Alan Jacobs

I wrote about Sherlock Holmes and Jacques Derrida. As one does.

My all-time favorite edition of Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files is this one, about an unfortunate encounter with Charlie Watts.

Had dinner at Red Herring tonight and the cacio e pepe was, if not to die for, certainly to kill for. Okay, maybe also to die for.

It finally arrived!

Pochettino: the only football manager on the planet who can look at the USMNT job and think: Well, it’s not as chaotically mismanaged as my last two clubs. ⚽️ 

Chelsea FC: Finally fulfilling its God-given role as a feeder club for American soccer managers. ⚽️ 

Oh cool, it’s Emo Dorothy Sayers.

Via Ethan Iverson, Vinnie Sperrazza gives us the backbeats.

Plan de l’exposition universelle de 1900. Full-size image here.

just before I lost that finger

First the Crush commercial and now this: Apple seems to have decided that the enemy they must destroy is … artists, especially ones who don’t make much money. Apple is getting close to Spotify levels of scumminess.

This article on the essential Shel Slverstein omits what I believe to be his masterpiece: Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book.

I wrote about something I call the diaconal charism. 

I wrote about anarchism as a spiritual discipline.

Writers at their desks 

Thesis: the first album — as a coherent work of art, not merely a collection of songs — was Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours (1955); the last one was Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998). 

The thing I love about sports is the way it can bring the world’s top political powers together. 

USA men’s 🏀, gold medal game, shooting in the last 3 minutes:

• Curry made 3
• Durant made 2 FT
• Curry made 3
• Curry made 3
• Curry made 3
• Booker made 2

Sixteen points, and they didn’t miss.

I’m really touched by Robin’s kind words here. (Also, what a great newsletter issue.) 

So Emma Hayes leads the (formerly quite broken) USWNT to a gold medal and all the Brit footy commentators can talk about is how she got her tactics all wrong. ⚽️