RTFB ...some other thoughts

RE: CRYING IN H MART By: Michelle Zauner

A Book that I Have Been Thinking About
From: Travis
August 31, 2024

I have a theory about crying in the movies; when reading books; listening to music (maybe it's the kind of thing that is actually super obvious and accepted by everyone else and I am just now catching on to it): Art makes you cry more when you're older.

When I was a kid, my mom really loved the movie Beaches. She probably still does, but she used to, too. Nowadays it might not be the kind of movie that everyone has seen, and it's been several years since I watched it myself, but what I remember is that it's about two women who became friends when they were young (and hanging out on a beach) and the story of their lives as one (Bette Midler) goes off to chase her dreams of being a big time singer and the other (not Bette Midler)... I don't remember; decides to get married and become a mom? and then, spoiler alert: gets sick and dies and Bette sings about how she had been the wind beneath her wings all along and adopts the orphaned girl. AND every time we would watch it, we made a point to get a box of tissues ready for mom because she cried every time.

I was baffled.

Sure, the idea was very sad, but, like, she knows this is just pretend right? I wasn't too much older than having figured out that the actors in movies didn't actually die IRL when they died on screen, so I felt she should've known this and been ok.

Fast forward several years, and we took our kids to see Coco when it was out in the theaters. I liked it a lot and I thought it was very sweet and, sure, i(...)

"'Everything comes in threes.' Not true. In reality, everything comes in ones. Sometimes, when three 'ones' come in a row, it seems like everything comes in threes. By the way, in medieval times it was widely believed that everything came in twenty-sixes. They were wrong too. It just took them longer to recognize a pattern."
- George Carlin

I debated even going over this, since I think this new format I'm trying out is pretty self-explanatory. But I've never been one to pass up on a digression (nor a chance to say something parenthetically), so here is it anyway:

Have you ever been out somewhere, getting a coffee or whatever, and walked past some people and realized that they individually and accidentally made up a set? For instance:
-A group was all wearing slip on Vans but in different colors.
-Or half of them all got a text and looked down at their phone the same way, at the same time.
-Or there was a mother in line with her daughter, and a woman there with her mother, and a grandmother waiting with her granddaughter.

Every so often, thanks to consuming a lot of different types of entertainment at the same time, I'll run into similar kinds of accidental sets; the book I'm reading has a theme that is also picked up in a TV show my wife and I are watching, which also features an event that reminds me of the video game I've been playing. That kind of thing.

That's what I'm trying to talk about in these 'Triptych' blog posts; things that make up a rough kind of(...)

I had never heard of the guy running topless on the cover before, but I got the audio book version of Finding Ultra in an Audible buy one - get one scheme anyway; thoughts of picking up tips on marathon training playing in my new-years-resolution-ripe mind. Reading the blurb about how Rich Roll became a winning ultramarathoner in his forties when he had previously been a slovenly layabout, I said to myself, "Hey! I'm a slovenly layabout and I'm going to be forty soon enough, this is probably worth the zero dollars I will have to pay for it."

For the record, I have already vented my frustrations with this book to my wife, my parents, my son, so the imperative to do any venting here is lessened just a bit. So let me start by saying that this book could probably be divided into three parts:
1. Life story
2. Marathon training and Veganism
3. Running the first epic5 ultra triathlon challenge

I came for the middle part.
I suffered through the first part.
The third part is the one that makes this book worth reading.

With that in mind, let me talk about the third part first, then you can bail out when I start pissing and moaning about the rest.

As I remember it, the epic5 was an idea that came from the author's fellow triathlete. A crazy-ass endurance challenge to end all crazy-ass challenges; namely to run a full Ironman-length triathlon on each of Hawaii's 5 main islands in 5 days. To spell it out, that would mean 2.4 miles of swimming (in the ocean), then 112 m(...)

My fellow nerds might remember this better than I, but I recall a Monty Python sketch. Said sketch was a type of a literary gameshow, wherein the competing teams had to produce an analysis of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, but their answers had to be given within a certain time limit and HAD to be presented in the form of an opera. The memory of this sketch was triggered when I scanned the blurb about this book (that I found while perusing at Deep Vellum.)

The conceit of the book that was promised reads a bit like a new year's resolution, so now feels like a fine time to talk about it. That conceit being: the dual authors, McGriff and Tyree tasking themselves with watching ALL of the films in the Criterion Collection in a single year (that year, I gather, being sometime before 2014). After each viewing, the two of them went off on their own and wrote a short story in response to the film they'd just seen. The liner notes also suggested that the two authors' responses would weave together to create "linked stories follow[ing] two boys coming of age in the 1980s."

I mean, I can't think of a concept more directly targeted at me.

Exhibit A: this whole web site/podcast focused around movies and books.
Exhibit B: distinct memories of browsing through the new Criterion collection DVDs (the humble DVD being a medium that wasn't that old, itself) each week when they hit the shelves at Barnes & Noble (the classy bookstore in town).

Very early on in reading the (...)

I suppose this is something that everyone does from time to time (but if you've never done so, you're missing out, friend) - namely, going into a book shop with or without a particular book in mind. Letting your eyes rove over the covers of the offerings in the different sections as you slowly walk through the aisles. Picking one (or two or three) up on a whim. Giving them a cursory review and then deciding to take a chance on them. Sure, just like a blind date, this can often go wrong (I'm looking at you, Finding Ultra), but when it goes right, it's really a treat.

This book was a Book Store Blind Date that went right for me (actually, if I'm remembering correctly, I got it from an online store... but you can still browse virtually, right? Book Store Tinder, I guess). A quick review of the blurbs did their trick:

"Japanese best seller?" I said.

"Blend of folklore? A hybrid of Virgin Suicides and Windup Bird Chronicles?" I said

"I've impulse bought for less than that" I said.

At home, unwrapping the book and diving in to reading, it didn't take long before I was feeling that spark (to take the dating analogy a bit too far).

The central conceit of the book - the heart, if you will - is this: a middle schooler, Kokoro ('Heart', your Google Translate will tell you), has been unable to go to class due to a mysterious illness; a stomach trouble that comes over her each morning, much to her mother's dismay. After a day of rest at home, she feels better - like she (...)

Here at RTFB, we've never once been accused of being on the cutting edge of review cycles, of being the ones on the forefront of the SEO of all the newest film adaptations, or the hip new thing that everyone is talking about. I think Dune and Dr Sleep are the only cases where we covered movies that were even still in the theater (if you don't count the Hallmark movies, which you shouldn't). So, it is in keeping with that grand tradition that I sit down now to write about a video game (an RTFB first!) that came out almost two months ago; Elden Ring.

Plus, whenever I try to talk to Danielle about Elden Ring her eyes get all glassy and I can see her doing the 'how quickly can I change the subject without risking our marriage?' math in her head, so this is really the only place I can go on about it at length, which I certainly will.

But, to keep even truer to tradition, before I talk about this game, I want to talk about Souls games in general.

I came to the series very, very late. The Demon Souls remake for PS5 was my first one, and even that was like a year old before I picked it up. All I really knew going in was that the general consensus was that Demon/Dark Souls games are, like, ridiculously hard - the whole 'You Died' meme, partnered with the general advice that the only alternative to death is to 'Get Good' - that they were populated with extremely difficult bosses, punishing game mechanics, and lots and lots of frustration. So, when I first booted up Demon Soul(...)

Back in our high school days, Other Chris and I were lucky enough to take a trip to France as part of a student exchange program. Seeing as we had just finished French 2, I, for one, was desperately under-prepared to fully embed in such a way (my French is still not that great, par parenthese).

Thinking back on my time with my host family, I recall a lot of awkwardness. Thanks to me, well, being generally socially inept, and the amount of French I could speak, let alone understand, I never became much more than polite with them, but the family still did what they could to include me.

I can't recall now exactly where we stayed (Other Chris was able to search his memory banks recently and confirmed we were somewhere near Elancourt) but I do remember the big, farmhouse style shutters in the guest room I stayed in that leaked in cold air overnight, the fireplace the family used as a primary source of heat, bowls of cherries that had been collected from the trees in the back yard passed around for snacks as we watched handball on TV. It all kind of made young high school me feel out of place ... in a setting that was part farmhouse, yet squarely in the suburbs of Paris, in a situation simultaneously so familiar to my life at home and just different enough to feel very alien.

While we were there, we would all ride the bus to school with our hosts (on, like, a regular city bus which I was constantly surprised could fit down the narrow streets of town, not a big yellow one (...)