Books:
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
I ended up being charmed by this, I don't know, period fiction with magical elements (it's not fantasy but there is magic in it), even though around 15% in I was sure I'd be DNFing. The story is set in the late 1800s and is about two ancient magicians who have a long-term rivalry in which they pit their proteges against each other with the loser protege dying. Know, however, that the book more or less has no plot really and that the above sentence is both the setup and kind of the whole thing. This is why I almost DNFed it, when I realized that it wasn't a book about magicians competing but rather a book about mood and imagination and creativity and love and it took a kind of mental shift from "fun plot book" to "book about writing and world" for me to end up enjoying it. There's no question the author can write and she's very effective at creating a mood and laying out the details of her world. But the book really isn't about a magician battle or fantastical objects or whatnot but rather about finding love without sacrificing what makes you you. Or at least that's what it seemed to me as much of the book was about the two proteges stuck in the competition they were bound to but didn't create and falling in love and trying to find a way to be together without losing each other. Your enjoyment of this book is 100% reliant on the degree to which you can invest in the writing, the world, and the theme because there's little else driving it along. I'd say this falls into the same general genre category as A Gentleman in Moscow in that that book wasn't exactly a story either (though it definitely had more plot than this one) but was really about capturing something with regard to the human experience, not a fairy tale but its second or third cousin. This is the same but about love, and the magic stuff, while central, doesn't shove it out of the fiction genre because it's more an excuse for describing and specifying the world than it is about people with special powers and whatnot. I think if you're in the right genre head for this book, i.e. the painting of a big romantic period world complete with an albeit fantastical obstacle to the leads getting together, you'll enjoy it.
TV/Streaming:
Evil (Seasons 1 & 2):
This is an utterly hate-watchable show about a psychologist, a pre-priest, and a techie who team up on behalf of the Catholic Church to investigate otherworldly/demonic cases to determine whether or not they're fraud while also dealing with a larger plot involving interpersonal issues and some outside evil force. This show is NOT GOOD - it's infuriating in many ways - and yet... well, yeah, I watched it. All of it. And will be watching season 3. But it's so annoying! The central religious spin on the X-Files I can live with because, even though it leads to a lot of ponderous religious statements, the show invests the characters with a sense of humor and it means each episode has some form of investigation/mystery which keeps it moving along. There’s also an uber-plot involving a big bad (maybe The Big Bad?) and a bit of a horror-movie mood that I guess adds to it in some way. What makes this show unbearably hate-watchy are characters who are just... so... infuriating. They're written in this way that makes them completely unrealistic - oblivious to major things when the script needs them to be, ignoring blaring red sirens about other people again as the script needs and without doubt the most irritating group of children ever to be placed on streaming or TV of any kind. There are 4 of them, girls, ages I don't know elementary school to junior high and every time they're in a scene - which is far far far too frequently and is often the source of the character obliviousness noted above (I'm not giving examples of this because it will spoiler but the mom notices NOTHING with her children and even less with her Christine Lahti mother) - the showrunners insist on having them all talking at the same time, loud, nonstop voices on voices, constantly talking over each other, and screaming this shrill endless nonsense, the dialogue completely indiscernible, like being trapped in a room with hundreds of spinning unoiled bicycle wheels and the only purpose for having the kids onscreen that way every single fucking time screeching over each other this blistering piercing infinity like being in a cave filled with coloratura sopranos recitativing nonstop about the weather is, I can only imagine, solely to make the other parts of the show seem less unbearable which, if that's the intention, is completely working. I’m not discussing plot because it’s all very spoilerable but despite all this I did, as noted, watch two seasons of this show so it's clearly entertaining at some level and I guess we'll have to count that as some kind of - I'd say non-ringing but just the thought of more ringing is making my brain collapse - endorsement.
The Great British Menu (Season 16):
MENU not Bakeoff/Baking Show or you risk great disappointment, though not so much that I stopped watching. This is a competition cooking show in which regional chefs around the UK compete to cook one (or more) courses at a big fancy dinner. There's always a theme (this season it was British inventiveness) and there's a lot of complex plating in order to highlight the theme. In fact, often the visual component is more interesting than whatever they're cooking and not merely because, barring making it all myself, I obviously can't taste what they're cooking but just that the food often sounds like the complicated and airquotes fancy variety that I'm never interested in eating. To be clear and so no one out there thinks of me as someone who spends all my TGIFs Olive Gardening in the Outback, it's merely that the expectations of complicated food combined with the thin margin of error in its execution have added up to disappointment more times than this Janice would care to discuss. Let me put it this way: how bad is a bad burger and fries REALLY gonna be vs how bad your cliche madlib [highly specific varietal of vegetable/seed]-crusted [sourced meaning presumably the place it grew up and not the place it was murdered] [breed/subspecies] [protein] with [something obscure and foreign leaving you unsure if it's a vegetable or fruit], [some fermentation method] [OMG I don't what this thing is either], and [heating method] [something at least vaguely familiar] in a [sauce where it's impossible to imagine whether it will pull everything together in ways you never could've conceived of or, alternatively will make you vomit] is gonna be. Like this: burger and fries OR hijiki-crusted Shearwater Meadows cutthroat trout with mizuno, pickled samphire, and grilled ramps in a blueberry-wasabi emulsion. The question isn't might the latter taste good; the question is which has the higher risk of you going home poorer and hungry? Thus being a lowbrow swilling pig is not some class statement about the caliber of my taste buds but rather a compliment on my brilliance as a risk mitigator! Regardless, the basic structure of the show is chefs cooking an appetizer, fish course, main, and dessert and being whittled down to two before those two present the four courses to a judging panel and then the winner is sent off to compete with all the other regional winners who try to get their dish on the menu. The show is deeply boring - I mean, it's barely a competition since everyone is just cooking what they cook and being judged for it but not really competing with each other directly - yet I find it to be soothing background noise, like perhaps my deep inner beast is calmed by being able to glance up and see food at all moments despite the fact that, at whatever point I actually get hungry, I won't be eating a single thing I see. I feel like this show is the kind of thing people could leave on for their cats when they go out of the house and I guess if that viewing category appeals in any way (and clearly it does to me) then this show is here.
Are You the One (Season 1):
This is an incredibly not-good dating reality series which was so horrendously bad - like Love Island bad (actually Love Island is significantly worse) - that obviously I'm going to be watching all 8 seasons of it. The setup is there are 10 hot dudes and 10 hot ladies, all of whom are self-confessed bad at relationships and are at least presenting as straight though who knows with millennials/GenZers, living together in a house, and some combo of matchmakers and algorithms (or something) has determined which are the perfect couples and, if all 10 can match up with their algorithmic partner, there's a million dollar prize. Each week there are games or whatnot to pair people off followed by dating, screaming at each other, getting drunk and, depending on how the voting goes, winding up in a "truth booth" where they find out if they're a perfect match or not. Each episode ends with a ceremony where they pick the person they think they're supposed to be with (even if they hate them or want to be with someone else) and learn how many couples matched but not which ones. That’s a lot to figure out, especially when you're super drunk and cheating on each other nonstop. Yes, so so so so dumb. But honestly is there a Janice out there who wouldn't want that stupid mess playing in the background while doing basically anything but actually looking at the screen it's playing on? I think not! In fact, I know not because I background-watched it all.
Movies:
Spider-Man: Homecoming (Marvel Universe #16) - So while I always loved the theme song to Spiderman - and btw when did it become Spider-Man? - I was never totally clear on what exactly he was. I mean he kind of has the same anti-criminal generic thing as every other superhero of his era but with some webbing, jumping, and a bulletproof suit instead of a bat-shaped grappling hook with a bulletproof suit or just sticking your arms out and flying with a bulletproof suit. So while with the other Marvels where I really had no sense of the superheroes beyond their appearance in the film title, with this one I did and you know what? I still don't get Spiderman (Spider-Man - it’s so weird to type!) plus the writers did something in this movie that took my not-getting to a whole new level of not-getting.
I know I can't stop harping on the race issues in all of these movies, but I don't know if I can stop myself from doing it once again and oh dear I can’t. I realize the lead actor - Tom Holland - is at this point a megastar but at the point they cast him, he was nobody meaning they were casting a non-star in the lead so whyyyyyyyyyyyyy did it have to be another White dude? I thought this the first time Spiderman showed up in I can't even remember which Avengers/Captain MAGA movie but seeing it play out for the 20000 hour running time of this film, it's just so strange to me. If they felt the person had to be White, couldn't that person have been a woman and call her Spidey instead of Spiderman or Spider-Man or S-pi-derm-an and leave it at that? How about a Black woman? A Latino person of any or no gender? Given that he has his face covered for like half the movie, maybe more, and we know, from Falcon, that Marvel's preferred way of bringing in non-White superheroes is to shroud them as much as possible in order to avoid mass racial panic, this would've been a perfect time to spin the color wheel and try something new.
Not to harp on this point - casting White men by default - too much by which I mean I'm about to harp on it and make a RIVETING, if seemingly roundabout (stick with me it’ll pay off I promise!) observation: The left/right political divide exists in every non-dictatorship on the planet, which has led many scientists to conclude that there's a genetic basis for it with a pull towards individual-over-group in one direction (Republicans in the U.S., Conservatives in the U.K., etc.) and group-over-individual in the other (Democrats in the U.S., Labour in the U.K., etc.). And from an evolutionary stance this makes total sense - too much groupthink leads to the repression of too many ideas and too much individualism means losing the massive benefits of banding together. We experience this tug all the time as anyone who's either (a) been on the receiving end of a sibling who would flee dinner the second it was over or get very immersed in having to do something upstairs real quick or had quote unquote homework or any other excuse where the remaining sibling(s) was/were forced to clean the kitchen because selfish individual (or total genius?) took the eff off or (b) been forced to sit in a room full of co-workers where everyone spends a friggin' YEAR debating the pros and cons of every single option for where they should order lunch can attest, the tug-of-war over which is of more evolutionary value - group or individual - isn't exactly crystal clear. So - payoff! - I would just like to point out to those on the right who complain that Hollywood is a bunch of PC tree/homeless-hugging namby pamby liberals, that Marvel, what with its ongoing relentless propaganda now 16 movies in that the world would be best run based on the whims of a few megawealthy empowered, super-powered, and entitled White men, may be proving that cliche otherwise. If they’re rich and White, Marvel, enacting the dream of right-wingers worldwide, wants them in a suit, flying, and benignly ruling the planet until they change their mind and decide to murder people without consequence in the name of a personal moral duty. Take that, Hollywood libs!
In any event, the baddie in this one is Michael Keaton who somehow managed to get his mitts on a bunch of alien weaponry though no one really seems to notice that it's missing nor am I sure where it came from nor why all involved seemed to have so little interest in keeping tabs on it nor what he plans to do with it other than what every other James Bondian villain seems to do with such things which is rule the planet maybe, though how that's any different or worse than the Avengers’ planetary rule is, as noted numerous times (like here or here for example), beyond me. Teenager Peter Parker aka Spiderman aka Spider-Man - is a high schooler a “man” just askin’? - who was bitten by some spider ages ago and now has some non-confusing spider powers like shooting webbing out of his wrists and very confusing non-spider powers like being indestructible which, given the numerous spiders I've squashed in my days (I know I know they're insect-eaters and I shouldn't do that but I also know, by which I mean I'm convinced the following oft-repeated urban myth (or not?) is true, that the average adult eats 8 spiders in their sleep over the course of their lifetime and I'm trying to cut back on my arthropod sleep-snacking), isn't a spider power I'm familiar with. But he has all that and, because he helped out the Avengers in some previous movie, Iron Man shows up to give him a suit upgrade which only served to add to my overall confusion as, well, wait, what’s the suit for? Like suit 1.0 which he made himself and which I assumed was just a piece of lycra he bought online and paid a Taskrabbit to assemble (unless he sews?) had no special powers did it? Or did it? In which case how’d he pay for/achieve that exactly? Suit 2.0 has Siri or Google Assistant or, if you’re one of the five people in the Samsung walled-garden, Bixby but beyond that what are either of these suits for exactly? I mean isn’t his origin story that he was bitten by some radioactive spider or somesuch and that’s how he got his powers? Clearly this was something one of the thousand screenwriters also observed as the you-wear-the-suit vs you-ARE-Spiderman divide becomes a very strange character point later in the movie though why any of this was raised as a point at all was and remains completely baffling.
Anyway, after what felt like a 500-hour episode of Saved by the Bell involving Spidey, his school friends, and an academic heptathalon, he eventually stumbles onto Michael Keaton's plot and chases down some baddies and winds up with a lot of destruction for which he's both dismissed and scolded - and with zero sense of hypocritical self-awareness - by city-destroying-murderer Iron Man who comes and takes away the upgraded suit. Though again since he got his powers from a spider bite WHY DOES THIS MATTER?!?! Iron Man keeps telling Spidey to stop investigating Michael Keaton and - and as usual it's quite possible this was explained in thorough detail at some point during the Saved by the Bell rerun section when I admittedly may have drifted off into the same staring-out-the-window when-will-this-end zoney agita which seemed to be my go-to state in 10th grade Latin though at least I knew I was suffering through that for the sake of knowing root words for the verbal section of my SATs - I have no idea why. At first I thought it was because Iron Man was letting Michael Keaton's badness play out for some reason that would be explained later, like how in many crime shows they let a low-level baddie go in order to follow that person to the big bad, but as the ending showed, Spidey was right and Iron Man was clueless in which case I have no idea why Iron Man was just ignoring Spidey other than a generic thing where people ignore kids because they're always exaggerating about alien planet-destroying weapons blah blah blah.
So now that the 2.0 suit has been taken away and he’s back his own Spidey 1.0 suit which he insists on wearing for reasons… well I’ll go into those in a minute. But we now arrive at the nonsensical character bit because either (a) he got a spider bite and became a superhero or (b) he’s like Iron Man i.e. your normal billionaire White murdering asshole who built himself an indestructible suit, but he is definitely not (c) both! Yet somehow the writers seem unaware of all of this as Iron Man takes away Spidey's suit and tells him, more or less, that he can't be an Avenger until he discovers he IS Spider hyphen man, like he needs to take some suitless journey of self-discovery to connect with his inner spider as if that isn’t already the case! Well, whatever, it must all be confusing to keep track of 30 writers later, but Spidey goes off to do exactly that in the most Marvel way possible, i.e. while being crushed by a cruise ship that was split down the middle by the baddies and which he then seals back together with his newfound skill of seeing his true self through loving eyes plus webbing. As will come as no surprise, it eventually all works out, meaning Spidey saves the day by murdering an endless stream of people and doing trillions in property damage
But let’s go back to that suit again for a second. Peter Parker is committed to hiding his Spidey identity from friends and family though they ultimately slowly discover who he is and, in this movie, his bestie finds out early on and becomes his amanuensis kinda like Alfred to Batman but teenagers. While I know all this hidden identity stuff was part of the original, there’s no meaningful reason for it to be in this one. Here’s what I mean: about 20ish years ago, Buffy played the entire hidden superhero identity thing as a sexual closeting metaphor in that Buffy hid her vampire-slaying self from her mother and season 2 of the show played Buffy’s hiding then coming clean about her vampire-slaying in the same manner as LGBTQ+ teens coming out of the closet to their parents. But this movie isn’t about a metaphorical closet of any kind. Plus all Spidey’s friends live in a world where none of the other suit-wearing Marvelites are closeted in this way - like everyone knows who Iron Man, MAGA, Thor, et. al. are beneath their suits. Therefore, because there’s no interior or external reason for hiding Spidey self, his effort to behave like a normal high-schooler who's keeping the truth about his real suit-wearing planet-saving-while-actually-destroying-it self from everyone but his bestie plays instead like a personal kink, some kind of intensive cosplay immersion experience in which Peter Parker and his bestie agree that Peter is the one who will wear an outfit and pretend to be a superhero and the bestie will be his otaku/nerd garbed in generic high-school drag and be the superhero's superlackey and maybe they will or won't have sex later but will definitely pose in front of a mirror a lot and post it all on their cosplay Finsta and who’s coming to whose house this weekend and ohmigod am I so sexy in this outfit and you are too and let’s go to Walgreens and walk around the aisles dressed like this I’m so nervous but so excited and let’s sneak out my window and walk around in public RIGHT NOW! Iron Man was wrong - I may or may not be Spider hyphen Man but OMFG THIS SUIT!