Eric Rothman
@ericmsandwich
Filmmaker, editor, animator, stationary bicycle rider, sandwich enthusiast. My work has won very few awards. I currently reside in Dayton, Ohio.
Eric Rothman
@ericmsandwich
Filmmaker, editor, animator, stationary bicycle rider, sandwich enthusiast. My work has won very few awards. I currently reside in Dayton, Ohio.
This is Ezra Klein expertly and precisely explaining how the business models of the news used to work, how they changed when the internet came around, and how it's all falling apart. Just wall-to-wall insight. We take it all for granted and it also seems completely obvious in retrospect. Him and PJ are also just charming and funny and fun to listen to.
Anne brings serious journalism to wacky, offbeat New York weirdness. I find her curiosity and openness to adventure completely inspiring. I want to be more like her. Also, her writing makes me laugh out loud, even when I’m completely alone, which puts her in the same league of genuinely funny writers as Scott Adams and David Sedaris and not too many others.
I’m dying for someone I know to have the experience I had with this album, but I worry it’s not gonna happen. Like, you just have to sit and listen to all the words and feel all the music and do it a few times. Is anyone doing that anymore?
Anyways, it’s like a movie, like with a story that’s emotional and true (or at least feels true), and it’s artfully told, starting and ending in interesting places, and it’s vulnerable and observational and funny and heartbreaking. I literally laughed and cried and said things like, “holy shit” out loud to myself while listening to it. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. And the music is fucking amazing. There’s oboes.
This is so valuable. As someone who grew up in a semi-vacuum of healthy conflict modeling, my adult life has been trial and error in this area, and so it’s just wildly helpful to see other people working on their relationships. I find myself measuring my own progress against the couples in the show in a way that’s clarifying. For example, this one woman is so clearly trapped inside of her own story that she can’t even see how she’s in her own way about it—and I think I was that way once, and seeing it, I can see that I’ve moved past that, and that articulation is useful in understanding myself. And then this other guy extends such thought and care to his partner that it stuns you that people can be that good and caring and that gives you something to aspire to. It also helps you appreciate that there are so many different kinds of people, with different and completely valid life experiences. The slow depth of the show helps you move past whatever initial biases you might bring such that you can genuinely appreciate people that are different from you. It’s also heartwarming to see progress, and heartbreaking to see things fall apart. Such drama. You really grow to love, empathize, be frustrated by these people over the course of a season.
"Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things."
- Ray Bradbury