- I’m not usually the clumsiest person in this household but I got my turn this week when I slipped on the stairs (wet feet) and fell/slid down to the bottom, on my bottom. Fortunately nothing seems broken, and the bruises aren’t visible, but it hurts! I narrowly avoided landing on my tailbone and took most of the impact on my left side, shoulders, and hands. My first thought was, “if I was in my 70s, this would be real bad.”
- Ex-colleague Jianjia was in town for a short stopover and we met up for a coffee on Tuesday. She’s about to make a big move across the world, so it will probably be many years before we meet again. Although we last saw each other two years ago, meeting her this time reminded me of the people we were back in 2017, and how much has changed. I think we’re both calmer, a little more jaded, but less to prove.
- Afterwards I decided to bite the bullet and go watch Supergirl (2026) at a nearby GV theater. I’ve seen talk online about how it’s bombing and people are unfairly blaming Milly Alcock for it, and it’s another example of misogyny among comic book nerds or Hollywood or whatever. I can tell you that the movie has problems and none of them are her; she’s fantastic to watch and brings most of the life to be found in this dreck. I mentioned last week that Craig Gillespie directed this, but I don’t see enough people blaming him. It’s a film that not only fails to carry the baton that Superman (2025) passes it, but fails to achieve anything of value cinematically. It’s a pastiche of boring plot points and cliches. Its needle drops and beat ‘em up fight scenes lack emotional impact. Jason Momoa doing an impression of Jack Black is probably the second best thing about this film. 2.5 stars.
- After that I came home and fired up the MUBI app like a thirsty man crawling towards a desert oasis. I decided it was finally time to watch the first of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs series: Three Colors: Blue (1993). No point saving all the good films for someday that never comes, because you never know when you’ll fall down the stairs and break your neck. Maybe it was the contrast whiplash, but what a glorious experience it was. In its first five minutes, it does more than Supergirl manages with a hundred and eight. 5 stars!
- Not having learnt my lesson, I agreed to watch The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026) with Kim on Saturday. It was okay, but a far cry from the fun of the first film, too focused on making current moment social commentary but then (unintentionally?) winds up being a downer because it can’t find a silver lining to this shit cloud we’re in. The only way to stop a billionaire is… begging another billionaire. There is a moment near the end that echoes the first film’s resolution where Andy reminds herself Miranda’s life isn’t worth what it costs, but any anti-work sentiment is swept aside and nullified almost as soon as it lands. Miranda’s victorious closing line, “I love working. I really do. Don’t you?” is one hell of a message for the establishment to lob at the general public; a naked admonishment from those boomers who complain “nobody wants to work anymore” without bothering to ask why that is. 3 stars.
- You know what else was gross? The actions of ex-Apple design team leads which were revealed in a suit filed against them and their current employers OpenAI/io. I’ll leave you to look them up on your own, but I didn’t think it was possible for me to have even less respect for that group than after Jony Ive appeared in his partnership announcement video with Sam Altman. Ive isn’t named in the suit, but whether he knew what his closest lieutenants were doing or just has terrible judgment about who to partner with, it doesn’t look great. What is the point of all that money which lets you do anything you want, if what you choose to do is unethical and stains the only name you have? Absolute loser behavior.
- I suppose my latest coding project also has something to do with “copying”, if just barely. It’s called Subconscious Samples, and borrows conceptually from the Subconscious Heirlooms series of drawings I made a couple of years ago. The idea is that your mind is always noticing and storing lots of visual patterns and ideas without you knowing it, and when you draw ‘mindlessly’ in a state of flow/play, some of them will emerge. This new software attempts to replicate the process, with a more transparent brain. You add some images, extract contours and shapes, and then it’ll compose new abstract forms out of them, in 2D or 3D space. I’m almost done with it but am still undecided if anyone but me will enjoy having a go.
- The Rolling Stones’ new album Foreign Tongues is out, and I’ve been listening to it over the week. There are some good songs here, and it’s astounding how good they still sound. One of the comments on the music video (below) starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Charles Melton notes that she was born when the Stones were already 34 years into their careers, and that was 30 years ago. I’m in the middle of the hour-long Zane Lowe interview they’ve done, and hope to be even half as lucid as Mick Jagger is if/when I get to 82.
- I may have lost a sticker collection when I upgraded my laptop a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve already got some new ones going from my last visit to the B-Side Label store and Village Vanguard in Shimokitazawa. The “How To Enjoy?” #StayHome one is actually from a series of three, with the girl reading a book and playing videogames in the others. What can I say? They spoke to me.
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