First Word #27
Dancing, Friction, the Cardiac Blues, and a film review...
Film Review: The Jock vs. The Artist… NYC vs. LA
I think its Timmy’s Oscar, right?
On Friday night I saw the 50th Anniversary showing of “The Killing of the Chinese Bookie” (1976) by John Cassavetes (extended cut). I am not a film guy (and never will be!) but watching this immediately after “Marty Supreme” (2025) was a whirlwind of masculine performance (different than performative masculinity). The Safdie brothers have directly cited Cassavetes — an improvisational, tense, independent filmmaker — as an influence. The parallel’s between the films, one extremely NYC and one extremely LA neo-noir, have been bouncing around my head this morning like the orange ball.
“I don’t think Marty Mauser hates women,” was the positive review a friend gave of the Safdie brothers’s movie as we walked out. The same was said about Cassavetes’s star Cosmo played by Ben Gazzara, who serves as a self portrait of the filmmaker. Cosmo is the owner of strip-club on Sunset Boulevard, where instead of lap dances the women perform avant-garde theatre with Mr. Sophistication — a sort of clown. Gazzara’s character proudly directs whole production, from the music to costumes, and handles the women with care, as much as a self-absorbed artist can.
Both films seem to grapple with what it means to want to succeed in your craft when no one respects what you do. For Marty, that’s because it's ping pong — or sorry… table tennis. For Cosmo, he’s running a strip club with too many musical numbers and not enough skin.
Meanwhile, both men are haunted by money. Cosmo has a massive debt from gambling and a valuable piece of real estate on the strip while Marty has a hole in his pocket while trying to make enough money to fly to the World Table Tennis Championship. As filmmakers struggling to find financiers, the plot is familiar for the directors: how do you make your true art when no one sees its value?
But when a man sees himself as an artist he starts acting like a pimp. Thus, in both films, women are the losing party — even if they escape any kind of outright abuse from the leading jock-or-artist gentlemen. They lack structural agency in American society are pushed down further by their loser boyfriends and [SPOILER but not really] in both films women take bullets unnecessarily due to men’s stupid mind games with each other.
Again, I’m not exactly the film-understander, but I also really enjoyed the LARB review of “Marty Supreme.” I felt a connection between the Sinophobia in Cassavetes and the post-war journey we take in “Marty Supreme,” which explored a bit in Bodrojan’s review. While watching “Chinese Bookie,” my friend said “I think he’s speaking Korean,” which I cannot fact-check but at least one other person seemed to think so… an interesting easter egg (maybe a choice by the actor?) in the film if true.
Writing about movies feels pretty silly right now but on the East Coast we are stuck inside and I cannot scroll or watch any more angles of this horrible moment from Saturday this afternoon.
I am going to the Winter Storm Fern (they/she) snow ball fight in hour at Prospect Park (you are all invited).
Enjoy some first sentences… that’s what you all are here for!
I thought that Saturday would be a day off. I got basketball tickets.
At 9 AM I fall in love with Amy. We’re in my friend’s old Corolla, following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle in our neighborhood.
ICE vs. Everyone // Erin West // n+1
Name: Claudius Sennet
Title: Vending machine operator
Experience: Three weeks as a Wall Street Journal operator (business now bankrupt)
Skills: Generosity, persistence, total disregard for profit margins
We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars. // Joanna Stern // WSJ
M texted me from the adjacent bedroom at 8 AM: “Wake up.” In the kitchen, he combed out his beard and ate a banana, which his people’s warriors ate to feel full, he told me. I pointed to a stray hair that stuck out of the side of his neck. “I keep meaning to pluck it,” he said.
At Immigration Court // Liv Veazey // n+1
Who is John Fetterman? A senator, a father, a husband, a stroke survivor, a hoodie-clad body double, an oaf, and recently, a Zionist who has cemented his name as a preeminent American mouthpiece for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. For a very short period of time, on a very small number of platforms, I was also John Fetterman.
When I Was John Fetterman // Leah Abrams // The Nation
From Sophie.
Since they replaced the diseased portion of my aorta with a knitted Dacron polyester graft, I hear my heartbeat if I turn my head; I feel a pounding in my chest whenever I inhale deeply; I feel new pulses in new locations with new intensity…Familiar metaphors become literal: when, in the process of repairing an aneurysm at your aortic root, a surgeon touches your heart, you are at risk of developing postcardiac depression, also known as the “cardiac blues.” They don’t know why this is, but it’s in the literature.
Cardiography // Ben Lerner // NYRB
A METAL POLE STANDS at a nondescript corner, wrapped in caution tape.
Miami’s Crisis of Memory // Alexandra Martinez / Art Forum
From Francess.
Near-death experiencers are the best dancers.
What I Saw When I Peeked Over the Edge of Consciousness // Jessica Grose // NYT
From Nicole.
I’ve been thinking about how the idea of escapism has become redundant.
In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing // Kathryn Jezer-Morton // The Cut
“We’re foie gras ducks being force-fed escapism,” would have been my choice for the lede imo but I understand why we had to coax the reader into getting there.
I’m at Elsewhere with Connor. Not quite my boyfriend, but someone whose presence has started to fill the small, quiet corners of my week.
BONUS READ: Not just Wegmans: More NYC retailers using facial recognition as tech outpaces law
Memorable bites of 2025
French onion soup @ Cafe Cluny (West Village, NYC) eaten w/ Lourdes, fabulous.
Delhi Chaat @ Chaat House (Philly) eaten w/ Anna on the snowiest day of the year
Seven layer chocolate cake @ Gertrude’s (Prospect Heights, BK) eaten w/ my besties (and gifted by my former boss <3)
Kashke bademjan (eggplant & cured yogurt) @ Eyval (Bushwick, BK) eaten alone (my fav restaurant for four years running…especially on a chilly dark night)
Vegan tantanmen ramen @ Mensho Tokyo (Culver City) eaten w/ Charlie after visiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology