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Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). If you’re interested in taking this journey with me, make sure you subscribe so you never miss a review. If you want to make sure I review any specific bagels (or want to let me know why I’m wrong), you can email me at seanmatthewkeeley@gmail.com. As we enter 2024, the Seattle bagel scene has come a long way since September 2022 when I first reviewed Oxbow.

Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). If you’re interested in taking this journey with me, make sure you subscribe so you never miss a review. If you want to ensure I review any specific bagels (or want to let me know why I’m wrong), you can email me at seanmatthewkeeley@gmail.com. I’ve been thinking a lot about the taxonomy of Seattle bagels.

I’ve been preparing for months to travel back to Churchill Downs in Louisville to experience the 1973 Kentucky Derby featuring Secretariat vs Sham. That trip will be in a couple weeks. But recently I learned that Secretariat, and his worthy rival Sham, met for the 1st time 2 weeks prior to the Kentucky Derby in 1973 at Aqueduct race track in the Wood Memorial Stakes. That race took place 50 years ago yesterday.

Hello friends! Do you like…secrets? Do you like…….wilderness? Do you like Alone-style challenges and Lifetime movie arguments that are uncomfortably topical here in July 2022? Okay, great, I can work with that. Let’s talk about SECRETS IN THE WILDERNESS! (Content warnings for a pregnant woman in peril, actual gaslighting, guns, and not really much else. Also this one will cut off, click the title to read it in your browser.)

When I was 20, I went on a date with a guy from OKCupid. He was charming and did adventurous things. I agreed to go back to his place that night, and we had sex. The morning after, I asked “how did you manage to have sex with me so fast?” and perhaps unwisely, he handed me a book on pickup artistry. I read it and was fascinated. I started browsing forums, hanging out in seduction chatrooms, reading blogs.

The first time I saw Calcata was on a writers’ retreat in Italy. The organizer had chartered a bus, and as we rounded the curve of a mostly one-lane mountain road, the clouds parted and a ray of sunshine poured out of those Renaissance skies, illuminating a tree-filled valley. A medieval village was perched on a fist of volcanic rock that rose high above the valley floor, its base festooned by drifts of fog.

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I lick my stepfather’s cheese… As I mentioned in the last newsletter, this was a seismic week in television, with series finales for several acclaimed, award-winning, zeitgeist-y shows. (This includes The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, whose final season I didn’t watch because the previous one extinguished whatever enthusiasm I had left for it.) We have to start, of course, with Succession, whose finale I recapped live on Sunday night, trying to organize my thoughts without the benefit of the time I usually have with an advance screener.

As a child, painter Paul Klee was fascinated by the vivid faces he saw in the swirly surfaces of the marble-topped tables in his uncle’s restaurant. As a pupil in school, the artist Salvador Dali gazed up at the ceiling of his classroom, perceiving outlandish scenes in the stained plaster. And as a master offering advice to other creators, Leonardo da Vinci recommended that they look to clouds and rocks, among other natural formations: 

Welcome to the 164th consecutive edition of the newsletter. I’m trying something a little different today. Rather than write about five ideas, I am going to write about one and keep it short, and hopefully memorable. Enjoy. In 1998 Jerry Seinfeld was offered $110 million to make another season of Seinfeld, but he said no. When Howard Stern asked him why, Seinfeld said… I could not go to that point where it (the show) starts to age and wither — and it doesn’t take long.