I’m similarly non-religious and enjoyed both the book and the film of Silence, though for different reasons in each. The book was a window into the Catholic worldview, which is something I had no real access to. The film kind of felt a bit like a more nuanced A Man for All Seasons, actually, where the challenges are…

While watching the movie, though I have to admit I first encountered the image via David Macaulay’s parody of it in Motel of the Mysteries.

Reading a fair amount by or about Brian Eno lately (just finished Visual Music, now going through The Year with Swollen Appendices), and this talk he gave in the mid-nineties leapt out:

Things to Come also has my favorite post-apocalyptic depiction, too (love how the warlord’s wife is decked out like Schliemann’s Helen!).

Dune’s been on the mind lately, and I listened to Bernard Szajner’s (Z’s) Visions of Dune this morning, actually. In a lot of ways it actually did feel a bit like soundtrack music—though the sort of pulsating, driving electronics and ambients are great if you’re the sort of person who likes that thing, more than most…

This week’s been something of a catch-up-on-well-reviewed-pictures week, including a couple I’m making right before they get out of theaters (in a week with record or near-record first-run theater-going for me):

This has been on my mind lately, too.

Oh, I found Art of the First Cities, too—the Met has a pdf available for free on their website (that’s also how I read their Egyptian painting catalogue).

Any relation between Chesterson’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and the Hitchcock films (it’s actually one of the ones I haven’t seen)?

I’ve been slowly sailing through the Aubrey-Maturin novels for years (checked—found a reference to Post Captain in a note from 2013!) and now the end is starting to be in sight. I finished The Commodore last night—which was good, but maybe I shouldn’t have read it immediately after the excellent The Wine-Dark Sea—and…

Are We Still Reading?

I made myself a cappucino this morning and it turned out perfectly.

Even better, it actually reads “Who?”

I recommend the diverse, gorgeous, and galvanizing discography of the late electronic master composer Susumu Yokota, which I’m haphazardly making my way through. Tonight I listened to Grinning Cat. It’s the perfect album for spending a night in reading a biography of Man Ray—atmospheric Debussy samples mixed in an…

I saw this after being woken up by a siren—I’m heartbroken reading this, @Matthew_Blanchette:disqus , but whatever else remember that it is okay to be sad, okay to have feelings, okay to feel miserable—if you are at a low point, well, we all are sometimes. Please be resilient, focus on yourself, and don’t be afraid.

It’s crazy how The College Dropout sounds like it was made by a different guy now—maybe it’s because I was in high school when it came out but it made a real impression on me and, to some extent, it’s how I prefer to think of Kanye given the sort of smothering in luxury he’s put himself through.

There are some pretty great ones in the final season, too—“Parallels” and “The Pegasus” really leap out in my memory, “Evolution” is camp and enjoyable (and the origin of my username), and “Sub Rosa” has to be seen to be believed.

And he also looked, in a way, so normal—much more natural for a terminator.

No, I quote Seinfeld without any gimmick (also I’d just watched “The Mango” before reading this).

I feel like I read the AVC review more than a year ago, something like 18-24 months ago. I also used to pass by a billboard for it fairly regularly, and I thought that predated 2016, too.