Who, how, where, why and what?

Links  Who does Brandon Baltzley think he is?

"Baltzley is quiet as he guides the car across a bridge, one place giving way to the next. He tends to be most himself in these moments. In conversation, he's too conscious—too aware of how he seems. "Who wants the truth?" Warhol asked. "It's not what you are that counts, it's what they think you are." Two hours from now, Baltzley will leave me sitting alone at a bar and return to tell me that he's been doing coke and playing with guns. An hour after that, he'll cry in a hotel room while we talk about his dad. Two hours from now, he'll give me what I think he is—an hour after that, he'll show me the truth."

How does everyday life compare between today and pre-1950?

"A graduate student at Eastern Michigan University, who was born in 1974, wrote her graduate school thesis about life before mid-century when technology did not reign supreme. In order to speak with authority, she spent a month forgoing any modern convenience that did not exist before 1950. She found it interesting and enlightening concerning the ease with which we face everyday life in the 21st century. Indeed, we expect life to be convenient today but that, of course, has not always been the way it was."

Where Does Art Fit Into The Goodnight?

"That's Goodnight, as in The Goodnight, the bowling-and-billiards-and-pingpong-and-karaoke-and-drinking establishment that's still kind of new to Anderson Lane, that used to be a Fuddrucker's, that's just a long film-reel roll away from the Alamo Drafthouse Village. And that's Goodnight, as in The Goodnight-Loving Trail, the trail used to drive Texas Longhorn cattle from the Lone Star state to Colorado in the 1860s."

Why does France insist school pupils master philosophy?

"I have been staring in admiration over the shoulder of my 17-year-old daughter, as she embarks on a last mental rehearsal before a much-dreaded philosophy exam. My primary thought is: Thank the Lord I was spared the torment. I mean, can you imagine having to sit down one morning in June and spend four hours developing an exhaustive, coherent argument around the subject: Is truth preferable to peace?"

What is wind?