Lessons Learned from Gardening, How the Vegas Sphere Works, Françoise Hardy, etc.
In which we'll have fun, fun, fun till daddy takes the T-Bird away.
💔 Rest in peace, Françoise Hardy. Love her.
🎓 Lessons from Roger Federer’s recent commencement speech to Dartmouth. “Then there are days when you just feel broken. Your back hurts… your knee hurts… Maybe you’re a little sick… or scared… But you still find a way to win. And those are the victories we can be most proud of. Because they prove that you can win not just when you are at your best, but especially when you aren’t.”
⚪️ Really want to see Dead and Co. at the Sphere. How the Las Vegas venue works. “Since it opened last September, Sphere — to use its proper, article-free brand name — has inspired more than a few reflections on what it says about the intersection of technology and culture here in the twenty-first century, not to mention the considerable ambition and expense of its design and construction.”
🐻 I don’t watch a lot of television, but the show I think I love the most right now is The Bear. It touches on family politics, alcoholism, anxiety, the quest for perfection and suicide — and it’s a comedy. Third season premieres June 27.
👩🌾 Illustrating lessons learned from gardening. “The day you plant the seed isn’t the day you see the fruit.”
🥃 Is your Japanese whiskey actually Japanese? It’s complicated. “But Japanese-whisky producers were allowed to play it fast and loose, and some brands imported whisky from other countries—mainly Scotland—to blend and bottle and were still allowed to call it “Japanese whisky.”
🎾 How tennis balls became yellow (yes, yellow). “At the end of the 1960s, the person in charge of the BBC broadcasts (which, of course, was in charge of Wimbledon) was the renowned documentary filmmaker David Attenborough. And he noticed that the visibility of the traditional white ball was not perfect, especially if it approached the lines of the rectangle of play.”
🏄 Next time I write this, it will be the first day of summer, and I suggest you listen to a lot of The Beach Boys. Love this set from ‘64. And yes, Pet Sounds is a masterpiece. But I love the early stuff, too. Too many compilations followed, but Endless Summer is perfect, and it’s telling that by 1974, folks were nostalgic for early rock ‘n roll.
🧐 Austin Kleon reminded me of this exchange on Parts Unknown between Bourdain and Iggy Pop:
Iggy Pop: “You seem like a curious person.”
Anthony Bourdain: “It’s my only virtue.”
Iggy Pop: “Curious is a good thing to be. It seems to pay some unexpected dividends.”
✌️ Stay curious. Keep the Hoping Machine running. Happy Dad’s Day.
Love,
Luke
