News and Notes, Vol. 3

First of all, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to my new followers. Like many people angry at Elon Musk, I just joined BlueSky, and I must have been added to a starter pack or something because I gained close to 2,000 followers over just a few days. Of course, I plugged my book and Good Eye immediately because self-promotion is pretty much the only thing social media is good for these days. So if you’re new here, welcome.

I’ve started and stopped writing a post about last week’s election several times now. In each instance, I got halfway through it, and something just didn’t feel right. Too preachy. Not preachy enough. Mostly, it just bored me. I guess I’m not comfortable writing too directly about what’s going on in the world and prefer to approach such topics obliquely. Come mid-February, I’ll probably be writing a piece about an obscure 1987 comedy, and somehow it will end up being about our crisis of democracy, and probably also about my childhood. That’s just how my brain works. You’ll get used to it.

Speaking of the future, there are some changes coming to Good Eye. Of course, I will continue publishing whatever movie and/or baseball thoughts come into my head every couple of weeks, but at the start of next year, I’ll also be creating some new content for paid subscribers. I’ve done this before. Last year, I published two essays a month on the films of 1998 for paid subscribers, and next year I’m going to tackle the films of 1990. 

I was 10 years old in 1990, and looking over the list of releases from that year, I realize it was a special year in my film education. It was when I started getting obsessed with comedies. I’m not sure films like The Freshman, Mr. Destiny, and I Love You to Death are as great as I remember them to be, but I’m going to find out. There are some other personal faves from this year that I know hold up—Joe vs. the Volcano, Tremors, and Quick Change—and I can’t wait to revisit them with a critical eye. Of course, we’ll tackle the blockbusters (Home Alone, Ghost, Pretty Woman) as well as the Oscar players (Dances with Wolves, Dick Tracy, Misery). And I’m delighted I’ll get to write about Goodfellas and My Blue Heaven, which incidentally are both based on the same person. We’ll also get to Miller’s Crossing and The Grifters. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to tackle Ski School, a film I watched probably 25 times in my youth for its, um, dense plotting.

As a reminder, these essays will be available to readers who purchase a paid subscription of any amount. If you’re interested but not yet convinced, I’ve unlocked all the 1998 essays. You can find them here. I’m particularly pleased with the pieces on The Truman Show, Rushmore, Permanent Midnight, and Zero Effect. Writers, however, are rarely the best judge of their own work, so you might want to poke around the collection instead of taking my word for it. Retro reviews are my thing these days, as I also do them at Washington City Paper, one of the few alt-weeklies still kicking around. Here’s a link to my author page over there. My recent essay on The Talented Mr. Ripley is not terrible.

In addition to the ‘90 pieces, I’m also going to give my paid subscribers some baseball content. My plan is to write a game story at least once a month, and I promise it won’t always be about the Mets. I’m gonna watch a lot of baseball in 2025, and when I see a game that sparks my sense of narrative, I’ll write a story about it. A news story? Kind of. A short story? Yeah, more like that. I don’t know exactly. I just know that beat writers these days are too reliant on stats-based reporting. It’s useful but boring. I grew up reading Mike Lupica and Roger Angell, and while I’m nowhere near as good a writer as either of them, that’s what I’ll be gunning for.

I hope you’ll consider signing up. Oh, and if you haven’t yet purchased my book Baseball: The Movie, I hope you’ll do that. And if you do neither, I’m still happy you’re here. Expect emotional baseball talk, Oscars coverage, personal confession, and an occasional insight into the world outside of my own head.

Talk to you soon.