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Telling jokes with a toucan balancing a Guinness on its beak behind me. Comedy IS funny.
Random Thought
I wanna tell you that I won’t mail this issue of the newsletter in. But I gotta be honest with you up front, I woke up this morning feeling very under the weather. I have some kind of cold, it’s not awful but it’s enough to make me just wanna throw in the towel and hide under the covers till I feel good enough to brave the outside world again.
At my normal pace, I’m not really a busybody. I don’t subscribe to hustle culture. I just try to do things at my own pace and enjoy shit and whatever happens, happens. It’s a pretty casual place inside my brain and it amazes me sometimes that I’ve been able to get a weekly newsletter out once a week on a regular basis for quite some time.
I am a living, breathing stereotype of a dude who turns into a complete baby when he’s sick. It’s probably for the best that I live alone and no one else has to put up with me in this condition (don’t worry, Jinx is fed and taken care of). I don’t really wanna do anything. I don’t even wanna try. I just wanna drink hot tea, sip soup, and keep my body laying down under some blankets. That’s it. I have no further interests at this exact moment outside of that.
So here it is in all its glory, a newsletter written when everything in my gut says to give it up and let this week pass without one. This could be the weakest newsletter I ever write but even if it is, it will still have been one of the most challenging yet because all I want to do is answer the beck and call of my bed and hide away till I feel like a healthy human who once again would enjoy the opportunity to type thousands of words about silly, unimportant stuff.
Movie I Watched Recently
King of New York
(Prime)
Add this to the list of movies people give me a lot of grief about not having seen yet. Grief me no more. I am up on the tale of Frank White, masterfully played by Christopher Walken.
Frank White is a crime boss who just finished a prison sentence and he wants to get right back to the crime stuff pretty quickly as soon as he’s out. Frank wastes no time killing people, mostly competition. He doesn’t really kill any innocent people. AND he wants to fund a hospital in the Bronx and stop it from closing. Is killing people still wrong if the people he kills are bad people? I suppose so. But the thing that’s insane to me is how hard the cops who are after him wanna bring him down.
They go so far as to go after White and his gang during their free time not being cops. They become ruthless thugs to try to take him out and I just don’t understand why these cops would risk it when really Frank White hasn’t hurt anyone innocent yet. I can understand being on duty and wanting to get him is a big deal. But going rogue and possibly risking your career and your life to stop him just seems insane, like these cops are crazier than Frank White.
Anyways, there’s a lot of good acting and good scenes along the way. A lot of it is kinda bonkers which makes it very entertaining.
Christopher Walken busting a move as Frank White.
TV show I’m currently watching
Jeopardy!
(YouTube TV)
It is finally the Tournament of Champions. Hopefully after this, the tournaments will be over and Jeopardy will start to feel some kind of normal again. But until then, the TOC is the best and there’s already been some wild upsets.
None bigger to me than the upset loss of 21-game winner, Cris Pannullo. This dude was so good, he was an alternative in last year’s Jeopardy Masters (they didn’t have to use him, but still a pretty big honor). He felt like the heir apparent to the lineage of Jeopardy super champions but just like that, he’s gone and now we may never see him again.
They also did this thing where they allowed the winner of the Celebrity Jeopardy! Tournament to participate in the Tournament of Champions and I couldn’t wait to watch some celebrity get brutalized by “real” Jeopardy champions on network TV. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Ike Barinholtz won the first round and lived to see another day in the TOC.
I predict that lovable goofball Ben Chan is gonna go on to win it all.
Album of the Week
I Got Heaven / Mannequin Pussy
Yes, the name of the band is Mannequin Pussy. So it’s a lot of fun to think about this band getting written about in all sorts of publications. I suppose such vulgarity doesn’t do much inside the boundaries of this humble newsletter, but it is fun to think they got reviewed in the New York Times and NYT spelled it out as is.
This was a really good album. I’ve heard a few songs of theirs here and there before this and even saw them live once in an opening spot which was very good. This is one of those young rock bands that just makes me feel like everything’s gonna be alright in the world of rock music. These kids got it from here. They know how to make a good racket.
There’s a fun range of sound on this album. Some of the songs are gritty rockers, a couple even lean towards a sorta hardcore punk vibe but then there’s also some slower solid jams that although they take the pace down a bit, still rock. The vocals follow suit with vocalist Marisa Dabice able to sing sweetly one second and scream like she means it the next.
I don’t really know what to make of the album cover but it’s a good album and that’s all that matters.
Book I’m Currently Reading
Please Kill Me (The Uncensored Oral History of Punk) / Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil
This was a great read on the early days of punk rock. From Velvet Underground and Iggy and the Stooges to the death of Sid Vicious, this book does a really good job of covering all the bases in between. The ending is a bit rough because things end on such a downer. There’s overdoses, death, and murder. Nancy Spungen is murdered. Sid OD’s. Johnny Thunders eventually OD’s (as far as we’ve been told. There’s some shady circumstances around his death).
A particularly sad thing to read was Dee Dee Ramone saying he didn’t enjoy being in the Ramones anymore. That they didn’t get along and he couldn’t wait to finish the shows and be done with it. I mean, I knew they had their issues and that part wasn’t new to me. But because it’s in the format of an “oral history,” it’s like you’re hearing it straight from the dude himself. Dee Dee is telling you from beyond the grave, “I didn’t enjoy the Ramones at the end there.”
But that was also an example of the strength of this book. It’s a collection of quotes and chopped up interviews and it’s put together really well and it feels like the actual players in the scene are communicating to you directly, no middleman/narrator to muck things up. It all comes at you quick and powerful which is fitting since the subject at hand is punk rock. The entire book is delivered in what feels like a very punk rock manner.
This will probably go down as one of my all-time favorite titles for a book.
Random sports thought of the week
-Everyone’s favorite NFL center (I assume he’s everyone’s favorite) Jason Kelce retired this week. He’s a heck of a football player, sure, but he might be more fun as a personality. Hopefully this isn’t the last we hear of him. I’m sure if he wants it, he has a future of some sort in broadcasting. I also look forward to him having more time to do cool things like drink beer shirtless at tailgates (NFL games and/or Taylor Swift concerts).
-Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Buckeyes recently broke the scoring record for all-time leading scorer, male or female, in NCAA Division 1 basketball history. A very cool accomplishment for sure.
Definitely the coolest thing about the state of Iowa at the moment.
Random pro wrestling thought of the week
Sting’s retirement match was almost pitch perfect, from beginning to end. It was a chaotic match, a Tag Team Tornado match where anything goes which I found very appropriate given Sting’s run the past few years in AEW. He maybe only wrestled sparingly and in tag team situations, but when he was out there, crazy shit was always happening. It was perhaps the most chaotic and “hardcore” era of Sting’s career.
Everyone played their part to a tee. The Young Bucks were the asshole heels you hated out loud with everything you had. Darby was the young, wild upstart and Sting’s protégé prone to do the craziest shit you’ll ever see (his jump off a ladder into glass may be the craziest spot in AEW history). Even Sting’s sons got in the mix, cosplaying as younger versions of their dad. And Sting of course, played the role of grizzled hero almost perfectly.
I don’t know if it will go down as the greatest match ever, but it will definitely be remembered as one of the most fun matches I’ve watched in years. After the match, Sting got to say some words on the mic and it was all a very touching ending to one of the greatest careers in pro wrestling history.
For the last time ever, victorious with a title in hand. Retires a champion and a legend.
Top 5 Maniacs in ‘Please Kill Me’
1- Sid Vicious
2- Dee Dee Ramone
3- Iggy Pop
4- Johnny Thunders
5- Richard Hell
Weekly Quote
“Overnight, punk had become as stupid as everything else. This wonderful vital force that was articulated by the music was really about corrupting every form- it was about advocating kids to not wait to be told what to do, but to make life up for themselves, it was about trying to get people to use their imagination again, it was about not being perfect, it was about saying it was okay to be amateurish and funny, that real creativity came out of making a mess, it was about working with what you got in front of you and turning everything embarrassing, awful, and stupid in your life to your advantage.”
-Legs McNeil (Except from ‘Please Kill Me’)
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Man, I was stunned and so disappointed when Cris lost! He was so much fun to watch.