Content Nausea No. 91: Art Czars
I’m really sorry if you thought this feeling was the fire keeping your heart beating
Welcome to the 91st edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 90 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
Some content I wrote this week
Impressions of a new athletic director in Indianapolis
A large man eats a large meal and plots a large comeback.
Looking toward Sept. 1 from the opposite sideline.
Some content I listened to this week
It’s almost time to wrap up the 072k22 playlist.
In Wednesday’s Content Nausea, I put Emotional Creature by Beach Bunny as an album that “missed the cut but will probably make the year-end list” ahead of my top 15 album rankings. Basically, that category was albums that I really liked but hadn’t really been diligent about slotting into my rankings like I had been earlier in the year. But Emotional Creature will probably end up in the top 5. It’s a great, fun album. Some Beach Bunny songs are a little more direct than what I usually enjoy listening to, but it doesn’t bother me as much in this album, like on “Gone” with lyrics like “'Cause I'm tired of guessing on a blurred photo / Are you hanging out with someone I don't know?”
The instrumental track “Gravity” is really beautiful and peaceful, too. And I love how “Love Song” reprises “Entropy” to give the end of the album a more epic feel. Really good album, undoubtedly one of my favorites this year.
I didn’t listen to much while I was in transit or in Indianapolis, but I did spend a good portion of the week with Wilco stuck in my head, especially “Handshake Drugs.” It would have been very on the nose to have Big Ten Media Days in Chicago this year.
Also had this — an early pandemic favorite — stuck in my head at various times during the week.
Some content I read this week
Started reading Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr this week. I wanted to get deeper into it, but a short flight turned into a 9-hour drive, so I didn’t read much.
Great The Small Bow from A.J. Daulerio.
Great Griefbacon from Helena Fitzgerald.
Tom Scocca on The Sopranos in Indignity.
Natalie Weiner on “LIV Golf and Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism” in fanbyte.
David Roth on MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in Defector:
He will simply do the bare minimum to justify an unjust and untenable status quo, on behalf of the people who benefit from it the most, to people who understand their jobs as maintaining that status quo, and trust that all the forces holding that status quo in place—not just money and power and inertia, but the broader American tendency to believe that making things better for someone else would necessarily make things worse for you—will do what they do.
Giacomo Bologna on the CopyCat building and Baltimore’s warehouse arts scene in The Baltimore Sun.
Marin Cogan on the deadliest road in America in Vox.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
I watched The Bear on Hulu last weekend, which was why I started listening to Wilco again. Using “Impossible Germany” to close one of the episodes didn’t feel overwrought and reminded me how much I love that song. Also, the one episode that began with a Chicago montage set to the Sufjan Stevens song ending up being the most intense episode of the series was a nice touch. Didn’t see that coming. But good show. Another one where I’m not necessarily sure if it needs a second season, but then again, I’m not a TV guy.
I’m not sure why I was so amused by it, but there was a mural painted on a wall near my hotel across from Lucas Oil Stadium that read, “You’ve entered the blue zone.” I kept repeating, “I have entered the blue zone” to myself whenever I walked by it.
Thank you for reading the 91st edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
Here’s your money back
Here’s your punk rock back
—D.G.