PicoBlog

“I’m having lunch at Datil and it’s outstanding.” I was only partway through my meal at a new restaurant when I texted this to a friend. I test more than a hundred Paris restaurants every year, but this sense of delighted urgency is something I feel only occasionally. I had just finished the first course of their tasting menu (five courses for €65 at lun… ncG1vNJzZmiokae2tK7YpqaurJhjwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89om5qsmaE%3D

There’s something therapeutic about hearing a new song from your favorite singer. It’s serving both sides, him for the artistry output and the listener gets a fresh set of notes and rhythm that will undoubtedly circle the head and heart like a helicopter waiting to land once the anxiety storm settles. Dave Matthews released a new single today, a cover of a Hazel Dickins song called Pretty Bird. A nice snackable tune that comes in just over 180 seconds, which means you can easily roll through it twice while the food heats up at lunch or the drive through line waits to show some life.

This is just a note to mark the passing of David Burrell, one of the great philosophical theologians and religious scholars of our time, and a friend whose company was always for me a source of profound delight. He was a brilliant man, of course; that much no one doubts. His philosophical gifts were enormous and, for many of us of a certain age—or of a certain span of ages—his work was an indispensable influence in our intellectual formation.

David ChenI've been reviewing film/TV online for 15 yrs. My newsletter is Decoding Everything, where I write about pop culture, tech, & the media. I host and produce the following shows: Decoding TV, A Cast of Kings, The Filmcast, and The Tobolowsky Files. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjaWt1Z6aoZ2eqLi6

In his newest for Harper’s, William T. Vollmann goes to Reno, Nevada, to bribe three outdoor men for their stories. For some petty cash and a beer or two, Roland, Happily, and Jesse submit themselves to Vollmann’s queasy inquiries and grudging pity, which all parties know will result in no material improvement of their circumstances (unless you count the opportunity to guilt-trip an extra blanket out of their interlocutor in time for the night’s snowstorm).

David Fincher’s new movie The Killer is out on Netflix today, which I suspect is exciting news to many subscribers of this newsletter, one significant demographic subgrouping of which is “Guys Who Were 14 When Fight Club Came Out.” I want to write about it because I enjoyed it, but also because I think (and we’ll get to this) it’s relevant to the subject of this newsletter, i.e. “internet.” The movie concerns a perfectionist professional hitman, played by Michael Fassbender, whose girlfriend is savagely beaten by rival assassins after he botches a hit; in response, he chases down the offenders and the man who hired them, seeking revenge and tying up loose ends.

David Helling has been working on his first feature-length film—His Only Son, about Abraham and the near-sacrifice of Isaac—for a long time. How long? He can remember casting actors for his film in Los Angeles in 2018, the same week Dallas Jenkins was in town to cast actors for The Chosen. Scheduling conflicts forced Helling to delay production until the summer of 2019—by which time the first half of The Chosen’s first season had come out—and then the pandemic came and threw the entire movie industry into disarray while Helling’s film, which did not yet have a distributor, was still in post-production.

David KernI am the owner of Goldberry Books in Concord, NC, and host of several bookish podcasts including Close Reads, The Daily Poem, Withywindle (a show for kids), and The Goldberry Books Pod, all available on Substack or wherever you get podcasts. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjaWt1aKbpJ2iow%3D%3D

In preparation for this installment of DAVID, I’ve been listening to a lot of David Lee Roth. Between that and my regimen of EMDR music (as insisted upon by my therapist), this nightmare has had a strange soundtrack. Not that the soundtrack has been unpleasant. I have a soft spot for what’s now known as classic rock—I mean, I’m from the Sacramento River Valley, where FM radio stations will devote entire an hour, every day, to Led Zeppelin—and Van Halen is one of the first bands I can remember recognizing.