Summer is here and it’s a begging for a curveball moment. This I’m sure of.
When I woke up on June 1 at the Suburban Bauhaus, I had been home a handful of hours shy of one full week. The previous six were spent at the Portland Pied-Á-Terre, decompressing, recharging, probably gaining weight from day drinking and, at least in short, special moments, doing some reading.
I did watch a lot of TV in Portland. I finished a number of series — nothing like being a completist. I tinkered around with some of the elements of this here Substack, trying to incrementally improve it and maybe incrementally increase my income. I went to Powell’s Books. I ate great meals because it’s impossible not to in Portland. I’m not ashamed to say I napped a lot.
It was all kind of glorious and very much needed.
Last night my partner and I sussed out that I’ve been moving — as in moving places where one lives — in some capacity, since the summer of 2022. We’ve both been dealing with tons of family crises — her mom just died; my brother is dying; I moved my sister from the mountains of Santa Cruz, where she’d lived and worked for, what, 24 years or something, to a high rise condo in Portland, with a 99 walk score, a 99 transit score and a bike score, for her particular place, in the low 90s (probably because there’s hills?), which is about 98 points higher than, say, living where she did.
She walks to the grocery store and two great, thriving neighborhoods. She’s a couple of blocks from my favorite natural wine bar. I spent some of those six weeks showing her around, and definitely showing her that it’s pretty impossible to get a bad meal.
After a couple of concerts down here in the Bay, four or fives appointments with doctors of various sorts, a dog grooming and yet another road-trip — this time with my daughter and her enormous dog, Bear — I’m going back to Portland in less than a couple of weeks.
Lot of movement, people.
I can’t say there’s been a TON of interest in new shows, recently. I mean, hell, I watched the entirety of “Bodkin” on Netflix and this is what it got me:
I mean, fuck that. Not to be harsh — because I very much enjoyed the whole “failure analysis” of it all — but I wanted a really good time and I got, well, maybe my longest post of the last year.
I have watched a number of movies, though, and I have a feeling this summer is going to be heavy on the film consumption and writing:
I’ve learned that most of you are very much on board for that, which is nice. It was you, or strands of you, plus my partner, who have pushed me toward getting the PAID VERSION of Letterboxd. Film nerddom in list form. I mean, it’s going to happen and then when my OCD about being a completist drives me mental, you are all to blame.
Of course, there are going to be numerous exciting new TV series, some of them returning (“The Bear,” “Severance,” etc.), and some of them fresh. But I’m kind of in a film phase, or at least want to be. (I can see my friend Dan, future fellow podcaster, reading this with anticipation and disbelief, excitedly making a list of Polish filmmakers, Iranian documentarians, famous Indian directors and 340 Japanese films I need to see.)
Many of you already know that when it comes to reading the order for me is usually 1) Reference books 2) More reference books 3) Architecture and design sites/magazines/Tumblrs, 4) Non-fiction and, finally, 5) fiction; but I do believe more fiction reading will occur. And writing! There’s that.
It’s a miracle when I finish anything since my theory is that you never finish a reference book — you just pick it up, read a bit, put it down, start fresh in a new section, put it down, pick up a different reference book, thumb through it, marking it up with yellow liner, then putting it down and repeating the whole process.
I’m of the belief that I could go years without finishing any book but “reading” lots of books. And I’m fine with that.
I did finally read Annie Dillard’s excellent and, for transparency sake, very slim book, “The Writing Life.” It’s not the kind of magnum opus you leap from your seat and pump your fists over having finished, but fuck off, I finished it. That counts for something.
I have been reading one of my favorite reference books, the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, hardback version naturally, hugging it, apologizing to it and realizing how incredibly lazy I’ve been in my word choices. Part of that is, of course, the conversational style I purposefully chose a couple of decades or more ago to mark my voice. There’s a little bit of art to it but if you get lazy, well, then it looks lazy, and all the magic drains out. So, as a lover of words, I’m back at honing my selection. (I think this started, in all seriousness, when friend and fantastic writer Claire Dederer — she of the magnificent “Monsters” book I wrote about last year as did every outlet everywhere — verbally confirmed my suspicion that she’d be a very annoying person to play Bananagrams with. Of course she would! She has the best words! She labors over them in a way I haven’t for ages, so I’m all over that Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, reworking those muscles like I’m back in a yoga class.
Do you know who else is insanely good at Bananagrams? My daughter, Zoe. She’s so good that she gets bored and does two things: 1) starts making strange architectural builds of her board; 2) plays the long game (in a fast-paced game) just to create either really complicated words or extremely inappropriate words, and still wins. She and her friends in college did the filthy word concept all the time and thus she can out embarrass you pretty easily, I’m afraid.
Not to be outdone, my son, who is a philosophy major at the University of Washington, had me read over two of his final papers and I think maybe the subliminal part of that was to show me he could both write and think circles around me? He never said that, or course, but as someone who was a philosophy minor at one point, I can assure you that I do not want to get into a logical argument with him, ever.
In issues of lesser import, I got an email from Max, formerly HBO, formerly HBO Max, that the streamer’s rates were going up a dollar next month. Look, when Discovery and its money and execs grew all over Warner Bros. like a bad rash, it seems the HBO we once knew has been relegated to a dungeon-level bedroom or outer barn. Max has the least user-friendly app on the market and I’ve been thinking about dropping my subscription for a while anyway and this might be the push I needed. Convince me I should stay in the comments if you have found some excellent recent content.
There was a time in my life where breathlessly following the Paramount-might-be-sold! story would consume me. Now that it looks like it will be sold, in some capacity, to Skydance, I don’t really care and that’s probably a good thing. The industry contraction continues apace, and the odds of getting a show (or movie) made downgraded from “not bloody likely” to infinitesimal. Remember five years ago when everybody was ALL IN on new content and endless shows? Yeah, me too.
OK, I’m going to leave you with this public service reminder about how to improve your entire viewing experience for free. If you haven’t read it, please do. If you have, get yourself ready for the upcoming Deep Dive: Kanopy/Hoopla feature.
First of all condolences to your partner. What a sad loss. And a big hug to you regarding your brother. That sucks and must be very draining and tough to manage.
Regarding words, I am fascinated by them, and I am in love with the English language. Any language is a never-ending well so it will be fun to learn new words through you.
I am not much into films, I don't watch more than one a week, but I am up for discovering new ones that are worth it.
As for series, I've just started "Fallout" that you suggested and I am not disappointed. I have my regolar dose - LOL - of one or two episodes per day of various ones.
My Paramount + sub ends tomorrow (6-6-24) and I'm not renewing. If I really cut down, my core streamers would be: Apple TV +, Prime, Max/HBO and Disney + (after Andor S2, tho' who knows). Netflix? No, because no annual 12-months-for-cost-of-10-plan that I could find. Also, my life is only so long and I like to get out from time to time! I think the biggest problem streamers have are the people who buy for a month, or use a free trial, and cancel after catching up on what interests them. New sub model needed, maybe? BTW: Great doc on MoviePass on HBO. Great 1981 Queen Rock Montreal on Apple TV (also Stax doc.).