Escape velocity

10 things worth sharing this week

“A lot of people leave Arkansas and most of them come back sooner or later. They can’t quite achieve escape velocity. I expect it’s much the same everywhere.”
—Charles Portis, The Dog of the South

Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. I spent most of the week trying to type, and when that didn’t work, I made an old-fashioned mixtape.
   
   

2. Reading: After I finished Charles Portis’s Gringos for the 3rd time, I decided it was time to finally pick up my copy of Escape Velocity, a miscellaneous collection of Portis’s writings edited by Jay Jennings. (If you want to know where to start with Portis, read True Grit and then The Dog of the South. Better yet, just buy the Library of America edition of his collected works. Worth it.)
   
   

3. A contextual calendar.
   
   

4. A short history of the daily planner.
   
   

5. On December 18th last year, I suggested that Cory Doctorow’s term “enshittification” should be made the word of 2023 (I put it on my top 100 list), and this week the American Dialect Society took my advice.
   
   

6. April’s solar eclipse in Austin, TX: This “In the Path of Totality” lineup of events at the beautiful new Waterloo Greenway is impressive! (If you happen to be visiting Austin around that time, check out the Ukiyo-e and Anni Albers shows that will be up at the Blanton Museum.)
   
   

7. Stand-up: A year-end list I missed is Jason Zinoman’s Best Comedy of 2023. (I already told you how much I liked Jim Gaffigan’s Dark Pale in my 2023 roundup.)
   
   

8. Music: Four Tet’s new track “Loved” goes on my slowly-growing 2024 playlist. Albums I played a bunch in the studio this week: Miles Davis’s Live at the Plugged Nickel and David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).
   
   

9. RIP avant-garde composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock.
   
   

10. RIP Our Flag Means Death, the best gay pirate show there ever was.
    

Thanks for reading! This newsletter is a hand-rolled, algorithm-free, completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books, hire me to speak, or become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin

PS. I’m in love with this box set of my books in Italian: