The first week of my 48th year
Can I still say I'm "in my mid-40s?"
It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious about birthdays, because if I were, last Friday’s terrible air quality would have augured a crummy year to come. And hey, it well might turn out that way! But until EVERY day has us cowering indoors struggling to breathe, I’ll try to find the pleasure where I can. Here are a few examples.
I was excited to welcome two new paid subscribers this week - it is a thrill and an honor to take your money! As is my habit, I’m taking the funds received and pumping them into other Substacks I follow. Here’s who came up roses this week:
The ReposiTORy: Tor Freeman is a wonderful British illustrator and cartoonist whose work has delighted me and Hope for literally years now. Her riffs on art and literature using friendly animal characters may look harmless, but they often hide a wicked darkness. Follow her today!
Garbage Day: I am very grateful to Ryan Broderick for paying close attention to the internet so I don’t have to. If, like me, you want to have an idea what’s going on in the world of tech and trends without having to sully your precious hands actually touching the stuff, you couldn’t hope for a better guide. His posts are hilarious, massively insightful, and leavened with links to actually-good content that’s worth exploring. Check it out!
Anyway, I haven’t spent my birthweek doing much of anything productive - the placement of July 4th this year was weird, so I didn’t build up much creative momentum. WHICH IS FINE. One activity worth noting is that Hope and I knocked off from work early on Monday to spend a couple of hours at the Whitney, where we accidentally have a membership because we didn’t cancel it before the automatic renewal. Well, whatever - it’s a great museum, even if we don’t get there that often.
The highlight of the visit by far was an exhibit of work by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, an indigenous American artist whose work reimagines modernist techniques through a feminist, anti-racist lens. Her works are full of life and color and imagery from native folklore, and I really liked them. There aren’t many pleasures greater than discovering a fascinating new artist, especially when it’s directly through their actual work rather than reproductions in books or online.
Otherwise, beyond seeing some friends over the weekend, I’ve mostly been plowing lazily through a pile of books and movies. Here’s what I’ve been absorbing this week:
BOOKS
I finished reading:
Funk and Soul Covers - a Taschen collection of gorgeous album covers, primarily from the ‘60s and ‘70s, which I’d been slowly enjoying over a period of months
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - I started this three years ago! It was magnificent, obviously - what a consistently surprising voice, hiding great depth within simplicity.
Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? - a wild, goofy homage to Superman’s little buddy, written by Matt Fraction (author of comics hits Sex Criminals and Hawkeye) in manic-antic mode - it was actually a bit too much of a good thing!
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock - I’d enjoyed a previous book by the author Jenny Odell (How to Do Nothing) and had high hopes for this one. I thought she had a lot of interesting things to say, but I found her writing here very difficult to get into - very heady, mostly quoting from other authors. There’s a waiting list for it at the library, so I’m returning it before I’m finished. I don’t do that very often, so it feels all heavy and weird when I do. But I tried - nearly 200 pages worth of trying, with 100 more to go! I guess I’m saving time in my own way.
And I started reading two books:
The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore - I’m only a few in, but I’m really enjoying it so far.
Bluets, by Maggie Nelson - This is a collection of 240 numbered paragraphs about the author’s obsession with the color blue. Interesting!
And here are the movies (more than usual, because of the holiday):
Cryptozoo - a hand-animated work of weirdness by the comics artist Dash Shaw, about, well, a zoo formed to protect cryptozoological oddities. Gorgeous to look at, but I wish the story had more substance. (It’s on Hulu.)
Zardoz - pure cheesy ‘70s sci-fi ridiculous from John Boorman. There’s nothing like a film that starts off with a giant stone head puking out guns and ending with Sean Connery stop-animating into a skeleton. (It’s on the Criterion Channel.)
Room with a View - I read the book about 20 years ago, and you know what? The movie’s not bad! Captures some of E.M. Forster’s sense of humor, with lovely performances by a stellar cast, including the late Julian Sands and a hysterically reprehensible Daniel Day-Lewis. (It’s on Max.)
Clash of the Titans - We showed this to Dash a few years ago, but now that he’s more versed in Greek myths he asked to watch it again. It has its moments but overall its not super, so it felt like way too soon. After an hour I went upstairs to wash dishes and fold laundry, because that’s what 47 looks like!
The Quatermass Xperiment - early, thoroughly unsentimental Hammer-produced creature feature. They’re certainly a lot less hysterical than Americans when there’s a life-sucking slime alien shambling in their midst. (It was a DVD from the library.)
Okay, I’ve bothered you enough for this week. More to come next Friday!