#Weeknotes S02 E15

Ultra-short this week, because hey, Easter!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

I feel like I’m slowly adjusting to the new normal. No, strike that — I feel like I’m further along in the grieving process over the old normal. I’ve got something of a routine where working the dayjob from home is concerned. Aside from that, I don’t know if me and mine have a “new normal” yet, because things are still shifting. Well, we’ll see what happens this week.

Also, Thundercat’s new album IT IS WHAT IT IS is pretty great. I recommend!

IN THE WILD
I know, Mazikeen. I know…

Catch you on the flip.

Quickie Review of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (2019) S01 E05: “The Wunderkind”

Art imitates life imitating a reality TV show imitating life… uh… “Twilight Zone.”

I hoped for a follow-through on the OMEN-esque vibe I got seeing the trailer. Some kind of new update of “It’s a Good Life.” Of course, the last episode that brought this to my mind didn’t seem so good to me. “The Wunderkind” had a promising premise, a compelling character, and the clever throwback touches I’ve come to expect from the new series. Trouble is, it couldn’t get off the note of “Look, look, it’s about how we’ve normalized the weird shit going on in Washington DC, get it?” The other impressions I came away with…

  • Five episodes and I have to be imagining the continual references to “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” That jukebox could be referencing a bunch of episodes. Right…?
  • You’re blatantly mixing your o.g. TZ references with John Cho strapped to hospital bed, there — part “To Serve Man,” part “Eye of the Beholder.”
  • But only in the modern TZ could you have the Asian character say, “I want Justin Timberlake to play me in the HBO movie!”
  • The polls being “high tech baloney.” A child who “tells it like it is.” Hm, seems familiar…
  • Only in the modern TZ can Asian guys be selfish a-holes proposing ridiculous candidates/ideas, blinded by the privilege that lets him think, “Everybody wins, nobody gets hurt.” Yeah, right.
  • Nope, the episode took my suspension of disbelief a step too far. Why would parents let Raff near them again. I could believe they could go for it once, but twice? Obviously, because the plot needs it.
  • Look, little Bobby Flay jumping up on the cutting board.
  • Ah, here it is — “That was a good thing you did, Oliver. A good thing.”

I’m reminded of the interview James Gunn (the sci-fi writer, not the director) did with Rod Serling where Serling mused about the consistency of the original TZ: “It wasn’t a good show every week. It wasn’t a good show, sometimes, three weeks running.” “A” for effort here, but…

The Jack Elam Score for “Wunderkind” (out of 5):

1: “And this lemon-sucker here…”
2: “Ain’t nobody been exonerated yet, that’s for sure!”
3: “Sharp boys, real sharp boys!”
4: “A regular Ray Bradbury!”
5: “CHECK ‘EM FOR WINGS!!!”

I *won’t* see you on #GoodFriday…

That gosh darn gummint overreach impinging on religious freedoms, I tell you…

Crucifixion site on lockdown to block penitents

Ruben Enaje, 59, a house and billboard painter, regularly took on the role of Jesus Christ in “Via Crucis” (Way of the Cross), the play staged on the streets of Cutud.

But local officials have asked Enaje and other penitents to drop the crucifixion rites after President Duterte ordered a stop to the gathering of people in big numbers to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Enaje said he would just carry a 37-kilogram wooden cross from his house to the hill on Good Friday.

This would’ve been Ruben’s 34th time doing this. So hey, if he can adjust to social distancing, YOU can adjust to social distancing.

Happy Good Friday anyway…

#Weeknotes S02 E14

This week flew by. I know I’m not the only one working from home for 8 hours and yet somehow losing track of time. It feels like most of the week is a blur of work and… not work…? I think back over the week and see only flashes. In those flashes, I seem to remember spending too much time on Twitter. I remember moving my entire Windows-based work-from-home dayjob setup to Ubuntu, basically because I could….

Other than that — aside from a little stir craziness, and the cancellation of chiropractic and dentist appointments until further notice, I’m still employed, working at 100% capacity (per a recent dayjob evaluation of everyone’s remote work capability relative to productivity), with my peeps and my cats.

Thankfully, I don’t (to my knowledge, as of the moment I send this) know anyone personally infected with COVID-19, let alone died from it. I certainly didn’t know any of these fellows who have, even though their music has been woven through my adult life. Rest in power, Wallace Roney, Ellis Marsalis, and Bill Withers!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

WRITING PROGRESS
Longest Writing Chain This Week: 1 day for 1 days. No, no excuses but these days, thankfully, I’m not really required to have one.

FEEDING MY HEAD
When I had the brainspace, I gobbled up bits of the books I got a couple of weeks ago. I’ve also set Lydia Davis’s ESSAYS ONE down in the queue, but really to review and process all the writing process stuff she has in there. Just like her fiction, there are a lot of layers to her writing tips, and I feel like I need to read and ponder them another two or ten times.

ROTTING MY BRAIN
And this week, I do mean “rotting.” Feels a little ironic that most of it has been on the History Channel. I finally managed to catch a new episode of THE CURSE OF OAK ISLAND for me to livetweet my snark. The same with a new show called THE SECRET OF SKINWALKER RANCH. On the other hand, FORGED IN FIRE doesn’t let me down.

But, don’t get me started on EATING HISTORY. I made the mistake of keeping the TV on after one of the shows I was watching and caught this… this… this display of mediocre bros getting the kind of shot on TV that talented people of color work their asses off to get but hardly ever achieve.

IN THE WILD

The dayjob office-in-exile.

Stay home. Wash your hands. Flatten the curve.

#Weeknotes S02 E13

Doing things in a different order this week. Because I can, that’s why.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
For as much bullshit as comes out of my home state of Ohio these days, I still get occasionally wistful. I was sent an article from SCENE MAGAZINE (oh, I still remember how cool I thought I was in high school carting one of these around every week), “An Oral History of WMMS, Cleveland’s Legendary Radio Station”

Legendary DJ Kid Leo — as famous to me and most Clevelanders as Wolfman Jack ever was — brings to mind the city I grew up in. (If it helps you get into my head, listen to “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders as you read this section.)

In those days, Cleveland was a joke to most in the national media and therefore to a lot of America. Our sports teams were inept, our mayors were fodder for late night talk show hosts’ monologues and hell, our river even caught on fire.

I only understood a fraction of the shit going on in Cleveland radio at the time, except for the big things like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the ROLLING STONES ballot box stuffing thing, WENZ “The End.” But names like Malrite, Ruby Cheeks, Jeff and Flash; the competition like WCNX, John Lanigan, the Stern show when it came to town — these are motes and flashes of deep, deep memories of good times I remember. (Yeah, I know it’s a Chicago song, shut up.)

Why am I waxing so nostalgic this week? Because this time period was on my mind anyway after reading this article, and others like it, on how Generation X came up with the skills to cope in this time of coronavirus.

Which, as I tweeted, wasn’t necessarily the most ideal situation. I’m not whining, though. Sure, an outsider’s picture of growing up in the ’80s on the “Mistake on the Lake” is probably close to how you envision it. But much like quarantine, isolation, remote work, fear, and uncertainty in 2020, it is what it is.

WRITING PROGRESS
Longest Writing Chain This Week: 1 days for 2 days overall. What do you want, there’s a fucking global pandemic on.

FEEDING MY HEAD
I don’t need any more books, but I got them anyway. It’s been a long time since a writer’s stuff made me happy that they jumped their place in my reading queue like Osama Almoar’s.

ROTTING MY BRAIN
I still think “Replay” is the best episode of Jordan Peele’s TWILIGHT ZONE so far, but I’ll be damned if “A Traveler” doesn’t come a close second.

IN THE WILD
I feel you, Asher. We’re all a little stir crazy. That… that’s my arm, though.

Quickie Review of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (2019) S01 E04: “A Traveler”

An assimilated people still have a line in the sand against a colonial oppressor. It’s just pushed far back. For some though, that line is set all the way… into The Twilight Zone.

I’m sure I didn’t get them all, but just in this single episode there were actual or thematic references to every original TZ episode where…

  • …someone is in a jail cell
  • …it’s all police can do to just keep a grip on WTF is going on
  • …people get paranoid and shit gets crazy
  • ::that Giorgio Tsoukalos meme::

And this reminds me of another strength of the original series. I think part (a small part, to be sure) of the reason people say stupid things like, “Why can’t modern SF/F be apolitical like THE TWILIGHT ZONE?” is because a lot of the stories were crafted to sink its speculative hooks in you so deeply that it practically enabled a shallow viewer to miss the deeply political stuff. Now, I don’t recommend that kind of viewing for “A Traveler,” because you’d miss out on its commentary on colonialism. But hey, you do you!

Other thoughts I had as I watched…

  • This is the Christmas episode, but I get the feeling it’s not going to be “Night of the Meek.” Will we ever get an episode like that in this 2019 iteration?
  • Sure keep showing the Gremlin, Talky Tina, the Mystic Seer — I like merch! But I don’t know… I don’t think the alien with the bling and a Sherpa hat is going to be a thing.
  • Jesus, Steven Yuen dressed like Ross — fucking awesome
  • “Quallinat Christmas sucks”… but as long as you get turkey and pie…? Hey, I’m Fil-Am, I’m not judging!
  • Again, a good depiction of the low key everyday racism that I experienced. (Heh, “experienced.” Past tense… it’s a joke, get it?)
  • Dummy Christmas wrapping
  • A. Traveler.” HAHA I like it.
  • Aggro travelers are a thing…??
  • Love the rotary phone with buttons
  • Oh, now we have some “Monsters are Due” shit going on here?
  • Mayor “Matheson” — okay, I think by episode 4, new viewers know how Richard Matheson is by now!
  • I was fully expecting Greg Kinnear to the be a racist dumb-ass. No, just a bigger egotist than racist.
  • “What the actual what?” is a nice callback to “Wet… what’s, ‘wet’?”
  • “My people are going to intercept them.” What… from Venus?

The Jack Elam Score for “A Traveler” (out of 5):

1: “And this lemon-sucker here…”
2: “Ain’t nobody been exonerated yet, that’s for sure!”
3: “Sharp boys, real sharp boys!”
4: “A regular Ray Bradbury!”
5: “CHECK ‘EM FOR WINGS!!!”

TBR in the Time of Coronavirus

There’s a piece in Alomar’s collection THE TEETH OF THE COMB & OTHER STORIES called “Psychological Barrier” that pretty much encapsules a good 60% of what I talk about in therapy.

Anyway, I recommend the collection!

The other thing I picked up, based on that episode of The Ezra Klein Show I mentioned last week, Jane McAlevey’s NO SHORTCUTS: ORGANIZING FOR POWER IN THE NEW GILDED AGE.

Because dayjob aside, there’s time now… right…?

via GIPHY

#Weeknotes S02 E12 (The Quarantine Episode)

Well, I don’t really have an excuse for this episode being a short one, do I? Between a root canal on Monday and setting up my mobile dayjob office-in-exile while making some desperate updates to my tech, it’s been busy.

I made my PodCastle narration debut reading Vida Cruz‘s “Odd and Ugly.” It was an joy and a privilege to read this! And yes, this was the “writing-adjacent” project I’ve been talking about the past couple of weeks.

I’d known something was up with my ThinkPad X1C Gen 6 battery since almost the day I got it, but I didn’t really register an issue until after my warranty ran out, ‘natch. But over the past 2-3 weeks, I suddenly noticed I was only getting two hours’ use out of it. Of course, I didn’t bother doing anything about it until I needed to use it to work from home and didn’t have the convenience of unplugging. Luckily, I decided fuck it, and got a replacement battery ordered before Amzn shut down non-essential stuff. So all’s well that ends well, although it looks like I probably shouldn’t have put it off for so long.

WRITING PROGRESS
Longest Writing Chain This Week: 1 day, but for 3 writing days total. I know, I know. But I’m ahead of February so that’s a good thing!!

FEEDING MY EARS
This was definitely not the podcast I should’ve put on late one night thinking it would help me drift off to sleep. Instead, I was up listening to this fascinating interview with Ezra Klein and labor organizer Jane McAlevey on how the left builds power all wrong.

ROTTING MY BRAIN
Sorry I missed my weekly post of TWILIGHT ZONE (2019) reviews. I got my review of “Replay,” the third episode, up yesterday. I’ve had notes on several episodes, but just couldn’t find time to organize them during the Andromeda Strain breakout. I caught some shorter things though.

I’m convinced that if an ’80s song sounds good when you take away the ’80s production values, it’s a good song! (Though I do miss Chaka Khan singing back-up on this one.)

Also, I’ll listen to anything sweary Doctor Who Peter Capaldi says about surrealism..

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

IN THE WILD
The “Before” picture from my first root canal. I wish the drugs and pain hadn’t hampered my ability to take pics of that last tooth on the right during the procedure.

Quickie Review of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (2019) S01 E03: “Replay”

Even a magical camcorder might not be enough for a Black mother to protect her son from racism in America… even in The Twilight Zone.

There’s some true alchemy in this episode! Like the first two, there were lots of tiny references sprinkled in for the eagle-eyed fans of the old series. But whereas the last attempt to update the old series was a little too on the nose (for me at least), “Replay” took the original TWILIGHT ZONE’s approach to the themes of the ’50s and ’60s and fashioned something completely relevant for 21st century viewers. Especially 21st century viewers of color! So far, “Replay” is the quintessential TWILIGHT ZONE update to me! Here are some other takeaways…

  • I love the sheriff uniform. Reminds me of something…
  • C’mon Jordan, is the Mystic Seer really necessary? I mean, I get it but still.
  • Emmett Avenue, huh? Of course.
  • Kaepernick super-bowl!
  • This is definitely reminiscent of those hitchhiker stories where the ghost keeps reappearing.
  • That’s it — instead of running from the apparition, go straight for it!
  • It’s not often you see subtle racism played out on TV. Sure we all knew the White trooper was racist and going to say “boy” at some point. But up until that point, he’ll sit and chat amicably with people of color. There comes a point in the episode where one might be tempted to think, “Oh, this is when she turns the cop around.” But people of color knew better.
  • Car 1015, eh?
  • You’d think anyone in a TZ with a grasp of the weird shit going on around them would’ve been like “ain’t no thing” when something bad happens.
  • “You’ve never asked for help” — that’s the key right there!
  • I called the ending — but not until it was almost on me. Good one, Jordan!
  • I don’t think I’ve seen a teleplay sum up about 90+% of the struggles of a community in a well-rounded way since, well, BLACK PANTHER.
  • We don’t just get a fleeting visual reference to the spirit of Rod Serling. Thematically, we also get, “It was love, not magic, that kept evil at bay.”

The Jack Elam Score for “Replay” (out of 5):

1: “And this lemon-sucker here…”
2: “Ain’t nobody been exonerated yet, that’s for sure!”
3: “Sharp boys, real sharp boys!”
4: “A regular Ray Bradbury!”
5: “CHECK ‘EM FOR WINGS!!!”