These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: July/August
There is nothing to say this week that I want to say here. I am endlessly stuck on the same feelings and themes, going around and around in circles worrying the same thoughts, afflicted by the same sadnesses, and none of this makes for good writing. I wish I had something better to give you, but I don't. It's not all bad, it's just all repetitive and I've said it all before. And so, in the absence of new words of my own, let me share with you some things other people have made that I love.
Goodie Bag by Still Woozy has been my musical fixation for a while now. I don't even know what genre it is, Pop, I guess, but weird pop with weird sounds and a falsetto, not usually something I like, but here it works for me. Pretty vocals with incomprehensible lyrics that don't really matter is one of my favorite genres of music, which is surprising since I'm normally a lyrics over everything kind of person.
I, like most of the world, loved Stick Season when it came out and I still do, but I never quite got around to listening to the rest of the album until this summer and that is a disservice to Noah Kahan. Stick Season is good, but so is everything else he does. He is making top tier sad boy music and we should appreciate him more for it. Everywhere, Everything is my favorite. The instrumentation is so stirring and his voice is somehow both triumphant and achingly sad. This is also true of Your Needs, My Needs, which is my other favorite, but in an even more raw way. And lastly, Halloween. This trio of songs makes me worry about this man a little bit, and I put them on whenever I want to cry.
I've seen the Talking Scared podcast floating around horror spaces for a long time now, and I've been subscribed to it for a while without actually listening. The thing that finally got me to is, of course, the episode with Stephen King. I am very predictable. It's a great episode and I don't need to talk any more about my love for Stephen King, but there are also two episodes where many horror writers and podcasters discuss their favorite short stories of his and they're delightful. And, on a note that isn't related to King, there's an episode with Josh Malerman about his newest book, Incidents Around the House, that made me a fan of him as a person as well as a writer. He seems so charming and thoughtful and I really liked the glimpses into his writing process. The most important thing about a podcast is the host, and this one is wonderful. Neil McRobert is a great interviewer, a great writer, and someone whose horror opinions I've come to really value in a short amount of time. He even managed to write a ranking of all of Stephen King's books that I don't hate and mostly agree with.
Let's talk some more about Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman, because when I tell you it's one of the scariest horror novels I've read in recent years, I mean it. I might be overhyping it and fear is so subjective that it's impossible to say something will be universally scary, but this one got me. Prior to this, I had only read Bird Box by him, and while I liked it, it didn't have staying power. I've never reached for it again and I only saw the movie once. Incidents is one I know I'm going to reread. It's told from the perspective of an 8-year-old girl who is being regularly visited by something that calls itself Other Mommy. A presence. An entity. And this entity asks her, every time it visits, "Can I go inside your heart?" If that isn't enough of a hook for you, it's also a surprisingly beautiful love story, and a wildly entertaining road trip story, and there are some nightmarish scenes of true horror that will linger with me indefinitely.
People have mentioned many times the similarity between Other Mommy and the other Mother from Coraline, but the similarity is only in the names. This book is not for children, and it's much meaner and sadder than Coraline. And in case you, like me, worry about books with child narrators because they're often either annoyingly precocious or they read like adults and we're just supposed to pretend they're children, this is not that. The narrator, Bela, reads like exactly the age she is, and it's an interesting narrative device to have the entire story told from her perspective.
On an entirely different note, I recently watched most of We Are Lady Parts, a show on Peacock recommended by a Facebook friend, and it's so warm and big-hearted and funny and I really recommend it. The stakes are low and there are some great songs played by the all female muslim punk band Amina, the main character, finds herself thrust into. It's found family and feminine rage and smart conversations about race and culture, and some really silly romances, and good performances, and it's just an all around hug for your heart. My only complaint is that the audio description for it is very sparse and doesn't give the level of detail I would prefer.
I'm going to end this with some questionable recommendations for reality dating shows. They're my guilty pleasure, along with Lifetime movies, the only things I actually use that term for because I don't generally believe in feeling guilty about things I enjoy. The first one is called Love Off the Grid, a show where one half of a couple lives out in the middle of nowhere, with few modern amenities, and the other half of the couple is coming to live with them despite preferring the comforts of a city in civilization. I'm well into the second season now and I'm obsessed with the poly couple who are trying to find the third member of their commune while also trying to get pregnant, and the unhinged woman who forced her partner to slaughter chickens with her even though he's a vegan because she wants him to prove to her that he's committed. It's a wild show and it's so compelling.
The other is called I Kissed a Girl, a UK dating show where a bunch of sapphics live in an Italian villa and meet by immediately kissing a person they've been paired with by whoever dreams up these awful concepts. As you might imagine, drama ensues, because, as the narrator of the show repeats constantly, everyone is a possibility. I'm only five episodes in and already the partner swapping and reconfiguring of couples is dizzying. There's a semi-regular kiss-off, where you can either turn around and kiss your girl if you want to stay together, or you can keep your back to her and save your kiss for a different girl, and whoever remains unkissed at the end of this horrifying event is sent home. It's absolute unadulterated nonsense and chaos, and I love it because I so often have to watch heterosexual couples engaging in these shows and rarely do I get one with queer women. The Ultimatum: Queer Love was the last one, and this one doesn't quite get on its level, but it's still a fun, brain-rotting time.
That's it. That's all the things I've read/watched/listened to and loved recently. Next week I'll have something more substantial for you, probably, or at least something more like actual writing and less like incoherent rambling. I'm just sick of myself right now and my inability to let anything go and move on, and I prefer to beat as few dead horses as possible. This week's work is shifting my mindset, so we'll see how successful I've been when next Tuesday rolls around. In the meantime, if there's anything you've been loving lately, I would like to know about it. Books, music, television, movies, podcasts, anything in the pop culture canon is fair game.