4 min read

127: June 2025

It's the midpoint of the year, a time for taking stock of how things are going. (It also seems to be prime time for taking stock of the quarter century so far, especially in movie circles; every time I participate in a conversation about the New York Times Top 100 list or whatever other list du jour I feel good about precisely one of my picks, and then immediately remember five others that I've left off, so there's no definitive list from me here.) My most recent weekend has been filled with little home-improvement chores, the kinds that are small but add up, and that are a relief to be done with even though individually most of them take about five minutes. This feels like the midpoint of my year writ large, too–a pile of little things that need part of my attention, some good, some maintenance, some that would simply be nice to do. I've been in a bit of a movie-watching rut, which is a problem given my work as a critic. I think about the pile and get overwhelmed, and then I get embarrassed about how overwhelmed I feel, given the state of the world right now.

I have one of the flavors of anxiety that means my thoughts are always in motion. This is fun for brainstorming, and for writing when I'm on a deadline, but it sucks whenever I'm in a doomscrolling spiral, because I pick up on something and keep returning to it, like a CD that keeps skipping. The only times I'm able to turn my brain off are when I'm gardening or at the gym. I suspect it's because these are the times when I'm fully inhabiting my body instead of living in my head. It's been too hot and sunny to do much gardening. This month I've turned to the treadmill, and with it, a diet of mid-aughts pop punk, most notably Green Day's American Idiot.

There's a mix of the comforting and the uncanny in the album. It's familiar enough that I can hum a few of the tracks; it was big enough when it first came out, and I was young enough, that listening to the record conjures up skate t-shirts and checkered Vans and the dawning realization that people could distrust authority, and in fact might have good reasons to do so. I didn't grow up listening to Green Day, although a lot of my friends did. At the time I knew, vaguely, that the band was unpopular in the conservative circles I grew up in, although at the time I think I'd chalked it up to the fact that they swore in their lyrics. I didn't understand why the record struck a nerve for a long time. It was simply a part of the post-9/11 noise.

Though it isn't really noise. American Idiot is polished, more "pop" and less sloppy than other examples of the pop/punk genre. The "punk" comes from the record's sensibility that the world's off kilter, and it's largely the fault of people who should know better, and that something should be done about it. If you're not mad, you're not paying attention, as the tweet goes. The record's uptempo, angry, an expression of disillusionment with a government engaging in a war the singer does not want them to be a part of, and with a culture so disaffected that most people keep living their lives, oblivious to violence being done in their name.

I feel angry every single day. A lot of that anger comes out in the form of imprecatory psalms. Sometimes it manifests as despair. It feels awful to watch history repeating itself, to know that power corrupts and complacency corrodes and that our world is broken. On my worst days, I feel trapped inside my own head, the background noise of injustice adding to the pile of things that need attention. I can't address the injustice directly; it's too big. It looms over everything. Worse are the days when I'm able to tune it out, go about my business, and then log on to some fresh horror, feel guilty about not having paid enough attention. Sometimes I feel like a brain in a jar, simultaneously fixated on the things I can't fix and unmoored from the things I can do. I'm on a treadmill of shame and embarrassment for my country and myself.

Ironically, getting on the actual treadmill has helped. I need the reminder that I'm corporeal, able to move and breathe and sweat and have a physical effect on the world, and that the more I do it, the better I get at it. I've been thinking about the insult/call to action of "Touch grass," a reminder I need to follow more often, but touching grass isn't enough. Last weekend I had the opportunity to meet a few interesting people, face-to-face, and just talk for a couple of hours about art and life and their interests and mine. I volunteered with a local mutual aid organization. One of my favorite songs off American Idiot has a chorus that belts, "I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives." It's angry and hopeful at the same time. I'll keep running to it.


What I wrote:

For Seeing & Believing, I reviewed Ballerina, The Phoenician Scheme, The Life of Chuck, and Elio.

I made my fiction debut over at Broad Sound, writing a short story in response to a Mountain Goats song for our "The Sunset Tree at Twenty" edition.

What I talked about:

My friend Ethan Warren, who publishes Broad Sound, also hosts a companion podcast about a variety of topics. One has to do with "perfect" works for art. I picked Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day as my example of a "perfect" book.

I rejoined the Fear of God podcast along with my friend Abby Olcese to talk about David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.


Thank you for reading The Dodgy Boffin, a newsletter by Sarah Welch-Larson. If you have any thoughts, or just want to drop me a line, feel free to get in touch. This newsletter is free, but if you'd like to support my work, you can pay for a subscription, which helps me keep the pilot light on.