Vignettes #2

Originally sent via Tinyletter on August 3rd, 2023

I moved two weeks ago and I have a dozen bruises to show for it. I’m careless with my body. I did Irish dance for some years as a kid and I retain no grace from those years, nor any sort of good posture – only the stiffness. As I huffed and puffed up and down staircases with suitcases most people would find light if not at least manageable, I learned physically what I already knew. I need to start going to the gym. A friend of mine said he’d make it his mission to get me to do a pull-up. It’s a very ambitious mission.

It would be easier if I didn’t find exercise so very boring.

I haven’t seen Barbie yet and even though I was generally looking forward to it before, the wild Barbie fever painting everybody pink has made the curmudgeon in me take over. I see articles saying its box office success shows the people’s hunger for “new” work, as in, films that aren’t sequels or reboots of pre-determined franchises (see the box office failure of the new Indiana Jones movie, just to compare). But that interpretation ignores the blatant fact that Barbie is nothing new or original, however entertaining it might be. It’s a 2-hour long commercial whose entertainment exists to sell more of a culturally ubiquitous toy which has already sold billions of units in its 60-year lifetime. It’s a franchise that spans multiple industries and depends on rampant nostalgia from its audience. It’s only “new” to a live actress embodying the doll. I’ve enjoyed other such commercials (The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie, for two). But let’s not pretend they’re anything else. I know there's always a tension (especially in Hollywood) between what counts as commercial and what counts as art, and that it's possible for these two aspects to coexist in one work. Sometimes, however, it feels like people want to justify enjoying something commercial by asserting that it is also art, which isn't necessary and isn't always true.

You might be wondering at this point if I'm capable of ever having any fun, if I'm always like this. You need to know I'm not capable of having any fun, and I am always like this. I'm also sometimes the very type of person I'm referring to! See the next bit about Zelda for my hypocrisy.

I’ll see the movie eventually and pass judgment in a more informed way later, if only for Ryan Gosling’s sake. For Greta Gerwig’s too! I'll probably be entertained.

On the other hand, I did see Oppenheimer in theaters (in IMAX, Christopher, okay? In real IMAX. Happy?). I knew Nolan’s intent behind flipping between scenes in color and scenes in black and white before walking in, but I don’t think viewing without knowing would’ve revealed that intent. Regardless, it was gorgeous, and I was invested for the entire three hours.

I’m playing more Tears of the Kingdom, to the exclusion of most other games, and I keep thinking about how lonely the first game was in comparison. In most Zelda games, the player character Link has a companion of some kind. They act as a guide, a friend, an impetus to move the story forward, and occasionally an annoyance (nobody liked it when Fi in Skyward Sword would remind you, over and over, that your Wii remote battery was dying). However, much like in the very first Zelda game, there was no companion in Breath of the Wild. The land you explored was vaster than any before, and you were utterly alone as you traversed it. Travelers and towns were few and far between, and when you found them, they were hardly busy. In the sequel, there isn’t a traditional companion, but Link is part of a team more often than not. You gather your friends to aid you in your travels, and they fight beside you, cluttering the battlefield. You run into bands of roving Hylian soldiers who help you defeat monsters. You find archaeologists appointed by the princess who are just as excited to learn the secrets of the land as you are, even if they’re not as good at it. It almost makes me miss the solitude of the previous game. And yet it’s overall a welcome change – after all that time spent saving the land in the first game, you feel even under the current game’s conflict, it’s really waking up.

A week and a half after I moved in, I finished returning my books to their bookshelf. So now, this is home.

Miscellany:

• I spilled a bunch of water on my copy of Infinite Jest the other day. Really, it was a miracle it had made it unscathed until then. Let’s see if it survives the couple hundred pages I have left.
• You ever heard the Turnabout Jazz Soul version of Godot’s theme from Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations? It’s the only jazz that matters.
• Of course I’ve also been thinking about this tweet nonstop for the past couple of weeks because it’s me and it’s true: