entertainment

Bill Murray’s missing spot in “Asteroid City”

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It seems odd that Bill Murray wasn’t in the new Wes Anderson movie, right? He’s always been in Wes Anderson’s movies, all the way back to Rushmore in 1998. What’s the deal? Is Tom Hanks the new Bill Murray?

It turns out Bill “Fkn” Murray was supposed to be in the film but caught the COVID and had to skip out. So Steve Carell replaced him last minute.

After filming, Bill Murray was hanging around the set, recovered and “giving pep talks”, so they decided to shoot a little promo with him and Jason Schwartzman. In the promo, we get to meet Bill Murray as Jock Larkings, the head of the fictitious Larkings Corporation, awkwardly promoting the film.

If you have the right subscription, you can see the promo on Apple News+ or The New Yorker. I assume it’ll show up on YouTube any day now. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Via The New Yorker

What’s this movie about, anyways? According to the video…

It’s about love, death, hope, war, peace, art, science, deep sadness, the unknown, and America. That’s the subject matter. Also infinity, and I don’t know what else.

I feel like they’re kind of stepping on my subject matter here. 🤔

Songs

Animal cover, version 1

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My friend Emily and I resolved to try recording some music together. I want to hone my skills at recording songs in GarageBand, and she wants to get into singing.

Instead of jumping right into an original song (writing songs is a whole other creative skill) Emily suggested we start with a cover. I tossed out a few ideas by Angel Olsen, Mazzy Star, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but she knew her own style.

Of the songs she suggested, I picked Animal by Sir Chloe because it was pretty short and simple.

Then I recorded a simple guitar and drum track for her to sing to. We tried collaborating remotely with GarageBand for iPhones, but it was too hard so we held a recording session in person on my MacBook with a decent mic. And I made some edits a few days later.

I added some electronic drums; they might sound odd at first but it gives a little intro and helps keep the song moving IMHO.  Let me know if you don’t like them; I can easily change/remove/reduce them. 

So here it is: our first shot at Animal! This isn’t the final version, but more of a proof of concept, like “Hey, we can do this.” I even left in her very first “practice” vocal take for fun 😬 and re-did the drums etc. a few days later on my own.

And for reference, a screenshot of the GarageBand project.

Quotes

“There’s no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.”

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Here is a great quote by an interesting person who seemed to live by these words.

There’s no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.

Alexander Woollcott

On the surface, Mr. Woollcott was a “drama critic”, which sounds like a horrible job to me. 😆

But he must have had something going on because he started the infamous Algonquin Round Table in 1920’s Manhattan, hosting Harpo Marx and Dorothy Parker, among others.

He grew up in poverty, served in World War I, and was a columnist in The New Yorker. You can still read his work there.

He even has a published book of letters about his life and the lives of his creative friends.” That sounds like a fun read.

Books · creativity

The “So what?” test

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Continuing to pull some helpful snippets out of Show Your Work, let’s look at the “So What?” test.

I had struggled for a while on this blog with the “to post or not to post” question. I was honing in on a vague “useful or interesting” test when I read Show Your Work, which attacked this idea with a “So What?” test.

I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: “SO WHAT?” She threw the piece of chalk down and said, “Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing.

Now any of my own posts must pass the “Sow what?” test before I will publish it. Clearly I found this “So what?” test useful because I use it here constantly.

As always, the book explains the idea most vividly with an illustration.

From Show Your Work

I will say that this rule seems at odds (or is it just tension?) with other ideas in the book, namely share something small every day.

I mean, do you really have something interesting and useful to share every day? If you’re a professional writer, maybe. But if you’re just a guy with a blog and limited time, maybe not. 😆

So I’m letting the “So what?” rule overrule any others for now.