Stuart Page's Blog
April 17, 2023
Romance in a World of Death-Goo
Wrote this short story in 2020. It didn't really come together in the end, but it did poke fun at the service industry, and it did have a polyamarous romance between three men and a death goo in chapter 3, so. Look. I'm selling if you're buying. Just stuff the notes into my little fist, stroke my hair, and tell me I've been a good boy.
Listen to Hymie's Basement. Buy a flower for yourself. This is chapter 1.
Romance in a World of Death Goo
1
Ric was not afraid of the goo. He was not afraid of the goo like he was not afraid of the flu. Sometimes it got you. Sometimes you died. And Ric was not afraid to die. Yet…
He looked about him at the interior of Dwell. He observed, as one gazes upon a rotting house plant, the coat hangers climbing the walls, the empty flower vases on the coffee tables, and the backwards tilt of the wooden service bar behind which he stood. Ric was not afraid to die, but he was afraid of this dying place, of what it meant for a business to fail under one’s unerring watch. That fear was sweat in his hands and tremors in his chest. “You can dust the lightbulbs if you’re after a job,” he told Creep, who was currently polishing and repolishing a small fruit knife. “I’m off for a smoke.”
“Don’t die.”
It was ten degrees out. The morning sun filtered through brushstroke leaves of brown, orange, and yellow, illuminating gently the cool grey pavements and the bonnets of abandoned vehicles that framed the dark road. There was none of the traffic that had once set this town apart from its neighbours. None of the colour, noise, or consumption that was so indicative of a healthy tourist trap. There was goo on the road. It looked, for a moment, like people.
Ric took a drag of his cigarette.
An hour later, Dwell received its first customers of the day: a group of teenagers wearing splash protection suits, variously coloured, the logo of a nearby private school emblazoned proudly on the fronts in brilliant gold. They ordered crude drinks: lattes with sweet syrups, a mocha with whipped cream, and a milkshake made with chocolate biscuits. Ric’s expensive and exciting rotation of Ethiopian coffee was as valued by his customers as he was by his ex-wife, which is to say that they could not have cared less, and he was mostly done trying to persuade them.
“If I shit anymore, my guts are gonna fall out,” Creep complained loudly, returning from Dwell’s single toilet with a flat expression.
“Have you seen Jessie today?” Ric asked.
“Got goo’d,” Creep said.
“Huh?”
“She got goo’d, didn’t she?”
Ric clicked his tongue. “Millennials. Always becoming goo.”
Creep sat gingerly upon a stool at the end of the bar and grimaced. He was stick thin and had not received a haircut in months. He looked like somebody you might find in the woods. “You think I ate something bad? No-one else is sick. None of the boys, at least. Do you have diarrhoea?”
“No.”
“You’re not supposed to work with food when you have diarrhoea, right?”
“Well, I’m letting you work anyway because you need the money,” Ric said. “Now wash your hands.”
“I already did.”
“Once more for good luck.”
Creep grumbled something contrary, but nonetheless rinsed his small hands in the bar sink. The teenagers finished their drinks, paid up, and left. Empty once more, Dwell resumed its financial bleed-out; Ric pressed his palms firmly against the sides of the cash register as if this might seal the wound.
There must be something, he thought. Some idea not yet caught in the fishnet of his mind. “A money saver. A money earner. Anything…”
“Lottery tickets,” Creep replied. “You could win two-hundred and fifty big ones. We could all sit around the radio with our fingers crossed. We could share it.”
Ric huffed lowly. “Clean the drainpipes out back. Make yourself useful.”
“Seriously?”
“Don’t die.”
It took most of the rest of the day for Ric to properly hear what Creep had said to him. It came as he was examining a bruised apple, which shared a wire bowl with strawberries not yet visibly mouldy. And then it took but seconds to sift out the good idea from the bad, the radio from the lottery. “Kit,” he said, sticking his head over the swinging saloon doors and into the kitchen. Kit was hunched over a road map that lay spread out against the pristine floor. She appeared to be drawing on it. She looked up with pink cheeks, raised a hand to stabilise the black beret atop her head, was startled as if by the headlights of a vehicle.
“It’s not what it…”
“I don’t care,” Ric said. “I have to run an errand. Hold the fort, will you? And keep an eye on Creep. If he's not being a pain in my neck, he's being a pain in somebody else's.” Ric exited Dwell with a great enthusiasm and hurried up the street to his truck, looking backwards not once.
It was generally inadvisable to go out before dark without a protective suit, as the goo hunted by daylight, but the fire of Ric’s realisation burned so brightly that it seemed to him a bubble. One that could not be penetrated by danger, disease, or death. And he was, at least for the time being, safe; he slipped uncontested into his truck and set off through the quiet town, passing shop windows that were blacked out by cardboard and pavements that went unused but for the occasional wild animal.
He drove straight until the road forked, then continued along tight country lanes and off-road through a patch of woodland until the old radio station finally came into view. He parked before it. There was only one other vehicle present, but it looked not to have been moved in a long time. Thinking little of this, Ric reached into his backseat and pulled out a crowbar. Then he approached the station, where a message, painted upon the single entrance, read, ‘Turn back now. Pray for me.’
Ric did neither.
He sang a little song. He pried open the door. He stepped into the darkness. “Some good old-fashioned advertising will fix everything,” he said to himself, flicking a light switch up and down to no effect. There was movement behind him. He didn’t notice. “Now, then. Where to start?”
Listen to Hymie's Basement. Buy a flower for yourself. This is chapter 1.
Romance in a World of Death Goo
1
Ric was not afraid of the goo. He was not afraid of the goo like he was not afraid of the flu. Sometimes it got you. Sometimes you died. And Ric was not afraid to die. Yet…
He looked about him at the interior of Dwell. He observed, as one gazes upon a rotting house plant, the coat hangers climbing the walls, the empty flower vases on the coffee tables, and the backwards tilt of the wooden service bar behind which he stood. Ric was not afraid to die, but he was afraid of this dying place, of what it meant for a business to fail under one’s unerring watch. That fear was sweat in his hands and tremors in his chest. “You can dust the lightbulbs if you’re after a job,” he told Creep, who was currently polishing and repolishing a small fruit knife. “I’m off for a smoke.”
“Don’t die.”
It was ten degrees out. The morning sun filtered through brushstroke leaves of brown, orange, and yellow, illuminating gently the cool grey pavements and the bonnets of abandoned vehicles that framed the dark road. There was none of the traffic that had once set this town apart from its neighbours. None of the colour, noise, or consumption that was so indicative of a healthy tourist trap. There was goo on the road. It looked, for a moment, like people.
Ric took a drag of his cigarette.
An hour later, Dwell received its first customers of the day: a group of teenagers wearing splash protection suits, variously coloured, the logo of a nearby private school emblazoned proudly on the fronts in brilliant gold. They ordered crude drinks: lattes with sweet syrups, a mocha with whipped cream, and a milkshake made with chocolate biscuits. Ric’s expensive and exciting rotation of Ethiopian coffee was as valued by his customers as he was by his ex-wife, which is to say that they could not have cared less, and he was mostly done trying to persuade them.
“If I shit anymore, my guts are gonna fall out,” Creep complained loudly, returning from Dwell’s single toilet with a flat expression.
“Have you seen Jessie today?” Ric asked.
“Got goo’d,” Creep said.
“Huh?”
“She got goo’d, didn’t she?”
Ric clicked his tongue. “Millennials. Always becoming goo.”
Creep sat gingerly upon a stool at the end of the bar and grimaced. He was stick thin and had not received a haircut in months. He looked like somebody you might find in the woods. “You think I ate something bad? No-one else is sick. None of the boys, at least. Do you have diarrhoea?”
“No.”
“You’re not supposed to work with food when you have diarrhoea, right?”
“Well, I’m letting you work anyway because you need the money,” Ric said. “Now wash your hands.”
“I already did.”
“Once more for good luck.”
Creep grumbled something contrary, but nonetheless rinsed his small hands in the bar sink. The teenagers finished their drinks, paid up, and left. Empty once more, Dwell resumed its financial bleed-out; Ric pressed his palms firmly against the sides of the cash register as if this might seal the wound.
There must be something, he thought. Some idea not yet caught in the fishnet of his mind. “A money saver. A money earner. Anything…”
“Lottery tickets,” Creep replied. “You could win two-hundred and fifty big ones. We could all sit around the radio with our fingers crossed. We could share it.”
Ric huffed lowly. “Clean the drainpipes out back. Make yourself useful.”
“Seriously?”
“Don’t die.”
It took most of the rest of the day for Ric to properly hear what Creep had said to him. It came as he was examining a bruised apple, which shared a wire bowl with strawberries not yet visibly mouldy. And then it took but seconds to sift out the good idea from the bad, the radio from the lottery. “Kit,” he said, sticking his head over the swinging saloon doors and into the kitchen. Kit was hunched over a road map that lay spread out against the pristine floor. She appeared to be drawing on it. She looked up with pink cheeks, raised a hand to stabilise the black beret atop her head, was startled as if by the headlights of a vehicle.
“It’s not what it…”
“I don’t care,” Ric said. “I have to run an errand. Hold the fort, will you? And keep an eye on Creep. If he's not being a pain in my neck, he's being a pain in somebody else's.” Ric exited Dwell with a great enthusiasm and hurried up the street to his truck, looking backwards not once.
It was generally inadvisable to go out before dark without a protective suit, as the goo hunted by daylight, but the fire of Ric’s realisation burned so brightly that it seemed to him a bubble. One that could not be penetrated by danger, disease, or death. And he was, at least for the time being, safe; he slipped uncontested into his truck and set off through the quiet town, passing shop windows that were blacked out by cardboard and pavements that went unused but for the occasional wild animal.
He drove straight until the road forked, then continued along tight country lanes and off-road through a patch of woodland until the old radio station finally came into view. He parked before it. There was only one other vehicle present, but it looked not to have been moved in a long time. Thinking little of this, Ric reached into his backseat and pulled out a crowbar. Then he approached the station, where a message, painted upon the single entrance, read, ‘Turn back now. Pray for me.’
Ric did neither.
He sang a little song. He pried open the door. He stepped into the darkness. “Some good old-fashioned advertising will fix everything,” he said to himself, flicking a light switch up and down to no effect. There was movement behind him. He didn’t notice. “Now, then. Where to start?”
January 6, 2022
Hotel Dusk//Living in a Hotel
Can a hotel become a home? I ask this question of the three employees of Hotel Dusk, a rundown motel in the desert, and they each give me their own take on the matter. Dunning, sharp-eyed, muscular, tight-lipped, the owner of the establishment, rubs his chin thoughtfully. “Well, the hotel is a liminal space, of course,” he tells me over a glass of bourbon. It is of excellent quality. He prides himself on the spirits he keeps in-house. This is telling, though I don’t immediately realise it. “You’re in-between here and there, home and not home. Isn’t that right? Like an airport, it can’t be comfortable for very long, though I can give you more than a bench to sleep on." He smiles. "That’s something, ain’t it?”
The jukebox is playing a jazzy little number I don’t recognise. It plays for over ten minutes before the handsome bartender, Louis, switches something livelier on. Dunning gets to his feet, and reverses this decision. The pair get into an argument, and the bartender exits. Dunning continues, “A hotel becoming a home… You can sit in your favourite armchair and watch the game all you like, know your way up and down the hotel corridors with your eyes closed, but for as long as you’re here, you’re still in-between point A and point B. There’s no fooling yourself. It’s a hotel. That’s the point. You’re A-, or B+, maybe, depending on the quality of the food. Of course, we’re the former, here. Tell that to your readers, won't cha?” Dunning smiles, then he makes his way behind the bar, and suddenly he’s pouring me a drink, and examining the reflection of the overhead lights in the glass bottle. He continues, "what I should say is, and I don’t like to say it, but it’s true, living in a hotel is like being in purgatory. You’re waiting, waiting, waiting. I’m waiting…”
“What for?”
“Hmph.” He crosses his arms, and looks at me like a door locked shut. “I don’t have to be waiting for anything. Sometimes, people sit under bus shelters because they’re cold. They don’t have to be waitin’ for a ride."
Rosa is the maid and the cook. She has a big smile, and even bigger arms. She is charming yet intimidating, like a mother of five. She hasn’t stopped working all day. Even now, so late in the evening, she interrupts our conversation to dust a shelf with a duster that she pulls out of nowhere. “What happens to a person when their work becomes their life… That’s what you’re really asking, isn’t that right? You can’t fool me,” she says with a wide smile. “Well, you could go ahead and ask any banker, manager, troubled artist, anybody, any adult across the states who doesn’t know when to take a holiday, rather than me.”
“Most people don’t usually live where they work,” I say.
“Oh, but they do,” Rosa counters. “Maybe not physically, but do these people ever clock out of the office of the mind? Well, I do. Living here has nothing to do with it. I work long hours, though as soon as I return to my room, I’m as good as gone. I’m the opposite of an over-worker. You won’t catch me doing overtime. By the time midnight comes around, I’ve left the hotel, figuratively speaking, and you won't catch me here until sunrise. Yes sir. That’s Rosa. A free lady. No doubt.”
Louis doesn’t return to his station behind the bar until both Rosa and Dunning have left for the night. We chatter about little nothings until the time falls away. We share a couple of drinks. When I finally ask him the same question I asked of his senior colleagues, he only laughs. “Come with me a minute," he says. I follow him into a dimly lit corridor. We are somewhere behind the kitchen, opposite a laundry room. He lets me into what appears to be a teenager’s basement hangout. It is his bedroom. Louis' own personal slice of the hotel pie. Posters of scantily clad women decorate the grey walls. Cigarette packets litter the bedside table, beside a large radio. A cardboard box waits in the corner, as if Louis is moving in, or moving out. “Do you prefer your one night stands at home, or in hotel rooms?” he asks me.
“What’s the difference?”
He smirks. “At home, you gotta clean the sheets afterwards. In a hotel, though, you pay some loser a dime to do it for you.” Without another word, we remove each other’s clothes. He presses me up against one of the cold walls, kisses me up and down my jawline, my neck, and my collar, then he bends me tenderly out of shape on his unmade, single bed. When we’re done completing each other, he wipes us down and changes the sheets, then he holds me tightly beneath his fresh bed covers and asks, softly, for a tip. He laughs. I laugh.
I’m sure all of this is an answer to my question, in some small way, but I am unable to say for certain what that answer is. This hotel…
For a second, I almost feel at home.
The jukebox is playing a jazzy little number I don’t recognise. It plays for over ten minutes before the handsome bartender, Louis, switches something livelier on. Dunning gets to his feet, and reverses this decision. The pair get into an argument, and the bartender exits. Dunning continues, “A hotel becoming a home… You can sit in your favourite armchair and watch the game all you like, know your way up and down the hotel corridors with your eyes closed, but for as long as you’re here, you’re still in-between point A and point B. There’s no fooling yourself. It’s a hotel. That’s the point. You’re A-, or B+, maybe, depending on the quality of the food. Of course, we’re the former, here. Tell that to your readers, won't cha?” Dunning smiles, then he makes his way behind the bar, and suddenly he’s pouring me a drink, and examining the reflection of the overhead lights in the glass bottle. He continues, "what I should say is, and I don’t like to say it, but it’s true, living in a hotel is like being in purgatory. You’re waiting, waiting, waiting. I’m waiting…”
“What for?”
“Hmph.” He crosses his arms, and looks at me like a door locked shut. “I don’t have to be waiting for anything. Sometimes, people sit under bus shelters because they’re cold. They don’t have to be waitin’ for a ride."
Rosa is the maid and the cook. She has a big smile, and even bigger arms. She is charming yet intimidating, like a mother of five. She hasn’t stopped working all day. Even now, so late in the evening, she interrupts our conversation to dust a shelf with a duster that she pulls out of nowhere. “What happens to a person when their work becomes their life… That’s what you’re really asking, isn’t that right? You can’t fool me,” she says with a wide smile. “Well, you could go ahead and ask any banker, manager, troubled artist, anybody, any adult across the states who doesn’t know when to take a holiday, rather than me.”
“Most people don’t usually live where they work,” I say.
“Oh, but they do,” Rosa counters. “Maybe not physically, but do these people ever clock out of the office of the mind? Well, I do. Living here has nothing to do with it. I work long hours, though as soon as I return to my room, I’m as good as gone. I’m the opposite of an over-worker. You won’t catch me doing overtime. By the time midnight comes around, I’ve left the hotel, figuratively speaking, and you won't catch me here until sunrise. Yes sir. That’s Rosa. A free lady. No doubt.”
Louis doesn’t return to his station behind the bar until both Rosa and Dunning have left for the night. We chatter about little nothings until the time falls away. We share a couple of drinks. When I finally ask him the same question I asked of his senior colleagues, he only laughs. “Come with me a minute," he says. I follow him into a dimly lit corridor. We are somewhere behind the kitchen, opposite a laundry room. He lets me into what appears to be a teenager’s basement hangout. It is his bedroom. Louis' own personal slice of the hotel pie. Posters of scantily clad women decorate the grey walls. Cigarette packets litter the bedside table, beside a large radio. A cardboard box waits in the corner, as if Louis is moving in, or moving out. “Do you prefer your one night stands at home, or in hotel rooms?” he asks me.
“What’s the difference?”
He smirks. “At home, you gotta clean the sheets afterwards. In a hotel, though, you pay some loser a dime to do it for you.” Without another word, we remove each other’s clothes. He presses me up against one of the cold walls, kisses me up and down my jawline, my neck, and my collar, then he bends me tenderly out of shape on his unmade, single bed. When we’re done completing each other, he wipes us down and changes the sheets, then he holds me tightly beneath his fresh bed covers and asks, softly, for a tip. He laughs. I laugh.
I’m sure all of this is an answer to my question, in some small way, but I am unable to say for certain what that answer is. This hotel…
For a second, I almost feel at home.
December 3, 2021
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (and being hungry for cheeseburgers)
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a relatively short yet re-playable game about how far friendships can be stretched, how many beatings a man can take, and how we stack the deck against ourselves and pretend not to notice.
This game pushes Ringo into a poverty-induced whirlpool of violence and crime, as the only way to afford food in the early game (apart from when your friend, seemingly at random, shells out for you) is by either beating the yen right out of other dudes’ pockets, or by opportunistically scavenging coins from the unconscious forms of fallen gang members who you just watched get pounded into the dirt. In this way, you become a wild animal, a crow picking at scraps upon city pavements, consuming barely substantial crumbs one fingerful at a time.
Ringo doesn’t have parents. Nobody in the adult world seems especially interested in taking care of him, beyond coaches who, you’ve guessed it, train him to be a better fighter. Ringo’s teacher will present him with lump sums of yen every week if he gets good grades, and he will verbally encourage Ringo, yet this too implicitly rewards those who fight and scavenge on the street; to focus on school and to study effectively at home, Ringo must surely have a full belly, and in order to achieve a full belly, he must roam the city in search of other gang members to steal from. In the early game, I found myself caught in a cycle in which I lost multiple fights in a row, wasted a lot of days recovering in bed, and was always starving. I expected to receive a game over, but it didn't come. Ringo Ishikawa always got back up, no matter how I failed him, no matter how very hungry he claimed to be.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t get into fights. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I certainly wasn’t left to fend for myself, without parents, money, or food—not for any extended period of time, anyway. However, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went through a phase where I struggled to eat. Looking at food made me feel sick. Looking at myself made me feel sick. I replaced breakfast with extra time in bed, which helped ease the sleepless nights. I was recurrently dehydrated. I could eat lunch only on days where I could successfully separate my mind from my mouth and my organs. I had a much easier time with evening meals, though I don’t know why, and not always.
I was hungry a lot. Hungry, and empty.
I remember feeling like I was self-destructing. I often hoped that somebody might jump me on the way home in the dark, like getting into a fight might fix everything, but I wasn’t an initiator, and for whatever reason nobody initiated against me. I had become a ghost, I thought. One night, during the winter, I was looking out at the river that sliced the town in two. I thought about jumping into it from the bridge above. I hoped the shock of the cold might be enough to make me panic and drown. If not, at least it would make me feel something. Suddenly, a man I didn’t know appeared behind me, and said something about it being a nice night. This startled me. I was crying. Silently, I think, though I couldn’t be certain. I tentatively agreed with him. It was a nice night. Freezing cold, crystal clear. I…
Ringo Ishikawa is not a ghost. I don’t believe that he can become depressed. I don’t know if he can starve to death, though I don’t think he can. He can initiate fights and have fights initiated against him. No matter how bad his previous day was, he will sit down at a school bench, if instructed, and read classic literature for you—literature that was, and still is, too intimidating for me to read, regardless of the fullness of my stomach and the health of my bank account, and in spite of my degrees in writing and literature.
All that to say, this game did and did not make me feel like a teenager again.
This game pushes Ringo into a poverty-induced whirlpool of violence and crime, as the only way to afford food in the early game (apart from when your friend, seemingly at random, shells out for you) is by either beating the yen right out of other dudes’ pockets, or by opportunistically scavenging coins from the unconscious forms of fallen gang members who you just watched get pounded into the dirt. In this way, you become a wild animal, a crow picking at scraps upon city pavements, consuming barely substantial crumbs one fingerful at a time.
Ringo doesn’t have parents. Nobody in the adult world seems especially interested in taking care of him, beyond coaches who, you’ve guessed it, train him to be a better fighter. Ringo’s teacher will present him with lump sums of yen every week if he gets good grades, and he will verbally encourage Ringo, yet this too implicitly rewards those who fight and scavenge on the street; to focus on school and to study effectively at home, Ringo must surely have a full belly, and in order to achieve a full belly, he must roam the city in search of other gang members to steal from. In the early game, I found myself caught in a cycle in which I lost multiple fights in a row, wasted a lot of days recovering in bed, and was always starving. I expected to receive a game over, but it didn't come. Ringo Ishikawa always got back up, no matter how I failed him, no matter how very hungry he claimed to be.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t get into fights. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I certainly wasn’t left to fend for myself, without parents, money, or food—not for any extended period of time, anyway. However, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I went through a phase where I struggled to eat. Looking at food made me feel sick. Looking at myself made me feel sick. I replaced breakfast with extra time in bed, which helped ease the sleepless nights. I was recurrently dehydrated. I could eat lunch only on days where I could successfully separate my mind from my mouth and my organs. I had a much easier time with evening meals, though I don’t know why, and not always.
I was hungry a lot. Hungry, and empty.
I remember feeling like I was self-destructing. I often hoped that somebody might jump me on the way home in the dark, like getting into a fight might fix everything, but I wasn’t an initiator, and for whatever reason nobody initiated against me. I had become a ghost, I thought. One night, during the winter, I was looking out at the river that sliced the town in two. I thought about jumping into it from the bridge above. I hoped the shock of the cold might be enough to make me panic and drown. If not, at least it would make me feel something. Suddenly, a man I didn’t know appeared behind me, and said something about it being a nice night. This startled me. I was crying. Silently, I think, though I couldn’t be certain. I tentatively agreed with him. It was a nice night. Freezing cold, crystal clear. I…
Ringo Ishikawa is not a ghost. I don’t believe that he can become depressed. I don’t know if he can starve to death, though I don’t think he can. He can initiate fights and have fights initiated against him. No matter how bad his previous day was, he will sit down at a school bench, if instructed, and read classic literature for you—literature that was, and still is, too intimidating for me to read, regardless of the fullness of my stomach and the health of my bank account, and in spite of my degrees in writing and literature.
All that to say, this game did and did not make me feel like a teenager again.
December 14, 2020
Citizen Kane and Sonic the Hedgehog
I have done it, haven’t I? I have made a clean split from my critical credentials. Abandoned my senses. Tossed myself to the dogs, never to be taken seriously again by film enthusiasts or by the critically minded. And being taken seriously is important to me—I have a lot of opinions, and I like my opinions, and I like when people listen to them. But this one takes the cake.
I watched Citizen Kane (1941) last week. It was one of the two worst film-going experiences of my 2020.
(Yes. I saw Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). No, Sonic the Hedgehog was not one of the two worst movies I saw this year. I kind of dug it, actually.)
The other contender was Venom (2018), which was juvenile, poorly scripted, and blandly filmed. Even over a glass of wine, it was hard to laugh at its pitfalls—and it is the easiest thing in the world to make me laugh over a glass of wine. Seriously. I’m a giggler. (A dancer, too.) And though Venom left me with this itchy annoyance at the bottom of my stomach like a hungry rash, and though it was in many ways an evening wasted, hardly did I fear that I wouldn’t make it to the movie’s credits. Partly, this is because my partner and I play a game where we try to make movies better without introducing significant new elements—so, we allow for structural rearrangement; dialogue cuts, adjustments, and minor additions; shot changes, etc—and this is an especially interesting challenge when the movie is straight up popcorn trash for teenage edge lords. (Cut the first twenty or so minutes. The movie should have started in the store, when the protag seemed to be talking to himself as if unwell, as if paranoid, but then it turned out he was really just talking to a lady in another aisle who works for the antagonist. Like, that would be some hot shit. Also, that was one of the few successful jokes in the film, so you might as well just start with it. Get off on the right foot.) But also, the movie was a dustbin fire that was as entrancing, to me, as it was odious. You want to see how long it will burn for.
My dustbin is plastic. Will it melt? I will have to watch to find out.
Citizen Kane, on the other hand…
Look. I try really hard, these days, to be positive about the media I consume. ‘Here are the things that didn’t work. However, here are the things I took from it and enjoyed about it.’ But, for a variety of reasons, I struggle to be kind to old black and white movies. They make me sleepy. They make me grouchy. (It’s something to do with the audio quality and acting style that I associate with those films, I think. But also, I just love colour, man. Fill my eye holes with that shit. Sunflowers. Grass. White clouds against the blue sky. Yes.) So, Citizen Kane was always going to have a harder time winning me over than newer titles. But hey. I enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird. I loved the black and white scene in Kill Bill. I watched Morocco and didn’t hate that. (Though I did lose interest after the first few scenes. Is it just me or was the beginning the strongest part?) And there are others. So, going into this movie that I knew nothing about (aside from its reputation for being the best movie ever made), I was sure that I would at least like it a little.
…
Of course it’s about a millionaire media mogul. Of course the best movie ever made is about some rich guy.
More on that in a minute…
I want to be kind, to begin with. I appreciate the interesting subject-framing throughout the film. In particular, the scene with young Charlie playing in the snow through a window in the background, while the adults talked about him in the foreground, was aces. I was trying to work out in my head how they choreographed that long take. I tried to visualise what it looked like on the other side of the window—the markings on the ground, the director telling the child what to do and where to stand, the young actor just being a god damn maniac in that (fake?) snow, on top of the world, playing soldier boy—and I was invested in that. I guess I still am, writing about it now. I’m invested in dual watching a scene in this way: observing, imagining, and putting the two together like a jigsaw. A scene like that reveals the director’s hand a little, doesn’t it? You glimpse their intent. You make out the frame of the bigger picture, touch the wood in the dark.
In one scene, there was an old character behind a desk who reminded me of Mr Burns from The Simpsons. I said so to my partner. And then subsequently there manifested a dance and song that I knew from, yes, The Simpsons! (There is a man. A certain man. A man who’s grace and handsome face are known across the land. You know his name… It’s Mr Burns!) Well, hey. That was funny. That was a serous highlight, actually. Though sure, the movie didn’t really earn that as much as it provided the context for a television scene that, even on its own, was already hilarious. Because of course the old working-class employee’s leaving party is all about the old white male millionaire employer. Everything is.
Especially Citizen Kane.
I know. I know. The movie is (surely?) a criticism of the man who had everything and nothing, who filled the gaps in his heart with money and statues, built a mansion around his image like an impenetrable shell, who lost love (though certainly not respect at large) because he couldn’t communicate, perhaps couldn’t even empathise, with the few people who were close to him. He understood not how to keep favour, at first easily earned, without cold hard cash and gifts. So, it is about him, explicitly so, but we’re not supposed to like him. We’re not supposed to want to be him. We’re supposed to learn from him.
…
Then again, he never goes hungry. He seems to be in perfect health (until he dies). He's not discriminated against. He's pretty cool. Pretty classy. Hell, he lives to be quite old, too, and passes away an extremely famous man. He dreamed. His dreams came to be. It can’t all be bad, really, being Citizen Kane. So what are we really learning from him? Perhaps not what was intended.
Let’s look at it a little differently.
Is not the movie a cautionary tale for rich men, about lovers who will use you for your money, and who will complain, 'oh, I don’t see enough of my friends. You’re mean to me,’ from the comfort of the armchair by the grand fireplace you built for them?
Is it not a hero’s journey, a progression from rags to riches (if only by luck)? Is not the viewer supposed to empathise with and support Charles Kane? Are we not supposed to hope that he will get ever richer, make his way to the top of the media pile, and be voted into local office? Are we not supposed to feel a great sadness when he loses that political election due to his romantic scandal, unfairly weaponised against him? Do we not feel sorry for him, even though we knew in advance that it was coming? Are we not supposed to hope that his last word, rosebud, meant something of worth? That it might have given his various, questionable decisions context?
Here’s my take, and I’m sorry it so long to get to the point. I think the audience is supposed to aspire to Kane’s wealth, to subscribe to the theory that if you work hard enough and sacrifice your personal life, then you can really make it. Really, truly make it! Make it so goddamn hard that when you die, and when you whimper some gaseous nonsense from the aging asshole that is your death bed, the whole journalistic world will be lining up to interrogate everybody you ever fucked to find out what that stink meant. It is dressed up, sure, but from start to finish Kane is presented as a misguided protagonist, a beacon of opportunity, and a product of graft, rather than an antagonist of the masses, a liar, and a stubborn brick wall of a man. He is the winning American, harbinger of the American dream, loser in love and hoarder of riches and bedrooms and statues. For every bad thing he does, for every exotic item he collects, the movie whispers, “This is pretty swell, old boy, isn’t it? If only Kane wasn’t such a gosh darn donkey about it, maybe this would be sustainable. Look at that mansion. Look at that parrot! Can you imagine all the good you—yes, you!—could do with this space? With these animals? With this money?”
It’s insidious. The dream hangs over us like a fog, obscuring reality, exploitation, economics. And blind as we are, wandering with our hands outstretched towards wealth invisible yet supposedly attainable, we find ourselves lost, having only ourselves to blame. If only we had worked harder. If only we had been a little more driven. If only we had been a winner.
A winner, like Citizen Kane.
Anyway.
The best movies I saw this year were Parasite (2019), Children of Men (2006), Get Out (2017), Moonlight (2016), and Blue Gate Crossing (2002). The latter, in particular, was an unexpected delight. You heard it here first: these five movies are better than Citizen Kane!
So, too, is Sonic the Hedgehog. No-one is more surprised than me. (I don't know if this is a joke or not.)
I watched Citizen Kane (1941) last week. It was one of the two worst film-going experiences of my 2020.
(Yes. I saw Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). No, Sonic the Hedgehog was not one of the two worst movies I saw this year. I kind of dug it, actually.)
The other contender was Venom (2018), which was juvenile, poorly scripted, and blandly filmed. Even over a glass of wine, it was hard to laugh at its pitfalls—and it is the easiest thing in the world to make me laugh over a glass of wine. Seriously. I’m a giggler. (A dancer, too.) And though Venom left me with this itchy annoyance at the bottom of my stomach like a hungry rash, and though it was in many ways an evening wasted, hardly did I fear that I wouldn’t make it to the movie’s credits. Partly, this is because my partner and I play a game where we try to make movies better without introducing significant new elements—so, we allow for structural rearrangement; dialogue cuts, adjustments, and minor additions; shot changes, etc—and this is an especially interesting challenge when the movie is straight up popcorn trash for teenage edge lords. (Cut the first twenty or so minutes. The movie should have started in the store, when the protag seemed to be talking to himself as if unwell, as if paranoid, but then it turned out he was really just talking to a lady in another aisle who works for the antagonist. Like, that would be some hot shit. Also, that was one of the few successful jokes in the film, so you might as well just start with it. Get off on the right foot.) But also, the movie was a dustbin fire that was as entrancing, to me, as it was odious. You want to see how long it will burn for.
My dustbin is plastic. Will it melt? I will have to watch to find out.
Citizen Kane, on the other hand…
Look. I try really hard, these days, to be positive about the media I consume. ‘Here are the things that didn’t work. However, here are the things I took from it and enjoyed about it.’ But, for a variety of reasons, I struggle to be kind to old black and white movies. They make me sleepy. They make me grouchy. (It’s something to do with the audio quality and acting style that I associate with those films, I think. But also, I just love colour, man. Fill my eye holes with that shit. Sunflowers. Grass. White clouds against the blue sky. Yes.) So, Citizen Kane was always going to have a harder time winning me over than newer titles. But hey. I enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird. I loved the black and white scene in Kill Bill. I watched Morocco and didn’t hate that. (Though I did lose interest after the first few scenes. Is it just me or was the beginning the strongest part?) And there are others. So, going into this movie that I knew nothing about (aside from its reputation for being the best movie ever made), I was sure that I would at least like it a little.
…
Of course it’s about a millionaire media mogul. Of course the best movie ever made is about some rich guy.
More on that in a minute…
I want to be kind, to begin with. I appreciate the interesting subject-framing throughout the film. In particular, the scene with young Charlie playing in the snow through a window in the background, while the adults talked about him in the foreground, was aces. I was trying to work out in my head how they choreographed that long take. I tried to visualise what it looked like on the other side of the window—the markings on the ground, the director telling the child what to do and where to stand, the young actor just being a god damn maniac in that (fake?) snow, on top of the world, playing soldier boy—and I was invested in that. I guess I still am, writing about it now. I’m invested in dual watching a scene in this way: observing, imagining, and putting the two together like a jigsaw. A scene like that reveals the director’s hand a little, doesn’t it? You glimpse their intent. You make out the frame of the bigger picture, touch the wood in the dark.
In one scene, there was an old character behind a desk who reminded me of Mr Burns from The Simpsons. I said so to my partner. And then subsequently there manifested a dance and song that I knew from, yes, The Simpsons! (There is a man. A certain man. A man who’s grace and handsome face are known across the land. You know his name… It’s Mr Burns!) Well, hey. That was funny. That was a serous highlight, actually. Though sure, the movie didn’t really earn that as much as it provided the context for a television scene that, even on its own, was already hilarious. Because of course the old working-class employee’s leaving party is all about the old white male millionaire employer. Everything is.
Especially Citizen Kane.
I know. I know. The movie is (surely?) a criticism of the man who had everything and nothing, who filled the gaps in his heart with money and statues, built a mansion around his image like an impenetrable shell, who lost love (though certainly not respect at large) because he couldn’t communicate, perhaps couldn’t even empathise, with the few people who were close to him. He understood not how to keep favour, at first easily earned, without cold hard cash and gifts. So, it is about him, explicitly so, but we’re not supposed to like him. We’re not supposed to want to be him. We’re supposed to learn from him.
…
Then again, he never goes hungry. He seems to be in perfect health (until he dies). He's not discriminated against. He's pretty cool. Pretty classy. Hell, he lives to be quite old, too, and passes away an extremely famous man. He dreamed. His dreams came to be. It can’t all be bad, really, being Citizen Kane. So what are we really learning from him? Perhaps not what was intended.
Let’s look at it a little differently.
Is not the movie a cautionary tale for rich men, about lovers who will use you for your money, and who will complain, 'oh, I don’t see enough of my friends. You’re mean to me,’ from the comfort of the armchair by the grand fireplace you built for them?
Is it not a hero’s journey, a progression from rags to riches (if only by luck)? Is not the viewer supposed to empathise with and support Charles Kane? Are we not supposed to hope that he will get ever richer, make his way to the top of the media pile, and be voted into local office? Are we not supposed to feel a great sadness when he loses that political election due to his romantic scandal, unfairly weaponised against him? Do we not feel sorry for him, even though we knew in advance that it was coming? Are we not supposed to hope that his last word, rosebud, meant something of worth? That it might have given his various, questionable decisions context?
Here’s my take, and I’m sorry it so long to get to the point. I think the audience is supposed to aspire to Kane’s wealth, to subscribe to the theory that if you work hard enough and sacrifice your personal life, then you can really make it. Really, truly make it! Make it so goddamn hard that when you die, and when you whimper some gaseous nonsense from the aging asshole that is your death bed, the whole journalistic world will be lining up to interrogate everybody you ever fucked to find out what that stink meant. It is dressed up, sure, but from start to finish Kane is presented as a misguided protagonist, a beacon of opportunity, and a product of graft, rather than an antagonist of the masses, a liar, and a stubborn brick wall of a man. He is the winning American, harbinger of the American dream, loser in love and hoarder of riches and bedrooms and statues. For every bad thing he does, for every exotic item he collects, the movie whispers, “This is pretty swell, old boy, isn’t it? If only Kane wasn’t such a gosh darn donkey about it, maybe this would be sustainable. Look at that mansion. Look at that parrot! Can you imagine all the good you—yes, you!—could do with this space? With these animals? With this money?”
It’s insidious. The dream hangs over us like a fog, obscuring reality, exploitation, economics. And blind as we are, wandering with our hands outstretched towards wealth invisible yet supposedly attainable, we find ourselves lost, having only ourselves to blame. If only we had worked harder. If only we had been a little more driven. If only we had been a winner.
A winner, like Citizen Kane.
Anyway.
The best movies I saw this year were Parasite (2019), Children of Men (2006), Get Out (2017), Moonlight (2016), and Blue Gate Crossing (2002). The latter, in particular, was an unexpected delight. You heard it here first: these five movies are better than Citizen Kane!
So, too, is Sonic the Hedgehog. No-one is more surprised than me. (I don't know if this is a joke or not.)
December 4, 2020
multi-tasking (writing and social media)
I am not very good at multi-tasking. That’s not to say I’m especially good at single tasking. I’m not. (I have a tendency to hyper-fixate and burn out or else procrastinate and produce nothing.) But multi-tasking is a big challenge for me. I should specify that I can do the simple things: pull a shot of espresso while a teapot fills with boiling water, smile while I take your order, etc. So that is one of my jobs taken care of. However, maintaining a social media presence while writing...these tasks are removed from each other like two lovers sharing a video call. One talks about themselves too much. The other spends too much time masturbating.
I am getting off track.
(Or am I?)
How do you do it? And what exactly should you be doing? Spend an hour scanning and replying to tweets when you could be reading and learning from books in your chosen field? For that matter, how do you spend time reading relevant books when you must also read from literary magazines in advance of submitting pieces to them? And how do you spend time reading literary magazines when your energy is spent so fretfully writing in the hopes that you will finally produce something desirable? How do you develop an audience as a writer, online, when you cannot publish pieces on your blogs and profiles for risk that magazine editors, at a later submission date, will refuse those works for their taken virginity? And of course, how can you justify upping your magazine submission output, in the hopes of something slipping through the slender cracks, when so many groups require payment for each submission?
Do you ever get the sense that you’re performing free labour and then begging people to accept it? I’ve never asked myself this in such terms before. Have you? Are we each other’s competition? How do you feel about that?
I’m very tired.
I am afraid of most people.
I wrote a musical this year in my downtime. Does anybody want to hear it?
…
<3 <3 <3
I am getting off track.
(Or am I?)
How do you do it? And what exactly should you be doing? Spend an hour scanning and replying to tweets when you could be reading and learning from books in your chosen field? For that matter, how do you spend time reading relevant books when you must also read from literary magazines in advance of submitting pieces to them? And how do you spend time reading literary magazines when your energy is spent so fretfully writing in the hopes that you will finally produce something desirable? How do you develop an audience as a writer, online, when you cannot publish pieces on your blogs and profiles for risk that magazine editors, at a later submission date, will refuse those works for their taken virginity? And of course, how can you justify upping your magazine submission output, in the hopes of something slipping through the slender cracks, when so many groups require payment for each submission?
Do you ever get the sense that you’re performing free labour and then begging people to accept it? I’ve never asked myself this in such terms before. Have you? Are we each other’s competition? How do you feel about that?
I’m very tired.
I am afraid of most people.
I wrote a musical this year in my downtime. Does anybody want to hear it?
…
<3 <3 <3
