important update on ken burns

ok hot tip i’m driving to austin and ~LISTENING~ to ken burns’s american revolution and it’s thrilling and depressing and inspiring and dispiriting and just a reminder that even geniuses are a mix of incredible and horrible and that every single thing is so complex and fucked up, even the good things. building this (dream?) republic based on (theoretical) equality is so revolutionary but the native americans and black people get absolutely effed in every way. but anyway i was honestly thinking I want to go on an am rev tour some day [any takers?] and thomas paine is kind of my new hero. MORE TO COME

who am i kidding

watching ken burns’s american revolution and a) I keep accidentally immediately falling asleep and b) sadly i’m 85% sure I’d have been a loyalist

constant mood

a 12!

from The NY Times:

After the meeting, [Donald] Trump called Xi a “tough negotiator.” Still, Trump seemed to be happy with the outcome. On a scale of one to 10, he said he would rate his meeting with Xi a 12.

this can’t be true

watched alfred hitchcock’s rope this weekend and thought i saw there was a commentary for it but couldn’t find it, so ended up reading all the amazon “x-ray notes” (!) that accompany the film and noticed this one — could this be true?!?! gagged and dragged off the soundstage!

everyone just disappears

still cleaning out my photos — hence the plethora of new posts — and found this bit from anderson cooper. it’s exactly what i’m struggling with:

On processing the past: “I’m the last one left from this sort of interesting family that existed,” he said. “I just find it sort of haunting this idea that everyone just disappears.”

you have everything

another old screenshot from my photos — a good reminder from “After A.L.S. Diagnosis, Rebecca Luker Is ‘Proud I Can Still Sing’”:

How has living with A.L.S. changed your outlook on life?
I want to tell everyone how lucky they are. I tell my friends that they can talk to me about their problems, but just to always be aware that if you can walk down the street and you’re healthy, you have everything. I’m never going to complain again.

there must be a better way

nervous cuz

i can’t believe i never wrote about jonathan gold, the amazing food writer who “wrote ‘to try to get people less afraid of their neighbors'” and won a pulitzer for criticism in 2017. gold passed away in 2018 from pancreatic cancer, and his obituary is a wild ride:

With cello proficiency in his favor, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles. Although he got his degree in music history, in 1982, he had a sideline in art; he took a class with and worked as an assistant for the guerrilla performance artist Chris Burden. For a brief time, Mr. Gold thought of himself as a performance artist, too. “A naked performance artist, to be specific,” he told an interviewer.

His materials for one piece were two bottles of Glade air freshener, a pile of supermarket broiler chickens, a live chicken at the end of a rope and a machete wielded by Mr. Gold, who wore only a blindfold. The chicken survived, and may have come out of the ordeal in better spirits than Mr. Gold, who later said, “The few minutes after an art performance are some of the most depressing in the world.”

valhalla, i have arrived

cleaning out my photos and found this lil bit from reggie jones’s obituary, “Reggie Jones, Jones Beach’s Longest-Serving Lifeguard, Dies at 93”:

Albert Reginald Jones was born in Manhattan on April 8, 1927, to Mary Kate and Adam Jones, Irish immigrants, and grew up on Long Island. As a wrestler at Baldwin High School, he won a Long Island championship in 1944.

That same year, his son said, he began lifeguarding at Jones Beach to escape working at his father’s gas station.

“He never had a formal swimming lesson, but he was so strong he could have passed any test,” the younger Mr. Jones said. “Once he got the job, he said, ‘Valhalla, I have arrived.’”