The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

THE PEOPLE’S JOKER? Luigi Mangione, the Gen Z kid who etched a loaded trio of words on three bullets, laid in wait, and murdered a healthcare executive last week has created some interesting reactions. Is he a revolutionary, an avatar representing all those lives destroyed by the corrupt and hatefully greedy American healthcare infrastructure? Is he just another version of one of those fuckwads who load up a gun and open fire on innocent bystanders? Is he more or less?

Certainly, the kid had intent apart from simply mayhem or nihilistic tendencies. A three page manifesto, a history of fetishizing the Unabomber, the ability to cover his tracks using multiple fake IDs, and a ghost gun. If it weren’t for his bad choices in fast food, the guy could’ve been in the wind. Say what you want about him, he definitely does not represent the Gen Z stereotype of entitled and lazy.

The victim had lots of blood on his hands with legions of people denied coverage and gamed into bankruptcy and demise for decades so was Mangione’s kill an act of justice against a specific individual who has contributed to many, many more deaths and destructive results than most average people? Was this very, very good looking kid (you seen those freaking abs?) a time traveler who went back in time to kill Josef Mengele? Is society better off in the absence of another super wealthy dude who makes his living denying healthcare to thousands of people in need?

On the flipside, the cat who strangled out the homeless addict on a New York subway was acquitted of manslaughter. Is the message communicated it’s acceptable to accidentally kill a mentally ill nuisance but to methodically scratch an executive of a brutal, inhumane money making corporation is off the table? We routinely ignore inner city murders as business as usual without the headlines or manhunt just as we routinely ignore the brutal inhumanity of unchecked capitalistic cabals hoarding medicine, food, and water only to sell it to us at a markup so how out of character is all of this?

The hardest thing to ignore is how TikTok sexy this kid is and how almost comically his name could be ‘Tony Bagadonuts’ and would be no less stereotypically Italian.

Active from 1932 to 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow engaged in a crime spree across the central United States, robbing banks, stores, and committing murders. Though their actions were undeniably brutal, the context of the Great Depression played a crucial role in shaping public perception. Many Americans, disillusioned by economic hardships and distrustful of banks and law enforcement, saw the pair as rebellious antiheroes.

Also they were very, very good looking.

DEBATES ON HOLD. David and I are pulling BUGHOUSE! from the landscape for the time being. Three basic reasons. First, it feels like the very people who get up on stage to faux argue are tired of arguing. The second coming of Trump seems to have taken the wind out of them (which is reflected in the tepid and largely quiet reaction from the Left in general) and getting performers is a bit like pulling teeth. Second, December is a tough month to do a show that doesn’t cram a Christmas tree up the collective audience ass (credit to Joe Janes who is doing his level best to do exactly that with a really fun non-Christmas show). Third, in reevaluating Literate Ape, we’ve lapsed in the initial mission: writers writing. The events were supposed to be a way to support the writing but since we stopped paying writers (more a pragmatic reason than a decision to cut people from our roster) there is no writing happening. We’re going to regroup, figure out how to get more words on the Ape, write more ourselves, and get back on track.

If you’re celebrating mass deportations of distraught, exhausted, human beings, seeking refuge, you probably shouldn’t be sweetly singing Christmas songs about a baby with “no crib for a bed” — John Pavlovitz

MAN OF THE YEAR? REALLY? Yup. Joining the ranks of Adolf Hitler (1938); Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942); Nikita Khrushchev (1957); and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), Donald Trump has once again been enshrined on the cover of a magazine (what’s that? You mean a video diary or a meme, right?).

“HOW ARE YOU HERE?” It’s been ten months since I crash landed back in the City of Big Shoulders and Traffic Cams and the reaction of an ex-girlfriend back in October from a year ago still pops up almost daily. I came to Chicago to check out the place and decide fully whether I was moving back. Joe and I went to the Chicago Reader Gala and I saw her. I approached to say hello. Her shock was obvious. “How are you here?” she asked as if I were an apparition conjured from too much absinthe and deep dish pizza.

Since coming home and working in both Millennium Park and the oldest theater in the city, this reaction is become routine.
“When did you come back?”
“I thought you moved to Vegas?”
“Oh my gawd! Don Hall!”

“Vegas didn’t work out the way I’d hoped so I came back.”

That answer fits and avoids the facts on the ground because those who really know me already know. Once in a while, like a mic drop, I now casually drop the third ex-wife debacle but mostly not. Old news in my world but now it’s fun to watch the range of reactions. My new co-workers are amused by how many people in the city know who I am, how many communities I have been involved in. As one storyteller dubbed me when I first got back, apparently, in Illinois, I’m the Don Hall which is the double-edged sword of reputational legacy. The downside is that it feels a bit like an anchor to nostalgia, a me that no longer exists, a past with some tributaries I’d rather put behind me.

I’m a very different person these days from the halcyon era of the Don Hall. I’m certainly more misanthropic, preferring the company of my family when I can, a handful of friends, and the comfort of my tiny apartment. I thought, when first arriving, that I wanted to go back to that life but the burnt edges of the tattered book of me is less inclined. As I go out into this world class city, I find that experiencing it alone has a certain solace to it—a solo day at the Art Institute, hanging out at the Harold Washington Library, catching a matinee of something weird and obscure at the Music Box. I’m in a quiet space surrounded by the noise of Chicago and it’s exactly what my weary soul seems to need.

THE TRIANGLE SIMPLIFICATION. I’ve long understood the organizational triangle that sits on the qualities of a project. Three points—CORRECT, CHEAP, FAST. No project can have more than two thus:

If it is CHEAP and FAST it won’t be CORRECT.
If it is CORRECT and CHEAP it won’t be FAST.
If it is CORRECT and FAST it won’t be CHEAP.

I recently saw another that seems on point.

HOT, SANE, SINGLE.

If she’s HOT and SANE, she isn’t SINGLE.
If she’s SANE and SINGLE, she isn’t HOT.
If she’s HOT and SINGLE, she isn’t SANE.

When it comes to political activism, I’d suggest:

ANGRY, RIGHT, EFFECTIVE.

If the activist is ANGRY and EFFECTIVE, he isn’t RIGHT.
If the activist is RIGHT and EFFECTIVE, he isn’t ANGRY.
If the activist is ANGRY and RIGHT, he isn’t EFFECTIVE.

ON SOLO TIME. There’s a weird and persistent cultural myth that being alone is inherently bad—like solitude is something that happens to you, not something you choose. It’s the lurking specter of loneliness that makes people confuse solitude with exile, like the only reason anyone would be alone is because they couldn’t find anyone to tolerate their presence. But solitude isn’t social failure; it’s an essential, if deeply misunderstood, state of being. In fact, it might be one of the few ways to reclaim some sanity in a world designed to fracture your attention into a million hyper-stimulated pieces.

The modern human being is under constant psychic assault. Everything—your phone, your email, your third “urgent” Teams message about the quarterly budget review—is designed to drag your attention out of your own mind and into a buzzing collective hum. In this environment, solitude becomes not just restorative but revolutionary. To be alone, truly alone, is to declare independence from a world that monetizes your distraction. It’s an act of rebellion against the relentless encroachment of notifications and alerts, the digital equivalent of clearing out a forest overgrown with invasive species.

Solitude also makes space for thinking—the real, deep, hard kind. The kind of thinking you can’t outsource to a search engine or compress into a bullet-point list. Virginia Woolf, who understood solitude better than most, famously said that a woman needs money and a room of her own to write fiction, but what she really meant (or what she should have meant) is that anyone doing any kind of meaningful intellectual work needs time and space free from the clamoring demands of other people. The human mind, left to its own devices, will wander into strange and fertile territory. Solitude is the condition that allows creativity to flourish because it removes the noise and static of everyday life.

Of course, solitude isn’t all productive epiphanies and existential breakthroughs. It’s also just… nice. There’s something deeply restorative about sitting alone in a quiet room, reading or staring out a window, or just existing without anyone needing anything from you. In a society that equates busyness with virtue, allowing yourself to be alone can feel suspiciously like slacking off. But solitude offers a kind of rest that sleep can’t provide—a rest from being seen, judged, evaluated. To be alone is to be momentarily free from the performance of being yourself.

But here’s the trick: solitude only works if you choose it. The same quiet that feels like liberation when you seek it out can feel like suffocating isolation when it’s imposed on you. There’s a delicate balance between solitude and loneliness, and the line between them is thinner than most people realize. One is a sanctuary; the other, a trap.

So the next time you feel the gravitational pull of your phone or the instinctive urge to fill the silence with music or a podcast, resist it. Sit still. Be alone. Not because you have to, but because you can. In a world that’s constantly demanding your attention, solitude is how you reclaim it.

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One more week until I choose the solitude of a Prius, the highway, and a trip to the Shangri-La of my folks’ home filled with Christmas and laughter and love. Wishing you all a grand holiday, a solid transition from 2024 to 2025, and the hope that you avoid the encroaching and pervasive news of one Donald Trump as he flails around breaking the furniture and eating all your cheese.