Hey y’all,

This is the last weekend to order signed and personalized copies of my books and get them shipped in time for Christmas. The deadline is Monday, Dec. 15th. (If you miss it, don’t worry: there are more ideas in my gift guide.)

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Here are 10 things worth sharing this week:

1. “I am so bored by A.I. One of the things I love about the theater is: A.I. can’t do it. I couldn’t be less interested in computers and fake things. I like people. I like the way they smell, I like the way they talk, and I like the way they think. I think of A.I. as a plagiarizing mechanism. That’s all it is. And I know it’s going to change the world, it’s screwing everybody up, and I’m not in denial about any of that. But I’m in open rebellion.” Well put, Ethan Hawke.

   

2. As much as I am personally offended on multiple levels — creative, spiritual, political, ethical, moral… you name it! — by A.I. and the tech oligarchs who push it on us, I am also with my friend Alan Jacobs: “Everyone knows. Everyone. We really don’t need any more stories explaining what people are doing to themselves.” 
   
   What I am really interested in is how A.I. is pushing people to articulate what they love about art, like Ethan Hein did in his recent post, “AI slop predates AI”:
   
   “I love 1980s hip-hop because there’s no way to predict it from projecting trends in 1970s pop. It questions basic assumptions! It’s missing elements that you might have thought were necessary (like melodies) and it brings in elements you didn’t know you wanted until you heard them (like samples and turntable scratching.) Now the 1980s rap exists, it’s easy to feed it into an AI as training data and get more 1980s rap, but there’s no way that AI could have produced 1980s rap if it was only trained on 1970s pop.”
   
   This is a long-standing obsession of mine: how often it’s what humans leave out — by design or by necessity — that makes their art not average. (Because I’m out here looking for what isn’t average.)

   

   
   

3. I’m having a ton of fun writing this new series, Tuesday Trio, where I recommend a book, a record, and a movie based on a theme. The latest was “problematic gifts.”
   
   

4. “This is the exciting but harrowing period in the publication of a book when, with the writing all done…the waiting-to-see begins. Will people read it? Will they like it?” George Saunders on being in “the gulp,” a spot we’re both in at the moment. (Watch him read from his new one.)
   

   

5. Music documentary: The great Penny Lane sent me a sneak peek of her new documentary about kids’ music, Happy and You Know It, which premieres on HBO on Christmas Day. (I watched it with my 13-year-old, who was a big fan of Penny’s other music doc, Listening to Kenny G.) I loved seeing Chris Ballew (aka Caspar Babypants) in his PNW element, strumming a 3-string uke in front of a fire and hanging out with his wife, the artist Kate Endle. (I was reminded how much I loved his interview with Chase Jarvis.) I also enjoyed the thoughtful commentary of critics Rob Harvilla and Willa Paskin — I want to listen to their podcasts! (Do check out Penny’s newsletter — she writes honestly about what it’s like to make art and documentaries right now. Maybe start with her recent posts about marketing and making trailers and not getting into Sundance.)
   
   

6. Music book: I knew from his newsletter Another Thought that I was teed up to like Dusty Henry’s 33 1/3 entry, 20th Century Ambient, but I was delighted by how expansive he was in telling the story of ambient music, bringing in some of my favorites like Satie, King Tubby, and Yellow Magic Orchestra. (If you’re into this kind of thing, see also: David Toop’s Ocean of Sound, Geeta Dayal’s Another Green World, and Michael Veal’s Dub.)
   
   

7. Songs I had on repeat this week: King Krule’s 2013 live performance of “Out Getting Ribs” (named after a Basquiat piece) and Deerhunter’s “Desire Lines” (named after one of my favorite things).  
   
   

8. The musical legacy of A Charlie Brown Christmas, 60 years on. (Really great reporting here by Felix Contreras — I should check out NPR’s Jazz Piano Christmas.) Apple owns the rights to the Peanuts specials, but anyone can stream A Charlie Brown Christmas for free this weekend on Dec. 13 and 14.
   
   

9. “I think the ordinary is a very under-exploited aspect of our lives because it’s so familiar.” RIP photographer Martin Parr.
   
   “I was trying to use the dumb, normal materials of the neighborhood.” RIP architect Frank Gehry.

   
   

10. A fun alternative for surviving our disastrous times.
    

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xoxo,

Austin