As with every other show, Abbe and I are way behind on Mad Men. Catching up now that it’s over, but catching up quickly. Five seasons in, I’ve come to think that the show isn’t really about the 60s, or about identity, or about rapid social change. Or maybe it’s about all those things. But I think it’s really a show about growing old. Old enough, anyway, so you reach the point where you stop...
So apparently “Cat’s Cradle” is being made into a feature movie. I haven’t re-read Vonnegut in a long time, but I’m looking forward to it for the same reason you look forward to anything related to any book you ever loved. Because it brings the book back to you, and with it, the love you felt. Only to lead to horrible disappointment, maybe. But still. If you...
There’s a story in the Post today on the decline of Christianity in America. The number of Americans who identify themselves as Christians — still pretty high, at 71% — dropped by 8% in a seven-year span, according to a Pew survey. And the trend for those born between 1981 and 1989 (“older millenials,” which makes them sound like a race of ageless immortals from a...
I watched Don Hertzfeldt’s “The World of Tomorrow” short film recently, and then almost immediately went and found his trilogy of shorts, “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” from a couple years back. Both films are heartbreaking — “Beautiful Day” a little more so, because it doesn’t have a character like the young Emily of “World of...
This weekend Abbe and I watched Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice adaptation. I’d been looking forward to the movie for a while, because I genuinely loved the book and because I thought the trailer captured a lot of the book’s goofy, slapstick spirit. The movie isn’t good. Sitting through it — and it feels like something you sit through, at two and a half hours...
Chekhov is one of my go-to writers when I’m between stories. His stories don’t move me very often, and his style isn’t similar to mine. But purely in terms of craft, there’s always something interesting going on in his stories. I just finished reading “Sleepy.” And while I enjoyed the writing, I wasn’t enthralled at first. Chekhov tends to be a slow...
This article on the Washington Post about a “smiley face” image taken in space by the Hubble space telescope led me to other articles about the phenomenon of pareidolia, which is our tendency to find (or imagine) human faces in everything we see. According to livescience.com, it’s a specialized version of apophenia, which is seeing patterns in random data. Two things in particular...
Sitting here tonight watching CNN’s coverage of the NYC protests in the wake of yesterday’s decision not to indict NYPD office Daniel Pantaleo after the choking death of Eric Garner. Right at this moment, the protestors are completely silent. It’s a “die in.” They’re lying on their backs on the street, arms crossed over their chest. I don’t know that...
I don’t know why I’ve waited this long to read Pynchon’s latest book. Some of it is that I’m probably a little worried that it’s his last book. As if by holding out, I can keep him around a little longer, which is goofy and morbid and dumb. He’s still alive, and he’s actually been more prolific in the last seven or eight years (three books) than at any...
With the Nationals down 2-0 in their NLDS series against the Giants, I started thinking a little about why we bother to follow sports at all, given the (real, but ludicrous) grief we feel when the team we love happens to lose. Because for almost every sports fan, in every sport, the team we love will eventually lose, so (again: real, ludicrous) grief is almost guaranteed. Every single year...