Anora, George Eliot, and Mesoamerican art forgeries

Weekly Rockfoils #11: October 14-20, 2024

Hello! Welcome back to my weekly newsletter of Things I Loved, Things I Didn’t Love, and Little Wisdoms I’ve collected over the past week.

A short low energy post this week because I am ~sleepy~ and ~grumpy~ and ~slightly overwhelmed~ by The Election. And also with my imminent trip to the Austin Film Festival this week (for which I am also very excited)!!! Probably no post next week due to festivaling. xoxo love Anna

Things I loved

• Middlemarch by George Eliot. Three intersecting love stories in provincial 19th century England. 800+ pages of tiny font. Many laughs, a few cries, and relentless yearning throughout. I was sure that the ending would break my heart but spoiler alert, it’s perfect. PERFECT. Perhaps an all time favorite novel ever? Shoutout to my 10th grade English teacher who mentioned this as her favorite book of all time to me 15 odd years ago, glad I finally got ahold of it at an estate sale recently and cracked it open. Still swooning.

• Anora by Sean Baker. I may or may not return to the cinema again this evening after having seen this last night, just to rewatch the last half hour. My first Sean Baker and wow, what a time. Gorgeous story, gorgeous performances, funny, suspenseful, heartbreaking, raw, loving, tender. I need an Igor in my life btw. Love.

• Dodgers on da way to da World Series babeyyyyyyy! I am reminded of this because I live a mile from Dodger Stadium and they have been honking and setting off fireworks outside my window for the last half hour. I only caught a few games this season but got to watch the beautiful LA boys crush the Mets 10-1 IRL back in the spring, so I’m delighted to hear they did it again tonight and are well on their way to defeating the Yankees in the World Series, and proving definitively the supremacy of LA over New York once and for all.

• I am obsessed with these $12 press on nails from Kiss. Shoutout to

  Rebecca Lynne Loftin
  for introducing me.

  

• I had fun reading this wild story on Twitter about Brigído Lara, an insanely prolific forger of Mesoamerican Art. This guy has over 40,000 forgeries under his belt, and got away with fooling museums and art collections around the world for decades. “He may be responsible for forging virtually all the Totonac pottery on record, opening up not just the possibility that some artwork might be fake, but that everything ever written about this culture is nonsense.” Honestly power to this guy idk why but I support him for his panache and work ethic. Also if you like art forgery stories this reminded me of a fantastic book I read in college about a guy who massively ripped off and humiliated the Nazis by doing a bunch of near-perfect Vermeer fakes in WW2.

  

  a fun tidbit

Things I didn’t love

Honestly I have been so #lockedin with work this week and getting ready for the film festival that I’ve been extremely offline, which means I haven’t had time to find much to be mad about. Sorry :)

Little wisdoms

Here is a favorite poem of mine by Kay Ryan from her Pulitzer winner The Best of It. It feels somehow relevant to me to a post I shared earlier this week about facing my fears of the ocean and overcoming social anxiety. I hope you will not seal shut the chambers within yourself that hold the secrets of who you are, and choose to live a life in which you are open to your own heart. :)

PS - Soda Pop says it’s totally okay that you haven’t done your laundry in two weeks. You are doing great and she loves you.

Have a nice day :). See you next week for another list, and check out my intro post if you want to know what the deal is with me and this newsletter.

And like this post, comment or even share it if you want to help me grow this little Substack. Thanks, I love you.