Recent Essays

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  The Three Senses of “What Now?”
  We may contemplate our future with dread and uncertainty or with joy and anticipation. But sometimes we see no future. I came to Ann Patchett’s “What Now?” in the meandering vein of “Things I learned Enroute to Looking Up Other Things” columns. I read Dutch House, which convinced me that Patchett was a good writer. So… Read more: The Three Senses of “What Now?”
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  Purpose Amid the Horror
  Quiet Place: Day One delivers a powerful message on the nature and magnetism of having a purpose. We are drawn to anyone who knows what they want, to purpose. And the worse things are, the more magnetic having a purpose is. Each Quiet Place movie has explored the role and nature of purpose in a world where… Read more: Purpose Amid the Horror
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  Our Dying Breath: Exhalation and ALS
  Ted Chiang’s Exhalation is a classic Sci-Fi short story. Brilliant, evocative, thought-provoking, deeply humanistic and inspirational. It tells of the end of days for race of mechanical men undone by the remorseless laws of the universe. It’s the title story of his 2019 collection, and while that collection is chock-full of great stories (especially the remarkable opening story), Exhalation stands… Read more: Our Dying Breath: Exhalation and ALS
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  ChatGPT Doesn’t Think. It Just Guesses the Next Best Word.
  Isn’t that what we…? ChatGPT and LLMs (Large Language Models of which ChatGPT is an exemplar) have taken the world by storm and triggered a hype cycle equivalent to the original dot.com boom. Almost everyone has tried ChatGPT (200 million active users and counting), and EVERYONE has seen the results of LLMs just by using… Read more: ChatGPT Doesn’t Think. It Just Guesses the Next Best Word.
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  Whatever Our Beliefs, We Suffer Together
  C.S. Lewis’ short book on grief covers the slow curve from the abyss to recovery. I read C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed because…well, when you’re a reader and you’re struggling with losing someone, you naturally read about…grief. Lewis lost a wife of not so many years. A wife he found late enough in life to know how precious their affection… Read more: Whatever Our Beliefs, We Suffer Together
• First Man
  Babylon was one of the few movies ever downvoted on StreamGems. It’s supposed to be streaming recommendations, after all. It wasn’t that Babylon was all THAT bad. There are a lot of worse movies you can stream on any given night. But if, like me, you were a huge fan of Damien Chazelle’s first three… Read more: First Man
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  What is it About Music that Plucks the Strings of Grief?
  Three times in the past few weeks I have found myself in tears. Three times! This is not normal for me; sadness is not my métier. A descent into tears is as unusual for my remorselessly cheerful nature as passing up a good bakery. There are reasons for grief. Reasons good enough that I need… Read more: What is it About Music that Plucks the Strings of Grief?
• Love’s Labour’s Lost
  Perhaps the most flawed of Branagh’s Shakespeare films, Love’s Labour’s Lost is a fitting adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s weaker plays. It’s a silly story and Branagh leans hard into the silliness while transplanting the action into a pre-war (WW2) setting and transforming the play into a Porter and Gershwin jukebox musical. Too much of… Read more: Love’s Labour’s Lost
• Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus
  I won’t pretend this is a movie for everyone. You need to like modern classical music or I suspect you will find this film interminable and probably sleep inducing. But if you check that box, Opus is an intimate private piano recital in your living room. It’s a 1hr 40minute concert with nothing but Sakamoto… Read more: Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus
• Remembering Gene Wilder
  There is a wonderful story in Remembering Gene Wilder about making The Producers. Brooks worked on it for years before getting it off the ground, and he’d wanted the not-at-all-famous Gene Wilder to be Leo Bloom after seeing him on stage and doing a reading of the first scenes. But when Zero Mostel was cast… Read more: Remembering Gene Wilder