saw my first james benning film last night and really enjoyed it, almost cried multiple times about my indelible attachment to chicago and certainly almost cried about midwestern roadtripping lesbians tenderly embracing boxd.it/bd8Da1

good thing i already started having my midlife crisis last week, because otherwise it would have kicked off today with the email i just got telling me my livejournal account is 21 years old

oops turned my bedroom into the kramer red light meme

in case anyone asks me later what kicked off my midlife crisis (in what at least at this moment feels like an incredibly emotionally productive way actually), let me note here that it was a double feature screening of James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus (1971) and Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) back to back

not me working on the bibliography/filmography for an important phd research funding proposal and contemplating adding a film i haven't seen yet that has letterboxd users responding like this...

i’ve had a challenging week for assorted reasons and also was wildly homesick for chicago, but i did get to see the new movie from very chicago director henry hanson here in québec so i decided to overshare on letterboxd about it boxd.it/b6S2yf

two nights ago i had a vivid nightmare that i had gone back to the US and then a zombie apocalypse began, trapping me in a skyscraper for hours of dream-time, trying to fight off with a broom handle all these seemingly ~regular~ americans made suddenly inhuman by a wildly contagious murderous rage

managed to not look at my phone for the first hour of being awake today and jesus christ i should do that more often huh

babe wake up new directed by crispin glover film announcement just dropped

this week i made a video in a very atypical way for me -- going through my archive following a very specific set of rules, thus giving myself very limited editing choices beyond my own past decisions -- and while i have no idea whether the work itself is worth watching, the process felt illuminating

i really gotta read some good scholarship about the giallo genre as a product of the years of lead...

once again fantasizing about starting a film festival that is *only* for “mid-length” films in the 25-59 minute range that famously are so incredibly difficult to get programmed into festivals i get why mid-length works can be challenging to curate, but they make sense to program with each other!

i’ve moved to a new city which has meant moving far away from many of the people i love, which is difficult but it also has meant moving to where one of the people i love lives, which as he said over diner coffee this morning, “is good. it’s as simple as that, it’s good”

among all the horrors a weird feeling: a clear image in my mind of some day being at a conference presentation and seeing this post on a slide

yooooo L’Amour à Minuit, a screening series at the historic adult theater Cinéma L’Amour is doing a midnight showing of SINGAPORE SLING (1990) (!!!!) on September 25th who in montréal will come see this amazing and unique and incredibly fucked up neo-noir at the porno theater with me????

happy 91st birthday to (retired but still around!) Jan Švankmajer, arguably the most Virgo director (using an almost superhuman attention to meticulous detail to make total freak shit) most of y’all are surely aware that Conspirators of Pleasure is one of my all-time favorite films

i may have just moved away, but i stand firm in my assertion that chicago is my favorite city in the united states and it’s not even close

the long distance train travel enjoyer has once again logged on

you know it’s been too long since i spent time in new york city when i get sentimental about seeing the subway rats

bringing an ornate vintage glass ashtray home with me that had ended up at my mom’s house (maybe from my grandmother’s?), fingers crossed i don’t break the damn thing schlepping my crap around new york city and then montréal 🤞🏻

yesterday i went to my high school reunion and today i am accompanying my mother to a hippie boomer music and poetry festival — so really a banner weekend for encountering people who make very different lifestyle choices from mine

about to fly to new york, i wonder if anything cool will happen in the news while i am on airplane mode for me to find out about once i land

hooting and hollering and kicking my feet in the air in the first day of this seminar as the professor goes through the syllabus and says “and here’s where we get into the reallyyyyy slow slow cinema”

having what i hear is a classic montreal experience up there with bagels and smoked meat and cross country skiing in the park

oh hey i started my phd this week

thought i had just inexplicably gotten way worse at doing my t shot myself after a year and a half; turns out some of the needles in the last batch i ordered just weren’t very sharp, oops

i also feel it’s important to note that i was drinking wine out of a metal chalice as i was experiencing this

tonight i have experienced the unique irony that the instrument that is called a hurdy-gurdy is actually exquisitely beautiful in both its form and the sounds it produces????

a weather alert i don’t think i’ve gotten before? SQUALL WATCH but i gotta go to the diy venue to experience some medieval elf drone flute

in case anyone is wondering, my music taste is generally operating on high levels of both dracula and circus music.youtube.com/watch?v=dt8T...

the last saturday night before i start my phd while juggling multiple projects, and an evening in which i had a good and necessary but very emotionally intense conversation, meant it was time to finally take an excessively leisurely bath in my new apartment’s tub

every once in a while i remember that the mall i hung out at as a teen had a very large genuine Alexander Calder sculpture in the food court not far from the Hot Topic

nodding my head sagely as i assume today’s discourse is surely regarding Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities

i am finally getting internet in my new apartment today after relying on my US phone's data since arriving, which means i in theory can actually catch up on the many many emails i owe so many people between now and when seminars start on wednesday, thank you to everyone who has been patient w me ❤️

if you're into experimental 3D animation & stories about occult biker gangs, conspiracy theories, and social alienation, today is the last day to support Lodgers of Euclid; a project by Tanner Masseth, who was an essential part of production for my feature seedandspark.com/fund/lodgers...

thinking about the probably 40-something gay man who saw me two evenings ago, sitting on my balcony alone eating the dinner i had cooked myself, enjoying it by candlelight as i looked out on the tree-lined street, and gestured to indicate my overall situation and simply said an emphatic “beautiful”

in an orientation session earlier today i had the agonizing experience of being able to see someone’s laptop screen as they asked Gemini a question and got what i know for a fact to be an incorrect answer, in a situation where i couldn’t really barge up to them and say so

so far i am really loving living in montréal, but i will say i am having a very difficult time gaining a sense of direction in a place where the streets are not due north/south and east/west, and the nearest water is in different directions depending on where you are

wow wow wow i’m finally listening to Cosmovisión, the @halfgringa.com album that came out in the spring and i am blown away Isabel Olive is one of my favorite living poets halfgringa.bandcamp.com/album/cosmov...

a useful and frustrating read from a classics professor at the university of chicago about what the hell is going on at my alma mater (i went to uchicago 2005-2009, and am a bit out of the loop with the admin state of affairs lately) www.compactmag.com/article/the-...

it happened again: i got through an interaction in french totally smoothly until i had to say numbers

regardless of haters… i’ve been making films i’m incredibly proud of, i’m in love multiple times over, i have incredible friends, i just moved to a new country to start a phd program, and now i have a goddamn balcony i can drink coffee on, i’m thriving

cw sa // learning that Annie Rose Malamet has no moral backbone has included things that are not mine to share, but among other selfish cruelties to people i care about, she consciously enabled a situation that led to me being sexually abused in person in boston in late 2022, and misled me about it

i am so excited for my unpacking to be far enough along to share some photos of my new place in montréal because you guys it is so cute 🥹

She put out a nebulous statement about "harm" and working with an "accountability coach." Don't fall for that. She fled the Bay Area because she's an abuser and burned all her community bridges there. Annie Rose Malamet is dangerous and not to be trusted. Don't date her, don't work with her.

holy shit i live in montreal now

barely posting because i’m in the midst of moving halfway across north america / to another country, but i have gotten to see my friend’s dog Demi during our brief stop in toronto and you need to see her

it *almost* happened that two of my current lovers unexpectedly met each other at the screening of Café Flesh i attended last night, but i guess the universe wanted to take it easy on my social battery but let the record show i would have looked hot while it happened

please clap: i felt a powerful temptation to give myself bangs (in a hurry when i have a million other things to do), and i let myself be talked out of it. for now.

in one week(!) i start a road trip with my best friend to move my stuff from chicago to montréal i have so much packing to do lol