The Crit

I'd tell y'all to wake me up when it ends, but I never went to sleep

Sep 23, 2024

Hi Critters,

September is here and it feels like I’m resting in the valley between two pillows at the head of a bed. It's specific, but it's an analogy I refer back to a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. It's about the feeling of being in between two big things. You can’t be fully in either, and instead, you’re smushed into a nook where all you can do is stare up. It’s not the most uncomfortable, but it's not the best sleep you’ll get. That’s what September can feel like sometimes. August to October feels like such a stretch, those months carry completely different energies and feel so far apart. If you ask me about the world in August, and then ask me again in October, you’ll get very different answers. August is a hazy orange and yellow, October a midnight blue and purple. But all that sits between them is September, a muted green image of Charon chaperoning us through the river of the year. Happy to see you all here again, in the valley between two pillows at the head of a bed.

Source: @primmieworldofficial on Instagram; Artist: Shirley Barber, British children's author and illustrator (1935-2023)

Critical Thought

I wish I had more for you here. Most of my critical thoughts these days revolve around how much I detest working for a company I don’t trust or how I wish this country was less evil. There is something that wears on your soul to work for a place that you know will never make the right decision for your health and well-being unless it’s profitable or extremely unprofitable for them. At this point, the hatred of working for a major university is beyond the lack of care and concern for the health of its employees, and at this point, it’s extended to the utter support for genocide and censoring the language of those who oppose it. So many times I come back to likening a bad job with a bad romantic relationship, and sometimes this is the right way of looking at it. If they control what hours you wake up and go to bed; don’t let you see your loved ones; treat others like garbage; have a track record of manipulation, narcissism, and general sociopathy; make decisions that they know hurt you; require all of your time and energy, and threaten to dump you if you don’t give it; say they are going to change for the better and then never do, but insist that they are even though you can clearly see them not; repeatedly dangle bare minimums over your head as a ‘privilege’; and do juuuuust enough to prevent you from leaving although you –and they– know you deserve better… if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…

I really can’t complain that much, because I know my job is not as bad as it could be (and not that this is how we should judge our quality of life: ‘not as bad as it could be’). When I bitch about work I’m bitching about the larger context and practice of work in America and the boundaries with it that we as a society allow to dissolve like sugar in water. Especially when it comes to employers who make EVIL decisions that lead to the death of millions, the destruction of our earth, or the putrefaction of morals (to name just a few). This has been on my mind recently because of the protests and encampments at universities condemning the genocide in Palestine and the university response to manufacture violence and dehumanize anyone involved who stands to threaten their profitability. School started again at the beginning of this month. I was told to go into the office four days a week, meaning that I’ve spent the majority of my week, of my month, in the office working for a place that is comically evil. And I can’t leave, because they’ve worked it out down to a science how to give me just enough money that I can’t find that salary elsewhere, but not enough to feel like I’m actually valued. I hate it here. Mini rant over. For now. There are actions we can take to address these feelings, but that’s for another time.

Critiques

Books

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas: I have finally done it. Finished my second SJM series, Throne of Glass. I think I have finally reached my limit on how many minor issues I’m willing to withstand in SJM novels. It’s clear her writing has evolved since this series, which is neat to see, but I know it’s not the best that romantasy has to offer so I’m eager to move on, even if I do have a book hangover!
Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas: Listen, I finished this series already so I won’t dwell on it, but this book could have been at least half the length. Or better yet, not a book at all and a small plotline in another book. Least favorite of the series. I don’t like Chaol, and this book didn’t really help it! It was boring! Everyone was boring! SJM tried her hand at another (non-euro-centric) flavor of fantasy and she should maybe leave that to others, or not revisit it until much later in her career.
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
Boys Alive by Pier Paolo Passini, Tim Parks (translation): I…. don’t even know what to say about this one. I don’t recommend it. I picked it up at the Center for Fiction in an attempt to break my streak of only buying previously recommended books and pick up one I’ve never heard of but sounded interesting. It was just not the kind of thing I needed to read. Meandering, plotless vignettes of impoverished, violent, salacious Italian boys in the mid-20th century (1950?), written by a man murdered and known for his particularly vulgar and ‘daring’ writing. It had potential, but ended up making me feel grimy. It succeeded in something, but not something I had an interest in.

Digital Media

Scavengers Reign: I was in the mood for a fantasy/sci-fi show (when am I not?) and randomly chose this one. SO GOOD. Absolutely worth a watch. The animation may seem rudimentary but the storyline, characters, and world are not. There is intense human emotion coupled with raw animal nature, questions of colonization and exploitation, and notes on the power of deep connection as a guiding star. Finished it in two days and went looking for more, only to learn that it didn't get enough attention and was canceled. Even with an Emmy nomination! Please watch this so that they might reverse that cancellation, even if it's just for me.

Rings of Power: Just starting the second season after a quick YouTube video recap of the first. I want to like this show and I want high-caliber fantasy shows to succeed. And I love LOTR. So I will be finishing this season, and will report back my thoughts!
Phantom of the Opera (1943): It may surprise you but I’d never seen anything Phantom until I watched this movie! Like I had no idea what the plotline was. I expected a dark romance with a little toxicity – That is not exactly what this was… But I liked it! Particularly this version of it. Should I watch the 2004 next? Or a recording of the Broadway musical? Which one’s the best?

It was originally released in black and white, which, to me, seems like a completely transformed movie experience.

Foods

Chinese Tuxedo: Named after Chinatown’s first fine dining restaurant and house in what was once the Chinese Opera House (a theater), Chinese Tuxedo looks and feels like the historical yet modern, upscale yet approachable space in strives to be. And it was fucking good. Scott and I will definitely be back for an elevated Chinese food night. I’ll be thinking about that crispy eggplant for a while.
wood ear mushrooms and the only celery I've ever liked, sheperd's purse dumplings, crispy eggplant, crab noodles
Summer Shrimp and Corn Scampi: I LOVE summer corn, and I only like cherry tomatoes in the summer. Combine it with shrimp in a white wine and butter sauce and yeah, its impossible to beat. This was my favorite home dish of the summer by far. It took 20 minutes to make and I could eat it every week for the rest of my life.

summer shrimp scampi served over couscous, served with an herb salad (arugula, cilantro, parsley, basil, lemon and olive oil)

Shalom Japan: A longtime member of out to-visit list in Williamsburg finally came to fruition. The restaurant is exactly what it sounds like: Jewish food meeting Japanese food. I got a cold ramen soup, we all shared a french toast that blew my mind (not pictured) and many other things (not pictured) that were super good. Would go back for a casual brunch!

Shot on iPhone. Prob one of my best food photographs.

Craving: Chuy’s jalapeno ranch with paper-thin tortilla chips. When you pick out a thick chip and it ends up being a bunch of chips bundled together, as if they all wrapped their arms around each other before going into the fryer, and you know you’ll get a good pull of the salsa because they’re stronger together. When you get a fragmented shard of chip that accidentally scrapes the roof of your mouth, as if tortilla chips come evolutionarily equipped to protest being eaten, like how onions make you cry, but its never enough to stop you. When the chip takes a single dip, loses all inhibitions and integrity, and breaks apart on the spot, leaving you to watch it sink to the bottom of the pool and ask you the great question: do you save it or let it go? Also, one of those Chuy’s margarita-tini-bo-bini bitches that come with a mini shaker full of a second dose on the side. Yeah. That would heal me.

Other crap

Divot: When I was writing the intro to this Crit, I learned something, or maybe experienced an intense Mandela Effect if you all can validate me, about the word divot. Mainly, I thought it was divet. And that a divet was a word that could be used to describe the space between two pillows (at the head of a bed). I kept telling myself that a divet was the same as a valley, or a crevice, or an engraving, or anything that refers to space that’s been somewhat scooped out. Turns out that's not a real word, and the real word is divot, which is almost exclusively used in golf (of all things) to refer to the ‘piece of turf cut out of the ground by a golf club in making a stroke.’ And so now, apparently, I’m having a stroke. I don’t even play golf? I was somewhat on the right path with my word, divet, but genuinely cannot find a reasonable source of my knowledge, given that I’ve literally only set foot on a golf course to wreak havoc and have never swung a golf club (except for that time at Top Golf in 2017).
Madrid: I’m going to Madrid next week for about 6 days! I’ll be meeting Scott there, who is traveling for work and decided to let me tag along so we can make a mini vacay out of it. It’ll be my first time back in Spain/Europe since 2019 and I’m absolutely buzzing. If anyone has recommendations or tips, please share! And be on the lookout for an incoming travel piece once I’m back. Until then, here’s a terrible little video of a very formative experience at the Prado. This was essentially a pre-modern Christian church that they reconstructed in the museum, incredible on its own, but when I discovered the quiet corner, there was only this child there in the center of it, swaying along to the music in his headphones, absorbed in the art.

Crit Pic

I located this animal in a National Geographic Grand Canyon National Park video narrated by Garth Brooks. So when you read its name, read it in a gravelly city-man-pretending-to-be-country-man voice. “In this magical green oasis, lives an animal found nowhere else on the planet. The Kaibab Squirrel. One of the rarest animals in Grand Canyon National Park.” You know I eat this shit up. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon but just knowing that there is an ultra-rare critter there, I’m more enticed to go.

Spicy Tostada

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