Post-Christmas Greetings

 I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Maybe it wasn't as merry as past years, but I hope it was still restful and enjoyable. I slept a lot (since I took a week off from my day job), read a lot, and watched a lot of television. Good times. And, hey, any day we're still alive during Covid is a good day to me! Seriously. When people ask how I'm doing, I've been telling them, "I'm just glad to be alive!" 

Recently, I decided to do some research on the Jonestown massacre and I read a book this month about it and also a documentary about some of the women who were main figures in Jim Jones's life, but I'm still having a hard time understanding why so many people followed him, not just in the United States, but out of the country. It's one thing to join a cult in your home country (and that's bad enough), but to pick up and leave your country for a cult is an entirely different ball of wax. And these people didn't relocate to a country that was similar to the US. They went to a remote location in the middle of a jungle. This was the 1970s and there was no internet or anything, but these folks were cut off from pretty much anyone who wasn't also a cult member. Crazy and sad.

Thorns in My Side

 My new book, Thorns in My Side, is publishing next month. (It's about time, right?) Here's the blurb:

When Tim Whittaker’s best friend Jake Thorn announces that he’s getting married to his girlfriend Jenna Riley, Tim tells him he’s making a mistake. Tim, who’s been in love with Jake for years, wants his best friend to be with him instead.

While Tim and Jake deal with their issues, Jake’s older brother Caleb is dealing with issues of his own as he enters into a secret relationship with Jenna’s newly-divorced father, David, who wants to keep his homosexuality hidden from his daughter.

Thorns in My Side explores the secrets, lies, and love between brothers who grapple with friends, lovers, and each other while trying to keep their lives, and the lives of those around them, from spinning out of control.

Won't Someone Think of the Children???

I read an article in the NY Times last week about kids growing up during the Covid pandemic and how they're coping with it. The kids today have a hard row to hoe right now. Face masks, social distancing, remote learning...it's all sad. I saw a group of little kids leaving their daycare facility last week for a group outing and they all had their little face masks on as they lined up and headed out. This is, sadly, the world we live in now. I don't even have kids, but it makes me sad to see the kids with their masks on. According to the Times article, the physicians they spoke with seemed to think the small kids will get over this ordeal once the Covid pandemic is behind us. I certainly hope they're right. I hope kids are able to overcome the trauma they faced during Covid and live their lives with normality once things get back to normal. (Well, whatever "normal" will mean in the future.) The kids may actually do better transitioning back to normal life more than adults. We'll probably be the ones still freaking out once this thing is over.

What Was I Thinking?

 As I get older, I often look back on stuff I liked when I was younger but don't like now. For example, I remember really liking the music of the Counting Crows back in the 90s. But now? Not so much. Mr. Jones? Round Here? The Rain King? Ugh. Yuck. No bueno. I also used to eat Fig Newtons when I was a kid, but you couldn't get me to choke one down now. Campbell's tomato soup, vanilla wafers, sugary cereal like Honeycombs and Sugar Smacks: I ate it all and now I couldn't imagine eating any of that stuff. I also used to enjoy watching Sex and the City. I even had one or two seasons on DVD. But now? Not my bag, baby. I doubt I could get through one episode without rolling my eyes. It's just not something that appeals to me now. When I was younger, I enjoyed the show, but now it just seems ridiculous and tone-deaf. Having lived in New York for a few years, I know how hard it is to maintain a living there when you don't make a six-figure salary. It's not easy and it's certainly nothing like SATC. 

Things change. Views change. Tastes change. I still love many things I loved when I was younger (like 70s music, 80s music, and the New Zoo Revue), but there's a lot of stuff that I've moved on from.

A Lot of TV

My cable provider gave me free HBO, Showtime, and other pay channels (that I don't have because I can't afford them), so I spent a large part of this holiday weekend watching television. I finished watching The Good Lord Bird (after having seen only the first episode) and largely enjoyed it. As someone I work with said, "Ethan Hawke does bring the crazy." Yes, he does. I also enjoyed Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass and Joshua Caleb Johnson as Onion. The performances were great. 

After The Good Lord Bird, I turned my focus to a bunch of documentaries and they didn't disappoint!

First: Murder on Middle Beach: I only watched the first two episodes available (although I believe there's another one tonight). Wow. This guy is trying to figure out who killed his mother and then he learns his mother was mixed up in this pyramid scheme with other suburban housewives. Crazy!

Second: There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane: This documentary was about a woman who killed herself, one of her kids, and three of her nieces on the Taconic Parkway back in 2009. The toxicology report found alcohol and marijuana in her system, but her husband claimed she didn't drink or smoke that much and didn't believe she'd drive while intoxicated especially with all of those kids in the car. What I couldn't understand was why she didn't just park herself and wait either to come down from the booze and weed because, according to the documentary, she stopped twice during her road trip: once at a rest stop and once on the side of the road (where she left her cell phone). She clearly knew she was having trouble keeping it together, so why keep pressing on??? No one will ever know what was going on with Aunt Diane that day. A sad story.

Third: The Inventor: This documentary focused on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes who got a bunch of people to financially back her contraption that was supposed to allow for a range of medical tests by using only a drop of blood taken from a finger stick. Yeah, that didn't work, yet so many people (old men mainly) believed in her bullshit. When you're a young, blonde, and cute woman, I guess you can get away with a lot of smoke and mirrors. Ridiculous!

Post-Thanksgiving Greetings

Well, another holiday has come and gone, but this Thanksgiving was quite different from the others I've had in my life. My sister and I normally travel to Michigan for Thanksgiving, but not this year. Due to Covid, we stayed home. It's all about survival now. I've read a lot of fretting about spending the holidays alone or not with the loved ones we normally spend them with and, while I'm sympathetic, I think we all need to do what we can to keep ourselves and others healthy and alive and if that means a solo or low-key Thanksgiving, then so be it. Better lonely than dead, folks. 

I've spent Thanksgiving and Christmas alone before. When I was in graduate school (and even after that) I often couldn't afford to travel for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so one holiday had to be sacrificed. Also, I've lived in cities where I didn't have any close family members around or friends who'd take me in, so I spent the holiday by myself and I managed to get through it. Now I'm not the kind of person who needs to be around others 24/7, but it was still sad at times to be alone on the holidays. It's not something I enjoyed, but it was necessary due to my finances. I didn't want to start the new year with a ton of charges from airline tickets and other things just because I didn't want to be lonely. You do what you have to do to make it work.

I certainly hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.

Szechuan Dumplings

This post isn't really about Szechuan dumplings. It's about Steely Dan singing about Szechuan dumplings. I read a Twitter feed called Good Steely Dan Takes and the feed shows various Steely Dan-related posts from people. One that stood out to me recently said that people like to shit on The Dan but praised them for creating songs that talk about things like sharing a meal of Szechuan dumplings with your cocaine dealer. 

Szechuan dumplings now that the deal has been done. I'm the one.

These lyrics come from the song "Glamour Profession" and, being the good Dan fan that I am, I immediately recognized what song the tweet was referring to. 

NY Times writer Brent Staples frequently tweets various Steely Dan/Donald Fagen lyrics such as "Won't you pour me a Cuban breeze, Gretchen?" (From "The Goodbye Look" from Fagen's solo album, The Nightfly.)

Steely Dan has song lyrics about getting take-out from Dean & DeLuca, drinking kashasha. Who else sings songs about stuff like that? No one!