The Clientele. Hot off their sprawling comeback album I Am Not There Anymore and a opening slot for another pantheon band of mine (The War on Drugs—at Royal Albert Hall, no less! Of all the shows for me to miss!), these lads had another strong showing this year in my stats, bolstered by the fact that I made a sprawling playlist and accompanying zine for my dear friend Sarah. I leaned heavy on B-sides and assorted ephemera this time around.

Where should I start with them? If you aren't hooked within the first ten seconds of “Since K Got Over Me,” the leadoff track from the band's masterful third album Strange Geometry (2005), I fear this band might not be for you. But if you, like me, love swirling, reverbed-out fingerpicked Stratocaster in your swoony, literary English indie-pop, keep listening to Strange Geometry, then listen to their first two albums, Suburban Light (2000) and The Violet Hour (2002), then pick back up with their fourth album, God Save the Clientele (2006).

The Isley Brothers. Funk-rock godfathers, the ultimate R&B chameleons, Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. These dudes wrote “Shout” in 1959 (which would cement anyone's legendary status, so unkillable is that song) and got Beyoncé to feature on one of their songs in 2022. They have been sampled by Biggie Smalls, the Beastie Boys, and Kendrick Lamar. Ernie Isley's guitar tone is one of the greatest sounds I've ever heard, guitar or otherwise. These guys are legends in the field.

Where should I start with them? I'm partial to the sextet era of the group that starts proper with the totally awesome 3 + 3 (1973), also known as “the one with 'That Lady' on it.” It’s my favourite Isleys albums, but the one I gravitated towards in 2024 was The Heat Is On (1975), which is more groove-oriented. Another Isleys track I had on repeat was “It's Alright With Me,” from The Real Deal (1982), which sees the brothers bringing in an electro influence.

Kiwi Jr. Last year, my friend Ross, who works at a record store in Jolly Ol', sent me a wonderful care package consisting of Kiwi Jr's second and third albums on 12” vinyl. Sometimes my friend spoil me rotten. He sent me the records in part because I've been singing the praises of this band ever since I listened to “Leslie” over and over again in 2019. Jeremy Gaudet is one of my favourite active rock lyricists, and not just because he obviously likes some of the same movies I do.

Where do I start with them? Since the Kiwis only have three albums, I'd recommend just starting with Football Money (2019) and working your way forwards. If you miss college rock like they did it in the 1990s, you'll love Football Money, which is catchy, breezy (10 tracks, 28 minutes), and a total blast to list to. There's a lot of Pavement in their DNA, but they love Guided by Voices and the Kinks, too. Cooler Returns (2021), my favourite Kiwi Jr. album, introduces a broader sonic palette, while Chopper (2022) is stacked floor to ceiling with cool, moody synths.

Peter Cat Recording Co. The few, the proud, the contemporary sophisti-pop bands. I stumbled upon these guys while browsing the album art for 2024 releases on Rate Your Music, which I acknowledge is the most deranged way to find new music to listen to. But the experience isn't unlike browsing the stacks at a record store, where you have little to go on but a genre and a piece of album art. I can't claim this is the most effective way of finding cool music, but it worked this time, because I found a cool band that was able to answer the question “What if Prefab Sprout were from New Delhi?”

Where should I start with them? Beta (2024) is the record that hooked me. The cinematic atmosphere, the long, languid melodies, Suryakant Sawhney's weary croon: at the risk of sounding too abstract, this record has fantastic vibes. The opening avant-chamber waltz “Flowers R. Blooming” is kind of a fakeout, since the album twin centrepieces of “21c” and “Black and White” are brooding dancefloor bangers.

Ween. I've loved these bastards since I was in high school (I once did an oral presentation on “Push th' Little Daisies” in English class), which puts them in the hallowed company of bands like Rush and They Might Be Giants. And let's face facts, Ween is They Might Be Giants for edgelords (I know Ween bristles at being compared to TMBG, but how many prolific genre-hopping alt-rock duos from the Northeast founded in the 80s whose members met in high school can you name—I'm gonna dedicate a blog post to this one day) and now I'm at the point where I'm the kind of sicko who listens to bootlegs. Never mind that, I have preferred bootlegs (check out Central Park 2010/9/17, which closes with the best version of “Doctor Rock” I've ever heard).

Where should I start with them? I'd recommend non-heads start with the excellent White Pepper (2000), Ween's most approachable album in that it has the fewest voice filters and the least off-putting imagery. There's a lot of cool psychedelia and Beatles-y pop, and ends with a three-song run that wouldn't sound out of place on a 70s country rock record. That run includes “Stay Forever,” a song so lovely it fries your brain knowing that these are the same guys who less than a decade earlier recorded a song called “Touch My Tooter.”

#music #tenthings

Here are ten books I read and liked last year.

1. Roland Allen, The Notebook (nonfiction, 2024). I don’t think there was a book released this past year that was more my shit than this one, a wide-ranging and thoroughly researched history of the humble notebook, from its mercantile origins in 14th century Italy through the commonplace book era to the bujo boom of today. It’s heartening to see that for almost as long as we’ve been writing things down for ourselves, we’ve been using it as a place to figure out the world around us, including ourselves. Every Field Notes has the truth printed inside of it: “I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now.”
2. Sarah Bakewell, How to Live (nonfiction, 2011). This overview of the life and work of French writer and statesman Michel de Montaigne has a very Montaingesque structure: twenty attempts to answer to the titular question. The root of “essay,” after all, is the French verb essayer, or “to try.” The Notebook was in part about the ways we came to exteriorize out thoughts and ideas on paper, and few people in recorded history did so with as much relish and as little regard for internal consistency as Montaigne. Of course, this was part of the process: Montaigne was demonstrating his trains of thought to better think through any given topic. This is a refreshing approach to decorticating something in an era of speed and instantaneity.
3. Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph (nonfiction, 1975). Oblique Strategies for the Letterboxd set. Something to be consulted, not necessarily read through. Fascinating insights about filmmaking from a legendary and idiosyncratic filmmaker.
4. Roy Peter Clark, How to Write Short (nonfiction, 2013). Writing long has its benefits; just ask Montaigne, who did so to tease out this thoughts about this topic or that. The benefit of writing short is when you know what you want to say, but want to maximize its punchiness. It is clear throughout that Clark (who I always confuse with Roy Thomas Baker, the guy who made Queen sound like Queen) has honed his writing advice over a lifetime in journalism, academia, and coaching. The advice itself isn’t particularly novel: keep it tight, pick strong words, be ruthless if need be. What makes this book interesting is the breadth of the examples Clark uses to make his point: tweets, dating profiles, baseball card copy, engagement-bait Facebook quizzes, poems, puns, T-shirts for sale on the boardwalk. It’s like J-school riff on that Jim Jarmusch quote about originality: “Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows,” it’s all good.
5. Kyle Chayka, Filterworld (nonfiction, 2024). The best thing I read all year, and also the book that made me do the Rick Dalton meme in recognition the most frequently, so specific were the observations and even the recommendations (I know Chayka is my brother because he too is a fan of Hiroshi Sato’s Awakening). Chayka, a writer for the New Yorker whose Infinite Scroll column is required reading, argues that the algorithm, and by extension Big Tech, flattens culture into a mushy flavourless middle, and that our various social media feeds kill our curiosity while fighting tooth and nail for our attention. What we take in is more and more imposed on us, and how we consume it has become more frictionless, passive, optimized. We must revel in the joyous friction of seeking things out for ourselves. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the best algorithm is the cool people you know, because cool people like cool things. (Further reading: I also read and liked Chayka’s book about the history of minimalism, The Longing for Less)
6. Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff (nonfiction, 2020). There’s something irresistible to me about a curious newcomer trying to break into a niche competitive domain, and the more niche the better. Consider my fondness for Stefan Fatsis’ Word Freak, a book that in no small part set me on my correct competitive Scrabble path, or the work of the Paper Lion himself, George Plimpton. I found Konnikova’s journey into the heart of competitive poker to be absorbing and alluring; there are through lines about the relationship between skill and luck, what you can and cannot control, and the overwhelming power of cognitive biases. “Less certainty, more inquiry” indeed. Pair it with Jon Bois’ Pretty Good video about poker.
7. Jason Kirk, Hell Is a World Without You (fiction, 2024). I didn’t grow up in the church. But I grew up in West Québec, which is still pretty church-adjacent, or church-adjacent enough for me to have had a high school girlfriend who signed one of my yearbooks with a screed against evolution (Rachel, if you ever see this, what’s up) and came to school armed with literature (I might be conflating two people here, cut me some slack, it’s been 20 years). But one thing I was for sure was a 14-year-old social outcast navigating friendships and romance and my own sense of guilt between sessions of Soul Calibur II and NHL Hitz 2003 with the homies. Kirk, a sports journalist and co-host of the venerable Shutdown Fullcast, writes with great humour and empathy about growing up Evangelical, and gleefully channels his inner puerile 14-year-old in the book’s funnier passage, which are legion.
8. Patrick O’Reilly, Demographics Report, November, 2023 (poetry, 2024). Full disclosure, Patrick is a friend, and Cactus Press put out my own chapbook back in 2021, but if I’m not going to rep my scene, who the hell will? Most of Demographics Report is a long, bleakly funny modernist poem attempting to catalogue, in the spirit of Georges Perec, the comings and goings of a city’s fauna, humans included. This slot could also have gone to Sahand Farivar’s beautiful Thirteen Sonnets or local legend Lou Vani’s Moon Rock Writes, which both feel classical in their own way.
9. Oliver Roeder, Seven Games (nonfiction, 2024). More than a pocket history of the titular seven games (checkers, chess, go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble, bridge), Roeder’s book is especially interesting when humans build machines that end up being so good at playing games that the best of us start playing like them (this is especially evident in the chapter about chess); the existential issue is, as Roeder puts it, the machines can’t explain themselves to us. There’s also the thorough line of computer scientists seemingly treating games as a problem to be solved rather than an elegant expression of human creativity.
10. Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars (poetry, 2011). The best poetry collection I read this year. Works in the same way as the best science fiction: ideas and feelings refracted through future tech and the sheer vastness of the Universe.

#tenthings

1. The word for the shavings left over when someone drills into steel is “swarf.”
2. The laundromat is an underrated third place.
3. You can write about 160 words on one quarter of an A4 page.
4. “Plots are for coffins and pedants.” —Spencer Hall
5. Board game streams are only as good as their colour commentators.
6. It's good to be a local legend.
7. Baseball is primarily vibes.
8. If you're boiling your corn on the cob, six minutes is plenty.
9. If you can't sleep, read.
10. Old notebooks are the cheapest form of time travel.

#tenthings

Here are ten things.

1. Between the record rainfall, multiple tornadoes, and sinus-destroying smoke wafting on down from the fires up north, I would say my beloved hometown is in its Biblical weather era.
2. SAG-AFTRA is now on strike alongside the WGA for the first time since 1960, further putting the squeeze on the studios. As ever, solidarity with the writers and actors, and may they get everything they're asking for and then some.
3. I am fairly certain “girl dinner” is just charcuterie, or as I've called it in the past, “indoor picnicking.” There truly is nothing new under the sun.
4. NEW JON BOIS JOINT IN AUGUST, THIS IS NOT A DRILL
5. Austin Krance's devilishly sticky browser game Sports Under 150 will gobble up every available second you have while at your desk. The premise is simple: you are presented with a country, select a sport they are ranked highly in, fill out your list, and aim for the lowest possible score. Get ready to wonder how good the Polish national baseball team is.
6. I have fully pivoted to being a Scrabble sicko. I busted out my tattered 20-year-old copy of Word Freak, downloaded some key pieces of study software, and started memorizing valid two- and three-letter words (god forbid I ever play CUM against one of the sweet old ladies at the Scrabble club).
7. Speaking of Scrabble, Babbl is a charming 8-bit Scrabble clone with an infinite board and no clock.
8. Variety put out a list of the greatest action movies of all time, and though it's hard to argue with #1, I found plenty to quibble about: only one 70s/80s martial arts movies not named Enter the Dragon, only one Jackie Chan movie, Terminator 2 outside the top 15. But at least Seven Samurai is in the top 10.
9. Headlining this edition's Watchlist Roulette is the certified pop-culture phenomenon known as “Barbenheimer.” Some friends packed into my friend Jerome's comically compact car and drove to the Carrefour Angrignon to take in all three hours of Oppenheimer (IMAX and/or 70mm will have to wait), had a light lunch, and treated ourselves to Barbie for dessert. A fun time was had by all. On the home front, I popped an adult gummy and watched Gilda on one of those free-view channels on my Roku device; highly recommended
10. “Go Ahead” by Roger Mitchell (via Pome):

    Go ahead, said the great crested flycatcher,
    lie in your bed all morning with the yellow curtains drawn
    and write poetry. No one will see.

#tenthings

Here are ten things.

1. I was on vacation last week! Steph and I went to Ottawa, visited some friends, frolicked in the pool, ate incredibly well, and otherwise had a nice, relaxing time.
2. Prior to that, we went to the Granby Zoo. We picked the warmest, stickiest day of our time off to go, but that just made the wave pool and lazy river feel that much better.
3. My rental was a Tesla. This was my first experience with the Elon Shitbox, and it pains me to say that it's a fun automobile to drive, even if it goes out of its way to take the driving out of driving. It's also over-engineered in a very specific tech-bro kind of way. Having to navigate a menu to be able to adjust the steering wheel isn't a feature, just... leave the little lever on the steering wheel. Damn near everything is done through the dash-mounted tablet, which, if you don't have a co-pilot, is a total cognitive hazard.
4. While in Ottawa, I got reacquainted with the consensus worst piece of fan fiction ever written, My Immortal. This was the first time in a while I thought about it, and the first time ever I experienced the whole interminable thing. What's most insidious/hilarious about this whole endeavour, other than the crass tween edginess and the litany of phobias and isms contained therein, is its repetitive hypnotic quality (the words “black,” “lace,” and, yes, “Gothic,” sound like nonce terms after a while). My Immortal lulls you into its absurd rhythms, which makes every brain-frying left turn feel that much more like a psychic concussion. There truly is nothing else out there like it.
5. I love the Home Run Derby, and I love it even more when a Blue Jay comes out on top. Every All-Star Game should have “ball go far” events. The Pro Bowl should have a longest field goal competition. The NBA should have a logo 3 contest. Hell, I'd watch NHL players fire one-timers from the blue line.
6. Via Andy Baio, the Tiny Awards, which is “a small prize awarded by an equally-small selection committee of online makers to the website which we feel best embodies the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.” This is the version of the internet we can still have.
7. But for now, I agree with Max that the internet is for 12-year-olds.
8. Xavier Dolan, the wunderkind Canadian filmmaker whose filmography contains more films that have played the Cannes Film Festival than not (including his debut film, which played the Riviera just a few months after his 20th birthday), has (maybe?) decided to quit the movies, declaring that “art is useless and dedicating oneself to the cinema, a waste of time,” and that he doesn't “feel like committing two years to a project that barely anyone sees.” Now Dolan has already been more successful than I'll ever be several times over and surely has enough clout to make smaller (if less seen, less lauded) projects until the day he can't even lift a camera anymore. But this seems like a loser's attitude. I get that feeling like you're creating art in a vacuum can be frustrating, but if you reframe it just so, it can be the most liberating realization you can make about your practice. If no one's watching, what's keeping you from doing any god damn thing you want? Do what thousands of hobbyists and enthusiasts have done since the dawn of the camcorder: write a script, call up some friends (and Xavier, if somehow you ever read this, I know for certain that you have friends in high places), and shoot a movie on what's available. If Steven Soderbergh and Sean Baker and Park Chan-wook can make entire actual-ass movies on iPhones, I believe you can too. The result might not play Cannes, but it'll be yours, forever. Art matters in the doing, not the touring.
9. Speaking of movies, here's where I landed on my most recent spins of the Watchlist Roulette: a gritty Montreal-set NFB crime movie from the 70s called La gammick, aka The Mob.
   
10. “Author's Prayer” by Ilya Kaminsky (via Pome):

    If I speak for the dead, I must leave
    this animal of my body,
    
    I must write the same poem over and over,
    for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.
    
    If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge
    of myself, I must live as a blind man
    
    who runs through rooms without
    touching the furniture.
    
    Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking 'What year is it?'
    I can dance in my sleep and laugh
    
    in front of the mirror.
    Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,
    
    I will praise your madness, and
    in a language not mine, speak
    
    of music that wakes us, music
    in which we move. For whatever I say
    
    is a kind of petition, and the darkest
    days must I praise.

#tenthings

Here are ten things.

1. I'm on vacation! I love being paid to sit on my giant ass and do less than nothing.
2. One of the least surprising things about me is that I really like Steely Dan, and it was a big week in Danland: the daughters of legendary engineer Roger Nichols, Ashlee and Cimcee, found a DAT containing a full version of the presumed-lost Gaucho-era track “The Second Arrangement”. Amateur engineers have already taken a crack at mastering the song. Could an official release be far behind? (via Expanding Dan)
3. Vox explores the use of miniatures in Wes Anderson movies.
4. For Vulture, Bilge Ebiri interviews the legendary John Woo.
5. Susanna Hoffs in the Criterion Closet.
6. For GQ, Eric Wills profiles Australian bowler Jason Belmonte, possessor of an unorthodox two-handed delivery, winner of 15 major titles, and possibly the greatest ten-pin player of all time. My main conclusion is that Kingpin is real.
7. For the first time in a long time, I participated in a Magic draft with a set that was still freshly released, which is to say that me and nine other dorks drafted Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth. I'm skeptical of the IP-centric direction Wizard of the Coast is taking Magic but I have to admit this was a fun set to draft. I drafted a solid-enough Boros deck built around Flowering of the White Tree. Gimli put in some good work, too.
8. My good friend Avleen (nom de poésie Mirabel) launched her latest book The Vanishing Act (& The Miracle After) at Montréal's venerable Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly.
9. Watchlist roulette: Wes Anderson's Atomic Age dramedy Asteroid City, current Sight & Sound world heavyweight champion Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the punchy, noirish B-western Forty Guns, and this year's CanCon all-star, BlackBerry.
10. “The Why” by Alex Dimitrov (via Pome)

    I want to be in rooms full of people I love.
    The world goes white then green again
    like the mind telling the body it is not alone.
    The body saying something I can almost hear
    above the sound of a dog barking
    because he feels himself tied and tremendously alone.
    Who would you believe?
    I walk the great streets of New York City
    where many great people have lived
    and think how great it is to live and die on earth
    even if it means having known nothing
    of the why. Nothing of the why.

#tenthings

Here are ten things.

1. In honour of Father's Day, the great Ryan Nanni (part of the SB Nation coaching tree, co-host of the Shutdown Fullcast) asks, What is the most Dad thing you did all year?
2. SlamBall is back, baby? What, you don't remember SlamBall? Teenage me had a lot of time for it. The great Kofie Yeboah is a fan.
3. For Slate, Dan Kois on why the text fields on my phone are littered with periods.
4. For Wired, Paul Ford on archiving his late dad's work.
5. Keith Phipps on the missing six seconds in The French Connection.
6. Would you place Alien in the horror section or the sci-fi section?
7. In font news: introducing Intel One Mono.
8. I was recently made aware of the 12-seat Little Prince micro-cinema in Stratford, Ontario, and it has reawakened dormant dreams of running my own little jewel box movie house.
9. Watchlist roulette: the neo-hixploitation classic Breakdown, the humanistic Korean military thriller Joint Security Area, and the screwball double feature of Bringing Up Baby and What's Up, Doc?.
10. “Summer Grass” by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robert Bly (via Pome):

    So much has happened.
    Reality has eaten away so much of us.
    But summer, at last.
    
    A great airport—the control tower leads down
    load after load with chilled
    people from space.
    
    Grass and flowers—we are landing.
    The grass has a green foreman.
    I go and check in.

#tenthings

Source: Instagram/@francisfordcoppola

Here are ten things.

1. I watched the fifth and final game of the 2023 NBA Finals with some friends and marvelled at Nikola Jokić, a bored king dominating the NBA almost as an afterthought.
2. The best thing about Nick Taylor sinking a 72-foot putt for eagle to clinch the Canadian Open is this slow-mo footage of fellow Canadian golfer Adam Hadwin getting absolutely trucked by security while celebrating.
3. SportsNet put out a cute Wes Anderson-esque summary of the totally wackadoo 1992-93 NHL season.
4. Matt Dinan on the semiotics of dadcore.
5. A Max Read doublet on MrBeast (not linking to his YouTube page cos honestly he doesn't need the help): first for the Times, and second for his excellent newsletter.
6. Radio Garden maps out every streaming radio station on the internet onto a spinnable globe. Now you too can know what they're listening to in, I don't know, Malmö.
7. Hideo Kojima paid a visit to the Criterion Closet, which is an event I have a vested interest in. Maybe I should pick up a copy of The Creative Gene?
8. “One of the greatest surprises in life is when you realize you’re elderly. But there’s a gentle comfort coming from that, as everyone loves stories and long ago adventures told by their Grandpa.” This is a quote from Francis Ford Coppola (you know, The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now...) on his first Instagram post. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.
9. Watchlist Roulette: the gloriously 90s Grosse Pointe Blank (maybe the best of the post-QT crime comedies?), the subpar but better-than-anticipated 65, and cable-TV dadcore classic Cop Land.
10. A poem by Richard Wright, via Pome:
    

    I give permission
    For this slow spring rain to soak
    The violet beds.

#tenthings

Here are ten things.

1. Let's get architectural: two of my favourite kinds of dwellings are surf shacks and A-frame cottages. The playful spirit of the so-called “gingerbread cottages” of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (like the so-called Pink House) come in at a strong third.
2. In what the great Spencer Hall called a “controlled demolition,” New York Times art critic Jason Farago takes a scalpel to the Brooklyn Museum's new Pablo Picasso exhibit, whose title is so embarrassing I can't will my fingers to type it out here.
3. For GQ, Howard Beck on napping as a practice in the NBA. If an evening nap is good enough for Jimmy Buckets, it's good enough for me.
4. Danny DeVito talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger for Interview Magazine, and it got existential.
5. RIP Blaseball. As the pandemic started to ramp up in early 2020, I stumbled into the tail end of this eldritch baseball simulation's first season, cheering on the lowly Seattle Garages. I watched aghast as our star pitcher was Incinerated by the Forbidden Book. I watched the game grow and blossom in a veritable cultural phenomenon. I'm sad it's gone, but frankly, I'm surprised it stuck around as long as it did. Nothing this insular or weird was ever going to be compatible with the desires of venture capital. Godspeed to you, The Game Band, for gracing the world with your creation when it needed it most; I look forward to what's next. Godspeed to you, fellow fans, and may your eternal Party Time be a happy one. Garages forever!
6. Speaking of baseball: here's Cincinnati Reds rookie Elly De La Cruz simply annihilating a Noah Syndergaard fastball.
7. The Atlantic's Walt Hunter lays out what I know firsthand because I did it as a workshop exercise: ChatGPT can't write poetry for shit.
8. Watchlist Roulette: closing out the Blank Check Buster Keaton miniseries with College, Steamboat Bill, Jr., and The Cameraman, and a Maya Deren double feature of The Private Life of a Cat and Meshes of the Afternoon.
9. RIP The Iron Sheik. I will be 93 and riddled with dementia but I will always remember him calling Caillou “the jabroni of the earth.”
10. “The Weather-Cock Points South” by Amy Lowell:

    I put your leaves aside,
    One by one:
    The stiff, broad outer leaves;
    The smaller ones,
    Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
    The glazed inner leaves.
    One by one
    I parted you from your leaves,
    Until you stood up like a white flower
    Swaying slightly in the evening wind.
    
    White flower,
    Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;
    Flower with surfaces of ice,
    With shadows faintly crimson.
    Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
    The stars crowd through the lilac leaves
    To look at you.
    The low moon brightens you with silver.
    
    The bud is more than the calyx.
    There is nothing to equal a white bud,
    Of no colour, and of all,
    Burnished by moonlight,
    Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind. 

#tenthings

Here are ten things.

1. It was my friend Willow's birthday, and to celebrate the event, a bunch of friends and acquaintances got together, ate pizza, yelled at Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, sang, played guitar, discussed the merits of Tommy Wiseau and yacht rock, and otherwise shot the breeze. I'm still not at a point in my life where I'll say no to a classic house party.
2. My friend CJ and her search for Kelly LeBrock's Weird Science shoes. Nike, I know you're reading this: the 40th anniversary of this movie is in a couple of years, and sneakerhead culture is still going strong. Now is the time to bring back the '84 Too Highs.
3. Daywrecker alert: Timeguessr, which is like Geoguessr, but for photography. (via Baio)
4. I love baseball, especially fake baseball, I love podcasts, and I love sleeping. Northwoods Baseball Sleep Radio combines all of those things in a single package. Think “baseball radio ASMR” and you're getting close. Kevin Goldstein of Fangraphs wrote up the show last January.
5. Shout out to local pizza chain Slice & Soda and their comically large pies.
6. There's something refreshing about /Film's Top 100 Movies of All Time list. There's the fact that it's unranked. There's the fact that every entry comes with a de facto double bill pairing. And there's the subtle choice of “top” in the title rather than best, because this list has a certain movieness to it; it reads like a who's who of rewatchables and comfort watches.
7. Watchlist roulette: Whit Stillman's acerbic yuppie talkfest Metropolitan and Oliver Stone's brain-melting conspiracy thriller JFK.
8. For absolutely no reason other than I find it wonderful, here a 2019 video of the great jazz guitarist Bill Frisell performing “You Are My Sunshine” as only he can.
9. RIP Tina Turner. She was, as the song goes, simply the best.
10. “Jesus visits my uncle's office” by Andrew Aftel (via Pome):

    Jesus and his disciples
    entered the office of my uncle,
    whose name was Norman, and who sold
    eyeglasses for great profits.
    And Jesus said unto him,
    “Are you having a good day
    at the office?” And Norman replied,
    “It is a fair day.” And Jesus said
    unto him, “Is that right?” Then he
    and his disciples proceeded to
    take hammers, and they smashed all of the
    eyeglasses. Then they opened the
    cages where the secretaries worked,
    so the workers flew away, like doves.

#tenthings