Just A Peck 0023 // Pynchon, Panahi, Warehouse Work
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WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT THIS WEEK
QUICK LINKS
- Retirement Plan
- Ideal Conditions Calculator
- Size of Life
- The skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey
- The Best Movie Posters of 2025
- Endless Word Search
- The control panel out of a Multi-Terra Helio-Cell Vehicle - 407
- A Muppet Carol of the Bells
- The Twenty Juiciest Behind the Scenes Documentaries about Filmmaking
JOURNAL
We had our good friends, Tom and Brandy, over for board games. Brandy took home “First Purrr-ize” (the cat trophy that switches hands each session) for absolutely dominating in Monikers.
On Friday and Saturday I headed to the Twin Cities to help deal with holiday volume in our warehouse. In the 13+ years I’ve been a part of this company, I’ve never actually participated in picking before. It was more fun that I would have guessed, but after eight straight hours of standing and walking on concrete, my back hurts more than my feet.
What I watched:
- It Was Just an Accident (2025). Jafar Panahi's Palme d'Or winning drama about living in a theocratic dictatorship, corruption, torture, trauma, revenge, empathy...and it's somehow incredibly funny? Squeaky prosthetic legs, wild dogs, and bribes paid by credit card machine.
- Peter Hujar's Day (2025). A lovely experimental piece shot on grainy 16mm and consisting almost entirely of the transcript of a conversation in which photographer Peter Hujar recounts, in detail, what he did the previous day in fascinatingly observed detail. Highlights include photographing a prickly Alan Ginsberg, a phone call with Susan Sontag, multiple naps, watching someone draw on the back of a business card while waiting, making a sandwich, and watching a sex worker put on makeup using the mirror of a truck. Ben Wishaw is outstanding.
- Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962). I love Agnes Varda so much, and revisiting her masterpiece Cléo... over the years gets more rewarding every time. This time, I learned that the handsome young pianist was played by Michel Legrand, a three-time Academy Award-winning composer, conductor, and pianist who composed the music for (among many other films), The Thomas Crown Affair, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Yentl (for which he won one of his Oscars).
- 28 Years Later (2025). The third film in the "28" zombie series by Danny Boyle, somewhat disappointingly released only twenty two years after the original. New zombie types (other than the original "fast" ones): Slow-Lows and Alphas, a bone temple, an iodine-smeared Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, and a strong debut from a young Geordie actor named Alfie Williams. Sort of a Part One, I guess? 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will continue the story next year.
What I’m reading:
- FINISHED: Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon for book club. I liked this one quite a bit more than Vineland although it started to lose me a bit three-quarters of the way through as it became increasingly gonzo. Milwaukee gumshoes, submarines in Lake Michigan, the Al Capone of Cheese, nazi bowlers, swing bands, bomb-delivering "elves", "asport" vs "apport", gaudy lamps, a pint-sized golem with a machine gun arm, auto-gyros, and Europe on the precipice of World War II.
- The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus
MEMORIES
Five Years Ago:
Five years ago, I was shooting and editing the Playhouse Family Theater’s socially-distanced virtual holiday production, largely created by the students and the Artistic Director at the time, Amber Burns. These kids went on to be superstars, so it’s fun to look back at the photos of them all looking so young.
Ten Years Ago:
Ten years ago I was writing a comic book series. I need to get back to writing as soon as possible.
MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Whether you are creating a novel or a painting or a film, you are engaged in an act of communication between you and your audience. What you create doesn't have to be utterly unlike every prior piece of art in human history to be valuable; the fact that you're the one who is saying it, the fact that it derives from your unique life experience and arrives at a particular moment in the life of whoever is seeing your work, is what makes it new. We are all products of what has come before us, but it's by living our lives in interaction with others that we bring meaning into the world. That is something that an auto-complete algorithm can never do, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
-- Ted Chiang
That’s it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!