Welcome to the 38th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 37 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
Much of the day and night is a blur at this point. There are a couple moments, though, that have lasted 10 years: the drop on “Dance Yrself Clean” during LCD Soundsystem’s set; “Here” by Pavement; Bob popping off during “Unfair”; choking down the dust in the Dance Forest during Neon Indian; rehydrating in the afternoon sun; the bass during Will Eastman; not paying attention during Jimmy Eat World, now a regret; watching the balloon drop during Matt & Kim from a distance; being in a half-empty pit during Joan Jett; the comfort of the late September mid-Atlantic night in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland; shoutout Allison.
Looking back at the lineup for the 2010 Virgin Mobile FreeFest at Merriweather Post Pavilion, which was 10 years ago last night, I’m taken by the bands we didn’t see that day: the aforementioned Jimmy Eat World (we were on the lawn but not paying attention), Sleigh Bells (during Pavement), Ludacris, M.I.A., Yeasayer. T.I. was supposed to be on the bill, but he got arrested. We planned out the day around LCD Soundsystem, Pavement and Neon Indian. Those were the big three.
It’s been 10 years since a lot of things happened. I turned 18, graduated high school and went to college during 2010, and that’s a lot, so of course there have been a lot of 10-year anniversary-type things over the past few months. I have a half-finished newsletter in drafts centered around seeing Cloud Nothings for the first time 10 years ago. The pandemic have given me plenty of time to think about it, too.
FreeFest feels like a pivot point of sorts. I am not sure what changed before and after it, but there was an element of, “Nothing will get better than this.” I have felt it a few other times: Driving through Monument Valley in 2014; driving around Southern California for the first time in 2012; partying at The Cottage; partying in Commons 1; Cape Cod; leaning up against the wall outside of 285 Kent; standing on the Shea Stadium balcony.
These are the moments where you are able to go outside yourself and view yourself through a cinematic lens. Maybe I can blame this on seeing Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist in 2008 and viewing it as aspirational. But we all are prone to casting ourselves in the movie of our lives, and there are moments where it all slows down and the focus sharpens. Sometimes, it slows down. Sometimes, it speeds up.
During FreeFest in 2010, the pit at Merriweather was cleared after each set. If someone wanted to see a band, they would line up along the left side of the pavilion. We wanted to be in the pavilion for Pavement, so we waited in line during Matt & Kim, who did what they do, which is good and fun. We met a guy named Gideon whose last name started with “R” and he was the third, which was a funnily dignified name to me.
Eventually, we got into the pit, and we watched Pavement roll through an impressive set that hit all the right notes. It is because of this set that I’ll forever view “Grounded” as an opener and always be slightly confused when it comes on a couple tracks into Wowee Zowee. “Starlings of the Slipstream” into “Gold Soundz” into “Here” was a prime way to close the night.
But we wanted to be in the pit again for LCD Soundsystem. They cleared it after Pavement, and then chaos broke loose. People were jumping out of the pavilion into the pit. We left the pit, sprinted across the pavilion a couple rows up and then dropped back into the pavilion. I don’t know how we didn’t lose each other. That was the moment I felt like I was in a movie. I stopped thinking, and I just acted. We pushed our way into the pit, and we were there.
Much from that night did not survive. But that selection of bands at that moment in time is lasting. You can never quarantine the past.
Some content I wrote recently
The Eagles like what they’ve seen from Joe Burrow.
Nobody asked about panicking, but the Eagles made it clear they weren’t panicking.
The Eagles lost their second game.
How the Eagles demonstrated during the national anthem before Week 2.
Miles Sanders on Antwon Rose Jr. Rodney McLeod on the national anthem. Malik Jackson on Breonna Taylor.
Zach Ertz on a suddenly uncertain future with the Eagles.
On a seventh-round pick who made the 53-man roster.
Me & Kaz wrote about the NFL season happening during a global pandemic.
Some content I listened to this week
It is officially fall, which means it is time for all of you to listen to the fall playlist. It is right here. I have created few, if any, things better in the world.
The new Night Shop is a beautiful collection of tracks:
I’ve been listening to Take This To Your Grave a lot lately? Healthy behavior?
New Kevin Morby is gonna be aces:
Excited for the new record from The Goodbye Party, too:
Ran through Champ by Tokyo Police Club a couple times one morning earlier this month because vibes:
The September playlist is incomplete, but it is here:
Some content I read recently
Some reading to catch up on because I haven’t done this in a while.
An ESPN story on Aaron Rodgers & Drew Brees never making it back to the Super Bowl after going in back-to-back years more than a decade ago. Plus, another ESPN story about Josh Jacobs.
Maya blogged about cows.
Cameo gets the Naomi Fry treatment in The New Yorker.
White men can’t blog by Jeremy Gordon.
Gordon cites this Jay Caspian King piece in The New York Review of Books on Scoop Jackson’s book.
Bomani Jones in Vanity Fair about college football players. Bomani on The Distraction with Roth and Magary was an utter joy. Maybe the best example of what podcasting should be? I guess?
David Roth on Skip Bayless after Bayless’ comments on Dak Prescott’s comments about depression. Also, Lindsay Adler on Dak’s comments in The Athletic.
Put differently, Bayless and his appalling, dangerous, genuinely heartless comments on Prescott’s admission of suffering from depression after his brother’s suicide can’t hurt me. To me, he’s a loser who embodies my personal nightmare: selling my soul for notoriety and a fat paycheck every two weeks. But it’s easy to recall periods in my life when I wouldn’t be able to wonder what was wrong with him instead of what may be wrong with Dak, or me.
The all-consuming business of sport is now revealed to be galactically larger, needier and creepier than the sport of sport, and now that the games have gotten out of the way, we see it for what it is in all its eye-searing weirdness. And we found that it takes very little adjustment to talk and write and moan and bitch and marvel at it all the ways that can make you smile while hurling into the rosebushes. We never ran out of stuff to hate and like and laugh at, because sadness and panic begets cynicism and cannibalism, and just as weirdly the desperate hope that it will get better because it can’t possibly get worse. Talking about all these things and dozens more turned out to be not only easy and important but aggressively vital because nature abhors a vacuum, and the beast that must be fed doesn’t take days off.
Defector’s welcome post.
A Welcome To Hell World about photography and Elliott Smith. Also a good Hell World interview with A.J. Daulerio.
Drew Magary wrote about authority figures complaining about college students.
I think if you’re making stuff that comes from a real place, if you’re making stuff because you want to make fun of something, or you feel really strongly about it, then you don’t have to be embarrassed when it doesn’t do well.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
Some personal news: I’m reading Thomas Merton again.
Tradition is not passive submission to the obsessions of former generations but a living assent to a current of uninterrupted vitality. What was once real in other times and places becomes real in us today. And its reality of not an official parade of externals. it is a living spirit marked by freedom and by a certain originality. Fidelity to tradition does not mean the renunciation of all initiative, but a new initiative that is faithful to a certain spirit of freedom and of vision which demands to be incarnated in a new and unique and situation. [Contemplation in a World of Action]
Yeah, baby! [I looked at some other Merton in Content Nausea No. 31 earlier this summer.]
I spilled a bunch of coffee grounds on my floor and just didn’t clean them up for a day or two and used the NFL season as my excuse.
At some point recently, I randomly remembered A Guy: Travis Jervey, who was a white running back for the Packers in the mid-to-late 90’s. He played special teams, and I distinctly remember him always having a really dirty jersey. I think one time he was bloodied when they showed him on TV. Also, the name “Travis Jervey” really stuck with me for some reason. I think it was the “V”s.
Anyway, I took a jaunt to Wikipedia, which:
So I decided to investigate:
Nice. [via]
Let’s gooooooo:
Trawling my favs:
[Not everything needs a social card!]
Thank you for reading the 38th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
All my friends are disappearing
All my letters are in codes
All I ever think and feel
In your shadow, it erodes
Waiting, waiting by the silent phone
I draft my next apology
Burn my letters once they're read
—D.G.