This will be a shorter post because the last couple of weeks have been a little busy with vacations and presidents threatening nuclear holocausts and other fun distractions.
I’ve Been Writing
Did you know that you can get from downtown Seattle to Poulsbo on just two seats of public transit, in less than an hour and a half? That’s what I learned while writing about Away With Words, a bookstore and bath and body shop that’s owned by a husband and wife team. A store that sells both books and homemade soaps and lotions might seem like an odd pairing at first, but it’s very clear when you walk in that the shop is intended as a spa for the body and the mind. Now that I’ve been, I don’t understand how there aren’t shops crossing Waldenbooks with Bath & Body Works in every mall in America.
I’ve Been Reading
I found Mega Milk on the front tables of Island Books on Mercer Island. It’s an essay collection by the writer Megan Milks, essentially, about their last name. They explore the science, industry, and culture surrounding milks of all kinds. I very much enjoy these kinds of books where an estimable talent focuses their attention on a single subject from a variety of perspectives.
Racebook, the latest from sci-fi writer Tochi Onyebuchi, is a collection of essays about his relationship with the internet, as both a cultural critic and a Black writer. He’s a smart and observant thinker and I got a lot from the book, but I was barely able to stay focused during the essays about video games. This is no fault of Onyebuchi’s. It’s just that the subject of video games interests me so little that the smartest, most charismatic person in the world would fail to keep my focus on it for more than a few seconds.
Catapult is a non-fiction book by Jim Paul published in the 1990s. It’s about Jim Paul and his friend Harry deciding to build a catapult together. The narrative is pretty straightfoward and it’s interspersed with pieces of narrative history about military technology, but ultimately it’s a very sweet story about male friendships.
Katie Kitamura’s short novel Audition was a publishing-industry phenom last year. It’s got a killer premise: A woman one day meets a man who swears that he’s her son, even though she has no memory of him. But to me it felt like a whole lot of premise and very little follow-through—one of those airy books that grabs your attention hard, only to fall apart on the wind.
Let’s All Go to the Movies
I recently went to see The Drama at the new Tasveer Film Center in Columbia City. I was thrilled with the experience.
The Tasveer used to be the Ark Lodge Cinema, and it was my neighborhood movie house. But I absolutely hated going there. Ark Lodge required patrons to wait in line outside the theater while a too-eager employee would question ticket-holders like they were suspects in a pressing criminal investigation and then seize their backpacks and bags for the duration of the movie.
Now, this is a bit of a side rant, but I live in a city with lots of public transit options and therefore I have virtually no patience for businesses that confiscate backpacks. I’ve walked out of multiple supermarkets that asked me to leave my bag at the front of the store, for instance, because I’m not going to trust my laptop to a security guard who can’t be trusted to keep the store’s stock of diapers safe. But I begrudgingly made an exception for Ark Lodge because they were a small movie theater in my community and I wanted to support them.
I’m happy to report that Tasveer doesn’t have a confiscatory backpack policy. Even better, the employees are pleasant and the theater is now run by a nonprofit that seeks to support South Asian cinema and filmmakers. Except for the fact that they haven’t gotten their snack options set up just yet, Tasveer is a tremendous improvement from the Ark Lodge in virtually every way.
And I have to say that I quite enjoyed The Drama. The Zendaya-Robert Pattinson movie is part rom-com and part, well, drama—with a slight musk of horror creeping around the edges. It’s all about the secrets that we keep from others, and it’s funny and tense and excellently acted and edited. I liked Kristoffer Borgli’s previous film with Nicolas Cage, Dream Scenario, but it ultimately fell apart at the end. The Drama sticks the landing, if you’re willing to make a few exceptions for the characters being young and dumb and in love.
A lot of ink has been spilled about The Drama’s “twist,” which isn’t really a twist so much as a premise that’s unveiled less than a half hour into the movie, but don’t worry if it’s been “spoiled” for you. There’s a lot to admire about the movie regardless.
Anyway, I am thrilled to have a functioning first-run movie theater back in my neck of the woods, and I hope you’ll go visit the Tasveer Film Center in Columbia City for an upcoming show. They’re showing a bunch of promising stuff in the next few weeks including the new Soderbergh, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and more. If you’re crunched for cash right now, they’re also running a two-for-one ticket sale on Tuesdays. Hooray for Hollywood (in Columbia City.)
See you in a couple weeks,
Paul
Paul Constant 