Had no idea until today that the MyEyeDr. where I have my glasses done was once home to a restaurant that received a documentary that received an Oscar nomination. Fine Food, Fine Pastries, Open 6 to 9 came out 30 years ago, but given how the place itself was a throwback, feels far older. Watch it here. It’s only half an hour, and if any part of your life is on Capitol Hill, it’s impossible to pause.
The recent essay “What Screens Can’t Show” is about seeing the concentration camp-related work of German painter Gerhard Richter online versus in-person. The essay focuses on the particular, incredibly powerful pieces of art. But the extremity of the case also explains well an element of what’s missing in all of life right now.
“The internet has made pandemic life much easier for those who can use it for work and school, or just to stay in touch with loved ones. But something is always lost in the translation to a screen. A deep encounter with art becomes possible only when viewer and object share the same space. Scrolling through digital versions of art is what [German philosopher Walter] Benjamin called an ‘absent-minded’ activity, and we need to be as present as possible when we look at paintings like Richter’s, paintings that attempt to represent the presence of suffering itself.”
Lucy Dacus.
Juanes.
Bonus: Extended 12″ Blaster Mix.
(Wikipedia: “In a first-for-Springsteen effort to gain dance and club play for his music, Arthur Baker created the 12-inch “Blaster Mix” of “Dancing in the Dark”, wherein he reworked the album version. The remix was released on July 2, 1984. The result generated a lot of media buzz for Springsteen, as well as actual club play; the remix went to #7 on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, and had the most sales of any 12-inch single in the United States in 1984.”)
One of the things to love about Glück’s poetry is that, while her work contains many emotional registers, she is not afraid to be cruel — she confronts the monsters in herself, and in others, not with resignation and therapeutic digression but with artery-nicking knives.
The poet Kay Ryan, in her terrific new book of essays, “Synthesizing Gravity,” writes: “I think it’s good to admit what a wolfish thing art is; I trust writers who know they aren’t nice.” Glück’s work is replete with not-niceness. You would not, you sense, want her as an enemy.
I’m reading the Kay Ryan book currently (and it is terrific), and I was happy last month to read of Glück winning the Nobel Prize. In this blog, way back, I liked to pretend she was an enemy, testing me with that cruelty. Years later, a big book of her work sits on my shelves. She won our non-existent battle. She’s too tough for me, by a mile.
The cereal restaurant this blog followed for an extensive period of time? The one that was good at its mission but unfortunately existed in a neighborhood without a lot of college kids?
I’m sorry to report to you, many years belatedly, that the Cereal Bowl has closed. And so has the Starbucks that opened in the Cereal Bowl’s place. And so has the Chipotle that opened in the Starbucks’ place. And, as of this month, so has the Tino’s Pizzeria that opened in the Chipotle’s place.
The place I’d been going to in my neighborhood had closed for good at the beginning of the pandemic. So for my first cut in eight months – the length of my hair had gone from exploratory to worse – I went to a barbershop that’s been operating in different spots in Foggy Bottom for six decades. My dad’s long-time barber had ended up there. I couldn’t go on a day that barber was there, so I asked for whoever was available. The barber I got had been cutting hair for many decades as well, and he did a great job. The haircut made my day, and later reading this story about the shop and its history made my hour.
We saw this Norman Rockwell one in 2019 when it came through the GWU Museum. The exhibit had so many of the early paintings that made him famous, but then came his later work, taking on race (the Ruby Bridges painting is even more stunning in person) and war, and that work led into modern takes by a beautiful mix of 21st-century artists, taking his quietly challenging American vision even further. I miss art exhibits and I miss where the best ones carry you.
Probably because it’s the middle of the afternoon.
From Roxane Gay: “Like I was a necessary thread among other necessary threads. Like I had found that essential truth. Like I was in a place that could become part of what I need home to be.”
About pesto alfredo: “I fell in love with pasta after reading about an Italian witch. It was 1994, and Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola was hot on the Reading Rainbow circuit.”
About Buca di Beppo: “The atmosphere was always raucous, the platters of food were so massive that they demanded sharing, and ogling at the sundry black-and-white photos of Italian wrestlers and spaghetti-eating contests that crowded the walls was as much a part of the experience as the actual dining.”
I really enjoyed this Red Sauce issue.
At the close of this article about Fr. August Thompson, a leading civil rights figure in American Catholicism: “Fill him with the grace and blessings he needs to do your work, for there is much work he needs and must do. Allow him to feel your love and let him know that I love him too.”
I was very happy to hear my cousin Nic and his dance troupe starred in a Times article this fall. There’s even a picture of him! I’m a proud cousin.
“In their first moments onstage, several masked dancers stood silently in a circle and raised their arms, fingertips nearly meeting but not quite, an apt metaphor for the evening’s reconvening.”
(Yes, this blog has been gone for months. I’ve been thinking about what to do with it.)