Just A Peck 0065 // Beckett, Writing, Family

Just A Peck
Welcome to the latest issue of Just A Peck. I'm glad you're here!

JOURNAL

Last Sunday, my friend Jason and I made a day trip to the Twin Cities to see two shows — Indecent at Theater Latté Da and Waiting for Godot at the Guthrie. I loved both productions. Go see them if you have the chance! It was a long but lovely day. Jason and I never run out of things to talk about.
The Indecent program, with a pile of suitcases and a typewriter on the cover, held up in front of the stage at Theater Latté Da
The orange Waiting for Godot program held up in front of the Guthrie stage, a bare tree in a pool of light
A mirrored-ceiling selfie of Justin and Jason riding the Guthrie escalator with their Godot programs, surrounded by other theatergoers
In addition to my art class, I'm also simultaneously enrolled in two writing classes which overlap for a little while, so a lot of my free time this week was spent writing. I'm really loving all my classes, and it's nice to have the writing class obligation to get my pages written every day. I'm writing longhand on my reMarkable tablet, and then (since they're both playwriting classes) typing those pages into Fade In once or twice per week, which also allows me to make some first-pass edits, but at a distance of a few days.
Two pages of a script in progress in Fade In, including the start of Scene Two
On Saturday, we drove down to Chippewa Falls — not because that's where Jack Dawson and Annie Hall are from, but because it's where Jody's sister lives, We were gathering at her farm for a family reunion. Kaylee, Corey (and Lyra), Alex, and Kelsie were able to join us, along with lots of Jody's siblings, niblings, and in-laws. We had good food, took a hay ride, sat around a giant fire in a tractor wheel, and enjoyed each other's company. And to top it off, the kids all headed north afterwards to join us for the rest of the weekend in Duluth!
A big group photo of the extended family gathered in front of the farmhouse garage and eating cookies
Family members sitting on hay bales on a flatbed wagon, ready for the hay ride, with the tractor and barn behind them
Jody and her siblings posing together in the farmhouse driveway
Our family in our driveway, fall colors all around
The family walking single file down a leaf-covered trail at Hartley
Mom, Kaylee, and Jody posing on a fenced footbridge along the Hartley trail

WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK

Sing Sing poster
Sing Sing (2023). A beautiful, moving, funny, inspiring true story. Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin were outstanding. Many of the cast members were actually involved in the RTA program while incarcerated, and they were also great. The power of art to remind us of what it means to be human. Is there a better Hamlet/Freddy Krueger crossover?
Digger poster
Digger (2026). The firestorm of disagreement around this one will likely be intense (I'm already getting the sense that people are readying their pitchforks), but I hope people see it. It's a little messy and deeply discomforting at times, but it's also really funny, and it's one of the biggest swings for a major motion picture that I've seen in quite a while. The entire cast is great (although I would have loved a little more Sandra Hüller and Emma D'Arcy). I can't think of another movie that better captures what it feels like to be alive in this insane, maddening, terrifying, unbelievably stupid moment in history. Whoever is funding projects like this with what I can only assume is the full understanding that they will never recoup their costs: thank you. More original, messy, bold, idiosyncratic movies like this, please!

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK

In Progress:

MEMORIES

5 years ago — After getting Spamalot open, I took off on a week-long road trip to visit every Meow Wolf (there were only three at the time: Santa Fe, Vegas, and Denver). More have opened since then, so it might be time to start planning a second trip to get caught up.
A car selfie of Jeff, Daniel, Robert, and me setting out on the road trip
A masked Justin in front of the glowing Mega Mart entrance at Meow Wolf Las Vegas
Daniel seated before a huge glowing mandala of lights and eyeballs
A dark room full of anatomical hearts on pedestals, each lit by its own spotlight
Justin in a mask against a dizzying black-and-white concentric wave pattern projected across his face
Daniel, Robert, and Jeff lounging under the AREA15 sign in Las Vegas
Grocery shelves of milk and juice cartons dissolving into streaks of colored stripes inside the Omega Mart
A neon geodesic web glowing red and orange above a circuit board of cyan lines
Robert, Daniel, and Justin in matching green sunglasses at a restaurant table

WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT

I'm part of a really good book club, and when it started nine years ago, one of our first picks was Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad. Egan's most recent novel, The Candy House, is kind of a sequel, and we'll be discussing it next weekend. In a wild set of circumstances, Jennifer Egan herself will be joining us via Zoom to discuss it!
Jennifer Egan seated on a wooden ladder in front of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves
Great googley-moogley! Every Frame a Painting is back!
Four frames from Eadweard Muybridge's galloping horse sequence

MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I think the big lesson I've learned is that it's very hard to write satire in America because almost immediately, whatever you've thought of turns out to come true, or sometimes it already was true."

— Jennifer Egan

That's it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!

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