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[twiststreet]

Imagine showing this to people back on January 6th. They’d say “why did you time travel back to January 6th of 2024?? You want the other January 6th! Did you not check Wikipedia?? Wait… does Wikipedia not exist in the future? Why? What happe—- ohhhh that’s why you’re showing me this! I get it now! Kind of indirect but i guess you’re entitled to poetic license!” (x)

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Thank you for not shading MLK, Shriya. (x)

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A thing i don’t know but should probably— are people who are into film scores like psyched about the current scene or are they like “no it was better.”.

I know that world has its controversies like that a lot of big name composers use other people to make the scores and then barely pay them, don’t give them credit, etc.

But there’s so many great people in that world right now— disasterpeace, nicholas brittell, i think reznor- ross kiiiiilled it on challengers, lorne balfe, i don’t know if michael giacchino is out of the game now to direct but i liked him too, Hildur Guðnadóttir. And you still get some weird guys who just pop up— i think Grizzly Bear did Past Lives?? Or like i’m not a junkie xl fan but he has fans for that snyder work. There’s so many people. Dave holmes!!! i mean there’s not a john williams but…

But are people like “no no we all know the golden age was ‘43-48??”. i mean i listen to lalo schifrin or whoever, sure, so i can believe an earlier era was better. miles davis doing elevator to the gallows, or i don’t know. The movies have gotten worse so you don’t see a range probably like you did in the 80s, say. (a lot of the classic guys worked in the 80s too). i don’t know. i’m not really in those trenches.

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This is going to be one of my dumber Dumb Guy opinions, but I remember when Speed Racer came out and bombed people were saying "yeah, it might bomb, but a lot of kids are going to be raised on that movie and wait until you see what they get into when they're older."

And I didn't agree with them because I didn't really like Speed Racer or care about any of that. But I feel like that's happened now and we found out what they're into when they're older and it's Challengers, and it fucking rules.

I feel like Challengers is the movie that made me as giddy as I heard people talk about Speed Racer making them, even though it's a horny tennis drama and not a movie about speed-racing, technically, except... maybe it is??? I'm open to the metaphors! (X)

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(yes!)

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Thought experiment: What if Challengers starred hot people instead??

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Fantastic Four #99, June 1970, original art by Jack Kirby (pencils) and Joe Sinnott (inks)

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Comic book adaptations of movies were generally pretty dull, but as a kid I pored over the Goodwin/Simonson/Janson adaptation of Close Encounters. It had a magic of its own that sprang entirely from their use of the medium. I studied it intensely and learned a lot about how comics can work.

Below: Fig 1: Simonson in 1978. Fig 2: Me in 1998. I didn't realize I'd done this until years later!

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Snipers positioned to attack children at OSU and Indiana University, at the request of a foreign government. (X,XX)

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It's not the worst reason that it's sad that society's falling apart in big, ugly, everything-is-rotten ways, but one way that it's sad is that it's making it less fun to read about how society's falling apart in small, Danny McBride science-fiction double feature, brain-zappy ways.

I like feeling like I'm surrounded by crazy people hurtling through the void in a dying empire in a fun, hijinx-y way, not in a constantly-depressing and increasingly frightening "I will never get to be in the Scream franchise if I start talking about this" ways, and these are hard days for that. Not the worst thing going on, it's (very) low on the list, but the doomscrolling is getting awfully doom-y lately.

Anyways: Johnny Mnemonic over here used the AI to have the principal say racist and anti-semitic things, plus threaten murder, all so he could supposedly stop the principal from investigating a $1,900 payment that went to his roommate, the school's JV basketball coach. (X)

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There's a section of Nixonland about popular reaction to the Kent State murders that people pass around online sometime because it keeps being germane-- what they're all trying to enable here:

(X,XX)

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who chairs the House Committee on Education and Labor, alleged Tuesday on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” that the protests are being funded and organized by outsiders. “It’s obvious that someone is funding them,” Foxx said. “They were well prepared.” (x)

“Why is everybody’s tent the same?” Mayor Eric Adams asked at a press conference Tuesday. “Was there a fire sale on those tents? There’s some organizing going on. There’s a well-concerted organizing effort and what’s the goal of that organizing? That’s what we need to be asking ourselves.” Adams said Kaz Daughtry, a deputy police commissioner, “made a good point” in an interview with Fox when Daughtry said, “If you look at the tents, where did they all get them from? The same place, the same person? Somebody is behind this, and we’re gonna find out who it is.” On social media, many users supplied links to a $15 pop-up tent sold online by discount store Five Below. “Looks like what we’ve got on our hands is a classic case of college students buying something cheap and disposable,” the Hell Gate story added. (x)

1970

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Statement from Emory University protestors (X)

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this was a comment on one of my post from a recent live event. it was photos of joyful queer buckaroos celebrating together and proving love is real through creation, community, and a trot of love. most important I AM LITERALLY IN PHOTO AS A REAL FLESH AND BLOOD HUMAN

it got me thinking about how DEEP AND VICIOUS the irony poisoning of these early internet communities goes. the way buds like this cannot fathom someone just being a sincere person unrelated to their OWN old days of cynical posting. it is fascinating, and i will admit, sad too

despite a DECADE of work, countless live events, 350 tinglers written well before large language models were a thing, there are still people who cannot imagine someone like me could exist. it is a strange place to be. not just part of me, but my entire EXISTENCE is often gatekept

it is easy to say ‘well chuck your art IS strange’ but honestly i think it is more than that. magical realism is common. there are stories about dinosaurs and bigfeet and unicorns. this scoundrel reaction is about two unspoken things: my art is neurodivergent, and my art is queer

heres the thing: I WILL BE FINE. what concerns me is not an issue of MYSELF, it is a concern for the other young outsider buckaroos who see comments like this one and think ‘is that what they will say if i express MY unique way? will i be dehumanized like this at every turn?'

i will be honest, i cannot say that WONT happen, but i CAN say this: for as deep as this irony poisoning goes, it is slowly dying. the way i was treated at the start of my career is LIGHTYEARS DIFFERENT from the way i am treated now. there is a massive shift towards sincerity

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY. to young artists trotting up, the things that i am harassed over and doubted for and made fun of for are NOT tangental to what has made me successful, THEY ARE LITERALLY THE SAME THINGS THAT HAVE MADE ME SUCCESSFUL. YES I AM STRANGE, WHAT OF IT?

the things that you tuck away for fear of a review that says ‘there is a PROBLEM with this art because it has always been done another way’ THOSE ARE YOUR SUPERPOWERS. the gatekeepers want you to tuck those parts of yourself away because THEY TUCKED AWAY THOSE PART OF THEMSELVES

never forget that your unique way is PURE UNFILTERED 100 PERCENT ROCKET FUEL. it will stick out (maybe, if you are lucky, scoundrels will even say that someone like you could never actually be real), but sticking out isnt so bad when you are waving the flag of love.

in fact, when youre waving the flag of love, sticking out is pretty dang cool. what are flags for, after all? LOVE IS REAL BUCKAROOS. thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed this long post then please consider preordering BURY YOUR GAYS.

LETS TROT

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(X)

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Here is a lengthy (and in depth) twitter thread of a "Drama Researcher" investigating this story about a 1949 production of The Tempest from Tom Stoppard.