Content Nausea No. 99: North East South West
And, man, America made a mess of me / When I messed with Texas and Tennessee
Welcome to the 99th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 98 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I wish I had something interesting to put forth about my time with the novel coronavirus, but unfortunately, I do not. Not too much changed about my day-to-day life, other than I slept a lot, and I wouldn’t have needed to leave the house much anyway, so… Yeah.
One thing I’m most looking forward to about being freed from ’rona is resuming my consumption of Dunkin’s holiday beverages. The peppermint mocha latte (my reason for the season) is great, and the hack of getting peppermint mocha syrup and cream added to a regular coffee brings down the price point considerably. I love the red cups at this time of year. (I was typing that paragraph, I got a push notification from the Dunkin’ app for a $3 medium Holiday Signature Latte, so I guess I know what I will be picking up ahead of my errands this afternoon).
Morocco is leading Portugal, 1-0, at halftime in the quarterfinals of the World Cup right now.
I just got an email from Tumblr that one of my blogs, one that has survived so many purges and pivots, turned 10 today. I started it because I needed somewhere to post a game story I wrote from the 2012 College Cup final between Indiana and Georgetown in Hoover, Ala., that wasn’t The Diamondback. And that reminds that 10 years ago this week, I spent three nights in Vestavia Hills, Ala., which featured getting stranded at a stadium, a cabbie with some interesting political views, eating lots of Waffle House, getting tacos from Hardee’s, watching Army-Navy, watching Johnny Manziel win the Heisman, drinking lots of rum, eating a good gluten-free pizza, missing a Japandroids/DIIV show at Black Cat — can you imagine a more 2012 bill than that??? — and overall, my first time spent in the South.
I didn’t make it back to Alabama until this past September when I went to Auburn. It’s an interesting place.
Scrolling through that Tumblr, there’s some quality blogging in there. It’s not quite the “mood board” that previous Tumblrs were for more — this one has the vaunted ‘danieljtgallen’ username attached to it, so it was ostensibly professional, but looking at it gives me a little pang for that past. I last tried to do it in 2020. Maybe 2023 is The Year. Maybe it’s here.
Some content I wrote this week
Not a lot of real reporting this week, but I’m going to the Rose Bowl, which is a cool, bucket list thing to check off. I haven’t been to LA in four years, and while I’ll be revisiting the same places I would frequent in 2013 and 2014, any new recs would be welcome.
Some content I listened to this week
Listening to a song called “December” in December.
An all-timer:
Song that has been kicking around my head for the past couple weeks (I consider Blue Suicide to be a post-Microcastle Weather album):
Some content I read this week
Who asked for all of this? Numerous critics — self-hating and otherwise — have argued that the mallification of the American city is the fault of the same millennials for whom all the new construction was built, who couldn’t quite bear to abandon the creature comforts of home even as they reurbanized. The story goes that millennials lived, laughed, and loved their way into an unprecedentedly insipid environment, turning once-gritty cities into Instagram-friendly dispensaries of baroque ice cream cones that call back, madeleine-style, to the enfolding warmth of their suburban childhoods. But the contemporary built environment is not the millennials’ legacy; it is their inheritance. They didn’t ask for cardboard modernism — they simply capitulate to its infantilizing aesthetic paradigm because there is no alternative. Or if there is an alternative, it’s between an $8 ice cream cone or an $11 ice cream cone (or a $49 ticket to the Museum of Ice Cream).
A brief, beautiful tribute to Grant Wahl, who died covering the World Cup last night, by Jon Wertheim in Sports Illustrated.
Barry Petchesky on the place for cheaters in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Defector.
Shelley Gaske on LCD Soundsystem’s LCD Soundsystem for SIXTYEIGHT2OHFIVE:
And because I was younger, I could pull it off. Make no mistake, LCD Soundsystem is an album of youth. It is the shots across the bow we all fire at adulthood. Could I really go to the club on a Thursday and pull off work Friday? If I was old enough to look down on the “kids,” why did I still feel exploited by the “adults?” If this was my time, I decided to take it. Storm be damned.
In our 20s, are we looting or liberating, waving or drowning, choosing or chosen? Time is the ultimate photo filter, and a life without mistakes is over-blanched sepia.
Brandon Taylor on ‘a year in nyc book buying (and reading)’ on his Substack. He had some good thoughts on Spotify, too. I’m mostly too dumb for his newsletter, but I like the writing.
Helena Fitzgerald on being ‘Haunted by the Ghost of 2019’ in The Atlantic.
A.J. Daulerio on ‘30 Under 30 Forever’ in The Small Bow.
Seth Wickersham on why Andrew Luck walked away from the Indianapolis Colts and the NFL in 2019 for ESPN.
Stephen J. Nesbitt on Around The Horn host Tony Reali, grief, his career and a lot more in The Athletic.
Richard Johnson on Max Duggan and TCU in Sports Illustrated. Kind of a long story, but I’m very, very happy for Max Duggan and will probably be rooting a bit for TCU in the College Football Playoff.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
Thank you for reading the 99th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
Flayed and gutted, so I’ve got to go
Back home, hungry for a hand to hold
And no matter how much I fan the flames
Canada always answers when I call her name
Down and out, drinking Dundas dry
Up against the wall of a winter’s night
Toronto, I’m trusting you to the cut the cane
‘Cause I’m saving Vancouver for a rainy day
—D.G.