103 Comments
Feb 5, 2022Liked by Matt Labash

Hesseman...You were good for what ails us. Thanks, Doc.

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Matt Labash meetup at the Golden Corral? Make it happen.

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Vis a vis The Golden Corral & Dinner Theater;

“You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” - Andrew Clyde

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"All I wanted was some steak!" Indeed. A land of a million sleeper cells ready to fight over feelings, entitlement, and false beliefs. What happens to civil order when true shortages / scarcity happen? Whether it's consumables or national infrastructure circumstances, we're in a tight spot.

In the meantime...I'll buy a power generator so that when the power grid goes dark I can hunker down and cope with an endless buffet of Anthony Bourdain videos. Matt, do you have a favorite episode? While it's hard to pick a single favorite, Asturias Spain with Bourdain and Jose Andres is special.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Matt Labash

Thanks for the Johnny Fever Clip!!!!!

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You force the cleverness in your writing too much; It was like having to read a college essay where the kid was too impressed with his own writing -way too much pseudo-philosophical “opininating”. This is only a reflection of the people involved in the fight and the voyeur that recorded it. It is not a mirror on the collective “we”.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Matt Labash

Mama June three knuckles deep in corn pudding … you captured the essence of Golden Corral perfectly in a single phrase.

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Another hilarious piece. Love your writing so much. Hope to live long enough to read your past writings as I only recently discovered you.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Matt Labash

You are full of surprises and the way you weave them together touches my soul. Golden Corral craziness, people who actually send feces in the mail (why is this legal?!), and then Frederick Buechner. Thanks.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Matt Labash

Aren’t all our lives more fulfilled when people take the initiative to record crazy behaviors and share them so others can comment? (Sarcasm intended). Is this how civilization ends? (Although the Roman Empire ended without TikTok).

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Feb 4, 2022·edited Feb 4, 2022

Agree that there's much more aggressive hostility on the lose these days. So many people seem perfectly willing to turn their rage lose at the slightest provocation. Am I the only one who noticed the Twitter handle of the OP? @TheJuggetnaut88. Or read the comments replying to the tweet, many of which were disrespectful and downright racist? I believe I have a pretty good idea about the point old juggernaut88 (obvious much, eh?) was making, and it had nothing to do with pointing out that there's a bunch of fighting mad people on the loose and everything to do with ridiculing a certain demographic, I guess so he can feel all superior or supremacist or something.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Matt Labash

Two rules I live by. Don’t eat at Golden Corral .and IHOP after 10 pm on weekends

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Okay, you quoted Buechner, so I subscribed. I hope you're happy now.

I have been pondering whether we as a culture are so angry because it's better to be angry than sad. If we're angry we feel like we have some power, but if we're sad, we're powerless, because nobody cares if we're sad.

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Not to be a dick, or rather, specifically to be a dick, if you’re listening to an audiobook while taking a walk in the woods, you aren’t taking a walk in the woods properly. Also, Caravan is not Van’s greatest song. It’s great and the live version on The Last Waltz, in particular, is way up there, but for my money it’s Madame George or Into the Mystic (take 11). Hypnotic stuff.

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founding

Matt, in the 1980s we made a film about a Black family called "A Singing Stream" that became the beginning of Folkstreams.net, a site 20 years in the making, that streams most of the old films about American Folklife for free. . A Singing Stream is emblematic of the idealism we had then, and our search and belief in the goodness of America. The central character is Bertha Landis, who was in her 80s when we made the film. Folkstreams is rich in this kind of material. https://www.folkstreams.net/films/singing-stream

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I must thank you again for your writing and for introducing me to Frederick Beuchner......he took my breath away on this colder than usual day in Tucson. While deciding earlier today to isolate, read and do something constructive and alone, laundry, I mused about preferring aloneness today. I just didn't have the energy to engage, even with people I love and like, except, maybe by text or email. And then Reverend Beuchner was brought into my life......and I shall save this piece in my file name Matt Labash. Can you imagine that I have a file on my computer with pieces of yours that I return to time and again to be uplifted or smile or say "what the f.....is he thinking?"

Many thanks and hope your weather improves.

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