A weekly note

I forgot to talk about sledding last week!

Michelle had taken A around the block on a sled back in December, but I was working too much and had a tweaked knee, so I didn’t get a chance to go with before the snow all melted. A few weeks later and it finally snowed again, or, dusted enough to support a small child in a lightweight sled.

We took a nice long walk, A laying flat on his belly, and ended up at a small hill by the middle school playfields. Michelle and I took turns sending him down the hill on his own and he loved every moment.

You can barely see his face with all of his cold-weather garb on, but his eyes convey the best smile. He signed “more” every time he reached the bottom and then finally an “all done” once we were at it for 20 minutes or so.

Such a good time!

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Tom Verlaine from Television passed away.

I’m not very familiar with their work—probably more familiar than I know, but I have had a small obsession with the song Marquee Moon for a while. It grooves so good and is on for so long and sounds like it could have been released by any number of bands in the last 10 years.

It pops into my head frequently.

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I finally broke my BBC Radio 6 streak on Monday and played a Björk album (fossora) through Bandcamp. Since then it’s been nice browsing my albums on Bandcamp through the Sonos app and picking something intentionally.

I may be coming around to figuring out how to leave Spotify, we’ll see.

I’d like something like a streaming co-op radio that has a catalog the size of Spotify, but where users pay some sort of royalty per play to the artist. Resonate seems like it’s in that realm, though it also seems unlikely for large labels to opt in.

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There is something hidden in Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, even if Michelle’s eyes rolled when I started to deliver my expansive thesis.

The short version: I’m not actually convinced the cows can type. I think duck is not in fact a neutral party. The cows and hens are pawns in the ducks’ power struggle / desire for a diving board.

The lesson from Animal Farm stands: four legs good, two legs bad.

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A signing “all done” while furiously shoving more blueberries into his face.

Same, man, same.

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The Mosquito Coast is such a strange show. We’ve binged through a season and a half and the best thing about it is the cliffhangers. We knew absolutely nothing at the end of season one, it was literally two MacGuffins competing for time. Somehow we’re still here.

Observations.

The script is full of preachy bits on climate change or government that sound straight out of an indie movie from the 90s. It’s not exactly the same, but at some point in season one I started imagining everything Justin Theroux’s character said as instead delivered by Matthew Lillard in SLC Punk.

Second, via Michelle, Justin Theroux is too Justin Theroux. His unlikable character conflicts with him being Justin Theroux.

MacGuffins! Plural!

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Reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man out loud to A has been a fun way to really parse the story. Page 71 is the first time I’ve been confused. He seems to transition quickly from a young to older age, but then maybe back again. I’m looking forward to rereading it at a slightly faster pace so that the flow is there.

I’ve told a few people that there’s nothing really difficult about this book and that it’s surprisingly linear compared to Ulysses or Finnegans Wake. I think that’s still true, but it’s fun to slowly find out.

And he keeps requesting it! I love it.

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It’s not January! 🍻