The Pitt is Sensational

Rejoice, injury lovers, for we have been blessed with new episodes of The Pitt, and I for one am glad to have the opportunity to see many more bleeding body parts. Yay!

He's back!

Last year I was dazzled and amazed by The Pitt's first season. The ensemble cast are a gorgeous tapestry of personalities, smirking with knowing mirth and/or shaking with nerves. I love the autistic one, Dr. King, an utterly charming geek. I love Dana, the sarcastic yet warm charge nurse. I love Javadi, her eyes wide with fear or narrowed in judgement at all times. I love them all.

Not that there are a lot to choose from, but she is easily my favourite autistic character of all time.

This show was, I thought then, maybe the best-paced TV show I'd ever seen. Each episode covers an hour of the shift, and so the season takes us, minute by minute, through a full twenty-four hours in the ER, and it goes at a breakneck pace.

The sense of urgency and very particular time management is conveyed through extremely tight scenario writing here, and it's impressive. We see the doctors and nurses weave through escalating emergencies and deaths and other surprises with a determined, relentless, unstoppable energy. Triage is an insane, twisted spider web, and our little flies are working themselves loose over and over again. It's incredible.

There are some wonderfully shocking moments that come from both excellent, surprising writing that keeps the viewer on their toes, and perfectly placed visual effects that unceremoniously show you the nasty conditions being dealt with. While much of this is gory and uncomfortable, I love how un-sensational it tends to feel. The human body is a marvel, in all its bloody, pulsing glory.

You are not gonna wanna open up that cast.

All of this great stuff continues into the second season, where we have yet another day to get through. It's main man Robby's last day before a fun little trip, and it's the fourth of July baby!!!! It's America's special day. Anything could happen.

What I immediately love is the way this season crafts the feeling of reunion. Some time has passed in-universe since that awful day that was the first season, and so we see that Whitaker has grown confident and can now instruct a new little man, his own little puppy dog, in the art of being a real, actual doctor.

Whitaker also has the tender start of a mullet forming. Powerful development.

We also see that Langdon's back after a long absence and stint in rehab, and can reunite with his bestie, King.

Aww.

The sense of that time having passed and the dynamics having shifted slightly in the absence of the audience is so well done - it really feels like getting to see old friends after having been away for a while.

And we have, as expected, some horrifying and downright spooky patient issues. I will say nothing more than that there is a penis draining. And it is so horrible. And so perfect.

Pure fear.

Babes in Toyland (1934) is a Mess

After watching the 1990s and 1960s versions of Babes in Toyland, I had to finally take myself to the source. Well, the first film, that is. All of these evil movies are based on a 1903 operetta. But we shall not speak of this.

This first filmed version is a Laurel and Hardy venture, and I do generally like their scenes the most. I'm probably the first person to say this, but Laurel and Hardy have a pretty entertaining dynamic going on. They should do more stuff as a duo, I reckon.

These guys are funny.

I was initially struck by the beauty of some of the sequences. There are some really impressive sets and beautifully lit shots. We get to see multiple sheep-woman hugs. Because the main woman in this version of the tale is Little Bo Peep. And she loves her sheep.

Aww.

We also see an electric performance by Henry Brandon, who plays this movie's Barnaby, the evil top hat man. He gives the role a wide-eyed pantomime quality, and he does it so well. This man is REACTING. I love him.

I could fix him. With a hammer.

So, for the first half of the movie, I was pretty into it. I felt a bit more connected to the very basic romance. A guy puts Bo Peep in the stocks and then kisses her, it's all very normal stuff. She loves her sheep, and so I support whatever other stuff she wants to do.

Sheep.

The second half, however, devolves into impenetrable nonsense. Mickey Mouse throws a brick at a cat's head. Monkey men get released. It's a whole thing.

The innocent, normal cat.

MICKEY NO!

And I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "Lilly, that sounds amazing". Well, listen, some of it is thrilling. I can't deny that I love to see Mickey Mouse attack. But sadly, chaos too can become boring, and this is very much the case here. You're watching scenes of constant screaming by the end, and it turns into a sludge. It's like watching thirty minutes of white noise and racing blobs. What's going on here? I don't know, I stopped paying attention. There's one thousand monkey men in the city. Are they the titular babes? Are the monkey men the babes?

Sure. Whatever.

Barnaby and his monkey boys.

One monkey man out of five. 

★☆☆☆☆ 

A Very Special Book: Hollow Inside by Asako Otani

I joined NetGalley recently, which is a really cool website where you can request Advance Reader Copies of books in exchange for reviews. Since I've been both reading a lot more since late last year, and writing a lot more since committing to my beautiful blog at the beginning of January, I thought, yes, this is my time to get really into reviewing books.

Of course, the prospect of a delicious new book that isn't released to the public yet also whet my appetite. I need those juicy, secret books. I need to be special and ahead of the curve. As a sidenote, I just looked up where the word "whet" comes from, because I realised I had no idea, and it turns out it comes from knife sharpening. You know, like a whetstone - what you whet your wheapon whith. You get it. Very good.

The first ARC (this is techno-speak for Advanced Reader Copy, as mentioned above) I picked up from NetGalley was this enticing, short Japanese debut novel - Hollow Inside, by Asako Otani. It's out now in the UK, and won't be published in the USA until the 5th of May, but I read it January. Because I'm very special.

I chose it partly because this cover spoke to me - the open dog head with two little people inside, yes, okay, nice and sinister, slightly reminiscent of some of the promotional material for Severance - and partly because it's a brisk 112 pages. I thought I should try a short book first and get to grips with the NetGalley experience, and I'm glad I did, because I ran into my first technical mishap immediately: this book was only available as a PDF. As you probably know, reading a PDF on your phone is what we like to call "hellish". PDFs aren't formatted for that sort of the thing. So, thankfully, the length of this novella made it bearable, but in the future I will be looking for gorgeous epubs only. I have learned. I am a fighter.

Without further ado though, let's talk about the book.

 

*** 

 

FEMINISM AND PLASTIC ANIMALS. HERE WE GO. 

There's a bit of a trend at the moment for short, crunchy Japanese novels that concern themselves with pissed off and alienated women. I read Emi Yagi's Diary of a Void and loved it. I thought Convenience Store Woman was pretty cool. And here is a new entry into the canon - a novella about a middle-aged woman who moves in with another middle-aged woman, and feels kinda bad about it.

Here they are. The books.

Hirai is an office worker grappling with the subtle ways judgement manifests in her life. She worries about her mother's expectations for her romantic life, and she worries that her co-workers would think it's super weird for her to live with a female friend at her age. 

Them.

She's 38, and so the pressure she feels to have children is coming to a head. This is all expressed in a wonderfully tentative, suppressed way. Hirai's thoughts are clearly in turmoil - she doesn't WANT to get a boyfriend or have a little baby - but she can't quite accept them. Instead she lies down on her bed periodically and pretends to be dead in these frank, tiny moments of desperation.

"I let all the strength drain from my body. I gave myself over to gravity and sharpened all my awareness right up to my fingertips. I lay on the bed not moving an inch. Pretending to be dead. I sometimes did this.

I was dead. Nothing in this world had anything to do with me. I thought about the dead dogs. The dead dogs that had been doted on by their owners. They had left fake bodies in the world as figurines, and their souls were running around the other world wagging their tails. My soul joined them frolicking there."

I love these perfect little expressions of a hopeless need for escape. I love the latching on to these dogs as adequately and vividly loved. Her roommate, Suganuma, makes 3D-printed custom sculptures of people's dead dogs, and this is used as a very fun metaphor for brokenness and acceptance.

"I picked up what looked like a reject figure that was lying on the floor. It was of a chihuahua, hollow inside and surprisingly light. The threadlike filament had become tangled around its body, as though enveloping it in a spider's web."  

That's right, the book title gets namedropped. There we go! It's Hollow Inside, baby!

The book is, for the most part, very straightforward. Nothing much happens, but there are these pockets of sweetness that I found so touching. There are also some good moments of humour, and I like that often when Hirai expresses an emotion, it's kind of intense, like it needs to burst out of her. She has this incredible disgust for men, finds them so physically repulsive that she can't help but be disgusted by women who touch them, and I just love the way this is explored. She feels so trapped in heterosexual expectations that she wants to THROW UP when a man looks at her. It's so, so good. Just the sheer magnitude of this caged animal reaction to the world.

There's something special nestled into this unassuming, simple story.

Four out of five defective dogs

★★★★☆

 

I Love 1970s Tennis Anime

A while ago I watched through the 1973-74 shoujo anime series about girls' tennis, Aim for the Ace! 

I can't remember how I came across it, but something about the visual style really struck me. The long, angled faces sometimes warped to a sort of dream-like alien degree. The beautiful, blurred backgrounds in purple tones. The colourful airbrushing and paint stippling. It's a gorgeous, odd-looking show.

It centres on a vaguely tomboyish tennis player, Hiromi. She has a fluffy Donny Osmond cut, a reserved personality, and a dream - to play some tennis. We start out with her about to move up to the senior team, and follow her as she takes part in more high stakes matches and gets into more intense training.

She has a little black cat, by the way. This creature isn't particularly important, but rest assured: that cat is there.

What I love about the series is its claustrophobic intensity. At the beginning, it seems that Hiromi and her friend don't care all that much about their tennis prowess, but it quickly becomes the beautiful, sparkling jewel at the centre of Hiromi's life. An intoxicating, visceral passion expressed so vividly by the textured backgrounds and often conspicuously empty, slightly abstract locations.

A figure of great inspiration to Hiromi is Todo, the sparkling and gentle boy tennis player she admires. He is an iconic 1970s boy. He has the most luscious eyelashes in the world, thick, flowing sideburns, and bewitching, geode-like eyes. He is quiet and unassuming, statesmanlike, and a very good tennis player.

The distant intensity with which she views him is so deliciously communicated. She is always gazing at him, and he is always leaping in slow motion, a graceful gazelle of a man on the court. And so, there is an impeccable, tentative sensuality to their relationship. Nothing feels quite real, but every detail is magnified, made huge and shiny.

Balls.

I also love the way the show explores the fraught position of women's tennis, and women in tennis. There's a powerful scene in which Hiromi talks about the extreme challenge she faces in making up for her relative weaknesses in strength and size.

It's so great. You're punching the air at this point. Our girl needs to win. She deserves it.

Another moment has a coach observing Hiromi's training, and he says this:

It's such an interesting and sad look at some of the stark realities of women's sports and their dismissal, but it's also inspiring and invigorating. Here is a girl who is truly in it for the love of the game, giving it her all, pushing her body to the limit - and carving out a space for women of pure, dogged athleticism.

I just love her so much. 

 

p.s. here's a dog:

I Made a Poetry Zine

My library's printing service is called princh (like the Grinch), which is very entertaining to me personally, but it's also very smooth and beautiful to use. You tap the special little screen attached to the photocopier, you check a preview of your image, and then you slam on the plus button and get yourself ten glorious copies. Perfect technology.

This is how I completed my new zine, a small poetry pamphlet with three poems inside, and some collage and illustration. I'll be honest with you, I only really like the last poem - but this was a challenge I set myself, to make a quick zine in one day, and I did it. So it doesn't matter too much how good the poems are, they just needed to exist. And one out of three ain't bad!

I read somewhere online, the other day, right after I had started crafting my zine, that it was zine month, but I can't find any evidence of that now, and I don't remember where I saw it. It just has to be zine year, zine life, zine minute in my heart, I guess. Somebody said this... it was real.

It's been some time since I've made a zine, so it's really nice to do it again and see that familiar, satisfying, grey photocopy texture. I used random words pulled from the newspaper (the Metro), to title each poem, which was a fun little prompt exercise, and the combination of newspaper cuttings, a few printed words, and of course, drawings... worked really nicely.

I have these transparent plastic sticky notes that I used to overlay some drawings on top of other elements, and that turned out to have a really nice layering effect. You can see the edges of these notes in some places, so they cast interesting little shadows of light texture.

Yeah. I like my zine. And I believe I should make more.

Dadposting

My dad died when I was still little, so while I do remember him, it's in a very limited way. There are, though, quite a few interesting pictures of him to look at.

On the tube.

He had a famous big leather jacket that he wore a lot, and, always, long hair dangling down in one pin-straight swoop. He also had a thing for bandanas, and Harley-Davidson merchandise. Father and I would wear matching Harley-Davidson bandanas together on occasion when I was a baby. Supreme fun.

Of course, many of these pictures involve me. After all, I was a charming little child at the time. Who can resist a new photo featuring the dazzling, cherubic infant? 

I love the insane, bug-eyed expression that newborns get sometimes. They are gorgeous little aliens. We have to help them. They need milk. I love this photo. Out-of-focus, barely living baby just taking it as it comes, and this man, head on a trenchcoat. Just new baby stuff.

In this one, I like my expressionless look. That's a baby taking it in, and not knowing what 'it' is. A beautiful lack of comprehension, contrasted with that knowing smile. "I have the baby", my dad is thinking, perhaps evilly.

And finally, here are some solo dad pictures. A pose with a cool bike (note the bandana - fandom membership confirmed!), and an underexpoxed kitchen shot.

If there was one thing that was definitely true about my dad, and that I am not making up, it was that he loved to be by the milk.