Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: The Worst Cake

Two tangentially-related tunes for going through a down time

Pictured is my attempt to make a belated birthday cake for myself, since my favorite kind is just a yellow cake with chocolate fudge frosting, and it seems foolish to order one from a bakery when they’re (ostensibly) so easy to make. As the keen-eyed viewer might be just able to make out: the process didn’t go well. The cake tore apart in multiple places, and the frosting was too runny and never solidified. The message of that cake is not so much “Happy Birthday” as “Why Do I Exist?”

Honestly, I thought the whole thing was funny. But it also happens to be a good metaphor for my overall mood the past couple months. Varenicline (aka Chantix) is a wonder drug in terms of helping me quit smoking when literally nothing else can, and as of today, I’ve gone five weeks without a cigarette and haven’t missed it a bit. But the side effects of the drug (and withdrawal) are lousy. For me: getting extremely nauseated after I take one, and a lengthy depression.

It takes over gradually enough that I’d forgotten that the same thing happened last time I took varenicline (and quit smoking for three years). It feels like something gunking up the gears in my brain, so that they grind imperceptibly slower each day, until they just sieze up. That means going from not really enjoying anything, to being not motivated to do anything, to just not being able to do anything, no matter how urgent it is.

“On Being Blue” is from Art of Noise’s last album The Seduction of Claude Debussy, from 1999. That means I was either on my way out at LucasArts, or I’d just left, and was likely suffering from career-ambition-oriented depression at the time. The song is actually about mood and color, though, which you can tell was a fixation of Debussy’s just by listening to La Mer, a composition that doesn’t sound like the ocean so much as feel like the ocean.

“Sunless Saturday” is from Fishbone’s The Reality of My Surroundings, released in 1991. That means I was in my second year of college and probably still feeling pretty optimistic. Fishbone was singing about injustice, not depression as a side effect of medication, but the reason I like it so much today is the same reason I liked it so much then: it doesn’t shy away from describing what it feels like to be in the pits, but it also doesn’t wallow in them.

It’s stabilizing to know that whatever you’re feeling is temporary. I’ve only got a few weeks left of this prescription until I’m done with it and the needless hassle of smoking. And of course, the upcoming election is filling me with hope instead of dread, for once. If you’re in the US, remember to verify your registration — or register to vote! — at vote.gov.

One Thing I Like About Ready or Not

Ready or Not is a black comedy/suspense movie that feels completely like an independent production

I just learned tonight (from the Dead Meat channel on YouTube) that Ready or Not, along with Abigail and the new Scream installments, were made by a group called Radio Silence. I think that’s worth pointing out for a couple of reasons: first is because this movie is so similar to Abigail that I would’ve accused the latter of being derivative. Second, both movies feel like stubbornly independent original projects.

It’s possible that I’ve just stopped going to theaters except for big franchise installments, but it does seem increasingly rare to see standalone, self-contained movies get much popular attention. No doubt the production companies would like to be able to turn them into long-running, profitable series, but Ready or Not seems to reject any attempt whatsoever to continue the story.

There are a lot of aspects common to both Ready or Not and Abigail: A premise that could work as the “twist” that sells the movie, but it’s given away in the trailer. A protagonist trapped overnight in a huge gothic mansion. A combination of comedy and pretty extreme violence. And a few gory specifics that would be spoilers if I gave any more detail. It almost feels like Ready or Not was a kind of first draft for Abigail, because I think the latter is quite a bit better.

One sequence I liked — or I guess it’s more accurate to say admired — in particular: main character Grace has been found and gets wounded by a bullet. She ends up falling into a horrific pit (something that also happens in Abigail), and after being fully traumatized by what she sees down there, she has to climb back out, wound and all.

The reason it works so well is because it’s excruciatingly suspenseful, in the way the best horror movies are suspenseful. You’re not wondering what’s about to happen; you know exactly what’s going to happen, because there is a single shot of an exposed nail that the camera lingers on for just a second too long at the start. And after sticking that image in your mind, the movie makes you wait an eternity for it all to play out, as if it were a Final Destination sequence. When it finally ends, it’s made a hundred times worse, because we’ve had to imagine the pay-off for so long.

That pay-off is also a good example of my biggest problem with the movie, though: the tone is all over the place. The studio lists it as a “horror comedy,” but there aren’t enough scenes where it’s both at the same time. Once the action starts, it feels like it’s spending most of its time either putting its protagonist through horrible and not-particularly-funny situations, or trying to draw out too much drama from the characters who are supposed to be sympathetic. It seems to take itself too seriously for what the trailers and screenshots implied.

But I thought it all came together satisfyingly in the end, even if I wished more characters had gotten their comeuppance earlier on. (I haven’t seen You’re Next, but from what I know about it, the structure is more like what I’d been expecting from Ready or Not). And I liked that it felt almost old-fashioned, for telling a complete, original story from beginning to end, with no hint of a sequel.

One Thing I Like About Abigail

Abigail is a mean, gory, often funny, action/horror movie that I hope never becomes a franchise

The completely spoiler-free premise of Abigail is this: a group of mercenaries are hired to kidnap a 12-year-old ballerina and guard over her until the ransom can be delivered. But they quickly discover that the girl’s father is a legendarily powerful crime boss, and he’ll be sending his most ruthless hit man to kill them all.

If you’re completely spoiler-averse (and that seems like something you’d be into, of course), then I recommend watching it without knowing anything else about it. Including this post, of course. The larger premise is “spoiled” in every trailer and every description of the movie, so good luck avoiding that! But also, there’s enough going on that it’s still interesting and surprising even if you think you know what you’re getting into.

My overall take: it is the horror/action/black comedy mash-up that I’d been hoping it would be, in a similar spirit as Orphan: First Kill, Malignant, and M3GAN, although not quite as good as any of those. It’s comedically mean-spirited, full of violence and blood and gore and people being nasty to each other, but keeping all of it just enough over the top that it’s still fun.

In fact, I was enjoying it enough that I wondered why it seemed to just disappear with little mention; I suspect that’s because the third act is a mess. It goes on too long, stops doing anything interesting with its premise and just becomes one fight scene after another, tacks on at least two unnecessary endings plus a Teachable Moment, and overall just feels like the result of extensive rewrites and studio intervention.

Until that point, though, it had a great “they don’t make them like this anymore” energy to it. It had the feeling of independent filmmakers working with an original premise and a big studio budget, gathering a cast and crew who all seemed to understand exactly what they were making, and put out into the world as a standalone project with no concern over franchises or tie-ins or “lore.” Considering that it’s already being called a “flop,” it seems unlikely that Universal will try to turn it into anything that it’s not1Except maybe a Horror Nights house? That could work., and that may be the best thing for it.

Continue reading “One Thing I Like About Abigail”
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    Except maybe a Horror Nights house? That could work.

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: White Noise

Two tangentially-related tunes to help drown out the bad thoughts about diversity, equity, and inclusion

Lately you might have been hearing cool and totally normal people sounding the alarms about “DEI hires,” which is a real and normal thing to be concerned about, and not just a lazy repeat of the same old dog whistles that go back seventy years or longer. Much like “urban,” and “hood,” all the way through “CRT” and “woke,” it serves a very important purpose: it lets people express all the ideas behind the n-word, without the unpleasantness of the n-word itself.

So let’s take a closer look at diversity, equity, and inclusion, while listening to some comforting white music!

First up is “One Bad Apple” by The Osmonds. This song was written by George Jackson originally intended for The Jackson 5, but went to The Osmonds after the Jacksons chose to record “ABC” instead. Clearly yet another in the countless examples of perfectly competent white performers being passed over in favor of more ethnic ones.

People like to sling out terms like “racist,” or “misogynistic,” or “inexcusably racist and misogynistic,” whenever someone raises concerns about DEI, but critics insist that it’s actually about fairness. And the logic is clear if you think about it for even a second: if anyone who’s not a straight, white, male gets a job or a promotion, that’s a “DEI hire.” That means that every job should be given to a straight white man by default, instead of some racially-motivated special-interest virtue signaling. Why are you bringing race and gender into a discussion about the things to which straight white men are entitled?!

While you’re appreciating that airtight bit of logic, here’s a song by Jack White: his cover of “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” with The Electric Mayhem for a Muppets album. This song was written and made into a classic recording by Stevie Wonder, but it took White to make an impression of the original with a “Seven Nation Army” hook grafted onto it.1Non-sarcastic note: I genuinely like Jack White and think he’s extraordinarily talented, but doesn’t add anything to this song and the cover is inessential at best.

And Muppets often have me thinking about rainbows, and how something that was once so simple and beautiful has been co-opted to have all these weird connotations of “different people living together with respect and harmony” and “freedom to pursue your own happiness.” And how this whole “DEI fad” doesn’t do much for white men like me.

Well, except for how working for a company with an explicit and extensive DEI policy means that I’m surrounded by co-workers at every level with a wider range of life experiences than I’ve ever been in a 30-year career. And I guess that I don’t have to spend every conversation worried about fallout if I mention that I’m gay, and I don’t have to worry that my job is at risk the next time politicians decide to use sexual orientation as a wedge issue to make up for their complete lack of policy.

Actually you know, now that I think about it, anybody throwing a tantrum about DEI is a nonsense-spouting dimwit who can go get stuffed.

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    Non-sarcastic note: I genuinely like Jack White and think he’s extraordinarily talented, but doesn’t add anything to this song and the cover is inessential at best.

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Smalltown Boys

Two tangentially-related tunes devoted to two tiny towns (NSFW lyrics and video)

After he left Soul Coughing, Mike Doughty wrote a bunch of simpler, pared-back songs and released them on the album and EP Skittish and Rockity Roll. Many of them are just acoustic guitar and a groove box, and most of them are hell of catchy.

My favorite is “Ossining”, which I’ve been singing along to for years without ever bothering to find out what it means. I’d used context clues and the repeated “why not seek Ossining” to guess that it was a playfully made-up word for some kind of enlightenment movement. As it turns out, it’s a small city in New York state. There could still be some enigmatic double meaning to the song, though, and I’m enjoying the continued mystery.

I do know what “Lithonia” is, though — if you haven’t watched that video yet, I don’t want to spoil it but I will warn that it has a jump-scare gory ending — because I grew up near there. So did Donald Glover, since he grew up near there, too. It’s not an especially remarkable city; when I was growing up, the highlight was that it had a Dairy Queen. Now, it has a mall.

Maybe the song isn’t about the city at all, and it’s a character or something from Bando Stone and the New World, Childish Gambino’s upcoming movie. Again, I’m preferring to live with the mystery for now.

I will say that I spent a long time underestimating Childish Gambino/Donald Glover, and I hope I’ve learned my lesson. For instance: I thought it was absurd that 30 Rock picked “Stone Mountain, Georgia” as the hometown of Kenneth the page, and they set at least one episode there depicting it as the smallest, most stereotypical, backwoods shithole in the darkest part of the Appalachians. It’s actually a relatively large city, built up around a landmark co-opted by racists to celebrate the Confederacy. I assumed that the 30 Rock writers intended it as meta-commentary, since the episodes were all about how New York writers had no idea what the rest of the country was really like. Later, I found out that Glover is from Stone Mountain, and he was a writer on the series.

Also, I’d been way too dismissive of Childish Gambino’s music, as just a celebrity side project. I think it was partly a defense mechanism, because it seemed cosmically unfair that someone could be that handsome and that funny and also be a talented musician. It turns out that not only are there some fantastic songs — “3005” in particular — but more importantly, the songs aren’t “celebrity makes a hip hop record” so much as a hugely talented person having too many ideas to fit into one medium.

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Run Away

Two cardio-friendly tunes inspired by my cat

One morning last week, my cat was performing his daily ritual of standing in the hallway and wailing until we got up to feed him. Instead of waking up immediately to address his concerns, I instead just incorporated his wails into my dream.

I don’t remember what the specifics of the dream were, but now it had a background track of Bronski Beat’s song “Smalltown Boy,” or at least the vocals at the beginning.

I’m skeptical that either Jimmy Somerville or my cat would appreciate being confused for each other, since they were both singing about something so deeply heartfelt and important to them. One the trials of being a young homosexual living in a town that doesn’t accept you, and the other having not been fed for at least six hours.

I really like this interview with Somerville from a Dutch TV show in 2007, where he’s a lot more lighthearted about the song than I would’ve expected, while still being defiant and assertive about what it means. I also have to admit that as many times as I’ve heard it, I never actually knew what it was about until just recently. I’m terrible at being able to decipher lyrics, so I never knew the lyrics beyond “run away, run away,” which I’d thought was the title.

Unlike the song “Run Runaway” by Slade, where I didn’t know the title and only remembered the lyrics “see chameleon, lying there in the sun.”

They’re kind of the opposite of Somerville’s smalltown boy, running back to Scotland to cavort amidst a castle with kilt-wearing pipers and dancers. I’m positive I saw that video back in the 80s, but I saw lead singer Noddy Holder and conflated it with a Doctor Who episode. I guess they’re also the opposite of Bronski Beat in that I’d always heard Slade associated with glam rock, and they are the straightest glam rockers I could possibly imagine.

One Thing I Like About It Follows

It Follows lays all of its metaphors out in the open, but rarely feels as if there’s no room for interpretation

I always like it when movies contain a line of dialogue that serves as a perfect review of the movie.1My favorite is a review of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that called out its line: “Do not see me.” It Follows does exactly that, with “it’s slow, but it’s not dumb.”

The movie has had so much buzz around it for so long, with some people calling it one of the best horror movies of the past decade, that I knew I was going to see it eventually. But it’s hung out in my periphery ever since, with a kind of dreadful certainty, just waiting until the time that I’d be in the right mindset to watch a horror movie that didn’t seem particularly “fun” in the slightest.

As it turns out, it’s very good. It’s absolutely a horror movie, but it plays out more like a suspense thriller: relatively bloodless and honestly not all that scary, but full of relentless tension and a kind of numb despair. The performances are all natural and completely believable. The soundtrack is perfect. It feels very much like an independent horror movie: not in that it’s low-budget, or in that it’s overly pretentious, but in that it feels as if the filmmakers had the freedom and confidence to do exactly what they wanted.

One thing I like in particular about It Follows is that it’s confident the audience will be able to figure out what’s going on without a ton of hand-holding. Some significant plot details are left ambiguous, mostly because knowing the specifics aren’t important to understanding the story. And while there are a few scenes with poems or quotes that are on the nose, they’re delivered as punctuation to themes that the movie assumes the audience has already figured out by that point.

It feels like a perfect introduction to cinema studies, which normally would be a severe insult, but here I mean as a compliment. When I had to take cinema studies, the most influential movie in my classes was Rear Window. Its theme of audiences-as-voyeurs seems like an obvious interpretation now, but for me, it completely changed the way I watch movies. I’m not claiming that It Follows will be the classic that Rear Window is, but it is excellent at inviting you to figure out its themes, while neither being too obtuse nor too direct.

There’s one scene in particular in which Jay and her friends are sitting in a field, listening to more details about how the entity works, and what are her options for escaping it. It’s a scene of exposition, functionally leading into the next act, but it doesn’t really play as one. Instead, the camera focuses on Jay — who at this point seems numb to everything that’s happening to her — as she picks individual blades of grass and lays them on her bare leg in rows. It’s a perfectly child-like thing to be doing, suggesting that she’s coming to terms with the fact that she’ll never be care-free again.

Once you pick up on the theme of the loss of innocence, the metaphors start coming fast and furious. Jay runs to safety on a swing set. A young man has left a well-used stack of porn magazines, the kind that Jay and Paul had been laughing about earlier. Two times, the gang runs for safety to a place that had been important to them as kids with their parents. And while we see the enemy frequently, it’s rarely made the focus, instead hanging out in the frame in a way that makes it feel not so much terrifying as it is inevitable.

In fact, a lot of It Follows feels like a (slightly) more bleak version of a Charlie Brown holiday special. The kids more or less fend for themselves, trying to make sense of things while the adults are rarely shown at all. That’s emphasized in the climax, where they come up with a plan that’s based on a sketchy understanding of how things work.

I don’t want to make it sound as if It Follows had no room for subtlety; it does, and its confident sense of style is what makes it work so well. I liked that for their date, Hugh took Jay to a screening of Charade. And I really liked how there was a mix of modern and dated throughout, with teenagers hanging out watching black-and-white movies on a CRT television in a very 80s-feeling living room, while one of them used a compact e-reader that doesn’t yet exist. Old and new cars co-existed without comment. Even the porn magazines seemed like the platonic ideal of 1980s porn (not to mention that a teenager in 2015 was still using printed magazines). The sense of timelessness gives it a feeling of universal nostalgia, the sense that no matter when you grew up2As long as it was in the American suburbs after the 1970s, it looked and felt like this.

But mostly, It Follows invites you to interpret its meaning while staying just shy of spelling it out for you directly. I can understand audiences who were expecting something like Scream or, even more appropriate, Final Destination would be disappointed that it was so slow and relatively non-violent. But I liked that it told audiences how the monster works without (too) directly telling them what the monster means. It’s somehow not all that scary, and simultaneously full of dread about the most primal fear there is.

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    My favorite is a review of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that called out its line: “Do not see me.”
  • 2
    As long as it was in the American suburbs after the 1970s

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Breeders Banquet

Pride month is over, so let’s turn it back over to the Breeders

The Breeders have released a 14-minute video called “Live in Big Sur,” recorded in the middle of a hiking trail in the most beautiful part of the California coast, capturing stripped-down performances of songs from Last Splash. In addition to some gorgeous drone footage, it’s also got short, clever animations scattered throughout.

The whole package is super charming, and a reminder that the band has a hell of a lot of great songs besides “Cannonball.” Here are two of my favorites:

I like “Wait in the Car” mostly because “Wait in the car, I’ve got business” is something I always thought only my mother said. It really helps sell the middle-aged midwestern punk rock vibe of the whole album. All Nerve is my second favorite Breeders album, and it was such a pleasure to see them get the band back together and still be as weird and funny as they were in the 90s.

Like when they recorded “Safari”. Which just cemented the crush on Kim Deal I already had from the Pixies. She’s just the coolest.

Trainwreck Revisited

Reconsidering my take on a mostly-forgettable movie from 2015 that is still depressingly relevant

After Trainwreck — the movie written by Amy Schumer, directed by Judd Apatow, and released in 2015 — was released, I wrote an overlong defense of it on this blog. I’m reluctant to link to it, partly because so many of the images and links are now broken.1Especially since the studios are now insisting on removing so much of their content from the internet. But mostly because reading old posts on here often has me thinking, “Who the hell is this asshole?” My last post was mostly responding to two reviews of the movie that I feel completely missed the point, and I was needlessly hostile and argumentative.

But I still agree with the points I was trying to make, even though I don’t like the post itself. Similarly, although I thought the movie itself was middling-to-forgettable, the ideas in it were more nuanced and mature than most people gave it credit for. And since it was released during the Obama administration, and we’re still suffering from the ultra-right-wing backlash to that, I think it deserves a revisit.

My interpretation of Trainwreck is that it’s a rejection of any form of feminism or progressivism that’s more prescriptive than inclusive. It’s presented as a gender-swapped twist on romantic comedy cliches, where this time it’s the woman who’s the slutty one! Can you even imagine?! But the more meaningful twist is how it flips the notion of conforming to society’s expectations.

It sets up the story with two sisters listening to their father go on an anti-monogamy tirade while telling them that he and their mother are getting a divorce. He has them repeat: “monogamy isn’t realistic.” Years later, one of them has taken that to heart and done everything expected of her: she drinks and parties as much as she wants, she has sex whenever and with whomever she wants, she refuses to be tied down to a committed relationship, and she still has a successful career. The other sister Kim is the “bad sheep,” in that she’s chosen to have a quiet life in the suburbs, married and expecting a baby.

When the movie was released, Schumer went onto Twitter and said explicitly what it was about: “I hope you see it. It’s a love letter to my little sister.”

Because it takes the format of a conventional romantic comedy, which implies a level of earnestness and taking everything at face value, it’s easy to see why so many audiences interpreted it as conservative. By the time you get to the end, it might seem like the message is, “Women need to reject single life, stop drinking, stop sleeping around, and devote themselves to a life of Traditional Heterosexual Monogamy to truly find happiness. Victory Through Conformity!”

But the movie isn’t a celebration of monogamy, or conservatism, or heterosexuality, but instead a celebration of self-determinism and mutual respect.

Continue reading “Trainwreck Revisited”
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    Especially since the studios are now insisting on removing so much of their content from the internet.

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Are You Not Entertained?!

Two tunes to irrefutably prove why everyone should like Soul Coughing as much as I do

Monday I got tickets to the Soul Coughing concert in Los Angeles (I live in Los Angeles, but I am not going to Reseda). It’s part of a tour that, as the site’s tag line says, the band said would never happen. Mike Doughty even wrote a book about it.1I haven’t read the book (yet), but from what I’ve heard it sounded like he was completely done with the band for good.

While I’ve been freaking out ever since the short teaser video was released — since I’ve gotten to see Doughty solo a couple of times, but have never seen the band perform live — it doesn’t seem to have hit everybody with the same magnitude. I’ve seen a couple of other fans comment on it, and the reactions are either this is the greatest thing that has ever happened, or who? (Maybe oh is that the super bon bon band? That’s nice I’m happy for you.)

For me it’s another one of those reminders of how I don’t get music on a fundamental level. Usually it’s about composing/creating, but here it’s about appreciating. Music has such a specific appeal for different people, and for me at least, it’s completely unpredictable. I can usually get to know someone and think, “Oh, you’d probably enjoy Battlestar Galactica,” or “I think you’d like Young Frankenstein,” or “You seem like you’d be a fan of David Foster Wallace’s books,”2Which I mean in a non-derogatory way, although I’m aware there are many who’d consider that the gravest insult. with a fairly good success rate. But I can’t do the same with any music. Even recommending bands similar to the bands I already know someone likes.

That also means that I just don’t get why people aren’t as blown away by Soul Coughing as I am. El Oso, my favorite of their albums, is near-perfect and not quite like anything I’d heard before, even from the band itself. Much of it feels like it was discovered like a Voyager gold disc, sent from a planet with an advanced civilization of jazz hipsters.

So I tried to pick what I think are the two Soul Coughing-est songs on their three albums, with the condition that they can’t also appear on their greatest hits album. The first is “Disseminated,” from Irresistible Bliss:

The upright bass, a looping sample from Raymond Scott, the stream-of-consciousness-seeming lyrics, a reference to chocodiles, the shuffling drums, and a backdrop of perfectly weird sounds that seem like the Mos Eisley Cantina band tuning up. What’s not to love?

The other is “I Miss the Girl” from El Oso:

This is like the climax to an amazing album full of amazing songs. Its creepy opening hook repeated over and over, getting more intense, and then everything building and building in creepy intensity until it ends in a cataclysm of sound, and then suddenly stops. (Leading perfectly into the quieter “So Far I Haven’t Found the Science,” which to me feels like what would happen if Soul Coughing made a song for a Muppet movie).

Anyway, I love them, and you should too. I keep having to remind myself that their last album was released in 1998, because to me it still sounds like music from the distant (and cooler) future.

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    I haven’t read the book (yet), but from what I’ve heard it sounded like he was completely done with the band for good.
  • 2
    Which I mean in a non-derogatory way, although I’m aware there are many who’d consider that the gravest insult.

Literacy 2024: Book 5: The Man Who Died Twice

The second book in the Thursday Murder Club series

Book
The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

Series
Book 2 in the Thursday Murder Club series

Synopsis
Not long after finding the culprits behind a double homicide in the first book, retiree Elizabeth Best receives an intriguing note from someone in her past life as a spy. Following up on the note involves Elizabeth, along with the rest of the Thursday Murder Club and their new friends, in a case involving multiple murders, mobsters, and the disappearance of a fortune in diamonds.

Pros

  • Gets right into the story, now that the characters and their relationships have been established.
  • Doesn’t feel as aggressively cozy as its predecessor, treating its characters from the start not as “elderly people solving crimes,” but actual characters with a ton of life experience.
  • Light-hearted throughout, but one line in particular actually made me laugh out loud.
  • Does a pretty good job of capturing “the banality of evil.” We see into the minds of (some of) the villains, and are shown that even when we’re in their point of view, they’re not fascinating or even exciting, just willfully ignorant and selfish.
  • Often anticipates the reader’s main theories about what happened, and has a character explicitly call it out, to reassure the reader that they’re in sync.
  • The character of Elizabeth, which I didn’t like much in the first book since she was essentially a super-hero of plot convenience, is more fallible and relatable here.

Cons

  • One of the main clues was disappointingly obvious.
  • The tone overall is “light-hearted but poignant,” so the moments where it descends into outright comedy just feel weird and out of place.
  • Overuses the gimmick of building tension by having a character reflecting on how good their life is right now. (Although the last one was pretty sweet).
  • The climax strains credulity past the breaking point, insistent on tying up every loose end at once.
  • Although I do really like the character of Bogdan, he’s clearly become the infallible super-hero of plot convenience for this book.

Verdict
I think it’s better than the first book, more confident in its main characters and a little less eager to make them quirky and charming. The side characters still seem a little too try-hard, some of the jokes are extremely corny, and the gag of “old people so stubborn and seemingly harmless that they always get their way” has been over-used to its breaking point. But it is absolutely still a fun and light, character-driven mystery story that’s not so light that it evaporates.

Spoilers after the break

Continue reading “Literacy 2024: Book 5: The Man Who Died Twice”

Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Out and Cringe

In honor of Pride month, two tunes from a time I wanted to forget but am now happy to remember

Dear Diary:

One of the things that might not be immediately obvious about coming out in your early 30s is that you’re a grown-ass adult having to go through a lot of the same awkward stuff that most people went through in their teens. In my case, that meant coming out with a huuuuuge crush on a guy that I’d met online, who decidedly did not feel the same way.

I should make it clear that there are no hard feelings at all; he was perfectly fine and supportive, and I don’t know how I would’ve handled the situation if the roles had been reversed. So everything here is making fun of myself, not anybody else.

Because I was infatuated. I’d save our chat logs and read back over them repeatedly, imagining that mundane conversations were the most witty and sparkling banter, and desperately looking for any clue that there might be some kind of spark there. Every story was fascinating, and I ended most conversations feeling like Marcia Brady after meeting Desi Arnaz, Jr.1I’m really, really old, is what I’m getting at.

And I got excited about “what’s your favorite song?” conversations, immediately going to buy the recommendations from iTunes.2Yes, this is back when you had to pay for music. See above. The first I remember was “Toxic” by Britney Spears, which was ubiquitous at the time, but I had somehow never heard in its entirety.

Purchasing this song felt like I was crossing some sort of threshold. By that point, I knew that I was gay, but I didn’t think I was that gay.

But once I got over myself, I came to the realization that “Toxic” is just objectively a banger, regardless of age, orientation, or snobbiness. The video is hilariously dated, stuck hopelessly in the early 2000s, but the song is still fantastic.

The other song, though, was “The Killing Moon” by Echo and The Bunnymen:

And again, I don’t mean any offense to anybody who likes the song, but man. That couldn’t be any less my thing unless it were death metal, or maybe “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes. Hearing it in the middle of an intense crush made my stomach drop like the first time I saw The Phantom Menace.

Hearing it now, though, just makes me happy. It’s a reminder of how hard it is to find the right person, how some people just don’t click no matter what, and how good things tend to happen when and if they’re supposed to. Twenty-plus-years-ago me was convinced he’d be alone forever, and he spent most of his time riddled with anxiety about everything. Now, I look back and realize… well, at least now I’m anxious about entirely different stuff.

  • 1
    I’m really, really old, is what I’m getting at.
  • 2
    Yes, this is back when you had to pay for music. See above.