Hitting The Links: 6/1/25
This one's got a whole ton of links, + an oblique update on how I'm doing, a Hopper-esque photo of Birdy, a beautiful/sensual Rilke poem, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
This Waiting Gesture
I alluded to various crises and exigencies last week; the main one was that my dad’s wife had to go to the hospital last Saturday. We got her out yesterday evening. It was a rough time for her, dad, and Amy & me, but it could’ve been a lot worse, so I’m trying to shed the stress and strain of the past week and find some joy in the time ahead.
It’s a quiet and sunny and cool Sunday morning, and I’m listening to Gary Clark’s Any Sunday Morning. Here’s something I saw floating in this morning’s stillness:
Birdy Of The Week
Speaking of this morning, Birdy & I took 2.5-mi. walkies, and when we reached the abandoned dry cleaner, I was struck by the Hopper-esque play of light and shadows on the space, so I stopped and took a picture. Birdy’s reflected in the lower left of the glass; I thought you could use something a little more conceptual this time around. I’ll get back to the cute fluffy stuff next week.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Cecile Wajsbrot • Keiler Roberts • Peter Kuper • Vauhini Vara • Craig Thompson • Ari Richter • Dan Nadel
RIP Loretta Swit . . . RIP Peter David . . . RIP Charlie Rangel . . . RIP Marcel Ophuls . . . RIP Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o . . . RIP Ronnie Dugger . . . RIP Tom Robbins (not the novelist, but the Pulitzer-winning Village Voice reporter) . . . RIP Al Foster . . . RIP Rick Derringer . . . RIP James Lowe . . . RIP Harrison Ruffin Tyler . . . RIP Robert Jarvik . . .
Also, the Duck Dynasty guy died. So did Bernie Kerik.
In a podcast tie-in, Loretta Swit attended the Katharine Gibbs School, which Vanda Krefft wrote a book about. We re-watched M.A.S.H. a while back, and the transformation of her character is phenomenal. Apparently, she really pushed to elevate Houlihan from a sex-object trope to someone who faced the challenges and sacrifices of being a woman who is hyper-competent at her job.
I’m glad I got to visit (and later have part of my honeymoon in) Big Sur while it was still accessible/there. I’m also glad Magnus Toren of the Henry Miller Memorial Library gets a quote.
The Pee-wee As Himself doc was really good. I’m usually averse to 3+-hour profiles of comedic figures, not bothering with the 2nd half of the Shandling or Carlin ones, but this kept me engaged, in large part because it’s about discovering one’s alter ego and trying to fashion a life when that alter ego becomes huge. Here’s the director’s take on making the movie, and how he (& the rest of the world) had no idea his subject was dying of cancer.
Here’s Chris Ware writing about Oliver Schrauwen’s new collection.
I missed the announcement back in February, but two of my past guests — Daniel Mendelsohn and Darryl Pinckney — got inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters!
This was a kinda interesting piece about the interview techniques of podcast host Alex Cooper. Different sorta show than mine, as I don’t ask my guests about their sexual preferences and such, but there are ways of making the other person feel comfortable talking to you that transcend the subject matter. I mean, one of my fave compliments is when a guest tells me, “I forgot we were on microphone.” All of that said, I’m so divorced from pop culture that 85% of the names in this piece could have been made up and I wouldn’t have known. I mean, when the summary said, “Alex Cooper,” I incorrectly assumed that was a guy.
I have never visited the American Dream Mall despite it being a) a mall, b) in northern NJ, so maybe my DNA’s changed or maybe it’s a failure, or some of both. (I mean, also, no bookstore, no comic shop, no pinball arcade, which makes it very unlikely I’d visit, but still.)
I wonder if there’s a shade of tobacco linen I’d look good in (skin tone, etc.).
Dan Sinker wrote about the disheartening Who Cares Era; As I’ve self-aggrandizingly said before, I like to think that my whole project — podcast, newsletters, postcards, ‘zines, the book I have to get back to, the drawings I have to get back to — is a big FU to AI.
Current/Recent Reading
Great Books - David Denby
Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer - David Denby
Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room - Paul Auster (adapted by Paul Karasik, Lorenzo Mattotti, and David Mazzucchelli)
HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life - Michael Houllebecq (tr. Dorna Karzeni)
Where the Paths Do Not Go - Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Burton Pike)
On the sun-accustomed road, in the hollow half tree trunk long since become a trough, renewing a surface of water quietly within itself, I still my thirst: taking the water’s cheerfulness and provenance into me through my wrists. To drink would seem to me too much, too distinct; but this waiting gesture fetches bright water into my consciousness. Thus, if you should come, I would need, to still me, only a light touch of my hands, whether on the young curve of your shoulder, whether on the rising of your breasts.
The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 2 - Robert Musil (tr. Wilkins & Pike) - I finished reading Burton’s Rilke translations on Friday, so it’s time to dive back into Ulrich and 1913 Austria, one chapter each morning. I’ll likely pass on the 600+ pages of posthumous papers, and just go with the 38 remaining extant chapters of the unfinished/unfinishable novel.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
Haven’t gone running for a few weeks, but I’m keeping up with my weights-yoga exercise cycle this week. Just gotta get weights in today and that’ll finish another 5-day loop. My weight’s a little high, but that’s partly my stress-induced eating habits. Gotta cut back, get back out running, and I’ll look/feel better.
I considered posting a shirtless post-workout picture for my gay male readers in honor of Pride month, but don’t want to scandalize you all.
Meditation hasn’t been too fruitful. I’ll keep at it, and hope that the breathing and the music take me somewhere, like outside the notion there’s a ‘me.’ But yesterday’s session wound up crystallizing the 2-page comic script I’m weeks late on. I retained enough of it to get most of the script written before I got the call to spring Dad’s wife from the hospital.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode, probably no new Instax, & some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
A hammer in a halo hits you without warning,