Micah ☔️ > Recent Status Updates

When you’re a curmudgeonly jedi and you have to hide your frustration with a smug, soft bureaucrat out of respect for Supreme Chancellor Palpatine 🤦‍♂️ <<<

Put it down for a movie review and stumbled into this from Jean-Luc Godard which would fit into a book about democracy quite nicely:
“Knowledge of the possibility of representation consoles us for being enslaved to life. Knowledge of life consoles us for the fact that representation is but shadow”

Reading this book on the bus and alternating between nodding and shaking my head so people know I support female rock critics, but disagree with “The Stomach-Churning Sexual Assault Accusations Against R. Kelly”

Kind of incredible that for all the dudes who are obsessed with this, its basically walked between the raindrops of “red flag book” discourse. Elroy heads, if we want that free publicity, we need to take a hard look in the mirror, and get more annoying

Franken being able to come across convincingly dewey eyed about such a broad an array of characters as lefty mavericks (Paul Wellstone), centrist party lifers (Amy Klobuchar), and commercialist conservatives (Toby Keith), is one reason he was such an effective politician in his day

I’ll fully cop to being a little slow for detail dense murder plots such as this. But I know of few writers who can make a gut punch surreptitiously trail you then engulf you the way French can

Hillary modeling her campaign launch on FDR is like the Katy Perry video where she dreams she’s Joan of Arc

The jaded, middle aged executive getting his first erection in months when he visits a sister band is basically Paul Thomas Anderson working with Haim

Rainer going from flexing his impressive bonafides of reading all the right people as a young man (Agee, Farber, Sarris) and curating Kenji Mizoguchi for his university film society. To writing that Wong Kar-wai is “a pop schlock aesthete” is more evidence for my theory that the worst thing that can happen to a promising critic is a stable, prestigious magazine gig

“In the mythology of American militarism that has taken hold since George W. Bush’s disastrous wars… the action of his father, George H.W. Bush, are often held up as a paragon of prudence… But the road to Baghdad ran through Panama city, with the 1989 invasion inaugurating the post—Cold War age of unilateral intervention” (p. 201)

Elio sniffs Oliver’s swim trunks and rolls around in his sheets as Aciman dares you to accuse him of unearned grandiosity. “I thought we were all real lovers here”, he seems to taunt

A lot of people have a lot of fun picking apart the world building of Harry Potter. And fair enough, far be it from me to defend those books in current year. But anytime I revisit a YA series that’s supposed to be more respectable or sophisticated in that regard I’m reminded that “Anything goes! Make shit up as you go along!” is my preferred approach when writing for children

This has been riveting so far. Missteps for the first time, almost halfway through. The section about the wave of bad PR Woods received for declining Bill Clinton’s invitation to attend a Jackie Robinson tribute is frustrating. Woods’s reason for the snub was petty. But everyone seems to take for granted that a black athlete posing with Mr. Superpredator would have been virtuous and good (the authors included)

One of the books that hurts the most from audiobooks not editing in proper pauses to page breaks. A section will end describing a harrowing story of Vince (allegedly) committing rape, or Andre the Giant wrestling when his body and mind are in no shape to do so. And then barely a breath will pass before you hear something like, “Ultimate Warrior had a bone to pick”

Won’t soon forget reading Rosenbaum’s review of Mississippi Burning on election day. Driving directly at the distortions and propaganda at the surface of American history, and then going deeper, into its heart. Spoke directly to the pit in my stomach. https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2023/07...

“The guillotine is waiting outside and we’re haggling over pennies”. Horrifying to learn that show biz types actually do corny, Aaron Sorkin style, anti-union speeches to each other (or at least did at one point).

It’s so funny to get swept up in a non fiction book about a subject you can’t explain on the fly

Friend: Are you doing alright? You look a bit shaken

Me: Bro, Lewie Ranieri just got fired 🫨

I start rubbing my hands together like Birdman whenever a lefty author starts going in on Rand

“It was an odd tragedy. All parties suffered, yet it was difficult to generate a whole lot of pity for any of them”. Basically the book so far in a nutshell

“This one’s explaining why they don’t have pianos in the Church of Christ”

It’s so funny that for the movie, they got one of the most beloved and handsome network TV stars of all time to play a guy named Harg

Oh, so that’s why I noticed an uptick in annoying people complaining about abstract art

“Logic Is a strange thing”

You never know what you got till it’s gone