A Post In the Machine.
Everything we know we learned from television. And maybe reading. The Notes Column.
Greetings from an undisclosed location I’m probably going to call A Ghost Town or A Town Called Malice or Something Cryptic under future Instagram posts, clever kid that I am, even though I kinda hate Instagram. What matters is that I’m here because some stuff blew up and out in my Oakland place and took the wifi with it — on a Sunday, for fuck’s sake — and I had to load up the dog and the laptop and the wine and head to my partner’s place, aka The Place I’m Moving Into in a couple of months.
I also just had two bowls of astonishingly good gumbo, so I think this is going to work out just fine.
So, LFG!
We watched “Return to Seoul” on Amazon this weekend and can’t stop thinking OR talking about it. Highly recommended. I think of television and its multiple-episode, multiple-season format as the novel of the visual arts, with film as either short story or poem, depending. There are wonderful tricks and difficulties in both of the latter storytelling formats, but where film provides such a welcome diversion for me — someone watching television a lot, writing it, etc. — is the glorious advantage of the cryptic, of marinating in subtext, of letting the imagination fill holes that television (and novels) almost demand be explained in fulsome clarity. “Return to Seoul” — directed and written by Davy Chou —basks in so many brilliantly conceived and executed scenes that lack explanation and sometimes even, in the moment you’re watching, reason for being. And yet it all works. It’s a triumphant film where you “sight read” your way through it, perhaps as well all should make our way through life. It’s a film that leaves you thinking and talking. Love it. Still thinking. Still talking. Go, do.
I tend to worry when I’m extremely excited — like kid-on-Christmas-excited — for a season finale. It means my expectations are likely too high, the pleasure I’ve received from all the previous episodes has erased my willingness to accept with any dignity the merely good. I say this because of course “Fargo” Season 5 is ending this week and I want it all, in every way.
There was a time where watching an awards show (Emmys, Oscars, Golden Globes) had something in it for me (you know, other than the obligation to write about it in the Previous Chapter of the Story Of My Life). But the point is this — even when I loathed having to write about it as a performance/spectacle, or tackle the correct decisions/snubs element, there was at least a small part of me that enjoyed a small part of it. But that stopped in 2020 because I was on to Other Things and it really, really stopped this year when, post-strike, post-entertainment-news-drought, you would think I might take a peek at the Globes from a Substackian vantage point or something. But no. Here’s why: I love writers and actors and directors and, yes, while I fundamentally don’t think art should be a contest, I — very newly in my life — also think they all shouldn’t want it so bad, that the reward is in the work and letting ego into the equation lessens every part of what they love the most (yes, the work, not the fame, though I am not so recently enlightened to also be naive to the fact that for some the fame is far more important than the work). I just think that in 2024 influencers and brand ambassadors should be burned as witches and actual talented people shouldn’t play the me/ego game.
“Echo” might be the first Marvel series I’ve wanted to see in a looooong time and the first instance of kind of wishing I still had Disney+.
There is more greatness than you could ever acknowledge with awards.
I’m doing very well on a number of New Year’s Resolutions, including reading more physical books, reading on my phone less. A number of people I know, in a separate category, have made some vow to cherish and partake in more physical media. I am one of those people. I just went to a storage unit to look at what’s there — and yes it needs a storage unit — and, wow, I’m the guy you’re gonna want to be in the bunker with, provided our bunker has both a DVD and CD player.
I even found a VHS tape on Charles and Ray Eames. And wow does that track.
Speaking of Eames, or my whole-life-inspired-by-design-and-dwellings, I’ve been reducing my considerably-on-the-rise-for-many-reasons anxiety by scrolling, every night, often for hours, on my laptop-to-monitor set-up, looking at shelter porn. And while I don’t have the math skills to have been an architect, I do think I missed my true calling for (modern) interior design. So if you want help, you know who to reach out to.
As an example of newfound wonkiness, I’m getting to be very damned good (and very damned interested) in finding maximum value in furniture designed by excellent names (or soon to be ones) for high end commercial office furniture companies that has then been recycled when, say, a very hyped Silicon Valley start-up folds and goes out of business. See, told you it was wonky. But if you want some Patricia Urquiola steals, I know where they are.
It’s possible I was doing something furniture related and forgot that I wanted to watch Jodi Foster in HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country” on Sunday night but the internet went out anyway. So I didn’t. I will though. Did you?
Also very, very interested in watching Jake Johnson in Hulu’s “Self Reliance,” based solely on trailers which, yes, I often tell you not to watch. If you’re not going to judge me on the gumbo, you can’t judge me on that.
Yet again, in yet another year, I’ve been listening to (and writing to) “lo-fi chill beats.” It’s fine, you can judge me on that. I deserve it and don’t care. For about four or five years now, I’ve found myself strangely drawn to vocal-free “lo-fi chill beats” of multiple iterations. It makes no sense. I was once a music critic, FFS! Not gonna stop.
Lastly, I will close with the news that, yes, I did in fact successfully do that potentially very crazy thing I said I might. It’s done. No going back. Shocked and happy and slightly astonished. Onward, never to be mentioned again, at least not so obliquely.
Oh, yeah, and as warned recently — I’m moving again, in just under a month and a half, going in three different directions. Embrace the change, I’m saying. Stay positive. It’s not chaos if it’s an adventure. Do not think about the steps.
If you’ve got series or movies you’re looking forward to, drop them in the comments among the random others. And as always, love to your mothers, as OG Irish Andrew would say.
Okay, let’s get right to the season five finale of Fargo.
One of the problems with so many movies and tv series to watch is that I don't remember if I've seen Return to Seoul! It's been on my list to see but did I see it? I guess I'll check it out and discover pretty quickly. Have you seen Past Lives. Of all of last years highly touted films it's the one that sticks in memory as near flawless and very memorable.