This Week
It’s August, which means I’m only a few weeks out from my Disney World trip, which means I’m deep in the planning stage. And the most important of all plan is what I’m going to eat and drink. So I wrote Eating and Drinking in Disney World 2019:
Not too long ago, an ill-informed op-ed made the internet rounds claiming that people without kids shouldn’t go to Disney World. I can’t expound any further on that theory, because I didn’t bother to read the piece, because the premise is dumb. Not only should everyone who wants to go to Disney World go to Disney World regardless of whether or not they have offspring in tow, Disney World has one quality that is of interest to adults in particular: it’s full of good stuff to eat and drink.
There is a spreadsheet. You’re welcome.
Links
What it’s like to use the internet on 50 MB a day.
I love to walk. It’s another benefit of living in a city and not owning a car. I walk a lot and I think a lot while walking. And so I endorse neuroscientist Shane O’Mara’s assertion that “walking is a superpower.”
This Quartz Obsession deep dive on claw cranes is great.
The best old block in downtown Chicago is a time capsule and a real community.
“I find myself reflecting on other women depicted as monstrous for their hunger; Pandora and her box, Snow White and her apple. The appearance of lacking desire goes beyond the bounds of etiquette or being ‘ladylike’ and instead crosses into the realm of a moral imperative. Which is to say, a just, good, decent woman is a woman who is free of any type of hunger, be it physical hunger for food, hunger as desire, or hunger as ambition. Conversely, a woman sickened with sin is one who is riddled with said hungers, reduced to a gaping mouth never satisfied.” The monsters we make of hungry women.
I really love this essay about Veronica Mars and the power of the solitary woman.
A guide to the classics of Korean noir cinema.
Every once in a while when I mention I’ve gone to see a film in 70mm, people ask, “What does 70mm mean?” Well, the Music Box Theatre, which is where I have exclusively watched 70mm films, just produced a handy video guide to exactly what the benefit of 70mm is.
“We participate in what I now refer to as visual thinking: by attentive looking we consider how the artist has used material to embody thought or feeling and we attempt to move from our own experience more fully into the space of the artwork. For a time, we give ourselves over to it so that we may experience something new—an insight, a sensation, an experience—so that at least in some small way it may change us.” On excavation and the paintings of Mark Bradford.
Reading/Watching/Listening
So I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Sort of spoilers ahead. Here I’m going to say something that I’ve never dared to say on the internet before and am only going to say it here because who is actually reading this anyway: I’m not a Tarantino fan. In fact, I actively dislike much of his work. However, I got curious about this film and took the opportunity I had to see it in 70mm. For about 85% of the film, I thought it was brilliant. But, by the ending, I had jumped off board. If this film is a personal reckoning with the legacy of traditional heroism, masculinity and violence in movie culture (and I truly believe it is), it seems either dismissive or ignorant of the fact that many of us who love movies and come from non-traditional perspectives have had to do this sort of reckoning from the very beginning, just so that we can continue to love movies. I have a hard time watching particularly brutal violence in film, to the point I often avoid movies that include it, or I carefully do not watch particular scenes. I’ve been called “too sensitive” in the past specifically for my avoidance of Tarantino. I averted my eyes from a lot of OUATIH’s final gruesome sequence. The audience I was in, however, was laughing. It all left a very bad taste in my mouth. This reckoning is a worthwhile one, but it’s so slick that for some of the audience it’s not happening at all, and, for the rest of us, it feels redundant in the most repellant way. Somewhere among the layers of irony, between artistic ambiguity and thematic muddiness, I lost the thread. So take that review for what it is. If nothing else, there’s a lot to think about. And it is gorgeous in 70mm.
Hey, want to know what was solid the whole way through? Crawl. A hugely satisfying, visually interesting monster movie that’s better than it has any business to be. Go see that.
I read The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. I’ve been working my way through all of Sarah Waters’s books after being blown away by her The Little Stranger, but this one didn’t hit the same high mark for me. It seemed overlong and had trouble sustaining the story’s momentum until the end. But it’s deeply felt and delicately detailed, still a fine slice of historical fiction.
Paul Thomas Anderson directed Haim’s new music video. It’s neat.
Around
In case you missed it, last week I wrote about my birthday and getting older:
Today I am thirty-eight years old, which means that I have accumulated thirty-eight years’ worth of facts, trivia and mythology about what my birthday means. My birthstone is a ruby (represents positive energy, passion and prosperity). My astrological sign is Leo (represents confidence, ambition and self-centeredness). I share my birthday with Helen Mirren (heck yeah), Stanley Kubrick (checks out) and Kevin Spacey (unfortunate). I was born under a significant star, destined for greatness in the company of an elite—just like everyone else, in one way or another.
Have your fun, whatever it is.
Love,
Jen
Connections
Substack archive: https://jenmyers.substack.com/archive
TinyLetter archive: http://tinyletter.com/jenmyers/archive
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 weeks’s quote was the regular sign-off of Studs Terkel in his radio show, but comes from a song by Pete Seeger called “Talking Union.”