To the tune of “Gilligan’s Island”:
Now sit right down and you’ll hear a tale
A tale of a rampant seal
Who’s damaging this coastal town
A hooligan named Neil
(via Adam Roberts)
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In which I make a mighty vow: I pledge my blogging, my linking, and my sacred honour to the open web.
A few years ago I decided to stop intervening in intra-Christian debates. I am not sure whether I regret having been involved in them, but certainly nothing I wrote had any effect whatever on the course of events, so the only good my writing ever did was to clarify my own th...
BTW, the two CBC documentaries on Gould that I mention in that essay are available on YouTube: Glenn Gould: Off the Record and Glenn Gould: On the Record. They’re fascinating.
The Fading Promise of Higher Education is the theme of this excellent new issue of the Hedgehog Review. I don’t have anything in the issue on that important theme, but I did write a reflection on hearing Glenn Gould — on the 70th anniversary of his breakthrough recording of the Goldberg Variations.
The Economist’s obituary for Alan Greenspan is a small masterpiece.
Confluence
I think, given his recent discovery of the possibilities of Casual Fashion, Poch’s personal theme song should be “Sharp Dressed Man.”
I have been assuming all along that he will leave the USMNT at the end of this tournament, and I still think that’s the way to bet, but the fanbase has fallen in love with him and he’s obviously reciprocating. I laughed out loud watching him sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” after the match. It wouldn’t shock me now if he stayed on — and that would be great, because he has these guys playing assertive, confident, tactically imaginative football. I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had watching the USMNT.
🇺🇸⚽️
BBC & ESPN. Pretty sure that if Bosnia haven’t scored by the 85th minute this ref will give them a penalty.
If I still lived in northern Illinois I would surely cheer for 🏴 against 🇲🇽 — but here in central Texas I think the power of neighborliness will shift my allegiance. Sunday will tell. Gonna be FUN.
I’ve updated my home page with a link to OUP’s page for my biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, now scheduled for publication on 28 November. I’ll add other options for pre-order as they become available. I had a lot of fun writing this and I think you’ll enjoy it also. I’m pleased that, in a series whose books average about sixty bucks each, OUP priced this one for a broader readership.
Here’s a post on why an argument about how humanists’ defenses of the humanities are bad is itself a worse argument than the ones it critiques. I’m gonna have to write a follow-up to this but … not soon.
Substack’s decision to turn itself into a social network has been successful in at least one sense: With a few exceptions (Austin Kleon for instance), Substackers only link and respond to other Substackers. For people deeply invested in that platform, Substack is the internet.
No þinge is meriar þen Ihesu to synge. — Richard Rolle
Austin in the 1950s. I saw the premiere of Malick’s A Hidden Life at the Paramount in 2019. Congress looks a little different now.
Speaking of title sequences, here’s a post on Disney’s.
For anyone who has spent time at Penn Station — and, for my sins, I’ve spent a good bit of time there over the years — it’s always a shock to be reminded what it used to look like.
My friend Austin Kleon has four notebooks, but I have only three: a planner, a journal, and a movie notebook. Whenever I watch a movie I write some brief thoughts on it. I started this practice just a few years ago, and I am now getting to the end of my second notebook. I love looking back through what I’ve seen and how I have responded — especially when I re-watch films, which I often do.
Eno, 1995:
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8bit — all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.
It’s the sound of failure: so much of modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.
The absolute definition of being “in the pocket” is Al McKay’s rhythm guitar on “That’s the Way of the World.”
Feel free to play Guess the Location of this old photo (taken by me) if you want.
