Gone fishin’
Cuz what else is there to do when the world floods?
Today’s email will be especially exciting for you, because you’ll learn that I won’t be bothering you for a week.
As you’re no doubt tired of hearing, I have a show coming up next week. If I’ve learned one thing getting older, it’s that I’m worse than ever at doing five things at once. At this point, I can reliably 1) Keep myself marginally healthy, 2) Be present for my family, 3) Do the sort of work that will earn me money, and 4) Focus on one significant creative pursuit. Since number 4 this week will be the show, I’m putting The Jeff Stream on pause rather than add a fatal 5.
I had intended to write this message at my usual time this morning, but surprise - New York City is flooded! I miss when I lived on the third floor, where I could look down and scoff upon the drowning masses as if I were Mr. Old Testament God. Instead, we now have doors that open up to a sunken terrace that took on several inches of buildup today, threatening to spill into the room where I keep all my books. It drained eventually, but before that I got to spend some quality time bailing out the shower into the sink when water started gushing up from the drain.
Anyway, you’re spared from incisive commentary like this until I come back from my self-imposed hiatus on Wednesday, October 11. Try not to miss me too hard!
Meanwhile, I’ll spend a couple of paragraphs explaining why I’m so tired I might walk into a wall…
Last week I traveled for work - a very rare occurrence these days - and even though I was only gone for three days, it took me at least that long to recover. (That’s why I have so many movies to report below - I didn’t have the zip to do much else.) I wasn’t in California long enough to adjust to the time difference, but after giving into a karaoke experience, I blew up my sleep schedule anyway.
Then, this week, also for work, I virtually attended a series of international events based in Australia, India, and France, for which I either had to stay up very late or wake up very early. It was actually for one of my favorite projects - I’ve spent a couple of months coaching a small group of employee at a major tech company to tell their personal stories for a diversity initiative.
This is the second year I’ve done it, and it’s a very powerful experience - these folks, many of whom have never spoken in public before, open up and trust us to help convert some of their most emotional memories into five-minute presentations for a global audience. I’ve helped them talk about things ranging from overcoming rare and debilitating health conditions to growing up in a bloody civil war. We end up becoming very close with these storytellers over a short, intense period of time. And then, after the events themselves - spread out over the course of a week - it’s all over.
I didn’t have much to do during those late nights other than wait for them to go on stage in their respective cities, cheer them on silently, and then let them know afterward what an amazing job they did. But truth be told, it’s almost more exhausting NOT to be there with them in person. Letting go at the end is always the hardest part. But they did great, of course, and I hope I have the opportunity to help out a new group next year.
In any event, here’s the usual nonsense.
BOOKS FINISHED
The Likeness, by Tana French: This is the second book in French’s acclaimed Dublin Murder Squad series of mysteries. These aren’t simple murder mysteries, but more literary works that use the genre as a springboard for complex psychological investigations of character. I was drawn deep into the first volume, In the Woods, which reveled in reversals of expectation and ambiguity in its story of a police detective who had himself in childhood been the lone survivor of a multiple murder. I enjoyed this installment too, but it was harder to suspend my disbelief. I found the essential premise of the undercover case to be inherently impossible - and even once I got past that, the story’s homage to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (one of my favorite books) was so clear and pervasive that I found it challenging to stifle comparison. But the narrator’s voice - the ex-partner of the first book’s narrator - was engaging and believable despite all that, and I’m sure I’ll continue with the series.
Ophelia, by Florence Stevenson: On the other hand, the premise of this ‘60s gothic was SO ridiculous that I was with it every step of the way. The book starts with a pet cat receiving a massive inheritance. When the family lawyer drowns the cat in a wishing well, she mysteriously is transformed to a human, which allows her to plot her revenge. I mean, what’s not to love? Stevenson writes with a finely tuned awareness of the story’s absurdity, and the whole thing goes down much easier than a cat into a well.
Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day, by Dan Nott: I borrowed this nonfiction comic from the library for Dash but highly enjoyed it myself. It’s a wide-ranging, clever, and evocative explanation of the physical systems that keep our society moving, presented with great aplomb and, in its candor about the negative effects of these systems alongside their massive benefits, without the slightest hint of condescension toward the younger readers it’s aimed at. The simple visuals do a great job of distilling highly complex concepts into something that nearly anyone can appreciate, which went a long way to reinforcing my shaky understanding of these crucial things we take for granted every day.
BOOKS STARTED
The Odd Woman and the City, by Vivian Gornick
FILMS
Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980, dir. Sammo Hung): With October around the corner, our viewing habits have begun to veer toward Halloween. When I saw that the Criterion Channel was featuring a “Hopping Vampires of Hong Kong” series, Dash immediately said, “We’re watching that.” This picture jump-started (har har) the genre, with its unique combination of supernatural scares, broad slapstick, and martial arts. A perfectly ludicrous good time.
Making Mr. Right (1987, dir. Susan Seidelman): I remember seeing ads for this back when it came out and thinking, “This looks really weird.” I wasn’t wrong! Seidelman is best known for the Madonna-starring Desperately Seeking Susan, and both films epitomize the 1980s in very different ways. Set in a candy-colored Miami, it’s a screwball comedy starring John Malkovich in a double role as an android and his creator, both of whom receive counsel from a PR rep played by downtown darling Ann Magnuson. (There’s also a great supporting cast including Glenne Headley and a wonderfully unhinged Laurie Metcalf.) It makes great use of a sizable production budget to create a charming paean to the right kind of artifice, which Seidelman is very careful to distinguish from the wrong kind. It’s a very weird, oddly personal film that at nearly every moment had me thinking, “God bless a world that provided a ridiculous money to make this.”
The Raven (1963, dir. Roger Corman): Continuing with the Halloween theme, we wanted to watch at least one of the Corman Poe adaptations before they disappeared from Criterion. This one seems like the loosest of the bunch - not so much an adaptation but an extrapolation of the famous poem, played almost entirely for laughs. Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff take turns trading jibes as dueling 15th-century wizards, with a fresh-faced Jack Nicholson playing the straight man. The perfect piece of candy corn for a rainy Sunday afternoon in the fall.
Talk to you after the break!