{"id":139760923,"date":"2023-12-22T13:30:26","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T13:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=139760923"},"modified":"2023-12-22T13:30:26","modified_gmt":"2023-12-22T13:30:26","slug":"friday-links-celebration-of-service-workers-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=139760923","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: Celebration of Service Workers Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It’s Midwinter Day today a day \/ To cause the sun to stand still as it will anyway” – Bernadette Mayer, ‘Midwinter Day’<\/h2>

First, a note on Nazis: there\u2019s no room for them on Substack, or anywhere. Substack execs with their techno-libertarian bullshit about free speech are intolerable to me. Nazis don\u2019t get free speech, this is not a court of law. Get the Nazis off the platform. <\/em><\/p>

If you\u2019re reading this, my kid\u2019s already started a two-week winter break. Pray for yr boy, by which I mean me, not the five-year-old. Mostly kidding, of course, I love this time of year. It\u2019s the next four months you gotta watch out for. <\/p>

Still, I\u2019m taking next week off, and the first week of January will be light. Hope any kind of break\/holiday season you may or may not be getting is full of warmth, love, family, friends, and food\u2014or whichever combination of those things makes your heart sing.<\/p>

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

Listen, I had a scheduled plan. Finish Noirvember with Motherless Brooklyn<\/em>, transition into this book, then take it easy for December. Well. Life got in the way of that, and this ended up being my last scheduled book of the year. It\u2019s 500 pages. A week before \u201cvacation.\u201d Reader, I couldn\u2019t read all the way through it. I\u2019m talking, of course, about The Fortress of Solitude<\/em> by Jonathan Lethem. <\/p>

\"book:<\/figure>

The fault of not finishing this book is about 70-30 Chris-Jon. As alluded above, I\u2019m more or less checked out. It\u2019s been a busy year. On top of all that, though, this book feels a touch too well-wrought for its subject matter. There\u2019s a sense of \u201cif I can tell the story of a white boy and a Black boy becoming friends in Brooklyn in a literary mode that liberal, New York Times<\/em>-reading white people will respect, I might solve racism! At the very least, I\u2019d vote for Obama a third time. If I could.\u201d Form is not matching content, I want this book to take more risks. Nothing feels risked. <\/p>

Perhaps that is not fair to Jonathan Lethem, who I found exciting last week<\/a>. This week, I understand why he was lumped in with The Literary Jonathans<\/a>. I will probably try this book again someday. I acknowledge a lot of things about literary culture I like owe a debt to this book. It just wasn\u2019t for me this week. <\/p>

What I\u2019ve Been Reading Lately (Take Two):<\/strong><\/p>

It\u2019s the solstice! Let\u2019s read Midwinter Day<\/em> by Bernadette Mayer! I\u2019ve never read Mayer before and I called this book \u201cMidwinter\u2019s Day\u201d on social media a whole bunch because that\u2019s what my brain is like today!<\/p>

\"book:<\/figure>

This book rips. Being a House Husband, domestic poetry is really speaking to me lately. Every time she mentioned her kids I turned into the Leonardo DiCaprio gif leaping out of his recliner. \u201cThat\u2019s me! I\u2019m a poet! With a kid!\u201d One time she mentioned Anslem Berrigan at age two and I was \u201cI have one of his books on my shelf!\u201d <\/p>

I might do this every year. Maybe we\u2019ll turn it into an event somehow next year. This book is really dense, kinda not easy to read in a day unless you plan to read it in a day<\/em>, and I was kinda planning on spending today playing Civilization 6<\/em>, because if you remember from earlier, my five-year-old\u2019s home for the next two weeks, which is sort of like a bowling ball coated in Flubber (except if Flubber did all the cocaine Robin Williams did in the 80s) is going to be inside my townhouse full-time for two weeks. You ever read this blog and think \u201cthat dude\u2019s brain is way too all over the place?\u201d What if your imaginings of my brain had legs and liked jumping off couches? <\/p>

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

Something to listen to while you browse? How about LA LOM covering Fito Olivares\u2019s \u201cJuana La Cubana?\u201d Fun cumbia arrangement, and the intimacy of the instruments combined with the technicolor camera and off-white shirts makes it feel like LA LOM is just some dudes jamming after work. Most US bars don\u2019t know it, but they\u2019re missing a corner where dudes can jam after work. Irish pubs are great at this.<\/p>

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