2025, week one

Hanging out and doing whatever.

(Watching elephant seals in San Simeon, Ca., Jan. 2 2025)

The focal point of our New Year trip to California was a drive to San Simeon. My wife had seen the Hearst Castle, and I hadn’t. She’d been to a reception at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo; I’d seen Buck Henry romp around in a loincloth there, in the Caveman Room when I watched “Aria.” These were my asks, and I had not thought hard enough about how we’d get there.

Here is why: I’d rented an electric car for the week. If you frequently rent, you’d probably noticed the deep discount for electrics, from car companies that loaded up on them and watched the value melt off. Apart from any problems with the cars — all batteries get worse with age — it’s a pain in the ass to drive an electric if you don’t have a plug to drive home to. You end up cadging volts wherever you can, parking for in mall garages and adding tasks to your visit so you can juice the car longer. If you’re lucky, you stay at a hotel with charging stations, and no more than one other electric car driver staying there. Or, no more than one other person like me, pretending to stay at the hotel so I can charge there.

We got a Polestar, an electric car with no political associations I’m aware of. (Who has strong opinions about Sweden?) It had a range of 230 miles if fully charged, which Hertz recommended against doing. I abided their dictate to fill the thing up to 90%, and that caused minor problems. We charged in a Santa Barbara parking lot on the way up, walking to an antique store where I picked up an antique Goldberg reel, then a cafe/winery where we got lattes on ice, then to a truck that sold only Japanese fried chicken or pork sandwiches. No one looked like they ate too many of these; I just had one. We walked it off in weather so perfect that I worried about staying too long and being ruined for mediocre weather. Bad habit. I’ve always started to think about how I’ll miss a moment when I should be enjoying it. When we sat down, I read Goethe’s Satan telling Faust something that felt relevant to me.

Fate has endowed him with the blind
Impatience of an ever-striving mind;
In headlong haste it drives him on,
He skips the earth and leaves its joys behind.

We drove on to the Madonna Inn, right before dark, and plugged the car in. I’d booked us the Matterhorn Room, up on the second story of the hotel’s main body. It was a nice little hike from the parking spot, and the steakhouse, where I ordered my first dessert of the year: a “pink champagne” cake.

All the warnings about sugar are basically right, and I have it now only on special occasions. This felt special enough: A new-year trip to a roadside attraction trimmed everywhere with pink paint and sculpted rocks, trimmed out for Christmas. (The decor I saw in southern California was very frequently religious; lots of red-and-white light menorahs, and lots of nativity scenes, most frequently in front of Latino family homes. The non-religious accompaniment, most often, was a light-up model of a reindeer, which he saw almost everywhere.)

The cake is obscene, three light layers stuck together with thick icing or soft Bavarian cream, all covered in even thicker icing. We defeated about a third of one slice and I carried the rest to our Matterhorn Room, where I was waiting for sunrise. I’d bet that the stained glass landscape would look good in the morning light. Sure enough:

After a late morning of walks and swims, we drove to the castle. Visitors parked a long ride away from the building itself; we ran onto the last, packed shuttle, and settled in while Alex Trebek (RIP) told us the approved story of the benevolent media tycoon. Even while dead, Trebek sounded like he enjoyed adding the parenthetical metric measurements to Heart’s imperial measurements. He didn’t need to sell us on it. You can’t beat reclaimed Roman and Egyptian art on the edges of a massive pool, looking out at acres of the central coast that can never be developed beyond how they looked in 1940.

High school memory. I learned midway through my sophomore year that my family was moving to England for work. Robert Crum, a history teacher who I’d really liked, got wind of it and pulled me aside after class. He was thrilled: I could travel to the great places, before getting too old to really enjoy it. Suddenly, he began mimicking an old man on a tourist bus. “Get on the bus, go to a cathedral.” He walked forward with his mouth open. “Go back to the bus.” He walked back. “Get on the bus, go to a cathedral.” Same glassy-eyed imitation of a guy squeezing in the Perrillo Tour before he died.

The thing I don’t like about that memory is that it comes back whenever I am doing normal mass tourism, riding a shuttle up to somewhere famous. But the museum is worth it — that’s why they send old people there! Hearst built not just a castle, but some surrounding villas, each with plazas and Greek statues, and easy access to his tennis court. We were on vacation. It was nice to point and say “wow” when you saw a room ringed by old church pew seats, with giant Christmas trees at each end. And it was to say “wow” 30 minutes later when we drove to see elephant seals before the sunset. We joined 300 or so other people to gawk and take photos of two-ton sea mammals, throwing sand on themselves, lifting themselves into the Pacific Ocean, biting each other with scary speed.

Much more “experience” on this trip, less pop culture. We like city walks just about as much as nature walks; little more boring, less strenuous, but the frequent chance to buy something perfect. A trip to the Norton Simon Museum got merged with another charging stop; a set of errands to make dinner for our host turned into, yeah, another charging stop. Halfway through, I calculated that the cost of charging the thing fully was more than the cost of letting Hertz fill it up when we dropped the keys off. We wound down and ignored the news.

The only mark I didn’t hit on this trip was hard work on a book I’m writing; I’d outlined it but wanted to do more. One percent of that thing, unless I make it longer, will have been put together on a pink chair in a fake chalet, looking out at horses and a few happy people riding them.

Best thing I read: Goethe’s “Faust.” Wanted to pull the wrapper off 2025 with a classic, and remembered that I’d thrown the Oxford edition of this onto my Kindle. I know the Faust story — you know the Faust story — and it isn’t even Goethe’s story. I’d watched Murnau's Faust, which shrinks the plot and gives it a simpler happy ending. But I hadn’t encountered Goethe’s specific bargain between the demon and Faust, which Murnau and others also changed. He wants one moment of transcendence, and if he gets it, to die immediately.

“When I say to the Moment flying;
'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!'
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
And my final ruin I will bear!”

No, nothing was going to beat that, but the eponymous story in “Pastoralia” worked on me, too. I half-finished a few other things that I can kill if this week doesn’t get out of control.

Books read
Douglas Murray, “The Strange Death of Europe”
George Saunders, “Pastoralia”
J. W. von Goethe, “Faust, Part One”
Junot Diaz, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”

Books purchased
Andrew Hultkrans, “Forever Changes”
Richard Ayoade, “The Unfinished Harauld Hughes”

Best thing I watched: Went cold turkey for most of the week, after finishing “Trouble in Mind,” a documentary about Jerry Lee Lewis directed by Ethan Coen. Like “Eat That Question,” the Frank Zappa documentary from nine years ago, it has no narration or hand-holding. It just compiles footage, mostly in order, showing Lee Lewis at work, or giving his most interesting or storyline-moving answers to interviewers. You learn about health problems from Tom Snyder asking him about his hospital visit. You learn that he has a brother because they do a piano duet then a grudging joint appearance.

Mostly worth it, but the best time I had was a double feature of Parker Posey one-city road movies: “The Daytrippers” and “Thelma.” Neither of these is a Posey vehicle; she’s the sister of Hope Davis’s Eliza, a married woman who discovers a love letter from “Sandy” to her husband (Stanley Tucci), and dragoons her family into following him to New York. Her boyfriend (Liev Schreiber) crams into the car, and his ongoing description of the unreadable-sounding surrealist novel he’s finishing in was, for me, the highlight of the movie. (I figured out the twist as soon as a I heard “Sandy,” and you probably would, too.)

“Thelma” was better — lighter comedy and a more inspirational story. I hear “inspirational” and usually run the other way. But this worked. Thelma (June Squibb) is a mostly-there but out-of-touch grandmother who gets scammed into sending money to her “son,” a layabout who doesn’t wake up when the phone rings. (“It was 10:30,” Posey tells him, part of her eternal gripe with the kid she raised.) She teams up with Richard Roundtree, in his final film role, a friend with minimal hearing who moved into a nursing home after his wife died. (Roundtree gets the film’s saddest line: “I didn’t hear her fall.”) They seek vengeance in a low-stakes way, a journey through the stupefied lives they and their families have been leading.

I like Squibb’s work and was sold on the premise, but I really locked in once the elderly Crockett and Tubbs stop by a friend’s home to steal her gun. Played by Bunny Levine — 95 when this was filmed — she lives in a stately multi-level house that’s gone to seed. “Don’t clean,” she warns, when Thelma lifts a plate and a roach scuttles out from under it.

“They’re hard to kill,” says Roundtree’s Ben.

“They make worthy adversaries,” says Levine’s Mona. She can barely hear. No one else is visiting her. She can’t remember what she said five minutes earlier. Ben and Thelma are shaken; then, they are nearly apprehended because Thelma is convinced she sees a woman she knows at a gas station, and gets into an interminable conversation with her, where they name potential connections until they realize none intersect.

High pathos and solid comedy, right on top of each other. It’s even better when it starts exploring the grandson’s life, and his feeble inability to do the simplest task, as his parents alternate between tough love and naming potential disorders he might have — which would mean he’s fine and they did nothing wrong as parents except not listen to more pediatricians.

The best thing I heard: Who? Weekly’s annual Who, Me? Awards, which performed at every level, and even made the ad read (Squarespace, still!) funny, by incorporating it in a gag that gave a stupid sponsor to every single prize. I’m talking multiple uses of the phrase “Blasberg Blast-Protector Ultra-Absorbent Incontinence Underwear for Men Award for Best Celebrity Feud.” Had us gasping for air while we drove down Christmas Tree Lane.