Even the moon’s frightened

Hey y’all,

Happy Halloween. Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. “Gatherings are the creation of a temporary alternative world.” Priya Parker and I had a nice chat about the creative power of Halloween, gathering, jokes, pranks, and other creative mischief. (Don’t miss my notes underneath the video — they’re more intelligent, probably, than anything I said.)
   
   

2. “Cheever’s is an autumnal world, all burning leaves and dying roses, rain-wet stones, house lights, ‘beards of gold-green weed.’” I’ve been switching back and forth between reading The Journals of John Cheever and The Stories of John Cheever, which contains one banger after another: “Goodbye, My Brother,” “The Enormous Radio,” “The Country Husband,” and especially “The Swimmer,” which I read around this time every year. (I love to listen to Anne Enright read it in her Irish accent.)
   
   

3. After one week, the scariest thing about having a teenager in the house is getting emails from tech companies essentially announcing, “Congratulations on your 13-year-old — HE’S OURS NOW.” (Bo Burnham: “They’re coming for every minute of your life.”) Also: I get annoyed by people who are annoyed by teenagers, so I scribbled this note to myself on the steering wheel of my car after school drop-off:

   

4. Two video games with horror elements my kids and I like to play: Limbo and Inside, both developed by the indie studio Playdead.
   
   

5. In my ongoing quest to be a Curious Elder™️ I dove deep into one of my 10-year-old’s current passions: analog horror. The glitchy VHS vibes reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Brian Eno’s diary, A Year with Swollen Appendices:

   Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.

   Speaking of cherished old mediums, here is some dad lecturing I will tolerate: Henry Rollins teaching you how to handle your vinyl records.

6. Geese’s 3D Country was one of my favorite things last year, but it took me a minute to warm up to their latest album, Getting Killed. I’m all in now: I even snagged a secondhand ticket to