December: True Crime, Goth Folk, and Trying to Catch the Holiday Spirit.

Hey Whores, New Year New Me. Right?

This has been an interesting year. We started out jobless, pennyless, and just all around sucky. I like to think that something nice has happened in the meantime. I feel that I have grown into myself a bit more both professional and I can see a lot of the ways that I have matured and the ways that I can still grow as a person. Financially I have done really well for myself and the coming year will be relearning how to actually handle money and not be in starvation/binging mode all the time. According to my letterboxd apparently I spent time not watching movies this month is. Thats crazy coconuts. 

The picture above is me going to a Charming Disaster concert. They are my favorite band and I really enjoyed myself. I need to go to concerts more often and I'm finally in a financially and car-owning place to do such things. 

Anyway bitches lets talk about the true crime docs I saw this month because this is literally the only thing I watched this month apparently . 

This month was pretty low-key 

Worst Roommate Ever (2022)

Watched on a whim and pretty much binged it while playing Celeste. Produced by Blumhouse, WRE, is a five part docuseries covering various you guessed fucked up roommates. Scam artists, Squatters, and of course your friendly local serial killer its popcorn true crime. The type of eerie kind of cautionary tale that makes you feel a bit better about your own roommates. 

I don't want to put on airs with this one. Its a true crime doc that gets it gets out and gets on with it. Do you like Unsolved Mysteries? Then your'll probably like this.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (2023)  

Malasian Airlines Flight 370, was a commerical airliner that dissapeared in 2014 while it was between call towers. I'm going to quote my original review on LB. 

"Wow People don't really like this documentary series.

From what I could aggregate from the reviews I've read on here theres a strong bias in this doc to give airtime to wild conspiracy theories instead of working on objective measurable evidence. I don't disagree with that.

I also have no horse in the game or a particular emotional need to weigh in on whether or not that framing is bad for a documentary. A little voice in the back of my head says probably but that voice also tells me I should write 20 page essays on shit like this and bitches are tired.

What I will say is that despite its framing MH370 is a well-produced, and cohesive storyline with strong talking heads. I put this on for background noise and it is one of the more competant of the Netflix Docs that I've seen so far." 

Don't Pick Up the Phone (2022)

From my LB review. 

"Ok hers the thing why does every single True Crime Doc gotta be about fucked up shit happening to women. RIght. Am I Crazy????

As I delve deeper into the world of true crime docs. I begin to understand that polish of format differs from the actually meat of the documentation. To crib Scott McCloud I'm distracted by the shine of the apple without realizing that its hollow at its core.

Suffice to say that this is a well out together doc. The title cards are snazzy, the sound bites zesty. The talking heads are well lit, well dressed, and suffiently vibrant and overall this gives an outline of some fucked up shit that happened.

I personnally found the three hours of this doc to go by fairly quickly and I will say that I enjoy, (through I'm loath to use that to describe my ghoulish interest in the fucked up and macabre), what had to offer.

What perhaps I dislike is that these docs tell you what, sometime how, but very rarely explain WHY? we get some handwaving over the Milgram Experiment. Some hooey over how people are conditioned to obey authority but for me the question is never truly answered or really explored.

Its conflicting because on one hand I remember what it was like to be a teenager, how growing up in a strict religious household makes you meek and docile, and how this subservience was used against me at times. I don't want to pretend that such conditional does not make one vernable to those that want to take advantage of you.

But It's one thing to be an employee scared of losing your job being felt up by a cop and a manager listening to a person on a phone convince them to go through so many different loops to humilate and torture there underage staff. The fact that this is not an isolated incident but one of many, over a hundred fills me with disgust, disquiet, and trepidation. That such horrendousness must be baked into the human condition.

They tell me something terrible but like most terrible things they don't seek to comfort with understanding."