Ask a Faithless Street Member

#544

those look quite nice @monkey; I’m usually a Joseph Abboud guy for chinos. Might have to look at Bonobos now :joy:

#545

I only wear chinos, so this thread is fuego. I go kind of low budge because I skateboard in them, so mainly Dickies. The Abboud ones are in my price range for chinos I’ll eventually destroy.

#546

Why did you kill ely?

#547

Apologies for sounding like a TikTokker on Mountain Dew Red.

#548

Honestly my kid did that to me too.

#549

I had a tic tock account for a short time so I could monitor my granddaughter’s progress in the hospital. When she got home i rid myself of that mess.

#550

@highlife Are there any authors who actually hit their stride and got better in the second half of their lives? I’ve been burned by aging authors so many times I’m thinking of making some sort of personal rule about it. BUT I am also aware it could be a streak of poor luck so I thought I’d consult you before I go off the deep end.

#551

Nabokov certainly comes to mind, with his English works being light years ahead of his Russian. His ‘Speak, Memory’ and ‘Pale Fire’ are both excellent, though I’ve never read ‘Ava’ and ‘Pnin’ is really just a minor trifle. For a guy who came to English as a second or third language, his sentences are a marvel of bejeweled perfection and wordplay.

I think you’ll maybe see more people who ‘published later in life,’ which is to say they didn’t write a book really worth publishing until they were older, rather than simply didn’t write until they were older. I can think of precious few who started young, got published, then continued to get better after a few books and managed to sustain that, other than genre writers.

#552

Georges Perec might be a candidate. My girlfriend likes Olga Tokarczuk and she is probably also one.

EDIT: A couple of years ago, my girlfriend convinced the other member’s of her book club to read Tokarczuk’s Runners, which she found stunning. But the others thought is was a stinker and it became sort of a running joke how she should not be allowed to pick any more books to read. About half a year later, Tokarczuk took home the Nobel prize.

#553

Vonnegut.

#554

@saf This is my much beloved Magnolia Electric Co / Molina playlist – but which essential tracks are missing, would you say?!?

You can obviously see that I prefer the band stuff but I strongly suspect that there are blaring/embarrassing/etc omissions from his solo catalogue (or other songs)?

1
1.png736x376 51.1 KB
2
2.png742x350 39.3 KB

#555

Thank you for asking! I’ll do you one better and give you my Molina Playlist to compare. :slight_smile:

https://music.amazon.com/user-playlists/d0dd70e95c8f417baaf4b4b28a4ad71fsune?ref=dm_sh_afkDsKN0mnypDBCpB0qdtdU77

#556

I do also love his Protection Spells album, but that’s not one to pull apart and put into a playlist.

#557

Awesom! This is exactly what I needed. Back to the drawing board!

#558

Great playlist, grabbing that :blush:

#559

Men of Faithless Street, I just finished reading a book on raising boys and his main thesis was that boys need a mentor to guide them through their mid teens to their twenties (because if you don’t find them one they’re as good as raised by wolves because they’ll turn to the internet or their equally clueless peer group). Did you ever have a mentor? Who were they? What did they teach you?

#560

Nope, not at that age, so I’ve been trying to fix my wolf-raised self since.

#561

No, my peers sort of raised me. And I was probably one of the the most mature ones (aside from a guy who became a commercial airline pilot).

I think if kids are in sports or martial arts they can be exposed to mentor-like figures in coaches (sometimes).

#562

It’s a great question. I’m having some trouble making up my mind exactly who counts as a “mentor.” There was this British guy in his 30s I met on vacation when I was 16 or so, who sort of took me under his wing. He was gay (and I am not), which freaked my mom out a bit (this is in the 80s), but I stayed with him a summer in London. What did he teach me? I’m not sure that I can point to a specific thing, but I know that it helped me at a difficult age. My mom’s boyfriend comes to mind as well, as we stayed in touch after they broke up. I don’t have any sons, but I think the thesis is sound. Maybe girls need the same thing though? I don’t know.

#563

So, like a father? I think a mistake a lot of parents make is checking out entirely when their kids can do the basics (feed, dress, and bathe themselves). Middle school and high school is an insane time, so you want to be connected.

I get the impulse (parenting is exhausting), but teen-onward is also when you need a parent intensely, but in a different way.