Or The Unbearable Lightness of Contextlessness
I’ve been putting off this specific braindump for no other reason than I was sure of the various pseudo-goals I’ve been giving myself this would be among the most enjoyable.
And probably, but not necessarily, it’s better having this post here than the Nothing here signage.
Anyway: books and movies and tv and whatnot. Probably music. No claims here of originality, and all opinions expressed here are entirely mine… and should probably be taken down sooner than later…
But, given that I’m taking a run at some MFA applications in the not-so-distant future this could be a sort of… electronic portfolio…
[Editor’s note: Matt wrote the preceding more than two days prior to hitting “publish” on this post]
[Editor’s note: Matt is the Editor]
Breaking, Badly
When my older son specifically asks if we can watch a show together, I am almost always up for it. And, as we come to the end of season 2… this show has been the catalyst for some pretty cool conversations… wherein we talk about the 2008-13 world the show inhabits… my son was born while this show was on the air… so I don’t know if it counts as “generational transfer” of a certain kind? Gerontological flow-through? I know there are many flaws with this show, but gosh darned if it isn’t some entertaining within the world it creates.
That New Adam Sandler Movie
…is pretty damned good. It’s at the same level as Uncut Gems. I really haven’t watched many of his films… by choice… but these two are beyond awesome…
Weirdly it has me looking forward to NBA Summer League… and like, I’m going to follow the Raptors this coming year… every game and whatnot… whereas NHL hockey… I dunno, man… but uh… totally going to see Canucks against Habs in Van City at first opportunity…
There’s a riot in my house 
Mark Lanegan passed away in Ireland on 02/22/22… and over the past few months… at least for me… he’s gone from being that Screaming Trees guy… to something like America’s version of Nick Cave. And that is with the literary output thrown in. He fucking wrote a book about nearly dying of COVID in 2021… and by the time it was available in hardcover he was only a couple of months from passing away… all to say… I don’t listen to much Nick Cave… but Lanegan sure has a deep and wide body of work, considering how self-declaredly fucked he was for long stretches of time…
The New Jordan Peele Movie
I remember thinking today… I think I remember thinking… he’s our generation’s Orson Welles… which is probably bullshit… but like… I look forward to the guy’s movies… and I have a very limited attention span for movies and whatnot…
Black Phone
I think this looks crazy. Does it actually, though? I think it might? Ethan Hawke… from Dead Freaking Poet’s Society… and those dope Linkletter movies… and from writing a novel… and from appearing in Reality Bites… to being this… weirdo-faced child killer guy?
Like Oh Captain, My Captain… into the jaws of Hell, I guess?
Er… Stranger Things
I’m over it… if I was ever into it… I remember binge-watching the first three seasons with my sons in early 2020 when the world was shutting down… and I have absolutely no interest, somehow, in the latest offering… but… METALLICA in the last season / scene / or whatever? OK… hold the nostalgia… but why no Black Flag… or Hüsker Dü… or [insert favorite band]…
Like… I’m never going to watch Lord of the Rings…
Or Game of Thrones…
Or anything further or similar to Stranger Things.
More Black Mirror, on the other hand, would be most welcomed… #manhasopinions
Blogging about Blogging
I don’t know if these things are essays. I don’t know if they’re much more than a sort of weekly snapshot… to feel like I’m still in the game… er… maintaining some semblance of productivity… but the facts are… somehow, almost impossibly, the end of the Divorce Tunnel is in sight… we’re 1.5 drafts into the Separation Agreement… Mediation— through Family Justice BC— is THE SHIT… and we should have done it a year ago… and 100% credit to the boys’ Mom for initiating it in the first place… and… I should / can / likely will / might / could / possibly / probably… the underwhelming gauntlet of possibilisms [sic]… begin an MFA… to work off the side of my desk… to be in a spot to say… I tried every danged thing I could think of… to buck getting a real job… and I wish I were in a spot now wherein I could actually talk about some of these so-called “career opportunities”… cause if they could work out… and it only takes ONE to say yes… for these that are still under active consideration… even having to move… IT WOULD BE SO DOPE. So there.
Les Simpsons
The younger kid has gotten his own phone and phone number before age 10.5 proving my lifelong belief that younger children are spoiled beyond belief. Including… no, especially… mine. But… at this point… he’s watched more hours of the Simpsons than I have… he must be past season nine or ten at this point…*
*Correction: fucking season THIRTEEN… hoorah for significantly under-supervised media time…
Anyway, not to beat the Generational Transfer Pony (GTP) to a lashed, gristly, viscera-oozing husk…
Three Awesome Freaking Weeks (3AFW)
It all came together really well… by virtue of what’s MOST CONVENIENT… I’ve got the boys for three weeks (two remaining)… and Their Mom has them for three… and, truly, I have no sweet clue what I’m going to do solo for 21 consecutive days… with no earthly adult responsibility… but the way things are going we’re closer than ever to seeing the same way on The Grand Divorce of 2022… and that will be a miracle of its own accord when those conditions finally come to pass… but in the meantime, 3 dudes and a dog… in a 70’s townhouse complex in Lower Sahali… and there’s space enough for all of us… and I’m just grateful is all… no work… all summer… probably… and all this time here with the boys and the dog… who you may recall was granted effective personhood within the terms of our Separation Agreement…
The younger kid is taking summer school AND swimming lessons AND summer tackle football… in preparation for the fall season… and the older kid is hitting the basketball court two or three times a day… and of course we’re all spending too much time in front of screens but… digital literacy summer with dad? Or something?
[Hangs head in his hands][Lip quivers emotionally]
*As a major footnote… I don’t know how this rates on the Grand Parenting Scale (GPS)… but… I moved the only TV in the apartment into the boys’ bedroom… and I quadrupled their storage capacity… via those 3 x 2 storage block thingys they sell on Amazon… and in so doing… have myself even more license to the full downstairs… for writing… or nothing much… and it’s FUCKING AWESOME so far… uh… I mean… yeah… FUCKING AWESOME…
A Tale of One City
It’s amazing to think of doubling down on Kamloops. How odd. How peculiar. But I can’t deny… my kids are here… and I’ve been welcomed to the territory by those who can speak in a real, good way… on behalf of the land…
I know I’m going to probably end up going somewhere else for work. And… in order to go, it would have to be a thing worth going to… so… maybe intentionally crash some interviews?
I’ve still got enough interest in this weird, multi-faceted, underwhelming construct of “career” to potentially want to see where it could go…
But my first real instinct is, honestly, just spend the next couple of years as I have been… except using the time to “retrain” as some kind of… paid non-fiction and/or teacher person. With apologies to both professions… sincerely.
I asked my older son how he’d feel if I kept renting in this complex… but also buying a unit here… and turning it into an Air BnB for $300 per night… within the rules of the Strata of course…
I’ll leave it to you to google your own GIF of benign but complete rejection.
He’s right! My kids are right about most things that pertain to them… They seem to be so confident, self-reliant, and at ease with themselves compared to how I remember the same years… the churning uncertainty… but maybe that’s exactly how they’re experiencing it.. and I won’t hear about it until later… if at all…
A David Simon Appreciation Non-Thread
I was thinking that this… should be the basis of its own blog post… but… laziness prevails…
It’s hard for me to be objective about the Wire. It’s factual knowledge… relative to the essentiality of the Periodic Table of Elements… or something equally INARGUABLY INFALLIBLE… tried and failed to think of a slapping music analogy… that this is the best, most Dickensian of all 21st Century Prestige Dramas (21CPD’s).
It’s challenging for me to avoid subjectivity about Treme. I guess this is the best realism I can think of… never have I wished an imaginary rendering of a city were true… only to the extent that you would swear Wendell Peirce was, for real, a few phone calls from your main alternate trombone player… and I think I remember that there’s a season where Ben Nichols from Lucero plays a brief romantic interest to one of the main players on the show…
And now We Own This City…
*And, selectively excluding The Corner, The Deuce, The Plot Against America, Show Me a Hero… and likely several more…
Look… I guess I probably read this somewhere… but this is the spiritual sequel to The Wire. And it’s always a treat to see actors showing up from across series. Marlo Stanfield… one of the most fearsome killers ever portrayed on TV… appearing as a potentially compromised detective… based on a narrative from nonfiction source material… through Jamie Hector’s visceral take on both…
I read the book… the day it came out… because I’ve been watching The Wire… I’ve lost track of how many times… and it was actually something that put the show to shame…
The casting is nearly as inspired as the scripts. That is my spicy take on this.
Jon Bernthal is a thespian’s thespian in this show… which I realized somewhat belatedly… the erratic, and/or unfortunate choices in facial hair… is to help ground the audience in a particular era within this fascist asshole’s career… the ‘stach as narrative prop, if you will…
Anyway, it’s pretty clear why I ought to like… talk a lot less until I get through writing school… if that even transpires… see, a real writer guy would NOT use “that even transpires” even at the risk of having family members clubbed…
And Generation Kill was also some fine, grindingly real TV… which I watched back in The Qatar Days… and so the fine, choking plumes of sand kicked up the Humvee’s wheels in the show… felt local, specific, and uneasy.
Anyways, I am in damned awe of David Simon. He makes the Only Television That Matters. [Cue the Clash]
