Current Preoccupations

Probably Not Lasting Ones

Footwear

Now that seasons are fully meaningless and every day promises any/all possible kinds of weather, we need better and more footwear options.  At present, cobblers are failing us.  We are in desperate need of something between a shoe and a boot.  We’ve had the sandal - admirably occupying the space between barefoot and shoe - for millenia now.  It’s time to fill in the other side of the footwear spectrum.  We need something that looks good, casual, but can deal with random ice and piles of snow.  Something that isn’t embarrassing to wear on days that turn out to be surprisingly nice, but also something that doesn’t soak through miserably at the merest hint of rain.  You’re probably thinking - because you’ve forgotten how to dream - that we should just acquire this shoe or that boot.  We refuse.  We do not want more shoe or boot variety, but a new thing.  We believe cobblers can achieve this, can provide for us in this time of need as we try to face Mother Nature’s stubborn mood disorder with grace and poise.  We haven’t given up hope.  And think, dear shoemaker, of the fortune you could make.  We don’t know much about the economics of shoes, but we’re fairly sure that you could make a tidy fortune before some athleisure brand steals your design, employs children to make it in basement warehouses, and liquidates rare orcas to synthesize the rubber required to make it on the cheap.  For the month or so your new neither-shoe-nor-boot shows up on feeds and in magazines, you’ll be the talk of the town.  Much like the inventor of sandals - Mrs. Sandals - was in, we want to say, ancient Egypt?  Get on it, sweet cobbler, if for nothing other than possible money, momentary fame, and our humble gratitude.

Not Googling Things

For a while, we’d immediately reach for our phone when a date or name or some other bit of trivia didn’t come right to mind.  We’d remember that our memory could be supplemented by this little machine and would alleviate our ignorance right away.  Then, though, we noticed that we retained almost none of this information.  We’d wonder when such-and-such a book was published, fail to know of ourselves, look it up, make a small mouth noise to confirm this new info, then promptly forget it again as if it weren’t worth knowing in the first place.  It was an odd little loop of thinking about, acting on, and discarding little facts.  So, now, we’re not doing that.  We wondered, the other day, what year an album came out, groped around our brain for some context to clue us into the answer, failed to find out, then did nothing whatsoever about it.  We’re not, here, celebrating our ignorance - but recognizing that this kind of vague not knowing is kind of nice because, well, we’re still kind of thinking about it.  The album floats around historically as we listen and re-listen.  We’ve been puzzling over what, if anything, the specific date might mean.  The mere fact of the matter, we’re pretty sure, would stop our thinking dead.  The matter would not only be settled, but we’d have to accept that we were looking it up only out of idle and shallow curiosity.  This no-effort experiment of letting small bits of knowledge stay fuzzy or void has an appeal that, right now, we can’t quite describe.  It feels like we’re preserving the possibility that we’ll somehow discover something other or better by avoiding the machine that offers straight answers.  This is a magical and stupid train of thought, but it’s one we’re enjoying riding right now.  Trying to skirt the blackhole we call the internet (at least in this very specific domain) is only, we know temporary.  There’s only so long we can go before we just have to know the name of that batshit crazy Besson movie starring Cara Delevingne (Venereal in the something something? That can’t be right) or when it was exactly that Tracey Emin won the Turner Prize for sleeping in that bed (1999?).  For now though, we’re getting pretty OK with not knowing fleeting little details immediately.  We’re having fun at present not constantly knee-jerkingly filling our heads with still more numbers and names.

The Carrie Diaries

Sucked into the blackhole of cyberspace on matters unrelated to names or numbers, we did - though - discover this thing the other day.

Did you know about this?  A Sex and the City prequel?  For teens?  Maybe we’re very out of a very specific loop, but this is entirely new information to us.  This didn’t even conjure up a vague, half-forgotten recollection.  Nothing.  It was as if we’d discovered there was a sequel to Dead Souls or something.  Not only does this show seem entirely too likely - as if it were magicked into existence by cynical jokes about studio television and the creatively bankrupt culture industry - but also impossible not to know about.  We ought to have known, in our bones, that this took place.  Like the equivalent of Fukushima or something.  We ought to have know that it took place even if the what or why or when or whatever remained obscure.  Sex and the City proper continues to meme meaningfully.  The show, the movies, the abomination of a reboot/return thing.  It persists.  But this!  This does not!  THIS!!

Other than the fact that the writing might be more appropriately called “un-writing,” how do two seasons of television associated with a culturally persistent franchise evaporate into nothing?  How many other seemingly inevitable and memorably unsuccessful things exist unnoticed in the backwards abysm of time?  Was there a broadway musical based on The X-Files?  Was there a kids cartoon adaptation of Eyes Wide Shut?  Was there a Rachel Dolezal mini-series with an accompanying recap podcast hosted by a former cast member of She’s All That?  Was there a She’s All That prequel?  How incomplete is our picture of the world?  Moreover, how did it never occur to us that Carrie Bradshow absolutely would sit directly on an oversized disco ball if it were just there on the street somewhere (see promo above for confirmation)?  This is cannon-building at its most inspired.  While we’re no longer googling trivial things, we are now frantically searching for lost or obscure detritus that flesh out our sense that the cultural powers-that-be are more than willing to invest money, time, and talent into pre-doomed projects out of an emaciated view of what people might like, want, need, or benefit from.  We’ve got our fingers-crossed that somewhere out there is a season and a half of a single-camera comedy from circa 2004 that continues the story of The Catcher in the Rye where Holden, now old and phony, watches camgirls and whines and whines and whines.  Wait, is that maybe interesting?  No, no, that’s just the brain rot talking.

Our Inability to Tell the Difference Between Bill Skarsgard and Austin Butler

We know they don’t really look alike. We are told that they are different people. But we are truly unable to keep them distinct in our mind and we absolutely cannot set aside the strong suspicion that they are in fact the same person with an elaborate facial prosthetics routine. We don’t know why we believe this, but we do. And wholeheartedly. This isn’t a bit. We might be alone on this - but hopefully by sharing this publicly other people can come forward and admit to sharing our suspicions. Bill=Austin. Merch and subreddit forthcoming.

The Cancellation and Bankruptcy of Just For Laughs

We’re less bothered by JFL’s failure itself than what that failure suggests about the current state of things.  If an institution with more government money and corporate backing than God cannot stay afloat, then - we’ve got to ask - what possible hope is there for smaller outfits trying to create and present cultural events?  More importantly, will there still be GAGS camera crews doing cringe-y candid camera shit all over the Old Port?  And what happens to the, urm, comedy demon mascot? 

What was this thing?  Who chose it?  Was it even chosen at all?  Why does it look ike it smells like wet tires and dirty ribbons? Is it one of the old gods?  Did it have a name? Does it have to persist?  Will he, like Youppi!, be inherited by the Habs?  It’s getting increasingly conceivable that the most exciting event in Montreal ten years from now will be a Jazz Fest that features no actual jazz and a summer festival with no identity, distinguishing features, or purpose for being (Osheaga).  Maybe after all the big institutions fail, smaller ones can take over.  Sorry, there must be a series of gas leaks because there’s absolutely no way anyone could possibly believe that from the ashes of this rotten civilization anything new will grow.  All these institutions are salty and the soil can’t possibly recover.  There are, though, certainly worse things than culturally barren land.  It could just be straight barren which, well, will happen eventually obviously but not tomorrow or the next day.  Or maybe not.  Everything - including cultural institutions seemingly built for perpetuity - are subject to change.  Except maybe that comedy demon.  It was pretty clearly forged in the antechambers of hell and will, with Bonhomme Carnaval, dance and chuckle long after we’re all piles of mixed bones.

Two Sinks in a Home Bathroom

We sometimes - late at night - look at houses we’ll never be able to afford in places we’ll likely never visit.  It’s not so much a matter of fantasizing about impossible futures, but rather seeing the possible worlds other folks inhabit.  We also kind of like houses?  Just, like, the idea of not sharing walls with neighbors?  Seems crazy.  Anyways, most houses built this century are aggressively boring.  They’re all rectangles and graytones.  There’s little aesthetically or architecturally noteworthy about any of them which - if we had the energy - would probably be noteworthy (in a banal kind of way) of itself.  There is, though, a feature that seems more and more common across homes: two sinks in the master bathroom.  Everybody gets two sinks now.  And we just can’t quite see our way to understanding what they’re for.  Don’t say convenience because two people of almost any dimensions can quite comfortably use the same sink simultaneously with minimal hassle or coordination.  There has to be a function other than a baseline desire to be at least a foot away from the person with whom you share a toilet.  What does one do with these sinks?  Is one ornamental?  Is this a religious thing?  We’re not saying we don’t want another sink, we’re just really interested in knowing what’s happening with them.  We’re assuming that very few people have every sought them out or requested them put in.  They’re like an interior designer’s whim that stuck.  That’s our guess.  They’re the bathroom equivalent of split-level homes.  There’s no need and no function, but it looks a certain type of way and that’s really maybe all it takes for something to catch on and become a pseudo-fixture at a certain income level.  The bigger question we have - other than two sinks - is why not TWO EVERYTHING?  Two showers would surely be useful, two toilets, two baths.  While we’re at it, why not two doors?  Two different rooms?  Two houses?  Go big, live in two different neighborhoods.  Stop limiting yourselves, two-sinkers.  Follow two sinks to the end and find your bliss.  Or, alternately, please tell us what you’re up to with that additional sink.  Are you bathing small creatures?  Making potions?  Just running the faucet endlessly out of contempt for the very notion of preserving water?  Are the sink manufacturers running a racket?  Do they have lobbyists?  Ought we be concerned about the influence of BIG SINK?  Does anyone have three sinks?  Is that something we’ve just not yet seen?  If you can answer any of these questions, please let us know.  Free us of the burden of imagining that one sink is sitting sad, unused and dusty.  Imagine how envious it is of its twin, of that other, useful sink over there across the counter - spat in and splashed with soapy water regularly.  Poor sink.  

The People We Catch Looking At Us While Walking on the Sidewalk

We appreciate the passing attention and wonder what you’re looking at and why.  We’re also curious - of ourselves as much as them - why it’s forbidden to keep looking once you’ve been caught looking.  We see your glance dart away when we catch you.  We know what you were up to.  We, now, are looking back.  What’s the harm of meeting someone’s eye?  Staring is impolite, but we’re both walking elsewhere.  We can’t stare in motion, so why not look longer?  All these people we’ll never see again and who’ll never see us again and everyone afraid to be seen seeing strangers.  We’re odd, shy creatures and almost uniformly lovely when silent and unknown to each other.

New Directions Fall ‘24 Catalog

With a few exceptions (Ed Park’s new novel, Kelly Link’s first novel, and the translation of Jelinek’s Children of the Dead), it’s been some time since we’ve been excited about forthcoming books.  The promise of what New Directions is publishing this coming fall, though, has us (tentatively - we’ve been hurt before) stoked.  Two volumes of Solvej Balle’s septology (did Fosse start a trend?), new long Krasznahorkai, stories by Ágota Kristóf, and a book by Elizabeth Willis that is nigh incomprehensible even in the promo-blurb are all things we want very much in our life.  We’re very curious, though, just how much money ND loses on these translations and ventures into unclassifiable high-pretense?  Or, if they don’t lose money, where are all these readers?  What are they up to?  Can we hang out?  Roam the streets as a posse?  Bully people?  Make them feel a certain type of way merely by mentioning authors with accents in their names?  Laugh smugly?  Wear scarves regardless of the weather?  Look disaffected?  Start a war over taste?  Call people plebs?  Poison wells?  Entrench the divide?  Relish the derision of others?  Reclaim pretention after explaining to folks what pretention actually means?  Condescend and get defensive?  Wear tight jeans and maybe a short wallet chain?  Bring back the hipster?  Listen only to minidisks?  Correct people’s pronunciation?  Insert half-remembered quotes into casual conversations and namedrop names no one rightly knows?  Or maybe just enjoy what we enjoy and talk about it a little?  Either/or, as Kierkegaard might say, is cool with us.

Our iPhone’s Lack of Space

It’s reached the point where every new message we receive prompts an alarming popup on our phone alerting us to the 0 kb of free space we have remaining.  If someone sends us a picture, we have to delete an old picture.  A new message means deleting an old message.  We are doing data triage every single day.  We could, we suppose, get a new phone.  OR, more interestingly, we could continue to live in a state of mild annoyance as we decide whether this old picture of a field that we took who knows when is something we’re OK with deleting so that we can receive who knows what picture from whomever.  Do we trade the known past for the unknown future?  It’s not very serious, but it is a curious constant state.  Do not tell us about backing up our data in the cloud or whatever.  We don’t want to hear it.  We don’t believe in clouds. Solutions to problems are for other people.

Awards

There are too many and they are all without value.  Unless you win one and then OMG CONGRATULATIONS THAT’S SO GREAT I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU.  Sincerely.  It’s nice to be recognized even if that recognition comes from the kinds of people who become judges or juries for awards.  Imagine, though, what it might be like to win an award for work you know to be subpar?  That must be a special kind of difficult.  That would feel worse than not winning anything at all, we imagine.  Or maybe it feels great?  Maybe the award then allows you to stop considering your work critically and admit, finally, that its worth is wholly dependent on others who hold a certain sort of position.  We wonder, though, when the realization hits that most lasting things do not ever win awards.  The books, performances, films, etc. that stay somehow vital over time almost never get recognized contemporaneously by peers.  So, we wonder, which would be better?  Some money and recognition while living (haunted by the hint that the work’s not that great) or some prospective future good that you don’t get to enjoy.  OR, of course, there’s always the chance that the work is neither good enough to merit neither current nor future attention.  It might just be middling forever.  Is that going to be OK?  Think, though, of all the time we’ll each save not writing acceptance speeches or having to think of nice things to say about the other nominees who are officially less talented than us.

Podcasts in Which Ghosts are Discussed with Great Seriousness

We love them.  There’s little better than two impassioned individuals talking into microphones about how a door slammed of its own volition and how that, that, is proof of life after death and/or many overlapping dimensions and/or the capaciousness of ensouled consciousness.  Tell us more, serious people, about how that woman in a Victorian gown was hitchhiking on the side of the highway.  Speak of the WWI-era orphan boy who moves trinkets around your house.  Tell us about ghosts that, initially, were thought to be demons.  Inhabit the world with ghosts!  We need it because, as it stands, all day every day all we tend to hear about is how more and more people have been killed simply for being alive in a certain place.

Whatever This Over-the-Shoulder Thing by Paolo Carzana Might be Called

We wouldn’t ever have occasion to wear it.  Lack the posture and confidence to pull it off.  Have nothing to wear with it.  Would be anxious at every moment that it’d get dirty or ruined somehow.  Cannot afford it.  Would be shy about even going to see it in a store or something.  Would never tell anyone we owned it.  But we’ll be damned if that beige-y complex side-shawl isn’t the most appealing item of clothing we’ve seen in a long while.  Adore it in such an unbridled way that we’ve come to hate mere sweaters or other lesser things that sit on shoulders.  The whole collection is dope, but this… this is something else entirely.   It looks like something a Muppet warrior would wear to a funeral in Fraggle Rock. Which, clearly, is a complimentary simile of the highest kind.