Volume 2, Entry 24: Frozen Motion
The newsletter last week linked to the wrong bookseller for newly-released paperback copies of Alyiah’s debut novel Faeblood: Unbroken. The correct link is here.
In the early summer of 2001, I had just dropped dirty clothes in a hamper when I found my parents’ small TV on. My mom had taken a phone call in another room and abandoned whatever show she had been watching, so I located the remote and tried to power it off but accidentally changed the channel, landing on MTV.
I’d never watched MTV before. My musical tastes mostly focused around oldies from the 60s, movie soundtracks, and songs recorded out of episodes of Nickelodeon shows (“Killer Tofu” will forever make me smile). MTV didn’t interest me, not with sports and cartoons and video games to attract my attention. Why watch a music video for a modern song when my tastes skewed in other directions?
Landing on MTV, though, felt daring. No one had explicitly forbidden me to watch it…but it had been made clear that the channel wasn’t to be in our family’s rotation. A bit of curiosity gripped me though so, after checking to make sure no one was in my proximity, I lowered the remote and listened.
A woman was introducing a new video for a hot young band. I didn’t catch the track title or band name, too caught up in what felt like a taboo act by fifteen year-old me, but I noted her mention that this was the music video’s debut on the network. She told me to enjoy it.
The video followed a group of men watching the VHS playback of a party they had attended with friends. I saw Solo cups in their natural habitat for the first time; I watched the playful guests run around, interrupting make out sessions and challenging one another to games I would later learn alcohol-free versions of. Through the entire video, the lead singer kept bumping into and catching the eye of a woman with brown hair. When shots of the woman appeared on-screen (in the video), there was a clear expression of regret and sentimentality on the lead singer’s face.
The music video ended with that same woman resting her head on his shoulders outside the house on a bench. Thanks to the frame story of the band watching the video they recorded, though, I understood that this was not the beginning of something that lasted forever; this was wishing for a return to a time that ended too soon. The song was almost mournful, despite the intimate moments and giddy closeness it depicted.
I loved it.
It would be two years before I watched my second music video—Madonna’s “Material Girl” in Honors English 11–but that was fine because what I had just watched stuck with me. That story of fond remembrance bitterly revisited resonated with me, and the images depicted lent me insight into the social world I was and always would (choose to) be outside of. The song was catchy and thoughtful and told a story that was new to me but also somehow familiar.
But it was greater than just the song’s content though. Through a series of coincidences and accidents, I had come to watch its literal premiere by a literal mistake on a channel I didn’t follow. This left me feeling like part of the song’s lore. There had to be a reason, I decided, that I had stumbled upon that video at that moment.
Serendipitous. I assumed it was serendipitous to my life to hear that song at that moment.
Or, it would be serendipitous. I just needed to live and arrive at why first.
It took awhile for me to locate the song in those days but, eventually, I learned it was “Here’s to the Night” by Eve 6. Although it would be six years before I purchased Horrorscope, the album it co-headlined with “Promise”, “Here’s to the Night” was the first song I found on Limewire and one included on every mixed playlist I made during college.
Each time it played, that music video played in my head and I found myself transported back to that moment of watching its MTV premiere. And I found myself wondering when the moment would finally arrive that would explain why it had found its way into my life.
During college, there was a girl from my Modern Algebra class whom I liked who listed Eve 6 as her favorite band on the earliest iteration of Facebook. When I found she had signed up for the same Coaching Youth Sports seminar I had, I listened to the first half of Horrorscope over and over in preparation for the next quarter. Every time “Here’s to the Night” played, I felt certain I was inching closer to understanding my swirled destiny with that song.
I wasn’t; she dropped the seminar before the second day. (Seminar was good though.)
Skip ahead seven years. While making the massive AVID slideshow for my class, I had room for one more song to accompany it. A little over four minutes in fact. I had found my reason: to honor the most transformative four years of my life. What better moment to capture with the sentimental song that had found me more than a decade prior?
The other three songs, as it turned out. “Here’s to the Night” played but lacked the power, especially compared to “Growing Up” and “The Story.” It conjured no emotion in me, let alone my audience.
I squeezed Eve 6’s hit song into Mathletes slideshows. I bought karaoke versions to test out for talent shows. I scribbled out parodies of it for end-of-year classes. None of them fit; most of those avenues were abandoned soon after starting.
Nothing I tried felt as right as watching that music video premiere that day. Every year that passed imbued “Here’s to the Night” with feelings of disappointment and heartache rather than destiny and purpose. I had believed that my mistaken button press gave me a glimpse of the future; finding it ill-fitting and pointing nowhere over and over became a mystery show canceled without ever solving the crime.
It would surprise no one to learn that I search for serendipity and purpose like this all the time. I want the things that happen to me to matter; I want to matter in the most desperate deep-in-my-soul way imaginable. I struggle to find purpose every day, just as I have spent what is now two decades of my life searching for a purpose for a random mistake leading to a random channel for a random song by a random band. A random song that wasn’t even meant to be about anything more than a one-night stand! This compulsion is one of many that routinely overclocks me.
At some point over the last couple of years, I let go of that pursuit a bit. I stopped including “Here’s to the Night” on my casual playlists, opting for the more intense Eve 6 hits “Promise” and “Inside Out” instead. I stopped humming it when recording videos. I no longer tried to force it into slideshows or projects. The music video faded from my recollection. To my mind, I finally grew up by letting go of the tenuous connection I had manufactured.
Over the last month, I began compiling a playlist called “Mucha Música” on my phone. Each morning, I would go through a letter of the alphabet and add every song I like or had ever liked into the playlist starting with that letter. After weeks of playing exclusively SOUR and months before that of Evermore and the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, it felt appropriate to mix things up. My goal was to play variety while I jogged, before and after the walks with Alyiah, and during my showers. I had narrowed my listening so much; I needed to refresh and expand again.
“Mucha Música” has reached the letter P and currently features 370 songs and more than 24 hours of tunes already. Although I do occasionally skip tracks, I typically just scroll blindly in the morning and pick a song to kick off a shuffled lineup before I head out the door. This has produced some odd accompaniments to heavy exercise—Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque” did not fit; “Jessie’s Girl” surprisingly did—but mostly it’s just been fun to hear old favorites play again.
Earlier this week, though, right as I crossed Bellaterra to resume running down Whitelock, a familiar instrumental opening began. Sustaining my cardiovascular and respiratory systems occupied my body, so my mind could freely focus on the song. Immediately “Here’s to the Night” conjured scenes from the music video, the familiar dull camcorder colors as distinctively grainy as they were in 2001.
But a funny thing happened afterward. Instead of the video playing out mentally with the track, images from my life filled my head. There were Matt and I driving down the Causeway. There was meeting up with Roseanne outside Hunt Hall for Mythology after leaving the coaching seminar. There was playing Taboo at Shannon’s tea party and looking out at my AVID class while they tried to do a scavenger hunt photo as a single group. Megan crushing every challenger at ping pong in the garage a few Christmases back, eating at Rick’s Diner after Dear Evan Hansen and Cafeteria 15L for the engagement celebration and drives down Highway 5 to River City or Jesuit. Leatherby’s after the State TOTY dinner, finding the secret decorations in my classroom, talking about life with Isaac, playing song after song with Courtney to finish up Diamond Day, a walk with Alyiah through Kunsting Park, sitting at the fire pit with Nate and Bria, watching Parasite in the backyard.
The amazing thing is this: “Here’s to the Night” wasn’t playing for any of these memories. And yet there they were, an endless stream of moments when I felt most alive and happy conjured by this random song about a one-night stand that I caught by pure happenstance on a channel I never watched in a room I didn’t belong in.
I was waiting for the moment when “Here’s to the Night” would serenade a single moment, some solitary scene that would resonate forever as the pinnacle of my living. The song that would play and everything would thereafter make sense. The song that would play and I would know I had arrived.
Instead of being the domino that began a lifetime of toppling, the song carried me forward; it joined the soundtrack of my life. And, now, all I need is that song to carry me back to not just my random MTV encounter but all of the best parts of the intervening years when I was struggling to place it instead of realizing it had long before grafted itself to my heart and memory.
Whether that counts as serendipity achieved or not, here’s a toast to the song that knows me all too well.
Content Consumption
FILM
Willy’s Wonderland (2021)
The pitch for Willy’s Wonderland sells itself: a wordless Nicolas Cage plays Five Nights at Freddy’s but, instead of being slowly stalked by the animatronic monsters, he systematically tears them apart between vigorous rounds of pinball. This isn’t the premise of some intriguing story; it is, however, a fun silly idea for a campy horror film that refuses to take itself seriously. // Unfortunately, despite this promising idea and a fully committed Cage grunting and massacring through a series of possessed creatures, a horrendous script that loses sight of why audiences would turn in undercuts all of the gleeful mania of Cage’s janitor and turns Willy’s Wonderland from a silly twist on Five Nights at Freddy’s into a sloppy hard-to-watch movie. // While Cage-dominates-evil-animatronics is the focus, the film strays from that storyline far too often. There’s a backstory of serial killers and satanic rituals, as well as some exploration of the town’s bargaining with the creatures. Moreover we meet Liv (Emily Tosta), the child of two victims and currently living with brutal Sheriff Lund (Beth Grant), who has organized a troop of teens to help her burn down Willy’s after extricating the janitor. // Before I go full-Cage on the film, I’ll note that I do appreciate what they were trying to do with all of this. The added stakes of a town held captive brought promise and, delivered differently, the backstory felt fitting. We only got three adult members of the community but they felt plucked right out of the 80s. The teens fit familiar archetypes of earlier (better) slasher films and provided some potential subversion. And, of course, the filmmakers had a bought-in Cage to wordlessly carry whatever self-unserious script forward. // But just because a film is meant to be shallow, stupid fun doesn’t excuse bloatedness, excruciating dialogue, or ill-conceived blocking. For a film singularly built around Cage, Willy’s Wonderland spends forever focused on others. Liv, her friends, the Sheriff—all get far too much screen time despite being uninteresting, barely-rendered characters. A bit of backstory can flesh out the world sufficiently for viewers to hang with the lunacy, but a little goes a long way. Not only that, but so much of the film away from Cage is filled with long, dry chunks of exposition awkwardly delivered by Tosta or Grant. Neither actress is the problem—it’s the writing that feels hackneyed and rushed. Every extended line disrupts tension and steals time away from Cage-at-work. In addition, while the extreme gore never bothered me—especially with some of the spurting liquid oil rather than blood—there is a sex scene between two teen characters that goes on so uncomfortably long that I nearly fast-forwarded through the inevitable attack following it just to get away from it. It’s yet another element that just feels juvenile, tacked-on, and poorly-reasoned—adjectives that each describe the teenagers as a whole. There had to be another way to introduce the victims but, regardless, this didn’t work. // Finally, on a more technical level, I took issue with the creatures themselves. Although I have admittedly never grappled with murderous animatronic mascots, I have visited Chuck E Cheese and played Five Nights. These are heavy, bulky animatronics; they lumber and overpower. And, while the character designs were mostly excellent, the battles too-often resembled Cage fighting either an obviously costumed human or what resembled an inflated costume for an early-90s Power Rangers villain. There was no bulk to even the large gorilla and, for everything clever battle (I enjoyed the ostrich one in particular), there was uninspired handfighting. With such a juicy conceit amd such a distinctive setting, I wanted some “zombie kill of the week” style of fun but that just wasn’t in the cards. // I can see what they wanted to do here. They had Cage and a concept which is one helluva place to start. Willy’s Wonderland could have been silly, mindless gore with story cast mostly aside to make way for Cage. I can appreciate the idea of the movie while also pointing out that it failed, though. The awful script tried to do too much and the construction felt rushed and too often the filmmakers seemed to distrust the heart of their film. I wish they’d just leaned into the lunacy. Framing with a minimal story is better than framing with not just a bad story but too much of one. // Even Cage couldn’t make this fully watchable.
Luca (2021)
While Soul showcased Pixar at its most philosophical and abstract, Luca is playful, grounded, and child-friendly without sacrificing structural tightness or aesthetic beauty. This is a story comprised of lovely pieces that have been developed well elsewhere, but the whole is at least as great as the sum of its parts. Luca is a colorful, heart-filled treat. // Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) is a “sea monster” living a secluded life with his parents for safety’s sake. When Luca meets fellow “monster” Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), the latter pulls Luca into the human world of Vespas and ice cream. Because the “monsters” become human absent water, the two then flee to a nearby town when Luca’s parents attempt to punish him, leading them to Giulia (Emma Berman), the firecracker daughter of a noted sea monster hunter. Giulia and her father take in Luca and Alberto while the three attempt to win a pasta-themed triathlon of sorts, with Luca’s world growing ever larger as he grows closer to Giulia, his parents in pursuit, and both Luca and Alberto always in danger of being discovered. // With elements of The Little Mermaid, H2O: Just Add Water, Little Rascals, and another film I won’t mention because I’m probably thinking too hard about it, Luca needed to be carried by its original characters and it does. Luca himself is a hungry kid in a candy shop; sheltered and alone, his eyes sparkle with every new person and activity. He is an endearing character who struggles to balance friendships when he suddenly explodes from going solo to two. Alberto is the strongest character of the three, his backstory clear and his arc by far the most powerful. The filmmakers make abundantly clear what he has faced and is facing but that didn’t detract from my liking his brash confidence, admiring his mentorship, and feeling wounded when he did. And Giulia, though given far less nuance than the boys, is the exuberant magnet that draws Luca into seeing wider possibilities than he did with Alberto; she is funny but there is depth enough to root for and care about her as well. Place these three in glistening water, gorgeous Italian countryside, or an vividly-realized town and the result is a joy. // As a coming-of-age story effectively about friendship and exploration, I can overlook some of the weaker elements. The entire triathlon worked to further the story but the stakes never felt meaningful to me; maybe that’s the point—these are young kids, so stakes feel different—but the bully Ercole was as flat as villains come and never added much to the film (aside from being burned by a perfect insult that cracked me up). Luca’s parents’ motivations early on never make sense (which would be fine but other elements conflict) and the same is true for Giulia’s father who is otherwise a delight. Again: these holes don’t detract from a story of three kids, but they were rare holes in an otherwise sharp story. // With Pixar films, it’s natural to compare one to another and obscure just how impressive each achievement is. Luca is not Soul, Wall-E, Toy Story 3, Coco, or Inside Out; this feels far lighter than those transcendent creations. But Luca remains a technical marvel and offers a fun summer story with exactly the right amount of emotion that can be enjoyed by all ages.
TELEVISION
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
Coming off of Wandavision, a show that was at once playfully meta and emotionally resonant, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had a tough act to follow. Offering a far more traditional and grounded story and characters both new and forgotten by me, TFATWS had highs and lows en route to eventually earning my investment but not without numerous bumps along the way. // Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) donates Captain America’s shield to a museum, preferring to remain the Falcon. Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) disagrees with that decision but, embroiled in the fallout from his time as the Winter Soldier, he has challenges of his own. When a group of super soldiers frustrated with governments displacing people after the Blip rise up behind the pragmatic Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman), the two Avengers reluctantly team up right as the United States name John Walker (Wyatt Russell) as the new Captain America, further feeding all conflicts. // TFATWS succeeds in expanding both characters from ancillary participants into people. We spend time in Sam’s hometown with his sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye) and watch him grapple with his experience as a black man while trying to choose a direction for his life moving forward. Mackie delivers the grand speeches that Chris Evans once did; this is Mackie’s show. Bucky receives similar attention; he’s always second-fiddle to Sam but there’s far more personality offered as he tries to make amends for his brainwashed former self and works through the implications of the sprawling “life” he has led. Other characters, in particular Walker and Morgenthau, get well-developed arcs too; both are well-intentioned characters who struggle with the violent demands of their jobs. // At its weakest, though, TFATWS feels bogged down by intertextuality and ambition. The reliance on tiny threads from earlier MCU entries with whole plots and characters disoriented me a bit. The show does well orienting viewers poorly-versed in the sprawling history, but I always felt out of the loop as new faces appeared that I was clearly expected to know but didn’t. (I’ve seen every MCU film but fallen asleep during a handful and those seemed to be relevant here.) Likewise, the ultimate arc of this show is pretty large in scope and there were times where the script faltered trying to carry such mature themes in even a self-serious superhero story. Race, allegiance, duty, and forgiveness are all nuanced concepts explored here and there are times when they come through beautifully—the story of Isaiah (Carl Lumbly) stands out as a resonant success on this front—but other times when they are distilled in speeches and discussions that feel contrived and inauthentic. I certainly appreciate the desire to tackle complex issues; I just wish the writing transcended the genre to match the gravity of each theme. Wandavision’s restraint to focus intensely on one main theme worked well, but the larger story Sam and Bucky lead does strain the wider lens on occasion. // But don’t get me wrong: this is a well-made and interesting story that fits naturally into the progression of the Captain America films. Mackie and Stan prove themselves capable of carrying fuller stories and Marvel gets to set-up some elements of future films. TFATWS is far more drama than Wandavision (despite similarly meaningful subject matter) but I am glad that I watched—and not just so that I can move onto Loki.
I reached some big milestones with revisions this week, but otherwise I got to enjoy some time with friends. Even difficult conversations can be rewarding sometimes, if that makes sense. But I need to do more this next week on Sweet Appeals to stay on schedule; tomorrow will be a big day.
Also:
They grow up so fast.
Err, evolve.