This Week
Friends, in some ways it’s been a less than easy couple of weeks for me. So I’m still working on last month’s newsletter essay. Paid subscribers will hopefully see that over the weekend. It covers the new season of the new Twilight Zone. In related news, I also added a couple of new items to last year’s list of my favorite episodes rediscovered in my original Twilight Zone rewatch. These got left out because they are from season four, which is unstuck in copyright time and space, and I only caught up with that season after I first published the post. That post, by the way, is available for everyone to read on my website.
In case you missed it, my new podcast project is live. Quiet Little Horrors is me and my friend Jessi discussing psychological horror films and the first full episode is on The Witch. You should be able to subscribe at your favorite local podcast app and you can also listen at our website, quietlittlehorrors.com.
Links
“How I became a police abolitionist.”
Hamilton makes the case for all Broadway shows being more accessible.
The rise and fall of Adobe Flash.
Elgin Park, a short documentary by Danny Yourd about Michael Paul Smith, a reclusive artist who works through his painful past in his miniature, dreamlike recreation of his hometown. I’m fascinated by miniatures and why people make them, and this is a lovely example of that.
“In other words, you’ve got to quit seeing solitude as an experiment in subtraction, and start seeing it as an experiment in addition. What you’re adding is your self — a true self, because at last it’s you who’s building it, not anyone else. You’re no longer looking to other people for their attention or approval.” How to be alone.
Reading/Watching/Listening
Yes, I grew up reading and rereading and rereading The Baby-Sitters Club books. That has only a little bit to do with the fact that I’m genuinely charmed by the new Netflix Baby-Sitters Club adaptation. Sure, it’s a show made for tweens. But it’s also smart and kind and really lovely. A balm for our troubled times. And if you are someone who has fond memories of the books, you’ll find plenty of faithful details to evoke them.
Usually the books/movies/etc. I list here I at least moderately recommend. However, there’s a reason that this section is not called “Recommendations,” and that’s because sometimes I mention things that are interesting and maybe worth exploring but fall short of an unqualified recommendation. The world is large and complex and the only thing I recommend wholeheartedly is absorbing a wide range of art so that you can refine taste and strengthen judgment. Anyway. I can’t quite recommend Perry Mason (HBO) yet. This disappoints me, because I was looking forward to it and it contains many items I’m sincerely enthusiastic about: the character of Perry Mason, noir mysteries, 1930s tales, Matthew Rhys. But so far this series is adding up to less than the sum of its parts. It’s fine to watch, but doesn’t feel original. We’ll see if it improves.
I finally got around to watching The Great (Hulu). It’s … really good. (I resisted the impulse.) Recommended for fans of The Favourite, historical idiosyncrasies and enthusiastic repetitions of the word “huzzah.”
Please scream inside your heart. And hang in there.
Love,
Jen
Connections
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Essay archive: http://modernadventuress.com/
Website: http://jenmyers.net
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Email: hello@jenmyers.net
Post: P.O. Box 13114 Chicago, IL 60613
This week’s quote is from Hannibal, Season 3, Episode 3, “Secondo.”