brendan halpin

Got vaxxed for the ol’ vid the other day, which meant a couple of days of watching horror movies in bed. I made a kind of thematic double feature sort of unintentionally and of course have some thoughts!

As you may or may not know, the City of Boston is entering into a partnership with a bunch of very wealthy people to renovate and expand White Stadium in Franklin Park in order to bring an NWSL team here.

There are many reasons to oppose this move. I’m always suspicious of “public-private partnerships,” because these are usually just a way for the people on the private end of the equation to direct taxpayer money into their pockets. And sports stadiums are a notoriously terrible deal for municipalities. Also—there’s no parking, so the team proposes to run shuttle buses, and basically my neighborhood will be inaccessible by car for probably four hours every time there’s a home game. Oh yeah, and they’ll be taking some parkland for, like, a beer garden or something.

Despite all these valid reasons to oppose the project, I actually support it. In order to explain, I’m going to have to tell you about a paving project.

I’ve written before about how I love noir and horror for the same reason: they both tell uncomfortable truths about the world. For horror, it’s that awful things can happen inexplicably and out of nowhere (See the original Halloween. No, I mean, really—see it if you haven’t already! I could go on, and I will in a future post.) And the truth of noir is that most institutions are corrupt and that an utterly venal lust for money, power and sex underlies just about everything. Also that everyone has secrets.

So I’ve recently watched 2 noir series and read 2 noir books and here come my reviews!

Here’s something you might not expect about Tom Jones: he is not a nostalgia act.

A lot of people are casting the Internet Archive vs. Hachette suit as some kind of David and Goliath battle, but it’s really a Silicon Valley dickhead moving fast and breaking things vs Goliath battle.

I’m kind of obsessed with celebrity second acts. The great majority of people who enter any kind of entertainment field don’t have any measure of success. Most of the people who enjoy success in one field find that success fleeting. Precious few people find success in two different fields. Here are 4!

Our story begins on August 13, 2024. My daughter and I realized we needed toothbrushes, so we decided to visit our local [NATIONAL RETAIL CHAIN REDACTED].

Recently had an opportunity to pitch a show to British TV. Here’s a transcript!

Me: Thanks for taking the time to meet with me. I’d like to pitch a show.

British TV: Right. Well, shows are what we do. What kind of murders, then?

I went on vacation last week. Spent 7 days in a lakeside cabin with my spouse, my dog, and our three adult children. It was idyllic as fuck.

There was no TV, no wifi and precious little cell service, so I got a lot of reading done! (Thanks to the Egleston Square branch of the Boston Public Library for the books!)

Really excited to have booked such an important guest on the blog today! I sat down with the state of New Hampshire to try to get some insight into this frankly puzzling state. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Brendan Halpin: Hi! Welcome! Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today.

New Hampshire: Happy to do it.

BH: So, I wouldn’t do this if you were a person, but given that you’re a state, I’d just like to say how stunningly beautiful you are.

NH: Aw, thank you!