PicoBlog

Earlier this week there was a big, ridiculous blowup over The New York Times’ coverage of trans issues. It was sparked by open letters from GLAAD and a group of writers, both of which accused the paper, groundlessly, of rampant transphobia. It resolved with a happy ending — the paper politely said “cool letter, but we aren’t really interested” — at least for now, and we’ll discuss it on the podcast.

It doesn’t take long to figure out what type of player Yeremay Hernández is. The 20-year-old — also known as Peke — hails from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, plays on the wing, and wears his socks closer to his ankles than his kneecaps. Although he left his hometown aged just 12, with Real Madrid his destination, that essence of street football which characterises many of those who hail from the islands is precisely what drives him too.

While the age of secularism is obviously breathing its last sigh, the inertia of western atheism gives it enough cultural sway that religious philosophy still feels the burden to make a case for its own validity, against the still-dominant preconception that the supernatural is a mirage and that only ‘rationalism’ (or, alternatively, a form of ‘critique’ which is suspicious of even rationalism) is able to make a serious claim to metaphysical traction.

QUIS UT DEUS is the translation of the Archangel Michael’s name—Who is like God?—and I never did find out why it was on this Florentine building. But I’ve wanted to use it in a newsletter and today’s letter seems as good a time as any. Today I’m writing to tell you about the newest of my essay classes, which begins a week from today at the Shipman Agency online and is a response to someone asking me something last fall at an event that was very much on my mind: “What did you learn from reading so many essays for the Best American anthology?

Under the Same Stars - Autofiction? Ten shun! Fiction is fiction, autofiction is fiction heavily based on real life, and memoir ( and biography) is ‘reality’ ( or at least highly fact based). Lot of people who bring memoirs or biographies for assessment ask me if their writing would work better as a novel or as autofiction. The answer? It’s very hard to say. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not.

Hi friend. It has been a manic week getting the kids back into school. We had grown used to staying in pyjamas until noon and it was a rude wake-up call to rush around to leave the house by 8:45. In the midst of the wild, I had contact with Andrea Baker, a mother of four sons that lives in La Paz, Bolivia, working for Word Made Flesh Bolivia. She provided me with a perspective on sex workers, or prostituted women, as she calls them, in La Paz that I have relayed for you below.

A regular feature for paid Watch List subscribers: I suggest one reasonably under-the-radar movie from the recent or distant past, and you do what you want with that information. The Fits (2016,  ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐, streaming on Paramount+ and Kanopy, for rent on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and YouTube)— One of those little miracle movies that seems to have come out of nowhere, “The Fits” was the debut feature of the young writer-director Anna Rose Holmer.

There are three people in every (and by “every” I mean “this”) relationship: Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, and me (and by “me” I mean myself, literally, but also “us,” meaning everyone watching from home). Bennifer is, more t… ncG1vNJzZmigpaPBpr7HmqmroaNjwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89opqedXaOutbXOp2SuppSav268wKlksJmcoMA%3D

Oh dear. This column is no stranger to racial stereotypes and offensive caricatures. From the forbidden tales of Uncle Remus to the many, many non-Native Americans in movies like The Light In The Forest and Tonka to the broad, cartoonish Asians of The Ugly Dachshund and The Love Bug, Disney just did not have a good track record when it came to depicting minorities. Sometimes their intentions were good and I think it’s important to keep that in mind.