The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

WILD AT HEART. When one of your artistic heroes dies, it’s a wake up call. David Lynch got his severance package this week and the universe has a hole in its pocket. Lynch’s work wasn’t for everyone which is exactly why it was for me. From the feverish nightmare of Eraserhead to the over-the-top version of Dune, Lynch was a mad genius and, for all accounts, a truly great human. In the they don’t make ‘em like that anymore category, he was a king. I’m going to watch some of his stuff I haven’t visited in a while and, if you’re in the commons with me, you should, too.

CHUCK frequently changed up his facial hair. In almost equal thirds, he’d sport the clean-shaven look, the full beard, and the goatee. The change from one to the other was almost random in that he’d wake up one day and just change it up. This change was not always greeted with accolades by his younger staff at the hotel.

“Wow. You look ten years younger!”
”Oh no! Grow it back. You look terrible!”
”I think I prefer the clean look on you, Chuck.”
”You look like a manager of a McDonald’s. Grow it back.”

The shave was an accident this time. He was sporting the goatee and went to trim it but forgot to put the guard on his trimmer. He mistakenly carved out a divot in the hair. He considered a mustache but that look left him seeing a seventies porn star or used car salesman. So he cleaned it up.

Infrequently motivated by the opinions of others, Chuck most times intentionally went the opposite direction of popular opinion but, this time, the comments came in equal proportion. The adults in the lobby expressed that beardless was better; the Gen Z staff hated it and let him know how awful they thought he looked. Chuck decided it was a generational thing. The younger staff loved nothing more than the near hippie or bespoke look of the hipsters on their social media feeds; the older crowd viewed the cleaner look as more professional.

He read a study published in Nature Human Behavior that found that first impressions of faces might impact the inferences we make about other people’s mental states.

“Over the years there have been a lot of surprising findings showing how first impressions from faces can predict important outcomes, such as which candidates would win an election, which politicians would be convicted of corruption, and which offenders would be sentenced to death,” Chujun Lin, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

“These findings show that the snap judgments people make about others based merely on their faces may bias consequential decision-making in the real world, ranging from who we vote for, who law enforcement investigate and how juries evaluate cases.”

Given that he was the manager of a hotel with hundreds of people coming in and out, he decided to conduct his own mini-study. He’d assess how the guests of the hotel responded to him with no facial hair, make notes, and then grow it all back and do the same assessment with the beard. Chuck was single and had a plant so he needed little projects to keep him occupied.

…to be continued…

WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE… A conversation with a friend about the California wildfires instigates thoughts of what of my stuff I’d take in the run out from a fire. I’ve slowly purged a lot of unnecessary material items and today, at nearly 59 years old, I have just enough to fill a studio apartment and nothing more.

This is not to say I have nothing with sentimental value in tow. I heard on NPR an interview with a 91 year old man whose home and entire set of belongings had been burned into nonexistence. “I’m tough. I’ll just have to start over.” That’s grit, kiddos. That’s the kind of absolute badassery that feels erased in subsequent generations.

I read somewhere about Chuck, a manager of a Chicago hotel, who would ask the question in his interviews for new hires what three things they would take if they suddenly had to move and the surprise was how few thought to get things that were irreplaceable. Phones, laptops, that sort of thing. It all made me wonder what I would take in that flash instance.

Looking around my tiny apartment with my pretty minimalist lifestyle, I don’t have a lot but the few things that are irreplaceable are evident. My trumpet. Sure, I don’t really play anymore but I’m always drawn to the possibility. Once in a while I dream of playing out my twilight years with my axe and a hat. My grandfather’s wooden box filled with his grade school report cards, oil rigging schedule, and patches from his WWII stint as well as his tiny Army-issue Zippo lighter. The Tiffany-esque lamp that my mom made and that which I’ve brought to every home I’ve had since coming to Chicago.

Not bad, I think.

“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind. Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

THE PITT. On Max. I was never big on hospital dramas but this one is something else. Noah Wyle is flat out fantastic. The writing is solid, the performances and editing top notch. As if Sorkin wrote a gritty hospital show. Worth a watch.

IT FEELS OPPORTUNISTIC, DOESN’T IT? I don’t watch sports much. Not my bag. Call it a flaw in my midwestern pedigree but sports has just never excited me the way it does, well, fucking everyone else. So, the ongoing encroachment of transwomen (biolgical men who identify as women) donning longer hair and some testosterone blockers trouncing female athletes has never been a big deal issue for me.

That said, when headlines were made about a dude who was lost in the pack in a men’s sporting event suddenly switching genders and dominating the chicks it always felt slightly opportunistic—like a benign version of a sexual predator being convicted and claiming an identity switch so he(she) could be housed among women in showers. Just a tad too convenient to be wholly dismissed.

The communities in favor of this set of circumstance cry “It’s not a problem! It hardly ever happens! Why are you so obsessed with this, transphobe?” Except, back in August, the United Nations published a report on violence against women and girls in sports and came to a slightly different conclusion:

Policies implemented by international federations and national governing bodies, along with national legislation in some countries, allow males who identify as women to compete in female sports categories. In other cases, this practice is not explicitly prohibited and is thus tolerated in practice. The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males. According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports. —Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences (United Nations)

If your right to living your best life infringes on that right of another, maybe some thought should be put in how to balance things out fairly cuz isn’t that part of the point of sports? Fairness? I mean, yeah, women are a huge pain in the ass but they deserve nice things, too, amiright?

EMPTY GESTURES. The room smelled like weak coffee, moral posturing, and stale air conditioning—the distinct aroma of another corporate conference or academic symposium. Somewhere, just before the keynote speech about “equity in action” or “diversity in practice,” a voice crackled through the microphone to deliver the obligatory land acknowledgement. You could almost set your watch to it. A somber pause. The words were slow, heavy, performed: “We acknowledge that this event is taking place on the traditional lands of…” Cue the applause. Cue the guilt-rinsing. Cue the complete lack of actual meaning.

This, my friends, is the quintessential madness of the modern land acknowledgment—a half-baked ceremonial farce, a ritualistic nod to history with all the depth of a bumper sticker. It’s like watching a drunk uncle pray at Thanksgiving: nobody believes it, nobody cares, and yet everyone agrees to pretend it’s meaningful. If anything, these recitations reek of cowardice—disguised as progress. A half-step toward enlightenment that stops just short of actually doing anything. Lip service, varnished with vague sorrow.

Let’s call it what it is: a collective pat on the back for people who want to seem aware without breaking a sweat. Because that’s the game, isn’t it? Everyone is terrified of seeming indifferent. Apathetic. The land acknowledgment is the safety net for institutions terrified of looking colonial but entirely unwilling to be less colonial. “We acknowledge that we are on stolen land,” they say, with no hint of irony, no follow-up plan, and no intention of giving the land back. It’s a moral shrug, a ceremonial exhale, a license to carry on with the same colonial machinery that brought us to this moment in the first place. There is little difference between the corporate pose than the activist pose except that Big Bidness could actually, you know, do something about it.

The absurdity would be funny if it weren’t so fucking insulting. The words roll out with the emotional weight of a Buzzfeed listicle: “unceded territory, Indigenous stewards, cultural heritage.” These phrases become meaningless through sheer repetition—hollow and lifeless, like slogans slapped on reusable tote bags or on the backs of #BLM tee-shirts. The tragedy is that somewhere, buried deep beneath the veneer of performative guilt, there was a legitimate intention: to reckon with history, to confront the ugly truths of colonialism. But now, it’s been repackaged and sold as a quick fix. No reparations. No redistribution. Just words.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Words. Words are cheap. Words cost nothing. The real currency—the kind that matters in this brutal, howling cesspool—is action. If the CEO of some multinational company steps onto a stage and solemnly acknowledges the Indigenous people displaced by colonial violence, what happens next? Does he leap off the stage and sign over the company’s headquarters to an Indigenous-led organization? No, of course not. He goes to lunch, probably somewhere expensive, and forgets he ever said it as he snorts coke and jerks off in the gender neutral bathroom.

Land acknowledgments have become the defanged, declawed house cats of social justice. There’s no bite, no edge, no risk. They don’t challenge power, they comfort it. They let institutions bask in the warm glow of progressiveness while maintaining every structure that makes that progress impossible. The banks do it. The universities do it. Even tech companies—those bastions of disruption and innovation—have joined the fray. They’ll acknowledge the land, sure, but fuck yourself if you ask them to rethink the pipelines or the mining contracts. Acknowledgement is easy. Accountability is not.

What’s even more infuriating is the smugness with which these things are delivered. As if the mere act of saying the words absolves everyone in the room of complicity. It’s like someone apologizing for punching you in the face while keeping their fist cocked and the other hand around your neck.

Here’s a thought experiment for you: what if, instead of mouthing a land acknowledgment, every speaker at these events donated half their paycheck to Indigenous causes? What if every organization that offered an acknowledgment committed to returning a portion of their land or profits to the original stewards? That, of course, would be impossible. The system isn’t built for it. The system is built to acknowledge the theft while keeping the spoils firmly in its grasp.

THE LESSONS OF FIFTY-NINE. Every year since as long as I can remember, I’ve spent some time for my birthday writing out the many (or few) lessons I learned during the tenure of the previous year. It’s the ultimate naval gaze for a cat who loves few things more than staring at his own belly button. This was a pretty big year for figuring things out and solidifying lessons I should’ve cemented long ago so the writing has been, let’s say, generous.

I’m driving down to the fam to celebrate and, as always, I look forward to the time with my loved ones.

Among the lessons (in draft) that I’ve learned this year:

LESSON: A rut isn't always apparent. Stand back some to see a bigger picture if you can't see your way out of the self created labyrinth.

LESSON: When a “Bull Durham” romantic hooks up with a “Fifty Shades of Gray” romantic, the union will disintegrate. Flowers and ball gags rarely mix well.

LESSON: Our capacity for hope is limited only by our choice to foster it.

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And… that’s the week! Next week we witness the passing of the championship belt from the BabyFace to the Heel on the WWF of American politics. I may spent Tuesday pretending I live in a cave rather than let my brain spiral. Weather the storm, gang. Weather the freaking storm.