#I Used to Go Here

[standupcomedyhistorian]

Hi, everyone!

It's Demetri Martin Month on my website for December, and I've been working on a number of articles about one of my favorite comics.

If you haven't heard of Demetri before, his comedy is DENSE with fun music, clever turns of phrase (he's a master of wordplay), and witty one-liners. Plus he draws—and he's ambidextrous!

Anyway, while doing some research, I discovered something pretty interesting:

Almost all of my top 5 favorite comedians have some affiliation with Gillian Jacobs (Britta Perry on Community)! 🤯

Here's how:

1. Bo Burnham: Bo and Gillian both appear in Adventures in the Sin Bin, and Bo knows her long-time partner Chris Storer REALLY well (Chris co-directed two of his comedy specials—what. and Make Happy)

Fun fact: Gillian also participated in a DND game with Bo and Jerrod Carmichael as part of Elsie Fisher's podcast—and it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard haha

2. James Acaster: No connection that I know of

3. John Mulaney: Both John and Gillian appear in the wonderful episode from Season 2 of The Bear called "Fishes"

4. Flight of the Conchords: No connection to Bret that I know of, but Jemaine Clement and Gillian both starred in I Used To Go Here (a really enjoyable movie and definitely recommended)

5. Demetri Martin: Gillian plays Demetri's love interest in his directorial debut Dean (that he also wrote—so talented!)

Pretty crazy how many connections all of my favorites have to Britta! 😉

[dierecneps]

There's definitely some alternate universe where these two are my professors and i am a full on mess

[directedbywomen]

Celebrating Kris Rey!

“I try to remind myself — and everyone — it’s really supposed to be fun and playful, and that it’s actually no big deal. So even though I had important things that I wanted to say, I also know that I’m not performing surgery on someone. In the end, it really is just a film and, when I remind myself of that, it gives me a little freedom to play and to try new things in the piece — to take risks — and that attitude carries over to the actors.”

Read more in Arts at IU.

I Used To Go Here (2020)

"I Used to Go Here balances its wistful approach to college days with genuine thoughtfulness about adulthood. Warmth and wisdom pervade Rey’s pleasing comedy, where other similarly themed films might hew toward cynicism."

Read more in the Crooked Marquee review.

Empire Builder (2014)

"Because of the film’s refusal to divulge the inner workings of the narrative (or the potential endgame), opting instead to hint and insinuate, the task of emoting and communicating these subtleties for the actors multiplies in weight and importance, the production’s success resting squarely on the shoulders of the two leads..."

Read more in Film Pulse's review.

It Was Great, But I Was Ready to Come Home (2009)

"I traveled to Costa Rica 3 years ago to try and learn Spanish and to try and gain some feeling of independence in my life. While telling a friend about that experience I thought it might be a good idea for a movie to show two girls traveling there together. I had been interested in exploring the uniqueness of female friendship for a while and thought that this would be a good backdrop. There is also something incredibly intimate about traveling with someone abroad that I thought would lend itself to the story." Learn more in this Indiewire interview.

Explore Rey's filmography on Letterboxd:

In several of her earlier films she was credited as Kris Swanberg.

[flipjack]

Gillian Jacobs at an art museum

[veryslowreader]

Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel

I Used to Go Here  

[sergle]

"tiktok is so toxic yall are on that evil app but I'm built different 💅" to you!! TO YOU!! YOUR TIKTOK ALGORITHYM MAY BE EVIL

Mine is FIRE

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[moviecinepelis]

[anotherpapercut]

yesterday I went to a little meeting at my local queer community center and I was admiring their bookshelves and mentioned that I work at the public library and someone said "well I bet they don't have any [LGBTQ+ books] at our library" and I was like um. yes we do. we have tons of them. half of our employees are queer leftists so they said "oh well I bet they don't in [nearby rural county]" and I was like uh once again yes they absolutely do. gay people live and work there as well

so here's a quick reminder that if you don't think your local library has enough queer centered materials you should actually check before assuming, and if you're not satisfied with their collection you should submit a request for more such books. I don't know what the political landscape of libraries looks like outside the us rn, but within the us no matter where you are, I promise you there are employees at your library fighting for inclusion and intellectual freedom and they can't win without vocal public support

[ionomycin]

Grief

ref photo by @jawsstone

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[kittyspring-creates]

[lotus-pear]

cringefail exes oh my god

[radiosummons]

This is supposed to be the outfit that "protects" Link from acquiring frostbite pfffttt

Between this top and the mandatory acrylics that come with the new arm, gotta say I'm loving how much Nintendo keeps leaning into GNC Link XD

MINI UPDATE: (Guys, I've already updated this post with the correct info. The "protects" part was supposed to be a joke about how skimpy the outfit was. I didn't realize the outfit gave an attack bonus at first, either. That was it. That was the post. You don't need to keep sending me messages trying to inform me about the frost attack. I know, I promise).

Update I: Just realized they gave him a set of blue acrylics for his left hand

Link really do be out here serving cunt 💅💅✨✨

Update II: Many thanks to the people who pointed out that this outfit gives you a special frost attack when in cold temperature areas, it doesn't actually protect you from the elements. I'll be honest, I am purposely avoiding any guides or walkthroughs for my TotK playthrough (since I'm trying to replicate my BotW experience). When I found the Frostbite Shirt, I was just happy that I finally had a piece of clothing that I thought could protect me from dying of hypothermia (was chugging spicy elixirs like you wouldn't believe) so I didn't notice the attack bonus until a bunch of you pointed it out lol

[flipjack]

With Hannah Marks and Richard Louderback