What I Watched: March 2019

I didn't watch this movie or read this book (now available in French!!) !in March. But I sure look great and sound brilliant in the bonus feature interview.

 Not a gigantic list, but nearly as much viewing as January and February combined.

1. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Kim is an avid listener to NPR. She listens on her commutes, while cooking, while working out--if Kim was as obsessive as I was about listing and categorizing all of the media she consumes, it would likely be an extensive list of NPR podcasts and programming. And I'm very thankful for this, because she has clued me in to a number of life-enhancing books, programs, and recordings. She became interested in this Netflix show after hearing an interview with Samin Nosrat, the host and author of a book of the same name. Ms. Nosrat's enthusiasm for food and cooking, and her delight in the people that share similar passions, is certainly infectious, and we watched the first three shows on successive Sunday mornings with coffee and crepes. The crepe pan is one of the best gifts I ever bought me I mean Kim.  Maybe we will watch Heat  in April.

2.The VVitch--Director's commentary.
I loved The VVitch when I first saw it and like to watch the director commentaries of movies I love (and sometimes movies I hate), usually finding the experience enlightening and inspiring, especially if the director goes into the particulars of creative choices they made.

3. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Like many Xers I grew up watching Mr. Rogers and a great deal of Public Television. The Electric Company, Zoom, Sesame Street, New Zoo Review--and my somewhat obscure favorite, Thinkabout. I was fortunate as a fourth or fifth grader to have been selected to participate in the Montville School District's Enrichment program, and once a week would pile on a bus with the other so-called "gifted and talented" kids to go to another school crosstown (the one where all the tough kids went). Those sessions ran until around dinnertime, and despite (ok, because of) the extra schooling, those classes were some of the happiest moments of my grade 4-8 years. I recall in the first year of the program we would gather around a television to watch Thinkabout and then discuss the moral and educational implications of the topics presented. I didn't remember much of Thinkabout's content when I got older (not even after buying some bootleg copies of the show off eBay--I am really, really weird), but I could remember every pixel and note of the show's opening, which I would visualize and hum during the many stressful moments of the rest of my schooling:

Looking back, it is clear Thinkabout's Liquid Len-ish opening spurred my pervasive and enduring love of Hawkwind.

I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor with Kim and learned a few things--I had no idea Fred tried to do a show aimed at adults, for example. Spoiler: this isn't an exposé, so those hoping Mr. Rogers turns out to be a child-hating fiend will be sorely disappointed. And the clip of him appearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications should be watched by anyone who...well, anyone who communicates, really. If only political/economic/ point of view disagreements today could be solved with such grace and aplomb. I think the clip in the movie is truncated; you can watch the whole testimony here:

4. Colette
I watched this on the plane to Seattle and really enjoyed it; I love Paris and the Paris period scenes (I am writing this now to distract myself from the heartbreaking news coverage of Notre Dame in flames) as well as those set in the French countryside. I also like Keira Knightly and Dominic West, and found many things interesting about the film, most especially the idea that Colette was writing for Willy's syndicate under his name when she started her professional career. I wasn't aware of the history prior to starting the film (woefully ignorant on French literature, sadly), but it seemed as though some synchronicity was involved, as I started the film to take a break from reading Girl Sleuth, Nancy Drew and the Women that Created Her. 


The universe has spoken; I now shall create a writing syndicate. Applications welcome, no prior experience necessary.

5. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season Two: Episodes 1-8 
I looooove this show. We didn't watch the final two episodes until April, so I will reserve my comments attempting to articulate why I love this show and this season until next month.

And as always, I will encourage you to buy one or several of my books, you can find them HERE

Only one of these is a movie. So far.

Terrible/Beautiful Synchronicity

I posted about Hawkwind yesterday, and my post title a few days ago was taken from an album title of theirs. My obsessions, especially the obsessions that run over the course of my lifetime, can grip me intensely for days if not weeks, so of course I was listening to Hawkwind again today (Space Ritual, what a classic). This led to clicking around the Internet to research various minutia about the band, albums, and songs. One jaunt through Wikipedia brought me to Barney Bubbles, who designed the distinctive cover of Space Ritual and a run of Hawkwind's psych/proggy album art. Barney, or Colin Fulcher, was a graphic designer responsible for a great deal of iconic album art in the seventies--he was art director for Stiff Records in 1977, among other things. An interesting and creative guy who unfortunately took his own life in 1983 at the age of forty-one.

All of which I learned about fifteen minutes ago. The terrible synchronicity part comes in because today, November 14th, is the 35th anniversary of his suicide.

Why did the universe conspire to send me surfing through the Internet to find and learn about Barney on the anniversary of his death? I've no idea. Coincidences, serendipities, and synchronicities like this seem to happen  regularly to me. Of course, the tendency to attach weight and import to events and occurrences that most likely are just random happenstance in likely a common affliction of writers, or these intersections loom large simply because one is attuned to them, or they have a greater likelihood of happening to someone who is constantly absorbing and sifting through vast amounts of information, trivial and otherwise, like most writers do.

I'm thankful for these strange moments. I find them both comforting and unsettling, which, I now realize, is probably my favorite state of being, especially when I'm trying to write. Space is deep.

So thank you, Barney, on the anniversary of your tragic end, for the art that you left behind. 

Learn about Mr. Bubbles HERE