A Post In the Machine.

Watching movies, vacation mode, upcoming Olympics, writing, eating the world and other notes.

My summer-long stay in Portland continues, as we enter the second week of my partner’s vacation, which is different than my “vacation” because I’ve worked from home for (gets calculator), uh, 13 years and counting.

Yes I was working from home way before the pandemic made it a real thing. And prior to that was only going into the office at the San Francisco Chronicle three days a week and one of those days was basically to do an early morning radio show, eat lunch with friends and go see a movie.

So there’s not a lot of “vacation” type sympathy for me, ever, and I’m cool with that. For those of you with non-traditional schedules, I salute you. We are simpatico.

I thought about doing my first official “Let’s Get Lost…” post, formerly dispatches “Greeting From” places like, uh, Portland, sometimes Oakland, sometimes Big Sur. Instead, I have a head full of lackadaisical thoughts that are not coalescing around themes, so you get what you get and you don’t get upset, which is what I used to tell my kids.

However:

I did post this “Sunny” Two Episode Test:

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I also did a short Note about the hot-mess of storytelling that’s going on after watching Ep. 3 and already my partner KB is definitely out. I mean, theoretically she’d watch it if I did, but I think at this point she’d rather be watching movies.

She enthusiastically rewatched a couple of them with me that I hadn’t seen yet — “Past Lives,” which I loved, and “Anatomy Of A Fall,” which I also loved. It’s quite possible that we might bomb out and see “Kinds of Kindness” at the beloved Cinema 21 today or the next day (which works as a sentence no matter when you read it).

It’s looming, people.

I’m definitely in a movie mood, probably more so than TV. Two notes about that:

1. I watched “Past Lives” on Kanopy, one of two free streaming services you can get, along with Hoopla, if you go get a library card (I now have two; one from the Portland Public Library system and one from the San Francisco Public Library). I strongly encourage you to get hooked up on that and here’s what I wrote about one of the best kept secrets anywhere:

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2. In a random chat recently I posted an old “classic” tweet from John Frankensteiner that made the rounds about being asked what movies to watch and coming up with a blank, then laying awake at night with a supercut of Martin Scorsese doing talk show riffs about movies he loves. From that chat, we got beloved reader Paul Costigan turning that lightning quick Scorsese supercut into…a Letterboxd list of every film mentioned! Fantastic, Paul.

Of course, before dutifully watching “Sunny” on AppleTV+, I added to the now-recurring feature in our desperate times, called “It’s the End Of the World As We Know It.” Here are the ones so far:

It's the End Of the World As We Know It.

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"It's the End Of the World As We Know It." Vol. 2.

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"It's the End Of the World As We Know It." Vol. 3

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Take your time delving through those useful lists and keep the lighthouse in sight, people.

This particular trip back to the Portland Pied-à-Terre really does feel like a vacation because we are basically eating our way through the best food city in the country and specifically hitting all (well, fine, many) of the places we have wanted to eat, or drink, noting them on past trips either with photographs or staring in the windows multiple times or catching whiffs as we walk by and saying, “We should just go there, already.” We have the rest of this week and the wanderlust and food comas have contributed to the overall joy, which really helps since getting a place here in the summer of 2022 essentially killed any ability to travel elsewhere for a number of years.

So while it might be nice to be in Paris, I’m happy where I am, which is exactly the feeling one should get — confirmation happiness — after setting down new roots.

Ah, you say in your perfect French accent (because you’re French, and you’ve rented out your place and escaped somewhere else), maybe being in Paris is not the ideal locale since the Summer Olympics start there on Friday?

Yes, likely true. But still — it’s Paris.

And still — it’s the Olympics!

Those of you who know me well already understand my love of watching the Olympics on television. I have written about it pretty much every time they roll around. I am not one to gripe about not seeing enough live events or complaining about coverage. I just enjoy watching, taped or not. Delayed or not. Summer or Winter.

That has always been an outlier stance as a TV critic. But I just take that particular hat off (one of many these days) when the Olympics come around. I’ve done plenty of long, hot takes on ridiculous coverage and inconvenient times and you know what? I stopped giving a fuck about that a long time ago. I just want to watch.

Particularly now, as my Campaign of Diversion From Reality continues apace (although, yes, KB did burst my NO NEWS bubble when the Biden out/Harris in news broke, which of course I allowed and welcomed and then swiftly went back to writing down movies I want to add to Letterboxd now that I have a new Pro account).

The despair is lightened but I wouldn’t say my mental health is somehow suddenly in Teflon shape, so I continue making lists of things to watch while looking away.

OK, more stuff coming in this modified kinda-vacation-mode. In the meantime, KB (and her sons) are vociferously touting “Dark” on Netflix as a series everyone should get absorbed into (with the necessary Reddit threads to follow along coherently) and I will have much more to say about this later, particularly if I heed their convincing advice, which I haven’t just yet.

I’m still researching older British sitcoms and hilarious game shows to add to my lists for you and your mental health/happiness, so keep an eye out for those. And yes, yes, yes, you should absolutely go back and watch one of the comedies I wholeheartedly endorsed from beginning to end — “Veep” on HBO.

That’s a series that just got better episode to episode, season to season.

(And while you’re at it, take note of Vol. 3’s inclusion of “The Thick Of It,” which I’ve been re-watching in YouTube chunks since posting about it.)

Stay hydrated, use sunscreen and love to your mothers.