cafenowhere

I have not been posting nearly as much as I had hoped when resurrecting my account. I now think that maybe I should use this blog to record my tv and movie thoughts, and maybe that will prompt me to write more frequently.

Currently J and I are watching several series: Invasion, season 2, on Apple+; The Blacklist, season 9, Netflix; Our Flag Means Death, season 2, Max; What We Do in the Shadows, season 2, Hulu; and American Horror Story: Delicate, Hulu.

It's a lot to keep track of, and I don't think too hard about most of them, but I do have thoughts about "American Horror Story: Delicate." I'll try to keep them non-spoilery. 

First of all, it's intriguing to me that this season of the show is based on a novel, Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine/Rollins. I believe this is the first time the show has this kind of source material. I haven't read the novel, so I spend time each episode wondering how much is taken from the book and how much is AHS's spin. For instance, the historical flashbacks seem typically AHS, but maybe the book relies on them, too. I have watched 5 episodes so far, and the plotline is much more linear than other seasons. Also, there's a main character, Anna Victoria Alcott, whereas most seasons of AHS usually have an ensemble cast and mixed storylines. This season has smaller roles for the repeating cast members. 

The premise for the series is that Anna Alcott, played by Emma Roberts, is a "middle-aged" (for Hollywood) actress who is trying to conceive a baby through IVF. Since she's carrying the show, there's time to pick at her character. She's...nice. Perhaps too nice for someone determined to make it in Hollywood. Supposedly she wants an Oscar as much as a baby, but I don't see it. In fact, we never see Alcott actually working. She started out on a CW show, but that's so old, the merchandise for it has been discontinued. The movie she stars in is complete when the series begins, so we never see her perform or rehearse (though we're only on episode 5; there's time for that to change, but I'm not sure it'd be effective anymore). She scores the cover of Vogue, but we don't see the photo shoot. We only know it's happened because she's asked to autograph it.  She goes into her publicist's office occasionally, but we don't see her reading scripts or approving photos. We see much more of her IVF journey: harvesting, fertility drugs, implantation, check-ups, etc. Any tension between her career and family goals feels pretty artificial. But perhaps that's one of themes of the story AHS is telling: the quest for motherhood can become all-consuming; under the rigors of IVF, it's inevitable to feel like simply a vessel, especially in a misogynist society that already relegates women to certain, limited roles.

My TBR read pile is massive and, so far, "AHS: Delicate" isn't compelling enough that I want to add Delicate Condition to it. I'll keep watching the show but mostly because it's spooky season and I'm looking to be scared.

We started the week at a disadvantage. On Sunday, the garage door spring broke, trapping our car inside the garage. We had to have someone from the garage door company come out on Monday, and fortunately they were able to fix the spring, so the door is again operational. We were prepared for them to say the door was a goner and they could only release the car. We are going to replace the motor for the garage door once they can get us scheduled. J says it should be more reliable during the winter and quieter too. I hope a new motor also means the whole house will no longer shake when the garage opens and closes.

On Wednesday, José gave a talk for the city's Office of Equity and Human Rights titled "Stepping Back Before Stepping In: Preparing for Conversations in a Modern World." He discussed sharing pronouns as part of introducing oneself, the importance of pronouncing people's names correctly, how to avoid microaggressions, using inclusive language, and making accommodations. I think he did a really good job. He introduced resources I'd never encountered before (and I'm beyond Inclusivity-101) and spoke from his own personal experience.

For example, he related how, as a child he was in a class with another child named José Jiménez and the teacher asked if he had a nickname she could use. Being young enough not to know the word "nickname" he said no--and ended up being called Panchito (meaning Little Frank). Out of desperation, because José Jiménez is a very common name, he resorted to using JJ as his name for the next thirty-some years. It was only when we collaborated on a poem and he used his proper name in the byline that anything changed. A very thoughtful editor inquired if he used an accent on the e in José and the question eventually led him to reclaim his name, accents and all.

In the evenings we have been watching two shows on Netflix, one a Korean time-travel series called "Sisyphus" and the other a Turkish series called "Hot Skull." The Turkish series is more interesting to me, as it has a very similar storyline to one of my favorite horror movies, Pontypool. In "Hot Skull," a semantic virus causes a pandemic of "jabberers," people who can speak nothing but nonsense. Mostly it's syntactical but it's still nonsense. Listening to the jabberers is a little like how I feel after a long day of reading poetry. I feel like I'm on the verge of understanding but my brain can't make that last connection. The reluctant protagonist of "Hot Skull" has these beautiful moments of surreal whimsy that save the show from being too somber but it's definitely a pandemic dystopia.

Work-wise, I'm still winnowing down the Strange Horizons poetry submissions I received in January. And I keep chugging away at the novel. On a good day, I produce 800 to 1000 words. Obviously, they can't all be good days, so I'm having to be patient with my characters and myself. I'm nearing 30K, which should be about a third of the way through.

Do you have any exciting plans for the weekend? Or for Valentine's Day?

This has been a good week for me. I got to do a variety of work things, which keeps me on an even keel. I prepared two of the poems that I selected for Strange Horizons for publication on the 5th and 12th. I chose a poem for recommendation on my Patreon and wrote up my essay early, posting it around noon today. And I cracked the 10K word mark on my novel today. This last is not as impressive as it sounds; I had a good number of those words written years ago and I started adding words two weeks ago. But I'm still pleased with the progress.

Our family had a few dinners together, which is less common now than it was last year, when Ash was still in high school. These days he spends most evenings with his friends, so it feels like a treat when he is available to eat with us. J has done a lot of cooking this week, saving us from takeout. We eat way more takeout than we should, just like we used to eat out too much before the pandemic. In fact, tonight J is picking up Indian food.

In the evenings, I have been making slow progress on reading Fantastic Americana, a collection by Josh Rountree from Fairwood Press. Reading these stories is not a struggle, it's all good work that I've enjoyed. It's just that as my novel progresses, it takes up more and more of my mind and I can't concentrate on fiction. (I still read a lot of poetry for my Patreon.) On nights I haven't read, J and I have watched Wednesday on Netflix. It's kind of like a cross between Nancy Drew (girl sleuth) and Sherlock (probably autistic protag). I have some Concerns about the show and how it deals (and doesn't) with race, but I like Jenna Ortega in the role of Wednesday Addams. We've watched all but one episode and Wednesday hasn't smiled once. It's refreshing, in a way. Most shows go out of their way to make the heroine likable, but there's all kinds of stories to be told with an antiheroine.

I don't have any weekend plans, except to get to the post office to mail a package. What about you?