Mostly Florida this week — that’s where the picture’s from. I took it after eating at Kool Beanz on the recommendation of a reporter who, like most reporters in Tallahassee, was much too busy to have dinner. And I was grateful, because how else would have I decided on a place with that name? It camouflaged a bistro that was jam-packed on a bad-weather Thursday. The rain broke before sunset, and I walked out to this rainbow.
Nice break, the only real break, in a pretty busy work week. Halfway through it I got an invitation to BlueSky, the social network all of the cool people — programmers, shape-rotators, etc. — are talking about. I never joined the Twitter exile, because the only thing worse than quitting that website would be quitting it for petty political reasons.
But I liked this alternative. Given a chance at new life and a new virtual body, like Rock Hudson in “Seconds,” I was determined not to screw it up, like Rock Hudson does in “Seconds.” This was the order in which I decided to follow people: First personal friends, then people I’d at least met once but would feel presumptuous calling “friends,” then people who I’d interacted with pleasantly on Twitter, then people I’d enjoyed listening to on podcasts.
The result? Fun enough that I’ve been using it and not Facebook notes. There is no way to send a directly message; everything you want to say must be said for the room. There are no gifs, gimmicks that can be a perfect button on someone else’s joke, but less than 1% of the time. (Do you ever want to see that gif of the floppy-haired ginger man in an awards show audience, contorting to look like an awed gargoyle? I don’t!) The first image I posted summed up my cheerful feeling about the whole thing:
Right? There wouldn’t be this interest in sea-steading some new Twitter if the old one hadn’t turned so obnoxious, all the good replies kept distant by a chud moat of paid users. But I’d rather write here than use either.
Anyway, Tallahassee. I know exactly one person who grew up there, and three people who moved to it for career reasons — politics — then stuck around. There are small cities that people describe as “hidden gems” or “real surprises,” but Tallahassee isn’t one of them. Whenever an old city is surpassed by mega-cities, people assume there’s something wrong with it, a reason that it blew a 35-year head start on Miami.
I barely got around it, and stayed right where the pleasant “governor’s walk” street ends and the dicey-looking part of town begins. An opulently decorated Chinese restaurant, closed permanently. A fake weed shop with obnoxious skater art and a sign outside promising that “WE HAVE TRIPPY MUSHROOMS.” A panhandler, the only one I’ll meet all week. (Pleasant exchange, gave him a dollar.) A billboard from Americans for Prosperity, thanking Gov. Ron DeSantis. A graveyard.
It was close to where I needed to be. The capitol itself was a dream to report from. Anyone who wasn’t going to talk on the record made it clear quickly, and anyone who would talk was accessible, down to the caucus meeting where they’d get assigned roles in floor debate. I got my story, came home, and went with my fiancé to a pre-White House Correspondents Dinner Party where we talked about electricity with Grover Norquist and about the Bible with anyone who let me talk about it.
Some explanation: I’m trying to read the entire Bible this year, and have found a few other people in my line of work, and age group, doing the same thing. Not as a religious trend. Independently, we all decided over the past year that we were getting out of touch with the western canon, and wanted to start with the greatest hit.
I was up to Kings, so we could riff on everything before that. One of us remembered the year that David Plotz wrote a Bible blog, so I dug that up and bookmarked it. After this wild fun, we called it fairly early, and came home to watch “For A Few Dollars More.”
We cleaned on Saturday, did wedding invitations on Sunday, met up with my parents and ate Khachapuri. (I got them over the raw egg part by comparing the process of mixing it with molten cheese to the heating of a fajita plate. Didn’t make sense, but made them less worried.) We rediscovered the Japanese supermarket that surprised us by surviving the pandemic, and how close it was to the gym. Fun weekend, is what I’m saying here.
The Best Thing I Read: No good choice here. If I say Ben Smith’s “Traffic,” which I mowed through in one excited sitting, you wonder: Is he being an apple-polisher for his boss? If I say Nathanael West’s “Day of the Locust,” which took three sittings, you ask: Is he trying to say something, not picking his boss’s book?
So I’ll leave the question unanswered and recommend both; West’s has been public domain for years, but I can vouch for the Library of America compendium that includes it. They paired well, too. West walks us through the lives and mania of people who are never going to achieve the success they live for, and Smith, who reported out what he didn’t personally live through, portrays incredibly successful people who dream up a new internet and fumble, handing it over to conservatives.
I finished the second collection of Harlan Ellison’s “Dream Corridor” so I could give it away. The art was more consistent than the stories, all of which Ellison introduces in splash pages where he gets at least five word-bubble paragraphs to talk. Stayed on the pulp sci-fi track with Norman Spinrad’s “Deus X,” which I’d gotten a cheap paperback copy of and since damaged in a weird enough way (a mysterious gash, about 3 mm long and one 1 mm wide) that I wouldn’t keep it. Spinrad takes gimmicks and blows them up like circus balloons. It’s not enough that the Catholic church is hiring a hacker to investigate whether uploaded consciousnesses have souls; he must be hired by the first female pope, and navigate a future coming apart from an environmental catastrophe.
The Best Thing I Watched: We had something playing in the background during most of the weekend clean, but we sat down for “La Marseillaise,” a Jean Renoir movie I’d noticed on Kanopy and kept moving around the queue. “The Dinner Game” had just finished, and the fiancé wanted to “see something else in French,” and boy, this qualified. Released between “Grand Illusion” and “Rules of the Game,” never getting the same assessment from critics, it was a fantastic surprise.
France’s national anthem was written in 1792, and sung first by a soldier named François Mireur at a rally in Marseille. Renoir’s movie invents a group of friends who witnessed the first singing of that song; we see two of them watch a crowd through a window, hearing the performance, when they’re in line to enlist. Before that, they’d helped storm the Fort Saint-Jean. Before they die, they’ll help storm the Tuileries Palace and end the monarchy. The last time we see them, they’re walking in a column as part of a conquering army, in front and and back of other ordinary people who have their own peasantry-to-revolutionary stories. Effective patriotic filmmaking. Michael Bay could never.
I finally fished “George Carlin’s American Dream,” which I’d put down and picked up for weeks. Carlin’s late-career comeback started with the 1992 “Jammin’ in New York” special and Mr. Conductor job on “Shining Time Station.” He was a righteous, grandfatherly presence if you were a 90s kid who watched a lot of “Comedy Central.” His books, like “Brain Droppings,” materialized in all of your parents’ houses, next to “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” (for her) and “Executive Decision” (for him).
Thumbing through it again, Carlin’s comedy read flat. "I’ve just about had it with all these geeky fucks who walk around listening to Walkmans.” Can you guess where that’s going? Yep, he’s going to say some shit about people who listen to music on headphones. Carlin’s observational comedy has aged badly, and his political comedy is the patient zero for clapter — the affirming response you can get for delivering mirthless comedy that celebrates oppressed people or really zings the Orange Man. His wordplay and delivery really hold up.
Unfortunately, I think the clapter material’s had the bigger impact, because Jon Stewart built his routine from it and “The Daily Show” taught a generation of college graduates that zingers could EVISCERATE and DESTROY the politics bad guys. I hear Carlin’s “you believe this shit?” mindset in more liberal rhetoric than I hear, like, Harry Truman. This was a lot to think about after a four-hour documentary, Judd Apatow’s really found his calling with these.
The Best Thing I Hear: The episode of “Bizarre Albums” about Edward Furlong’s rock album, real tuneless nightmare stuff that was jumped on the Japanese market. Incredibly hard to listen to. Recommended.
Wow man a lot of great stuff in here. Glad your enjoying bluesky I'll make sure to follow you in a few weeks once those sign up codes are everywhere. Always love a good "no Homers" reference, though the Simpsons joke that has been living in my head recently was when the football team came back from losing the big game and a mob is there to attack them and overturn the plane.
I liked your 'old city surpassed' observation, and the short sentences you used to describe the dicey part of town. I'm a little surprised you do the WHCD, since the job already eats up much of your time but good on you sticking to the grind. As someone whose read the Bible for non and religious reasons I appreciate the plotz link.
If I get smith's book I'll make sure to email him I got it on your rec so you can get the brownie points lol. Deus x sounds right up my alley and I'll see if I can find it at my local shop.
I first listened to Carlin bout 20 years ago and had the same reaction you did. I felt Stewart's worst bits embodied that, though there was one he did on food stamps during the tea party era where he transcended that and I found that maybe he had stumbled on something better style wise.
Very much gonna check out John Connors album before its all we're hearing over cb radios. BTW the executive decision reference had me thinking of my favorite line from an ebert review about the film "segal's best film if only for the fact he's barely in it". Hope next week is fun!