The Red Shoes, Lessons from Groundhog Day, Paying Attention, etc.
In which we learn that the best way to get approval is to not need it.
🗓️ You’re coming off the holidays. It’s cold outside. It’s snowing. It’s OK if you’ve been lazy. It’s Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow, supposedly signaling six more weeks of winter. That means there is still time to set goals. If you’ve ever seen the late-Harold Ramis film, remember that things take time for Bill Murray. “He sees what problems there are in the town to solve, and how he can use his powers to help… He also throws himself into his work: he crafts a super eloquent speech for Punxsutawney Phil, which he presumably gives every day. He learns French. He learns how to play the piano. He learns how to sculpt ice. And it’s when he finally masters these things, when he’s turned himself into a person worth loving, it’s then that Rita notices him, and they live happily ever after.
Phil learns, as Hugh Macleod says in his book Ignore Everybody, ‘The best way to get approval is to not need it.'”
📽️ The Best Picture of each year, according to Letterboxd user ratings. Lots of hindsight, but outside of the years that are identical, I think most of these films are better than those that won the Oscar for Best Picture.
👠 Watched The Red Shoes, from 1948. The ballet centerpiece is one of the most beautiful and wondrous sequences I've ever seen. The rest? Devastating. A+, no notes.
📺 Also watched Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music. The opening sequence is as good as they're saying it is. As for the rest, unless I blinked and missed, no Replacements, Pogues, Lockers, Radiohead, Brian Wilson or I Wish It Was Christmas Today, and probably coulda used a little bit more cowbell, but as an SNL Historian I still approve.
🏔️ Since Lynch passed, I watched Twin Peaks, Fire Walk with Me and The Return. Also read The Secret History, and am currently reading The Final Dossier. A brief oral history. “The first episode – from hour one to hour two, the numbers skyrocketed, apparently, because people were literally calling each other, going: ‘Are you watching this show?’” Love this bit from Michael “Sheriff Truman” Ontkean:
“Paul Newman, who was my friend, missed the broadcast of the original Twin Peaks pilot on television and was well aware of the avalanche of positive reviews. I called David and asked for a copy to be sent to us in New York. Paul arranged for it to be shown at a Manhattan screening room. It was just the two of us and Mike Nichols. Afterwards, Paul gathered himself, got real quiet, turned to me and said it was one of the few times in his life he had experienced a perfect movie.”
🤣 A Man removed the music and studied what the cast were “playing” in an episode of Saved By the Bell and overdubbed what they would have sounded like and I’ve watched this like five times now.
🎧 An album I love every week, in no particular order, figuring by year’s end I’ll have what would constitute my top 50.
(4/50) Le Tigre, Le Tigre: I was a bit young for Bikini Kill, so this was my introduction to Kathleen Hannah. First time I heard Deceptacon, it felt like a lightning bolt to both my senses and my sensibilities. Effortlessly cool, sample-laden new wave/punk record that will get you dancing more than any other radically political album I can think of.
🎶 More music:
A classic Beastie Boys clip from Letterman. I saw them during this tour in Detroit and it pretty much opened the same way.
Few bands were as cool as The Strokes were from 2001 to 2003.
Consider the bassist of Lord Huron a good friend and still see him the same way I did eighteen years ago. Sincerely, just a flat-out genuine human being. It's so hard for me to wrap my head around how successful they've been. It's amazing and remarkable and I couldn't be happier for them. They have a new single with Kristen Stewart. If ever there were a time for them to perform on SNL, I would think it is now.
🤳 Siri, are you getting… dumber? “With the absolute most charitable interpretation, Siri correctly provided the winner of just 20 of the 58 Super Bowls that have been played. That’s an absolutely abysmal 34% completion percentage. If Siri were a quarterback, it would be drummed out of the NFL.”
📸 If there is one thing you should know by now, it’s that I’ll always share the nature photos. “A jury of 25 experts, comprising scientists, editors, naturalists, journalists, and photographers, narrowed down 100 images from more than 11,000 entries. Photographers in 61 countries submitted photos of a wide range of animals and environments, capturing dramatic behaviors and fascinating habitats.”
🏀 NBA greats think collegiate D-II coach Jim Crutchfield is a basketball genius. So why don’t you know who he is? “Crutchfield has won 86.4 percent of his games, the highest winning percentage of any coach with at least 10 seasons of experience at any level in NCAA history. He has turned two programs with no winning history into juggernauts.”
🧘 How to pay attention. “What do you pay attention to instead? Anything that comes along! You get in the habit of reacting, sometimes responding—but rarely noticing. The modern world is designed to discourage you from paying attention. If you want to counter the norm, you have to be intentional about it.”
✌️ Keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
