Welcome to the 61st edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 60 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
The man who gave me my second jab at the CVS in Lock Haven on Tuesday said, “Good luck with your immunity.” So I hope I have good luck with my immunity.
I was slacking last week because I didn’t acknowledge that May 1 was the 10-year anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death, which cost me an opportunity to share one of the greatest tweets to have ever been sent on Al Gore’s internet:
I was at Ratsie’s (RIP) in College Park with Emily and some other people when we found out. Earlier, we had been at Sweetlife at Merriweather Post Pavilion to see The Strokes (according to my spreadsheet, the only other acts Anna and I saw at the festival were Girl Talk and Lupe Fiasco) and it was a good show. Somehow, I won tickets to it? The TV had the Mets-Phillies game on, so we found out from ESPN, and when we left Ratsie’s, there was a group of bros wearing various pieces of American flag clothing and holding flags walking down Knox Road. Weird. I spent a good portion of the night on the seventh floor of Cumberland Hall with my neighbors just being like, all right? All right.
This is also an excuse to share my favorite image of Ratsie’s:
I do not know what is on that corner now. Ratsie’s In Piece.
Also:
I got an email from Tumblr this week to celebrate the ninth birthday private Tumblr that I made in 2012 to catalog poems that I liked from the poetry class I was taking:
Not sure how many more we will really get, but all right. Anyway, I almost did an indulgent post going through the poems that were chronicled on said Tumblr, but it turns out I already did that back in November. I am a tired act with no new ideas.
There were some other recent anniversaries from the past week or so that I feel like I should acknowledge, in addition to that of Terry Rozier’s tweet:
— Wednesday was the 10-year anniversary of me staying in on Cinco de Mayo as a freshman and proceeding to comb through every Cloud Nothings song that had been scrobbled on last.fm to see what mp3s I didn’t have. I got “Another Man” from someone in Australia, and it appears the deep dive also scared up “Are We More Than Bones?” because I posted a Facebook status with those words in it that day. I probably stole some tequila from my roommate.
— Thursday was the 10-year anniversary of when me and Emily tried to make it through the wall, and we did not. But Nelly ruled and Tame Impala solidified themselves as one of the most boring live bands I’ve ever seen that night (no, I will not revisit this take unless you tip me $250 on Twitter). I believe that was also the first night I ever hung out with* Mark Sanchez, so what’s up Mark! (* by ‘hung out with’ I mean stood in the same room in Old Leonardtown.) We saw Yuck, eventually (like five months later).
— Friday was the 10-year anniversary (Wow, I was living large in my final days of being 18) of me and Hinton going to see Sleigh Bells at 9:30 Club and getting stuck two or three rows outside of the pit behind people who were not into things. I definitely beat on the guy’s back at one point, and Hinton finally pulled us into the pit at some point (it might not have been until the very end with “A/B Machines”?) and it was wonderful. Sleigh Bells rules. Treats holds up.
— OK, pulling back the calendar a bit, I got to give a 10-year shoutout to seeing Double Dagger and Parts & Labor at Golden West in Baltimore in late April 2011. That was sick. Parts & Labor played a very noisy WMUC in-studio earlier that day, too. Parts & Labor were the final act Anna and I saw at Whartscape 2008, too, so they always hold a prime place in my heart. Mapmaker rips.
Some content I wrote this week
Good quote I got from a graduating senior today: “Over this last year, I would say the one big thing I learned how to do is not get my hopes up.”
Read more about that and Penn State’s socially distanced graduation ceremonies here.
Enjoyed writing this quick draft story about a former Penn State corner who got drafted by the Eagles out of Texas Tech (and I also wrote this about him earlier this year. It involves haboobs.)
Some content I listened to this week
I forget exactly how I came across this Origami Angel interview on Twitter, but there is a lot right away:
the Len Bias jersey in the promo shots
one of the dudes went to Eleanor Roosevelt High in Greenbelt, and I covered a baseball game he played in back in 2015 #allmets (or he was at least listed on the lineup card that I took a picture of, I will not dig out the scorebook when I am this weekend to confirmed whether he played or not)
one of the first lyrics that caught my ear on an early spin through the discography referenced Route 193
one of the guys recently graduated from Salisbury after going to DeMatha
“Despite not having gone to UMD, Heagy and Doherty are hardcore Terps fans who absolutely light up at the mention of Lonnie Baxter, Chris Wilcox, Greivis Vasquez, and Juan Dixon. In fact, I don’t think we talked much about other bands at all throughout our Zoom call, as the conversation frequently veered towards the likes of Tyreke Evans and O.J. Mayo, Dewey Wilkerson and Sheen Estevez, with a little Anakin Skywalker thrown in for good measure.” (I do not care about Jimmy Neutron or Star Wars, but I am in on Malcolm in the Middle).
the cover of Origami Angel’s first album, Somewhere City, is a rework of the Sunset Junction sign on Sunset Boulevard in Silverlake (I had breakfast there the last time I was in LA in 2018)
yeah
Anyway, I really liked Somewhere City, and Gami Gang is growing on me a little bit. I’m always late to bands like this, so it doesn’t matter. But yeah, fun band to spend some time listening to as I continue my emo regression:
On a similar emo vein, this Home Is Where song was getting some buzz online recently, and it’s pretty good, though the rest of the EP is pretty eh:
Re-upping my letters of recommendation for Tethers by The Natvral, Head of Roses by Flock of Dimes and Tragedy Reel by Fog Lake. I should probably get on the 052k21 playlist.
Some content I read this week
Drew Magary wrote about ESPN’s Marvel experiment from earlier this week, which is something that is Bad, and all I really have to say about it is: We do not have to do this.
This is a good appreciation of Albert Pujols by Will Leitch on MLB.com. Pujols’ career could basically be over, and I don’t really have much to add to it, other than it feels odd to see someone whose career is split so evenly in half. The Cardinals half was next level. The Angels half was not. I spent some time around Pujols in the Angels clubhouse in summer 2014 but do not have much to add. He was already eclipsed by Mike Trout at that point.
Will Leitch also wrote about his Buzz Bissinger thing in his newsletter. That was a long time ago.
Good Embedded on a controversy that I didn’t really notice was happening: “One of the biggest freedoms that has come with this newsletter is not having to pretend anything is more important than it actually is.”
Good Welcome to Hell World post.
A good story about Stony Brook women’s lacrosse, if that is your thing.
The guy who wrote that problematic Jeremy Lin headline — now that was a good JOUR320 discussion! (I do not remember if it was a good JOUR320 discussion because it was too early in the morning) — is now a priest.
Every single writer I follow was sharing this John Swartzwelder interview, which was pretty good.
Real Life published a thing about the Dark Sky app, which I use, but I am more partial to MyRadar. I have three weather apps on my phone.
Good piece in The Drift about citations and using search engines to fill in some holes in literature. (I hope I distilled it right because it’s a little over my head).
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
A good question:
I guess I do have a contribution to the Pujols thing: I searched my Twitter timeline for his name to see what would come up just cause, and I found a tweet from when the SAT got rid of the essay section (did that actually happen?) about how in the three times I took the SAT, I wrote my essays about Pujols, hipsters and Brett Favre. None of these things aged particularly well. Also, it might explain why I did not do better on the SAT.
Thank you for reading the 61st edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
There are no more roles on TV shows
There are no road-cone dispensing jobs
There are no spots left for park ranger
'Cause there are no bears left to save you from
—D.G.