brainsplotch

I will not be writing about the hatemonger and his demise last week. Instead, I will begin by writing about George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London . Well, for four days I have been away from working on this post. In that time, the guy whose name rhymes with "Gnarly Jerk" has been elevated to martyr status by dear leader and his rogues gallery of sycophants. And just yesterday, Jimmy Kimmel was, for all intents and purposes, canceled for having the audacity of joking about dear leader and Jerk. The dark cloud of fascism is right on top of us. It's deeply disturbing. Back to Orwell. I liked Down and Out. The best   part was his description of working as a plongeur (dish washer) at an upscale hotel (the Hotel Lotti) between the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre. The hotel is still in business and looks to be still upscale. If I'd known about in when we were in Paris, I would have sought it out. The book gets bleaker in the second half when Orwell leav...

As I write this, news broke that there was a school shooting in Minneapolis. "Murica doing what it does best...and just the excuse "Dear Leader" needs to send the National Guard to the Twin Cities (I am only half-kidding), extending his authoritarian tentacles even further. Sorry to finally get back to this blog and immediately start in on a downer. I am returning to this post four days later. I finally finished reading The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. It was the heaviest reading I'd done in a long time, and a good primer into the world of Epicureanism, the search for ancient Roman manuscripts, Poggio Bracciolini (a seeker of said manuscripts), and how Epicureanism and Atomism flew in the face of Catholic/Christian orthodoxy. Advocates of this forward-thinking philosophy often paid with their lives. This was a dense but ultimately rewarding reading experience, a little bit out of my comfort zone, but that can be a good challenge. So now...

I attended one evening of one day of the annual Rockin' the Suburbs SuburbsFest. Having already blown through 96 or so hours of vacation time for Europe, I wasn't sure I'd have enough for two days, plus I need to save up for trips to Baltimore and Savannah. So even though the fest was in Michigan (or maybe because the fest was in Michigan) I only went for one day. I'm not sure why I feel the need to explain myself, but there it is. The one night I was there (Saturday night), it was pretty, pretty, pretty good (as Larry David might say). I saw several podcast friends, as well as the RTS "house band" Frank Muffin, the Stick Arounds (from Lansing), and an excellent young band from GR/west Michigan called Money Soup. When I say they're young, I mean it. I'm not sure any of them are over 21 years old. They play a funk/soul/jazz/pop hybrid and write their own material. I'm astounded at how good they are at such young ages. Their drummer, Lainey, is a pur...

July is, amazingly, almost over, so I'd better get a post in. It figures that after being so prolific during our European vacation, I'd go silent for almost the entire next month. I'm at that stage in which I can't believe there was a time that I spent 2 1/2 weeks in Europe. It now seems like a long time ago, even though it was only a month ago that we returned home. July has been marked by a lot of dog-sitting bookmarked by a podcast recording on July 3 (Book Bound podcast) and friends wedding on July 5--and a Tigers baseball game in Detroit with some other podcast friends (from Rockin' the Suburbs). This is also the month of Wet Leg and their excellent new album Moisturizer , which I was skeptical about but now absolutely adore. They have to be one of the most promising bands to appear in a long time. Moisturizer eclipses their first album. "CPR" is undoubtedly my "song of the summer." It's just so catchy, breezy, humorous, and fun.

The one somewhat positive development of our delay yesterday was we had to stay over night at the TWA Hotel next to JFK Airport. It was built in 1962 as the TWA Terminal (I think I have that right), and is a masterpiece of mid-century modern architecture. It's like stepping into the Jetsons animated show (which, when you think of it, introduced kids everywhere to the mid-century modern design aesthetic--whether they knew it or not). I wish we'd had more time and energy to enjoy it, but we were fried from our travels from Edinburgh to New York. By the time we got through customs, the entire process of which had to have taken more than an hour after disembarking our plane. We had to walk what felt like a half-mile down a long, wide concourse just to get to customs. Then the process freaks me out. I'm always worried I'll say something stupid and get in trouble--but it was quick and painless. There were so many people that I think the customs folks just wanted to get us thr...

We're standing here at Gate 14 for NYC/JFK because there really is no place to sit. Our flight was delayed three hours, so we'll be spending tonight at, presumably, the 1962 mid-century modern TWA Airport. Then we fly out early tomorrow to, wait for it, Columbus, Ohio where we have a two hour layover until we make our last leg to Detroit. Then the one hour or so drive to Okemos. It's gonna be a long few days of travel. I can't tell if Edinburgh Airport is small and just feels busy because it's Saturday, or if it's always this busy. The place is crawling with people today.