media update: January

CONFIDENTIAL TO G:  Skip movie review #13 (the last on the list, handily!), although the side notes are safe if you want to read those.

I hardly ever go to the movies anymore for a number of reasons---people are rude, movies are expensive, they come out on DVD about 4 months later anyway so what's the point of putting on a bra---but I went three times this month!  G, C, and I had to see the new Star Wars in the theater, of course, and then a lovely friend sent me a gift card, so I went twice on my own.

Asterisks denote something I particularly enjoyed or found especially worthy of my time; double asterisks are reserved for the creme de la creme.  As always, your mileage may vary.

FICTION

1. The Line Between by Tosca Lee:  After being kicked out of a doomsday cult, Wynter discovers that the world truly has gone to shit thanks to a mysterious virus that may have ties to her former life.

2. Long Bright River by Liz Moore:  Philadelphia beat cop Mickey and her sister Kacey have been at odds ever since Kacey spiraled into drug addiction.  A string of murders leads Mickey to fear for Kacey's safety, especially after Kacey disappears, and Mickey's off-the-books investigation could have dire consequences.

3. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins:  After their entire family is gunned down by a drug cartel, Lydia and her young son Luca try to make their way across Mexico and to the safety of America.  I'm so white I'm transparent, so I don't feel qualified to comment on the controversy surrounding this book, but I will say I thought it was overrated.

4. The Prized Girl by Amy K. Green:  After Jenny, a former child pageant queen, is murdered, an older "fan" of hers is accused of the crime. Her half-sister Virginia doesn't think he did it, so she decides to look into it herself.

5. The Better Liar* by Tanen Jones:  In order to receive her inheritance, Leslie hires a woman to impersonate her dead sister; it does not go as expected.  Good and nasty.


NONFICTION

1. Camgirl by Isa Mazzei:  A memoir about the author's stint as an extremely popular camgirl.


MANGA/GRAPHIC NOVELS

1. Our Wonderful Days by Kei Hamuro

2. Food Wars!* vol. 33 by Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki

3. Commute* by Erin Williams

4. What Did You Eat Yesterday? vol. 14 by Fumi Yoshinaga 

5. The Way of the House Husband* vol. 2 by Kousuke Oono


MOVIES

1. Hustlers*:  After the 2008 stock market crash, a group of strippers concoct a new way to make money.  Based on a true story, it's very entertaining and holy fucking shit is Jennifer Lopez hot in this.

2. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels:  After a high-stakes poker game goes wrong, four friends have a week to come up with the cash or they're toast.

Side note: I don't think I've ever seen a movie with fewer women in it.  There are only three that I can remember: an unnamed stripper, an unnamed card dealer, and a druggie named Gloria.  There aren't even any women in the background shots!  I know Guy Ritchie doesn't exactly make chick flicks, and I don't absolutely require everything I watch to pass the Bechdel test (I'd never be able to watch martial arts movies otherwise), but damn.

3. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker*:  Because this is the end of the newest trilogy, I won't give it a proper review lest I spoil someone.  I will say that I was expecting it to be hot garbage based on reviews and assorted Twitter wankery, but I actually enjoyed it!  Sure, there were some missteps here and there, but overall it was much better than I thought it would be. 

4. 47 Meters Down:  In this tense thriller, two sisters impulsively decide to do a shark cage dive in Mexico; this turns out to be an exceptionally bad idea.

5. Joker*:  Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a failed stand-up comedian who's sick of being shit on by society.  When he impulsively performs a vigilante act on the subway, it puts him on the road to becoming the man who would eventually become Batman's biggest nemesis.  Grimy and disturbing; technically I'd give it 3 1/2 stars out of 5, but I rounded it up due to Phoenix's incredible performance.  I imagine he'll be the one to beat at the Oscars.

6. Ad Astra:  Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) embarks on a dangerous mission to find out the truth about a project his father worked on.

7. Three Kings*:  After the end of the Gulf War, three soldiers find a map they think will lead them to gold stolen from Kuwait, and they set out to find it.  Excellent performances and acerbic humor.  I wasn't thrilled they featured my least favorite song in the world---I have been known to actually leave restaurants when it came on the sound system---but I'll forgive it.

8. Detective Pikachu:  After his estranged father's death, Tim goes to Ryme City, a place where humans and Pokemon coexist.  While there, he runs into his father's partner Pikachu, and they team up to investigate.  Cute and funny, with a great voice-over performance by Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu.

9. The Rundown:  A bounty hunter (Dwayne Johnson, though this movie is old enough that he's credited as The Rock) is sent to the Amazon to retrieve his boss' son (Seann William Scott), an aspiring treasure hunter looking for a priceless artifact.

10. Gemini Man:  A hit man (Will Smith) finds himself being stalked by an unusual foe.  It takes too long to get started, and it has some really distracting green screen work, but the exciting action scenes make up for it.

11. Underwater:  When a drilling station at the bottom of the ocean is breached, the survivors have to make their way across the sea floor to get to the main facility, but they've got company.  Basically Alien under the sea, but it's very tense; the first few minutes are pretty sedate, and then when shit goes down, it rarely lets up for the remainder of the movie.  I saw this in the theater and the surround sound really added to it.

12. It: Chapter 2*:  When Pennywise reappears 27 years after they first fought him, the Losers Club reunites to stop him for good.  I liked this one more than the first one; the cast is great, and there's a really scary scene where Bev revisits her old apartment and meets its new tenant.

13. 1917*:  In a race against time, two British soldiers are sent to deliver a message to stop their troops from walking into a trap.  It's done in one shot (or rather made to look that way, but it's seamlessly done aside from one obvious "cheat"), which adds to the intensity.

Side note #1: Forget what I said about movie #2 above, because this had even fewer women in it!  (One unnamed woman and one unnamed baby girl.)  Then again, it's set during a war in (spoiler alert) 1917, and I'm pretty sure there weren't a lot of women wandering around the battlefields.

Side note #2:  I got stuck with the worst goddamn audience for this movie.  I was the youngest person in there by at least 25 years, which is fine except it's not the audience you would have expected to be texting and talking throughout the whole thing.  The assholes behind me were especially loud, and at one point, when a cow showed up onscreen, one of them said "A cow!"  Wow, holy shit, I didn't know we had Dr. James Herriott in the audience!

hard to explain

I am currently in my 14th month of unemployment.  When I was still receiving unemployment payments, I could afford to be picky.  I was making really good money at the Cube Farm by the time I got laid off, and I knew that was mostly because I'd been there so long, but I wanted to get something that was at least close to what I'd been making.

Six months went by, the unemployment stopped.  I started being less picky, but the job hunting sites, despite my strict parameters, kept sending me postings for things I wasn't qualified for and/or were so far away that they would have to pay six figures to make up for the gas, wear and tear on my car, and emotional wear and tear on me for sitting in Los Angeles rush hour traffic.

Then I broke my hand, and nobody wants an administrative assistant who can only type with one hand.  Job hunting delayed for another six weeks.  The half-cast came off, and I needed another three weeks to regain full mobility in my hand.  Once I was able to get back to my usual WPM on an online typing test, I started looking again.

Then came a call from my dad that was unusual, but I wasn't really sure what to do about it.  I was afraid he was having a stroke, but his voice wasn't slurred and he answered several questions (my middle name, his and my stepmother A's anniversary, the name of my old cat) correctly.  He said he felt fine, aside from being tired.  I asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital, and he said no.  I put the phone number for his local police department in my phone just in case.

The next morning, I got a panicked call from A, who had been out of town visiting her son.  My dad was in the hospital; he'd run to their neighbors in the middle of the night because he couldn't breathe.  They were running tests.  My dad and A had recently gotten back from Africa, so they checked for parasites.  Nothing.  No signs of a stroke.  No brain tumor.  They thought maybe he'd had a panic attack, or sleep apnea.  Once A arrived at the hospital, they gave him a prescription for Xanax and sent him on his way.

In late October, A had to be out of state for a commitment she couldn't get out of, and because I was still unemployed, she asked if I would be willing to come stay with my dad, because he couldn't be left alone.  I said yes.  It was one of the worst weeks of my life.  My father, of whom I was once so terrified because of his white-hot rages that could be sparked by anything from the legitimate (me mouthing off) to the benign (me saying I didn't like the song "Smoke on the River"), was hunched in on himself and had lost an unbelievable amount of weight.  I took him to a cobbler's to have new holes punched in his belts because his pants wouldn't stay up.  He obsessed over liquid soap in Publix for, I shit you not, a full hour while I tried to explain to him that yes, it was still Dial, look at the label, it's just a Great New Look, it's still antibacterial, it's fine Dad let's just put it in the cart can we please go.  I had to coax him to eat.  He sat at the kitchen table and cried because he was a burden and it would be "so much easier on you all if I just died".  He wrote me a check for my airfare, and he asked me how to spell my name.

When A returned, we picked her up at the airport.  She pasted a big smile on her face, but I could tell she was dreading the return.  When we got back to their condo, and my dad went to use the bathroom, she grabbed me in a fierce hug and whispered, "See, he's so bad off, he's SO BAD OFF, thank you for coming, I don't know what's happening, what the hell is happening to him?"

I left the next day.  I had a layover in the Atlanta airport, just long enough to use the restroom and grab some magazines and snacks for the rest of my flight.  I opened a bag of almond M&Ms and had just started to put one in my mouth when I crumpled in on myself and began sobbing.  A woman walking by yelled "Head high, girl, Jesus carries you!"  Another woman sat down next to me, gave me a side hug, kissed my head, and handed me a packet of Kleenex before patting my arm and leaving again.  People can be so tender sometimes.

To cut a long story short---and yes, I'm several paragraphs past that point---my dad saw some of the best doctors in the country at one of the best hospitals in the world and it's Lewy body dementia, the same thing Robin Williams killed himself over.  It came on very fast, and they aren't sure why, but the rounds of chemo he went through a couple of years ago might have accelerated the process, because when God closes a door He opens a window but the window is on the tenth floor and He flings you right the fuck out.

G and I are having a house built in another state.  California is getting too crowded, and it's always been expensive, but it's getting worse, and the wildfires came far too close for comfort back in 2018.  I'll desperately miss California; I've lived here the vast majority of my life, and it's my home in a spiritual sense too.  I'll miss walking on January nights with nothing heavier than a sweatshirt on.  I'll miss my friends, the sunsets, the ocean, the mountains, the weird stores, the occasional celebrity sighting, the legal weed, Little Tokyo, Shake Shack, the sensation of driving late at night listening to Soul Coughing and going 75mph and singing along at the top of my lungs. 

But it's time to leave.

Still unemployed, I have been taking this opportunity to go through boxes for the last few weeks.  I still have so many crammed in the front closet, most of which haven't been unpacked over the last several moves.  One full box of just CDs.  Random trinkets from dozens of Little Tokyo trips.  The sticker album I kept when I was about 12, filled with Lisa Frank and Hello Kitty and an "I [heart] DURAN DURAN" bumper sticker and Ms. Pac-Man, underneath which I helpfully wrote "I AM A VIDIOT 4 LIFE!!!"  Letters from my first boyfriend, letters from a guy I met on AOL who became obsessed with me (though not in a "call Gavin de Becker" kind of way), cards from old college friends, letters my mom wrote me when I was away at college.  I'd forgotten just how funny she could be. 

"I miss my PMS pal!" Mom wrote in one letter.  "Wendy's Biggie fries aren't the same if not shared with my sweet girl, the salt soothing our anger...at least for a little while!"

On a postcard from Sandals in Jamaica, with two hot young things holding hands on the front and gazing at the turquoise sea:  "As you can see, your dad and I are the new Sandals models.  Keep this card, my autograph will be worth something now that I'm famous!"

Photographs.  Me with my childhood cat, me staring up at my dad as he blew out the candles on my 4th birthday cake, my childhood best friend, my mom and dad at a company picnic, my brother and me dressed up for Halloween.

So much proof I was loved.  I held each photograph, read every letter.  Most of them are gone now---friends I fell out of touch with, boyfriends I broke up with, my precious and forever beloved mother, lost back in 1997---but I took a moment to honor each one, to thank them for their place in my life and my heart.

I have to get rid of at least some of this stuff.  I know Marie Kondo says to keep the things that spark joy, but what if it all does?  I make three piles: one to keep, one to donate, one to trash.  The pile to keep is much bigger than the others. 

On the other side of the country, my father is packing for the assisted living facility.

I put everything back in the boxes.