No. 10 - Special Deluxe Size Issue
Zola, Lying Flat, No Sudden Move, and I Think You Should Leave
Quote Retweeted
Back in 2015, Aziah "Zola" King, posted a 148 string of tweets1 starting with, “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out???????? It's kind of long but full of suspense😂😭” and what followed lit up the internet. As David Kushner of Rolling Stone put it, “It reads like Spring Breakers meets Pulp Fiction, as told by Nicki Minaj”, so, almost immediately, it was optioned for a film adaptation. Directed by Janicza Bravo, the film adaptation, Zola, is out in theaters now and it just might be my favorite movie of the year so far.
The story is relatively simple, Zola (newcomer Taylour Paige), a Detroit waitress, meets Stefani (Elvis’s granddaughter and Scientologist, Riley Keough) and the two of them have an immediate connection. They bond over their shared occupation (stripping) and Stefani convinces Zola to join her and a couple friends on a road trip to Florida where she promises that they’ll make thousands of dollars on this weekend getaway. Things go awry with violence, betrayal, and a host of other wild shit as Stefani reveals herself to be completely unhinged and kinda racist. Zola keeps the affair mostly light by retaining Aziah King’s original voice and tone in the script. No matter how dark things get in the film, the twitter chirp chimes in to remind you the origin of this story.
Most impressive with the film is the overall look of it. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a comedy stylized this much. Often it reminded me of the 1999 Alexander Payne comedy classic Election2 because of it’s hilarious use of freeze frames, narration, and visual flairs. Zola updates a lot of it to emphasize the social media element in the story and of the source material and it works tremendously.
Zola is in theaters now.
Only Running Forward Is Allowed
Last week, The New York Times reported a phenomenon in China called “lying flat” (also known as tangping) where young adults are countering the expected 996 lifestyle (9am-9pm 6 days a week) by doing as little as possible. It also includes one deciding to “forgo marriage, not have children, stay unemployed and eschew material wants such as a house or a car.” The innovator of this lifestyle, Luo Huazhong, quit his factory job once he realized that life means so much more than his dissatisfying work and is now using his savings and doing odd jobs to get by in order to support his main priority, lying flat. He’s spending his days pursuing his own interests (working out and reading philosophy) and “living minimally” so that one has the freedom to “think and express freely” and encouraging others to do the same. He has become a sort of symbol for the movement through his posts. There’s even a chill anthem for tangping that’s been uploaded to YouTube where the artist, Zhang Xinmin, performs it on acoustic guitar while he, you guessed it, lies flat on his back. Of course, the government doesn’t approve (they’ve removed his posts and censor mentions of tangping) nor do the upper class (words like “shameful” are thrown around for “lying flat before getting rich” 🙄), likely because they depend on the young workforce to grind themselves down in order to make their money.
It’s a very thought provoking read and one that I’m sure plenty of my generation can relate to. You have no doubt heard about how businesses these past couple of months are having trouble attracting workers and keeping them right now. Generally speaking, offering things like increased pay has paid off for employers (forgive the pun), but many businesses are still avoiding paying a livable wage by offering things like iPhones to new employees (after qualifying to a certain criteria and working for six months of work). It’s totally disrespectful to people who have to work in stressful conditions, especially since these companies generally saw profits last year when many people suffered. Much like the people of the “Lying Flat” movement, many American workers are ditching jobs that don’t treat them with respect.
If this article has done anything for me, it has made me feel personally vindicated. When I was under-employed during lockdown last year, I developed my own daily and weekly routines that I found highly rewarding. Because I was working so few days and hours, but still making enough money to support myself, I had the motivation and time to work on personal projects, get back into kickboxing3, start doing yoga4, and read more books than any other year of my adult life. It was, in my mind, the ideal lifestyle. Despite being stuck inside, I felt truly alive.
Once lockdown was lifted for vaccinated adults and work hours became somewhat “normal”, I found myself doing less and less of those things. It’s taking me forever to get through Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, I haven’t worked out in forever, and I’m finding that I have some sort of social engagement most days of the week. At these social gatherings, I was able to speak to friends and acquaintances about my fantasy of returning to the sort of lifestyle where work is minimal to none and many balked at it (some even called me lazy). For some, they appreciated the structure work provided, others found their work personally rewarding, and one person said they’d rather die than not have to go to work5. Surprisingly, I found only a small number of people who agreed that being able to get by with as little work as possible was the ideal. Finding out there is a whole culture of tangping gives me comfort. I don’t think I’ll be quitting my job and living a minimalist life like some people in that story, but I think, culturally, we need to find a way to make work not so much of a grind.
“Burnt out employees actually cost companies…at least 125-180 billion dollars a year”
The key may be for employers to allow more opportunities and flexibility for employees to achieve a good work-life balance. Otherwise, workers face burnout, stress, and mental and physical health issues. Beyond flexible hours, promoting a healthy workplace culture and comfortable working conditions is a no brainer. In Eric Garton’s article “Employee Burnout Is a Problem with the Company, Not the Person”, he cites “Excessive collaboration” (too many endless meetings, too many emails, and too much context switching burns out employees without them even getting to what they’re meant to do!) and “Overloading the most capable” as just two of the reasons employees face burnout and dissatisfaction from work. Speaking from experience at one of my past employers, I can confidently say that Garton’s article rings true. Burnt out and unfulfilled employees are less productive and actually cost companies, according to a study from 2015, at least 125 to 190 billion dollars a year (not to mention, work-related stress being accountable for at least 120,000 deaths a year). Impassioned employees are just the opposite: they are more productive than employees who are just showing up for a paycheck. It only seems foolish for employers to look at movements like tangping or fast food employees quitting en-masse and do nothing to make things better. If only they could create a job where their employees could have the same fulfillment that I had when I was lying flat, then a lot less people would feel stressed out about work.
A Simple Plan
Released last week on HBOMax, Stephen Soderbergh’s latest film No Sudden Move boasts a talented ensemble cast (Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Jon Hamm, David Harbour, Julia Fox, Amy Seimetz, Kieran Culkin, and more) in a hardboiled twisty crime thriller. Can’t speak too much about the plot without giving too much away, but, suffice to say, Curt Goynes (Cheadle) and Ronald Russo (Del Toro) are hired muscle for a simple job for a mysterious criminal organization, things go wrong, double crosses are done, uneasy alliances are made, and things spiral out of control in 1950s Detroit.
What makes No Sudden Move different than other crime films or heist films where everything goes wrong (think, like, any Coen Brothers crime film) is that No Sudden Move takes care to show how tangled all these lives are and become. Due to one incident, so many lives that were seemingly parallel are now disrupted. A husband and wife’s marriage becomes at risk, higher ups at an auto industry are threatened, old beefs with organized crime members reignite, and many others become spurred by an event outside their control. Goynes, like many others in No Sudden Move, is attempting to wrestle some control out of fate’s hands and into his. He wants to escape his lot in life, but many approach him with racist or classist ideals and try to force him to “stay in his place” or asking him to stop looking for more. Most characters end up exactly where they started or dead, so there’s a big cynical “status quo is god”6 vibe, but, keep in mind, that is not the law of nature. The world is dynamic and one is able to break free of status quo, provided they’re smart enough, lucky enough, rich enough, or all three.
No Sudden Move is available for streaming exclusively on HBOMax
Its About a Big Baby Duck Who Gets His Head Stuck in a Stewed Tomato
I’ve been told to watch I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson pretty much since the first season came out two years ago. Generally speaking, I don’t watch a lot of sketch comedy and I’m content with just seeing the best sketches as they’re sent to me by friends who brave entire sketch comedy shows.
What made I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson season 2 different was that, in addition to one of my friends reminding me to watch it, I saw a blitz of online commotion over it and I realized that each episode is only 15 minutes and both seasons are only six episodes. I was able to knock it out in pretty much an evening and over lunch the following day and, man, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson is incredible stuff.
The show, created by Zach Kanin and Tim Robinson, is aggressively weird and follows in the tradition of surrealist comedy like The State7 and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! in that many of the skits veer far away from their initial set-up into hilariously bizarre situations. Comedy like this is very similar to horror in that there’s an anticipation of something that’s going to get a big emotional reaction out of you, but you don’t know exactly what it is or when it’s going to happen. Often, in I Think You Should Leave, its some verbal or tonal non-sequitur that brings the house down.
Some favorite sketches:
“Brunch with these two dum dums” featuring Vanessa Bayer
“I love Tammy Craps. I’m 60 pounds.”
“I wish I hadn’t said that. I love my wife.” featuring I Liked It! favorite Paul Walter Hauser
“She thinks he’s a whole new guy because of the glasses and the hat.”
And too many more to list…
Both seasons of I Think You Should Leave are available for streaming on Netflix.
Stray Observations
Ten issues! I made it to ten issues! Very happy that I’ve gotten to double digits and that you’re here to be a part of it. This was a jumbo extra long issue so I think I’ll be taking next week off from I Liked It!.
As of this publishing, the first two parts of Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy have been released. Each film takes place further and further back in time in order to explore the history of local serial killers and haunted lore of a small town. I’ve only seen the first one, Fear Street Part One: 1994, so far and it’s fun! A fun slice of pop-horror that doesn’t try to remake the wheel, but it has enough twists and surprises to keep it fresh. I’m looking forward to how the explore the ideas presented in the first part in Fear Street Part Two: 1978 and Fear Street Part Three: 1666.
Upcoming indie game I want! Shut Up and Drive! is an arcade style driving game, but the driving looks far from conventional. Look at these clips! It looks incredible!
"You're late! What happened?!" "I'm tellin' ya, traffic was hell today!" As usual, decent video quality in the reply below! #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #GameMakerStudio2 #screenshotsaturdayStill a ways to go for that A.I., but hey, it's starting to have it's moments! #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #GameMakerStudio2Shut Up and Drive! will be available August 2021 via itch.io
I reread The New Yorker short story “Cat Person” in the wake of a new article from Slate: ““Cat Person” and Me” where the author reveals how she was the inspiration for the original fiction story. Both are fascinating reads in how fiction, the digital world, and reality interact.
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Thanks for reading! I know this week is a little different because it was mostly an editorial with a some media recs, but, hey, it’s my newsletter, so I’m the boss. Since I’m in charge you can send questions, comments, corrections, and admissions of feelings (love, hatred, or otherwise) directly to me at my email address nick.dauphin@gmail.com and I’ll get back to you.
The tweets are archived here on imgur.
Election is available for streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Too many comedies are just really plainly shot whereas Election takes advantage of the fact that it’s a movie and uses the camera to actually say something or enhance the feeling of the scene. Movie is really dark comedy, but I highly recommend it. An all-timer.
I had done kickboxing for, like, a third of a year at Jabs Gym in Eastern Market Detroit when I was first starting out, but I fell off for a multitude of personal reasons. When I got back into kickboxing, I used YouTube to guide me through my workouts. This video was my go-to:
Yoga With Adriene, natch.
I do not understand this person specifically.
A turn of phrase I am borrowing from the trope of the same name. Usually in reference to sitcoms where no major changes happen to the characters’ lives from episode to episode so that the show can run syndicated on television out of order and new viewers won’t be confused by changing dynamics. Used here in my review for a movie because I just think the phrase sounds cool and makes sense in context.
I’ve only seen clips from the 1993 tv series The State and I love it. I mean, I love pretty much anything with David Wain, Michael Showalter, and Michael Ian Black’s involvement. I’d love to see the rest of the show as well as their other shows, Stella and Michael and Michael Have Issues. All these shows (with the exception of Michael and Michael Have Issues) are available on DVD. My birthday is August 1st. Just an fyi.