Brain Food Fall Edition

Here are some of the memorable written things that I’ve ingested into my brainbox in the last few months.

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Reading this as my niece is studying it for her GCSE’s in the UK.

• The Act of Living by Frank Tallis. Terrific history of the great psychologists dipping meaningfully into their teachings and showing how they play off each other.

• Meditations by Joe Dispenza. Trying to make meditation more of a regular part of my life. This particular book is ok. It’s repetitive but that’s meditation for you.

• Straw Dogs by John Gray. Really interesting examination on the human instinct towards dogma and its evolution.

• Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage. Makes you want to make.

• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver by Oliver Burkeman. Helps you understand how finite our time on earth is, how to use it without being ridden with self-criticism.

• The Daily Dad by Ryan Holiday. Keeps you focused on what kind of dad you want/need to be.

• Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Abraham Riesman. Shoutout Alan Mercer.

• A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney. This book scares me and I am reading it so slowly. It’s beautifully written but the thought of losing a child affects me in a way I didn’t expect. I’ll finish it and love it but I’ll need courage.

Brain food

A quick dump on some stuff I’ve consumed in the last couple of months. It’s actually not much because I’m binging Youtube videos on Russian history. What Pooty is doing to Ukraine is beyond criminal but how did it get to this point for Russians to accept this kind of mental patient as leader? There is a long national psycho-pathology dating back centuries that is interesting and grimly logical if you go down that rabbit hole. Other than that, here’s what’s been going into my brain recently:

Books about Montessori

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Top 10 movies I’ve ever seen)

Old Obama Interviews.

Mr Beast Videos

Old Between Two Ferns eps.

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead

Seinfeld (Again. Like for the 20th time all the way through)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Zero Dark Thirty (Again)

Land Before Time

Fear and Desire (1952)

Salò (yes that one). It was on at the Academy Museum and I left after about an hour. That was plenty.

The Batman (The Pattinson One)

Triangle of Sadness

All Quiet on the Western Front

Wednesday

The Patient

Classic heavyweight boxing fights including Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, Ali, Lennox Lewis, Frank Bruno

Lots of Kimmel. I guess I’m that age where I need late night.

Pillow Talk

I just finished The Pillowman and it is very very very dark stuff. It’s about power, it’s about guilt, it’s about family, it’s about an artist’s desperation just to be noticed even if they are to be despised, it has graphic descriptions of violence towards children and yet somehow, SOMEHOW, it made me laugh. McDonagh really is a genius. I bet when this was performed many of the laughs were laughs of relief; of pressure being released out of the theater but when you just read it you don’t get that communal reassurance. You have to let yourself off the hook and it’s just different. It’s a tad twisted. But it’s self-evidently brilliant.

I’ll read one more McDonough before I move on to something else. Next up is the Lieutenant of Inishmore. I’ll report back. I tentatively have Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? lined up. Shoot, after another one of these plays I’m probably going to need a therapy in hardback anyway!

Note: I just discovered that McDonagh literally wrote a play called “A Very Very Very Dark Matter”. At least we’re aligned. He is an absurdist sadist.

Play time

Reading. I love reading. I joked yesterday with Delali that if I won the lottery, I'd just read. Read and watch movies… after doing all the honorable charitable stuff. Obviously.

But reading. When does one find the time? Well, if you want to read, you’ll read. We can all  forgo 45 minutes a day of scrolling if we really had to. Still, for those that just can’t, I found a hack to facilitate your pseudo-intellectual ambitions.  

No. It’s not reading articles. Articles don’t count. This post doesn’t count either. Anything that is written with the goal of getting clicks doesn’t count. Sorry. 

The hack is plays. Theatrical plays. Not sports. Sorry again. Short plays. Funny plays. Sort, funny plays of substance.

I hadn’t forgotten how wonderful Martin McDonagh's plays were. After falling instantly in love with In Bruges and reading the spec script for Seven Psychopaths in my first Hollywood internship I delved into his playwriting career 15 years ago. Back then, I read the Beauty Queen of Leenane and remember chuckling out loud a lot. It’s impossible not to read his work with an Irish accent. His writing feels like Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter” meeting Father Ted. Or maybe Beckett’s “Huis Clos” meets Father Ted. Either way, it’s something tense meeting something whimsical and Irish. Folksy, funny and fatalistic banter. 

Recently I discovered that my Great Grandmother was Irish. A total surprise to me that has opened up some fun personal identity narratives to play with whilst musing on one’s own nature. In literature, I love imbeciles. I love narratives about humble people with modest goals being held back by hilariously miserable bastards. I love the underdog and I love schemers. I don’t like to be sad but I like work that excuses people who are accustomed to and comfortable in misery. These themes really find a home in Irish culture so perhaps my lineage should’t be a surprise after all.  

This week, I read The Cripple of Inishmaan. It was 90 pages. I read before bed, while I burped my daughter and while I was on the loo. Who can’t fit in 90 bloody pages of double spaced dialogue into 5 days for feck’s sake? It was terrific.  It compelled me into quiet moments and it awed me. So simple. So funny. So sad. So good. So short. I just ordered two more McDonagh plays. So if you know me IRL and I tell you to “feck off” just understand that it's nothing personal. I’m just trying to read more. 

Winter On Fire

Watch this film and it's clear Putin has fucked with the wrong country. Ukrainians literally just came from a fight to the death for their independence from Russian influence - which they won. They aren't going to be cowed this time either. Identity is galvanized by struggle. Despite the cultural and historical overlap with Russia, Ukrainians are profoundly patriotic and will defend their country to the bitter end.

Two things stuck with me in this film.

1. The baddies in this doc are the brutal Ukrainian riot police, the "bertuk". They ruthlessly beat and kills demonstrators in harrowing, visceral scenes. But presumably many of the “bertuk” are Ukrainians themselves. What the hell must have been going through their minds during this period? I'd love to have known. Similarly in the last few days, we've seen interviews with captured Russian infantry. They are appalled at the lies they've been told by the Russian government ordering them to butcher their Slavic brethren. Of course, it's smart for a POW to show remorse but these interviews feel genuine especially knowing what we do about Putin's "military exercises" ruse.

2. Roma Saveliyev is a 12-year-old revolutionary who is one of the most remarkable and compelling characters I've ever seen in a documentary. Think the Artful Dodger if instead of picking pockets for Fagan, he was filling Molotov cocktails for freedom fighters. Expelled from school but a legend of Maiden Square, Saveliyev has Dickensian the cheek and guile layered on a child coming of age in a pressure cooker of graphic violence and political upheaval. His self-awareness and cheerful bravado are arresting. If you’re inhaling content about the war in Ukraine stop watching CNN for 90 mins and watch Winter On Fire. Netflix are showing it for FREE here.

Fell for it

When I first heard about this partnership between Gucci and The North Face I felt two things simultaneously. 1) Typical and 2) That will work. Now I’m watching the anthem video and I’m like…damn that must have been a fun shoot. I had no idea who Francis Bourgeois was. His top Google search was a Rolling Stone article I skimmed telling me confidently that he was both the most wholesome person on the internet and/or a complete phony. Classic internet. Regardless, I liked the video. And here is the video. It’s Wes-ish Andersonny.