The finer things in life

10 things worth sharing this week

Tacos Yo Soy on North Loop here in Austin, Texas

Hey y’all,

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

1. Like many, I’ve found myself captivated by the Olympics, starting with the French heavy metal band Gojira’s performance during the opening ceremony. They have Snoop Dogg providing running commentary and Flavor Flav hyping the U.S. Women’s water polo team! Korean sharpshooters that look like they stepped out of a steampunk cartoon! A Clark Kent who solves Rubik’s Cubes and chills before becoming Superman on the pommel horse! Photos of a surfer floating through the air! It’s marvelous. (Dave Pell has been posting great links over at NextDraft, like, “No, You Can’t Beat an Olympic Table Tennis Player.)
   
   

2. Three years ago, I got interested in “The Twisties,” the phenomenon in which a gymnast loses their mind/body connection. So a huge highlight for me was watching Simone Biles’ triumphant gravity-defying return. (I love looking at the composite photos of gymnast routines.) One of the things I keep noting is how much athletes talk about not-thinking when they’re at play. “I have to focus on not thinking,” says Biles. “If you think about a trick, sometimes it makes it harder,” says skateboarder Minna Stess. “When I’m skating, the best thing is to not think at all.” Pommel horse champ Stephen Nedoroscik takes off his glasses when he performs: “It’s all about feeling the equipment. I don’t even really see when I’m doing my gymnastics. It’s all in the hands— I can feel everything.” (All of this, to me, seems relevant to creative work.)
   
   

3. I read Adam Gopnik’s tiny slice of a book called All That Happiness Is, in which he proposes that happiness is about being in the state of flow often accessed by athletes and artists: “Genuine happiness is always rooted in absorption in something outside us, and begins in accomplishment undertaken for its own sake and pursued to its own odd and buzzing ends.” (I don’t completely agree with Gopnik, but the book gave me a lot to think about.)
   
   

4. The cognitive dissonance the Olympics produces for me: You’re watching these amazing athletes push their bodies to the limits of their abilities, you tear up at the drama and the joy and the excitement and the pain and disappointment of it all, you’re maybe even thinking about what it means to be human and how much intelligence is the result of being an embodied creature… and then every tech company ad wants you to buy into artificial intelligence. (I know somewhere John Warner is furiously typing out a newsletter all about it.)
   
   

5. “The age I associate with the most is 4 years old.” That’s 86-year-old painter Bella Bader in her inspiring interview with Oldster, a newsletter “exploring what it means to travel through time in a human body, at every phase of life.” (Thanks to her daughter and friend of this newsletter Sara Bader for sharing.)

   
   

6. Head in the clouds: This collection of video game skies has got me thinking about how much I want to hire a muralist to paint Super Mario clouds on the back of the H-E-B grocery store I can see from my front porch. (I’ve been reading Cloudspotting for Beginners.)
   
   

7. A must-watch movie: “The second highest-rated film on Letterboxd at the halfway point of 2024 is a black-and-white silent comedy made for just $150,000.” That film is called Hundreds of Beavers, and it’s one of the best things I’ve seen in ages. Imagine Buster Keaton, Looney Tunes, and The Legend of Zelda thrown in a blender, but even better. The movie is a #ShowYourWork dream: Here’s the behind-the-scenes of how they made it (lo-fi with lots and lots of After Effects), an epic list of movies that inspired the film, and an interview with the filmmaking team, who say, “We believe in small and slow. Four people over 12 weeks can make a more interesting film than an indie trying to emulate a Hollywood look and only having 10 days.” Love the punk DIY spirit. (Special thanks to film critic Matt Zoller Seitz, who re-assured me it was an okay pick for family pizza night.)
   
   

8. Speaking of Matt Zoller Seitz, he has a new book in The Wes Anderson Collection series coming out next year about Asteroid City. Fifteen years ago, MZS did a wonderful series of film essays on Anderson’s work called “The Substance of Style” that I’m sure were in the back of my mind somewhere when I was writing Steal Like an Artist. Last I checked, if you pop over to the Internet Archive you can watch them. (MZS just interviewed Anderson for Texas Highways about his Lone Star Roots.)
   
   

9. Believe it or not, one of Wes Anderson’s big influences is the director Michael Mann. (Anderson once said in a Q&A that he’s been re-making Heat over and over and nobody’s noticed.) I wonder if he’s yet signed up for The Michael Mann Archives, another #ShowYourWork dream — a website that shows off Mann’s prep work with mini-documentaries, script pages, etc. (“Directors have no idea how any other director makes a movie,” says Mann. “And so we each evolve our own particular process. This is an opportunity to pass that on…”)
   
   

10. I have fallen far behind on my obituaries. RIP actress Shelly Duvall. (Artist Ray Johnson was a fan.) RIP comedian Bob Newhart, best known in this house as Papa Elf. RIP writer Edna O’Brien. RIP Abdul ‘Duke’ Fakir, last of the Four Tops. RIP artist Ben Vautier. RIP artist Jon Sarkin. RIP fitness legend Richard Simmons. (My mom had Sweatin’ to the Oldies on VHS.) RIP editor Lewis Lapham who “knew that an artful editor is a great thief.”
    

Thank you for reading. This is a hand-rolled, ad-free, anti-algorithm, completely reader-supported publication. You can help keep it going by becoming a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin

PS. I signed a big batch of my books at Bookpeople this week. They ship signed and personalized copies anywhere. (This is usually a slow time of year for bookstores, so get out and support your local if you’re lucky enough to have one!)