I keep a tally of how I spend my working hours. I put it all in a spreadsheet to make sure I’ve got enough “butt in chair” time when it comes to school, coding, career stuff. It also helps me admit when I’m burned out, because the numbers don’t lie. Recently: 📉. So I took a few days off this week, just focusing on rest and recuperation. And movies. Felt great. Coming out of this weekend with a just-enough-vacation sort of freshness.
A couple other highlights this week:
- Having hot dogs and potato chips for dinner, along with a summer blockbuster on TV.
- I finished v1 of www.runwear.app, aka Project Runwear, a little experiment to help me figure out my running outfit given the local weather, dialed in based on my own experience. It’s not essential right now – these days the main question is: tshirt or tanktop? – but it will be useful in the fall and winter, soon enough.
Art
Look at this cool pair of teacups by Sargent Claude Johnson.
Books
Titanium Noir. A blend of hard-boiled detective in a scifi web of intrigue. I thought I was going to drop it, but glad I decided to push through. There’s some sort of “wise guy” crack on just about every page, often our can’t-help-himself hero just digging the hole a little deeper.
Articles & Episodes & Twoots
Free Things NYC 2024.
The case again travel. “You have to let go of wanting to do anything existentially and focus on shortest term pleasure. Optimization of time and energy is the complete antithesis of loafing.” and “Moving is the most passive thing that feels active.” (via)
Running
Hill workouts are going well. And I’ve started taking small tangents from our run clubs usual routes – breaking off for little spells of novelty before rejoining. Gotta do the things that keep me interested.
Music
Godzilla Minus One OST. Enjoyed what I heard during the movie, but I really knew I’d like this when I saw the track list.
Holly Herndon, PROTO. Herndon was a recent guest on Ezra Klein Show, and is thoughtful on her use of AI systems in her music. I like the overlapping voices and orchestra hits in “Eternal“
Movies
The Rock. Nicolas Cage is such a gem. I should really spend more time with his filmography.
Perfect Days. Such mixed feelings! It’s lovely but I felt a little remote from it. Some of this may be situational. The theater played a pre-roll promo with the director and lead – “This beautiful movie is about X. It’s also about Y. So-and-so is a true talent.” – and I found it really, really off-putting.
She’s Gotta Have It. Spike Lee was just shot out of a cannon, huh? Really cool seeing Fort Greene Park, just down the road. And man, he loves a musical interlude. Didn’t know he was doing those from the jump. Why not?
Men. What you might call a “rich text”. E.g. we’re picking apples in gardens within the first few minutes, and plenty more comparably subtle imagery to come. Really appreciate the eeriness simmering underneath from the very beginning. The sinister, fantastical turns toward the end are a bit too drawn out, but effective in their own way.
Orion and the Dark. Glad to see animated movies mixing in different visual styles in the middle of the movie. Interesting that they didn’t have that contrast for the framing device. Don’t always love a narrator, but it fits the structure.
Passing. Really heartbreaking, uncomfortable. I like how how the upper-class milieu just heightens everything, draws in your focus. Ditto for dense, allusive conversations, and our limited view through Clare’s perspective. We get only a limited sense of the tradeoffs, though some acutely felt. The book was one of my favorites read in 2022.
Immortals. This got on my radar from cool-looking stills. I think I was expecting something a more clean, campy, cartoony, adventurous. It was much more in the 300 vein, with plenty “look at this badass being a badass” slow-mo-ments, plenty of bloody splatter to go around. Still elevated by the thoughtful sets and costuming. (The Fall is the only other Tarsem film I’ve seen, with a narrator dials up the kooky visuals even more.)
TV
The X-Files, s2e17, “End Game“. Alien Bounty Hunter escapes again. I still love Skinner so much. The most unpredictable character in the show.
The X-Files, s2e18, “Fearful Symmetry“. Zoos are bad! Love the recurring PNW environmentalist hippie types we’ve seen in this show.
The Expanse, s2e5–8. I liked the first season, and the corresponding first book in the series. I abandoned the show a while back, though. I started to tune out when the Mars characters and bureucrats were getting more focus. I think I’m still trying to figure out exactly where TV fits in my life.
Bodkin, s1e6. Curious how they’re gonna wrap this up…
Mark Larson 