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Finished S4 of Better Call Saul. In theory there’s a S5 coming next year. For just a minute KW and Jimmy are on the same page about heists and they are glorious together. But then he hits a spot where people around him claim to want sincerity but actually want him to lie, where he is punished for following the rules. And so he decides to tell them the lie they want. To be the person they insist he should be. That Chuck always was, though he couldn’t admit it. KW goes for the lie too. She wants it to be true. She sees how there was a point where it might have been true, but how Jimmy was pushed past it into the space where he has to hate it. Where he decides the only sustainable option is to not care. It’s so hard to see him close to something great and forced away by a world that chosen a role for him. It’s so hard to see how the life he was handed kept him from ever feeling safe enough to live the one he wanted. I don’t mean to describe him as lacking agency – there were things he could do to control his reaction. But I can see why being punished for your sincerity and grief and compliance makes burning it down feel like the only option.
This weekend I watched most of Before Sunrise (1995), at least up to the point where Shanda sees the third act developing and was triggered to sleep. It’s a slice-of-life movie like a lot of other Linklater films. It’s very 90s, from the glacial interstitials (which you’d think would be beautiful given the setting, but are just meh), to the ribbed shirt under a low-back sundress, to the public lockers.
The plot involved Ethan Hawke being aggrieved by a romantic interest off-screen and then taking it out on some woman he meets on a train. He feeds her lines, negs her, insults everyone they meet, and she mostly responds with “Te he” like it’s all a joke. As the title implies they will part in the morning and so I try to read it as the ranting philosophy of someone venting to bar patrons, but it’s easy to read as intentional manipulation played against someone we made vulnerable and continue to isolate. It’s bad behavior even if it’s unintentional, and I hope it wasn’t part of a plan by people involved with the production to practice this scam in Vienna while they shot a movie.
In any case, Ethan Frome wanders down back alleys at night in a city foreign to them both and attempts to seduce a woman he doesn’t really like, often while riding public transportation. There are some impressive steadycam shots. Big scenes in a running tram, an over the should pull to background where the camrea and new subject walk alternate halves of a circle to switch places. Not super uncommon today but good for the 1900s and one of the better shots in the movie. There are actually two more of these with all the same people: Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), set 10 and 20 years in the future, fulfilling the promise made in dialog in the opening scene. I’m not a big fan of this movie because of the unhealthy romantic plot but I’m sort of interested to see what Linklater did to make it keep going.
More medical appointments today for Shanda. Got a few more recommendations about how to keep the process going, instead of waiting another month or so. And got sort of speculative orders for an MRI so we can start fighting with the insurance company about actually having it, so that we don’t have to wait another month after neural ophthalmology finally gets to us. It continues to be very frustrating but it’s good to make progress. Also got some medication for migraines, which may or may not help with actual migraines but will at least help you admit they are happening sometimes.
Got a letter from M, which makes me want to skip in concept alone. We used to have letters. Not a lot but enough to let me see past the sunglasses sometimes. Enough to make me start Screeding. For lots of reasons we fell down to tacos and for a while it was just the power of my will holding open a channel. But I managed not to get stuck there and today I got a letter and I can’t help but brag about it.
Did almost none work. I was tired in the morning and had appointments with Shanda in the afternoon. Mostly it worked out though because most of the bits I had planned became irrelevant throughout the day. My delayed BZ project needs to bubble back up this week but it looks like I will be able to ramp down the critical response so hopefully that balances out. I’ve still got one SR from last week and I tried two queue days this week for coverage on my vacation. It’s always a crap shoot trading queue days but with a little luck this will mean I’m totally free from work by the time my vacation starts.
Talked at DerbyK. Full-on ranted even, after I finished Invisible Punk Unicorns. As I guess might be expected I had a big backlog. We haven’t had a chance to actually connect yet but it was good to get started. I’m trying to get myself worked back up to real-time processing after several weeks with other priorities. I feel like I’m making progress though. I also got a letter off to M and one I’ve been chewing on for a while to FB. I don’t know FB’s will hit, and I feel a little like I waited 3 years to long to send it, but it’s done now. And it made me do the research I needed to accomplish the other 11 notes I’ve been ignoring all month.
Training Dog. Less barks.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.