Archive • Divertidos • Buttondown

healing is our greatest achievement

September 8, 2024

The most important things in life are boring. Or so they seem. The clocks all around us tell us to focus on an ever narrowing timeframe. But this is a lie....

2D desires, 3D realities

August 24, 2024

It’s the little things. The ones we don’t notice. That’s what defines our reality. Going on nature walks is transformative precisely because a single leaf...

leaving the postmodern

August 17, 2024

Sometimes I write things that surprise me and, at my ripe old age, I now assume I must be wrong. A younger person, a dumber person, takes shock as evidence...

My father grew up in a military family; his father an orphan, his mother could barely read. As a teenager, he wanted to become an air force pilot but he...

Do you remember the first time you worked with a computer? Or the first time you saw a movie? Can you picture your first beloved toy? I’ve spent the last...

if it’s in a museum, it must be… I learned to code* in the 1980s, when my working class immigrant parents bought me a Commodore 64. (today we all “love”...

too hot to work for this pay

I wrote this 45 second melody. It’s a little jazzy. They’re too good to us. If we were being served by the best and brightest, they’d want local innovation...

We learn by copying. We borrow words. We try on looks. First we imitate our parents, then the kids around us. There is no authenticity that does not begin as...

bandits get away

Go to a movie theater and watch Furiosa. They won’t make them like that soon. Last week, I watched The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968. It’s a bad movie, well...

Our purpose is implicit in our bodies: we evolved into social animals! We have the gift of speech to serve one another. Our communication is thus moral,...

Benefit of doubt

My father is an ex-con. I’ve never called him that. I’ve never even thought of him as that until this morning. Because we don’t reduce the people we know to...

How to Make the Future Cool Again

All eyes on him. Was the future cooler in the 1980s? Yes. Because we were on the edge of an abyss – a leap forward. We had all the parts but they had not...

Ride like the wind

In 1980’s “Ride like the Wind”, soft rock legend David Cross promises, albeit unbelievably, to take us on a lawless tour all the way to the border of Mexico....

For the last year I have been photographing this landmark in our neighborhood. Without knowing what it was, exactly, I have been seduced by its beauty;...

The TSA agent wanted to make sure the boys weren’t being kidnapped so he asked them to say their middle names. Michel! Emile! Who are these French children?,...

Please don't flash the octopus.

We must look like birds to them. At the Museum of Natural History, in the hall of mammals big and small, I saw a glimpse of our future. It looked goofy, and...

Linear, please. (6m25s)

Our boys come home from school with "viruses" like curse words and references to pop culture. The other day I heard them share a snippet of a joke that...

The Kids Are Not Alright, actually (6 minutes)

I’ve spent the last 30 years or so working with people in their 20s: Today’s young people are not better informed than their predecessors were 10, or 20...

But have you seen the 1979 movie Alien?

I spent two thrilling days in the company of scholars this week and was intoxicated by their poetry.* Who doesn’t love poetry? (Fascists, mainly.) But even...

February 18, 2024

Because the body is a vessel that must also be consecrated, repeatedly, tattoos often have explicitly religious motifs. (In my experience, even the most...

January 13, 2024

Ten years ago, the employees of a TV station in Los Angeles took a group photo to celebrate their 1 millionth follower on Facebook. They were a very...

We finally really did it!

We moved. You learn a lot from moving, especially the older you get. Our shells get bigger. We accumulate literal, material history. What can you toss,...

learning to deep fry

I started frying at around age 12, under my parents' supervision. It was almost certainly fried plantains, either the savory or the sweet kind. (Both perfect...

the town square

November 5, 2022

there's a square in town. he doesn't fit in very well into most groups. except with the gamers and the bankers. we should talk about them. but, first, let's...

Always Be Opening

I wrote the below last week and then did not send it. This has happened a lot lately. But I was motivated to send it just now because of the final sentence....

venn you have time

I may change my mind, but, over the last 10 years, or so, I've come to believe the most rewarding work is simply whatever allows me to have interesting...

solving the wrong problem really well (5m34s)

February 27, 2021

here's a frightening realization: it's possible to get really good at solving the wrong problem for example, i've spent a few hours over the last year...

positive vibes only: bring back the WWW and make it 10x BIGGER!

February 18, 2021

With the last four years, my first 48 years, and the last 12 months especially weighing heavily, I'm trying to reorient my thinking to positive vibes only....

5 things I learned by deep listening

December 19, 2020

A few days ago, I had to ponder: what sound to play when a recording stops? I couldn't quite figure it out so I left a note to the sound designer: what is...

February 1, 2019

I've started and stopped three times. So let me skip the topic of Venezuela for now. Instead, let me write from my direct experience. That's almost certainly...

January 17, 2019

#1 I’m going to launch a premium content distribution business. I’ll only put out VHS tapes. They’ll be sold out of food trucks. Each tape will cost $5 and...

economic anxiety

January 4, 2019

After two years, we are finally discussing the Wall as a religious sculpture. Though some continue to claim it's a real wall, these gestures are like...

the manger, among the animals

December 23, 2018

Have you ever flown international through LAX, DFW or ORD? You know how they have super long hallways, with soft lighting on one side and rolls of razor...

tv on the internet

October 28, 2018

One of my few memories of Cuba is watching a clown on TV. Like everything else in Cuba, television was finite and scarce. It would run out and there was no...

Priceless takeaways from my off-site in LA

October 12, 2018

I've been at an off-site for three years. Every morning starts with coffee and toast in the conference room. Then the music starts playing and the Superego...

September 17, 2018

I have spent the last few years failing. Most days, I try to fail for at least an hour. As a result, I've gotten better at failing. I fail all the time now –...