Sinners, Voltaire, and Miguel Adrover

Weekly Rockfoils #28: April 21-29, 2025

I just got back from the Accountant 2 so I’m riding that high to get a late one out for you tonight. This week we’re talking James Baldwin, 70s sci-fi, and Louis Theroux’s doc the Settlers, among other things.

Hello! Welcome back to my newsletter of Things I Loved and Little Wisdoms I’ve collected over the past week.

Things I loved

• This week I discovered via some random account on Twitter the existence of designer and artist Miguel Adrover, my latest obsession. Adrover caused a minor sensation in the early aughts by being way ahead of the curve on a bunch of fashion trends we now take for granted before basically fading into relative obscurity. I read several of his interviews and he seems like a very cool guy. I am obsessed with his self portraits and his instagram is a work of art (in one interview he says he thinks of himself now more as a photographer than a designer, which makes sense). For staggering aura levels see below.

• I had a darling experience this weekend working as a script supervisor on my friend’s short film set. I met a lot of talented and charming cast and crew, learned a ton, and spent many of the 40+ hours I wasn’t making notes on shot takes reading through three and a half books. I finished Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, which was fabulous, if a bit laggy at times due to fidelity to the truth of Lincoln’s life. I read James Baldwin’s the Fire Next Time, which has around 100 pages of which I dog-eared probably half for quotes I want to write down. I started Carson McCuller’s the Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which now that I’m about 1/3 of the way through has strong all-time-fave potential. Lastly, I read Voltaire’s Candide, because I got it at an estate sale ages ago, it’s very short, and I’m trying this year to read more classics. Since it was written in 1759, I expected it to be a Challenging and Serious slog, which I’d be able to mentally pat myself on the back for finishing. How wrong I was! Candide is goofy as fuck and hilarious. Apparently Voltaire wrote it basically to make fun of contemporary philosophers, who claimed the world they lived in was the best of all possible worlds. The titular character is a happy-go-lucky guy who travels around the world experiencing increasingly hijink-y horrors, from torture to warfare to near-misses with cannibalism, plus being separated from his beloved princess for many years, during which time she becomes horribly ugly. It’s great. Shoutout Voltaire.

  

  unrelated pic from the short film i worked on. movies :)

• I finally made it out to see Sinners last week, and I’m so thrilled to have been able to contribute to an original blockbuster’s banging box office numbers. I didn’t think it was the timeless masterpiece a lot of my friends did; there were some pacing issues and at times it felt a bit confused about what story it wanted to tell (also, I’m mad we didn’t get more of the Choctaw vampire hunters). But overall, I had a great time. I thought it was beautifully made, perfectly cast (special shoutouts to Cornbread, Delroy Lindo and that Buddy Guy cameo), and very rich and sexy and smart and fun. Also I didn’t know Ryan Coogler was so fine but like…wow. Hello. Anyway. I also watched Inherit the Wind, a 50s legal thriller based on the Scopes Monkey Trial, because I saw my goat Tony Gilroy mention it in an interview about Andor. It was ok; some great shot composition and a killer performance from Spencer Tracy but otherwise not the best courtroom drama I’ve ever seen. On the other hand I fucking loved the Accountant 2, lol. Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal. Lots of laughs, lots of bang bang pew pew. Cinema.

• I went to an estate sale and got these books because the covers were cool. I’ve already read the Postman Always Rings Twice but I’m looking forward to the rest from Cain, and the 70s sci fi from some guy I’ve never heard of.

• I haven’t actually watched either yet, but I’m excited to get into season 2 of the Rehearsal and looking forward to watching Louis Theroux’s documentary the Settlers. As ever there’s been a lot of shit in the news recently making me fucking depressed about Palestine, and from what I’ve read it sounds like Theroux’s doc provides a searing indictment of Israel, mostly by just letting Zionist settlers offer their free opinions. That usually does the trick! I was also very amused to read about episode 2 of the Rehearsal this season, in which the ever-diabolical Nathan Fielder apparently compares Paramount+ to Nazi Germany for removing an old episode of Nathan For You due to claims of being “uncomfortable with anything that touches on antisemitism in the aftermath of the Israel/Hamas attacks." So fiendish, Fielder. So funny.

• Pasadena was very beautiful this weekend :)

Little Wisdoms

In the Fire Next Time (1963) James Baldwin discusses race in America with a particular focus on religion, through both his experience growing up in the Christian church and his encounter with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. I would like one day to write something thoughtful about this work, particularly in conversation with the Autobiography of Malcom X (1965), one of my favorite books, and a very different one. But for now I’ll just leave you with these quotes:

I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempts that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. I think I know—we see it around us every day—the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads. It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others is debasing himself. That is not a mystical statement but a most realistic one, which is proved by the eyes of any Alabama sheriff—and I would not like to see Negroes ever arrive at so wretched a condition (p. 83).

Baldwin writes this after his encounter with the Nation of Islam, who taught that white people were created as devils and that their earthly destruction was nigh. I have often felt that if I had been born black in America back then, I would have led a life of violent rage. I’ve never felt that more than after reading the Autobiography of Malcom X, written by the Nation of Islam’s most famous adherent. What makes Baldwin so extraordinary to me, and one of my greatest heroes, is that his writing and beliefs were always rooted in love, and a profoundly wise understanding of the ultimate truth that violence only begets more violence, and hate only begets more hate. I don’t know how he found his way to that truth, living the life that he did, but I’m grateful that he did, and that he shared his loving wisdom with us.

Here’s one more quote that speaks for itself:

It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself—that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving (p. 86).

I hope you can find some way to give of yourself this week. I will try.

PS - Soda Pop says zzzzz sweet dreams <3

Have a nice day :). See you next week for another list, and check out my intro post if you want to know what the deal is with me and this newsletter.

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