Let's Ban Together
"One day the sadness will end, but I don't think today's the day."
🗓️ Greetings from Merit Coffee in downtown Austin, where it’s a brisk 30°. Welcome to all of our new subscribers and thanks to those of you who sent along positive feedback and/or shared last week’s post For LA.
Along with all of the positive feedback, I got connected to a few organizations who are working to help those impacted out in L.A. and could use our help spreading the word. I wanted to specifically shout out friends of the newsletter Loop Apparel, who have been helping families affected by the fires by providing free clothing for young kids and shared this generous offer with our readers:
If your family was impacted by the fires and need some new children’s clothing, email Loop at hello@wearloop.co. They have kids’ shirts and sweats, 18mo-7yo, to send your way for free.We had a few weeks off, then last week’s focus on our friends in Los Angeles, so I realize this is the first time we’re catching up. I was thinking about recapping a few stories that developed while we were away, but this year’s howling at the door, so let’s start at the present.
Just this morning, after a week worth of aggressive backtracking by after both parties–who unanimously supported the bill–on the law voted into law only a few months ago, the TikTok ban went into effect late last night. Load up the app and you’ll see this:
America’s battle with China over TikTok didn’t stop cucumber shortages in Iceland, which were attributed to a TikTok craze that took off with Icelandic youth. Meanwhile, Belgium issued a food advisory against consuming Christmas trees. Kim Jong-un banned hotdogs for North Koreans and declared cooking them to be an act of treason, while a small town in Italy banned residents from getting sick and Australia had to close nine Sydney beaches as mysterious grey balls washed up on shore.
In sports, the Chiefs rode some very favorable calls Travis Kelce’s best game of the season to a win over the Texans (with Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark looking on). The Washington Commanders1 dealt a brutal gutpunch upset to Tim Robinson, Sam Richardson, and the rest of the Detroit Lions faithful2. And finally, Los Angeles got some much-needed good news as international sensation Rōki Sasaki, a pitcher from the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Nippon Professional Baseball league who is making the move to MLB in 2025, announced that he would be signing with the Dodgers3.
Unfortunately, we also had more bad news out of Los Angeles this week. As the city continued to contend with remaining fires and began reckoning with the sheer scope of the damage, one of its longtime icons exited the frame.
David Lynch died on Wednesday at the age of 78.
Lynch had been battling emphysema and in an interview with Sight & Sound magazine last year, he revealed that due to Covid fears and his emphysema diagnosis, he no longer could leave the house, which meant if he directed again, it would be remotely.
There were reports that Lynch "took a turn for the worse" after being forced to evacuate his house due to the Sunset fire in L.A., but nothing confirmed as of yet.
Lynch moved to Los Angeles in 1970, as he was finishing his first feature film, Eraserhead. He lived in the Hollywood Hills and, up until his recent health troubles, he could be spotted out and about across Los Angeles, including daily trips to Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank for coffee and a shake.
He was a kid from Montana who made movies set everywhere from Washington state to Arrakis. But Lynch embodied L.A. – perhaps a version of the City of Angels that is no more – as much or more than any filmmaker, a sentiment echoed again and again in his passing:
Lynch came to speak to my film studies class at USC. It was 1999, and he had come for a pre-release screening of The Straight Story and Q&A afterwards.
If you haven’t seen The Straight Story, it’s the least Lynchian of all his films. This was before the internet film news industrial complex, so I don’t think more than maybe a few people in the room knew to expect a very earnest, straightforward (no pun intended) story about a man facing the end of his life, making his way on a riding mower across the country to see his brother and apologize before they both die.
The lights come up, Professor Drew Kasper introduces Lynch. He walks out, sits down, pulls out a trademark pack of American Spirit yellows. I don’t have a full transcript, but the initial exchange will remain burned in my brain:
Lynch: Can I smoke?
Kasper: (hesitates) Uh–
(Lynch lights and takes his first drag.)
Kasper: –uh yeah, that’s fine.
(Lynch stares off in the distance, as if he’s already forgotten the exchange.)
Kasper: “This is quite the departure for you. How did this project come to be?”
Lynch holds for an awkwardly long pause, takes one more drag.
Then he gives what at the time I thought was the coolest possible answer. Now it feels like advice to hold close as we steady ourselves towards an uncertain future:
“We’re all capable of doing many types of things.”
R.I.P. to a legend and true L.A. icon.
You once said that where a person lives tends to affect them. Los Angeles is a very particular, peculiar environment. What is it about this city that appeals to you?
Number one, the intense light. Also the different feelings in the air. But like every place it’s always changing. And it takes longer to appreciate L.A. than a lot of cities, because it’s so spread out, and every area has its own mood. What I really like about it is, from time to time, if you drive around – especially at night – you can get a little gust of wind of the great days of the silver screen. All there in, like, living memory. It just makes you wish that you’d lived in those times. I think that if you could go back, that’s the one place that you want to go back to. Maybe they didn’t appreciate it at the time, but it was an incredible place to be at the beginning of cinema.
–David Lynch
📈 Oddsmakers
Following the smart money4, here are a few things to watch for in 2025:
Meta replaces conference tables with octagons: +1000
Amazon famously banned PowerPoint presentations, Zuck will channel the company’s latent masculine energy and turn standup meetings into grappling and grunts.
Deion Sanders leads the Cowboys to the Super Bowl: +10000
He won a Super Bowl as a player for Dallas. He already wears a cowboy hat. He’s put together a college record of 40-18. Prime Time and the Star is too perfect: the big name Jones needs right now5 and no shade to those 40 college wins against the likes of Colorado State and Central Florida, but Jerryworld would give Deion the place to rustle up some real cattle to go with that hat.
Amazon’s One Medical starts offering whatever Jeff Bezos is taking: +100000
This man is 61 years old.
Society has never been more “every man for himself,” which I can appreciate in a born-alone, die-alone kind of way. However, under further inspection, helping friends and neighbors or even simply showing empathy feels good—maybe as good as avoiding government regulation.
Chris Black
Check This Out
The internet is getting a little weird again. New apps and sites are broadening our digital horizons, working to enhance our lives (rather than commandeer them by attention hacking). This year, I am going to highlight a few of my emerging favorites here.
Mozi is a new app from Evan Williams (creator of Blogger and co-founder of Twitter) trying to solve the basic problem: how do I connect with people I know when I travel?
At first glance it gives vintage Foursquare vibes, but it’s a lot less involved than the old days of ‘checking in’ to venues in pursuit of Mayor badges. This isn’t about broadcasting your real-time location, just a simple way to say “Hey, I’m visiting New York for business in late February” or “I am planning to attend SXSW.”
I sign up for Mozi, choose who from my contacts I want to connect with, indicate some planned trips, and then my friends and I can see when we’re going to be in the same place. Let’s give it a try together, and give serendipity a nudge in 2025.
And finally…
Today, we end the show with a visit to Winter Park, Colorado, circa 1990, for a beautifully-restored VHS home video aptly titled “Destructive Testing: Eskimo Chairlift.” If you’re into that sort of thing, I highly recommend6.
NOTE: YouTube also has the full 22-minute video7
BOB UECKER: 1934-2025
Upon hearing the unfortunate news of baseball announcer (and Major League and Mr. Belvedere actor) Bob Uecker’s passing this week, I was comforted to see how many people expressed a similar sentiment to mine:
If you grew up in the 1980s or 90s, you personally had a Uecker-type in your world. It might have been an uncle or dad’s buddy from the club, for me it was my Grandpa Marty.
As I did a tribute rewatch of Major League, a movie that Uecker holds together at times as Harry Doyle, the play-by-play announcer for the movie’s lowly Cleveland Indians8, I could hear my grandfather’s voice and a sort of nostalgic pain washed over. In the movie (and in real life, as an announcer for an often mediocre Milwaukee Brewers team), Uecker found his way to an optimistic outlook regardless of the situation. I remember a lot of the same from my grandpa, the sort of worldview that I suppose came from the perspective of having seen plenty worse and finding pride in being able to still tell a joke, no matter the circumstances. We had our “I can do this all day” heroes right here.
Here’s to the man, and all of the other Bob Ueckers out there.
Not going to lie, it still feels weird. I am not saying they should go back to Washington Redskins, but either they need much more distinctive helmets and unis or they need to go back to the naming drawing board completely. Commanders feels like a fake team from a movie that couldn’t get NFL rights. I’m half expecting to see Shane Falco at QB.
Although I will say, one upside of Washington making a run is seeing it bring joy to Commanders fan, actor and national treasure Jeffrey Wright.
Sasaki selected the Dodgers ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays and San Diego Padres, his reported second and third choices respectively.
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That is, if Jerry doesn’t just want to ride his much-lauded Landman cameo into an acting career.
Better stop complaining about Vail and their bullshit, they’re going to do this to you.
Filled with all sorts of interesting ski lift facts and some lovely Colorado landscape shots. Really quality DP work.
There are any number of reasons you could never make Major League today, but high on the list is that MLB would never, ever, in a million years allow their IP to be used in a story about an owner actively trying to leave town. In retrospect, that was wild.
One of your best posts. Thank you for starting the week on a positive note.
KB