neither good cop nor bad cop but a secret third thing (mid cop)

I think this is shocking to me because for a few years now I've been letting Sandra Bullock (1964) substitute for Geena Davis (1956) in my outer consciousness

A woman stares out across a century from the post-WWI Dada era at something just beyond you

Did you also fall in love with this picture of Emmy Hennings

I've never made the time, but it has foundational status in American studies/African-American/popular music studies, and I understand that Lott's prose goes down pretty smooth for the scholarly set

20th anniversary edition LOVE & THEFT BLACKFACE MINSTRELSY & THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS With a Foreword by GREIL MARCUS Eric Lott

Don't be bamboozled: the title Love & Theft is knowingly borrowed from Eric Lott's 1993 book of the same name, the definitive account of the origin and enduring power of minstrelsy in American culture.

I am extremely excited to one day see the anorak they offered to make out of a moth-eaten blanket I brought them in late 2024 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is simpler than it looks, just let the people who did the Hunter Biden movie take on Comet Ping Pong.

It features three cats with intricate, unique patterns on their bodies. The artist notes that these are manually embroidered and sometimes sold with baby cats included. The designs are often inspired by traditional art patterns like folk embroidery or floral themes.

a handmade embroidery artwork titled "Manually embroidered cats" created by artist @ladyserebrennikova.

Ronald Reagan, the made-for-TV movie The Day After, and the American jeremiad.

I think it still sounds kinda smart, but I had cooked my brain reading Lipstick Traces and depended greatly on the inexhaustible patience of my advisors.

speaking as someone who was for a long time uncomfortable with "am yisrael" until I spent a little more time thinking and reading about it, I think it would be helpful to assume that Jews and non-Jews alike could use a refresher on the point

The one I remember was my friend’s mom‘s self portrait that hung in his basement. Half of her face looking dead on at the viewer, a series of doors and keyholes and forest groves. Immaculately olive and tan. Intensely spooky, not at all bad.

- and a scene at said camp where the director gravely informed the campers that Iraq had invaded Kuwait (I remember that breakfast as clear as day)

very excited to learn by way of writing this thread that Abel has a new book coming out in June!

Heather Abel's The Optimistic Decade came out in 2018 and featured:
- a lefty Santa Monica milieu (which I'd come to know well)
- an alternative summer camp setting (like a mix of the one I attended and my college)
- ...

this week Maris asks "Did you ever read a book in which you are so far inside the target demographic that it feels a little creepy?" by way of introducing Dear Monica Lewinsky and I know it's a rhetorical question but yes, shockingly, yes...

yup. please let's visualize this for music, movies and TV, which have their green shoots but very rarely get loud enough to compete with politics. (video games seem to be coming along, maybe that's because they mystify me as much as sports)

one of the ways the mid to late 20th century political world has distorted the historical memories of even sophisticated observers is in the idea that you can achieve major transformations of american political life through something like bipartisan consensus

I am fond of Love & Mercy, but I think it's overall a well-made but ultimately biopic-shaped container for the incredible sequence where they make Good Vibrations

It helped that it came out the same year as The Aviator, which I thought fell down completely on a. but managed b. with the help of Cate Blanchett's Katharine Hepburn pants.

I liked Kinsey (2004) a lot. It helped me develop my criteria for biopics, which is that they should both a. make a case that the person changed their world in some profound way, and b. intolerably sexy Peter Sarsgaard.

"Donald Rumsfeld" is both too recent and too perfect

we all know I have no life, so:

wait how did Platner already end 2026. I'm jealous

Also election night 2004 was a particularly bad shitshow IIRC -- maybe even the origin of "if you're in line, stay in line". And exit polls early in the day seemed to indicate a Kerry landslide, so by the end of the day many people were primed to think that a Bush victory had to be tainted.

It used to be a swing state!

I'd buy one

at the time I developed the opinion that Jenny Lewis was candy to Neko Case's whiskey. turns out it just takes a few more licks to get to the strychnine at the center of the candy

Huzzah Stella!

'When Peter Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wasn’t talking about your freedom. He was talking about his own. You don’t exist.'

What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat For the richest men on Earth, everything is free and nothing matters.

Very good. We need the curtain pulled back on these guys by people insightful, independent and incisive enough to cut them and their bullshit down to size. Not surprised a screenwriter fits the bill - really nice job by Noah Hawley.

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Kind of regretting my misspent indie rock 20s about now. I was so much older then…