{"id":136836762,"date":"2023-09-15T12:30:27","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T12:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=136836762"},"modified":"2023-09-15T12:30:27","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T12:30:27","slug":"friday-links-area-man-releases-ep-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=136836762","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: Area Man Releases EP Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I adore the work. It’s very comforting…Books are things that keep us going. Books\u2014I haven’t got much feeling about many other things. I adore the work.” – Donna Murray to Studs Terkel, ‘Working’<\/h2>

\u201cArea Man\u201d in this instance is not me, but my good friend Pat Nolan, who plays music as Area Man, plays basketball like Pau Gasol, and sings like Bruce Springsteen. Here\u2019s the Area Man Bandcamp<\/a>. <\/p>

Your Friday Vine update: the podcast is live! We\u2019re only on Soundcloud at the moment, the other apps soon. Here\u2019s episode one (chapters 1-6 of <\/a>Vine<\/a><\/em>)<\/a> and here\u2019s episode two (chapters 7-11)<\/a> Thursday was Chapter 10: \u201cThe Burials,\u201d<\/a> today is Chapter 11: \u201cHunt.\u201d<\/a> More stories on Monday, don\u2019t forget to sign up for the weekly Vine newsletter<\/a>!<\/p>

What I\u2019ve Been Reading Lately<\/strong><\/p>

Sometimes, I think to myself: \u201cChris, you\u2019re incurably Protestant. You can\u2019t escape it. Just look at the book you chose this week. You were excited <\/em>about this book.\u201d Well, hell. Some of the best writing advice I ever got was \u201cdon\u2019t go to grad school, go work in the real world for a while.\u201d Not to romanticize it (work sucks, after all), but I\u2019m glad I did\u2014I\u2019ve been a deckhand, a bartender, a server, a parking office assistant, a bookseller, a warehouse guy, a copywriter, The Guy In The Drive Thru at Taco Bell, and The Guy Who Unloads The Delivery Truck at Taco Bell. These experiences have shaped me\u2014made me more empathetic (read: completely unable to say a word if a restaurant gets my order wrong)<\/em>, made me more Marxist, made me more well-rounded<\/em> than an MFA and PhD ever could. So hell yeah, I was stoked to read this book, and Max Weber can suck it. This week, of course, I read Working<\/em> by Studs Terkel. <\/p>

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I\u2019ll be upfront and say I didn\u2019t read the whole thing\u2014it\u2019s 600 goddamn pages of people from 1972 talking about their jobs, after all\u2014mostly because I already know this is going to be a reference book for me. Every USian should be required to reading it, just like every USian should be conscripted into a service worker job for two years at some point. All the vignettes are 1-5 pages, conversational. Today\u2019s epigraph comes from a bookbinder. I enjoyed chapters from Roberto Acuna, a farm worker; Frances Swenson, a hotel switchboard operator; Roberta Victor, a \u2018hooker\u2019 (shoutout <\/a>Sin In The Second City<\/a><\/em>); Dolores Dante, a waitress; Hots Michaels, a bar pianist; and Jesusita Novarro, \u2018just a housewife.\u2019 Plenty of others, too, but those stuck out. There are plenty more for me to get to. I won\u2019t sum it up with some pithy \u201caren\u2019t people amazing\u201d or \u201cunderneath it all, we have so much in common\u201d schlock. I will simply say it is good to spend time learning about other people, listening to them \u201ctalk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.\u201d This is a very good book for the soul. <\/p>

LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>

Something to listen to? Why this set from Alfa Mist? It\u2019s a cool watch, too!<\/p>

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