Weekly Roundup (June 7, 2023) (Patreon)

I feel like we're stretching the definition of "weekly" in a sort of Hitchiker's Guide-esque "trilogy of five" way.

My last couple essays have been written while I've been recovering from wisdom teeth surgery. Recovery has been fantastic -- I only spent four days without painkillers because CVS simply neglected to fill my prescriptions. And the teeth pulling itself was an upgrade for me. That was the first time I've had four teeth pulled with anesthesia. Just another sign of how far I've come since I left West Virginia.

So far I've spent my summer recovering from the surgery and watching too many movies (at the peak of my excruciating pain I think I watched five movies over the course of 24 hours). I'm also stuck in my dorm for a while, so I haven't had much to do besides watch movies and write them up.

Lately I've found myself turning more towards video as a medium. I always wanted to make movies, and that dream faded as I let myself (rightly) believe it was impractical. But I've realized that working with a camera sets my soul on fire in a way nothing else does. My partner Janet produced a demo for the score of my multimedia documentary about Grandma Stazi, and when I heard it, I instantly envisioned the entire movie in my head. It was a completely unprecedented experience, and I think I need to sit with it for a while.

You may have noticed that I've shifted to film criticism lately. A lot of this is just a product of watching movies, but to be honest, a good part of it comes from that just being a more natural medium for me than doing Eruditorumesque works. I promise I'll write about more contemporary, non-Western movies soon. But I think film is where my head is nowadays.

Lately the news has kind of gotten away from me, which isn't great for a journalist, but I've caught a few stories. Here's a quick roundup of the headlines to close us out, as always:

Jelena Dunato has written a lovely piece about Slavic fantasy and the exorbitant and tyrannical expectations authors of certain ethnicities face about representation.

Student loan repayments will resume in August, so my life is ruined.

Jason Farago's pillorying of Hannah Gadsby's atrocious Picasso exhibit is as good as you've heard.

Apparently Disney can now take a $1.5 billion tax write-off for destroying its own movies.

PBS shows how most Americans actually feel about legislated transphobia.

From Erin Reed: a Florida judge has partially blocked the state's fascist HRT ban.

Oklahoma now has a religious charter school, which shows you what "school choice" is really about.

Crypto is a prosecutable scam! Who knew?

Putin continues to be a genocidal monster in Ukraine.

Ex-FBI agent and Soviet spy Robert Hanssen is dead.

Cornell's own Alli Smith tells us how to look at birds.