My latest typewriter interview is with artist Tucker Nichols.
This answer made me laugh and think of Ghostbusters:
Janine Melnitz: Do you have any hobbies?
Dr. Egon Spengler: I collect spores, molds, and fungus.
You can read the whole thing here.
Typewriter interview with Elizabeth McCracken
From a WSJ review of Elizabeth McCracken’s A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction:
Ms. McCracken refuses to link process and outcome in fiction, so the whole endeavor retains its mysterious sheen. By the end of the book, I didn’t want to write a novel, I wanted to read one. If that’s another kind of long game, then well-played.
Last month Elizabeth borrowed my Smith Corona GT Ghia to type up the answers to her typewriter interview.
They haven’t got me yet, baby
A still of Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, which I used as a guardian spirit for my notebook at the end of 2017.
Might need to print another one soon, as 2026 looks like 2018…but on crystal meth.
(“You’ll be nostalgic for all this, too,” wrote Patricia Lockwood. “If you make it.”)
Lessons learned from movie night
Today’s newsletter is a dozen lessons we’ve learned from our favorite family ritual:
Every Friday night our family eats pizza and watches a movie….
In the beginning, there was pizza, but no movies. My youngest son would get too sad or scared or upset to sit through a feature film. “One day,” I thought, “One day we will be able to all sit down and eat pizza and watch a real movie together.”
That day came during the first Christmastime of the pandemic, when the youngest was approaching age six. We started with gentle, short viewings, like A Charlie Brown Christmas, Muppet Family Christmas, It’s A SpongeBob Christmas!, and even Elf. (My log notes that “Jules cried, but we made it through.”)
In 2021, when the boys were 8 and 6, Friday night pizza and a movie truly became a family ritual, something we looked forward to every week, something we did almost without fail.
Somehow we’ve been doing this for five years?!? Wild.
The letter also includes my logbooks and recommendations from each year:
One of the most prudish things about me: I think people introduce movies to their kids way too early.
Read the whole thing here.
Happy new date stamp year to all who celebrate
I like to make a dumb little post of my date stamp on January 1. My friend Deb commented, “When I turned to the fresh clean rubber 2026 yesterday morning, I thought, ‘happy new date stamp year to all who celebrate!’ and thought of you.” I am very happy to be thought of for such things, and think we should make this a thing from now on.
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