December 2020: vol. III
December 2020: vol. III
keeping up with America's mayor
I’ve been wanting to get in a few words about Rudy Giuliani, a man whose long decline (America’s mayor falls into vat of radioactive goo; emerges as farting, sweating mascot of national humiliation) has been a great source of joy for me as a sort of slapstick mirror-narrative to the whole tragicomedy of Trump. The guy who was TIME’s Person of the Year in 2001 and received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II now has a podcast called Rudy’s Common Sense where, flanked with iPads, he does infomercials for gold and silver coins (“You buy gold not only for what you know, but you buy gold for what you don’t know”) and warns his audience about home title fraud with a copy of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense sitting on a bookshelf behind him. I’m guessing he hasn’t cracked it open yet, or he might have seen something like this: “Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”
Anyway, in the words of Smokey Robinson, God bless you, babe, and enjoy Chanookah.
ben tapeworm
on the turntable
“Anthem” - Father John Misty released his rendition of Leonard Cohen’s song over the summer, smoothing the gravelly awkwardness of the original into a rather timely lullaby of dread.
“In the Image” - Released in 2004 under the pseudonym Phynix but recollected in a compilation this year, Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s track is a mesmerizing affirmation (that also kind of sounds like “Triple Trouble” for a half a second). Thanks to Matt for sharing.
corner bar - A high-spirited jukebox for an imaginary bar. Yé-yé, country, jazz, samba, &c. Listen in order if you can.
on the screen
I finally joined the rest of the world and watched The Queen’s Gambit, which I found to be—for good and bad—a perfect example of Netflix’s house style. I often find myself saying something looks Netflix-y without fully knowing what I mean—some combination of RED cameras, turquoise in the color grading, and lots of well-executed but unnecessary camera movement. The Queen’s Gambit has all that, but also clarified something else. Well-cast, unevenly written, smashingly art-directed, and full of airbrushed historical nostalgia, the Netflix-y show is one that makes you think more about television (those dresses! her eyes! that 60s air mattress!) than about life.
from the archives
Design archivist Evan Collins has pulled together his contributions to the Consumer Aesthetic Research Initiative, a project that collects and names bygone trends that we’re all familiar with but don’t always know how to describe. Start with Utopian Scholastic or Whimsigothic or Global Village Coffehouse and get lost from there. Thanks to Lucas for sharing this.
The Materials Library at London’s Institute of Making is a physical collection that has been elegantly digitized into an encyclopedia of stuff—from the more familiar astroturf and artificial snow to such substances as honeycomb aerospace paper and quartz glow stones.
from my incoming texts
“Cats are so funny dude. I’ve never really hung out with them”
“Currently revisiting that Walkmen album ‘Heaven’ that you showed me when we were drinking rolling rock at 4:15 in the morning”
“I think I am looking at this as ART OBJECT IN VACUUM and you are taking a more COMPARATIVE approach”
“I’m pretty sure the birds are supposed to represent the soul”