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Telling jokes at the Friday Night Live Open Mic in Clifton, NJ, a cool open mic to go to on any Friday that’s not also a Hell Yea! Friday. Jonathan Justin runs the room and took the pic. He also just had a birthday and dropped an album making fun of podcasts. He’s a swell dude. Follow him on IG:
Random Thought
I’ve been so annoyed lately. Maybe it’s the sobriety breaking me down and this is why I drink? Slowly but surely I can feel all these little annoyances building up and I don’t know what to do about it. Maybe the world is just an annoying place and it’s taken a few weeks of clearing the booze fog to see things more clearly.
The other day I was driving on my way to work and I was in the passing lane. And I know that this is the lane where everyone drives faster. I get it. So there I was, doing about 70 in a 55, breezing past pretty much everyone else in every other lane. Then suddenly some dude speeds up behind me and he’s tailgating me. And I get it, common decency dictates that I’m supposed to move over if someone behind me is going to use this lane to be faster than me. I don’t think that’s the law, but I feel like that’s the unspoken agreement.
But here’s the thing, when you start to tailgate me, I suddenly don’t want to move out of your way. I saw you and I know you’re driving faster and I was gonna move over just as soon as I had a chance to do so. But instead of giving me a moment, this dude decided to ride my ass so that made me annoyed and I figured, fuck it, I’m staying put. I did that until he sped around me and then when he got in front of me, he was doing this thing with his arm in his car, waving it wildly in what I assume was his way of telling me I should’ve moved over. So I put my arm outside real quick and waved it to mock him. He then slowed his car down I guess to force me to slow down which is dangerous and stupid and the only point it proves is he’s the bigger asshole. But whatever, he slows down, I move over to the middle lane and then he speeds off and I never see him again (I doubt he reads the newsletter but if he does, “hello, guy”).
But here’s the thing, that incident bothered me all day. I kept thinking about it and getting angry at the guy. I kept telling myself to let it go, that it’s done and it’s not like we’re ever gonna get a chance to confront each other about it (not that I wanna fight the dude or whatever but I would like to tell him what an asshole he is). And I guess that’s what made me mad, that I never got to say my piece.
I watched Fargo this week (more on that in the TV section below) and they bring up this concept of, ‘Minnesota Nice,’ and it’s this idea that everyone in that area is more polite to each other. This might be a very broad brushstroke for a part of the country I’ve never been to but it made me think how in my head, my assumption is that most of America is more polite/less rude than New Jersey. And sometimes that seems nice. But I have two concerns about it:
1- No matter where I go, I’ll have Jersey in me. I’m polite for New Jersey but my guess is polite in NJ is still rude anywhere else. If I found myself some place polite, my guess is everyone would be like, “look at this rude asshole.”
2- Maybe our directness is mistaken for rudeness. We do a better job of cutting through the bullshit and saying/communicating/conveying what we really mean and in a way, that means we’re closer to pure honesty.
2a-I know my job (or any corporate job) is full of “politeness” and it can be smothering sometimes because it’s hard to break that code of polite and say and/or tell people how you really feel or what you’re really thinking without coming off as rude or inappropriate for the workplace. And that sucks.
So I don’t know what the point of any of this is. Maybe I’m just trying to find a balance between being annoyed but also grateful to live in an area where we feel okay with getting on each other’s nerves. Maybe I just need to get myself more in the game and speak my piece more often than I do now.
Or maybe I need a beer…
I know it doesn’t look it here, but Jinx gets annoyed very easily.
Movie I Watched Recently
Drive-Away Dolls
(a movie theater)
Real quick, to stay on the topic of being annoyed just a little longer, shout out to the two women in our row at the movies who talked through the entire thing. Seems they just wanted some background noise for their conversation.
So this was a very weird movie. Ethan Coen has gone solo from the usual Coen Brothers pairing and I think maybe Ethan is the odder one and Joel reigns him in? That could be a rash assumption but there were definitely moments where it felt like maybe they needed to color inside the lines a little more.
It is a mostly fun movie though. It’s a lesbian caper movie. You don’t see that a lot. Two lesbian friends rent a car for a road trip to Florida and the car was supposed to be rented to some gangsters but things got mixed up and now the lesbian BFF’s are being pursued for what’s in the trunk.
And wait till you find out what’s in the trunk. I would never spoil it but I’m almost certain that unless you’ve seen this movie or it’s already been spoiled for you, you could never guess.
The movie takes place in 1999. Me and my friend Eileen came to the conclusion that maybe they chose that year so they could avoid cell phones and whatnot. The plot had some holes and I imagine modern 2024 technology would’ve made some of those holes even bigger. But it is always kinda nice to take a trip back to the before times of smartphones.
I did enjoy the big names in this movie that only played bit parts: Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon, Miley Cyrus. None of them take up too much screen time.
This movie succeeds at being weird and different from everything else. The plot and characters are fun and the movie is paced well, I never felt bored… closest I felt was sometimes thinking, “wtf am I watching right now?”
Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley shine as two opposing sides of a lesbian spectrum. One is more freewheeling and wild while the other is more timid and reserved.
TV show I’m currently watching
Fargo
(Hulu)
I enjoyed this season of Fargo so much that I’m almost hesitant to write about it. I feel like I can’t possibly do it justice and properly convey to you just how great I thought it was. I will say this, I feel like the greatest compliment you can give a show is how fast you binge it because you just need to keep watching. I burned through all ten episodes (each episode being in the 45-50 min range) in a little under a week.
This is probably my favorite season of Fargo yet. Maybe ask me again in a month or so because I might just be a victim to the moment, but I don’t remember enjoying a season this much, which is kinda wild because I have enjoyed every season of Fargo so far. I think it’s one of the best and easily one of the most underrated shows out there (I find it’s underratedness to be advantageous though. It doesn’t seem like everyone’s talking about it so I was able to avoid spoilers that way). But somehow, this last season has topped them all.
It’s provided my two favorite characters in the series yet, Dot (played by Juno Temple) who is a Minnesota-nice mom doing her best but some skeletons in her closet come back to really fuck her shit up. And then there’s Ole Munch (played by Sam Spruell) who plays a nihilistic assassin for hire that at times you don’t wanna root for but at other times you absolutely do. He speaks little but always has the best, most enduring lines.
Then there’s Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance as Dot’s billionaire mother-in-law which is top notch. Dave Foley absolutely kills it as the eye patch wearing lawyer of Dot’s billionaire mother-in-law.
But Jon Hamm, holy shit… Jon Hamm. He plays Roy Tillman, a militia-leaning sheriff who doesn’t play by the rules. He is a bad guy and you will hate him. Jon Hamm is so good in this because he makes you hate him (or at least he made me hate him). I’m gonna need some time to undo this Jon Hamm hate I got going in my heart and it’s all because of Roy Tillman. It’s an unbelievable job well done and maybe the best acting I’ve seen since Jamie Lee Curtis in The Bear.
I guess by what I’ve just written, I enjoyed this because it felt very character driven. These are all strong characters that you learn to love and hate, to root for and despise. Fargo continues to bring out the absolute acting best in its cast. It’s almost unreal how consistently great every actor is.
The story is also solid and modern (takes place in 2019 and there’s some taste of the American political landscape at that time mixed into all of it). It’s at times beautiful and other times ugly, sometimes full of hope, other times full of doom. It hits all the checkboxes. And the ending is done so well.
I can’t say enough good things. And the great thing about Fargo is you can watch the seasons out of order. It’s more a collection of different stories that just sorta have a similar vibe than anything interconnected. From here on out, if anyone asks, I’d have no reservations in saying you can start with the fifth season first if you want.
The new faces of good vs evil. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be at the mountaintop screaming, “WATCH FARGO SEASON 5!!!”
Album of the Week
Tangk / Idles
A little before the pandemic, Idles were the last new band I went gaga for. I was a little late to the party, it was on the heels of the release of, ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance,’ so I had that album and, ‘Brutalism,’ to really dig my claws into. And dig I did. I love both those albums very much.
And their two follow-ups since then were also great (Crawler and Ultra Mono). I enjoy these albums a bunch but I don’t have the same reverence for them as I do for ‘Joy…’ and ‘Brutalism.’
But there was always a constant theme for me in all four of the albums mentioned here. There was a sense of danger. When I listened to Idles, it always felt like something bad could happen at any moment. The music puts me on edge and it feels good. I’m alive and aware and ready for something… a fight, a war, sex?? Who knows? But listening to Idles always made me feel like anything could happen at any moment and chances are it’s gonna be something completely wild.
That’s why it’s hard for me to type out that I feel like the danger has been depleted in this latest release. I’m not sure what happened. When your music sounds like what you think the possibility of the world blowing up at any moment sounds like, how can any band keep up that pace? It’s probably not possible.
‘Tangk,’ feels like the end of a roller coaster. But I wasn’t quite ready for the ride to end yet. Maybe I should’ve been. Maybe I should be grateful. Break neck, roller coaster pace is hard for anyone to pull off. But I feel like if, ‘Tangk,’ was in a vacuum with no attachments to its past, I still would be kinda not thrilled about it. I’m not sure that if this was some other band’s debut album that I would think it’s good. I’d probably just never listen to it again.
Sometimes when a band I love puts out an album I’m not into, I’ll find that album grows on me over time. Or sometimes it doesn’t and I still love the band and I just skip that album whenever it comes to choosing something to listen to.
I still love Idles. But I might listen to ‘Brutalism,’ very loud very soon.
I feel like this album cover illustrates what I think Idles sounded like before this album.
Book I’m Currently Reading
Please Kill Me (The Uncensored Oral History of Punk) / Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil
So, I do feel as a punk rock fan that I probably should’ve read this book by now. But then again, expectations of what content you should consume isn’t very punk either so y’know, whatever, who cares?
But this book so far is awesome. It starts off with the Velvet Underground and then MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges which I guess you could sorta classify as proto-punk but you gotta start somewhere and punk probably doesn’t exist without them (and the New York Dolls a little later in the book).
But every band this book covers it goes fairly in depth on. I so far feel like I’m getting mini-biographies on the super important bands and musicians for early punk rock history including: Velvet Underground, MC5, Iggy and the Stooges, New York Dolls, Ramones, Heartbreakers, Richard Hell, Johnny Thunders, Patti Smith, Sex Pistols, and those are just some of the bands this book has covered so far.
There’s a lot of seediness and filth in the beginning. Definitely a lot of drugs. It’s also fun to watch punk take form. Over the decades, punk sorta became regimented but in the beginning no one really knew what it was supposed to be (it doesn’t have a name till like 100 pages into the book). It’s just stripped down rock and roll and young people having fun and doing drugs and fucking, there’s a lot of fucking.
There’s a lot of seediness and filth too. There’s drugs and junkies and most of the major players are kinda gross, either on purpose because that’s a very punk attitude to have or even accidently.
There’s also weird art (Warhol) and poetry (Jim Carroll, Patti Smith) and other such things that some people might not exactly lump in with punk. Somewhere along the way in NYC, rock and roll (or more specifically an urge to rebel against what rock and roll was turning into) meets artsy types and it all somehow helps add fuel to the young, burgeoning punk movement.
It’s been a wild ride so far and I’m looking forward to digging into the rest of it.
The title of the book is inspired by this t-shirt worn by Richard Lloyd of Television. The story goes that it was Richard Hell’s shirt but he was too scared to wear it so Richard Lloyd was like, “let me wear it.”
Random sports thought of the week
If the Chicago Bears do that thing where they trade their current QB (Justin Fields) so they can use their 1st overall draft pick to draft QB Caleb Williams, I am going to instantly root for whatever team Fields goes to because honestly, I feel like that’s a shitty move by the Bears.
It’s gonna take more than a young, promising QB to fix what’s wrong with the Bears. Fields maybe isn’t the greatest QB in the NFL, but he’s good enough. What this team should do is trade down and acquire more picks for the draft so they can build in more spots to improve the team more overall.
Getting rid of Fields for Williams will only ensure that the next 2-3 seasons at the least will suck for the Bears. It’s trading off an experienced NFL QB so that you can throw the new kid to the wolves. This team isn’t going to be a good place for a new QB with no NFL experience.
Meanwhile, Fields can mess around and end up somewhere like Atlanta possibly, on a team that’s just missing a piece or two to do something great. When I type it out, I almost want it to happen. It’d be to the Bears detriment, but in a way, maybe leaving Chicago is the best thing that could happen to Justin Fields. Five years from now when we’re comparing Justin Fields to Caleb Williams, experts might be like, “what were the Bears thinking?” (although a lot of those same experts are currently saying the Bears should draft Caleb Williams because at the end of the day, none of us have any idea what we’re talking about.)
Justin Fields, possibly pointing in the direction of the state of Georgia.
Random pro wrestling thought of the week
AEW Revolution is this Sunday. Here are some quick predictions:
-All Star Scramble Match (Chris Jericho vs Wardlow vs Powerhouse Hobbes vs Lance Archer vs Hook vs Brian Cage vs Magnus vs Dante Martin)
Okay, first off, this was supposed to be the “Meat Madness” match originally and I was looking forward to that but I guess AEW realized they left some dudes off the card so they went with this instead to get some of them in there.
I’d love to see Archer win this. That’d be a real wild booking decision. But it’s gonna be Wardlow. It’s gotta be Wardlow. He’s just gonna powerbomb the fuck out of everybody.
-FTR vs Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli
I hope FTR wins this one. Mox and Claudio are great and I’m a big fan of both, but FTR is possibly the best tag team on the planet. Tag team wrestling is their turf. Give me FTR winning, Claudio eats the pin since Mox has to fight Naito soon for the IWGP Championship at a NJPW event.
-Christian Cage (C) vs Daniel Garcia (TNT Championship)
Cage wins. This is filler since Adam Copeland is injured. Could be the best one-on-one match of the night though.
-Will Ospreay vs Konosuke Takeshita
This is Ospreay’s big debut as a full time member of the AEW roster. No way he loses.
-Eddie Kingston (C) vs Bryan Danielson (Continental Crown Championship)
Yea sure, let’s run this match back one more time. I’m getting kinda bored with it. If Danielson loses he has to shake Kingston’s hand and because of that stipulation alone, Kingston is going to somehow beat one of the greatest pro wrestlers on the planet AGAIN.
-Timeless Toni Storm (C) vs Deonna Purrazzo (Women’s World Championship)
Purrazzo has been a great addition to the AEW women’s roster so far but there’s no way she’s beating Toni Storm. Storm’s keeping that title till Mercedes Mone takes it.
-Orange Cassidy (C) vs Roderick Strong (International Championship)
All good things must come to an end and one of my favorite things in all of wrestling is an Orange Cassidy title reign. But something’s gotta give and this Undisputed Kingdom needs some juice. Strong wins. Josh will be sad (until the main event).
-Samoa Joe (C) vs Hangman Page vs Swerve Strickland (World Championship)
Joe retains somehow. I hope he pins Page. I’m not sure how they can pull it off, but Joe needs to retain while Swerve still somehow retains his momentum. Maybe build up to a one-on-one match with Joe down the line.
-Main event / Sting’s last match ever / tornado tag match:
Sting and Darby Allin (C) vs Young Bucks (Tag Team Championship)
All AEW has to do is give us the happy ending. Sting wins. Sting gets the pin. Sting hugs people and says goodbye. Sting walks off into the horizon a champ and undefeated and most importantly, a legend who got to come out the victor in his final confrontation. It gets no better than that.
What an incredible run it’s been. When Sting first showed up in AEW, I thought it’d just be to sorta hang around, no way he’d wrestle at his age. But they’ve booked him sparingly and in tag matches only and it’s worked out really well and he’s gotten to prove how great he still is and has always been. Sting’s run is the absolute high watermark for all of AEW so far in their short history.
Top 5 Idles Albums
1- Brutalism
2- Joy As An Act Of Resistance
3- Ultra Mono
4- Crawler
5- Tangk
Okay, so technically they only have five albums (and a bunch of EP’s) but I wanted to put them in order. They also happen to be in chronological order and there’s just nothing I can do to convince myself it should go any other way.
Weekly Quote
“A boy complains because he thinks the world is unfair. He cries to his mother when the toy breaks or the knee is skinned. A man knows better. The things that happen happen. Who lives, who dies. You don’t yell at the boulder for being a rock.”
-Ole Munch in Fargo Season 5
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