I love you dude. Let it rip.
A choir of 2,000 young fathers.
The Bear’s first two seasons peaked in the final episode of series one (Carmy’s seven minute monologue is really something else), and in the ‘Forks’ episode which just destroyed me.
I’ve loved rabbit-holing into the clothes the cast wore (see for example this Esquire interview with the Bear’s costume designer Courtney Wheeler), and learning about the unique loop wheel construction of Carmy’s Merz B Schwanen t-shirts.
Related: SuccessionFashion on Instagram.
The Bear’s soundtracks are also spectacular, especially for those of us vivified by the Pearl Jam (Live in Chicago), Wilco (‘Via Chicago’), Sufjan Stevens (‘Chicago’) alt-continuum.
Great art surprises in the ways it connects - and I was shocked at how engrossed my four year old became in the show. It felt a little profane for the eight year old, but for the four year old, I think it was the Chicago, and Copenhagen cityscapes, and the food shots that sucked him in.
Greta Gerwig’s Official Barbie Watchlist
The first person I followed on Letterboxd was The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri.
And Letterboxd is the first piece of software I’ve encountered in years that made me just feel a profound sense of gratitude to its creators. The kind of gratitude where you instantly search for a way to pay for a premium subscription, not because you need it, but just because you want to say thank you.
Related: Why everyone you know is suddenly a Letterboxd head.
The four best movies I’ve watched this year: Close (devastating), Everything Everywhere All At Once, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Anatomy of a Fall.
Letterboxd is famous for asking actors and directors what their four favourite films are. Favourite films are the art form least predictive of friendship. Liking similar music is very predictive - generally you’ll feel like you’re already friends with the people who attend the concerts of your very favourite artists. But movies tell you almost nothing. With that, here’s my top four:
“You have so many relationships in this life
Only one or two will last
You go through all the pain and strife
Then you turn your back and they're gone so fast
So hold on the ones who really care
In the end they'll be the only ones there
And when you get old and start losing your hair
Can you tell me who will still care?
Can you tell me who will still care?”- Hanson ‘Mmmbop’ (is a sadder song than you remember)
“We don't take drugs to come up with the ideas, we take drugs to stop them.”
I’m a big fan of Victorian YouTuber Beau Miles - Run The Line, and A weekend away after the hardest year of my life are two of my favourites.
In a similar vein is Tasmanian YouTuber Angus Thornett who nonchalantly walks around Hobart with his small dog explaining the city’s remarkable history.
North Hobart Laid Out
It’s always a sign of a great technology experience when you remember your first time experiencing it for a long time after. Before Groupon founder launched his podcast editing platform Descript, in 2016 he launched Detour - a walking tour app that let you experience a series of narrated walks around San Francisco.
It sounds basic - walking tours?? - but it was transformative. I’ve never forgotten it, and never looked at cities the same way.
Every city is a thousand stories, layered on top of one another, with only the most recent one visible.
There is something powerful in revealing the stories that lies beneath. Like the two statues of a boy and a girl installed at St John's Park Newtown, north of Hobart. For the reveal, I’ll let Angus Thornett take you there.
“I think one of the best things a person can be in this world is a father – a father who is present, loving, devoted just may be the greatest gift a child could ask for in our society. And I have a damn good one. My father believed in me more than anyone. He believed in me and my brother. And whenever my own insecurities would arise or self doubt would come in, he would stifle them with the warm embrace of belief, unwavering love and belief.”
- Jason Kelce’s 'Retirement Speech’
⬇️
Related: “One of the things you’ve got to understand about your kids - this is really worth knowing - your kids want to have the best relationship with you that they possibly could have. They are 100% on board with that idea. Way more than anyone you’ve ever met in your life. And that means you could have the best relationship with your children that you’ve ever had with anyone.”
Coldplay - ‘Yellow’
Boiler Room sets are a cultural juggernaut. As with The Bear, part of it is the main event but part of it is also the rabbit-holing.
Boiler Room set YouTube comments are the best, especially the diligent tracklisting that enables you to find the source material of the set’s best moments (like Dam Swindle’s ‘That’s Right’ from Folamour’s recent Boiler Room / Sugar Mountain set).
Related: DJ Heartstring’s Boiler Room x AVA Festival 2023 set has been my absolute go-to for getting work done this year. The Ciara ‘1, 2 Step’ drop is a thing of beauty.
The people dancing in the background of Boiler Room sets are now becoming a main event all of their own. From the guy in the yellow Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt who brought Fred Again’s set to a halt with his happy dancing, to the infamous Kaytranada Boiler room dancing girl.
A new entrant to the Mt Rushmore of people dancing in the background of Boiler Room sets has been chiselled into the mountain … best introduced by the current 16th comment on the Chase & Status | Boiler Room: London Set.
“46:50 "The ENERGYYYY of this fkin nutterrr on the right. I didnt get hyped like that in a looong time! The combination of the buildup, the drop and him turning tf up is just out of this world.”
Aspirational, inspirational.
Pedestrian stranded on a bench at the corner of Elizabeth and Bourke Streets, Melbourne, during a flash flood in February 1972.
“Moon, a hole of light
Through the big top tent up high
Here before and after me
Shinin' down on me
Moon, tell me if I could
Send up my heart to you?
So, when I die, which I must do
Could it shine down here with you?”
- ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ Mitski
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What’s Your Go-to Comfort Media? “Most of us have certain books, movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, and other media that we turn to when we need some comfort. These are things we’ve seen, read, or heard before — often many times — and know exactly what we’re going to get from them.” What’s yours?
Fred Again covering ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ in the middle of his underrated Lockdown Live set. I documented my obsession with this song in Instantly, I Knew.
Taking out a mortgage for a surf break (the story of how a Dad built his own surf reef in Bundaberg… and the profound impact it had on his daughter).
Niksen: The art of doing nothing: have the Dutch found the answer to burnout culture?
Nintendo’s design guru Shigeru Miyamoto: ‘I wanted to make something weird’
‘I didn’t realise I was so loved’: the people hosting their own ‘living funerals’
Her Sculptures Were Ignored for 33 Years. Then She Got a New Roommate.
Personal Renewal - Delivered to McKinsey & Company, November 10, 1990.
How Asking 5 Questions Allowed Me to Eat Dinner With My Kids
"Seinfeld: I'm never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I'm thinking, could I do something with that?
Howard Stern: That, to me, sounds torturous.
Seinfeld: Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with."
- Jerry Seinfeld on Howard Stern
Make Your Life Better by Saying Thank You in These 7 Situations
Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.
An F1 lap, as seen by a drone travelling the same speed.
Bring Back More Low-Stakes Social Gatherings
Inside the Glorious Afterlife of Roger Federer
Past Lives (2023) | The Definitive Explanation
Brian Cox On The Craziest Universe Fact 😨
Self Reliance - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It was the Patriot Way, until it wasn't
What Garry Winogrand Saw in Color
Can Bradley Cooper really conduct?
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
―Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Keith Jarrett’s ‘Koln Concert’ seems to get mentioned in Branches ad infinitum but there’s good reason - it’s likely the most enduring, impactful piece of art in my life.
A record that my father played before I was born, after I was born, and something I still play regularly today.
Just two weeks after ‘The Koln Concert’ was recorded, Jarrett played another show in Bremen… and it captures much of the spirit of his Koln effort. Somehow, despite spelunking the Jarrett archives for years now, I only discovered ‘The Bremen Concert’ this week while deep in the Keith Jarret subreddit .
Keith Jarrett Solo 1975 "The Bremen Concert" Complete & unedited.
“At its best, this album is the flow state on wax, an auditory expression of how it feels to be deep in the zone, where one’s relationship to time shifts or dissolves altogether.”
- Pitchfork, giving a 9.2 to Jarrett’s ‘Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne’ (which is also good but not as good as Koln).
I still have my Dad’s original vinyl copy of ‘Koln Concert’.
Inside the cover, he cut out and saved an article about Jarrett from the Sydney Morning Herald in 1982. It’s still in there today.
As affecting as holding the orginal copy is, it’s the clipping that moves me more.
The record is the record.
But the enduring act of having saved that clipping, and it still being there today just hits me in the heart, every time.
“Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du, oh yeah”
- Hanson ‘Mmmbop’
Branches is one of my 'comfort media'.
My go to comfort media on a Saturday afternoon is the All-In podcast