Laura Michet's Blog

Week wrap-up - Oct 6

It's been a hell of a week!!

Cohost finally went read-only, which hit me much more emotionally than I expected.

I've got a list down at the bottom of this post of others' writing about it. A lot of the old Cohost posters liked Cohost because it was a place they could actually write, and they're still writing. It's great. Everything will be okay!!!!!

Otherwise, here's what I've been checking out this week!

Web stuff

Jingle Cats - Misty DeMeo

As an elementary-school kid I was super into the Jingle Cats. My friends and I had a cat "fan club" where we... discussed cats? I think? And we were all super into Jingle Cats. (We listened to the album a LOT. Our parents probably wanted the Jingle Cats to all go to hell.)

But I never knew that there was a Jingle Cats videogame. My friends and I would have lost our minds over this in 1996. Misty's article about the game is full of incredible screenshots. The actual mechanics of this game sound pretty nuts. (And very steal-able for a modern project??)

trickle-down misery in penny dreadful - catalina

My MTG friends have been keeping me up to date with the drama surrounding the commander format's rule change, which ruthlessly devalued certain painfully-OP commander-specific cards.

This blog post goes into how this devaluing suddenly made some of those cards valid in a different MTG format, "penny dreadful," where you can only play cards so cheap that they cost less than 2 pennies in MTG Online. I love this. Everyone suffers!!!

A History Of Webcomics, T Campbell (2006) - Dante Douglas

I liked Dante's writeup of a 2006 "history of webcomics" book with a lot of wild stuff in it. It's very fun that the book included predictions about the future of webcomics which completely omit the concept of social media (because it did not really exist yet in the form it would come to occupy).

Learning that there is a book with the Megatokyo nerd on the front of it felt like getting shot in the head with a piece of rebar!! Lol and lmao!! I used to read that shit on the computer in the afterschool program classroom!! I was in 7th grade!! Owch!!!!!

Da Movies

Medium Cool (1969)

On streaming sites, this film is usually blurbed as if it is a political thriller. Well, it's not actually a thriller! Every streaming service has been lying to me!

This is a slice-of-life vibes movie about a TV reporter who tries to build a relationship with a new girlfriend in 1968. It's about life in the The Cool Zone, trying to juggle a relationship and a job during a time of political turmoil and change. The most significant plotline is actually about the reporter trying to gain the acceptance of his girlfriend's son.

It also has a lot to say about the role of journalism re: protest, shock content, and violence, but I was most impressed by the way it mixed all that stuff with the everyday life stories. I think a lot of people alive in the US today would find this to be a pretty apt reflection of the topical whiplash we've all experienced day-to-day in our own time. It's also quite experimental and strange, mixing traditionally-shot narrative sequences with documentary-esque sequences about famous protests and major political events. I was really impressed by it.

The Substance (2024)

I was so impressed by this one. I think it's Actually Good but it's also... well... a straight up tomato sauce horror flick which exists in large part to make you feel profoundly ill. I can watch a couple of these a year without dying, and I'm growing to like them!

It's also very on-the-nose. My husband and I have been talking a lot recently about how we actually like things that are incredibly direct. Sometimes, there is actually nothing sophisticated about being subtle; I refuse to grant coy puzzlebox shit the dignity of "sophistication." The running time that a movie must spend on artistically concealing or obliquely suggesting its opinion can often be better spent on other things. (Like, for example, a relentless stream of body horror effects, or a tomato sauce slasher sequence, or some really good character performance work from Demi Moore.)

I wouldn't blame anyone for saying they hated this movie - in fact, I think most people would not enjoy it - but I will go to bat for its directness. Increasingly, I find my personal work becoming more and more direct. I think some people really value a movie that makes them feel smart by presenting the plot as a puzzle for them to solve. They think a good movie is a movie that gives them "work" to do, that includes them in the process of unfolding, and they want the movie to flatter this smartypants part of themselves. I don't need that to enjoy myself. I'd rather watch a movie that is groaningly direct, yet visually buckwild and thematically coherent, any day of the week.

Rich Flu (2024) (I have not seen this)

I have merely learned at the director of The Platform, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, is coming out with a movie called "Rich Flu" this year. It has the tagline:

The richer you are, the faster you die.

I don't know, I just wanted to spread this information around. Incredible.

Writing about Cohost, specifically

Here's some writing about Cohost's shutdown that I've been reading recently. The sense of loss is huge, but I'm also very grateful that so many people seem to be taking this as inspiration to move on, do new things, and keep writing.

#cohost #horror #link_roundup