I’ve kept this diary going, the first and only goal when it started. And not easy! The first time I attempted to keep a diary was so early that I can’t place the memory. Forced to do one for class, probably? Wandered away while my parents were shopping and decided to treat myself, as kids do, with a little leather journal? I do remember starting a few MS Word diaries at the beginning of new years that followed bad ones — okay, if I start marking all my thoughts, confessing all the rumination, I’ll get into the habit and things’ll improve.
The habit stuck this year, even on bad weeks. This was one of them. No real achievement, beyond hauling a beat-up box spring out to the curb. A few projects that didn’t come together. An obnoxious and ironic — obnoxious on my end — situation where I kept suggesting different days to meet up with a friend and kept having that part of the calendar fill up. (I’ve figured out a solution to this that involves actual work and planning — don’t recommend it.) My wife and I saw “Priscilla” on date night, rolling up to the theater as Saturday’s big “Free Palestine” protest was wrapping up, people going right into their art cinema and left with their keffiyehs.
I went down to that protest, but haven’t written about it. When something interesting happens near me, I check it out, and I haven’t made a plan, I have material if some plan emerges. The speeches I heard were right on my beat, with a chant of “no ceasefire, no vote” going up and, moments later, a man hoisting a “NO CEASEFIRE NO VOTE” sign. The people who want to withhold support for Democrats unless they force Israel to shut the war down aren’t kidding around — my only political Take is that one year before an election is a perfectly fair time to threaten your preferred party into doing what you say.
This is election week, and third debate week, so I’ll be busy and traveling and the funk never lasts when I’m busy and traveling. On to the slop!
The Best Thing I Read. “Strange Stars” by Jason Heller. Five years ago, Politics & Prose booked me for a dual-author event — me and my progressive rock history, Heller and his look at science fiction as a force in rock history. It was built, covered and marketed as a book about David Bowie, a strategy I respect, because Bowie merchandise moves. Have you stopped to look at the impulse boy stuff at your non-chain bookshop, or that store that sells candles and household products embroidered with curse words on them. (An oven mitt: “BITCH I’M BAKING.”) Turn your head left as you put the credit card down and you will see little enamel Aladdin Sane pins, perfect for the niece whose taste is still formulating but will probably get to Bowie eventually.
There is more Bowie in here than there, but he’s the connecting character, not the protagonist. Heller’s goal is a comprehensive history of post-war science fiction influencing pop music, a cross-genre investigation that connects Hawkwind with Blue Oyster Cult, The Kinks with Jefferson Airplane. Man has a tendency to rank and categorize, time-consuming habits that don’t teach much but repetition — top ten animal skins for warmth on the tundra, top 11 Benny Goodman sides, top 20 squeak rappers, etc. I have gotten out of the ranking business and into the connection business — what ties these artists together? — so I was a complete mark for this. If, like me, you got into unpopular music by listening to “Tyranny and Mutation” and wondered who Michael Moorcock was, all the context you were missing is here.
I finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Green Mars,” which I’d owned for at least 20 years, grabbing it after finishing “Red Mars” then toting it from house to house. This is where organization comes in — putting that on my Hugo Shelf, the clever name assigned to the shelf where I keep paperback copies of novels that one the Hugo, made it tempting, and once the terraforming descriptions started I was locked in. Burned through a couple of giveaway comics — “Superman: Birthright” was just fine, not surpassing the “Man of Steel” reboot I grew up with — and finally finished “The Big Book of Martyrs,” the most unexpected of Paradox Press’s great, lamented compendiums of weird stuff illustrated by a collection of esteemed (Joe Sacco), not-yet-esteemed (Frank Quitely), and never-heard-from-again (would be rude to name) artists.
I remember walking into Forbidden Planet with nerves on end, hoping that Paradox had churned out a new book, unsure how to find out on that early version of the internet. The series petered out 23 years ago with “The Big Book of the ‘70s,” which felt like a signal that inspiration — after truly great books on “Death,” on “Freaks,” on “Urban Legends” — had run out. I wonder what the author of these books, so formative on my teenage tastes, has been getting up to?
Uh-uh. Moving on.
The Best Thing I Saw: Already mentioned “Priscilla” — not for me. The most absorbing moments I spent in front of a screen were given to “Hélas pour moi,” the latest beautiful, inscrutable 90s Godard film I’ve tested my IQ with.
Here were the test results:
The most fun I had, honestly, was in the final sequence of “V/H/S/85,” the latest in the endlessly renewable horror anthology that started when the found footage genre was in its second renaissance, and has outlived it by years. Scott Derrickson’s “Dreamkill” features a home invasion set to Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady,” and while it breaks the format, it’s perfect — all that wet, tumorous music creeping into your brain while you desensitize it even further.
The Best Thing I Heard. This neat little playlist by a “Strange Stars” reader, gleaning the book for every single song referenced and plunking it in. Only the weirdest Bowie tracks make it in, next to the father-and-son ballad that inspired Bernie Taupin to write “Rocket Man” — its title was “Rocket Man.” I found all sorts of fun new stuff here.
When walking around, I usually listened to my friend and old boss David Plotz read “Good Book,” the compendium of the Slate column “Blogging the Bible” that he finished before I met him. False advertising, if you ask a Methodist; the Bible, for Plotz, is the tanakh, and if I want to know what the man who gave me newfound love for journalism thinks of the New Testament I have to find him and ask.
I listened to three TrueAnon episodes while moving around furniture but you don’t need to hear about that.
The Best Thing I Played. “Spider-Man 2” is a beautiful thing, built to addict you. The tell is how bored you get during the cut-scenes, which are — faint praise, maybe — about as strong and surprising as anything coming out of the rickety MCU factory. These games take place in their own timeline, with their own character designs* and fates. Villains you watched die onscreen years ago are reborn here, so they can die by your hand; characters who didn’t dramaturgically need to be white guys (Mysterio) are no longer white guys. There is a hilariously destructive crime happening every 30 seconds, and unless you turn the difficulty far, far down, you can end the story of Peter Parker, America’s most relatable hero, on the business end of some random thug’s baseball bat.
I rarely play this kind of game when it’s new; I beat the “Souls” games about two presidential terms after they ended. The gift of being a release-week player is discovering the glitches that haven’t been clipped out yet, and in a fairly bad week, I needed the joy of transforming into a white cube that performed acrobatic meta-human stunts as I webbed criminals to brick walls.
Off to Florida for a bit, maybe I’ll finish it later.