If you're new around here, hello and welcome! Remy from Immaculate Taste has sent many of you my way and I am honored. Now that I'm not talking exclusively to my former Twitter followers, I guess I should let you know for a bit of context that I'm a public librarian in Los Angeles. And August was a bit crazy for me because my boss went on vacation for three weeks and left me in charge! Running a branch is no joke. During her time away I dealt with a violent patron, a coworker fell and broke her finger, and people called out sick nearly every day. I wasn't able to write all that much, but I did watch some things I liked and bought some inexpensive stuff.
Enjoyable Views
Jam
Jam is the 6-episode, bleak-as-it-gets brainchild of Chris Morris that aired on the BBC in 2000. I loved it way back in the day and I revisited it recently for the first time in 15 years or so. Gotta say, it holds up. This doesn't surprise me because I have long felt that Chris Morris may be the funniest person alive.
A little Morris history: He created news satire On the Hour with Armando Ianucci (creator of Veep) back in the 1990s, which was expanded into a spinoff called The Day Today (famous for launching Steve Coogan's career). His next show Brass Eye lampooned current affairs reporting and featured an episode about pedophilia that is both extremely fucked-up and absolutely hilarious. People HATED it.
Around this time, he created three series of an incredibly strange radio program called Blue Jam for BBC Radio 1. Each episode opens with a surreal, barely coherent monologue set to ambient music. Then the sketches begin and it gets even weirder. I'm avoiding going into much detail about the content because quite a bit of it was reused in Jam and I want you to watch that! Just know that if you have a lot of trouble with themes of murder, suicide, sexual assault, and bad things happening to children, it will very likely upset you. If you're a sicko like me, you'll think it's funny.
Anyway - the generally downtempo music is a constant throughout, and it's all fucking great. Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, Brian Eno, Portishead, and D'Angelo are just a few examples. Blue Jam must have done fairly well as far as listenership goes, because it was adapted into Jam.
It's a successful adaptation, though it might be a bit too off-putting for many given not only the themes I've already mentioned but its strange visual style. BBC viewers certainly complained about it a lot! I see it as toeing a very unique line between video art and sketch comedy. The actors often lip-sync their lines, pulled directly from the radio show, adding to the uncanniness of it all. The music pulses underneath throughout the sketches, which include a man who kills himself by jumping off his second-floor balcony 40 times rather than jumping off a taller building and porn stars who become afflicted with a deadly disease known as “the gush.” Go find a torrent!
Drive a Crooked Road
I'm a big fan of the American Cinematheque's Sunday Print Edition series at the Los Feliz 3. They screen a mix of well-known and obscure black and white movies on 35mm every Sunday afternoon. One of this year's standouts is Drive a Crooked Road, a 1954 noir starring Mickey Rooney in a dramatic rather than a comic role. Rooney plays a mechanic hired by bank robbers to transport them over extremely dangerous desert roads at maximum speed after a heist. Turns out he has serious acting chops, who knew. It's a tragic story and I nearly wept for Rooney's character at the end. I believe it's streaming on Amazon Prime these days.
The Shopping Report
I'm not shopping for much outside of groceries these days, but I did buy a few fun things for myself this month.
Cocteau Twins sweatshirt
I've mentioned my aversion to all things 1980s before, but the Cocteau Twins are an exception! I've had Cherry-coloured Funk on a loop lately (I know that song's from 1990, leave me alone). Copycat Press, who also make my favorite longsleeve Lana Del Rey tee, rereleased this sweatshirt this week and I snapped it up.
The Met x Casely phone case
When my boring-ass clear glitter phone case turned yellow and started to crack, I knew I needed an upgrade. I find most phone cases either too cutesy or hideously ugly but thankfully I came across this Casely collab with the Met - Monet's painting View of Vetheuil (1880). It only cost $28 with a coupon code and I'm very happy with it. They sell several other Met collabs and they're all beautiful.
eos lotion in Pink Champagne
I picked this up on a whim at CVS. It smells a lot like Ariana Grande Cloud, a scent that has already overstayed its welcome but still appeals to me in a trashy, wear-it-around-the-house kind of way. If you enjoy that scent profile, you'll like this. It moisturizes very well and isn't greasy at all. The fragrance fades fairly quickly so you don't really need to worry about it clashing with other scents, but it does layer nicely with sweet ones.
Hope you all had a lovely month!