So long sober month

The Josh Wells Weekly, Episode 338

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Random Thought

My sober month is over. It came to an end on Wednesday at an open mic. I drank a very casual three light beers to put the whole thing to rest. After completing a month of not drinking, I’ve come to a few realizations. Nothing new or exciting, more like a reinforcement of things I already knew but need to be reminded of from time to time.

This was a hard time to be sober. The news is shitty. What’s going on with ICE and everything else MAGA related is shitty. The weather’s been shitty. My financial situation has been shitty. There are a few bright spots in my life and I won’t say the whole thing sucks, but clearing the fog a bit reminded me that it’s chaos out there and I am not exactly living the dream.

I don’t mean to drink alcohol to numb myself to everything that’s going on that I don’t wanna deal with but it sorta just turns out that way anyways. It’s a good way to turn the volume down a bit on all of that and it helps me get by a bit. And when I think of it like that, I suppose it’s good to take a break from turning numb and remind myself of the stone-cold reality of the situation.

But that reality is enough to send me right back to the nearest watering hole. Not only the drinking, but the socializing I do when I drink helps ease things up. I’m a very social drinker. I almost never drink at home. I almost never drink alone. So, when I take a break from the drinking, my social life takes a hit too and that can feel slightly isolating at times. It’s nice to be around friends and to talk to people and feel less alone.

I think there’s some kinda lesson about balance here. I’m not gonna beat myself up because I go out and have a few beers with other people. But I can’t let that take over or completely blind me from the realities of everything else. Life is hard. There’s a lot of ugly in the world. And I’d be delusional to try and ignore and/or avoid that. I can’t allow drinking to become a turtle shell that I hide away in.

But I can’t allow all that ugly to defeat me either. Staying in, playing it safe, not having fun… those are no ways to live, at least not for me. I’m a social dude. I need to get out and be around people. That’s where a lot of my joy is. It was slowly starting to feel like it was becoming an “all work and no play…” situation and that’s just not the life for me. There will be joy. There will be play. And there will probably be a few beers.

There will also be koozies. Finally, the collection is back in the game. (This is not nearly all of them, btw).

Movie I watched this week: Honey Don’t!

(Netflix)

This was a very fun neo-noir dark comedy type movie directed by one of the Coen Bros (Ethan) and written by Ethan and Tricia Cooke (who also happens to be Ethan’s wife). Margaret Qualley plays a cool, unconventional Private Investigator. She gets wrapped up in a murder investigation that looks like a cover-up job that was made to look like it was just a traffic accident. There’s a lot of fun elements in this movie. There’s drugs and murder and lesbian stuff. There’s a lot of fun oddball characters. Some shady, some not. Overall, this movie is a good time. I highly recommend.

It’s also a very fun cast.

TV show I watched this week: Mr. Robot

We are now in the midst of Season 2 and things are getting crazy. Elliot and his crew have succeeded in taking down a major financial corporation (Evil Corp) and there’s a whole lot of fallout. Elliot doesn’t really take any time to enjoy their victory though. He sorta loses it and is obsessing over the whereabouts of Tyrell, the former executive employee of Evil Corp who teamed up with Elliot at the end of Season 1 and then disappeared.

Meanwhile, there’s a bunch of fallout at Evil Corp. Darlene is leaning in heavy on continuing with the “F Society” movement post-hack. Angela is falling deep into working for Evil Corp and is developing some kind of weird relationship with the CEO that I’m not really enjoying, and I fear is gonna get weirder and/or worse. I suppose we’ll see.

There’s also an FBI agent who is hot on their trail and they don’t even know it yet. So, I’m sure that will add some more fun drama in the near future.

More to come…

They also got Craig Robinson in there. And in a way, he may accidentally be the guy who gets Elliot to snap out of his doldrums and get back into the game (Elliot has been avoiding computers and trying to not do anything remotely computer related. Sorta like his own sober month but his sobriety is from hacking).

Album I listened to this week: Singin’ to an Empty Chair / Ratboys

I gotta give it up to this band. They sound nothing like their name at all. Never judge a book by its cover or a band by its name I suppose. They don’t sound like rats or boys or the combination of both.

Ratboys are some kind of alternative country or new era Americana or something like that. It’s very good. It’s a bit of a mellow rocker and moves at a pace that is slower than I’d usually prefer but I’m not gonna fault the band for that. They’re very good at what they’ve set out to do.

This album is sincere and has a whole lot of heart. There’s definitely a lot of heartbreak underneath it all but in a way, that doesn’t turn this album into a depressing mess. They somehow take that heartbreak and create something that’s an enjoyable listen that doesn’t make me wanna slit my wrists. I walked away thinking, “me, you, the Ratboys, and everyone else… we’ll all be okay. We’ll move on. This will pass.”

Sure, the chairs are empty, but the scenery’s nice.

Book I’m currently reading: Punk Rock (An Oral History) / John Robb

Things are happening in England. Especially The Damned and the Sex Pistols. They seem to be the two bands that make the most noise in the beginning. But the Clash is also out there doing their thing and sure to hit their stride at any moment.

This book talks about a bunch of bands I’ve never heard of as well and that’s always fun. Makes me wish books like this came with a playlist that goes along by chapter. The playlist for this book would be a lot of fun to throw together, I imagine.

We’re still in the 1970s here. I got a lot more book to go. The Sex Pistols are just starting to make noise. They’re not even world famous yet.

More to come…

I like this alternative book cover. Simple and fun just like punk rock.

Random Sports Thought

The Seahawks did it. They won the big one. And when I woke up the next day… it was like no one cared. It didn’t matter. All that anyone wanted to talk about was Bad Bunny. He stole the show. Some loved it. Some hated it. A lot of people are somewhere in between.

It probably didn’t help that the game itself was kinda boring. If you’re a football nerd, you probably enjoyed that it was a defensive battle. But the Superbowl is when all the casual fans tune in. I don’t think it was entertaining to a large chunk of that audience. By halftime, I was certain the Seahawks kicker was gonna win the MVP (he didn’t).

Anyways, as I’ve said for the past two weeks… Go Seahawks. Go grunge.

Also, way too many AI commercials. I’m officially scared of the future.

Sam Darnold is the best story to come out of this game. He played for five different teams in his career. He started his career with high hopes, being drafted third overall by the Jets. That didn’t work out well. He’d eventually find himself elsewhere being a backup. And then he ended up in Minnesota a year ago and helped them win 14 games. To reward that kind of success, they sent him packing. The very next season, he’s on a different team that also wins 14 games but also goes all the way and wins the big one. This had to leave a lot of teams, fan bases, and personnel executives who saw this image live on TV thinking what could’ve been.

Random Pro Wrestling Thought: Brody King and the “Fuck ICE” chants

I wanted to write about this last week, but I couldn’t because AJ Styles had just retired and nothing is more important in wrestling than that. But another fun thing that happened that week was Brody King found himself in a main event match on Dynamite with big stakes against the champion, MJF (it wasn’t for the championship BUT if Brody won, he’d get a rematch with MJF that would be for the championship).

Anyways, right as the match was getting started and the two men were staring each other down from opposite sides of the ring, the crowd started chanting, “FUCK ICE,” loud. It could not be ignored. Everyone knew what was going on. It became a pretty big moment for AEW who received a ton of attention on social media and elsewhere for it.

Brody King is the man. He’s one of my current faves. Before he ever became the anti-ICE dude, I was already a fan. He’s a big bruiser type. He’s covered in tattoos, possibly more tattoos than any other wrestler out there. And they’re good tattoos… a lot of them are scary and dark. It gives him a real menacing look. He also has a sick beard which helps the overall look.

He’s also the lead singer of a hardcore band called God’s Hate and I’ve listened to their stuff and it is heavy shit. A lot of times in wrestling, it feels like any attempt to provide us with characters that represent a subculture (like punk, hip-hop, etc) comes off insincere and unauthentic. That is not the case here. Brody King is the real fucking deal. That’s a true straight edge, hardcore, punk rock dude.

So, a few months back, AEW did a televised show in Mexico. Brody wore a shirt that said ‘Abolish Ice’ at this show and that caught fire a bit on the internet and elsewhere. He’d go on to sell ‘Abolish ICE’ shirts independently and give the proceeds to charities that align with being Anti-ICE. Once again proving that Brody King is the real fucking deal.

And there we were. Two weeks ago, Brody King in a main event, he was now the anti-ICE wrestler and the crowd decided to let him know with, “Fuck ICE” chants. You can call wrestling fake or whatever, but that was a real moment, and it was beautiful. That was a heartfelt show of appreciation from an audience towards a wrestler who wears his anti-ICE heart on his sleeve (along with the tattoos). You can’t script that.

This was at the show AEW did in Mexico. This image was on American TV. A shirt worn by a dude who looks like someone I’d bump into at a punk show.

Top 5 Punk Bands From the UK

1- The Clash

2- Cock Sparrer

3- Stiff Little Fingers

4- Sex Pistols

5- Crass

Weekly Quote

“I drink to make other people more interesting.”

-Ernest Hemingway

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