The Pitt is one of the best medical shows, I’ve ever seen and I’m a doctor! Dying for Sex was funny, and gruelingly sad and beautiful at the same time. Well worth the watch. Even when women aren’t sick, especially midlife or older women, there is a poverty of sexual pleasure. Many don’t have or aren’t in relationships. Or the taboos around women seeking pleasure are so strong, we just stay home. However, there IS nothing wrong with having a lover or two.
The playlist prompt is great! I just built one where I added the constraint that I would choose the song for each year based on the top 10 of the billboard Hot 100 as of my birthday that year.
It was an interesting exercise for a few reasons. One, you see how much music has changed over a long period of time.
Two, it can be hard to make a choice about what song you put for each year. What are the values you're trying to represent with the list? Are you putting in songs that you just like the most now, or the one you liked the most at the time, or one that you like ironically. For example, one year that I struggled with was 1992. The top song was Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy, which is kind of a classic pop song/One Hit Wonder which at the time I really liked and still look back on it and laugh. Or do I choose Smells Like Teen Spirit, which has had a lot more durability in my life and shaped my musical tastes for a long time, but isn't a traditional pop song? (I went with Smells Like Teen Spirit.)
And three, it made me realize how detached I am from pop music now, probably due to a combination of the fact that so much of my listening is done through streaming services rather than radio, and the fact that I'm just old(er). I was surprised to find that in some of the recent years how many of the songs on the top 10 that I had never heard before or knew who the artist was.
I'm not sure how much I like the end result of the playlist though, especially the later years. I think I'm going to have to dig in and just do a list where I pick a song from each year that I like, regardless of whether it was a pop song.
Fantastic list this week! Definitely going to make a playlist—I have 69 years of songs to check out. Still struggling with reading—it’s a hard one. Burkeman always just hits—being a disappointment has always been one of my biggest fears.
Great recommendations! We often think of fiction to read, but forget about the great genre of drama. If I may be so bold as to add, the greatest play written this century, and it will still be the greatest by 2099, is “August:Osage County” by Tracy Letts. Ignore the film version. It’s a terrible adaptation but reading the play will knock your socks off! 😀🧦
A new wonderful thing about some of your newsletters and your blog posts Austin is that my 10 yr old and I sometimes read/watch them together. We just read the Star Wars post again and laughed at the last line :-D
Wow. What a great list from the LA Times. I’ve read more of them than I expected. Behind the Beautiful Forevers was amazing and I’ve been slowly working my way through Thick over the past few months.
Love the encouragement to read. Read read read, a couple of these nonfiction works were fantastic, however, I find myself drawn to fiction works much older than 30 years…
I have been on retreat/vacation this week near Navasota,TX, and still have had problems justifying just sitting and reading, especially a novel that I’ve been jonesing for but was waiting until now to start (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones). People watching & chatting has been a distraction, albeit a good one, as has nature watching.
I have started John Warner’s More Than Words, at your recommendation—had to wait until the library got it. I just ordered it online yesterday as I realized that I need to write in it.
Thanks, as always!
PS: going to post my zine once I return to Austin. Can’t decide whether to write a long post or a short one to intro it.
The Pitt is one of the best medical shows, I’ve ever seen and I’m a doctor! Dying for Sex was funny, and gruelingly sad and beautiful at the same time. Well worth the watch. Even when women aren’t sick, especially midlife or older women, there is a poverty of sexual pleasure. Many don’t have or aren’t in relationships. Or the taboos around women seeking pleasure are so strong, we just stay home. However, there IS nothing wrong with having a lover or two.
Into Thin Air is so good. One of my favorites.
That article on being a disappointment. Helped to put words to the work I’ve already been doing.
The playlist prompt is great! I just built one where I added the constraint that I would choose the song for each year based on the top 10 of the billboard Hot 100 as of my birthday that year.
It was an interesting exercise for a few reasons. One, you see how much music has changed over a long period of time.
Two, it can be hard to make a choice about what song you put for each year. What are the values you're trying to represent with the list? Are you putting in songs that you just like the most now, or the one you liked the most at the time, or one that you like ironically. For example, one year that I struggled with was 1992. The top song was Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy, which is kind of a classic pop song/One Hit Wonder which at the time I really liked and still look back on it and laugh. Or do I choose Smells Like Teen Spirit, which has had a lot more durability in my life and shaped my musical tastes for a long time, but isn't a traditional pop song? (I went with Smells Like Teen Spirit.)
And three, it made me realize how detached I am from pop music now, probably due to a combination of the fact that so much of my listening is done through streaming services rather than radio, and the fact that I'm just old(er). I was surprised to find that in some of the recent years how many of the songs on the top 10 that I had never heard before or knew who the artist was.
I'm not sure how much I like the end result of the playlist though, especially the later years. I think I'm going to have to dig in and just do a list where I pick a song from each year that I like, regardless of whether it was a pop song.
Fantastic list this week! Definitely going to make a playlist—I have 69 years of songs to check out. Still struggling with reading—it’s a hard one. Burkeman always just hits—being a disappointment has always been one of my biggest fears.
I love this pair of blackout poems!
Great Friday post, as usual. Hope you have a great weekend!
I love the idea of choosing a favorite song from every year of my life- perhaps I’d include musical theatre songs instead of just pop radio… 😀
Great recommendations! We often think of fiction to read, but forget about the great genre of drama. If I may be so bold as to add, the greatest play written this century, and it will still be the greatest by 2099, is “August:Osage County” by Tracy Letts. Ignore the film version. It’s a terrible adaptation but reading the play will knock your socks off! 😀🧦
A new wonderful thing about some of your newsletters and your blog posts Austin is that my 10 yr old and I sometimes read/watch them together. We just read the Star Wars post again and laughed at the last line :-D
Wow. What a great list from the LA Times. I’ve read more of them than I expected. Behind the Beautiful Forevers was amazing and I’ve been slowly working my way through Thick over the past few months.
Love the encouragement to read. Read read read, a couple of these nonfiction works were fantastic, however, I find myself drawn to fiction works much older than 30 years…
I have been on retreat/vacation this week near Navasota,TX, and still have had problems justifying just sitting and reading, especially a novel that I’ve been jonesing for but was waiting until now to start (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones). People watching & chatting has been a distraction, albeit a good one, as has nature watching.
I have started John Warner’s More Than Words, at your recommendation—had to wait until the library got it. I just ordered it online yesterday as I realized that I need to write in it.
Thanks, as always!
PS: going to post my zine once I return to Austin. Can’t decide whether to write a long post or a short one to intro it.