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2026-06-06

Promiscuous Art

I went to the symphony last night to check out our new music director. I knew the main event was La Mer (no, not that one) but did not otherwise look at the program when buying my ticket. Upon arrival I learned that there would also be Wagner. Specifically the prelude and Liebestod from Tristan. This gives me opportunity to deploy one my (many) favorite Huysmans quotes from Against Nature, translated by Robert Baldick.

Then again, secular music is a promiscuous art in that you cannot enjoy it at home, by yourself, as you can a book; to savour it he would have had to join the mob of inveterate theatre-goers that fills the Cirque d’Hiver, where under a broiling sun and in a stifling atmosphere you can see a hulking brute of a man waving his arms about and massacring disconnected snatches of Wagner to the huge delight of an ignorant crowd.

He had never had the courage to plunge into this mob-bath to listen to Berlioz, even though he admired some fragments of his work for their passionate ardour and fiery spirit; and he was well aware that there was not a single scene, not even a single phrase, in any of the mighty Wagner’s operas that could be divorced from its context with impunity.

Slices cut off and served up at a concert lost all sense and meaning, for like chapters in a book that are complementary to one another and combine to reach the same goal, the same conclusion, Wagner’s melodies were used to define the characters of his dramatis personae, to represent their thoughts, to express their visible or secret motives, and their ingenious and persistent repetitions could only be understood by an audience that followed the subject from the start and watched the characters gradually taking shape and developing in a setting from which they could not be removed without dying like branches cut from a tree.

Des Esseintes was therefore convinced that of the mob of melomaniacs who went into ecstasies every Sunday on the benches of the Cirque d’Hiver, barely twenty could tell what the orchestra was murdering, even when the attendants were kind enough to stop chattering and give it a chance of being heard.

Considering also that the intelligent patriotism of the French made it impossible for any theatre in the country to put on a Wagner opera, there was nothing left for the keen amateur who was ignorant of the arcana of music and could not or would not travel to Bayreuth but to stay at home, and this was the reasonable course Des Esseintes had adopted.

The whole book is like this. Des Esseintes is such an asshole. I love it.

Anyway, I agree with his sentiment vis-a-vis disconnected snatches of Wagner, at least when it comes to Tristan. The whole point of the chord is that you have to sit through four and a half hours of tension before it is finally resolved. Playing the prelude and Liebestod back-to-back, as a single piece, defeats the purpose. It loses the emotional weight, and degrades to just being a nice piece of music. There’s no höchste lust there.

Despite all that they played everything well, it was a great concert, and I think I like this Elim Chan.

2026-05-29

media, stationery

Diva

Last night I went to a screening of the recent 4K remaster of Diva. It looked gorgeous. I hadn’t seen Diva for a few years, but was reminded that this may be one of my favorite films. Every scene is dripping with stylish neo-noir coolness. This movie is probably one of the reasons I started going to the opera. Beineix shoots Paris like Mann shoots Chicago and L.A..

Diva, of course, is also part of the unofficial Nagra Film Trilogy. If you like beautifully designed, portable, high-fidelity audio equipment, you want to watch The Conversation, Diva, and Blow Out.

And just when you may have thought that this movie couldn’t be any more up-my-alley, I noticed during this viewing that in the press conference scene one of the reporters is taking notes on what appears to be a Rhodia N°13 graph pad with an (unknown to me) fountain pen. I appreciate fine stationery in film.

Très chic.

This article was modified 2026-05-30.

2026-05-28

media

Cold, Cold Nights Under Chrome and Glass

Last week I went to see The Black Queen. This was my first time seeing them perform since 2016, when they were touring Fever Daydream. I had no idea that Danny Lohner had joined the band for this tour until he walked out on stage. At the end of the set I yelled at him to release the Tapeworm tapes, you coward.

So if that ever happens, you’re welcome.

Holy Water opened that night. I’d never heard him before, but he was great. He reminds me of VNV Nation. I went home and bought his album, which I did not like as much. He’s much better live. He also seems like a swell guy.

This week I went to the Male Tears show. I had never heard of them before. They’re alright, I guess. Not really my jam. I went because the opener was Sleek Teeth, who very much is my jam.

I first heard them last Halloween at Substance Fest. They became my favorite new-to-me band, and my third favorite of the festival overall (after Sacred Skin and Pixel Grip). Their EP is only five tracks, but all of them are bangers. When I listen to it I just loop it to make it seem longer – seven months of that, and I haven’t gotten sick of it yet. I like to listen to Operating when I’m operating operationally.

They played some new tunes, so I look forward to a full album and more shows. But I will also accept more shows of the same music. Repeatedly.

2025-12-16

media, influencer

The Hero We Need

Influencer is mistakenly billed as a horror film, but is actually an inspirational story of a young woman using her murder island to try to make the world a better place by pruning the insta-face-twat-tok-tuber population.

I eagerly awaited the sequel, and can now report that Influencers is even better than the first one. I am here for the Influencer Cinematic Universe.

Whoever composed the score clearly spent a lot of time listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack (and who among us has not). Specifically they seem to be a big fan of track 4.

2025-07-16

media

The Future Without Future

I listen to 65daysofstatic and their generative noise program Wreckage Systems. My favorite advertisement for Wreckage Systems is on the Debris album (a blind stumbling through the cratered landscape of the musical-industrial complex):

The future without future. The ceaseless turmoil of now. A world of fog and foreboding. Wreckage Systems are the lamp by your side. The stranger who walks beside you. The hand in the dark. Wreckage Systems is the scaffolding that we erect to stop the crushing wave of the heavy sky falling down and around us, dissolving into the ocean that is already lapping around our ankles. Join us and help the dedicated team over at 65LABS expand their noise as together we strive towards utopia.

No future.

2025-07-03

media, stationery

Stationery of the Jackal

My critique of frivolous details in The Day of the Jackal continues.

In the third episode, there’s a scene where our titular assassin is doing some computing and we see his pen in the corner of the frame. It isn’t in focus but is obviously a fountain pen. I immediately lose interest in whatever he’s doing and say to myself “Ah, bella penna.”¹

A few shots later we get a close-up of the pen and notebook. The pen is clearly a Kaweco Sport. So, he could do better, but anytime I see someone use a fountain pen my opinion of them goes up. I can’t identify the notebook, but the paper is grid-lined, looks to be A6 in size, and it doesn’t seem to feather much with his ink. I approve. The nib is probably a Fine based on the size of the writing. Good choice. The ink is a rich blue. Always classy. I’m more of a blue-black man myself, but every now and again I can get down with a little Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-peki or similar. Maybe this Jackal character is all-right.

The Day of the Jackal: Stationery screenshot

I judge a man by his stationery.

Notes

↵ The recent Ripley TV show approaches perfection because, unlike The Day of the Jackal, it revels in all the minor details. (Also, that lighting.) One of the things on my aspirational to-do list for the past year or so has been to watch Ripley again and make a super-cut of every time someone says "bella penna". Because I'm weird like that. It is one of my favorite parts of the show. The pen doesn't really matter to the plot at all, yet at the same time it communicates most of what you need to know about the character. And anyone who EDCs a fountain pen fantasizes about others acknowledging it.

2025-07-02

media, review

Tribulations of the Jackal

I’ve begun watching the new The Day of the Jackal TV show. I read the book years ago, and remember enjoying it – though I think Forsyth (like Trevanian) is one of those novelists for whom one’s memory of the books is usually better than the reality of them. I never saw the 70’s film. The only thing I remember from the 90’s film was how satisfying it was to watch Jack Black’s arm get blown off. (The Internet assures me that there was another 121 minutes of this movie, but those 3 minutes are all I remember.) All of which is to say, I went in with middling expectations. But the first episode was better than I expected. I’ve watched the second episode now, and it is as good as the first. Unfortunately, there are plot issues holding the show back.

I have notes.

The show opens with the titular Jackal assassinating some political candidate. The Jackal is shown to be meticulous, competent, and highly skilled. (This excites me because competency porn is my favorite porn genre.) In the aftermath of the assassination everybody else in the show’s world comments on how the shot should have been impossible. This communicates to the audience that the Jackal probably isn’t desperate for work, nor is he a replaceable cog like his fellow gig-workers at Uber and Doordash.

Then we see the Jackal go home to some fancy villa in Spain. Everything about his house, his clothes, his cars communicates to the audience that he is rich.

As he communicates with his existing client and a new speculative client via his not-Tails live distro we see that he has strict rules about how he works and how he interacts with clients.

Yet this new speculative client immediately asks him to break his rules and his response is basically “lol ok let’s go”. Why? It is never explained. He’s rich, successful, and has a well-respected brand. Usually the setup for this sort of plot is “He wants out but the big bad boss is going to kill him unless he does this one last job”. Or, “He wants out but he’s broke and this one last job will earn him enough to retire to a Spanish villa.” But the writers of the show don’t attempt any of that. This guy already has the Spanish villa. They could solve this problem with just a few lines of dialogue and about 30 seconds of screen-time, but instead they just traipse right past this gaping void in the very beginning of their plot.

In the second episode the speculative client requests a meatspace meeting. The Jackal says “That’s not going to happen.” (It’s one of his rules, you know.) To which the client retorts with something like “Then we’ll have to go elsewhere. I expected the Jackal to say “Have a nice day” and hang up. This guy should hold all the cards in the negotiation – he’s supposed to be the best, the client approached him, he’s not struggling to feed himself, he just completed a job that nobody else could do. Instead he agrees to the meeting. It makes no sense. In every interaction he rolls over for the client, giving up all leverage. This is not how successful freelance employment works. How has he lasted this long?

The client wants him to murder some tech-bro CEO because said tech-bro CEO is going to release a piece of software called “River” that promises to make all financial transactions publicly viewable. How? Magic. It is never explained. Somehow this software will just be released, and in the next second all transactions everywhere in the world are going to be in some central, public database, I guess? (I keep expecting some character to say the word “blockchain”, but am pleased to report that this has yet to happen.) This is not how fintech works. River is just the show’s MacGuffin, so it doesn’t really matter, but the writers make the deadly mistake of telling us just enough about it to shatter the fantasy of the story. I find this sort of thing super frustrating. The right way to setup a world-ending MacGuffin is to copy The Rabbit’s Foot from Mission Impossible 3: the only thing we are told is its codename and that it is bad. Nothing else to distract from the plot. (They later fucked this up by trying to explain it in the recent sequels, but, well, you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.) The writers should have told us that tech-bro CEO is going to release a piece a software that will change the world, and left it at that. Don’t extrapolate when it isn’t necessary.

The client tells the Jackal that the murder has to happen by such-and-such a date, because that is the date the tech-bro has said he is going to release the software. So… killing this CEO guy is going to destroy the software? This is not how software development or deployment works. The date is coming up soon (soon enough that the Jackal scoffs at the deadline but then immediately agrees, because he doesn’t care about his rules and always does whatever the client wants). The tech-bro is shown making the television rounds on some sort of press tour, promoting the imminent release. So we have to assume that the software is already pretty much ready for release. The client is not trying to kill the tech-bro because they want to prevent him from writing the software. They just want to prevent the release. They have yet to explain how killing the CEO will accomplish this. Why not figure out what data center the guy stores his git repos in and destroy that? Nobody knows.

Prior to the meeting in episode 2 that should never have happened, the Jackal quoted the client a fee of $100 million (or maybe Euros or Pounds or Woolongs, I don’t remember). At the beginning of this meeting the client says “We’re still pretty far away on the price.” The Jackal ignores her and requests half now, half on completion. She says no, but she’ll give him $20 million now. To which the Jackal responds, great, he’ll get started as soon as he gets the $20 million. Dude. She has explicitly told you that she is not going to pay your requested fee. She has offered to put down 20% of what you’re asking. You have completed no negotiations about what the remainder of the fee is going to be. And your response is to start on the project anyway? This guy is a terrible business person. The client must be overjoyed at how much of a pushover the Jackal is.

When he first uses his not-Tails live USB flash drive, he does so on a public computer at an internet cafe in Paris. This threw me. I thought the show was supposed to be set in the modern day, not 2003. Are internet cafes really still a thing in Paris? I paused the show to look it up on Google Maps, and apparently they do still exist. Weird, but I can move on. The Jackal then moves on by navigating to his darknet web chat thing and logging in with his username and password. On a public computer. So, not worried about key loggers, I guess? Surveillance cameras in the cafe that capture the keyboard? Why even go through this whole thing with the internet cafe? Just use your laptop from a public wifi network. Later, he does insert the same USB drive into his personal laptop and log into the same chat service. So it isn’t like he is trying to keep all his work stuff off of his personal machine. The whole thing just seems odd, and it’s not like his being at the internet cafe drives the plot in any way. Maybe later in the series they’ll reveal that security cameras in the cafe captured him and this will become relevant to the plot. But even then, they could accomplish the same thing by having him login from his personal machine while sitting at McDonald’s after ordering his Royale with Cheese.

When he finishes with the public computer, he stands up and picks up the snacks that he was munching on and the cups he was drinking out of. I think to myself “Oh, neat, this guy’s tradecraft is so good that he’s going to take this trash with him and dispose of it elsewhere so that he doesn’t leave any DNA at the cafe!” But then he just tosses it in the trash can inside the cafe before leaving. I cried a little inside. What was the point of even writing the trash into the show if not to communicate something about the character with it? I really hope this whole cafe scene comes back later in the series and becomes some sort of linchpin in the good guy’s investigation.

The MI6 lady who is trying to identify the Jackal gets a lead when she figures out that the backpack he is seen carrying is from some sort of small-batch Kickstarter thing that was only sold at two shops in jolly-old-England. So our (anti-)hero, who is shown to be so meticulous in his planning and a master of disguise, is dumb enough to walk around with some couture backpack of which only a couple hundred were ever sold? It strains credulity. I checked, and the first episode aired on 2024-11-07, while Brian Thompson was killed on 2024-12-04 so it wasn’t like this plot point was sloppily shoe-horned in at the last minute to make fun of Peak Design – which was my first thought.

Anyway, I’m enjoying the show. I just need to pause it three or four times an episode to rant about how stupid some minor plot point is. It’s frustrating because all these little unimportant things hold it back from being a good show. I hope they improve the writer’s room for the second season.

2025-01-04

micro, media, influencer