we are who we are
Basically all I have to talk about today is the HBO show We Are Who We Are, the seventh and penultimate episode of which I watched last night as soon as it became available online—and I was so eager to discuss it with someone, but Laney said she won't have time to watch until today or tomorrow, I did a very rare thing and immediately stuck my AirPods in my ears to listen to the Still Watching podcast episode, with Vanity Fair writers Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson, about it. I may even see if I can find any other random podcasts with people talking about it.
The episode was easily the most difficult to sit through of the season, and yet arguably the best episode of the season. The preview of next week's season finale makes it seem sort of iffy as to how the season might wrap up, but I am absolutely reserving judgment, as thus far I have had great respect for every decision the show runners have made, and how impossible it has been to predict the story trajectory.
This was also the longest episode of the season thus far, at a good 75 minutes, closer to 80 after the "inside the episode" post-credits stuff as well as the preview for next week. Between that and the podcast I listened to directly afterward, I spent about two and a half hours last night on either watching this show is listening to people talk about it. There's so much to be impressed by with this incredible show, but one thing I have loved all along is how it started being so short on plot in favor of simply being immersive into this world of a U.S. Army base in Italy (the show is directed by Luca Guadagnino, who also directed the fantastic film Call Me By Your Name), and now in each episode a kind of head-spinning amount of stuff happens.
The show turns out to be, very sneakily, kind of about the 2016 Trump election all along, but the best part of that is the subversive way it's done: always a sort of vague backdrop, very rarely in any way at the forefront of the story. It's going to be very interesting to find out how looking back on a show like this will be affected by the election results this year.
Oh, I guess I could also mention that I stayed engaged with work-related things slightly longer than usual yesterday afternoon, not leaving my desk until 5:00 rather than the usual 4:30 but also otherwise basically stopping work at 4:00. Because I got on a Zoom "Board Meet and Greet" call, just to stay abreast of goings-on at PCC. I had no real questions to pose the Board, although it was interesting to find all of about 50 people on the call, and so far as I could tell, only two of the actual Board Trustees. One of whom I found surprisingly kind of cute.
The call began with a presentation about our recent decision to create a Chinook Salmon sourcing standard, in an effort to protect the food supply of Orca whales. I had already seen this presentation in a separate work related Zoom call last month, so: I support it; it was also old news. There was just Q&A with the Board after that, and the most memorable part of that was when I asked Claudia, who was also on the call, why she was sitting outside. She explained she was sitting in a comfy gaming chair her son uses in his bedroom, and she was bundled up in her coat because her house was cold. Turn up the heat maybe? (I say this without my heat turned on either. But, we largely get heated by three floors of units below us.)
I suppose I could also mention that Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court yesterday, widely regarded now as the farthest-right member of the court, filling the seat vacated by famously liberal Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I try not to think about this too hard, but it fills me with blind fury when I think about the number of people on the left who insisted there was no difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, who said concerns raised about the Supreme Court was "fearmongering" and "just a scare tactic," and now we have the most conservative Supreme Court this country has had in decades, widely known to be far to the right of what polling shows the majority of the country actually feels about key issues like women's reproductive rights, marriage equality, and gun control—all of which now hangs in the balance. This woman is the third justice nominated by a literal reality show host, all of them confirmed, the first time three justices have been confirmed in a single presidential term in over thirty years—since Reagan. And now, we have a majority—five justices—nominated to the Supreme Court by presidents who lost the popular vote. It's fucking insane.
I'd say that Democrats actually do have power to fight back against this shit should they win the coming election, except their history of having no fucking balls leaves me with very little hope in that department.
Oh wait, I guess I have one more thing to talk about! I just finished up this week's Zoom Lunch Meetup with coworkers. This week we had the usual suspects: Rebecca and Brent, and a return of Noah who just happened to be unavailable last week; then Molly returned too, plus myself. So, five people total. A nice, comfortable group, not very big but still not too small.
We found plenty to talk about and we filled the hour. Now I need to get back to work though.
[posted 1:03 pm]