A profile of Apollo Robbins, possibly the greatest pickpocket in the world. (The opening feels like a nod to Mark Singer’s opening to his famous profile of Ricky Jay. Also, don’t miss the accompanying video.)

PODCASTS: This American Life at Harper High School (part 1, part 2) and at a car showroom | The Slate Culture Gabfest is always good, but the discussion of Dana’s anti-flipflops piece (from 34:45) may be the Gabfestiest moment since the infamous granola-off | Natasha Vargas-Cooper on the Longform podcast | Radiolab: Speed | Stephen Fry on RHLSTP (RHLSTP!)

In defence of Gus van Sant’s Psycho remake

MUSIC: Best albums: Yeezus was impressive for how much effort it went to to actively piss off its audience, and was also great. (Here’s Carl Wilson; here’s SFJ.) My favourite album of the year, though, was the underrated Amok by Atoms for Peace – I think has been underrated because people heard “Thom Yorke and Flea” and were hoping for funk Radiohead, so were disappointed to get slightly Afrobeaty Radiohead but with interesting real/electronic percussion interplay | Best singles: Arctic Monkeys (above; the album is good too), Sleigh Bells, Bonobo feat Erykah Badu | Best EP: FKA twigs | Best live version of a song already mentioned on this list: Amok by Atoms for Peace (I’m not sure if I’m in the audience of that video, or whether it’s from the other night) | Best remix of a David Bowie song inspired by Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music”: “Love Is Lost” remixed by James Murphy| Best unreleased cover of Jennifer Paige’s Crush: Jai Paul | a playlist

Don’t make fun of renowned author Dan Brown

On Smarm – I think about this essay at least once a week, plus it has little Thumper bunny pictures in it.

FILMS: The Act of Killing is extraordinary – the penultimate scene where Anwar Congo returns to the rooftop will stay with me for a long time. I am not embarassed to say I loved Gravity. Before Midnight completes the best film trilogy ever made. Enough Said makes me sad James Gandolfini didn’t get to make more romantic comedies.

Thanksgiving in Mongolia by Ariel Levy. This is beautiful and heartbreaking and I hope it’s not insensitive to say it’s also sometimes like a horror film. (Also: Levy profiles Edith Windsor.)

Pairs of tweets that are anagrams of each other – for example:

Interlude for listicles: Martin Amis Character or “Tatler” Byline from Feb. 2013? | Arguments against gay marriage | A Slideshow Of Different Animals Who Are Not Friends And Have Never Met

OLD THINGS I CAME ACROSS THIS YEAR: Nina Simone’s 1958 debut album Little Girl Blue is her most straightforwardly jazz album – but my favourite moment is the piano solo in “Love Me or Leave Me” (at 0:52) which sounds more like Bach than jazz. | I spent one sunny weekend this summer inside reading two novellas, and they’d both very high on a list of the greatest fiction I’ve ever read: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez and The Outsider (aka The Stranger) by Albert Camus | The films of Alfred Hitchcock: The Birds and Rear Window are masterpieces; North by Northwest the best fun one; The Lady Vanishes is terrific and underrated; I haven’t seen Psycho yet | Old Slate Audio Booksclubs](https://slate.com/podcasts/audio-book-club/6) – by “old” I mean sort of 2006–2009, when Stephen Metcalf, Katie Roiphe, and Megan O’Rourke were common panellists; maybe start with Philip Roth’s Everyman | Joan Didion’s essays “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and “On self-respect”.

SNP on James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime

What happens when Lindsay Lohan, Brett Easton Ellis, Paul Schrader, and James Deen (the pornstar, not the other one) try to make a film together?

22 Reasons for the Bedroom Tax, a poem by Carol Anne Duffy (context)

SPORT: Stage 6 of the Vuelta a España – Tony Martin went on a 175km solo breakway lasting four hours; I can only find a video of the last two minutes of it.

An all-time great #Slatepitch: Inside - better than outside

Behind the blogpost: OK, I admit that it’s actually 2022 as I write, and I’m trying reconstruct this list from an old partially-completed draft I found on an ex-laptop. The last item on the list is “Marmots eating biscuits”, with no hyperlink.I have no memory of what that was meant to refer to, but perhaps it was this: