EPISODE 308.5: STORMY DANIELS WEATHER
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Something about the newsletter I sent out Friday didn’t sit well. Maybe it was the fact that in the end I tried to turn Keyboard Cat into an inspiration to rise up?
(Yeah, what was that?)
(If you're looking for a way to tell when you've gotten a little bit full of yourself, turning a cat video into earnest political symbol is a good starting point.)
It’s a challenge writing this sometimes. Maybe it’s the going-on-fifteen-years of priesting, but there’s an well-worn groove in me to often start with some sort of story from my own life and end on “and the moral of the story is...”.
Sometimes that works. A lot of time after the fact it makes me want to shriek and erase the memory of everything I’ve ever said.
(Have I ever mentioned that I have that power? Believe it or not, you’ve actually been reading this newsletter for 18 years.)
Now who knows, maybe you like your Wow like that. Maybe that’s how you prefer to take your Wow. Maybe those are the Wows you're looking for.
(Stopping now.)
But I think I’m going to try to mix some things up. Like sending you on an extra newsletter on Sunday just to say hey -- and yeah, that title was a total head fake just to get you to read this. (Forgive me Father.)
We'll see how it goes. As always, thanks for reading -- and for letting me know. I am always blown away when someone lets me know they're reading.
Have a great week.
Postscript: The image at the very top is former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. One of the most exceptional and beloved Australian politicians of all time. Also well known for the Guinness-Book-of-World-Records speed with which he was once able to down a beer. Also reason #43897 why I love Australia.
THREE
I was at the March for Our Lives yesterday in Los Angeles. Three things that hit me:
The LA rally began with Questlove from the Roots DJ-ing a medley of songs. Some of it was familiar – “Lean on Me”, Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up” – and some of it was just rhythms that got you moving.
When he was announced I was set for full eyeroll. All the love for Q, but it seemed like such an LA thing to build a rally about gun control around celebrity performances and speeches.
But I ended up loving the instinct to start with music, and the way he took it. If we’re going to rally for our lives, we should definitely be dancing. ++ There were a lot of great posters, the best from kids. This was my absolute favorite.
When I asked to take this picture, the boy immediately stood up. “I made this one,” he kept saying. “I made this.” He had so much pride. ++ Did you see Naomi Wadler in DC? “I am here today to represent the African American girls whose stories don’t make the front page of every national newspaper,” she said. “Whose stories don’t lead the evening news.”
It’s an incredible speech. (And she’s eleven.) Here’s the link.
I’m so proud of all the kids who are standing up.
TWO
Two pages I loved from comic books this week.
Chris Samnee, Captain America #696
(Love that first beat of the shirt hanging in mid air beside the railing.)
ONE
From a book I just finished and now want everyone to read:
Clark had always been fond of beautiful objects, and in his present state of mind, all objects were beautiful. He stood by the case and found himself moved by every object he saw there, by the human enterprise each object had required. Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that had invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the assembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors’ dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a gray-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn City Airport. Clark shoot the globe and held it up to the light. When he looked through it, the planes were warped and caught in whirling snow.
Here we go.