A Post In the Machine.

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink; enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. And so many other upbeat thoughts. Plus two polls! No, not those kinds of polls!

Back in the Bay at the secret Suburban Bauhaus location and I have to admit I’ve been hit by a wave of “yeah, fuck all of this world and I think I’ll be going to (conjure various countries/cities here) after the election.” The natural born depressive in me know this is fleeting, a couple of bad days stacking up, but the nihilist in me sees an altogether lovely scenario of me living on a Scottish island talking to myself by the sea and killing mad goats.

Which is, let’s be honest, a pretty sunny introduction to this post. You’re welcome.

Credit: Harry--Vincent.

The lengthy recent stay in the Portland Pied-À-Terre was magnificent, long, helpful, productive, importantly boring, insightful and just overall produced what I had hoped it would. Introspection. One of the things I did a lot of, mentioned only briefly here, was reading a lot. I also watched a staggering amount of television and some movies as well (not enough — self-critical in that regard) and came across a roughly equal amount of inspiring and depressing passages in said reading.

But a solid “A” for internal exploration; spelunking into My Ever Changing Moods.

Here are some remembrances of things past and less sublime thoughts:

Let me start with a TV reference since that’s the alleged calling on this Substack burrito supreme:

My past references to being slightly worried about “Nobody Wants This” on Netflix and then dismissing that worry because the first two episodes (which I had just watched) were excellent, ultimately turned out to be warranted. The gut-level doubt, people; the critic’s cynicism, it’s still there — no amount of let’s-make-peace-with-my-past lyric leg tattoos is going to change that. I am, for better or worse, a critical observer where I see more red flags than green ones.

Here’s what I said after my brief two-episode sampler:

But I did finally get to Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” and was thinking about giving it the Two Episode Test but in truth those first two episodes went down like candy and wine (okay, maybe don’t try that), and both were funny and delicious and an immediate “yes,” so no need to go on and on about it with a Two Episode Test.

I will only add this caveat, which I’m guessing will not be an issue — series creator Erin Foster (you should probably just look at her Wikipedia page), who wrote the first two episodes, doesn’t write any of the other eight episodes. And I only just burned through the first two last night, so if it goes off a cliff, I think we have a reason.

I guessed wrong — it was an issue.

The first two episodes are the best of the season, by a large margin, and though I liked plenty of others enough, I can absolutely understand why so many people wrote scathing columns about the depiction of the Jewish women in the series. Netflix renewed the series but changed the show runner set up, likely to address some of these complaints and, I would guess, some of the weaker material that wasn’t doing the show justice. Jenni Konner from “Girls” fame has been brought in (along with Bruce Eric Kaplan, also from “Girls”). Trust me on this, Konner is going to right that ship.

One thing that probably can’t be completely fixed (tweaked, maybe), and something that continues to bug me is that Kristen Bell and Justine Lupe — who nail all the lines they are given, let’s be clear and fair on that — have their characters mired in 20-something affectations, speech, references and attitude (no disrespect to all the 20-somethings I dearly love for who they are and where they are in their journey), and the assumption is that Bell and Lupe are playing, I believe, early 30-something women (Bell is 44, Lupe is 35), and there’s only so much of that dialog, funny though it may be, which works at convincing the audience these characters haven’t let go of a lost part of their youth and matured a bit. I know, at least in some way, that’s the point for Bell’s character, the non-Jew sex-and-dating podcaster who falls for a hot, hip rabbi. She’s the wildest of wild cards; he’s the unexpected attraction, together they will grow into something more dimensional for the both of them.

But somewhere around the fifth or sixth episode, it’s impossible to see Bell or Lupe as anything other than two people trying to be nearly a decade younger than their characters, and you wonder what opportunities might be missed there in the writers room.

Anyway, it got reviewed, it still has a lot of potential, and I think it’ll be better in S2 with Konner in charge.

On Wednesday, my beloved partner KB and I are celebrating what she notes (and has noted for many years) is the 10th anniversary of us meeting, on our first date (yes, on the apps) and while that’s not what we consider the beginning of our current state, we are nothing if not (judging from a lot of people we meet) a little atypical in that regard; no interest in getting married, partners for life we hope, co-mingled in so many ways, and often very hilariously tolerant of our colorful pasts (us realizing that kind of understanding was a prerequisite is ultimately why we are always on the same team).

I bring this up because we (I don’t want to say “frequently,” but on the regular) know all too well who is in the others wheelhouse (that’s a metaphor, if you’re playing at home). She has said, and I completely agree, that if a person of desire could have been minted from my mind and plopped into this world, that person very likely would have been Dua Lipa. The big caveat here is that while I like her music she’s not in my Top 100 female artists, and in the context for which we are having this discussion here, music is completely irrelevant, if you know what I mean and I’m sure you do. (Also, Dua Lipa’s dad is totally in KB’s wheelhouse. I found this out tonight.)

So, imagine my surprise when I read a recent Substack post from writer George Saunders and found out that Dua Lipa is a voracious reader and loves to interview authors and, well, yeah, what a wonderful surprise as two of my great interests commingled:

Dua Lipa. With “Lincoln In the Bardo.”

And honestly, I’m a LOT jealous of how great her Service95 site is, and wish I could have something as in-depth. I never doubted she contained multitudes. That’s my story. I was listening to the interview and, not surprisingly, taken to another dimension by her accent, and would often have to rewind to hear what Saunders’ answer was.

I probably wouldn’t have had any desire to watch the HBO/Max documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” because it was about, well, Bitcoin. Like a lot of people, I just don’t care — at all — and that encompasses learning more than the limited knowledge I possess about it now.

But then I read that fantastic New Yorker feature last week on the mysterious cryptocurrency founder Satoshi Nakamoto, a potentially fictitious cover for the real inventor, and then I got very, very interested. (I think you can click the link and get at least one free article — if so, let it be that one).

Now I’m going to watch “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.” On the radar. (And yes, there’s a new book out about this same idea, but The New Yorker suggests, rather convincingly, that this well-hidden while in production HBO doc maybe really did just find out who Satoshi really is.

Part of spiraling in anxiety and leaping around previously suppressed fragmented depressive behavior is that, at this point, try as I might, I can’t really forget the other things I’m reading and watching and wanting to talk about, so even if the weight of it all prevented me from posting this on Monday, there’s a lot to discuss on various topics and I managed to get most of it out, here, Tuesday, like a ghost who posts in the machine:

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