Teach me to care and not to care.
10. Spencer (original motion picture soundtrack), Johnny Greenwood
9. Old Friends New Friends, Nils Frahm
8. L’amour hélas, Clio
7. The Quiet Drift, Hollie Kenniff
6. Mercy, Natalie Bergman
5. Chansons d’Ennui Tip-Top, Jarvis Cocker
4. Rams, Brian Eno
3. Shade, Grouper
2. Blue Weekend, Wolf Alice
1. Promises, Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra and Pharaoh Sanders
5. The Power of the Dog
4. Locked Down
3. The French Dispatch
2. Licorice Pizza
Tomorrow, for the sixth year in a row, I will be watching The Grand Budapest Hotel on New Year’s Day.
Consider joining me in this important R-rated tradition.
What happens when you’re famous and conservative and let your kids have social media accounts? Ask Ted Cruz.
This one is marked collaborative, so after you get the vibe, feel free to add to it.
View: reading the paper in the lobby of the Jefferson on the last day of the year.
“A Charlie Brown Christmas insists the problem is not with Christmas, but with us. Christmas doesn’t need to be fixed. We do. While we tend to remember all the comments about ‘commercialism’ made in the film, in the end, A Charlie Brown Christmas asks those who complain about Christmas commercialism to quit soapboxing and sing a hymn.”
-from The Enduring Appeal Of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” my latest for CiRCE
“The average megachurch talks constantly about ‘taking over this town for Jesus.’ It’s a large scale cultural project with returns that can be easily measured. And the megachurch model is (apparently) successful, at least in the short run, which is what tempts classical Christian schools to borrow the megachurch ethos, aesthetics, and business model.”
-from a forthcoming article for CiRCE
“Do a little digging and you will find the About Us section of most classical Christian school websites is really not all that different from non-classical Christian school websites. However, one gets the distinct impression that Bobby McGee is not trying to win any popularity contests. At present, the students at St. Francis Classical do not receive numerical grades and are not expecting to receive diplomas. And while St. Francis is an ACCS member school, they are not accredited and do not plan on seeking accreditation. “Remaining unaccredited allows us to offer courses and establish pedagogical practices specially crafted for our students and our tutors,” said McGee. Accordingly, St. Francis is not a school which will fast-track students to earthly success. In fact, sending your child to St. Francis means giving up on a good deal of what the world thinks is important, and yet, with six instructors and twenty-four students in their first year, it seems giving up on the world is a viable business model.”
-from “The Next Generation,” my latest for CiRCE
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.