2024, Week 22

~ Mark

Build all the scaffolding you like, nature will follow its course.

Wardrobe Upgrade PSA
Prescription sunglasses are great! I’ve been wearing glasses since 8th grade, and contacts almost as long. My new prescription sunnies are perfect for when I’m going to be out in the sun for a while, but not long enough to “waste” a pair of contacts and wear sunglasses. For daytime runs, errands, morning walk, etc., I love being able to do a quick swap and head out the door.

I also got some roomy, light-wash khakis. Summer dad style: activated. 😎

Articles & Episodes & Twoots
“Don’t apologize for your interests. Sell your interests.” Can’t speak for him, but I think Joe was using “sell” in the broader sense of promotion/persuasion, rather than simple transaction. In any case, I choose to read it that way!

Zadie Smith: “Generally speaking, I don’t make notes. I sit down. I write a novel. But already this non-novel that I was refusing to write had generated a drawer full of notes and a shelf of books.”

Jumping, a really interesting animated short with a first-person “through the eybeballs” perspective. (via Funkaoshi)

I’ve only seen a handful of Howard Hawks movies, and didn’t love them all, but love this description: “his movies feel like motorized airport walkways — life, but a little bit quicker, a little bit smoother than normal people can manage.” Along the same lines, and great reason to listen to podcasts at 2x: people are funnier when reactions are quicker, snappier! Bonus: an interview clip of Howard Hawks talking about overlapping dialogue. (via Bright Wall/Dark Room)

I love Tyler Smith’s re-appreciation of Congo. “Marketing, critical consensus, box office; while these are impossible to ignore, they do tend to fall away on their own as the years go by, leaving only the movie itself, free of baggage and ready to be seen from a fresh perspective.” It’s been a few years, I need another re-watch.

“Moments that get ‘gridded’ are highly economical. They refine an entire story to a few key images less for their formal memorability (meaning, they don’t look particularly special) than for what they symbolize: critical emotional flashpoints that, taken together, constellate the fantasies that shows like [these] reflect and cater to.”

“The gender gap in higher education is wider today than it was in 1972, when Title IX was passed, but the other way round, with men earning only 42% of degrees“.

RIP Bill Walton. A remembrance from my friend James and from the Trail Blazers.

Movies
Alien. Terror, in deep space! I guess I’ve seen this 5-10 times now? Never once let me down. I’m reminded again of Ebert’s note on the cast’s age: “By skewing older, “Alien” achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers“.

Aniara. Despair, in deep space! A spaceship bound for Mars is knocked off-course, sending immigrants into a years-long voyage to nowhere. The crisp hotel/cruise-ship vibe wears off and we see passengers moving through stages of grief, despair, escapism, cult beliefs, false hopes. What I found most intriguing here is the AI service/entity called Mima from which the passengers get a sort of spa experience, lulled into hypnosis by their own experience and memories. Not too hard to imagine…

Music
Depeche Mode Week. I didn’t quite finish, but spent most of the week listening through their discography. I wasn’t prepared for how zany/computer-y their early work was.

Maybe I’ll make a playlist of favorites when I catch up to today, and see what themes I can spot?

In other listening, since “Water” was the big hit last week, I continued with Tyla’s TYLA. This week, I’ll shine a light on “On and On“.

Inspired by my friend Will, I revisited Mastodon’s Remission. The opening riff of “March of the Fire Ants” is a classic.

Antonio Salieri, Piano Concertos.

Alice Coltrane, The Carnegie Hall Concert.

Books
Infinity Gate. Enjoying this scifi so far. Given an infinitude of Earths in different realities/dimensions and development paths, imagine a paranoid super-civilization develops among them.

School
Another class down, two to go.

TV
X-Files, s2e14, “Die Hand Die Verletzt“. A small crew of (half-hearted?) devil worshipers meet their match.

s2e15, “Fresh Bones“, Haitian voodoo stuff. I was nervous about this one being more clumsy or offensive, but not too bad in the end. I like the military and refugee aspects – sadly relevant for NYC right now.

Bodkin, s1e3–4. I’m enjoying the “Sunshiny Yankee” trope in this series. Seen also in Catastrophe, for example – an “aw shucks” friendly and gullible American, so easily bullied.