think Rogan is in Putin's pocket, though.
The Rogan/Trump interview is simply easier to listen to. Rogan always comes off as friendly and reasonable and he has a way of bringing up contrary points without seeming resentful or combative. He did confront Trump on his persistent denial of election results and I don't think Trump realised how foolish he came off because of how diplomatically Rogan constructed the segment.
Trump is relaxed and interesting in the interview but to the unbiased listener I don't think he came off well, at least not as a presidential candidate. He rambles frequently--which Rogan charitably calls "weaving", and Trump, with his fragile ego, eagerly accepts the term. And Trump shows himself frequently unable to recall the names of people important to the stories he tells or points he's trying to make. Sometimes he meanders so much he becomes nonsensical and his continually stressing the importance of being friendly with Putin or Kim Jong Un doesn't come off as tactful but every bit as guileless as Harris accuses him of being.
If Harris loses this race, I think it'll be entirely on the lack of transparency. We really do need a candidate outside of the machine Rogan talks about but Trump is simply not suited to be president. He's too simple-minded. But I sure hope Harris accepts Rogan's invitation to do his show.
An English family fleeing mysterious scandal in their home country establish themselves at a sprawling homestead in rural Maine. Things get weirder from there in 2017's Marrowbone. Produced by J.A. Bayona, now best known for Amazon's The Rings of Power, it's much like that series in that it feels like the makers of it have seen lots of quality productions and tried to cobble together their own from impressions rather than feelings. The result is formulaic, sometimes ridiculous, but occasionally pretty.
Allie (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a young American woman who meets the family, headed by matriarch Rose (Nicola Harrison). Rose has three boys and a girl. When she dies, Jack (George MacKay) becomes head of the family and the siblings decide to hide their mother's death for fear of being separated and adopted.
The film has clear moments that present us with missing information and most viewers will be waiting for a twist ending, having been trained by various movies from M. Night Shyamalan and his imitators that began to lose popularity roughly a decade earlier. Writer/director Sergio G. Sanchez's answer to this problem is to nest multiple twists in the end. It results in an intensely plot driven film and the characters therefore feel like they're held at arm's length, functioning essentially as pawns in a chess puzzle. Some of the contortions the story's obliged to go through in order to serve the plot are really silly, particularly a crucial moment where Allie is informed of many of the family's secrets via a handmade scrapbook that was left for her in the hollow of a boulder. It's a cloyingly precious moment that will try the viewer's patience since the plot at this point is in a position of critical suspense, in which Allie learning the truth before the following day is crucial to the family's survival.
Imagine the local authorities are due to confiscate all your property, separate your family, publish scandal about you, and your way of handling it is to get out the construction paper, yarn, and crayons and spend all night laboriously designing, compiling, and sketching. I'd say someone deserves a trip to the funny farm.
I won't spoil the end of the film but, I think, it must certainly have come from a devotee of Michel Foucault. Some people might like that but I was rolling my eyes. The cinematography is pretty, though, and there are good performances by Anna Taylor-Joy, Mia Goth, and Kyle Soller.
Last night's Agatha All Along was good and felt very much like a TV show. That's been a particular asset of this show, er, all along, actually. It's the first one to use the new Marvel Television logo and it seems they're making good on their new strategy to build these series more like television series than like movies.
I wondered why Patti LuPone, with her famous ego, took what was essentially a fifth string role in an ensemble but last night made it clear she was kind of front and centre all . . . er, all along.
It was a pretty cool set up and pay-off and certainly gave her a memorable send-off. I liked how Tarot was woven into it and how it seemed like the show's writers genuinely understood Tarot. The witch cosplay was nice and Agatha was eerily perfect as the Wicked Witch of the West.
I watched Howard Stern's interview with Kamala Harris a few days ago. Long time readers of my blog know I was an avid Howard Stern listener fifteen or so years ago. I started listening to Stern in the '90s and went back to him sporadically. When I was making comics full time, his was a perfect show to occupy my ears while I was inking or colouring. But at some point he started to change, around the time Artie Lange left. He santised himself so much it seems strange to think at one time he was the prototypical "shock jock".
Despite not having listened for years, I knew the story he opened the interview with, the one about the Prince concert he attended. I've heard him tell that story a dozen times but it's not as dull as when he does an impression of his mother, which he did at the end of the interview. I can't imagine why he still thinks that's entertaining, except maybe he doesn't think about what he's doing too much anymore.
The interview had little of value. Stern talks about how even Saturday Night Live's mild jokes about Harris make him nervous. No wonder he had no challenging questions for her. More than anything, though, it's the dishonesty that bugs me. Putting aside all the shock and gross-out humour that once defined his show, it was Stern's unvarnished honesty that really kept listeners tuned in. Now he says he can't even understand why people would vote for Trump. This is despite Stern admitting in the interview that Trump was a guest at his own wedding. Trump used to make appearances on the Stern Show all the time. I certainly wouldn't fault Stern for not wanting to vote for Trump or having reasons for disliking Trump's policies, even disliking Trump as a man. But to say that he doesn't even understand Trump's appeal seems like it could only be a lie. If there's one guy in the U.S. who understands why people are voting for Trump, it should be Stern. I think it's that kind of dishonesty, that reflexive fear of even acknowledging empathy with the other side, that makes politics so bitterly polarised.
I prefer Harris because she's competent. But I wouldn't say I don't understand people wanting to vote for Trump. People voting for Trump is like people who prefer to date someone they know is dumber than themselves. They think that's the safe option because a stupid person is easily comprehensible. That makes them charming. But stupid people are capable of making mistakes beyond the limits of a stupidity fetishist's imagination, particularly since wanting a stupid partner is a declaration that you don't like to have to think too much about your partner. But stupidity is a dark and treacherous sea.
X Sonnet #1892
With lazy blasts, the sun destroys the paint.
Contented swallows bask in falling chips.
To watch the pigment dry is vaguely quaint.
To watch it fall's akin to faucet drips.
A hiking man was left in ages past.
Another portal turns the first around.
A race of cats neglects to honour Bast.
A set of teeth would render words profound.
Realities of gesture spill the soup.
No care sufficed to keep the substance flat.
Surprise dispersed among the canny troop.
A chorus girl concealed a gallant's hat.
The moaning singer missed the crucial key.
The victor claimed defeat from evil tea.
Last night's Only Murders in the Building, directed by the ever reliable Jamie Babbit, revealed the killer for this season. As usual, there were no real clues that could have enabled any viewer to reason out the killer's identity but I found it to be a very satisfying reveal anyway.
Spoilers ahead
So, yes, the guy with imposter syndrome turns out to be an imposter! I love this idea, especially because I think so many people with imposter syndrome are imposters. How could it not be so when American colleges have basically become expensive daycare centres for adults, particularly in the humanities department? Do you know how many students I met at college who wouldn't dream of reading a book through, let alone going to the trouble of developing their own thoughts? An obscene number, I assure you. But every time someone says, "Gee, I don't think I'm actually qualified for my job," we're all supposed to say, no, no, you just have cold feet. We could be encouraging them to do their diligence instead. Try making an effort, you might feel better.
It's not to say the average professional imposter is a murderer like the guy on Only Murders in the Building. But the kind of whiny hustler he is certainly familiar. His fake beard is even funnier now.
Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.
I don't know what video to post so here's another Selena Gomez video:
I liked the joke last night about her "erotic non-sexuality" and her sad reply, "It's the sweaters." I think I was right that it was Gomez's dissatisfaction that led to her sexier look last season.
Since I got Disney+ again, I've picked up watching Ally McBeal again. I find myself slightly more irritated by flaws in the show I recognised even when I first watched it back in the '90s. I grew tired of it back then because it got stuck in a pattern of introducing new characters with wacky personality traits to make up for the previous ones growing stale and repetitive. In the episode I watched last night, "Being There", from near the end of season one (May 4, 1998), Peter MacNicol's character, John Cage, goes through a litany of his gags that were mostly just faintly funny when they were first introduced--his mental bells he hears to build confidence, his comfort words he repeats when stressed, and his nose that occasionally whistles in awkward moments. That last one was at least funny the first time. I'm also finding the cuteness around the character of Ally herself a lot more cloying than I did the first time. The previous episode, in which she adorably faints for having to deal with a homicide case, was excruciating.
However, once you weed through all this baloney, David E. Kelley does give you something thought provoking. In the case of this episode, Ally's roommate, Renee (Lisa Nicole Carson), goes on trial for assault when she breaks the neck of a man whom she invited back to her apartment for sex. Suddenly, this character that had seemed little more than a token black character, there to make wise pronouncements about love and life in the service of Ally's main plotline, becomes interesting. I like how Kelley takes something that had been mined for cheap gags in previous episodes, Renee's aggressive flirtatiousness, and turns it into an interesting problem.
With the suspense of a jury response hanging over the dialogue, the mind compulsively finds the ambiguities in the situation. There's great value in being able to watch something like this, from outside our current era of political thinking and neuroses. Is it fair to say Renee has any culpability here?
