Hackneyed

Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.
Hackneyed

Hackneyed

Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.

Dealing with People On the Internet

This issue of The Discourse has some great advice on dealing with people online.
  • Reward your “enemies” when they agree with you, exhibit good behavior, or come around on an issue. Otherwise they have no incentive to ever meet you halfway.
  • Accept it when people apologize. People should be allowed to work through ideas and opinions online. And that can result in some messy outcomes. Be forgiving.
  • Sometimes people have differing opinions because they considered something you didn’t.
  • Take a second.
  • There’s always more to the story. You probably don’t know the full context of whatever you’re reading or watching.
  • Create the kind of communities and ideas you want people to talk about.
  • You don’t always have the moral high ground. You are not always right.
  • Block and mute quickly. Worry about the bubbles that creates later.
  • There but for the grace of God go you.


(Via Kottke)

So I have been reading. A bit.

I was very slowly working my way through Jude the Obscure, but I put that down for the Beastie Boys Book. I am aware I am the only person in the history of civilization that will ever say that.

I’ve been missing Bob lately. I was hoping to see his name in the photo credits.

When I was maybe five or six, I inherited my stepbrother’s bedroom at my father’s. With it, a few things he left behind, including a Beastie Boys photo pulled from a magazine taped to the wall.

Years later, when Bob and Brian J. Bowe were working on the CREEM anthology for HarperCollins, they let me pick and transcribe a few pieces for the book. One was an interview with the Beasties by Chuck Eddy. Bob pulled the art for the article from photos he’d taken, including the one taped to my wall all those years before.

Sunday Morning/Early Afternoon Not Live

Last night ‘s episode had some fun moments. Really related to the bit in Matt Damon’s monologue about staying up late with his dad to watch the show as a child. And somehow related to the Weezer sketch even more. #TeamLeslie

Also, say what you will about Miley (I have), but I enjoyed her performance and singing it alongside Sean Ono Lennon kinda got to me.

I don’t know why I am writing about SNL. I must have mono.

Welles

Been devouring Orson Welles the past week or so. Started with watching The Other Side of the Wind, which I would not recommend to another human being. Still, I found it fascinating.

Since, I’ve watched/rewatched eight films either by him, and/or starring him, or about him. Plan on keeping that up while I await next week’s Criterion release of The Magnificent Ambersons.

Even managed to crack Bogdanovich’s This Is Orson Welles, which has been collecting dust on my shelf for far too long. There’s an anecdote in the book about MGM looking for an actor to play opposite Hedy Lamarr that I’m finding far too relatable at the moment. It’s like a metaphor for my entire life:

“Welles – that’s who we want! Get him! Who’s his agent?”

“He doesn’t have an agent.”

“What?”

“No, he’s on the radio and he’s running a theatre in New York called The Mercury.”

“Get him.”

Because of the time difference, it is now two o’clock in the morning on the East Coast; ten secretaries are put on the job… [they] start wildly searching by long distance telephone. “We hear he’s at the Stork Club.” “No. El Morocco.” From Harlem to Chinatown, the telephone dragnet spreads out over Manhattan; and for four or five hours, the conference proceeds…

Finally, a secretary, breathless with victory, throws open the door: “I’ve got him for you!” she exclaims, “I’ve got Orson Welles!”

Then, somebody says, “What does he want?”

Vonnegut’s 7 Commandments

  1. Reduce and stabilize your population.
  2. Stop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
  3. Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems.
  4. Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
  5. Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
  6. 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.
  7. And so on. Or else.

(Via Open Culture)

Semi-Related:

A map of the world where the size of the country is determined by its population.

A brief, animated explanation of Stoicism from TED-Ed. I picked this book up a year or two ago and 2019 is the year I actually go through it. Provided I can actually find it.

#FrasierFriday

Frasier

Well, actually, we’ve been out a couple of times. I’m really rather taken with her. She has a very playful side.  She took me miniature golfing last night.

Martin

Oh, sure, when she takes you, it’s playful. When I take you, it ends up as a short story in the high school literary magazine.

Frasier

“Through the Clown’s Mouth Darkly” took second in the all-city fiction contest that year.

The MFIC

Luke, it was great meeting you and hanging out, although we could have spent more time together. I was planning on working on my enigma persona, but you were too much fun.

MFIC, RM.

That was the first of thousands of emails from my then “new boss” (MFIC stood for “Mother Fucker in Charge,” borrowed from Mayor Young) the day after we left Coachella in 2004. There was a time when I almost considered him a best friend and a time when we didn’t talk at all. We had so many plans and ideas and it was all electrifying and none of it panned out.

I’ve been missing him dearly for about a year now and looks like I’ll be missing him for the rest of my life.

Taking this one to heart, and in the future trying to remember these two things: don’t wait to do things you wanna do, and to let go of stupid shit.

Hope to see you again, Bob.

Love,

Luke

I’ve noticed something.

On any site where you can ask questions and crowdsource answers (this extends to social media), people will respond regardless of whether or not they have anything to offer. Even if they are wrong. It seems people just want to converse.

Don’t ask questions on the Internet. Look for answers, or people you trust that can point you in the right direction.

June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018

Bourdain was a hero to me.

Today is a reminder.

To travel more.

To eat more good food.

To have more sex.

To really listen to others.

To try my best to never lose hope.

Rules for a Knight

Just finished Ethan Hawke’s epistolary novel written as a letter from a knight going into battle, to their children, imparting knowledge and what they assume will be their last words.

The book is brief and contains simple, effective language and great advice, mostly collected from various sources (credited at the end).

A few rules that stood out to me:

Humility
Never announce that you are a knight, simply behave as one.

Friendship
The quality of your life will, to a large extent, be decided by with whom you elect to spend your time.

Forgiveness
Those who cannot easily forgive will not collect many friends. Look for the best in others.

Discipline
Excellence lives in attention to detail. Give your all, all the time. Don’t save anything for the walk home.

Dice

I learned this game at a bicycle shop in Brooklyn that had a liquor license.

Supposedly they had great brunch as well.

It requires at least three dice.

Each player antes one dollar into the pot and they then take it in turn throwing the dice.

The object of the game is to score the lowest total amount by adding up the spot values of all three set aside dice but counting 3s as zeroes.

Each player has up to three rolls of the dice (or more if you have more dice. One roll per die).

You must set at least one aside after each throw.  Once a dice is set aside, it may not be rolled again.

The best possible score after all the dice have been set aside is zero (all threes).

In the event of equally low scores, tied players either play again or have a shoot-off with one die per person.

The winner takes the pot and rolls first in the next game.

 

Ugly Delicious

I chose the wrong career path.

As an outsider that is still obsessed with good food (read: I have an unrefined palette), it’s speaking my language. Bourdain is my hero, but he’s far more who I want to be than who I am.

From the New York Times:

David Chang and his new Netflix series, “Ugly Delicious,” can most easily be defined by what they’re not. Mr. Chang is not a fastidious French kitchen god, a high-energy American showman or an Anthony Bourdain-like poetic observer. “Ugly Delicious” is not a stand-and-stir cooking show or a pack-your-bags travelogue.

Its eight episodes take on topics as conventional as pizza, barbecue, fried chicken and Chinese cooking. The cameras pan over jars of artisanal tomato sauce and capture the squirting juices of xiao long bao. Ritualistic pronouncements of deliciousness abound, often punctuated with a certain four-letter word, and the occasional non-culinary star — Aziz Ansari, Jimmy Kimmel — drops by to both lend and borrow celebrity wattage.

What Mr. Chang and the food writer Peter Meehan, his co-star and fellow executive producer, are attempting is something more ambitious, though: an extended television essay, in the form of free-associative, globe-trotting conversations about food and culture.

In the first episode Chang says he hates “being told I can’t like something.”

Amen.

Now. Time to get eating.

Principles & Values

Friends of mine own a pair of remarkable BBQ restaurants.

The food is great. They are great. Their principles and values are worth a read. Many (all?) can be adapted not only to any business, but life in general:

Be the best restaurant we can be, not just the best BBQ restaurant.

Produce the highest quality food at all levels and exceed standards.

Provide the most knowledgeable and remarkable customer service that exceeds all expectations.

Every item on the menu must be exceptional. A bigger menu isn’t a better menu.

Have a kitchen/restaurant that is so clean and safe that you’d be proud to show a customer at any time.

Be solution focused, not problem focused.

Honesty, integrity, and respect in all interactions with customers and colleagues.

Have the best communication in the industry.

Assume the best in others and be empathetic. Especially with customers.

Always ask, “how could this be better?” Challenge all sacred cows. Push to be the absolute best.

Empower Others – don’t be a bottleneck. Be systems and process focused.

Operate from a place of positivity, not negativity.

Operate with logic, facts and numbers. Not from emotion.

Be respectful of everyone’s time.

Bootstrap it: do more with less and work with the tools you have.

Milos Forman has passed.

He was 86.

In my formative years I often felt like an outsider and Forman’s best films – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Man on the Moon, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Hair and Amadeus– sang to my rebellious heart.

Site Update

Not sure what I am doing here.

But I I like that.

Feel like this is an attempt to put all the pieces together, even if I don’t know what it is I am building.

If that makes me Winston with a puzzle, so be it.

“No, it’s the children who are wrong.”

Don’t know exactly how I feel about Apu in 2018.

But I think the conversation deserves more than a troll/PR stunt response. I wonder if Al Jean or Matt Groening understand that part of the problem with Apu is that his name is used as an insult. My best friend is Indian. I’ve seen it firsthand.

Having their response come from Lisa is a complete disservice to one of the best role models in modern fiction. I would probably stop watching the show if I hadn’t inadvertently already done that around season nine.

Tired of not doing the things I want to do.

That includes being tired of missing the things I used to do.

In the past year or so I’ve built and discarded about five or six skateboards online.

I finally pulled the trigger. Mark Gonzales deck, Spitfire wheels, Independent trucks. Life is too short to be missing out. To fear other’s perceptions. If you get any sort of joy from something harmless, let that shit ride.

(One last Gonz video for good measure. Apologies for the low-quality. As far as I’m concerned whichever service makes old skate videos available wins the streaming wars.)