ash rocketship

stuff i read: june 2019

Here are some things I read this month that weren’t a waste of time!

Noah Cho, Burning Your Mouth to Spite Your Heart

Meghan White, Male Entitlement Undermines Steve Rogers’ Core Characterization and Story Arc

Taylor Lorenz, When Grown-Ups Get Caught in Teens’ AirDrop Crossfire

Paula Pell, People Used to Tell Me ‘You Could Be a Knockout’—My Mistake Was Listening to Them

Pilot Viruet, Finally, Queer Joy Is Infiltrating TV

Chris Bourn, Deprogramming the Cult of the Workplace Personality Test

Kerry Howley, Tulsi Gabbard Had a Very Strange Childhood

Szilvia Molnar, Me and JT LeRoy: On Anonymity and Queer Art

Shannon Keating, The Time I Went On A Lesbian Cruise And It Blew Up My Entire Life

I absolutely loved Claire North’s, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Like I said in my review, once I realized what I was reading, I wasn’t sure that I would like it, but even when it made me feel a little dumb, I enjoyed it. Harry is just an incredibly interesting narrator to hang around with, both because of what he is and also because of the dry way he relays his observations of the world around him. Though he’s never effusive, you can feel these wonderful tremors of joy and anxiety and fear and possibility with just the subtlest change to the narrative voice. Wonderful writing and world-building and a great, simmering queer subtext, and the wonderful line, “He enjoyed toying with me, and, in my way, I enjoyed being toyed with.” — one of the absolutely horniest things I’ve ever read.

I’ve been listening to Phantom Planet’s “BALISONG” and Big Data’s “Put Me to Work” on repeat a LOT all month long. “BALISONG” has this great chugging rhythm and Alex Greenwald’s hypnotic voice rising and falling in all kinds of interesting ways and it’s got me extremely hyped for a full-scale comeback. “Put Me to Work” is fucking great, extremely dance-y and perfectly current while also feeling a little flashback-y like all good synth music. Also, who doesn’t love a shout-y sing-a-long chorus?

I waited a long time to watch Call Me By Your Name because despite my Genuine! Best! Efforts! I am a jerk who sometimes ends up turned off of things because the hype has overwhelmed me! I don’t think it was necessary this time, but man, was it worth the wait anyway. What a lovely piece of moviemaking and storytelling. I’ve been trying to articulate a lot of things about it both as a movie I liked and as a Piece of Queer Media (especially a compare and contrast with Brokeback Mountain, oh man. There are even shirt parallels!) but mostly I keep being grateful (which says something really fucking shameful about pop culture) that this felt like a movie about a gay relationship that I was just able to enjoy as a romance because no one died a horrible death and the heartbreak was just nice regular heartbreak. Progress!?!??! Also, what a lovely story about family, too. (Shoutout to Reid, the tattoo artist I saw a couple of weeks ago who said it “really fucked him up” because I hadn’t seen it yet and couldn’t have a conversation about it, but you know what? Fucking same, dude.)

And three to look forward to…

stuff i read: may 2019

Here are some things I read this month that weren’t a waste of time!

Janelle Shane, This neural net would like to deliver these petitions

Leah Johnson, The Jonas Brothers Joke About Their Purity Rings Now. Why Can’t I?

Daniel Nichanian, “A Sliver of Light:” Maine’s Top Election Official on Voting From Prison

Thomas Leo Ogren, Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies

Tierney Finster, The Woman Who Wrote The Book On ‘Doing Nothing’ On Why Inactivity Is The Only Thing That Can Save Us

Gabrielle Emanuel, How Making History Unmade A Family

Jaya Saxena, We’ve Entered the Era of the Large Adult Meatball

Natalie Adler, Season 2 Of “Killing Eve” Killed The Queer Subtext, And All The Fun Along With It

Miles Klee, The Great Solicited Dick Pic Experiment

totally top three: april 2019

The end-ish of this month has been ROUGH because I got sick like a dumb idiot and also because I have to go in for my semi-annual endometrial probing and I also have other stuff scheduled and I don’t handle having plans very well? I prefer to be free and I will assume that this is just my nature as a pisces, since one of the other things I find myself obsessed with in 2019 is astrology even though I don’t believe in it at all. What an adventure being alive is!

I did at least manage to like some stuff this month, so that’s cool!

I thought Unicorn Store was incredibly sweet and charming and also it made me cry a little bit, but in a nice, moved way, which is always great. Brie Larson is a national treasure who I already love a lot and Mamoudou Athie is a wonderful new addition to my list of People to Be Obsessed With. I liked that this just leaned into its premise and let it play out as weird as it wanted to without sacrificing any of its characters’ humanity. Samuel L. Jackson was also great as always and man, what a wardrobe!

I didn’t actually know anything about Jessica Knoll’s Luckiest Girl Alive when I finally started reading it 10,000 years after the hype died down and though I don’t think it mattered much enjoyment-wise, I do think I would have been extremely fucked up by the expectation that it might be anything like Gone Girl because it just… Is not at all that kind of book and I don’t know what marketing person decided to fucking, die on that hill. This is some of the best writing I’ve read in a long, long time and a really complicated, interesting narrator to spend time with and I am so glad I read it and happy to never read it again.

Lizzo is a babe, a talent, a hero, an idol, an inspiration and Cuz I Love You is joyful and fun and energetic and beautiful and I am so glad I’m alive on earth at the same time as her. I can’t imagine telling a young version of myself about Lizzo’s entire existence and I am so envious of and happy for young people right now. Favorites: “Cuz I Love You” & “Like a Girl” & “Jerome” & “Better In Color”