Patti Harrison

📖 ADHD 2.0, 🎥 Millennium Actress, and 🎮 KUNITSU GAMI: PATH OF THE GODDESS.

October 15, 2024

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Patti Harrison is a Los Angeles-based comedian, writer, and actress, who you might recognize from roles on shows like Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave and Aidy Bryant’s Shrill, her brilliant stand-up (like this Arthur Russell one), or perhaps her online antics (like the enchanting tale behind her Twitter ban.) I was introduced to Patti via her penmanship of my favorite song of all time, this track she performed for Comedy Central— a “Dua Lipa type beat” with the incredible chorus “I would kill myself if you asked me to." You can catch her in Julio Torres’s Max series Fantasmas which came out earlier this year, or keep up with live show announcements here. Lucky for us, Patti’s here to tell us what she’s been into.

📖

ADHD 2.0 by Edward M Hallowell and John J. Ratey

I don’t like to read and I accept that. But if you have ADHD or think you could have it, I prescribe this to you!!! My therapist put me on to this book a few years ago during lockdown. My procrastination & inability to motivate myself to finish the simplest tasks had become debilitating. I felt petrified in life, depressed, stuck in a sludge, and all that jazz. (lockdown probably had a wittle bit to do with it). Knowing that I am unable to finish every book, my therapist recommended the audiobook version of “AHDH 2.0”. The authors are both doctors who also have ADHD and they really understand their demo. It’s an extremely quick, easy listen, and left me feeling scarily encouraged and hopeful. Put it on in the background while you’re drafting an apology email for missing a deadline and simultaneously masturbating at your standing desk that was supposed to change everything!

🎼

MADONNA PERFORMING RAY OF LIGHT ON OPRAH IN 1998

I wouldn’t say I’m a like a mega fan of Madonna, but I am a fan in the sense her music was so ubiquitous during my youth a lot of her songs are ingrained in there. I did realize the other day I can remember the lyrics to more Madonna songs from start to finish than I can from bands I claim are my favorite bands. I’m fake and you can come kill me in my house for that. But there is this video of her performing Ray of Light on Oprah in 1998 that is soooooo funny and truly incredible. It just is such an odd combination of things. I remember as a kid Oprah airing around 4pm when I was getting off the school bus. I’m sure Oprah was probably filmed at like noon. Madonna comes on stage wearing a pretty normal outfit. It’s like a black blouse with leggings and wedges? No crazy hair or makeup. I think this is shocking to me because the bubble has burst with every top 40 musician dressing all crazy now in a way that’s oversaturated and makes dressing crazy completely normal. To see Madonna in what appears to be head-to-toe Ann Taylor Loft parent-teacher conference wear is so jarring. She literally looks like she should work in a candle store and she just walks right on stage and starts belting this 6 minute long song dancing like she’s on meth and it shreds. An audience of women wearing primary colors and plain pastel business casual blouses are on their feet jumping and clapping the whole time. And Oprah is flatlining, her eyes rolled up in her head. At one point she starts dancing with the microphone up to her mouth as if she’s about to sing, but never does? Cock tease! The energy is so trance-like it really feels like they’re all about to summon something. It’s actually shocking that Bahamut does not appear by the end of it and pull her down into the hellmouth in a burst of flames leaving behind only the foam that was spewing from all her orafices. It genuinely is such an incredible performance from Madonna, made all the weirder that it’s on day time TV and probably was taped in the late morning or early afternoon. And i feel I must mention that she’s either 39 or 40 years old at the time and just adds to how incredible she is. Unfortunately, I look at the current day Madonna and feel a bit sad, probably in a patronizing way that you can come kill me in my house for, but this video truly reminds me that Madonna is the real deal and made me feel a lot more respect for her despite the fact I never want to meet her because she seems lizard brain mode full time. Respectfully!

🎥

Millennium Actress

A lot of people know Satoshi Kon from his anime films “Perfect Blue”, “Paprika” and perhaps his TV Series “Paranoia Agent” that got an american run on Adult Swim ( It’s one of my favorite TV shows of all time & I also recommend it, but I don’t know if it’s legal to recommend something like this within the Perfectly Imperfect Newsletter). I am a huge fan of his work, a lot of which is pretty dark, scary, challenging and so on. But if I had to pick my favorite of his, it would have to be his second movie “Millennium Actress” which feels like his sweetest and most heartfelt work. It’s a super surreal, dreamy, gorgeous movie. Especially insane how small the budget was for an anime feature, and his last movie to use actual cel animation before going digital. It also has my favorite original soundtrack from any movie, composed by Susumu Hirasawa, who went on to do the music for Paprika and Paranoia Agent. Susumu Hirasawa is famously known for doing the theme & other music for the anime BERSERK, but is an electronic music pioneer in his own right. The soundtrack he made for Millenium Actress is so unique, beautiful, and inspired. It’s this combination of his singing which is what I would poorly describe as gorgeous yodeling teetering into operatic howls which he digitally manipulates, pitch shifts, layers, and samples, over these electronic dance tracks which then veer into reverb-y orchestral plucking and religious choir chanting. It’s very emotional & atmospheric and I am doing a horrible job describing it so I will just make one of the songs my next recommendation and hopefully it can be hyperlinked. The final thing I’ll say about this movie is that I showed it to a friend a few years ago and he said that “this is not a feminist film and I’d say it would actually pass a reverse bechdel test whatever that is” and I completely agree. But sometimes it’s really beautiful when a woman has no other meaning in life than to find her crush! 😍

🎶

“Run” by Susumu Hirasawa from the Millenium Actress OST

This is my favorite song on the soundtrack but there’s a lot of good stuff on there. Another highlight is Chiyoko’s theme. I am also putting recs inside recs and have to recommend if you like this OST you have to check out Susumu Hirasawa’s album “Technique of Relief” which is the English translation of the title. You should actually just listen to all of his music. He was also in this amazing synth rock band in the late 70s/early 80s called P-Model. I should have just recommended Susumu Hirasawa in general but I am going to just let this all stay.

🎮

KUNITSU GAMI: PATH OF THE GODDESS

If you were a fan of the Onimusha, Okami, Otogi, or Ninja Gaiden games, I highly recommend Kunitsu Gami! I’m playing it on PS5, but it’s also available on PS4, XBox, PC, and Steam. It’s impossible to explain and yet here I go!!! Basically… it’s a strategy-based, hack and slash action/horror game where you take control of Soh, a genderless katana wielding dancing bodyguard to a magical goddess named Yoshiro who is tasked with ridding the mountain villages of “defilement” which is basically, as you may have inferred, demonic overgrowth entrapping and possessing all of the plants, animals, and villagers of the mountain. Your job is to clear a path for the Goddess through each village, and rescue villagers who you can then employ as soldiers of different classes and abilities. Day time is spent gathering resources, racing against the clock to stock up on health and set trap before sunset, which is when the portals to the demonic realm open and all kinds of ghouls & monsters start to crawl out. You then must survive the night by killing all the demons that emerge while making sure they don’t reach Yoshiro. It seems complicated at first but it is pretty simple once you play through the first two levels. This game is so fucking weird in the best way. It really feels like the heyday of Capcom making very specific games with weird-ass, eccentric character and creature design, a la Onimusha, Okami., and Viewtiful Joe. The art direction of this game is wild. In this making-of video on youtube, the creators said they wanted the players to feel like they’re moving through a diorama. To accomplish that, instead of digitally creating the environments, they had sculptors build full miniature villages, forests, traps, and effects BY HAND and then 3D scanned all the handmade miniatures and models into the game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This makes me want to kill someone in a positive way. Art is not dead! So much love went into it and you can tell. This is that BTS video if you want to watch it

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Patti Harrison

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