..or how one becomes a person who hunts for Vera Bradley items from before 2015 (the year they closed down their last Indiana workshop).

Lamine Yamal's little brother, Keyne, shouting " ¡VAMOOOS!" ("Let's goooo!") was the image of this World Cup for millions of Spaniards, and now for people around the world. Even those who aren't sports fan can share that joy 🌟

Riding the bus in Madrid today -- all the coaches are flying Spanish flags ❤️💛❤️

¡España entera es una fiesta! / Spain is one big celebration right now 🥳🎉🥂

Finally!

And here we GO!

Everyone in Spain is rooting for "La Roja" ("Big Red", nickname of our national team), in tonight's World Cup final -- even the tins of film at the Conservation & Restauration Centre of the Spanish Film Archive are sporting the colors of the flag! 🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦🇪🇦

Wow, I was unprepared for how hard 17th-c Spanish artist Valdés Leal went with these huge works for the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville: "Ni más ni menos" (Neither More Nor Less) & "In ictu oculi" (In the Wink of an Eye). The most *metal* paintings I've ever seen.

For your convenience, the Pride and Prejudice live-posting super-thread 📚

One of the best to ever do it 👑

¡Viva España! ⚽️

Classic crime on the beach: TOUR DE FORCE, by Christianna Brand

Tomorrow's World Cup semifinal: dueling omelets! I predict that Spain's hearty classic (stuffed with potatoes & onions sautéed in olive oil) will come out ahead of France's fluffier version 🍳

Tonight's viewing ✨️

Sam Neill elevated everything he did. Our Classic Summer Blockbuster (Re)Watch Party this year was Jurassic Park & we all agreed that the against-type casting of the leads--especially Sam Neill, with his horror-icon eyes, playing the dream dad role--was what shifted the movie from good to great.

On the beach: Btwn following the epic 1st-read thread of Pride & Prejudice by @trungles.com, & my daughter's running commentary of her own 1st read of Northanger Abbey, I'm really enjoying a Hot Jane Austen Summer here. Since I can't read 'em myself for the 1st time again, it's the next-best thing.

Tonight I went to an exceptionally good flamenco show in Cadiz & the break between sets was extended so that the artists & audience could stay in the bar & watch the end of Spain's victory against Belgium, including the 2nd goal. Not surprisingly, the show's 2nd set was even better than the 1st 🇪🇸🇪🇸

For those thinking about Bonnie Tyler today: One of the best episodes of the @kirkhamilton.com podcast "Strong Songs" goes deep on "Total Eclipse of the Heart", including the fun fact that it was originally intended for a musical about *vampires* strongsongspodcast.com/blogs/episod...

LOL -- After finishing Christianna Brand's murder mystery "Death in High Heels", I went online to look up some information about it... and a random AI pop-up (which of course I never asked for) at the top of my search feed provided a fake spoiler featuring a character who isn't even in the novel.

Happy Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas! (That photo looks like a still from a movie that I would definitely want to see if it existed.)

I voted in the @fangoria.bsky.social #ChainsawAwards, and you can, too, at the link! ⛓️🪚💀 www.fan.gd/share-vote-bs

My new favorite TV thing is that there's an Australian comedy series, "Deadloch", about crimes in a Tasmanian town... and the local seal is interfering with the investigations. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

I would watch the heck out of an "Aniaba" costume dramedy.

Solís brand tomato sauce, no. 2 in the highly competitive Spanish market, just put out an "AI" slop TV ad. As part of Nestlé, they have the budget for a proper ad, but chose not to do one. Makes you wonder where else they're cutting corners... I'll be buying Orlando 🍅 youtu.be/HnnCJPXW2VY?...

European attitudes about the USA, bicentennial vs semiquincentennial: 1970s - Wow, they sent humans to the Moon & brought us back a moonrock as a gift symbolizing aspirations for world peace! 2026 - The current US president is a joke, but also a menace to the planet. (See ALT text for captions)

Despite Brexit, Shakespeare still has a lampshade at the European Parliament visitors' centre.

JCDecaux owns many of the billboards you see in airports. When they have a temporarily empty space, they fill it with ads for themselves. In Brussels today, one such ad was cringe "AI" slop (zoom in for the pathetically mispelled "pizzeria" sign). Not a good look for the world leader in their field.

Greetings from the Waterloo battlefield, where the scheduled reenactments were canceled due to the heat wave. Luckily we went early & saw the amazing view from the Lion's Mound before the sun got too high, spending the rest of our visit in the museum (highly recommend), which has good AC.

The vibe of this book is very much, “These people are ridiculous, but the stakes are real and matter,” which also feels veRY PERTINENT TO THE TODAY-TIMES SOMEHOW.

For local people

Canopies providing shade in public spaces are common in Spain, but few are as beautiful as this one in southwestern Andalusia.

It might've seemed like damning with faint praise when I said "What I liked most about BACKROOMS: The inciting incident was that, like nearly all of us, the protagonist had no idea how a large fusebox works." But for me an inciting incident so rooted in the everyday is what makes the rest work ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hey, #birders. I'm looking for a couple of good bird identification guides for Europe: 1. A big, comprehensive reference work, 2. A more compact field guide to carry around. Thanks for any recommendations! #birdsky

Just got home from BACKROOMS, which I've been psyched about since first seeing the web series thanks to @randomhorror9.bsky.social. What I liked most about the film: The inciting incident was that, like nearly all of us, the protagonist had no idea how a large fusebox works.

My favorite use of a gong is the Rank Organisation logo.

The would-be emperor has no clothes. (In the linked cartoon by Ricardo Martinez from the Madrid newspaper EL MUNDO, the text in the speech balloon asks, "How was the strip poker game with Iran?") www.elmundo.es/opinion/2026...

I am going to be thinking about this all day.

Confused by the "AI" slop ad that popped up in my feed, which appears to show Steven Spielberg (carrying a bunch of paperwork at a weird angle) & Annie Lennox (doing Wallace's "cheese!" hand motion) w/ a toothy woman who is handing them sloppily-folded pants next to a table of uncanny-valley crafts.

Everybody knows the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows

It's Basil Rathbone's birthday, a good time to revisit one of the greatest fencing scenes ever filmed, in "The Mark of Zorro": youtu.be/J0hHe5kCPKg?...

Reminded today that I far prefer David Hockney's joyously colorful "Mulholland Drive" to that other work of the same title by someone also named David.

Nature is so unfathomably amazing ✨️

This is such a timely thread for me right now, because this morning my Oblique Strategies deck got mixed up with my brother's by accident, so I've had to lay out all the cards on a table to match each one into its own deck again... which might be the most Oblique Strategies thing ever.

Yes, I am the target demographic for this!

I love ripe, fresh cherries so much. Too bad the season here in Spain is so short, because they're my favorite fruit.

Some designer who clearly knows what I like used this classic Peggy Lee album cover as the central motif for a large velvet pillow, which now graces our sofa.

Happy Bob Dylan's 85th birthday, which I will celebrate by getting together with a bunch of friends, in a bar, to play Dylan tunes on various stringed instruments. My request: "Million Dollar Bash". Cue the music... youtu.be/NGUQgty1e3g?...

I waited to listen to the latest ep of @randomhorror9.bsky.social until I could watch BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (in the delightfully cheesy original Italian dub) & I am loving the CITIZEN-KANE level framing of Chekov's Handbag.

The English translation of the liner notes from this 1973 flamenco album is *nuts*