We unpacked this week, broke down cheap shelves, installed new shelves, and installed a rack for the TV that distracts us from the books on those shelves. We did this successfully, as I realized when our neighbors called their landlord to complain about the noise. I was mostly in the wrong; we’d told them about our moving schedule, but not that I sometimes would get a burst of energy and start attacking boxes late at night. There was one casualty, a box of un-drunk liquor that crashed loud enough for me to think: “Why hasn’t a neighbor complained about this?”
It’ll work out, because the manic phase of moving is over. Relief came over me when I left for assignment in Chicago - photo above of Brandon Johnson, the progressive Democrat running for mayor. I wrapped up the day around 9 p.m., wrote most of this journal entry, then sat down on a hotel bed and passed out immediately. Sorry for the delay - I try to shoot this out on Sundays - and I’ll try to collect more interesting experiences this week. The goal is writing every week, the perk is that something unexpected might happen. Sometimes, I just plod ahead and write about it.
The Best Thing I Read: Really, nothing. I started Kerry Howley’s “Thrown,” which I already know is good, but keep wanting to give the giveaway books one chance to impress me. Didn’t get much out of “The Unseen Force,” a fanboy filmography of Sam Raimi, or “Checkpoint,” the Nicholson Baker novel in which one friend talks about his plan to assassinate George W. Bush and the other keeps trying to dissuade him through heroic digressions. Didn’t get much out of that, either; felt like an expired candy, something that had shock value at the time and got robbed of it by desensitization. I did get through most of “It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism,” the new Bernie Sanders polemic, because all of his books are didactic and reflective. His cursing’s restrained, and you learn more about Sanders in Ari Rabn-Havt’s memory of the 2020 campaign, but he’s got freshly bitter thoughts on Biden’s first two years.
The Best Thing I Saw: “John Wick: Chapter 4,” the apotheosis of video game as movie. It is built like an SNES platformer, Wick murdering his way through villains in identical outfits, leveling up with bosses, getting knocked back down to the starting screen. There’s an immaculate sequence in which the camera swings up and shoots down, filming the action like it’s “Hotline Miami.” There’s a fat guy who turns out to be a MMA-level fighter. Everyone has body armor you deplete before knocking off HP. Really stupid with several of the greatest fight scenes I’ve ever seen. Hurt, and I think considerably, by the CGI cleanness of the kills, and a climatic sequence that floats our heroes on a green screen. It looks worse because the real choreographed fighting is tremendous. I don’t think we’ll get a better joke this year than beret-wearing French assassins playing human Frogger at the Arc de Triomphe.
The Best Thing I Played: That story from earlier, about the noise, could have mentioned my obnoxious grunting when a game’s gone poorly. I hacked around in “Bloodborne” when I needed a mental break from unpacking, and advanced a bit in new game plus.
Maybe you don’t play these games. I don’t blame you! It’s a bad habit, probably my worst. What keeps me hooked is the community, the other people who play the From Software games and invent ludicrous challenges for themselves. There’s a player named Happy Hob who’s defeated five of these games, some of the hardest popular games ever made, in a row, without getting hit by anything. This in a series where one boss, The Blood-Starved Beast, secretes a poison goop if you get near it in its final phase.
Do you get intrigued by a name like “Blood-Starved Beast?” Then you’d like at least the look and plot of this game. Anyway, some games now offer a “new game plus” mode after you beat them. Select it, and you start from the beginning of the game, while retaining all the useful killing/protecting/empowering things you got when you played it, with the enemies given more health and better AI to re-balance things. By no means will I do everything I did when I ran through the game in 2020, a year when gaming with friends replaced other social activity for months. But I was having fun during the few hours I played this. The feeling was like gaining a little bit of lucidity during a dream, suddenly becoming aware that you know the way out of it, only instead of realizing that I was not back in high school, I realized I had synaptic memories about how to slay - one example - a gigantic teleporting spider, created by man to mock the Old Ones, and defending itself by summoning meteors.
The Best Thing I Heard: Nothing new, but I left Chet Baker’s last great (and best overall) live album on while doing the noisy cleaning described above. My theory is that troubled jazz musicians record their best stuff in Japan because they can’t get heroin there, but I’m open-minded if someone with more knowledge wants to explain the real reason. (In Baker’s case I have to think it’s the heroin thing.)
I feel lucky that growing up all the time when there were weird loud noises no one ever filed a complaint. I only thought noise violations were for raves or house parties in movies.
Not so fun Sam raimi fact when the studio and JCVD thought of bouncing john woo off hard target raimi was the projected fill in director. I was meaning to get my hands on a copy of mirage (a sort alternate version of the war on terror with the sides flipped) which might have aged better than checkpoint.
The bernie book sounds solid might look into that. I loved the way you described the film as a snes platformer 'dudes in the same outfit' leveling with the bosses. Lol.
I tried getting into dark souls but I guess I'm more of a bioware/cities skylines gamer nowadays. I do get the appeal it reminds me of my old nes days trying to beat ninja Gaiden one which is certainly a level of hell that Dante missed. Clever boss battles get me at times, I spent quite a few hours beating that most recent tmnt platformer where the boss fights were quite challenging but fun.
The jazz rec sounds cool. There was a lot of good stuff here despite the not much happening week.