Good Morning & Happy Friday Friends!
This morning is mild and breezy 75℉ here in New York City. We’ve had some days reach near 90℉ this week and some heavy thunderstorms. If you’re in the tri-state area, I’m sure you’ve seen videos of subway system flooding.
Earlier this week I finished reading The Talented Mr. Ripley. I loved it! Highsmith’s writing drew me in and took me for a ride across Italy as I watched Ripley transform from small-time crook to criminal mastermind. I couldn’t get enough so I rewatched Netflix’s Ripley series starring Andrew Scott which I think more accurately captures the spirit of the book than the 1999 film.
I’ve been dragging my feet a bit with writing longer essays on the books I’m reading this summer. At the moment I’m in between books. I’ll be traveling next weekend for a short trip to California and I know that whatever I start reading now I’ll likely be reading next weekend so I want to pick something that will suit this trip. Some options sitting on my shelf waiting to be read are Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur.
Here’s Five Bullets capturing my attention this week:
I traded in my trusty (but rapidly aging) 2004 Chevy Astro Van this week. I’ll miss the van’s CD player - the CDs I kept in the car were the soundtrack to every drive and trip. I wrote about those CDs here.
Artist Tom Sachs and Nike are back with another sneaker collaboration, the Mars Yard 3.0. When Nike exec Mark Parker challenged Sachs to design a better sneaker, Sachs met with NASA engineers to engineer the perfect sneaker with ultra-strong and lightweight Mars rover materials. Over the years Sachs improved the sneaker and assembled a team of testers for limited releases. Watch a Brief History of the Mars Yard.
Pino Palladino and Blake Mills are back with another album, That Wasn’t a Dream, releasing on August 22nd. The bass and guitar duo dropped a video for song Taka to announce the release, with support from drummer Chris Dave. If Taka is any indication, the album seems likely to pick up where Notes With Attachments left off, combining world influences with jazz and funk plus the pair’s signature minimal and airy sound. Check out my Notes With Attachments review.
Is the U.S. ready for the next war? Dexter Filkins, author of The Forever War, reports for The New Yorker on how drones and A.I. are changing warfare and the Pentagon’s approach to military spending. The headline might be a bit alarmist but Filkins’ reporting on where, how and why the money is spent is solid.
When I’m short a bullet or two for this Friday newsletter I take a look at what happened on this date in history. I noticed that today would have been Hunter S. Thompson’s 88th birthday, born July 18, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. In recent years when I began reading his work, I started backwards for some reason - with The Curse of Lono (1983) and The Rum Diary (1998). Then I read Hell’s Angels about two years ago and when I read the opening chapters of Fear and Loathing (while I tried to figure out what to read this week) I was shocked at the difference between the two books. Hells Angels is a very serious, sobering, and (mostly) factual account of the motorcycle gang while Thompson’s gonzo journalism in Fear and Loathing reads like fiction. I’m looking forward to reading more.
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading.