Issue #308: Save Your Ephemera
On Christmas, I started playing Alan Wake II (2023) and beat it this morning. I enjoyed the game a lot as an experience. I think there are a lot of gameplay shortcomings, but the whole package is certainly worth putting up with them. The ideas of the game, though, picking up from the original Alan Wake (2010) and Remedy’s other interconnected game, Control (2019), are where the novelty lies.
Among other things, the game is a great lesson on how to interpret high concept sci-fi plots, but the lesson it offers is one its audience refuses to learn. Despite the repeated insistence by the game that the plot doesn’t matter, people still obsess over the minutiae as if it will lead them to some greater, transcendental truth about the game and its world. There are no shortage of youtube explainers trying to hand wave away the game’s explicit instruction to its players that there’s no revelation that will make sense of every disparate element of the plot.
In the end, Alan Wake II asks its players to consider the nature of artistic creation and the costs one might incur in an effort to create something. There’s plenty of other ideas there, too. I don’t think I’ll play it again, but I will be rewatching some of the cutscenes.
Work on the yearly 100 album review is well underway. As is often the case, the holiday season newsletters are sacrificed at the alter of that project. It will be coming, tentatively, next week.
A few other notes: I dug into my 2023 film backlog this past week. I watched The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall, Ballerina, May December, and Dream Scenario. Aside from Ballerina, the films all sit among the best things I saw last year. Dream Scenario really stuck with me as the most ambitious of the films. It’s final turn, where influencers advertise to people within their dreams, reminded me of Earl Lovelace’s novel Is Just a Movie (2011).
The invasive Gen Z advertisers popping up in one’s dream in Kristoffer Borgli’s film is, on its face, quite strange. But the idea fits among the various critiques of contemporary culture, most focused on the supposedly novel behavior of young people today. Even if the critique is familiar, the cinematic expression is profoundly unsettling. The last uninterrupted private space of some version of one’s subjectivity suddenly porous and accessible to none other than malignant advertisers.
In Is Just a Movie, Lovelace treats the notion of dreams a little differently. For him, the “dream” is synonymous with one’s unrealized aspiration or ambition. Even so, the two different meanings of dream in each text can’t help but coexist as a palimpsest. So much of Dream Scenario is about what others dream of, but those dreams are inextricably connected to what Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) dreams of achieving. Lovelace’s novel has a similarly absurd sci-fi conceit where one can sell their dreams for money. Here’s a lengthy quotation that describes the idea:
His recommendation was simple. The state and private enterprise needed to join together to rid the people of unrealistic and stifling dreams … It was for these very compelling reasons that a few days later the Ministry of National Security and Mental Health, at a ceremony in the County Council building, launched a programme to buy up useless dreams … They come back and tell me about this new system where you could sell your dreams. Something about assigning to each dream a number and being paid for it … I watched the advertisements they had running on TV, in a video featuring the Carnival queen lying on a couch surrounded by luxurious furnishings and handsome young men singing the theme song, based on a popular melody by the Mighty Sparrow, that ended with: Dreams gone, development take over now. (315-316)
As Lovelace goes on, he shows more clearly the connection he sees between the dream as ambition and the dream as sleep activity:
People started to sleep early so they could dream, women started complaining about husbands and husbands started complaining about wives who wouldn’t let them sleep. Births went down and the smoking of marijuana and the sale of sleeping pills went up. (317)
In both cases, something seemingly antithetical to the logic of the market becomes either a marketing space or a commodity in its own right. Even before the invention of the dream traveling technology in Dream Scenario, Trent the marketer (Michael Cera) is trying to seed people’s dreams of Matthews with Sprite. In one way or another, these disparate fictions transform a private ungovernable activity into part of a market and “productivity.”
My guess is that Borgli doesn’t have any familiarity with Lovelace’s writing, but this loose similarity bolsters the truth of the truism: great minds think alike.
Objects of 2023
The newsletter is less and less often dedicated to fashion or consumer product recommendation, but I was looking back on what I copped through this year and had some pretty significant standouts. This is stuff I have reached for constantly since owning and I feel like is noticeably better than comparable items. In no particular order…
Salomon XT-6 Gore-Tex
I got my first pair of Salomons in 2021 I think, so I was pretty late to the party. They were XT-6s, worn often. It was the first time I experienced the adjustable pull-tab laces Salomon uses in many of their models, and the XT-6 is very wearable shoe because of the customizable slip-on fit.
I bought the XT-6 Gore Texes at the beginning of the year. They are an in-line sneaker, still regularly restocked today, and at the time stock was plentiful so I got them for under retail. I don’t keep count of how often I wear which of my shoes, but my guess is these are what I wore 1/3rd of the time I left the house. Far and away the shoe I wore the most this year. The water proofing is no joke and adds a ridiculous amount of convenience to an already inviting sneaker.
They have been put through the wringer. Tons of shows, torrential downpours, snow, they have never failed me. They have held up extremely well and will be heavily worn again this year. There is a outer area above the tongue to maintain the weather resistance. Some people say they run a little smaller, but I actually found them to run bigger than XT-6s. Still, I take the same size in both, I just feel like the Gore Tex version is a little roomier which is another plus.
LLS X Burgunder Mercury FL Cap
The Burgunder Mercury FL Cap has been a workhorse in my wardrobe. I love the color and pattern of this particular one, which is still available even a year + after the collaboration drop, but it’s available in a lot of colorways. Regardless of the color you choose, it has a long, wide brim, is weather resistant, and usually offers some reflective part for the evening runners out there.
GLP Creations The Author Notebook
I have been searching for the perfect notebook, narrowing my prospects to those that use the sublime Tomoe River paper. Until I bought this, I thought my favorite Tomoe River variety was the 52 gsm “S” paper, what they put in the Hobonichi Techo planners. It’s kind of like Bible paper. This one, however, uses the 68 gsm paper. It’s thicker and just a bit more practical. Though it is a bit pricey, this is the best A5 size notebook I’ve ever used.
Suicoke PEPPER-LO-ab-PT04
Something about me: I suffer from chronically cold feet. I don’t know if it’s really a medical condition, but my toes are usually icicles. That is, before I bought these clogs/mules/slippers. I got them on deep discount from SSENSE, and as much as I use them I’m not sure I could justify paying full price. But I strictly wear them as house shoes and finally, finally, my feet are warm.
They use 3M Thinsulate insulation, so maybe anything with that would be just as good. But these are no joke.
A Hope Hemp HSX-259 Sock
In the continued journey for warm feet, these have been another huge winner. They are 50% acrylic, 15% hemp, 15% wool, 10% cotton, and 10% nylon. A lot of fabrics. But I think they. are warmer than all my 100% merino wool socks and less thick. The only thing they don’t beat are my bison down socks… another good thing to own, but purchased last year and also extremely thick. These socks keep my feet toasty without changing my shoe size.
Analogue Pocket
When I was a kid, I had a transparent blue Wonderswan Crystal. This feels like getting as close to that as I can with a reasonable, useful piece of technology. Out of the box, the Analogue plays any variety of GameBoy game, from the original to the GBA. It also uses FPGA hardware emulation to run a number of other consoles (Genesis, SNES, that sort of thing) and can run a number of other handheld cartridges with supplemental hardware adapters. It also has a dock that will let you play your handheld or retro games of choice on your modern television. This transparent color is long gone, but any color will do just fine. They’re usually out of stock, but you can order one now (black or white are the available colors) and it’ll ship in February.
Camber Max-Weight Jersey Pocket T-Shirt
I like heavy, thick t-shirts and this is one of the most solid I’ve owned. The heavier the fabric, the less flexibility it has, so even though it’s a “relaxed fit” shirt you might consider sizing up. I usually wear a medium shirt, and I like how it fits, but the neck starts out pretty tight and has to loosen up. For those who like this sort of thing, it’s worth the hassle.
Hoka X Satisfy Clifton LS
It’s a shame this Hoka model isn’t available in a non-collaboration style. In the sizes people actually wear, they are pretty expensive on the secondary market. But those pull-tab laces are once again just way too convenient. These don’t have any weather resistance or anything, but the reflective parts of the shoe on the toe box and the heel actually reflect a deep blue. They’re comfortable and nice to look at.
Mizuno X Nonnative Wave Mujin TL Mid GTX
Another tough to come by sneaker that dropped at the end of the year, I love how they look but struggled to understand how something so porous looking could stand up to the elements. There’s a layer between the knit material and your foot that does the job. Christmas Eve was very rainy here, but these took me through the mud. I like to have a boot-ish sneaker that can handle bad weather. Previously for me it was the Nike ACG Mountain Fly (also Gore-Tex) but these have unseated them. If you try to hunt them down, they’re worth the hassle. They fit more or less true to size.
Weekly Reading List
I didn’t play the original Alan Wake, but it watches pretty well as a movie. I was impressed.
Kings, Gone
Early last week, my friend Jimmy Flynn passed away. Jimmy was a true original. I knew him best as a legendary show promoter who booked under the name Hardcore Stadium, paying tribute to the venue he had named as such — then divested of the name after one too many unsatisfactory dealings. More than any space, Jimmy became Hardcore Stadium, embodied it. His energy and enthusiasm were unparalleled, as was his knowledge about a wide variety of hardcore music.
Every scene, hopefully, has a lore guy, a guy who books a million shows, a guy who would get the name of even the most minor local band tattooed on him. They are rarely the same guy, and none could ever measure up to Jimmy. As familiar as he might seem to someone who doesn’t live in Boston, the Sisyphean effort of keeping a scene afloat with few DIY venues and expensive fees for booking a room would grind lesser men to a jaded stub. Not Jimmy. He was well into the promotional cycle for another hare brained but certain to be unforgettable show in March, reuniting Negative FX to play two shows along with Citizens Arrest, Underdog, and others. When he built, sometimes with just a flyer before any bands had been asked, they really did come.
My decade of friendship with the guy was just a scratch on the surface of his life in hardcore. He also played in bands: Shot Dead, Mind Eraser, New Lows (maybe more the first one than the latter two). He made zines, flyers, hot lines. I wish I could find the flyer for that, but close to when I moved here I distinctly remember him giving me a phone number I could call for upcoming shows. It was never updated — just one recording of Pearse reading off the time and date for a Boston Strangler show Jimmy booked.
And he was nice. The hardcore scene isn’t a particularly welcoming place, but he made everyone feel at home. It’s not going to be the same without him. It fucking sucks.
Another piece of Jimmy trivia: he loved Law and Order: SVU. Specifically, he loved Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay). The man was obsessed. Among the many memes he made, there was an era of prolific SVU memes mostly focused on his appreciation for those two. This shared appreciation for police procedurals is something that bonded us.
There’s so much ephemera he gave me that I have to dig up. Jimmy’s one pagers, flyers, elaborately designed ticket subs, goofy posters, and tongue-in-cheek laminates certainly fill the better part of a shoebox somewhere in my attic. I never knew how much I would end up wanting to have that stuff preserved, documented, and archived. I should have. There has never been another person like him, and there never will be again.
Until next time.