I haven’t watched this film, but it was recommended and I can already tell it’s going to leave me kinda destroyed when I find a copy.
I had this in my drafts to write up some grand thing about Unbreakable but whatever, it’s great, watch it.
Now I’m on the train to arrive at work at 1:45 in the PM. I’m passing lots of constructions that did not exist until recently. Lots happenin’ in the bay area, let me tell you. Lots of tech happenin’ and people need places to live. Gotta invest wisely, build equity, all that. Think of the future.
Peru might be a fine place to die. They have elevation. There’s good deaths to be found in the Andes. If a man kills me I might take it personal, but an animal, well it needs to eat. Death is horrible when it’s a source of fear. I don’t know what all nonhuman lives in the Andes, I don’t know if I’ll find out.
There’s tent camps too, here by this train. People need places to live with access to food, water, communication, medicine, and privacy. These are human necessities.
Earlier, I knew I was going to miss the train. It pulled up to the station when I was still a minute away. I walked on thinking I’d have to wait at a nearby restaurant for the next one, but the train sat there. I walked under the bridge, and it waited. I climbed the stairs and it waited. I walked and then clumsily jogged and it waited. And finally, when I stepped inside, it closed its doors, dinged its bells, and lumbered on toward here.
I had this in my drafts to write up some grand thing about Unbreakable but whatever, it’s great, watch it.
Now I’m on the train to arrive at work at 1:45 in the PM. I’m passing lots of constructions that did not exist until recently. Lots happenin’ in the bay area, let me tell you. Lots of tech happenin’ and people need places to live. Gotta invest wisely, build equity, all that. Think of the future.
Peru might be a fine place to die. They have elevation. There’s good deaths to be found in the Andes. If a man kills me I might take it personal, but an animal, well it needs to eat. Death is horrible when it’s a source of fear. I don’t know what all nonhuman lives in the Andes, I don’t know if I’ll find out.
There’s tent camps too, here by this train. People need places to live with access to food, water, communication, medicine, and privacy. These are human necessities.
Earlier, I knew I was going to miss the train. It pulled up to the station when I was still a minute away. I walked on thinking I’d have to wait at a nearby restaurant for the next one, but the train sat there. I walked under the bridge, and it waited. I climbed the stairs and it waited. I walked and then clumsily jogged and it waited. And finally, when I stepped inside, it closed its doors, dinged its bells, and lumbered on toward here.
The second of American Gods, “The Secret of Spoons,” kicks off with one of the most memorable character introductions in ages. It’s one of the show’s “coming to America” vignettes, set aboard a Dutch slave ship on the Atlantic Ocean in 1697, and it highlights that not everyone who arrived in America with their gods came of their own free will. A man named Okoye, shackled and scared, called out to Anansi for help and offered gifts if his prayers were answered.
“Let me tell you a story,” Anansi started softly. “Once upon a time, a man got fucked. Now how’s that for a story? ‘Cause that’s the story of black people in America!”
For the next few minutes, the men on the ship (and some of the audience at home) are given a rude awakening. It’s a blunt and candid summation of what black people in America have waiting for them after reaching those shores for the next few hundred years. Although the men on that ship might have no idea what Anansi means when he tells them what will happen, the audience knows exactly what he’s talking about.
Anansi is an expert storyteller, and in the hands of Orlando Jones—who grew up hearing stories of Anansi long before he read American Gods—he’s absolutely captivating. He can enthrall and spin webs, rile up those who listen, or calm them down if he needed to. (In this case, he pulls absolutely zero punches.)
“I was blown away,” Jones told reporters last month during an American Gods press junket. “I joked when I first read it, I was like, ‘Man I didn’t know these guys [showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green] were Black Panthers.’”
“It’s a brutally honest accounting of obviously the historical elements that come to play,” Jones continued. “It’s in the same way that I think we’re responding to all of our dialogue as the characters in that way that there’s a core resonating through it that we recognize as completely truthful, and you’re almost like, ‘Are they gonna let us say this?’”
They do that and more as Anansi convinces the men on the ship to kill all of the “Dutch motherfuckers” and burn down the ship, which will certainly kill them in the process. And Anansi has a message for them, one that might end up resonating with audiences after the show.
“Angry is good,” he said. “Angry gets. Shit. Done.” [x]
does this mean they’ll maybe do Anansi’s Boys after this?
I think they’ve semi-officially floated the idea.
American Gods flows at the pace of a novel, which is great in the end, but painful on a weekly basis. Think of reading only two chapters of a novel each Sunday and then waiting a week to continue. Brutal.
But it’s these vignettes at the start of each episode that save me, much like any good short story. They are brief, intense, and to the point. While I get the general direction of the TV show (and did read the novel many years ago), the vignettes always surprise me.
(P.S. the BBC is producing their Anansi Boys series but if it doesn’t measure up to Orlando Jones’s introduction to the character, or just feature Jones himself as Mr. Nancy, it’s gonna be a bummer.)
The second of American Gods, “The Secret of Spoons,” kicks off with one of the most memorable character introductions in ages. It’s one of the show’s “coming to America” vignettes, set aboard a Dutch slave ship on the Atlantic Ocean in 1697, and it highlights that not everyone who arrived in America with their gods came of their own free will. A man named Okoye, shackled and scared, called out to Anansi for help and offered gifts if his prayers were answered.
“Let me tell you a story,” Anansi started softly. “Once upon a time, a man got fucked. Now how’s that for a story? ‘Cause that’s the story of black people in America!”
For the next few minutes, the men on the ship (and some of the audience at home) are given a rude awakening. It’s a blunt and candid summation of what black people in America have waiting for them after reaching those shores for the next few hundred years. Although the men on that ship might have no idea what Anansi means when he tells them what will happen, the audience knows exactly what he’s talking about.
Anansi is an expert storyteller, and in the hands of Orlando Jones—who grew up hearing stories of Anansi long before he read American Gods—he’s absolutely captivating. He can enthrall and spin webs, rile up those who listen, or calm them down if he needed to. (In this case, he pulls absolutely zero punches.)
“I was blown away,” Jones told reporters last month during an American Gods press junket. “I joked when I first read it, I was like, ‘Man I didn’t know these guys [showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green] were Black Panthers.’”
“It’s a brutally honest accounting of obviously the historical elements that come to play,” Jones continued. “It’s in the same way that I think we’re responding to all of our dialogue as the characters in that way that there’s a core resonating through it that we recognize as completely truthful, and you’re almost like, ‘Are they gonna let us say this?’”
They do that and more as Anansi convinces the men on the ship to kill all of the “Dutch motherfuckers” and burn down the ship, which will certainly kill them in the process. And Anansi has a message for them, one that might end up resonating with audiences after the show.
“Angry is good,” he said. “Angry gets. Shit. Done.” [x]
does this mean they’ll maybe do Anansi’s Boys after this?
I think they’ve semi-officially floated the idea.
American Gods flows at the pace of a novel, which is great in the end, but painful on a weekly basis. Think of reading only two chapters of a novel each Sunday and then waiting a week to continue. Brutal.
But it’s these vignettes at the start of each episode that save me, much like any good short story. They are brief, intense, and to the point. While I get the general direction of the TV show (and did read the novel many years ago), the vignettes always surprise me.
(P.S. the BBC is producing their Anansi Boys series but if it doesn’t measure up to Orlando Jones’s introduction to the character, or just feature Jones himself as Mr. Nancy, it’s gonna be a bummer.)
