Twins Days 2025: Double Vision

It's almost time to get back to school, which means it's almost time to field a lot of questions about how I spent my summer. Last year, these were easy questions to answer. I took my family to Iceland, where we hiked, bathed in natural hot springs, admired waterfalls, watched whales, and, in my case, sampled fermented shark meat. A trip to Iceland requires no explanation: its appeal is obvious.

This summer, to follow up that adventure, we took a vacation to Ohio. Already, that sounds like a punchline. In fact, several people I've told have assumed I was trying to make a weird joke. I've always had a soft spot for Ohio, my adopted home for four year, but I'm also aware that "Vacation" and "Ohio" are not supposed to belong in the same sentence. So I realize that when I tell people we vacationed there, I'm basically begging for a follow-up question -- probably, "Why?" There's nothing to do but lean into the answer to that question, which is inescapably ridiculous. We went to Twinsburg, Ohio (where else?) to attend the Twins Days Festival, "the largest annual gathering of twins and multiples in the world!" (Source: the official Twins Days Festival website.)

In response to this information, some people smile and nod politely, as they internally judge me as a big nerd. Some can't help asking, "Are you serious?" Others seem sort of amused at the eccentricity of our plans. One friend suggested that the festival would be an excellent topic for a Christopher Guest mockumentary, which, come to think of it, is absolutely true. Other friends instructed me to write a reflective piece in the spirit of David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster," which I don't think I can do, but said I'd take a stab at.

I learned about Twins Days l from a book I once received as a gift: 1000 Things to See in the USA & Canada Before You Die. Unlike most people, who I suspect flip through the pages of a book like this without giving it too much thought, I've always taken its suggestions seriously as a sort of Guide to Life. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I really do think I'll eventually check off each of 1000 things, even though I know rationally that it's probably impossible. The one thousand things in question are a good combination of obvious landmarks (the St. Louis Arch), beautiful regions (the Napa Valley), hotels I can't afford, and obscure local festivals. Years ago, the book guided me to the Maine Lobster Festival (subsequently immortalized in Wallace's great essay) -- certainly a memorable experience. One of its other items was Twins Days, which I read about and filed away for a rainy day. Later, when Maya and I learned we were going to have twins, I was obviously excited. Mainly because I had always wanted to be a dad. But about 5 to 10% because I had feared I might die before checking Twins Days off my list, having previously had no reason to go there.

For years, I hinted to Maya that we should consider Twins Days as a summer destination and for years, she rolled her eyes -- which was a reasonable response. The kids were too young to really be able to appreciate it, she said, and besides, it was a long drive to go to a goofy festival. That was fair. But the more I suggested it, the more I wore her down. We could make a nice trip of it, I said. We could get a nice AirBnB, do some hiking at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, maybe check out a baseball game in Cleveland. It would be fun. And anyway, we couldn't do big trips like Iceland every summer. In the end, she made me the happiest man in the world by assenting to the vacation I'd long dreamed of.

The madness of Twins Days was immediate: as soon as we pulled into the parking lot of its headquarters, Twinsburg High School, on Friday afternoon, we caught a glimpse of two women in their mid-twenties, wearing matching magenta t-shirts, black-rimmed glasses, and high ponytails. It was starting. The school's cafeteria, which was being used to register twins, had transformed into Wonderland, with twins of all ages, shapes, and sizes roaming around, some of them greeting each other and catching up like old friends. Registration was a serious matter. Twins Days was attempting to set an official Guinness World Record for the largest ever gathering of twins, and in order to make it official, participants needed to produce proof of twindom in form of birth certificates. We came prepared, and after presenting our paperwork and paying the $15-per-twin entrance fee, we were part of the official count.

The main events took place on Saturday, chief among them a charmingly ragtag parade featuring local businesses, the Mayor of Twinsburg, a marching band, and, of course, a whole lot of costumed twins. (Every other marcher, so it seemed, threw a handful of Tootsie Rolls at my kids, much to their delight.) Some of the more memorable pairs included:

• Brothers who vaguely resembled Michael B. Jordan, dressed as Smoke and Stack from Sinners. (Easily the twins-themed costumes of the year, and there aren't many who can pull it off.)
• Sisters holding hands and skipping in Harlequin-style body suits.
• Middle-aged Middle Eastern brothers in matching turbans.
• Old guy hippy kings
• Cowboys with matching Twins Days sashes
• Obligatory Mario and Luigi
• Obligatory Luke and Leia
• Two bros with huge matching trucks that said Thing One and Thing Two (like the characters from The Cat in the Hat).
• Men wearing crowns and coordinating shirts, one that said "It's Good KI," and the other, "To Be NG." They would have been indecipherable out of context, but when the men stood next to each other, the message read "It's Good To Be KING." I assume they were standing next to each other all day. At least they were when I saw them in the parade.
• A few sets of triplets and one (that I saw) of quadruplets.
• A pair of identical twins, married to another pair of identical twins. One of the couples had children who were identical twins.

After the parade, the festival part of the festival began in earnest. The main gate was guarded by twin wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing tube men, but in many ways, the preceedings looked like any small town gathering. Inside were many kiosks, some of them selling overpriced twin-related gear (matching t-shirts, mugs with slogans) and some selling overpriced other things (a plastic trumpet, which I regrettably bought for my son in a moment of weakness). To help people part with their money, some standard carnival games were there too. Included among them was the Rubber Duck Game, which my kids and I have also seen at the Maryland County Fair. The Rubber Duck Game really isn't much of a game at all. Essentially, you pay seven dollars to have your child pick a rubber duck out of a pond. On the bottom of each duck is written a letter that corresponds to a category of prize, ranging from dinky to extremely dinky. Each prize would cost significantly less than seven dollars if you were to buy it at a store, but if you did that, you'd be depriving your children of feeling like they won a carnival game. My daughter won an inflatable dolphin and for the rest of the weekend, every time I looked at it, I thought about the seven dollars I would rather have had. I hope that was my children's last ever time playing the Rubber Duck Game. We'll see.

Of greater interest and importance was a Twins Talent Show that lasted basically all day. It was essentially an open-house, with audience members strolling in and out of the performance tent at their whim. As far as I could tell, no one had vetted the acts, which somehow made the show more fun. Acts ranged from endearingly amateurish (old ladies with puppets) to relatively polished (ten-year-old girls in sequined costumes, performing a tumbling routine).

The day (or at least our participation in it) ended with a group photo, taken by a man atop a cherry picker. As it turned out, the Guinness record wasn't broken that day, but it's some consolation to know that our twins were in the official fiftieth anniversary picture. I'm not sure the two of them had ever previously given much thought to their "twin-ness" before. They have nothing to compare it to, and very little life experience, so I get it. Plus, they don't look alike in a way that would obviously brand them as twins. But on that Saturday, they were the ones who couldn't get enough of that talent show. My daughter in particular wanted to stick around long after I had grown restless. After you've seen pair after pair of identical, and identically dressed, people, just geeking out over their identicality and the special bond that accompanies it, you start not only to see twinhood as a special bond, but the Twin Community as a secret, exclusive club.

During the parade, two identical women in their eighties waved to the crowd from the back of a slowly moving car. They wore crowns and tiaras that said, "Celebrating our 50th Twins Day Festival!" On the side of the car was a picture of the sisters as much younger women at Festival #1. These were some diehard twins. And while I think Twins Days was probably a one-tie thing for my family, I'm happy to know that people like these have found their people.

American Psycho: What did I just read? And why did I read it?

I almost never say I hate any book - especially one this popular - because I can almost find the redeeming quality that endears it to people in the first place. But I need to make an exception for American Psycho, a novel I truly did hate.

It wasn't just the unspeakably depraved violence, although I'll admit that's part of it. The movie, which I liked well enough but didn't love, was violent and depraved in its own right so I figured I more or less knew what to expect going in. If you know what American Psycho is and then you complain about the violence, it's kind of your own fault, right? Except that the book is far worse. It cranks the violence and the sex (which is always disturbing and never sexy) up to eleven. The murder scenes, especially those involving women, are more horrific than I could have imagined, richly detailed, and much, much longer than they need to be. I almost "rage quit" every time I got to one, then willed myself through it, then decided I was in too deep and had to finish reading. It wasn't easy.

As much as a problem as the gratuitous violence though is the novel's length and its repetitiveness. After one hundred pages of its four-hundred-page length, it had emptied its bag of tricks. Everything I needed to know about Patrick Bateman, a vessel for Brett Easton Ellis's commentary about eighties materialism, was already behind me. The final three quarters of the book were just variations on a frequently unpleasant theme.

If reading were conducive to such a thing, I would propose an American Psycho drinking game. Drink every time Patrick Bateman exhaustively lists clothing designers. Drink every time he launches into a catalog of luxury items. Every time he uses the word "hardbodies," to refer to attractive women. Every time he praises Art of the Deal-era Donald Trump. Drink every time tells us what was on the Patty Winters show. Drink every time Patrick mentions Les Miserables. Drink every time he describes some bizarre or obscure modern dish at one of the fancy restaurants he frequents.

There is virtually no plot here and almost no characters to speak of. Misidentification is a running motif: the people of this world are so lacking in distinguishing features or personalities, they are virtually interchangeable. Which I get as social commentary, but which makes for some really uninteresting scenes any time we're in a restaurant or a club or a party (which is like more than three quarters of the book).

Virtually everyone who didn't like the movie probably had to endure one of its fans telling them they just "didn't get it." I know I did. I'm sure the same is true for people who didn't like the book. So let me clarify that I do in fact get it: I get that American Psycho is obviously satire and its ideas are more important than its characters or its plot. I'd further argue that the weird deification of Patrick Bateman by a certain sector of bro culture proves that the movie's fans are the ones who miss the point.

I can get it and still not like it. Both things can be true. Even as social commentary, it fails.

Here's the gist of the social commentary:

Yuppie culture of the 1980's is shallow, superficial, nihilistic. Its disciples, typically Wall Street finance bros, who proliferated during the decade, are vain and materialistic, misogynistic, racist, classist, and xenophobic. The ethos of the decade fosters and may actually reward these antisocial impulses, which are adjacent to the impulse to rape and murder. So even if Bateman didn't do all the things he claimed to have done (and honestly I don't care to engage in the tedious question of whether he did or not), he still feels the impulse to do them.

It's not that the idea is uninteresting. It's that it's established within the first chapter and the rest is either disgusting or just boring. And anyway, when you're reading the grossest possible descriptions of body mutiliation, the social commentary sort of feels beside the point. 

Anyway, I'm glad it's over. I'm now reading a novel by Nick Hornby, who is one of my favorites. It's kind of like drinking cool filtered water to wash down a vat of sewage.

I don't like him. Not even ironically.

Oscars 2025

Why is it so difficult to watch the best movies of the year? I have not yet seen two of the ten films nominated for Best Picture - The Substance and I'm Still Here - and that bums me out.

But it was certainly no easy feat to see the other eight - plus many other good ones that weren't nominated. It took a little illegal bootlegging (shhh) and some convincing my wife to let me sneak out to the movies once in a while. All I'm saying is that I wish these films were a little more accessible. The Oscars are probably less relevant than they've ever been. There are many reasons for the loss of popularity, but the fact that it's so hard to watch the nominated films certainly doesn't help.

Anyway. Of the eight nominated Best Picture films I saw, here are my rankings:

8 - Nickel Boys

On paper, I should have loved Nickel Boys. It's an important gripping story about two black boys trying to navigate a brutal Jim Crow-era reformatory in Florida. But I found the storytelling kept me at a distance. The director, Ramell Ross, uses first-person shooting technique, which, while certainly innovative, also served to alienate me from the characters and action of the story. File this one under: films I wish I enjoyed more than I actually did. (I did like this piece of African jazz that played over an important montage near the end.)

7 - Emilia Perez

Describe the premise of Emilia Perez to anyone who hasn't seen it and you will sound insane: A lawyer helps a Mexican drug lord seek a sex change. And then later the two of them start an NGO to help victims of cartel violence. And it's a musical.

Not all of it lands. The hospital song and dance number is ridiculous out of context - and for that matter, in context. The ending really goes off the rails in particular. But you have to admire the chutzpah. 

6 - A Complete Unknown

I'm kind of over musical biopics. There's a new one every year and they all have basically the same story beats. (Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox really hammered home this point to me.) I'm not even sure A Complete Unknown gave me much insight into who Dylan was and what drove him. But Chalamet is great. And it's a thrill to feel like you're witnessing an important moment in music history. Months later, I'm still smiling as I think about that performance of "The Times They are A-Changin'."

5 - Dune - Part 2

I'm generally not a sci-fi guy, but there was something about the Dune movies that just grabbed me. Maybe the downcast vibe and the desert setting. Maybe the relative simplicity of the story. After I watched the two movies, I briefly entertained the idea of picking up Frank Herbert's novel, before ultimately deciding there are many things I'd rather read instead. But still, the fact that I even considered reading the book is a testament to the movie.

The sandworm sequence is one of my favorite movie moments of the year. Lisan al Ghaib! 

4 - The Brutalist

Hardcore cinephiles loved The Brutalist. To me, it was half a great movie. I was really invested in the first half: following WWII, talented architect Laszlo Toth immigrates to America from his native Hungary, finds his now-assimilated brother and his brother's new wife, builds a weird chair, gets a commission from the son of a rich man to build a library, builds the library, is yelled at by the rich man, gets addicted to heroin, falls out with his brother, is effectively adopted by the angry rich man. All of that was great.

And then things start to meander. Laszlo's wife joins him, Laszlo goes to Italy so the movie can show us cool shots of a marble quarry, there's a horrifying sexual assault, and later there's a weird epilogue set in 1980 back in Italy. 

I found myself checking my watch during the second half. A few times. But hey, that first half was great.

3 - Wicked

It's a huge, overblown spectacle. It's really long. The music is good, sometimes great. This is not the kind of movie I usually like. (And I like musicals, so that's not why.)

Whatever. I watched it with my family and we all loved it. And that last half hour, Elphaba and Glinda arrive in Oz, flying monkeys, escape, "Defying Gravity." Damn. I had goosebumps, I had tears in my eyes, I was clutching one of my kids. I could be cynical, but really how many movies make you feel that way?

2 - Conclave

The process of picking a new pope is kind of fascinating (and, as it turns out, maybe more timely than the filmmakers expected). But what makes Conclave great is that it could have been about pretty much any kind of election. The important part is the jockeying for votes, the backroom dealings, and the secret alliances behind the decision.

Conclave has been categorized as a drama/thriller, which seems odd when you consider that it's a movie about old men talking in rooms. (The youngest principal actor, Carlos Diehz, is fifty-three years old. I just looked it up.) But I was invested from beginning to end. And by the way, I did not see that ending coming.

1 - Anora 

When I need to quickly recommend Anora, I describe it as Pretty Woman, if it were directed by a really gritty Indie director. I'm not sure this does it justice. Like few other movies I've seen, it covers such a range of human emotions. It's thrilling, and romantic, and hilarious, and sometimes achingly sad. More than any other movie on this list, it also looks like the real world. The sequence where Annie and the three goons drive through obscure Russian neighborhoods in search of Ivan feels like a private tour of Hidden Brooklyn.

Sean Baker is fast becoming my favorite director in Hollywood. (I loved Tangerine and The Florida Project too, though I haven't seen Red Rocket yet.) Plus, he's from Summit, NJ, right next to where I grew up. So that's cool.

If Anora wins the big prize - and I'm starting to think it will - it will be the first time since the 2020 (Parasite) that the Best Picture winner was also my favorite of the nominees.

Other good movies I saw this year:

Good One

A Real Pain

Juror #2

Sing Sing

The Wild Robot

Gladiator 2

Thelma

Kneecap