EPISODE 506: THIS IS A GHOST CAR
I'm pretty sure Conan O'Brien is stalking me.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi, and welcome to this, a newsletter from some guy that likes to dig around for cool things in pop culture and otherwise spends his days making up code names for projects he is working on. I’m that guy.
So the Democratic primary season is really kicking in now. Which makes it sound like we’ve all taken a drug, but if so it does not seem to be the fun kind I keep hearing about.
For me the main takeway remains: No One Fights Like An Uncorked Midwesterner.
You want straight up You Talking to Me hostility, I know, you think New Yorkers. Honestly, I think it’s a bum rap perpetrated by people who wish they could be that straightforward. Seriously, once a Midwesterner finally has had enough, they have so many decades of rage stored up from having had to be nice all the time what emerges is a living hurricane of ire destroying everything in its path, including eventually themselves.
(Btw, Isn’t it about time we started naming nightmare weather patterns after emotions? How have we not already had Hurricane Ire? Tornado Furiosa?
Is a Severe Weather Warning ever really a “Chet”?)
I can’t predict who the candidate will be – and neither should anyone after three primaries in let’s be honest itsy-bitsy spider-size states (7.5 million population total in those three states, and that’s not just the Democrats, #WhyisOurSystemLikeThis, sign my Change.org) – but what I can predict with absolute certainty is that Klobuchar and Buttigieg will eventually wipe each other from the face of the earth so completely it will be like one of those science fiction time travel movies where no one ever knows they existed. Yes, that’s right, they are going to Marty McFly each other.
Every time I see them look at each other the way they do I think of this:
It was kind of a crazy week. I help run a Facebook page for the Jesuits at Loyola Marymount where I live. And after two years of doing it Facebook suddenly came after us, I guess because the name “LMU Jesuits” does not sound like a Person-Name. Which makes sense, as it is not. But so far we’ve been acting as a person--- that is, instead of a fan page, where people come to you and It’s-All-About-Me-so-Like-My-Post, we friend others and respond to their stuff too, which you can’t do on a fan page.
It’s been a lot of fun, actually – I’ve become very fond of the GIF reaction comment – and a great experiment for us.
Cue Facebook shutting down our page without warning, and by “shutting down” I mean flicking a switch somewhere that results in our page no longer findable not only on Facebook but on Google, which it turns out today is pretty much the definition of not existing.
(Written Today, “Stabbed” would be replaced with “Removed from Search Algorithm”)
It was, um, unsettling. I mean, some days I would very much to be like the Chinese Buddhist monks that sculpt the most beautiful paintings ever out of sand and then immediately destroy them. But also I would like to be able to have that happen as a choice if that is an option.
(Notes to self: a) You are comparing your posts on Facebook to works of art; b) You are complaining because posts which are old and have already had whatever impact they’re going to have can no longer be seen by people who are not going to be looking for them anyway; c) People lose things a lot more precious all the time, humanity is hard, deal.)
For the moment things seem to be better? I don’t know. They said our case is closed and so we are going to proceed like that is a true statement, but also we are definitely going to Noah the heck up and prepare for an extinction-level event.)
Meanwhile, my great writing group read the treatment for my EVERYBODY SAYS DON’T and gave me good notes that made me realize what a mess I had made of it. I went back to the drawing board, particularly on trying to figure out the journey of the main character. It’s crazy but true, if there’s going to be a weak spot in your script, someone who is Highly Snore-able or Is He Going to Just Be There Doing That (as Michael C. Hall once said of an actor friend of mine who had been told by the director to be and do just that) -- it’s so often going to be the main character.
Along the way I also peppered in some super fun 1980s ideas that are sort of in the background of the world of my story; for example, I’m pitching that a big conversation happens during an ever-more-drunken game of Pong (which game actually has its own crazy great story that maybe someday I’ll get someone to let me tell).
Basically this process is like the hawks that are always floating by outside my window – you rise and fall on invisible thermals, and just try to stay mellow and go with it.
This week, hopefully back to ANOTHER HUNDRED PEOPLE and maybe some research into a piece I’m doing about event comics – that is, mini-series that each of the big comic book companies whip up, usually as we head into summer, that are meant to drive eyeballs.
My idea is that Marvel and DC each have a basic paradigm for events that is drawn from all the way back in the 1980s. To some extent those paradigms serve them well; but, especially in the case of DC, the paradigm also contains within it a virus that eventually destroys all the opportunities the story itself is meant to create. I’m weirdly obsessed with the whole thing.
In other news I have spent the last month reading a science fiction series about super-evolved space-traveling spiders and octopi and all I can say is: a) I can hear you rolling your eyes from here; b) That is very hard on your eyes; and c) Sam Sykes and I would like you to know something:
My favorite part of the thread that follows:
I feel like I’d been seeing comments about the two-volume Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky for about a year before I jumped in. If you are at all interested in world building and evolution, I swear to the Baby Jesus, this will blow your mind.
THREE TWEETS: BEAUTIFUL THINGS
A thing that happens in the world that makes me happy:
A thread to click on and read through to the end:
And, encouraging words from a beautiful human being:
Also, loved this piece from a tweeter walking us through his funny tweet going viral.
READ
I feel like there’s been so may articles about the fires in Australia and climate change in general that it’s really really hard to read another one, that is, to actually see the words and have them impact us.
But this piece – while seeming pretty similar on the surface – by the end actually had me dreaming about how the fires could actually inspire a reimagining of the country in terms of something other than “bad” or “loss”.
And here’s the thing about Australia: for as much as their current political leadership is often exhausted, the nation as a whole is capable of great innovation. It would not surprise me in the least to see this summer provoke a whole new and exciting kind of thinking about their life that also ends up inspiring people elsewhere.
WATCH
While I do not subscribe to driverless cars, We were supposed to have rocket packs and cars that fly by this point!, I love this commercial so much:
Also, this trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie is so absolutely Peak Wes Anderson that you would think it is a clip reel of all his other movies made into a new movie.
CLICK
I was skeptical about this interactive map of Great Places to Cry in New York. But the more anecdotes I read the more it made me think about what a relief a good cry can be. (I highly recommend Judith Light’s piece about crying at the Neil Simon Theater.)
LISTEN
Last week I mentioned that the theme song for Star Trek Voyager is the best of all Star Treks. That led me this week to try and learn more about its composer Dennis McCarthy, which led me to discovering that he had worked not only on all the post-original Star Trek shows but had produced an album of standards sung by Brent Spiner (Data) called Old Yellow Eyes is Back.
And on that album I found this, which has not only Spiner singing, but Patrick Stewart, Levar Burton, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn (that is, Picard, LaForge, Number One and Worf) doing background, and they are actually REALLY good.
Lastly, in a world where we’re all getting worried about getting sick this solution is still the most terrifying thing I came across this week, and I have discovered my own secret ingredient to a good omelet: red pepper flakes.
A lot of times the world right now feels like a giant Activision game of Pitfall, every couple steps another alligator, underground scorpion or secret patch of quicksand.
But there’s nothing so pleasurable as swinging right over them.
Keep leaping for the vines. And see you next week.