The single most pleasurable movie of all time is Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven, and it achieves that status in order to try to convey what makes filmmaking uniquely magical: a sense of shared enchantment between the audience and the director, and the ecstasy of the latter pulling a heist on the former -- not (just) trickery, but the successful creation of an ornate and difficult craft. (See also The Prestige.)

June, like any month in which I neither write very much nor read very much, feels already cryptographic in retrospect.

There are two mental models about work and fatigue which, like my brief dalliance with Roshe Runs, I have loved and outgrown:

I had hoped and expected that the chaos which had marked the start of the year — floors, termites, sickness, fires, ACL surgery — was largely behind us, and that I would be freed to find some sort of rhythm or backbeat with which to tether a new normalcy. And of course, this has not been the case, though for more pleasant reasons than previously: three semi-impromptu trips (all good); lots of corgi rehab (all successful); lots of sleep regression (some in the rear-view). But I was still able to...