> 180: You want to see my hands?
Hi,
There are a lot of horrors in the world right now. Take a break from them for a few minutes if it's helpful to you.
Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:
Step into a museum of internet artifacts.
One of the most fun movies I've seen recently is one I'd completely missed from 2016 called The Nice Guys. It stars Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, and a young actress called Angourie Rice and it's mystery, grief, and hijinks in 1970s LA. Watch and be delighted.
Every recipe I've made from Molly Baz's first cookbook has been tasty as hell, and I'm looking forward to working my way through her new one, More is More. Please be warned that the typography in this book is horrifying. Also anticipating Erin French's follow-up to one of my favorite cookbooks, The Lost Kitchen, and Sohla El-Waylly's Start Here.
Explore Tokyo through its train lines.
New book genre classification: No plot, just vibes.
Cozy as hell and easy to make: Smitten Kitchen's chicken with buttered onions.
Romance novel covers, visualized.
A state-to-state guide to every State Supreme Court.
I've recently had a run of watching film and TV about partnerships—romantic, work, and those that are both. I thought Ethan Hawke's documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's relationship and their collaborative careers, The Last Movie Stars, was nuanced and thoughtfully done. It's largely based on transcriptions of interviews, so Hawke got his famous friends to narrate excerpts for the documentary. George Clooney is Paul; Laura Linney is Joanne; Sam Rockwell and Zoe Kazan make appearances as supporting characters. On Netflix, a four-part documentary of the Beckham relationship doesn't get as deep into how their relationship actually works but is a sweet depiction of how one deeply strange young person tried to have a family after becoming astronomically famous by the accident of being both super-handsome and incredibly driven to succeed.
In fictional partnerships, I am enjoying the AppleTV adaptation of the wildly popular novel (which I thought was interestingly executed in parts but mostly just fine) Lessons in Chemistry, in part because Brie Larson is so perfectly cast as the main character and Lewis Pullman pulls off his could-be-boring role of "shockingly equity-minded 1950s white man" with such charisma. If there is any sense in this world, young Pullman will go from here to revive his father's tradition of leading successful mid-budget romantic comedies. We deserve this.
Looking forward to: Longtime Newsletter Fave Cord Jefferson's first directorial debut (!), American Fiction, which also has so many Newsletter Fave actors in it—Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae, and more.
"The internet promised, among other things, absolute audience surveillance, full measurability, and perfect knowledge of who was watching what, when, and for how long. What it delivered, instead, was metric tons of metric bullshit."
"Watterson has said, of the illustrations in 'Calvin and Hobbes,' 'One of the jokes I really like is that the fantasies are drawn more realistically than reality, since that says a lot about what’s going on in Calvin’s head.' Only one reality in 'Calvin and Hobbes' is drawn with a level of detail comparable to the scenes of Calvin’s imagination: the natural world. The woods, the streams, the snowy hills the friends career off—the natural world is a space as enchanted and real as Hobbes himself."
Phoebe Bridgers and Olivia Rodrigo in conversation; an incredible Yeah Yeah Yeahs sweater (discovered via the wardrobe of Noel on Bake-off, which thankfully is good again).
You want to know how I spend my time?
I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding. You ought to know
I'm never weeding, on my knees, pulling
clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact
I'm looking for courage, for some evidence
my life will change, though
it takes forever, checking
each clump for the symbolic
leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already
the leaves turning, always the sick trees
going first, the dying turning
brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform
their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?
As empty now as at the first note.
Or was the point always
to continue without a sign?
—Louise Glück, Matins
Bye,
Laura