Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

thenameofthegameisfizbin asked:

So I was reading your newsletter (which was wonderful as always- living in a cabin in the fall sounds ideal!!) and I saw you went to grad school. I'm debating going back to school myself and I was just wondering what you went for/did you think it was worth/did it help in your career etc. I'm really going back and forth on this decision so any helps is appreciated! Thanks!

Aw thank you! And aw APOLOGIES, I am rereading this and discovering I was very unclear! I did not actually go to grad school. I prepared to go, two different but consecutive times, and then ultimately threw it all over and moved to New York City for a couple years. Which was basically Life Grad School, honestly. New York is like that.

My reasoning for wanting to go to grad school was: I was 23 and didn’t have any other plans, and I’m good at school. In what manner am I good at school? Mostly storybook improbability. The year I graduated, my rural public high school was sending less than 30% of my class on to four-year colleges, and what’s almost more unbelievable: I and one of my closest friends were both heading off to what has been ranked the #1 liberal arts college in American for [checks] 15 years running. And my (improbable) (impractical) (but highfalutin!) undergrad life/style definitely shows in the variety of grad school I was considering: get a PhD in one of the humanities and become a professor. Lol. 

What’s incredible is that it took a second time for the same warning bell in my head to finally get me to leave, which is that studying for 7+ years (I was only considering subjects in which I did not in fact hold a bachelor’s degree—further hilarity) only to emerge on the other side highly trained to do exactly one thing for which there are no jobs, would be a grave mistake. (To all you professional academics out there reading this right now like [Thor voice] ”I make grave mistakes all the time!”, I love you, you’re right and I love you.)

Ultimately I did realize that this wasn’t the right path for me. I’m far too much of a collector to commit to one sub-sub-subject, for one, and also, as I figured out while reading huge anthologies and surveys and taking undergrad courses at a local university as a non-matriculated student, you don’t have to be going to school to study and learn things! So I decided against the grad. 

Anyway that’s my story. In the style of MBMaM: did I help??

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Okay, post-TIFF Most Anticipated update, this time just descriptive titles, for limited value of descriptive

- Kiera Knightly becomes an author AND a lesbian in early 20th-century France
- Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed play prospectors in love
- Child Tarra’s Fave Filmmaker Debuts His Masterpiece, Cementing My Status as Cinephile Prodigy
- Do It For Her (Cary Mulligan)
- the South Korean one where all the descriptions feel deliberately incomplete and I’m in2 it
- I’m so mad Luca, I’m gonna fucking hate this and think about it all the time
- Lady Heist Movies 2k18!!
- really looking forward to getting a matching pair on Queer Rachel Weisz Content this year
- RUIN ME BARRY
- All Hail Sir Shaw
- A-Garf’s Lynchian LA noir
- “from the director who brought us IDA–” me: “SOLD”
- Do It For Her Round 2 (L Gaga)
- Do It For The Boy (The Boy)
- surprise Neil Jordan B-movie??
- Mahershala Ali wears coordinated chartreuse
- and last but extremely not least:

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Patreon subscriber Christine asked for my current running playlist, which is really just a selective arrangement of two songs each from St. Vincent, Mitski, Florence + the Machine, Lucius, and Janelle Monáe, plus a couple wildcards, but yknow it works for me, and maybe it will for you too.

43 minutes, go go go~

LISTEN: Spotify

Your Best American Girl - Mitski | Fear the Future - St. Vincent | Turn It Around - Lucius | Make Me Feel - Janelle Monáe | Shake It Out - Florence + the Machine | Never Be Like You - Flume, Kai | Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen | Americans - Janelle Monáe | Young Lover - St. Vincent | Dog Days Are Over - Florence + the Machine | Nobody - Mitski | Genevieve - Lucius

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

wellntruly asked:

Your (brilliant) Moby Dick coffee shop au made SUCH an impression on me that I did copy it into an email to my old AP English teacher, to whom my friends & I once presented a video of a puppet version of Moby Dick we'd been secretly making on weekends, starring him as Ahab, so this was par for the course for us, anyway, he said: "You should track this person down and marry them, most ricky-tick. Or join their cult. Or, at the very least, encourage such important art. Pass along my compliments."

minipliny answered:

oh my goodness, thank you!!! I love the story of the secret puppet version of Moby Dick starring your teacher as Ahab I CANNOT BELIEVE AN ACTUAL ENGLISH TEACHER READ THE THING I WROTE WHILE BLOWING OFF STEAM TRYING TO PASTICHE MELVILLE FOR SLASHFIC PURPOSES BUT I AM VERY HAPPY. I should say I am taken (engaged!) but my cult is constantly recruiting, just take a good…long…sip from this harpoon cup here.

[wellntruly]

👍

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

If you need just overflowing vegetation for your late summer phone background, like a true overrun Unseelie situation, I’ve never had any complaints about this Tim Walker photograph save that this is the largest size I can find it in. But, does come with this handy white line already built in for setting apart your “lock” and “home” screens.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

strangeassortment replied to your post: THE YOUNG POPE - 1x01

Boy am I delighted to come back from Europe and find you’ve started recapping this. Your drink sounds an awful lot like one I had during my trip, with limoncello, Fever Tree, and mint. “Lovely and refreshing,” they described it, accurately.

Wait hold on, that sounds elegant af I must make this. Fever Tree club soda or tonic or..? Anyway call me I miss you I wanna hear all about the ‘Dam 💛🍋

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

miceenscene asked:

yo, that playlist you made. A Summer Hymnal? A++++ *insert a million fire emojis here* great work

Thank you, thank you so much. I take great care with the craft of playlisting, and I was proud of this one. The goal was to feelingly sing along with 1970s country songs yes, but also to see if I could put together a run of folk, bluegrass, and gospel so exceedingly beautiful & classic that it would make ‘Wagon Wheel’ genuine again, and gosh darn I might have done it??

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

This is because of that old VHS clip of John Denver singing ‘Country Roads’ with Johnny Cash.

LISTEN: Spotify • 8tracks

Never Going Back Again - Fleetwood Mac | Danny’s Song - Anne Murray | Long Black Veil - Johnny Cash | It Doesn’t Matter Anymore - Lucius | April Come She Will - Simon & Garfunkel | Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song) - Oscar Issac & Marcus Mumford | Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver | Down To The River To Pray - Alison Krauss | Sun It Rises - Fleet Foxes | Jolene - Dolly Parton | Not Dark Yet - Bob Dylan | Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby - Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, & Gillian Welch | Hang Me, Oh Hang Me - Tim the Lion Tamer | Animal Tracks - Mountain Man | The Wind - Yusef / Cat Stevens | Swimming & Horses - Michael Brook | Peaceful Easy Feeling - Eagles | The Predatory Wasp of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us - Sufjan Stevens | Oh Sister - Andrew Bird | Fire and Rain - James Taylor | June Hymn - The Decemberists | Landslide - Fleetwood Mac | Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

theglintoftherail asked:

I also watched the first few seasons of True Blood on MegaVideo in the late 2000s, SYNERGY! What a good dumb bad show.

MEGAVIDEO, thank you that was it!!

Seriously, True Blood was a PRISTINE schlocky addictive hot ass garbage summer show. Just perfect. Swelteringly hot out, thunderstorm rolling in, dabbing your condensation-dripping glass to your neck watching some shirtless southern gothic vampire be like “howdy. blood orgy?” In some ways I am probably always chasing that summer show experience…

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

maulthots asked:

I know you talked about your Legion recap ~process~ before and I was curious - do you use a similar process for your Official Movie Recaps?

I do! Sorta. The movie recaps are NEW and I’m still kinda figuring it out! The main diff is that everything I put up on my Patreon as recap contenders are existing favorites, so I’ve already seen them multiple times. This means step one Just Watch The Thing has already happened, so I go straight to rewatching with scene-by-scene pauses to take notes and screencaps, and then write the recap off that blueprint as usual.

That writing process has been running at an oddly drawn out pace though, and I’ve actually been puzzling over this. I think it’s gotta be because the movies themselves are constructed at a different pace than TV, a whole story in less than two hours, and I should probably adjust my style or approach or something to accommodate it. As is, and this is probably gonna make no goddamn sense because I hardly even know what I mean, but I feel almost constrained by being linear about them..? I do not know….what an alternative would even look like…. Brain what do u want.

Anyway real question: what do YOU want? What are the Community’s dreams and wishes for my writing projects! :)