If AI wins and we lose
Some thoughts after reading this morning's news Anthropic disclosed $895.4 billion in committed spending
Inflicting Nostalgia & The Part You Keep
I bought a lot of Simpsons comics in my childhood, even though they rarely made me laugh. Recently, I keep eyeing a Treehouse of Horror collection I had as a kid, wondering if I should pull the trigger on that $15 purchase and see if this comic I didn'
Motivation / You Can See Everything
"He turns the empty glass in his hand and considers biting off the rim." - Raymond Carver, "Are These Actual Miles?" 1. Personal story about the recipe and how I learned it from a family member and now make it for my family I've been
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), Richard Price, Smile, etc.
"It's a crime/horror story about gentrification." Isn't that enticing? Isn't that the first time you've ever heard anything described like that? People are always talking about how surprisingly smart some new genre story is for featuring gentrification as a
Joe Matt's Peepshow & Dead Ends
Three years ago, after the cartoonist Joe Matt died, I wrote about the depressing metanarrative running through his work. It was probably too soon but it was also something I'd been thinking about for a decade. That ran on my Substack, which I abandoned four months later, as
My Dad's Work And The Sony Offices Next Door
Occasionally in the 90s, I'd visit my dad's workplace in Foster City, CA. He was a general contractor and the company he worked for occupied around half of a building in a business park. Look at this beauty: In May 1994, in the run-up to
The Bad Kind of Violence, pt. 2: I'm never watching the old Faces of Death movies
Fair content warning up top. I don't want to ruin anybody's day. Descriptions of violence and death to follow. Thinking about 9-1-1 as violence I can't stand for its weightlessness and for all the overwritten melodrama in its wake, I had to
The Bad Kind of Violence, pt. 1: I May Have Watched Too Much 9-1-1
Two sections here. First one's titled "Finding Art," second one's titled "I Just Got Banned From Another Gymboree." I. Finding Art How do you navigate the cultural surfeit? Genuinely, I'm asking. In theory, I'm mostly fine with being
Fudging history makes Primetime a better movie & a worse argument
I saw Primetime, the new movie about NBC’s To Catch A Predator, a couple nights ago. It was a “good time,” a stunning look through ”the drama” of making a TV show that truly brought “water for elephants.” These are all the names of Robert Pattinson movies. He plays
Y tu mamá también (2001)
I haven’t revisited Alfonso Cuarón’s great Y tu mamá también in at least ten years, but we don't choose when the art in our mental archive comes for us. We take it in and hold on tight for when we'll need it. At the
Resident Evil (2026)
It's a metaphor for AI.
Doors addendum/Barry Bonds story: a quick thought about Oliver Stone's Indians
Editing some typos in the Doors essay I wrote yesterday, I realized I had a perfect story to relate the way Oliver Stone uses Native Americans in that movie. I don't think I'm going to get a better time to share it, so here it is.