Talk QWERTY to me
One young man's tale of losing everything, and his relentless fight to get it back
Hello and Welcome back,
Wokeness Has Gone Too Far
Gabby and I are in a debate about whether Bushwick is becoming more like Seattle or whether Seattle is becoming more like Bushwick. I know Brooklyn is doing the whole woke, mullet, large jorts thing but I have to say that’s only because Seattlites are moving there. Seattle invented the flannel, male feminist, IPA drinking, beard grooming, circle glasses millennial thing that every major recent-college-graduate neighborhood is becoming. Brooklyn is gentrifying, yes but it’s morphing into what Seattle has been since before I was born. Seattle was named the anti-fashion capital of the world for a reason.
This article and many others are arguing what we already know, fashion, especially rich people fashion, is increasingly trending towards looking ugly, unkempt, unstyled, but this isn’t your grandma’s sprezzatura. We see this in ripped jackets, shabby Yeezys, ugly haircuts, shaved eyebrows, and of course those horrible horrible oversized jorts that I have to say I despise (I’m sorry). I know I’m a straight man and this opinion might be vaguely fascist (I’m kidding hopefully) but I am really against this trend. New York and Seattle transplants can dress like they worked a 9-hour shift at the lumber mill for the entire NYU semester just to slip into the balenciagas for the family holiday in Bora Bora. This movement in fashion was in many ways popularized and started with an evil man by the name of Macklemore (I actually do think he is a good person despite the music he puts out into the world). Macklemore and his sniveling sidekick Ryan Lewis released Thrift Shop in 2012 - although the world did not end as the Mayans predicted, perhaps it has been given an even worse fate. Since then, vintage thrift stores around the world have been bombarded by theater majors and Lockheed Martin heirs. Where is Macklemore from, you might ask? Why… my hometown of Kent, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. This disease upon western society started where all scourges upon modern society (Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Costco, Funko Pops, Red Robin, Pickleball) were born, my home state of Washington.
This really started in one place and ended in another but I’m honestly surprised Pickleball was invented in Washington that was really surprising and scary to me.
Y2K Spoiler alert if you care
I had the pleasure of seeing Kyle Mooney’s new MASTERPIECE of a film Y2K this week. Okay, I’m being honest… it wasn’t very good but please don’t tell anyone I said that. Was it fun? Yes! Do I recommend everyone see it? YES! Was it good? … How does one measure the merit of a film anyway?
Ultimately the script and the film felt unfinished and unpolished. I think A24 knew this and haven’t been marketing it like at all. They often do this, like with the amazing film the Iron Claw and with oscar contender A Different Man. It sucks because these films have a chance to be amazing and to make a lot of money if they’re just given a wide release! Anyway.
The movie has such a fun concept and some really great actors so I had very high hopes. Jaeden Martell, of It: Chapter 1 and Knives Out Fame who should totally star in a Ben Shapiro biopic one day, was pretty good. His character honestly get annoyingly angsty and moody and shy which works but could have been played bigger and more fun. At a certain point I stop rooting for him and start being annoyed with him. Julian Dennison of Deadpool 2 fame, who already has an insane filmography at 22 years old, is honestly fantastic. He does the “funny best friend” thing as good as the all time great, Jonah Hill. They spend the whole beginning of the film setting up their friendship and how important it is and I think this whole thing is gonna be a buddy-comedy AND THEN HE JUST DIES! Literally so early on. I was mad mostly because he was the best character and because I thought their arc had so much room to grow. This showed me the first issue with the movie, it was very short (which can be good) but it didn’t feel fleshed out. Rachel Zegler, whom we all are familiar with, was also in the film. She was kind of bad and annoying. (Now you can see my frustration when Dennison died because the other two are like annoying). There’s also these other side characters that are added in but you don’t really get emotionally attached to.
Basically the plot revolves around the Y2K crisis turning every electronic object into a killing robot machine. The horror elements are really fun and the effects are all practical and cool. I thought they nailed the feel of the era with the costuming and props. The comedy is also great, but made better whenever my kind is on screen. I love Kyle Mooney and I honestly think he is one of the funniest people to ever be on SNL. Whenever he is on screen he is electric. His character is a white guy with dreads who runs the local video store. He is fucking awesome and you can tell he just has the sauce. Unfortunately, not every actor is able to carry the type of humor he writes. When he’s not on screen, I simply don’t care as much.
The plot moves weirdly slow and fast at the same time. I don’t feel like I get too emotionally attached to anything before it either dies or becomes obsolete. The jokes and horror elements were there but they weren’t glued together by anything meaningful. The best part is that you can tell Kyle Mooney has seen every movie ever. Instead of trying to hide of cliches he leans into them for comedy, and whenever he does you know he knows exactly what he’s doing. Rachel Zegler plays this “popular girl who’s actually really good at coding” and she saves the day by hacking into the robots. The craziest, most absurd hacker montage punctuates the climax and she literally says “I’m in” at the end. Also Fred Durst and The Kid Laroi are in it? Totally worth the watch on a plane in like 5 years!
The Christmas Question
I’m in a very funny situation orchestrated by the ignorance of many passive men (myself included). Basically, my job doesn’t give very many holidays off. For the coming weeks, I only have Christmas and News Years day off, not even a half day on Christmas eve. This is pretty fake though because almost every employee uses their PTO to travel for the holidays, meaning that if you don’t use yours the office is effectively empty. The catch is that PTO doesn’t kick in until you’ve worked at this company for more than 6 months. As someone who started in October and didn’t become permanent until this week, I do not have that luxury. Funnily enough, my boss and my boss’s boss both started in the past two months too, meaning that none of us have the PTO to take the week of Christmas off.
I was understandably confused how next week is going to work so I asked my new boss Kevin if anyone was going to be coming in. He told me, “That’s a wonderful question.” Turns out, his boss (my boss’s boss’s boss) Diane, has yet to reveal to any of us how next week will work or whether we should come in at all. He didn’t want to bother her so he waited until today to bring it up. His ENTIRE FAMILY is flying to Florida this weekend and he is NOT GOING so that he can come into work next week. I asked him what we’d do if we came into work. Since 90% of our job is emailing people and since no one will be working anywhere… that answer is diddly squat. We all agreed that if we came in we’d basically be doing nothing the entire week.
Now today Kevin is finally talking to Diane about how it’s going to go. Either we’re gonna get to Work from home, Kevin will join his family in Florida, and I can hang out with my parents during the day, or we all better warm our thumbs up for some long hours of twiddling.
UPDATE: My boss Kevin has spoken to his boss, Diane, to see about winter break. It was a complete failure. She said at first, “we don’t want to set a precedent of people being able to work from home.” Awesome. Then she said, “I don’t like the idea of people staying until 5pm on Christmas Eve. You can definitely turn a blind eye if people want to head out early.” Boy, thanks Diane! Basically my two bosses, Kevin and Joe, said that they will be coming in late, leaving early, and incorrectly filling out the sign-in sheet every day. I literally think there will be no one in the office except for us. Luckily there is a library downstairs with every movie ever. Welp.
My Christmas List this year
This year, after putting a lot of thought into it, here is my 2024 Christmas list.
As much money as you are comfortable giving me
A month’s rent
$30,000
An easy, straightforward way to get ADHD tested
$5,000 gift card to Wegmans
About $5 more an hour on my paycheck
A clear life goal or path
Dunkin Donuts $6 meal deal
New Shoes maybe
Uniqlo gift card
The NBC page program to give me a chance
Chipotle once a week for a year
Citibike membership
Improv Class
For all my friends to live in the same city
A free trip to Mexico City or perhaps Alaska
Typing
So… interesting story about me, I never learned how to type. When I was in elementary school and we went to the computer lab, I vividly remember being told not to ‘hunt and peck’. I unfortunately also felt like the typing form they wanted us to do felt incredibly inefficient. All those finger muscles to coordinate… it felt stupid. So I just continued to hunt and peck, developing an advanced form of this bad habit. Now, I think I have maxed out my abilities at an abysmal 63 words a minute. I can’t believe I made it through four years of typing high school essays, followed by Princeton (WITH A THESIS) while typing like a toddler on crack. My method is effectively using my index and middle finger to move about the keyboard wherever necessary which has left my ring and pinky fingers completely uncoordinated. After years of accepting this shortcoming, I have started using my boring and extra time at work to learn real typing. That means this simple paragraph took me like 10 minutes to fucking write. Yes, my WPM has dropped to a measly 20, but soon I will be typing like a pro. Here are some things I’ve noticed.
I understand that the keyboard was laid out very methodically or some shit, but some of these letters are definitely in the wrong place.
The most annoying letters type are E, C, P, and M. Just why are so many common letters tucked away behind rarely used ones? Who put K in the home row and P in the back corner???? Let’s get real.
What election put the semicolon next to L while the period needs to be hit by the fucking ring finger??
I am starting to understand the logic, though. It makes sense that letters that aren’t commonly typed together are placed near each other, like ‘m’ and ‘n’. ‘T’ and ‘r’ though… count your days.
Queer
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, first of all what a year for him. First Challengers now this! And the academy will probably ignore both. I won’t say much because I’m still learning to type, but despite some negative things I’ve heard, this was awesome.
The negatives, in my opinion, were that it was so fucking slow and the story was a little ‘blah’. This film was well over two hours but with a quick 90 minute story. There were like 5-10 moments where they stared into each other’s eyes for like 5 minutes too long. There’s literally a part where Daniel Craig does Heroin for 10 minutes. Coupled with that, the story was both simple and kind of hard to follow. It just followed Craig and his obsession with this guy, but then it’s about telepathy?? You can tell it’s a Burroughs novel because that shit got weird.
HOWEVER, despite the strangeness and slowness, it was some of the best impressionist and surrealist filmmaking I’ve maybe ever seen ever. The dream sequences were amazing and beautiful. Later when they trip on drugs, it’s insane looking. It showed me a terrifying beauty that I previously thought was confined to Dali paintings. The performances were also great. Although it had some definite challenges, I need every filmmaker to watch these dream sequences to see what film can truly be like.
Also there’s like three Nirvana needle drops in this 1950s piece that totally took me out of it lol.
THE END
This week, my parents are coming to the Big Apple, so Daniel’s living for free!