I love surfing the web. On a long holiday weekend, a perfect way to slosh around and almost-but-not-quite totally waste a few hours. Over the last couple weeks, I’ve seen more and more posts referencing nostalgia for the Old Web™. If you’re over 30 years old, you have a better sense of it. Before the big social platforms, when all the sites were personal or academic, or even the corporate ones that were moderately inept (like the rest of us) and/or experimental. Such a great feeling then, when you caught a good wave. Slipping into the flow and hopping from site to site, finding all the warp portals between the good spaces where you see the best of our collective weirdness. Captured that again for a little while today.
Books War and Peace. Almost halfway! Some of these people are super messy.
Music Choir of New College, Oxford dir. Robert Quinney, Like as the Hart: Music for The Templar’s Garden. What a great, great album, all choral interpretations of Psalm 42. Came across it when looking for recordings of Palestrina’s “Sicut cervus“, itself beautifully done. The real show-stopper for me is Buxtehude’s. “Quemadmodum desiederat cervus“, BuxWV92. I keep coming back over and over.
A couple from Yosi Horikawa, good electronic stuff often with nature sounds, city sounds, field recordings. On Spaces, I like “Crossing“. And on Impulse. “Soil” is the winner.
Books War and Peace. The wolf hunt is a major highlight so far, tragedy and thrill both in the mix. I love these little interludes / transition moments.
“All of these sports make the process of improvement a central point in all of them. And I think that is what makes them cool.”
“Athletes possess large quantities of high-value, portable items,” said Nikos Passas, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, making them appetizing targets for burglars. And because their work schedules are publicly available ahead of time, everyone knows when they won’t be home“.
“One of the arguments for religion is just there’s a place you can stuff your dogmatism into beliefs about the Trinity, and then the rest of you is free to be open minded, because you’ve taken care of your dogmatism. You’ve sent it somewhere where it doesn’t really matter that much for a lot of decisions.”
OBEX. Reminds me of Mandy a little bit in overall vibe – dreamy hallucinatory reality-blurring. But a lighter, kinder form. But also of Hundreds of Beavers, in black-and-white creativity and constraint.
We have a whiteboard on our fridge. Most weeks, we update the whiteboard with what’s happening that week, along with doodles, quotes, competitive nonsense, bragging rights, etc.. My wife is great about photographing it before we erase and start the new one, and had built a nice historical archive. So I made a photobook of the whiteboards from the last few years.
Had another Friday morning coffee & coworking with some friends. What a treat.
Felt like a rough work-week even though nothing notably bad happened. I gotta work on ending each day crisply before I crash! It’s often better to step away and circle back rather than power through.
Movies This Is Not a Film. I respect Panahi’s work, and the drive/obsession/risk to put this together but as a viewer, you’re mostly watching a guy talk on the phone in his kitchen and it’s not the most interesting thing to watch.
Things Will Be Different. Good scifi time travel thriller. Great little world they’ve invented here. Wonderful sound, too. More movies about siblings!
The Meg. A re-watch. Humor falls flat, and repetitive in the way of many monster movies, but overall decent.
TV The X-Files, s5e17 “All Souls“. I like these religious episodes, and how the writers blend and remix historical materials.
Line of Duty, s6e5. Only two more episodes left of this show, and it’s making me sad.
Running Running trails in the earliest morning light, just before dawn, is such a perfect gift before starting the workday. Red Hook again this weekend, will take one more run to complete the map. Maybe next weekend, though I don’t love the idea of hitting the same area three weekends in a row. We’ll see.
Around the Web This weekend I learned the phrase “haud yer weesht “, via Line of Duty. (Who else but Hastings?)
Where Americans Choose to Move and Where They Leave. Interesting to see some family trajectories mapped out here. “From 2020 to 2024, 1.47 million more people moved from California to elsewhere in the United States than from a different state into California. That outflow is equal to 3.7% of the state’s 2020 population.” Time to buy low?
Music Yosi Horikawa, Vapor. Had this album on repeat throughout the week. I love all the nature sounds mixed into bouncy, juicy, lush electronic stuff. Two faves: “Maki” and “Summer in 1987“.
Donnacha Dennehy: Land of Winter perf. Alarm Will Sound cond. Alan Pierson. Months of the year in chamber form. I liked this recording. “November” is the best, of course!
Movies Girls Town. Close friends, soon to leave high school, navigate shared tragedies. It’s very sweet and sad and funny. Two thumbs up.
Wolf Man (2025). Got exactly what I signed up for. Fun movie. Love that we see the early hints of transformation in the heigtened senses – smell, hearing. The sound design is especially good, as we take on the perspective of the protagonist. Early tragedy in the simple distancing from inability to communicate what he’s going through. Appreciate the novelty of the precarious greenhouse sheeting – take full advantage of your setting!
The Fate of the Furious. I’ve seen a lot of individual scenes before, but for the life of me I cannot tell you how or when. The spectacle is dialed in. The writing is bad. I don’t think I’d intentionally rewatch again. Vin Diesel wears the mythologizing well, but the Statham scenes easy eclipse everyone else in the cast.
Last week was my first full week back to work, post-holidays. I was surprisingly at peace on Sunday night, ready and accepting that it was time to get back to reality. Sometimes vacations can feel too short; sometimes, too long. Felt like this one was dialed-in.
Lately I feel like I have more space in my weekends somehow. Something has shifted. It’s like there’s just 2–4 hours that weren’t there before. I’m not sure how it appeared.
Took my first ride on the NYC Ferry this weekend, up the East River from Brooklyn to Queens and over to Manhattan. So pleasant!
Late last year I spent way too much time window-shopping for a new keyboard. It was an intense relief to finally buy one. Shopping can be a thrill and a vast emptiness.
Books War and Peace, cont.. Hit a bit of a rut this week. Whether chicken or egg, it coincided with losing my earlier consistency.
Running Just a few more miles and I can add the Red Hook neighborhood to my ran-every-street list. Got back to a longer run this weekend, aided by warmer weather. Above 35–40º, it gets much, much easier to manage a run over a longer period of time. Fewer garments to manage, lower downside risk if you mismanage ventilation or layering, etc.. And drinks stay warm.
Around the Web The life of a fangirl. “Fandoms create environments where participation happens almost always naturally and almost always horizontally.”
The Case for Blogging in the Ruins. “The blog, at its best (a best I aspire one day to reach) is Montaigne’s direct descendant. It’s a form that allows for intellectual exploration without demanding premature certainty. You can write a post working through an idea, acknowledge in the post itself that you’re not sure where you’ll end up, and invite readers to think alongside you.”
Against access. “Our environment has endless potential for life. For centuries, however, much of our vitality was forbidden. We were forced to stick with the effects of the hearing and sighted world. Now, though, we are all in varying stages of flight.” How accessibility (in a common understanding of an “us” making the world easier for a “them”) falls short, with particular focus on ASL interpreters. Very interesting!
The loneliness crisis isn’t just male. “What our polling reveals, though, is that it’s a youth loneliness crisis, rather than a male loneliness crisis. Age, not gender, shows far greater correlation with antisocial attitudes and beliefs. Younger voters — both male and female — are increasingly paralyzed by anxiety and fear, and they are finding it harder and harder to socialize. In fact, when you look at the data, the ‘antisocial crisis,’ as I like to call it, is actually most pronounced among young women, who experience the highest rates of social isolation.”
“One of the most underappreciated things about the recent past washow common boredom was.”
Funkadelic, Maggot Brain. I really like the title track. Interesting to hear this transition in music history – borrowing from blues, gospel, psychedelic rock, blending it all up and leaving nothing out.
Movies 45365. Documentary of people in a place (Sidney, Ohio). If you like this sort of “snapshots of everyday life around town” documentary – I really do – check out Hale County This Morning, This Evening.
City of Gold (2015). Follows along with food critic Jonathan Gold as he explores LA food, and with other talking heads about his impact on food writing, etc.. At its best when its attention is on the city.
Fragments for Venus (short). Straightforward description and juxtaposition – sometimes the basic ingredients are the most potent.
Tron: Ares. Gorgeous to look at, and I think a larger screen would shift my opinion a bit, but all the dazzle in the world cannot save a leaden script, delivered flatly. Interesting to see Minecraft-life voxel cube material when techno-things disintegrate – very similar presentation in Superman (2025) with the reality rift thing.
At some point I decided to stop being depressed. That might not be scientifically or clinically valid, and it took longer to see it through, but that’s about roughly how I experienced it, or at least remember it. I remember immiserating in bed one Saturday morning, spiraling darkly, stagnant. And then a mental sigh, and: “I’m tired of this.” I got up. I got dressed. I went for a walk. I felt better when I got back, though not the whole day. The next day I got up and made myself go walk again. I felt better.
It probably wasn’t just the walking. Therapy and experience and maturity chipped in, but the walking gave them fresh soil to grow in. Every day, every day, every day: outside.
And then one day earlier this week I realized, “…I… didn’t go outside yesterday!”. No special reason, just distractedly busy with other things. It had been least 1742 days, along with several years of habit before I started logging it. Annoying to forget, but also: I didn’t need it. It’s not the life-raft it used to be. Today I’m a different person with different needs, and it’s time to give those attention in different ways, new streaks yet to start.
I hate when there’s standing water around the house. I always squeegee the shower before I leave. And I hate when pools linger under the dish rack, or on countertops. We have a robo-coffee machine at work and I always dump the drip tray first thing every morning. Then I had a realization where it might come from. This might be a just-so story but I think it makes sense: mosquitos. Life-long nemesis, largely disappeared from daily life, but still shaping my behavior.
Books The English and Their History. Still a great read. When we get to newer periods, I’ll probably drop and switch to other books. I’m really curious about the ~300–1300CE time period.
Running Running early before sunrise is a pretty decent replacement for running late at night, which I don’t do much anymore. Similar quiet, calm, place-to-your-self feeling. Looks like I’ll end the year with around ~950 miles, much less than last year and annoying short of a nice round number.
“When I finish a book, I immediately read the first 10 pages of a new one so I am never between books.”
Why we love Jane Austen more than ever after 250 years. “It was Austen who gave us the perfect art of a socially realistic novel about people having to overcome their inner problems—rather than having to overcome problems imposed upon them by the world.”
Cold cases in the AI era. “The cold case genre delivers a kind of satisfaction more appropriate to the AI era than the cozy mystery genre, first because of the forensic software tech, the genealogy databases, document analysis systems, etc., and second, because audiences want stories about human judgment, about deciding what matters and what does not.”
Music The Acid, Liminal. There’s a bit of kinship here with Thom Yorke’s The Eraser in this particular flavor of vocals + electronics mix. “Tumbling Lights“, “Ghost“, “Red” – all great.
Movies The Commuter. Good clean fun. Very happy with how they shot the close-quarters fighting.
The Shop Around the Corner. Takes a while to get momentum but it’s a good one. Saw this at Metrograph and remembered that I really really need to go there more often.
For a team event at work, we went to an axe-throwing place. I was terrible to start, and didn’t mind being terrible. Something was off, not my night, oh well. I was happy to throw up bricks, and see if I got better results every few minutes when it was my turn again. Low stakes, low investment. And then I switched to a different hatchet, and suddenly I was consistently thunking metal into board. And success made it fun, and I tried harder. It’s okay to blame your tools sometimes?
I also went to our office holiday party this week, and also my wife’s. One comfortably chaotic, because I knew everyone. One intimidatingly elegant, because I didn’t. It feels good to dress up every now and then. Wear sweats on the flight if you must, but we should think twice about casualness creeping into every occasion.
I’ve been on the search for new washcloths. I really hate the default: thick, soft, fluffy, take weeks to dry. I feel like I’m the only person that likes thin, skritchy-skratchy ones. So anyway I got some hemp scrubbers and they’re great.
Visited the Studio Museum in Harlem today and remembered again how lucky I am to be in a city with so much good creative stuff just a train ride away.
Books The English and Their History, by Robert Tombs. Really happy with this so far. I’m a bit concerned it’s glossing over the old, old times a little too quickly. Might circle back to other books to add a few more layers there.
Running Mileage dwindling with the mercury. Had my first run in the snow this morning, a rare treat.
Around the Web Colors of Growth, a paper on using the colors in European artwork to get insight into economic activity in the past.
DS9 Redefined, “A Loving Restoration and HD Upscale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”. Yes!
Silent Night (2023). John Woo action movie. Brutal, and could use a dose of humor here and there, but visually very fun. Love how they make sure you don’t miss a thing, even without dialogue.
Wake Up, Dead Man. It’s good! Appreciate the earnest religiosity. Took a bit of time to wind up, and lots of moments I think were supposed to be funny (?) didn’t land, but still good.
TV The X-Files, s5e10 “Chinga“. Yep, the one with the killer doll.
Last week I wrote thank-you notes to writers whose books I really enjoyed over the last year or so. It’s an exercise I started a few years ago. I usually end up sending out a dozen or so. I’ll get a handful of messages back, which is cool but very much not the point. Remember: “This will be easier, psychologically, if you don’t want to be a writer, don’t ask questions, don’t need advice, and don’t particularly care if you get a response. Spread gratitude, be free!”
Maybe next year I’ll extend the same to memorable artists, musicians, moviemakers, etc.?
This weekend we went to see Les Arts Florissants perform at BAM. The favorite of the night for me was the Messe de minuit pour Noël. I grew up Catholic, so it’s easy to recognize all the familiar parts of the mass. I found myself remembering back to old memories of fidgeting in the pews, ready for it all to be over. There was less fidgeting this time (only a little bit – those seats are cramped at Howard Gilman Opera House).
One of the things I love most about early or Renaissance or classical music is imagining what it was like to hear it when it was new. Maybe in a stuffy ballroom, or in a cold, dark church. Orchestras today are often cover bands, so a performance can be a sort of time travel. I think about how even when you’re having a great day, a torch song can make you feel love’s torment, or an anthem can make you feel boundless, even if nothing around you has changed. Or like this weekend, I can listen and feel humility, reverence, hope. There’s something comforting in connection to a tradition that’s lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years, even if I’m not part of it in quite the same way these days.
Books Rebecca. This is such a fun book. I’m nestling into the warm embrace of melodrama.
One Long River of Song.
Running Splitting my weekend long runs into two days more often lately. Call it cowardice or cleverness, it is very exhausting to do the usual mileage in the cold snap we’ve had.
The Western demands its myth—the one where courage restores the world and a man’s violence is the nation’s virtue—and High Noon offers it only grudgingly. There is no sweeping horizon here; we see only a sliver of prairie. The real action takes place on Hadleyville’s bright, empty streets and on faces flattened by sunlight. The West is emptied of romance, replaced with a collective anxiety that threatens to boil over.
Rafael Karlen, Sinking Cities, with Camerata, Queensland Chamber Orchestra. Modern choral stuff. “Everything Changes” is pretty good, but the rest didn’t have as much staying power for me.
I spent the last two weeks traveling in Japan. The trip started from NYC to Tokyo, then quickly relocated to Osaka for a few days, and to Okayama for a few (day trips to Imbe, Kurashiki, Hiroshima, Naoshima), and then the last few back in Tokyo. Very different from my only other trip there, where I spent most of my time in Tokyo with brief visits to Hakone and Kamakura. I’m going to dump some of my notes I wrote down along the way.
Fun to feel complete disorientation on first arrival, trusting years of public transit instinct to navigate the first trains. Anything outbound looks good, if not, yolo, we can turn around and try again.
I forgot how lush Japan is. Damp and green, buildings overtaken by where it’s not hemmed in. Mountainsides ready to move downhill if not paved over. Fluid. And decaying. Narita airport is far from the city center, so you pass through a bunch of podunk towns on the way to the megalopolis.
It’s also very rugged. When I think “rugged” I usually think “rocks”, but here it is hills everywhere, steep forested hills just outside every town. Life squeezed in where it can be. In several places I’d seen baseball fields in the middle of houses, like right next door – nets put up around and above so sport can take place while protecting what’s nearby. Just like all the retainment walls on the hillsides or concrete embankments on the rivers. Protect with walls so what’s inside can be preserved, or exist in the first place.
Shinkansen, like Waymo, was utterly mindblowing for the first few minutes and then I quickly took it for granted. But it’s amazing that you can just walk up, buy a ticket, walk directly on the train, and 10 minutes later be traveling at 200mph or whatever.
It’s good to have small bits of travel mixed in with the overall trip. An hour or two of calm on a train or bus. Just enough to pull out a book and be in the moment in a different way.
Learned a lot about celadon pottery, and was especially curious about all the peonies and chyrsanthemums I saw carved in them. Also learned a lot about Bizen ware pottery. So great to have LLMs to ask about what I’m seeing and deep-dive on random questions throughout the trip.
Washlets/bidets are such a great invention. We should spread these in the States. Even coffee shops have them!
Interesting to travel and not have all the social cues. Here at home I can glance at someone and have a pretty good sense (confidence, at least, if not accuracy) of where they fit in – nerd, finance pro, Bushwick hipster, “cool” or “uncool”, etc.. Not so much there. I can tell when the overlap is obvious – skater chic travels – but plenty of everyday looks I couldn’t place.
I love eSIMs. Data is so cheap, no-brainer for future trips.. I remember my first trip to Japan, I bought a cheap burner flip phone so I could have service and text with a few friends I was meeting up with, and call for basic things that weren’t easily internet-able (“open today?”). This was 2007 if I remember right. Using Art Space Tokyo and paper guide I guess, and a map, and a willingness to just be kinda lost or not find things. Different times.
Averaging ~20,000 steps per day makes for a pretty good lifestyle.
The towns of Minoo and Imbe made me think about my birth place in rural Georgia. I respond to the familiar, smaller size of each, and the closeness to nature right out the back door. But they also add density, and neighbors, and trains. Best of both worlds? They were like a more ideal form of where I grew up. (Also makes me think of The Goonies or Stand by Me, for example – small town + plenty of friends nearby + plenty of nature for adventure.)
I have a new appreciation for ukiyo-e prints. I especially like the prominence of ghosts, people sitting in waterfalls, toads, goblins. It’s all much more lively and weird than I’d thought.
The ideal city size is one that’s large enough where it’s worth having a bike to run errands across town, but small enough where you don’t feel a need to brace yourself and armor up to do it.
As an experiment on this trip, I kept a regret log. Just jotting down poor decisions and 20/20 hindsight to help shape the trip. Among those:
Not adventuring the first night we arrived, instead letting myself crash and nap too long.
Not learning much of the language, and having more basic phrases locked in. I felt both rude and helpless during a few basic interactions. I’m smart enough to remember these things, and had plenty of opportunity to prepare.
Over-relying on the big train stations. It’s tempting to navigate to big central stations instead of smaller, less convenient ones. But they tend to be harder to get out of, to navigate through/around, harder to get oriented when you emerge, and a bigger pain to access on foot.
Not eating enough early enough. I always eat breakfast at home, but let that good habit slip. I like an early start, but coffee and pastry will only last so long, and the extra time for a reasonable meal makes a big difference in how the day plays out.
Going to the known tourist trap/shopping area just in case it wasn’t as bad as I feared. (It was. (It usually is.))
Movies All of these were watched as the creators intended: on am airplane seatback screen with tinny headphones.
Little Shop of Horrors. I had no idea what I was getting into – didn’t know it was a musical. Quite a fun one. Levi Stubbs singing as Audrey II seems like a clear bluesy/sleazy ancestor of Oogie Boogie and that crab in Moana. (I wonder if there are earlier examples in this lineage?) Fun to see Steve Martin’s precise theatrical choreographed movement (see also the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels training scene).
Tron: Legacy. It’s clunky. Interesting set designs, but not as thrilling, visually, as the original. Plot-wise, familiar father-and-son stuff, again not as fresh. Lots of “catch-up” explanations that slow things down. I like some of the religious undertones. Not sure why computer villains would spend time declaiming to vast ranks of soldiers.
Woman of the Hour. A blunt instrument at times, but effectively chilling.
TV The X-Files, s5e3 “Unusual Suspects“. The Lone Gunmen origin story! Richard Belzer playing a square!
Hannibal, s1e2–3. The Abigail Hobbs character is a tough role to play.
Last week I went bouldering for the first time in 6 years or so. So great! I need to work that back into my life. For me it’s one of those pleasures like playing guitar or videos, where I never got very good, don’t particularly care, and find a lot of satisfaction in re-learning the basics every now and then.
Books Sense and Sensibility. Things I’m appreciating: mixing dialogue with summary of dialogue and the way the narration undercuts and pokes fun at its subjects. Also appreciating how primogeniture and entailment make even the most comfortably wealthy women so vulnerable. An incredibly enjoyable book.
Running This weekend I ran a long loop touring some of my least-favorite neighborhoods, and had a great time. It’s not only where you are, but what you make of it.
Around the Web Zadie Smith on The Art of the Impersonal Essay. “It’s in that optimistic spot that I set out my stall, yes, and my ideas and arguments such as they are, sure, but without demanding to see anyone’s identifying papers in the opening paragraph.”
Encourage purposeful friction. “In general, if you can reduce the friction required to start doing or continue doing a thing, you’re more likely to do that thing, and keep doing it longer. Great! Helpful. Unless the thing is something you don’t want to keep doing.”
Illiteracy is a policy choice. “If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools.”
Why Warm Countries Are Poorer? “A big percentage of equatorial population actually lives in mountains: The closer to the equator, the higher up the capitals!”
“Aphorisms never accomplish anything. Their whole talent is traveling beyond their occasion, gathering force as they go, to end up on a refrigerator magnet.”
Movies Weapons (2025). Fun to watch but nothing lingering afterward. The vignette structure is a welcome change of pace.
28 Years Later. This is a good blend of high and low. References to Bible stuff, Bergman, Hamlet. I like the use of montage to unsettle and give some historical resonance. Appreciate that the father and mother are very imperfect. What’s with movie dystopias leaving all the women in floral dresses?
TV Line of Duty, s4e2–4. I love Hastings. An imperfect but forcefully moral leader, endlessly disappointed that others set such a low bar for themselves.
Last week I was out of town for 3 days, out in San Francisco for a work conference we were hosting. I’ve been there maybe a half-dozen times now, and I think it’s gotten better each time. Or I’m just different, finding it a bit easier to get on its wavelength.
On the day of the conference itself, I didn’t have formal responsibilities. So just tried to be a welcoming and friendly presence, using the opportunity to strike up conversations with customers, prospects, vendors. Not my natural inclination in a crowd – I was completely fried by the time I went to bed, after the after-after-party – but at the very least, a nice change of pace from the usual.
Two trips to the Pacific coast in the last month, but the view from the plane had me itching for a mountain edition.
Books Sense and Sensibility. Inconsistency is hurting my moment. Need to get back on track.
Running Heading out of town threw off my rhythm, and cut into my mileage but I rallied for a great long run yesterday. Cooler weather seemed to boost everyone’s mood – lots of greetings and smiling faces. Even the seedier neighborhoods couldn’t deny it.
Movies Get Out. Masterpiece, gets better every time.
Challengers. So fun! Sexy, messy, shot in interesting ways, makes dramatic mountains out of molehills. Interesting to watch a movie where I’ve heard the soundtrack before seeing it.
TV Abbott Elementary, s4e22. I think I’ve seen more season finales than regular season episodes? Always surprised how gently they close things out.
Line of Duty, s4e1. They know how to start with a bang.
Last weekend we made gumbo. Today, pralines. Rounding out the repertoire from my New Orleans side of the family. I’ve been making the oyster dressing for family holidays for a good while now, and I’ve got a decent handle on red beans & rice. These treats used to be reserved for special occasions, or the summer vacations down to Louisiana. Now as an adult, good reminder that I can… just cook them? Whenever I want?
Had breakfast with a friend this morning and reflected on how nice it is to learn about all the small little tidbits – grad school progress, the new hobby, work challenges, reflections from a recent trip – the collection of small facts (for me) that make their life their life. It’s nice to have a rooting interest in other people’s lives.
Sometimes reading my Kindle in the dark in bed feels like a very primal experience. Like being near a campfire, calm and quiet, safety and interest nearby, darkness surrounding.
Art Wooden face mask from the Bembe region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. #49, oil on canvas by Cy Thao. Portrait of Tah-Bo-Ho-Ya, oil on panel by Elbridge Ayer Burbank. Stokrozen quilt by by Ans Schipper-Vermeiren.
Running Much lighter week. Wish I’d spent a bit more time stretching or cross-training or the like, but glad I took a lil’ break.
Around the Web Frank Chimero took a sabbatical. “There’s a pressure to have noticeable outcomes to life choices like this. I made space, and after 3 months, all I have is a more internalized sense of that space.”
Moderation is not overrated. “One of my rules of internet discourse is that whenever I see people talking about how something is not a “silver bullet” or a “panacea,” I know I’ll need to take the rest with a grain of salt.”
While I’ve been reading The Eagle and the Hart, decided to put on some late 1300s/early 1400s music to keep the mood going. Can’t say I deeply connected with any particular works in these collections, but they’re all great, and a good reminder of how much talent you con find in any niche you care to look into:
Movies Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Quiet, observant mood-piece, rainy night at a movie theatre during its final screening.
The Invitation (2015). Third viewing. I really like this movie. (The first time I saw it), I liked for plot/suspense reasons. The second time, I appreciated but felt like I was missing something. This time, I connected much more on an emotional/character level. Repeat viewings can pay off!
KPop Demon Hunters. It’s fun! I like how the animation style borrows from manga and such in more expressive moments. Also interesting that the fight scenes are largely “something to do”, and presented as artificially high stakes – we know the heroes are going to survive, so let’s just make it look cool and keep the story going. I know nothing about the musical scene, so I’ll spend some time with the soundtrack, and I think I’ll line up a deep-dive into K-pop in general later on.
TV Line of Duty, s2e3–5. I love how quickly this show moves along. There’s not a lot of meditative artistry or glamour. Just the facts, and messy people, and turning the screws a little tighter. Great interrogation scenes recently.
This morning I spent a couple hours listening to Bach, loudly, while I puttered around the house. As good as earbuds or headphones get, there’s nothing that can replace big speakers moving the air, recreating the space and reverb and texture from when it was recorded. (Of course, the extension of the argument is to go to a more live shows…)
I’m enjoying cooking as a creative outlet lately. I think I always have – thinking back to attempting scrambled eggs with a childhood best friend after every sleepover (surely one more spice will make them good?) – I just never point my time or energy in that direction on a regular basis. This weekend: an apple tart, and savory quiche. I think my “I don’t care about cooking” identity might be helping. I’m not invested that much in the end result, as long as the vision is clear and ideas are flowing and the process feels fun. Probably better this way.
Books Wolf Hall. Predicting a DNF, but slight chance I’ll dip in again.
On the Calculation of Volume, Book 1. A woman relives the same day over and over. Will probably finish this today. (Will I do it again when I wake up?)
Running More morning runs over the last week, even managed to squeeze one in before I went to the office. If I’m going to wake up naturally at 5am for no reason at all, might as well take advantage of it.
Music Balimaya Project, When the Dust Settles. Tight jazz / west African blend. “For Aziz” is good; the riff in “Anka Tulon” got stuck in my head for a couple days.
Boards of Canada, The Campfire Headphase. I was vaguely aware of this act two decades ago, but never gave it any time. So now my 2025 ears can’t help hear “chill vibes to study to”.
Movies Smile. Had to watch because I heard the second was even better. It’s good, and the lead is so good, but couldn’t help thinking the roots-in-trauma horror is getting a little worn out.
Smile 2. Thematically richer than the first, maybe less haunting, with another intense, capitivating lead performance. Undermined a little bit here and there with repetitious moments, but it’s good.
Last weekend I went back home to Atlanta. After a 6am flight, the first order of business: breakfast order at Waffle House. Felt good – and strange – to be back in my old stomping grounds downtown.
Second mission: a visit to the High Museum for their exhibition Faith Ringgold: Seeing Children, which was just about perfect. Especially liked the low-mounted art on the walls, and the storytelling area where they had a ceiling-mounted video of Faith Ringgold reading Tar Beach on a loop. (The opening sentence is one of the greatest in all literature.) The collection for Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan was a really nice surprise. Beautifully lush, dense plant-tangled landscapes.
Aside from that, lots of time with family, seeing our local 700-foot waterfall, picking blueberries in the back yard, pondering “Western Art“, playing on the floor with paper collage and Legos, eating too much, and sipping evening coffees.
Going back home made me fall in love a little more. Seeing people care about someone you love is inspiring. Like when friends show up to your amateur concert or sports events. It’s validating. You want to live up to their encouragement.
Art The Conversion of St. Paul, a bas relief in stone and glass by Lumen Martin Winter. Ran by this one on the face of St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church, had to pause to admire for a moment. A Maori feather cloak (kahu huruhuru) in a checkerboard pattern.
Books Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, interesting twist on Rumpelstiltskin folklore.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Only ~20% into it, but so far so good.
Running Lovely long long run to and through Central Park yesterday, along with Riverside Park and the Hudson River Greenway. (It’s so nice to be able to pop into a deli for a mid-run snack.) The biggest breakthrough was bringing some running shoes to Atlanta and making sure I got a few miles in. It’s more the commitment than the value of the workout itself.
“One big benefit of traveling is the diversity of places you can see. But another big benefit — not to be neglected — is the diversity of eras you can sample. I am so, so glad I saw what those places were like in the late 1980s, China most of all and also the hill tribes. No history books can compensate for that. So that is a very good reason to travel NOW. And to travel to places that are going to change a lot.“
I got a photo from family recently. My grandpa was a lifelong craftsman, mechanic, carpenter. On the day he died, three tools had been left out on the table saw in the barn. A combo square to plan and check; a notched wooden guide to steer boards safely over the blade; a screwdriver for the hundred little tasks that screwdrivers are useful for. Measure, plan, push forward, adjust.
Books The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. Maybe it’s because I’m too familiar with them, but surprised by how… dry? factual? the stories were. Like reading very straightforward reporting. Not bad, though. Just not as dramatic as you’d think in this telling.
It. DNF. I’ve never read Stephen King before! I think I should look to his other, shorter works.
Between Two Fires. Historical Christian horror? Interesting! Getting a better sense of the time period (Black Death-era France), how desperate and destructive and confusing it must have been.
Running I’m acclimating to summer weather. This weekend I continued my irregular series of running to the end of various subway lines, with a journey east through Forest Park to the Jamaica–179th Street end of the F line. There’s something interesting on the other side of every intersection.
Silent Shout. “Silent Shout” feels like it has a lot of early synthwave Kavinsky-type sounds percolating in there. Not a complaint. “Like a Pen” is great, too.
Movies Avengers: Infinity War. Captain America’s phone has an Atlanta area code! The deaths of Vision and Spider-Man hit hard. Respect for movies willing to end on a sour note. Well done.
Feels like work kinda took over this week. Demanding mostly in just raw hours, but not really difficulty. Crawled to the finish (a walk to our favorite pizza place) and had a wild Friday napping on the couch. A good life, all in all.
BLAAP, Of the Trees, Freddy Todd, Volcanology. I like “LIFE CONTROL“, puts a little snarl on my face.
Movies In the Cut. A sick romance and murder mystery all wrapped up. I didn’t love it but I feel like it’s so fresh and disorientingly different I eventually will.
X. Horror on the farm. Interesting commentary on ageism.
Trap. Good to see Hartnett explore so many moods and facets. Falls flat in the last 10-20 minutes or so, but plenty of fun beforehand.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. A little flabby and dour. It’s lost the spark of silliness that makes the franchise great. But the biggest setpieces were as good as you’ll find.
Did my taxes last week, a capstone on an other wise perfect Sunday: awake early, reading and writing in bed for a bit, morning walk, personal admin, afternoon run, pizza, movie, nap, dinner, reading until bedtime.
I got audited by ChatGPT this week, now that it has ability to remember and consider previous chats. I played with a few questions I’ve seen floating around:
Describe me based on all our chats – play it straight.
(necessary follow-up when LLM was trying to butter me up:) I don’t see much criticism there. Feels like you’re soft-pedaling a bit…?
Based on everything I’ve ever asked you, what do you think my biggest blind spots are?
I got the kind of accurate criticism that makes you squirm but where you also quickly ‘fess up to it – embarrassed laughter, easy recognition of my best and worst.
Art Yesterday after visiting a new diner, we went to see Amy Sherald: American Sublime at the Whitney. I’d previously seen her work collected at Spelman Museum in Atlanta and a couple years later at Hauser & Wirth in LA. I don’t know many other artists where I’ve been able to revisit the work in person over a few years, and see them refine and iterate and grow during my actual lifetime.
I signed up for a two-day weaving workshop at the Textile Arts Center next month. It’s been a consistent interest for a few years, just as an appreciator of the craft. Can’t wait to get hands-on and learn more. I’ve also been taking more photos lately. I have no method or philosophy that I know of. I just like trying to capture things that might look interesting? And that’s enough for me right now – feels good to be a carefree dabbler.
Books Bright Young Women. Re-visited, found my way in.
Running Really enjoying my early evening runs before dinnertime. And this morning I had best run-walk ever, wife by my side, cold breeze, warm sun, flowering trees in bloom. Perfect start to the day.
Articles & Episodes & Twoots I’ve been off Twitter for a couple weeks now, and generally drew back from online inputs this week. I’m liking this change. I’ll be back later I’m sure.
“i think creative people ramp up when they lean into their pretentiousness. creativity is supposed to let you be someone you’re not (but aspire to). admit that beauty moves you, that footnotes excite you, that you think art matters. ‘I do have taste and i’m not ashamed of it.'”
Music Vega Trails, Sierra Tracks. Folk/chamber music – double-bass and saxophone and drums and orchestra – that would be perfect for a soundtrack. Probably my favorite of the week. I like “Murmurations“.
Or maybe it was John Carroll Kirby, Septet? Tightly-written jazz with a bit of funk exocita. Dig the bookends, “Rainmaker” and “Nucleo“.
Abercrombie, Hammer, DeJohnette, Timeless. A bit more jam-jazz than I typically respond to. I like “Red and Orange“, though.
Terje Rypdal, Chaser. Is this easy listening? Or a predecessor? “Once Upon a Time” typifies the spacy, jazzy, noodly vibe.
Eberhard Weber, Endless Days. Jazz bass, didn’t stick with me.
Movies The Clock (1945). Charming. Strangers meet in NYC, have some adventures, fall in love. I love the willingness to let linger on their faces. The elation when they found each other at the train station! It will probably make my end-of-year lists.
Dawn of the Dead (2004). Pretty good! You got your reliable people, you got your flakes, you got your bad decisions, you got your relentless zombies. I don’t need the body horror stuff, but the dread and close calls are dialed-in.
Small Things Like These. Gentle, heavy, dark, hopeful. Powerfully acted without being loudly acted.
TV The X-Files, s4e14 “Memento Mori“. Very worried about whatever deal was made with the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
This was an exhausting week at work, and that sort of vacuumed up all the energy I might have put elsewhere. Took on some work in a new area, straight to the deep end, trying to absorb context on the fly. Add in our usual backlog and a critical incident or three, and poof, the workdays fly right by… and continued into the night a few times. It’s nice to know that, when needed, I can just crank out a 12-hour day and come back for another one. People are resilient!
This week I also had a last-minute hang with a friend in town, one I hadn’t seen in a couple years. A huge and immediate boost. Highlight of the week.
Reflection #2 (1959), tapestry by Kay Sekimachi in plain-woven linen, cotton, and rayon.
Books Life and Fate. Feels like I’m losing my grip on this book. Found myself skimming over, rushing through, attention drifting.
Bright Young Women (Knoll). A little bit of trashy killer thriller to liven things up. I think this will end up as DNF.
Running One of the things that fell by the wayside this week. I did return to run club yesterday for a rainy 38° run over the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges. A familiar route, but made sure to liven things up for myself with a couple detours. Needed that dose of selfishness.
Jon Hopkins, Music for Psychedelic Therapy. On the lighter, wispier side of electronic vs. the pulsing EDM flavor of the previous.
Harms Way, Posthuman. Metal. “The Gift” is easily the least like the others, but I like it’s nightmare-ish basement-of-horrors energy.
Movies West Side Story. The first and only time I saw was when I was a kid, must have been elementary or middle school. I also played the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story orchestra suite in college. So it was fun to revisit a story I barely remember set to music I know really, really well. The brownface and accents are rough, but it’s still a pretty lovely movie.
The Sacrament. Inspired by events at Jonestown. Gene Jones gives a tremendous performance. The rest of the movie, I could take or leave. The wikipedia is haunting enough on its own.
TV The X-Files, s4e13 “Never Again“. Scully wrestles with her inner demons by getting a tattoo.
Bosch, s1e3-4.
Severance, s2e10. Finale! I don’t need another season, but I’d 100% tune in if we get one.
Abbott Elementary, s4e18. One of the funnier episodes I remember.
Movies Conclave. Modest gossipy drama that evaporated as soon as I turned the TV off. It sets the stage, puts the pieces in motion, and we see who is left standing. I see what they did there, with the ending, and with the way women step into and out of the action througout, but… it felt a little cheap, after so much petty personal conflict and politicking, it suddenly wanted us to care about ideas?
Drive-Away Dolls. Horny and juvenile, but I appreciate how they play with the transitions, soundtrack, and moments of heightened acting. The bit parts were the best parts.
Speak No Evil (2022). A vacation from hell (see: The Rental). Like many good horror movies, we build unsettling dread and discomfort from the small ways that people fail to trust their instincts around other people who constantly push the boundaries. “Because you let me.” An incredibly uncomfortable climax, sickening. Not sure I could watch that again – I immediately swore it off – but the lead-up was great.
Red Riding: 1974. A journalist gets hooked on a case, pays the price. It’s good.
Speak No Evil (2024). After I cooled down from watching the original, curiosity about the remake won me over. More straightforwardly dramatic, less tense. More of a character piece, with much more focus on our main villain.
Heretic. I really appreciate late-career Hugh Grant. Seems like he’s having fun. Mounting stress, a rich conflict, and heroines that surprise you.
Bill Evans, From Left to Right. Jazz with piano and Rhodes piano and orchestra and it’s all good.
TV The X-Files, s4e11 “El Mundo Gira“. Back from a little break, and the show is back on track. I loved this episode. In style, like a telenovela, heightened soap opera desperation, but with a chupacabra.
A week of ups and downs – a trail race, an injured finger, a random Sunday evening adventure, a 24-hour stomach flu, a miserable workday, an invigorating professional conference, a beautiful evening run, a long call with a friend. Let it come, let it be, let it go.
The highlight was finishing Middlemarch yesterday, in one long final push. It’s one of those books where I’ll miss living with the characters for so long, each of their personalities and arcs so vivid. Some overall themes in the book: the importance of who you marry, how community inertia can defeat or deflect idealism but also help you find purpose and place, how financial struggles can multiply your frustrations, the value of a happy compromises and ordinary virtues.
Books The Faerie Queene. Just dipped my toe in. We’ll see if it lasts.
Middlemarch. Finally done, loved it. One last round of quotes:
“He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
“The lights were all changed for him both without and within.”
“What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
“He had begun to perceive that Mr. Brooke’s mind, if it had the burthen of remembering any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and not easily come back again.”
“He looked almost angry. It had seemed to him as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other’s presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning.”
“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.”
“Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable language into his outstretched hands.”
“It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which become delicious about twelve o’clock, when the clouds part a little, and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the hedgerows.”
“He was now a prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation”
“For the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer’s desire to make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be another’s, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide calamity.”
“Rosamond played the quiet music which was as helpful to his meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening lake.”
“that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly”
“Damme if I think he meant to turn king’s evidence; but he’s that sort of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him”
“There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that—to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.”
“Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the emotions of others”
“We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves.”
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
“Beyond interactivity, what a video game promises is not just rendered image and sound, not just narrative, not even just the joy of play, but inhabitation of an imaginal realm that is both deeply interior and collectively shared.”
Movies Touch of Evil. Dynamic and quickly-moving, everything tainted.
TV Scandal, s1e1. Speaking of quickly-moving, this is breakneck TV. “My gut tells me everything I need to know.”
Bosch, s1e1. Felt good to dip back into the series, like putting on comfortable shoes.
Severance, s2e6. Burt is sketchy, huh. I liked the speculative fiction angles here: jealousy of yourself, jealousy of your partner’s innie, innie/outie adultery, innies with souls distinct from their outies, etc..
Mark Larson 