Podcasts, Ethan Hawke, the 90s, whatever

Let's get back into writing these lists

I haven’t done one of these updates lately where I just talk about what I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to. I fell off right around Christmas time last year and never picked it back up. A combination of depression, my ADD, and good old fashioned laziness is the culprit. But whatever, I need to stop writing things where the first paragraph is me apologizing to the two or three people that will read this.

It’s all about the habit of writing, and I guess my frustration and inability to write is often the only thing I can focus on when I start, so it helps me push through that. It’s a good starting place for free writing that would get axed in an edit—but I don’t edit my substacks. LEt’s gooooo

New from me

My podcast Mammonburg is on a hiatus right now, but it will be back here soon. Until then, I’ve begun working on my other, personal podcast Fruitless a bit. I’ve begun a monthly series on Fruitless with my good friend, Chris Barker, where we read and talk about a nonfiction book. A few others have joined our “bookclub” here, and will appear in future episodes. The main goal is to get through our personal list of nonfiction books we’ve been meaning to read but never got around to. Chris got first pick, and we tackled The Basque History of the World which was an interesting discussion about European history and politics, nationalism, and international relations. If you don’t know anything about the Basques, you’re in good company—so a lot of the episode is just us going “wow, did you know they did this crazy thing also??” You can listen to that here.

On top of that, I have two interviews lined up for Fruitless that will be coming out in September. I’m really looking forward to both of them.

Speaking of projects in the works, I am also producing another podcast right now that will finally start getting released here within the next month or so. It’s far enough along that I don’t feel like I’ll be jinxing it by saying what it is: it’s going to be a podcast about Law & Order: SVU and the weird politics of the show, called The Good Apples. The other co-hosts are Jackal from Mammonburg, Josh Christianson from Odd Splice, and my girlfriend and SVU mega-fan, Kelli/Chimera (she liked that Jackal got a cool pseudonym, so she decided to have a pseudonym we use interchangeably with her real name lol)

We are building up a small back catalogue before we begin release, so we do have about four episodes in the works. I’m excited to share it with everyone.

Lastly, I’m working on video content as well. Finally branching out to video essays (the natural extension from becoming an annoying podcast guy). The YouTube channel that I will be posting these on is sitting empty right now, but there is an Adobe Premier file on my computer right now that’s about an hour long and will, ideally in a month or two, be in good enough shape to share with the world. I’ll just go ahead and say it’s about zombie movies, and I have been having a lot of fun making it.

I think that’s that.

Film & video

I actually haven’t been watching a ton of movies lately, but since I haven’t written in a while I have a wider gap to time to work with. I recently watched the Boston Strangler (2023) with Keira Knightley which is pretty okay for a Zodiac (2007) rip-off. I’ll be talking about that on a future episode of The Good Apples, however, so I’ll leave my thoughts on it for later.

Aside from that, I’ve been working through Ethan Hawke’s filmography slowly. They’re usually daunting and hard to finish, but I really enjoy working through an actor’s filmography (rather than a director or writer, any sort of auteur that I would usually work through) because it makes me watch movies I never would have seen otherwise. The last actor I did this with was Nicolas Cage, although I fell off at Left Behind (2014) and have just been dreading watching that film despite my love for shitty evangelical movies. It just looks so particularly joyless, so instead I’ve pivoted to Hawke.

I’m still in the young Hawke era, with a lot of pretty okay but mostly forgotten films like Waterland (1992) or Alive (1993). Waterland wasn’t amazing, but I could sense that the novel it adapted would be more interesting, so I snatched a copy that I’ll probably never read, but I own it now.

I’ve been particularly interested by some of the angsty, end of history 90s films that I watched because of appearances he makes—Floundering (1994) and Reality Bites (1994). Both are movies that are dated in a lot of aspects, but also incredibly similar to now. I have an ongoing half-joke-half-serious thesis that we are living in the Long 90s, and that most of the same angst and sense of helplessness reflected in that time period is the same now. I don’t think we’ve really evolved much as a culture outside of some (very good) social progress. Both are films dealing with the difficult period of life after college where it begins to feel like your life doesn’t have much of a narrative, and a combination of financial problems and political problems keep you from feeling much hope about the world. I’ll flesh this out more as I think on it. I struggle to find the words at times, but ultimately I think the 90s are key to understanding the state of culture and politics right now.

I think the last film I’d like to mention here is Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009). I finally watched it. It was a film that kind of intimidated me, and I had been putting it off for a while. It was as upsetting as I was anticipating, but I also loved it. I can’t really recommend it to anyone in good conscience, unless you are okay with extreme and transgressive imagery, but if that’s already your wheelhouse, it’s a fantastic and weirdly beautiful movie. There are much smarter people who have written about the film, so I don’t have much to add to the conversation.

Reading

As I mentioned, I recently read The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky. You can listen to me talk about that on Fruitless. Outside of that, I’ve been slowly working on Europe in the High Middle Ages by William Chester Jordan, and The Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm. Both solid histories, although I prefer Hobsbawm’s writing style. I’m about to start Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis for the next installment of the Fruitless Bookclub.

In the realm of fiction, I’ve been reading Devil House by John Darnielle. I actually started it a week or two ago, but haven’t had a chance to pick it back up (I am reading a physical copy, as the above books were all audiobooks, and picking up a real book is a pain in the ass sometimes). I’m really enjoying it. John Darnielle, both as songwriter and fiction writer, has been really influential on my own personal writing. Both of his previous novels inspired a lot of the novel rough draft I wrote a few years ago for NaNoWriMo that I really really need to edit already.

Music

I haven’t been listening to a ton of music lately. I recently revisited a band I was into in high school, Innerpartysystem. I’m not sure I’d really call them “good,” but they were really cool to me in my teens and I thought their music videos were deep (they said consumerism is bad, woah). It’s been fun to revisit alongside other bands I liked at the same time, like Enter Shikari.

Aside from that, I’ve spent a lot of the year listening to Los Campesinos! and Cloud Nothings. I’ve also enjoyed the trashy indie pop of The Limousines. One thing I’ve realized, as I’ve been around less music-obsessed people (I used to be around music nerds a lot in the past because I worked in a coffee shop for three years and was around a lot of DIY musicians), I have less and less of a conception of good or bad taste with music. And, admittedly, I’ve found it a bit freeing. Hence my Innerpartysystem revisit.

Everything else

I’m running out of steam and also need to get to work doing my actual job. The only other things I can think to mention is the Republican debates from the other night which made me feel like the world is ending. Aside from that, I’ve honestly just watched a lot of YouTube while working—mostly rather popular video essay channels like Jacob Geller, Dan Olson, and Patrick H Willems. They’re good.

Alright. That’s enough. Hopefully I’ll write another one of these soon.