Hitting The Links: 8/10/25
Lots of links, an aborted essay on shaving and upbringing, a reunion with an old friend, Cheech & Chong for pre-teens, BIRDY! with a bone to pick, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
The Kindest Cut 2: The Shavening
I can shave after today. My brother is keeping the 30-day prohibition Jews have on shaving/haircuts after the death of a close family member, so in solidarity I’ve gone without shaving or trimming my beard.
I started an essay once about shaving. It cited Miller’s Crossing and Barcelona and Phillip Lopate’s Samson and Delilah and the Kids and it was about my father.
Dad grew a beard around the time I was born, and kept it most of my life. I was almost 40 the first time he shaved it off, and that act raised questions about the stability of the universe. The only thing that’s disoriented me more since then is that my brother has become a cat person.
His facial hair came and went in the years since. In his final months he had stopped shaving, leaving this world with a full, unattended beard.
I never wrote the essay because the two anecdotes at the center of it felt like family score settling. When I think about it now, perhaps it’s not. You make the call.
1
My father picked me up on a Friday when I was 14 or so, and my mom told him, “You need to teach your son how to shave.”
He did not do so. Instead, on Sunday afternoon before taking me home, we stopped at a Marshalls where he bought an electric shaver. I don’t remember him saying anything about it when he handed it to me. I read the manual and did my best. As with many aspects of human behavior, I had to teach myself.
2
Thirty-something years later, when Dad was in a rehab clinic after a heart procedure, his wife said, “You need to give your father a shave.”
On my daily visit, I found the electric shaver she’d brought from home, tucked a towel into his collar, and got to work.
As I’m starting to discover, there are things in my life that could not end (or begin) until his death.
Birdy Of The Week
Long in the tooth
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Sacha Mardou • Oliver Radclyffe • Eulogy • Rachel Cockerell • Paul Karasik • Kate Maruyama • David Denby
RIP Loni Anderson . . . RIP Leonard Lopate . . . RIP James Lovell, Jr. . . . RIP Jane Morgan . . . RIP Stella Rimington . . . RIP William Webster . . . RIP — wait, a former MI-5 chief AND a former FBI/CIA chief died in the same week?! I’m getting suspicious, but as long as there’s no other intel/cointel deaths . . . RIP Sandra Grimes . . . okay, this is getting ridiculous . . . RIP Kelley Mack . . . RIP Sallie Bingham . . . RIP Ann Harris . . . RIP Terry Reid . . . RIP Eddie Palmieri . . . RIP Joseph Lovett . . . RIP Brandon Blackstock . . .
Also, Asher Watkins died.
Nice tribute to Tom Lehrer by Matt Zoller Seitz.
Steven Heller interviewed Mimi Pond about her upcoming graphic biography of the Mitford Sisters.
I liked this advice column by AJ Daulerio on how recovering alcoholics can try to manage their emotions, and I think there’s some wisdom there for, well, the rest of us.
Man, this sure seems like a lot of work to get a free meal, but you do you.
Brett Martin wrote about Manhattan’s restaurant resurgence.
An occasional reminder to watch The Straight Story sometime, then watch it again.
I am HERE for an oral history of Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan. (I saw it in the theater with a college pal who was somewhat In That World, and I knew zero about it all.)
When I recorded with my old pal Mitch Prothero a few years ago, he talked about the organized crime/drug problems in Europe, and how much was being trafficked through Rotterdam. Here’s a piece on how the Netherlands deals with three bomb/grenade explosions each day.
Current/Recent Reading
Acceptance: Book 3 of The Southern Reach - Jeff VanderMeer
Songs for Other People’s Weddings - David Levithan and Jens Lekman
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen - Lance Richardson
I Want to Die, I Hate My Life: Three Essays on Tragedy and One on Beckett - Simon Critchley
+ the mourner’s Kaddish every morning, in Aramaic
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I missed weights last Sunday (excuses), and again on Wednesday (late business call w/prospective client in Japan), but did yoga-weights-yoga Thursday-Saturday. I hope to get weights in today. My weight/diet’s not great, so I need to get that under control while there’s still time.
Not that I looked bad yesterday morning when I met one of my oldest friends for breakfast while he’s visiting. (Jeff & I met at 6 & 7 years old when we started Hebrew school. He’s the guy I wrote about bumping into in a comic shop in LA on my birthday in 2024.)
I’ve been meditating, but find myself caught in the race. On Saturday, I was trancing after yoga when I heard an ice cream truck outside. The melody collided with my ambient Eno soundtrack, and I remembered watching Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams with Dad, the one where they dealt pot out of an ice cream truck and it turns Stacy Keach into a lizard. We used to watch Cheech & Chong movies all the time on his pirated HBO at his apartment. I was like 11 or 12, and Dad had no idea it was drug humor. He just found them funny.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll back on Wednesday, with a new episode to share, plus some Instax and maybe some art. On Sunday I’ll be back with links, books, & workout craziness, & maybe a little profundity or something.
She gets a charge out of being so weird / Digs getting downright strange / But I can keep a handle on anything / Just this side of deranged,