Hitting The Links: 4/7/24
This one's got lots of links, a visit to the Antiquarian Book Fair in NYC, and a HOUSEQUAKE
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A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
HOUSEQUAKE
On Friday, I was working downstairs while Amy & her client were talking upstairs about the product photos they were going to shoot. Then I felt a vibration that, for a second or two, felt like when Benny gets up in the living room and stretches before walking down the hall. I’ve lived in this house for most of my 53 years, and it’s like an extension of my nervous system.
In this case, my very nervous system. The vibration didn’t let up, and increased in intensity. I thought maybe Amy and the client were moving something heavy upstairs, maybe with a hand-truck, though I couldn’t imagine what that might be.
And then it kept going, and felt like a train passing nearby, except there are no trains out here. I hurried upstairs and Amy asked, “Did you feel that?” I said it must’ve been the local fault line, although the last time I felt an earthquake here in the mid-‘90s, it was more like a bang, as though something heavy fell in the attic. (Benny was conked out asleep on one of his many beds.)
Then the client’s partner called from Princeton, to see if we felt it. And that’s when I knew this wasn’t a Skyline Lakes phenomenon. On Bluesky, my NYC-area pals were posting about the earthquake, and then reports started showing up from people in PA, CT, and even MA.
As it turned out, the epicenter was maybe 35 miles south of here, so we got the wave pretty quickly. It was a 4.8 on the Richter Scale, and apparently our fault lines are so deep that tremors tend not to be as ruinous as in other regions.
Still, pretty freaky start to the weekend.
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This email setup runs $29/month, so if you want to help out with it or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can support the Virtual Memories Show with a contribution of any size. Also, I've got an idea for a book that I plan to run a Kickstarter for later this year. More details on that when I can, but I will ask you guys for some advice on the project.
And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Leela Corman • Keith Mayerson • Edith Hall • David Small • Brad Gooch • Japan, a monologue • Scott Guild
RIP John Barth . . . RIP Lou Conter . . . RIP Ed Piskor . . . RIP Joe Flaherty . . . RIP John Sinclair . . . RIP Larry Lucchino . . .
Speaking of Kickstarters, Trillian Stars & Kyle Cassidy (2012, 2017, 2020) have a fantastic one going, feat. some amazing photography and poems by Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal! Go check it out & back it! (We recorded a bonus episode of the show about it yesterday afternoon; I’ll post that a little later today.)
I went to the International Antiquarian Book Fair in NYC with a friend yesterday. A lovely British couple noticed my interest in their signed copies of the UK editions of Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy ($1,200 for the set), but I resisted. I did plotz over seeing a first edition of Charles Portis’ Norwood ($3,500), and joked about buying the signed/inscribed A River Runs Through It for my brother ($6,000). We also saw a first of Wisconsin Death Trip by past guest Michael Lesy, and gabbed a little with past guest Henry Wessells. Oh, and we saw Patti Smith a few times, but I thought it would be gauche to take her picture or intrude on her, so I took a pic of one of her books instead.
I pitched Patti Smith on the podcast once when we were on line together at a bookstore, but never heard back from her I would have spent some $ at a used bookstore. Here’s Michael Dirda’s (2012, 2014, 2015) tips on shopping in one.
W. David Marx has a good piece on Paris Hilton and the emptiness of the ur-influencer.
Matt Zoller-Seitz wrote about actors doing good work in their 80s & 90s.
Ed Zitron has another piece on the AI bubble. For my part, I hope that bubble pops soon so that people will stop using “compute” as a stand-in for “computing power,” because that drives me nuts.
We need to have a conversation about the birds and especially the bees . . .
Midlife crisis: totally a thing, according to this study (PDF). (I mean, you could just listen to my episode with Andrew Jamieson to learn about that, or, tbh, just about every episode of the podcast.)
I’ve only taken the Pacific Surfliner train once (from LA to San Diego), and hope to again this June; not sure if that’ll happen, what with climate change.
A few weeks ago, Steven Heller (2018, 2019, 2022) had an interview with Mark Mothersbaugh on the occasion of MM’s new art book, Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti.
Current/Recent Reading
Lessons for Survival - Emily Raboteau
“The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination as your imagination limits the world.”
—Karl Ove Knausgaard (tr. Don Bartlett), My Struggle: Book 3
Fractured Body, Fractured Mind
Things have been hit & miss with exercise. Last week, I got in 4 out of 5 days of my weights-yoga cycle (Fri-Tue), missing Saturday because of the pod-trip to Providence, RI. I missed yesterday’s yoga because of the NYC trip to see my friend & the antiquarian books, and I’ll likely miss Tuesday’s weights because of work travel (I’ll be speaking at a client company’s executive leadership team meeting on Wednesday). Still, I’m trying to get back into shape.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday (or maybe Thursday: travel) with a new episode and some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & non-workout craziness, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
Shakalaka boom! / What was that? / Aftershock!,