PicoBlog

How funny: I was literally in the middle of comparing Herrick’s poem to Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” when I saw someone’s tweet linking this post! (Talking of comparison, Herrick’s reference to coyness occurs only in the last stanza; Marvell’s in the second line!). It’s one of those poems where its lightness, and seeming effortlessness, belies its artistry. It was only after a few readings, for instance, I noticed how perfectly the spondaic “Old time” & “go marry” - at the beginning & at the end of line 2 of the first & last stanzas - complement each other.

Hi there! Welcome to A Letter a Day. If you want to know more about this newsletter, see "The Archive.” At a high level, you can expect to receive a memo/essay or speech/presentation transcript from an investor, founder, or entrepreneur (IFO) each edition. More here. If you find yourself interested in any of these IFOs and wanting to learn more, shoot me a DM or email and I’m happy to point you to more or similar resources.

Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary. My book Tenderheart is available from Books are Magic, Kitchen, Arts and Letters, Book Larder, Bold Fork Books and also here or here. Give a gift subscription We traveled to O'ahu for Christmas, a week of sunshine but really a reunion to see my mum, who traveled from Sydney to celebrate her imminent milestone birthday with us.

I'm beginning to realize how much Hollywood reused story lines that had proved successful. "Casablanca" was a big hit, so that basic set-up — Humphrey Bogart as a man of dubious loyalties in an exotic land, centered around a saloon, involved with nefarious dealings and a notorious woman — was recycled several times. I previously covered "To Have and Have Not" in this space and now I've stumbled across another: "

Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: an actor gets a Russian girlfriend, a pop star takes on Deuxmoi, and the Olsen twins are matching again.  Weeeee oooo weeeee ooooo: Tom Cruise allegedly has a new girlfriend, and she was until very recently married to a Russian oligarch. Cruise, who has not had a serious public relationship since Katie Holmes divorced him 11 years ago, is apparently dating Elsina Khayrova, a Russian socialite who currently lives in London.

Narrator: In our last episode, PUNK Magazine’s distribution and advertising deal with “High Times Media” came to an end, Sid Vicious was arrested for the murder of Nancy Spungen, and PUNK Magazine attempted to throw an awards event amid the chaos. ————————————————————————————————————— The Last Days of Tom Forcade: October 1978 According to Sean Howe’s excellent book about Tom Forcade’s life and death (Agents of Chaos), Tom went to Los Angeles with several films he wanted to produce: Polk County Pot Plane (aka The Smugglers); Cocaine Cowboys (a truly bad film that stars Jack Palance, Tommy Sullivan, Andy Warhol and Victor Bockris, you can watch it for free on TUBI if you’re interested: https://tubitv.

A recent D Magazinearticle mentioned how author Stephen King’s son Owen plays D&D with members of the band The Old 97’s. It included a link to this terrific No Depression article excerpt titled “Dungeons & Dragons’ Offers Musicians a Multiverse of Creativity.” Although the musicians that author Stacy Chandler mentions are frequently included in lists of celebrities who play D&D, she provides quotes that have more substance on the gaming side than I usually see.

Everyone is coming up to me and saying Tom what do you think about Live Action One Piece. Are you gonna talk about Live Action One Piece on the show. Obviously no we won’t. Joe doesn’t watch TV. This is the best you’re getting. Let’s get some things out of the way first: One Piece is supposed to be a comic book.  Oda did not decide to make One Piece a comic book because he lacked the means to create it in his intended form—no.

Ciao a tutti, a quick announcement before this week’s post, a long-form all about tomatoes. In the last few days, some of you have unsubscribed from this newsletter because you do not have time to read the content that Tommaso and I create. I feel you. For those of you whose inboxes are clogged with Substack newsletters, you will surely really appreciate the new Substack app (I use it now more often and with much more pleasure than the Instagram App).