Xerxes flogging the Hellespont has nothing on my kids doing K-Pop Demon Hunters moves on the Pacific Ocean with bamboo they found on the beach

Well shit, I guess I’m the emotionally repressed butler to a doltish English Nazi sympathizer

No fucking Merlots

California good IMO

I finally watched Top Gun on the plane today. It’s incredibly fun, and good evidence for my “just cast some proper movie stars and it will at worst be entertaining” theory. But also the need of 80s movies to cast the crumbling USSR as a behemoth to our plucky underdogs remains extremely telling.

The 6YO, opening the plane window and looking at the runway at LAX: “it isn’t snowing here!”

Real heartbreaking to fly to LA right now

Tempted to do some celebrity spotting (driving by the house in Pacific Palisades where Thomas Mann lived in exile) but that would be a tough sell for the kids

If I have any LA knower followers, we’re going to Ventura tmrw, but will have a couple of hours to kill in LA if flight is on time. Any recs for cool outdoor stuff (ideally with playground and good cheap food nearby) not too far out of the way from LAX to Ventura? Will have tired 4 and 6YO and a car

The 6YO’s loose tooth came out at the Belvidere Oasis, and that we will now always have that association with a random place that we drive by or stop at on a semi regular basis feels like a cool parenting thing

Finished “The Remains of the Day,” and boy was that depressing (also very good)

But really aren’t we all against South Florida on January 6

This Wolves game is, spiritually, the second game of a back to back

It ended up being a “Surprisingly Core Workout Heavy River”

About to go to a Dells water park for the first time, with the four cousins between the ages of 4 and 8. We will be teaching the river the virtues of hard work and diligence.

December, 2035: just landed an exciting new job using ChatGPT to create lazy email scams, but in space

At the risk of granting any of the premise here, my in-laws, who helped the Spanish Republic, escaped Europe by the skin of their teeth in 1940, and built lives here teaching and fighting for justice are better representatives of what this country can be than mindless worshippers of the founders

Last Crusade is the best and it’s not particularly close IMO. The whole sequence between Venice and the escape from Germany is one long action sequence, well choreographed, well acted, funny, with great chemistry between Ford and Connery.

Have returned to Wisconsin

Update on this, he, uhhh, perked up a bit

Jokic looks personally offended to have to do OT, like “man it’s late, I have to FaceTime my racehorses in 8 hours”

Julius Randle just bully people on offense challenge

The Wolves are playing in the late slot on Christmas and they decided to go with their “high school JV team warmup jerseys” look, unacceptable imo. Especially because Denver is wearing the cool rainbow mountains.

Got the kids and their cousins invested in whether Dallas would hit exactly 67, I regret nothing

Football on Christmas is an abomination, the sort of civilizational decadence that lead to the fall of Rome and the advent of the Dark Ages (glances around to make sure @lollardfish.bsky.social is otherwise occupied) RETVRN

My spouse’s 10th holiday season in Minneapolis, and the first one where I got her to go out on a frozen lake on a Christmas run (also I was listening to the Replacements while going by the Bob Stinson bench, it’s nice to be home even if it’s only for a couple of days)

Highly recommend having a sibling get really into woodworking, as they made a huge new dining room table for us.

Hand of God goal but for Mouse Trap

Yeah buddy I like monasticism

This is true. And one other product of the year my family lived in Paris was a reminder that you can absolutely get baked good that are (almost) as good in the US as they are in France, they will just cost 5 times as much and aren't on every damn corner.

God bless Minneapolis

Watching my dad teach my Swedish/Sephardic Jewish/German/French/Italian/Ukrainian/English kids how to make lefse, the sort of thing that’s just about all that can make me kind of patriotic for this place these days.

Late 30s Millennial music take incoming, but I've been listening to a lot of Magnolia Electric Company for the first time since high school, and man is it good www.youtube.com/watch?v=malJ...

My winter break reading goals are finishing “The Remains of the Day” and getting at least a respectable chunk into “Middlemarch,” or as the kids call it, getting provincial English regret and disappointment pilled

I can live in hope that he will discover that juries don’t always acquit at some point in the not too distant future

470 or so years after Philip left and the Habsburgs are back in England

There should be a movie where someone hotwires a Tesla, just so Musk can have a lengthy breakdown about how that’s not possible

@jamellebouie.net had a post the other day about the vibe of 70s movies vs movies about the 70s, and I gotta say I think “OBAA” is kind of the flip of that. Extremely 70s looking movie about the present day.

“One Battle After Another” is not a, uhhh, subtle movie, huh?

We’re watching Elf, and when he goes into the candy cane forest, the 4YO said “is he in Chicago?” We asked why she thought it looked like Chicago and she said “it just does.” So there you have it.

Sunday morning reading/listening - because I’m nothing if not on the nose

A distinctive architectural style known as Marie Ann Arbortoinette

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

This wine is absolutely can’t miss, there is no way it won’t get better and better, you’d be a fool not to buy cases of it.

A history thing I think about a lot is that the Easter Rising was deeply unpopular, even among Catholics in Ireland, but then the British basically created a republican majority by their incredibly brutal response

Watched the Wolves game from last night. Man is it satisfying to watch them beat the Thunder like that, with an absolutely fantastic sequence from ANT to close it. Hope they can use it as a springboard. Also: they should always wear the Prince jerseys. youtu.be/amu-aRrM3G4?...

Yesterday between my work thing and my flight home I drove out to the Eastern Shore, a beautiful and otherworldly landscape, and a place that feels heavy with history

My favorite pieces at art museums these days tell interesting stories about histories of cultural exchange, peaceful, violent, ancient, current, etc. And wow does this statue of the archangel Michael, carved by Chinese artists from African ivory in the 16th century Spanish Philippines fit the bill.

*Guy in the art history program focusing on early modern Japanese weapons* While you were partying I studied the blade