Category: Arts and Letters

Full Metal Jacket Trivia – Joker’s Full Name

Although never spoken in the film, Private Joker’s real name is J.T. Davis (as seen on the back of his PT sweats). He was named after Specialist James T. Davis, the first U.S. casualty of the Vietnam War. He was killed in action on December 22, 1961.

I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do – ABBA

“I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do” is a song recorded by the Swedish pop music group ABBA for their eponymous third studio album (1975). It was written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, and their manager Stig Anderson, with Andersson and Ulvaeus producing. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sing lead vocals. It was released on 10 April 1975 as the album’s third single by Polar Music. The song takes inspiration from the European schlager music of the 1950’s to the 1970s, as well as the saxophone sound of the 1950’s American orchestra leader Billy Vaughn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Do,_I_Do,_I_Do,_I_Do,_I_Do

Opera for the People – New York Ticket Lottery

NEW YORK – Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) Commissioner Diya Vij today announced “Opera for All,” a long-term partnership between the City and the Metropolitan Opera that will provide 70,000 free tickets this season to New Yorkers who have never attended a performance at the Met.

Beginning this month, the Met will release 10,000 tickets each month throughout the 2026-27 season, about 10% of all tickets for the season. New Yorkers can enter the monthly lottery at on.nyc.gov/opera or through the Met’s app. This season’s performances include Macbeth, Lincoln in the Bardo and La Bohème.

Mayor Mamdani Launches “Opera for All,” Bringing 70,000 Free Metropolitan Opera Tickets to New Yorkers

Sylvester Stallone Interview – New York Times

In the book you seem to suggest that both your parents saw your arrival as having ruined their ambitions in some way. You wrote, “Can you really make people proud who never wanted you in the first place?” And when you were very little, you were sent to go live in a boardinghouse, and your parents only visited you once a month. How did you understand that as a kid?
…
You keep using the word “tough.” But I don’t hear tough. I hear messed up.
You know, you’re right. I’m using “tough” as a masculine banner for something much more perverse and weird.

And dark. And dark.

Sylvester Stallone Hid His Struggles for Decades. Now He’s Coming Clean.

From Amazon:
The Steps: A Memoir

A gritty, inspiring, heart-wrenching memoir by the Academy Award-winning legend and icon Sylvester Stallone, about his unlikely path to stardom and the creation of the greatest underdog story ever told.

This American Life – Fan Data and Insights

I was first introduced to This American Life about a decade ago, right after the podcast, then a relatively novel media format, got sensationalized by the true crime show Serial. Only later did I find out about the shared DNA between the two shows. Life comes full circle.

Over the past thirty years, since Ira Glass started This American Life, the show has grown from a personal passion project (formerly called Your Radio Playhouse) discussing the everyday lives of ordinary Americans into one that touches millions of listeners, covering major events across the globe and making a real impact on the people its team cares about.

As the show approaches its 900th episode, every one of which I’ve listened to at least once and many more than that, I decided to dissect it and find the recipe for what makes it such a fascinating show to me and millions of others: what it talks about week over week, who has been telling these stories, what makes them so immersive to listen to, and all the real-life impact it has made. Let’s go.

https://milesmeters.com/pieces/this-american-life/

I used 3 weeks to gather data, analyze, and build a site dissecting ~900 episodes of This American Life over 30 years. As a die-hard fan of the show, some insights are as expected (e.g., themes, contributors), but some are genuinely surprising (e.g., songs & artists).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThisAmericanLife/comments/1wk1scu/900_episodes_over_30_years_data_insights_of_this/

Breathe (2 AM) – Anna Nalick


@HabsoluteDog
This video is so early 2000s and I’m so here for it it’s insane. God I miss those days.

@sklishumanbusybeing
2026, anyone?

@thejanglezclan
“Life is like an hourglass glued to the table” is an underrated powerful lyric.

Nalick’s first single from her Wreck of the Day album was “Breathe (2 AM)“, which peaked at No. 45 U.S. and went 3× Platinum on the Billboard Hot 100, and went huge on Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40. It was heavily played on AAA and Hot AC stations across the U.S., along with light airplay on Pop stations, and Nalick became one of 2005’s biggest newcomers. Her video for the track got very heavy airplay on VH1 and some MTV airplay as well. At the time of the writing[when?], Wreck of the Day has sold over 615,000 copies with a gold certification from the RIAA, and a No. 20 peak on the Billboard 200. In New Zealand, Wreck of the Day reached the Top 15 albums on the Top 40 Albums Chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Nalick

70 Up – Final Installment of Up Film Series

In 1964, Canadian director Paul Almond filmed a group of 14 British schoolchildren aged seven years-old for a documentary called “Seven Up!” examining the lives of kids across class divides. Seven years later, the children were filmed again, this time by British director Michael Apted, for “14 Up.” Apted went on to revisit them every seven years, charting their progress, resulting in a further seven films, each equally spaced seven years apart. The result has become one of the most remarkable and original longitudinal documentary series in the world.

Apted, who died in 2019, did not live to see the final two-part instalment, “70 Up,” the first of which airs Tuesday evening in the U.K. on ITV (a U.S. broadcast hasn’t yet been finalized). The baton was handed to “Amy” director Asif Kapadia, who documents 12 of the surviving septuagenarians as they reflect on their lives (two of the original cohort, Lynn Johnson and Nick Hitchon, died during the course of the series).

https://variety.com/2026/tv/global/70-up-definitive-longitudinal-documentary-1236854131/

SEE ALSO:
https://edhawkes.com/2021/01/10/michael-apted-interview-fresh-air/
https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/1whmgwr/70_up_review_a_deeply_moving_conclusion_for_the/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)

Literary Criticism in Tlön

In literary practices the idea of a single subject is also all-powerful. It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist: it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works—the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say—attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres…

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Labyrinths
Jorge Luis Borges

Girl as Seen from Train / Vision of Alternate Life – Proust Quote

I needed her to notice me. She did not notice me, so I hailed her. Her tall person was topped by a face with a complexion so golden-pink that I seemed to be seeing her through the radiance of a stained-glass window. She turned and walked back toward me: I could not look away from her face, which, as it neared and grew larger, was like a sun that did not dazzle the stare, no matter how close it came, which you could look straight at as it deluged you with its blaze of glorious golds and reds. Her eye, which had a piercing gaze, met mine; but just then, as the guard and stationmaster were shutting the doors, the train started to move. In broad daylight now, I watched as she walked away from the station and along her footpath: I was traveling away from the dawn. Whether my excitement had been caused by the girl, or whether it had been the cause of much of the enjoyment afforded me by the nearness of her, she was so much a part of my feeling that my desire to see her again was above all the longing to retain something of that excitement, not to let it die, not to be severed forever from the one who, though she was unaware of this, had been part of it. It was not just that this feeling was pleasant. It was especially because (as the tightening of a string or the more rapid vibration of a nerve produces a different note or color) it gave a sharper tone to what I saw, gave me a part to act in an unknown and infinitely more interesting world; and for as long as the gathering speed of the train allowed me to see the beautiful milkmaid, she was like a part of some other life, separated from the one I knew by a narrow borderline, another life, in which the feelings transmitted to me by things were not the usual ones, and the leaving of which felt like a sort of inner death.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2
Marcel Proust