july field notes ⚽️⭐️🫒

-maxxing, rashida jones x bella freud, and surveillance chic

Happy Wednesday! Happy July-August cusp and Happy summer (forever)! A month of dot cakes, the never ending world cup, a sports day. For the Field Test, this substack was randomly #48 then #6 then #19 rising substack in the Netherlands, so that feels really good.

If you’re new here, I write monthly: (a) field notes: a log dissecting my media diet, (b) a field guide interview with people I admire about things they are building, and what they consume culturally; and (c) a field test, a longer form essay that deep dives into a specific cultural moment (for paid subscribers at only €5 a month).

Just in case you didn’t already know. -maxxing has been used A LOT this year. This is a Google Trends report from a couple weeks ago:

1. BOOKS

As expected, East of Eden was amazing. The type of book you wish you could read all over again, as soon as you finish it. I woke up a couple days after finishing it, and thought to myself how much I missed being in that world. Its characters were like friends, and when they died I remember being incredibly moved. There were no points during the reading that I wished a part would be over, or wondered what I was doing on some tangent.

I have finished Eat Bitter, a memoir by Lydia Pang. I read it as part of a very cute cross-Atlantic book club with some insanely intelligent people. In some chapters, she tends to get a bit preachy, which frustrates me as I don’t remember the last time I enjoyed reading a self-help book. But the chapters I related to the most were when she writes about her relationships: her mother, her father and her partner. I think to some extent we all wish we could write something like this to the people we love, and for ourselves, as a form of reflective exercise.

Also, I got influenced into buying London Falling. Written by investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe (Rogues), the story follows what happens after a 19 year old dies in London, and it turns out he has been posing as a Russian Oligarch. This is a great tonic of a book with so many twists and turns, I have sat up many times while reading to audibly gasp.

2. WATCH

I watched Paris, Texas, and it reminded me a lot of the feeling I had when reading East of Eden. The feeling of being lost, and searching for something with the heartbreaking possibility that you might never find it.

SPOILER: The scene where Travis finds Jane reminds me so much of when Adam finds Cathy. In that scene, they both understand, finally, the reality of their choices, they both realize the person they have idealized for so long, never really existed. It actually also reminds me of the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s where Doc finds Holly, and Holly tells him, “I’m not your Lulu Mae, anymore”.

If you read my recent field test on nonnamaxxing, you’ll know Bourdain was a reference. I guess ahead of the new series coming out about him, my tiktok FYP has been full of his lore. Sometimes I’m skeptical, I’m worried they will say bad things about him. Before I left Malaysia (in April), I had even picked up one of his books, Kitchen Confidential. (Did you know he also wrote some fiction books??) Either way somehow or another, the feeling he gives off in his shows has been something I have been craving lately. When I don’t know what else to watch, I find myself watching his shows, whether it’s the originals A Cook’s Tour. (S1 and S2 available on YT), or Parts Unknown.

The Rashida Jones x Bella Freud interview was really good. I find everything about Jones fascinating, especially as she has such a seemingly down to earth and grounding nature. I found out in the episode that she wrote a zine about a socialite being recruited by the CIA. Growing up, I always dreamt of being a spy, so hearing her talking about the lore behind the intelligence industry was pretty cool. It also resonated so much with me when they started to discuss nudity and this tendency of body hate that we have for ourselves in youth only to regret that hatred when you’re older. I think about this so much.

Before the end of the World Cup, I watched Offside. It’s a film about a group of Iranian girls who try to sneak into the stadium to watch the qualifying game for the World Cup. (Because of Iran’s strict laws, women are not allowed to watch the games.) At times I felt the dialogue was a bit long, but it was a really good watch. Poignant and at times funny, the film captures the realities that women face in Iran, and how a sport really can bring people together, even if it’s just for a little while.

I stumbled on Erling Haaland’s final 24 hours of the World Cup vlog. He is such a dork.

LASTLY, because I am a sucker for a bad documentary, I ambient watched the documentary about Jerry Springer. I didn’t grow up in America, so to me a lot of the white male talk show hosts looked the same. I couldn’t really tell them apart. I think it’s ironic Netflix explores this show that produced scandal out of real people’s lives, in a documentary format (historically also a produced format). It’s incredible still, so many of the people involved in the show aren’t able able to hold themselves accountable about the insane havoc they caused in people’s lives.

3. ARTICLES

I have been enjoying articles on The Heatmap! The substack features writers from different parts of the Mediterranean (from Antalya, to Beirut, to Marseille). It’s very good, It feels like I am reading short stories about summer against the backdrop of gentrification and overtourism. If you would like a gift subscription to this let me know!

Did you know I love Anu? Her trend reports this year have been INCREDIBLE resources. Her recent series explores global trends from Melbourne, Wuhan, India, Delhi. How does she do it??

Late Stage Groceries. I don’t know how I started following snaxshot, but I love their articles. The substack writes about cultural insights about food and beverage.

An essay about how your research practice is your creative identity. The premise of the essay comes from challenging where our references come from if we are all looking in the same place. “Research is when the act of looking starts producing ideas. You are making connections across unrelated fields, noticing patterns, and building a visual argument. You find a photograph in a 1970s Italian architecture magazine, and it changes how you think about negative space on a brief you’ve been stuck on for two weeks. You read a paragraph from a Susan Sontag essay on photography and suddenly the casting direction for a project you couldn’t articulate becomes clear. The research is not feeding the work, it is the work.”

Gaza and the problem of moral stupidity. Long read, but I caught my breath reading this. It’s less an article about Gaza than about the hollowing of intellectualism in the face of it. Omar’s argument: the genocide isn't continuing because we lack evidence, it's continuing despite unprecedented evidence. Western institutions have all the facts and still can’t act on them, because fully absorbing the truth of Palestine would mean confronting the fictions the West tells about itself.

As I question my netflix subscription!!! This free article is about Netflix’s failing strategy of audience capture: “Sooner or later, the audience refuses to be held captive. And that’s happening now at Netflix—hence the stock sell-off.”

This article about the aestheticization of surveillance capitalism we are living under, aka Kylie Jenner and meta glasses, referenced ME! how very cool! such great writing about a very important topic. As we get past the tech companies tastewashing, now we come to the intersection of influencer and tech, using them to really make bad things ‘cool’ or ‘hot’! Emily Sundberg (a cool newsletter influencer I sort aspired to) did an interview with Zuckerberg, wore the glasses and then promptly got shut down by a NUMBER of her followers. If anything, this just shows how deeply polarized our society is now. Also another take on it by Maggie Zhou.

4. RANDOM

I have been quite obsessed with people making adorable music videos of their summer holidays!!! Cinematic solo hike!! FRIENDS ON HIKES. PARAGLIDING WITH FRIENDS. High school musical version. Mamma mia version. Mamma mia version ii. Eviva la vita version.

OMG Lore!!! Someone has launched a website that aims to fix the ‘fan experience’, by giving us the lore about our favorite celebrities, from the teletubbies to ariana grande. I just got the beta version access and am playing around with it and so far it is quite cute. It aims to collate all the info you want about something into one website.

What is Sam Smith’s current sidequest? Sam Served? I love it.

Please check out Photovault. It features over 500,000 film slides from photographer Wernher Krutein, photos across the world, all meticulously organized and preserved over decades of his life.

Are we all obssessed with Kait Park’s holiday with her friends? I will watch 1000 more of these.

Community Radio Index is an interactive website that maps community radios around the world. A rabbit hole for your ears!

Also I watched all 8 minutes of this tiktok video so maybe my attention span is not that bad! (bring me back to the damn beach!)