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Telling jokes at the Northvale Diner while thinking about ordering a cheeseburger deluxe. Thanks for the spot Gary James and thanks for the picture Janet Regensburg (a fellow comedian and North Bergen-ite).
Random Thought
I went to the dentist yesterday. I know, big deal, right? But it is a big deal, at least to me it is. Me and the dentist started talking (side note: not a lot of talking is usually accomplished at the dentist. I find it funny whenever they try to talk to you when you have 3 dental gadgets in your mouth) and it came up that I’d been seeing her for 13 years now. She hit me with my first appointment ever which was January in 2011. It was a New Year’s resolution that year to start going to the dentist and hey how cool is that? A resolution actually stuck.
Before I started going to the dentist, I was kinda scared of dentists. I don’t know exactly why although I did have a bit of a traumatic dental experience in high school when my dentist at that time was putting a filling in one of my teeth and for whatever reason the Novocain wasn’t working. He kept giving me more but at some point he was just like, “that’s enough, we gotta do this.” I felt a lot of things that day.
And so I didn’t see a dentist again for a really long time. Along the way, I’d adopt fun little life philosophies that helped reinforce the idea that I didn’t need a dentist. I fell into my semi-nihilistic headspace of, “who cares? We’re all just gonna die one day anyways.” And I confess that I probably still think this way about too many things in life but the thing about teeth is you’ll eventually learn the limits of your vanity (or lack thereof).
I’ve never thought of myself as a very vain person but over the years it would become harder and harder to ignore the state of my teeth. They were stained and discolored and slightly chipped. I’d look at myself in the mirror or see myself in pictures on social media and get self-conscious. That would eventually spread into real life human interactions. I’d constantly find myself looking at other people’s teeth and noticing how much better off they were than mine and worrying that they were doing the same but to take note of how much worse off my teeth were.
Also, I had this one tooth towards the back, it sorta exploded when I was chewing gum. But it somehow exploded in a way that didn’t hurt. Somehow nothing serious was exposed so I sorta just lived with this semi-exploded tooth in my mouth for a few years. Gross, I know.
Anyways… this all started to weigh heavy on me and there’d be these 1-800-DENTIST commercials on TV a lot that would really start to get to me and it was December of 2010 and I was like, “enough’s enough. New Year’s Resolution- go to the dentist.”
Hey, by the way, if you ever find yourself in a similar position, don’t do that. I would’ve been way better off going in November or December because I needed a lot of work done and it exceeded what my insurance covers yearly and my dentist told me if I had gone a month or two earlier, I could’ve split the coverage into years and I would’ve paid less out of pocket. No regrets in hindsight because I got my shit fixed, but just a cautionary note to others.
Anyways, it was sorta strange to be hit with that surge of memories yesterday. I didn’t make a New Year’s resolution this year. I figured if I seek self-improvement or whatever, I can go after it any time of year but that was also sorta just an excuse to slack on it. I mean, I don’t think anyone should feel any pressure to constantly seek ways to improve themselves. Most of us are probably enough as we are.
Some years things feel fine and maybe that’s a cool opportunity to use New Year’s to celebrate that. But other years your teeth are falling apart and you don’t feel good about it and New Year’s is a nice excuse to finally crawl into your local dentist’s office and get that work done.
Also, real quick, let me tell you about these floss gliders or whatever you wanna call them. They were a total game changer. I went from never flossing to flossing every day.
Movies I Watched Recently
The Paperboy
(Hulu)
I’m not sure what drew me to this movie. It was probably a weird mix of reasons. Maybe it was the cast (Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, Macy Gray, etc). Maybe it was because it was described as pulpy and weird and I’m into that. Maybe it was even because I’m way deep into my binge of the TV show, ‘Atlanta,’ that centers around a rapper who calls himself Paper Boi (okay, this is probably not that much of a factor but it was a thing I couldn’t not notice).
This movie is weird. It’s mostly okay, I guess. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad movie. But it felt underwhelming. I wanted more from it. I think most of the acting is even impressive but for some reason that didn’t feel like enough to carry this movie.
It’s one of those movies where you look at the cast and think, “this is no one’s best movie.” There’s no career defining role here. I’m not gonna google it, but I wouldn’t doubt if even Macy Gray’s done better elsewhere.
The story has so much promise but it feels like they don’t dig into it in the right way. There’s a death row inmate and a journalist who wants to set him free and a woman who fell in love with said death row inmate. This kinda feels like the ingredients to a great story but it falls short.
Also, it’s based on a novel that is supposedly based on a true story but I did some googling after and had a hard time finding anything about the true story this is based on. That was kinda frustrating. Maybe I shouldn’t take that out on the movie but it might’ve added a little something to the mix if I was able to validate this movie’s wackiness with facts.
This promo pic needs more Macy Gray. She narrates the entire thing.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
I mean look, I’m gonna go see every Ghostbusters movie they put out. I know there’ll never be anything as good as the first one. That’s an untouchable classic and maybe one of the greatest movies of all time. So it’s almost not fair to compare anything with the Ghostbuster name on it to the original.
This movie is fun. It doesn’t really take any chances or add anything new to the game. We do get to see the OG Ghostbusters. In fact, the age differential of the Ghostbusters is wild. One of them is 15! (which got them in some heat with the mayor of NYC who is the same dude that was the head of the EPA in the first one. He still wants to shut the Ghostbusters down. See? Nothing’s changed.)
If you’re already a fan and you’re not too critical, you’ll probably enjoy this movie. This and most of the other new-ish Ghostbusters have little to no replay value when I can just watch the first (or even the second one which is also good) again.
But I guess ultimately I am happy to see the Ghostbusters franchise age into the 2020’s and span generations.
There’s sooo many Ghostbusters and also… Slimer.
TV show I’m currently watching
Atlanta
(Hulu)
I’m in the middle of season 3 and most of it takes place in Europe. Actually, it’s strange because season 2 ends with them going to Europe to open for Clark County. But Season 3 gives me the impression that this is a Paper Boi headlined tour so maybe some time has passed in between Season 2 and Season 3 or maybe I’m just making that up in my head.
Vanessa is in Europe too because she needed a getaway and things between her and Earn are kinda weird so far. They seem to get along but there seems to be something bubbling under it all but I’m not sure what.
There’s also been two very random episodes that maybe aren’t so random. The season opens up with an episode that’s really just Earn’s dream and the dream is about a Black kid who hates his home situation and ends up being taken in by a white lesbian couple and he hates that more and wants to go back to his original family.
Then there’s this other random episode that features none of the show’s characters about how a Black dude sued his white employer for reparations and now it’s a legal precedent and white people who have slave-owning ancestors are starting to get sued by descendants of their ancestor’s slaves. This episode almost feels more like an episode of Black Mirror, which is good because I’m a big fan but it’s just so random how it’s thrown in the middle of the season without any explanation or reasoning (yet… obviously that could change in time).
There’s also the Teddy Perkins episode in Season 2 and I don’t even know where to begin but wow what a strange episode.
I never know what I’m gonna get when I hit play on the next episode. This show keeps me on my toes and I like the randomness and weirdness but there is a sense of satisfaction when I start a new episode and it’s gonna be one with Earn, Al, and Darius altogether. It’s like the whole gang’s here, things are gonna be cool (even if they’re not a lot of the time).
Sick ‘Atlanta’ art.
Album of the Week
Gen and the Degenerates / Anti-Fun Propaganda
First off, great band name.
Despite the album title, this is actually a very fun album. It seems G and the D are really anti-anti-fun propaganda, if that makes sense. Like yea, the world’s got a lot of issues and stuff sucks but that’s no reason not to seek joy, however it is you may seek it.
I have a hard time describing this sound. It’s fun. It rocks. But it feels like it’s got a bit of a new wave feel too and maybe a bit garage-ish? There’s definitely some punk fundamentals in there as well. Whatever it is, it’s very good. If this album was a person, I’d like to hang out with them. They’re probably fun and smart and cool no matter how much the song, ‘Post-Cool,’ seems to indicate otherwise.
There’s also a very sentimental song at the end that, if I had to guess, is about a friend or loved one who’s no longer with us. It’s called, ‘Jude’s Song,’ and there seems to be a play on the Beatles song, ‘Hey Jude,’ for a person who didn’t actually like that song. It’s very good and hit me in the feels. It was also a dope turn in direction to end the album on, just to let people know this band’s got range.
I feel like this album cover helps encapsulate why I don’t wanna be a homeowner.
Book I’m Currently Reading
On The Beach / Nevil Shute
This book hits slightly heavy. I think I wrote about this last week but basically humanity is coming to an end. WW3 is over and the air is filled with radiation and it’s coming for the people of Australia who have months, then weeks, then days to live. This is an odd book to get lost in. I can’t say that I let my guard down entirely to get lost in the story and adopt the feelings that the characters in this book have because they all know their days are numbered. But I feel like even if I’m not in the same situation myself, there is some perspective to get out of it.
And there are some heavy philosophical quandaries. Like what if you have a kid, or a baby even, and you know that you’re all going to catch radiation poisoning and die? There’s no avoiding it. Do you try to end your child/baby’s life in an ethical manner before you die so they don’t have to live on or try to survive without you? Imagine a baby outliving its parents in this situation.
That’s probably the heaviest situation that comes up in this book. But there is a lot of, ‘what would you do if you knew you and everyone around you only has so long to live?’ Society sorta falls apart towards the end. Things get filthy. People get reckless. Death seems not as heavy. Like for instance, there’s these street races they have and suddenly the drivers in the races are driving like maniacs because who cares? So what if they crash and die? They’re gonna die anyway.
Or maybe some people try to live their lives as they always have. That’s sorta what Dwight Towers does. Although his wife and kids in America are obviously dead by now, he lives his life like they’re still alive. So he meets a woman, Moira, and in any other situation they would almost certainly hook up. But they don’t. They hang out constantly but Dwight wants to remain faithful to his wife till the end. And I’m not saying it’s wrong or right but it’s an interesting choice and feels like the opposite of the reckless vibe you get from elsewhere in the book.
It’s an interesting story for sure. When I went into it, I was expecting something a bit more bonkers but maybe a lot of people will exercise civility if this situation were to really happen. Who knows for sure? That’s what makes it such an intriguing read. Instead of going crazy or over-the-top, this book sorta normalizes the idea that the world is coming to an end soon. It turns the volume down on possibly the loudest topic there is.
It sometimes amazes me that some crazy nuclear war hasn’t happened yet (or maybe not even crazy, maybe just modest would do). I suppose it’s a thing to be grateful for. But if I think about it too hard, it starts to freak me out how there’s so much nuclear arsenal in the world and it really wouldn’t take much to put an end to most, if not all, of us. And the idea that it’s all beyond our control is maddening.
Random sports thought of the week
At the risk of sounding like I care about baseball, I just wanna comment on the Ohtani gambling scandal. For those that don’t know, baseball phenom, in fact maybe the best thing in baseball right now, Shohei Ohtani, had an interpreter who was recently fired by the LA Dodgers for gambling (the interpreter also did illegal gambling which is like, WHY??? when it’s so legal now). Upon further inspection, there were some shady wire transfers from Ohtani to his interpreter and now people think Ohtani might’ve been gambling in sports. And MLB has a very strict anti-fun policy on gambling.
I’ve never really been anti-athletes gambling. I don’t know, as long as they’re not gambling on their own team, who cares? I could see the cause for concern but at the end of the day, it’s just not that big of a deal to me. You’d never catch me with that sports radio passion to wait on hold an hour just to yell about it.
But also, gambling is so legal in so many places now and American sports leagues are compliant in promoting gambling. It used to be that watching any sporting event meant an hour of beer commercials but now it feels like those beer commercials have been replaced by gambling app ads that always seem to feature one overpaid celebrity.
And if it’s not the commercials, it’s the total appropriation of gambling culture. All we see now during games and all other forms of sports entertaining is spreads and betting odds and overs/unders and prop bets. ESPN has gambling experts come on and tell you who you should bet on. I guess they didn’t foresee Ohtani’s interpreter being part of that at-home audience.
If MLB blows this somehow and sends a generational talent such as Ohtani to the scrap bin of history, I think it’d be a big mistake. American sports is already in bed with the gambling apps and it’s only gonna become more obvious and acceptable over time. I think if anything, this is the time for MLB to right their wrongs and put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame.
It’s your periodic reminder that Pete Rose is in the WWE Hall of Fame. Further proof that WWE HOF > Baseball HOF. Maybe they got room for Ohtani in there somewhere.
Random pro wrestling thought of the week
A few random thoughts:
-That CM Punk/Drew McIntyre/Seth Rollins segment on Raw this week was gold. Might be Punk’s best promo in this WWE run and probably my favorite segment so far in the build up to Mania.
-All I really wanna see at Mania is Damian Priest cashing in the MITB briefcase during the big tag match on Night 1. How crazy would that be? Cashes in during the match, pins Rollins (or Reigns if they really wanna get crazy) and then whoever he just pinned still has to finish that tag match? Plus, it totally changes up one of the title matches the next night. I love chaos and I can’t imagine anything Mania related could make me happier.
- There’s something wild about AEW and how in the same week we can get the debut of Mercedes Mone and crown the likes of Adam Copeland and Okada as new champions. There’s also been several sick matches on TV the past couple of weeks. I was slightly concerned that AEW would hit a lull post-Sting’s retirement but AEW is not fucking around right now.
New TNT champion, 50 year old Adam Copeland. I’m looking very forward to Copeland (and Christian) moving on from this rivalry. I wanna see some different and new matchups. That’ll be fun to watch.
Top 5 Ghostbusters Movies
1- Ghostbusters
2- Ghostbusters 2
3- Ghostbusters (2016 reboot)
4- Ghostbusters: Afterlife
5- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empires
Yes, I realize they’re in chronological order. Sometimes it just be like that.
Weekly Quote
“I knew I wanted this song to be the opener because I thought it was funny to start an album with the line ‘the truth is, the world is ending’. It’s about the dissonance of being in the early stages of your life while the world is in the early stages of its demise. Working hard to build your own future when you’re not sure there’ll be a planet to live on. But as the song says, I’m not a nihilist. The idea isn’t to throw caution to the wind and do whatever we want. It’s about trying to find those moments of joy for ourselves when things seem hopeless. There’s a lot of criticism of younger generations and their supposed recklessness. I think that’s a little hypocritical coming from the generations that damaged the environment to a near irreversible point and tanked the economy.”
Gen of Gen and The Degenerates in reference to the song, “Kids Wanna Dance.”
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Fri, 4/19
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Sat, 4/20
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