Chris Holden
@cholden
Music librarian, trivia nerd, infrequent social media presence. The questions are more important than the answers
I took the first picture in 2016, so I’m going to have to demand royalties from Christopher Nolan for using the exact same camera angle in 2026. (Ait Ben Haddou, Morocco. Once you’ve been there you start to recognize it in every movie set in a desert)
Old maps would just throw in pictures of little guys wherever there was a blank space, and we should bring that back.
Here I am with my tour guide when I visited Haiti, in a fort built to keep out the French. Both Haiti and the US rebelled against their colonial overlords around the same time, and the two countries have a lot in common if we actually cared about seeing similarities instead of differences
This is me for pretty much every paperback reissue in the past twenty years. (Also happy belated birthday to Tom P.)
I’m going to become a RETVRN guy, but only for using the Old English words for “music” before the Greco-Latin references to the Muses crept into our language.
Still getting used to this thing where my favorite movie of the year also wins Best Picture (in fairness, the Academy completely ignored my 2nd through 15th favorite movies)
Sometimes I Google a portion of a quote, and I’m so glad that now Google gives me questionable literary analysis from Reddit in bold highlighted font, front and center, instead of, you know, just the complete quote or the source.
Watched the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet, and for a 30 year old unabridged adaptation of a 400 year old play, its humor and pacing somehow seems perfect for social media memes in 2026?
Every so often the Grove Dictionary of Music absolutely throws some poor obscure 17th century composer under the bus
90% of the city's population votes Democrat. It's statistically likely this commenter is the sort of person who has a "hate has no home here" yard sign and votes blue no matter who, etc.
This is a Hungarian speaking in English to a Mexican journalist with the interview translated *back* into English by a machine, but there is something so childlike and wonderful about the language László Krasznahorkai uses to describe Thomas Pynchon's love of pizza.
The neighborhood listserv is mostly NIMBYisms and barely-concealed racism, but when it hits, it hits.
May I offer you the naiads and tritons in the Court of Neptune fountain at the Library of Congress (a fountain so sexy that someone stole the fig leaf off Neptune’s genitals and they never bothered to replace it)
"Chris, choose one movie that isn't boring as shit challenge" If I limited my list to mainstream US releases mostly made for the awards circuit pipeline it would look something like this, but there's a reason I'm not a populist.
I have my gripes with the NYTimes Best Movies of the Century project (overreliance on English-language releases, complete lack of any avant-garde or installation pieces that didn't get a commercial release) but instead of complaining about it incessantly, I'll just post my (unordered) list I guess.
The French Lieutentant's Woman (1981) joins the short list of Movies Better Than The Book. The film fixes the problems with Fowles' novel (turgid prose, authorial voice that thinks it's more clever than it is) and improves on the conceit with a parallel story about the actors making the movie.
We made a mushroom wellington in an attempt to find a substantive meat-free Thanksgiving entrée for my vegetarian father. Mostly successful, although next time we need a thicker crust.
Also, here's a nice reminder that fantasy books used to have memorable, evocative cover art, and now they just look like any other trash airport bookstore thriller.
New Nuri Bilge Ceylan is finally coming to DC; excited that this next installment in meditative, psychologically-grounded Turkish cinema is the longest one yet!
My wife recently led me through a 10 week Taylor Swift bootcamp in preparation for her show, and then she foolishly agreed that I could do the same for her with Peter Gabriel...I currently have 16 weeks planned.
The migration over here has led to a great leveling…even the former Twitter power users are only getting a handful of likes.