Notes

Lanterns

I read John Stewart’s first appearance as a kid, out of my Dad’s comic collection. Green Lantern #87, 1972. Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams made him a Detroit architect who refused the mask because he had nothing to hide. He was later retconned into a U.S. Marine. His first job was guarding a racist senator he couldn’t stand. Heady stuff for a kid.

So I wanted Lanterns to be a space opera with cool wishing rings, crazy aliens, and galaxy-spanning consequences. Cosmic DC Universe in all its weird glory. Three episodes in, I’ve gotten almost none of that. The show drops Hal Jordan and John Stewart into a small Nebraska town, where there are several dead (alien) bodies and a lot of quiet. It’s True Detective with a power ring, and there are two mysteries running. One is the case from the logline. The other I won’t spoil.

My disappointment lasted about twenty minutes. Kyle Chandler plays Hal as a tired man who resents the kid sent to replace him. He’s crusty, world-weary, and perfect. Aaron Pierre plays John with a stillness that makes you lean in. Episode 3 slows everything down to tell you who John is, and the show is better for it.

The fan chatter is the good kind. People are sorting every neighbor into “human” or “not human.” Some think the trouble didn’t come to town at all, and the town is the trouble. Others are squinting at the Guardians. A few are already mapping it all onto the new Superman movie currently being filmed.

For me, the pleasure is in seriously not knowing where the story is headed. Online predictions are all over the place. I’ll be shocked if we see Parallax or any other colored rings. Well, we might see Sinestro’s yellow power ring.

Then there’s the crowd calling it “woke” or racist. John Stewart has been political since Nixon was president. Denny O’Neil understood what he was doing 50+ years ago. Those people never read them. I just hope my Dad has that issue bagged and boarded. A good copy is worth about a grand.

Anyway, three episodes down, five to go. I’m in.

Harry Potter Trailer

A new trailer for HBO’s Harry Potter series arrived by owl on Wednesday morning, and, surprising myself, I could not care less.

I’m sure it will do well. It’s a streaming show so things should be allowed to breathe and we’ll get more of the book on screen. The casting is mostly good. I’ll reserve judgement, but Paapa Essiedu’s Professor Snape seems… off-putting.

My favorite book is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which would be the third season of this show. Chances are high I’ll get to see it.

Productivity

Shawn Blanc –

Every productivity book boils down to three things: Get clear on what matters. Decide what you’ll do about it. Follow through.

I realize this is a massive oversimplification, but at the same time it really is this simple.

Start by writing down your goals (personal and business) and making sure you’re clear on them. Most folks have no idea what their goals are. Or their goals aren’t exciting.

Look at your schedule and make sure you have some breathing room each day for yourself and for the action steps you can take to accomplish those goals. A lot of people are overwhelmed and dealing with distractions all day, and they’re kept away from the things they want to do.

Lastly, I’d start small with one small habit. One small, daily action you can take to follow through on moving toward your future. Show me your habits and I’ll show you your future.

Apophenia

Seth Godin –

Apophenia is the uniquely human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns or connections in random or unrelated data, events, or objects.

Humans are story telling machines. And one thing we do is turn co-incident events into more than coincidences.

When we see faces and shapes in clouds, apophenia wastes our time in the form of pareidolia. There isn’t actually a teddy bear in that cloud, or a face in that grilled cheese sandwich.

On the other hand, our ability to make out patterns is essential when trying to understand a system. Systems are nothing but non-coordinated conspiracies, individuals following their interests in response to a culture that is shaped by individuals following their interests.

The skill worth developing is the insight to tell them apart. Useful stories when needed, uncorrelated noise when there’s nothing actually going on.

Taste

Daniel Pink –

AI can now make almost anything — 100 logos from one sentence, a song in seconds, three times as many books published as before ChatGPT. But when making gets cheap, judgment gets priceless, and the only thing separating the good from the forgettable is someone with the taste to tell them apart.

Taste is everything.

The problem is that people with no taste make all the decisions.

Trump is in Open Revolt Against the Consitution

Jamelle Bouie:

The details of what is happening here are important — that’s why I laid them out — but it’s also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.

It is important to say, as well, that this is all out in the open, as plain as day.

So very tired of him.

KISS Destroys Anaheim '76 4K Upscale with Updated Audio

This YouTuber spent four days gathering the songs from the new Kiss LP, Kiss Destroys Anaheim 50th Anniversary Edition, upscaling the video bootleg, then syncing the songs to the video and filling in missing time they didn’t use in the release of the anniversary album. Amazing.

This is my second favorite KISS concert, now with the best video and audio imaginable. For the record, the KISS Largo show in 1977 is my favorite show of all time. This video edit is the absolute best version.

Dolly’s Happy Heart

Dolly Parton –

I was born with a happy heart. I’ve always tried to let that shine even during my dark times. I’m one of those people who, even if things are not right, goes about trying to make it as right as I can rather than just lying around on my ass and wallowing in it all day. I think, “Well, I can either do this or I can do that.” I choose to get up and try to make it better if I can…

Of course, I try to improve every day. If there’s a better outfit, I want to wear it. If there’s a better song, I want to write it. If there’s a better record, I want to record it. If there’s a better movie, I want to make it. I will continue to be as good as I can be. And I intend to keep coming up with new ideas all the time.

Tim Curry, 1946–2026

Tim Curry died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 80.

Nobody ever walked into a movie the way he walked into The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He originated Frank-N-Furter on a London stage, then put it on film in 1975. The movie flopped. However, midnight audiences found it, and fifty years later people are still throwing rice at the screen.

And that was just the (in)famous role. He charmed audiences as Wadsworth in Clue. He was Pennywise in the 1990 It miniseries. When my daughter was young, she watched The Wild Thornberrys and his iconic voice was there. Personally, I loved his appearance on an episode of Criminal Minds. He was Rooster in Annie. The concierge in Home Alone 2. And so many more.

A stroke in 2012 took his mobility but not the voice. He kept working. He published a memoir, Vagabond, in 2025, the same year Rocky Horror turned 50. I’m going to have to pick it up.

Nobody made bad look like so much fun. Don’t worry. He’s just going home.

Quit taking the good ones. Seriously. Knock it off.

Dolly

The news broke right after lunch and I did what I suspect a few million other people did. I stopped what I was doing and just sat there for a minute.

Dolly Parton died in Nashville at 80, after what her family called a brief battle with cancer. Her nephew Bryan Seaver announced it, because she’d asked him to years ago. She even planned the goodbye. Of course she did.

The numbers are staggering. I really had no idea. Fifty studio albums. Eleven Grammys. More than 100 million records sold. She wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” and either one alone would be a career. But the numbers were never really the point with Dolly, and I think she knew that better than anyone.

She was maybe the last public figure in America that everybody agreed on. Country fans and pop fans. Red states and blue states. Your grandmother and your teenager. Nobody pulled that off. She did, and she did it without ever pretending to be anything other than a girl from a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains who liked big hair and bigger songs.

Most importantly, she spent the money on other people. Her Imagination Library has mailed hundreds of millions of free books to kids. She helped fund the research behind a COVID vaccine and barely mentioned it. When the family announced her passing, they didn’t ask for flowers. They asked for donations to the book program.

The songs will outlive all of us. If you only listen to one Dolly song in memoriam, make it this one.

However, what I’ll remember is simpler than that. She showed you could be enormous and kind at the same time, and that the kindness was the real act.