brendan halpin

Part one is here. Part two is here.

At this point, I suppose it’s worth asking why I continue to write about this. I should start by saying that I really had no resentment of Danny Hillis from my time as his employee. One of the things his company did that probably led to their downfall was to hire overqualified people for low-level jobs. Which was how I found employment during the Bush The Elder recession. I rarely interacted with Hillis—he played the part of the absent-minded professor who didn’t own any professional clothing and would slouch around the joint in old t-shirts. Even then I recognized this as a flex— “I’m so important I don’t have to dress as nicely as the people who answer my phone”—but while there were some horrible people at Thinking Machines, I never thought of Hillis as one of them.

A while back, the marketing people were talking about “friction” a lot. I can’t remember if this was before or after they were talking about “pain points.” Either way, friction in this context means things that slow you down, that make it hard for you to get stuff done. (I believe online shopping was the prime example here—like every click that stands between you and the “complete purchase” button is friction.)

More Epstein emails have dropped, and after seeing my former boss, Danny Hillis, in one of the recent photo dumps, I went a-searchin’ for Danny’s name in the emails.

In recent conversations with friends and acquaintances, I’ve found myself in the unaccustomed position of being optimistic. Which is weird with the world falling apart around us, but let me explain.

A rehearsal studio somewhere in England. 1978.

Enter Roger Waters.

So I was perusing the photos dumped by the Justice Department, and I saw two photos of a man I once worked for, Danny Hillis. (My first job out of college was at Thinking Machines Corporation, the doomed supercomputer manufacturer founded by Hillis, who knew computers, and Sheryl Handler, who knew business. Apparently neither of them was actually very good at what they did because the computers broke all the fuckin’ time and they couldn’t sell them after a while and the whole venture went belly up a few years after I left).

It’s tough for us horror weirdos when Halloween ends and we start getting bombarded with treacly Christmas entertainment. Fortunately, there’s always some weirdo who puts out a nasty Christmas horror movie, and may Satan bless them for their efforts.

On a recent episode of the Tomb of Terrors podcast, host Old Man Brad extolled the virtues of the new Silent Night, Deadly Night. I had never seen the original, so I decided to correct that before seeing the new one.

The only thing I really knew about the original was that Siskel & Ebert absolutely lost their minds about it when it came out. (yes, I was watching Siskel & Ebert in 10th grade. Wasn’t everybody?) I mean, they hated slashers in general, but they seemed profoundly offended by this one, clutching their pearls about THE CHILDREN and how evil it was to have a killer in a Santa suit. (Had they seen Christmas Evil in 1980?).

I went out to see some bands play on Friday night. (Ray Liriano Experience, Muck & the Mires, and The Chelsea Curve, all of whom were absolutely fantastic! These are all Boston bands, but if you have a chance to see any of them in Boston or anywhere else, do not miss it). I did not come home smelling like cigarette smoke.

If you’re younger than, I dunno, 50, this may seem like a weird thing to remark on. Why would you come home smelling like cigarette smoke after seeing bands play?

In most cases, when people say a novel is good or bad, they’re wrong. Because novels can offer a variety of pleasures: an involving plot, interesting characters, beautiful prose, keen observations, titanic imagination, dialogue that is better than real life speech but not so much better that it sounds fake, an atmosphere that you enjoy getting lost in, or just a vibe that hits you in the right place at the right time.

We all value certain of these pleasures more than others, and no novel offers all of them. And our preferences for things done well and tolerance for things done badly can change from book to book.