Favorite Films of 2002

I’m creating my annual movie lists retroactively. See all of them.

Looking at the full list of 2002 releases brought up lots of random memories:

  • going to Changing Lanes and Signs in the theater with my dad
  • seeing the original teaser trailer for Spider-Man on TV in fall 2001 that featured the World Trade Center towers
  • watching The Hours in a high school English class twice as an exercise in close-reading a film
  • rewatching The Hot Chick enough times with my sisters to have the “boys are cheats and liars” chant memorized

Ah, to be young again. This year also saw me transition from middle school to high school. My friend Tim and I were deep into making stop-motion and live-action short films using the LEGO Studios Steven Spielberg MovieMaker Set camera and software. Titles included Doctor Dreadful, The Penington Estate, and Dino Dan—all esteemed Oscar-worthy pictures.

One day I’ll excavate the DVDs full of these heavily pixelated treasures. Until then, on to the list…

1. Minority Report

This was one film, in addition to the LOTR trilogy, that really hooked me into the power and possibilities of film.

2. Catch Me If You Can

Only five years after Titanic made Leonardo DiCaprio a global sensation, this and Gangs of New York (released the same week) confirmed him as a sensational actor as well.

3. Signs

Man, the jump-scares of the aliens on the roof and in the Brazilian street got me real good in the theater. Though The Sixth Sense is great and Unbreakable is his best, this is peak Shyamalan.

4. In America

I’m glad I saw this later on, in college, when I was able to appreciate just how marvelous it is.

5. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Even the least of the LOTR trilogy has excellent moments, namely “Forth Eorlingas!” and “by rights we shouldn’t even be here”.

6. My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Thanks to the late Michael Constantine, aka Gus, for several iconic catchphrases from this movie that I still deploy occasionally, including “put some Windex on it” and “so there you go”.

7. The Ring

This movie is sort of Patient Zero for my dualistic relationship with horror films: I don’t like willingly subjecting myself to horrific content that will disturb my mind and sleep, but I also greatly appreciate supremely crafted suspense films.

8. The Count of Monte Cristo

I’ll admit to not having rewatched this in a while, but my enduring impression is that it is, as Roger Ebert wrote, “the kind of adventure picture the studios churned out in the Golden Age—so traditional it almost feels new.” I also had a crush on Dagmara Domińczyk as Mercédès.

9. Jackass: The Movie

This and subsequent Jackass movies are in my Mount Rushmore of making me cry-laugh.

10. The Bourne Identity

Sure, it inspired too many mediocre shaky-cam knockoffs, but there ain’t nothin’ like Matt Damon and Clive Owen facing off in the countryside.

Honorable mentions:

  • Gangs of New York
  • Punch-Drunk Love
  • Road to Perdition
  • Panic Room
  • We Were Soldiers
  • Spider-Man

December 23, 2021 3 Comments

The long and winding genius of the Pauls (McCartney and Simon)

While trolling for something to read on Hoopla, I came upon Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. It’s only available as an audiobook (or “audio biography”), and wisely so since so much of it depends on hearing Simon play his songs amidst his conversations with Gladwell. In that way it’s more like a limited podcast series than a book.

Whatever you call it, Gladwell’s intention was to interrogate the phenomenon of creative genius, and pinpoint how and why it applied to Simon, whose long and wide-ranging musical career set him in contrast to other contemporary artists who may have had higher peaks (The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan) but didn’t produce at the same level of quality over decades as Simon has.

As Gladwell writes:​

We tend to be much more caught in the peaks of an artist’s career. But why? The true definition of creative genius—to my mind, at least—is someone who is capable of creating something sublime and then, when that moment passes, capable of reconfiguring their imagination and returning to the table with something wholly different and equally sublime.​

Whether Simon meets this criteria is debatable, though Gladwell makes a good case for it.

The other Paul

Regardless, the book found me at a propitious time since I just finished watching and listening to the other famous ’60s singer-songwriter Paul in the documentary The Beatles: Get Back. The film captures McCartney in his first sublime period, which coincided with the transition between The Beatles and his solo work.

His career as a whole is eerily similar to Simon’s: incredible creative and commercial success within a popular group throughout the 1960s, followed by an acrimonious breakup in 1970 and then decades of steady solo output of variable quality.

(Conan O’Brien even had a bit involving Lorne Michaels called “Which Paul is he talking about?” since Lorne is friends with both.)

Per Gladwell’s formulation, both men created something sublime within a relatively condensed cultural moment, then reconfigured their output after that moment passed. Whether those later albums were “wholly different and equally sublime” depends on where you look.

If it’s a choice between The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, I choose the Fab Four all the way. (My cheeky Better The Beatles series notwithstanding.)

But solo-wise, I think Simon’s exceptional ‘70s work combined with the highlights of Graceland (1986), The Rhythm of the Saints (1992), and So Beautiful or So What (2011) give him the edge over McCartney, whose early solo work was definitely the best of all the ex-Beatles (though not perfect), but didn’t approach the sublime until Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005) and Memory Almost Full (2007).

Seeing Paul McCartney at Wrigley Field just over 10 years ago remains an all-time life highlight. (By seeing I mean standing outside Wrigley listening and singing along and barely catching a glimpse of him on the Jumbotron. But still.) I regret not being able to see Paul Simon live, as I imagine it would have been just as good but delightfully different. Which, perhaps, is what Gladwell would consider it too.

December 21, 2021 1 Comment

Typewriters are better than Bitcoin

Last week I visited a Salvation Army I’d never tried before for some quick typewriter hunting. Between two late-period electric Smith Coronas I spotted a silver fiberglass case that screamed Olympia. And sure enough, I popped it open and beheld this 1959 SM3 (photo taken post-cleanup):

The combo of gray body and brown keys was not my favorite. And despite the carriage being unlocked and the general appearance of working order, I just couldn’t get the typebars to strike. I try to make sure typewriters I buy at least type decently before I commit, especially since this was going to be a refurbish-and-resell.

But it was $20, and since I couldn’t do an autopsy right there on the shelves between the kitchen appliances and stereos, I decided it was worth the risk knowing I’d make a profit regardless.

I brought it to the checkout. Then, because either the cashier misread the tag or there was a sale I didn’t know about, she rang it up as $10.

Merry Christmas to me, I thought. I could barely hide my smile as I left.

Mr. 2 Years Old was eager to help me clean and fix it, and was especially keen on using the compressed air can to blow out an impressive amount of gunk.

The typing issue, I eventually discovered, was due to the margin release bar blocking the typebars from striking even when it wasn’t activated. I’m guessing it’s due to the mechanism slowly loosening over the years? Regardless, giving it a little bump set the typebars free and made it sellable.

And I did sell it yesterday via Facebook Marketplace for $100, making me a 900% return. Typewriters—better than Bitcoin!

December 19, 2021 Add Comment

Literacy as a religious act

From the remarkable book How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill:

“Like the Jews before them, the Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act. In a land where literacy had previously been unknown, in a world where the old literate civilizations were sinking fast beneath successive waves of barbarism, the white Gospel page, shining in all the little oratories of Ireland, acted as a pledge: the lonely darkness had been turned into light, and the lonely virtue of courage, sustained through all the centuries, had been transformed into hope.”

December 17, 2021 Add Comment

Let It Abbey Road

I’m two-thirds of the way through The Beatles: Get Back, the 8-hour documentary on Disney+. It inspired me to add another installment of my Better The Beatles series, wherein I trim the fat from their discography to create super albums of only their best stuff. (Previously: Sgt. Pepper’s Magical Mystery Tour, The (Single) White Album, and Ram McCartney.)

Since both Abbey Road and Let It Be contain songs created during the same period, here’s my track listing for a hypothetical Let It AbBey Road:

  1. Get Back
  2. Come Together
  3. Two Of Us
  4. Something
  5. Dig A Pony
  6. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
  7. Oh! Darling
  8. I’ve Got A Feeling
  9. Octopus’s Garden
  10. Let It Be
  11. Here Comes The Sun
  12. Because
  13. For You Blue
  14. You Never Give Me Your Money
  15. Polythene Pam
  16. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
  17. Golden Slumbers
  18. Carry That Weight
  19. The End

The omissions from Abbey Road weren’t terribly tough: “Sun King”, “Mean Mr. Mustard”, and “Her Majesty” are slights, and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is too long. 

Similarly, it was pretty easy to remove “One After 909”, “I Me Mine”, “Dig It”, and “Maggie Mae” from Let It Be because they aren’t good. “Across The Universe” and “The Long And Winding Road” are good, I guess, but also tonal outliers from the rest.

You’re welcome.

December 15, 2021 Add Comment

Tales from a two year old

The following is a short story my almost-3 year old told me while we sat in bed resting between wrestling bouts. I dictated it into my phone as he told it to preserve for posterity:

The gasoline pulled up to the ghost in the starry nighttime sky. The ghost pulled up to a very big bumbly ghost skeleton. The wizard came to the ghost and said something different to the skeleton. It pulled up to a very big nose who said, “hello!” The door pulled up to a very big light and the light said something very funny. The light did a very silly thing with his friend. And all his friends laughed at his silly dance. The window pulled up to a very very very very big book and said something different, said “hello!” The sweatshirt pulled up to a very big shelf, and do you know what the shelf said? It said, “how are you doing today, book?” The papa pillow pulled up to the TV and said, “call head!” By Michael Moore. The end.

A few notes:

  • For the second half he was basically looking around the room for objects to include, a la Brick in Anchorman
  • He has never heard of the documentarian Michael Moore, so it’s clearly some other Michael Moore
  • Clearly things “pulling up to” other things is from a book or show or something he’s seen recently but I don’t know what

After reading the story back to him the next day, he dropped another on me:

The hook came up to the long long snail. It traveled to the great big monster and said “Poo!” The big bumblebee went to the little bumblebee, and you know what it said? “I want some birdseed! I want some birdseed!” The vent traveled to a very big tissue. The cabinet came to the very big clock and said “I wish there was some very big seed for me.” Then the light came to the very big frame and said “I want a sweater to put on!” Wapa wapa and a zaymoo, the end.

Enough said.

December 8, 2021 1 Comment

Gangsters for children

Magazine mashups from Entertainment Weekly, November 2019. More here.

December 3, 2021 Add Comment

Media of the moment

An ongoing series

Everything my son consumes. Obvs.

Love on the Spectrum. Just finished the second season of this heart-warming and instructive Australian reality dating show on Netflix featuring people on the autism spectrum. The delightful dynamic between Michael and his mom should be its own show.

Abbey Road. I previously wrote about encountering the super deluxe remastered edition of Sgt. Pepper’s and, by Jove, it happened again with my favorite Beatles record on a recent drive home. Luscious.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Finally read Miller’s debut novel after loving Circe, and she is now two for two in my book.

The Great British Baking Show. The current season is only the second we’ve seen, the first being last year’s COVID-bubble season. Mr. Almost-3 has started saying “Mmmmm, yummmm” every time the food drawings appear, which is (almost) always correct.

The Green Knight. Thought this was just OK for a large chunk of it, until the ending, which made me want to rewatch it immediately.

Witness for the Prosecution. Similar to The Green Knight, this was fine for a while until the end, when it became great. The acting was a bit over-the-top, even for the 1950s, but Charles Laughton was the tops throughout.

Shiva Baby. Nothing quite like seeing a writer-director absolutely nail the cringey-funny tone required to make this work.

Dune. Started watching as a Dune newbie and finished as a believer. Don’t think I’ll read the books though.

November 20, 2021 Add Comment

Introducing ‘One Typed Quote’

Here’s a new fun thing from me: One Typed Quote, an online catalog of short, share-worthy quotes typewritten onto paper and lovingly flung onto the internet.

This new venture was inspired by the blog One Typed Page, created last year by Typewriter Review purveyor Daniel Marleau. I pitched OTQ to Daniel as an offshoot of OTP and he jumped onboard.

For years I’ve been collecting quotes I like from books, movies, songs, podcasts, and other random sources. I never knew what I’d do with them; it just felt good to save them for reference, librarian that I am.

One Typed Quote lets me share these quotes quickly and easily, in a visually interesting way, using tools I deeply admire. The blend of analog and digital also befits my personality and general ethos of life.

How to participate

Follow and contribute on Instagram:

Don’t have a typewriter? Email your favorite quotes to onetypedquote@gmail.com and I’ll turn them into OTQ treasures.

Have your typewriter (platen) ready to roll? Here’s how to join the merry coterie of quoters:

  1. Pick a quote. From a book, movie, song, podcast—doesn’t matter so long as it’s brief and beautiful.
  2. Type it. On paper, with a typewriter. Include the author and source material.
  3. Share it. Take a pic (square is ideal) while it’s still in the typewriter, then post it on Instagram with the hashtag #onetypedquote and the typewriter’s make/model/year (if known) in the caption.
  4. Or email it. Send the pic and caption to onetypedquote@gmail.com to be shared on the @onetypedquote account.

That’s it. My hope is this will inspire a steady stream of captivating quotes from a variety of sources, but I have no expectations other than having fun sharing typewritten bits of wisdom I’ve encountered and appreciated myself.

Happy typings!

November 17, 2021 3 Comments

My son’s media of the moment

A spinoff of an ongoing series

Library books galore. Between my work library and the two public libraries close to home, we’ve established a pretty regular rotation of titles old and new. Recent hits include The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak and Bone by Bone: Comparing Animal Skeletons by Sara Levine.

Bluey. The first-ever clip I saw of Bluey was the claw game and it made me literally LOL. The best kids TV show, period.

“Dem Bones”. He really got into spooky season this year. He’s especially obsessed with all things bones and skeletons, so this old traditional was and remains a hit.

Pixar movies. Approaching 3 years old, he’s enjoyed and (mostly) stuck with the Disney/Pixar movies we’ve tried with him so far. My guess at his ranking (starting with the most loved): WALL-E, Moana, Luca, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, Coco. Still not sure how far back in the Disney canon I want to bring him even as he gets older. There’s a lot of good stuff—though I would say that as a Millennial, wouldn’t I?—but in general Pixar is higher quality and a lot less dicey.

The Okee Dokee Brothers. Specifically “Haul Away Joe” and “Jamboree” and a few other songs on seemingly infinite rotation. Good thing I love them too.

November 16, 2021 1 Comment

Presidential trivia pursuit

One of the chief pleasures of my presidential biography mission is the accumulation of historical trivia.

These factoids aren’t good for much except trivia nights and some Jeopardy! categories, but they fascinate me nevertheless—and illustrate that history is a lot richer than just a boring list of dates in a textbook.

A few tidbits I’ve gathered:

  • James Buchanan is the only bachelor president
  • Woodrow Wilson was the first president since John Adams to deliver his State of the Union address before Congress in person
  • Herbert Hoover was the first president to have a phone on his desk
  • Theodore Roosevelt chased down boat thieves for 36 hours straight in the Dakota Territory while also reading Anna Karenina
  • Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel
  • The only two 20th century presidents not to golf while in office: Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter (heroes)
  • Per Thomas Jefferson’s utopian vision of self-government, the University of Virginia (which Jefferson founded) had no president until 1904
  • To avoid attending the Republican National Convention in summer 1928, Calvin Coolidge stayed in northern Wisconsin and fished on the Brule River; Herbert Hoover visited and they fished together
  • James Polk’s first client as a lawyer in 1820 was his father for public fighting; he secured his release for a $1 fine
  • George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention but, perhaps unsurprisingly, spoke only once
  • James Madison technically had two birthdates due to the change from Julian to Gregorian calendar systems
  • As an 8 year old, John Quincy Adams personally witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill
  • John Tyler was in 1844 the first president to decline to seek a second term
  • William McKinley and Rutherford B. Hayes served in the same Ohio regiment during the Civil War
  • Hayes’ wife Lucy hosted the first White House Easter Egg Roll in 1878 after Congress banned it at Capitol
  • Harry Truman was the first vice president to have Secret Service protection, and the first president to invite his successor (Eisenhower) to the White House post-election

November 13, 2021 Add Comment

Moon moon moon, shining bright

I was playing soccer on the front lawn this evening with Mr. Two Years Old when the moon, waxing crescent, caught his curious eye in the encroaching darkness.

I asked him if he knew why the moon glowed. We’ve read books about it before, but he said he didn’t. I explained in the simplest language how it was sunlight he was seeing, and that it only hit part of the moon because it was round, like a ball.

After my brief lecture, he grabbed the ball and brought it next to one of the solar-powered lawn lights that illuminates our front walkway. “I want to make the soccer ball glow,” he said.

It was an excellent opportunity for an object lesson. We looked at how the ball was lit up only on one side, where the light was coming from.

I managed to photograph the view before he kicked the ball away for more scrimmaging:

I never know how much of what I explain actually makes sense to him or sticks in his mind. But I should know by now never to underestimate his intelligence and curiosity, because two year olds are made to be learners.

November 9, 2021 1 Comment

My favorite presidential biographies (so far)

Ever since reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s excellent Abraham Lincoln biography Team of Rivals years ago, I’ve been fascinated by the lives and times of U.S. presidents. So much so that I made a goal to read a substantive biography of every U.S. president.

This goal isn’t motivated by politics. If anything the legislative minutiae, policy discussions, and battlefield play-by-plays are usually the dullest parts of these books. I’m simply fascinated by the peculiar power of the presidency and the stories of the men who have wielded it—even if (and when) they don’t live up to our twenty-first century expectations.

Any biography I read will teach me something, regardless of the likeability of the subject or overall quality of the book. But the best of them combine compelling prose, insightful commentary, and strong storytelling that fairly recount the person’s life while contextualizing and sometimes criticizing their decisions or behavior.

With 19 down out of 45 currently, I’m nearing halfway through this literary mission, so I thought it would be a good time to check in with what I’ve read so far.

I’ve mostly stayed away from more recent presidents, preferring books that have at least a little historical distance from their subjects. (Outside of George Bush Sr., the most recent president I’ve tackled is Harry Truman.) I also endeavor to only read meaty, single-volume biographies that make this expedition feel substantive and worthwhile (if slightly masochistic).

All that said, here are a few titles that have stood out thus far, in no particular order. 

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President by Ari Hoogenboom

For a long time the only things I knew about Hayes were that his heavily disputed 1876 election ended the Reconstruction era in the former Confederacy, and that he was one of those forgotten presidents between Lincoln and Roosevelt with cool facial hair. But I soon learned that Hayes was a lawyer who became an abolitionist and defended escaped slaves, a brigadier general in the Civil War who was shot in the arm in the Battle of South Mountain yet still led his men to victory, and a post-presidency education reform advocate who helped found Ohio State University. Not bad for a forgotten one-term president.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

This is the first (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) book in a trilogy about Teddy Roosevelt, who might be the most impressive president we’ve ever had. It chronicles the crowded years of his pre-presidency life, which began as a sickly yet bright child who by 25 became a best-selling author and bull-headed New York legislator, then continued as a young widower who served as a Dakota sheriff, New York City police commissioner, Navy secretary, Army colonel, and New York governor, all before becoming president at 42. Energetic, fun-loving, and extremely intelligent, Roosevelt is a biographer’s dream and one of my history crushes.

John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul Nagel

From birth, John Quincy Adams lived within a shadow. His father, John, the legendary Founding Father and fiery orator, pushed John Quincy hard in his studies and inspired him to greatness. But the greatness JQA achieved—e.g. speaking multiple languages, serving as George Washington’s minister to the Netherlands at age 26—always seemed to forestall his desire to live a quiet, scholarly life away from politics and his father’s prodding. Historian Paul Nagel captures all of this in addition to Adams’ unimpressive term as president and surprising final act as an ardent abolitionist congressman. (Another bit of trivia: He was probably the only person to have known both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln personally.)

The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

The standard photo-op of a new president standing cordially with all of his living predecessors is common, but that wasn’t always so. Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman created the so-called “former presidents club” in the 1950s, and since then the relationships formed behind the scenes between members have often been surprising (like with rivals-turned-best-friends George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton) and sometimes subversive (like when Richard Nixon deliberately sabotaged Lyndon Johnson’s peace talks in Vietnam to aid his own 1968 campaign). The book is a fascinating account of how the private and public lives in “the world’s most exclusive fraternity” have interweaved throughout modern political history.

Other favorites:

November 7, 2021 4 Comments

Favorite Films of 2003

I’m creating my annual movie lists retroactively. See all of them.

We’re now deep into an era that was, at least for me, dominated by DVDs. I seemed to get a new one or two every birthday and Christmas, and rented aplenty from Family Video or Blockbuster. My movie collection has changed a lot since then, but I’ve never stopped collecting physical media.

On top of more frequent moviegoing as a freshman going on sophomore, I also started paying more attention to the Oscars. Part of this was printing out a ballot to track the guesses of my friends and classmates. My claim to infamy: being the only person to predict an upset Best Picture win for Lost in Translation—this in the year of the 11-win sweep by Return of the King. I was glad to be wrong.

On to the list.

1. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

My friend and fellow LOTR nerd Tim and I were in the same high school chemistry class, and we spent the entire fall semester counting down the days until this movie premiered. All the haters who complain about the multiple endings are fools of a Took. See also: my Top 5 Lord of the Rings moments and other appreciations.

2. Finding Nemo

Not unlike the LOTR trilogy, this film—#6 in my Pixar rankings—is a journey. I haven’t watched it since becoming a father, so I wonder if and how my feelings about it will change with a rewatch.

3. School of Rock

Wrote about this a while back.

4. Matchstick Men

I don’t think I’d seen many con movies at the time, so this one made a strong impression. Nic Cage is the perfect balance of quirk and cool, and Sam Rockwell shines as usual in a wiry supporting role.

5. Kill Bill Vol. 1

Hard to decide whether I like Vol. 1 or Vol. 2 more, though the fact that Vol. 2 didn’t crack my 2004 list perhaps makes the case for me.

6. Ghosts of the Abyss

Sought out this documentary during my recent Titanic kick. It follows James Cameron and the crew of his deep-sea diving expedition in 2001 to explore the remains of the Titanic shipwreck. Haunting, beautiful stuff, in a way that’s different from Cameron’s other Titanic movie.

7. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

A rollicking and only occasionally ridiculous adventure, and the rare adaptation success that Hollywood has been chasing and failing to reproduce ever since.

8. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

This seems to have acquired a reputation as an under-appreciated masterpiece. It’s quite good, and I’d definitely watch a sequel, but I’ll leave it at that.

9. A Mighty Wind

Third-rate Christopher Guest joint (literally—after Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show) with a five-star soundtrack.

10. Runaway Jury

The idea of a gun manufacturer being held criminally liable for a mass shooting seems quaint these days. Not quaint: Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman going mano a mano. I miss Gene Hackman in movies.

Honorable Mentions:

  • Big Fish
  • Bruce Almighty
  • Capturing the Friedmans
  • The Italian Job
  • The Fog of War
  • The Matrix Reloaded
  • Phone Booth
  • The Recruit
  • X2: X-Men United

October 25, 2021 Add Comment

Tools of the moment

It’s been a minute since the last time I took stock of my notetaking/productivity apps, so here’s where I stand currently:

  • I still use paper. The reporter’s notebook I got last Christmas is good for my occasional work-based bullet journaling.
  • Feedly has been my RSS reader of choice for years now. To further declutter my email inbox, I also use Feedly to follow many email newsletters (shout-out to Substack and Buttondown for their RSS-friendly design; boooooo Mailchimp).
  • I went deeper into WorkFlowy, which has remained delightfully clean and minimalist even while adding a bunch of new features. I transferred my Book Notes & Quotes there, along with old conference session notes and other reference things that fit as bulleted lists.
  • Once I realized my files were awkwardly split between Google Drive and Dropbox, I decided to commit more fully to the former and put the latter on ice. Once essential, Dropbox now seems superfluous.
  • I stopped using Simplenote because other tools filled its role, and Apple Reminders because its syncing sucks.
  • I started paying for 50GB of iCloud last year before I upgraded to a new iPhone, mostly for photo backup.
  • I use the Office 365 suite for work. It’s fine.
  • My calendar situation remains annoyingly bifurcated between Google for personal and Outlook for work. The only place all my events appear together seamlessly is in the iOS Calendar app, which isn’t ideal.

See my other “of the moment” series.

October 22, 2021 2 Comments

The art of ‘90s photo envelopes

While going through my library’s bevy of old staff and event photos, I encountered lots of what used to be commonplace but are now practically ancient artifacts: photo envelopes. Most of them were from the 1990s and early 2000s, which you can probably guess from the designs.

(See also: groovy ’70s library brochures.)

October 18, 2021 2 Comments

A friendly birthday typewriter

This cross-stitch was a belated birthday gift from my mom, who said she used the color of my Olympia SM7 as inspiration. As I don’t have a display room or even nook for my typewriters, I’m not sure where to put it yet. But it’ll brighten up whichever wall it lands on.

October 14, 2021 1 Comment

Top 5 autumn movies

I have a pretty good handle on my Christmas/winter movie canon. But fall? Not so much. That’s what inspired me to consider the movies I return to during autumn, or seek out when I want that Mr. Autumn Man feeling on screen regardless of the season.

To qualify, they have to take place primarily within, embody the spirit of, and have the look and feel of autumn. So my beloved Little Women (both the 1994 and 2019 renditions) don’t quite make the cut given their year-round plots. Nor do other movies that are widely considered fall movies but I either haven’t seen (Hocus Pocus, Practical Magic) or care enough about (When Harry Met Sally).

Here, listed alphabetically, is what I landed on, along with some of their appealingly autumnal attributes.

Coco

Dia de Los Muertos. The spookiness. The cemetery.

Knives Out

The foliage. The sweaters and coats. The gothic architecture.

October Sky

The title of the movie. The overcast. The mournful spirit. The gorgeous music. The light jackets and flannel. (This is really #1.)

Remember the Titans

The nighttime football. The new-school-year vibes.

The Village

The cloaks. The chilly nights. The aphyllus trees. The forest walks.

October 12, 2021 3 Comments

Four Thousand Weeks in the Midnight Library

Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library asks: What if you could explore every what-if of your life, specifically those that turned into regrets? How many of your other lives would actually turn out better than your real one?

It’s an intriguing philosophical question that quickly turns personal for the book’s protagonist, Nora Seed, who comes to learn that each book in the titular library—rendered as a kind of metaphysical manifestation of purgatory—represents one of the infinite versions of her life.

Adventures in space-time

The idea of exploring what-ifs through magical realism or sci-fi isn’t new. It’s the narrative foundation of some of my favorite films (It’s A Wonderful Life, Back to the Future trilogy) and other intriguing cinematic counterfactuals (The Man in the High Castle, The Last Temptation of Christ, About Time).

But rather than focusing on (as Doc Brown would call it) one specific temporal junction point in the entire space-time continuum—what if George Bailey had never lived, what if Biff stole the Almanac, what if the Nazis won—The Midnight Library extends its ambit to the many sliding-doors moments in a single life.

Nora is given countless opportunities to choose and experience parallel lives where none of her regrets came to pass. “I stayed with that ex-boyfriend” and “I didn’t give up swimming” and “I pursued my dream of becoming a glaciologist” all get a spin. But none of these supposedly ideal realities live up to her expectations.

While she’s able to shorten her list of regrets—an immensely valuable gift in itself—her pursuit of happiness doesn’t solve the deeper existential crisis that plagues all of us at some point: per Mary Oliver, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?

4,000 Weeks

That question infuses another of my recent reads: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, an approachably philosophical exploration of the wily, incorrigible thing called time and our dysfunctional relationship with it.

I have an extensive list of quotes from the book that make for good ponderin’, but there are three specific ones that would fit right into The Midnight Library. (Synchroncity knows no bounds, temporal or otherwise.)

First, a reality check:

The world has an effectively infinite number of experiences to offer, so getting a handful of them under your belt brings you no closer to a sense of having feasted on life’s possibilities.

Therefore, Burkeman writes, you have to make choices:

Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experiences you actually do have time for—and the freer you are to choose, in each moment, what counts the most.

And once you do that:

If you can hold your attention, however briefly or occasionally, on the sheer astonishingness of being, and on what a small amount of that being you get—you may experience a palpable shift in how it feels to be here, right now, alive in the flow of time.

That “astonishingness” of being alive in the flow of time doesn’t arrive on command. You have to reorient your mind and your attention to create the conditions that allow for it to reveal itself.

In The Midnight Library, that process looks like an anguished young woman replacing her perceived unworthiness with gratitude for mere existence. (Just like George Bailey.)

In Four Thousand Weeks, that looks like embracing temporal limitations rather than resenting them.

And in my life, that looks like treating the things I love—my wife and son and family and friends and typewriter collection and bike rides and movie nights and library books—as the temporary gifts they are, for however long I live.

October 8, 2021 Add Comment

Learning fictions

I’ve been on a fiction reading tear recently. In the last fortnight I’ve finished The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All by Josh Ritter, and The Midnight Library by Matt Haig—all with a mix of print and audiobook. I just started The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller on audiobook and am hopeful about it.

In the midst of this streak I texted my buddies that I was resolving to read more fiction.

“It’s an ongoing struggle,” I wrote, “to come to terms with the fact that I won’t be able to learn everything I want to learn via nonfiction books, so I might as well start to nourish other parts of my consciousness too.”

My friend Steve replied: “I feel like I learn a lot about the world from nonfiction, and I learn a lot about myself (and my relationship to others) from fiction.”

Couldn’t be truer. And when I said I typically tilt much farther toward the world, he replied: “While vast, it is sometimes less daunting.” Compared, that is, to ourselves.

Wendell Berry:

Fantasy is of the solitary self, and it cannot lead us away from ourselves. It is by imagination that we cross over the difference between ourselves and other beings and thus learn compassion, forbearance, mercy, forgiveness, sympathy, and love—the virtues without which neither we nor the world can live.

Angus Fletcher:

Whatever the power of truth may be, literature’s own special power has always lain in fiction, that wonder we construct.

October 2, 2021 Add Comment