You are a hungry little chud. Your chud belly is rumbling, crying out for nourishment. I am here to feed you, by the spoonful, until your little chud belly can’t take anymore. At the point of undeniable satiety, I’ll give your belly a slap and together we’ll watch it jiggle, reverberating in great geometric patterns that look like proof of God.
Below is your food. Eat up, little chud. I only ask that you wash your own plate in the aftermath.
MEDIA ROUNDUP #3 - BERG
Contents
Spoilers for all of these to follow.
Berg, Ann Quin
Things I Don’t Want to Know, Deborah Levy
Hokum
The Drama
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Books
Berg, Ann Quin
Berg is a comedic retelling of the classic oedipal drama - Ali Berg, hearing that his absent father is alive, and living with a mistress in Brighton, sets off to exact his revenge. Like Hamlet, Ali Berg is stuck in a contemplative impotence, rationalising time and time again his inertia, never quite succeeding in delivering the fatal confrontation his journey is oriented around. Berg’s prose is experimental, and asks the reader to be an active participant on Alistair’s journey; deconstructing and rebuilding much of the story, turning yourself into the impotent son.
Things I Don’t Want to Know, Deborah Levy
TIDWTK is a biography that uses George Orwell’s Why I Write as a springboard for exploring a life in writing. It’s structurally challenging, and the writing is really lyrical, especially for a biography. It’s one of a trilogy of ‘Living Autobiographies’, Levy’s attempt to broadcast her life’s work and career in a much more vivid, classically narrative form. It’s just really well written - That spring when my life was very hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations. It’s one hell of an opening line.
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed, but all I could do was to get drunk again, Ciáran Óg Arnold
this is a photography book, but the title is too good to pass over. It’s taken from a Charles Bukowski poem, the suicide kid. The photographs are cool, very grungy and grainy and thematically consistent. I think.
Movies
Hokum
A really pissy, skeptic writer ends up in a haunted hotel, a classic whodunnit with a spiritual aftertaste. The characters are somewhat caricature-like; the moody intellectual, the brutish older brother, the dweeby bellboy with a masterminding subconscious. It has a Scooby-doo like reveal, and some of the script is cringeworthy, but there’s legitimate jump-scares and a creepy overtone to the whole thing. It’s fine, it’s nothing special, but the cinematography certainly outdoes the premise.
The Drama
Film of the year, at least so far. It’s so paranoid, so tense, so hard to watch at times. It’s wonderfully tragic; a failure of communication, of being able to convince your partner than you’re not the monster in their head without any evidence. Equally, the tragedy of forming that opinion, birthing that monster off the back of a preconceived set of notions and aesthetics around terribly Bad Acts, without the time or space for nuance. Tragic and beautiful and romantic and grotesque. Never guessed so many plot twists utterly incorrectly before, either. Didn’t want it to end, and didn’t particularly like the ending, but an incredibly successful film, and a completely coherent vision and identity. A really maturely-done film.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
A classic, no-frills horror film. Just scary, nothing more to it. Not particularly well-shot, or well-written, or clever. None of these are criticisms, because it wasn’t trying to do any of those things. It was trying to be fucking scary, and it was. Like an updated version of The Exorcist or something. Just all-round scary, jumpscare-scary and creepy-scary. I have a real thing about evil old women and religious perversions in horror movies. Fuck. A great horror movie, but a really mid film.
Music
DRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKE
I was never the biggest Drake fan, but sitting through Iceman felt a bit like what I imagine watching a 42-year old Jonah Hill in a Superbad sequel would feel like. You’re forty years old, give it a rest. It’s kind of sad, pathetic even, to be rapping about hoes and money and drugs and internet beef at prime mortgage age. The other two albums, Maid of Honour and Habibti, were even bleaker. He’s not the LeBron of the rap game, he’s Uncle Mike Conley, giving you a solid 10 and 5 a night, but really, it’s time to lace them up.
Two genuinely fantastic songs from the Juno soundtrack. There’s someone from Superbad doing it right.
Art
The Dories, Ogunquit, Edward Hopper
Untitled, Bob Dylan
Are you full, little chud? Did that satisfy your pitiful cravings? Good. I’ll be here when you get hungry again, hours into the future. SMACK! Now, waddle off to bed like the satisfied chud that you are, undulating fat swinging from your stained t-shirt. Until next feeding.
is the belly slap inspired by personal experience?