Friday Inspiration 544

that Robert Glasper Radiohead cover, should everyone have fun (or just the ultra-wealthy), the $1.50 Costco hot dog

Clips of this performance were floating around social media this week, especially noting that Robert Glasper has tears running down under his sunglasses while he plays a cover of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place,” and it is incredibly powerful. But I poked around a bit and he’s been covering this song for at least 20 years, so I wonder why this performance affected him so much? (video)

This New York Times article about Sylvester Stallone’s Cliffhanger being a “good-bad movie” is fun and interesting, and it also made me think that if they really want to milk this “good-bad” thing, they could probably just write about every 80s and 90s action movie that I loved/love (aside from Die Hard, which is just a good-good movie). [GIFT LINK] (thanks, Syd)

I don’t know why I am interested in the $1.50 Costco hot dog (I’ve been vegetarian for 20+ years now, so I’ve never actually eaten one). But I am interested in the $1.50 Costco hot dog, mostly because people love it, its $1.50 price seems to be part of the Costco mythology, and people like Alan Seigel see fit to write about said mythology and what it means today.

I got to interview author and journalist Heather Hansman on My Favorite Things last week, and we mostly talked about her favorite things, including The Fugees’ The Score, Alex Katz’s Maine paintings, Raven’s Exile by Ellen Meloy, The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White (writing nerds unite!), and Lisa Grossman’s river paintings, but I also can confirm her new book that comes out next week, Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America’s Love for the Wild, is a wonderful read.

There’s a section of this piece that captures something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: The idea that we all feel like we should try to make more money in order to afford nicer things and experiences, but that at a certain amount of wealth, you often (maybe unintentionally) buy yourself out of having an authentic human experience—or at least, an experience that’s authentic to most humans. Anyway, Garrett Bucks wrote it way better in his essay, “Do you believe that everybody should have fun or that only a few people should have fun?”: “I resent the corporations that commodify our joy. I hate this broader system of haves and have nots. And I’ve got plenty of not-too-tender feelings about the wealth hoarders themselves, occupying their luxury boxes and driving up prices for the rest of us. But I also feel sorry for them, because the more they buy into the idea of exclusivity and isolation, the more that they’ll never actually experience the best parts of being alive.”(via Kottke)

My friend Nick Triolo’s fantastic (and award-winning!) book The Way Around just celebrated its first birthday this week, and he found a really unique way to write about the experience of creating the book, and doing his best to push it out into the world for the past year, including his therapist’s line that “by publishing a book you’re voluntarily expanding the surface area of the self that makes contact with the world, and that’ll bring with it all sorts of interesting and challenging encounters.”

In a much more less cerebral recommendation, here is a video shot by a couple watching a guy’s fully-loaded shopping cart roll away from him all the way across a Walmart parking lot while they laugh their asses off, which I believe will also make you laugh your ass off.

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