For years, I’ve thought of myself as an underdog, despite all evidence to the contrary. I was born with many advantages. I am white, male, and able-bodied. I have no physical deformities. I may have had some challenging circumstances early in life, but so did lots of people. And many of them didn’t attend a private high school whose alumni include Barbara Bush and Nick Kroll, and earn a college degree without accruing a dime in student loans. I’m no underdog.
And yet I’ve always felt like one, and I wonder how much that has to do with being a lifelong fan of the New York Metropolitans. Now, I realize that every fanbase thinks they’re the aggrieved ones. Complaining is the primary role of the fan. But being a Mets fan comes with a unique set of challenges. They’re the inferior baseball franchise in their own city. They find new, humiliating ways to lose; even last season, one of their best ever, ended unkindly. Their previous owners were caught up in the Bernie Madoff scandal and, after suffering serious financial losses, decided they were unwilling to spend enough on player salaries to compete at the highest level. You see how it works. Follow a franchise like this one long enough, and losing will seep into your bones.
Then a change occurred. One of the richest people in the universe bought the team. With a net worth of over $14 billion, Steve Cohen is easily the wealthiest owner in major league baseball, and lately, he’s been acting like it. The Mets 2023 payroll currently stands at $385 million (assuming some little details get worked out), which is $75 million more than the next highest-spending team (that would be, ahem, the New York Yankees). It gets funnier: Due to MLB’s competitive balance tax, the Mets will be punished for their high payroll to the tune $111 million dollars, putting their actual financial outlay for the upcoming season somewhere around half a billion dollars. This is unprecedented territory.
Underdogs no more. They spent $800 million in guaranteed contracts this offseason. They have four likely future Hall of Famers on the roster. They will enter the season with a big target on their backs. They are more like the Evil Empire, a moniker once reserved for their crosstown rivals, than the #LOLMets of old.
What does that do to a person? To a fan? Who will I be in 2023? It’s possible that once the season starts, it will feel like business as usual, and I’ll live and die with every game and every pitch like I always do. Or maybe the universe has a surprise in store for Mets fans that will cancel out all the good vibes surrounding the franchise right now (I’m betting on Cohen getting busted for tax evasion and going to jail). Or maybe this team will simply not be very good, which is not an uncommon result when you try to put together a Superteam in one offseason. The team who wins the winter rarely ends up winning the World Series.
Or maybe I’ll have to shed my underdog mindset and become…I dunno…someone else. Whatever happens, I’ll work hard to be mindful of the changes within, and maybe even write about them here. There could be a new Noah born in 2023. Or you might be stuck with the same charmingly disgruntled jerk who expects the worst while holding out hope for the best.
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Like many who came before me, including previous iterations of myself, I’ve decided to get in shape this January. To be honest, I work out consistently throughout the year, but December is never kind to my waistline. There’s too much work to do, too much incentive to sit on the couch and watch screeners, and do my colleagues at work really have to send me that tin of cookies every year?
So it’s back to the home gym. I’ve got a bench and some free weights in my house, plus an elliptical machine. Figuring out what exercises to do is easy enough. The challenge is figuring out what to watch. I don’t do television series (I watched only three this year, and two were for assignments), so, like everything else in my life, it’s movies, movies, movies. But I’ve learned the hard way that not all films are meant to be background for aerobic exercise. So I’ve developed a set of five principles for identifying a proper Workout Movie, and I’d like to share them with you here.
1) Nothing with subtitles. I love international cinema, but I find it impossible to process the images onscreen and follow along with the words at the bottom of it while bouncing up and down on an elliptical machine. Not to mention some of my weightlifting occurs with me flat on the back on my bench, where reading is really not an option. Pick a movie in your native tongue. It just makes sense.
2) Nothing too pensive or thoughtful. I think of it this way: When you exercise, you become an idiot. Your muscles need more oxygen, so your brain gets less, which basically makes you a tick or two dumber. Watching anything that requires your entire brain is going to be a waste. Try to pick something Forrest Gump would watch, and you’ll be fine. Actually, Forrest Gump would work nicely.
3) Action movies are good. See #2. I’m not saying there aren’t smart action movies, but there are a lot of dumb ones, and even the smart ones have enough visceral pleasures that you won’t lose anything by shutting down part of your brain. Schwarzenegger movies are ideal.
4) Bad movies are good. Ya know that movie that’s probably terrible but you still want to watch? The kind that you don’t want to waste a night on the couch with your wife watching but you still kind of want to see what it’s all about? That’s a Workout Movie.
5) It’s helpful to watch fit, good-looking people. This principle is built on the idea that good health is contagious. Studies show that if you’re around overweight people, you’re more likely to become overweight. I reckon the opposite is equally true, and a movie with lots of thin or muscled people can have a motivating effect. Of course, Hollywood movies are filled with good-looking people, which creates a high bar. I recommend looking for one where the actors aren’t wearing much. Anything with people at the beach or performing some kind of athletic activity is good. Ever go to the beach, look around, and say, “Man, I’ve really got to get in shape?” A movie can do that to you, too.
With all of that in mind, here’s a list of movies I’ve worked out to in the last couple of years. Enjoy!
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A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had not seen Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the recently-crowned best film of all time. Well, readers, I rectified that glaring omission and watched it on Criterion Channel. And ya know what? Good movie!
It’s a glimpse into the life of a particular woman, a widow and single mother of a sullen teenage boy. She spends her days cleaning up around the house, cooking, running errands, and doing the occasional bit of sex work. The bit here is that she treats both jobs—mother and prostitute—with a stunning, almost comical matter-of-factness. She shows little emotion. She makes perfunctory conversation with her son at dinner. She watches a neighbor’s baby for an hour every day to help out. She fucks a stranger in her bedroom. These are the jobs that define her existence, and the film, in showing them with such exquisite clarity, free from praise or shaming, turns her into a symbol of modern womanhood in all its hypocrisies.
It might sound like a drag, and I’d lie if I said there weren’t moments I was bored, thought the boredom didn’t bother me too much. There’s always something to look at in the frame if the action onscreen (and I use the word “action” loosely) doesn’t compel you. A knick-knack on her dining room shelf. A tree outside her window. A sign at the bank. Still, Jeanne Dielman isn’t static. It lulls you with purpose. It draws you in to her routine so that when something changes—she burns some potatoes one hour and forty minutes into the film—it feels like a seismic shift. Critic and filmmaker Paul Schrader called this a “transcendental style” of filmmaking that reflects the rhythms of daily life, forcing you to lean into its stately pace, and when something does happen, it is felt more deeply. Schrader wrote about this phenomenon in the context of Robert Bresson (Pickpocket), Carl Theodore Dreyer (Ordet), and my beloved Yasujirō Ozu (Tokyo Story), but Jeanne Dielman provides one of the best uses of this style of film you’re likely to find. Watch it on the Criterion Channel right now.
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Finally, a quick question. I’m thinking about launching a series of essays on the films of 1998 that will be available only to paid subscribers. It won’t be much. Maybe $3 or $4 a month. Would you pay for that? Reply and let me know.
I’ve chosen 1998 because it’s the 25th anniversary, which offers a neat opportunity to take stock of how well a film has aged. It was also an important year in my growth as a cinephile. I was 18 in 1998, and I had just gotten turned onto cinema a year earlier. There was a lot going on. In this series, I’d write about movies like Dark City, The Big Lebowski, He Got Game, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Truman Show, Out of Sight, Buffalo ’66, Rushmore, Armageddon, and more.
If there’s some interest in this, I’ll give it a whirl, and stay tuned for more info about how to subscribe. If not, I’ll try not to take your silence as a personal attack. No guarantees, but I’ll try.
Until then,
Noah
You're a brilliant writer, Noah G! Such fun to read. Thanks!