Friday, December 27, 2024
As I’ve done for the past few decades, I’m ending the year with a look back at some cultural highlights I found most fulfilling during the past 12 months: Hitting the road with the kids: 2024 was a special year for family travel — an early summer trip to stay with relatives in San Francisco (a moment from there above), then a late summer stay with my sister just outside of D.“Jesse Eisenberg Has a Few Questions” — An excellent interview at The New Yorker’s website. I can still remember seeing him for the first time in “Roger Dodger” in the early 2000s. A committed, inquisitive art-maker.
“The Zone of Interest” was an astonishing film. How it shows what it chooses to show; the sounds we hear of what it chooses not to show — it’s just an incredible work of art made with deep sensitivity by everyone involved. If you’ve already seen it, I recommend this Vanity Fair interview with writer/director Jonathan Glazer and director of photography Łukasz Żal. It’s streaming on MAX. Plan to rewatch soon.
Saturday, December 30, 2023
Continuing a 23-year tradition of rounding up cultural highlights from the past 12 months, here’s a recap for 2023: 15 Books I Especially Loved This Year An Additional Batch I Enjoyed (That first hard-to-ID book is “Pentagram: Living By Design," which I had to scramble to procure before it sold out. The brown one in the middle column is “Scaling People”, a terrific book about team- and company-building. The full list of what I read in 2023 is here.
“After Yang” was a beautiful, sensitive, and contemplative movie. Quiet, unrushed. The characters' world is strikingly, confidently created — of the future, but earthy, calm. Written and directed by Kogonada, whose “Columbus” I also loved. He’s got a singular vision and vibe. I’ll watch whatever he makes for however long he makes it.
Since 2000, I’ve been publishing a kind of year in review — mainly cultural highlights from the prior 12 months, along with a few personal notes. Here’s my post for 2022.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
In the mid–2000s, I was completely taken by the book “Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences,” written by Lawrence Weschler and beautifully published by McSweeney’s. Weschler surfaced “strange connections” between images and wrote about them intriguingly. I still think of the book when I come across an image — a photograph, a painting, a movie moment — that brings to mind another one. I spent part of this evening with Julie Blackmon’s absorbing book of photographs, “Midwest Materials.Rewatched Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Mirror,” a dozen years after first seeing it. Some unforgettable moments, meditative and life-enriching.
Friday, December 31, 2021
Since 2000, I’ve had a year-end tradition of sharing my cultural highlights of the past 12 months. For this year’s post, I’ll first note the major life change I had in 2021. After eight years leading comms and marketing for the nonprofit conservancy Forest Park Forever, I re-entered the agency world this summer by joining The Stoke Group, a fully distributed digital marketing and content studio that focuses on the B2B tech sector.Thursday, December 31, 2020
*Sylvie, sipping through a backyard quarantine concert by a friend and SLSO musician* Year 20 of my annual cultural-recap tradition was quite something. Thus far my family’s had good fortune amid the global pandemic, so we’re spending most of our time feeling grateful, yet exhausted, then grateful, yet exhausted. With lots of time at home, there was some enjoyable culture to take in. Here’s a look at some highlights: Books The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches & Meditations, Toni Morrison Uncanny Valley: A Memoir, Anna Wiener Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, George Packer Having and Being Had: Eula Biss My Parents: An Introduction, Aleksandar Hemon Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong Weather, Jenny Offill Promised Land, Barack Obama Then the Fish Swallowed Him, Amir Ahmadi Arian Jack, Marilyn Robinson My Life in France, Julia Child Severance, Ling Ma Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson Luster, Raven Leilani Intimations, Zadie Smith Monocle: How to Make a Nation The Passion Economy, Adam Davidson These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Martha Ackmann Wine Simple, Aldo Sohm Normal People, Sally Rooney The Lying Lives of Adults, Elena Ferrante Girl, Edna O’Brien Lurking: How a Person Became a User, Joanne McNeil How to Be a Family, Dan Kois Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece, Alex Beam The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St.Sunday, May 3, 2020
Odds and ends from the past few weeks: What a fun treat to see Forbes spotlight ListenForestPark.org, an audio microsite my team launched a few years ago as a side project. It’s found a new audience these days. Finished “Devs” on Hulu. Dug the style and performances; so-so on the ultimate substance. The series “ZeroZeroZero” was, like one of the creator’s prior work “Sicario,” cinematically beautiful; it was just too grim and violent for me to continue past episode three.“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”
Hadn’t seen this Camus quote before. (It appropriately closed a new profile on Sam Mendes in TNY.)
Monday, March 5, 2018
Continuing for month two of this recent effort to note the cultural intake of the prior month: Read Medardo Rosso: Experiments in Light and Form, Pulitzer Arts Foundation — (Disclosure: Married to a contributor) (A)Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, Robert Cialdini — Recommended by someone high-wattage bright in conversation, who was advising on how to nudge. (B)Magnitude: The Scale of the Universe, Kimberly K.Sunday, February 4, 2018
With a nod to Kottke's monthly "Media Diet" posts, I'm experimenting this year with short monthly recaps of interesting things I've read, watched or listened to. (This is as much for myself, as noting what I took in can help me better recall it.) Read Paula Scher: Works — Terrific, from the opening essay and interview to the work itself. (A)Abbott Miller: Design & Content — Intelligent and beautiful. Especially loved reading about Miller's co-founding of a "Sunday, December 31, 2017
Continuing a 17-year tradition, I’m happy to share my Annual Favorites list for the year 2017: Family Let’s start with the best thing that happened to my family this year, which is the arrival of Sylvia Huremović Schenkenberg in late April. We’re still smiling at her the way Leo was above, just a few days in. Books My Struggle: Book 5, Karl Ove Knausgård Blind Spot, Teju Cole Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia RankineSunday, June 25, 2017
I can still remember encountering Crewdson’s work for the first time in The New York Times Magazine more than a decade ago. Original, absorbing and haunting. Today’s “Monocle Weekly” interview with him had me heading to his website, which alerted me to this documentary.Sunday, February 26, 2017
Finally saw this extraordinary movie, piercing and tender and unforgettable. Catching up on some interesting pieces about it, including this one.Friday, January 1, 2016
Continuing a 15-year tradition (though one that’s gotten briefer with age and fatherhood), here’s a roundup of some of my favorite things experienced during the past 12 months: Books My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante Lila, Marilyn Robinson My Struggle: Book 2, Karl Ove Knausgård Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi CoatesFriday, November 27, 2015
A film with gorgeous black and white shots from start to finish.Sunday, January 11, 2015
Back before Tamara and I had our son in the summer of 2013, I used to keep regular lists of my “Annual Favorites” of the year — the best books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, exhibitions and so on that I’d consumed that year. To say my rate of cultural digestion changed with fatherhood would be an understatement; that said, I still have an interest in logging the great stuff (if only for myself).Monday, July 29, 2013
"> <figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:560px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:106.0714263916%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/debbb-image-asset.png" alt="" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="" /> </div> </figure> </div> One of several clever ones at Vulture’s “Woody Allen’s Films As Infographics.”Monday, October 15, 2012
A short film about the radio station’s first year. Can’t say I’ve ever connected with the music they play, but I enjoy subscribing to a handful of podcasts, with The Stack, Section D, and The Entrepreneurs at the top of the list.Sunday, March 11, 2012
Great profile of Jonny Greenwood in today’s New York Times Magazine. Greenwood’s soundtrack for “There Will Be Blood” has been a favorite of mine on Rdio for the past year.