mobiusstripper | Shit's on fire, yo

As some of you may recall, I am based in Los Angeles, so things have gotten a bit crazy lately, and I have left the city for the time being. The area where I live has not yet been ordered to evacuate, but we are adjacent to one Level 3 (mandatory evacuation) zone, and another adjacent zone was recently updated to Level 2 (be ready to go). I was without power for two days, the air quality is terrible, and all business as usual was cancelled (several of my clients had to evacuate), so I ended up packing up my cat and going to stay with a friend in Las Vegas.

As of right now, my home is still unaffected and only categorized as red flag, but I'm still glad to be out of L.A. and far away from all the catastrophe. It's been wonderful to see my friend, whom I have been trying to find time to visit anyway. She is my main movie-watching friend over Discord. We actually met on Discord, although we have hung out in person before and both visited one another in the past. But we still do watch parties on Discord together a couple times a month because we have similar tastes in media. So yesterday, we had a big movie day. We went to the theater to see Nosferatu (my second time seeing it - I loved it, almost a perfect movie, will probably post meta about it in the coming weeks), then went back to her place, watched the original 1922 Nosferatu, and then watched The Substance, which both of us have been wanting to see. I heard mixed things about The Substance, but I really liked it and actually disagree with some of the criticisms I heard about its themes that made me expect going in to enjoy it less than I did. Probably meta coming in the future about that one, too. It had some of the most outrageously laugh-out-loud funny black comedy body horror I've ever seen; I had a blast. I'm hoping while I'm here, I can show my friend Videodrome and eXistenZ.

My cat has already taken over her home and asserted dominance over her cats. I have no idea how long I will be here, since I have no idea how long L.A. will be on fire. Or whether my place will burn down. Well, it is what it is. Again, glad to be out of there. I'm looking for a place to train BJJ here in the meantime. Ideally one that will let me borrow a gi, since they are too bulky to have fit one in my go-bag. I'm also trying to figure out how I'm gonna make income while all my shit is on hiatus. I will probably have to do some online short-term tutoring like I did during COVID. I guess I will also use some of the down time to focus on building my business website, which has been a project on my to-do list for a while. I can finish learning CSS and PHP. I've also been learning PyGame to do with one of my local programming students, so I can work on that and be ready when we (hopefully) get back. I wasted a lot of time the last few days playing FruitMerge on my phone and listening to podcasts about Ong's Hat, but I think it's time to get back to productivity now that I'm safe and settled.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's a scary situation to be in.

Hope your home is okay

Fires seem to be going down now, and my neighborhood is fine thankfully! Should be going home this weekend.

Glad to hear

Good luck on your house. I have a few friends in the area who are packed and ready to go.

I'm glad you have a safe place to stay & the support of a good friend while all this horribleness is happening. Fortunately I live far enough north to not have been badly effected by it, or any fires this season so far, but I know all too well how scary it can be. Even just having to endure the smoke levels can be unbearable. I hope your house won't be effected & that you're able to get back on track w/ things soon <3

Fires seem to be going down now, and my neighborhood is fine thankfully! Should be going home this weekend. I have a lot of N95 masks that I fully intend to wear whenever I have to go outside for a while.

The fires these past handful of years have been ultra scary and the fallout... holy hell. It's really worrying! I'm so glad that you're alright and have a friend to stay with. Fingers crossed for your home.

The Substance is a HELL of a ride, omg. I watched it at TIFF. Haven't heard much about the criticism (because I don't give a shit, tbh) but I'm unsurprised that people have Opinions about its themes. I'm excited to read about your thoughts!

I'm so glad to hear that Nosferatu is good. I want to see it, so this is encouraging.

Thank you! I'm okay and my home is okay, and I will be going back this weekend.

The main criticisms of The Substance I've seen are that it reinforces some of the things it's trying to critique by using tropes from hag horror, the male gaze, etc. I'm still mulling over how much I think its use fell into the usual pitfalls vs. subverted/deconstructed them.

Nosferatu is very good and you should see it.

So glad to hear that your home is okay. How have you settled back in?

Ah, I see. The problem I have with that criticism is that the director/writer of The Substance is a woman, and I firmly believe that any surface level "male gaze" catering is made intentionally as part of its commentary. I really feel like its using all of these tropes in a critical manner to discuss the issues laid out in the film. Personally, when I was watching, I didn't get any feelings that it was falling into "hag horror".

Moore's conflict with the process and fear of aging and desperation to "become desirable" again felt incredibly grounded in real world expectations and experiences (of course amped up to eleven, because horror). Sometimes I think that in our desire to be critical we end up becoming restricted in our thinking. Sue's entire character was ramped up and heavily sexualized on purpose, because she's young, she's beautiful, she's "the better self". 100% calling on societies expectations of women and aging and a woman's worth in the eyes of men & society.

Then I shall add this to my watch list!!

Shit's on fire, yo

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject