Shorts, Summer Solstice 2017

  1. The Babadook
  2. ChuckECheese’s

1

Jonathan Pageau is one of the few icon carvers in the world. He has a beautiful website and has contributed many articles to the Orthodox Arts Journal.

I heard his explanation of how he came to carving icons in a fascinating blog, embedding two videos where he and Prof. Jordan Peterson riff about patterns and symbolism (I watched every minute, though not necessarily as intently as merited). He came to iconography as a misfit art student and Evangelical convert to Orthodox Christianity, fascinated by the iconographic tradition and its boundaries. And icons, of course, are absolutely packed with traditional symbolism.

Pageau is now expanding his interest in symbols and patterns in a YouTube channel where he explores the symbolism of movies. Here’s the latest episode, a movie called The Babadook, whose grotesque Babadook figure has become something of an odd, and I’d hope controversial, LGBT symbol:

2

I have never been in a ChuckECheese’s. But Matthew Walther says it’s one of the best bars in America:

Another great thing about Cool Chuck’s is that it is almost totally free of upper-middle-class white liberals, the most dangerous and annoying class of persons in America. They would have no reason to go. By the time ordinary people’s children are ready to enjoy the lights and ball pit, theirs are already studying for the LSAT and brushing up on calculus at bespoke magnet preschools. Besides, it is a place that serves real pizza, with pepperoni and mozzarella cheese, not the flatbread creations topped with avocadoes or peaches or goat cheese or broccoli or all four, which they pretend to like for the same reasons they feign enjoyment of prestige cable dramas instead of just watching Sanford and Son reruns. Also: Dylan and Heather already have iPads stuffed with classical music apps, so the games aren’t a draw either. More for the rest of us.

De gustibus non est disputandum, y’all. Yeah, I’m WEIRD.

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There is no epistemological Switzerland. (Via Mars Hill Audio Journal Volume 134)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.