Content Nausea No. 111: Sex and Dying in High Society
You say your pain is better than any kind of love
Welcome to the 111th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 110 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I started writing this newsletter nearly a month ago, and it was going to be centered around going to the path of totality to see the eclipse, but that was kind of a bust (I still appreciate you, Canandaigua, N.Y.), and then I left the country for two weeks. But I’m once again making some sort of “Content Nausea is back” promise, and I do think I finally have some new, interesting stuff queued up for this month. We’re approaching the five-year anniversary of this newsletter/exercise/product, and I think I’m trying to level up a little bit. I don’t know if it’ll work. But this is another cleanser edition.
Some content I wrote this week
I was on vacation for more than two weeks, so there is nothing new to report here.
Some content I listened to this week
The note that I had when I started this draft nearly a month ago is that the new Bnny album One Million Love Songs is a pleasant listen. To be honest, I haven’t listened to the record again since I made that note (I don’t think), so you’re going to have to take my word for it.
The monthly playlist project has really taken a backseat for the past two years or so, but I’ll make an attempt with 052k24 to return to some sort of normalcy with it.
Shout out to Danny for pointing out that “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter is just “Say So” by Doja Cat. No new ideas. “Espresso” is fun, though. Good song of the summer.
A brief rundown of albums that I’ve enjoyed over the past few weeks that maybe I’ll expand on, since this edition of Content Nausea is mainly serving to flush the system: Hovvdy by Hovvdy, Undefeated by Frank Turner, BUG by Kacy Hill and Final Summer by Cloud Nothings. Final Summer was a big-time travel album for me.
I did a brief runthrough of the Content Nausea archive and couldn’t find a mention of Daniel by Real Estate, even though it’s been out for more than two months, so I guess I should highlight that I love it. I saw Real Estate in Philadelphia last month before I went to Europe, and I think I’ll have more to write about that show in the future.
Some content I read this week
On the book front, the last thing I finished before going on vacation was The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue. It was fine, probably not for me. The little twist in it wasn’t bad. I thought it was a pretty good portrait of being in your early 20s, too. Otherwise, I am in the home stretch of There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib, which I love and am going to need to find time to re-read this summer to take some notes, and Sonic Life by Thurston Moore. According to Goodreads, I am still “currently” reading Moby-Dick (haven’t touched it since May 2021), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (haven’t touched it since April or May 2022) and Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe (haven’t touched since April 2021).
On the newsletter front, Max Read’s Read Max has been on a hot streak lately. Lots of really, really good posts like this one and this one. I am getting close to finally paying for a subscription, but I need to cancel some other things (I’m looking at you, B1G+).
The Athletic had a couple good stories about relationships with parents and grandparents. Tim Cato on Dereck Lively II’s relationship with his late mother Kathy Drysdale and how he’s found a family within the Dallas Mavericks was excellent. Andrew Baggarly hit some really good notes with his piece on Mike Yastrzemski homering at Fenway Park, where his grandfather Carl was a legend:
The curiosity about being a living legend is that nobody around you — nobody outside of your innermost circle, anyway — wants to exist with you in the present context. They want to gush about the past, traffic in nostalgia, prompt you for memories or seek affiliation by sharing their own. When they express admiration, it can feel like it’s for what you’ve done, not for who you are. Carl Yastrzemski the ballplayer stopped existing four decades ago. He is a different person living a different life and relating to different subjects now. Everyone experiences time differently, of course. Everyone defines themselves in unique ways. But it should not come as a surprise if Yastrzemski is uncomfortable fixing his identity to anything but the present. That is how he approached his 23-year career, forever operating in the moment, tinkering and working on his swing, taking each of his 3,308 games one at a time. He won a Triple Crown and became a perennial All-Star and zoomed past 2,000 hits on the way to 1,419 more, yet he kept grinding as if afflicted with impostor syndrome. Perhaps it was simpler than that. When you are so detached from your former self, it can feel like it wasn’t really you who accomplished all those things.
At ESPN, Ryan Hockensmith routinely producers bangers, and his piece about cauliflower ear in wrestling and combat sports was fantastic.
Some others:
Is Hunterbrook Media a News Outlet or a Hedge Fund? by Clare Malone in The New Yorker
Hovvdy on Double Albums, Career-Building, Parents, and Coldplay by Larry Fitzmaurice in Last Donut of the Night
An Interview with Photographer Amanda Fotes by Dan Ozzi in ZERO CRED
Will Americans Ever Get Sick of Cheap Junk? by Amanda Mull in The Atlantic
If You Love Podcasts, Dump Spotify by Alex Sujong Laughlin in Defector
What Phones Are Doing to Reading by Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker
Soaking in the baseball history at Fenway Park with Jackson Holliday and Colton Cowser by Danielle Allentuck in The Baltimore Banner
Voice Lessons by Kevin Lozano in The New York Review of Books
Super Cute Please Like by Nicole Lipman in n+1
I Figured You Out by Luke O’Neil in Welcome to Hell World
Submit to Chaos by Sam Hockley-Smith in Gross Life
On Recognizing My Secular Saints by Alicia Kennedy in From The Desk of…
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
Movies I watched on the plane: American Fiction (2023), Oppenheimer (2023), Stripes (1981).
Saw there’s a band called Games We Play, which immediately brought me back to 2010 and Games’ That We Can Play EP. No new ideas.
For the past few months, I’ve been enamored with an Instagram account called Twin Tour Golf that features mini-golf tournaments played by a group of early 20s Wisconsinites. It’s a great way to kill some time.
Started indulging in some Poshmark shopping for the first time since 2020… We’ll see where this goes.
It remains a buzzkill that you still cannot post embeds on here.
I did a good job of not consuming or thinking about too much content while I was away.
Thank you for reading the 111th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
You started out that way
You'd do anything to stay
And keep your money boys
Made of silver and gold
Keep your pekinese
Turkish cigarettes
And your lighter that looks like a gun
So you married your daddy with a different name
—D.G.