Content Nausea No. 34: Mardi Gras Beads
Your glance sings of lyrics ‘cite from memory / It's sad our goodbyes sound nostalgic
Welcome to the 34th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 33 right here. I have missed the right timing on a couple other posts in the past month. Whoops. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I had one of the weirder days of the pandemic this week. I woke up at 3 a.m. Wednesday and could not fall asleep. At 4:15, I got up to make coffee and read for a while, and then at 5:35, I left the house to go to the Rail Park to finish my coffee and watch the sunrise. I forgot my mask. This photo is from 5:55 a.m. It was a nice morning. Then, I came home and made a new Tumblr. We’re definitely at a weird point in the pandemic.
I have to come clean: I was rather reckless with my parking in recent weeks with this bit in mind as an endpoint. Was the $55 worth 15 likes? Look, I don’t have to answer that. But I have a parking permit now, so it’s moot. Right?
Some content I wrote this week
NFL players want to play, but they want the coronavirus safety protocols from the league.
Didi Gregorius homered off Max Scherzer while wearing a mask.
Some thoughts on Jason Peters returning to the Eagles to play right guard.
DeSean Jackson accepted an invitation to visit Auschwitz.
Some content I listened to this week
Revisiting this album for nostalgia’s sake.
It was a hot one today. This is a good hot day song.
Saw The Oranges Band in Baltimore at Artscape 12 years ago yesterday.
New Widowspeak songs are shaping up to be really good.
Happy fifth birthday to DS2.
Some content I read this week
Subscribe to Eian’s new newsletter, Digital Kapital! I’m so happy to see new photos from him again on the web, and I really identify with his thoughts on searching for the right platform and medium.
Portland is being used as a bellwether to see what this administration can get away with. And also what works to quell protest. The police tactics don’t work. We’re on night 50. There’s this knowledge, I believe, in the more lucid chunks of the administration, that this problem will get worse in the next month. August is shaping up to be one of the hardest months in our nation’s modern history. September may be worse. And it will have to come to a head.
The Philadelphia Inquirer on what happened on 52nd Street in West Philly last month.
The Washington Post’s investigation into horrific conduct at the Washington NFL team.
The Athletic’s Andy McCullough on baseball’s impending return:
This should not be happening. Not like this, at least. But it is. And the explanation is never hard to discern. The specter of the coronavirus pandemic will loom over this season for as long as it lasts.
So here we are. The sport offers its fans a choice as Opening Day approaches: Enjoy the silver linings or fret about the all-consuming cloud. Or try, for as long as you can handle it, to do both.
A 2018 piece in The New York Times on millennials.
Pareene on Andrew Cuomo.
The journey of a $20 cheeseburger during a global pandemic.
Jeremy Gordon wrote about Japandroids in his new Substack:
Still, there they are, drinking and smoking and gently declining into that good night. Someone has to do it, even if it’s embarrassing or out of step. At the moment, I would pay hundreds of dollars to attend this kind of vivifying, variable concert where I consume 3-6 drinks and sing along a little and wonder if, at the end, it kind of sucked or if I’ve just gotten older, if rock is really dead or just gently napping. Instead, we have the next best thing.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
I watched PALM SPRINGS (2020) ‘with’ Maya on Friday night, and it was an enjoyably dark ride. The biggest endorsement I can give a movie is that it made me feel like I should watch more movies, and PALM SPRINGS did just that. It was also the first “new” movie I have watched since the beginning of the global pandemic, which everyone said was a good time to begin watching movies and all that. Whatever.
Dark, brooding, time-looped Andy Samberg is a great character, and while the beats of his development aren’t necessarily surprising, he sold it well. Cristin Milioti was also impressive. I had neither heard of her nor seen anything she has been in, but there was an air of familiarity there, and the chemistry with Samberg was natural. The J.K. Simmons cameos were great, too.
Plus, the desert landscape is a good backdrop for an aesthetically pleasing film. Maybe I will watch more movies now.
I spent years hunting down this Seattle-based gluten-free beer, and while it cost $16 for a four-pack of 12-oz. cans, it was worth it.
The Zac Efron travel show is entertaining but kind of bizarre? Watch the episode about water! Don’t watch the one about Costa Rica!
Thank you for reading the 34th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
It’s the images, contained, not the lens or frames
Recalled to my mind before I fall asleep
A list of regrets is no place to be
I’m coming in late, but I’ll never modulate us to the minor key
Smiling all the while the paint chips off of my Mardi Gras beads
—D.G.