PicoBlog

A few days after Walter Becker’s death in September 2017, the Minneapolis radio host Ron “Boogiemonster” Gerber mourned as only he could. He got behind a microphone on a Friday night at community-run KFAI-FM and dedicated an episode of his long-running weekly program to Steely Dan. “Everything I play tonight,” he told the listeners of Crap From The Past, “would not have been possible without Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.” 

Casey O’Neill is part of an increasingly rare group of people who join a company while in college and never leave. Her entry into Boston Beer Company originated during her senior year at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, when she accepted an internship in their Quality Assurance (QA) lab. Fast forward 12 years and she’s now the Director of Product Development for Boston Beer, specializing in their “beyond beer” category. Her already extensive purview over Truly, the second-largest national hard seltzer brand after White Claw, is on the cusp of growing even more — Boston Beer founder and chairman Jim Koch says he expects “beyond beer” will double the company’s business over the next 14 years.

‘If you live in Chartres, you have to hustle to get to the top.’ That’s the basic idea behind the French crime comedy Cash (which is called Gold Brick in some other territories). The movie tells the story of Daniel Sauveur (Raphaël Quenard), who was born in Chartres, in the middle of Nowhere, France. The town is run by the Breuil family, who export Parisian perfumes to the rest of the world.

I spend a lot of time mulling over questions without clear answers. For instance: Freedom of religion is a core American principle. I’m all for it. But how are women free if we’re born into a belief system rooted in we’re to blame? The story of Eve in the garden seeps into the subconscious. If you buy into the idea that all woe is made from a woman eating from the tree of knowledge, it does not bode well for women in politics.

Welcome to the Witch’s Kitchen! This is the monthly free full version of the newsletter. To have access to everything we post (and allow us to keep paying our spectacular writers), plus be able to comment on issues, upgrade to a paid subscription. Hello, wonderful witches! One of my favorite scents is a freshly brewed pot of coffee. Which is a little odd, because I actually don’t like coffee at all.

Sure, the stalwart Potter 19 is massively popular with our audience, but then there must be good reasons more than 15,000 Catalina 22s have been built. Let’s take a closer look. About the Catalina 22 we wrote: It’s probably safe to say that you or someone you know has sailed aboard some variation of this popular boat. Frank Butler’s design has endured largely because of its versatility. As you read this, somewhere a Catalina 22 is probably camp-cruising a vacation lake, while another races toward the upwind mark at a local regatta.

Programming note: I’ll be talking about this movie on an upcoming “Medium Cool” podcast with Austin Glidden and friends, so make sure to tune in! Like a lot of people, I watched Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” when it came out 22 years ago (!), enjoyed it as a comedic caper starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a real-life teenage con man and Tom Hanks as the FBI gumshoe chasing him — and then more or less promptly forgot about it.

Welcome to the AZ Coyotes Insider newsletter. My plan is to publish stories four to six times per week. By subscribing, you’ll be supporting independent, accountable journalism. Subscribe now so you won’t miss a story. Give a gift subscription Introducing Catching Up With, a new story series from AZ Coyotes Insider that will check in with former Coyotes to see what they have been doing with their lives since leaving the organization.

This morning I finished reading YOUNG QUEENS: THREE RENAISSANCE WOMEN AND THE PRICE OF POWER (Bloomsbury/Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2023). Authored by my dear friend and writing think-tank buddy Leah Redmond Chang and weighing in at over 400 pages before the notes, this book is as compelling and as gorgeous a read as it is long.  With the suspense of a Jason Bourne novel (or movie) but with teen- and tween-sized protagonists wielding quills instead of Kalashnikovs, turning curtsies not cartwheels, with platform-soled, backless silk chapins on their little feet (Elisabeth de Valois came to love Spanish footwear), the book is a poignant, immersive, and altogether magnificent re-telling of the intertwined lives of three women who became the very young queens of France, Spain, and Scotland.