This Week
Happy holiday weekend to my fellow Americans. Yesterday I wrote about the complexity of Independence Day, my favorite piece of writing about America and, of course, Bruce.
I celebrated the day by going to see Jaws in a theater. I also met my new favorite person.
Links
He cyberstalked teen girls for years—then they fought back.
"'I don’t know why, but this weird, fractal, crystalline architecture evokes the future to me,' I say. Jason replies that it is because it was drilled into our heads as kids." A dream called Epcot.
The importance of photographing women in sports.
“When forming our literary, cinematic, and artistic canons, it’s important to remember that if you want a canon of saints, you’ll end up with a canon of zero. Rather than recoil from an artist’s grotesqueries and let them destroy otherwise interesting and nuanced work, or rather than hold an artist at arm’s length and pretend there’s an impenetrable wall that separates creator and creation, embracing the bramble of imperfections and idiosyncrasies of an artist tends to make the work prick with even more strangeness and complexity, mystery and negative capability. Not only is an artistic canon of saints untenable, but it’s undesirable.” On John Wayne and the art of problematic artists.
“And that’s Kubrick’s point. As long as men choose ignorance, and women accept it, the relations between them will never change.” What I learned after watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 times.
Trailer for Rian Johnson’s forthcoming Knives Out.
The campaign to restore Nina Simone’s childhood home.
How the Homocore Chicago concert series propped open the gate for queer punks.
From Daniel Ortberg, in praise of museum cafes and little restaurants in botanical gardens. I love museum cafes as well. They are also reliable ports in a storm when you’re traveling internationally.
“To live in the Midwest is to experience two realities: the first, all sunshine and bland pleasantries among other potluck-suppering churchgoers; the other, a red-lit underworld where people relay vulgarities through the learned second language of euphemism, eye rolls and loaded silence.” My life living “Midwestern Nice.”
Reading/Watching/Listening
In the Aisles (limited release) This is a German film getting a release by the distribution company connected to my local art house theater, so to be honest I’m not sure where you can find this one right now (although you can do a search for theaters at its distribution website). But if you like slow, beautifully shot and sound-designed films about modern loneliness and pockets of humanity within a retail worker wasteland, you will appreciate this film when it becomes more widely available.
It also features actor Franz Rogowski, who is becoming a favorite of mine after this performance. He gave a similarly understated performance in Transit, a terrific film that is bound to show up on a lot of best-of-year lists and is now available to rent/buy on all the usual digital services.
Wake in Fright is on Amazon Prime. It’s an Ozploitation classic, telling the story of a bonded schoolteacher in rural Australia who hates his lot in life, but in his desperation to get away he inadvertently descends into an existential hell among a crew of degenerates. This film is billed as “horror”—and it is horrific, but not in the way typically expected when given that label. It’s psychologically harrowing and thoroughly nihilistic. (Content warning for a very graphic hunting scene, I have zero problems admitting I fast-forwarded some of it.)
Hey, if you’re in a mood for Australian brutality, the Nick Cave-penned The Proposition is also on Amazon Prime! So have fun. Or, you know, not.
I’m watching season three of Stranger Things. So far, my love for David Harbour has been strengthened and I also want to go to Waldenbooks at the mall.
It’s July 5, but I bet the fireworks will still be hailing over Little Eden tonight.
Around
I’ve opened up two virtual mentoring sessions for beginning tech speakers from underrepresented minorities on next Friday, July 12. If you or someone you know is interested in having a chat with me about what it’s like to speak at tech conferences or meetups, head over to my mentoring page to sign up: jenmyers.net/mentoring/ If you’re not in tech but would like to talk about speaking in other contexts, I’m happy to help if I can, so also feel free to jump in.
Just a note that last week I sent out the monthly essay for paid subscribers. If you want to check that out, you can get it over here.
Stay cool.
Love,
Jen
Connections
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Today’s quote is from Olivia De Havilland, 103 years old this week.