We Could Be Rats - Emily Austin

I picked up this book for its title off a library shelf. It was a hardcover book with a pink dust jacket and images of sketched people in blue on a amusement park giant swing.

The contents of the book concern self removal at the least inconvenience to the schedule of other people's lives. It is apologetic and tells anecdotes from a small town childhood where the protagonist and her sister have to navigate a volatile household of parents constantly fighting. The reader learns of the family and people in this small town through the lens of scenes throughout the life of a twenty year old high school dropout with a job at a discount store. There are sweet gems of moments of joy, and honest moments of struggle to communicate just why the road has led to this irreversible, but ultimate conclusion to leave this mortal plane at such an early age.

The older sister of the suicidal young lady handled the trauma of waking on eggshells by trying to appease and make peace, avoiding triggers of conflict. This caused some strain as the younger sister is constantly blundering into triggers, setting off emotional bombs and being blamed for the mess of shrapnel in her wake.

The sisters are both shaped by this household, by their mutual love of their grandmother, who has been an anchor in their stormy waters, and their aunt who was an occasional lifeboat with one oar to try to have a temporary break from the unstable ship, but could only circle them back to where they started.

The older sister headed off to college, as an escape from the small town and it's gravity, leveraging her perfectionist path of coping skills and practice of navigating people's moods.

The book shifts gears both light and heavy with deftness and care. People are imperfect, and can let you down in disappointment from the dreams of how it could be if they cared to stop and listen.

I found this a fast read and tender in a broken spirit of things found too late, and held up like a kaleidoscope to try to make sense of a mundane and monotonous world.

Maniac Magee - Jerry Spinelli

How do you describe this book? It is about a legendary kid, with threadbare sneakers and breakneck speed. It is about an absolute innocent savant, a male Pippi Longstocking. Except he doesn't have a house, a horse, and isn't a shameless liar. He is just Jeffrey "Maniac" Magee, a kid who runs off the page and into the prejudice of a small, divided town.

I read this book as a preteen kid and it captivated me. Rarely do I see an immediate need to reread a book, but this had me in a chokehold for about a year and a half. It was told like a tall tale, but had moments of vulnerable poverty of soul and spirit as this homeless 12 year old survives through persistent and unrelenting sweetness, to take shelter from those with a spare seat, cot, moment, and have their lives changed and beliefs shaken by this strange vagabond child.

He is an athletic savant, with quick reaction time, and blazing speed, who is like Pablo Sanchez in Backyard Sports, preferring to lead with actions and not words. He is beloved by young kids, who see themselves in this innocent big kid who does not understand skin color or cultural mores, as he untangles their "rat nest" shoelace knots and patiently reads story after story to them. He is a paradox who refuses to attend school, but has a voracious love of reading; a kid who is a prodigy at running, but has nowhere to go; a kid who longs for a home, but can't stand still long enough to be pinned down; a kid who loves so hard that he doesn't understand hatred.

He wanders through people's lives like a modern kid Jesus, blessing them with his gifts, but unsettling whispers surround him that "It is straight up unnatural that the kid is the way he is. No one is that good, he must be hiding something awful." He is not a tame kid, but he is good. And though his footsteps are quick, he can't outrun a sorrow fate from the bitterness in the hearts of man.

We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021)

I was haunted by the eerie resonance to the world building of Jane Schoenbrun's "I Saw The TV Glow". Which intrigued me even with the trailer for whatever it was. And then I heard a podcast host mention the same weird identification to that director's work, in the atmospheric sense of unfamiliar familiarity to the specificity of the subject. And the host recommended checking out the director's previous film, as it had similar seeds of the most accurate depiction to "the experience of being extremely online".

"I saw the TV Glow" encapsulated being obsessed by a niche piece of media culture at a formative time and how powerful a connection that is to share when you are seen by someone else who shares that exposure. How deep and fragile that bond rests as you explore how it shaped your personality and perspective to where you arrived now. There are people who root their identity to things they saw and admired and wanted to embody for themselves. And when you are rooted in something mainstream, that can be a broader connection to others. But what if your formative experience was to something obscure and fleeting? At best, it might be a pop culture thing that might have a resurgence in niche nostalgia to laugh at it being dated in its time.

But this film, this earlier work by Jane, yeah, I can understand some threads, but this is much more small scale in scope and narrowed vision. While "TV Glow" has a parallel in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and other, even more doomed teen TV pilots and shows. "World's Fair" is influenced by "LonelyGirl15" and other niche online video communities and creepypasta forums. 

It is a matter of timing for being caught in the wave and riding it down a rabbit hole of specific momentum in tandem with others in a chatroom of private and long distance Marco Polo with a specific password and frequency. For people in this period, they heard about a specific online trend of a "horror role playing game", documented through an uploading an online video of repeating "Wanting to go to the world's Fair" and shedding a small amount of blood while watching a specific video. Something between Bloody Mary/Beetlejuice and The Ring. Then the participants continue to document what changes in their lives over time by performing this ritual.

The main character is in her early teens and rehearses what she is going to do for the ritual at night before going live in her room and filming it. The perspective is from her MacBook camera into her room as a fixed shot. After she turns on the video, the activating video's colors wash over her face, illuminating and shadowing her place in an inconsistent pattern. It is extremely personal and unsettling to be this unfiltered. It is almost a relief to leave the room's fixed camera and see short fixed shots of the suburban town in the dead of fall, at various big box stores at the mall and the road of passing cars. Then a sequence of the main character walking along a fence in a handheld shot before switching to tracking her at a fixed distance behind like a normal walking shot.

Eventually, the camera shows her back in her room as she sets up her camera to take a video of her sleeping at night, trying to document what changes will happen from the ritual. But she can't sleep and starts looking up videos from other accounts who report going to the World's Fair and being changed. One guy is on a treadmill and his video title announces that "I CAN'T FEEL MY BODY", as he runs, he keeps slapping his face and not flinching. The video finished and queues up a follow up in the World's Fair participant playlist, where an attractive girl is smiling and making duck faces at the camera with a title of "I'm turning into plastic" and a description of "I don't know why it feels so good." The main character leaves her room and goes out to the barn, where she lays on a couch and watches an ASMR comfort video with a young lady stroking gently at the camera with long nails telling the viewer softly "You're okay. you can go to bed and have sweet dreams" as the camera changes angled to show the projector perched on a pool table and slowly pans in to the screen to be filled with the ASMR video. The video wraps up, queueing a followup video, one in which the main character, Casey, is featured in a still image from her first video we watched, distorted and with coal black eyes. Discordant music plays, and there is cuts to scrawled text that "You Are In Trouble" and "Please Talk to Me".

Casey gets up and stands in front of the screen. The next morning, she looks up that user and contacts them on Skype. This user goes by the moniker "JLB", is middle aged, and doesn't turn on their camera from showing a ghoulish sketch as a profile icon. They apologize that the video message was unsettling, but they couldn't find a better way to get Casey's attention to respondThere are long pauses in the conversation, as the user mentions that they only talk to serious game players and that there is deep lore and theories of the "World's Fair" and the effect it has on its participants. Casey is told to be careful and that she should contact the user if she has any questions, but to keep making videos to let them know her status in the process of her gradual horrific physical and/or mental metamorphosis.

And so begins a uniquely online and parasocial relationship between Casey as a content creator documenting her life in sporadic updates and JLB as a concerned commenter on the effect this "World's Fair" is having on her. The camera switches to JLB as they wrap up audio response videos and calls to Casey. And they live in an organized and stable large house, JLB seems to have a successful life aside from this niche community. But they are haunted by the rawness of Casey's unstable updates and care about her wellbeing.

The cinematography switches between video blog updates from Casey and other World Fair users who have various body horror elements and bizarre rambling stories of how the Fair changed them and also following Casey and JLB when they are not actively being recorded for content or calls. The lines between paranoia and real life begin to blur and the focus of the frame doesn't let you get grounded in scenes or dialogue outside the tension. There are long lingering scenes where nothing appears to happen and there is no dialogue, forcing the audience to sit and be uncomfortable wondering if there is any significance to a small detail changing our understanding of what is going on here.

The movie feels too personal and voyeuristic, the audience both knows too much about quiet moments and too little about the subjects to know a grounding context for what is true and what is performance here.

But in the final act, where the two main characters have another Skype call, this modern, awkward relationship is attempted to be navigated, with huge blind spots for the uneven nature of the extremely niche exposure they have to each other's lives. It is too accurate and unflinching, to have to witness this encounterto unveil what has been unsaid for so long. But the audience is a third party here and is at an extremely helpless disadvantage to be an active participant and satisfy a curiosity for what was happening and what the outcome of this whole thing could be.

 

I have spent time on social media, and, through trial and error, learned how to curate a persona which is a faceted extension of my identity, but not everything I am. Because everyone can wear masks in a masquerade and not everyone you meet is your friend. It doesn't do to be careless and risk exposure of your private life which is not for strangers to access. Information assymetry on the level you are willing to be comfortably known by what you reveal to be seen and understood. But this sometimes means I develop a fondness for others I encounter in the space when I am wandering these online environments and I care about their lives. I wish them well in their continued existence, but there is much about them that I know I do not know and should not have an entitlement to access. Some of them become inactive users and I have no way of reestablishing how they are doing. And no one in my offline life can quite comprehend the depth of this loss of an online companion who had amusing thoughts, witty banter, funny jokes, or interesting stories to relate. And I can't explain adequately to my real life friends and family the nature of things, because they were not there in the time and place, they don't have the context of the timing in which you find these people in these communities for a fleeting moment of season. They also can't speedrun an accurate accounting of key moments to understand the dynamic established, because that file can't be compressed like that, something was lost in trying to zip it up neatly for quick file transfer. Unpacking it in full would be likely an effective failure to transmit.

 

This film was uncomfortably accurate in what was shown and not said. It was universal in the silences to be received by those whose antenna were exposed to those frequencies at some point. Echoing resonance to the awkward memories of knowing this could be either very special and/or an extremely foolish interaction, a mutual ritual of a possible trust fall forward with both parties' eyes wide open to witness, in excruciatingly slow motion, if they will let you be shattered by falling through an illusion to an unforgiving ground of a reality check.

Boys Go To Jupiter (2025)

The equation is simple - Demi Adejuyigbe shared that he was part of this animated film in his Instagram story and I determined to watch it.

It was playing in an independent theatre nearby and I caught a showing today. The voice cast is studded and stuffed with comedic talent. The plot is that Billy 5000, a Florida high school student, drops out of school to exploit a currency glitch in a food delivery app. He hopes to make enough money to be able to move out from his nurse sister's garage. He has buddies who hang out and have no greater ambition than to snag cool stuff, freestyle rap original songs, and find out whether there is really an alien worm washed up at the local beach. There is a different plot concerning a local juice tycoon's difficulties with her brilliant, but unmotivated daughter who has vague ideas about capitalism's evils and wants to be called "Rozebud".

This movie is genuinely the most fun I have had at a movie this year. There are musical interludes and excellent bits of dialogue throughout. I was often delighted by how much space was given for time to breathe to sustain a joke or build anticipation in timing the set up for a new one.

Zaphod Beeblebrox Plays It Safe - Douglas Adams

 I was thinking about this again today, about this short story plopped in the middle of the five part trilogy collection. It has been years since I last went through Adam's work, but it is perhaps one of the more core aesthetics which I enjoy. It is like G.K. Chesterton's "Manalive" (which I also plan to reread soon) about taking a long detour of adventures with the end goal of seeing how the sandblasting and erosion of the journey will serve to allow you to see your home again in a new light and fresh delight of being alive. 

The Adams short story is constructed by a slow reveal, badly and frustratingly conveyed in the middle of a hysterical rant. A core idea of a self fulfilling loop of "short sighted spite perhaps leading to an inevitable crisis" of the future is plundering the past, so the present wants to screw them both by collecting all available fuel reserves for a one way trip into a black hole? It being derailed by a pilot who craves hometown seafood? It is absurd. It is a squandering of its premise's potential in pettiness. But it can be read as a joke itself to do so. Maybe whatever was being transported might not have been as great as blowing it all up in a San Diego fireworks show, with the camera focused on the blankets instead of the sky. This story is always better in my memory than the act of reading it.

Juror #2

I had heard good things about this film and watched it last night with a friend. It is a jury movie, except transposed in a way that 12 Angry Men has an additional complication. While in "12 Angry Men," it works as a closed room session which could be staged as a play production set, "Juror #2" needed to have the benefit of being a film.

The movie starts with Justin, a young guy with an expectant wife in her third trimester. The couple had experienced a miscarriage before this pregnancy and are still skittish about whether this time will go to term. Justin is summoned to Jury duty for a case in which a boyfriend and a girlfriend were arguing at a bar on a night with heavy rain. She walked off and was found in a ditch the following morning. The boyfriend is accused of being vindictive. But Justin in hearing the case is suddenly seized by a sinking feeling - he was at the bar that night.

It was the anniversary of the miscarriage and he was not wanting to bring that distress home. But he is also in AA recovery and is at risk of a relapse. On his way home from the bar, he hit something in the rain, but when he got out to check, it was too dark and rainy to see what it was.

And this is a high profile case, with the prosecutor wanting a conviction, as she is currently running for District Attorney and this would be a headline example.

So Justin is stuck by this unwelcome epiphany that he probably was the cause of this case, but is not sweating in the witness box facing a future of incarceration. Drama ensues.

This is a Clint Eastwood film, and so I was wondering how he wanted to resolve this story. He made his bones in western films, where there was justice and frontier justice. And you are following around this expectant father who finds himself responsible for an accident as a result of being in the wrong place at a bad time. Justin transgressed one of my mother's favorite parenting maxims of "Nothing good ever happens from being out late at night."

Does the film want to let our protagonist off the hook for his potential role? What is his responsibility to try to give this boyfriend a consideration of innocence? What about Justin's wife who would find herself effectively a single parent to an infant? What message or time does Clint want to leave with his audience as a guy who seems to want his films to carry hard truths?

 

No good path forward

Guilt carries weight of waiting 

How to save a life 

Holy Trinity (2019)

When I saw this feature pop up for a one night showing at a local independent theatre, the one line description of "A dominatrix gains the ability to communicate with the dead after huffing a mysterious aerosol can" got my attention for 'Why would you start with that premise and what are you wanting to explore with that?'

And the film appears to have spent the majority of its small budget on sets, props, and wardrobes, all of which had extreme contrast in aesthetic colors. But even as the editing style occasionally decided to go for a trippy and disorienting strobe effect, the film feels like it fits its intended purposes for its niche and target audience. It was interesting to see this film in a room of other people who felt seen and understood by the intentional visual cues and jokes through recognition and appreciation. For a stylistic choice, most of the brands throughout the movie are shown in pastel with words describing their contents. Some set pieces look uniquely distressed or modified, like a CRT TV set covered in a mane of white around the screen with shaving cream or flattened cotton balls. Or a store with the corporate tag of "Glamhag" which is also the name of the film's production company.

The cast and crew of this film looked like they were having a blast making it, as they delivered dialogue to one another in familiar tones and affects, like a group of friends deciding to amplify their mutual theatrical amusements with drama and posing. And the film's premise is absurd and plays in a heightened alternate world and setting apart from what feels connected to daily reality. But this filter on reality within the film underscores the tone of feeling like an alien having to process what normal would look like, with hypermundane branding of everyday items, and extravagant costuming. There are musical and dance performances being part of the fabric of what the film wants to display. There are extended set pieces and tangents which show flashback scenes and backstory of what drew the characters in the film to seek solace in deep and old wounds, roleplaying the scenarios to process, console, and control what had affected them.

At times the film feels extremely raw and intimate, like it is too much to display in terms of emotional and personal traumas being aired out like sticky clothing on a humid day. It is imperfect and fantastical in its dreams and yet leans into these areas even when difficult conversations must be had to resolve the characters' conflicting desires, and needing to reach out to others from humility for guidance.

Will I watch this again? Probably not, but it shows a world and perspective with an open hand and heart, one which asks some questions of joy, acceptance, and resistance against convenient conventions. The characters are messy, but delighted to participate in community with each other. It feels like a movie you would make with your talented friends and a ridiculous idea which made you laugh together and try to chase and tease out what it could do and where it could go. Speaking to the dead doesn't really go anywhere, but the experience and environment make a haunted impression of annoyed dynamically static landscape.

 

A canned response heard

An unusual echoed hum

When struck and blown out