The Warhol Lottery, Anticipated Films, International Travel Costs, etc.
In which this week's newsletter is presented by ¡Cerveza Cristal!
💌 Hope this email finds you in a well.
🎧 An album I love every week, in no particular order, figuring by year’s end I’ll have what would constitute my top 50.
Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One: An album I ordered as a teen after reading about it. When it came in a few days later, I came to find they had ordered it on vinyl by mistake. I re-ordered it on CD. The clerk asked if I still wanted the record. I begrudgingly took it.
This album is everything: the upbeat indie rock of “Sugar Cube,” the sampledelia-jazz of “Moby Octapad,” the slow-core “Autumn Sweater,” the charming chamber pop of “One PM Again,” the dead-pan shoegaze cover of The Beach Boys, the sincere cover of Anita Bryant. That it all fits together is a wonder.
I likely sold the CD decades ago. Still have the record.
📋 Stephen Soderbergh’s long list of what he read and watched in 2024. I am envious of this man’s consumption. Lots of tennis, Star Wars content, and Jaws, the latter of which he is writing a book on.
🎥 The Criterion has made a list of “the most anticipated films of 2025,” including new work from P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach, Bong Joon Ho, Yorgos Lanthimos and Boots Riley. Oh, and Stephen Soderbergh. I am curious what The Criterion is adding to their collection in 2025. So far, I am interested in Godard’s version of King Lear.
🧟 Also this year, 28 Years Later, with Alex Garland and Danny Boyle once again writing and directing, respectively.
🍺 The original Star Wars trilogy didn’t air in Chile until 2003, and when it did, it had only one sponsor, a beer company that in lieu of traditional commercials, hilariously inserted scenes featuring their beers into the films.
🍿 A scene from Jurassic Park, edited to feature more scientifically-accurate raptors.
📸 From NPR, photos from around the world that “moved us in 2024.”
💰 How much does it cost to travel the world? “By Western standards, $32,500 is less than the average individual income of about $39,000 in the U.S. Less than one year’s income to visit 100 countries? To a person who values international travel, that seems almost too good to be true.”
🖼️ An artist collective purchased an Andy Warhol drawing, replicated it 999 times, and is sold all 1,000 at random. “Given that Warhol embraced all things mass-produced, one wonders whether he would raise a milkshake to the new work.”
⚙️ Steve Young is keeping vintage pinball machines, and as this article puts it, “hope,” alive. “Over the past 50 years, he has built the world's greatest collection of rare parts and schematics that keep this detail-obsessed hobby humming.”
🎹 The Shepard’s Tone, the “barber’s pole of sound.” “This clever auditory illusion tricks your brain into thinking a sound is always rising or falling in pitch.”
🙏 Rest in Peace, Sam Moore. Here he is performing an all-time great with Bruce and the E. Street Band.
“Don't you ever feel sad, lean on me when times are bad.
When that day comes and you're down, in a river of trouble and about to drown,
hold on, I'm comin’”
✌️ Keep the Hoping Machine running, always and forever.
Love,
Luke
