PicoBlog

Charlie Daniels died yesterday at 83. While his conservative beliefs have come into focus with his death, he is best remembered as the musician behind “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” If you’ve never heard it for some reason, it’s worth giving a listen as a folk tale and fun song. I’d rather remember Daniels for the music, rather than some of his counter-productive rants on Twitter. (Although, it’s still prevalent enough that it’s worth acknowledging).

Happy to be back in The Neighborhoods after a week off. This week’s newsletter covers the very small, very quiet neighborhood of Malba, Queens. Just west of the Whitestone Bridge, between College Point and Whitestone, Malba’s 40 square blocks are home to some 406 houses. The streets in Malba were private until the mid-1980s, and walking around the neighborhood still somehow feels like trespassing. This is one of those places I call a “Can I Help You?

One bleak evening in January 1977 the CIA Station Chief in Moscow had left the embassy and driven to a nearby gas station. He was approached by a middle-aged Russian who asked if he was American. When the Station Chief replied in the affirmative, the Russian left a folded piece of paper on the car seat and left. The paper contained a request for a meeting to discuss confidential matters. It also contained detailed instructions for a meeting including time and place for two possibilities, along with a signal to indicate which one was preferred.

Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: two actors get late-in-life married, another actor gets into a “situationship,” and Katy Perry gets bangs (uh oh).  Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup got married last week! The actors, both 54, have been dating since 2017 and reportedly got engaged a few months ago. Watts officially announced the marriage on Instagram, sharing photos from their wedding at City Hall in Manhattan.

Content warning: The so-called black-pilled ideology, which I’ll explain here, can include advocacy of extremist politics, suicide, and violence, from mass murder to genocide. Also, the material here is bleak—but the essay ends on a high note. I promise. You probably know something about the reigning political pharmacopeia, with its foundational pills: blue and red.  The probably-expired metaphor comes from The Matrix, in which a mentor character offers a naïf a choice: “You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

I recently came across this clip from The Pat Bev Podcast with Rone, and Patrick Beverley and his co-host were commentating on how Rashard Mendenhall, a former NFL player, was suggesting that there should be a Black vs. White football game. And then the two hosts started listing off names of current NBA players that would make it into a Black vs. White All-Star Game. After watching this hilarious clip, I thought it would be fun to make my own list, which is kind of messed up seeing how I’m writing this article on MLK Day.

“You had to weave through the streets avoiding the bodies. Their skin, burst open, was hanging down in rags. Their faces were burnt black. I put my hand on my camera, but it was such a hellish apparition that I couldn’t press the shutter. I hesitated about twenty minutes before I finally pushed it and took the first picture.” ncG1vNJzZmiokam%2Fqq%2FKsKCtrKljwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89oq6GdXZe8rq7Ip55mp5Zitaq%2BzqyfoqWRYr2ivtNmaQ%3D%3D

A few weeks ago, there was a big mess on Twitter, the Big Mess Place, about whether stories needed ‘conflict.’ A few general camps emerged, among them “no, lol” and “how dare you talk that way about my sainted high school English teacher.” I don’t often wade into this sort of thing, because I don’t have time, and because the Big Mess Place shapes the conversations it hosts in much the way a station wagon tire shapes a beloved toy left, by accident, in the driveway.

These Box Set deconstructions contain spoilers and should be read after you’ve watched the episode. As more of these excellent “Fargo” episodes roll out the more we fully understand how much creator Noah Hawley is biting off to tell an all-encompassing story — debt, both fiscal and biblical; MAGA extremism; an emerging refutation in the assumption that America is the land of the free; the whole concept of lying and what that might mean to people and, of course, a Coen Brothers touchstone itself, the complicated weight of “paradox.