Phil Gentry

Tenor of the times: I serve in a very low-duty volunteer role for a very casual hobby (amateur lake sailing in old wooden boats) and everyone is suddenly screaming at each other over email about some arcane timing issues for next summer’s races. 🙃

Americans, with childlike glee: “look, it’s a chocolate volcano!” British, sneering: “that’s right, pudding, you work for me now. I’ll just watch.”

I have been quarantined and bedridden with a terrible norovirus for a numbers of days now, and I am pretty sure that I have now seen every last short form vertical video available on every platform. All of it, I have seen. A new level of consciousness.

This expensive new pomodoro timer I bought is going to solve all my problems.

Personally, as a man I only read books by fellow men; that’s why I enjoyed Middlemarch so much, that George fellow really gets us.

Just to give an example of what I mean, for over two decades the CPUSA published New Masses, a general audience-oriented magazine of cultural criticism. Many ups and downs, but consistently published amazing artists and left an indelible imprint on modernism and mass culture.

Looking forward to reading this impeccably-timed new book by @abbieboggs.bsky.social

I gave a talk on Paul Robeson to my kid’s fourth grade class once, and made the mistake of playing Robeson singing “Joe Hill,” and for the rest of the class, all the kids wanted to know was the precise details of how Joe Hill was killed. 🙄

Not PopCon directly conflicting with SAM 😔

Have been around higher ed long enough to recognize that sometimes important work does require bureaucratic expansion, but also, lol that they began by hiring a VP and buying new software, lol, classic move.

speaking of actually-existing cancel culture...

Dennis Hastert, Jim Bakker...who's the third going to be?

and totally unrelated, not at all a pattern, that last spring's PSSA scores are still in a mysterious holding pattern in the bureaucratic skies. 🙄

Gotta take any journalist job you can, I know, but I really feel for whoever's it is at the NYT to dutifully write up a detailed summary of SNL each week.

I’ve had recurring nightmares based on Return to Oz for about four decades now.

I have to say, I think Philly would be a happier, healthier place if they got rid of all the professional sports teams.

I just still don’t understand how the traffic mitigation for the Market St. bridge closure included turning these blocks of Walnut into a three-lane highway and getting rid of the bike lane protection.

So glad we got our 10yo a phone so she can text important questions during class.

I know that my students are zoning out on me because I referred to CPE Bach as an eighteenth-century softboi and nobody blinked an eye.

My wife and I, using four separate devices, attempted to get reservations at Mawn anywhere in November the moment reservations opened up today at 12:00pm. We failed.

This is niche west philly content, but: the whole faking-being-Palestinian thing was mostly a reflection of one bad actor, but it’s definitely also a reflection on her organizing community, and if I were them I would not be continuing to plant more stories in the paper about it! 🤯

Shipping from Fordham now. My thanks to @isaackamola.bsky.social and Grace Hong for their generous reviews of the manuscript and these blurbs! Use EMPIRE26 for 25% off too! Degrees of Empire - Abigail Boggs share.google/IFCGRIBTTh2G...

My gentle giant of a daughter is doing a girls-only basketball program (trans inclusive, thank you very much), and after years of her enduring shitty boys in coed leagues, it warms the heart to see her play without all the noise. 😭

I know that I overdo the "everything starts with McCarthyism" thing, but also, if you want to understand what Senator Eric Schmitt was attempting to do there, I strongly recommend Nathan Glazer's analysis of it, back in 1953. www.commentary.org/articles/nat...