See ya soon

Weekly Wrap - 12/21

I started this blog over a year ago, with my first official post coming on November 21st, 2024, but with this project starting nearly exactly a month later, that is my slightly corny-named weekly blog, The Weekly Wrap.

Thus, this is my anniversary of this project in which I set out to post something once every week for a year… and… I did it! I didn’t miss a week! I have successfully achieved what I set out to do. That is something that I am pretty freaking happy about. The goal being what it was, to create something weekly, you could assume that my ambition was about the output. While that is a part of it, the desire to have amassed a broader project, I mostly wanted to see if I could stick to something almost purely for myself. I didn’t expect to gain a lot of attention or followers, and don’t worry, I didn’t! I wanted to see what it would feel like to push myself to continue working for something even in the face of it feeling like nobody was paying attention.

But that doesn’t do justice to those who did pay attention, my friends and family, and the very occasional random person on Substack who discovered my blog. My dad left countless comments, my sisters always made sure to bring it up when talking with me on the phone or in person, and my mom would text me about the movies I would bring up in the watched section regularly. My partner would text me what the P* stood for each week in an act of perfectly endearing acknowledgement. My friend Ayden, who also writes on Substack, and you should go read her posts cuz she’s a really talented writer (also mentioned last week as related to her killer music taste), would comment on and thoroughly engage with my work. Not to mention the countless friends of mine who never tell me they read it, and then it comes up randomly that they do. What a gift you have given me with your time! There is so little time in this silly world, and our attention is in an ever more violent fight with every company and product in the world. Taking any time to give to my opinions and broader project of creating something here is deeply appreciated on my end.

But now that this year has finished I feel ready to do something else with this blog. Having set out with a year in mind, I am now ready to see what else I can bring to this space. It won’t be a weekly release anymore as the pieces that I want to write are going to be a bit longer, take more research, and be a little less straight-up opinion-based. Expect them to be a little more focused on just music and film, as I feel like, through this process, I have really gotten into writing about / critiquing these mediums. I also think I will have a collaborative project happening as well! For instance, I started writing a post last night on the Avatar series, as I have just watched the 3rd installment in the series, and I can’t wait to break it all down because that movie nearly killed me. In general, I want to move slower, I want to get a little deeper into things, slipping a little past the at times surface-level feel I sometimes got from writing the wrap. But for this last wrap, I am going to do a final check in a rapid-fire style of my usual format. One last go around for old times’ sake. Thank you for all the appreciation this year, even if you just read one post or one paragraph. I have really loved doing this.

Watching:

Wake Up Dead Man! The new Rian Johnson murder mystery is a delight to watch, mostly because Josh O’Connor eats up the movie as the lead, Father Jud, a priest grappling with a new parish that he has been sent to and a particularly challenging leading figure of the church. The movie is just a delightful little romp of a movie that I am really glad is good because I found the 2nd one to be utterly horrendous.

Best of all is Josh¹ who might just the best actor working right now. I don’t think there is anyone whom I feel more confident going forward than him. He has delivered two of my favorite performances of the year between this film and The Mastermind, as well as leading my favorite of last year, La Chimera.

Reading:

On Tarantino

The best thing I read all week is this “take down” of Tarantino. Take down is probably the wrong phrase, as it is more of a light dust-up, but I think there is a lot of value to be gained from reading this. Big T forced himself into our film stack take-world by attacking Paul Dano last week and birthed a wide valley of responses. My small two cents? Tarantino has a problem with understanding the difference between the realities of the worlds he inhabits and the world at large, turning the tables so often, edgelording while fighting against his own edginess, he has lost his grasp of humanity (or maybe never really fully had it).

Albumin:

Easily one of my favorite discoveries of the year is the band Jejune. A late ’90s blossoming from the hardcore scene of the earlier part of the decade, they deliver a shoegazing-emo-melodically decadent pitch-perfect album in 1998’s “The Afternoon Malady.” They are described in the description of the album in the recent pre-order description for a re-released vinyl as: “Second wave emo gasping at alt-rock’s final breath.” This seems to be the perfect way to address them, as a unique and dying breed of a band in the late 90’s fighting to hold on, fighting to find a sound, and eventually, as if prophesized, they fall apart, burning out from the heat of capturing indie rock on its falling star.

The song “Regrets Are Unanswered Dreams” is the perfect song for me right now. It is full of perfect mid-west emo guitar pulls, grinding and electric, with immaculate vocals that sit away from the drums and guitar, giving everything a haunting and magical quality as Jejune wax’s poetic on how painful it is to be alive. What on earth else could you need from a song?

P*:

Most important of all this week, P is for partner! Because this year has been full of change for the two of us, and she has been such a darling with this whole wrap project, putting up with my diligent hammering on my computer every Saturday afternoon and night. We are about to spend our first Christmas together, as in the first one we are spending not with one of our families and just us (alongside our best friend :) ) in the first apartment we have lived in together. It all feels remarkably adult! Like, when did this all happen? When did we slip from just kids into all of the wonders of adulthood? It seemed to happen so fast. To Ava, I couldn’t have done this project without your support, even if it was just listening to me yammer on about whatever I was going to write about that week. Thank you <3

Wrapping Up:

Goodbye, my loves! Tata for now. Remember this, goodbye ain’t forever, it’s just a see ya later.

1. He is also so fucking hot.