Intentionally, sadistically dense stuff, every single page its own literary sudoku, like only Gibson can get away with. Let it wash over you, rereading the page with the context of its contents. Once you’re comfortable with the ride, it’s good solid fun with some real payoffs. Quite explosive, actually.

Thanks Dan for the gift! You helped me rediscover my favorite author. Now on to the sequel, Agency….

OB S3 got all the little nuances right. Engaging plot, perfectly-sized entourage of great characters, full emotional range of well-written scenes, all wrapped around the showcase of Tatiana’s unparalleled performances.

Like a one night stand rebound, this show stepped in to save me from Westworld. By Greg Daniels, who works with Steve Carell and Mike Judge, it’s a near-future sci-fi comedy that walks well trodden ground with off-the-charts freshness.

From comicbook.com:

Daniels started writing the series right after The Office ended and it’s taken the past six years for the show to finally come to fruition. “It’s been a long time coming,” Daniels tells us. “I was writing episodes in 2017, and then we shot a pilot in 2018. And then we shot the series in 2019. There were so many special effects, that it took another year to do all the visual effects. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s great fun.”

This is how deep art happens.  It’s why bands have a hard time reproducing the depth of that first “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” release.  It’s why the strike in the middle of Bladerunner let it refine like wine.  It’s why the fire that destroyed all master tapes and forced Meat Beat Manifesto to rerecord its first release was such sweet good fortune (wait, Jack made that up? Genius).  It’s how Phoebe Waller-Bridge gradually turned her Fleabag stage production into the most powerful and sublime television, a fully-formed vision.  I am grateful for these gems, I hope you like them too, my friends.

Rock solid near-near-future sci fi. Here we go!

UPDATE: meh… WARNING, incoming spoilers…

In a lot of pain lately. Thankful for my black comedy friends, there is no better medicine.

Only discovered Curb Your Enthusiasm a month or so ago, binged every last episode.  Larry David has definitively proven that the perfect length of a joke is 38 minutes.

Once in a while, an old gem reappears, thank you John C. Reilly you are a genius.

And Kurt. My life would be so much poorer without you…

From Breakfast of Champions, published 1973. The more things change, the more they stay the same…

On one of my ex’es birthdays many years ago, I had spent the week earlier working on an artistic rendition of a poem by one of her favorite poets, sadly scrawled on the largest canvas I could think of, the drywall in the garage. I added a simple happy line of my own at the end. When I took off her blindfold to reveal the surprise, she was horrified that I had the arrogance to pervert such perfection. Soon after, as her disgust grew, I painted it back over in white and shame.

I can remember neither the poem nor the poet.

Update: It turns out there is precedent, thanks to a belated unearthing of yet another Vonnegut gem. However, I cannot hold KV directly responsible for the transgression, as he always breaks the fourth wall via a safety net named Kilgore Trout, or in this case, his son or some such, who writes:

If only I had the balls to own it like Kurt…