The Pleasure of Physical Media

I did something this month that I haven’t done in quite a long time: I bought a book at Barnes and Noble.

I know, shocking isn’t it? America’s largest big-box bookstore actually got me to purchase an item there. How rare is that these days? But I did. I walked out of my local store with copies of Epictetus’s Discourses and a Penguin Classics edition of Apocryphal Gospels. 

Shy of groceries, I rarely buy things from large chain stores, partially because I live in rural Wisconsin where, save for Walmart, Piggly Wiggly, and Menards, they’re rare, and partially because I’ve become increasingly alienated from them. In the past decade, Gamestop has all but abandoned their original purpose of selling video games, becoming a trashy merchandise store. Best Buy was the latest domino to fall, announcing their decision to stop selling DVDs and Blu-Ray discs this January. These stores’ hostility toward physical media has meant that a majority of my new movies come from Amazon—which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

Barnes and Noble has been one of the more disappointing stores in this respect. I love books; I also love buying books. I’m the kind of person who keeps a therapy pile of unread books dangling precariously next to my bed. Buying new books makes me happy. I’ve tolerated Half Price Books’ annoying excesses for this reason. Sure, the high prices, lack of plastic bags, and “Banned Books” pandering made me feel like plugging my nose as I browsed, but at least they remained true to their mission of selling ink on paper.

🤳 Ballot Selfie Debate It’s the Justin Timberlake voting booth selfie-gate all over again. Yesterday, Councilmember Jacob Kupin encouraged Nashvillians to vote for the mayor’s transit plan by sharing a picture of his electronic ballot screen on X. The post sparked a continuation of an old debate: Can you take pictures in the ballot box?

During the 2016 presidential election, Justin Timberlake flew back to Memphis to pull the lever during early voting. Following the pop star's decision to upload a selfie taken inside a Germantown voting booth, jokes of jail time and penalty fines floated across the internet. At the time, taking a ballot selfie was a misdemeanor violation in Tennessee. A few months later during General Assembly, the legislature decided to loosen the parameters around the law. Citing previous Supreme Court decisions which concluded that restrictions on ballot selfies infringed on the First Amendment, sponsors proposed a bill to allow photos in voting booths.

That being said, it’s hard to tell if Kupin is in the clear. According to the Tennessean, the change made in response to the Timberlake mishap prohibits voters from photographing a filled out ballot. Likewise, while current Tennessee Code restricts county election commissions from preventing voters from using cell phones, it appears voters are prohibited from using a “device for telephone conversations, recording, or taking photographs or videos while inside the polling place.” And so, the question mark looms—but the freshman council member seems more than comfortable following in JT’s footsteps.

🗳️ Record Breaking Early Turnout…Kinda Yesterday 13,986 Nashvillians cast their ballot on the first day of early voting in Davidson County. At first glance, the turnout doesn’t seem that impressive when compared to reports that claimed 44,301 people in Music City pulled the lever on day one of early voting in 2020. But a closer look shows that the numbers from four years ago were skewed by the unusually high number of early mail-in ballots. A better comparison came from the Davidson County Election Commission who posted a more accurate figure on X last night: the first day of early voting in 2020 yielded 12,899 in-person votes. In 2016, that same figure was 12,397. 

But when looking at the vote totals compared to Nashville’s population growth and increased voter registration, the record-breaking in-person turnout isn’t quite as clean cut. A glimpse at the data reveals that 2020’s first-day turnout was 2.68 percent of total registered voters—0.04 percent higher than this year. That being said, registration numbers in major cities tend to bloat over time due to election cycle registration drives. The active voter roster reflects the consistency of a voter’s participation, making it a more reliable figure to work from. According to the DCEC, a solid 3.21 percent of active voters pulled the lever on the first day of early voting yesterday.

⚠️ Pothole Repair On Tuesday, the Metro Council approved an intergovernmental contract with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to repair and resurface Franklin Limestone Road. The Nashville Department of Transportation is only responsible for 2 percent of the $1,829,700 project, leaving the rest to the state.

This particular area has gotten a lot of attention over the last few years. In 2022, NDOT completed the Antioch Pike Streetscape Project along the stretch of road between Haywood Lane and Franklin Limestone Road. The facelift included the installation of five curb islands, new landscaping, and asphalt repairs.

FALL FOLIAGE

DEVELOPMENT

✹ REVIEW: WE LIVE IN TIME (2024)

The most unfortunate casualty of the post-pandemic theatrical landscape remains the near erasure of Hollywood adult dramas–films like Jerry Maguire and As Good as It Gets that connect with casual moviegoers while garnering significant awards attention. However, despite a film culture that increasingly reserves the big screen for franchise properties and obscure indies striving for Oscar buzz, an artfully crafted tearjerker like We Live in Time can occasionally still will itself into being to remind largely disengaged audiences of the role big screen romances once held in our collective imagination. 

Breaking from its typical slate of art-horror and twee hipster touchstones like Everything Everywhere All at Once, boutique studio A24’s decision to back a Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield vehicle that traces the development of a couple’s relationship from meet cute to cancer diagnosis via a cavalcade of flashbacks and forwards is a welcome departure. Though its mass appeal deviates sharply from A24’s reputation for cutting-edge fare, this tale of an on-the-rise British chef who meets a divorced cereal conglomerate IT guy is no lazy late 90s Julia Roberts dramedy. It’s a generous and unflinching character study of what unexpected love does to career-minded thirty-somethings who yearn for storybook romance but ultimately realize that the inescapable conflict and pain of real connection is worth it.

With Brooklyn director John Crowley at the helm, the film avoids grand gestures as it painstakingly unspools its love story in scenes so specific and intimate they resonate universally. Even when the film teeters on the edge of slapstick, the characters’ classic Hollywood charm manages to merge these moments of levity within a love story so grand and fully realized that no film in recent memory could serve as a rival. As it reaches its bittersweet end, We Live in Time makes a case not just for the power of undying love but for the enduring power of the movies in general. JEROD HOLLYFIELD

We Live in Time opens Friday in theaters. 

THINGS TO DO

View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.

📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.

🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.

👨🏻‍🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.

TONIGHT

🎸 Boowah with Nathan Kalish & his Derechos @ Dee's Lounge, 6p, $5, Info

🎻 Stravinsky’s The Firebird @ Schermerhorn Symphony Center, 7:30p, $29+, Info

🎸 Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit with Matraca Berg @ Ryman Auditorium, 8p, $59.75+, Info

🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info

🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info

🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
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