My Name is November

a little while ago on kjb i think either you or abbi mentioned a wolf-themed fragrance that you liked(?) or thought was interesting and i cannot seem to find it no matter how hard I try

in early episodes of kjb i swear you referenced something called the mother problem in sci fi? do you happen have any additional sources or writing on it (bc i was about to reference it to a professor and then realized i didnt know enough about it to reference it correctly)

Dear ma'am, I saw this and the parasociality screamed "November!" 🤷‍♀️

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DH7MoP8SbOi/

adverse conditions entry: on a transcontinental flight, sitting in the aisle seat, the guy one row up on the other side of the aisle was watching san andreas, the movie where california is destroyed by an earthquake and dwayne the rock johnson is there. i’m easily distracted by moving images so decided to watch over his shoulder. “replacement-tier disaster movie viewed without sound on a small screen from four or five feet away” isn’t the entry, the entry is that i was trying to watch it but the guy kept fast-forwarding through every scene that wasn’t earthquake destruction. i’m not sure how much of the plot i actually missed but i’m fairly certain i was supposed to know who the character who got obliterated by a shipping container was in relation to everyone else fairly certain this was also a flight to california, so the guy may have been manifesting (hasn’t worked so far)

Adverse conditions film club:

I share an alma mater with the Pixies frontman and took every film course taught by the professor whose syllabus gave us Debaser, which was a delight. Unfortunately the class made locally famous by a big band had a lot of dudebros there for what we would today call clout.

I make the mistake of getting high with my friends beforehand.

We're watching In a Year of Thirteen Moons, a film which at one point features a desperately depressed German transwoman reciting from Goethe in an actual, working slaughterhouse, viscera and all and I am surrounded by frat boys giggling to one another about "what a fucking freak this dude is". I'm repressing as hard as I can and in such major denial and everything about this movie is promising me misery and everyone around me has decided this is a joke and is uttering forms of transmisogyny and slurs entirely novel to me, way too stoned.

Nova that movie felt like it took thirty fucking years to end and delayed my transition by a couple of years.

ACFC: watched a documentary about Enron on a Netflix and chill date, but I got too into it and my partner fell asleep on my lap. which would not have been a problem if not for the sanitary condition of their couch, my legs going numb from the angle I was sitting in, and my total inability to wake them back up until the credits rolled.

How about going to see the premiere to a 3 hour long documentary my film professor was really proud of, only to then Fall Asleep After The First 15 Minutes. Sitting Next To My Professor, The Subject Of The Doc, And My Friend Who Found It So Hilarious He DID NOT WAKE ME UP. I was absolutely mortified, my teacher found it to be the funniest shit, the doc subject left in a huff. I didn't end up watching it so idk how it fits in the ACFC, but spiritually it fits in.

adverse condition films club: when i was in college i found out one night that my most beloved relationship was built entirely on lies—not even cheating lies just like made up shit that never existed—and in an addled sleepwalking depression state the next day i skipped all my classes and watched hoop dreams (1994), unbroken, no phone use. i retained... "basketball"

i have an adverse film club story. i apologize if this is too sad. i watched Hatchet as a 10 year old in a dark classroom while my school was locked down during a school shooting happening one town over (not in my town but very close, hence why we locked down as well). none of the other kids (to my knowledge) seemed to know about what was happening but myself and a boyI had been playing with at indoor recess did cuz we went to use the class computer to play games and our teacher's had had a news article with live updates and PHOTOS open. she made us promise not to tell anyone, then the school locked down, and we all watched Hatchet with extremely low volume. i fucking hate the movie Hatchet

my best ACFC: went to see cats (2019) at 3 in the afternoon with my musical theater gay bestie and we split an order of pretzel nuggets. everything was coming up us except for the fact that i had had chronic, undiagnosed gallbladder disease for 3 years at that point which i did not know about and could not control, and the pretzels were coated in butter,,,,,, so i spent the film in the sort of half-alive half-astral transcendence state of severe and unrelenting pain, writhing in my seat, trying to pay attention to the taylor swift cat and the dancing child-size mice, wondering where her butthole went, while also doing my best to not vomit or scream. the gallbladder attack ended as the movie ended because it was SO long. walking out of there i was a new woman

Adverse film conditions: My dad's way of building my character as a child was Werner Herzog movies. I was very young when he had me watch them. I have formative childhood memories of Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo. They definitely made me feel new emotions, so I guess it was a success. Nosferatu gave me nightmares, and he'd play the soundtrack to scare me. I love the movies/docs now, but not as a child.

Also, his nickname for one of my childhood best friends was "Klaus" because he really looked like Klaus Kinski.

not that adverse (in a cinema) but watching Ant Man and The Wasp while hungover and recently dumped with a group of friends including the guy for whom I'd been dumped was a real low point

my latin/ english teacher showed us a film version of romeo and juliet from the 70s on an old tv that was bolted into a pintle mount swivle joint contraption from the ceiling in a corner of the room. for as long as she'd been there she knew that there was a scene where romeos naked ass is on screen, so she timed it out perfectly and just stuck the vhs box up in the air in front of the tv and knew how to move it back and forth so no one saw the low res 70s twink ass. the vhs case was just long enough for her to reach with it. must've done it a hundred times. also when we watched the old 60s Great Expectations she rewound and replayed the scene of Mrs. Havershem bursting into flames and dying like 5 times for us because (she told us privileged few outside school in the latin club) that she thought that woman was a "heinous bitch"

Adverse conditions film club: watched a pirated version of Wallace and Gromit The Wrong Trousers with only the background audio and no dialogue. Took a few mins for us to realize since the dog doesn’t talk but by then we were committed so we just watched the whole thing that way.

Submission for adverse conditions film club:

About decade and a half ago I was on a terrible ferry trip with my family. My dad was missing for most of the trip. Either drinking or existing in a quiet lethargic zombie like state of drunkenness. There, but not really. I of course got the pleasure of sharing the closet sized bunk-bed cabin with him. Getting back on home shore was a relief. Bur he didn't arrive with the rest of the family. So we just waited at the ferry terminal parking lot for him to show up. And waited some more. And then some more.

I think it was after the first hour of waiting after all the other vacationers had long since left that the dread really sunk in as the distinct possibility that: drunk out of his mind he had simply fallen overboard and was currently floating face down in the Baltic sea, began to fill everyone's thoughts. Mom was stress smoking, alternating between furious and worried. My two kid brothers were asking where dad was and what he could be doing, first out of boredom and confusion but then increasingly out of worry. I think it was another hour later that he finally stumbled out. Drunk out of his mind. I didn't feel relief, I stuffed my hard plastic earphones as deep as I could and spend the car trip home watching Zodiac (2007) on my 480p Windows Phone. I've since talked about it with my now divorced mom and I don't have any first hand memories of the apparently eventful car trip. So I think the movie was great.