Content Nausea No. 62: Black And White
Nothing makes my heart so wild as being in possession of a potent night.
Welcome to the 62nd edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 61 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
Content Nausea turned 2 earlier this week, and in going back through the archives briefly, it turns out I have written about my birthday a lot (No. 1, No. 2, No. 27 and No. 28). So in debating whether to punt on spending some time over my four-day weekend doing this newsletter, I decided that I might as well keep it going as this project(?) enters its third year. I’m almost out of Parquet Courts song titles.
I’m watching the Sixers play some absolutely disgusting basketball against the Heat in a hotel room in Center City (the marketing material claims Rittenhouse Square, which I disagree with) and I’m trying to keep the energy up for the Blazers tipping off against the Suns in the 10 p.m. slot. I need to get my body clock ready for the playoffs in a couple weeks. Udonis Haslem got ejected after playing, like, three minutes, which was pretty cool.
Blazers-Suns was tipping off as I finishing this, so I guess my plan worked.
It’s the night before my birthday. You’re reading this the day after my birthday. What happened in between? I’m not sure, and I don’t have any plans for it, much like this newsletter.
I ran through what I did on all of my birthdays since 2008 in No. 2 (to add 2020 to the list, we JQBX’d the night before and then I just sorta chilled and walked around and did whatever during a global pandemic).
But I will give a shoutout to my 19th birthday a decade ago in which me and Emily saw Body Language and Adventure in Adam Friedland’s basement in D.C., went to Ben’s Chili Bowl and then wandered around the Mall near the Washington Monument and the future site of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. We talked a lot about the 2008 inauguration? Anyway, that was fun, and most of the recent birthdays have been good.
But yeah, Friday was my 29th birthday, and that is fine with me.
Lol, I’m really mailing this one in. So let’s dive into the Twitter drafts. I started jotting in some stray thoughts that are too mundane for my Twitter feed and saving them in my drafts, and here is the first crop (including some typos):
Some explanations:
Maya posted about Best Coast’s Crazy For You on IG on Thursday morning, and I had a three-hour drive ahead of me, so I decided to run back Crazy For You and King of the Beach by Wavves back-to-back. And yeah, both albums hold up nicely. I don’t think King of the Beach gets enough credit for how weird of an album it is. All of us were too preoccupied with Nathan Williams — who’s got another album coming out that seems like it’s going to be pretty good based on two songs — shedding the lo-fi sound, whatever that means.
But Crazy For You is just a great collection of fuzzy pop songs, and King of the Beach really leans into some offbeat sounds. But “Linus Spacehead,” which is one of the later songs on the album, really caught me Thursday morning. It’s pretty sick.
I did tweet about this, but listening to Crazy For You and King of the Beach brough the memory back: The most incendiary music take I’ve ever vocalized might be when I said “Midnight City” by M83 was not that good of a song at a WMUC party in February 2012. Things got kind of weird. (My opinion isn’t wrong, either).
I figured out the system for driving from State College to wherever: I listen to music between State College and Harrisburg because it’s a very bucolic and scenic ride, and then I listen to a podcast for the tedium of working through Harrisburg, and then if I’m staying on the turnpike to go to Philadelphia, I’ll stick with a podcast, while if I’m going to Bel Air, I’ll listen to a podcast till about York and then switch to music for the rest of the drive through northwestern Harford County.
The Kim Petras draft speaks for itself. That album rules.
Tokyo Police Club released a song that seems to foreshadow the financial crisis (but was probably just speaking to ever-present conditions in our society)? Hmm…
I forget what day it was last week and why the vibes were off, but I could not get a handle on things, so I scrolled aimlessly though Spotify before I ran an errand and eventually got suggested Champ by Tokyo Police Club, and it’s been a great neutral listen on some drives and when I was walking around Philadelphia on Thursday. There’s the mix of genres (“Bambi” and “End of a Spark” being on the same album is kinda neat) and the songs are just good (I don’t understand why “Big Difference” has the fewest streams on Spotify?). It’s solid front to back. A Lesson in Crime was a very October 2007 release for me, so TPC has always had some fall connotations (though “Tessellate” was March 2009 for me), but Champ has spring brightness to it. And it fits that vibe.
Some content I listened to this week
Sort of ran through it above? This Green Day cover rules:
Some content I read this week
Kind of a moving essay by Dan Barry in The New York Times on a quiet opening day in Rhode Island after the Pawtucket Red Sox left for Worcester.
A longtime Washington Post columnist moves on.
Carmelo Anthony’s move into the top 10 of the NBA’s all-time scoring list.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
Former Maryland basketball players keep showing up under the friends suggestions on Facebook. I’ve gotten Evan Smotrycz, Berend Weijs and Nick Faust (shoutout HarCo) in the past week or so.
Friends doing numbers:
Thank you for reading the 62nd edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
When atonement comes in distant waves
I might wait until the next to break
Choking through forgiveness at a sunfly prompter
Staring through the back of my face
Its a vulgar, hidden part of being tethered to the world right now;
Spending all my dollars to remain a member
Nothing in my eyes but a scowl
Do I bother to define myself beyond what they allow?
Have I already forgotten how?
—D.G.