From Wikipedia:
“Introduced in 1964 and initially called Fruit Scones, the name was soon changed to Pop-Tarts as a pun on the then popular Pop Art movement.”
(File under “things learned watching Jeopardy!)
The Sears Wishbook
I had a lot of these toys so this is not me complaining, but one of my funniest Christmas memories is my stepmom handing me one of these and telling me to circle everything I wanted for Christmas. I went to town, greedily circling every item imaginable. That holiday morning, I believe I received exactly zero of the things I had circled. In retrospect, she was getting me to settle down and be quiet for a bit, which, yah, totally understand.
Hulu: Top 15
Since Hulu launched a “top 15” list of their most popular shows and films, I decided to counter with the fifteen things currently on Hulu I’d recommend:
The Bear: Along with Ted Lasso, my favorite show right now. With how much they’ve used Wilco, they could have renamed it “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”
Better Things: Before The Bear or Ted Lasso, other shows had made me laugh more, but few have made me smile, cry or feel as much as this one.
Bottle Rocket: Wes Anderson’s underrated debut. Flawed, but but perhaps his funniest?
Brigsby Bear: Amusing, endearing little picture about a lot of things. I went into this fresh and think that has to be the best way to watch this so no spoilers, but if you wanna talk about Brigsby Bear I can be found at Brigsbyfan2.
Closer: Not sure what it says about me that this is one of my favorite films, but it is.
Damsels in Distress: Whit Stillman and Greta Gerwig should have made more pictures together.
Eight Days a Week: Probably the most contrarian thing about me is that I prefer The Beatles’ first half to their second.
Frasier: If we are being honest, The Dinner Parting is basically a feature-length Frasier episode.
Freaks and Geeks: Even though 21st Century comedy was born here, this brief show was even better than that fact would suggest.
Only Murders in the Building: Initially, I wasn’t sure this needed to be more than a mini series (or even a film), but it’s continued to impress.
Theatre Camp: Two-time summer camper and late-stage theatre kid who absolutely loved this film. Very funny, and perfectly cast. And I was very happy to see Alexander Bello. I think about “I Saw A White Lady Standing On The Street Just Sobbing (And I Think About It Once A Week)” about once a week.
Raising Arizona: “I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn’t easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House.”
Spin Me Round: A dark comedy Suspiria. Saw this at Cinequest last year and everyone was in stitches, one of the hardest laughing audiences I’ve ever been in.
Welcome to Wrexham: So I like heartwarming shows about soccer, sue me.
The Wonder Years: The warmest blanket I can imagine.
Days Between
Since seeing Dead and Co. in Colorado last month, the Grateful Dead have been in heavy rotation since. Perfect summer music.
Since we are now in what Dead Head’s call “The Days Between” (the days between Garcia‘s birthday and the date of his passing), if you’ve never listened, I think their run from ’70 to ’72 is perfect from the initiated.
Starting with their first great record, Workingman’s Dead and the even better American Beauty, arguably their two best studio albums, they followed up with two classic live albums, Grateful Dead and Europe ’72.
Patio hall of famers and the perfect introduction to the band.
I believe RetroDuck truly made it once we could be found in an annotation on Genius.
I like the song, but might be biased.
Best Debut Albums
I know I just mentioned him, but longtime music critic Steven Hyden recently ranked 100 debut albums for your reading pleasure.
Some that stood out to me:
The Go-Go’s, Beauty And The Beat (1981): “This band is in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, and this album is 90 percent of the reason why.”
The Jesus & Mary Chain, Psychocandy (1985): “There are countless artists posting albums on Bandcamp right now who stole all of their ideas from The Jesus & Mary Chain, and they might not even know it. They might think they’re ripping off The Velvet Underground, but they are really ripping off this band who ripped off The Velvet Underground in the mid-’80s.”
The Mothers Of Invention, Freak Out! (1966): “I completely understand why people can’t stand the guy. He writes stupidly complicated music and stupidly stupid lyrics. Personally, I think Zappa is 1) a genius and 2) one of the most obnoxious men who ever lived.”
The B-52’s, The B-52’s (1979): “As a public service, I am sharing this video. I have watched it 25 times and I suggest you do the same. And then make this album a cornerstone of your life.”
Fiona Apple, Tidal (1998): “This might very well be the greatest debut album made by a teenager. I am exactly six days older than Fiona Apple, and I was working a customer service job in the summer of 1996, which is a million times less impressive than writing and recording ‘Shadowboxer.'”
Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True (1977): “The only track on My Aim Is True that’s not convincing is ‘I’m Not Angry,’ which is like Marvin Gaye recording a tune called ‘I’m Not Horny.'”
Pavement, Slanted And Enchanted (1992): “In the proverbial ‘what would you play for an alien to sum up this kind of music?’ scenario, Slanted And Enchanted must be regarded as the go-to soundtrack for any hipster extraterrestrial.”
Beastie Boys, Licensed To Ill (1986): “Uncut Id is taking the riff from Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf” and combining it with the drum break from Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks,’ and then inviting three idiots to chant ‘Ali Baba and the 40 thieves’ eight times over it.”
The Strokes, Is This It (2001): “Though if I ever write a column about the best second albums ever, Room On Fire might rank higher on that list than Is This It does here.”
And of course Pink Flag, Exile in Guyville, 3 Feet High & Rising, Ramones, Horses and The Velvet Underground & Nico. Jimi Hendrix took the top spot, which my stepdad would probably be happy about. DJ Shadow and Ween did get honorable mentions.
Hyden also speaks of albums that feel like debuts. In my opinion, an album in that department that always sticks out is You Forgot It in People, which projected Broken Social Scene from a small, mostly instrumental side project, to one of the most epic and ambitious rock bands this century.
A few omissions surprised me and few that made the cut downright bewildered me, but that is why I like lists like this.
Here are five I would have considered.
Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes (1982): Shocked this didn’t make the cut, so much so that I have to imagine Hyden isn’t a fan. I am hard pressed to think of too many debuts that are so quintessentially the band itself.
The Smiths, The Smiths (1984): Everything one would love about The Smiths is all right here. Not my favorite but could easily be someone’s favorite Smiths record. Especially if “This Charming Man” makes the cut.
Le Tigre, Le Tigre (1999): Their best album. Effortlessly cool, sample-laden new wave/punk record that will get you dancing more than any other radically political album I can think of.
Imperial Teen, Seasick (1996): Their best album, too. An even poppier Pixies (and Breeders!), for my money this is the most underrated alt-rock album of the 90s and the #1 album I want to see on Spotify.
Belle & Sebastian, Tiger Milk (1996): I still have love for this band, but in the ’90s and early ’00s, they were the best.
Oh, completely forgot that first Clash record. Listen to that. It rips.
Roger Ebert Passed 10 Years Ago Today.
Before the Internet, or at least any Internet I knew of, Siskel & Ebert was my best resource for what was coming out. By the time I hit the age where I wasn’t supposed to be seeing certain things but wanted to, those two were a gateway drug. Very few things sounded more interesting to my just-under-teenage brain than Clerks and Pulp Fiction.
I treated their year end lists like gospel. By my freshmen year of high school I walked around with and read and re-read and basically treated Book of Film the same.
For years, when I watched something, I would end up looking up his reviews to see what he thought. While I often disagreed with him, I was always interested and loved discovering films via his writing. I wonder now what he would have thought about movies that have come out since he left us. I might wonder that forever.
As Steven Hyden wrote when he passed:
“If the sum total of all the people affected by the life and career of Roger Ebert could somehow be quantified– his fellow writers were just a tiny sliver of a large and loyal readership, mind you– we might begin the process of wrapping our arms around the legacy of perhaps the most celebrated film critic who ever lived. In lieu of that, let’s just say: It’s a whole hell of a lot of people.“
I recommend looking through his work, particularly his “Great Movies” archive. Love this quote of his: “”Every great film should seem new every time you see it.”
There is also his final “top ten” list and this list of underrated films he loved, including the Up documentary series, about which he wrote:
“No other art form can capture so well the look in an eye, the feeling in an expression, the thoughts that go unspoken between the words. To look at these films, as I have every seven years, is to meditate on the astonishing fact that man is the only animal that knows it lives in time.”
Benedict Cumberbatch and Ian McKellen Read Letters by Kurt Vonnegut
From two Letters Live events, great letters filled with great advice from one of the twentieth century’s best minds.
Key takeaways:
Reduce and stabilize your population.
Stop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems.
Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
Stop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean, and stupid.
And so on. Or else.
And for your own personal growth:
“Practice any art… no matter how well or badly, not to get money or fame, but to experience becoming. To find out what’s inside you. To make your soul grow… Do art for the rest of your lives.”
(Via Open Culture)
Herzog’s Advice for Filmmakers
Apparently this list is on the back cover of A Guide for the Perplexed. Need to pick this up ASAP.
- Always take the initiative.
- There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need.
- Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
- Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.
- Learn to live with your mistakes.
- Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern.
- That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it.
- There is never an excuse not to finish a film.
- Carry bolt cutters everywhere.
- Thwart institutional cowardice.
- Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
- Take your fate into your own hands.
- Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape.
- Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory.
- Walk straight ahead, never detour.
- Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver.
- Don’t be fearful of rejection.
- Develop your own voice.
- Day one is the point of no return.
- A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class.
- Chance is the lifeblood of cinema.
- Guerrilla tactics are best.
- Take revenge if need be.
- Get used to the bear behind you.
(Via Kottke)
Round Midnight (1986)
I often want to live in films, but seldom ones this dour. But jazz clubs in the 50s, that’s my love language. Especially when it’s shot this beautifully, this dreamy. The faux-Paris streets at night are as out of this world as the soundtrack.
Round Midnight unfolds so nonchalantly, there’s almost no exposition. Things just happen. Sometimes they’re beautiful. Often they’re tragic.
Sometimes that’s one and the same.
Dexter Gordon is brilliant. Musically, obviously, and I’m glad he and Hancock got prizes for it. But with all due respect to Paul Newman, Gordon was robbed (I’d also take Hoskins in Mona Lisa over Newman, for the record). Incidentally, Newman was in the good but incomplete Paris Blues, a story that touches on the exiled black jazz musicians of Paris, something this movie greatly expands upon. Gordon wasn’t an actor, but he lived the part in real life. That doesn’t always work but when it is meant to inflect real life pain, it sure as shit does. He plays a composite of two real life musicians, but here he’s playing himself all the same.
Based on Francis Paudras’ memoir, we find the character of Francis outside the club on a rainy night, too broke to go inside but too in love with jazz and too indebted to Dale, whose music he fell in love with years earlier, not to huddle outside and take in what he can. They form a beautiful friendship, and while one could see Francis as someone suffering from a white savior complex, that would be dismissive. He sees Dale’s talent, but he also and more importantly he sees his pain. Unfortunately he cannot reconcile how one can exist with the other. He can’t understand how someone so brilliant can’t rub two nickels together, doesn’t understand addiction, and probably doesn’t understand the black struggle. He says on the first night he hears (not sees) Dale, that he played like a God. If our gods suffer, what does that mean for us?
Walking, Productivity and Creativity
I have walked and jogged and ran quite a bit since the pandemic began some 87 years ago, but this summer I decided to step it up (unfortunate pun intended).
100,000 steps per week, every week, for twenty weeks. Two million steps. Sounded like a reasonable goal. I didn’t think about my Fitbit dying, being sick, being injured, plans, writing, just not wanting to fucking go outside. Making up for those days though, really pushing myself to get to 100,000k, those days truly made it worth it and the experience and the accomplishment all the more rewarding. I ended up taking 2,038,018 steps, which ended up a bit under 1,000 miles. Which in retrospect, that should have been the goal. (I dumped the data on Facebook if you really wanna see/really just wanna be my friend).
“Every walk is a sort of crusade,” so said Thoreau.
“I would walk for six or eight hours a day, composing thoughts that I would later jot down on paper,” wrote Nietzsche, who by his thirties would walk closer to ten hours a day and write much of which he is known for. “Sit as little as possible; do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement — in which the muscles do not also revel… Sitting still… is the real sin against the Holy Ghost.”
This summer on my walks, I also listened to Atomic Habits, a book that is billed as “an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones.” Lots of great stuff in there: we imitate the people we envy. Only turn the TV on if you know what you want to watch. Never make a single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. Until you work as hard as those you admire or envy, don’t explain away their success as luck. And so on.
A big one was making habits more attractive by rewarding oneself or combining habits. “Doing the thing you need to do means doing the thing(s) you get to.”
So usually if I want to read the news, check my personal Instagram, I do it while walking. If I want to listen to a particular podcast, I do so by walking. I make work calls in the middle of a two hour hike.
I walk more than I run, but by combining habits I feel like I am getting more done, even when large chunks of time are dedicated to clearing my head, or thinking about my writing, or brainstorming for the printing company I co-own. Not all of these tasks are rewarding, but it allows me to multitask and often breaks up my walks into nice chunks, which itself is rewarding.
I much prefer the outdoors to the gym. Now that it’s winter in Michigan I imagine running through snow and chopping wood and basically just living my best Rocky 4.
I would recommend doing the same. Maybe listen to Atomic Habits while you do. If you happen to live in Michigan, Joseph Beyer just wrote about some great places to have a winter walk. And regardless, good luck and happy trails. Keep on truckin’.
