December 26, 2021

#25: Delayed Holiday Edition

A QUICK TWENTY MINUTES OF ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE FROM THE BLIZZARD OF ‘78 —

A QUICK WORD FROM HOBART —

“When the first billionaire exploded I was at the drive-thru with my dad.”

A QUICK WORD FROM HAD —

“the only fact i remember from the freshman year human evolution course is that thing about the earliest evidence of civilization being a broken femur whose person didn’t die from the wound.”

A QUICK WORD FROM WORD AND SPORTS —

“By the time the huge spots
of pigmentation on the road turned out,
after a series of laboratory tests, to be 
bubblegum spit …”

A QUICK JOKE FROM AN ELEPHANT —

A QUICK WORD FROM BBC FOUR — THE STORY OF FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK.

A QUICK WORD ON THE NEW MATRIX —

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was terrific as the new Morpheus. In a weird way — and I swear this isn’t written as a result of pure recency bias — there’s a slight echo in Abdul-Mateen’s performance with that of Joey Batey playing Jaskier in The Witcher. It’s not that both performances traffic in camp — it’s that both performances create the space and potential for camp, and that lends a certain degree of delight to both.

(Also — how surprising was it to see David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon listed — in addition to Lana — as two of the three co-writers of this film? (You can read an interview with them here.))

A QUICK LONG WORD —

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

A CONSIDERED WORD FROM ZADIE SMITH ON JOAN DIDION —

“Radically upgrading Hemingway’s ‘bullshit detector,’ she probed the public discourse, the better to determine how much truth was in it and how much delusion. She did that with her own sentences, too. Rereading her, you find her astringency relentless, undimmed by age. Maybe this is why it remains easier to look at pictures of Didion than to read her.”

A MUSICAL WORD FROM GEORGE HARRISON —

A QUICK SET-UP TO AN ALBUM I DIDN’T KNOW EXISTED UNTIL A FEW DAYS AGO —

A QUICK WORD ON CLIMATE — “ENERGY TRANSITION IN SARDINIA: A MATTER OF TIME, SPACE, AND JUSTICE.”

A QUICK WORD ON A PLAYER WHO SHOULD BE TRADED TO THE LOS ANGELES LAKERS —

With a defensive box plus/minus of 1.6, a 1.5 defensive win share, and a league-leading 2.8 blocks per game (per Basketball Reference), why not give Myles Turner a try?

The Lakers are currently allowing 48.4 points in the paint per game. (That’s sixth worst in the league.) Four players of the roster have a lower-than-average defensive rating. (IT, Chaundee Brown Jr, Wayne Ellington, and Austin Reaves (who … has an offensive rating of 120?)) The rest have a slightly better-than-average defensive rating. Only one player — Sekou Doumbouya — has a defensive rating below 100.

Myles Turner currently has a defensive rating of 97.

I’m not quite sure why Indiana is willing to some of the best players on their roster available, as has been reported, nor what they might want in return. A roster that has Brogdon, Sabonis, Holiday, LeVert, Duarte, and Turner on it … doesn’t initially read to an outsider as terrible, so we’re left wondering where the team might want to go.

A QUICK WORD ON JOB POSTINGS —

1. Butler is looking for an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing.

2. Nicole Hannah Jones is hiring a Knight Program Manager over at Howard.

A QUICK POSTSCRIPT —