Category - WFAT

*** Wisdom From A Typewriter #69 ***

WFAT 69 - Kara Swisher

I used to think Kara Swisher is a bit of a blowhard.  I’d listen to some of her interview/podcasts and think “shut up, Kara, and let your guest talk.”  It seemed she always had more to say than whoever she was interviewing.

That is still often the case, but I’ve warmed up to her, particularly since I started listening to the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway. I listen to Pivot mostly to hear from Galloway.  Don’t anybody tell him, but he’s a Staunch McLuhanist, too.

I found this week’s Wisdom From A Typewriter in this profile in Vanity Fair.

Also, apparently, she lives with a relative of Buster’s:

Kara Swisher, cat person

Kara Swisher, cat person

 

*** Wisdom From A Typewriter #68 ***

Quote from Marc Maron

From Marc Maron’s conversation with Terry Gross on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ – February 16, 2023.

That’s as good a reason as I can think of for my divorce.

Hard to believe it’s been four years already. Haven’t spoken to her since.

That’s all.

See all the WFATs here: wisdomfromatypewriter.com

PS: I watched Maron’s HBO special ‘From Bleak to Dark‘ last night.  A lotta laugh-out-louds.  I’ve always respected Marc Maron from a distance, never really dove into him, but after seeing this special I’m more of a fan.  He scores a lot of subtle points without the usual yelling that too many comics rely on.  He might be this generation’s George Carlin

***Wisdom From A Typewriter #65***

I was not familiar with the author Emily St. John Mandel until earlier this year when I tuned into the HBO Limited Series Station Eleven – the ‘show about a pandemic created in the middle of a pandemic.’  That series was simply one of the most compelling things I’ve watched on the TeeVee in the past year, at least.

This past week I learned – via Ezra Klein’s podcast – that Mandel (St. John Mandel?) has a released a new novel, Sea of Tranquility. 

I found this quotation in the in the first few pages.  Kinda reminds me of myself… I go through life with the pin in one had and the grenade in the other, wondering where I’m gonna toss it….

Also, it’s a perfectly sublime Sunday afternoon here in the Treehouse with Buster.  I am not missing working in the mall on weekends.

What She Said (***WFAT #63***)

I watched the first episode of HBO’s new show “The Gilded Age”  last night.  I’m not sure yet what I think of it.  It’s created by the same guy who created Downton Abbey, and I liked that, but one episode in this seems over the top and a bit fatuous.  I took a shine to Carrie Coon after The Leftovers and Fargo, but she seems wasted here in a role that is all about living in a ridiculously large house and wearing ridiculous dresses.  Granted this was the pilot episode, so maybe it gets more worthwhile from here, but the viewing was at least hearing this line.  I take a note these days whenever I see or hear the word “incorrigible.”  Every time somebody uses that word, this little demon gets his smile on 😈

*** Wisdom From A Typewriter #62 ***

Marianne Williamson is the only presidential candidate that has made it to a national TeeVee debate stage that I ever had lunch with.

That was back about 1990, when she was just getting started on the lecture circuit, talking about A Course in Miracles.  Long before “A Return to Love,” Oprah, or the 2020 Democratic Party primaries.

At the time I met her, I was in Los Angeles training for my brief career (1990-1991) as a Series 7 securities peddler.  I heard Marianne at one of her lectures at a church in West Los Angeles,  talking about how she was financially insecure, so I approached her after the lecture and we arranged a lunch meeting.  Nothing came of it beyond that, other than the recollection that that was one of the most intense lunch meetings I ever had.

If nothing else, she and I are both Truman Babies (she 1952, me 1950).

This quote above is lifted from a profile in a recent edition of the New York Times. 

*** Wisdom From A Typewriter No. 61 ***

 

Scott Galloway is a tech investor, commentator and business school professor at NYU.

I first learned of his existence on the Bill Maher show back in March, 2021. He made quite an impression. Maybe too strong an impression to ever be invited back.

But after I saw him on the TeeVee, I started listening to Pivot, the podcast he hosts with tech/business journalist par excellence Kara Swisher. They have as good a grasp of the Forces At Work in the World today as anybody.

Near the end of their first episode of the New Year, Galloway started talking about having lost a cousin to Covid. The cousin was all of 62 years old. In what almost amounted to a ‘hidden track’ at the end of the episode, Galloway said what I have quoted above.

And that, I hope, will be my mantra for the coming months.

Please say hello if you want to be among my “Dunbar’s Number

 

 

*** Wisdom From A Typewriter No. 60 ***

I might be paraphrasing a bit here. The quote went by pretty quickly in the middle of a screening of “Without Getting Killed Or Caught,” the documentary about Guy Clark (and Susannah Clark and Townes Van Zandt for good measure). He was actually recalling how he captured the refrain from his signature song, “L.A. Freeway,” which became the title of his biography by Tamara Savarino.

Watch the trailer: