Hitting The Links: 8/3/25
This one's got a ton of great links, a coffee-driven excerpt from my book in progress, sprezzatura in a Cybertrukkk, crying-meditation, some yoga pretzel-beefcake & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Extreme Moderation
[Excerpt from GUEST/HOST, a book in progress]
When I was a kid, I worried that a recording angel was going to harangue me with a tally of all the quarters I'd blown on video games and pinball. Later in life, that shifted to the amount of time spent watching porn. Now I don't worry about angels — they have better things to do — but I do think about the time I’ve spent making coffee. The ritual of the pourover is meaningful to me: grinding beans, warming the Chemex or wetting the Kalita filter, the bloom, the scent of the steam, the pulses of water, the exacting rhythm of it all. And the focused void of my mind, the early morning and post-noon drift.
I drink it black, so I can’t say I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
I had my first coffee on a visit to Seattle in 2000, when I was 29. Around a decade later, I was in an emergency room because of heart murmurs that we concluded arose from stress and a months-long buildup in my coffee-habit. I got the caffeine under control.
Someone is always more exacting than you are, whatever the practice. You will never be hardcore enough, and that’s why I’ve chosen a life of extreme moderation.
[As I’ve been telling people, “The pictures I took are so good, no one will notice how poor the writing is.” Neither of these pix are from the book.]
Birdy Of The Week
My slatternly love
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Oliver Radclyffe • Eulogy • Rachel Cockerell • Paul Karasik • Kate Maruyama • David Denby • Peter Stothard
RIP Tom Lehrer . . . RIP Ryno . . . RIP Robert Wilson . . . RIP Michael Ochs . . . RIP Wallis Annenberg . . . RIP Hula Hoop Queen Joan Anderson . . . RIP Steam Titan Ross Rowland . . . RIP William J. Rutter . . . RIP Allan Ahlberg . . . RIP Sarah Aspinall . . . RIP Jeannie Seely . . . RIP Morton Mintz . . . RIP Cecile Dionne . . . RIP Séan Rocks . . . RIP Flaco Jiménez . . .
Also, Horst Mahler died.
At 77, Mark Jacobson reflects on 60+ years of protesting.
I probably won’t watch Happy Gilmore 2 but I am HERE for a Christopher McDonald profile.
Did I ever post this 2022 article about Prince’s Sign ‘O’ The Times movie? I can’t find anything in my archives. This is also an excuse to say that I got a Brazilian DVD of the movie and ripped it in hi-res so I have a copy in my home & traveling media libraries.
On the occasion of what would have been his mother’s 96th birthday (four years since her death), Benjamin Dreyer reposted The First-Withouts.
NYRB has an interview with Benjamin Swett; you oughtta go read that.
This is a pretty neat presentation/story about the proposed Interborough Express rail line between Brooklyn & Queens.
Citizens of St. Augustine, FL, the only advice I have for you comes from an episode of Parks and Rec: “Stop. Pooping.”
“There’s a difference between the people that read and the people that are the subject of what you’re reading, you know what I mean?” I enjoyed the heck out of this Bill Burr interview.
Dude.
I cannot BELIEVE I didn’t know about the Dutch Pinball Museum when I visited Rotterdam for a conference last May. (The conference is supposed to return there next year, so I hope I can make a visit.)
Beautiful piece about JMW Turner by Emily LaBarge (whom I hope to record with next year, and whom I met when I recorded with Brian Dillon).
Finally, if you’ve ever wanted to watch/listen to me give a 10-min. pharma-interview while in full sprezzatura mode inside a parked Cybertrukkk, you’re a weirdo but your wish has been granted.
Current/Recent Reading
Acceptance: Book 3 of The Southern Reach - Jeff VanderMeer
Past Tense: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself in Therapy - Sacha Mardou
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen - Lance Richardson
+ the mourner’s Kaddish every morning, in Hebrew
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I’m 4 days into my 5-day weights/yoga cycle, so if I get weights in today, I’ll have accomplished something. Birdy had 3 consecutive nights of waking us up repeatedly — sometimes barking, sometimes just clacking up and down the hall — that left me in such an ill mood that I skipped my morning 15-min. exercise routine all 3 days, which is NOT good for my mind or body. We gated her in the bedroom again on Friday night, months after we’d given her run of the upstairs overnight, and that helped. My body looks pretty good, but I don’t want to scandalize you this week.
Okay, fine:
I missed a couple meditation days this week, but had a pretty important session on Friday. I re-experienced some things from early in Dad’s final hospital stay, some really terrible stuff, and in that meditative state, I was able to really embrace how rough it was for both of us. That got me crying a bit, for the first time since I was at his deathbed, as I let out how sad it was and how painful.
When I stopped, still lying in corpse pose, my face was sorta contorted in a way that I thought was letting me breathe through the tears. But then I let that face go, let myself fall slack, and felt at peace. I felt like I wasn’t denying his suffering or mine, and that I didn’t have to dance around those moments in my head.
(Side note: my meditation practice began as a result of my reading The Snow Leopard last December, which was preparation for Lance Richardson’s upcoming biography of Peter Matthiessen, which I started this week. As ever, the podcast and everything related to it has deepened my life and guided me into all sorts of wonderful places.)
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.
XXX,