Hitting The Links: 12/1/24
A LOT of links, some post-Thanksgiving thoughts, the anxiety of influencers, the Cybertruck graveyard, some running-craziness, and good thoughts for the last month of 2024
The Virtual Memories Show News
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New & Not Worthy
I hope none of you had a traumatic, dramatic, systematic or hydromatic Thanksgiving, and that the festivities treated you well or otherwise left you in peace, not pieces. Ours was low-key — Amy cooked, my friend from college came to visit, we watched the National Dog Show to make up for missing Benny (they didn’t show the greyhound getting judged in the Hound group: grr) — and I even managed to recharge a little over the course of the week.
Yesterday I went out early to get my car inspected, then hit a diner for breakfast, followed by an hour-long browse at the nearby Barnes & Noble, where I reveled in the books and marveled over how all the authors I’ve recorded with have opened up my life.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Caitlin McGurk • Frances Jetter • Roland Allen • Eric Drooker • Simon Critchley • Doug Brod • Sven Birkerts
RIP Jim Abrahams . . . RIP Chuck Woolery . . . RIP Barbara Taylor Bradford . . . RIP Adam Somner . . . RIP Lou Carnesecca . . . RIP Helen Gallagher . . . RIP Bodhi the Menswear Dog . . . RIP Seuk Kim . . .
KICKSTARTERY! Go support Rian Hughes / Korero Press’ new one for Arthur Ferrier’s Pin-up Parade! And there’s still a few days left to support Jonathan Baylis’ new issue of So Buttons; get on that!
Fun profile of Alan Cumming in WSJ, as if there could be an unfun profile of Alan Cumming.
Elizabeth Lopatto calls out AI BS artist Sam Altman on his notebook/notetaking advice.
Speaking of notebooks, Warren Ellis adopted a new notebook system that sound pretty cool.
Longtime/obsessive readers/stalkers know that I keep a daily journal and that I ran out of Calepino No. 2 graph pads, my notebook of choice, last April. I shifted to the LIFE Vermilion A6, and I like them just fine, although the paper’s a little slicker/less toothy than the Calepino. On Friday, the Calepino people wrote to say that the No. 2 is back in stock (the company changed hands, which accounts for the inventory problem), so I ordered pair of 3-packs, in hopes that they’ll be the same as my old stock. I’ll let you know, although I still have a TON of those Vermilion A6 pads (one of my listeners sent me a couple packs of them after I wrote about ’em). I had promised myself I wouldn’t spend a dime on Black Friday, but had to make an exception.
Here’s a neat Adam Moss piece about Jonathan Franzen’s process of writing The Corrections. As a reminder, you should go get Moss’ The Work Of Art, which is a fantastic book. It’d make a great holiday gift for artists.
Steven Heller interviewed Chris Ware about the latest edition of Ware’s sketchbooks.
I didn’t know much about Ken Burns, except that we both attended Hampshire College — he dropped out, I dropped in — before reading this thoughtful profile of him.
The CLL Society’s newsletter this week had (unfinished) reflections written by a psychotherapist who was at the end of the line, after 13 years with the disease. He was younger than me when he got diagnosed, but I assume he had the more aggressive of the 2 mutations that cause CLL, because he went through a lot of treatment over the years, and I’m still just in watch & wait mode, 3+ years in.
I suspect the sun will implode before I ever get up to 10 drinks in a row.
Speaking of the implosion of the sun.
NYT best books of 2024? 0-FOR-100, BAYBEEEE! (TBF, I’ve read other books by some of these authors, and own a bunch of the ones on this list.) And 1-for-100 on this one (The Notebook by Roland Allen).
I’m utterly outside the whole Influencer universe, but I enjoyed the heck out of / was fascinated by this story of influencer-infringement that I call Single Beige Female. The whole “emulate my utterly minimalist home by buying as much crap from Amazon as I tell you to” ecosystem blows my mind.
I mean, yes, there are books I hope you guys will buy based on my recommendations, and I attach a Bookshop affiliate link to those, but I think that’s added up to $75 in referral fees in the past 5 years.
Then there’s the whole discourse about algorithms and optimization of all those videos and how that leads to some seriously lowest common denominator crap. People were saying the same thing about shitty TV in the ‘70s, I guess, but it seems different now when every individual user’s activity can be tracked and producers can see the exact moment you clicked away for something else. It’s absolutely bizarre to me that this piece makes no mention whatsoever of capitalism and, um, how all these vids are selling things, but it’s a short, punchy video about how short, punchy videos are all the same.
You’d be better off reading W. David Marx’s book, Status & Culture, is what I’m saying. (Yes, that’s an affiliate link.)
On a semi-related note, after leaving Barnes & Noble yesterday, I passed the overflow lot for a nearby Tesla dealership, saw 40-50 of those idiotic Cybertrucks parked there, and laughed.
Guessing they’re not pre-orders Lastly, I enjoyed this piece about what Sven Birkerts got right way back in 1994 in The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in the Electronic Age about how e-reading isn’t the same as print and what deep reading means in an age of ever-increasing distraction. The writer goes into how prescient Sven’s take was, but I will note that a big difference between reading a book and reading online that he doesn’t mention is that the book tends not to hit you with display ads for underwear after a paragraph break.
and now a word from our sponsors If you’re making the migration to the Bluesky platform, you can find me at vmspod.
Current/Recent Reading
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Tell Me A Story Where The Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund - Caitlin McGurk
The Philosophy of Translation - Damion Searls
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
It was a weird workout week for me, making up for missing some days last week: I ran 6.4 miles with The Guys on Monday, then did weights that afternoon, ran 4.6 miles with The Guys & then weights again on Wednesday, skipped yoga on Thanksgiving, did weights on Friday & yoga on Saturday, and I’ll get to weights again today (this morning, as our lunch plans will likely leave me in non-workout mode).
The Monday run was my longest in a LONG time, and my running pal Pete upped the pace once our 3rd companion left after mile 4, but I managed. I’m hoping to get back to 15-20 miles a week, and that third pal hinted that he might try to run his first marathon next year, so we talked a little about training for that, too. I put on a couple pounds between post-Benny depression and Thanksgiving, but I still look good (no pic for you this week, unless you ask nice).
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, maybe some art, a bunch of Instax pix, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
And hey: there’s only one month left in 2024. I’m going to try to live mine as fully as I can, even if it doesn’t look much different than any other month; I hope you’re able to make those days count — not in a life hack/optimization way, but in a sense of fullness and a life lived, y’know? — and that you remember to stop and take a breath. Despite all that Influencer BS, you’re living for yourself and those you love, not some tech-shopping-industrial complex.
You're just a little tired today / Tomorrow you’ll be fine / If love heals anything at all / We should be flying,