hi guys. halfway through the year; same soup reheated baby. i’ve been running on way too little sleep lately, waffling late into the night about all the things i want to write, watch, plan for, and do, now that summer is ticking down and i’m entering my third year out of college. which is insane to think about, btw. without a structure to the year, without externalized goals, it’s easy for me to feel like an engine revving perpetually with nowhere to go, hoovered into my computer screen night after night without a single deadline to kick my ass into gear. i’m not going to run a marathon and i probably won’t be visiting japan soon, so maybe grad school apps are what’s in the cards for me #muchtothinkabout. or maybe the answer is to get back into doing fic fests again.

life

i took 3 days off work in july to do parkour coaching training, and am now in the process of fulfilling my assistant coaching hours before i can get formally certified. i bugged a parkour friend to do it with me and it turned out that we were two of only four adults to have signed up; the rest were ~10 teens doing it through summer development/coach in training programs that the org runs. it was kind of funny and eye opening, being around teenagers at such close capacity; i don’t even remember the last time i had to interact so closely with that age group. spending three days with them did make me feel, privately, super glad that i’m not a teenager anymore. i think it can be sometimes fun to indulge in the romanticization of being seventeen and all the verklemptness that comes with it, but in a practical sense, i very much like having adult money and total control over my adult time.

i’ve been doing a lot of parkour recently, more than i thought i would at the beginning of the year, not just as a sport but i’ve also been volunteering for events and showing up to community gatherings and working more closely with people in and out of the org. it has been the most formative community i’ve found in boston, and one that was not predicated on existing friendships or relationships at that; i will always be grateful that i found it, and that i have now have developed enough skill and passion for it that i’ll be able to re-anchor myself in it if i ever have to leave boston.

parkour is also kinda funny because nothing else in my life reminds me so acutely of the curiosities and indignities of having to interface with the world via my meat suit. in june at american rendezvous i bashed my toes into concrete stairs so hard that i had to hop on one foot for the rest of the day because i thought i’d fractured my index toe. the pain went away pretty quickly so i thought it was fine. and then four weeks later i found out that the index toenail of my left foot had completely detached and was flapping open like a clam, with only the root of the nail still connected to the bed, so i had to clip the entire thing off. what a fascinating consequence. it really is quite surreal sometimes to go from my disembodied remote computer job to piloting my body into doing jumps and vaults and twists midair, and feeling, occasionally, entombed with fear, insecurity, and a 500ms latency ping between my mind and body. i don’t feel that shit typing in vscode, that’s for sure.

what else…i’ve been taking mixed aerial trapeze/hoop 101 at the circus gym; i’ve taken to trapeze quite well and will likely come back to it after trying out rope this next session. i got the zsa voyager split keyboard (with the navigator trackball attachment) for better ergonomics and have had a lot of fun customizing all the key behaviors and positions—a bonus perk that i did not even consider but have now come to really appreciate is that i can place my notebook or breakfast or whatever in between the two boards, so it’s a massive space saver as well. a friend of a friend (who is now — a friend) organized a game of jet lag hide and seek in boston and i spent a very fun saturday playing it with people i sort of knew but never had a reason to hang out with before. my team definitively won; as seekers we found the hiding team in less than 2.5 hours, and as hiders we took the ferry to the charlestown navy yard and camped out there until the seekers hit the 3 hour allotted time limit and gave up. we even had time to play a round of 250th independence day-themed mini golf!

oh, another thing that happened was that my brother’s two month old kitten accidentally fell out of his balcony on the fourteenth floor. it was very touch and go for a while there but she’s miraculously fine, not a single broken bone, i don’t know how. she should be on the news for that.

on art: i often find myself in spaces with a lot of artists—that is, people whose art are visible, interactive, tactile, public. it’s made me think about my own practice, and whether i can even make claim over it at all. is writing an art? is writing derivative stories art? is spending hours thinking about writing and reconstituting the same paragraph over and over in a blank doc art? i dunno. i have nothing to show for it, partly because there’s nothing coherent to show, and partly because i’m prickly about sharing. is there a utility to private, indulgent, navel gazing art? is making websites an art? i never know. i can connect with people on a spiritual and emotional level about making art, but i always feel awkward and somewhat fraudulent talking about what i specifically consider to be my art, because it is not visual, not really original, or in the case of website making, the art refers to the systemic thinking behind the design choices—the succinctness, the problem solving, the frankensteining of other people’s code, fitting it together, making it work—and not really the design itself. is there artistic legitimacy to that?

concerts

twice: i saw them with friends in april…honestly it was so long ago i don’t remember much of it anymore. i had a good but forgettable time. i really like twice, obviously, and have a strong nostalgic fondness for them, but i think i’ve outgrown the mega arena, tightly choreographed, ultra veneered shows like this…i’m definitely losing touch with kpop as well. also, i hate td garden as a venue, so that was probably a factor.

the last dinner party: this was soooo fun and so cute you guys…first of all abigail morris your natalie scatorccio hot goofy dancing calling everyone babe rock star slay…i was not immune and was in fact was patient zero. florence road were great openers. i remember the set design/lighting/mixing being great too. abigail was an incredible showman and had soo much stage presence…she read a sonnet off a sign someone from the wellesley shakespeare society had made, took and commented on gifts, taught us a short silly choreo to this is the killer speaking, did a silly friends impression. it was very interactive and you could tell they loved performing.

lcd soundsystem: ok they were lcd soundsystem. what else can i say. the instrumentation was insane, they had a very extensive set up on stage and played some banging electronic tunes in metronomic symphony. james murphy sounded exactly like james murphy. there was a lot of dancing. and seeing them perform all my friends live, around the time college graduations were happening, looking around at groups of friends hugging each other, moved me.

yumi zouma: they were cute! i didn’t know them before the show but i saw that they were performing at the sinclair for $30 so i was like why not, i love live music. two of their songs ended up in my rotation: in camera and cowboy without a clue. i haven’t had much of an appetite for slow moody alt pop lately but it’s pleasant easy listening.

underscores: this was crazy. it was the sweatiest, dampest, dankest show i’ve ever been to, literal sweat on sweat, skin on skin the entire time. my wallet in my pocket was soaked through by the end. at some point it started getting hard to breathe, like the air was being saturated with body vapor. it was disgusting but at the same time absolutely electric. euphoric, even? i submitted to the mosh pit. subsumed by the literal sea of people. why was everybody so TALL and i so SHORT. by the last song (whenimwithyouitfeelslikeMUSICCCCCCCC) i was starting to get lightheaded for real i had to book it out of there. underscores you have my life. i’ll be back.

metric + broken social scene + stars: i did not realize that stars and bss would be opening for metric, i thought they were all co-headlining for some reason. as soon as metric came on though you could definitely tell they were the headliner, their stages (and music) were just so much better than the other two, or maybe it was just emily haines singlehandedly bringing the roof down. the entire show was 4 hour long and such a delight; all the leads kept reiterating how special it was to be performing with friends they’ve known since grade school (and these people are 50, so), and all that joy and gratitude leaked out of them palpably.

highlights from metric were victim of luck, youth without youth, now or never now (craziest song to hear performed live btw, the heavens opened up), loyal, gold guns girls, combat baby, help i’m alive, black sheep OK BASICALLY EVERYTHING THEN! it was a pleasure seeing anthems performed live…it’s an iconic song for many reasons, but i actually never connected with it the way everybody else seemed to, never really understood the lyrics on an emotional level, until i heard the i saw the tv glow version by yeule, and then it clicked. something about the distortion…the electronic flatness as though reaching out through a screen…the voices almost drowning in static…recontextualized by the themes of the movie, of dreaming up a different, truer self than who you are now, going to sleep longing for it…i mean, yeah. it clicked.

two more shows coming up: slayyyter in september and olivia rodrigo in december (in seattle with my sister! we’re making a trip out of it since neither of us have ever been). also under consideration are ninajirachi + dj dave + the liz phair/sleater kinney joint tour but i do need to be wise about my money. i need to lock in for slayyyter i can’t keep showing up to the floor sleepy and whining about my feet.

movies/tv

i watched the devil wears prada 1 and 2 and spent copious amounts of my free time in june/july watching emily blunt interviews, emily blunt promos, emily blunt blooper reels, emily blunt clips, emily blunt movies. yes i rewatched edge of tomorrow to see miss full metal bitch rita vrataski on my screen again. may i present, for your edification: emily blunt doing accents, emily blunt channeling emily charlton for vogue, emily blunt and claire foy having a laugh, emily blunt and ryan gosling having a laugh, emily blunt impersonating a little boy, emily blunt and anne hathaway sucking up to each other for 50 minutes, emily blunt and anne hathaway beefing over their lip sync battle, and this bluntaway lore timeline, which could mean nothing. okay i’m done. shoot me in the head.

i saw supergirl twice. woman of tomorrow is one of my favorite comics of all time and as you know i am karazorelfan so i was going to be seated no matter what. it was a fine movie! well the cinematography was paltry compared to the gorgeousness of the source material, and everybody other than kara and ruthye were giving glup shittos, and i’ve come to realize that i find james gunn’s directorial fingerprints pretty sauceless. but the depiction of kara’s grief and apathy and aimlessness under the weight of the loss of her planet and people, in contrast to how hopeful superman was in his movie, and how the two of them clash in how they internalize duty, was everything i wanted to see in a live action adaptation of supergirl. sorry i have an intense and toxic love hate relationship with cwsg that will follow me to the grave.

i also saw the odyssey twice, once in 70mm and once in imax. it was very epic in story and scale; i enjoyed it both times, though the first watch felt more mythical and magical to me, i think i was just more aware about the 3 hours ticking down on the second one. i didn’t mind the christianization allegations actually; not depicting the gods/keeping their existence murky worked for me, especially because at the end it put the zendaya/athena reveal in a different, harrowing light. it made their world feel larger and more ominous. why would the gods bother with meddling in pedestrian matters in person when they could sink ships from offstage with a flick of a hand? why would they want to give men the chance to reason with them? obviously greek mythology is so much more expansive and you can retell the stories any which way but i liked christopher nolan’s interpretation and narrative choices. and like, that’s all it is—an interpretation. i don’t know why people have been landmining themselves so much over it.

other stuff i saw:

• girls like girls: corn on da cob
• death becomes her: fantastic campy toxic yuri, this was so good and so funny. i liked that from the get go their motivations in seeking youth, beauty, immortality etc. became purely about one upping each other, and neither could stop the inertia of their mutual downfall because both woman were so obsessed with destroying the other that it did not even matter that they were destroying themselves in worse ways in the process. and then realizing that they’d gone too far, that they’d inexorably debased themselves to the point that they now needed each other because nobody else would ever understand what they had put themselves through in pursuit of what they now understood to be a futile goal. so good
• backrooms: the first half was promising but once the chase sequence started it killed the suspense for me and became boring. i just think making the film character driven with very little experimentation in form was an uninteresting and uninspired choice. the final shot of mary’s still life figure in the backrooms freaked me out bad though, it was creepy
• disclosure day: a deeply unserious movie. hot weatherwoman emily blunt was so good in it tho
• wonder man: this was unexpectedly so good. a rare depiction of randos trying to survive in the mcu world even though it keeps blowing up in their faces
• i love boosters: randomly very funny and absurd, but for how inventive it was in fabulating ways to build up cross-cultural worker solidarity i thought the ending would offer something much more radical than a labor strike. like, you guys have teleporters! why wouldn’t you use these technologies to show the bourgeoisie you mean business

this is your notice to book yourself in for teenage sex and death at camp miasma at local theaters near you! jane schoenbrun i would follow you to places i wouldn’t even go with a gun. the coolidge did an early screening of it as part of a summer camp slasher double feature in an OUTDOORS CAMPSITE in the rocky woods. it was too logistically difficult for me to go but i’m devastated to have missed it, i was actively stalking their instagram stories to see what was happening and it looked like an insanely fun time :‘(

reading

my ass has not seriously been reading. i did read the king of scars duology to be reunited with my blorbo nina zenik and was touched by the zoyalai ruthless stoic commander x charming playboy king epic royal court romanze; i was kinda whatever about nina/hanne but the transmasc bodysnatching ending made me sit up and go heol…bad situation for them all around but the implied genderfuckery vis a vis body tailoring was kind of sexy and tickled my brain. also i’ve been reading a memory called empire for 3 months so there’s that.

i saw isabel j kim on tour for her debut novel sublimation (moderated by rf kuang…my god you will find her at nearly every asian american literary event in cambridge) and it was great except for the fact that she chose to adapt one of her least interesting short stories, so by the end of it i was kind of like, why did you not adapt ZETA EPSILON instead. that one was so good. i think i’ve been subconsciously repelled by diaspora poetics lately…i’m experiencing this shit up close and personal in real life i don’t need to be whumping myself over it too.

plugging hardcover here as my reading tracker of choice—it is the only tracker i know of that has an API, which allows me to pull my reading data directly onto my site. as a bonus, their blog posts are fun to read—i subscribe to them on my rss reader—and personally i find their site much more visually appealing than storygraph.

up next: butter by asako yuzuki, hooked by asako yuzuki, exordia by seth dickinson, wolf hall by hilary mantel

music

• trinkets (album) by tsubi club: crazy good noskip digicore album, i’ve been listening to this nonstop for the past 2 months. one of my aotys for sure. what’s a bit of a pain though is that (╥﹏╥) is my favorite track but there’s no way for me to search that and i can’t even copy text off the spotify app
• headlock (remix) by underscores: ok so was no one going to tell me about this 🗿 headlock rock remix with a skrillex sample on guitar. her brain is just too big and too juicy
• innuendo (i get u) by underscores: did not even gaf about this when i listened to U but hearing it live was a richter 10 gag. the beat gives me chills
• it’s only sex + bodys by car seat headrest: save me white boy emo rock save me
• closer by nine inch nails/boys noize: this isn’t even that different compared to the original, but the original is already so peak that whatever boys noize did just elevated it
• singasong by v8: this is actually so good if you ignore the nonsense lyrics