When you first heard Love Shack, presumably as a child, what did you think a love shack was? I thought it was a really cool fort or treehouse for adults.

If our national anthem was the theme to America’s Funniest Home Videos, no one would have ever taken a knee.

Probably way behind on this, but has anyone attempted a corporate sponsorship deal where companies stake their name on individual personalities? Not talking about a celebrity endorsement. Like, “Hi I’m Zach and I’m brought to you by Popeye’s.”

Side hustle: developing surnames for novelists. New release: Cretzboem!

If I choose the Garden Herb Triscuits, do I thereby open a parallel world where I am enjoying the Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil Triscuits?

First attempt at my own Jeff Foxworthy joke: If you live in a rural area, enjoy hunting and fishing, have socially conservative views and traditionally white working-class tastes…you might be a redneck.

Please read our open letter to the WVU Board of Governors published in the Boston Review today. @jessiew.bsky.social , @rosecasey.bsky.social and I wrote it together and we mean every word.

Turns out the best restaurant bill is $33.34, post-tax. It gives you the opportunity to tip $6.66, which brings your total to a precise $40 and is almost exactly 20% (which is $6.668). Perfection.

This is the photo I keep seeing circulated by critics of the so-called Bradley/Bernstein “jewface” decision. I’d like to point out that 1. if he didn’t have a sweet schnozz I’d lead the boycott myself; and 2. these are obviously very different angles…give me goal-line technology or nothing at all.

BlueSky poll, for @annakornbluh.bsky.social and I (aka The Goon Squad): how many crab Rangoon can one reasonably eat in one day while holding on to basic discriminating faculties?

Glass half empty version. It’s mid-August which means I’m about as far away in calendar time as possible from the next award I’m going to receive in my profession: a certificate of completion for an online workplace training course.

It’s mid-August which means I’m about as far away in calendar time as possible from an online workplace training course.

Prior to making BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, Robert Altman had a conversation with Paul Newman about starting their own production company. He proposed that they combine half of each of their last names: The Altman Company.

“Only the greatest masters can stand aside and allow themselves to be admonished by one of their creations whose vision, by some miracle of autonomy, is larger than their own.” - David Malouf, on Patrick White’s sublime RIDERS IN THE CHARIOT

Is Stanislaw Lem’s SOLARIS (1961) *the* anti-SF SF novel? @zachtavlin.bsky.social might have convinced us all at last night’s SF Bookclub.

More niche content: I’m proud to say I finally got to use Bake McBride in Immaculate Grid. 0.2% rarity score.

How many good films have been made about editing film? And has there been anything better than Albert Brooks’s MODERN ROMANCE?

Greetings Bluesky, from MKE.