Category Archives: Doing

I haven’t writ­ten one of these in a while, but now that sum­mer has near­ly wrapped up, it felt like as good a time as any to cov­er the music, TV, movies, games and books that have cap­tured my atten­tion when I’m not ful­ly immersed in Tik­Tok or my job search.

Read­ing

• We Want Every­thing, by Nan­ni Balestri­ni — The eas­i­est way to mar­ket a book to me is to have even the most ten­u­ous con­nec­tion to Rachel Kush­n­er. She men­tioned this book in her essay col­lec­tion The Hard Crowd and I’m not sur­prised that I found it an engross­ing account of how indus­tri­al­iza­tion affect­ed Italy in the ’60s. As we as a soci­ety come to grips with the impact AI may have on our lives and our liveli­hoods, this was a brac­ing read about work­ers try­ing to main­tain some con­trol over how they work and how that trans­lates to their abil­i­ty to live.
• Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biog­ra­phy in Sev­en Songs, by Greil Mar­cus — Some­times I real­ly miss the late glo­ry days of music crit­i­cism as seen in alt week­lies. That kind of writ­ing seems even more gnom­ic now than it did then. The ref­er­ences are often even more obscure now, but in the hands of a mas­ter of the form, all the more won­der­ful. I don’t know if I’ve real­ly got­ten to know Dylan bet­ter as I work through this book, but the kalei­do­scop­ic por­tray­al match­es the sev­er­al Dylans he’s been through­out his long career. Did­n’t hurt that Rachel Kush­n­er had a blurb on the inner jacket.
• Board­walk of Dreams, by Bryant Simon — This is so good I wrote the author an email. I’ve longed for a great piece of urban polit­i­cal econ­o­my about the arc of Atlantic City, and this is it. Bet­ter still, Simon does a fan­tas­tic job of out­lin­ing how the dynam­ics that shaped Atlantic City are per­ti­nent for any city that’s been trans­formed from an indus­tri­al cen­ter into a tourist play­ground. The com­mon thread of how pub­lic spaces are cre­at­ed and for whom illus­trates not only how the Board­walk scenes can be con­nect­ed to the casi­nos, but by the tran­si­tive prop­er­ty, how vibrant down­towns con­nect to sub­ur­ban malls. If you’ve spent any mean­ing­ful amount of time in Atlantic City as my fam­i­ly has vis­it­ing friends on the sound end of town, this will help you under­stand what real­ly hap­pened there and why. He also just shared a Jason Isbell inter­view con­duct­ed by Cap­i­tal Moves author Jef­fer­son Cowie and I’m just smitten.
• Red­dit. I’m the last per­son on Earth to get lost here. I final­ly fig­ured out how to make it work for me now that I’m not spend­ing time refresh­ing Twit­ter. I get far more enjoy­ment out of it than I ever did most social media. What if forums were the answer the entire time?

Watch­ing

• Bar­bie — Felt like we had to see it in the the­ater. Helen wore a pink dress and I wore the “sun­ny side up” Pave­ment t‑shirt. I loved so much about it, but felt like for all the talk about dis­man­tling the patri­archy, we spent a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of time reha­bil­i­tat­ing the men. It was a fun movie, but I think I want­ed more Ghost World than it could offer.
• The Bear — Is this the only pres­tige TV I like? Maybe! “Fish­es” and “Forks” were stand­out episodes, but the whole show evolved this sea­son into some­thing more than anoth­er fre­net­ic, trou­bling restau­rant dram­e­dy. Also, Oliv­er Platt rules.
• What We Do in the Shad­ows — I did­n’t love S4, with baby Col­in Robin­son danc­ing around, but the show seri­ous­ly bounced back in S5 and com­plete­ly pulled me back in just when I thought I might let go. “The Cam­paign” is to Col­in Robin­son what “Forks” was for Richie.
• Cut­ter’s Way – 20 years ago I was a video store clerk respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing the Amer­i­can actors por­tion of the store. I can’t tell you how the VHS box for Cut­ter’s Way taunt­ed me all these years, along­side Hack­man’s Night Moves and Keach’s Fat City. I dust­ed all of them, but nev­er watched them. Now all three are stream­ing on Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel togeth­er and after watch­ing Cut­ter’s Way, it’s time I address this over­sight. If I learned any­thing from my time behind the counter at TLA Video, it was that some movies are, well, just a vibe, and this is no excep­tion. The dis­il­lu­sion­ment, much like in We Want Every­thing, just res­onates so pow­er­ful­ly in the cen­tral con­flict and the char­ac­ters are well-developed.

Lis­ten­ing

• Yo La Ten­go — This Stu­pid World. There’s lit­er­al­ly noth­ing to say about this band that has­n’t already been said. They’re one of a hand­ful of bands that con­sis­tent­ly pro­duces music that I know I’ll enjoy before I’ve lis­tened and they’ve been doing it for decades. This album is no excep­tion, but you already knew that.
• Mix­cloud. It’s the best music dis­cov­ery app for me, hands down.
• This Andy Beta mix that was just shared via his Sub­stack this morning.
• Indiecast. This is the clos­est I get to music crit­i­cism dra­ma near­ly 13 years since last writ­ing about music for mon­ey. It’s as close as I want to get, I think. Steve and Ian are the Siskel and Ebert of 40-some­thing crit­ics and at a time when so much music crit­i­cism has real­ly focused on fan ser­vice, they offer up indif­fer­ence as a refresh­ing coun­ter­point to all that.
• Jok­er­men & Nev­er End­ing Sto­ries. More Hyden! I’ve loved Jok­er­men, but NES may be my new favorite. The inter­play between the guys is just fan­tas­tic and height­ens my appre­ci­a­tion for Bob and all the sil­ly things he’s done through­out the years.
• WRTI. What a gem this radio sta­tion is. It was there the entire time. I should’ve been lis­ten­ing since before I got to col­lege, but glad I start­ed now.
• WFMU. I’ve long aspired to sup­port the sta­tion and I’m glad I final­ly did. Jesse Jarnow’s The Frow Show was a gate­way to so much great music and the broad­er net­work does not dis­ap­point in that regard either.

Play­ing

• Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la. I think I’ve spent the last two years play­ing Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la. It’s equal parts embar­rass­ing and enthralling. I have lit­er­al­ly no friends play­ing this game, but I fell in love with all the Viking back­sto­ry thanks to liv­ing in Scan­di­navia 30 years ago. The sto­ry was real­ly sat­is­fy­ing, so much so that I actu­al­ly com­plet­ed the game and can’t stop wan­der­ing around the coun­try­side. I can’t wait for Mirage to hit.
• Starfield. I haven’t start­ed play­ing yet, but I’m hop­ing this game cures me of my Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la habit!