PicoBlog

This is Clusterhuck, my newsletter about faith, culture and a flourishing future for all! I’m glad you’re here. I can only do this through the support of my readers, and I’m grateful for every one I’ve got. If you’d like to join, just click here. You’ll get a free seven-day trial, including access to all the archives. My pastor told me “when you leave, all you take is your memories,” and I’m gonna take mine of you with me, Lana Del Rey sings on the opening track to her new album.

This winter, I learned how to dig a grave. Where I come from, death is an industrial process. It wasn’t always this way: England, bless it, has an ancient heart, but it beats under a long-mechanised carapace. The Machine we made has corralled our deaths as it has corralled our lives. Everything must fit the pattern. When relatives of mine died back home, they were taken away by a paid undertaker we didn’t know, to be embalmed and then put on display in some small, cold room in the undertaker’s commercial premises, before being taken in a long black car to a newbuild crematorium on the outskirts of a suburban town.

DiGiorno’s Thanksgiving pizza features “a thick Detroit-style crust, turkey, rich gravy, diced sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberries, two kinds of cheese, and a crispy onion topping.” Each pie costs $11.23 (a nod at Thanksgiving’s date this year). The Thanksgiving Pizza will be on sale at Digiorno’s website every Wednesday at 12:00PM EST through November while supplies last. The pizza arrived in a nondescript box marked with a low quality label that had clearly been printed with a cheap LaserJet printer.

Grigor Dimitrov defeated Holger Rune 7/6 6/4 in the final of the Brisbane International ATP 250 to claim his ninth title and take a 2-1 lead in their H2H. It was Dimitrov’s first title since 2017 (ATP Finals). This was a hyper-aggressive final between two players who take the ball early and finish at the net. In quick humid conditions aggression was rewarded, and Dimitrov played with conviction and poise throughout the encounter, weathering Rune’s sledgehammer backhand and dictating with his own forehand at every opportunity.

No one has earned his success like Carl Franklin.  For the first two decades of his career, Franklin was a character actor mostly on television, with credits in some of the biggest series in the ’70s and ’80s—Barnaby Jones, The Rockford Files, Trapper John M.D., The A-Team, MacGyver, and Hill Street Blues, among others—but only a small handful of extended runs. (His role as Captain Crane on 17 episodes of The A-Team may be his most recognizable part, and that was deep down the cast list.

"Dirty Dancing" may just be one of the most seminal garbage movies ever. But, garbage it is. Somehow I missed seeing this film, a smash success when it came out in August 1987. The omission is perhaps not surprising: I had just gone off to college, and it looked to be a sappy romance dressed up against the backdrop of dancing, something in which I have never had an iota of ability or interest.

Last Friday, Jennifer Grey appeared on The View to promote her new memoir, Out of the Corner, but also discussed abortion and the recently leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that will likely overturn Roe v. Wade. The conversation didn’t have to veer away from Grey’s work to make the connection. Her book’s title is taken from her most famous role, Frances “Baby” Houseman, a teenager whose 1963 Catskills summer vacation includes romance, dancing, and witnessing firsthand the horrors that can happen when abortion is illegal.

I’m really testing my foraging and survival skills as I’ve temporarily moved house. I’ve left the fresh green Scottish spring behind and have moved to the northern Kalahari Desert, where I’m staying with a Jul/’hoansi tribe for a whole month. I’m both excited and terrified – there are, after all, 17 species of poisonous snake in Namibia! My interest in foraging and hunter-gatherers is almost as old as I am. I grew up in Kenya and, as a voracious reader, had read many tales about the San Bushmen of the Kalahari.

It’s late 2015 and the Hotline Bling video has just dropped. Twitter, Instagram, and Vine all give their own spin on the video.There’s a Buzzfeed listicle about the best ones and people actually read it. It’s all anyone on the internet can talk about. Memes themselves have a longer half life and it remains in the collective consciousness for at least a week.  Today, those memes are merely a memory.