the distance from the sentence to your eye
i mentioned it once already but two more episodes dropped yesterday and seriously do not sleep on the boyfriend (netflix), it has an all time great main character (shun, who we call "dark prince" like literally an anime character of a human being but also he has a backstory full of pathos) and the general vibe is SO tender and vulnerable and sweet (which normally when other people say that about shows i'm like "no thanks, gonna hurl" but!!!), like in the most recent episode there was a long and beautiful segment of the cast sitting in their pajamas and discussing their coming out stories and later a kissing scene that one of the panelists called "a kissing scene that will go down in human history" which is hyperbolic but also in its hyperbole gives you an idea of how it feels. in related media consumption news, i tried reading the bee sting because deborah loved it so much and wanted me to and it's really well written but also hits my personal high school trauma cringe spots so hard that i couldn't make myself keep reading (so back to hilary mantel's french revolution fanfic).
things at work are kind of messy rn but i'm still being helpful to others and making progress on the stuff i'm working on and i only have two more sprints before my month-long sabbatical. beloved PM is back from parental leave and we met to catch up. first sub- nine minute long run in a while and i got rained on very hard but luckily it was near the end. i finally cleaned up our overgrown yard and the grass out back hasn't been completely killed by the heat wave. assembled the patio furniture that was deborah's anniversary gift and got into the bad mood i always get into when i have to build things in the physical world which she very generously gave me grace for. talking to her therapist deborah was describing our respective speeds of being able to exit a state of emotional distress with metaphor and said that she was a train and i was an electric car.
in the car on the way to pick up ec to go to longlegs, because in an interview clairo had named the song as a reference point for "glory of the snow", playing deborah the original of "seabird" by the alessi brothers, a cover version by the innovations (not as good as the original), and then the beautiful old home recording e made for her partner and generously shared with me and deborah loving the song. in another conversation e and i having millenial physical media consumption memory hour and telling me about the summer when she kept recording "bohemian rhapsody" off the radio "every time it came on. just over and over on the same tape so i wouldn't have to rewind it as much and in an unending quest to get a nearly perfect recording of it"
the trailers before an R rated horror movie on a friday night in the summer, an attraction of their own. surprisingly plump movie theater hotdog, popcorn ec shared in a paper boat, chocolate covered cookie dough bites which i just have to draw a line and never buy again because they'll always be a disappointment (too artificial, eternally stuck in the uncanny valley) and deborah doesn't like them at all. longlegs, which was a stylish fucked up romp and imo a great weekend-starter! it feels very of a piece with the previous movie by this director i'd seen, the blackcoat's daughter, but funnier and more meta and weird. i'm thankful that though you come for the nicolas cage performance which is as weird as you've heard but also there are other great ones including a great scene from kiernan shipka. i also like when movie directors say things like this about how they think of their craft:
"I figured the way to connect with a bigger audience would be to trick them into thinking that they were watching Silence of the Lambs, and then do a thing where it was obviously not that at all."
typing in my long secure password using the apple tv remote correctly the first time. we watched se7en, a movie that is deborah canon but somehow i don't know if i'd ever actually seen (maybe it didn't get played as much on cable because of how fucked up it is)? gwyneth paltrow being in that movie and me having a soft sport for her remembering how when i was a teenager and i did not have reliable access to porn on the family computer but did have a DVD of the royal tenenbaums and literally masturbated to the scene where she is getting off the bus in slow motion while "these days" by nico plays which truly can you imagine something more embarrassingly twee!!!! (related: that orna from couple's therapy's dog nico is named after the singer).
walked past a goth-looking bar where there was a sandwich board outside that said "eat, drink, repent". learning from shoshana's stories about the "roxanne" drinking game which involves two teams drinking when in the song "roxanne" the lyric "roxanne" (team 1) or "put on the red light" (team 2) is sung, which happens a lot and everyone gets drunk quickly. cold beer in the summer. the gold foil on modelo, always brings me a little extra joy. actually having fun playing elden ring this time (at least so far), which i will write about more later but for now i am thankful for the fun. the concept in video games of "draw distance" which means within the virtual world of the game how far you can see from where you are to where the game stops rendering the finer details of the world. this fluxus work by ken friedman from 1971 called "Distance" which has the text "The distance from the sentence to your eye is my sculpture"
Previously on this day
- 2016 (new avalanches album; dark but funny joke a friend told me the other day about dealing with the crazy medical bills after her father's death and her feeling that "surely we shouldn't have to pay these because it didn't work"; d couldn't decide whether she wanted fudge drumsticks or caramel drumsticks, i bought boxes of both)
- 2017 (finished the first stage of a major work project i've been working on for more than a month yesterday; that prey is hitting all of my videogame sweet spots and i spent many happy hours over the weekend playing it; yoko's schema of seasons)
- 2018 (to remind myself of the reason that i started these notes, which is to remember things i appreciated or appreciate things i remember; my poison ivy has stopped aching, even though that has meant that it has started itching; metaphor about twitter)
- 2019 (sleeping on an air mattress, which is not great but is better than sleeping on the floor; the tenant before us left a portable air conditioner in the basement and it still works; the mingus cat training manual)
- 2021 (i got a justin bieber hoodie from the sale rack at H&M for $12.99; cherished old video clip of english friend trying to say "molasses" in a tennessee accent stoned on the bed of a work hotel room on a saturday afternoon; chili crab fried rice)
- 2023 (beat the lightning temple in tears of the kingdom without ever looking at a strategy guide; that my mom is playing breath of the wild, which is the first real 3D open world game she's ever played (at age 59); to recognize for myself that historically this stretch up till labor day is the time at which my body seems to process anxiety and stress the worst)