I got a compliment on this one from a passenger sitting in traffic.

Many thanks to @opensecretsmag.bsky.social and editor @rachelkramerbussel.bsky.social for publishing this piece about my father and my regret that we never found our own time apart. opensecretsmagazine.com/p/father-son...

Having a Drink with My Father

On missed conversations and regret

opensecretsmagazine.com

“We’ve never stopped requiring masks (though we’ve taken hits for that). We’re a small, owner-operated used and new bookstore in Western Massachusetts.”—Hillary Hoffman, owner, Federal Street Books, int by @msjulieslam.bsky.social 📚😷 www.instagram.com/p/DbjIn0gxLFp/ www.facebook.com/share/p/1HcU...

Only way to read it and I used to write the thing.

Pavel@spavel.bsky.social · 6d ago

Trying to wean myself off doom scrolling so I am hate-reading the dictionary

Getting a haircut tomorrow so I guess this is as done as it will ever be.

We really should have gone to greater lengths to be loudly disgusted by anyone who acted like getting a shot or wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a pandemic virus was worse than being conscripted into the First World War

My namesake is playing against the Red Sox tonight, so I can feel negged by the local announcers when they say "They can work carefully here with the light-hitting Serven on deck."

MLB Jersey Numbers@numbersmlb.bsky.social · last mo.

C Brian Serven will wear number 10. Last worn by INF Max Muncy in 2025. #Athletics

I would be very grateful if you would consider pre-ordering my new novel, ONE MORE THAN ONE, which is out in January. www.harpercollins.com/products/one...

One More Than One

Swept into the underbelly of mid-century unrest, an artist begins to reexamine everything he’s ever known in this piercing and hypnotic novel about art, prot...

harpercollins.com

enjoying imagining the discussion among editors in which they determined if this ought to be pluralized as Spider-Mans, Spider-Men, or Spiders-Man

A biopic of the coffee magnate J.A. Folger. There really once *was* a man from Nantucket.

Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · last wk.

Studio execs are going to want to adapt more poems for the big screen now

It’s nice to see everyone’s textual analysis of The Odyssey It’s almost like the humanities give you entertainment, feelings, pleasure, and fun/interesting stuff to talk about, as well as lenses into both past and current society

Streaming on @criterionchannl.bsky.social currently.

Karen K. Ho@karenho.bsky.social · last wk.

I am now curious how many more people will watch the 2000 film O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU because of all this discussion about Christopher Nolan's THE ODYSSEY because I am certainly inclined to watch it now.

If the Matchbox movie doesn't involve a parking garage made of cardboard and held together with electrical tape and cars with exposed engines that click up and down when they move then why bother making it?

Took me some time to process this pileup on the Autobahn crash blossom.

Feels like on British Jeopardy! they should allow to contestant to phrase it like "Tropic of Capricorn, right eh?" since that's technically a question.

Luigi de Guzman@ouij.bsky.social · 2w ago

When my British friends saw my episodes the first comment I got was that the pace was way too fast for British TV. The various failed British Jeopardy adaptations slowed the game down to British quiz show pace and the results were almost unwatchable. Not even Stephen Fry could fix the pacing.

How the fuck is the Trojan Horse street legal in Roku City?

oh yeah? can AI writing and art do this?? (disappoints my parents)

You celebrate your way.

Look, the lawyers and judges have to kick back at night somehow.

Andrew Ferguson@dontfuck.men · 3w ago

Intellectually I know that The Hague is a real place and things other than The International Criminal Court exist there. I was still not prepared to read the sentence: “Shrek Rave Is Coming To The Hague!”

I started to write a joke about Oedipus and Midas. It was motherfucking gold.

Skittles Is A Paranoid Freak ☕@skittles6.bsky.social · 3w ago

I started to write a joke about Poseidon, but it got waved away

Incidentally, I don't think he won legitimately in 2024, though I'm basing that only on grapevine news and his own doddering boasts, plus the eye test of no one showing up to his birthday only 7 months after the election. You know what they say about accusing others of what you're guilty of.

Harold Parkingfee

kim@kimmymonte.bsky.social · 3w ago

your baseball pitcher name is your grandfather’s first name and the last thing you bought i’ll go first mine’s Dominic Sandals

@joshthelibromancer.bsky.social, bookseller and founder of the Porter Square Review of Books, on the changing relationship between booksellers and book criticism.

As Book Criticism Disappears, the Booksellers Are Stepping In

From my desk at the bookstore where I work, I can see most of fiction and all of our new releases, the poetry section by the front door, the edge of world history. I watch people bend down to exami…

buff.ly

Everybody Loves Raymond Chandler Bing Cherry Blossom Dearie

Alasdair Beckett-King@misterabk.bsky.social · 3w ago

OK, here's the pitch: Raymond Chandler Bing.

This is Hegseth, knowing he is the one who loses wars, knowing he is what weakness looks like in a man, hating his country for knowing that, inflicting injury on the first people he can find because that is the only noise he can make. Weakness.

I applied for this. It was an incredibly fun application process to try as a writer and language enthusiast. (I've always thought that J! clues are similar to dictionary definitions in a lot of ways.) I'd be stunned if they got only 1,000 applicants, though. www.cnn.com/jeopardy-wri...

Inside the hunt for the next ‘Jeopardy!’ writer | CNN

The quiz show’s executive producer says there’s been a “staggering” amount of applications to be the next clue writer.

cnn.com

The All-Star Game has too many Rileys.

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they overthrew the Shah of Iran, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”

Sean Marshall@seanyyz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Why I’m a fan of the Oxford comma.

More Adorno in our local sports coverage please and thank you.

Alex Speier@alexspeier.bsky.social · 3w ago

I believe we just had a pre-Derby ceremonial booing - directed at no one in particular - at Citizens Bank Park. Philadelphia is Theodor Adorno’s ideal spectating populace.