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Levi Stahl

@levistahl.bsky.social

4.5K followers 1.2K following 11K posts

Editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany and The Daily Sherlock Holmes. Marketing Director at the University of Chicago Press. Board member of the Uptown People’s Law Center.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · Aug 25

I started a newsletter, friends.

this-not-that.ghost.io

This, Not That

Reccomending some good books, movies, music, and more

this-not-that.ghost.io

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 18m

Play ball. Let’s go, Cubs. (I’m way too old to go to a baseball game that starts after 8 o’clock.)

Wrigley Field from my upper deck right field seats.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 46m

Working on Bach’s “Jesu” at my lesson, for an 8-hands performance at my teacher’s next student event, & I’m broken by jazz such that I had to fight the urge to swing it. Which is probably an abomination against god, but He’s seen worse. Today. In Chicago.

(If you play, you should try it. It’s fun!)

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 6h

Hobos still in the playoffs:

Javy Baez: At any given station stop, he can find you -anything- you need.

Matt Shaw: Pinkerton spy

Cal Raleigh: Nicest guy you ever met cooks the meanest beans you ever ate.

Justin Turner: Ghost. Died in the Casey Jones crash.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 6h

Hobos still in the playoffs:

Schwarber: If you've got a bottle, he's got a guitar & a head full of Wobblies songs.

Addison Barger: Offers to help a widow lady with chores, ends up helping with so much more.

Tim Hill: Annoyed at how often he has to stop smoking to cough blood into a handkerchief

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 7h

Way, way back when. I remember liking it. He was a good soul.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 8h

No, and I don’t even think I have any friends who have, unless you’re that guy?

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 8h

Yeah, it looked really good and used the landscape well. Just about everything in that movie was better than expected.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 12h

Got my first issue of my new print Sun-Times subscription. I’ve had a print NYT subscription for about 4 years now, and shifting back to print made a big difference—I read more news but feel less vigorously harried by it. It’s helped me cut my online time dramatically.

Today’s Sun-Times, a tabloid paper with a cover story about Pritzker standing up to Trump and sidebars on the Cubs, Israel and Hamas, and the Macarthur grants.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 14h

It’s barely an exaggeration to say that my favorite thing about My Neighbor Totoro is the physical environment of the human spaces and the objects that occupy it, all of which are depicted with great care, care that presents as love.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 14h

One aspect of this, one that connects this reading of Miyazaki to Tolkien, is that they both emphasize the physical stuff of the world. The world is people, & nature, but it’s also the things people make, things which attention reveals to have been made with care & to reflect both people & nature.

Nosferatu RBMK 🦇 @comraderobot.bsky.social · 21h

idk its not really fair to classify entire ouvre as “cozy,” but miyazaki really lingers on natural and domestic things so i think its fair to say its an emphasis

like, miyazaki is cozy in exactly the same way that lord of the rings and the hobbit are. its there! its not The Point but yknow

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 14h

Good morning, friends!

A panel from an Avengers comic (sorry, I don’t remember the issue or artist) showing Thor, Silver Surfer, and Iron Man standing together. Thor says, “Perhaps if we combine our might.” Surfer adds, “Focus on one small area.”

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 23h

One of the things I hate most in sports broadcasts is when the booth team decides late in a final game that it’s over and begins talking about the assumed losing team in the past tense, talking about what they achieved and looking to next year. There is still baseball being played, guys!

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

What’s with the Sith Lord sitting next to Marlins Man?

The front row of Yankee Stadium. Marlins Man is there in his orange Marlins gear. Next to him is the guy who’s been there the past few nights who wears big pink sunglasses, but tonight ja also has a hooded black robe and is making weird hand gestures.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

I had a meeting, so Stacey is there in my place today. Good game thus far, absolutely gorgeous day.

The Wrigley scoreboard showing just the four playoff games, bleachers jammed below it, sky blue as blue above it.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

I so -wanted- to be a type of guy. But I was just a rube.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

There's sometimes talk about the disadvantages rural kids have when they get to college.

One that doesn't get discussed is just how few types of guy you're familiar with. Your town had maybe like 4 types of guy. You meet all these new people & it takes FOREVER for you to grasp that they're types.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

The Belichick thing was always such a clear example of “rich people get an idea” that it’s delightful to see it play out exactly as expected but on a greatly accelerated timeline.

Defector @defector.com · 1d

The great Bill Belichick experiment is already deep in the dumpster: defector.com/the-great-bi...

The Great Bill Belichick Experiment Is Already Deep In The Dumpster | Defector

It’s not the sort of career-capping achievement anyone had in mind, but Bill Belichick really has done something amazing at North Carolina. He has somehow managed to make his job, which was supposed…

defector.com

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Man, this is like the Picture of Dorian Gray of Impulse! covers. Like, the others could be so gorgeous only because this one was so hideous.

(Not the important thing, of course. It’s Tyner on Ellington. Still can’t quite believe I got to see Tyner at the Jazz Showcase my first month at college.)

The cover of McCoy Tyner Plays Ellington, which features poorly collaged photos of the twin men, with Ellington looming in the background looking awful, mouth half open.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Roughshod (1949) is a surprisingly solid little Western. Robert Sterling is kind of a C-plus Joel McCrea, which means he’s actually pretty good. And—the important thing—we get Gloria Grahame.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Good morning, friends!

A panel from the Emperor Doom graphic novel showing Iron Man, Mockingbird, Hawkeye, and Tigra looking at us in concern. Hawkeye is saying, “How?”

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

The people behind Judge are in the upper deck.

Aaron Judge with fans in seats the background.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

The “We will not go quietly into the night” sign being held up by a fan in Detroit just now seems like a bit much. It’s the division series, bro.

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 2d

Same across the board.

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 2d

Within Eliot’s own work, the structure of orthodox faith and the language of devotion are broken apart in order to make room for something much stranger and more tenuous, like the sound of someone crying in an empty church.

—Peter Ackroyd

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 2d

I genuinely don’t understand how people can live with notifications.