The opening of Top Gun: Maverick as a perfect pop song.
Power to the Ukrainian librarians.
Amazing photos from NASA’s Artemis IÂ mission to the moon.
A short history of the Avatar Papyrus logo and the amazing SNL sketch that mocked it.
No more very.
See previous year in review posts.
My view from the end of all things 2022:
(Not visible: the buffalo plaid pocket square accompanying the bowtie.)
The biggest thing that happened to my family this year was trying to have a second child. It was a long and demoralizing journey that ultimately ended successfully (due in late May), but itâll take more than a bullet point to say why.
Beyond that, we just kept on livinâ. Hereâs what that looked like this year:
More photography here and on my Instagram.
A sunbeamed leaf as seen through our car windshield:
The yin and yang of a backyard bonfire remnant:
At work in his corner office:
Cloudy with a chance of a refill:
The bubbles are back, and theyâre multiplying:
Mr. 3 Year Old is eager to shovel at the slightest dusting so weâre out there even while itâs still snowing. This results in what I call snombrĂ© (snow + ombrĂ©), where the freshly shoveled blends smoothly into the re-covered areas:
I finally listened to the original cast recording of Back to the Future: The Musical, which is making its Broadway debut in June 2023. I canât say I loved every song, though the new showtuned rendition of âPower of Loveâ is most welcome:
It also reminded me that years ago I started making my own musical version of the trilogy. Well, it wasn’t a musical per seâmore like an anthology of songs dedicated to various secondary characters.
Here are the more fully formed song ideas, which also have lyrics and a basic idea of the musical style:
Other potential song subjects I sketched out: Chester the bartender, Terry the mechanic, Farmer Peabody, and Principal Strickland.
(Not) coming to a Broadway theater near you!
Wanted to spotlight something from A.O. Scott’s interview with Steven Spielberg, where he talks about collaborating with screenwriter Tony Kushner on The Fabelmans:
Itâs hard to hold someoneâs hand over Zoom, but Tony did a good job in giving me the kind of comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life, secrets between myself and my mother that I was never ever, ever going to talk about. Neither in a written autobiography, which Iâve never done, or on film. But we got into those tender trenches.
As far as I can tell “tender trenches” isn’t an existing idiom or common phrase, so Iâm assuming that remarkably evocative phrase must have come from Spielberg himself.
Someone oughta use it in a song or poem or somethingâŠ
Alissa Wilkinson preaches the truth about movie trailers:
At best theyâll just show you stuff you probably knew anyway, or donât need to know â whoâs in the movie, whatâs on the soundtrack, the basic plot setup. Maybe the look or the tone or the vibe. But trailers arenât designed to give you a glimpse of the movie; theyâre mini-movies, designed to sell tickets (or maybe subscriptions to a streamer). And theyâre starting to feel increasingly divorced from their actual movies.
This has been a hobbyhorse of mine for a while, so I was delighted to be validated by a professional movie watcher (i.e. film critic).
Iâm so serious about not watching trailers for movies I want to see that when Iâm seeing a movie in the theater, Iâll close my eyes during the pre-show trailers (or just try to arrive after them). Iâll still hear them, but usually the audio and dialogue are abstracted enough from their use within the actual movie that it doesnât spoil anything.
Thereâs certainly an art to a great movie trailer, both in its construction and purpose. One I think about a lot is Little Children, a movie I still haven’t seen.
Itâs fine that most trailers arenât high art, but itâs not fine when they spoil what theyâre supposed to be promoting. Alissa:
Itâs surprising how many movie trailers just mess up the viewing experience for someone who wants to see the film. I watched both The Lost City (very funny) and Ticket to Paradise (intermittently funny) before I saw their trailers. Why, oh why, would you put all of your filmâs best jokes in the trailer? Does that not telegraph immense insecurity on the studioâs part? I guess once they get you in the door, theyâve got your money?
Her advice, which I co-sign:
Pick a few critics, maybe three, who you like, and rely on their writing to help you decide what to watch. Or, Google a movie to see whoâs in it, who directed it, who wrote it, and what their previous work is, and make a judgment based on that. Or, even better, just watch a movie with little to no idea what it is and see if it surprises you â one of the best experiences you could ever have.
This is pretty much all I do, a recent example being The Banshees of Inishiern. A new movie reuniting the In Bruges crew of Martin McDonagh, Colin Farrell, and Brendan Gleeson? Sold. Iâm in. I deliberately avoided all information about it and went in fresh. Even though I liked-it-not-loved-it, it was fully worth the experience of encountering a movie without any preconceived notions beyond an earned trust in the artists to deliver something worth seeing.
The latest annual Vanity Fair/Billie Eilish interview is out.
How Peter Jackson’s AI is remixing The Beatles.
An ode to the “prescient obsolescence” of cassette tapes.
Ban TikTok.
As parents of littles know, going to the library with kids is a very different experience than going solo. (âTraveling with young kids is not a vacation, it is a trip.â)
When in chaperone mode, if Iâm lucky I can wrangle the three year old for just long enough to let me quickly browse the new movies and grab a book if I know what Iâm looking for. After that, heâs off to the kids area and entirely unconcerned about how I’d like to use the library.
On the rare occasions I’m able to go on my own, it’s an luxurious experience: slowly scanning the new books and movies and CDs for anything eye-catching, venturing into the book sale room. It can help sand off the jagged edges of the day and become therapeutic for an introverted library lover like me.
Which made me think: libraries + therapy = librerapy. Don’t know if anyone has capitalized on this concept yet, but it’s just sitting thereâŠ
Athena. Come for the gangbusters opening 10 minutesâstay for the tense, heart-pounding drama of Children of Men-meets-The Battle of Algiers in a French apartment complex. (Streaming on Netflix.)
The End of Education by Neil Postman. My third Postman book after Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly. Would probably rank it below those two but still a barnburner.
The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick. The story of discovering the Rosetta Stone (thanks Napoleon!) and the decades it took to decipher it, thus unlocking the secrets of ancient Egypt to modernity.
The Hunt for Red October. Finally got around to see this. Enjoyed it but still have to give the ’90s submarine action thriller edge to Crimson Tide.
Kikiâs Delivery Service. Been going through the Miyazaki oeuvre with the 3 year old and some, like this one, are first watches for both of us. Love being able to show him animated movies with a completely different pace and style than what he’s used to with Bluey/Curious George/Disney, etc.
The Worldâs Worst Assistant by Sona Movsessian. Sona is a key part of the success of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast so I’m glad she’s able to cash in on it.
Why Fish Donât Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Story of Life by Lulu Miller. A remarkable memoir/biography hybrid that reminded me of The Feather Thief with its nature/animals obsessives at the center and the ethical dilemmas they encounter (and create).
I just finished a rewatch of the Lord of the Rings trilogy extended editions, something I was saving for after I finished season one of The Rings of Power. And Iâm glad I did because I was able to appreciate the trilogy that much more, with the events of Middle-earthâs earlier age as captured in the series adding an extra weight and significance to what happens in the movies.
Some stray thoughts on each movie as I went through themâŠ
Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers:
The Return of the King
A coder recreated the “digital rain” from The Matrix.Â
A flautist playing Lord of the Rings music in a giant tunnel.
Folding clothes is a scam.
More photography here and on my Instagram.
The view of the capitol building in Madison from the Madison Childrenâs Museum rooftop:
Mr. 3 Year Old and his cousin on the slide at the Madison zoo:
Stumbled upon this view atop a slide at a nearby suburban park:
Ascending a magically wooded tunnel of stairs adjacent to a sledding hill at another nearby park:
More stairs, this time at the DuPage Childrenâs Museum:
Clive Thompson on the appeal of microhistories:
When you drill down deeply into a single subject, you nearly always realize: Holy crap, this is more complex than Iâd have thought. This is true of just about any subject, right? And itâs exactly the opposite feeling you get from a âbigâ book, which strives to make you feel like you understand how Everything Is Explained By This One Specific Idea. When you gloss over a subject from 50,000 feet in the air, as those big books often do, you can feel a sense of dangerous knowingness. Youâve been insulated from the gnarly details; you think you know whatâs going on, but you really donât.
In contrast, when you dive obsessively into a single, narrow subject, it humbles you about about the state of your overall knowledge. If thereâs this much to know about cod â or pencils, or champagne and salt and ice and gramophones? Then you become usefully aware not of your knowledge but of your overall ignorance. Youâre reminded that, as ever, that the devilâs in the details.
To paraphrase Rick from Casablanca, when it comes to history books Iâm a true (small-d) democrat. Iâll take âem long or short, expansive or narrow. But I totally share Thompsonâs love of microhistories. I just finished one recently for a book club (American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella) and have enjoyed many more, including: