Love T.K.O.
10 things worth sharing this week
Today is Friday the 13th. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing:
My favorite thing I wrote this week was a Tuesday Trio based on the 2001 short documentary and cult classic, The PriceMaster.
“Nelly, I am Heathcliff!” I got about halfway through Wuthering Heights and gave up, so I laughed quite a bit while reading this review. (I remember enjoying the artsy/trashy mix of Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, so a “smooth-brained” adaptation might be up my alley, honestly!) But I know many people who love the novel, so let’s take a poll:
You might be tired of me talking about the band Geese, but too bad because they recorded an NPR Tiny Desk concert and it was great. (Also, if you’re new to Bad Bunny via his Super Bowl performance, check out his Tiny Desk concert!)
Love is not a gadget. Love is not mind-reading. “Love don’t make things nice.”
“Love is a mixtape.” Here’s my latest Valentine’s Day mixtape, called “Love TKO.” Teddy Pendergrass, Barry White, Bill Withers, and more. You can listen to the mix on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Comics: I got a copy of Facing Feelings: The Art of Raina Telgemeier for my 10-year-old cartoonist. (He’s read all her books, including her latest with Scott McCloud, The Cartoonists Club.) Facing Feelings was originally a career retrospective at The Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Columbus, Ohio. They just announced that their next show is dedicated to the work of Chris Ware.
App: I’m always maxing out my iPhone storage from taking too many photos, so I am in love with the “Swipe Mode” function of Clever Cleaner. It pulls up your photo library month by month and lets you delete or keep photos by swiping left or right. Extremely handy, and it doubles as a great way to revisit old photos and memories. (Thanks, Recomendo!)
Decaf: I’ve been drinking lots of barley tea. (I get mine from Asahi Imports here in Austin, TX.)
RIP Fred Smith, who left Blondie to play bass in Television. (Debbie Harry is quoted in the great book Please Kill Me as saying, “Boy, did he make a mistake.” But… he played on “Marquee Moon!”)
Thanks for reading. This hand-rolled, ad-free, AI-free, anti-algorithm publication is made possible thanks to the kind support of readers like you. To keep Friday free for everyone and get an exclusive email from me every Tuesday, become a paid subscriber:
xoxo,
Austin
Aw, that article about Wuthering Heights makes me sad; there are so many other reasons to read the novel beyond a misreading of it as "the greatest love story of all time." It's not! It's a novel about delusion and cruelty and misunderstanding and the mismatch between desire and social constraint—and about somehow, almost miraculously, figuring out how not to keep perpetuating a cycle of violence and cruelty. If you don't go into it expecting or hoping to like everyone or anyone in it, but instead thinking about how it represents people interpreting and misinterpreting others, it gets much more interesting.
I thought Wuthering Heights was sooooo romantic when I read it in high school. It hits different when you’re older, and not always in a good way. If you want a better WH adaptation, the Andrea Arnold version is faithful to the book in some important ways—I think she’s the only director to cast a Black actor as Heathcliff, a casting change I appreciated.