Category: Inspiration // Cool

So this movie doesn’t even belong in the line to register to take the Bechdel Test, but no matter. It’s a holiday and that means your brain and social responsibility can take a vacay.

It’s not just the Fourth of July on which this tale of Russia v. Rocky/USAUSAUSA is appropriate. Nay, this is a fun romp for all the biggies: Christmas, Easter, Halloween and New Year’s Day.

1) While it would seem to any mere mortal who hasn’t watched this movie at least 10 times that this is just a boxing movie about avenging a friend and healing two countries’ wounds and ending Communism in a one-two punch, they would be giving it too much credit but would also not be wrong. It’s also a movie about personal ethics, personal power and personal growth delivered on a gold platter crafted from Dolph Lundgren’s manically chiseled sweaty abs. God bless America.

2) There’s a robot! Not just any robot: a robot that appears to babysit the children while all the adults are away. And not just any children: the child of Rocky and Adrian AND his friends. Like… how did that happen? Did the parents just drop off their pre-teen sons to a robot in an apron and say, “I’ll pick him up after the child in your care’s father is beaten to a pulp half a world away, Robot. We’re going to Chi-Chi’s.” Isn’t that silly? Answer: It is. And it was put in the plot with no real explanation and approved by hundreds of people who make movies for a living. The robot is just a device for humor-kind-of and nothing about it beyond that was really thought out.

This. This is the world we live in and it is absurd. That is comforting confirmation of all of the ridiculousness you feel is taking place outside your living room and second bag of Doritos; comforting confirmation by way of a sassy robot with no real purpose. In the movie biz, we call that an easy pill to swallow on holiday.

3) Montages. So. Many. Montages. The best is the training juxtaposition of Rocky doing the old-school, hard-knocks method and Drago jamming and juicing in what looks like a soviet laser tag arena. The scene is set to a sweet little diddy called “Hearts on Fire” by John Cafferty. Literally the whole song. That’ll boot the holiday tunes that have been on repeat since fall right on out of your pretty little head. How many montages are too many? None because this is America but also Russia but also the world and that matters and that’s what we learn in the end. Confused? You’re not alone. NONE OF US ARE ALONE.

4) James Brown sings as Apollo dances in a top hat and sequin jacket. Then he dies. Spoiler.

5) “You cut him! You hurt him! You see? You see? He’s not a machine. He’s a man!” I genuinely tear up every time Duke delivers this line in the final fight. Whatever is happening tomorrow, when it’s time to take your PJs off and act like a “real” person, you too can conquer the world. Or at least a 6-foot-five doped up Russian. Which, let’s be honest, is what the first day back to reality always feels like.

Sink Swim Chicago

Marketing a fish restaurant would be so fun! There’s so much you could do with it. Sink Swim’s take reels me in. Sophisticated but cheeky. Love it — and that little sailor hat logo. The chef is a Kent State grad, too, which means we used to swim in the same school? Eh?

Alaskan Tapes

This Ontario band has been my jam lately when I need to not jam. Ambient and chill as a creek in a long-forgotten woods, Alaskan Tapes’s music has been perfect lately when I need to calm down and focus… or calm down and zone out. DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN.

I found this song, through Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, which updates, you guessed it, once a week. Spotify curates the list well. It’s on point for delivering deep cuts for genre surfers like me. It’s like someone picking the best of every city’s local scene and putting it on a playlist for you. Every week. I can dig it.

“OJ: Made in America”

Oh my gawd. Have you been watching this? Get to it. Stat.

“OJ: Made in America” is a five-part series on ESPN about OJ Simpson’s career and absolutely unprecedented historic crash and burn.

It is incredible just in terms of the way the documentary delivers his pre-trial and juxtaposes his denial of his race at a time and in a place where racism was literally making things explode. This is outstanding storytelling.

OJ’s life hits on everything that is still relevant today.

Systemic and soul crushing racism.

Domestic violence that turns into murder.

Class privilege.

Self denial.

Phony celebrity.

Athletic entitlement and hero worship.

It’s disheartening how similar many of these cases of racism and power privilege are to ones we’ve seen in recent years.

This series asks viewers to consider transcending your Otherness and how best to do that or if it’s even possible. Do you fight for the cause, for your people, for yourself? Or do you ignore it in an attempt to have everyone else, including those who are oppressing your and your people, ignore your Otherness too?

It’s important to fully understand what was happening around this case. I still have to finish the series, but I’ve been most surprised at how big of a star, renowned by the media for his “character,” OJ was (as a ‘90s kid, he has always been that OJ) AND how little I actually know about the specifics of the racial horrors happening at the time and the murder victims of this case.

I also hope this documentary sheds a little light on why women stay in domestic violence situations, what it can lead to, how abusers so often dupe outsiders, and how other women perpetuate the problem (his first wife, who is probably righteously angry at Nicole, brushes his violence off in an interview snidely, that it’s something she’d never let happen to her…).

😐 

😐

😐

Essays by Charles D’Ambrosio.

You should never judge a book by its cover.

But always judge a bookstore by its staff suggestions.

Just a block from my new place in Chicago is a bookstore with an impeccable recommendation section, and I recently picked up writer Charles D’Ambrosio’s book of essays “Loitering” and am smitten with his writing style and ability to build an essay. He’s a modern master of the form who digs on Susan Sontag and Edward Abbey. I love that the title of the book describes what he thinks essays are… loitering. Hanging out around an idea. No conclusion necessary.

I *do* think the book cover is cool. Whatever, Red Bull. Words give you wings. Sometimes they’re broken…

A sampling of his style, for your viewing. Then get your own copy. Mine’s taken.

Damn. That is a sentence.

Advice for writers by way of Andrew Solomon and, of course, Rilke.

This article, which is an oldie but a goodie, speaks for itself, but here’s an excellent taste.

“The worst mistake anyone can make is to perceive anyone else as lesser. The deeper you look into other souls—and writing is primarily an exercise in doing just that—the clearer people’s inherent dignity becomes. … Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination’s curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.”

I like his thoughts on being an oldie but a goodie oneself. Age isn’t a restriction, and we can learn a lot from one another, young and old.

I also felt this way, though not so thoughtfully, after listening to this NPR article about how Millennials interact with the fantastically conceived Taco Bell brand via social media but they’re still not buying more tacos and as a Millennial I’m just kind of over being a Millennial and I know all of our lives are hard no matter what age we are and we all just want to see horses turn into unicorns and wow that must mean being a Millennial doesn’t really matter anymore because we’re getting old and there is fresh new blood in the water and it smells like tacos and who even am I anymore?

Opening credit art.

Ever since Mad Men’s iconic opening sequence, TV series have been outdoing themselves to turn this pivotal piece of production into an artpiece. (Or they’re just not doing an opening credit sequence, perhaps because they’re intimidated or it just feels right for the series or they’re using it as a defense against encroaching commercial time restraints. “Here’s the director. IMDB the rest of this shit, people.”)

The best (read: my favorite) ones are, like Mad Men, openings that don’t rely on the obvious visual styles and/or references of their corresponding TV show’s subject matter. That could go terribly wrong though, right? Because it could look so obviously like they were trying to make it different from what the subject matter is and in the age of Reddit and message boards and bloggers like me, just a whiff of desperation can take you off the air. But if done well it sets the tone and gets the viewer excited or intrigued every time they see it. Here are two of my new (to me) favorites.

Finally, recent title holder in best opening credits, movie edition = Deadpool. Writers: 1.

Ha. Just kidding. Here are more distractions.

Make believe that’s real af.

Do you want to write a sci-fi novel or the next great dystopian drama where the human race as we know it is being quickly eradicated for a sharper, sexier homo sapien?

 

Sure, me too. Here are some excellent research pieces for you.

This video is fascinating (that Ted Talk tag is no lie) and it’s apropos considering this recent StarTalk podcast about the ethics of genomic manipulation and study. What’s StarTalk? Only your most regular dose of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman, NDT’s co-host of Bob’s Burgers fame who references Star Trek a lot and makes you feel not so stupid. Thanks, Gene(s)!

 

Some feel-good-flavored fuck yous.

So into this band right now. Perfect for gross gray days that should be ready made for play.

What a sound.

Taste all the Radkey sludge on Spotify.

 

And a swift kick in the ass.

A colleague let me borrow this book. Colleague is such a better word than co-worker. It implies office friendship, no? And one must have an office friendship to recognize the deep seated self-hatred in one another for not yet completing that one creative project you always dreamed of.

It’s all about how to defeat Resistance, which is that internal not-doing that evolves from so many places and defeats so many of our desires.

 

Employers sometimes use up their best creative people by giving them too much to do, counting on them for too many things, asking them to solve too many problems. That’s often the case, but it’s important to think about how we let ourselves get used up, too… how that contributes to our personal Resistance… and why we do it.

You’ve settled.

“I learned later how hard it can become to unsettle yourself, to trip yourself up, and I think that a good place to write from. It’s important to undermine yourself and create a level of difficulty so the work doesn’t come too easily. The more comfortable you get, the more money you earn, the more successful you are, the harder it is to create situations where you have to prove yourself and make yourself not just want it, but need it. The stakes should always feel high.”

Carrie Brownstein, “Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl”

You’re listening to the wrong country music.

Currently on the Roku: “American Masters: Loretta Lynn.” Watch it! Forever a bad bitch mountain girl. “Say what you will but she’s a feminist. She made it OK for other women to say, ‘Wait. Yeah!.’ And that’s how movements start.”

You remember the Duke case wrong.

The new “30 For 30” episode covering the Duke Lacrosse scandal from the 2000s has made me completely re-think (consider for the first time?) *my own* privilege. Not because I’m a woman, but because I’m middle class. I remember when this story happened and reading the news stories and looking at the photos and thinking these guys were definitely guilty. They were rich and jocks.

And rich people and jocks were entitled and mostly always sucked. Please check out the film. It’s a well-done look at how journalism and social righteousness can go terribly wrong, a stark reminder that innocent until proven guilty applies to all of us. (This story feels especially scary considering that our reactionary natures have only accelerated since this happened thanks to clickbait headlines.)

“I want you to come with me.

If you cannot walk, let me carry you.

I want to show you what I have found.

A dream I had as a child has blossomed
Into a castle. You can have your own wing.
Although, I doubt you will need it.

My love, your dreams have blossomed too.
And all that is missing from their sacred grove is you.

Come.

Without you a garden becomes
a vacant lot. A castle: a nutshell.”

— Saul Williams, An excerpt from his poem “How He Talks to Me”