Monthly Top Ten: March 2022

1. camp.o.rama instagram. (https://www.instagram.com/camp.o.rama/). Londoner Myles Lester describes his Instagram as a mixture of "high and low camp and everything in between." He pays homage to some typical gay icons to teach the children. But his Brit base means he has plenty to teach me. If you were already aware of Cilla Black's "All Night Long" from her 1983 Christmas special, featuring children attempting The Robot but achieving...something else, then you're one up on me.

2. The 2022 Society for Cinema and Media Studies virtual conference. We were crushed that we couldn't meet in Chicago. But the conference platform (where you could leave messages, start polls, upload files, etc.) was a model for how to pull off a virtual conference. Some vestige of it should remain when (when!) we return in person.

3. Hash browns. Their simple structural integrity is welcome on the east coast where canned potatoes in a sea (literally) of unpredictable vegetables (especially yucky-ass green peppers and oppressive onions) are apparently the norm with breakfast.

4. Tony's Chocolonely 32% milk chocolate caramel sea salt. Godawful name. But so transcendent that I long to try this Dutch confectionery's plain ole milk chocolate. Even sweeter, the company strives to make all chocolate 100% slave free. More here.

5. The Righteous Gemstones, Season Two (created by Danny McBride) (HBO Max). A bit too broad this time out. And Kelvin Gemstone's muscleman side cult subplot was a disaster. But Eric André as oily televangelist Lyle Lissons owns the best line of the series. To Joe Jonas playing himself at a groundbreaking ceremony: "Get your Christian ass up here!"

6. Servant, Season Three (created by Tony Basgallop) (Apple TV). The most streamlined season of this scary, wacky series. The creators are right to have Season Four be the last. Nevertheless, each episode still feels like it's about to jump the shark when a twist worthy of executive producer and occasional director M. Night Shyamalan recalibrates the entire edifice.

7. The Lost Leonardo (Andreas Koefoed, 2021). An infuriating documentary on the Salvator Mundi which brought out the Judge Judy in me. Imagine these questions in her vice-like voice: Where exactly did this painting come from? Did you or did you not deem it to be a Leonardo?

8. Henry James, The Turn of the Screw. My very first James! And I much preferred the film adaptation The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961). 

9. Jess Conrad: This Pullover (Jasmine, 2022). The idea that pre-Beatles early-1960s popular music was a vast wasteland has been debunked so thoroughly that it's refreshing to encounter an act that bears out the thesis. The title track from this recent compilation was voted the World's Worst Record on Kenny Everett's Capital Radio show in 1977 and it just might be: bottom-of-the barrel teen idol tissue paper with no camp escape valve discernible. Later, Conrad showed up in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Julien Temple, 1980) presumably to take up his place in a time-honored tradition.

10. Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4AD, 2022). As always with this band, it starts out a bit too contained, a bit too Apollonian. Then the title track pauses your treadmill of a day as chief Thief Adrianne Lenker accesses the provisional calm in Yoko Ono's "Mrs. Lennon" and your favorite non-"Sara" Steve Nicks track off Tusk. At which point the entire album opens up and honors an outfit Wiki describes as "an American indie rock band with folk roots based in Brooklyn, New York." Far more consistent than Tusk and the best album of the year so far.