Lit City Blues

   1. Look, I've been saying it for years now, but this has to be the year of Book 4 . It's grinding away, little by little but at minimum, I'm going to get this damn thing into a workable draft format this year. If I'm very lucky and write very well, I might be into revisions by the end of the year and beating into shape for a final draft and a release. I have no idea why this is taking so long. I have no excuses to offer. I just really, really want to get this- at a minimum- closer to the finish line this year.  Book 4 is officially on hold for now. Doing some more reading and a lot of thinking about where to take this one, but hopefully I will have a solid plan by year's end.  2. Let's Get Some Vinyl: I finally got another tattoo and will probably get another at some point this year, but I really want this year to be the year I expand and actually use/listen to our vinyl collection more. We need more storage for it and I'd like to make purchas...

I haven't done a complete dive into Led Zeppelin's 1-4, but I might have to after this because I'm curious to see if my opinion changes. Prior to really giving III a good listen, I was very much a Zoso/IV fan, but now I think I might have to shift. I might have to lower the boom and say it: Led Zeppelin III is the best of the first four albums. (A full dive into Zeppelin's catalogue might change my opinion still further. I was surprised at how top-to-bottom excellent, no skips, Houses Of The Holy is as well.) Dipping back into the Albums2010 Archives , it looks like I did Led Zeppelin II (#20) and Led Zeppelin IV. (#27) in the original run-- #68-#80 were lost to the Unfortunate Wordpress Experiment, so it's possible I got more Zeppelin in the original run, but I don't know if I did Led Zeppelin III- so, without further ado: III: It feels like a tone shift from prior Zeppelin albums, and after consulting with the interwebs, that turns out to be true because tha...

Look, I'm just going to say it, because someone who lives in this county should: just lower the flags . I don't know what it is about Progressives, but something just unhinges their brains in moments like these and they choose to pick fights over the stupidest fucking shit. This, this is the hill you're going to die on? You're going to defy an unpopular Governor who is not running for re-election? I'm stunned at the bravery on display. I marvel at the profiles in political courage it must have taken to decide to chase some Progressive internet clout in a moment that demands, if nothing else, basic human decency . Do I have a very high opinion of our county board of supervisors? Not really. But I am disappointed in Jon Green. Progressive though he was, he struck me as a dude who had his head screwed on straighter than most of the rest of the local Progressives, and it turns out, I was wrong. He's exactly as myopic and clout-chasing and small-minded as all the ...

Ok, I'm three years in, and I'm going to start expanding some of these and defining them a bit more clearly. You'll notice some blank spaces because I'm still thinking about what to do for a lot of them and will add them over the course of the year to hopefully be fully updated by next year. (Also, I'm not sure I did this last year at all? So if I skipped a year, I'm sorry.) My 42nd revolution around the sun began with a trip to Colorado to see Brandi Carlile in concert with the Missus. We went to see the sunrise over Rocky Mountain National Park. We did some hiking. It was a great way to spend a birthday. 50 Before 50 Self Improvement 1. Run a 5K: I honestly don't think I'll do it more than once, because I'm not a runner by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd like to do it once, unless there's a walking challenge or something I can do? 2. Ride the whole week of RAGBRAI:  Again, I did a day, so why not the whole week? (Plus, I know it mig...

This was going to be a completely different post, but as usual, the never-ending slurry of chum that is the political feeding frenzy in this country changed all that. Originally, I was thinking I would chip away at this notion that the internet seems to be convincing itself that the Democratic Party's approval rating is somehow indicative of their impending doom. Arguably, the generic ballot at this point in the cycle paints a different picture, and a lot of the disapproval of the Democratic Party is coming from their own voters, angry at the party's general impotence and the fecklessness of the DNC in general. So, it's a talking point I don't particularly rate all that much. At this point on Twitter, it's essentially clickbait/ragebait more than anything else. (Ditto with any tweet that ends with THIS IS HUGE-- I assure you, it's not particularly HUGE. So, calm down... and stop inventing Tweet genres. It's annoying.) That got me thinking, though: are we in ...

I think the first time I ever listened to Talking Heads was on CD in my parents' old stereo system. I know technology is a wonderful thing and blah blah blah, but I was thinking about that stereo system the other day. The speakers were strategically placed around the room. The record player, the CD player, the cassette player, all in one cabinet with storage below for vinyl records. The way the sound bars jumped and shifted with the music in that late 80s-'90s kind of way. (Side note: am I the only one old enough to remember seeing neon markers for the first time? That was like an event when someone had magenta, electric blue, hot pink, and neon yellow markers in elementary school.) But the album that introduced me to Talking Heads was Stop Making Sense . It took me years before I actually got around to watching the movie (often cited as one of the best concert movies ever made, something I would co-sign.) I had a greatest hits compilation on CD ( Sand In The Vaseline: Popular ...

If you ever watched The X-Files when it was on back in the day, you will be very familiar with the poster that hangs in Agent Mulder's office of a UFO hovering over the landscape with the bold caption: I WANT TO BELIEVE.  In our current time of nonsense, I find myself drifting more and more to the position of I DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE, because every time the internet gets all riled up over some sign that our populist fever is breaking or some indication that there's a scandal that might finally have the current President dead to rights, it never seems to go anywhere. But very quietly, I'm starting to wonder about the following: 1. The Nativist Delusion: Real Or Cope? Illegal immigrants have become the Right's answer for every social ill, in much the same way that structural racism was blamed for every social ill by the Left at the height of Woke. We can slice and dice Medicaid and Medicare because it's costing so much because of all the illegals on it. Can't f...

  1. Look, I've been saying it for years now, but this has to be the year of Book 4. It's grinding away, little by little but at minimum, I'm going to get this damn thing into a workable draft format this year. If I'm very lucky and write very well, I might be into revisions by the end of the year and beating into shape for a final draft and a release. I have no idea why this is taking so long. I have no excuses to offer. I just really, really want to get this- at a minimum- closer to the finish line this year.  I sat on Book 4 for the majority of the first quarter and I'm breaking back into it now. I think I have a better handle on where I'd like to take it, but it remains a work in progress! 2. Let's Get Some Vinyl: I finally got another tattoo and will probably get another at some point this year, but I really want this year to be the year I expand and actually use/listen to our vinyl collection more. We need more storage for it and I'd like to make p...

Happy Birthday, America.  It's an odd one this year. I think there's a saying floating around out there in the universe that America is a country that will try literally everything else before doing the thing they know they're going to need to do in the first place. President Trump got his big, beautiful bill. We get no tax on overtime until 2028. Seniors get a $6,000 tax cut just because, and the rich get yet another tax break, and the social safety net gets shredded a little more. I might be inclined to believe that things will work out in the end, and they might, in a half-assed, mediocre sort of way, because President Trump seems to have preternatural amounts of luck. We heard a lot of talk about the Biden Economy and how people were suffering under the Biden Economy, and there were people who felt that, but a lot of people didn't see any difference at all. What if the script flips? What if some people get burned, and for a lot of people, their tax refunds get bigge...

Shockingly, I've been through the complete archives of the original run of Albums2010 , and I don't know if this Album made the cut. It's possible that The Blue Album was lost in the unfortunate WordPress experiment (#68-#80), but it is a glaring omission from the original run of Albums2010 and one that I will have to rectify, and there's no better time than right now. Weezer's self-titled debut dropped in 1994 and I don't consider this a particularly spicy take, but if you do, that's fine, but I'm going to go ahead and say it: this is one of the best albums of the 1990s and apparently Rolling Stone ranked it at 294 on it's list of 500 Greatest Albums of all time, which is probably about right in the grand scheme of things. But for the 1990s- and I know there's a lot of good music that dropped in the 90s, you would have to put this in the Top 25 at least for me to take your list seriously. Probably higher, if I'm being honest. (Doesn't ma...

I wasn't really expecting this. I was thinking maybe by the evening of the 2nd day of the Conclave, maybe they'd push it into day three-- but lunchtime on Day 2? That was a surprise and as I sat (as everyone did) and waited for the official announcement to find out who it was, the more convinced I became that this was going to be a fascinating choice. I don't know if we ever get hard data on vote totals from Conclaves-- I do think names float out there after a while-- who came in second, that sort of thing. (That's how we figured out that Pope Francis was runner-up when Pope Benedict came in)- but if I'm guessing (which naturally, I am) I think that if there was a 'liberal' bloc and a 'conservative' bloc, both sides figured out pretty quickly that their preferred candidates were not going to cut the mustard and set to work finding someone who would. (I also love the attempts to try and force an American political analysis into all of this-- yes, this...

Hey, remember when I wrote my elected officials about the potential cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service? Remember when the cuts went ahead anyway, and there are now delightful tweets like this one floating around? I want to say again: I'm not against cuts. I'm not against shrinking the size of the government, but what I am against is cutting off your own nose to spite your face. I am against this delusional idea that absolutely everything of value must go regardless of its good or not. This is not good. Don't believe me? Go talk to any meteorologist, and they will tell you that these cuts are a terrible, terrible idea.  (The interesting thing-- if such things could be called interesting-- is going to be how people react to this when the cuts are felt in a real way. I do not think we will be frogs in boiling water that's turned up slowly-- I think we're going to be frogs in suddenly boiling water and we're going to be pissed off. At least I hope so.) A...

The Missus read this book a while back and really liked it, so after hearing her talk about it for months , I finally got around to picking it up and seeing for myself what the fuss was about. In essence, Michael Easter is arguing something pretty unusual that grabs your attention right away: we're too damn comfortable. "Embrace discomfort to reclaim your wild, happy, healthy self." That's the tagline on the front of the book, and quite honestly, going into it, I was a little bit dubious. I don't know why: I got really into the whole mushroom thing that went around a few years back, and I will happily take Lion's Mane until the end of my days because I found all the mushroom science I read to be somewhat convincing. (I am, I will admit, also the type of person to say, "hey, that supplement sounds interesting, maybe I'll try that," so there's a little bit of that there I've got to be honest about as well.) I've heard all the Joe Rogan ...

 1. Look, I've been saying it for years now, but this has to be the year of Book 4. It's grinding away, little by little but at minimum, I'm going to get this damn thing into a workable draft format this year. If I'm very lucky and write very well, I might be into revisions by the end of the year and beating into shape for a final draft and a release. I have no idea why this is taking so long. I have no excuses to offer. I just really, really want to get this- at a minimum- closer to the finish line this year.  Quarter One revealed to me that Book 4 had a structural problem. I'm working on re-tooling it a bit now and I want to get back into it sometime this month and have palpable progress to report on by the end of this quarter. (For more details, you can see my Substack update.) Do I think I'm still on track to get this thing closer to the finish line by the end of the year? I do. But when I started writing books and putting them out into the world, I mad...

I can't remember when I got this album, but I know I haven't listened to it all that much since the first time I got it. Which is a shame because if two Santana albums were growing up that I was very familiar with, it would probably be Abraxas and Supernatural ( which featured as #25 and #26 on the original Albums2010 run ) so I'm still not quite sure why Blessings & Miracles hasn't been spun up more often, but for whatever reason, it hadn't, so I gave it a whirl and then I realized why it probably hasn't been spun up all that often. Don't get me wrong: it's very much a Santana album, and my opinions are probably hampered by the fact that I haven't done a complete dive on his very extensive discography (this album is #26 for Santana and produced by the man himself) so I say this not knowing for sure if it's par for the course or not, but it feels like this albums is trying to recapture the formula of guest stars/musical acts that made Super...