Lit City Blues

Am I a yacht rock superfan? Not really. I know the music and when the mood takes me, I'll throw on a playlist on Spotify and jam out a little, but little more than that. Did I know where the term came from? No. Did I know how it developed when it did? No. But the new documentary on MAX, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary gave me all the answers to my questions and then some. I'll be honest: I watched this more out of curiosity than anything else. I'm glad I did. Yacht Rock developed from a web series that started around 2005 or so and basically, a bunch of friends would raid the $1 bins at the local record store and found themselves listening to a lot of the artists that came to make up the 'yacht rock' genre and dubbed it that because it sounds like 'music that makes you feel like you were on a yacht.' (The super crazy aspect of all this: this is a web series that predates YouTube. It's now on YouTube of course , but if you want to talk about a 'deep cut...

THE FINAL TALLY IS HERE: I'm going to call this an okay year. Made progress on a lot of things, succeeded at some, failed at others. I think next year I'm going to have to be more concrete in my goals that way they're not so vague and hard to quantify the way some of these are. But in general, a final record of 4.5-2-3 on the year isn't... terrible. But not my best work either. On to 2025! 1. Book 4: Get this book into draft form (close to, if not ready to launch-- fingers crossed!) by the end of the year. I have some other writing goals as well, but this is going to be my big, main focus for the year. Book 4 is still grinding and nowhere near draft form. FAIL. 2. Get Another Tattoo: I might get really crazy and get two! (But for real: no reason why it can't happen this year. Money is being accumulated. The date just needs to be set to do the deed.) Behold, a SUCCESS. 3. The Health Thing: Okay, so I'm going to get away from numbers on scales this year. It's ...

This big doorstopper of a book has been on my bookshelf since I don't know when. I'm pretty sure I inherited this one from my parents, so it probably sat on their bookshelf since I don't know when because I don't remember purchasing it despite the fact I have Pakenham's excellent book The Boer War (which I do remember purchasing.) And having made my way through all six hundred and eighty pages of it, I'm still not entirely sure what I think about this book. Let's start with the obvious: this was written in 1991 and it feels like it, too. I'm sure there have been more up-to-date assessments of the Scramble since then (at least I hope so) but when Pakenham pegs apartheid in South Africa as being the most poisonous legacy of the Scramble, it makes sense in the context of the immediate post-Cold War, pre-ending of Apartheid era in which he was writing. I, reading this in 2024, 33 years after Pakenham wrote the book would be more inclined to point the finge...

Day One: That's the thing about life. It goes on. Day Two: I was only ever convinced of one thing: someone was going to be very, very wrong. I just didn't expect to be this wrong. There's no fluke here. No antiquated bullshit like the electoral college to hang your hat on. This was a comprehensive thumpin' and people voted for this. It's nice on the one hand, because living in Iowa I've genuinely thought that people had lost their damn minds in this state for a few years now and now it turns out we weren't crazy, we were just early . I hated the black despair of Tuesday night. It took me most of Wednesday to drag myself out of it, but I did. I don't think politics or elections should impact my mental health that much so I'm not going to let them do that anymore. This post will probably be my last piece of political commentary for the foreseeable future. I want to do other things with my brain. I want to read more books. Study more history. Write more...

This book has been lurking on my shelves for years and I've taken a few runs at it now and again but I finally finished it. I've been thinking about this and I can't remember when I purchased this book, but if I could pinpoint a reason why, it was probably moving to Mankato for grad school. No, I didn't buy this for a class, but once I moved there, I decided to try and learn a little about my new place of residence and that's when I found out that the largest mass execution in US history took place in Mankato. That's when I found out about the Great Sioux Uprising that tore apart southern Minnesota in 1862 . I grew up, attended elementary school, high school, and four years of college about 200 miles away from where a lot of it happened and none of it ever came up in any history class I had ever taken, ever. For people of color in this country, that's probably not all that surprising- given how many people had to learn about the Greenwood Massacre thanks to...

PRESIDENT/VP: Harris/Walz: I keep meaning to respond to a tweet that floats up in our pre-election nausea/anxiety phase. It's something like, "Tell me why you're voting for Harris without using Trump as a reason." Well, okay, then random Twitter person, as the kids say: Bet. Leaving aside the fact that she's excellent on reproductive rights, and housing, has actual policies on her website, and doesn't just verbally diarrhea her way to half a dozen different policy positions a week, I have a couple of very simple reasons I'm back Harris/Walz this time around that have absolutely nothing to do with Trump.  First, it's a hammer blow to our current primary system. As currently constructed, the primary system rewards and encourages partisanship. To a certain degree, that's to be expected, but it's metastatized beyond the point of lunacy now. Candidates who run for either party's nomination are forced into positions that are wildly out of sync wi...

Almost forgot about this, but here's the Third Quarter Check-In: 10 For 2024 1. Book 4: Get this book into draft form (close to, if not ready to launch-- fingers crossed!) by the end of the year. I have some other writing goals as well, but this is going to be my big, main focus for the year. I'm still grinding with Book 4. (Currently on a draft of Chapter 7) after getting some eyes on what I have, I'm fairly sure that the final draft is going to be structured differently than the current story I have in mind, but for now, the big picture goal here is to get it all down on paper and then see what I've got to work with and go from there. In big, genuine, real-life news: Paid Posts are live on Substack. I don't think I did the best job with the first two rounds, but I'm getting better at this (always the goal) and should have them nicely packaged with free previews moving forward. Speaking of: my first novella launches over there today! (I'm planning on wide-r...

I have had this book lurking on my bookshelf for years and I've made an attempt or two at actually reading it, but have never made it all the way through- at least until now. It is, I will confess, an abridged version, which some purists may have an issue with, but I didn't.  The story begins with Edmond Dantes who is returning to the port of Marseilles after being at sea and his future is looking very bright indeed He is on the verge of becoming the master of his own ship. He has a young lady that he loves (Mercedes the Catalan) who accepts his offer of marriage. Good fortune, stable finances, and a prosperous life seem to be ahead of him.  However, not everyone is happy with Edmond Dantes. His crewmate, Danglars wants the job that Dantes is on the verge of getting. He's also got a rival for the affections of Mercedes: Fernand Mondego. Together, they plot to undo him and in this, they are helped by an unusual fact. On the way back home, at the behest of the Captain (now d...

Okay, this going to seem like a tangent, but stick with me, because it's part of a larger point I think is worth making. I never left Twitter. Some people I know did, but I sort of stuck around to see what would happen and when I didn't see an appreciable decline in the quality of the septic tank fire that it always had been, I shrugged and kept going. On impulse a few weeks back, I downloaded the Threads app, because I find the Threads web interface incredibly clunky and MAN OH MAN is Threads so much better on the app. But I've been running them side by side for a few weeks now and I'm starting to see what people are talking about when it comes to the declining usefulness of Twitter. Now, it's not all bad. Full credit to Elon, Community Notes was a brilliant and much-needed feature that honestly, more social media platforms should copy-- and it should be a lot more widely used than it is on Twitter. But man... it's getting rough. Either my algorithm is breaking...

It's just a game, but at the same time it's not. I think it would blow people's minds the number of moving parts involved in making sure a stadium is ready to go for 70,000 people to walk in, sit down, and watch a sporting event for three hours. But last Saturday, I worked the day job for nine hours, holding the baton (in my case, my trusty tactical spork) and dealing with the symphony of gameday chaos. It went better than week one, as it always did, but there was an extra fillup of crazy in the air because it was Iowa State and that's just how the world works. But after my shift, I drove home, grabbed a burger, poured myself a generous measure of single malt whiskey, and wandered down to my firepit where the Missus was waiting for me. The kids eventually joined us, and Smores were made. We listened to music, looked at the stars and it was just perfect. The tension of the day bled out of me and I realized that it was just a game. I walked away from downtown and drove do...

I'm trying to think where my fascination with this period of British history began and I think it might stem from a trip to visit relatives in the UK when I was younger where we went and saw a historical re-enactor present about the English Civil War at my cousins' school. The re-enactor in question was dressed as a Cavalier and I thought the overall look, but especially the hat was pretty damn cool. (He also, once he found out we were American informed us that at least one battle of the English Civil War took place in Maryland, which is true .)  As I grew older, I think it was a combination of picking up random books on various UK trips ( Cromwell, Our Chief of Men , King Charles II , and most recently, The Glorious Revolution ) but I think I have to give credit to Mike Duncan's incredible Revolutions podcast that got me interested not just in expanding my own knowledge of the period, but trying to trace back what influence it may have had on the development of American d...

I tweeted this: What I’m 👀 for the campaign: 1. Harris VP pick 2. Convention Speech Would hope to see her do some interviews (actual, non-soft ones) after that. Am increasingly convinced that she’s a fundamentally different candidate from 2020. — Tom Nixon (@litcityblues) August 2, 2024 #1: Nailed it.  I get that Walz has some detractors in the Punditocracy, but Harris is working on a condensed timeline and has not time for an intraparty fight, even if it might be one worth having. Shapiro would have helped in Pennsylvania, but he also would have meant an intraparty fight and she ain't got time for that. Walz helps in the Upper Midwest (MN, WI and probably MI) and it doesn't hurt that he used to be a teacher, served in the national guard and is an effective communicator to boot. I have not worn a uniform, so I'm going to let the folks who have litigate any fights over the nature of his service. To me and probably a lot of other normie voters, the fact that he wore the un...

This is a well-written essay . I will give the author all his flowers: it's well-written, it's compelling, it's even persuasive (in parts) but it's also utterly wrong. 'Reflections on the revolution in England' immediately grabs your attention, because: what Revolution? The anti-immigrant riots? The criminalization of speech? There's a reason people sailed away from that Island over there and landed on these shores, buddy and it's because there hasn't been a revolution on that sceptered island and its relationship with speech has always been sketchy. This is the same Kingdom that brought us the Star Chamber after all Full credit for this quote, however: The latter shed more heat than light-- the American grasp of European affairs is generally poor, a quality amplified by orders of magnitude when discussing the European grasp on American affairs, which is simply abysmal. Truer words have never been put to paper or screen. It's even worse because ...

Once, in 9th Grade, I filibustered on the cotton candy-filled goo of Olympic coverage for a solid thirteen minutes because all I wanted to do was watch some fucking speed skating, but no, whoever had the Olympics at the time insisted on filling so much time with human interest stories that it crowded out the sport . Of course, I was in 9th grade and was full of teenage arrogance and lacking in any sort of knowledge of basic media criticism, but I believed what I believed damn it . So when I watch the Olympics, I do judge the coverage. And the older I get, the more judgey I get about it. But, you know what: Paris was awesome .  Medium Spawn and I watched the tape-delayed broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies and, the weird menage-a-trois moment aside, it was awesome. It did something no other Opening Ceremony managed to do effectively and that was a showcase of the host city itself. The boat parade on the Seine? Perfect.  This-- which on the broadcast I remember being dead silent...