#10 Entrance to the Rodeo where we begin to scintillate
#10 Entrance to the Rodeo where we begin to scintillate
Returning to a new season after a summer abroad.
The fasten seatbelt lights dinged on. The interactive map reflects 36,000 feet above sea level, ground speed 500mph, actual speed 560 mph. The map rotating between aerial review and cockpit view, the latter a pixelated screen of what passengers might surmise as the dark sky, but with a route that tangents off the Arctic Circle ever really see the night sky? The passenger in 24B is watching The Iron Claw. 24B nodded off, slumped over almost encroaching on 24C.
Jake Gylennhaal piledrives another wrestle into the mat.
In another movie, Gylennhaal has an eye-twitch throughout. He pile-drives a presumed pedophile into a kitchen table. The table does not collapse like it should if it occurred on a WWE set.
Earlier in the summer before this international flight, a man flicked the joystick of a claw game. Plush, stuffed animals manufactured in Bangladesh await the dexterous user. I took a moment to pause and watch the man flicking the joystick. The deafening neon lights of machines. A row of twenty machines each housing stuffed animals, most recognizable from some cartoon movies.
If this was a piece of art, this would be like buying the Mona Lisa," Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions at Heritage Auctions
Earlier in the year, Babe Ruth’s 1932 World Series uniform went to auction. Most might know this as the jersey he wore when he called his home run shot. The jersey sold for a record breaking $24.12M.
In 2022, a Topps Mickey Mantle card sold for $12.6M.
From research by a firm called Market Decipher, an analyst earlier in 2024 stated that the “Collectibles market size was estimated at $458.2B in 2022 and is expected to cross $1T by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 6.2% on average of all collectible products”.
A friend years ago introduced me to the films of Roy Andersson. His works visually are like a drab Stanley Kubrick. Perhaps they’re meant to be. Andersson’s work in one vein seems to be about the lack of sensitivity that people are desensitized to specific things.
Andersson quotes Edward Hopper as an inspiration.
It’s the loneliness. His paintings are beautiful and sad at the same time. He made a fantastic painting titled The Office at Night where the secretary is standing beside the man in the office. He is about to say something or he just said something. The painting is about waiting, but it is almost moving. It’s a kind of movie.
Waiting and boredom are things that make Hopper’s paintings interesting.
As a quick aside, there’s a Lu Xun short story about a man encircled by an angry mob. He has a knife or they do. Either way they’re hostile towards each other. The entire story hinges on the tension between the crowd and encircled man. Their relationship left up to guesses about the event that preceded the short story. The reader awaits the violence that never arrives — iirc the story is about an alligator.
Andersson’s films are filled with empty scenes. Typical Andersson sets are one-camera sets where the set is artificially elongated.
For example, in Pigeon, there is the scene of the manager of a big company who we assume will commit suicide. For a long time, he is just standing there, the only sound a thunderclap. He just stands there, pistol in one hand, cell phone at his ear, listening, and you start to wonder will he shoot himself or not. Finally, he says, “I am glad you are feeling better.” But until that point, he is telling you everything silently.
Video game developers are unionizing the video game industry. There’s a recent Tech Won’t Save Us and This Machine Kills podcasts. Brian Merchant writes about it at further length on his newsletter:
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