Movies: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
I know that I’m decades late to this, but I’ve had this made-for-TV movie featuring a Morrissey-handsome Daniel Day Lewis on my mind for days. The magical realism was borderline unfunny—I’ll give it another try—but the difficult tenderness of sex and young love that was shot with such detail and without cliche, combined with the socialism-versus-communism-versus-Thatcherism ironies, won me over.
Art: Storefront for Art and Architecture Open Session #17: Hosted by Olivia Crough
Crough showed film and video clips set at the site of the former Fresh Kills landfill that forgo the stereotypes of toxic sites as off-limits—too dangerous, subaltern, and repugnant to be touched.
Shu Lea Cheang’s feature-length Fresh Kill (1994) envisions a near-future New York where the financiers dine on sushi cut from fish lips while the rest carry on by sorting through the detritus, all with 90s cyberpunk stylings channelled through public-access TV.
I think Josh Kline might have seen the film? Compare the two images below:
Music: Calm Roots w/Alex Rita on NTS
Meditative field recordings for writing that will make you forget you’re writing anything at all
People: Seniors graduating
They’re the first ones to experience anxiety. Ever. As their professor, I know.
Corporations: Are they a front?
This week, the Guatemalan restaurant on my block shut down. Chairs, tables, and soda machines were hauled out to an unmarked van. This is at least the fourth time the restaurant has changed since I’ve lived in my apartment. It began as a Mexican restaurant, then became a different Mexican restaurant, then a diner, then a Thai-fusion spot, and then a Guatemalan place.
My new theory about the turnover is that there’s a lot of so-called restaurants that offer free wifi. Even if the new street-food-as-bowl place don’t make a profit, they’re gathering a large list of emails to sell or use for other purposes. Restaurants don’t just sell food—they harvest data.
Have a nice week, y’all.