some pretty good advice

shoutout to Kurt Vonnegut (and, to a lesser but not insignificant degree, Rodney Dangerfield)

Every now and then someone will ask me about books. “What are you reading?” they’ll say, or maybe “What do you think I should be reading?” This is always interesting to me because most of what I post online is screencaps of people farting and grand theories about movies where Jason Statham comes out of retirement to clobber some goons, but still, it does happen. And I’ll usually hem and haw a little while I think about whether I should give an answer I think a smart person would give — “uh, I liked… The Scales of Dust” — or whether I should just say that I read Calvin & Hobbes or books about basketball most of the time. But neither of those is entirely true, and not just because The Scales of Dust is a book title I just made up a minute ago.

The real answer is If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? It’s a collection of commencement speeches and essays by Kurt Vonnegut that I flip through every few years. I’ve actually bought the book a few times — at least twice — because I’ve given it away to people after I recommended it to them and they showed the slightest interest. It’s all categorized as “advice to the young,” but honestly, it’s got useful stuff in there for everybody. The title comes from something Vonnegut’s uncle used to say, a way to recognize a pleasant moment and not take it for granted, whether it’s drinking lemonade on a perfect spring day or watching your beloved Philadelphia Eagles womp on the Dallas Cowboys. I recognize that this second example might not be universal but I think you see where I’m coming from.

It’s also about trying to be a good person even when that’s hard, which is something that might resonate on a deeper level. People more familiar with Vonnegut’s fiction writing — Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, etc. — will tell you he was a smart and thoughtful person who wrote about humans as layered creatures. You can also see that in passages like this from one of the speeches in the book.

We may never dissuade leaders of our nation or any other nation from responding vengefully, violently, to every insult or injury. In this, the Age of Television, they will continue to find irresistible the temptation to become entertainers, to compete with movies by blowing up bridges and police stations and factories and so on…

But in our personal lives, our inner lives, at least, we can learn to live without the sick excitement, without the kick of having scores to settle with this particular person, or that bunch of people, or that particular institution or race or nation. And we can then reasonably ask forgiveness for our trespasses, since we forgive those who trespass against us. And we can teach our children and then our grandchildren to do the same — so that they, too, can never be a threat to anyone.

That’s from 1999, for the record. The individuals and the circumstances are always changing but humans remain flawed in the same extremely stupid ways. A good thing to remember. Or try to forget.

But yes, that’s my answer. This book. I’m probably going to crack it open again this week for any number of reasons you can probably imagine. If you are looking for something to help turn down the volume in your brain or try to reset your internal settings, feel free to give it a try, too. Kurt Vonnegut was a smart dude. He also appeared as himself in a Rodney Dangerfield movie, which doesn’t have too much to do with anything else I’ve said but I’m not sure when I’ll have another excuse as good as this to post the clip. So here we go.

You could also just watch a bunch of clips of Rodney Dangerfield on YouTube if you’re not up for a book. Either way. Or both.

Tough to go wrong with those two options.

STUFF I TYPED

— my Friday newsletter, which opens with a section about how I need Dylan from Severance to push his glasses up and also includes a very good cooking segment

— my weekly Severance blog for Vulture, which discusses the series-altering twist and also Pat Benatar

— a second blog for Vulture, this one about network television and also beef stew

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— thank you to Carly Lane for getting an answer to the conundrum about Dylan’s glasses

— good blog about chins

— Sepinwall’s Better Call Saul book dropped this week and here’s a great little excerpt

— I loved this thing about how the guy who plays the janitor on Abbott Elementary had his life changed by the role

— Gemstones teaser

— the best golfer in the world hurt his hand making ravioli

— Christopher Walken doesn’t have the technology to watch the show he’s on

— rascal subway joyride

— the South Park lawsuit is gonna be a big corporate mess and I am kinda excited about it

— “'Everything I Say Leaks,' Zuckerberg Says in Leaked Meeting Audio”

— “DEA Officer Who 3D-Printed Cocaine Gets 17 Years in Prison”

— gas heist

— great post about how we use our various apps and how maybe apps should be secondary pieces of our lives that support the other things we do and not the opposite

— “I feel so stupid right now”

— congrats to Chili’s

— I love the fat bear so much

— lol

Okay, that’s it for this week. Please subscribe and upgrade and read a nice book.