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!
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].
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.
I saw someone mention that Ocean State Job Lot, where I go for bargain priced seltzer, jam, and nuts, was selling a Bird ebike for 800 bucks with a 400 dollar coupon. (400 bucks buys a lot of seltzer! 50 cases at current prices!) So I went for it.
(You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. But you don’t have to!)
A few years back I had a fight on social media with the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, which is located in the neighborhood of Boston where I live. The folks running the place hate dogs, and they put out this story about an unleashed dog killing a great blue heron in the arboretum. Except the story didn’t make sense. It came out that someone had seen an unleashed dog in the area the night before the heron was found. When I pointed out that this “unleashed dog” might well have been a coyote, since we’ve got lots of ‘em in my neighborhood, the arboretum’s social media person replied that it couldn’t have been a coyote because the heron was found in a plastic bag.