March 18, 2026
Well, hello there.
Is this the best YouTube video of the 2020s? My vote is yes.
My 20s: I really, really, really hate this song
My 30s: I love this song
I enjoyed the Oscars on Sunday. It was fun to see some great movies get some awards.
Financial Times’ Unhedged has become one of my go-to financial podcasts. Its hosts feel like actual people and not soulless tech bros.
I love their recent episode explaining the modern state of stablecoins and the wider crypto universe. Katie Martin and Rob Armstrong, the latter who (in)famously coined the phrase “TACO,” both think crypto, while full of promise, is really, really, really stupid and is the tool of the modern grifter. I agree. But unlike me, they have actual evidence.
Over the weekend, I picked up Haruki Murakami’s old short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes. I used to own this collection and loved it dearly. I wanted to revisit it as I work on my new short stories. So imagine my surprise when I reread these stories and, except for "Barn Burning,” which is still a top short story for me and the source material for the excellent movie Burning, I … didn’t love these stories anymore?
Does that ever happen to y’all?
I wonder if it’s a form of second-hand embarrassment. I loved this collection in my late teens and early 20s, and now I’m older and find a lot of who I was as a younger man embarrassing. Maybe it’s Murakami’s gift in conveying surprise, which immediately disappears upon rereading, except, again, for “Barn Burning.” I did notice that on this read, he spends a lot of time on little mundane details. I once saw these details as valuable world-building and as a bridge between reality and his more absurd and fantastical scenes. For some reason, it all now comes across as “Look at me and all the cool stuff I have.” After a while, it slows down the momentum of the stories.
It’s strange how that works.
Earlier this week, my friend and I saw the new Colleen Hoover adaptation, Reminders of Him. (One of the benefits of being an AMC Stubs A-List member: you’re more willing to try out movies you’d otherwise never see.) I had minimal experience with Hoover’s style of beach romance, while my friend knows more about these kinds of books and all their film and TV spinoffs. Since my friend and I are creative guys who make things, we went to the movie to learn how Hoover connects with so many people. Clearly, she’s doing something right. I went in with an open mind.
I didn’t like the film. I actually kind of hated it. My friend also had issues—we agreed that there was a lot of strange editing and stiff acting, which is more a film issue than a source material issue—but he was able to appreciate the movie for what it was and think about how it connected to its intended audience.
That’s a nice summary of how creative folks can be split, I think: You can work to reach an existing audience by giving them what they already know and want, or you can make something just for yourself, which then shows other people something new that they didn’t realize they wanted or needed. The best artists are the ones who can balance these two sometimes-combative goals.
Since I’m the latter kind of writer who’s most concerned with getting certain images and feelings out of my head and onto the page, regardless of whether two or two million people care, I still wanted to walk away learning something about storytelling.
Thankfully, I did.
Credit to the film: the setting, tone, principal characters, dramatic stakes, and pretty much the entire roadmap to the film are introduced within the first two minutes. You don’t know all the details about the journey, but you know the exact destination where these specific characters are heading and what every instance of dramatic tension is building towards. Now you can enjoy the ride and the eventual romance.
It’s an intentional lack of friction, not from the characters (who start out not understanding each other and having to learn to connect with each other) but from the storytelling. It’s a comfort to get the story you think you’re going to get; you’re rewarded for your assumptions.
That is fine, of course. Art can be a useful reminder of what we already know that makes us feel. What I learned for myself is that the storytelling friction that doesn’t exist in this movie is why I love all the art I love. I find comfort in having my expectations challenged, confused, or even blown up.
A helpful contrast is the first handful of minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. After the first handful of minutes, I still have no idea who Daniel Day-Lewis’s character is or what is going to happen or even where I am, but I’ve already learned so much about the character and what he is capable of that it even foreshadows the movie’s end. The journey and destination are so unclear to me, so I’m enjoying the ride to somewhere beyond my existence.
I’m not a smart-enough film watcher to catch this on my own: I’m stealing from Quentin Tarantino’s own talk about why he loves There Will Be Blood and why the opening works. (Around the 4min mark.)
It’s a good rule to keep in mind for writing. Be intentional about the types of friction you choose to place upon the reader. There is no “bad” friction or even a requirement to place it upon the audience—I understand Hoover’s appeal, even if it’s not for me—but I never before articulated to myself how intentional I should be with different types of friction.
Hoover fans: What should I watch or read next?
With love and all the good things,
-b
