Saturday Night/Sunday Warning S2E12: Dog's dick kicker (no ref. to Lord Austin)
Another instalment of weekly recommendations and miscellaneous items.
This is the weekly round-up of things I liked in the past seven days + extra content for paid subscribers.
6 Things I Actually Enjoyed This Week
1. ARTICLE
My Marriage Was Never the Same After That
Maggie Smith — not that one — for The Cut
When the poet, Maggie Smith, started to get attention and praise for her work, her husband’s eggshell ego could not take it:
As I told a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch, my hometown paper, “I feel like I go into a phone booth and I turn into a poet sometimes. Most of the other time, I’m just Maggie who pushes the stroller.” But my marriage was never the same after that poem.
One night, lying next to me in bed, my husband told me I was famous. He said it quietly in the dark. In his inflection, I heard sadness. I heard you’re not the same anymore, you’re gone somehow.
“I’m not famous,” I said. “I just wrote a famous poem.” It wasn’t the same thing.
I said it as a kind of apology, as reassurance, because I felt like I’d been accused of something. In my inflection, I hoped he’d hear I’m the same, I’m just me, I’m right here.
2. ALBUM
Scaring The Hoes — JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown
Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
A record which begins with the line, ”first off, fuck Elon Musk?” is one you need in 2023. It’s also an album of endless invention and incredible samples.
3. GLOSSARY
‘F*** me, Doris!’ How’s that for a dog’s dick kicker?
Press Gazette’s guide to journalism jargon by William Turvill
I like glossaries and I like slang so this was a good combination for me, particularly as someone with an unhealthy obsession with journalism. Here’s my ‘favourite’ entry:
Colour piece – A descriptive, adjective-heavy feature
Fun fact: In his younger days, BBC presenter Amol Rajan amused colleagues at The Independent when he was asked to write a colour piece while reporting on the Madeleine McCann case from Portugal. Rajan told Campaign magazine in a later interview that he was phoned by an editor who said: “I like the intro, I like the payoff, it’s all very nice, but what the fuck is with all these references to the magenta sky, the lilac walls and the terracotta brickwork?’… I thought I had written a colour piece – I didn’t know what one was.”
4. REVIEW
Andy Cush reviews Warren Zevon by Warren Zevon (1976) for Pitchfork
This is a brilliant demonstration of how to write about great art by a shit person:
Zevon had already accrued substantial debts, financial and emotional, at this relatively early juncture in his life, and he would continue racking them up for a long time after. Only those who knew him well—the friends he alienated, the wife he subjected to drunken beatings and threats of suicide, the children he all but abandoned, and whoever happened to be around when he indulged in his habit of firing guns indoors as a joke—can say with any authority whether the music he left behind is enough to repay them. His self-titled album, at least, settled his bill with the Hollywood Hawaiian.
5. PODCAST
E193: ASBAPpin
by Podcasting is Praxis
I’m biased here as I’ve been an occasional guest on the psychic damage circus that is Podcasting is Praxis but this episode on the government’s strategy to criminalise being “young, poor, or in a park” is excellent in its brutality and truth.
6. NEWSLETTER
Why medieval artists drew ancient Romans in medieval clothes
by weird medieval guys
The Twitter account about weird medieval guys now has a Substack —
— about weird medieval guys and other weird medieval things. And it is good:Marie talks about making a “story” of Latin texts. She is alluding to the medieval tradition for the copyist to take a critical approach, commenting and altering as they wrote with the intention of improving the original. Thus, each version of a text was unique to the scribe who created it. While the idea of taking a red pen to Cicero would horrify a modern scholar, historian Jaques Monfrin summed up the medieval attitude rather succinctly: "as long as it is transcribed and translated, there is no reason not to update it or improve it by supplementing it with information drawn from other sources." To copyists of ancient texts, who felt that their pagan sources needed to be suitably adapted for a Christian audience, “improvements” often included heavily rewriting to align with contemporary values. These weren’t seen as falsehoods but necessary amendments to modernise the text.
Updates, Corrections & Clarifications
Minor typo corrections. Fix to this edition which incorrectly gave the impression that a lesbian age of consent was not discussed in parliament: It was but it did not end up being pushed into law.
Beyond the paywall: bonus content including the micro-essay, the newsletters I nearly wrote last week and the bonus recommendation.
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