Hello, Lit Hubers. it’s been a while. But the spring sunshine has once again filled this employee with joy.
What’s making us happy lately? earlier this month, Molly Odintz enjoyed Austin Psych FestWhich brought a group of indie rock icons and shoegazers to her hometown.
And this week, drew brussard Gone analog. Our podcast editor watching horror movies theaterwith Friend-And they’re happy to report that this activity is just as fun in adulthood as it was during middle school. Drew says: “There’s something immensely enjoyable about the communal awe, the shared laughter, the genuine ‘body in space, together’ vibe.” No one asked, but I signed.
Recent Broussardian Weird Fridays include exit 8 (“Well, oddly conservative”), hokum (“Absolutely delightfully nerve-shredding, in love with an old witch”), and crazy (“Yes that one!”). Fun fact: Drew caught up with her author friend Leah Rowan on Classic to celebrate her new book, Marion!
johnny diamond Watching with astonishment. Our editor says, “Now is the time of year when Canada Geese fly high above our house on their way to find the Hudson River, their way north.”
“They make an incredible honk when they move on the ground, and are so close to us in the backyard that we can hear the flapping and whirring of their wings. My late mother loved Canada Geese (and famously rescued one from a frozen lake when she was a six-year-old) so when the geese fly by we make a point of telling the kids ‘There goes your grandma,’ which is obvious. “Confuses a 3-year-old child.”
Appropriately, given the Knicks spirit in my town, Kelvin Kasulke “Outrageously Addicted” Enjoying Playing 82-0 Web game. In this trivial pursuit, one attempts to create the best, unbeatable NBA team across different teams and eras.
Kelvin says, “I’ve succeeded twice; once with a team that would be incredible to watch, and once with a team that would have really disgusting feelings.” “A great mechanism by which certain people can be remembered.”
I, brittany allenThis week I came across two pieces of art that reminded me why I love New York.
Ann Rover’s if you are a girl It’s a strange auto-fictional history about the good life in the city – presented as a story collection. Upon its initial release in 1990, Rohwer’s book attracted Eve Babitz. A fresh semiotext(e) reissue updates the older material with new stories written from Rover’s octogenarian uptown perch. The result is an auto-imaginary star chart that depicts the life of a giant, entire city.
There’s a restless curiosity about all of Rover’s work, and I love the way the good old days and the good new days are brought together in this collection. If you like stories of late-breaking sexual awakening, Richard Hale and Wooster Group cameos, complicated grief, and diaristic visual reports, I think you’ll love this. I must thank the publishing gods for bringing this to my attention; It only came onto my radar because a nice-looking guy was reading it next to me on a recent plane ride.
The last thing I will leave you with is a movie. (Thanks, recently Criterion Flash Sale!) John Berry’s Claudine (1974) stars James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll as a star-crossed couple trying to make it work – and make it To Work—In Abraham Beame’s Harlem. This film contains some of the sharpest, funniest writing about the (rigged) economic situation of struggling working-class people that I have ever seen on screen. Plus, its brutal leads have so much chemistry that I felt like blushing while alone in my house.
Plus the Curtis Mayfield/Gladys Knight score made me want to stiffen on a spring day. This city is sometimes hard to live in, but it is definitely nice to be here in spring.
Wishing you a weekend of analog wonder, bodies in space, and friendly ghosts.
