you made me think i was crazy
now that the days of awe are over i can wish my fellow hebs a shana tovah, and i hope you've all been sealed in the book of life for a good year. tuesday night my sister and i went out for pre-fasting dinner with cousins j&r and j's kids. wednesday my sister felt really meh so i went to morning services by myself, which was totally fine. she showed up just as the service was letting out, so we ran errands - by which i mean we bought cookies for break the fast - and saw don't worry, darling which i liked more than she did. harry styles was fine. he's not going to win any awards but he wasn't totally mortifying, altho there was one scene that made the teenage girls sitting a couple rows in front of us lose their shit laughing. (their high school must have had the day off for yom kippur.) it's a very attractive movie - southern california, palm trees, blue skies, mountains, midcentury modern houses, very cool cars, so many pretty dresses - but it has this weird undercurrent of wrong. there's a scene when florence pugh's character - alice - is in the bathtub, and as she slides down into the water there's a brief moment when her reflection in the mirror next to the tub stays above the rim while her actual body slides down. like, the body moves and the reflection doesn't. it's like two seconds of "...wait". and chris pine is excellently disturbing. and gemma chan's in it! which i didn't know.
once you find out the twist, that it's essentially virtual reality, a whole ton of questions pop up and not all of them are answered. like, picky practical things like what's in the iv that real!alice is hooked up to, and does jack ever, like, turn her over so she doesn't get bedsores, and what kind of money is he making in the real world in order to be able to afford a. rent on their apartment, and b. all this virtual happiness? doesn't anyone in the real world miss alice? like, what did jack tell the hospital? you can't exactly say "yeah, i didn't think my wife was happy and i was miserable too, so i knocked her out and hypnotized and brainwashed her to make her think she's living in the happy homemaker 50s". do they not need eyedrops for those, uh, whatever they're called, the metal clips that keep their eyes open. and when bunny tells alice she knows it's not real and she's going to stay in her virtual life because her kids are there and she has them back - the implication being they're dead in the real world - i just thought "but i never got the impression you even liked your kids". she doesn't come across as a particularly invested mother. i did think she and florence pugh had reasonable friend chemistry, tho, and if i didn't know there was all this ~drama~ i wouldn't have guessed people were saying florence and olivia wilde didn't get along on set. florence and harry had ok chemistry, not burning up the screen but i could buy they were at least attracted to each other. and did i mention how good it looked? it looked so good. and the soundtrack was fabulous.
the very end was a little too ambiguous. i wanted something a tch more concrete.
things i can say outside the cut are that there wasn't enough kiki layne and repeated scenes of breakfast being made - eggs and toast and bacon - are very hard to watch when you're fasting.
for trailers we got black adam (eh), amsterdam (that cast...!), and the new shazam (which has helen mirren and lucy liu as the villains?). it was a very comfortable theater.
after that we went back for the closing services and broke the fast with cousins m&e and their friends and neighbors and the world's most basic but most delicious egg salad. (it really is the most simple and the most yummy.) i got home later than planned because my cousin's house is a black hole from which none can escape. i was a little over-peopled by that point but at least i was no longer starving. and now that i've repented of last year's sins i can go forth and enjoy this year's sins. :D
today i was back at work and it was fine. oh, on tuesday i kind of met one of the big fluffy dogs i've seen around the building - i was coming back with food for a seminar lunch and this friendly cloud and his grad student got on the elevator with me. the friendly cloud (whose name i did not learn!) was interested in my lunch but also seemed eminently happy to just let me pet him. i told him he couldn't have my lunch but that he was very cute. i also got my flu shot and have had zero reaction. my arm doesn't even itch.
this is deeply creepy and uncanny valley - a couple guys on america's got talent manage to deepfake simon cowell. by which i mean, a third dude comes on stage and sings with simon's face. and then they do it to the rest of the judges. (and elvis.) it is, as i said, DEEPLY CREEPY.
anyone who's worked in academia (or for any big corporation) (or probably in government) knows this to be true - the person who gets shit done, the real power behind the throne, is a midddle-aged admin named peggy. she might be named carol or linda or brenda and she can be any color and any shape and she may or may not have cats or pictures of her kids/grandkids on her desk, but at heart she's a peggy and the place would fall apart without her. i'm not a peggy at my job because i haven't been there long enough to know where the bodies are buried, but i work with peggys and i don't doubt that some of them are the reason their pi's can even function. (i know for sure that the project manager for one of my groups is a peggy. she's been there upwards of twenty years and she keeps the group solvent and the pi on track, and he is 100% team peggy and worked very hard to get her a promotion so she wouldn't quit, because he's not stupid and he knows how important she is.) be nice to peggy. peggy keeps things running and doesn't always get the recognition she deserves.
once you find out the twist, that it's essentially virtual reality, a whole ton of questions pop up and not all of them are answered. like, picky practical things like what's in the iv that real!alice is hooked up to, and does jack ever, like, turn her over so she doesn't get bedsores, and what kind of money is he making in the real world in order to be able to afford a. rent on their apartment, and b. all this virtual happiness? doesn't anyone in the real world miss alice? like, what did jack tell the hospital? you can't exactly say "yeah, i didn't think my wife was happy and i was miserable too, so i knocked her out and hypnotized and brainwashed her to make her think she's living in the happy homemaker 50s". do they not need eyedrops for those, uh, whatever they're called, the metal clips that keep their eyes open. and when bunny tells alice she knows it's not real and she's going to stay in her virtual life because her kids are there and she has them back - the implication being they're dead in the real world - i just thought "but i never got the impression you even liked your kids". she doesn't come across as a particularly invested mother. i did think she and florence pugh had reasonable friend chemistry, tho, and if i didn't know there was all this ~drama~ i wouldn't have guessed people were saying florence and olivia wilde didn't get along on set. florence and harry had ok chemistry, not burning up the screen but i could buy they were at least attracted to each other. and did i mention how good it looked? it looked so good. and the soundtrack was fabulous.
the very end was a little too ambiguous. i wanted something a tch more concrete.
things i can say outside the cut are that there wasn't enough kiki layne and repeated scenes of breakfast being made - eggs and toast and bacon - are very hard to watch when you're fasting.
for trailers we got black adam (eh), amsterdam (that cast...!), and the new shazam (which has helen mirren and lucy liu as the villains?). it was a very comfortable theater.
after that we went back for the closing services and broke the fast with cousins m&e and their friends and neighbors and the world's most basic but most delicious egg salad. (it really is the most simple and the most yummy.) i got home later than planned because my cousin's house is a black hole from which none can escape. i was a little over-peopled by that point but at least i was no longer starving. and now that i've repented of last year's sins i can go forth and enjoy this year's sins. :D
today i was back at work and it was fine. oh, on tuesday i kind of met one of the big fluffy dogs i've seen around the building - i was coming back with food for a seminar lunch and this friendly cloud and his grad student got on the elevator with me. the friendly cloud (whose name i did not learn!) was interested in my lunch but also seemed eminently happy to just let me pet him. i told him he couldn't have my lunch but that he was very cute. i also got my flu shot and have had zero reaction. my arm doesn't even itch.
this is deeply creepy and uncanny valley - a couple guys on america's got talent manage to deepfake simon cowell. by which i mean, a third dude comes on stage and sings with simon's face. and then they do it to the rest of the judges. (and elvis.) it is, as i said, DEEPLY CREEPY.
anyone who's worked in academia (or for any big corporation) (or probably in government) knows this to be true - the person who gets shit done, the real power behind the throne, is a midddle-aged admin named peggy. she might be named carol or linda or brenda and she can be any color and any shape and she may or may not have cats or pictures of her kids/grandkids on her desk, but at heart she's a peggy and the place would fall apart without her. i'm not a peggy at my job because i haven't been there long enough to know where the bodies are buried, but i work with peggys and i don't doubt that some of them are the reason their pi's can even function. (i know for sure that the project manager for one of my groups is a peggy. she's been there upwards of twenty years and she keeps the group solvent and the pi on track, and he is 100% team peggy and worked very hard to get her a promotion so she wouldn't quit, because he's not stupid and he knows how important she is.) be nice to peggy. peggy keeps things running and doesn't always get the recognition she deserves.