I Am Watching Things
and feeling obnoxious about it
Happy New Year, if you’re into that sort of thing. I am writing to you, loyal readership, to address the question I’m sure has been burning at the forefront of your minds during my writerly silence: what, if not creating and proliferating Substack entries, has Calla been doing with her time?
FAQ
1. What have you been writing lately?
Records of my sleeping habits and reminders to myself to buy more bone broth.
2. Why?
I read on Twitter that if you drink a lot of bone broth every day your face sucks your nasolabial folds back into itself and that sounded a lot cheaper and saner than getting filler as a 23-year-old.
3. No but like why not anything else?
I’m tired.
4. Why?
I don’t sleep enough and when I do it doesn’t work.
5. Why?
I don’t know.
6. Have you tried melatonin/magnesium glycinate/chamomile tea/L-theanine/benzos/exercise/meditation/acupuncture/CBT-I/weed/CBD/lavender pillow spray/cutting out caffeine/not looking at screens-
Yes. I have no notes on most of these except for that they don’t work, though I’m not sure I can fully claim to have “done” acupuncture since the one time I had an appointment I almost managed to faint while lying down completely flat for the second time in my life. All I got for my troubles (and money) was an admonition that “even babies” usually tolerate having needles sticking out of their skulls and a consolation massage which mostly consisted of the lady who called me worse than a baby squeezing my buttcheeks, which is something I do not mind but usually does not help me sleep. In any case, I certainly “tried” it.
My notes on cutting out caffeine and not looking at screens are that they also did not help me sleep, but did make me a lot less enthusiastic about being awake, so I could see how one might confuse the two.
7. Okay so what have you been doing?
Going to work (mostly), being sickly, eating food, and watching things.
8. What have you been watching?
I am so glad you asked and now I shall tell you. Spoilers ahead.
Sex and The City (for the third or fourth time)
I really don’t have anything to add to the discourse around this, which is…well-trodden to say the least. To hit on the most popular points:
Do you think Carrie sucks?
Yes but probably not more than you if you’re going to be really objective with yourself, and that is why she is a compelling character. See: Emily Nussbaum piece on how Carrie is an anti-heroine whose sins of infidelity and being way too into expensive shoes deserve the level of cultural reverence usually reserved for the likes of Don Draper and Tony Soprano, who are not that into shoes but are way more into cheating, but, crucially, are also men. Man x (infidelity – shoes) = Carrie-level evil.
Which one are you?
Obviously a Carrie-Miranda hybrid. This is decidedly not taking the reboot into account.
What about the episodes with bad politics?
So true.
Saltburn
I do not like this movie. I had to keep watching it because it made me care about what happened next, but only with suspense, which is cheap and insulting. The shots were well-composed and the editing was mostly really good (I am a sucker for dialogue over a montage), but this actually irritated me more than if they were mediocre because I could feel how Saltburn was both angling to be plastered all over Twitter and trying to trick me into thinking it was a good movie in real time--the sexual freakery in particular read as contrived and pandering to members of Gen Z whose libidinal practice consists mainly of posting things.
The Farleigh character felt redundant and I do not think it said anything interesting about race, class, or psychology, but instead followed a bastardized yet now culturally legible Parasite-meets-The Menu formula to seem like it was. The performances also fell flat to me, except, surprisingly, for Jacob Elordi’s. This was disappointing, for I enjoyed Barry Keoghan as a horny simpleton in The Banshees of Inisherin.
Succession
After three years I decided I have finally run out of the energy required to try to make people stop trying to convince me to watch Succession. I am in the middle of Season 2, and while I think the characters, performances, and molecular-level dialogue are usually fantastic, I have been unable to make myself care about the business parts, which is kind of unfortunate since those parts have comprised at least half of the screentime up to this point. The last two episodes have also stretched the limits of my belief as far as the collective tolerance for business violence within the Succession-verse would go, (see: boar on the floor, Greg getting pelted with water bottles), but they do seem to be onto something about effective conflict resolution strategies if nothing else.
Metropolitan
It’s just people talking, and they don’t even talk differently from each other. It should be boring but I love it. Whenever I consume ‘80s media, I’ve increasingly been feeling that the decade seems to have had its own fully-formed dialect and syntax that sprung from nothingness and returned to it just as readily—would be interested to hear what a Gen-X elder would have to say about this.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is unlike anything I have watched before and my artistic critique of it feels about as useful as one I could provide of The Epic of Gilgamesh, but it was certainly interesting even if primarily as a cultural artifact. It is also my feeling that humanity can always use another cautionary tale about how being too horny can make you die.
And…that is the thought I shall leave you with.