Issue #357: Paradox Newsletter Gift Guide
“I gotta believe”: this is the refrain from the game PaRappa the Rapper (1996) that I have found surprisingly motivating this week.
I have had music and lyrics from this game, and its 2001 sequel, stuck in my head since their respective releases. It’s always the first song from each game, either “kick, punch, it’s all in the mind” or “french the fries.” The songs are so good. And, thank god, now available widely to stream. But I am hooked on the PaRappa the Rapper 2 opening and PaRappa the Rapper’s final song, “Live Rap.”
They just don’t make ‘em like they used to.
Speaking of activity that brings me back to the early 2000s, I started rewatching Lupin the 3rd Part II (1977) in its English dub. What a cast they assembled for this one. Tony Oliver as Lupin, Richard Epcar as Jigen, Lex Lang as Goemon, Michelle Ruff as Fujiko, and Dan Lorge as Zenigata, everyone firing on all cylinders. This has to be one of the best English language casts for an anime ever. Running those old episodes late at night, complete with the anachronistic pop cultural references included for the Adult Swim viewing audience, makes me feel like no time has passed at all.
Other amusements over this past week? Pop Culture Jeopardy (2024) came onto my radar because an acquaintance of mine will be on the show in early 2025. Opinions will vary on Colin Jost’s hosting chops, but a Jeopardy contest with a pop culture focus reminds me how exciting it is when the mothership series has a similar category.
Finally, I watched the new Watchmen animated movie. Chapter 1 (2024) is available on HBO Max. There’s no reason to make something like this, but there’s really no reason to make anything. Watchmen presents some unique disincentives to adapting it given Alan Moore’s attitude, but unfortunately for him this version is good enough. Better, by a lot, than Snyder’s 2009 live action. Watchmen 2024 is as close to a 1:1 adaptation from comic to screen as we’ll see. But adapting the comic under the stewardship of DC animation workhorse Brandon Vietti is more evocative than ever of its Golden Age inspiration. It also reminded me how obvious Watchman’s overwhelming influence is on Urasawa’s Pluto (2003). In Vietti’s Watchmen, it felt like Gesicht would wander into the Comedian’s murder scene any time.
This week is half benevolent, half self-indulgent. I have lined up the gift guide to end all gift guides if you want to buy anyone in your life socks, specialty coffee, or obscure Japanese hardcore books. I also have some commentary on film in 2024 and lists that deem films among the best of a given period.
Paradox Newsletter Gift Guide
Can’t decide what to buy your loved ones? You might find something here. As for disclosures, there are no affiliate links, though not for lack of trying. But there is one referral link (for the Cometeer) and the Paradox bigcartel linked below.
Zero Magazine Outo Special Issue
https://zeromagazine.base.shop/items/95520541
Zero Magazine is the coolest collection of Japanese punk photos and Outo is one of the coolest bands of all time.
This also comes with a live DVD from a show in 1988. Use Buyee, Worldshopping, or Zenmarket to buy in the U.S.
William Ellery Rec Socks
https://williamellery.co/products/rec-socks
When I first bought Rec socks from William Ellery, I had a loose thread in one pair. Like really loose looking. I emailed them, and they did a couple things that struck me:
assured me the loose thread didn’t mean compromised durability by comparing the construction of their socks to the Golden Gate Bridge
gave me a full refund for the pair anyway
That was a pretty nice turnaround from me feeling a little sore that my expensive socks might have an issue. And they weren’t lying, the pair has really held up. These are not my favorite socks, the true cream of the crop is below, but these are great as an all season pair in less extreme climates. The striped ankle adds a nice vintage flare to the usually swagless product category of “high performance sock.”
A Hope Hemp HSX-259 Socks
Widely available, but here are some places you can find them:
https://www.blendsus.com/products/a-hope-hemp-hsx-259-socks-orange
https://totemshop.com/collections/a-hope-hemp/products/hope-hemp-wool-sock-hsx-259-orange
https://bdgastore.com/products/hsx-259
Also much cheaper directly from Japan, but currently OOS from all my favorite vendors including Great Blue and akas-objet.
These are a wool/hemp/cotton blend sock that keeps your feet warm and minimizes moisture from sweat.
Knestknit Socks
Here’s the product “specs” for the last available pair of “full cushion crew” socks from Knestknit:
SPECS:
Body: 17 - 19 micron 2/25nm 100% merino wool //
Skeleton: 1/100/34 denier nylon + Lycra // black
Elastic: 180 denier dc Lycra
Reinforcement: 2/44 or 100 denier n6 nylon //
Machine: 120 needle 9 gauge lonati
Height: crew
Sock construction: full cushion, full density
Toe construction: standard full terry
Style: boot classic
Honestly, I don’t know what it all means. I have had merino wool socks before from many brands. But nothing comes even close to Knestknit’s full cushion pairs, of which at time of writing they have available in striped:
They also have a multicolor pack of three, but their inventory is moving and changing fast right now so no guarantees regarding what’s available when you’re reading this.
I have replaced more or less all of my socks with ones from Knestknit over this year. In addition to the many pairs of “full cushion crews,” I also have one “flatknit crew” that has a raw hem instead of the normal elastic band and a few “half cushion crew.” They are both very good. The ten pack of flatknit crews on the site right now is pricey for an exploratory purchase, but they also have some smaller three packs. They are a really thin and yet remarkably sturdy sock that stays really dry. The half cushion crews are basically the same as the full cushion ones (duh?) except half as cushioned, thus thinner.
If you are buying for people who live in warmer climates, you probably don’t need their thickest offerings. But the full cushion crew socks have permanently put an end to my toes being chronically cold in the Medford winters.
Their stock is sporadically updated and often limited. I have to imagine the fact that this is an operation of just one guy matters a lot. But it almost certainly makes the socks better. Given more time, I am sure I could write more enthusiastically and romantically about them but you will just have to trust my judgment as a guy who buys a lot of socks. You can’t go wrong here. If you only buy one thing off this list, something from Knestknit has my highest recommendation.
Merry Berry Punch Twizzlers
Available at Five Below, Wal-Mart, wherever. Check the seasonal section.
I had some friends over for my birthday and among them, one was vegan. Instead of cake, I served him these. I think it is a toss up as to which was better — and the cake was really good. This is an all timer seasonal candy for lovers of the delicate, complex flavor of blue.
Uniball One P
https://www.jetpens.com/Uni-ball-One-P-Gel-Pen-0.38-mm-Soda-Body-Black-Ink/pd/36769
Also available elsewhere
This pen was among the Stationary Store Award winners for 2024. From the awards committee:
The Uni-ball One itself is a ballpoint pen whose selling point is its functionality, which allows it to write thickly, but with the "P" it is a complete victory for design. Looking at social media it is easy to see how popular this pen is with idols, and it is certainly true that its cute, round form that makes you fall in love at first sight is a line that you would never expect to see. Furthermore, many users have bought multiple barrel colors and rearranged the upper and lower barrels to create a bi-color pen, enjoying the originality, which seems to have boosted sales, and the fact that the tones are easy to combine is also impressive. On the other hand, the pen tip is equipped with a metal stabilizer, and the revolutionarily smartly shaped clip is also made of metal, so it is excellent in that it maintains its functionality as well.
I have one of these. It writes well. It’s easy to carry. Perfect for the stationary lover in your life.
Cometeer Coffee
I am not a huge fan of the new direct-to-consumer business model that more or less mandates a subscription membership to order the product. But Cometeer is worth the minor annoyance. Along with Knestknit socks, Cometeer has felt like a noticeable lifestyle upgrade. I always opt for the light roasts and always drink it iced. Onyx is my favorite roaster that works with them by far. This is as close to I get to a Japanese iced pour over — I would rather drink Cometeer at home than buy iced coffee from most cafes.
Buy using the referral link and we’ll both get some Cometeer credit.
Paradox Newsletter Merchandise
https://paradoxnewsletter.bigcartel.com/
My self-promotional instincts are so minimal that someone had to remind me to include this. The Paradox Newsletter merchandise, however, is really nice. I don’t deserve much credit for it. The artwork is by the legendary hardcore punk illustrator Sugi and the printing and embroidery was done by New York’s Panther Printing. The turquoise hats are sold out, but I have a few black ones left. It’s such a good quality and unique hat, I actually wear it all the time. Nylon, wide brim, hits above the ears. Only the best for my readers.
A Better Class of Bait: Sight and Sound’s Best Films of 2024
Sight and Sound, the film magazine published by the British Film Institute, publishes two lists of ten years of the greatest films of all time — one list based on the result of voting by critics, another by directors. It is the most prestigious and seriously considered of such lists, in part due to its regular publication since 1952. In the critics poll, the most commonly cited, Citizen Kane (1941) **took the top spot from 1962 through 2022, only to be unseated by Vertigo (1958) in 2012. Vertigo’s tenure at the top was brief, supplanted by Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) entering the list for the first time in the top spot.
Less fêted is the yearly Sight and Sound list, as controversial as any despite the similar approach. If a polling body can satisfactorily determine the best films of all time, shouldn’t they also be trusted with determining the best of a given year? Their list for 2024 is full of choices that oppose conventional critical wisdom, but are certainly closer to my taste. Megalopolis tied for the seventeenth best film with several others, including The Brutalist, Evil Does Not Exist ranked twelfth, Love Lies Bleeding tied for seventh with The Substance, and Anora ranked second.
My own end of year list, right now, comprises twenty seven films — with Megalopolis not among them. It may deserve an honorable mention, but when considering my list criteria (undefined, arbitrary, unimportant) I have to ask myself if Megalopolis has more to offer me than the Road House remake, and I don’t think that it does. That is more to the credit of the critically panned action film left to rot in the muniments of Amazon streaming exclusivity. Road House is, after all, the twenty-sixth best film I saw released this year. Bagheera is the twenty-seventh. Maybe that one isn’t better than Megalopolis when I think really hard about it.
Lists of “favorites” or “bests” by one critic aren’t about detailed, exhaustive, repeatable criteria. They are about, as I’ve written in the past, sending a message.
The credibility of Sight and Sound is precisely a result of the repeatable criteria: they poll a body of respondents and tally the results. But this is convincing because it collects the opinions of a group in equal terms. Maybe I could repeat their method for Substack film critics, exclusively. I still don’t think Night Swim would make it. But when it comes to my list, I don’t care to answer for the relative placement or hierarchy of one film in relation to another, on the list or off of it. Instead, I consider if I thought a film was good or not and why. And, yes, there are messages too. Usually “you think this film is bad, but it’s actually good.”
Another interesting facet of my list is just how sparse it is. So far, I’ve watched 158 films from 2024 in 2024. In 2023, I watched 170 films from that year in that year. Among those, I counted 49 among my favorites. What I have seen this year hasn’t moved me nearly as much as previous years. Part of this probably has to do with my viewing habits. The movies I watch can be organized into roughly three categories: “critically acclaimed,” “critically questionable,” and “movies nobody would ever seriously consider watching.” Yes, out of the third category I may have watched GTMax and Time Cut and Stream and Subservience. But the movies that really left a sour taste in my mouth this year are from the acclaimed (or close enough) category: Smile 2, Alien: Romulus, Longlegs, Humane, Monkey Man, and I Saw the TV Glow. Only Hit Man (2023) from last year was more disappointing than the movie from among these I found most tolerable — Monkey Man.
These movies all suffer from vastly different problems, so it is hard to diagnose some broad filmmaking trend that has made this year’s movies so uninspiring. But each of these films in some way suffer under the weight of antecedents that make the derivatives as substantial as matter rendered subatomic by an atom smasher1. That is the kind of obliterating power Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997) and The Matrix (1999) wield over I Saw the TV Glow, or The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Cure (1997) over Longlegs, or even Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) over Romulus. These films are dust blowing in the wind of their statuesque predecessors. Some of these films (all except Humane) deliver the intermittent sense pleasure of film viewing — Longlegs’s first five or ten minutes, Romulus’s visual design, Smile 2’s uncannily distorted fan monsters. But occasional visual interest can’t overcome something that skims the surface of its origin. Smile 2 has the same ending as Rings (2017) for god’s sake.
All of this isn’t to say I didn’t have a great year in movies. While Sight and Sound might be more enthusiastic about the overall quality of 2024 film — and I’ve seen only about 1/5th of their list — I saw more “all timers” among the films of Kihachi Okamoto, Masaki Kobayashi, Samuel Fuller, and Jean-Pierre Melville than any contemporary year could hope to produce. So, 2024 was a repertory year for me. Nothing wrong with that. And I still have a lot from 2024 left on the docket. I have to squeeze in Juror #2 and Conclave, at least. And 10 more zero budget streaming exclusive horror movies. This is what I do.
Weekly Reading List
The release of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX (2025) may be the single most important event in the history of anime. In addition to having an unpronounceable name with six Us (the Japanese title is a much more reasonable 機動戦士GUNDAM ジークアクス), this is a collaboration of hitherto unimagined scope.
This is a Gundam series made by Hideaki Anno’s Studio Khara. Anno has a writing credit on the series along with Yōji Enokido. Enokido is an impressive writer in his own right, working with Anno on Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) as well as:
Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997)
FLCL (2000)
RahXephon (2001)
Star Driver (2010)
While it is a little funny Enokido worked on Evangelion along with RahXephon, a show which is widely considered to be an inferior Evangelion rip-off, I think RahXephon is quite good.
GQuuuuuuX’s director, Kazuya Tsurumaki, has been mentored by Anno throughout his career. He was an animation director for Nadia (1990), Anno’s assistant director for Evangelion and director for the first half of The End of Evangelion (1997). He also directed FLCL, Diebuster (2004), and co-directed with Anno all four Shin Evangelion films released from 2007 until 2021.
This is no joke. This is not the B team. This is the heaviest hitters remaining from the legendary Gainax studio making a Gundam show. This is it. Yoshiyuki Tomino, you have eight days to respond.
There are so many great directors out there, it’s possible, I think, to assign some kind of superlative to all of the greats. But Johnnie To is remarkable in his consistency across decades of filmmaking. This is the only Criterion closet video that matters. With only Executioners (1993), The Heroic Trio (1993), and Throw Down (2004) available on Criterion, one can only hope To was visiting to finalize some upcoming film releases.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/succession-brian-cox-jeremy-strong-method-acting-criticism-1236080562/ — Brian Cox only enhances Jeremy Strong’s capacity for method acting by being every bit the disapproving father Logan is to Kendall in Succession (2018).
Miho Nakayama passed away a few days ago, on December 6th. One of the most prolific pop artists ever, with twenty-two studio albums, she leaves behind an enormous body of work. I can’t recommend her first album, 「C」(1985), more highly. It has no skips.
Until next time.
Ever the exception, perhaps Monkey Man evades this accusation by simply lacking in basic action movie competencies.