BRAINWORMS: March 2025

Spring Has Sprung and So Have I!

No time to waste! We’re fully loaded with heat in every medium you can find it and I have to inform you all about Genius of Loathe’s imminent hiatus (relax, I’ll be back sooner than you realize (probably)). Let’s go digging for BRAINWORMS.

MUSIC

Chart Courtesy of tapmusic dot net.

Earworm of the Month: Shame, Songs of Praise

Imma keep it a buck with you guys I have no idea how the Crash soundtrack ended up on my chart for this month. I may have fallen asleep while it was playing on my phone. Don’t draw any conclusions about me based on that theory.

Gonna opt for a deeper cut here, a heavy-rotation record from my college radio days. shame are a criminally underappreciated band, among the very best from Britain's post-punk revival of the mid 2010s. A moody and angry but still tight and professional band in the mode of Buzzcocks or The Fall, but with some of that post-Y2K laddishness to keep them approachable. Not too much lad, I must stress. They’re not Slaves (who have apparently changed their name to SOFT PLAY? What?) They’re not even IDLES (who I don’t like!) Add them to that lineage of British bands that might have conquered the world if they were a bit more photogenic, right up there with Dire Straits and uh- oh yeah, Buzzcocks.

So yeah, give Songs of Praise a spin. Their other two records are worth a look as well. Food For Worms was one of my favorite releases of 2023. They also did a kickass cover of “Rock Lobster.”

VIDEO GAMES

Pixelworm of the Month: Mass Effect, developed by BioWare, published by Electronic Arts

Who says you can’t go home again? In one sense I’m 2X years old and just paid my taxes. In another sense I’m 16 and obsessed with Mass Effect, which I discovered in an issue of GamePro I purchased at the supermarket because it had a cover feature on the then-forthcoming Super Smash Brothers: Brawl.

I’ll keep this brief, mostly because I suspect I’ll essay on it more thoroughly in the future, but I absolutely made the right decision to finally get stuck in to the Legendary Edition remasters as a long term gaming project. I absolutely love this universe and believe these games to be among the very best of the 7th console generation. BioWare is now a shell of its former hitmaking self and EA has degraded further into risk averse greed. But for a brief, beautiful moment there, it seemed like the system might just work. I live in fear of what they’re gonna do to this franchise for the inevitable reboot.

LITERATURE

Wordworm of the Month: The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac

My father purchased this along with On the Road from City Lights in San Francisco in the same way you’d buy a holy medallion from a cathedral where some saint’s foreskin is kept in the reliquary. I was grateful for the gift. I like Kerouac well enough although I’d never want to edit him. I read Dharma Bums some time ago and liked it more than this. Kerouac did write this (allegedly) in three nights though, which is a serious flex. Interesting microtrend in my consumption lately of novels drafted in remarkable circumstances (Jewels of Aptor before Delany was 20, now Subterraneans). I’ll confess we’re awarding another Wordworm of the Month by default here but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading. Been too long since I’ve read philosophy regularly and so I’m forcing the issue. I’m deep in some other dense nonfiction and have a project planned for my upcoming vacation. Difficult to keep all these plates spinning but you can rest easy knowing I’m gonna keep trying until they all fall down and shatter over my head, wounding me terribly.

FILM

Eyeworm of the Month: Throw Down directed by Johnnie To

We got the movies working in March and not a moment too soon! The volume and quality of films, especially first-time viewings, was absolutely brilliant but really I think the variety was what excited me most. I think a cinematic habit goes stale more due to ritual than content. I’m lucky to have a solid DVD and blu ray collection (plus the standard compliment of streaming options) but March saw me recapturing the adventure of moviegoing, with all the dizzying highs, crushing lows, and creamy middles that implies. We were up, we were down, we were at theatres, we were on YouTube, we were at home, we were downtown, in bar attics that seat thirty, outside of town, in fashionable exurban faux-indie theatres with comfy leather seats. We were at the movies.

On the off-chance any of you happen to be local followers of this newsletter (DC) I really cannot recommend enough that you take advantage of the city’s movie theater infrastructure. Suns Cinema in Adams Morgan and the AFI Silver just over the state line in Silver Spring, MD are both cheap, cozy, and boast one of a kind programming.

Was a bit of a difficult pick for Eyeworm of the Month. No shortage of compelling contenders taking up mental real estate. Maybe it would have been best to throw whatever weight I possess behind Black Bag while there’s still some conceivable chance that it might be playing near you. The Insider represents a compelling recency bias option. I could go full YouTuber hyperbole mode and explain how truly terrible The Electric State is (maybe I could even pen a little skit where an evil version of me kidnaps me and forces me to watch it and review it).

However, given that I basically see the point of this feature as recommending things, and that I prefer these recommendations to be evergreen (I’m not giving you homework but really, go see Black Bag if you can) I’m going to go with Throw Down, which you can consider a tangential recommendation of literally any Johnnie To movie. I am still waiting for this man to make something less than brilliant (except Executioners, but that movie is basically the ensouled afterbirth from The Heroic Trio (which is brilliant)). The thing that really impresses me about To is his range as a storyteller. His movies refuse to find a comfort zone. He’s done hyperactive comic book action, gritty, brutal, socially conscious mobster drama, and now an achingly sweet martial-arts comedy about overcoming depression through judo. My life is feeling crazy affirmed right now, dog! To-heads, where are we at?

BLOG BIZ

I’m going on vacation! Two weeks and change in central Europe. It’s been far too long since I had the opportunity to go abroad and it’ll be my first international trip with my fiancee. I expect to have a lovely time, assuming my asshole elected representatives don’t get me knifed in a back alley. In any case, you fine people will not be coming on vacation with us. I will be deleting Substack from my phone in mid-April and don’t expect to return until May. I may choose, if I feel I’m within striking distance of an end to the novel, to extend the hiatus into summer so I can push for it without distractions. However, I don’t take the growth we’ve experienced for granted and wish to continue crafting essays that will grow Genius of Loathe and participate in the broader reformatting of our discourse exemplified by Substack at its best.

I’ve been somewhat light on essays this month, but that is owing to Other Projects which may make themselves known to you soon. Watch this space. Watch all the spaces. I intend to present you with at least one more dispatch before my departure and rule nothing out as far as content during the hiatus goes. Just because I’ll be AWOL on Notes, that doesn’t mean I’ll be totally silent. The only thing for sure is that nothing’s for sure. Stay tuned.

-JW