summer is trashy TV season
+ promoting media consumption
The Ultimatum (queer love)
Something in the combination of extreme cheapness and entertainment value continually brings me back to reality TV. The Ultimatum is a terrible show— in a nutshell, its clips of the most reactive people you can think of layed over royalty-free music. Nearly every episode has a fight, a passive-aggressive public declaration of love, driven by an intense need to make an ex jealous. It’s probably something of a morbid curiosity; I want to know all the supremely fucked up things people say to each other.
Summer is the perfect time of year for these shows. They feel meaningless, fun, easy to watch, and that’s the show’s goal. I feel like I’m experiencing one of those animal TV programs whenever I sit down to watch reality TV— this is created to grab your attention and hold it, as stubborn as a toddler finding a piece of candy stuck to the bottom of a railing, never letting go. It triggers some weird reaction I don’t really understand.
Ottessa Moshfegh- My Year of Rest and Relaxation
The story centers on a gorgeous, blonde, wealthy and unnamed woman living in New York, just before the twin towers fell. She decays in her beautifully disarrayed apartment (which she doesn’t pay rent on) and stews in her sadness and deep sense of self-pity –– yes for the whole novel––. Sometimes Reva (her bulimic, girl-boss friend) visits and pretends to care, using the pill-addicted sack of smooth skin and slender bones as an outlet to complain about her sex life, the married man she’s been sleeping with. She works in the twin towers.
This book was hard to read. It felt like I was walking through wet cement every time I picked it up, I almost had to force myself to read it. I would like to this was on purpose; the reader endures the same miserable existence as the central character. That said, it makes the process of reading the book pretty difficult.
Community (a rewatch)
By the time I’d finished season 4, and had given up halfway through season 5, I had forgotten what made the Dan Harmon show so good in the first place. It’s self-aware in a way that doesn’t come off forced or insecure. It contrasts classic sitcoms, and dodges the “wink wink, nudge nudge” humor that comes with the genre (at least for the first few seasons).
Albums
Streaming basically takes away any incentive for artists to make albums, not as compilations of tracks, but as actual bodies of work. More than a sum of its parts, or whatever that saying is. I find the people who say “music just isn’t the same as it was” annoying as much as anyone, but the sentiment is still true. Bob Dylan probably wouldn’t write Blood on the Tracks now, at least not in the same way. Same with Dark Side of the Moon.
Other things I've been enjoying
jeans that are so worn out they’re soft
second-hand bookstores
projectors on the wall
mechanical pencils
open d guitar tuning
men i trust garage sessions
Thing’s I’ve decided are unacceptable
curated Instagram pages
self-deprecating humor
apple (the brand not the fruit) commercials
black coffee
people pleasing
shaving your upper lip