I watched five entire movies this weekend — yay — all of which I had seen before — boo — but that I did watch and finish while mostly not staring at another device — YAY — and it felt unbelievable to actually do it. Attention span, friend, is that you? (Please hear this in a Kate Bush “Wuthering Heights” falsetto, thanks.)
Highly recommend revisiting The Rocky Horror Picture Show if you haven’t in a while. It’s still so, so fun and still makes me feel like I’ve got a whole community of weirdos and queers where I belong, even when I can’t be with them in physical spaces due to the plague and also living in a nightmare place. I only got to see it once “live,” but it was the 30th anniversary show at the Hollywood Bowl and it’s hard to beat Par-tici-pating with 8,000 other nerds, you know?
I got a new favorite hoodie in October, the Smalltown Famous hoodie from Ohio In My Mind. Marty’s a lovely person and the stuff they make is great and charming and makes me feel like I belong to the community of the Greater Midwest even when my Local Midwest is waving Trump flags and giving me constant low-grade anxiety. New stuff drops all the time and it’s making up my entire wardrobe right now. I even ordered a back-up of this specific hoodie and one in a different colorway just to be safesies.
I also finished a book recently! Devin Kelly’s Blood on Blood which is a poetry based on a Springsteen album I’ve never heard — I love the Entity, but the music’s not really my thing — and I loved it very much, especially each of the versions of “The Story of How You & Your Brother Grew Up.” Me, liking poetry! 2020 surprising me yet again.
It’s November. Tomorrow is election day. Please vote for Joe Biden, even if it hurts. Any other option will hurt us all worse. I’m sorry we haven’t done more. Please donate to mutual aid funds if you’re able. Wear a mask, wash your hands, stay safe. I love you.
I’ve been on a country kick lately — unfortunately I am now truly midwestern, rip the cool version of me — that started because I listened to Bonnie Raitt’s entire discography and then the Old 97s — one of the only contemporary country artists I listened to when I was still cool — dropped an album in my lap! And it’s great. This is really classic country storytelling and it feels very alt-Texas. I’m partial to “This House Got Ghosts,” “I Like You Better,” “Belmont Hotel,” “Our Year,” “Bottle Rocket Baby,” and “Why Don’t We Ever Say We’re Sorry,” which, you know, is most of the album, so they must be doing something right.
One of my personal projects this year has been to try to get into poetry because I’ve never read beyond what I absolutely had to when I was in college/grad school and that seems unfair to a whole bunch of writers! It has been… a largely fruitless endeavor because my brain just isn’t designed for it honestly, but I ordered Kimmy Walters’ new collection The Faraway [
Tomasz Jedrowski’s Swimming in the Dark [
