I first wrote about the Alice books here in early 2010.
While it was clear that they and discussion around them were things I loved, I’d not
yet begun this series of posts — although Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice work got referenced in the debut installment later that year. So inducting them officially into my roster of 55 Favorites (and counting) didn’t feel necessary until a few recent events persuaded me.
The above pic came to light as I was going through some cloud photos. I had wanted
to provide a look at my Alice items on the shelf, unpacked from the boxes they’d been in; however, I’d rearranged and decided the best place for them was on a vintage dresser topped with a mirror — if you get it, you get it — and pieces set to hold small lamps but also good for teacups. Since the items have been sitting piled on that dresser with other stuff mixed in for too long now, I’m sharing the older incarnation despite having added to my modest collection and sadly not being able to revert the photo to the wider shot I must have taken back then.
I’ve been holding onto an unusually intense dream that’s appropriate for today.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, was leading a very small tactical team including me on a covert mission deep within the Kremlin. We all were incredibly silent and the living quarters were eerily vacant as we breached them, so I figured there had to be help from the inside — which just got me even more worried that our mission was to, you know, take a certain someone out, quite possibly for the greater good of humanity but perhaps at a cost to my own since I was new to this stuff.
Once we arrived in a long, ostentatious dining room, a signal was given and a bunch
of children filed in. Then a film projector started up and unspooled Star Wars on an expanse of blank wall space to the kids’ delight. I can’t say if it was meant to be humanitarian relief for a group of hostages, soft propaganda to win over sheltered, indoctrinated young minds, or what, but it was apparently successful as the scene jumped to a few of us sitting in a dimly lit parlor with a woman who might have been the late Madeleine Albright offering congratulations on a job well done.
I’m happy to report that the digital library of Peanuts books offered at Humble Bundle to mark Fantagraphics’ 50th birthday was extended.
Click on that link now — as long as it’s not yet 2 p.m. ET on April 23rd, 2026. I’ll be here when you get back. [Update: The campaign seems to have a rolling deadline, although that could easily change.]
Not sure why I haven’t shared this here before. I put it up on Tumblr (man, I need to update and rework that layout) and Facebook (geez, I need to get the public Blamposts page there going) like a decade ago. Sorry if you’re not familiar with the French expression but at least I amuse myself.
Related: 5 by 5 • All I Needed Was the Laugh You Gave • Pyg’ Spy
“I Wish” as put to vinyl by Stevie Wonder in 1976 contains your recommended daily minimum of joy. Yet the jazzy instrumental cover whipped up last year by Polish guitarist Marcin and Japanese pianist Hayato Sumino is so infectious, so irrepressible, that it almost renders the original tame in comparison. [3:17]
That’s among the more recent music links I’ve been sitting on for too long. I’ll round
out this post with another cover and another instrumental, both employed in a pivotal episode of Vince Gilligan’s brilliant Apple TV series Pluribus — a chapter loaded with songs, within and external to its narrative, as enumerated in a Decider article which you might not want to read if you get kitschy ’80s pop like Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy” stuck in your head easily. (Oops! Sorry.)
A recent dream that found me in the heart of lovely Wayne, PA, where I resided for a couple of years much longer ago than it seems, reminded me that I’d jotted down another one set there several months back.
The newer one: I’m walking on a side road that feeds into Main Street when I hear Dido singing “Thank You” during an outdoor photoshoot. I approach her because she’s an old friend and we catch up a little but she’s busy working — so after confirming that she still lives nearby I tell her that Em and I have a place in Manayunk now and we should meet for lunch.
Zero idea who Em’s supposed to be.
The older dream: I’ve gone to Minella’s Diner with someone whom, per my notes, I couldn’t place upon waking and in hindsight I would very much like to believe was the mysterious Em. Bruce Springsteen, the E Street Band, and their entire touring entourage are there and have taken up several tables. I hear another patron tell his server that any drinks they order under $55 are on him and, dear reader, I’m at least as curious about how my subconscious came up with that cutoff point as you are. Once my friend and I have been seated, Lex Luthor turns around from the next booth to speak to us — not a generic version, but Lex Luthor as voiced by Clancy Brown in the DCAU Superman and Justice League animated series, fleshed out in real life and threatening us with something I can’t recall.
Related: Of Was and When • REM Brands • HIVE Minded • Fight and Flight
