wilt | mushrooms (not that kind), Andy, Henry, Bob(s), Jess

silent bliss

one

I’m happy a three-star Michelin chef can still do the thing Adrienne Cheatham does at 13:37—keel over in pure bliss after eating something delicious like the camera isn’t even there.

two

I spent most of this tribute video trying to figure out who this actor looks like (answer: Nick Kroll and Nick Offerman’s baby). But in all seriousness, give Andy Serkis his flowers.

three

This TED-Ed animation about a Haitian king begins with a quote from Nelson Mandela: “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” (Spoiler: The king is no Nelson).

four

Even if you don’t watch The Bob Emergency, a funny, moving and sometimes stats-heavy SB Nation documentary about all of the Bobs in major sports and how they’re slowly disappearing, at least watch this video of one of the Bobs.

It’s a silent, slo-mo video of Bob Burnquist finally landing something called a megaramp fakie to fakie 900, a trick that, at that point, no other human being had ever done before.

I love his stained butt from how many times he’s fallen, his joy when he finally lands the trick, the vicarious joy of the people who watched him fail and fail and finally nail it.

five

Of pie and men.

misc:

• I can’t stop thinking about this New York Times Magazine article from way back in August 2020 that I only read a couple of weeks ago. It’s about the battle within the medical community between researchers trying to figure out exactly which medicines would best treat Covid-19 and doctors on the front lines just trying whatever treatments they thought would work, to the chagrin of those researchers who wanted them to use more methodical approaches.
  
  It’s obviously a serious article, but I really couldn’t help but laugh at this bit:

  
  “There is no evidence,” a fellow I.C.U. doctor said more than once, her voice raised. Kory, who pointed out at the meeting that his suggestion was based on the opinion of the hospital’s own experts, says he fired back with equal intensity. “And this is Wisconsin,” he told me. “People don’t yell here.”
  

  Other colleagues who were supposed to jump off the call to attend another meeting later confided to Kory that they couldn’t bring themselves to leave, for fear of missing out on this unusual hospital drama.
  

• I’ve been a little haunted by this review of Christine Blasey Ford’s new book about her life before and after her testimony:
  
  We were supposed to be changed by these women’s self-exposure, and what was then euphemized as the difficulty of this moment was supposed to be worth it. We were supposed to honor their sacrifice by changing our own behavior.

  
  We did not. The plundering of public survivors’ psyches during #MeToo—their vulnerability and humiliation, their drained emotions and bank accounts, their curtailed prospects and usurped identities, their rage and grief and degradation—appears, in retrospect, to have been less about our edification than about our entertainment.

  
  Ford and many, many women like her sacrificed their anonymity to let us rummage through their lives for lessons. It was a gesture of desperation but also one of hope. I’m no longer sure it was a wise one.

In lighter news, every morning I’ve been filling up terracotta plant bases with water for the birds in my backyard. A bath for them, bird TV for me.

Spotify playlist: wilt | july ‘24

take care,

b