The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

Jan 04, 2025

IF THE KID HAS AN IPAD, YOU’VE ALREADY LOST THAT ONE. It’s a strange notion that of shielding basic information about the harshness of the world from children. Certainly, it feels like protecting them, letting them maintain a semblance of the innocence we assume is theirs to enjoy, but protecting them from reality seems slightly stunting and the innocence is better defined as experiential ignorance. Hang out with a group of small children and you instantly find yourself among our most feral, selfish, aggressive citizens this side of a slow TSA line on a holiday.

The raging question of whether children should or should not be exposed to concepts concerning gender identity, sexual content, and anything to do with human genitals is unceremoniously dismissed as bullshit posturing if the kids in question have unsupervised time on the internet, the modern short term babysitter, the nanny of the screen. Trust me, you can put all the parental controls on those tablets you want, if a little boy wants to see titties, he’s gonna find a way. If a little girl wants to be exposed to the hatefulness of other girls online and the self esteem crippling parade of comparison by social media, you simply cannot stop them.

The Pandora’s Box we opened by allowing our youth to own supercomputers easy enough for morons to use is now manifesting and trying to keep the rushing tide of sexual information from bathing those tiny unformed brains is a moot point. Too fucking late. Now that the little fuckers know all about sex, death, gun violence for kicks and revenge, and the new goal of every child to be internet famous rather than grow to become a doctor or a teacher, our only choice is to actually parent them. Perhaps some guidance is in order like finding out that your child knows exactly how to build a smart bomb and sitting him to down instruct him on ethics and responsibility with that power.

Nah. That’s silly. That’d mean prioritizing their upbringing over our pursuits of quarter-tight glutes and leaving our marriages because we’re too bored to try anymore.

OMINOUS BEGINNINGS. 2025 has started with two high profile acts of violence—the assassination by truck of fourteen people on Bourbon Street celebrating the new year and the explosion of a Tesla in front of Trump Tower in Vegas. Truck guy was killed after shooting two police and being gunned down and the Tesla explosion is still being investigated but I imagine that both shitbags were hoping to be celebrated in the same way as Luigi Italiano but, sadly, were missing the abs.

I guess we could kill it Murderous Jackass Pretty Privilege? Or the fact that the FBI will label anti-Covid parents ‘domestic terrorists’ but a mass murderer flying the ISIS flag and a suicidal vet are just bad actors?

THE PERFECT REMAKE. Bob and I caught Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu at the Music Box in glorious 35 mm and it was extraordinary. Essentially a beat for beat remake rather than adaptation of the original 1922 silent film but so much more than that. It’s the first vampire movie I’ve seen in a very long time that was genuinely frightening, seriously ominous. Part of this is the refusal to make the creature Count Orlock sympathetic in any way. He is simply a creature of power, lust, and destruction. And he’s grotesque and amazing to behold. Lily Rose Depp is remarkable as is Simon McBurney as Knock (the unauthorized version of Renfield in the Dracula tale).

The experience solidified a 2025 resolution of sorts: go see more movies at the Music Box.

OOF. LOOKS LIKE WHITE WOMEN LOST ANOTHER ONE. The historic Women’s March, started back in the olden days when Trump won his first election over a woman and threatened to yank reproductive rights, has now been rebranded into the overwhelmingly less specific People’s March. Which means it’s a great time to get your steps in but not so much to protest anything specifically. I might be wrong but I think it ends at a local bistro for brunch and Mimosas.

ART IS WHAT SEPARATES US FROM EVERYTHING ELSE. You think art is the garnish on the plate of civilization instead of the main course? Let me stop you right there, because if you’ve ever hummed along to a song, quoted a movie line, or spent ten seconds staring at a painting longer than you intended, you’ve already lost the argument. Art doesn’t just matter; it’s essential. It’s the mirror we hold up to see the truth about ourselves, the voice we amplify when silence feels unbearable, and the heartbeat that keeps us alive when the world feels like it’s flatlining.

Artists are not a luxury. They’re not the optional upgrade you throw in if the budget allows it. They are the architects of empathy, the frontline workers of culture, and the historians of human emotion. You think the pyramids of Giza were built for structural efficiency? No, they were built because someone dared to dream of something more permanent than mortality. That’s art. And the pharaohs didn’t build those. Artists did.

Take away the artists, and what are you left with? A world with all the precision of an accountant’s ledger and none of the poetry. Sure, the trains might run on time, but without art, where the hell are they taking you? Art isn’t about the destination; it’s about the journey. It’s the question that doesn’t have a definitive answer, the story that doesn’t tie itself into a neat little bow. It’s the thing that keeps you awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what it all means.

You want to know why we need artists? Because they tell us who we are. The politicians will tell you what to fear, the advertisers will tell you what to buy, and the algorithms will tell you what you like. But the artists? The artists tell you the truth. They dig into the mess, the contradictions, the things we don’t want to talk about but can’t stop thinking about. They take your fears, your hopes, your failures, and they make them beautiful. Not pretty—beautiful.

There’s a difference. Pretty is easy. Pretty is comfortable. Pretty is a Hallmark card. But beautiful? Beautiful is raw and jagged and honest. Beautiful is the line in the song that makes you cry and you don’t even know why. It’s the play where the characters say the things you’ve been too afraid to admit to yourself. It’s the movie that leaves you sitting in your car long after the credits have rolled because you’re too busy wrestling with the questions it raised.

Artists are the memory keepers. They capture the moments that history books miss. The small, quiet victories. The devastating losses. The in-betweens. They’re the ones who remind us that history isn’t just dates and battles and treaties—it’s people. Real people with real lives and real stories. Without artists, we lose the humanity in history, and let me tell you, that’s a loss we can’t afford.

And here’s the thing: Art isn’t just a reflection of society—it’s a challenge to it. It asks us to be better. To think harder. To feel deeper. It’s the protest song that lights a fire under a movement. It’s the film that changes the way you see the world. It’s the play that forces you to confront the things you’ve been running from. Art doesn’t just show us who we are—it shows us who we could be.

So don’t tell me we don’t need artists. Don’t tell me they’re expendable. Don’t tell me that in a world of AI and automation, they’re irrelevant. Because you know what machines can’t do? They can’t create art that makes you feel something real. They can’t paint the anguish of a broken heart or write a poem about the smell of rain on a summer afternoon. They can’t capture the complexities of the human experience because they don’t live it.

Artists live it. They live it every day. They take the world in all its chaos and beauty and pain, and they give it back to us in a way we can understand. They remind us that even when everything feels like it’s falling apart, there’s still something worth holding onto.

And that? That’s why we need them. Because in the end, art isn’t about survival—it’s about living. It’s about finding meaning, making connections, and leaving something behind that says, “We were here. We mattered.”

So go ahead. Build the machines. Write the algorithms. But don’t forget the artists. Because when the machines have rusted and the algorithms have been replaced, it’ll be the artists who remind us what it means to be human. And that, my friends, is everything.