Notes

Another exemplary kickoff music video for her upcoming album, August. Directed by the legendary Matt Yoka. Delightfully creative, strange and has the aftertaste of meta you know and love. Enjoy:

Michelle Slatalla for the Wall Street Journal writes:

But these days, clotheslines lovers are fighting back, Mr. Lake said. At least 19 states (including California, where I live) protect a “right to dry” with laws that prevent municipalities and homeowners’ associations from outlawing laundry lines.

It’s sad that clotheslines have become a cause of community disputes, because laundry used to connect neighbors, said museum curator Lissa Rivera. Digging through the archives of the Museum of the City of New York, Ms. Rivera recently discovered a trove of early 20th-century photos of clotheslines crisscrossed above courtyards. “Those clotheslines were a way of knowing your neighbors, because you would have to make arrangements to share a line,” she said.

Wow. Unbelievable. People in California are having to fight for a right to dry. That makes me so sad.

My grandmother continues to air-dry laundry on her clothesline. To this day. She rarely uses her actual machine dryer. I never really thought much about the clothesline culture until after reading this story. I figured many still do it, but I suppose it’s dwindling. I mean, hanging clothes up to dry outside is a seriously zen exercise. It’s good for the planet. But, the best part about it? Your clothes will last longer. They won’t fall apart as fast.

But, what a tragedy to see homeowners associations are wasting breadth, fighting over this. Of all the things they should be debating amongst themselves — HOA’s are getting upset over clotheslines? What the fuck. Let people air-dry their clothes.

The Guardian:

He told local radio: “We have to drive the devil out of Buenaventura, to see if we can restore the peace and tranquility that our city has lost due to so many crimes, acts of corruption and with so much evil and drug trafficking that invades our port.

“We want to go around the whole of Buenaventura, from the air, and pour holy water on to it to see if we exorcise and get out all those demons that are destroying our port, so that God’s blessing comes and gets rid of all the wickedness that is in our streets.”

Colombia’s army is reported to be providing the bishop with a helicopter for the aerial exorcism during the city’s annual patron saints’ festivities.

Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast, was named as the country’s most violent place in 2014.

Yeah, I’m sure sprinkling a few gallons of some water by air, onto the city will help everyone.

Caitlin Dickerson and Zolan Kanno-Youngs for the New York Times reports:

Mr. Morgan then directly lobbied Mr. Trump to move forward with the raids. He is now the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, another arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

In a tense meeting with White House officials on June 21, two days before the raids were scheduled to begin, Mr. McAleenan again outlined the challenges of the operation, including the separation of families and the logistics of housing them until they can be removed. If undocumented parents are found to have children who are United States citizens, for example, ICE agents will need to wait with the children in a hotel room until a relative in the United States can claim them.

Homeland security officials also worried that many of the families that the administration had hoped to detain might have left the addresses known to ICE after Mr. Trump tweeted the agency’s plans.

Anyone working in government who has contributed in any way to the organized raids of undocumented immigrants is despicable. It’s sickening, plainly morally bankrupt, and repugnant. These are people like you and I. It’s heartbreaking to see organized raids on undocumented families (these are non-threatening immigrant families seeking asylum here mind you).

Historically speaking, when these sorts of raids tragically happen, a lot of people will die. Mainly because these organizations do not care about their lies. The deaths of these children and families will be the lasting legacy of the GOP and President Trump. There is also an eerie parallel with the Kristallnacht raids. Both are targeting immigrants. Both involved authorities moving persons to border concentration facilities.

If you are reading this, and you are residing in the United States illegally, do not open your door this weekend. If you need legal representation or help, please contact RAICES here.

From mymodernmet.com:

Kintsugi art dates back to the late 15th century. According to legend, the craft commenced when Japanese shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a cracked chawan—or  tea bowl—back to China to undergo repairs. Upon its return, Yoshimasa was displeased to find that it had been mended with unsightly metal staples. This motivated contemporary craftsmen to find an alternative, aesthetically pleasing method of repair, and Kintsugi was born.

There are three types of joinery available in Kintsugi:

• Crack – using gold resin, lacquer or dust to fill
• Piece method – there may be a missing ceramic altogether, and is replaced entirely with gold/lacquer
• Joint call – ceramic piece replacement via a non-matching fragment and gold lacquer to achieve a patchwork effect

This Staff Pick hit me right in the feelers.

It’s a short film from Joan Bosch (he/him), a Spanish filmmaker “based between Madrid and Barcelona.” From the short film’s description on Vimeo:

“(Life) While Traveling” is a short film about the way we look to the world when we travel. It’s about colors, shapes, textures and details that surrounds us every day, but we only realize when we are far from home.

Gorgeous, emotional, and even a tad nostalgic. Really motivates me to take stock of what we have here, on Earth. Joan really hit me in the feelers on this one. Enjoy.

Nuff said.

From GrubStreet:

On what would have been his 63rd birthday, people across the food world and beyond are coming together to remember author and TV host Anthony Bourdain’s life on Bourdain Day, created in memory of the late chef by his friends, chefs Eric Ripert and José Andrés.

So far, people like CNN host Christiane Amanpour, Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, Washington Post writer Tim Carman, The Wire producer David Simon, chefs Daniel Boulud and Dominique Ansel, chef Ludo Lefebvre’s tween daughter, Rêve, and even Waffle House, which Bourdain visited in an episode of his show Parts Unknown,are sharing tributes. Much of it is, unsurprisingly, tinged with sadness and a sense of great and intense loss, but there’s also a sense of hope — that if we all learn to live as Bourdain did, we’ll be honoring him as well as ourselves. Read the tributes below and check back for further posts as they continue to roll in throughout the day.

Bourdain was a fucking national treasure. A tour de force. A bit stubborn — a bit rough. Something I can really get behind. He was loving and compassionate. He was one of the most empathetic creative persons I’ve ever followed. He was too good for us. While he left us too soon, we’re a better planet, having known his words, his myths, his loves and his thoughts.

After Bourdain and President Obama sat down at Bun Cha Huong Lien for an episode of Parts Unknown, the restaurant owners permanently enshrined the table in plexiglass:

A restaurant in Vietnam that Obama once ate at, now keeps the chairs and table on display pic.twitter.com/FhgWUzfcRB

— Jake (@Jake_Wells15) March 9, 2018

When Bourdain was alive, the glass-case immortalizes both men. The vacant table was an amazing monument to a beautiful moment (if you’ve never seen the scene, watch and read about it here). Now, with Bourdain departed, it takes on a different meaning. He will forever be missed.

From Jalopnik:

You may recall that, thanks to an issue with faulty sensors in the Boeing 737 Max flight control systems, those planes have been grounded after multiple crashes were found to be related to the issue. Grounded planes are, by definition, not in the air, and as such need to be stored, on the ground, somewhere. In the case of Boeing’s Renton Factory in Washington state, there’s so many grounded planes that some of that ground has to be taken from Boeing’s employee parking lots.

Historical moment in Aviation history! ✈️
Aerial images show the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft parked in the staff car park because there is no more capacity left at the airport. pic.twitter.com/TZ3MKH8rdM

— Aviation ✈ (@Airplane_pic) June 23, 2019

My stage name is less about withholding parts of myself or maintaining privacy than it is a symbol of the idea that I am more than just my job or any other isolated slice of my identity.

[…]

Maybe it would be easier to navigate the dissolving boundaries between public and private spaces if we all had a variety of names with which to signal the aspects of ourselves currently on display. And maybe we should remember that our first glimpse of a person is just one small piece of who they really are.

I came across this op-ed a while back, and it’s been in the front of my mind for a while now. I really love Stoya’s viewpoints on privacy. She’s thinking really far ahead, and might be onto something valuable here. Holding onto a single name is pretty archaic (not to mention difficult to do effortlessly across the ever-more crowded digital landscape) nowadays isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have contextual aliases available to users everywhere?

A public alias. A private alias. A work alias. An expressive alias. A commenting alias. Each username, an extension of our whole-self. Each one signaling a segment of digital and personal self. I think this would be a remarkable addition to a product like Twitter.

Whatastory. Now, I’m a born-and-bred Texan. I may live in New York City (for now), so the Empire State may have my taxes — but the Lone Star State has my heart. Always has, always will. Despite the troubling past and problematic heroes (and if you have the stamina to stand up to Republicans occasionally), Texas can be a fantastic, magical and oh-so affordable place to call home. So pardon me swimming through some backstory here, while I work up to the big reveal.

To quote the great Lawerence Wright:

[…] Texans see themselves as a distillation of the best qualities of America: friendly, confident, hardworking, patriotic, neurosis-free. Outsiders see us as the nation’s id, a place where rambunctious and disavowed impulses run wild. Texans, it is thought, mindlessly celebrate individualism, and view government as a kind of kryptonite that weakens the entrepreneurial muscles. We’re reputed to be braggarts; careless with money and our personal lives; a little gullible, but dangerous if crossed; insecure, but obsessed with power and prestige.

Power and prestige indeed — Fast-food restaurateurs frequently come to Texas to wade in the tepid waters of the nation’s id if you will. Open a shop in Texas, and it does well — chances are, you will do well just about anywhere.

Texas has it all. From Five Guys to Fuzzy’s. We have Del Tacos (god knows why), food trucks, and oh so many Chipotle’s. Texas has In-n-Out’s and then there’s the Braums, Kincaids and Juicy’s. Not to mention a constant fierce rivalry between Shake Shack and our hero, Whataburger. And boy-howdy, lemme tell ya about the Jalapeño Tree and Bernie. The highway culture in Texas is a fertile breeding ground for all sorts of varying opinions on fast food. From Uvalde to Amarillo, every Texan has a contrarian favorite. But every true Texan can probably agree, Whataburger is a prized possession. Seriously. Couples may get married at McDonald’s locations in Hong Kong, but you can be damn sure Texans get married at Whataburger:

Whataburger fans have had Whataburgers sent to them out-of-state via Federal Express, twenty-four couples were married at a Whataburger restaurant on Valentine’s Day in 1996, and in 1999 the STS-93 crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia requested Whataburger cookies on board for their July mission. The Seventy-seventh Texas Legislature officially recognized what customers have known for more than 50 years: Whataburger is a state treasure. On April 9, 2001, Rep. Jaime Capelo, (D-Corpus Christi), announced his resolution to recognize the Texas-based hamburger chain as a Texas Treasure.

Whataburger has been in business for nearly 69 years now since the first location opened up in Corpus Christie (nice)! But there’s big news on the horizon for every Whataburger enthusiast — our Texan treasure, is now poised for growth now that the Dobson family has handed over the keys to Byron Trott:

The merchant bank [BDT Capital Partners] that’s taking over the majority stake in Whataburger was founded by one of Warren Buffett’s favorite investors.

The founding Dobson family will keep a minority position on the board, while Whataburger’s Chief Financial Officer Ed Nelson will become president of the orange-and-white burger chain. The company’s headquarters will remain in San Antonio.

Not much is known about BDT Capital Partners. Despite dealing with billions of dollars, the company doesn’t have a website and rarely makes headlines.

However, the company continues to grow under its founder, Byron Trott, who has been publicly praised by Warren Buffett in the past.

Sign me the hell up. This is fantastic news for Whataburger. They’ve outgrown their spurs, many times over, and I have confidence that Trott and BDT Capital will take good care of Whataburger. I would love to see a Whataburger location open up in Brooklyn or Manhattan in my lifetime. That would be just so glorious.

If you want to learn more about the history of Whatburger, The Texas State Historical Association has some incredible photographs (that couldn’t be shared here) and a lovely summary Whataburger’s history written by an excellent history teacher — Cindy Jones, of Woodrow Wilson Junior High in Dayton, Texas. I only know this because the THSA publishes a list of their junior historians here, which is super cool 😎

I’ve been wanting to share this artist’s work on my blog for a long time. So long in fact, I don’t even remember how I came across her paintings in the first place.

Sally West is an oil painter who lives and works in Australia. She has some pretty killer work, but her beach studies have recently blown me away. They’re just deliciously weighty, and the folds of thick dabs of oil produce a dance of motion I really enjoy. If I could afford to buy paintings, Sally West would probably be one of my first fine art purchases. Here’s some of her beach studies from her recent Surf & Snow series:

If you’re interested in learning more about Sally West, check out KAB Gallery’s blog post on her work.

Charlotte Graham-McLay for the New York Times:

The firm ran the experiment — which reduced the workweek to 32 hours from 40 — in March and April this year, and asked two researchers to study the effects on staff.
Jarrod Haar, a human resources professor at Auckland University of Technology, said employees reported a 24 percent improvement in work-life balance, and came back to work energized after their days off.

“Supervisors said staff were more creative, their attendance was better, they were on time, and they didn’t leave early or take long breaks,” Mr. Haar said. “Their actual job performance didn’t change when doing it over four days instead of five.”

Not surprised by the results of this interesting study. Not completely unrelated, but taking an afternoon nap can lower your risk of heart-related death! If you take a step back from the results of either study, it’s apparent that reducing the hours of working (wether that is physically or mentally exhaustive) contributes to a better life.

Just about every city in America should be all-in on improving the quality of life of their citizens. A change to the few, impacts everyone. In other words: a rising-tide lifts all boats. It appears the New Zealand study reveals a reduction in operating costs for businesses and takes car traffic off the road:

Noting that the company had seen lower electricity bills with 20 percent less staff in the office each day, Mr. Barnes said the change in work hours could have wider implications if more companies adopted such a strategy.

“You’ve got 20 percent of cars off the road in rush hour; there are implications for urban design, such as smaller offices,” he said.

But reducing the workweek can be expensive for other cities, as a similar study in Sweden shows. But it does corroborate public health results:

The study showed that employees felt healthier, which reduced sick-leave absence, and that patient care improved, but the city won’t push ahead to make the plan permanent.

Fascinating results. I would love to see a 4-day workweek become the norm. If you ask me, the trade-off is worth the coin spent.

I went down another Wikipedia rabbit-hole this weekend. The last time I did that I learned about Abiogenesis.

This time around, I began reading more about Aphex Twin, and ultimately ended up at Ivvavik National Park. Not so sure what I read in-between or how I got there — but in case you’re interested, Engigstciak, is a rock formation at the Ivvavik National Park. It’s really striking. I believe it’s particularly beautiful. So much so in fact, I was inspired to write a bit about it:

There’s also this really interesting paper available on JSTOR regarding Engigstciak’s surrounding geology. You can view it for free with a JSTOR account. I love this stuff. If you’re a fan of Bill Bryson, something tells me you’ll enjoy this paper too:

The Yukon is a pretty vast, and unorganized expanse (something my Texan heritage has informed me I might enjoy). Within the wide and unforgiving tundra are archaeological heritage sites. It turns out, Engigstciak happens to be one:

[Pottery found at the site] likely relates to the Norton Culture (Norton Check-Stamped Ware) which is found predominantly in the coastal reaches of northern Alaska. Although dating from the last few centuries B.C., this vessel is part of a ceramic making tradition which began in Alaska more than 3500 years ago and was inspired if not imported from Siberia.

The Ivvavik National Park is so remote in fact, that the nearby airport — Sheep Creek International Airport, is merely just a strip of gravel.

The Yukon seems nice.

Felix Salmon for Axios:

The bottom line: A whopping 81% of the $29.55 billion in equity that Uber has raised is underwater. IPO investors have lost $655 million, while investors from 2016 and 2018 have between them lost $2.27 billion.

Losers: Investors who bought Uber shares 3 years ago have lost 15% of their money, before fees. The opportunity cost is even greater: Investors in the S&P 500 have seen their money grow by 50% over the same period.

Holy. Guacamole. That sucks.

Uber lost more money than any other company that has ever gone public. That’s impressive and morally repugnant. Sure, it minted a few millionaires and reinforced the world’s wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos with a cool $400M. Fun. I wonder how the underwater investor feel right about now?

It’s still early days — but I’m still largely a proponent of Lyft (and the subsidiary Motivate for that matter). Personally, I believe Uber will bleed into oblivion thanks to the rat-race of short sellers. But if automation is the key to profitability (for any ride-hailing company), Uber just shot the starting pistol.

Crossing the chasm of losses per share for these companies will be an arduous race. It’s going to be an insane ride. Especially during this absolutely absurd trade war Trump has started, which I should add, irrefutably, the US will lose this trade war if Trump continues to escalate.

Fellow blogger, writer, front-end engineer, and John Gruber fan (who doesn’t like Daring Fireball seriously?) — Tim Smith of BrightPixels is Kickstarting probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while. If you like services like Letterboxd or Micro.blog I think you’ll enjoy this Kickstarter.

More on that in a bit. But first, let’s back up. If you follow the blog here, you know I’m no fan of Facebook. No surprise there. There’s been some interesting developments recently concerning Facebook:

"Richard Allan, the company’s vice-president for public policy, said the company (Facebook) took down 2.8bn fake accounts between October 2017 and November 2018."
TWO. POINT. EIGHT. BILLION.https://t.co/RmSQlMnS0Y

— Sam Sanders (@samsanders) May 6, 2019

Oh. Fun. 2.8B fake accounts.

That. Is fucking insane. A huge admittance.

Our precious fragile WWW is dire peril ya’ll. It’s up to us. It’s time to dump Facebook. Zuckerberg’s recent pivot to “encryption” and “privacy” is a nothing short of malarkey and an attempt to circumvent potential FCC fines for future data-mishandling. He knows Facebook is bleeding users and there’s a reason why Instagram’s co-founder left Facebook last year.

To make matter worst, Instagram is horrible for your mental health. We spend way too much time peering into the black mirror of Instagram. It’s driving many of us into depression, others into despair, and for others inspiring fear and hate.

Magic Mirror, on the wall, who, now, is the fairest one of all?

So yeah. Facebook is horrible. There’s really no disputing that Facebooks suite of social media applications are tearing apart the web, our mental health, and society. *sighs*

Enter Bokeh. A refreshing new take on photo-sharing.

If you’re a fan of MLTSHP (or the predecessor MLKSHK), I think you’ll enjoy Bokeh’s vision (from the Kickstarter):

Bokeh will be ad-free, have a chronological timeline, and will be private by default. That means that all accounts will start off as private. Public accounts will have an RSS feed, will have the option to cross-post to other social networks, and will support custom domains. All accounts will have an indie web compatible export so you can self-host if you want to.

People won’t be able to find you by name, but will instead need to know your username to find you. Bokeh will never display publicly who follows you or who you follow. If someone has requested to follow you 3 times and you’ve declined, the app will prompt you to block them. In other words, these are your pictures and I want you to have precise control over who sees them.

I think this is really compelling privacy-focused concept. I’m an avidly public persona online, and that’s just me personally — but everyone isn’t into that. So, having this privacy-by-default option is really rad. Moreover, I’m digging the pricing strategy:

Bokeh will have individual and family accounts. Individual accounts will cost $3/month or $30/year, and family accounts will cost $5/month or $50/year. You’ll be able to add up to 5 people to a family account, including the account admin. By backing this project now, you’ll get a discount and allow me to pay for the initial development.

This right here is what hopefully keeps hate-speech at bay, and might even eliminate bots and spam. I firmly believe pay-to-play models will save our online communities. Whereas, free-to-play models might become (predictably) the last bastions of hate-speech.

I really like Tim’s blog. I really like Tim’s idea and that’s why I’m backing his project. I really want privacy to win. But more importantly I want us to win. The more we use services like Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp — the more we lose. For the longest time, I thought Apple was uniquely positioned to bring us a privacy-focused photo-network but that never really panned out did it? It’s time for a change. Isn’t it time we had a real place to share photos with our friends?

Initially came across this fun list via Twitter:

0/ 20 Heuristics to Generate Startup Ideas — I regularly help pre-seed entrepreneurs identify and evaluate startup opportunities. The following are heuristics I’ve developed and collected to identify problems to solve that may also be startups. Also: https://t.co/mSbvunk40Z

— Avichal Garg (Electric Capital) ⚡ (@avichal) February 25, 2019

His actual post, is embedded in his Tweet, but you can visit the list here. But in particular I enjoyed #8:

Turn open source projects in to SAAS businesses — Find open source projects that are very popular and turn these in to out of the box services for enterprises, e.g. PagerDuty is like Nagios.

Great entrepreneurial advice, and easily serves as a fun jumping-off point for any viable hack-a-thon. Any hacker or eager founder can find some amazing open-source projects and inspiration on Github.

My personal favorite startup adage, for any would-be-founder is, be the arms dealer.

In lieu of recent news of Karl Lagerfeld‘s passing, I thought I would pen a post about fashion — instead I thought I would share a post that’s a bit more important. A fascinating dissection on mending wears. Troubling, and equally eye-opening, it’s important to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going with fashion.

It’s interesting what war will do to economies, culture, and country:

Out of this came a British “make-do and mend” ethos, whereby civilians were encouraged to patch up and repair old garments, rather than buy new and replace. When garments couldn’t be patched up any longer, they were “deconstructed” so that their raw materials could be recycled. Raggedy sweaters, for example, were sometimes “unknitted” so that the yarns could be used to darn old knits or makes new ones entirely. The Ministry of Supply even organized a fashion show to demonstrate how new clothes could be made from old garments. 

Women weren’t the only people mending during this period; British soldiers and men back home were also encouraged to fix their clothes. In some of the  “Make Do and Mend” ad campaigns, the government specifically targeted men. Pictured above are some of my favorite war-time tutorials on how to make buttonholes, reinforce areas for extra wear, darn holes, and patch shirts. 

I have (too often) found myself frustrated, scared, and confused as to how to mend a rip, a hole, a tear, or the occasional missing button. It’s too bad that high-octane retailers like H&M, Zara, Forever 21 or even Target go to such great lengths to get the cheapest, fastest commodity into stores in forever increasingly divided shorter fashion seasons. We all end up with wardrobes that are too homogeneous, shitty, tattered and honestly of poor quality, and astoundingly, we spend more money on clothing. It’s only getting worse with the ease of subscription retailers and Amazon.

A dear friend of mine has jeans that he can never part with, and have over the years fashioned a makeshift zipper garage (that is what it is called) out of a paperclip and sewing magic. I love a good Macgyver-approach to mending.

Apart from dieworkwear‘s incredibly important links to tutorials, resources, lovely images on mending and guides for alterations — this post has a lovely quote I just want to share verbatim:

I am endlessly touched by men’s sentimental attachment to old clothes: Shetland jumpers that are more hole than whole, Panama hats missing half the crown, shirts with collars so frayed you can plait the edges. One barrister friend, who’s just turned 50, has been wearing the same leather jacket since his student days. No matter that, nowadays, he’s more Sid James than James Dean.

☺️

It’s official.

So, the trend begins. Tech startups will no longer IPO, but instead direct list. I’m kind of into it. It gets right to the point. There’s no ritualistic dance with investors, no large ceremonial bell ringing, no superficial breakfast or charade between bankers, investors, shareholders, workers, and founders.

The public, the investors, the VCs and so on — they all get what they want on the big day, without the headache, fever and subsequent hangover from the IPO. You just list, and poof — you’re on the exchange. Simple enough.

Matt Levine of Bloomberg:

It seems to me that the IPO process is going through something similar: It used to be that, if you wanted to go public, there was one way to do it. Now there are two. But the choice creates the possibility of more choice, of unlimited customization, of tweaking each feature to get exactly the tradeoffs you want.

It sort of makes sense that this would be a project led by tech companies, no? The story is that there was a big old legacy business that comfortably sold a standard package of features for a lucrative price, and then a bunch of tech startups came in and questioned everything; they unbundled the service so customers could get what they wanted rather than what the legacy players wanted to sell. It’s just that the tech companies didn’t do it as competitors, by offering the disruptive unbundled product, but as customers, by demanding it.

Interesting, huh? Leave it to the startups to disrupt a 236 year old process.

I can’t quite read the oracle bones on Slack, but it has serious potential. The jury is still out on their rebrand. While the rebrand stings, their engineering prowess and vision is impressive. Slack isn’t the new watercooler, there’s no money in that metaphor — Slack is the new vending machine.

At any rate, it seems that direct listing will become the new norm for VC-funded tech startups. I have to say, I don’t hate the thought of it.

Ronald “The Gunny” Lee Ermey, was a United States Marine Corps drill instructor, actor, philanthropist, comedian, and of course — a gun-nut.

He was a voice-actor in one of my all-time favorite animated film (and the subsequent sequels), Toy Story. While Ermey was obviously typecasted frequently, he’s appeared in many many films. I think he enjoyed the notoriety, the work and being armed with such an iconic voice he was likely highly sought after.

His obituary in the LA Times really captures the breadth of his virtues:

[…] A decorated Vietnam Veteran, R. Lee Ermey was an outspoken, rebellious, and creative spirit who dedicated decades of his life in service to his country and to his craft as an actor or television host. Starring or appearing in over 60 feature films, his decades-long career was highlighted by earning a Golden Globe Nomination for his role as drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, which was released in 1987. While R. Lee Ermey, nicknamed “The Gunny,” often portrayed the villain onscreen, in his personal life he was known best for his sharp sense of humor and generous spirit. Ermey joined the Marines shortly after high school and has often credited the military with saving his life. R. Lee Ermey never stopped showing his gratitude to “The Corps” through his charity work with organizations like The Young Marines, Fisher House and Toys for Tots. […]

I don’t have a particularly decorated or rosy relationship with my father, but Ermey reminds me a lot of my dad. Both men were complicated, really funny, patriotic, and both are definitely gun-nuts. While my father never served in the military, he has a profound and deep admiration for the Marines and servicemen (and servicewomen) of the US. I like to think that The Gunny and my dad would have been really good pals.

I’m happy to see The Gunny was laid to rest during a particularly unique and beautiful backdrop at Arlington Memorial Cemetery:

Rest easy Gunny. ✌️