top of page
LISTS
December 31st, 2023
Apocalypse Wrapped: 2023
​The "apocalypse" part of these lists has always, mostly, been a joke, but I'd be lying if I said this year hadn't felt different. On the one hand, I think they always do. The years will continue to feel apocalyptic because awful things will continue to happen, and will do so in full view. I've tended not to write any kind of significant annual retrospective at the tops of these things because I never really know what to say. Some things are wonderful; many things are catastrophic; most things are in-between; and yet the idea of leaving the events of 2023 and a literal ongoing genocide unacknowledged feels like a betrayal. I write these lists because I like thinking about the wonderful art I've enjoyed throughout the year and I like sharing them with whoever wants to read them. I like thinking about them because I need them.
I still don't know what to say, so I guess I'll say these things instead.
Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. Zionism is a colonial project. It began that way in the early 1880s with the support of Theodor Herzl and has remained so. A situation can be complex and painfully simple at the same time. You do not need to have a degree in international relations to oppose the targeting of civilians, hospitals, schools, border crossings, the use of white phosphorous, the breaking of the Geneva Conventions. You do not need to wait for something to happen to make up your mind. It has already happened. It's your turn now. A state is not a friend. Your country is not your father. The president does not care about you and will not hear what you have to say. The people around you will. If you were indigenous to the land, you would not raze it. The victimization of one group does not empower or justify the subsequent victimization of another. Palestinians are human beings. Everyone in Gaza is a human being. Nothing would justify this.
I hope you enjoy this list of things that made me happy in the past year, and have one of your own.
BOOKS: Land of Milk and Honey - C Pam Zhang
I've been enamored with C Pam Zhang's prose since reading her debut novel a couple years ago, a lush and biting saga set in the American West called How Much of These Hills is Gold. So when I learned she had a new book coming out, I preordered it, and then I forgot I preordered it, and when it arrived some months later it was a lovely gift from my past self that quickly surpassed expectations.
Land of Milk and Honey is the story of a chef living through unprecedented ecological collapse, one in which climate disaster has rendered most foods endangered for all but the most wealthy. In a strange twist of circumstance, she ends up being hired on as the private chef for a remote enclave where these foods still exist - owned and populated by the uber-wealthy, by whom she will be paid and for whom she will be cooking.
The novel is a paean to the senses. I have never read such rich, sumptuous, delicate, cutting descriptions of food (nor an entertaining Acknowledgements section at the end of the book which lists specific dishes alongside editors, agents, and the many other humans that go into making a book possible). And I'm not surprised, having read HMOTHIG, at how incisive Zhang is with describing female desire and pleasure in particular here as well - either as it relates to food, the imagination, consumption, loss, waste of it; or people, the imagination, consumption, loss, waste of them. Not much in this book is easy, but all of it is both hideous and beautiful, and I think that's kind of the highest praise I can give anything. Recommended for fans of Caroline Polachek, Chef's Table, and Baz Luhrmann movies.
Honorable Mentions:
An Excess Male - Maggie Shen King
Malice - Keigo Higashino
Into the Riverlands - Nghi Vo
MUSIC: going...going...GONE - Hemlocke Springs
The stranglehold Hemlocke Springs has had on my 2023! I only stumbled on going...going...GONE after YouTube served me up the music video to pos in my suggestions, so thank you, almighty algorithm. She had me from the aesthetics of her videos alone, which are surreal and artpop and spooky in that kind of way that feels so specific to the person. One of those, "ah, a weirdo with a very specific vision, I'm glad you exist" moments.
But then the songs themselves are total bangers! New wave synth, a voice that can slip between riot grrl growl and dreamy falsetto, a sense of humor that makes me think of, like, Missy Elliot? of Montreal? She definitely shares DNA with a wide range of indie goobers, and for that I salute her. If you find you like her even a little bit, you should check out all of her music videos. Recommended for people who wish Remi Wolf was a little darker, or that the Eurhythmics had access to TikTok.
Honorable Mentions:
Assorted singles (no LPs... yet) - ATARASHII GAKKO!
Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) - Yves Tumor
Javelin - Sufjan Stevens
The Perfume of Decay - Tiger Cub
Stereo Mind Game - Daughter
Sundial - Noname
Crushed by Everyone - Water From Your Eyes
TELEVISION: Poker Face
A fun thing about being a diehard Natasha Lyonne fan is that she's pretty consistently great regardless of how good the actual project is. Two fun things about being a diehard Natasha Lyonne fan are that she's friends with Rian Johnson, and so sometimes said popping-up location is a cameo playing Among Us with theater legends in a whodunnit, and sometimes it's a full whodunnit series in which Hong Chau briefly plays a trucker. An embarrassment of riches!!
In the same way Kenneth Branagh seems to be cashing in on his career by putting ensemble casts into beautifully awful Agatha Christie adaptations, Rian Johnson is doing with Poker Face what I would want to do: a serialized mystery of the week with stacked ensemble casts and a perfect central detective. I cannot rightly choose a favorite episode because they are all so funny and so supremely clever from start to finish, things that actually work much better for me in Poker Face's tighter hour-ish runtimes than Johnson's more recent features. It's really just putting fantastic performers in fantastic genre work. Lil Rel Howery, Adrien Brody, Benjamin Bratt, Dascha Polanco, Tim Blake Nelson, Stephanie friggin' Hsu. Did I mention trucker Hong Chau? Did I mention Natasha?
Thanks, I love it. And it makes me think about my own whodunnit dream cast, so for those playing along at home, here's a wishlist that immediately got away from me:
Teyonah Parris
Andrew Scott
Anjana Vasan
Sally Hawkins
Paapa Essiedu
Gael Garcia Bernal
Stephanie Hsu, again
Danielle Deadwyler
Dev Patel
Ayo Edebiri
Will Sharpe
Danny DeVito
Amber Midthunder
Tony Leung
André Holland
Kayvan Novak
Merritt Wever
Natalie Morales
Jessie Buckley
(I edited this down. This is the edited version.)
Anyway. Recommended for the middle of the Venn diagram between Columbo and Orange is the New Black, and also everyone else.
Honorable Mentions:
Extraordinary
1670
The Bear (season two)
Game Changer (season five)
MOVIES: Aftersun
I saw this movie in, like, January. So it was very early in 2023, and I do actually go through the year thinking of what my favorites will end up being by December, and it didn't take me very long to realize Aftersun was going to hold the top position for all eleven months.
I think it's become a bit of a running joke with my friends that I gravitate towards art that will emotionally devastate me, but hey! Them's the breaks! A daughter pieces together memories of the week she spent with her dad at a Turkish resort in her youth. Her parents aren't together; her dad, played by a heartwrenching Paul Mescal, is struggling with something dark whose source we can't quite see but whose symptoms are much more evident. It's a love letter. It's the offhand comment an adult makes to you when you're young that gets stuck in the brain, that won't be deciphered until you grow up and remember it. It's forgetting what things were actually like, and then trying to remember, and then deciding maybe you don't need to have the facts right to know how it made you feel. After I finished the movie, I texted my dad.
Recommended.
Honorable Mentions:
Lady Vengeance (2005)
The Quiet Girl
Nope
They Cloned Tyrone
Bodies Bodies Bodies
GAMES: Baldur's Gate III
Karlach, my beloved!
There is a Dragon Age-shaped hole in my heart which, given BioWare's consistent and baffling commitment to gutting itself, seems like it may never be filled - but damn, if Baldur's Gate doesn't come close. In the midst of one of the best years for games and one of the worst years ever for game developers, BG3 is a juggernaut of a bright spot: a six-year-long labor of love by a stellar developer, a masterclass in post-launch support, a highlight reel of incredible acting, mind-boggling breadth of play. Easily a best-in-class RPG. Does it pass Disco Elysium on my list of personal favorites? No. But I don't have over 300 hours in Disco, now, do I? And Disco doesn't have Karlach! Case closed!
Listen, the gamers will already know why this is my GOTY, so I'll keep this brief and only say: think about the scope of this thing. Genuinely, please, it would be a New Year's gift to me to consider, for a moment, a sentence. Now, think of two responses a character might have to that sentence. Great, now do that again. Add more sentence options for each response. Duplicate and adjust it a few times for the ways different characters might react. Now again for your character's class. Again, just because. Is it a lot yet? That's a lot, right? Branching narratives are a lot? Branching narratives do seem like a lot, don't they? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THE GAME REACTED TO A CHOICE I MADE FIFTY HOURS AGO?
Anyway. Recommended for other fans/mourners of Dragon Age, power gamers, NPC smoochers, gnome yeeters, octopus smashers, hag apologists, and people whose D&D groups' schedules keep falling through.
Honorable Mentions:
Deceive Inc.
HiFi Rush
El Paso, Elsewhere
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (2022)
Mount & Blade II Bannerlord (2022)
“In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don't, then it doesn't.”
xoxo Char
bottom of page