The politicians of New Mexico have responded to Trump’s latest proposal.
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Samuel has been complaining about the wasting of his time. E.g., when someone else chooses a video to watch, that person is “wasting my [Samuel’s] time.”
He can be rather sweet about it, however.
“Mom is working [napping, etc.]. She is wasting my time.” He clarifies: “I wish I could to talk to her instead.”
Evelyn Waugh, Scoop:
He had published eight books … beginning with a life of Rimbaud written when he was eighteen, and concluding, at the moment, with Waste of Time, a studiously modest description of some harrowing months among the Patagonian Indians.
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Daniel: “Mommy, I am going to bed, and [the letter] A is going to spend the night with me. Can you carry me and A to bed?”
(2) Pablo of Texcoco, How to Be Grateful: An Aztec Guide to the Art of Gratitude (2025), reviewed at NDPR.
It was jarring to come across both reviews in the same week. It was like reading about Nazis and then learning that a collection of mid-20th-century Germanic homespun “wisdom” had just been issued by a major university press.
The “Nazi” remark isn’t a cheap exaggeration. Clendinnen’s work unavoidably brings the Holocaust to mind.
Still, the analogy isn’t perfect, especially when it’s applied to the other book. Pablo’s “wisdom” was written down quite a few years after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. Would we demand that every postwar Germanic writer address the sorrowful legacy of the Nazi period? If not, then perhaps we shouldn’t object when Pablo and his 21st-century expositors choose not to dwell on the same Aztec qualities that Clendinnen emphasizes.
Perhaps the introduction of Christianity into Nahua culture accounts for the surprising gentleness of the “Pablo” book.
Or perhaps not. It’s not unheard of for the same people to manifest brutality and exquisite etiquettical sensitivity.
How does Clendinnen’s work go down these days? Her scholarship is impossible to ignore. I fear that she is becoming unfashionable, however. I see that in the second (2022) edition of The Mexico Reader, the selection from Clendinnen has been considerably shortened.
Her drunk, laughing mother climbs into the tiny bed with her after a night out. For 18-year-old Sarah (Lena Headey), it’s the last straw. She resolves to leave home. A younger sister is left to contend for herself.
What could have been a depressing first scene is oddly bouyant. It’s lightened by notes from Leftfield’s song “Melt.” Rave music sounds throughout the whirlwind opening third of this 70-minute BBC drama for teens, as Sarah meets, takes ecstasy from, and moves in with Tom (Ian Hart). There are tracks by Orbital, the Prodigy, and similar musicians.
Trainspotting, the more famous drugs-and-techno movie, was released around the same time. Loved Up is much gentler. It’s basically an earlier version of The Spectacular Now, treating of an unsettled but ultimately tethered girl and her rootless boyfriend.
Tom lives in the Now. He pretends not to – he takes pride in his regular employment and considers his after-hours partying to be well-earned – but the truth is, he parties all day long. He plays with the merchandise in the toy shop where he works. He can’t relax at home: his pals are always dropping in, and he hankers for the club.
The movie’s final two thirds are a gradual come-down from the initial high. But what a high!
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As soon as Tom has given Sarah the ecstasy, he takes her to his pals. They all go clubbing and joyriding, and when a postal truck loses a sack of mail, the revelers open the letters and drive around the neighborhood, delivering the happy-sounding ones. Bills and such, they throw away because, what use is unhappy news?
Then, at the flat, Tom and Sarah consummate their new love. The movie may have been broadcast to teens, but its U.S. rating would have been a solid “R.”
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Hart and Headey would go on to become famous for, respectively, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. Headey also would hold her own as Stellan Skarsgård’s co-star in Aberdeen, playing a more grown-up version of Sarah. (Hart re-appears there, too.)
I guess Loved Up is a cautionary tale, but Hart’s and Headey’s heedless glee is what makes it worthwhile. Hart and, especially, Headey are infectious early on – Headey for Sarah’s wide-eyed innocence as she enters Tom’s funhouse scene, Hart for Tom’s pose of worldly assurance. The eventual undermining of these stances is a poignant, if minor, tragedy.
That’s not to put down the rest of the movie. There are some fine later sequences. Sarah invites Tom to meet her alcoholic mother, and Tom obtusely brings along a pal – and a bottle of sherry. Later, when, in an emergency, Sarah summons Tom, he loses the address and tells the cab driver to just follow after other cars.
Meanwhile, Sarah makes her own blunders, losing her job, trying to compensate for forgetting her sister’s birthday, and allowing herself to grow too close to Tom’s dealer (a charming, snaky Jason Isaacs).
None of this is irreparable. There’s little of Trainspotting’s fatalism. One realizes, of course, that Tom will have to wake up, or else. The movie isn’t quite an argument for shortsighted revelry, but it doesn’t come down hard against it, either. What it does argue against is the permanency of this state.
I don’t think any viewer – teen-aged or otherwise – would wish to end up like Sarah’s mother.
… whose music I don’t know well – I confidently recall only her songs “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” and “Islands in the Stream” – but whose generosity I appreciate. My children have received dozens of free books from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
Speaking of libraries: Abel has become almost impossible to supervise in actual ones. He climbs on tables, ravages displays, chews tips off markers, and dumps toy bins upside-down. I follow in his wake, cleaning his messes. Today, while I was picking up toys, he moved through the Spanish-language book section like a tornado, pulling several shelves’ worth of volumes onto the floor.
The library’s rules, unfortunately (or fortunately), do not permit me to reshelve books.
My two least favorite librarians were on duty – the ones who sternly call me “Sir.” They were kind this time.
Yes, it’s good that we receive plenty of books at home, thanks to Dolly Parton.
