 Feeling nostalgic might delete this later. On Saturday night, or I guess Sunday morning, I was lying on the floor of my bathroom on the West Elm bath mat my girlfriend had received mere hours earlier. Thinking about how amazing it is that our bodies and brains make us forget how awful it is to be in serious pain or really sick. Like I contend with chronic pain as a result of the injustices of existence and so think that I have a fairly high threshold for someone without a uterus. But maybe I just have a bad memory. I was in the midst of the COVID speed run that many people have found the 24 to 36 hours following their second vaccination to be. Good golly, was that not fun? As I rested my head against the side of my bathtub, I just repeated to myself that it was all going to be worth it, that it would be over soon. And I should be grateful that I didn't get the thing for real. And because I had literally nothing else to do, I started thinking a lot, about a lot of things. I know that I was exposed to COVID-19 right as New York went into lockdown 13 months ago. The day before my company sent us all home, I spent at least 15 minutes in the apartment of someone who had just a few hours prior begun feeling quite ill. And though we kept some distance and I sanitized heavily afterwards, you know. In the days that followed, many of my colleagues came down, including the guy who sat right next to me and who I spent a lot of time talking to had a far less than six foot difference. It didn't occur to me for months that I had likely been in asymptomatic carrier at the start. It's entirely possible I was already infected by the time I picked up my first inhaler in years as a precaution, which was the thing I did, because although I am relatively healthy minus that chronic pain, I spent a lot of my younger years fucked up by asthma and specifically virally induced asthma, making a virus that attacks the lungs a genuinely terrifying prospect. And I was scared. Last week I rewatched the first two videos I did after New York went on pause, a channel update slash Q&A, followed by a discussion of some pandemic set movies that found a popular resurgence in the early months of 2020. These videos were done when we would only venture out from the apartment once a day after the sun went down so we could walk in the completely empty park and also leave our groceries in the hallway for like 48 hours to let whatever virus may be hanging on die off. It was a very different time, which made the videos fascinating to watch. It's one of the most interesting things about having this YouTube channel in general. Like it's not really a vlog channel. Or at least not a very good one. But the archive still serves as an audio visual record of my life that I can return to at any point for as long as YouTube exists and my channel doesn't get deleted. Obviously I have like 10 years of writing that, or damn, it has actually been exactly 10 years I started writing for Flixist 10 years ago next month. That's fucking wild. Anyway, I have all that writing obviously there and elsewhere and that's cool, but I can't see the circumstances in which I wrote any of that. And also I was always at least somewhat and often substantially limited in these sorts of asides I could make by virtue of working on someone else's platform. But here, I can open a review of The Nightingale with a rant about the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. Isn't it great that I don't even have to pretend to say allegedly anymore? Like, thank fuck. Or a review of The Exorcist with a plea to vote blue in the 2020 election. And no one can stop me. People can complain about these things and tell me that they're not gonna watch my videos anymore but like, good, I don't want them here. So I have those videos and so many others as records of what I was thinking about and how and at the time I had no idea what was to come. And I certainly wouldn't have believed that vaccines could become available as quickly as they did let alone that I would have been able to get one or even two just a few months into the new year. But I am well aware that this is not a universal experience in that, well, I rarely feel this way. I guess I'm kind of lucky to be an American. Vaccine rollouts have been spotty around the globe while we're over here at the point of having nearly more doses than we do people willing to get them. But as much as I enjoy having this little look at the old me and my old life and the ability to see myself change and grow over time, there is a downside to such an easily accessible archive where old and bad opinions could surface or actively be surfaced. Our good old friend, the hate mob. That's right, we're doing this. The night before I got my second shot I removed myself from a Facebook group that I'd been a part of for nearly five years. It's a fan club for the Flop House podcast and I've largely enjoyed being a part of it. But on Thursday night, someone decided to post about Lindsay Ellis' latest video, the absolute epic that is mask off addressing her recent cancellation. Now, I'm a huge fan of Ellis. I watch all her videos, back on Patreon and even bought an autographed copy of her damn book. And I'll really follow people on Twitter who I haven't met in real life, meaning I'm generally disconnected from a lot of these big dramatic campaigns until the fallout reaches my subscription feed. And what a fallout this one was. I think that her video is a must watch, addressing the inciting criticism in depth as well as a laundry list of other mistakes from the past 13 years that some genuine weirdos on Twitter put together as though that negated everything else she'd done in that time and stood alone for who and what she is. But the folks in this particular Facebook group were not impressed, demanding she apologize for things that she has apologized for in the past and also again in the video, as well as other perceived slights that there's no good reason to apologize for, as explained in said video. And whenever someone said, hey, maybe you should watch the video, they got real fucking hostile about it. Why should I have to watch a 100 minute video that she'll make money off of when she could? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Obviously I defended her also. And then someone else said, it's interesting that only straight white men are defending her. Do they know that she's married and isn't going to date them? What the fuck? Look, I was a militant atheist as a kid and even I found the lack of faith in that thread disturbing. And no cap. If you try to defend the whole thing here, I'm just gonna block you. So I left because I really don't want to be around people like that who just want to tear down random folks and dance on their graves. Like fuck those people, right? But also I'm one of them. And recently too, ain't no deep dive required to see my hypocrisy there. It is a reality that I've been kind of avoiding for a few months. And while my critiques of freelance variety critic Dennis Harvey were more about abstractly dunking on some random dude who did a bad job reviewing a movie and not creating a mass mob to end his career, the intention doesn't really matter. I was part of the mob anyway. More than 19,000 people saw a version of my promising young woman review where I was just hating on some guy for what turns out to have been a misunderstanding. In fact, I only just found out this week. Most people in the comments said nice things about how mean I was. A couple of people who I can only assume were close personal friends of his told me they reported my video over it. Obviously I enjoyed the former and found the latter kind of funny. But then finally someone engaged in what appeared to be a mostly good faith manner and told me that what I said about Harvey was wrong. So I decided to dig a little deeper. The Guardian had posted his response the day after my video dropped and in it he basically said that he was trying to make the exact argument that I did make while saying he was wrong. Clearly he didn't communicate it well. But I believe him when he says that his comments had been completely misconstrued. And I was very unhappy to realize it. I sat on my couch and stared at the video for 30 minutes trying to figure out what to do. It was immediately clear that it couldn't be nothing. If the video wasn't particularly successful I may have felt like I could just get away with a pinned comment saying, hey, I was wrong and I'm sorry. Please laugh at and not with me while I'm being a douchebag. But it is currently my most popular video and was on trajectory to get at least a couple thousand more views before it inevitably dropped into obscurity. And I'm not okay with that. But because it was doing so well I also didn't wanna delete it and upload a new version. Vimeo lets you replace video files without losing reactions, comments, et cetera. And it's really frustrating that YouTube doesn't offer the same ability because the problem with the review is that what I said about Harvey wasn't just an aside. It was built into my introduction for the film. A few years ago I sent an editor a piece that was approximately twice as long as it was supposed to be for a publication where length didn't really matter. And I was just being cheeky. He ultimately sent it through basically as written because when I am doing this whole free association thing any significant changes will make it fairly difficult to figure out the train from point A to point B. The connections are tenuous enough as it is and he didn't feel like fixing them himself. And I got lucky here. I listened to that section 10 maybe 15 times until I figured out a way to cut in the middle of one sentence and out of another such that it slightly changes the meaning but more or less flows and is frankly over and forgotten in a few seconds. It is awkward and I don't love it, but I had to do it. I wasn't okay with having this very personal attack be here when it was over a misunderstanding and then something occurred to me. Why was I okay with having this very personal attack on a random guy in the first place? I am not speaking truth to power by dunking on some random freelance critic. I am just being a bully, both stop. And that sucks. And it brings us to what I was really thinking about there on the bathroom floor. Who am I? Can I condemn this man to slavery? Pretend I do not see his agony. This innocent who wears my face who goes to judgment in my place, who am I? Can I conceal myself forevermore? Pretend I'm not the man I was before. And must my name until I die be no more than alibi? Must I lie? How can I ever face my fellow men? How can I ever face myself again? My soul belongs to God. That's a lie, we already talked about that. Joking aside and serious, I was trying to grapple with me and what I do and how and why. Regulars who I assume are the only people watching this video likely have feelings about my current lack of a set. For the first two and a half years of this channel, I had the same setup because it was enforced by the design of my previous apartment. And I liked it. I liked using a window directly behind me since it goes against every piece of conventional wisdom you will ever get. And I think I was able to make it look nice. Especially later on as I introduced more lights and different colors. But the lights were the only thing I designed. The rest of it posters the plants already there when I first decided to set up my camera. And now I have to decide what the week I review video looks like when it's built from scratch. And it's not just a matter of the background which I'm basically paralyzed at the prospect of figuring out. I have to decide if I should be sitting like I used to or standing like I am now or how much of me you should see at any given moment. The answers to those questions also change what the background can look like. So whichever one I choose feels permanent. And as soon as I realize that I get overwhelmed then to start watching TikTok. Or I watch so much TikTok and I don't feel bad about that but it definitely gets in the way of doing things that I could be doing for this channel. But also I don't know what I should be doing. Part of this is the fact that I don't really know what I'm doing in general and have literally zero plans for the future. In a junior year of high school my class was asked to do an exercise where we were to draw where we expected to be in five and 10 years. Five was easy. I'd be in college, obviously. But 10, I drew a gravestone. I didn't really think I'd be dead at 27. And indeed I was not. But when I imagine my future, I see nothing. And I don't imagine very well in general and that's probably part of it. But in five or 10 years from now I could well be dead. So why think about the future? Why plan? And the last year has convinced me that the best plan is none at all. And not just because the film that won Best Picture espouses that same notion. I had plans for 2020 concerts, theatrical productions, a trip to Europe. All totally paid for and all totally canceled. The one long-term plan I've had since early 2019 was a month-long trip around Southeast Asia this coming September. And while timelines are pretty fuzzy globally, still it seems rather unlikely that I'll be able to do that trip now. And I don't know when or even if I'll be able to make that work again. I am lucky to be vaccinated. And that virtually all of my friends and family have had at least one shot. But as I said, that's not true everywhere or most places or many places. Frankly, it's barely true in some places. Many major countries that did an amazing job containing the virus have shockingly low vaccination rates. And most non-U.S. countries that fucked up their initial responses have had all kinds of issues on the vaccination front as well. And even if my city or state or country hit herd immunity in the near future, this shit's not over until that milestone's met everywhere. So my one plan is in limbo. And though it is the least cosmically sad thing ever, it makes me sad anyway. But you know what they say, you can't be disappointed if you have no expectations. This bleeds into the way I handle the channel. The first time I did a live stream, it was completely spur of the moment. And then doing it again was too. And I tried a few different schedules before ultimately settling into the every other Saturday afternoon slot I've got going. But even with that, I'm never actually prepared. I realize like an hour beforehand that I have to take a picture for a thumbnail, schedule the thing, set up my stuff. I only sometimes have anything specific to talk about. And in general, I haven't figured out how to do much more than just talk at the camera. Which, let's get real, is pretty unbrand for me. But the lack of preparation is also the reason I can do it on that consistent schedule, right? And frankly, I could do it more often and would enjoy it. It's literally just me saying shit and I'm gonna be doing that, whether my audience is my significant other or a small but shockingly diverse group of very cool people. But that is also the reason I can't do it more often because me talking gets pretty exhausting pretty quickly, right? Facts. See? So once every couple weeks strikes a good balance, I think. But that same consistency there has made it painfully obvious how inconsistent the regular uploads have become. Like I actually had the idea for this video before I got the second shot. I thought maybe I'd even do like a vlog or something and then I remember that you can't film in a doctor's office, but also what? Was I seriously gonna just come here and brag about how cool it is that I'm not gonna die and everyone who's still waiting can suck it? All the B-roll in the world couldn't cover that shit up. Like that, that would be something to cancel me for. Obviously it is a genuine relief to have gotten the shots. A weight was lifted from my shoulders or whatever but you don't need me to tell you that. Either you know because you're feeling it too or you're mad that a stupid American got it before you, a more deserving not American did. And that brings me back to the question of what I'm doing here. Because this channel is all about me. Like it's just an excuse to inject myself into every possible subject. So maybe this video should have been me bragging and dancing without a mask in the middle of traffic or something because I'm invincible now. But no, obviously not. Like towards the end of my massive review of Derek DelGaudio's in and of itself, I mentioned that I feel compelled to make my problems interesting to an audience. And so as we begin to wind down whatever the fuck this is, I want to add an addendum to that. When nobody's idea of a good time story concluded and the performance was over, I asked that small audience a question. Was it as awkward as I promised it would be? Turns out no, it wasn't. Because the story itself was too well told. If it had been boring and they had to watch me react in real time while sitting mostly naked on a raised stool before them, that would have been awkward. But fortunately for all of us, I couldn't bear to make it boring. I am a lot of things, many of which aren't good. But boring's not one of them. And if you find me boring, you need to switch those uppers to downers, my man. I want these videos to be things that a person would reasonably want to watch through sheer force of my existence. The idea of this channel at its most basic is that people would be interested enough in me as the through line of each video that they would be down to watch me talk about things that they had never heard of and didn't care about at all because they found it interesting to hear me talk for eight to 14 minutes every Monday. And yeah, we have long since given up on Monday and my videos regularly and frustratingly passed 20 minutes these days. But my hope remains that people who come for my movie reviews might check out a book review just because it's from me. And yeah, I know it doesn't actually work that way. I see my analytics. But if I were to pivot away from the anything goes concept and make this say a purely movie review channel, I wouldn't be happy on a practical level. Not that much would change. I mostly talk about movies already and my TikTok is all about movies, but conceptually philosophically, I would be deeply unhappy. Honestly, I'd probably just give up on the whole thing at that point and that doesn't sound fun at all. What I'm trying to say is that I don't really know what post vaccination life means for me or this YouTube channel. I don't know what the world is going to return to or how fast the streets of New York City are increasingly busy. Though we may not be quite at pre-pandemic levels, it feels like we're getting there. In a few weeks, I will be seeing my first live in-person performance since the theater district shutdown. I bought my first concert tickets the other day, albeit for a show in October. From the sound of it, I will be returning to the office. I haven't seen in 13 months sooner than later. All this points towards my life going back to what it was in the before times. And maybe the week I review will follow suit going back to videos that are more frequent and shorter, but should it? Is that good actually? I don't work better on a deadline and I think that videos made when I could post any day of the week have been better than the ones that were kept to a rigid Monday morning schedule. By the same token, I think it was the right decision to spend an entire month writing that 55 minute review of In-N-Out-Itself. Now, I'm not really interested in doing more things like that, but I'm glad I did it. And I do want to do more of the interesting videos, you know, like A Moral Man, or I'm Thinking of Ending Things, or I Can't See, videos that let me stretch some creative muscles while also sticking to the essence of what the channel is. Because look, I'm not about to start turning any length of video into the full-fledged, highly edited video essays that would probably make me way more popular than I will ever be talking straight to camera. I don't have the time, or perhaps more importantly, the drive to do that. So I guess I'll just keep playing it by ear. Maybe I'll figure it out at some point down the road. Or I won't. I've got no plan. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you particularly to my patrons, my mom, Hammer and Marco, Kat Saracada, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Magnolia Denton, Elliot Fowler, Greg Lucina, Liam Knype, Kojo, Phil Bates, Willow, I Am the Sword, Tomatown One, Timmo, and the folks who'd rather be read than said. If you liked this video, awesome. If not, oh well. If you wanna see more, please subscribe. I hope to see you in the next one.