I feel good. Great, even. Many (but not all) of my new habits and routines I’ve been building over the past month seem to be clicking all at once now, and my days feel good, and because of that, I feel good.

I woke up to twenty—twenty—low heart rate notifications on Friday, an obvious record for me. Last week, Apple Fitness+, my workout service of choice, released kickboxing workouts, and I spent every weekday last week going through them. Normally, my heart rate maxes out at around 150bpm during my most intense workouts (HIIT mostly), but I noticed during my kickboxing workout on Thursday that my heart rate maxed out in the 170s. During my sleep that night, I practically entered hibernation mode, and I woke up the next day feeling strong, lean, and healthy. When I weighed myself on Saturday, I dropped another pound, making that 4.5 pounds lost since the start of December. My goal then was 10 pounds, and I’m almost halfway through achieving it.

Fitness is only part of the equation. Good sleep also matters, as well as how I fuel my body. The last book I read last year was Thrive: The Plant-Based Whole Foods Way to Staying Healthy for Life by Brendan Brazier. The Thrive Diet is basically an alkaline diet, where the focus is on eating foods that are not too acidic. The first few chapters go through the science, and frankly, I didn’t give a shit about that. Brendan spent those chapters trying to sell me on his food philosophy, and it felt like a snake oil salesman trying to sell me on bullshit. But! The last half of the book was devoted on recipes, and these looked good. They were high on good, natural foods, something that jived well with my vegan diet—I diet I started on January of 2017. Over the last few weeks I’ve been slowly—oh god slowly—adding these recipes into my recipe app and acquiring as many ingredients as I could in my small town. Last week, I finally finished adding all the recipes into Mela, and I started to finally make some of these foods.

And oh my god.

The few I’ve made have been more than just good—they’ve been great. The almond flaxseed burger was orgasmic, and the chocolate blueberry energy bars helped me see in multiple dimensions. After I took my first bite of the burger, I messaged my friend and told her, “I love being vegan.” She didn’t say anything because she was busy eating meat, but oh my god, that night’s dinner is forever ingrained in my head. It was also the same night where I watched The Menu, which added an extra dimension to the viewing experience (what a great movie, by the way).

This week, I hope to keep pushing myself as hard, if not harder, during my workouts, and I hope to keep making more of these Thrive recipes. The book also has a 12-week meal plan (that I also digitized), and I’m not quiet ready to start that yet (some recipes require ingredients I can only find on Amazon so far), but it is on my radar. There are these pizza recipes I really want to try but they require buckwheat flour, and why don’t more stores carry buckwheat flour? What the hell? Anyways.

It’s been a good 2023 so far. Let’s keep going.

What a way to ring in the new year than by watching this incredible, incredible movie.

I went into The Banshees of Inisherin not knowing anything about it, something I’ve learned is the best way to approach movies nowadays, and I’m glad I did. I’ve never gone from laughing my ass off one second to literally crying the next.

I want to watch it again, to really study it. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve rewatched a movie. I’ve been so caught up in the chase of the new that I need to remember to slow down, that we’re all going to the same place anyway, so why not enjoy the journey until then?

If you haven’t watched it, I highly highly recommend it. If you have, then you know. “There goes that dream.”

Today was my last day at work before the holiday break, giving me five days to rest and recuperate, and for some reason, I had a strong urge to watch films this week. In the spring of 2004, I was accepted to the USC School of Cinema-Television (now known as the USC School of Cinematic Arts), and I majored in Writing for Screen and Television. As part of my acceptance package, my advisor in the writing program sent us this list of 101 films. I don’t remember the context for the list, but I was very excited for school to start that I spent most of the summer watching as many of these movies as I could.

At the time, our family had a Netflix subscription, but back then, it was a subscription to rent DVDs as Netflix didn’t have their streaming service setup yet (that was around 2007). We had the 3-DVD plan, and remarkably, they had most of the movies on this list. I didn’t quite watch every movie, but I was close. I would watch a movie and immediately seal it in that big red envelope and go on to the next movie. I remember spending an afternoon adding as many of these movies to our Netflix queue, and oh man, the nostalgia.

I thought again about these films, and thankfully, I had a scanned copy of it in my files. Scanning this list again brings back so many great memories from that summer. I still remember that excitement I felt, of watching these movies, of getting to go to the best film school in the world, of meeting fellow film nerds, of going to Los Angeles and living on my own, of starting my life. There are some amazing films here, and I am eager to check them all out on all the streaming services I now subscribe to. Man, to be my eighteen year old self again in this day and age…

Without further ado, here is the list of movies my writing advisor sent us all those years ago. I warn you, this is a pretty banger list:

• African Queen
• All About Eve
• Amadeus
• American Grafitti
• Andrei Rublev
• Annie Hall
• The Apu Trilogy
• Babette’s Feast
• Battle of Algiers
• The Bicycle Thief
• Black Orpheus
• Blue
• Burnt by the Sun
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Casablanca
• Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis)
• Chinatown
• Cinema Paradiso
• Citizen Kane
• Cool Hand Luke
• Crimes and Misdemeanors
• Cyrano de Bergerac
• Dekalog
• Dersu Uzala
• Diner
• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
• 8 1/2
• The Exorcist
• Fantasia
• Farewell, My Concubine
• A Fish Called Wanda
• Five Easy Pieces
• The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
• The General
• The Godfather I & II
• The Gold Rush
• Gone With the Wind
• Grand Illusion
• Harlan County, U.S.A.
• High Noon
• It Happened One Night
• Ju Dou
• Juliet of the Spirits
• Kramer vs. Kramer
• La Dolce Vita
• The Last Emperor
• La Strada
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Like Water for Chocolate
• A Man for All Seasons
• Manhattan
• MASH
• Midnight Cowboy
• Murmur of the Heart
• Nashville
• Network
• Ninotchka
• Notorious
• On the Waterfront
• One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
• Out of Africa
• Paths of Glory
• Patton
• The Producers
• Psycho
• Raise the Red Lantern
• Raging Bull
• Ran
• Rashomon
• Rear Window
• The Red Balloon
• Remains of the Day
• The River
• Roman Holiday
• The Searchers
• The Seventh Seal
• Shane
• Shoeshine
• The Sorrow and the Pity
• Spellbound
• Stagecoach
• A Star is Born (1937)
• Star Wars
• Sunset Boulevard
• The Third Man
• The Tin Drum
• A Touch of Class
• Triumph of the Will
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Unforgiven
• The Verdict
• White
• Wild Strawberries
• The Wizard of Oz
• Woman in the Dunes
• Woman of the Year
• Zelig

I finally made time to watch Demon Slayer: Mugen Train this evening, and I absolutely loved it. I’ve been without Demon Slayer for almost five months, and I remembered why I loved this series so much the moment I watched the first frame flash on my screen. This arc in the manga was one of my absolute favorites, and I felt like it translated wonderfully on the big screen. Everything was top notch, from the animation to the music to the acting. The studios added some 3D elements that I felt were a bit off, but thankfully, it wasn’t a distraction.

I had to renew my Funimation subscription to watch this, so I guess I’ll try to take advantage and see what new anime I can start. I hear both Fruits Basket and Kaguya-sama: Love Is War are pretty good…

Austen Goslin, Polygon:

Dragon Ball Super is getting its second ever movie sometime next year, Toei Animation announced on Saturday. The announcement of the new movie came on Goku Day — May 9 because the Japanese character for five and nine can be read similarly to the character’s name — which serves as a celebration day for the entire Dragon Ball universe.

Dragon Ball is the anime that got me into anime. A few years ago, I binged through every Dragon Ball series, so of course I’m stoked for this.

But what I didn’t know is that May 9th is Goku day. According to the official Dragon Ball website:

Goku Day is an official anniversary certified and registered by the Japanese Anniversary Association¹. Why May 9th? Well, since in Japan the date is written in the order 5/9, and because 5 and 9 can be read as “Go” and “Ku”, the numbers combine to make Goku’s Japanese kanji! Thus, May 9th became Goku Day!

I much prefer this holiday over May 4th, but that’s mostly because I didn’t grow up with Star Wars like many people around me did. And 五 (go) and 九 (ku) is just cool.

Funny story: I studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and we had most of our classes in a building named after George Lucas, and it wasn’t until my freshman year when I finally watched my first Star Wars movie. Yeah, that was awkward! I’m a fan now, though.

I finally got around to watching Tenet tonight, and… why does my head hurt so much? But also, why do I feel so invigorated?

Wow, Nomadland was beautiful. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

Mortal Kombat was ridiculous, vulgar, bloody, brutal, extremely violent, and a helluva lot of fun, exactly what one would want in a movie based on an extremely violent, brutal, bloody, vulgar, and ridiculous video game.

I finally got around to watching the new Mulan movie, and oh my, what a beautifully shot movie it was. Every frame was gorgeous. It was shot by Mandy Walker. I’ll be following her work from now on.

The movie itself was okay. A fun diversion with a very cartoonish antagonist.

Pixar’s Soul was incredible. A great movie to end the craziness that was 2020.