Brilliant underappreciated female directors

Hi to you if you are reading this, but these days I'm posting just for myself since it's not much of an interactive space. I was watching La Cienaga last night, as part of the Criterion "Bad Vacation" collection (I've watched almost all of them - may rewatch Haneke's "Funny Games" although it's one of his weaker movies), anyway, La Cienaga is brilliant and is directed by an Argentinian woman and I was thinking since I often forget director's names that I should start a list of brilliant female directors so that when I'm looking for a movie to watch I can browse theirs.

So: Lucrecia Martel. She has quite a few and La Cienaga is her first full-length. She seems to be quite acclaimed so not sure why I haven't heard of her.

The other day Mike C. texted me to ask if I had ever seen movies by Lynne Ramsay and I said no and then looked up her movies and I've seen most of them! I think I was a bit confused by Morvern Callar, but I liked We Need to Talk About Kevin and liked but didn't love You Were Never Really Here. I need to watch Ratcatcher! That seems like one maybe Smiller would watch.

Then there's Eliza Hittman, Here most recent (this year) is Never Rarely Sometimes Always is super gripping and important. Beach Rats I remember liking. I need to watch It Felt Like Love now.

Then there's one of my FAVES: Maren Ade. Towering talent there, but OF COURSE does not get the props she should of would if she was male. She's only made 3 movies in 17 years so I hope she makes more soon. She probably can't get funding cuz she's a woman.

Then there's Atlantics, which is on Netflix and I hope everyone has watched it!! It's very arresting, for the setting in Dakar as much as anything else. And I love the soundtrack and horror elements. Directed by Mati Diop, who also starred in a Claire Denis movie, so she's multitalented.

I need to watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire although I don't tend to like those type of period pieces, but that's directed by Celina Sciamma and I know people loved it.

I'll think of more and add!

Quar Phase Report

 It's now about two months since my last post. Dull, repetitive time flies! 

I deactivated my FB today. I hesitated on total delete due to photos, memories, etc. The final straw was looking at the Sac Antifa page about a protest I was planning to go to. I went home before dark, which was when the Antifa-organized one started. It was peaceful and inspiring.

Anyway, this Folsom bro (using his real name) was like "this is a great time to try out my Dodge whatever protester ramming truck". I flagged it as a violent threat. FB reviewed it and left it up. This along with articles coming out that FB refused to remove threats in advance of that kid killing the Kenosha protesters. 

It was a pretty easy choice given that I've wanted to do it for years, but I used to be afraid I would miss events. But without events.....

I will definitely miss Natalie's Mark Trail content.

Other quar stuff:

I make sourdough bread every week. It's tasty but ugly. I just bought a bread proofing basked and a lame (which is a knife you use to score the bread). I'm hoping the lame will help with the ugliness aspect. I have discovered that an overnight proof gives the best flavor. I'm not sure I'm using the term "proof" properly. I make bread, but I'm not a bread nerd. I don't read about it or anything, I just use the same recipe over and over, with slightly different mixes of flour.

My Elena Ferrante book club is going strong, one of the better quar. things I've done. We have finished book two. These books are mightily entertaining but don't linger in the mind. Not great for a book club because there's not a lot to discuss, but I enjoy the people in the group.

Still been doing a lot of writing, mostly for the Bee. Have another thing lined up for Sacramento Mag. 

I am stalled on my secret political activism project because work has been intense. It's too boring to go into, but it leaves me no time during the day for little projects, and then when I'm done I don't want to stay on my computer.

But politically, I've been donating more, I have a diversity book club at work, I just did my first protest in a while as I mentioned. 

PS Trump is going to win prepare yourself.

Criterion "bad vacation" collection is giving me life right now! Love it.

state of the Heckasac

What the world really doesn't need right now is....a new Heckasac post! But yet here it is.

"Quar" as I mostly call lockdown, shelter-in-place, what have you has so many different phases, right? It's always changing, yet always flat and dull. I won't say boring, because I have Criterion channel, a sourdough starter (thanks EL), a fun husband, and a lifetime of books, so I'm not "bored' but life is just flat and kinda drab.

I won't go through all the phases (a few: joking about gaining quar. weight, flour shortage/baking, backlash against joking about gaining weight) ok of course it's me so I would list the food ones.

Here's the phase I'm in now:

1 book club started (reading My Brilliant Friend), waiting for my books about racism to come in so I can start 2 more. Of the two I am looking to start, one is with friends (The New Jim Crow) and one is at work (re-reading White Fragility), since my work needs it!

Making sourdough on the regular. Ok, twice, but the second time the flavor was on point.

Starting a secret political activism project, not ready to share yet, hope I can keep up momentum on it

Bought a Dyson (one of the cheaper ones)

Running 4 times a week (3 miles each) and doing yoga or barre in my bedroom the other days

Still can't get a handle on my chaotic movie watching, which is upsetting to me. I want to find a way to stick to a theme, it's just to all over the place. Watching I Will Destroy You and tripping on it, on Season 6 of The Sopranos with Smiller and loving it more than ever. It will be a trip when we finally finish the show, it's going to feel like really turning a quar corner

Thinking about food writing a lot. I have made many mistakes and I'm learning. The latest thing is Peter Meehan stepping down at LA Times yesterday. I truly never got him. I always think about being so annoyed at how macho the first Lucky Peach was that I threw it away, and then people I knew later were able to sell their copy for a hundred bucks.

This year I've been doing more writing than ever, thanks mostly to a good editor hookup at The Bee. Writing about The Last Supper Society is one of the most rewarding things I've written in my career as far as feedback, so that's going well. With no social life, writing deadlines don't bring on dread like they used to, so I enjoy writing more. Plus, now I do The Cook In every Friday and that's been really fun and delicious.

With no 'rona, I would have been heading to Tampa for work soon, and then from there I was going to fly to Havana. If Cuba didn't work out I was going to go to Miama and the Keys. Those were my last travel plans for the year, besides a vague plan to go to Malaysia by myself in the fall. The lack of travel plans is the major contributor to the flatness of life for me.

So that's the state of Heckasac on July 2nd.

comedy article

I wrote a thing for the Bee on local comedy doin's

I think I've already written more this year than I did all of last year. It's so different taking on deadlines now because there's no social life for them to conflict with. It makes the writing more enjoyable.

cry of the day

This article on directors' memories of the Cannes film festival made me cry. Just this morning I was thinking I miss movies so bad! I think going to a movie will be an early post shelter in place activity for me, as long as the theaters put precautions in place. I'll do that before I'll eat sit down in a restaurant I'm pretty sure.

The lone exception in that article is the Wes Anderson part, which is lame and should have been cut out.

There are so many directors and movies mentioned that I haven't watched! My favorite is the quote from Hirokazu Kore-eda:

Because I experienced firsthand the vast reach of cinema and the abundance of its history. And then, once I accepted my own minuscule presence and my immaturity as a director, I experienced joy. The awareness that although I was but a single drop of water, I was flowing with the bountiful river of cinema. 

He directed Shoplifters, which I have wanted to watch. Why the fuck does pasting change the font sometimes, does anyone EVER want that to happen?@? Too lazy to fix.

Everyone is talking about this Robert Pattinson profile, I have to read it!

Sopranos and trips not taken

Smiller and I watched the season finale in season 4 (Whitecaps) of the Sopranos last night. WOW. The acting was so visceral and upsetting. I just checked, and Gandolfini and Falco both won Emmys for it, which was their right! Falco won the Golden Globe that season 2. Their marriage-ending fights in that episode made a Marriage Story look like the weak sauce it was. There's so many little touches like how Carmela shakes from nerves or even how she squints at the light when she's sick in the first part. One of my favorite episodes.

So my memory (no plot spoilers) is that season 5 and 6 are not that great? I think there's even a chance there are some episodes I never saw. Can't remember. I am glad I have more episodes to watch though.

We were supposed to be heading for London from SMF around midnight tonight. We had a decent red-eye with a one hour layover in Newark, and then would arrive in London on Friday night. We were hoping to be early enough and not too tired to get to our hotel in Islington and then grab a pint and fish and chips. It was going to be perfect to overcome jetlag because we left at night and arrived at night. I had a reservation at Ottolenghi Islington I think Saturday? And I was casting around for places for us to get a Sunday roast. And I had made a map in Google maps of other places to eat and go. Last time we were in London I was loving hanging out near the canals and checking out the barges people live and recreate on and also going to open air markets and sampling the food. And I saw so much cool art last time - the Christo in Hyde park and Toma Abts at the Serpentine.

Oh yeah, and because I was loving the London parks last time, and because of this New Yorker article about cold water swimming, I was planning on swimming in the Hampstead Heath pond, which has a men's and women's area.

dream job

I've never really had a "dream job". When I was a kid I told people I wanted to be a dentist because I knew I wasn't a hard enough worker to be a doctor and dentist sounded impressive. But I never took the slightest action to pursue that.

When I started college at Sac State I wanted to be a therapist and was a Psychology major. I still kind of wish I had stuck with that, as I probably would have been in practice for over ten years now and would be pretty established and settled probably.

But I veered off into being interested in the brain, and for a brief time (couple years) I guess my "dream job" became neuroscience researcher. I def. daydreamed about being all celebrated and garnering awards, etc. That led me into the lab and eventually into a job at UCD where I still am. But again, my realizing how hard I would have to work made me drop that. At least I know myself!

Writing about food has never really been a dream job, because I know doing it full time would ruin it. I mean maybe if I could take a time machine back to the 80s, which in retrospect was the heyday of food writing (on into the 90s), sure. But the field was small back then and I probably couldn't have cut it anyway.

Which leads me to my true dream job, which would also necessitate a time machine: working for Springbok puzzles in the 70s and 80s. If you have ever read the back of one of their puzzle boxes you know that there was some crazy creativity and wackiness going on there. And probably some recreational drugs as well. I picture pitch meetings for new puzzles, and I want to be in those meetings. So maybe my title would be creative director? Or just writer. Middle class jobs were a thing then so imagine this work allowing me to be financially secure enough to buy a ranch house, maybe with a conversation pit.

Although, looking at the Springbok history page, I see that it was founded in 63, but then sold to Hallmark by 67. Hallmark would probably suck to work for. So is my dream job even more specific than I thought? Is my dream job, being Katie Lewin and founding Springbok? What did she do after she sold it?

Wow, there is a jigsaw wiki!

butches!!

Slept on this when it came out, great article on butch lesbians (in the Times, it's SFW). Very entertaining 15 minute film along with it and I almost teared up a little to see Jenny Shimizu. I think it was the nostalgia of the CK One ad. I can't believe I wore that stuff!

My no-knead bread is looking really good today. Fingers crossed. I did add just a teeny bit of extra yeast. It still has to do the second rise for about an hour, and then cooking in the cast iron. It's the Jim Lahey recipe.

I really do see a pattern for myself with the beginning of the week being very rough with SUPER high anxiety and then mellowing out towards the end and then a long, boring but relaxing weekend.

new article up!

I wrote a thing for the Bee on what William Rolle is up to, and it has recipes, including for his famous salad dressing, which is super simple. I was so relieved to find out he is stoked.

I also wrote letters to the Cafe Marika peeps and June. June didn't answer, but Eva from Cafe Marika answered, but too late.

LOLing

Working on a thing that the Bee *might* publish (some parts of it fell through) and I'm LOLing remembering how BAR only gave Cafe Rolle 2 out of 4 stars.

Novel, delayed. Everything, delayed.

The Times has a short profile of writer Otessa Moshfegh today. I'm bummed they are delaying the release of her new book. This is part of a larger topic, but people need to accept that something magical is not going to happen this summer that is going to make things like book tours possible. So her new novel was supposed to come out but now is delayed until summer. But anyway, I love her and if anyone wants to borrow her book "Eileen", which is my favorite, I could loan it to you. If you want to do a deeper dive, the New Yorker did a longer profile.

Who runs Bartertown?

Wow two comments on my last post! Exciting! Being sincere!

I am about to go barter something so I thought I would start a list of things I have bartered during the pandemic. There's a lot and I will forget, and I like Heckasac to serve as my external brain. Although I am stretching bartered to include "venmoed money for"

1) Thermometer
2) traded dental picks for yeast and olive oil
3) traded herbs for homemade kimchee (that's the one I'm getting in a few minutes!)
4) Garth Greenwell book for Ocean Vuong book with bonus Lidia Yuknavitch book
5) wheat berries for duck fat
6) bout to buy wine from Chloe Henry (find her on the Gram to buy some wine, tell her what you like) and trade it for an N95 mask
I think that's it, but still, kind of a lot

What have you bartered?

It's all bullshit, sheeple!

Anyone else finding that Mondays are really bad? Garfield? Anyone?

I think it has to do with the news cycle ramping up for the week, going back to work when work is so weird (for those of us working from home) and then also the weekend being over but not really feeling like a weekend. I had a terrible day yesterday, my anxiety was off the freaking charts. Also our expensive baby ear thermometer is so all over the place that every few days I'm not sure if I have a low fever, and that happened yesterday. I feel fine though, hope you all do too.

But today is a Tuesday, Whole different beast, amiright?

I thought I would throw out a couple controversial food opinions, since people are talking a lot about food and cooking. One controversial opinion going around Twitter is that "sourdough is gross". This is happening because there's a yeast shortage so people are making their own sourdough starter. I mean, that opinion is just silly but it got me thinking.

I made meatballs yesterday, and I put a parm rind in the sauce, as the recipe called for. Controversial food opinion alert: I doubt this has an effect on the flavor whatsoever.

Controversial food opinion number two: bay leaves don't do shit. I feel like I've blogged about this before. I have them, I use them, but I doubt that they do anything.

While we are on this topic - epsom salts, what's the deal? Not for cooking, for soaking in. Do they do anything? By what physical mechanism? Do they soak into your skin? And do what? I recently finished the last of mine and someday I will buy more, but I don't think they do anything.

New Bee article!

My writing gigs were starting to pick up right when this thing hit. That will likely dry up but I feel blessed that I have my second article for the Bee this year up online, and in the paper edition on Sunday. Staci O'Toole has gotten a lot of press for her truffle farm in Placerville, and her cute truffle-hunting Italian dog. She even got a big piece in The Guardian. So I took a new angle and talked to the UCD scientist she is working with to figure out how to cultivate truffles in our climate. I had planned to do both interviews in person, but they worked out fine via Zoom. Now that everything is canceled, my weekends are pretty free to write, but of course all the publications no longer have any ad revenue coming in and are in survival mode.

I have one more small thing lined up, for a publication I've never written before, and that will be out in July. That may be it for a while.

old school Heckasac content

Thank you the Four Eyes for reminding me of this video, and also I looked on Heckasac and in 2011 the Four Eyes played it at the Xmas show. How did I forget that??????

Media pairing

Hi Kids,
Just felt like calling you that. So I am.

I'm adjusting to working from home and the wrist rash is better. I did a barre class at home yesterday and now a weird part of my back is sore.

Are you also wondering if Andrew Cuomo's nipples are pierced? Dan Savage weighs in. Spoiler: yes.

Since now all we can do is bake (if we have the ingreidents) and consume media or (sort of) go outside (but not to the beach or state parks!) I am going to suggest a media pairing to you. Is that a thing? Well, why not! It is now.

I suggest that you pair this New Yorker article about avalanches with this funny Swedish movie in which an avalanche is a pivotal plot point. I had to pay 4 bucks on Prime to rent it, but you can get it free from Kanopy which needs a library card which is too complicated so I didn't do it. There is one scene in Force Majeure that had me cracking up so hard, and also it's at a beautiful ski resort in the Alps so it's kind of like a little getaway.

Quarantinotainment for the reblogaissance

I posted on IG about this, but I watched the documentary Marjoe a couple nights ago and it blew my dome. Very entertaining, loved the 70s fashion, and the speaking in tongues church services and the giant Texas hair,etc. It won the Oscar for best documentary in 1972 but I think was a bit forgotten, or maybe I'm the only one who didn't get the memo. It's on Tubi, which is a free Roku channel that has all kinds of interesting stuff, including a lot of obscure documentaries and last night I was watching the Dolemite movie "Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son in Law".

Fun trivia: Marjoe, the documentary subject had somewhat of an acting career after the doc. came out and was briefly married to Candy Clark, of American Graffiti fame. How cute is she?

More quarantotainment: the IG account Comedy Quarantine is doing stand-up sets every day at 7pm and you can tip the comedians on Venmo. Yesterday had Kyle Kinane. Check it out!

Cooking tip: when we were in Oaxaca this year, we were blown away by their use of black beans in the cuisine. One of the dishes was enfrijoladas, which were kinda like enchiladas, but pureed black beans are the sauce. This is a very simple dish and easy to make from non-perishables. Since we are all obsessed with beans now, I would recommend making the beans from scratch so they will taste better. I just cooked black beans with some toasted dried chilies, put em in the blender with the bean liquor and chilies, then fried up some corn tortillas in oil, used some cotija I had left over (but any kind of cheese will do) and then topped with cilantro from our community garden. Here's a recipe.

Maren Ade is the best

Man, I really messed up on that Basha post below. I ass-umed that because a restaurant billed itself as "Jerusalem" cuisine that it was Israeli instead of Palestinian and then even thought their wall hanging was in Hebrew when it is obviously Arabic. Duh. I hope this new (opened in Jan) restaurant can hold on so I can write something about it and educate my dumb ass.

I am currently waiting on a Ticketmaster bot to help me get a refund from that Kings game that they promised me would be here soon over a week ago! I was supposed to go the night the entire season got canceled and I've got money for four tickets coming back. I understand they are scrambling and their business is super effed, but they already said it would be coming and now they are like "I don't see that, let me check our records". Then they said "it will be in as soon as 30 days" which I screengrabbed for next time I have to chat with the bot.

This absolute BABE (which is immaterial, but a fact) is the German director Maren Ade, who is a somewhat unsung genius. She def. got acclaim for her movie Toni Erdmann, which was wonderful, but I feel like she should be up there in the Serious Dude Director canon and it doesn't feel like she is. Criterion has both of her other movies up. They are both insane in their own way. The Forest for the Trees is the story of a socially awkward bumpkin who moves to the city to be a teacher and can't make friends and is desperately lonely. It is so REAL it will kill you. And Everyone Else, which was from 2009 and was the last before Toni Erdmann, has more weird mind-fuck pranks like TE. It's about a TERRIBLE relationship and also feels very real, and the plot involves a German couple on vacay in Sardinia so it kind of feels like a mini (but bad) vacation. I'd like to point out that Ade is only 43, which means that she was like 26 when she was directing Forest, wunderkind anyone? Her new movie is released in April, so if movie theaters still exist then I will even drive to the Bay Area to see it.

post

My wrists are scaly and I've also been getting wrist rashes. I'm very spacey and can't concentrate very well and keep doing weird stuff like today I put dressing on a salad that had dressing on it already and my head feels like it is going to float off my body and I keep worrying that that somehow means I have the virus and also I read that lack of taste and smell can mean you are infected and that made me freak out because my Ezekial bread tasted like cardboard this morning so I smelled my own armpit to prove I could still smell and then remembered that bread always tastes like cardboard.

I am losing weight and looking somewhat stringy and I feel like I have aged rapidly in the last two weeks and my skin is so dry from so much washing because showers and baths and washing dishes are the only things that feel clean. For once my nails are growing and aren't breaking off but then I know that nails trap germs so should I cut them and also I will never be able to get a manicure again so who cares if my nails are finally longer? It's funny to me this is the one thing that has made me lose my appetite, including when I thought I was dying of a tumor (benign) I think I was still eating but things are fuzzy from that time so maybe not.

My sister is out of work, my brother is out of work, my mom reports from coastal Mexico that people are taking it seriously, except their president AMLO who is apparently joking about it. She said she is used to being isolated so this is not that different, but she also went to a flamenco class Thursday I think and is going to the market to get her cat smoked marlin today because she claims that is all she will eat and also she went to the fabric store I think maybe yesterday to get fabric to make my sister a quilt which she does not want so now that I add these things up she is not really staying in at all is she? She said there are no hospitals there which is an absurd thing to say and no tests and I said there are no tests here, or none that I know of so we laughed about how the countries are not so different.

I feel feverish but I'm sure I'm fine.

Talk freekah to me

Guess what you are not going to read about here? Not today!

Good things:

Lean In paid tribute to a trans activist on their Instagram for women's history (herstory) month. That made me smile.

My girl Agnes Pelton getting the respect she deserves in the New York Times, and I did get the new Art Forum with her on the cover at News Beat, and even got to go with Mr. Charles Albright, which was an unexpected treat. Makes me think about the Gorilla Girls work "the advantages of being a woman artist" that says "your career will pick up after you're 80". Well, for Agnes it took until after she was long dead, but hey, better late than never, right!?

And, there's an Israeli restaurant on Fulton I'm SUPER EXCITED about. Learn more after the jump