These Are, Uh, Four of My Favorite Things: Seventh Edition
Remnick on Gaza, Bern on Parade, Yams on Yams, Dissect On Radiohead
1. IN THE CITIES OF KILLING by DAVID REMNICK
“Favorite” is not a good descriptor here. There’s nothing favorite about what’s happening in Gaza right now. Maybe “necessary” is a better word for how I felt about the article I’ll link to below. Maybe “insightful" works. I don’t know. My inability to pin down the right word here is in-tune with how I’ve felt about watching October 7 and its aftermath unfold: I can’t find the words.
Great writers find the words. And I was moved (and saddened and gutted and demoralized) by the words of David Remnick in a recent issue of The New Yorker.
The weight and truth of his opening line alone is worth the subscription:
The only way to tell this story is to try to tell it truthfully and to know that you will fail.
It’s worth the read.
2. You know I’m a sucker for traditions. For recurring things (that is to say, good recurring things). And one of mine is that every Thanksgiving I give a listen to Dan Bern’s song “Thanksgiving Day Parade.” It’s sprawling and stream-of-consciousness and Dylanesque and I love it every time.
At 10+ minutes, it’s a real experience. A radio station when I was growing up would play Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” every Thanksgiving as a tradition, all 18+ minutes of it. I’d listen in. Sometimes to the whole thing. But I always felt like a tourist. “Thanksgiving Day Parade” is the one for me. It’s my “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Here it is on Spotify.
And on Apple Music.
And I have a whole playlist of Thanks/Food-adjacent tunes, if that’s your thing (with some songs from The Band and U2, which seem random and, well, are….but remind me of Thanksgiving).
3. Yams & apples, man. YAMS. AND. APPLES.
Another day I’ll tell the story of my first Thanksgiving as a husband and the absolutely absurd knock-down, drag-out we had over whose family’s version of yams we were gonna bring to the Friendsgiving we’d been invited to out in Brooklyn. Man, we were a hot mess. Or I was at least.
But it’s my favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal. (Mashed potatoes take a close second, though.)
4. The podcast Dissect
This season (their 11th), the podcast Dissect is diving deep into Radiohead’s landmark album In Rainbows. And it is enthralling. Little production details. Minutiae for days. Isolated bits of this guitar part or that synth part (the podcast must have access to the native files?) Soundbites from interviews with the band. And of course plenty of superlative fawning from the host that even a big Radiohead fan like myself sometimes has to roll eyes about. (Shout out my friend Dominic who pointed me in the podcast’s direction.)
I listen to it every chance I get.