Note to self: awesome photos that I find online can be printed. I think I’m going to print and frame up my #trainstagram collection, too, now that I’m up to a dozen or so.
Don’t focus too much on this idea about your influences
Don’t focus too much on this idea that your influences will be similar to people whose films you admire. In fact, it’s really the opposite: You like people who are doing something completely different, and it’s very relaxing to you because they’re dealing with all kinds of problems you don’t have to deal with.
Whit Stillman. Filed under: Whit Stillman, influence.
A Most Wanted Man
A Most Wanted Man. No one I saw it with agreed with me, but I thought it was really good. Has a similar feel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: cold, deliberate. This isn’t the sexy/sneaky side of spying. This is conversation, paperwork, negotiation, management. Every now and then you get to use a hidden camera. The only other Anton Corbijn film I’ve seen is The American, and it’s great.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s good. Nice to see superhero movies trying to be a bit more lighthearted and funny. Too bad the villains and the climax are so lame. I’d still put the Captain America movies at the top of my Marvel rankings, but this is close behind.
A Decade Later, Whither the Metrosexual
The men’s care industry killed metrosexuality by co-opting metrosexuals’ grooming habits and repackaging them as masculine and paternal. Same goes for the renaissance of old-school men’s shops, where conditioning skin and softening hair is neither “metro” nor “narcissistic,” but “classic,” and “quality.”
Against “Against [X]” - The New Yorker
“Against [X]” is often not just an effective rhetorical form but also a canny career move: against X as an implicit argument for the polemicist.
The Urban Oil Fields of Los Angeles
The Urban Oil Fields of Los Angeles. Oh my God I love that city.
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
I read Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and I loved it in the end. I might even say it changed my life in a few pointed ways. It’s a mildly science fictional story that pairs a good sense of humor with some great thinking on memory, nostalgia, wistfulness, and stories we keep telling ourselves.
Time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain to experience.
The writing is slightly distant and self-aware because it’s more fun that way. Like this heavily-footnoted passage, where he’s describing the time machine he lives/works in, which leads to a minor footnote on particle physics:
This unit, this phone booth, this four-dimensional person-sized laboratory, I live in it, but, over time, through diffusion and breathing and particle exchange, the air in here, the air that travels with me, it is me, and I’m it.* The exhaled carbon dioxide that gets recycle and processed by the pump, the oxygen-rich air that is piped back in, these molecules* move around me, and in me, and then back out, all* of it* the same matter.* I breath it* in, it* is in my bloodstream. Sometimes, they* are part of me, sometimes, I am part of them.* Sometimes, they* are in my sandwich,* […]
There are plenty of little aphoristic moments that come up, like…
Life is to some extent an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years.
…or like this aside on growing up in a household with parents arguing and fighting:
Call it the law of conservation of parental anger […] bouncing around, some of it reflected, some of it absorbed by the smaller bodies in the house.
One of my favorite turns of phrase came up in one travel scene, picking up on that swelling, aching beautiful uplift you can feel when flying:
As the machine banks into its approach and we angle into our steep descent spiral, looking down into the city, I have, for a minute or two, some clarified sense of scale, the proper balance of awe and possibility, a kind of airplane courage […]
There’s also some clever meta-textual work relating to the physical book itself and some interludic commentary (like how people in recreational alternate universes can qualify as “protagonists” or even “heroes” in these fantasylands, or diagrams that clarify the plot, background sketches on history/setting, magazine tips for time travel, etc.). I have to acknowledge that there’s a definite patch just after the halfway point where it dragged a bit for me. (You can see him getting carried away, piling ideas between commas.) But the opening half is so fun, and the final sprint led to a goosebumps ending for me. Very much recommended. Earlier this spring I also really liked Yu’s collection of short stories, Third Class Superhero.
Double Indemnity
Double Indemnity. So dark, and so funny. They don’t write'em like this anymore. This was my second viewing, and it’s worth a third. Previously.
Sacred Hoops
I read Phil Jackson’s Sacred Hoops, and mostly liked the more biographical stuff. His tales of the early days (in a Pentecostal family in North Dakota) reminded me of my father and grandfather, devoted Christians growing up in the midwest and geeking about about basketball and eventually other spiritual traditions. One nice treat of reading books like this – recent history when there are always cameras rolling – is the ability to check YouTube for the highlights.