Anonymous

[ateolf]

Mary Beth and I did our Fresh Market grocery run during my lunch break (after being delayed by meetings). After work I finished reading Castle to Castle Louis-Ferdinand Céline. It was pretty alright. I didn't like it as much as the sequel North that I had read first. I believe I stated earlier that the events of the two novels are not in order and what happens in North actually happens before Castle to Castle, but that was wrong! I mean, Céline does jump around a little bit here and there, but the main arcs are chronological (I didn't read them out of order on purpose, just didn't realize the one followed the other when I'd started reading it!). Also, in the one I just read, Céline does a lot more of the whining about how persecuted he is. I mean, he does it in the other one too but here it was literally the first third of the book before he even got to the "plot" (not that I think a plot must be the focus of a book! but the other thing of grumbling no one likes you (for being an Antisemite and having been a Nazi collaborator!) doesn't make for the most engaging alternative!). Anyway, enough blathering! At night we went to see an Indie Memphis screening of The People's Joker. I didn't know what to expect because the brief descriptions I let myself hear beforehand didn't make any sense. And that's because it doesn't make sense that it exists in such a copyright-infringing manner! In fact, it had been cease-and-desisted after one screening but I guess lawyers finally got its "fair use" angle wedged in enough to allow it to screen again. So yeah, it's a trans coming-of-age story told through the lens of parodying and totally ripping off the Batman franchise (also a lot of jabs at Saturday Night Live, at least that was called by a different name, though Lorne Michaels is a character with his own name). Anyway, the narrator/director/main character is an underground stand-up comic and is kinda the Joaquin Phoenix version of the Joker and then ends up dating another comic who's the Jared Leto version of the Joker and then the other comics are all a bunch of other Batman villains and such. It's filled up with a bunch of the most hey-look-at-how-cheaply-this-was-made-and-we-have-no-budget cgi animation. At first, I didn't think I'd like it because of its complete anti-aesthetic but I came around at some point and enjoyed it. And as a footnote, it had some cameos (though mostly animated with voices...the whole movie mixed live action with the cgi animation) from famous comedy people, most notably Bob Odenkirk (who played Bob the Goon, when I saw the credit I'm like, who is that even? and then I went and found a picture of the character and I don't even remember it from the movie! It was probably one line. Like Scott Aukerman was Mr. Freeze and I remember he had one line). Okay, I'm just kind of babbling now.