If You’re in Line, Stay in Line
... with these non-election, non-politics-related links to keep you company and/or distracted.
Wishing you a happy Election Day, or more accurately, a productive one. Go vote!
I voted early, so I’m going to spend the day not trying to read much about the race because it’s the worst time to be trying to read meaningful news about politics.
In that spirit, I’m including you links to things you could read, listen to, or watch while you’re standing in line, and the best part? They have absolutely nothing to do with politics, Harris nor Trump, the election, exit polls, vote totals, any of it.
Ten Worth Your Time
- R.I.P, Quincy Jones. We lost a real one with his passing. Slate’s music writer Chris Molanphy and host of the podcast Hit Parade has two episodes about Jones answering the fuzzy question of “What exactly does a music producer do?” An even better distraction for you, if you’re indeed standing in line, is the Spotify playlist Molanphy includes on this page, absolutely brimming with hits that we owe to Jones. It’s a perfect way to pass time standing around and waiting to do your civic duty.
- Speaking of musical geniuses and podcasts, The Wonder of Stevie is a fabulous new podcast looking at the career of the incomparable Stevie Wonder, album by album. It’s hosted by the brilliant New York Times critic Wesley Morris and was produced with help from the Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground.
- Last week, I shared a story about a high-end rare-books dealer who’d gotten into selling authors’ archives. One of the archives he’d sold was Bob Dylan’s, and Bookforum just published a dispatch from the site in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I love the thought of writers’ archives precisely because of how the piece starts: with the mind of the writer revealed, the decisions laid bare, the roads not taken faintly evident.
YOU OPEN BOX 34, take the typescript from its folder. You can see right away that the song is pretty much finished. He’s got the first four verses locked in, save one lingering question about Ma. Should she be forty but say she’s twenty-four, or eighty claiming sixty-four? Or what if she’s twenty but wants you to think she’s sixty-four? Is that better? Nah. But this is small potatoes, a distraction from the real problem, which is the fifth and final verse, which is still stumping him.
He writes it longhand in the white space below the typing: “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.” Makes sense that after dealing individually with Maggie’s brother, Pa, and Ma over the last three verses, he’d finish by returning to the farm itself. But now what? He writes “You” on its own line. Adds nothing. He leaves some space, gives it a fresh go:
if you ain’t like everyone else
they think they’ve been insulted
everybody try keep track of the
He pauses. This isn’t working. Maybe he takes a break, stays away for a while, because what’s written next is written with a different implement, something darker and thicker. Could be charcoal pencil but who knows. In the white space beside the abandoned fragment, he writes:
I try My best t be just the way I am
but everybody wants me to be just like them
they
they SAY SING WHILE YOU SLAVE
/ I just bored
And there it is.
- Last Friday, my mom retired after 47 years. The party thrown for her was decorated with pictures from her past, and you could see the evolution of technology in the background: first typewriters, then computers, then newer computers. Pieces of ancient history were returned to her as well: 37 years ago, just before I was born, she painted some of the Peanuts characters in their warmest winter wear as decoration for the upcoming Christmas parade. But she never got to see them in action: she went into labor and missed the parade entirely. She hadn’t seen Snoopy and the gang since. But some of the workers found the paintings from storage and returned them to her. Here they are, in all their glory, just about to celebrate a birthday.
As a result, Peanuts has been on my mind, and this story from 2019 shows the enduring appeal. Relatedly, here’s Charles Schulz drawing the characters in a 20-minute video; he’s no Mom, but he’s pretty good at sketching these characters he created, and it’s a calming way to pass the time. P.S.—Here’s a post from Kottke that shares a letter from Schulz about what it means to be a good citizen, which feels appropriate for Election Day. - I recently undertook a project for the University of Missouri’s Writing Center, in which I interviewed and chronicled the development of its Online Writery. It was a chance to talk with some really smart people who, 30 years ago, saw the potential for the internet in writing instruction. Going through the files I found an old photocopy of an article from WIRED, a brand-new magazine at the time. WIRED also decided to do an oral history: of its own website, one of the first media websites ever. If you’re standing there in line, killing time mindlessly scrolling the internet on your phone and looking for something to distract you, take in this history of a website that’s also the history of the internet more generally.
- Maybe you’re not in the mood for reading OR listening, and you’re going to turn to a game of some sort. Maybe that game is Wordle (or one of the countless other awesome games offered by The New York Times), but the union that includes the employees who make all the games is on strike and asking for folks not to play the games out of solidarity. What’s a person to do, you ask? Time to kill, a brain that needs stimulation, the whole nine yards. Well, look no further than AlphaGuess. A shockingly simple concept: Figure out the word of the day by guessing a word and getting instructions on whether your guess comes, alphabetically, before or after the correct choice. You get the guidance and adjust your guess accordingly. You can try to get it in the fewest guesses possible OR you can try to get it as quickly as possible (or if you’re a real sicko like my friend and word-game queen, Courtney, you can do both so well as to make me not even want to play word-based games). Regardless of your approach, it will give you something to do while you stand in line.
- I’d been meaning to listen to Brian Phillip’s new podcast for The Ringer called Truthless. I’m behind a few episodes, but when I saw one of the most recent was about Malcolm Gladwell, I jumped to it. I’ve written about Gladwell lately, and since then, I’ve listened to his audiobook version of Revenge of the Tipping Point, the follow-up to his hit bestseller of 25 years ago. (Spoiler warning: He did it again; he hooked me, and the book absolutely flew by.) But Truthless is a podcast summed up simply: It’s about the lies we tell. So I was interested to see Gladwell as a subject, and the story was entertaining in itself but poked at some of the most interesting aspects of journalism and storytelling: honesty and objectivity. No small things, and Phillips goes back and forth over a story that Gladwell told at The Moth, an NYC storytelling organization, that is undeniably entertaining but, upon closer inspection, a fabrication of some of the basic points of the story. Regardless of whether you’re interested in the larger issue, this podcast episode is a blast; you’ll be closer to the voting booth before you even realize it. Just for an added deep dive, here’s a link to the 2008 Slate piece by Jack Schafer that called out Gladwell’s story in the first place.
- Recently, I shared a story about LeBron James and his son, Bronny, as the latter sought to join his father in the NBA. The shadow cast by his father is large, and it was a fascinating read to hear unbridled opinions about his game and imagine the fortitude of the young man who no doubt can read the same articles and see all that’s been said about him. Here’s a literary version of that: John le Carré, famed writer of Cold War espionage tales, died in 2020, and his son, also a writer, finally decided to carry on his father’s characters and stories. If you prefer to listen to the son’s charming accent as he talks about taking the reins from his world-famous father, here’s an interview with him on Fresh Air that I particularly enjoyed.
- Here’s Sloane Crosley in The New Yorker on Dorothy Parker and the art of the mean book review. Bring back mean book reviews—this message has been approved by me, and I hope you’ll vote for it.
- It’s been a while since I’d checked in the Blank Check, a podcast about filmographies of directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. They’re currently doing David Lynch, and I decided to relive the wonders of Twin Peaks and accidentally ended up rewatching the entire first season in an afternoon/evening. I also stumbled onto a delightfully deep Twin Peaks podcast called Diane: Entering the Town of Twin Peaks, named for the faceless assistant to whom Special Agent Dale Cooper is constantly sending tapes of voice memos. Just a lot of lore to dig into, if you’re so inclined, and honestly, Twin Peaks is by far the most accessible Lynch project out there.
More From Me
Over on my blog, I’ve been writing about various topics of interest to me.
'This American Life' and The Risk of Oversubscription
Culture Diary
Here’s a collection of what I’ve been consuming in the past week.
The legend for my list was stolen from Steven Soderbergh, where ALL CAPS represents a movie, Sentence Case is a TV show, ALL CAPS ITALICS is a short film, Italics is a book, and bold is a live performance or show. A number in parentheses after a TV show highlights how many episodes I watched. An asterisk after an entry means it’s a rewatch. The source of the movie or show, whether streaming service, physical media, or in theaters, is shown in parentheses as well.