The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

CAMPAIGN OF FEAR. “Fear isn’t something you face. Fear is something you ride.” It’s a paraphrase from the trailer of the upcoming Twisters. While sitting in the mostly empty theater, the phrase gut-punched me. The last presidential campaign I could remember that was about ideas designed to bring hope was in 2008. Certainly, there was the fair share of doomsaying about the other guy but the tone was of hope and change. The past three elections have been almost drenched in the flop sweat of claims that the other guy (or gal) would bring about the end of democracy and the American way of life in general.

One good thing about fear and anxiety—it definitely obfuscates the pragmatic, the practical, the reasonable. It blinds people from seeing THE truth by positing A truth that is tainted by the scattered notions of fight or flight. It’s also incredibly entertaining to feed into the doomsayer’s mantra “The end is nigh.” The difficulty lies in the fact that every time, every time someone has predicted the end, they were dead wrong because we all woke up with laundry to do.

SPEAKING OF MOVIES. Bob and I caught Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness and, if you’re a fan of the man’s work—from Dogtooth to The Lobster to The Killing of a Sacred Deer—this is not a disappointment. Three stories featuring a common ensemble send up corporate culture, marital disentanglement, and religion in ways that only the Mad Dutchman can. Yup, it’s long but worth every long stare, bizarre twist, and strange reaction.

FIVE YEAR PLAN? ARE YOU NUTS? Talking with one of my GenZ ushers and he tosses out the idea that we all need a five year plan. He’s taking a business course and the instructor assigned this as something meaningful.

“You ever put together one of these?”

“A l-o-n-g time ago, I did.”

“Was it helpful? Did you get there in five years?”

“Not even close. My experience dictates that you might plan for something to be reality in five years but life has a way of derailing even plans for next week. I’ve had jobs for longer than five years but these jobs were never the goal—most jobs are sort of long-term temp work because corporations don’t have a sense of loyalty to humans, only money. No one is indispensable and no one expects an unplanned death or divorce or house fire.”

“So what’s your five year plan now?”

“At fifty-eight? Write some books, tell some stories, make some new stories to tell, do some shows. Try to stay in shape while doing it.”

“No retirement plans?”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH—cough—AHAHAHA!”

The Democrats can’t keep telling us that democracy itself is on the ballot and then run a candidate whose argument is “as long as I try real hard it’s OK.” — Megan K. Stack

RECOMMENDED.

Bottoms (Amazon Prime). Two high school girls (Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri start their own girl’s only Fight Club in order to get the cheerleaders to have sex with them. Super funny and over the top without being obnoxious. Loved it.

Fantastic Machine (Kanopy). A documentary by Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck. From the first camera to 45 billion cameras worldwide today, the visual sociologist filmmakers widen their lens to expose both humanity's unique obsession with the camera's image and the social consequences that lay ahead.

The Boys. Season Four (Amazon Prime). Best superhero dystopia ever created.

THE STUMBLES KEEP ON COMING. President Biden is making his case that he is fit for four and a half more years but he just can’t seem to get cognitive control of his old man brain. A gaffe came at the end of a speech by Biden about NATO’s enduring support for Ukraine. He barely stuttered during his remarks as he pledged security guarantees from Western countries beyond the end of the war in Ukraine.

But that was quickly overtaken by a very embarrassing mistake.

As Biden introduced Zelenskyy to give his remarks, the U.S. president said: “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin.”

Later, at the follow-up press conference, he offered this gem: “I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president did I think she was not qualified to be president.”

Maybe when people say “I’d vote for a head of cabbage in a bucket rather than vote for Trump” it’s something his people are counting on?

HOW MUCH DISTRACTION IS A PROBLEM? Distractions can fragment our attention. The human brain has a limited capacity for focus, and every time we switch from one task to another, it incurs a cognitive cost. Studies have shown that even brief interruptions can significantly impair our performance, as the brain struggles to regain concentration on the primary task.

I have a lot of potential distractions throughout my day. Plenty of TV to watch and movies. Scrolling through news online. Podcasts. An almost relentless barrage of texts triggering a buzzing on my watch and phone. Once in a while, I see myself pushing everything on an imaginary desk off onto the floor to clear out all the noise preventing me from getting the things I know I want to do in the forefront. As I’ve become older, that desk piles higher and higher and my brain can only entertain a diminishing portion of it.

One distraction that I’m (so far) successfully avoiding is the quest for a mate. I think about how all-encompassing that has been and, in the absence of the chase of a paramour, I see the host of other distractions that get in my way. The gym, the book, the documentary, and a healthy schedule of productive things to do are the keys to staying focused, maintaining concentration.

I can’t even fathom how Biden manages to get dressed in the morning with the myriad distractions he must be swimming in. I’ll bet he watches hours of Netflix. So, yeah. Wish he’d pass the torch on but also have some empathy for the dude.

"No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.”—James Baldwin

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That, Dear Reader, is the week! Life is a dance so make sure you stretch.