letters of recommendation

things I recommend

I said I would write here every two weeks and teased something I’d been writing about my favorite band. And then I ended up getting Covid and totally missed my mark.

But! When I was sick I watched a lot of movies and a lot of The Sopranos and finished reading a few different things. So as I try to get back into the swing of things, I wanted to share a list of the things I’ve been reading and watching and thinking about.

my recs …

Santa is fake. Jesus is real. Courtesy of @ChristnNitemare

• The Invisible World by Nora Fussner. 2023 (Fiction)

• “Zach Williams meets the redemption machine” by Aaron Hedge, Range, Oct. 2023 (Journalism)

• Betting as a balm. Wagering against Zion Williamson & Brandon Ingram (NBA Basketball)

• The Sopranos created by David Chase, starring James Gandolfini. 1999-2007.(Television)

• First Reformed directed by Paul Schrader, starring Ethan Hawke & Amanda Seyfried. 2017 (Film)

• @ChristnNitemare. Stumbling into my theme here, I borrowed photos from their timeline for this post. But also! chek out TimTok—maybe I’m getting into TikTok? (Social Media)

notes on …

The Invisible World

by Nora Fussner (2023)

I don’t normally read spooky stories and wouldn’t normally choose to read a brand-new horror novel, but my friend Nora published this earlier this year, and—holy moly!—it’s so good. I really loved it. And I can’t wait for her next book!

Set in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, The Invisible World tells the story of a spirit that haunts the home of a newlywed couple. Picture frames magically move across the room. Bookshelves topple. Lights flicker. To help make sense of the spookiness, they invite a team of television producers and ghost hunters into their home. But the disaffected filmmakers and over-eager ghost nerds are no match for the spirit’s ability to bend perception and defy narrative.

Run. Don’t walk. For PGH friends, Nora’s book is carried at White Whale.

The story is told from multiple perspectives—among the TV crew, the ghost hunters, and the bohemian homeowners Eve & Ryan—and is framed around a five-day television shoot. Each day unfolds as an admixture of prose and interstitial excerpts of “found” interview transcripts, which become more revealing as the days pass by. This framework is cool! It helps to create a measure of balance and objectivity while building a sense of tension and mystery. The interviews—which are often duplicitous or in the shallow tenor of reality TV—allow for a compelling kind of uncertainty without ever descending into confusion. (We can trust that we can’t trust the characters…)

The pace is brisk and Nora strikes the perfect balance between provocative complexity and good-old-fashioned fun without ever feeling hoky or sluggish. The behind-the-scenes world of reality TV is a perfect canvas for existential questions about narrative and perception and the fraught tangle of shared realities. What makes a belief a belief? (Or unbelief?) Whose belief is the right belief? And what does it matter? But beyond its ability to empower armchair philosophizing, this book is just really really fun! Is the brooding, sexy cameraman dead or alive? Is the television producer going to fuck the ghost hunter? Will Eve’s marriage survive the haunt?

What I liked most about my time with Nora’s book is that it made me think about a question that’s been on my mind a bunch: How do you create one cohesive story arc with a cast of multiple central characters? Is there a casting limit for central characters? Three? Six? Ten? And why is my brain always trying to decide which character is the “main character”?

A few years ago, someone on Twitter asked for examples of good magazine stories that balanced the narratives of multiple characters. And I spent an embarrassing amount of time coming up with a very short list. I discovered that, by-and-large, good stories that feature a big cast of characters are, in reality, carried by one (maybe two) characters. Any more more than two characters carrying a feature, and you’re probably looking at a book. And even then, “good” becomes the operative word. Sure, yes, you can point to stories with an ensemble cast—but which ones feature an ensemble of fully realized characters?

I started to think: Telling a good story about lots of people is … tricky. It’s rare! And I think it’s rare because it’s extremely challenging. Probably for all genres. I suspect it has something to do with our solipsistic brains, like maybe there’s an evolutionary design bent toward tunnel vision. I have to wonder if maybe there are limits on how many humans our brains can hold, and we simply can’t process more than one camera angle at a time.

And, again, “good” is the operative word. I understand, all the characters at the end of Star Wars are drinking champagne at the victory party. Everyone dies at the end of Hamlet. Plenty of balance. Lots of characters! These are good things. But I’m wondering about, when we come to a close, as the screen fades to black, how many characters do we truly know? I’m thinking here about psychology and clinical concepts of revelation and understanding, like insight. In the best stories, there’s a shift in self-understanding.

And typically when we do see this degree of care and attention for each character, those stories are built around a family tree with baked-in power dynamics. Which is all the more credit to The Invisible World. Among our ghost hunters, our hauntees, and our TV crew, I couldn’t quite settle on which of our characters played the lead role until about two-thirds of the way through. And when it came into focus as a story of three unique and fully-rendered central characters, I was delighted. That discovery was half the fun. Within all their disparate motives and desires, there emerged an interwoven question of belief and identity, separate yet connected. The kinds of big questions I can continue asking.

And I suspect this balance is rare.

Unfortunately, I’ve misplaced that old list of mine, the one that I started all those years ago. But I think I’ll start from scratch. This time I can include more genres. I’ll put The Invisible World at the top.

The Sopranos

It is with utmost enthusiasm that I recommend … The Sopranos.

I mean duh. Obviously. You don’t need another gibroni to tell you to watch The Sopranos. But seriously. Watch The Sopranos. Watch it to the end. Watch it for the jokes. Watch it for the A.J. Soprano storyline. I think I would have watched it sooner if I had known how funny it is. On this first watch through I’m in love with the way so many singular episodes have a fully realized beginning, middle, and end—complete stories on their own merit yet essential plot points to the larger drama.

I heard someone once say (Felix Biederman I think) that The Sopranos is the first show to elevate television to the level of art. I believe it. It’s beautiful. heartwrenching. hilarious. It’s inspired me to eat more cold cuts and Honey Combs™ and to randomly yell “gabagul!” at my cat. 

I asked an AI illustrator to do The Sopranos meets Hieronymus Bosch. Tries #5, 7, & 9.

The show is ostensibly about middle-class gangsters doing crimes, eating meats, and raising families. But I experienced it as a dead-on portrayal of the emptiness and darkness of life as a suburban American at the turn of the century. The A.J. Soprano storyline is essentially my own personal Wonder Years. If only Fred Savage endured the Iraq War and the agony of ego death. It’s kinda like showrunner David Chase is a modern-day Norman Rockwell huing towards truth. I’m thinking here about a demented Rockwell possessed by Hieronymus Bosch: the Soprano family—Tony and Carmella, A.J. and Meadow—all gathered around the dinner table for rigatoni and gravy. An idyllic Coca-Cola Dream, only their reality is a pustulent oozing hellscape beset by conspiring demons and suit-wearing bureaucrats and cavernous ghouls in bowler shirts.

The Soprano’s meets Hieronymus Bosch. (Courtesy of AI)

I just really loved it.

First Reformed

Written and directed by Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver and Last Temptation of Christ.) It tells the story of a small-town pastor, played by Ethan Hawke who ministers a parish historically known as a waystation for the Underground Railroad. When he’s not giving guided tours of the grounds and selling kitsch at the gift shop, he lives a quiet, unassuming life. He is content to quietly mourn the loss of his only child and to drink himself to death.

The plot forms around the pastor’s attempt to counsel two of his congregants, a pregnant woman and her husband who is convicted of eco-terrorism. In their collective anguish, the eco-terrorist and the pastor (whose son died pointlessly in the Iraq war) consider the question: Can God forgive us for what we’ve done to the world? 

At first glance, if you only read the jacket copy, this movie looks like bummer city. Its topics are dense. It’s set in a church and asks us to think about global warming and corporate grift and grief.

In “Capitalism as Religion” Walter Benjamin writes: “The nature of the religious movement which is capitalism entails endurance right to the end, to the point where God, too, finally takes on the entire burden of guilt, to the point where the universe has been taken over by that despair which is actually its secret hope.”

But, to me, this is a story about rebellion. Rebellion as rage and despair. And it challenges us to consider what action looks like in the face of despair. It convincingly argues that the capitalist mechanisms that undergird our institutions of faith are the same mechanisms that have destroyed our planet. But it’s not didactic and not a Ted Talk. (Not preachy. Lol.) 

What surprised me most was the grip of this thing. The story pits two disparate kinds of anguish on a collision course without feeling mechanistic. The plot unfolds on an edge. Strings us out on a hum and a drone. For both our eco-terrorist and our minister (and for us), the complicity is too much to bear. Hypocrisies gain clarity. And atrocities of a white-washed world swell into imminent heartache, malign death, and violence and …

I’ve been thinking a lot about “alive” stories—by which I mean stories that are living in our blood as they’re told, geopolitically, sociologically, and/or maybe spiritually. I don’t know exactly how to define it. I started thinking about this after seeing Oppenheimer when I was struck by the magnitude of the forces on exhibit in that film and how the same physical power that pulsates through that story is the same true physical power that I can feel pressing on my chest today.

First Reformed is like that. It’s a living story, alive in the graveness of our complicity.

The threat of nuclear holocaust is terrifying insofar as the human capacity for selfishness and greed are terrifying. With the rape of our planet, the button’s already been pressed. We can’t escape it. And we all can feel it: fear becomes despair becomes anger.

It feels to me like a time collapsing. My mother-in-law tells me a story about bomb drills in grade school, teachers prompting her to hide under her desk—to await the bomb. Each fall, after I’m assigned my classroom, I’m sent emails from the provost in which jumping from the window is among our options for escape—should the school shooter come today. I open up Twitter every day to see more and more bodies of dead humans bombed to death by alive and living humans, empowered by same the politicians for whom I voted and for whom I will supposedly vote for again.

I don’t know.

Despair, they say, is inevitable. But I don’t like it. They also say on the other side is hope, so who knows?

Last week, I woke up one morning, and saw a Tweet decrying the bombs and enumerating the body count, 18,000+. Which meant it was just another Tuesday. I was compelled to re-post, to say, look at this credible source! Listen! But it felt so helpless. What’s the point? I made this instead:

elrod_durango

A post shared by @elrod_durango

“Zach Williams meets the redemption machine”

by Aaron Hedge, Range,

This is a story by my pal Aaron who writes and reports in Spokane, WA. It’s the kind of gumshoe reporting that I think the world needs more of. This is a biopsy of a public relations campaign by the celebrity preacher and failed politician Sean Feucht. Here, we zoom into one of the final stops of Feucht’s 27-city worship tour, in which he enlists local church leaders and right-wing politicians to help him host Trumpian rallies. The churches provide preachers, permits, musicians, and the audience. Feucht provides the politicians, horse troughs for baptism, and the phony narratives of salvation. 

In this exposé, Aaron reveals Feucht as a huckster who doesn’t think twice about using an unhoused person as a prop for fame—simply to earn a two-minute spot Fox & Friends. Some sickening stuff! 

I have a lot to say about it all. But I’ve rambled on long enough for one post, so I’ll save my notes on this one for another day. But! As a word of advice, you don’t need to be from Spokane to enjoy words by Aaron Hedge! Really, it’s remarkable how he spent the time, reported this out, and helped return some humanity and autonomy to someone who’d been cast aside. Follow him @aaronhedge.

Christmas pranksters play Scrabble on old lady’s garage. (Courtesy @ChristnNitemare)

Gambling: using clairvoyance to fight class war

In the most awkward moments of Covid brain, I had ample energy to worm around in bed yet didn’t quite have the will to be a coherent human. But in one of those half-wit moments of feeling useless, I discovered the great, warm comfort of makin’ small wagers on basketball games. And woo boy — i recommend it as balm for dark times. lol.

I saw this clip. I saw the giggling. And in a moment of clarity, I made a wager on their opponent. For background: the NBA, for the first time, created a mid-season tournament in which the players of the winning team are awarded $500,000 each. In the clip below, Zion Williams and Brandon Ingram are on the podium because their team was one of four finalists for the prize, when a reporter asks them “What would you do with the money if you won?”

And they giggled.

I can’t say for certain what their giggles mean. It’s weird and foreign to me. Looks a lot like scoffing … at half-a-million dollars. For context, these two guys are the highest earners on their squad with contracts worth a combined $350+ million—which is about 100 times more than most of their teammates. Their three lowest-paid teammates are on one- or two-year contracts just north of $500,000 per. For those guys, it’s likely this is their only year to earn this kind of life-changing money. You’d really hope your teammates would take it seriously.

Anyway, in a fevered fury, I put $25 bucks on Lebron and the Lakers to kick their ass. The Lakers won by an astounding 44 points.

And … I won $107.

See! Things aren’t so bad.

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