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This is a pic that just recently came my way from a friend’s Halloween comedy show. It’s me in my natural form drinking a beer in a koozie around short beings.
Pic credit and producer/host of said show I was at: Chris Park. He’s funny. Follow him on IG:
Random Thought
The other night I went out for a run and it was the first cold run of the season. I define cold by what I wear in preparation for a run. In this case it was a hoodie, winter hat, and gloves. So yea, that’s officially cold. I haven’t rocked that gear combo since probably February or March.
Anyways, I’m on my run and for the first part I’m mostly consumed with thoughts about how cold it is and how I’m not accustomed to it yet so it kinda sucks but I’m also trying to tell myself to suck it up because this is how it’s gonna be from now on and hopefully maybe I’ll even build an endurance or get used to it.
I also wait patiently for the sweating to start. When the body gets warmed up, the cold starts to go away a bit. I still know it’s cold but at some point it just doesn’t affect me as much. But since this was the first cold run in a while, it took some time.
As I was running, something tragic happened that suddenly took my mind off the temperature. Not to me, to somebody else, a stranger. I was running through the park by my place and a car hit someone on a bike in an intersection. I was running so I didn’t stop (and even if I wanted to stop, I kinda don’t like being one of those people who stop at accident scenes to gawk at what’s going on. Feels overly intrusive). So there’s a lot of details I don’t know.
I’m not sure how old the person on the bike was although I assume young-ish and I only make this assumption because there were a few other young-ish dudes on bikes who had stopped and looked on. I assumed maybe they were all friends riding together maybe.
I also don’t know how bad it was. All I know is it looked bad because I ran a loop that’s about a mile long and there wasn’t much progress. It was someone laid out on the ground and each time I came around, there were more vehicles with flashing lights around. (It takes me about 9-10 minutes to get around the loop so I only got two glimpses at it).
But there’s this part of me that just wants the person to be alright. And that part hurts a lot. I wrote pretty recently about reasons I find it tough to be an atheist and this is a big one that I probably left out of that issue. I don’t have anyone to pray to, no one to make a request and say, “hey, this isn’t cool. Can we make sure this person on the bike will be alright?” I want that part of believing in higher beings to be true so bad because it’s the only solution I can think of from feeling completely helpless in the face of tragic happenings.
It’s sorta like war in a way. I look at war and I think why and I wanna yell, “stop that!” But that’s not gonna do it. If I believed in some kind of God, I’d put it on their to-do list and maybe feel a little better about doing my part. But logically, war is stoppable. We could just stop doing it. We could stop doing war like people could stop hitting people on bikes with their cars. It’s all gonna require being more careful and this is a shared effort we’re all gonna need to make and when you put it like that, yea I suppose it’d just be much easier to pray it away and make it someone else’s problem, preferably someone way more powerful than me.
Another odd thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was how the police closed the street one way and it caused a bunch of traffic and I just thought about people in their cars who have no idea why the road is closed so they’re just pissed off about it in general. Sometimes people will be like, “why is there traffic?” and sometimes this is the answer.
And then I wondered if there were any drivers affected by it who knew the reason why and were still mad about it anyways. And then I wondered if they pray to God and if they do, what do they pray for? The person on the bike to be okay or for less traffic? Sure, maybe both, but I doubt it for some reason.
This was all very heavy stuff for a run. It filled me with conflicting feelings. On one hand I was grateful to be up and running. Forget about the cold, it’s a privilege to be on my feet and moving. Any day I don’t get hit by a car is technically a good day. But that also made me feel selfish. I really wanted this person to be okay but I was also using their shitty situation to make myself feel better. And that’s a weird thing about life. We constantly have to deal with watching others fall down, get hurt, sick, etc, etc and we’re forced to keep it moving. We have no choice really but even if we did, moving should be the choice we make. Is it possible to be sad and grateful both at the same time?
I hope the person on the bike is okay. By the lack of sense of urgency, I feel like the person on the ground was in a way that was, “they’re gonna be okay but we should leave them in place till the ambulance gets here.” Typing this in a newsletter won’t do anything to fix it. All I can do is try to be a better driver myself when I’m out on the roads and hope everyone else will do the same. Or go to church I guess.
A note about this week’s title:
’If I Should Fall from Grace with God,’ is the title of a Pogues’ album and song. Shane MacGowan recently passed away. I wrote a brief thing about him this week in the Music Section.
Movie I Watched Recently
A Stupid And Futile Gesture
(Netflix)
This was a really cool movie about the creation of the National Lampoon magazine and focuses on Doug Kenney’s story in particular. I really didn’t know a whole lot about the history of the magazine or Kenney so it was a bit of an eye opener for me.
The first half is so much fun. It’s comedy as rock and roll. It was everything that made me want to get into comedy in the first place. We’re in this to have a blast and they certainly did that. It felt like such a wild time for them and for comedy in general.
The second half hits a bit differently. Things get serious. Kenney starts to spiral and things start to fall apart for him. It’s so odd because all I knew really of National Lampoon overall is that it turned into this super successful movie franchise. So I was sorta ready for good times all the time. Doug Kenney turns out to be a tragic figure in comedy and I almost feel dumb typing that out loud and admitting I had no idea about his life before watching this.
Emmy Rossum was in this movie and I knew this moment was gonna come sooner or later. I was eventually gonna be confronted with the actress who played Fiona in Shameless, one of my all time favorite characters in anything ever, being a different character. I don’t think I was ready. All I see is Fiona. It’s probably because I just binged the entire series a few months back. It’s no fault of Rossum’s. But seeing Fiona just sorta made me miss Shameless.
(I have similar issues with ‘The Bear.’ Yes, Jeremy Allen White is great in it. But I can’t help but constantly think he’s Lip with no bite).
I love Shameless and I wanna root for the cast forever no matter where they go from here. So this is on me, not them. I just probably need a little more separation from my Shameless binge and if I’m guilty of anything, it’s just loving that show too much.
TV show I’m currently watching
Haven’t started binging anything new. Maybe I need to get on that so I can stop missing Shameless already.
WWE superstar Becky Lynch taking her Jeopardy loss in stride. She grabbed this sign from a fan and shared it with the crowd.
Albums of the Week
Rockstar / Dolly Parton
I’m not sure how long the studio cut of this album is, but if you go on Spotify, you’re hit with a 30 song, 2 and half hour avalanche of Dolly doing rock music. It felt like a lot but it also felt like something I had to listen to.
The overall vibe of this album feels like a fun celebration of rock and roll music from a beloved country music legend. This album is filled with covers of well known hit songs. There’s a couple of songs that I think are new and maybe a couple of lesser known covers as well. She duets with everybody. Seriously, everybody, here’s a list:
-Sting (the musician not the wrestler)
-Steve Perry
-Ann Wilson
-John Fogerty
-Kid Rock (this one is unfortunate and skippable)
-Steven Tyler
-Stevie Nicks
-Peter Frampton
-Joan Jett
-Chris Stapleton
-Brandi Carlile
-Kevin Cronin
-Debbie Harry
-Elton John
-Melissa Etheridge
-Lizzo and her flute that she named Sasha Flute (Stairway to Heaven cover. Wild stuff.)
-Rob Halford
-Simon Le Bon
-Linda Perry
-Emmylou Harris
-Sheryl Crow
-Pat Benatar
-Ronnie McDowell
-Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr
-Lynyrd Skynyrd
Phew, that’s a lot.
This album and Dolly are very lovable. It’s a fun listen but you won’t catch me saying you have to hear this. She takes on the world. I find it very brave to take on songs like Purple Rain, Stairway to Heaven, and Free Bird all on the same album. Pretty intense.
There’s a lot of fun ad libs before and after songs and I can’t tell if they make the album feel more fun or awkward. Like, were they really adlibbing or were they scripted adlibs? I might never know. But y’know what, everyone showed up to be on this album so it must be a big deal. I don’t think even Dave Grohl could put this kind of rock and roll who’s who list together on one album. All hail, Dolly.
Leopard print steering wheel cover? C’mon man, who’s cooler than Dolly?
Rest in Peace Shane MacGowan
Shane MacGowan passed away on Thursday at the age of 65. I’m not gonna try to pass as a Pogues’ super fan but they were cool and I do listen to some of their stuff. When I think of MacGowan, I think of two incredible things.
The first being his songwriting talent. He was an amazing lyricist and an absolute poet on the mic. He leaned towards the punk tradition but in some ways was too beautiful to ever allow punk rigidness to put a cap on his abilities.
The second is his hard living. Except for maybe Lemmy, I can’t think of anyone else who immediately comes to mind when I think of people who lived hard in spite of everyone who says you shouldn’t. 65 is probably young but his appetite for drink was of the highest level and well known to all. It’s incredible to think of the list of musicians he outlived while probably living more dangerous than most of them.
Shane was a drunken angel. He was a guiding light for all the wayward drunks of the world. If you’ve ever felt the warmth of a pub or a shared drink with loved ones, Shane was singing your song and singing it so well that you didn’t have to exclusively be a drunk to feel it… but it probably helped.
Book I’m Currently Reading
A Creature Wanting Form / Luke O’Neil
I finished this up this week and I enjoyed it very much. I’d maybe like to see a genre of sorts like this book. It’s fiction sorta I guess but most of it feels based on nonfiction. It’s all extremely short stories that sometimes come across like essays.
An overall vibe I got from this book is the looming inevitability of death. Luke seems to think and write about death a lot. And it feels like a very honest thing. I wouldn’t say he’s obsessed but maybe he is but maybe we all are or maybe I’m just speaking for myself here. But I guess that it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one that has the idea of death kicking around in my brain a lot. I think it’s okay to think and talk about death and maybe it could even be more normalized. Maybe this book feels like a step in that direction.
One more time, I’d also like to plug Luke O’Neil’s newsletter, ‘Welcome to Hell World,’ which is all about this world we currently live in and what a fucked up place it can be:
https://www.welcometohellworld.com/
This is not a book cover or anything like that. It’s just a cool logo for his website that I found while googling stuff.
Random sports thought of the week
I don’t usually watch many football games in their entirety. I’ll check in here and there if I’m home on a Sunday, but mostly I depend on highlight shows to catch me up. And it usually doesn’t take much. An hour of SportsCenter and I feel completely caught up and by the time I watch anything sports related on a Monday, it all feels like old news.
However, I did catch almost all of the Eagles/Bills games this past Sunday and it was a really entertaining game. It was a tale of two teams. The Bills are struggling and seem to be playing below their expectations. Some people would say there were Super Bowl aspirations for them this season but it suddenly feels like that window is closing and close to completely shut.
Meanwhile, the Eagles feel like they could maybe be the best team in the NFL but they also get behind a lot and never really dominate anyone. They also have that one single loss on their record to the Jets. The Jets! Yikes!
So at this point in the season, this game felt like one team (the Bills) who wanted to prove they’re still a top tier team against the Eagles, who are a top tier team but at times don’t look like one. The Bills gave this game everything they had offensively and for most of the game they did look like the better team. But in the end, the Eagles found a way and they won. Doesn’t matter how, they got it done and they own the best record in the entire NFL.
I don’t root for any team personally so I guess for me this is what I want out of football, competitive games with a good story and that’s what I got here. I was watching the 49ers/Seahawks game at a bar recently and there were a few 49ers fans there and I was taken aback by how they didn’t want an entertaining game. They wanted a blowout, a domination. Instead of a fun, competitive game, they would’ve much preferred the Seahawks getting embarrassed. And I don’t know why, but that’s weird to me. Are you a fan of the team more than the sport? How good is the sport if one team can just go through dominating everyone all the time? That would be boring. That would make the sport unwatchable. No, we need the drama. A fan may want the easy win, but the sport demands and needs competition.
It’s like that Jean-Paul Sartre story about the dude who goes to Hell and Hell ends up being a poker game where you win every hand. There’s no long-term fun in that. That’s not where the juice is. It could never last.
So next time your team is behind or the game is closer than you like, remember that this is good for the game. I think this is why the Eagles are a great football team this season. Not because they’re blowing opponents out, but because they constantly find a way to make every game close and entertaining and dramatic.
Did some googling after I wrote the brief part about Sartre above and found this quote. I’m sure this is in reference to soccer but still… kinda wild that he had anything to say at all about sports.
Random pro wrestling thought of the week
CM Punk returned to WWE at Survivor Series and ugh I hate the internet because this is actually very surprising to me but also, I’m already exhausted hearing about it. SS was in his hometown of Chicago so the anticipation was there and fans were hoping he’d come back to WWE but if you asked me personally, I was a heavy doubter and CM Punk and WWE absolutely proved me wrong on Sunday.
It’s a fun moment but it all feels full of hypocrisy. Punk’s go to material was bashing WWE for the past 8 or so years. On top of that, when he was in WWE, he would constantly talk about the part timers who came in and took the spotlight from the full time talent and now he’s pretty much gonna do that very thing he used to rail against.
Also, WWE is the establishment and Punk is supposed to be the anti-establishment guy. I’m glad he’s making money but it sorta feels like a big sellout move. We can all differ on where our principles lay on this matter, but the dude uses the word, “Punk,” in his name and claims to be a punk rock dude and this was a very un-punk rock move.
But hey, free will and all that. Since it’s gonna happen, let’s hope for the best. But out the gate, he had a very tepid promo to close out Monday Night Raw this week. Whatever you thought about his run in AEW, he was an absolute beast on the microphone. This first WWE promo felt more like a caged beast.
It’s early and anything is possible and maybe and hopefully it gets better. I don’t know. CM Punk used to be my favorite current wrestler but now I’m just so whatever about him. I used to want to tune in just to see what kind of crazy shit he’d say on the mic. But now I feel more like an Orange Cassidy guy. Punk’s back in WWE? Whatever.
I feel like I used to be an angrier dude and so was Punk but maybe we’ve both mellowed in our middle age. Now I’m older and lean more towards apathy like my dude, Orange Cassidy.
Top 5 Songs That Dolly Parton Covered on Rockstar
1- Free Bird
2- Magic Man
3- Heartbreaker
4- Night Moves
5- I Hate Myself For Loving You
(Whatever you do, just stay away from the Kid Rock song, ‘Either Or.’)
Weekly Quote
“The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks- they spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.”
-Shane MacGowan
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