#36: BLEAKNESS ABOUNDS

Death By Consumption

1/7/25 - 1/13/25

The past few days, as I watched Los Angeles burn from afar, destroying homes and lives and places I've loved, while texting friends for updates on when they were deciding to flee, it finally set in: oh fuck, we're really about to do Trump 2 and the climate crisis at the same time, huh? Here's a list of fundraisers for Black families displaced by the fires, if you're able to help. I'm sure you've seen a million other links for where to donate, but there's another one for you, if you can. I wonder how many GoFundMes are going to be created over the next 4 years.

This week, on a barely lighter note, I saw the spectacular new Almodóvar film and experienced dread, both about the future of the world but also about how bad Alamo Drafthouse is. I also watched both Smile films for some reason, I let my brain absolutely rot in front of two incredibly stupid shows featuring reality TV royalty, I loved yet another book about 7th century England, and I just generally continued to spiral about our collapsing society. When I compile it all like that, sometimes I wonder how my nervous system is still chugging along.

The Room Next Door (2024) — at Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn

I went into The Room Next Door not knowing anything about the plot, and I think that added to the enjoyment. It's not like there are twists or anything, but the premise is so simple and funny and devastating that you should try to enjoy it with as little info as possible going in. All I knew going in, and all you really need to know, is that it's the new film by Pedro Almodóvar and it stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.

With Almodóvar directing Julianne and Tilda, I was always going to love this film, but I didn't expect to love it so much, nor for it to stick with me as long as it has. It's about grief and anxiety, death and our bleak future — watching it as LA burned was a strange experience; you could practically hear the audience holding their breath during a specific scene — but it's also hilariously camp and gorgeous. There's really no other movie like it, except maybe other Almodóvar films.

But now, please allow a brief tangent on Alamo Drafthouse: I haven't been to one in years, and in that time it seems they've substantially reworked their food and drink ordering system (or at least, they did at the Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown Brooklyn). Previously, if you wanted a beverage or some food during the movie — and who doesn't want to eat a drippy cheeseburger in the pitch black? — you'd write your order on a little piece of paper and put it in the slot on the edge of your table, where it would stand up like a little flag, until the server snatched it away. A few minutes later, your order would arrive silently in front of you. I know some people hate theaters like this, and their complaints are valid: servers walking in front of you throughout the movie are distracting, and sometimes someone orders a food item that is outrageously pungent. Still, though, I've found most of that easy enough to tune out.

But what I found last week at the Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn was chaos. First, they've added an entirely useless step to the ordering process: now, after you write your order and stand it up like a little flag on your table, you have to press a button? Which turns on a little red light? Which means, when the server comes to get the order, they now have to press the button again to turn off the light? It's an unnecessary step that seems designed to make the server linger longer in front of you, blocking your view of the movie. Even worse — and to be fair, I couldn't tell if everyone was doing this or just our particular guy – instead of taking the slip of paper back to the kitchen and putting in the order there, our server would whip out his little tablet and enter the order right there, right in front of us, blocking our view of the screen. Even more insane, he'd ask what you want, as if he wasn't holding the very slip of paper that told him what you wanted!

So, picture this: Julianne Moore is sobbing on screen, expressing deep emotions at an Oscar-worthy level. But I'm only able to see the left half of her face, as the guy is standing in front of me, quizzing Justin on whether he wants a Coke refill (which is what is written on the piece of paper currently held in the man's hand, a slip of paper he is completely ignoring), insanely asking if he wants a strawberry milkshake, which is something Justin had not written down anywhere. Imagine watching, like, Still Alice, and you've got a guy stage-whispering, "STRAWBERRY MILKSHAKE????" right next to you. I had the brief thought that there was actually something surreally Almodóvaran about the interaction, like this was an art-house cinema version of a 4D movie.

Look, I know this could come across as all sorts of rich (especially these days), complaining about a server not disappearing into the darkness adequately enough for me. Like, ew, I had to look at and hear the person waiting on me?! But, I'm sorry, that is the name of the game at Alamo Drafthouse, the entire promise of their stupid little system. They don't have a concession stand, so if you want a stupid little treat, it has to be brought to your stupid little table. I am aware that I sound like an ancient boy emperor throwing a temper tantrum, but I just think in this instance my little treats should be brought to me as unobtrusively as possible! I'll see myself to the guillotines now, thank you.

"The Traitors" season 3, episodes 1-3 — on Peacock

Let's get the obvious out of the way: The Traitors is a really poorly designed game. The rules barely make sense, the Traitors have a massive advantage over the Faithfuls, and the only actually intelligent strategy we've seen (devised in season 2 by Queen of Survivor Sandra, of course) actually kind of broke the game. And that's before we've even gotten to the entirely pointless challenges. There is no logic to this show!

But absolutely none of that matters to me, as the game is simply a pretext to get all these insane personalities inside a castle, so we can watch them interact and point fingers at each other based on flimsy pretexts. And this cast is so stacked with charismatic weirdos plucked from far-flung corners of reality TV (and, oddly, the royal family?), I'm honestly happy even watching them just eat breakfast. Though season 3 hasn't yet reached the supreme highs of season 2, it's still delivering that surreal crossover magic I've come to expect from The Traitors. Is this what straight dudes feel like watching The Avengers 17 when, like, Iron Man high-fives Bulbasaur or whoever? Now I get it!

For someone like me, whose brain has been almost entirely scooped out after 25 years of reality TV addiction, it's a slightly out-of-body experience watching my beloved, kooky Dorinda from RHONY try to make sense of Survivor's most chaotic winner Tony. Why does Bob Harper — someone I've never heard of until now but who seems to be a very aggressive gay man from The Biggest Loser, of all shows, who in every scene is wearing head-to-to Thom Browne — now have beef with Carolyn from Survivor? These are conflicts I never knew I needed in my life, but now I can't live without them. (One crossover, though, was extremely predictable: of course Selling Sunset's Chrishell hates Tom Sandoval from the jump.)

A good way to test if this show is for you is to gauge your response to the following sentence: Bob the Drag Queen has drama with Zac Efron's brother. If that made you shudder with horror at how far our nation's culture has fallen, The Traitors isn't for you! Please continue to enjoy your local library. But if the thought of a hilarious drag queen insulting the not-famous brother of a B-list celebrity gave you a confused little thrill, you'll probably be endlessly entertained by this stupid show.

"Deal or No Deal Island" season 2, episode 1 — on Peacock

Okay, this one I'm not proud of. I had no interest in watching the first season of this show (even I have reality TV standards, okay?), but the casting of Survivor legend Parvati Shallow, one of my all-time icons, alongside Australian Survivor legend David Genat, hooked me. I fold so easily! And, I hate to say, the premiere did entertain me. The game is beyond confusing — I'm usually pretty good at figuring out strategy, but this one feels like a math test administered by a drunk teacher — so I watched most of it completely bewildered. I genuinely had no idea what was happening at any moment, so I just let most of it wash over me, like a baby watching Cocomelon.

But what got me was the cast. First of all, for those who haven't had the great fortune of experiencing her charms on television before: Parvati happens to be one of the most effortlessly charismatic people on the planet, and it's a thrill watching her work her spell on new people, especially people who know how charming she is, are well aware she's manipulating them, and yet they can't help but fall into her traps time and time again. It's crazy Survivor just randomly discovered this woman 20 years ago! And now I know for certain she can get me to watch any show, no matter how trashy, as long as she's a part of it.

Beyond Parvati, the cast is full of the kind of one-dimensional crackpots we haven't seen much of since the early-2000s reality TV heyday. We've got a loudmouth from New York, a wide-eyed manic pixie egomaniac, a naive young man ready and willing to be manipulated, all the classic characters! The show feels almost contemptuous towards its contestants, which is refreshing in a gross way. Reality TV has gotten too gentle these days, and from time to time it's nice to see a show that's willing to completely humiliate the people who go on it. And, honestly, the audience is humiliated as well. Why am I watching this?

Smile (2022) — on Paramount+

Smile is a perfectly decent horror film, though it relies way too much on jump scares. Those aren't fun when you do them 400 times in one film, and I thought we all understood that by now! But the premise of the film is smart, if not the most original (trauma is bad? you don't say!), and there are a few really good, creepy sequences, which is all you really need with a horror movie, so I had a decent time with this, all things considered. It's fine, okay? It's fine!

Smile 2 (2024) — on Paramount+

Smile 2, on the other hand, is queer cinema. Naomi Scott — who I just now learned is a former Disney star, which makes it all make sense — is great as a Diet Lady Gaga, a pop star being tormented by the Smile demon or entity or whatever it is. She doesn't exactly feel like a pop star when she's off-stage (I don't think real pop divas apologize that much for being a little late to a dance rehearsal, for one), but on stage she sells it, or at least sells it better than M. Night Shyamalan's daughter in Trap, the other 2024 horror movie about a pop star. If I were in the Smile universe I would probably listen to Skye Riley's music, which is somewhat embarrassing, but I can't run from who I am.

Menewood, by Nicola Griffith (2023) — paperback

Like Hild before it, Menewood is an immersive, engrossing, beautiful book. I don't know what it was like for people who had read Hild 10 years before Menewood came out (will I be in my 50s when the next book is published? Oh god), but picking this up immediately after reading the first book meant I had no learning curve to getting back into the world, the characters, or the language, which meant it was enjoyable from the very start. It's 700 pages long, and just as dense with names and places, but at this point I was a master at it, able to differentiate Osric from Oeric from Oswald as if I had grown up with them myself.

These two books were kind of all-consuming for me the past couple weeks. It's not just the lifelike characters or the story — the way Nicola Griffith made the 7th century come alive is a true accomplishment. You know how, sometimes after walking out of a movie, your ears somehow pick up sounds better for a while, like you're still listening to the sound design of a movie as you walk down the street? I swear that happened to me a few times after closing this book — I'd realize my ears were suddenly more attuned to the birds outside, or the wind moving through the trees, after spending so many pages immersed in the natural word of 7th century Britain. What I'm saying is: Nicola Griffith is a witch, and these books are dangerous.

"Casual Viewing" by Will Tavlin — in n+1

I read this article before the fires started, so I don't want to appear like I'm kicking a city while it's down, but it is a very good explanation as to why and how Netflix has started to destroy Hollywood. It's a very bleak read, but I found it completely accurate. If you've ever wondered, as the article puts it, "why Netflix looks like that," this is the article for you:

“Such slipshod filmmaking works for the streaming model, since audiences at home are often barely paying attention. Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” (“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James, in Irish Wish. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.” “Fine,” he responds. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”)”

I thought of this article as I was scrolling through Netflix this weekend, considering finally watching Emilia Pérez (couldn't pull the trigger, but I'll keep trying), and it was nearly impossible to even find the movie, without directly searching for it. This movie just cleaned up at the Golden Globes, it's the biggest success Netflix has had for a while, and it's already been swallowed up by their content machine, just another piece of coal shoveled into the furnace. Seems bad!

"There Is No Safe Word" by Lila Shapiro — in NYMag

I realize this is a bleaker than usual email, sorry about that! But this week's NYMag cover story hit close to home, as Neil Gaiman was one of my absolute favorite writers growing up. The story, if you choose to read it, is full of unflinching descriptions of Neil's sexual assaults — including assaults in front of his own child — and the way he was enabled by his success and also his wife Amanda Palmer (it's beside the point, but I've been asking this for like 15 years: what the hell is Amanda Palmer's whole deal?). It's damning, and I hope Netflix and Amazon end their deals with him over it (not holding my breath on that one lolllll fuck).

I don't know anyone who even has energy for the "what do you do with the art of bad men?" conversation anymore, and thankfully this one isn't that difficult to grapple with because it's not like I'm going to pick up a copy of, like, Thankfully, The Milk or whatever shit he's been writing lately, and the Netflix adaptation of Sandman sucked, so, phew! The art got bad, so I don't have to engage with it anymore, because I wasn't engaging with it already. I'm off the hook!

But, as with JK Rowling's ongoing and weirdly public mental breakdown, it's hard to not get depressed that someone whose work meant a lot to you when you were a certain age turned out to be an unrepentant monster who hides behind the morals of their characters in order to hurt vulnerable people. Sorry for stating the obvious, but: that's a huge bummer! What the fuck! These childhood writers are still teaching us lessons as we grow up, I guess, but they're really not fun lessons to learn. I fear for Gen Alpha when they grow up to learn about all the horrible things Blippi is probably doing right now.