I still have an iPod. The last time it was updated was, I’m guessing, 2010 or so, not long before Apple purged my iTunes without any warning. One day I had 29,000+ songs in my files. The next day about 60% of that. Music I had purchased online,
La Pochette brand cigarette pouch, made from 100% leatherette and 14K Goldelle, tagline: “You kids KNOCK IT OFF!” This is an ad from Programme 4, a world outside of both time and place. The product, La Pochette, never existed. Also, in 1972, my mom owned one. She smoked Tareytons. She
I wrote a silly little book once – out of print, who cares – and in that silly little book I documented a moment when I was expected to review a film based on seeing it at its premiere. Sometimes they do this to you: no press screening, it's just
"Barrie Chase is here," I said to friend and neighbor Gary Cotti. The name didn't immediately click for him. So I whispered, "Mutual, I'm sure." "WHAT?! WHERE?!" He didn't yell, but his response was emphatic and warrants all-caps.
Two novels about unhappy priests by Georges Bernanos: The Diary of a Country Priest (1936), about a young priest in a rural French village whose physical frailty from encroaching stomach cancer parallels the diminished faith of his parishioners. He can't pray or sleep or eat, and despairs over
I have built a subjective scale of Christmas mania and appointed myself as arbiter of truth. A simple 1 to 10, where 1 is you tolerate the holiday, 5 is you like it like a normal person, 10 is you might have actually lost your mind for it. I have
I took that photo with my shitty iPhone 8. People laugh at me when I tell them that's still my level of phone but I don't care. It functions mostly. Anyway, the tomato. It's from my local farmer's market. Not THE farmer&
INHERENT VICE (2014) A title card in Inherent Vice references graffiti from a Paris wall in May of 1968, when French student and worker protests announced a social revolution there. That slogan — “Under the pavingstones, the beach!” — is about two forces pushing against one another, the cement on top eventually
7 Walks with Mark Brown is a documentary about French plants and the paleobotanist who loves them, and when I describe it that simply to friends, sometimes their eyes glaze over and they say something deadly like, “Oh… well, I guess that sounds nice.” 7 Walks is, of course, more
I woke up to a text from a friend letting me know that Radu Jude's latest film, Dracula, opens at the end of October. I admire Jude's films – his exuberantly long titles alone make me pretty happy: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn; I Do Not
has nothing directly to do with what I'm writing about today. I just really enjoy Dr. Pepper and I couldn't find a decent picture to represent anything else.* I don’t often watch the Emmy Awards. I never know when they’re taking place. And because
There’s a terrible Google commercial featuring 26-year-old “Ted” asking Google AI to find him, very specifically, a “cool” music activity in his city that still gets him home at a reasonable hour. This Ted person is allegedly 26 years old. And cares about being home at a reasonable hour.