authenticity
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...
Models
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....
Power
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;...
Stuck on you
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...
Rock of ages
Because the body is a vessel that must also be consecrated, repeatedly, tattoos often have explicitly religious motifs. (In my experience, even the most...
the new TV
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...
Remembering
A few days ago, I showed our kids this graph: And this article, which traces the global decline in academic performance to the popularity of the smartphone....
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,...
left aligned
Here's a video you can't miss. It's a perfect introduction. To alignment. If you're using a computer, you know how to change alignment. Which is very useful!...
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
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....