October has been a MONTH, man. Since the end of it is going to be a mess, I started this on the 10th and am now finishing it on November 2nd. 2018 is really blasting by, isn’t it? I’m exhausted.
Crystal and I saw Fall Out Boy live twice this month and the shows were honestly spectacular. We saw them together in November 2007 and then for a variety of reasons (none having anything to do with Fall Out Boy, to be honest, just L I F E) hadn’t seen them again and it was really weird and interesting and exciting to see what ten years can do for a band. We had so much fun it was kind of unbelievable and I came out loving a couple songs that I was sort of meh about previously. (You cannot watch Patrick Stump jam out while doing “American Beauty/American Psycho” and not come out obsessed with it.) I love live music so much, it’s hard to articulate. It was so important to me for so many years and I took my access to it so extremely for granted. These last few months of shows have been massively revitalizing to me and I hope we can do it again soon.
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I hate brushing my teeth! This is literally a thing I have struggled with my entire life. As an adult, I am lucky to 1. know that it’s partially a sensory issue, and 2. have a very good dentist & hygienist who help me take care of my teeth, but also, I just want to be better about it! Generally, if I can get myself started, I can brush fine, but it can be hard to make myself do it twice every single day. (I read that the optimal number is actually three times in two days, but dentists say twice a day because it’s easier and humans are big dumb forgetful animals.) I figured the best thing I could do to improve on it (after YEARS of trying to make myself a twice every day person) was to make sure I was always brushing for two minutes every time I brush. I have a Sonicare which I like a lot AND has a timer, but also can’t handle using every time I brush my teeth (GOD WHO KNEW YOU COULD HAVE SO MANY PROBLEMS WITH SUCH A SIMPLE LIFE FUNCTION) so I bought myself a timer in hopes that it would inspire me to brush for the full two minutes! And when I found one that looks like a rocket, I knew it was meant to be. And you know what? Two minutes is a LONG time. But staring at a lil rocket helps.
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Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism was such a good, fun, creepy read with a really wonderful core of friendship and love. It reminded me of my favorite kind of campy 80s horror movies and also my favorite stories about loyalty. It has a great cast of characters, makes good use of pop culture (without being annoying or feeling phony), and an ending that made me tear up. And definitely a great read for spooky season!
I LOVED Castle Rock! I didn’t really expect to and really just went into the first episode curious (like most things) because I’d seen someone mention it on Twitter and ended up feeling really hooked in a non-manipulative way. (Nothing makes me quit shit faster than a cliffhanger!) I just wanted to know more about the characters and see that Castle Rock mythos exploited and man, did I end up enjoying it. Bill SkarsgÃ¥rd is… a babe. A brutal, giant-eyeballed, beautiful babe. André Holland is really good and nuanced and I have loved Melanie Lynskey since But I’m a Cheerleader and I was so excited to see lots of other people I’ve loved pop up as well. The cinematography is really beautiful and the placemaking is exceptional, making every location feel really alive and unique. Also, Sissy Spacek is fucking amazing. Really very interested in seeing where this one goes next.
Dolly Parton & Sia’s new recording of Dolly’s “Here I Am” which they recorded for the Dumplin’ soundtrack (a book I loved and a movie I cannot wait to watch!) and which is absolutely so beautiful and tender and lovely that I can barely believe it. 
I feel like a lot of people went into Sierra Burgess Is a Loser thinking it was going to be like, super fun? Or similar to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and all I keep thinking is that none of those people were fat enough or weird enough in high school. A lot of this reflected my high school experience (and in ways I wasn’t expecting which was kind of interesting) even though I was way, way fatter than Sierra Burgess. She’s preemptively cruel in ways that I recognized and leans into her weirdness in a way that felt really true. But I also think people who didn’t think it was fun are wrong! Her friendship and exchanges with Daniel are fantastic and some of the brutal awkwardness let itself veer hard into the comedy of the moment which is always a great relief. It felt like an 80s movie with technology in a lot of great ways. And! It had my favorite trope of teachers calling out their asshole students in ways that both other students and teachers would probably kill to have happen in real life. Frankly, if you weren’t fat and bullied in high school, I don’t know that I’m particularly interested in your opinion of it anyway. Also, people forgive male characters for way worse deeds, so maybe let’s examine what’s going on there while we’re at it?
Pray for the Wicked is so, so, so good and I wasn’t really expecting it, even though I was excited to hear it. (I’m a firm believer that life is best lived with low expectations! Disappointment is worse than surprise! Don’t be cynical, be chill!) It’s a nice follow-up to Death of a Bachelor and the songs were amazing live. I won’t say too much since I’m pretty sure this one will end up on my year-end list, but what an album of jamz, man. Tracks to Check: “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” & “Roaring 20s” & “Dying in LA”
It took me a while to read Rebecca Stead’s First Light but thankfully that isn’t the book’s fault, I’ve just been terrible at follow-through this year. This was a conceptually great story with characters it was easy to care about and follow, even in the more high-concept side of the story. As I said in 
Crystal and I have dedicated our summer (and our October…) to live music because we have missed it so, so much since we moved to the middle of nowhere. We saw The Used in May which was an excellent show in an 
Netflix’s Alex Strangelove was very charming and very sweet and pretty funny with likable characters that I super enjoyed spending time with. I was a little bored with the root of Alex’s repression (and repression in general, some people don’t figure it out ’til later on and that’s FINE, it doesn’t always have to be about trauma) but overall this was a really fun, really joyful gay romcom. Daniel Doheny was very good and I loved seeing Jesse James Keitel’s character Sidney be really unapologetically visible in the face of Dell’s dumb straight boy ranting. Fun and sweet!
I had been very eagerly awaiting Love, Simon since I read the book way back when and had 
Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World was a gift from the Amazon algorithm, recommended to me based on the probably pretty high volume of queer books I both peruse and buy. I really liked the writing in this one and Stephen’s inner monologue and the secondary characters we get to spend time with. I also especially liked seeing it take place in an semi-unfamiliar place and time, the 80s in Nova Scotia, and the fact that it is a real coming-of-age story, following Stephen for a good long while. This one is less happy than the the stories I tend to love (and beware if you’re particularly sensitive to violence) but it is really hopeful and kinder than a lot of books set in similar times and places. It reminded me some of Marie Sexton’s Trailer Trash, which I 
I was really, really excited about John Mulaney’s new Netflix special Kid Gorgeous at Radio City and that’s usually a bad omen for me because being excited about something often leads me to having accidentally high expectations and I do not handle having expectations well at all. But Mulaney totally delivered and I laughed a lot a lot and was just generally delighted. It also has the most beautiful stage setup I have ever seen for a stand-up set and I’d kind of just like to stare at it a lot forever which is sort of weird, but great.
Crystal and I caught up on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Speechless this month and they’re just such good, funny, smart, charming shows that I kind of get overwhelmed by them both. It’s nice to watch sitcoms that are consistently funny and don’t waste their time or energy on jokes that punch down. I’m also super glad that both are coming back next year!
Ali Wong’s new special Hard Knock Wife is so so so soooooo funny. Her jokes are great and really well-paced, but what really sets her apart is her delivery. She says things in ways that I never expect and she commits 1000% to everything she does and it all made me laugh so hard that my stomach hurt afterward. I also love that no matter how outlandish or “gross” her jokes might get, they never feel like she’s trying to be ~edgy or outrageous; it feels like she’s talking to you the way she’d joke around with her friends and that makes the show feel really special.
