brainsplotch

Happy New Year's Eve! I spent this morning and early afternoon reading a couple thin Images of America books to reach my woefully miniscule yearly reading goal. It is so woefully miniscule that I'm embarrassed to give the number...oh fuck it, it's 25 books. Yes, I know there are folks out there who probably read 25 books in a month, maybe even a week. I wish I was one of those people, but I'm not and probably never will be. In the late afternoon, I went out for one final run, which in this case was just a walk/run. I knocked out 5 kilometers yesterday, so today it was 3.25 km (about two miles) running and 2.5 kilometers of walking. I enjoy the days when I mix it up. I will run a half-kilometer, and then walk a half-kilometer and simply enjoy being outside in nature (while, of course, also listening to a podcast. I don't really listen to music that much anymore while running, I tend to enjoy hearing people talk about movies, music, television, politics, or sports. I ...

This just might end up being the obligatory "gotta keep the December streak going" blog post.  The weather has warmed significantly the last few days. It's funny to think that a week ago we were slowly plodding our way through ice, snow, and wind to and from the airport, and today I was practically overheated in my fleece sweatshirt on my run through the neighborhood, and later didn't even wear a coat on our completely non-treacherous drive to my brother's house. (We were able to have a little family get-together after last week's chaos postponed just about everything). It's also that time of year when I feel the need to cram in as many last second movies and books in as possible before the new year. I think that tomorrow I'll try to watch The Banshees of Inisherin to see what all the fuss is about, and seeing as how I should try and get some reading in, I'll sign off for now.

I am coming at you live from Slows BBQ at 2138 Michigan Avenue in Detroit--Corktown to be precise. I just finished eating a pulled pork sandwich called "The Reason" and a Moscow mule. More later. Okay, I'm back several hours later. As I mentioned in a previous post, we drove down to Detroit today to see the "Van Gogh in America" exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). I have now been to so many Van Gogh exhibitions over the years that I might be accused of being a total Van Gogh "stan." We saw the "Van Gogh: Face to Face" exhibition at the DIA in spring of 2000 (I had to look up the name of the exhibition and through the miracle of Google, I actually found it.). Then, earlier this year, we saw the Van Gogh interactive Expo in Grand Rapids. So, though I wouldn't describe myself as a Vincent Van Gogh superfan, maybe I am. The man was an undeniably brilliant visual artist and had a unique, passionate, busy, tragic, and all-too-sho...

Someone of "The Big Picture" Facebook page posted a query asking people about the first "adult" movie they saw in a theater. By "adult," I assume they meant R-rated, and strictly R-rated. (So if your parents snuck you into an X-rated movie, you're out of luck). The post got me to thinking about my own moviegoing life, not just my first R-rated movie experiences, but all movie experiences. It seemed like a fun topic to explore in this blog. Disney animated features are the first movies I went to. This is when my parents lived in Holt, just south of Lansing. A Lansing, by the way, that still had downtown movie theaters. I have distinct memories of seeing Bambi , Cinderella , Peter Pan , Robin Hood , and Song of the South with my mom. I'm sure we saw others, but these are the ones I definitely remember. By the way, these were the days when Disney routinely re-released old, animated movies from their vault for exhibition in theaters. It's a shame ...

We're back to doing what we usually do when older son is home: watching funny YouTube videos. In this particular case, it's cat videos. The sheer variety of strange and goofy cats is astounding. Earlier, we ate Thai takeout while watching the series The Mosquito Coast (starring Justin Theroux) which is good--much better than I expected. (We generally find some new show to watch when he's home. It has often been anime, but not always). This week is weird because I'm only working two days: today and tomorrow. I took Thursday off to go to the Detroit Institute of Arts for the Van Gogh exhibit they are having. That should be fun, fascinating and I will give a report here. Friday is a day off because New Year's Eve is on a Saturday and that's a normal day off for me. So Friday is basically "the holiday." And the same is true for Monday, a day off because New Year's Day is on Sunday. Is that boring enough for you? Now we have exhausted all of today'...

Hello everybody, happy Boxing Day! Thus far today, I have been drinking coffee, I ate an Entenmann's mini-donut for breakfast (one of those is quite enough), and I have been watching funny meme videos on YouTube courtesy of older son, who just spoke to a customer service representative about his missing luggage after being on hold for two hours. (No, that's not an exaggeration). It sounds like the bags are still in Amsterdam. I hope he gets them before he has to fly back to Germany. The sun is out for the first time in what now seems forever. The temperature is supposed to top out at over 20 degrees today, which seems like a heatwave. I plan on going out in the afternoon and, at the very least, going for a run/walk combination. My exercise has taken a real hit the last week or so. Yesterday, after Christmas dinner, we watched Glass Onion: A Knive's Out Mystery on Netflix. It is a fun movie, definitely worthy of a rewatch. Beyond being a murder mystery, it's a good send-...

I am taking a few moments in the aftermath of this morning's Christmas festivities to knock out another post. 25 in a row. I amaze even myself. I wasn't sure if I could really do this. I am not sure of the quality of some of these posts, but I hope that at least some of them have been entertaining and/or informative. Last night's drive to and from Detroit Metro Airport was truly harrowing. This is the worst Christmas weather we have had since 2013, when a horrific ice storm knocked out power in our area for a solid week. I suppose I will accept bad driving conditions over no power. Last night, we saw a few spinouts on the road, did a little fishtailing ourselves on I-96 heading towards Detroit, and saw a few abandoned cars along the side of the highway. In a few minutes, I'll have to abandon this blog post and go outside and--guess what?--do a bit more shoveling. We have some family arriving and the driveway needs to be cleared at least a bit. As for gift exchange, youn...

Coming to you live from the baggage service office at Detroit Metro Airport. Older son is here, but his baggage is not. This is putting all our Christmas Eve plans in doubt, but honestly--whatever. At this point, I'd prefer to just get home and go to bed. The drive here was harrowing. This is one relentless storm. Unlike most winter storms in Michigan, it didn't just drop a ton of snow in a few hours and leave, it has lingered and slowly bludgeoned us for about two days. It's bitterly cold, icy, snowy, windy.  That's all for now. Live update, part 2: It is 9:03 EST and we are driving in these conditions: [Sorry folks, Blogger will not accept my photo for some reason, so you can't see what the road looked like. Suffice it to say it was extremely snowy and icy]. Snow still coming down hard. We are stuck in a snow vortex. I hope we are home in about a half-hour. Update: We safely arrived at our Christmas Eve festivities, only three miles from our house, and were able t...

As expected, older son's flights were canceled. It looks like he should be able to fly on Christmas Eve though. That throws our original Christmas Eve plans out of whack, but whatever. That doesn't really matter much to me. That will just make it our second consecutive "memorable Christmas Eve/Christmas," though I suppose Christmas '20 was memorable because it was the "deep in the pandemic" Christmas. Memorable for all the wrong reasons. I am now relaxing on the couch. Just watched the 1966 Chuck Jones-animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas --hadn't seen that all the way through in many years--and now onto the mind-numbing but addictive fluff Emily in Paris on Netflix. I think I will be turning off my brain the rest of the evening.

My morning, for all intents and purposes, started with me spilling my coffee all over the place at Starbuck's. I ordered ahead and stupidly tried to pick up the coffee by its lid. Guess what? The lid was barely on the cup. Disaster ensued, but thankfully none of the spilled java ended up on me. I just had to wait about five minutes for the barista to make a new cup of joe for me. The rest of the workday was fine and reasonably uneventful. Now we wait to see if snowpocalypse/snowmageddon hits with the ferocity that has been predicted. As I write this, it is snowing outside. It's not too bad yet, but we'll have to see what it's like tomorrow. I just hope older son can make it home without incident. Today's drivetime listening was The Godfathers' 1987 album Birth School Work Death . I grabbed the CD impulsively this morning. Eighties crunchy guitar rock just seemed to fit the bill. (I still have not purposely listened to any Christmas music in December). I don'...

For this post, I thought it'd be fun to list musicians and bands that I like, yet don't own any of their records. This harkens back to an earlier post in which I compared soccer to bands you like when you hear them, yet for whatever reason have never bothered to buy any of their records. So here is a list of three bands off the top of my head. I may add others as I think of them: The Beths --This New Zealand power pop band has three albums out already. I've liked everything I've hear by them, yet I do not own any of their records. They are an absolutely infectious power pop band, though. The Cramps-- One of the most famous bands to emerge from the punk era and a precursor to goth. They have had a recent resurgence based on their version of the song "Goo Goo Muck" appearing in the Netflix show Wednesday . Like The Beths, I've liked everything I've heard from The Cramps, yet somehow don't own a single record, cassette, or CD they have released. I am ...

It's looking increasingly like there will be a "snowpocalypse" starting on December 23 and extending at least until December 24, and this throws older son's travel plans into doubt and uncertainty. I guess we'll just have to see what happens. I hope it's not as bad as predicted, but I'm definitely worried he will fly into Dulles and be stuck there for who knows how long. Today, we had a fire alarm at work. We have fire alarms at least once a month, or so it seems. It's usually caused by a library patron lighting up in the restroom. Our fire alarm is so loud that it could wake the dead. It's so loud that one of these days, one of us will keel over from a heart attack, and then immediately come back to life because the damned fire alarm....you guessed it...wakes the dead.  We all grabbed our coats, phones, keys, and whatever else we wanted to take and snaked our way down the stairwell and outside. There, we waited for the fire department to arrive, p...

I'm feeling a bit fried tonight because I stayed up too late last night. That said, I still need to get my 10,000 steps in before I go to bed and I have about 917 to go. Those 10,000 steps can be reached from pacing back in forth in the kitchen while listening to a podcast. Yes, I actually pace back and forth in the kitchen if I need to get the steps in and I can't get outside to do it. It's too late and too cold to go outside and walk. I admit, I'm a weirdo. The weather is calling for a wicked snowstorm to hit the Midwest on Friday, which just happens to be the day that older son is scheduled to fly in from Germany. I am, of course, worried that he'll either get stuck in Washington, DC at his layover stop, or that his flight(s) will get cancelled/delayed. I suppose we'll "cross that bridge when we get there," to use that well-worn cliche. I also feel that along with the slight rise in Christmas spirit, the annual Christmas stress is battling the spiri...

 As soon as I get on my laptop, the cat is immediately fascinated with what I'm doing and must rub my face and claw at me. And as soon as I finish that sentence, she jumps down and finds something else to occupy her time.  I also find myself "refereeing disagreements" between the dog and cat(s). The dog becomes very possessive of his little Greenie bones, which he always thinks the cats have designs on stealing. I don't think they give a damn about his Greenies. Still, he insists on barking at them, which they casually dismiss. Sometimes, he will leap off the couch and get in their faces, and their response is a cross between mild annoyance and mystification.  We seem to be at peace for the moment. This morning, we watched the World Cup final between Argentina and France. I really did not care who won. Maybe I was kinda sorta rooting for France? However, seeing as how Argentina had not won the Cup since 1986, I was happy for them. Regardless, it was an incredibly exci...

It's feeling a little bit more Christmas-like the last few days. For one thing, we have SNOW now and it's cold. I also had my annual holiday potluck at work yesterday afternoon. L. found a Christmas tree after work yesterday. Conveniently, the biggest tree farm in the area is literally across the street from her office. We put the tree in its base today and L. did about 90 percent of the decorating and I did maybe 10 percent. I know, that's bad. My problem is I put about two ornaments on the tree and then get either distracted or bored. Then I putz around for 5-10 minutes before resuming with another few ornaments. I'm also afraid I'll put the ornaments in a bad location on the tree and that gives me some anxiety.  Later this afternoon, I grinded out a four-kilometer run to get my week total up beyond 16.2 km/10 miles. The pavement was slicker and icier than I expected, so I needed to be careful. The last thing I want is to wipe out and fall on my ass in freezing we...

I can't listen to Jimi Hendrix without thinking about college, which is the time and place when Hendrix's music first entered my musical life.  Of all places, it was at a David Bowie concert in 1987 that I first thought, "hmm, Jimi Hendrix is pretty cool." This was when Bowie's guitarist on that tour, Carlos Alomar, broke into a snippet of "Purple Haze" that was mind-blowingly awesome. In fact, it was the clear highlight of that concert. (I love, love, love David Bowie--and I am grateful that I saw him perform live--but that Glass Spider Tour was subpar). Fast forward a few months into my sophomore year in college. A bunch of us from Ground Floor/Shaw Hall had piled into a car and driven out to the Meijer store in Okemos. I can't remember why, exactly. Some kind of grocery run? a beer run? (Probably a beer/alcohol run, primarily). On the drive to and from, various cassettes were rotating in the car's sound system. On the way back to campus, on Gr...

I am easily led into unexpected directions by whatever podcast I happened to listen to or whatever book I'm reading. But lately, it's really been podcasts that have had the power to sway me in directions involving movies to watch or music to listen to. A few days ago, I listened to an episode of The Classic Rock Album-By-Album podcast that was all about the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced album. The guest host was Tim Riley, who is a music commentator who has been around for a long time and wrote two books about The Beatles and Bob Dylan that I have enjoyed for decades, Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary and Hard Rain: A Bob Dylan Commentary.  I remember haunting the old   Community Newscenter bookstore on Grand River Avenue across from the MSU campus when I was a college student and had little-to-no money. One of the books on the shelf was the hardcover edition of  Tell Me Why. The book was published in 1988, so this would have likely been sometime that yea...

In recent years in December, I maniacally try to catch up with all the movies I should have seen during the year but have fallen behind on seeing. So, last night, I/we caught Ticket to Paradise on the Peacock streaming service. It was a perfectly fine "turn off your brain after work" type of screwball romp. There are plot holes a-plenty and a script that is a bit half-baked, but it is enjoyable to see the George Clooney and Julia Roberts chemistry on screen. Anyone who liked those two in the Oceans series of   movies will be at least reasonably entertained by Ticket to Paradise. I will more than likely, either on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, list my favorite movies of the year in this blog. This was a year in which I thought the television shows offered by the streaming services were, in general, much better than movies. So I am just warning you that even with my intense December catch-up, I'll probably have still missed a large swath of movies. As for TV s...

It's that time of year when I understand why old people go south in the winter. The older I get, the less tolerant I am of the cold. I went out running when I got home from work, trying to get out there while there was still a sliver of light outside (it was, for all intents and purposes, dark when I finally got going at 5:30 PM) and it was miserable. Not only was it dark, it was cold and windy. Cold as in slightly under 30 degrees F. That might not sound too bad, but the wind made it feel worse. I grinded out two miles, and when I say "grinded," that's what I mean. My pace was slow and plodding in the freezing dark. (I should also mention that our neighborhood has few street lights and plenty of potholes and crumbling asphalt, so it's best to run carefully in the dark). Regardless of all my griping, I have to keep plugging away at the running in the winter and not use bad weather and darkness as an excuse not to knock out at least eight to ten miles per week.

I watched the season two finale of The White Lotus last night and enjoyed it. I have to say The White Lotus will certainly be in my top ten television shows of 2022. Aubrey Plaza was in this latest season of The White Lotus , and also in a movie I just watched tonight, Emily the Criminal . It is now streaming on Netflix, so if you have Netflix, by all means check it out. At 97 minutes, it's a tight taut suspenseful crime drama about a young woman (played by Plaza) saddled with college debt and an assault conviction in her past who is compelled to enter the world of credit card fraud to make money. Plaza is excellent in the movie, as she also is in The White Lotus .

I will carry on after my cat interrupted me yesterday: I should have mentioned that before I left to pick up my CD player, I was listening to another Fleetwood Mac's album Then Play On (1969), which is considerably different from Tusk , the album I listed to in the car. Of course, aside from Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, those were completely different versions of the band. Then Play On features Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer and is more like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers combined with a dose of early blooze rockin' ZZ Top. This is how it sounds to my ears, others may disagree. (I have no idea if Fleetwood Mac was even aware of ZZ Top, so the similarity I hear with them might be completely coincidental). Ten years later, Lindsey Buckingham had assumed control of the Mac and Tusk is a glorious hodge podge of lush pop rock and eccentric, edgy weirdness (mainly supplied by Buckingham, who was in mad scientist auteur mode and likely hoovering coke like a human vacuum cleaner). ...

For today's installment, I will simply recount my activities for the day, or at least the highlights. I have managed to watch four different sports today: football (soccer), football (American), basketball, and now hockey. Perhaps there is an Australian league baseball game I can watch later to add to today's variety of sports. I caught the end of the Morocco/Portugal World Cup game (won by Morocco in exciting fashion), and then drive off to Williamston to pick up my CD player which was finally repaired. I wanted to get younger son to drive there but he was a bump on a log and I just didn't have the energy or patience (mainly patience) to prod him. So, I grabbed Fleetwood Mac's Tusk CD for drive time listening (yeah, going through a bit of a Fleetwood Mac jag--which was actually already sort of the case even before the passing of Christine McVie). It's about a 15-20 minute drive to Williamston--essentially a straight line from my house. Vintage Sound was humming wi...

This post is maybe "cheating" a bit, because I am transcribing something I wrote after attending my one previous Detroit Lions game, on November 23, 1997: It only took me 29 years to make it to a Lions' game, but what a first game to go to! On a grey, windy, extremely cold day, Mike [my brother] and I saw the Lions at the [Silverdome]. We sat in the 22nd row of the bleachers--lower deck in the south end zone. Detroit sacked Indianapolis' quarterback in "our" end zone for a safety. Before the play, Mike was chanting, "Safety! Safety!" and, lo and behold, the Lions did it. I believe the Colts' quarterback was Justin #11. [The quarterback was, indeed, Paul Justin]. We saw it all, two Jason Hanson field goals for over fifty yards each. He kicked a 55-yarder on the final play of the first half to give Detroit an 18-10 lead.  Without a doubt, the highlight of the game was Barry Sanders. He rushed for about 216 yards [216 yards exactly] an...

I was listening to a podcast recently (The Slate Culture Gabfest) in which one of the topics of discussion was Christmas cards and the Christmas form letter from the "perfect family." It stirred up memories of the Christmas form letters my Grandma C. received every year from an old college friend and her family. For the sake of their anonymity--though I highly doubt they will ever come across this humble blog--I'll call them the Bannister's. Let's just say they had "done well for themselves" in life. Here is a rough approximation of one of the Bannister's holiday form letters: "Dear Friends, "Yet another whirlwind year for the Bannister clan. It began in January when Tom and Muffy took the children to Switzerland for a lovely skiing vacation. Ted and I were delighted to be able to accompany them. Long days on the slopes followed by shopping in Zurich or evenings sipping hot cocoa at the fireplace of the mountain lodge. It was a most splendi...

I need to just get a post out there to keep this streak going.  My biggest adventure was the continuing road construction in Okemos making my commute a pain. I had to drive about three miles out of my way this evening to get home. First world problems, as the expression goes. The weather was warm enough that I didn't mind going for a run this evening. I hate running when it's dark and resent that it looks like nighttime by 5:30 PM in the winter, but you have to just push through. I managed to get in slightly more than three miles. The other huge excitement was Michigan State basketball actually winning a game (woot!) and then watching the latest episode of Abbott Elementary (about the only network television show that I enjoy--so damned funny) and the second episode of Wednesday on Netflix. About halfway through Wednesday , I was struggling to stay awake, so it was off to bed I went. ( Wednesday , for the uninitiated, is a spin-off series from The Addams Family franchise feat...

Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac died last week at age 79. Her death--like the deaths of pretty much every celebrity in the last several years--got me to reminiscing about my earliest associations with her and Fleetwood Mac. So, that took me back to 1977-78 and fourth grade. That was when Fleetwood Mac's blockbuster album Rumours was released. Now, of course, I don't remember the album being released, nor would I have had any interest in that. When you're a nine(ish) year old kid, music just sort of appears. You hear it on the radio and it never occurs to you where it came from or how it was created.  When I think of Rumours , my mind invariably goes back to a girl who was in my fourth grade class at Peter Vetal Elementary in Detroit. I can still remember that she had meticulously braided dirty blonde hair, thick glasses, a prominent nose, she loved horses, and she loved Fleetwood Mac's Rumours . I don't remember this girl's name anymore, but I remember that s...

  Late Saturday evening (more like early Sunday morning, to be precise), I finished reading Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. The book starts as a somewhat breezy, lighthearted collection of character sketches featuring the oddball and eccentric characters Isherwood (or "Issyvoo," as his landlady Frl. Schroeder refers to him) encounters as an English tutor/aspiring writer in Weimar Berlin. 200 pages later, it concludes ominously with the dark cloud of fascism enveloping Germany. What I particularly appreciated is its boots-on-the-ground reportage of the gradual decay of Germany in the early 1930s. Isherwood wrote this as Hitler was coming to power. We see Isherwood transform from passive observer to horrified chronicler. This book is a cautionary tale of how evil and hideous political movements can quietly take hold.

So, I went to my first Detroit Lions football game in 25 years and, just like that one, the Lions won in a blowout. On November 24, 1997 the Lions beat the Indianapolis Colts, 32-10. Today, the Lions beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, 40-14. So while the Lions have an all-time losing record, I am 2-0, with the boys in Honolulu blue outscoring the opponent 72-24. Am I a human good luck charm? It would appear to be true. We set off for Detroit at about 10:00 AM. After the requisite stops for gas and Starbuck's coffee, we finally got on the highway at about 10:20. It was smooth sailing until 6-96, north of Detroit. There was construction that narrowed the freeway down to one lane, but soon it was easy-peasy again until the Fisher Freeway Service Drive which was bumper-to-bumper traffic. It took us a good half-hour to go less than a mile, but we eventually were able to park the car in Comerica Garage and got into Ford Field--amazingly--about a half-hour before kickoff. Do you ever go to a ...

Today it was mainly me and younger son. I started the day by checking on the progress of my Sony 5-disc player, which is ostensibly being repaired at a shop. I left a message and didn't hear back, so who knows what the hell is going on with that. Stereo equipment repair dudes are as bad as car repair dudes when it comes to follow-up. I suppose I just have to keep pestering and eventually I"ll get an update. Good thing I have a backup CD player, so it's not urgent. After this, there was the matter of me not having much in the way of Detroit Lions gear for tomorrow's trip to Ford Field. Yes, that IS an issue. I made the short trip to the mall to pick up a shiny new Lions hat. I am having a technical glitch so will just post this now and update later. --- I am back. Serves me right for trying to write this on my phone. So after I bought my nice new Detroit Lions hat, I stopped at Jimmy John's to get younger son a sandwich for lunch since he is allergic to leftovers. A...

Hey, how about this! I am about to post my second consecutive blog post. Here's an observation: The older I get, the more sentimental I become. The oddest and most unexpected things move me: For instance, today at work I was cataloging a new children's book about Robert McCloskey and the creation of the book Make Way for Ducklings. In the back of the book was a small section about sculptures of the ducklings that were installed in a Boston park in 1985. McCloskey was apparently dubious of the sculptures until he saw children playing on them. That was the trigger that set me off. A few tears were shed. A voice inside my head said, "Seriously, dude?!" But it is what it is. I am an old softie. I mean, I've always had a tendency towards sentimentality, but it's become more pronounced than ever the last few years. Is it because of the pandemic? Is it because I'm getting older? I really don't know.

Here is an experiment to see if I can write something every day in the month of December. We bought tickets for the Detroit Lions/Jacksonville Jaguars game this Sunday. Why, you might ask? Well, it started when L. thought she might have scored free tickets at work. I suddenly got excited about the prospect of going to my first Lions game since 1997, when I saw Barry Sanders run roughshod over the Indianapolis Colts at the dearly departed Pontiac Silverdome. Unfortunately, someone else snatched up the tix before us, but the hankering to see the Lions at Ford Field--a venue I still have not been in--had firmly dug its claws (Lion claws?) in my brain. So, even though this will decidedly NOT be a free Lions game, we are going. Oh, but at least we have better seats than those free tickets. So, anyway, I'm excited about that. Whether the Lions win or not, it should be an enjoyable Sunday afternoon. Unlike most other late season football games I attend, weather conditions will play no rol...

'Tis the season when Thanksgiving ends and we, at the very least, pretend to be festive and joyous until January 1, 2023 and then fall off the ledge for the inevitable post-holiday blahs.  Okay, sorry to start the post with such a downer statement.  Anyway, Thanksgiving is sort of like "opening day" for the holiday "festive season" that lasts about five weeks. To use another sports metaphor, Thanksgiving is like the "exhibition game" that prepares us for the "regular season" of Christmas (and Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's Eve/Day). Thanksgiving is also the "Rodney Dangerfield" of holidays: no respect. And in recent years, Thanksgiving is taking much more of a beating for being racist and an anachronism. It's hard to dispute this, certainly when it comes to Thanksgiving origins. Even if one ignores Thanksgiving's roots in European extermination of the native people of North America and tries to treat it as a day in w...

This is the link to a podcast I was on. It was recorded back in the spring and just dropped a few days ago. Why The GDR Fascinates Me: Neese Family Adventures in Radebeul, Leipzig and Dresden :  "I have said this often, but I am so grateful to you all for your continued loyalty to the podcast this season. Most of you all don't know this, but I got…"--Steve Minegar, Radio GDR podcast [The rest of Steve's commentary is available after one clicks the link above].

Today marks the 37th anniversary of The Cult's Love album release.  The album was released on October 18, 1985, but I didn't hear The Cult for the first time until at least one year later.  I was at WhereHouse Records in East Lansing. It was the old location on Grand River Avenue and Charles Street, which is now a Starbuck's Coffee. I don't know what I was doing at WhereHouse or what I was looking for. I might have just been poking around or maybe I was looking for an R.E.M. or Smiths album (having just really gotten into those bands upon arriving as a freshman at MSU). I felt free from the restraints of home and of the secluded backwater I had lived in from fifth grade through high school graduation. College life and by extension, the energy and vaguely countercultural vibe of this record store made me feel alive in a way that it difficult to describe. So that one particular afternoon--and I am positive it was an afternoon because I remember natural sunlig...

We took Avery and Nora to the airport last Friday for their return trip to Germany. I've been reasonably okay in the past when seeing A off on any of his overseas trips, but this was the hardest time I've ever had. We had so much fun with the two of them and it was such a joy having them stay with us that I had to do everything I could not to just lose it as I saw them meander their way through the TSA checkpoint. What makes me feel better is that I know they are adults and have to go about their adult lives, and I know that Nora's parents are there and they'll be there if Avery needs anything. He may be thousands of miles away, but he's in good hands

This is the final installment of this electrifying series. So we woke up relatively early on Monday, September 5 (actual Labor Day) and headed on the road back to Niagara Falls. We had all filled out the online ArriveCAN app on our phones to get into Canada. After my last horrifying adventure with the Canadian border (in pre-pandemic 2019--I believe I wrote about it here), I was concerned about getting beyond the border without a hassle. In fact, I felt a bit anxious about it the entire drive to Niagara Falls. As usually happens when I worry about something, the actual source of the anxiety ends up being completely uneventful, and in this case the Niagara Falls Canadian border patrol guard was a perfectly polite and kindly fellow who let us in with a smile. Nora was excited because it was her first time in Canada and she was able to add another stamp to her passport. Despite overcast skies, misty rain, and a chill in the air, the Canadian falls were delightful and worthy of multiple ph...

I better finish up this Labor Day Vacay series before a) I forget what happened and b) my readers completely cease to care (assuming they already DID care). So on Day Four (Sunday, September 4) we collectively agree to check out Watkins Glen State Park, which is on the south end of Seneca Lake, about a half-hour(ish) drive from Ithaca. We didn't anticipate the huge crowd at Watkins Glen, but we should have. It was the Labor Day weekend, after all. Even though there were a lot of people, and they made climbing the hundreds of narrow steps of the Watkins Glen gorge falls a bit tight and mildly treacherous, they didn't detract from the amazing beauty. Watkins Glen has to be seen to be appreciated. We returned to our hotel in the early afternoon sweaty and dirty. We cleaned ourselves up, and walked up route 13 to the Barnes & Noble about a mile from our hotel. (It's been a pleasure to discover how much Nora likes books and bookstores). We, of course, got iced coffees from t...

I meant to write yesterday about Day Three of our Labor Day Vacay.  So we fought traffic and much larger crowds on September 3 to view the falls from the city of Niagara Falls, NY (and not Goat Island). The first stop--after thankfully finding a parking spot in one of Niagara Falls' massive parking ramps--was Starbuck's. I must emphasize how much all four of us love Starbuck's. Yes, I know it is a giant monstrous corporate coffee chain, and I'm not necessarily proud of my devotion, but the product is consistently good. So we stopped there, as we did often on this vacation, and I got my iced brown sugar oatmilk shaken espresso and was ready to face the hordes. The view of the falls was as equally impressive as it was from Goat Island. Niagara Falls reminds us of how small and insignificant we are as humans--at least that is my theory. There is something awe-inspiring to witness this enormous cascade of water tumbling 170 feet. The sheer power, danger, and beauty of the n...

So after I putzed* around Progressive Field taking pictures from every conceivable angle and location, we checked out of our hotel (Hilton Garden Inn) and hit the road for Niagara Falls, New York. (Initially, there was some concern about whether we should attempt to venture to the Canadian falls, considering one of our travelers is a German citizen and we weren't sure how difficult that would be to get through the border. Spoiler alert: it was fine. We saw Niagara Falls from the Canadian side on the drive home). We arrived at our hotel (Double Tree on Buffalo Avenue & 4th Street), which was along the Niagara River, in the early afternoon. Thankfully, we were able to check in early and get all our luggage and perishable food up into our rooms. Seeing that we could easily walk from the hotel to Goat Island, we set off.  The weather was bright, sunny and warm--but not uncomfortably warm. We saw the falls from the observation areas of Goat Island and then on a whim decided to go on...

First of all, and update on the Renaissance Festival. It was fine. Aside from the temperature being a bit hotter than I'd have liked--I find the RenFest to be more enjoyable by late September when the temps are in the low 70s--it was a pleasant time. It didn't get too busy until about an hour before we left. Even though I'm really not the biggest Renaissance Festival fan in the world, after all we have been through with Covid, I had the tastiest giant turkey leg I have experienced in a long time. Last Thursday (September 1), we headed off on a five-day vacation through Ohio, the little sliver of northern Pennsylvania that pokes up between Ohio and New York, then New York State, and finally into Ontario before returning to Michigan. We brought Avery and Nora with us. We arrived in Cleveland at about noon on Thursday. As soon as we parked in the lot on Lake Michigan near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we were greeted by the ear-piercing sounds of several blue military jets s...

I am on the road to the Renaissance Festival in Holly, MI with the family. We are bringing my older son's German girlfriend, who has never been to an American ren fest, which I assume are much larger and extravagant than their European counterparts. I haven't been to the RenFest since before the pandemic. I'd become a bit turned off by how enormous the crowds had become, and I will likely feel the same after today...but who knows. I'll let ya know later.

It was another emotional, powerful, brilliant, utterly captivating performance by the Brandi Carlile Band, at Huntington Bank Pavilion on Chicago’s lakefront. As usual, I was a puddle of tears during “The Story,” “The Joke,” and “Party of One.” Brandi’s voice and words (though it was Brandi’s bandmate Phil Hanseroth who wrote “The Story”) just go straight to my heart like few other musicians are capable. There were so many highlights at the show, so I will just list them as I think of them, in no order.   There was the alternately soaring and shit-kicking “Broken Horses,” the always shit-kicking “Mainstream Kid” (my favorite Brandi rocker), the Hanseroth twins (Phil and Tim) opening the show with their dueling guitar “Twintro,” Brandi and the twins singing three-part harmony on “The Eye,” opening act Celisse joining Brandi and the band for rousing covers of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Radiohead’s “Creep,” the second opener (and legend) Ani DiFranco joining a worshipful Brandi for...

I keep reading about the latest horrific mass shooting in the United States, this one in the affluent Chicago suburb of Highland Park. In what seems darkly appropriate for what this country has become, this shooting took place during a July 4 parade. The following is yet another rant that I feel compelled to get out of my system. I'm not sure if there is a state of mind that is just "beyond angry." I am so disgusted with the continual inaction of our lawmakers to do one single goddamned thing about gun violence and/or gun law reform. It seems like I say the very same thing every single time one of these massacres of innocent life takes place. Reading about two-year old Aidan, who lost both of his parents yesterday, sent me over the edge. It is absolutely heartbreaking. Why do we continue to allow this to happen? Why has the right to "the pursuit of happiness" been superceded by the right of any nutcase to arm himself to the gills (and it's ALWAYS "himse...

As everyone knows by now, Roe v. Wade was struck down by our ultra-conservative Supreme Court on Friday, defying the will of--if the polls I have seen are accurate--approximately 67 percent of Americans. We are officially living in a minority-rule, ultra-conservative, theocratic, authoritarian hellscape. Democracy in the United States is on life support. This nation is a joke and should deservedly be a laughingstock to the rest of the world. The only way we even begin to get out of this is if the American electorate hits the polls en masse in November and votes the corrupt GOP out. But it's not enough to simply vote, folks on the left have to let the right know that we will no longer tolerate their brazen thuggishness.  If we can't force these authoritarian theocrats out of office and send them scurrying into the rat holes where they belong, they will not stop trying to mold the United States into their own "ideal' society. One in which straight cisgendered white men a...

So it only took me almost four months to get through this book, not because it was bad or difficult to read, but because I was juggling two books at one time (something that never works out well since one almost always supersedes the other one in the "reading hierarchy"). Then, when I was finally able to devote my full "reading attention" to it, I would often put off reading until 10:30 or 11:00 at night and promptly fall asleep after reading about five pages. In the last week, I finally decided to read the book in the afternoon or early evening before I became irretrievably exhausted. So here is a brief blurb I wrote about the book for the library. I thought I'd share it here, too (apologies if the font size does not match the blog--I am copying and pasting it): This is a must-read for anyone interested in the life of Buster Keaton, silent movies, comedy, or the early days of cinema. Film critic Dana Stevens—who is also one of the hosts of the Slate Culture Gab...