Year: 2018
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Long Quotes on the ‘Prairie Fires’
Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder is about 150 pages too long, and spends a lot more time with Laura’s daughter Rose than I expected or desired. But the first third of the book, with the Ingalls family and Laura as a young adult, was quite illuminating. (Great Scott am…
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Now available: ‘The Wonder Of It All’, a new album of old demos
Surprise! I just released a new album of old demos called The Wonder Of It All, now available on SoundCloud. Since 2010, when I first got my MacBook Pro, I’ve used GarageBand to record song ideas. Some of them remain fragments and half-songs, but many have become full songs. This album is a collection of…
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LEGO my DeLorean
Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine… out of LEGO? While rearranging the apartment in advance of Baby, I was sorting our small games collection and stumbled upon the unopened LEGO Back to the Future set my dad got me a few years ago. I gotta say, it was…
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Tale from an unknown typist
Once in a while I stop by a nearby antique rental shop that is stocked full with all kinds of vintage junk. And in its musty, cavernous basement, among the rotary phones, LPs, radios, and TVs, is a wall of typewriters. I already sifted through most of them awhile back: varying conditions and styles, some…
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Recent Views
More photography here. And on my Instagram. Pretty cool frost patterns on my car window (I call this one “Frozen Fractals All Around”): A few shots of my building’s backyard in the snow: Scraping off the car one morning, the snow shavings fell in a pattern that encircled the car. They contrasted well with the dark…
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The Seventh Seal
Because the only screengrabs of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal I’ve ever seen are of a knight playing chess with Death, I really thought that would be the whole movie. Just a Very Serious Film that would be more film-buff obligation than an enjoyable experience. But wow, am I glad to be mistaken. It’s a profound, disturbing,…
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Paper Only! No TVs
This sign is posted in the parking lot outside my work. Why “NO TV’s”? A while ago someone left an old TV next to what they thought was a dumpster for trash but is actually a dumpster for paper recycling. But only people who had seen the TV there before it got picked up will…
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New words for obscure sorrows
I love learning new words. (And writing them down.) All the better when they are invented words. John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a collection of words Koenig has created—inspired by real etymology—for specific emotions that don’t have precise English words to describe them. Tell me you haven’t felt every one of these: Sonder:…
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Big Mouth of Little Lies
My wife and I recently binged season 2 of Big Mouth and season 1 of Big Little Lies, and I noticed a key bit of thematic overlap between the two. Big Mouth, Netflix’s obscene, irreverent, gut-bustingly funny cartoon about kids going through puberty, introduced the Shame Wizard character in season 2. Voiced by a slithery…
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Refer Madness: Always on call
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. You know how doctors are always on call? Someone has a heart attack on an airplane or chokes at a restaurant, and doctors, nurses, or other care providers jump to the rescue, even if they are off the clock. Even medical students count: I…
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Gary Rydstrom on Rear Window’s ingenious sound design
Northwestern’s Block Museum hosted a screening of Rear Window that was introduced by Gary Rydstrom, Oscar-winning sound designer for Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Jurassic Park, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and many other movies you love. Though I didn’t stay for the movie (I’ve already seen it on the big screen), I was eager to hear Rydstrom’s perspective…
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A new typist in the family
Since I don’t have a Hermes Baby, our now un-Disneyfied toy typewriter will have to do as a stand-in. Excited for when baby’s hands will be strong enough to type. Perhaps I should start typing close to the womb so he can get used to the sound, and then maybe the clacking will be soothing…
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Boom Town
In his new book Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Sam Anderson writes about how Oklahoma’s storm chasers, though overly sensational and ratings-hungry, still provide crucial insight about Oklahoma’s notoriously destructive tornadoes: Radar data, like starlight, is information about the past: it tells you about the distant object it bounced off seconds or…
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Refer Madness: Hate the change, love the library
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. A while back, my department’s email received this message: “What happened to the CLASSIC CATALOG? I am old, I hate change, but love my library. Thanks.” I had to laugh. Funny but dead serious, succinct and self-aware, this missive captures a very real conundrum:…
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Hearts Beat Loud
“You gotta be brave before you can be good.” So says a love interest to Sam (Kiersey Clemons), a shy but talented musician who reluctantly performs with her dad (Nick Offerman) in Hearts Beat Loud, the new indie film from Brett Haley. It’s a little High Fidelity, a little Once (or more like its inferior…