Lit City Blues

So this last 'Best of' list was probably the most difficult one to put together of any of them. Movies are tough: we've got three kids and so we're in that 'wait until it shows up on streaming' stage of our movie watching existence- with the occasional family movie trip to the movies. (And occasional date nights as well, but we need to be more consistent about those in 2020 I think.) Television was easier: if we entertain ourselves these days it's usually through streaming the latest show on Netflix or something. So, let's wrap it up with Movie and TV: MOVIES 15. Molly's Game: written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, I'm going to make a bold declaration here, so buckle your seatbelts: this might be the best movie that Sorkin has ever written, because it focuses so much on poker and not politics and it's remarkably free of the Sorkinisms that seem to follow his writing around through television and movies. I loved it. 14. Mad Max Fury Ro

Watched On: Netflix Released: 2019 Starring: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci Directed By: Martin Scorsese Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer 96%/Audience Score 86% Pick: Mine The movie opens with an elderly man, whom we learn is Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) recounting his time as a Mafia hitman-- the movie then flashes back to the 1950s in Philadelphia. Sheeran, a delivery truck driver, starts to divert some of his deliveries to the local crime family. His company accuses him of theft, but a union lawyer, Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano) gets him off after Sheeran refuses to give the judge the names of his customers. He then gets introduced to Bill's cousin, Russell (Joe Pesci) and Sheeran starts to do jobs for the local crime family including murders (or, as people like to refer to it as "painting houses.") Russell eventually introduces Sheeran to President of the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) who has ties with the Bufalino crime family and is fighting both ri

So, music was difficult. I don't really listen to albums all that much anymore. I've also seen some incredible concerts over the past ten years. There are also songs that stuck in my head as well- either through influencing my writing or just in general. So, instead of doing one flavor of music-- like 'album' or 'song' I just went ahead and did a big old mish-mash of the best music of the past decade.  Here it is: Honorable Mentions: Y'all, this list was actually harder than it looked to put together. I had to some real deep contemplation on who rose to the level of being impactful enough to make the list versus music I listened to a lot but not quite that much. So, Lorde and Vampire Weekend score Honorable Mentions for artists while Atmosphere (live at 80/35) and Blake Shelton (live at The Great Jones County Fair) score Honorable Mentions for concerts. 15. "2009", Mac Miller : This is quite literally the only song of Mac Miller's I hav

So, for months now (and when I say months, I mean months ) the Conservative blogosphere has been insisting that the truth will be revealed and we'll find out what the Deep State was really up to when the Inspector General's Report comes out. It'll all make sense then. Well, it finally dropped and... It's not nothing, which is what most of cable news seems to be treating it as. But it's not proof of Deep State perfidy either. First of all, +1 to the Inspector General for including a 25 page executive summary of the report and it's findings right up front. I mean, don't get me wrong- if I really have too, I'll dig through all four hundred or so pages of a report, but having spent two months picking my way through the Mueller Report I wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of having to do it again. I'll acknowledge that the Executive Summary may not have everything and all the details, so I might be missing some nicities and legalese in all of

So I've got this weird thing about 'End of the Year' lists, especially for music. I don't know why, because inevitably, I read the list of the 'Best Albums of [Insert Year Here]' and maybe recognize two of them- at most. Same thing with Best Books and hell, even best movies. I was all set to plunge into figuing out whether the 'Best Songs of 2019' actually delivered on the hype, when it sort of hit me that the people who makes "Best of" lists are usually critics who listen to a shitload of music/read a shitload of books/watch a shitoad of movie/TV for a living and thus have a far wider palate than you or I might, dear reader- though in the case of television, the golden age of streaming has made that far less of a possibility than it used to be. The long and the short of it: I figured why not make my own, 'Best of the Decade' lists. So I'm starting with books, there will be another one for Music and one for Movies/Television. F

The first Iowa football game I can remember watching was the Rose Bowl in 1991. I'm not quite sure I grasped the significance of the game, but I did know that Iowa lost to Washington and remember being very satisfied when we thumped them in the Sun Bowl in 1995. My Dad had faculty season tickets for football for a few seasons until one too many frigid November games against Minnesota and the general disinterest from myself and my siblings made him give them up. I remember going to see the NCAA Games at Carver Hawkeye Arena in 1993 when they made their run to the Final Four. I guess my point is that I was always aware of Hawkeye sports in some flavor or another, but never really dug deep and started paying attention to sports with any seriousness until about 1998 or so. But I knew who Hayden Fry was. I think that alone should tell you how iconic the man was. I was a bookish kid, only tangentially aware of sports until I hit high school, but I knew who Hayden Fry was.  Walk a

I did my level best to ignore the UK's election campaign, because I had this terrible feeling that it would result in yet another hung Parliament and yet another extension of the never ending tortuous process of Brexit. My wish for the Motherland, heading into the big day yesterday was for voters to pick one. A veritable kaleidoscope of pro-Remain parties or a clear and convincing mandate for Brexit with the Conservatives. Turns out, they went with the latter. Polls were showing a pretty consistent 10 point lead for the Conservatives through the campaign, but in recent days some polls seemed to be showing a surge for Labour and most every media outlet over there had it as too close to call when voting started. Then, the Exit Poll came out and showed a prediction of a majority of 86 for the Conservatives. I was somewhat stunned and somewhat dubious at the same time, as America's experience with Exit Polls has been somewhat... mixed to say the least. (It does seem that all pl

Watched On: Netflix Released: 2019 Starring:  Timothee Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Lily-Rose Depp, Robert Pattinson, Ben Mendelsohn Directed By: David Michod Rotten Tomatoes: 70% Tomatometer/85% Audience Score Pick: Mine I haven't really dealt with the Henrys or many of Shakespeare's monarchical/historical plays, to be honest. My first encounter with the Saint Crispin's Day speech was actually the end of Renaissance Man (deep cut, I know.) I don't think I've ever actually read any of Henry IV Part I or Henry IV Part II, so I approached this more contemporary, non-Shakespearean take on Henry V with something of an open mind as I knew the basic outlines of the story and not much else. The King tells the story of Henry, Prince of Wales (Timothee Chalamet), who goes by Hal and who is estranged from his father, King Henry IV (Ben Mendelsohn). He spends his days drinking, whoring and generally avoiding being a Prince as much as he can with his companio

We're back! November was consumed by beating Book 3 into shape and so I didn't do much in the way of blogging, but now it's Saturday and we're back on the TWIV-Train with two more flags from the strange and kind of formally recognized world of separatist movements and sub-national autonomous regions. First up, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus : If you're thinking to yourself, 'hey, that looks a lot like the flag of Turkey' well, you'd be correct because without the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 , there wouldn't be a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. I can't even remember which class it was an undergraduate where I wrote the paper on Cyprus, but I do know that learning about this conflict was one of the most interesting things I've ever done. I didn't realize that Cyprus was a divided island and that Nicosia was Europe's last divided capitals. So why the invasion back in the day? Well the TL;DR of it all is that a

So, I've never really dabbled in alternate history as a writer, but I've read plenty of it as a reader and on the whole, I tend to find the whole concept fascinating. Shows like 'Man In The High Castle' are like catnip to me. (Even though I've stalled out somewhere in Season 2, I think- because given it's subject matter, I find it better in small doses rather than one long, large binge.) It was not surprising, however, when I found myself in an extensive discussion on Discord about the ins and outs of using time travel to kill Hitler. (I'm pretty sure I answered a similar question about this on Quora as well awhile back. So, let's talk about the notion. Assuming time travel is real and possible, would it be advisable to go back in time and kill Hitler with the aim of preventing the whole World War II/Holocaust thing?  No, I wouldn't. Because killing Hitler wouldn't actually solve the problem. If you really want to alter history to eliminat

The 'I'm running for President, so I wrote a book' thing has become so ubiquitous that it practically qualifies as it's own genre now. Off the top of my head I think Senator Klobuchar and Senator Harris both have books out- undoubtedly Joe Biden has one floating around somewhere from years past and I'm pretty sure Bernie and Booker have had books out in the world for awhile now as well. In general, I don't read these books-- though, one of these electoral cycles it'd be interesting to buy all the books and read them and see how that changed my opinions/thoughts on any of these candidates. Despite my previous aversion to these type of books, I had a free credit from Audible and Pete Buttigieg was a candidate I was looking to learn more about, so I snagged an audio version of his book Shortest Way Home and gradually began working my way through it. My second audiobook ever, it's narrated by the Mayor himself, which lends a certain amount of authenticity