The Checkout Counter #46
September 2026

Ariel

Linda Linda Linda

First Cow

it's fall where i am! i love fall. it's equally magical and funny how much my ambient mood turns for the better when the leaves start to yellow and the afternoon sun feels gently pleasant instead of searing. of course the 4pm sunset can't be avoided and i'll change my tune when the longer nights arrive, but for now i'm loving fall.

happy world postcard day and start of weird web october 🎃 thanks for reading!

Film

  • Linda Linda Linda (ăƒȘンダ ăƒȘンダ ăƒȘンダ), 2005linda lindaaa linda linda lindaaaaaaa ♫

    soo fun. i got very stressed out by the last act lol, being late to anything school-related is my recurring nightmare. very satisfying to see the gymnasium gradually fill up with students escaping the rain, then when the band finally arrives and performs the titular song the crowd explodes into cheers. the girls will probably never play music together or even hang out again but they'll remember those three days forever! shoutout to the middle-aged teacher who does his best to make sure they do.
    Music, drama, comedy. A newly-formed band has only three days to practice for the high school rock concert.
  • First Cow, 2019john magaro has such an insane case of đŸ„č face in this. big sad brown eyes (much like a cow
). can't stop thinking about how he immediately starts sweeping the floor after being invited into king-lu's house and gathers a bouquet of flowers, making it into a home. together the two share their dreams of business and commerce and that hunger for a future beyond basic survival ultimately leads to their downfall. and soon after the beaver trade will collapse and oregon will achieve its statehood, another piece of land to milk dry for the colonial project of the united states.

    so much to say about gender
of course there's the aforementioned scene of cookie tidying up the house as king-lu chops wood outside, and when he looks after the baby in the bar, and the general hypermasculine world of the frontier, but there's also the titular cow. cookie seems to identify with her—they're both out of place. he even looks personally hurt when king-lu makes a misogynistic comment. much to think about.

    i spent the last fifteen minutes or so with my hands on my head after i suddenly remembered the scene at the very beginning of the movie that i completely forgot until then. just a constant background noise of "NOOOOOO"
! of course the man who benefits most from stolen land reacts the most violently to being stolen from. putting handholding skeletons within the first five minutes of this is so crazy. i love this movie. thank you kelly reichardt.

    AND another thing: this inspired me to make a new page dedicated to food movies i like.
    Western, drama. A cook, a man on the run, and a dairy cow arrive at Fort Tillikum in Oregon Territory.
  • Attack the Block, 2011love the tight focus on one apartment block and the variety of improvised weapons (the ice skates!!). john boyega is such a star here—he and the other kids work so well together. on the other hand i get what they were trying to do with jodie whittaker's character but it doesn't quite work as well.

    the monster design is so evocative and memorable i had a dream about them and their glowing teeth years ago, when i just knew this movie through gifs on tumblr.
    Scifi, action, comedy. A teen gang defends their South London neighborhood from an alien invasion.
  • Coyote vs. Acme, 2026it's trite to say but it really is special that the movie about perseverance against all odds finally, against all odds, managed to be released to the public. the seemingly endless torment inflicted by corporate entities does feel sisyphean, doesn't it...we're all mr. coyote. he's just like us for real. we may never catch our roadrunners but maybe it's the chase that matters most.

    there's also a tasteful pepe le pew joke lol. a miracle!
    Adventure, comedy, family. Wile E. Coyote hires a personal injury lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation for their consistently faulty products.
  • Supa Modo, 2018
    Drama. A village comes together to help a terminally ill girl fulfill her dream of becoming a superhero.
  • Ariel, 1988another kaurismĂ€ki banger about the finnish working class. he's quickly becoming one of my favorite filmmakers ever—just the perfect blend of aesthetic and thematic sensibilities i gravitate toward. i love how everyone is styled like cartoon characters but they're all deadly serious and living mundane lives, working mundane jobs. strong thread of "the only way to succeed/be upwardly mobile is to do crimes" in the movies i saw this month. tale as old as time!
    Drama, crime. A former coal miner travels to the city in search of work, with nothing but a Cadillac convertible and the clothes on his back.

Music

Books

  • Hooked, Asako Yuzuki (tr. Polly Barton)whew some chapters felt like ripping off a bandaid, but if that bandaid covered a whole limb. yeowch!

    i don't know if i liked this or not, which can be an exciting feeling to have for a book. eriko and shƍko are so well realized and they circle each other, pulled into the other's orbit like the sun and then a black hole. and just when i thought their relationship would go completely off the rails, it all resolves in a way that's much more sober and realistic. a sort of anti-twist that i liked, weirdly refreshing in a contemporary literary world full of unhinged-feral-etc-women.

    then there's everything to do with maori, whose storyline feels so cartoonish i don't know what to make of it at all. the internalized misogyny and fatphobia gets so frustrating. the invasive fish metaphor is also unceremoniously dropped somewhere in the middle.

    and despite all that i've still thought about this book way more than ones i've solidly enjoyed and also managed to write way more about it, too, so clearly there's something in here that resonated. much to think about.
    Literary. Eriko puts it together that her favorite blogger lives in the same Tokyo neighborhood, so she begins tracking her down in the hope that they will become friends.

Articles & essays

Blogs

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