Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Where I talk about books, movies, television, art, pro-wrestling and other forms of culture and pop-culture

When a Fluke Gives A Moment of Respite From the World

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If you haven’t not seen any of the articles about an out-of-control train being caught by the fluke of a whale sculpture, I can heartily recommend it as a temporary respite from the stress of the world right now. Go check it out.

Personally, I’ve hit the point where I’ve removed all forms of social media and news from my phone, turning it into a very expensive ebook reader with my Ebook app positioned where my browser used to be. Every time I reach for the phone to fill a few minutes, I’m reminded to read instead of spending the next hour doomscrolling Twitter, The Guardian, or checking FiveThirtyEight.

If you’ve never actually gone through the process of removing web browsers and social media from your phone, this is a damned good week to try it.

Recommended: David Tennant Does a Podcast…

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David Tennant Does a Podcast is a constant source of unexpectedly good advice for artists, largely because its not a podcast attempting to deliver good advice–it’s just Tennant sitting down with a bunch of talented people and asking the questions he’d like to have answered.

There’s also an interesting pattern form–every season, the best episode in terms of creative advice always seems to come from an unexpected angle. For example, season one is awash with fantastic interviews with great actors like Tina Fey, John Hamm, Olivia Coleman, and Ian McKellan, but the episode I’m most likely to re-listen to for a creative boost is inevitably the one with James Corden talking about the lesson he learned from Tom Hanks.

In the current season, the best episode thus far is the interview with Cush Jumbo. The entire thing is worth it, but I honestly think the section where she talks about the dark periods of her acting life and the sheer lack of relief when you’re in the early hustling-for-work-and-always-broke phase of your career is something most artists should hear early on.

Tell Me Of Your Favourite Blog Reads

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It’s been about five years since I last did a serious scouring of my RSS feeds, which means a lot of the regular incoming information is largely focused on topics that were of interest to me from 2010 to 2015. Things have changed since then, and the signal to noise ratio is becoming a little more unacceptable, so it’s time to start culling feeds and adding new stuff.

Kathleen Jennings dropped by earlier this week and noted that she’s in the process of setting up a new RSS reader, after years of working without one, so I figured I’d create a space where folks who may be doing the same can talk up the feeds that are meaningful to them.

One of mine remains Inhabitat, a blog about using design to create a better world, which is a glorious mine of story ideas and setting details.

A newer site I’m adding in is SF writer Trent Jamieson’s new online space, where a recent redesign has seen a short burst of online blogging in which Trent writes about recent obsessions and process in his considered and meditative style.

And I’m still on the search for a good architecture blog, after a lot of the places I follow went dormant over the last few years. Which sucks, because I’ve missed glorious things like Oki Sato’s glorious staircase-driven house design .