Number One With A Bullard

Feast, Famine, Et Cetera

1. The Mega Man theory of personality In the video game Mega Man, when you beat a boss, you gain their power. Beat the fire boss and you can shoot fire in the next level. That sort of thing. When I was a senior in high school, I was cast as Mark Twain in a school play. To play the part, I read Twain, I read about Twain, and when I drove places, I read the signs and billboards out loud in my attempt at his accent. The next semester, my English teacher pointed out that I was writing with more humor, and taking more jabs at the school administration in my papers than I had before. “I think this Twain thing really rubbed off on you,” she said. To some degree, this is influence. The experiences you have shape you in ways you can’t always clock. If you go into a creative field, then whatever you make is shaped by the ideas and styles you take in. With journalism, there’s the additional need to research a topic you write about until you can comfortably talk to experts and participants in the field and explain their activities to non-experts. I’m a neurotic researcher and avid collector who has spent most of my professional life as a generalist—that is, not having a specific beat, but picking up whatever seems interesting or needs coverage. Factor these together, and you get a pretty good explanation of my mental landscape and my physical surroundings. My head is a collection of facts learned in the course of duty and my apartment is a collage of artifacts that feed my obsessions. Ask about the shelf full of Polaroid cameras and I can tell you about the company’s history, which I studied while working on a story about how discontinued technology can be repaired, decades after the parts are no longer manufactured. Point out the Harry Partch/John Cage split album in my record collection, and I’ll tell you about the letters between the two that I found while researching a performance of a John Cage piece. This goes beyond items and into ideas. I spend so much time with the research, I keep thinking about it after the story is done. Sometimes this gives me a new perspective on a story that I wish I would’ve come to while I was on assignment. Other times, it leads me to a fun new hobby. And occasionally, it changes how I live. The ability I gain isn’t just an influence or a piece of knowledge—it’s a way of seeing the world. 2. Abandoning Expectations Look, this isn’t going to be a navel-gazing section about my own writing. But I need to mention it to get to the main idea. For the last two years, most of my professional life has been focused on my book, which I’ll surely soon encourage you to pre-order. There’s a part of the book that deals with convenience and information—particularly how the media and the audience reacted to new ways to get news easily, and what that did to our understanding of the world. One challenge I faced writing this section was moving beyond chronicling the missteps. But one of those missteps has stuck with me—the way so many news publishers have tried to stay relevant by jamming their way into as many conversations on as many platforms as possible. It’s a quantity strategy. I’m thinking of it now because, as you’ve noticed, my writing here has been sporadic as I’ve had my head down working on the book. Bursts of regular posts happen between deadlines and edits. I made an assumption in that last paragraph. I wrote “as you’ve noticed.” Have you noticed? Did you even think about it until I mentioned it? When you got this newsletter, did you think, “I haven’t heard from Gabe in a while” or did you assume that you just missed my last dispatch? Did you think of it at all? Probably the safest assumption is the last one. That’s the one I hope for. Because, as I’ve been thinking about the expectations of convenient technology, I’ve been realizing how unhelpful and artificial they are. This isn’t a newsy newsletter. If it doesn’t arrive, it’s nowhere near the disruption to your habits that it would be if, thirty years ago, you didn’t get the morning paper or your favorite drive-time radio station was off the air. It’s not even like tuning in to see a sitcom you casually follow and finding out it’s a rerun or is pre-empted. You don’t go to your inbox and search for this. It comes when it comes. The problem is that I think of this as a problem, and you probably don’t think of it much at all. If you have expectations for me, it’s probably for the substance of the newsletter, and not how many you get. When it comes to the downsides of easy information, I’ve come to think that maybe one solution is for writers like me to not give in to the pressures to constantly publish and for readers to not expect a cadence for anything that doesn’t need to have a cadence. If I want to go a bit further and project a portion of my post-book personality, then I might say this strategy makes receiving an individual newsletter slightly more pleasant. Here’s what I mean: I subscribe to a lot of magazines. In the U.S., I knew when weekly magazines would arrive because they always arrived on the same day of the week. Monthly magazines were a pleasant surprise because I didn’t know when they would show up. I might have figured this out if I thought about it, but I didn’t think about it. Biweekly, quarterly, trimesterly, and other oddly intervaled periodicals were more of a treat. I still don’t know when The New York Review of Books publishes. Now that I live abroad, I have no idea when a magazine will get to me. They come from printers in neighboring countries and they get here when they get here. I look at the tables of contents and then decide what priority to give a particular article or issue in my general stack of reading. In the end, I read more of what arrives because it all arrives like letters. Do I still have media I expect? Yes. I expect my news apps will be updated when I look at them in the morning. There are three or four podcasts that I’ve timed to particular regular activities that I rely on. But for the most part, with magazines or newsletters, I’m just happy whenever one shows up. That’s who I am. Or at least, it’s who I am now. For now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe [https://gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Everything Is An Event

In late summer last year, young people across the German-speaking world met by the dozens in parks and public squares. At a designated time, they took out small cups of pudding and plastic forks, then used the latter to eat the former. They did it because someone posted to TikTok that it would be a fun thing to do. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe [https://gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

On Becoming a Local Character

Over the holiday break, I had a piece published in the New York Times Magazine about my snail obsession and how it helped me adjust to life in Switzerland. You can read it here [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/magazine/moving-abroad-snails.html]. This post is kind of a cousin or sibling to that one. Let me know if you like this kind of writing, or if you’d rather have the typical hand-wringing analysis of minor records or trends or whatever else it is I do here. For a short period of time in my late 20s, I was, according to a handful of friends, “Louisville famous.” This meant that within the Louisville, Kentucky, Metropolitan Area, people who listened to a lot of public radio or who attended live storytelling events (this is probably a redundant list) knew who I was. “Famous” is a stretch. Fame for local journalists went to hosts of radio shows, newspaper columnists whose photos ran next to their bylines, and anyone who was on TV. I was less notable than most of my on-air colleagues. Still, I would occasionally be recognized. In a restaurant, someone might say “aren’t you on the radio?” The question left me flattered but made me worry that I was talking too loudly. Once when I was playing tennis in the park, a man stood outside the chain link fence watching me. During a break in play, he said, “You’re Gabe. ” I said yes. “I liked your article about pens,” he said, and walked away. On a Saturday afternoon, a stranger outside a cigar store yelled out “Moth man!” a reference to my co-hosting the live Moth events in the city. The rewards of this fame were having a local food truck name a hamburger after me for a night (it was good) and forming a lasting friendship with the guy who called me Moth man. Still, even this limited recognition made me nervous. It wasn’t because I might be spotted doing something embarrassing. I didn’t worry about reputational damage. I wasn’t comfortable having a reputation at all. I’m shy. I liked the anonymity of being on the radio or existing only as a byline in print. Once, the station ran a photo of me to promote the news blog I wrote. I was thrilled when a local lawmaker said “hey who is that in the ad for your blog?” unaware it was a photo taken a year prior. After Louisville, we moved to Boston, then to D.C. I worked behind-the-scenes in newsrooms, only occasionally writing or putting my voice on-air. I wasn’t a little fish, I was a plankton. Unknown except to those who I wanted to know me (friends, mostly, as well as the staff at the restaurants and coffee shops I frequented). Now I’m in Switzerland and I think I’m getting a reputation again, but not for work. Every morning, I jog along a set path, usually at the same time each day. This means I see the same people. The custom here is to greet someone with a Grüezi as you pass, which I do, even when I’m out of breath pushing for a better mile kilometer time. They return the greeting, even if they’re speeding by on a bike or tying up a dog waste bag. With some of these strangers, the greeting has expanded into a miniature conversation in passing. They’ll comment on the weather, maybe, or say something about how I’m still at it. One group of dog walkers who I often pass always throws me for a loop, shouting phrases in German that force me to match my physical exertion with mental. I worry about being rude, so I usually smile, nod, and agree to whatever it is they’ve said with the word for “yes” or “exactly” or “one more day.” The other day, a guy who lives at the top of our hill was on the sidewalk talking to a man from a tree-cutting service. He said something beyond my comprehension, so I sped up to give myself plausible deniability for a snub. Before I got out of earshot, I heard something I could translate: Er ist jeden Tag hier. “He’s here every day.” Self-consciousness over my pace and appearance aside, I don’t mind this kind of recognition. It’s neighborly. In Boston and Washington, there were people who lived in our apartment building who didn’t say hello. In Louisville, people were friendly but sometimes the encounters carried some kind of expectation; people asked for my take on a big local news story, for gossip about NPR personalities, or for a recommendation letter for a young relative who was applying for jobs “and would just be thrilled if you could do something.” I like having the neighbors as part of my day, and I like thinking that I’m part of theirs. If I don’t see someone for a while, I ask myself if they’re on vacation or maybe feeling sick. I hope their dog is still healthy enough for a morning walk. I wonder if they do the same for me. When I’m out of town, do they ask “what happened to that bald guy with the funny accent?” In a way, I feel less like a person people interact with and more like part of the scenery here—the jogger in the green cap who never goes any faster, never gets any thinner, and appears along the road to Schönenbuch on weekday mornings. Really, I suppose I’ve become part of a routine. Walk the dog, see that guy, go home. I like it. The only expectation is a friendly word or two and the unspoken promise of being back at it tomorrow. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe [https://gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Muddle Through Somehow

So many Christmas songs are sad. That's just right for the season. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe [https://gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

A Visit to the Wes Anderson Archives

Who taught you what a director does? This is one of those pieces of knowledge that used to come through cultural osmosis—some assembly required. Based on conversations with peers (and the discussion on the latest Blank Check [https://substack.com/profile/168490650-blank-check] series), I learned about directors the same way a lot of kids who grew up in the ‘90s learned. First there was Tim Burton. Batman was everywhere, and when I saw Edward Scissorhands on hotel cable during a family trip, I could understand that the same person made both movies. Twin Peaks was on TV, too, and I knew to associate David Lynch with an eeriness and imagery I didn’t understand. This is how I learned about the director as an artist. The only Spike Lee productions I had seen as a kid were Nike ads, but he was about as famous as a director could be, especially during the marketing of Malcom X. Stephen Spielberg was on Animaniacs and he made Jurassic Park and E.T. This is how I learned about how directors existed as artists in the public eye. When Fargo came out, adults around me sprinkled their conversations with Minnesota nice—“you betcha” and “ohh yah?” especially—and so the Coen Brothers entered my cultural lexicon. My oldest brother had posters for The Doors and Dazed and Confused in his room, and he talked about Boogie Nights and Casino, so I knew the names Stone, Linklater, Anderson, and Scorsese. My mom had previously rented 2001 for me, and I picked up on Kubrick references on The Simpsons. This is how I learned about directors and audience taste. Around the time TV ads hyped The Big Lebowski as coming from “the guys who brought you Fargo,” I latched on to a director for myself. The TV spots for Rushmore had funny jokes and my favorite song (The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away”). My brother said he had seen the director’s first movie, Bottle Rocket, and liked it. I fixated on seeing Rushmore the way a thirteen year old fixates on anything that seems to be part of a slightly more grown-up world. When it finally landed on cable, I studied it, trying to figure out what made the movie the work of that particular director. The music? The visuals? The editing? A couple years later, my mom came home with the just-released DVD of The Royal Tenenbaums. Now I understood what a director did. By college, I had seen enough movies, watched enough Siskel & Ebert, and read enough newspaper critics’ columns to understand directors (and to have a loose opinion on auteur theory, which my proximity to film majors soon solidified). Sophomore year, my school got a sneak preview of The Life Aquatic. The screening was packed. The giveaway promotional red stocking caps were prized possessions on campus. Walking out, I was among the disappointed. The general consensus from my friends was that the movie was too heavy on style and too light on substance. Classmates used terms like real and raw to describe what they liked about the earlier Anderson movies, and they used the word twee to describe The Life Aquatic. The red caps were no longer cool. Like Richie Tenenbaum’s red-white-and-blue headband, they were the mark of a style-over-substance hipster instead of a true aesthete. A few months later, I watched The Life Aquatic again on DVD with friends and saw all the realness and rawness of the movie’s broken heart. I understood how Anderson’s style might appear to hold certain ideas and emotions at a distance, when in fact the emotion is right there in front of us. I’m a solid Anderson defender now. The accusations of twee are constant, though. And I see the point. His movies have become so stylish and singular, it’s overwhelming to follow what’s on the screen. At the same time, the movies have taken on deeper, heavier, more existential topics. (I wrote about the shallow accusations of “quirk” at Together Alone.) On a trip to London last week, Linda and I saw The Wes Anderson Archives at the Design Museum. It was beautiful. (As she wrote, one of our early relationship highlights was seeing shooting locations of [https://ljgolden.substack.com/p/visit-london-do-american-things]Rushmore [https://ljgolden.substack.com/p/visit-london-do-american-things] while visiting her parents in Houston. [https://ljgolden.substack.com/p/visit-london-do-american-things]) The exhibit opens with handwritten script pages and on-set Polaroids. It moves into the Sundance posters for Bottle Rocket (then a short film) before exploding into color with the Rushmore costumes. Walking through, you see how Anderson used greater and greater budgets to realize the most meticulous details of his visions. You see scouting photos of the Tenenbaum’s house, costume sketches for the Zissou crew, the prop books made for Moonrise Kingdom, and the precisely detailed miniatures for The Fantastic Mr. Fox. The placards describe how Anderson worked with designers, prop specialists, and a seeming army of collaborators to make every frame exactly how he imagined it. I spent a good fifteen minutes studying the editorial board from The French Dispatch, which appears on screen for a few seconds and isn’t even readable then. While I was studying the wale of Mr. Fox’s corduroy suit, I overheard another visitor. “I appreciate the design, but it’s just too much fluff,” he said. “Give me something real.” I’ve been turning that over for a while. My main criticism of Anderson’s latest movies is what I mentioned earlier—they’re overwhelming in their detail. This and the brisk plots makes repeat viewings necessary to take it all in, and it can be hard to know what to focus on in the moment. But as a problem to have, that’s pretty minor. What could be more real than this? We’re in a gallery hall full of ideas made manifest. No production still showed even a hint of green screen. I never saw the letters CGI in their all-caps succession. Yes it’s incredibly fussy, but isn’t this perfect for the age of streaming, when you can pause and study each frame? Isn’t this exactly what’s lacking from so many movies today? This month, the wrong files for Mad Men were uploaded to HBO’s servers, and special effects shots were missing. A Starbucks cup appeared in [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/game-of-thrones-starbucks-cup-coffee-daenerys-targaryen-scene/]Game of Thrones [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/game-of-thrones-starbucks-cup-coffee-daenerys-targaryen-scene/]. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/game-of-thrones-starbucks-cup-coffee-daenerys-targaryen-scene/] These are understandable if embarrassing mistakes, but given how often these things happen (there are hundreds of thousands of words dedicated to “bloopers” like this on IMDB), isn’t a carefully constructed screen world something we should celebrate? Or is “good enough” ok, and reality is judged by how little attention an artist can appear to pay? Look at the examples of directors I mentioned in the opening. Notice how each one is still a notable name today. They were artists who millions of people knew, who a kid growing up in a tiny rural town could aspire to learn about, to sharpen his taste against. They were artists who made mainstream works that became part of popular culture. I’ll take an indelible but obviously constructed world over whatever seems real on streaming today. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe [https://gabebullard.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]