Now playing: “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn (thank you, Rock Center DJ)

Hello from exhaustion season, which has locked its claws into some shoulders and minds since well before this week. I thought I could get away with being booked and busy for two weeks in a row, but my own personal record scratched once I published my iPhone review, did a live stream for work about it, and attended an unrelated press event on Wednesday morning. Once I got home from that, a fever told me I had been too ambitious, and stopped me from seeing Hayley Williams (which was pretty frustrating concerning how impossible it was to get tickets for her prior tour). It also began a four-day window where I was reminded how plans have the rigidity of puff pastry.

Welcome to the 32nd consecutive free, weekly edition of this newsletter. This is little a test of my consistency (something I am eager to prove to myself and to anyone who is paying attention), and I don’t see it letting up soon. Today, as usual, I’m thinking and writing about patterns I’ve seen for months. Might be obvious stuff, but it’s what’s on my mind and what I feel comfortable sharing with the wider internet. Thank you, though, to the specific subscribers who continue to receive this experiment in their inbox. 

Last night, Sara and I saw the live Broadway version of Paranormal Activity, which did a good job of scaring its audience. I don’t see a lot of Broadway shows, this was only my second of the year, so I can’t really judge the quality of the story or performances.

I am confident in saying, though, that its merchandise is absolutely terrible:

I never expected the Broadway adaptation of a horror movie series I’ve never seen to be a thing that gets me to open my wallet more than I already did for my ticket. But this was perfectly fitting for the draft I’d pretty much finalized earlier that day.

Author Chelsea G. Summers once told me “always buy the shirt,” and I practically abided her advice as often as I went to any sort of gig. Until this year, that is. The James Blake show at the Brooklyn Paramount earlier this year was one of the first places I remember feeling a shift in my once-consistent comfort in spending money at the merch table. That continued at the Charli XCX show¹ on Monday night, where all I got was that lousy low-grade fever. 

I intrinsically want to buy merch from Charli because I’ve been a fan from pretty far back. I first found her flavor of pop to be one I could repeat-one with “Superlove,” a single that never found an album, and had a Harajuku-inflected music video that recalled Gwen Stefani enough to make me question my own preference. But I stuck with Charli (through Pop 2 and “Fancy,” you might say), and kept going to shows. Along the way, Charli had stuff for sale that fit my own presence, instead of making me feel like a style-jacking poser. But Monday’s Music Fashion Film Tour stop at Barclays Center, much like her 2024 tour stop at the Brooklyn Paramount, only hawked stuff that I know wouldn’t really work right on me. 

Take, for example, this “I ❤️ FILM” shirt. Yes, even though I fit the message, the shirt isn’t it. I don’t want to spend $55 + tax on a pre-distressed shirt, and because the text all ran on one line near the top , it probably wouldn’t sit right. This is, of course, OK. I don’t need to be declaring my current, up-to-date affinity for Charli with her latest merch. Also, I can just confidently say that maybe she shouldn’t be designing merch with my demo in mind, she doesn’t need 41-about-to-be-42 year old dudes as her street team. I get it. But why, I wonder, why did I wait on the merch line for a few minutes to confirm I didn’t want that shirt. To confirm that I didn’t want to spend $120 on her “oblivion is freedom” hoodie?

Then, Mike helped me confirm this pattern by sending me a photo of the Hayley Williams merch stand. Her stuff was a tad better, but nothing good enough to make me ask him to grab me something. And I just started to wonder.

One of these incidents on its own would have been normal, but looking through my concert tickets, it’s been a full year since I got that Nine Inch Nails tote. Maybe merch is just in a decline right now, writ-large? Maybe I’m just growing out of it, as I move to my single-color, non-graphic tee era. We’re seeing Phoebe Bridgers and Carly Rae Jepsen next week, so maybe I’ll get to see this trend will heal itself.

Ask anyone who has a hobby that includes physical items they own, and they'll tell you the itch to collect can lead to lots of scratching. Or, as playwright, actor, and physical media super-collector Tracy Letts told The Big Picture's Sean Fennessey, "you're trying to fill an un-fillable hole with physical media and you're not going to fill it that way."

I bring this up because much like with shirts, I’ve realized I feel pretty confident about my movie collection. I don’t have the itch to order more, especially after my last two preorders of 28 Days Later and Barbarian in 4K delivered in the last month or so. Yes, I’m well aware of five already-released titles I'd like to get some day and the six movies I'm hoping will come out in physical form. But I’m fine without them.

Sure, I think about how Ken Russell's The Devils is finally getting the restoration and director's cut release in theaters, and how a physical drop is likely to follow. I'm also wondering if A24 will ever print Eva Victor’s Sorry Baby, and when the rumored re-release of Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke will finally come out.

Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron is amazing, and released on Criterion’s odd little Criterion Releases imprint that keeps it outside of the esteemed “collection,” but within the big C brand, and I’m sure I’ll get it some day. Speaking of that collection, 4Ks of Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident, Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent, and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value are also in circulation, but I’m in no rush.

It’s nice to have a little wish list. To leave something for down the road.

I’ve used a fair amount of elbow grease and not-insignificant chunks of time these last months cleaning out my apartment, including giving away a lot of stuff. A TV to the local buy nothing group, and trash bags of t-shirts to charity. You outgrow the need for things. It’s the way it goes.

While I’ve always worn whatever merch I’ve bought, there are a small number of movies I’ve acquired in the last two years that I’ve just yet to watch for one reason or another. But I have good reason, I tell myself, I’m not always in the mood for Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy or Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love. Thinking about all this made me start to think about waste. I bought those movies to watch them, but if I don’t actually do that, I’m just participating in consumerism for the sake of small pieces of wall art. That’s not who I want to be.

Now, I’m enjoying those times when I walk by a concert merch stand or stroll through my local physical media shop and leave empty-handed.

Resident Evil (2026) is the third feature film from director Zach Cregger, who co-wrote this adaptation of the survival horror video game that’s revolved around mutation outbreaks in the comically-named Raccoon City. The director of Barbarian and Weapons pivots away from the action movie style you might expect from such a video game adaptation by follow fuckup protagonist Bryan (Austin Abrams) along a dark and winding road full of nasties that constantly derail him. It’s dark, it’s bloody and grizzly, and often extremely comical, as Bryan reacts the way your drunk or stoned buddy would while playing the actual Resident Evil video games. Homage is made to bloody classics from John Carpenter and Sam Raimi, but I believe Cregger’s film stands on its own, even though it takes moments to be “just like” the video games. No sacred cows go unmutilated in this film’s 87-minute runtime, and it is all the better for it.

Just don’t go seeing it at the Regal in Union Square because they’re advertising a 35mm print, as their projector was broken at noon yesterday which is weird if you ask me.

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time? I have no idea.