film

Saturday, July 12, 2025 →

Great weekend trio: Rewatching “Before Sunset,” then reading a thoughtful and admiring take by Jonathan Rosenbaum (for years my favorite writer on film) and listening to The Rewatchables crew lovingly discuss its many charms.

NYT: The Best 100 Movies of the 21st Century

Saturday, June 28, 2025

I’m a sucker for these types of projects: “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century,” as selected by 500+ directors, actors, and other “notable names in Hollywood and around the world.” Love the chance to see individual ballots as well. The fluid presentation allows you to note what you’ve seen (82 in my case), mark what you’d like to see, and create your own top-10 ballot. Here’s mine:

A few more I have great memories of seeing since 2000: Yi Yi, Columbus, Ida, Cold War, There Will Be Blood, Winter’s Bone, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Boyhood, The Lives of Others, The Master, Private Life, Past Lives, Marriage Story, A Separation, Drive My Car, Tree of Life, Tár, Anatomy of a Fall, Manchester by the Sea, Lady Bird, First Cow, The Squid and the Whale, The New World, Saint Omer, Petite Maman, Aftersun, George Washington, Selma, Get Out, The Best of Youth, Bright Star, Meek’s Cutoff, Ex Machina, and Gerhard Richter Painting.

Friday, June 20, 2025 →

“Revisiting ‘Columbus,’ a Thrilling Drama of Growing Up Modernist”: Lovely appreciation from Richard Brody. Have seen it twice. Planning for a third. (Here’s the trailer.)

Year in Review: 2024

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:

  1. 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.C. Muir Woods, Presidio Tunnel Tops, the de Young, the Glenstone, MLK Memorial, National Gallery, and so much more. Great ages for the kids to experience both. Fortunate to have been able to do it.

  2. Nonfiction books: “The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight," by Andrew Leland; “The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983 – 1992” by Tina Brown; “All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess” by Becca Rothfeld; “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow; “The Message” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; “Kafka: Diaries” (translated by Ross Benjamin); “To Fall in Love, Drink This” by Alice Ferring; “Lovely One: A Memoir” by Ketanji Brown Jackson; and “The Contagion Next Time” by Sandro Galea.

  3. Chunky, visual-heavy nonfiction books: “The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature” by Peter Mendelsund and David J. Alworth; “The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing” by Adam Moss (an exceptional editorial mind); “I. M. Pei: Life Is Architecture” by Shirley Surya; “The Wes Anderson Collection” by Matt Zoller Seitz; “Branding: In Five and a Half Steps” by Michael Johnson; “How Design Makes Us Think and Feel and Do Things” by Sean Adams; and “Crossing the Line: Arthur Ashe at the 1968 US Open” (multiple editors/writers).

  4. Novels: “The Fraud” by Zadie Smith; “Nonfiction: A Novel” by Julie Myerson; “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney; and “Catalina” by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

  5. Books of poems: “Scattered Snows, to the North” by Carl Phillips and “A Film in Which I Play Everyone” by Mary Jo Bang, both STL-connected writers.

  6. Books about what went wrong at Twitter: I should not have spent time reading two books on this subject, but they were interesting: “Battle for the Bird” by Kurt Wagner and “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac.

  7. Rereading “Gilead”: Endures. Recommended for when you’ve just read two books about Twitter.

  8. The William Gass Centenary: I spent many years writing about and promoting awareness and discussion of Bill’s work, and I had the great fortune of getting to know both Bill and Mary during the last decade of his long and productive life. In October, WashU organized a day-long event to mark what would have been Bill’s 100th birthday. While the Gass projects I launched over the years are set on a kind of permanent simmer, it was meaningful to re-immerse myself in the world of Bill’s writing. Videos and resources are available on the university’s centenary website.

  9. Movies: I was deeply impressed and moved by “The Zone of Interest”; “The Taste of Things”; “Past Lives”; “Anatomy of a Fall”; “Petite Maman”; “Saint Omer”; “Aftersun”; and “His Three Daughters.” Also enjoyed “Killers of the Flower Moon”; “American Fiction”; “You Hurt My Feelings”; “Between the Temples”; “May December”; “Barbie”; “Oppenheimer”; “Maestro”; “Janet Planet”; “She Said”; “Showing Up”; “BlackBerry”; and “Dumb Money.” Temporarily engrossing: “Conclave.” Interesting docs: “Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story”; “Martha.”

  10. Satisfying rewatches: “Marriage Story”; “Heat”; and “Kicking and Screaming” (prompted by The Rewatchables). Plus, with the kids, “Spellbound” and “The Princess Bride.”

  11. Articles about the world: “Seventy Miles in the Darién Gap” by Caitlin Dickerson, The Atlantic; “Our Strange New Way of Witnessing Natural Disasters," by Brooke Jarvis, NYT Magazine; “The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers,” by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker; and “Unsafe Passage: A Palestinian Poet’s Perilious Journey Out of Gaza,” by Mosab Abu Toha, The New Yorker.

  12. Articles about America: “What Will Become of American Civilization?" by George Packer, The Atlantic; “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” by Franklin Foer, The Atlantic; “The Man Who Died for the Liberal Arts," by David M. Shribman, The Atlantic; and “Shibboleth” by Zadie Smith, The New Yorker.

  13. Personal essays: “On Cancer and Desire," by Annie Ernaux, The New Yorker; “The Birth of My Daughter, the Death of My Marriage” by Leslie Jamison, The New Yorker; “If My Dying Daughter Could Face Her Mortality, Why Couldn’t the Rest of Us?" by Sarah Wildman, NYT; and “Variations on the Theme of Silence," by my friend Jeannette Cooperman, The Common Reader.

  14. Great match of medium and story: “She Slept With a Violin on Her Pillow. Her Dreams Came True in Italy," by Valeriya Safronova, with photographs and video by Sasha Arutyunova, NYT; “How Taylor Tomlinson Nailed Her Closing Joke," by Jason Zinoman, NYT.

  15. TV shows: The show that made me smile the most all year was “Girls5Eva” (all seasons are streaming on Netflix). Huge fan as well of “Beef”; “The Bear” seasons 1 and 2; “Ripley”; “My Brilliant Friend” season 1; and “Fargo” season 5. Enjoyed “Magpie Murders” and “Bad Monkey.”

  16. New Music: “Oh Smokey” from Clem Snide; “Manning Fireworks” from MJ Lenderman; “Charm” from Clairo; “Patterns in Repeat” from Laura Marling; “Hit Me Hard and Soft” from Billie Eilish; and “Chromakopia” from Tyler, The Creator. Doechii’s Tiny Desk performance was fierce.

  17. New podcasts: My favorite new-to-me podcast this year was Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. The host is wise beyond is years, does superb research and prep, and seems to quietly relish his good fortune of gently steering weighty conversations. (You can’t go wrong choosing an episode, but Fragoso’s conversation with Ocean Vuong was especially memorable, particularly for the author’s insights about youth and masculinity in America.) Another new discovery I enjoyed, as a former magazine EIC, was Print is Dead (Long Live Print). I can’t remember if I discovered it last year or this year, but I enjoy Jarrett Fuller’s Scratching the Surface podcast (as well as his blog).

  18. A few podcast episodes: Bonnie Prince Billy talks through “I See a Darkness” on Life of a Record; The Wolf of Wine decodes his single “Quintin Tarantino”; Zadie Smith talks through “The Fraud” on Fresh Air; and the Dissect hip-hop aficionados talk through the Best Bars of 2024.

  19. Connecting with two living artists: Any year when my wife Tamara presents a new exhibition is a good one, and this year saw her open “Delcy Morelos: Interwoven," at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Having our kids meet the Colombian artist, and hearing her talk astutely about her work, were highlights from the year. Grateful as well to meet Julie Blackmon, one of my favorite living photographers, and hear her discuss her distinctive Midwestern work at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

  20. Home tour with Laura Dewe Mathews: I have such admiration for Matt Gibberd and what he’s built with The Modern House — from the real estate listing website to the Homing In podcast to the publications, each one presented handsomely and with soul. In the summer, Matt shared a video interview and tour he did with architect Laura Dewe Mathews. I was thinking back to this one in particular, because Mathews' lovely home is known locally as “the gingerbread house” — and our kids are asking to begin nibbling away at theirs.

With that, sending best wishes to you in the new year.

Sunday, October 27, 2024 →

“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.

Sunday, October 20, 2024 →

“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.

Year in Review: 2023

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.)

TV
Especially grateful for “Succession” (a perfect close), “Patriot” (committed to its singular vision), “Reservation Dogs” (often profound and goofy within the same shot), and “Slow Horses.” Enjoyed “Jury Duty,” “Fleishman Is in Trouble," and “Vienna Blood.” “The Diplomat” was fun in parts.

Movies
Each year it’s a fresh bummer to have seen so few new movies, considering how many my wife and I used to see pre-kids. In terms of what I saw: I loved every minute of “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb,” and also really liked “The Banshees of Inisherein” and “A Quiet Passion.” Two good docs: “Beckham,” “Navalny.” “The Killer” was well-made, but I wondered why I was spending time on that subject. Enjoyed rewatching “Tár” and “After Yang” and “Karate Kid” (Leo screening). Couldn’t get excited about “Mission: Impossible,” except for that last extended escape-the-train scene. Wish I liked more: “Asteroid City." “Air" was entertaining, but didn’t quite seem like a full movie.

Music
Enjoyed new albums from Joanna Sternberg, Youth Lagoon, boygenius, Mitski, Killer Mike, and Veeze (a discovery for me).

Podcasts
New-to-me this year: “Heavyweight” (so late to this; now cancelled : / ), “The CITY Voice,” “After Hours,” “The Power of Teamwork” (it was fun to have pitched this to Adobe; congrats to my former colleagues on S2) and “Dissect”’s deep dive into Radiohead’s “In Rainbows.”

Articles & Essays
A few highlights from The New Yorker: “Words Fail," by Rachel Aviv; “The Fugitive Princesses of Dubai," by Heidi Blake; “The Greatest Showman," by Alex Ross. A few standouts from The Atlantic, which gets better every year: “We’re Already in the Metaverse," by Megan Garber; “The Moral Case Against Equity Language," by George Packer; “The Resilience Gap," by Jill Filipvic; and “Black Success, White Backlash” by Elijah Anderson.

Visual Art
Not a lot of museum-going this year (or travel, which often leads to it). But it’s always such a pleasure to see my wife Tamara open a show at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Pictured: Opening night at “Faye HeavyShield: Confluences," with our kids vying for the spotlight.

A Song That Struck Me
In many of these year-end posts I include an especially memorable songwriter discovery (Weyes Blood, Haley Heynderickx). This year in his Substack newsletter, Jeff Tweedy mentioned that the band keeps a Spotify playlist where they share music they’ve been enjoying. While streaming that mix in the background, a song called “Life According to Raechel” by Madison Cunningham stopped me cold. Many repeat listens that day, and days after. Here’s a solo version to share with you, followed by one with an ensemble:




Happy New Year, and best wishes for an enjoyable 2024.

Saturday, January 14, 2023 →

“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.

Friday, December 30, 2022 →

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.

Julie Blackmon and Convergences

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.” Blackmon has some intentional allusions in her photographs, but others I think just come from the consciousness of the viewer.

There’s something, for instance, about the turf and peculiar (and menacing) objects in her photograph “Spray Paint” that brings to mind Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” (picture the poster, and the final 30 minutes).

Or, seen below, “Snow Days,” which immediately brought me back to a moment in Tarkovsky’s “Mirror,” which I recently rewatched and posted about early in the month:

I realize there’s a risk in it seeming like I’m undervaluing the originality of one work by graphing it over another. But one of the pleasures I get in taking in art of all kinds is not just the pieces themselves — which I’m grateful for individually — but for how they intermingle in my mind.

Tuesday, December 6, 2022 →

Rewatched Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Mirror,” a dozen years after first seeing it. Some unforgettable moments, meditative and life-enriching.

Year in Review: 2021

Saturday, January 1, 2022

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.

As the Senior Director of Editorial Content, I spend most of my time on editorial projects for Adobe (a key client, and one that values great writing and design), as well as helping produce the video podcast Real Creative Leadership with its host, Adam Morgan. While I miss the connection to my St. Louis community, I’m enjoying working with strategists, writers, and designers on content work for large global clients. I hadn’t worked with clients at this scale or in this specific sector, so it’s been broadening in the way I hoped. The team’s packed with interesting, talented, upbeat people.

With that 2021 milestone covered, here’s a look at some cultural-intake highlights from the year:


Books: Fiction

1. Lanny, Max Porter

2. Second Place, Rachel Cusk

3. Leave the World Behind, Rumaan Alam

4. The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen

5. Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri

6. The Morning Star, Karl Ove Knausgaard

7. Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney

8. The Sellout, Paul Beatty

9. Tenth of December, George Saunders

10. My Heart, Semezdin Mehmedinović

11. Fox 8, George Saunders

12. The Carrying: Poems, Ada Limon

13. New Teeth, Simon Rich


Books: Non-Fiction

1. Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning, Philip Kennicott

2. The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life, Kyle Beachy

3. Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, Michael Bierut

4. Suppose a Sentence: Brian Dillon

5. Hannah Wilke: Art for Life’s Sake (Eds., Tamara Schenkenberg and Donna Wingate)

6. Three Women, Lisa Taddeo

7. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib

8. The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, Louis Menand

9. Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy, Paula Marantz Cohen

10. Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, Kelefa Sanneh

11. The Monocle Book of Homes (Monocle)

12. The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, Jim McKelvey

13. Studio Culture Now (Ed. Mark Sinclair)

14. The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, Kati Marton

15. Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, Adam Nayman

16. This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s “Kid A” and the Beginning of the 21st Century, Steven Hyden

17. After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, Ben Rhodes

18. Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald

19. An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang

20. The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer, Christopher Clarey

21. Proustian Uncertainties, Saul Friedländer

22. Seeing Serena, Gerald Marzorati

23. Graphic Life, Michael Gericke

24. How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims

25. Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, paired with Twelve New Essays by Jessica Helfand

26. Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century, Tim Higgins

27. The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alter

28. No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

29. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, Adam Grant

30. Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business, Adam W. Morgan

 

Movies

1. The French Dispatch

2. Cold War

3. Certain Women

4. Meek’s Cutoff

5. The Power of the Dog

6. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

7. Let Them All Talk

8. The Farewell

9. To the Wonder

10. Citizenfour

11. In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark

12. Biggie: I Got A Story to Tell

13. Mies

14. Untold: Breaking Point

15. WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn

 

TV

1. Succession, Season 3

2. The Bureau, Season 1

3. Ted Lasso, Season 2

4. Great British Baking Show, Season 12

5. The Chair 6. Only Murders in the Building

7. The Other Two, Seasons 1 and 2

8. This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist

9. Lupin, Season 1

 

Podcasts
New finds I enjoyed this year: A Change of Brand, Conversations with Tyler, and The CMO Podcast. The Two Month Review’s podcast series on William Gaddis's J R delivered a ton of insights and smiles during the first few months of 2021.

Visual Art
This was the second year in a row with little travel (which often prompts new art-viewing) and sadly little museum-going here at home (that’s on me). That said, and acknowledging my bias, the exhibition Hannah Wilke: Art for Life's Sake — curated by my wife, Tamara H. Schenkenberg, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation — gained in richness and meaning every time I saw it. If you’re here in St. Louis, I highly encourage a visit before its January 16 close.

Music
A million years ago, my year-end lists included dozens of individual albums and concerts. While music’s a daily essential for me, I see almost nothing live and dip in and out of all kinds of new things I learn about, often without good record-keeping.

I usually work listening to classical, then jazz is on in the evening. The only specific new recordings I’d surface this year are the terrific records from Tyler, the Creator, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker. Phoebe Bridgers didn’t have a new album, but I loved her live Pitchfork Festival set that I happened to catch the evening it streamed.

In terms of new discoveries, there was one artist — and one song — that I’ll long connect with 2021: “A Lot’s Gonna Change” by Weyes Blood (Natalie Laura Mering). I was introduced to this singer/songwriter through a Spotify station as I drove on an errand of some kind. I was transfixed.

At about 1:20, Mering sings the title phrase — “A lot’s gonna change / in your …. life / … time.” — and it swallowed me up in the way great song moments do. Likely because my wife and I spend so much of our non-working time focused on raising our young kids and thinking about what their future lives will be like, the line took on all kinds poignancy and significance in the seconds I heard it.



Later on, the second time that part of the song comes around (2:55 in the video above), Mering sings, “‘Cause you’ve got what it takes / in your … life / … time.”

Here’s to the time we’ve got ahead of us in 2022.

Year in Review: 2020

Friday, January 1, 2021

*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

  1. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches & Meditations, Toni Morrison
  2. Uncanny Valley: A Memoir, Anna Wiener
  3. Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, George Packer
  4. Having and Being Had: Eula Biss
  5. My Parents: An Introduction, Aleksandar Hemon
  6. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong
  7. Weather, Jenny Offill
  8. Promised Land, Barack Obama
  9. Then the Fish Swallowed Him, Amir Ahmadi Arian
  10. Jack, Marilyn Robinson
  11. My Life in France, Julia Child
  12. Severance, Ling Ma
  13. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
  14. Luster, Raven Leilani
  15. Intimations, Zadie Smith
  16. Monocle: How to Make a Nation
  17. The Passion Economy, Adam Davidson
  18. These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Martha Ackmann
  19. Wine Simple, Aldo Sohm
  20. Normal People, Sally Rooney
  21. The Lying Lives of Adults, Elena Ferrante
  22. Girl, Edna O’Brien
  23. Lurking: How a Person Became a User, Joanne McNeil
  24. How to Be a Family, Dan Kois
  25. Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece, Alex Beam
  26. The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St. Clair
  27. No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, Sarah Frier
  28. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, Hanif Abdurraqub
  29. How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy
  30. How Architecture Works, Witold Rybczynski
  31. Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, Barton Gellman
  32. To Start a War, Robert Draper
  33. The Spy Masters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future, Chris Whipple
  34. Agent Running in the Field, John le Carré
  35. The Monocle Guide to Better Living
  36. Hell and Other Destinations, Madeline Albright
  37. The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger
  38. Bitter Brew, William Knoedelseder

Movies

  1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (exquisite, perfect)
  2. Parasite
  3. Booksmart
  4. Marriage Story
  5. Little Women
  6. Uncut Gems
  7. 1917
  8. Meyerowitz Stories: New & Collected
  9. The Irishman
  10. The Trip to Greece
  11. Palm Springs
  12. Rams
  13. Knives Out
  14. The Other Guys
  15. Maggie’s Plan
  16. Shoplifters
  17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
  18. The Price of Everything
  19. Ford v. Ferrari
  20. Despicable Me

TV Shows

  1. Better Call Saul, Seasons 4 and 5
  2. Atlanta, Seasons 1 and 2
  3. Schitt’s Creek, All Seasons
  4. Never Have I Ever
  5. Call My Agent, Season 1
  6. Roadkill
  7. Devs
  8. Great British Bake-Off, Season 6 and 8
  9. Ted Lasso

Visual Art
I can’t recall a year when I saw less art — whether here in St. Louis or in cities we didn’t travel to. With that unfortunate reality, I’m especially grateful to have been able to see the fantastic exhibition “Terry Adkins: Resounding” at the Pulitzer this summer.

Podcasts
Favorite new discoveries: The Modern House Podcast, Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg, Siegel+Gale Says, and Simplicity Talks. Valuable mood-improver for 2020: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

Music
My Spotify’s a shared-with-kids mess, and for loads of weekly hours I stream jazz and classical music that I don’t make a note of to be recalled. That said, I did especially enjoy new records from Fiona Apple, Phoebe Bridgers, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy, Lomelda, Bob Dylan, Run the Jewels, and Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist. I’m grateful to have been turned on to the music of Big Thief, Harold Budd (via the e-newsletter Flow State), Eleanor Bindman, and Haley Heynderickx, whose “Oom Sha La La” always brightened our family’s quarantine, with the kids screaming and jumping along to the swelling refrain, “I need to start a garden!” Here’s to what’s to come.

Weeknotes #02

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Odds and ends from the past few weeks:

Wednesday, October 3, 2018 →

“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.)

Cultural Notes: February 2018

Monday, March 5, 2018

Continuing for month two of this recent effort to note the cultural intake of the prior month: 

Read

Watched

Cultural Notes: January 2018

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

Watched

Listened To

Year in Review: 2017

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

  1. My Struggle: Book 5, Karl Ove Knausgård

  2. Blind Spot, Teju Cole

  3. Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

  4. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid

  5. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

  6. Swing Time, Zadie Smith

  7. Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches, John Hodgman

  8. Now You See It and Other Essays on Design, Michael Bierut

  9. Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game, Karl Ove Knausgård and Fredrik Ekelund

  10. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah

  11. Obama: The Call of History, Peter Baker

  12. Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure, Bianca Bosker

  13. A Separation, Katie Kitamura

  14. Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art

  15. More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers, Jonathan Lethem

  16. Powers of Ten, Philip Morrison

  17. Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind, Peter D. Kramer

Movies

  1. Moonlight

  2. Lady Bird

  3. Under the Skin

  4. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

  5. Clouds of Sils Maria

  6. Life Itself

  7. Arrival

TV/Streaming

  1. Better Call Saul, Season 3

  2. The Americans, Seasons 4-5

  3. OJ: Made in America

  4. Master of None, Season 2

Audio
I’m going to skip making a long list of favorite albums and podcasts, and instead note a discovery in each, respectively: Phoebe Bridgers (watch her Tiny Desk Concert here), and S-Town. They each feel a bit haunted, and they share, in parts, a gothic sensibility. (Also: I can’t not mention Black Thought’s instantly classic 11-minute freestyle video, which c’mon.) 

Technology 
Our SONOS Play: 1 is used every evening for listening to music as we get ready for dinner or just goof around with the kids. Things 3 finally launched, and it’s attractive and enjoyable to use. It’s only been a month or so, but I’ve been enjoying trying out Ulysses as a writing environment (despite having no interest in using Markdown.) I’ve been impressed with Airtable as a flexible, humane alternative to Excel, when you need a database of some kind but have zero needs for financial calculations. (I’d seen the fancy Sandwich video when it launched, but didn’t realize it could fit my needs until the co-founder’s segment on Track Changes.)

Personal
As noted on this website earlier this month, I was sad to see an end to the remarkable life of William H. Gass, who I was lucky enough to get to know over the past decade-plus. Bill lived a long and productive life, dying at 93, and working through his final year. I was honored to write briefly about him for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and speak about his life and work on St. Louis Public Radio. I continue posting notes from readers and admirers at ReadingGass.org.

Work
Highlights from a very fun year at Forest Park Forever include engaging the public in the final year of Forever: The Campaign for Forest Park’s Future, speaking at the international City Parks Alliance conference in the Twin Cities, launching a 2.0 version of ForestParkMap.org, and publishing Forest Park: Snapshots of a St. Louis Gem.

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Gregory Crewdson:

Sunday, 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. 

Hilton Als on “Moonlight”

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.

Year in Review: 2015

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

  1. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

  2. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante

  3. The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante

  4. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante

  5. Lila, Marilyn Robinson

  6. My Struggle: Book 2, Karl Ove Knausgård

  7. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

  8. H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald

  9. The Balloonists, Eula Biss

  10. Being Mortal, Atul Gawande

  11. Becoming Steve Jobs, Brent Schlender

  12. Stress Tests, Timothy F. Geithner

  13. Van Gogh: A Power Seething, Julian Bell

  14. Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo, Nicholas Carlson

  15. Bark, Lorrie Moore

  16. Girl In a Band, Kim Gordon

So-so:  Grace: A Memoir; I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel

Movies

  1. Ida

  2. Ex Machina

  3. While We’re Young

  4. Birdman

  5. Boyhood

  6. Mr. Turner

  7. Carol

  8. Interstellar

  9. Magic in the Moonlight

So-so: Spectre; Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

TV

  1. Borgen: Season 3

  2. Mad Men: Final Season

  3. An Honorable Woman

  4. Black Mirror: Season 1

  5. Master of None: Season 1

  6. Veep: All Seasons

  7. The Good Wife: Seasons 1-6

  8. Sherlock

Podcasts

  1. Design Matters with Debbie Millman

  2. Slate Culture Gabfest

  3. The Longform Podcast

  4. The Monocle Weekly

  5. Serial

  6. The Entrepreneurs (Monocle)

  7. The Political Scene

  8. Section D (Monocle)

  9. The Foreign Desk (Monocle)

  10. Mom and Dad Are Fighting

  11. The Talk Show

  12. Connected

  13. ATP

  14. The New Yorker Radio Hour

Music
I used to make long lists of specific albums purchased and enjoyed, but since I’ve gone to paid streaming (and, maybe, since I’ve become a committed podcast listener), it’s harder for me to point to specific recordings at a year’s end. This is especially the case since Rdio shut down, and I’m now starting fresh with Spotify — my digital records are kind of a mess. While I listen to hours of classical and ambient/lush music through the headphones during work, a few specific artists I spent more time with in 2015 include Angel Olsen, Youth Lagoon, Sun Kil Moon, Sharon Van Etten, My Bubba, Jennifer O’Connor, Girlpool, Atlas Sound, Earl Sweatshirt, J Cole, Common, Pusha T, A$AP Rocky, Villagers, Natalie Prass, and Perfume Genius.

NYC + D.C.
I had the good fortune of accompanying my wife on a work trip she had to NYC, and it was incredibly culture-rich. Highlights included the new Whitney, MoMA (Yoko Ono and Bjork special exhibitions), The Drawing Center, David Zwirner Gallery (Serra show), Neue Galerie (sensational collection), the Cooper Hewitt, and “Drifting in Daylight” in Central Park (where I shot this short phone video). We also enjoyed a long weekend in D.C. with family, with pleasant dips into the National Gallery (terrific Caillebotte show) and The Phillips Collection (first time, great time).

Work
I’m fortunate to have a great job at Forest Park Forever, and 2015 saw a few especially fun projects ship. This includes the introduction of our new brand platform, our launch of Forestparkmap.org and the formal introduction of Forever: The Campaign for Forest Park’s Future, with a new website that features a beautiful campaign video we made with the team at Once Films.

Family
As referenced appropriately at top, so much of this year — and so much of every day — has been about Tamara and I raising our son. I’d been told that right around 2 is a fun age, and it’s true. This year had a ton of special moments, including — just to pick one, which we happened to catch on film — Leo’s changing expression during his first ride on a carousel at the Saint Louis Zoo. 

Ida

Saturday, November 28, 2015

A film with gorgeous black and white shots from start to finish.

Year in Review: 2014

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). So while I skipped 2013 entirely, here’s a go at some highlights from 2014: 

TheGassInterviews.org
In May, I published a project I’d been working on for some time: The Ear’s Mouth Must Move: Essential Interviews with William H. Gass. I chose to publish this on Medium at no cost to the reader, and included a range of footnotes, photos and videos. Thanks to all the contributors who made this possible. 

Books

  1. On Immunity: An Inoculation, Eula Biss

  2. My Struggle, Book One: Karl Ove Knausgård

  3. Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart

  4. Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, Eula Biss

  5. What We See When We Read, Peter Mendelsund

  6. Inferno (The Divine Comedy, #1), Dante Alighieri (Mary Jo Bang, Translator)

  7. Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips

Movies

  1. Like Someone In Love

  2. Inside Llewyn Davis

  3. Her

  4. The Grand Budapest Hotel

  5. La Notte

  6. Jane Eyre (2011)

  7. A Most Wanted Man

  8. Gone Girl

  9. Take This Waltz

  10. Enough Said

  11. The One I Love

  12. Your Sister’s Sister

Podcasts

  1. Design Matters

  2. Slate Culture Gabfest

  3. Serial

  4. The Monocle Weekly

  5. Longform

  6. In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg

  7. The Entrepreneurs (Monocle)

  8. The Stack (Monocle)

  9. The Political Scene (The New Yorker)

  10. New Yorker: Out Loud

Articles & Essays
If you follow me on Twitter, you have likely already seen links to the best articles and essays I read in 2014. I use it mainly as a way to praise and recommend. 

Music
I listen to Rdio every day of the week — on my Mac, iPad and iPhone. A great deal of what I stream is classical, since I listen while I work. And on that front I do a poor job of logging what I like, as I hop quickly from label to composer, from soloist to trio. So for this post I’ll skip classical (and hip-hop, where I also jump around) and point simply to a handful of indie albums I enjoyed this year: 

Life

"The stage directions were lucid... and the color of the binder: Good choice."

Monday, July 29, 2013

Woody Allen’s Films As Infographics.”

Monocle 24 Turns One

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. 

Saturday, June 16, 2012 →

Gerhard Richter Painting,” certainly one of the finest artist documentaries I’ve ever seen. Smart, measured, surprising. Watch the trailer, then find it in your city. A big thanks to Webster University for bringing it to St. Louis.

"Radiohead’s Runaway Guitarist"

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.