If one of the goals of the This Is My Blood project is to cut down on my drinking, then we can find at least one silver lining from this historically awful global pandemic—it's made it easier to drink less. I don't have many reasons to drink, so I've been drinking way less, but my life is pretty much on cheat mode in this very specific regard.
So here I am in Wildwood, NJ, on vacation (or whatever constitutes a "vacation" in this near-apocalyptic version of my favorite shore town). It is a town where I am usually more drunk than sober. I will attempt, I guess, to take it a little easy? Is that even possible here?
We are off to a reasonable start tonight. The plan was to drink one single large bottle of a nice Belgian ale as a sort of stand-in for champagne, in celebration of our return to a home-away-from-home. That went well—decent beer, strong combo of fruity Belgian yeast and bitter hops, closer to an IPA than, say, a dubbel or quadrupel, good shit.
But I also gave in and had a glass of wine with dinner. One extra drink isn't going to kill me, but it also was completely unnecessary, and I couldn't help myself. It was probably the least alcohol I've had in one day in Wildwood in the past decade, and I still can't help but feel that I fucked up by having that extra glass. It doesn't bode well for the rest of the week (in the context of some pretend sobriety, anyway).
But we'll see.
NOTES
BEER: Kasteel Tripel
STYLE: Belgian Tripel
ABV: 11.0%
BREWED BY: Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck N.V.
LOCATION: Emelgem, Belgium
PURCHASED AT: IGA
PAIRED WITH: One single moment of peace while Martha slept and Willow was on the boardwalk getting ice cream with Mom Mom and Grandpop
Funkadelic clearly has not been up to anything recently, but Pitchfork reviewed Maggot Brain three weeks ago and gave it a 10/10, which seems a little high.
Fontaines D.C. have a new album coming up at the end of the month! I will probably try to review it as quickly as possible so it's ineligible for Record Club! Reviewing the same band twice in Record Club is boring! (Sorry Foals!)
You missed your chance to buy the PUP live album to support them during COVID. Don't worry, you can still buy the jigsaw puzzle!!!
Jens Lekman was doing concerts over Skype... man, remember when such an idea seemed novel? Those were the days.
I can't imagine that Harry and the Potters are planning any more music now that J.K. Rowling has revealed herself to be a pretty terrible person.
Connie Converse remains missing.
YBN Cordae was charged with a FELONY for PEACEFULLY PROTESTING the unjust murder of Breonna Taylor. For those keeping track, YBN Cordae and 86 others were given felony charges, and the police who MURDERED a civilian in her own home remain free. Defund the motherfucking police. (Update since I first compiled this list: the felony charges have been dropped, because they were outrageous, but then, so are many actions that the police partake in. Defund 'em.)
Pond isn't up to anything, but another Tame Impala side project released a pretty decent album about a month ago. GUM's Out in the World. Better than Pond? Record Club may never know.
Hopesfall's guitarist/songwriter has a new band that's cooking up an EP as we speak, if Hopesfall was your thing (this bullet point is a personal message to Brittany I guess).
The Beths released Jump Rope Gazers three weeks ago! It's great!
T-Pain was a Record Club pick because of The Masked Singer, whose (hopefully soon-to-be previous) host is an anti-Semite. (Update since I first compiled this list: Doesn't look like The Masked Singer will be firing their host. You're telling me that this cheaply made trash television game show has no scruples?!?!?!)
Jim James finally stopped dicking around and released a new My Morning Jacket album, The Waterfall II.
KAYTRANADA released a new single a couple weeks ago, but no album release plans so far.
KAYTRANADA and U.S. Girls were both shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, which is awarded to the best Canadian album each year. I had no idea that U.S. Girls was Canadian, if I'm being honest.
Alanis Morissette, believe it or not, is releasing a new album at the end of the month. Will it be better than Jagged Little Pill? Probably not. Will it be better than her bit part in Manic? Maybe!
100 gecs released a remix album called 1000 gecs & the Tree of Clues. I will not be listening to it unless Nate somehow finds yet another way to force me to listen to 100 gecs.
There's a new video for Robyn's "Dancing on My Own," a song that has to be taken literally these days.
Perfume Genius interviewed Christine and the Queens (thanks to Rachael S. for always staying on brand and sending me this).
Yahoo just printed an interview with Nile Rodgers about his writing Diana Ross' "I'm Coming Out." Good timing, as this was right after we reviewed the album. I found it really interesting that he tries to reframe the infamous "Diana Ross hating the song at first because it would ruin her career" claim that at least two reviews for diana mentioned. Previously, Rodgers had said that it was Ross who made the assumption that it would ruin her career, but in this most recent interview, he places the blame on radio DJ Frankie Crocker, who he now says directly told Diana Ross that this song would ruin her career, and she just made the simple mistake of believing him. I don't know why I'm writing so much about this—it's a good song, it's a good LGBTQ anthem, and she's a great artist.
You can check out reviews for all these artists in our archives, found HERE. You can also listen to one song each from all these artists and more on our playlist, found HERE. And now, finally, you can scroll down and see this week's album.
WEEK 78 — July 26-August 1, 2020
What we're listening to this week (Joe's pick):
ALBUM: Watermelon Man! ARTIST: Mongo Santamaria
RELEASED: 1963 (couldn't find the exact date, though I'll be honest I didn't search all that thoroughly)
WHAT GENRE IS THIS: cha-cha / salsa / Latin jazz
WHY JOE PICKED IT: I'm gonna be down the shore for most of this week, so I wanted to pick something that wasn't going to be totally grating for a family who finds most non-country music grating. Are they going to like listening to Mongo Santamaria? Probably not! But it's different than, I dunno, if I picked a Metallica album or something. At least Watermelon Man! seems like it could be on in the background if need be. (An aside: the title of the album is printed with the exclamation point on some sites, and without it on others. I'm keeping the punctuation because it seems cooler.)
TRACKLIST:
Watermelon Man
Funny Money
Cut That Cane!
Get the Money
The Boogie Cha Cha Blues
Don't Bother Me No More
Love, Oh Love
Yeh-Yeh!
The Peanut Vendor
Go Git It!
Bayou Roots
Suavito
LENGTH: 31:39
WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE: YouTube—all the songs are on there, but I can't find a playlist that compiles 'em, sorry
READING SOME SHIT: Mongo passed away in 2003, and was retired since the late 1980s, so there isn't too much reading material online except for retrospectives and what have you. Here's his NYT obituary.
from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
1973
Bruce Springsteen is one poetic motherfucker, probably more than his Chris Christie-type fans give him credit for. Have y'all seen Springsteen on Broadway? That thing gives the Springsteen hits extra depth, more than they already had, which I didn't think was possible. The man is a poet first, guitarist second.
One song that has always struck me as particular special is "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," a song that unravels one magical night in the shore town of his (your) choice. This is Springsteen taking the camera and panning across one spellbinding boardwalk scene, where the teens are dancing and running from cops and making out underneath the boards. The details are vivid enough that you can tell that Bruce isn't just singing about such a night, he's lived it.
Now, I've had some fucking nights down the shore. But I've always held "4th July" somewhat at arm's length, because the details here don't quite match up with the details of my own youth. The most obvious difference being that I was a shoobie experiencing the seashore life one week every year, as opposed to living that life every day, like Springsteen did in Asbury. Perhaps more significantly, any Wildwood romance I've ever experienced was fleeting and only occurred because we were far from home, whereas Springsteen's protagonist is in it for the long term, and the wild, innocent shuffle of that boardwalk night is more of a backdrop to the romance, as opposed to the catalyst for it.
Still, I appreciate "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" like I appreciate a good novel. I may not have specifically chased factory girls through dusty arcades, but I know that wild abandon that seems to come to the forefront whenever we cross that bridge into North Wildwood. But a novel isn't inspiring me to yell out the window—that's another Bruce song. "Thunder Road" has been fashioned into the story of my brief occasional seashore town life.
So perhaps this entry into the Song of the Week canon can be considered a bookend to that entry a year ago. I have my Bruce Springsteen Summer Song, and Bruce Springsteen has his own Bruce Springsteen Summer Song, and we acknowledge that everyone has their own Summer Song for their own Summer Shore Town, and we appreciate that Summer is even able to exist at all this year, even in hobbled, truncated form, that we are able to enjoy that shore life, however briefly, however secluded from the boardwalk, however far away we are from the Sandys of our youth.
WHO: Zwart Bloed. According to google, this means "black blood" in Dutch.
WHAT: An "imperial black india pale ale." This is a thing! Tasting Beer has a list of all kinds of variations of IPAs. There is such thing too as a white IPA (usually a wheat ale with IPA-style hops), red IPA (featuring a raisiny malt character in addition to those hops), a Belgian IPA (apparently difficult to find a balance between the Belgian yeast and the IPA hops), India pale lagers (brewed cold, same hops), and session IPAs (we're familiar with these already, and more have to do with ABV than flavor profile).
But a black IPA, also known as a Cascadian dark ale, is not what you'd expect. You'd expect a dark, roasty stout to be blasted with hops. It's actually the opposite. It's an IPA that is hit with a "malt coloring syrup" called Sinamar. Tasting Beer claims that this is just a coloring thing, that your eyes see a dark black beer and make you taste roastiness even though it's not there. I tasted roastiness, so maybe I really am as dumb as Randy Mosher assumes I am.
WHERE: White Pony Microbrewery is located in Italy, which apparently has a booming craft beer scene. I don't know how one random White Pony beer ended up at the six-pack store in Port Richmond, but I'm glad I found it. I love looking through breweries' websites and seeing everything they have to offer. I love how every website has a section where they say something like "beer is art" or "beer is our passion" (especially charming here due to the slightly broken English). I love looking at all the beers I will probably never drink, especially if they have outrageous names (White Pony has a Belgian IPA called "What the Fuck?! Belgian IPA," which is the first beer I've ever seen with an interrobang in the name).
HOW: Not only is the art on this beer interesting, but it's also the first beer art I've seen give credit to the artist right there on the front. The artist is Adrian Borda. Yes, all his art is in this style. I wonder, though, if the art was created for the beer, or the beer asked permission to use it? The website features "Spanish Galions on Fire" but doesn't say.
WHY: I was down at Richmond ABV, the six-pack store down the street with a medium-quantity selection of loose beers to "make your own." For Wildwood purposes that I'll explain next week, I needed to make a very specific five-pack, which means I had one spot left in the sixer for any beer that jumped out at me from the shelves.
There was Zwart Bloed. Out of the way, in the bottom corner of one fridge, but with a sign attached. "SALE: $2. Save $3.50." Anything with "imperial" in its name is always going to be too expensive, so it intrigued me that I could have this very fancy looking import beer for only $2. Was it about to go bad? Did they receive an accidental double shipment? Are the racists of Port Richmond refusing to buy any beer with the word "black" on the label? I do not know why this beer was only $2, but you better believe I snatched that shit up.
NOTES
BEER: Zwart Bloed
STYLE: Black IPA / Cascadian Dark Ale
ABV: 8.5%
BREWED BY: White Pony Microbrewery
LOCATION: Piove di Sacco, Italy
PURCHASED AT: ABV Port Richmond
PAIRED WITH: egg and cheese tacos... good food, good beer, bad pairing
Everyone gets old, including me, you, and the two gentlemen behind Brick + Mortar... or so I felt after my first listen to Meta Meta Etc. The album was good, I decided, but it seemed more like an echo of their past albums than something new and exciting. I threw my back out on Sunday and first listened to the album on Monday morning when I was still in a good deal of pain. Realizing that this may have made me a tad bit pessimistic, I listened to the album again on Wednesday after taking some muscle relaxers. The album seemed better the second time around. The songs were livelier than I remember them being. Each song was distinct too. While all the songs fit together to form a coherent album, they did not flow together. Of course, this could just be the muscle relaxers talking. My doctor told me they make some folks loopy. Nevertheless, I look forward to hearing this album live if we ever get to hangout in crowded, seaside bars again.
Is TV a vast wasteland of junk again? In retrospect, the decade before Minow's speech was the first Golden Age of TV. The shift from Shakespeare and Twelve Angry Men to cheap sitcom and cheap western is, probably, lame. But harping too much on it seems... pretentious. What about Minow's other point? That it's all commercials and content-as-commercials, particularly preying on children? Did that change? Has it changed now? Sometime around each tech cycle (broadcast to HD to streaming) there's energy and really good work is made. But, as if by laws of thermodynamics, proliferation sets in as more space is needed for the commercial. Does the work has artisanship anymore or has Netflix's algorithm worked better than they could hope? Did "cable cutting" work? What's the cost of Netflix, Hulu, D+, Amazon vs the old TimeWarner plan? Guess it's Meta stuff, etc., etc...
The album has a nice aesthetic to it. Lyric/vocal forward with a comfortable supporting mix of drums, samples, and guitar. That spring has enough flex that they can play with tempo and tone to create a pretty varied album. I enjoy the upbeat "Tear Me Apart" for its progression, "Saturday Night" for its introspection, and plenty others mix the two. But the twenty one pilots-ness of "Fiend," "Question" is dubious. The singing plays better than the distorted spoken word. Maybe it's indie/alt trend, maybe it's an attempt to branch out, maybe it's a natural effect of using too much synth. In the same way, the lyric hits both sides of the thoughtful-corny gradient. It nets out with enough fun and interesting tracks that makes it all enjoyable and worth relistening to.
In his piece about being a Deadhead in his late 30s, Steven Hyden had this to say about your relationship with music as you grow older:
Getting into the Dead replicates the feeling I had as a kid learning about music for the first time, when all artists were new and classic albums I had never heard were blowing my mind every day. Once you reach a certain age, it’s impossible to feel that way again, which is why so many people drift away from discovery in middle age and stick with the music they know.
If that's true, then Record Club is a conscious pushback against that inevitability. I don't want to just "stick with the music I know." That's boring to me. And so what if the new music I'm listening to isn't blowing my mind? I can just relax and put on something that's mildly enjoyable, and every once in a while, maybe I'll be surprised to find how much I'm digging something. That's good enough for me these days. Honestly.
Meta Meta Etc.? Yeah, it's good enough. It sounds like someone took the Unicorns/Islands and ran them through the 104.5 FM meat grinder. "I got some Foster the People in your Beck," and "I got some Beck in your Foster the People," and so on. Mostly it just sounds like two guys fucking around in a recording studio.
Despite the unfairness of reducing it to that, it pretty much is just that—two dudes from Toms River, having fun making music, and not really caring all that much about success, not really taking any of this seriously. Why should I take it seriously then? It's easier to just sit back and enjoy it for what it is, and not really worry. It's summer. Who the fuck cares?
If literally my only reaction to Brick + Mortar was "who the fuck cares," then maybe we'd have a problem. But there are some moments here that truly make me sit up and take notice. Not close to the aforementioned "mind blowing," but good enough that it transcends the "who the fuck cares" of it all.
"Hate Thy Neighbor" is one of those moments, a closing track that leaves you wanting more. "Tear Me Apart" is a dance tune that makes me believe Sean when he said that B+M's live show was raucous fun.
But then there are other tracks that are extremely forgettable. "Fiend" has that kind of annoying vocal manipulation sprinkled into a very bored and boring performance. "Original Sin" is what I imagine Twenty-One Pilots would sound like if I ever listened to a single second of Twenty-One Pilots. A few songs have a weird thread of hip-hop influence that seems wildly out of place. And what's up with that opening track? At least when Chubby did this, the preacher shitting on music. What does TV have to do with any of this?
I don't care. Who the fuck cares? I don't care. I'm relaxing by the pool. This is fine. It's good enough that I'm not going to stop trying to find new music. It's not mind-blowing, but I don't need mind-blowing. I'm certainly not like Pam, calling it "embarrassing." I don't believe that. This is pretty good. I'm not embarrassed. This is good enough. I'm fine. I'm good. I'm getting older. This is fine.
There's a website called PhilliesNation.com that I used to visit every day throughout the summer. If you go there now, you'll find a sleek, multi-panel website, one that reeks of corporate buyout but is actually, as far as I can tell, still independent (the dude who runs it also runs the sports clothing store in Center City). But back in the day, it was a rickety lo-fi blog about my favorite sports team, and I loved visiting. The best part about the site was that they posted a preview of every single game, talking briefly about the pitching matchup, the recent history of the two teams facing each other, things to watch out for, etc. At the end of each preview, there was also a beer pairing that the author felt would go well with that particular game. Not that I gave one modicum of a shit about craft beer at the time, but it was interesting to read about the beers anyway, and the mostly jokey ways that each beer could apply to that particular game. Anyways, here is my attempt at an old-school-Phillies-Nation-style Phillies preview for today's game.
Miami Marlins @ Philadelphia Phillies
July 24, 2020
Game 1
We finally begin the Phillies 2020 campaign, after months / years / infinite lifetimes of waiting. As is usually the case for this Phillies team, we enter the season with more questions than answers, though unfortunately, many of those questions now involve which bench coach is eventually going to be hospitalized because Nick Williams didn't wear his mask when he got a Postmates hoagie delivery on an off day.
But we're not here to preview a national pandemic—your wife already has enough anxiety about all that—we're here to preview the first matchup of the year. Yes, it's against the Marlins, the only team in our division guaranteed(?) to be worse than us this year. Not that we have basement-level expectations! We will hopefully make the playoffs! We might even win an asterisked championship! You never know! I'm just talking worst case scenarios here. The Mets and Braves always seem to be putting a good squad on the field, and the Nationals are the reigning World Champions, so I'm just saying that it's going to be a dog fight, and Marlins are going to be the only ones who we know are going to shit the bed. So it's nice that we're starting the year against them, that's all I'm saying.
Am I saying that Bryce Harper is going to smash a home run in his first at bat? Yeah, sure, why not. This, despite the fact that Harper is a notoriously slow starter in a 162-game season (e.g. through the first 90 games of 2019, he had 16 homers, and then the last 67 games he had 19). It'll be interesting to see if our lord and savior can get off to a hot start and stay that was through this very short seasons.
Because of COVID, rosters are starting as 30-man, which is more than usual. This leaves a lot of room for a bunch of human question marks to sit on the bench and hope to make their mark. Lots of unknown names—bullpen arms like Deolis Guerra, Trevor Kelley, and Reggie McClain, positional players like Kyle Garlick and Neil Walker—are here, and we'll just have to see how that turns out. I love how any baseball game has the potential to be won or lost on the backs of these unknowns. Maybe we'll be talking about "the Kyle Garlick Game" years from now.
One player who is not unknown is tonight's starting pitcher, Aaron Nola. Despite an iffy 2019 campaign, and despite the fact that there were rumblings that he might not be ready for COVID-related reasons, Nola appears to still have THE STUFF, pitching 5 scoreless innings on only 62 pitches in his final summer training game last week (17 recorded outs, it should be noted—exhibition games are weird).
The Marlins are throwing out their ace (in a surprisingly solid rotation), Sandy Alcantara, who went 6-14 in 2019, with a 3.88 ERA in 32 starts, plus an All-Star appearance. It'll be a nice test for a Phillies offense that weren't as explosive as they had the potential to be last year.
And so begins the Joe Giraldi Era here in Philadelphia. It's weird, because I've hated this dude since 2009, and now he is our leader. That's how baseball works, for better or worse. He has a proven history of success, though, so I'd love to see Giraldi lead this team to the playoffs and beyond. Let's see him earn Philadelphia's love. It's there if he can get it.
Speaking of love... guys, it's Phillies baseball! It's back! We're here! Hopefully everyone can stay healthy!!!
Your beer of the day: Flying Fish Tradewinds
Time to gather with kith and kin and watch the Phillies for the first time this year, while you crack an ice cold wheat ale from Flying Fish. Two reasons why this is the perfect beer for today. First, you'll be watching those Phillies home run balls flying over the fish all night. Second, yes, the shortened season means it's already time to start talking trades! What expensive all-star will the Marlins offload this year? This will be a good game to get a sense of the tradewinds...
Enjoy yourself, and let's fucking go Phillies!!! NOTES
BEER: Tradewinds
STYLE: American Pale Wheat
ABV: 5.7%
BREWED BY: Flying Fish Brewing Company
LOCATION: Somerdale, New Jersey
PURCHASED AT: Tioga Beer Distributors in a variety pack... we'll see what other Flying Fish beers show up in the coming days, and which are consumed by thirsty family members on Sunday
Degrassi: The Next Generation "Mother and Child Reunion"
Season 1
Episodes 1 and 2
Originally aired: October 14, 2001
If I'm going to commit to reviewing Degrassi: The Next Generation episodically, then we need to get one thing out of the way immediately—this is a show meant for children, not a 31-year-old. Appreciating this show requires its audience to fully invest, as opposed to picking at its very apparent seams. I will be "reviewing" each episode, which means that I will dutifully point out flaws, but at the same time, I want this experience to be enjoyable, so I'm not going to concentrate on the flaws, if that makes sense. This is a show made for children.
But so the weird part about the pilot episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation (henceforth referred to as simply "Degrassi") is that it's a weird hybrid of a true pilot for a brand new children's television show and sequel to an even older children's television show, one that ran while most of this show's intended 2001 audience was still in diapers.
I have never seen Degrassi High (or Degrassi Junior High, or The Kids of Degrassi Street), and have no intention of doing so. Everything I know about these series is from reading about them after I became invested in this current iteration of Degrassi. So the first time I sat down to watch "Mother and Child Reunion" (not in 2001, probably more like 2008), I had no fucking clue what was going on with any of the adult characters. Why were Joey and Caitlin so weird around each other? What's up with Lucy's cane? Was Allison always such a slut? Who was this "Wheels" character Snake kept talking about? What the heck is up with the nickname "Snake"?
I think it's safe to assume that the majority of the audience watching this pilot for the first time felt the same way, and I wonder how many people turned it off after one episode because it was just too confusing. What a weird fucking way to start a new television show, right? This is some Scrubs Season 9 shit. Here are new characters that you'll be following, but also, we can't stop talking about the old characters.
Degrassi would continue to explore some of these adult characters' lives in the coming seasons (Snake, Spike, Joey, and Caitlin, mostly, and in that order of ubiquity), but thankfully, "Mother and Child Reunion" also makes plenty of time to introduce our main children characters as well. Emma, Manny, J.T., and Toby will more or less be the core four, at least at the beginning, with Emma being the ostensible "main character." However, being an ensemble cast, this won't necessarily be the case for every episode; it will be interesting to see if Degrassi juggles its large cast as well as I remember it doing.
Still, in this episode, Emma is the main attraction, at least on the children's side of the story. Her foibles in her very antiquated-looking email inbox serves as the A-plot of this episode.
Let's talk about the kid actors for a minutes. What do we think about their acting abilities so far? I probably won't go so far as to say I was "impressed" with any of the performances (Miriam McDonald is Emma, Cassie Steele is Manny, Ryan Cooley is J.T., and Jake Goldsbie is Toby), but they definitely held their own. Here's the thing about Degrassi's actors: this is the rare television show that actually casts age-appropriate actors for each character. Emma is twelve years old, and Miriam McDonald is twelve years old.
This means that there are going to be some intense growing pains, as far as acting goes, but it also means that we get some very raw performances, which suits this teenage soap opera nicely. Also, as the years go on, we also get to appreciate how the acting performances grow along with the actors. If my memory serves me correctly, Cassie Steele, who is pretty meek and average in her acting here, grows into a powerhouse by the end of her time in the series (her thongs must give her superpowers). On the opposite end, Ryan Cooley commands his fully character in this pilot episode, but never really grows as an actor (but it's been a while, so maybe I'm wrong about that—we'll see!).
I've always been more understanding of even the worst of the child acting on this show, because of the age thing. Sometimes kids are weird and awkward, and so it makes sense that the acting is the same. This unfortunately means that the adult acting on this show, whenever it is showcased, is not given the same benefit of the doubt. Sometimes Spike's performance is just straight-up fucking painful, and it's like, what's your excuse? Isn't this like the fourth TV series you've been in? Caitlyn, c'mon, show some emotion when your cartoonishly dickish boyfriend blatantly cheats on you at your own high school reunion!
Again, this is all something you might just have to swallow if you're going to commit to watching a show like Degrassi. No one is here for sterling acting performances. You're here for the juicy drama.
Which I haven't even mentioned yet. Sorry, there were too many first-post-in-a-column quasi-introductory statements to make first. Let's move onto what I will probably call the "weekly taboo." Degrassi, besides portraying very normal interpersonal teenage conflicts in a school setting, also usually acts like an After School Special-type TV show and features a challenging subject for teens to digest as they watch.
Over the course of Degrassi's (*checks notes*) three-hundred and eighty-five(!!!!) episodes, everything is covered. Literally everything. I haven't watched this series in a decade and I can still rattle off at least three pregnancy situations. Every drug is consumed, every STD is contracted, every ripped-from-the-headlines dangerous teen trend is on fully display. Any challenge that a real-life teen could possibly face is also faced by one of the characters on Degrassi.
See: the pilot episode, in which the protagonist is catfished by a Dennis Reynolds-looking adult male and is seconds away from being raped in a hotel room. This is the pilot episode!
Now, to be totally honest, Degrassi is a little hit-or-miss when it comes to the handling of these delicate topics. There are admittedly times when the show can come off as preachy. It can tend to underline the main lesson in too heavy an ink on occasion. Emma's decision to meet up with an internet stranger is a trainwreck the audience can see from a mile away, because it wouldn't be an episode of Degrassi if everything turned out to be a big misunderstanding, right? And after Emma is rescued, the police detective who comes to collect her computer is incredibly heavy-handed with his scolding of both Emma and Spike—"Keep your next computer in the living room... where you BOTH can see it" and so on.
Worst of all in terms of the overall quality of this television show, rarely are there actual long-term consequences from these damaging events. For instance, if my twelve-year-old was held captive in a hotel room and was three seconds from being molested, I would probably send him/her to therapy? Or at least monitor for signs of emotional stress, PTSD, etc.? I can't recall there being any actual fallout from this. Maybe I'm just not remembering, but I'll have to monitor if there is any actual mention of these events ever again. I can't think of any.
But Degrassi is totally able to play the long game, and plan for stories that happen over season- and series-long arcs! I'm not saying it can't. It does. Without spoiling too much, I recall that Emma's woes do pile up in a noticeably emotional way over an entire season at some point. And, like, there are events that happen in one season (say, a rape), that have consequences seasons later (say, the trial for that rape). Degrassi is capable of it, and it is absolutely at its very best when it does. But it's just not always the case.
I do want to make sure I talk about the "taboo of the week" a little bit more in detail in these weekly reviews, so bear with me as we now take a quick moment to do that. Internet catfishing—does this happen today? Clearly so, since I used the term "catfishing," which didn't exist in 2001 when Emma got catfished. But I'm looking up statistics here: 16% of all teens have at least considered meeting with an internet stranger, and 8% have actually done it. No exact numbers as to how many of those have resulted in sexual crimes, but honestly, if the number is anywhere north of 0%, then teens should not meet up with internet strangers.
Now that's me getting preachy; let's not do that. Let's acknowledge that Degrassi does not, ever, portray all teens as idiots. When Emma expressed interest in meeting up with "Jordan" during his "class trip," alarm bells immediately went off in Manny's head, and she meekly suggested to her best friend that maaaybe that isn't such a good idea. Toby, too, once he found out about it. I don't think Degrassi's point is to say "you are a dumbass if you act like Emma," even if that's technically true. Degrassi is able to acknowledge that all teens are dumbasses (I certainly was) without ever stating it outright. Instead, it is able to connect with teens because it simply shows what happens when one of them makes a poor decision. It's not "don't meet up with internet strangers," it's "here's what could happen if you decide to meet up with internet strangers." The difference is what made Degrassi so successful. There had to have been someone watching this show at some point whose life was saved because she learned from Emma.
I'll be curious, as my series rewatch continues, whether I'll be able to gain anything personally from this particular aspect of the show. I may have been a dumbass teenager, and I may still be a dumbass adult in general, but I know for certain that meeting up with internet strangers is dangerous, and should always be done in a public setting when absolutely necessary (also, it must be said that I may be out of a child molester's preferable age range at this point). Additionally, my own kids may be years away from having to absorb this type of lesson through Degrassi-via-dad. So what's the value in watching this type of show?
There's plenty, in my humble opinion. I just love how, no matter how heavy-handed and soap-opera-ish this shit can get sometimes, there's also so many real, true to life moments happening around the edges of the stories, and I appreciate them as a general TV watcher. I love the scene when the adults come back to Spike's house after a night catching up at the bar, and you can tell they are a little drunk, but not overly so, and how Emma is able to acknowledge that the parents are acting "weird" without necessarily needing to point it out. That's real. I love how Emma corners a slightly tipsy Caitlin and is able to extract from her the advice that she wanted by asking withholding questions. I don't even know if Emma consciously knew that she was trying to get justification for meeting up with "Jordan" from Caitlin, but no one ever said pre-teens were self-aware. That's real.
So I can totally forgive Degrassi for indulging in the slow-music montage of Spike and Snake running through the hotel hallways, screaming bloody mary for Emma to be safe, outrunning the Canadian mounties. I can forgive the tripe because of those moments of groundedness. I can forgive moments like the detective practically breaking the fourth wall when he states this week's lesson if the episode is also going to include moments like what follows.
The moment finds Emma repressing her anguish over the situation, while Spike justly calls her out for making a stupid decision. Emma cuts back, "You never made a mistake?" and then, "You don't remember what it's like being twelve!" Degrassi, in this moment, absolutely nails what it's like to be twelve, how you think you know everything, and are reluctant to admit you were wrong even when it's so fucking plain that you were. That's real.
And maybe what she's saying to her mom is real for this Degrassi fan too. I really don't remember what it's like to be twelve. I'm hoping that this is where the real value of a rewatch of Degrassi will come from. Maybe I'll be able to remember.
Anyways, that's I guess where we are headed with these Degrassi episodes. Hi, I'm Joe, I'll be your host for this journey. We'll be covering one episode at a time (unless we come to other two-parters), maybe two or three times a month here on Puke on Your Birthday. One of my New Year's resolutions was to review a TV show episodically, and I can't think of a better TV show to do it for.
There's another line in the episode that might point us in the right direction, as far as these reviews go. One of the characters, probably J.T., says something like "People in the '80s were weird!" He's saying this with almost 20 years of perspective. I thought that was interesting, because now I have 20 years of perspective on this show, and it'll be interesting to see if it holds up as well I as I hope/think it does. Thanks for following along with me.
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
Stray Observations
I will also include a bunch of stray observations below the main write-up for each episode, which, if you're not familiar with the structure from AVClub's TV reviews, basically include all the odds and ends that the author couldn't fit into the main body of the review.
There are a ton of stray observations for this episode, and the main body ended up being much longer than I originally anticipated. I can't imagine any episodes after the pilot are going to be nearly as long. Like I said earlier, there was just a lot of introductory stuff I needed to cover in this one.
Here's a line that I didn't have room to include above: "We're practically turning 30!" Caitlin says this, possibly as a 29-year-old I guess? Which makes her a lot closer to my current age than, say, Emma. And yet, I find myself still not really caring about what Caitlin, Joey, et al are getting into. Maybe it's because, when the adults are getting up to soap opera hijinx, I can say "that's not really how it is," whereas when the kids get into soap opera hijinx, I can just chalk it up to "maybe that was how it was back then, who knows?"
I plan on keeping a running total of all the taboos of the week that Degrassi covers over the course of the series, so let's begin by clicking the counter once for "Internet Predators." TOTAL TABOOS SO FAR: 1.
I am still feeling out how strict I should be about spoilers in this. I find it hard to believe that anyone would take the time to read Degrassi episode reviews without already being familiar with the series, but maybe I shouldn't assume? So let's say that I may allude to future plot developments when necessary, but won't be explicit about them.
THIS WEEK IN OUTDATED '00S REFERENCES: Hilariously, one of the ways Toby figures out that "Jordan" is hacking Emma is because "they both like Chicken Run." Remember that movie?! Jeez.
As the immortal Degrassi opening credits prove right away, this show features an ensemble cast, but interestingly, not many of the main characters make an appearance in the pilot (including, of course, everyone's favorite rapper, but I'm sure we'll have much more to say about him later). Ashley and Terri do make cameos in the episode, though, as tour guides for the alumni visiting the school.
By the way, what's the deal, is Degrassi a brand new school, or what? They act in this episode like the school building is brand spanking new. Is that how they do it in Canada? A school invests in new computers, and they decide that they should just build an entirely new school to go along with it? Is this what it's like to live in a country that doesn't force children to learn in old asbestos-filled buildings?
Going back to the fact that there aren't many main-billed characters in this episode, I'll be curious to see whether Degrassi operates better when it's hyperfocused on certain characters like this (The Leftovers being the best TV show ever at this method), or whether the real fireworks are when all the characters are together (remember when Game of Thrones finally pulled the trigger on that, and how exciting that felt?). I'm leaning toward the latter, but I honestly don't remember enough to make that call right this second.
I had totally forgotten that Principal Raditch got star billing in these first few seasons (played by Dan Woods). What a nothing of a fucking character, huh? Or maybe I'm forgetting something, I dunno. I seem to recall he was a teacher in Degrassi High, so maybe they expected him to make a bigger impact on The Next Generation then he eventually did.
Something else to watch: Toby's relationship with his dad. It's incredibly understated here, but something about it made a light bulb burn dimly in my brain's hall of memories. They don't have a good relationship, right? Or he beats Toby or something? These aren't spoilers because I honestly cannot remember. There was just something about the way Toby's dad thought it was okay to drink a Big Gulp during a school tour that rubbed me the wrong way. Also, consider the fact that it was at Toby's house where they discovered that Emma had been kidnapped, and Toby's first reaction was to tell any other parent besides his own. Anyways, this is something to look out for, to see if the pilot really did lay the barest minimum of a framework for this storyline, or if I'm just making shit up.
Also something else to watch for: Is Joey's existence a sad one? I mean, I know they lay it on thick, with the unseen dead wife and all, but to me, the sadness that I detected emanated from that hokey car commercial. When everyone saw the commercial at the bar and congratulated him on it, he just looked so defeated, like, "This is not the life I chose." It's possible that some of how the actor himself was feeling was peeking through the character: "Is portraying Joey Jeremiah all that I will amount to in life?" Or maybe I'm just making this up too, I dunno. I'm looking for a reason to be invested in the adults of Degrassi, and this could be it.
One reference to the original Degrassi that I will NEVER tire of is that goddamn Zits song (heard here when the adults get home from the bar and are drunkenly singing it). This shit is a banger!!!
This episode was directed by a dude named Bruce McDonald. I don't know how often I will mention the director for each episode, but I figured it was worth it here, since he did a couple interesting and noticeable things with the camera. First, some of the shots of Emma in the hotel room were shown through the lens of the camera that the internet predatory was using to tape the experience. This added some extra creepiness to the feel of this scene. Second, the episode ends on a freeze frame, which is so corny, and I wonder if that was a Bruce McDonald decision to set that precedent, or that decision came down from the Canadian television execs.
Should I have mentioned before this that Degrassi is shot in Canada? I'm sure there will be future episodes when I can talk about this in more detail.
The episode was written by Yan Moore, who is billed mostly as a series creator. I can't possibly fit in the story of Degrassi's creation in this blog post, but we'll have more opportunities to talk about Yan Moore in the future—it looks like he had at least a hand in writing about sixteen additional episodes in this series. (Also, fun fact, he created a Canadian soap opera called Riverdale in 1997, though I cannot find any evidence that there is a relation to the currently-running CW soap opera Riverdale.)
If you don't care about the adults in this episode, then you definitely don't care about Keith, Caitlin's boyfriend who manages to find time to cheat on Caitlin during the only episode we see him. I think it's also supposed to be funny how outrageously rude this guy is? I laughed, at least. Apparently this role was supposed to be played by Degrassi superfan Kevin Smith before scheduling conflicts got in the way. All good, we'll see Jay and Silent Bob show up in the Degrassi universe soon enough.
Seeing as how we are now 20 years closer to Earth's destruction, I definitely will always appreciate how much of a hard-on Emma had in the early aughts for environmental causes. From a TV critic perspective, I'm especially interested to see if there was ever a time when her support of environmental reform actually had a real impact on the plot, or if they continue to just use it as a plot device. Like, in this episode, Emma is into environmental rights because that gives a good excuse to connect emotionally to "Jordan" and, later, to Caitlin (who hosts an pro-environmental TV show apparently?). It could've been any subject, though. Let's make Emma's causes matter, alright?
Shit, I promised myself that I would devote one bullet point in each review to mentioning the song that each episode is named after. You see, Degrassi is attempting to keep its '80s influences in close range by naming each episode after an '80s hit. It's the basest level of connection though, usually; it's not that the theme of the song is connected to the theme of the episode, it's just the title of the song could apply to the plot in a surface-level way. For instance, Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion" is the song, and yes, there is a mother, a child, and a reunion in this episode. I've never heard this song before right this second... I didn't know Paul Simon got so heavily into appropriated reggae sounds. Yikes.
PREVIOUSLY ON THE BLOG: Of course there's been plenty of mention of this amazing TV show over the years, but I should get out of the way now that there's been at least two full blog posts about Degrassi. Here's the first, and then here's a response. They were both written a long time ago and are thus very bad.
Finally, a note about streaming. This show is pretty easy to find online and on TV. If you have a Firestick, download Pluto TV. It's free, and they have every episode. I'll continue to embed each episode at the beginning of the blog post, too, until YouTube takes 'em down. Someone please let me know if that happens, okay?
In an alternate universe, Pam is the one drinking a new beer every day and blogging about it on her old 2008 blogspot account Sneeze on Your Anniversary. Here is her entry for 7/23/20:
As the consummate reader will already know, the K***s are going to be moving by the end of the year. This is not a kick-the-can-down-the-road-type situation any longer; like, Joe was on the phone today with the credit union trying to figure out the preapproval letter. It's imminent.
So that explains why I spent most of my day painting the kitchen ceiling. At this point, I'm doing anything I can to raise the monetary value of this house so that we can moves as much money as possible from the buyers' pockets to our pockets to the credit union's pockets. Is a fresh coat of paint on the kitchen ceiling going to net us that much more? Probably not. But it might net us more than the $40 the cans of paint costed, ya feel me? It wasn't exactly a fun day at the beach, doing all this painting. Not only is Willow constantly all up in my shit, but the act of pressing an extended paint roller above my head for hours at a time put a physical toll on my body. I'm going to be hurting tomorrow morning.
In an attempt to offset the pain, I cracked open my daily beer at 2 PM today—not the earliest I've had a beer this year, but close to it. Totally worth it. The beer of the day was PYNK, Yards' attempt at a fruit beer. Successful attempt. I love how effervescent this bright pink beer was, and how puckering the tartness of it was. It was weirdly refreshing. My goal for this year has always been to find beers that I like. I don't need to get crazy with it. My husband drinks these jet-black imperial stout beers sometimes, with like 9% alcohol by volume and a tough roasty taste. That's not appealing to me. That's not what beer should be. I like a nice fruity beer, and so what if it's literally pink?
That the beer was pink actually complemented another part of the painting process quite well, now that I think about it in retrospect. I'm painting the ceiling white, but when I cracked open the paint can, imagine my surprise when the paint was bright pink. Apparently it starts pink but then dries to white eventually? Was anyone else aware that this was a thing?
So it was bizarre sitting under a pink ceiling drinking my pink beer. It was excruciating waiting for the paint to dry, but let it be just one more small sacrifice I'm making for the sale of this house. One day my ceiling will be white, and one day, it won't be my ceiling at all.
Back in this reality, Pam and I split an IPA later. I have nothing to say about it besides anything I've already said about IPAs ad nauseam. Thanks to Pam for letting us peek into her psyche.
Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical
order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.
Between the Buttons
The Rolling Stones
1967
Jesus, it feels like just yesterday we were talking about the Rolling Stones in this column. Okay, it was three months ago, but time works differently during a pandemic. Don't worry, even though the Rolling Stones have a penchant for album names that start with the letter B, I will refuse to check out Black and Blue, Bridges to Babylon, A Bigger Bang, and Blue and Lonesome until we are safely in the Cs. There's no need to type more about Charlie Watts than I have to.
And even though, yet again, the Rolling Stones seem to get an exorbitant amount of attention on this blog relative to how much I actually enjoy them (which is "most pretty much like them sometimes"), I'm actually really excited to spotlight Between the Buttons. As someone who is not familiar at all with over 50% of the Stones' discography, and as someone who is more willing to champion an underdog than a normal person, I might be willing to say that Between the Buttons is my favorite Rolling Stones album.
The reason which, if you read the hemming and hawing in my Beggars Banquet write-up, you should know already. To restate that thesis for those who skip The Albums That Matter during its weekly turn on the blog, I have a problem with the "classic" Rolling Stones albums because their massive radio hits have been inscribed into my skull my entire life, so not only do those songs on those albums seem tired before I even push play, but the songs around those hit songs consequentially feel somewhat like filler.
But Between the Buttons doesn't have that problem, because there are no massive radio hits on this album (well, at least the version I listen to—more on that in a sec). In other words, none of these songs are featured on Forty Licks, the greatest hits album that my parents bought when Boomer nostalgia for the Stones was cresting. When I first downloaded Between the Buttons (maybe a year or two ago?), I was hearing every song for the first time. It was a fucking REVELATION.
All the music sounded fresh to me, which is probably ironic since these tunes are older than the ones I am intimately familiar with. It's just really cool to see this band operating on such an effortless level before they entered their imperial phase and became legends. Songs like "My Obsession" operate like opposites of their big hits, like if "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" existed in the Upside Down. But it's still fun, because it doesn't carry the baggage that "Satisfaction" does. This is a rock band having fun. I have never said that about the Rolling Stones before.
Admittedly, liking Between the Buttons requires a stomach for the baroque alongside the pounding rock. The accordion on "Back Street Girl" makes the Stones sound like they are performing in a French alleyway; the kazoo and the sitar on "Cool, Calm & Collected" make the Stones sound like they are performing for some strangely rococo hillbillies. This is all Brian Jones, by the way, who apparently gave up trying to sound like he was part of a rock 'n' roll band in the final years of his life, before he gave up on a lot more than that.
I have the stomach for it, though, because I'll take the Stones in any mode besides bang-out-the-hits-for-millions-of-dollars mode. If they want to sound like the Who (like on "All Sold Out"), I'm fucking here for it. If they wanna do some '50s rockabilly homage (like on "Please Go Home"), I'm fucking here for it. If they wanna cut the bullshit and play a deep cut like they really were the best rock band in history, putting a knife to the Beatles' throat and daring them to make a move (like on "Miss Amanda Jones"), then, obviously, I'm here for it.
I should probably clarify at this point that there are technically two versions of Between the Buttons floating around out there. You may be aware of this if you are a Beatles fan, but: in the 1960s, U.S. music publisher would get copies of U.K. albums and chop them up for deviously craven purposes. Sometimes, songs were taken from albums and compiled on other made-up albums (more products = more profits). Sometimes, hit songs were added to albums so that the dumb American public would have more of a reason to buy it.
The latter is the case here. When Between the Buttons made it stateside, the double-sided single of "Let's Spend the Night Together" b/w "Ruby Tuesday" was placed on the album, and "Back Street Girl" and "Please Go Home" were both taken off. So, if you were listening to Between the Buttons in America in 1967, or if you haphazardly downloaded the album in 2018 without crosschecking the Wikipedia article, then you're going to be listening to an album that DOES contain hit singles that were featured on your parents' Forty Licks Disc 1, and my entire blog post above is rendered moot.
This annoys the hell out of me, honestly. Not only because the U.S. bastardization of Between the Buttons makes the album markedly worse (in my opinion), but also because the importance of Between the Buttons is muddled when there are two different versions existing at all. I'm not sure why the Stones haven't done what the Beatles have done in the past couple decades, and confirmed that the U.K. versions of the albums are the official ones, and then releasing an official odds-and-ends collection of the non-album singles.
For what it's worth, it looks like Between the Buttons is the final Stones album to exist in two forms. Their next album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, exists in one form worldwide. But the Stones have the power to go back and correct America's mistakes, and I don't know why they haven't done it.
Well, I have a suspicion or two. It's possible that Mick Jagger just doesn't give a fuck about his older records, and not just because they aren't netting him as much profits. In later interviews, when talking about the album, Jagger has said that he is "really disappointed" with how Between the Buttons came out (shades of the Killers vs. Battle Born). The man ostensibly has created enough music that he still likes that he doesn't have to think about Between the Buttons if he doesn't want to.
An argument against this theory, though, is that he went on to say that "I don't know, it just isn't any good. 'Back Street Girl' is about the only one I like." "Back Street Girl" is one of the songs that the U.S. version cut. So it would make sense that Jagger would want to disown the U.S. version, right? Since it's made up entirely of songs that he doesn't like. Wouldn't he want to restore the U.K. version as the only version, and make sure that the only song he likes is on there? Shouldn't he? Why doesn't he care? C'mon man!
But now I'm just getting way off track. These are my own idiosyncrasies when it comes to consuming music. Listen to whatever version you want, I don't care. I'm just making the case that Between the Buttons is a good album, and it's better without the distractions of a(n incredibly overrated) "Ruby Tuesday." There are dozens of worthy deep cuts in the Rolling Stones canon that you won't hear on WMGK, and you just happen to find twelve of them on Between the Buttons. That's what makes this album so special. Your uncle has been to every Stones concert at the Linc since '04 but he doesn't know "Miss Amanda Jones." He is a fraud. That's what makes this album special.
~~~~~~~~~~~
If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Connection"
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stray Observations
I do sincerely promise to try to not cover the Stones again for a long time in this column by not downloading any other album that starts with B until their spot in the alphabetical order is passed. But I also have promised myself to eventually get around to becoming familiar with the entire discography (30 studio albums). My ultimate goal is to create a Best Deep Cuts mixtape to compete with the Forty Licks Best Of of my youth. 40 of the Stones' best deep cuts. It's going to be called Tongue Scrapers.
Speaking of albums not covered in this column, I missed Aftermath, which I got into after I would've covered it alphabetically. Aftermath was released nine months before Between the Buttons, but to my ears, they are radically different albums. Aftermath seems like a dour album, darker and angrier than a typical Stones release. I'm not sure if Between the Buttons' bright baroque pop was a reaction to that, or a simple leveling up.
Speaking of baroque pop, there's nothing so fancily quaint as the talky section at the end of the album, on "Something Happened to Me Yesterday," where Jagger acts like an old-timey radio host, wishing his audience a thank you and a goodnight. Jagger described it as like "something I remember hearing on the BBC as the bombs dropped," which is a joke because Jagger isn't that old, but it's a fun description anyway. Apparently the song is really about being on LSD... that makes more sense.
ALBUM TITLE: "Between the buttons" is British slang for "undecided." Allegedly, Watts asked the producer Andrew Oldham what the name of the album was, and that's what Oldham responded, so the band just took him literally.
Watts asked him because he was drawing a comic strip to accompany the album's artwork. It took me a while to find a good quality copy of it. I'm sorry to report that Watts is as good of a cartoonist as I am.
Also, seems like there was a falling out between Oldham and the band after Between the Buttons, and after producing all their albums up until this point, he had nothing to do with what would follow (i.e. one of the most successful runs in rock 'n' roll history).
Oldham had been responsible for half-firing original Stones member Ian Stewart because he "looked too old," and wouldn't fit the profile of the Stones being a bunch of misfit ruffians (even though Bill Wyman is two years older than Stewart). He remained the Stones' studio pianist and road manager until he passed away in 1985. I think if he could see the Stones now, very old and very unbefitting of that original profile, he might have a strong word to say about it.
ALBUM COVER: Wikipedia has a whole section about it, but mainly it's two paragraphs of explanation as to why Brian Jones looks like an asshole. I fucking love it. I love how he is the only one who understands who dumb and unimportant photo shoots are. I wonder what the Stones would look like today if Jones hadn't gone off the deep end.
CHARTS: As noted, the only songs released as singles are the songs not included on my version of Between the Buttons. ("Ruby Tuesday" went to #1, somehow.) The album itself went to #2. The Beatles at #1 would've been a good guess, but they were actually blocked by THE MONKEES. Woah.
YOUR MOMENT OF CHARLIE WATTS SUCKITUDE: You might be inclined to say that Charlie Watts actually sounds like he gives a fuck on that nasty "My Obsession" beat, until you realize that he just straight up played the same fucking beat that he does on "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." He has never passed up a chance in his entire life to prove that he is the laziest drummer in history.
A: I only ask because I've had some beers with the noble hops this year, and have even used the phrase to describe a beer, but I've never stopped to actually think about what this actually means.
The simple answer is that they are the traditional hops that countries like Germany and Czech Republic have historically used in their beer recipes. (If you need me to back up another step, I'd be happy to—hops are marijuana-like plant oils that are added to beers while they are being made, either to add aroma or to add bitterness, or both, depending on at what point in the process of fermentation that the hops are added.)
The difference between noble hops and American hops is geography; consequentially, there will be differences in what aromas will be produced, and what levels/textures of bitterness will be present, depending on where you get your hops from.
American hops tend to focus on citrus-type aromas. Tropical, grapefruit, etc., you know the deal with American IPAs. Those aromas are a result of American hops.
Noble hops work in the same way, but instead of fruity bullshit, the noble hops cause the beer to have this sort of floral, almost grassy, or even slightly earthy aromas. Additionally, the bitterness is closer to the sensation of "spiciness" than its American counterparts' puckering bitterness.
There are four noble hops. I'm going to do a lot of paraphrasing from some google searches I just performed.
Hallertau—grown in, uh, Hallertau—strong spicy flavor, floral undertones—apparently this crop was pretty susceptible to disease, so it wasn't used much past the 1970s, and only just recently is making a comeback due to advances in farming technology—I guess this explains why that beer I had last spring was called "Hallertau Pils," huh?
Spalt—grown in the Spalter region of southeast Germany—there's less spiciness in this hop—more likely found in a helles than a German pilsner
Saaz—grown in what is now Czech Republic—definitely spicy, but even with the earthiness of the aroma—this is the hop used in the original pilsner
Tettnang—grown in a town called Tettnang—the floral aroma is more prominent than the spicy bitterness in this one
Stoudts has a fucking awful website with zero information about the ingredients of each beer, so I don't know for sure which noble hop was used in their version of a German pils. I do have an inkling, though, that it was Tettnang, not only because that hop is apparently the most widely-used one, but also because the pils me and Pam split tonight was definitely floral-forward. It's an aroma that it's taken me the better part of the year to understand mentally, but I'm definitely there at this point. I even said to Pam out loud "I'm starting to appreciate the aroma of these noble hops," which is a fucking embarrassing thing to say without knowing what the hell you're talking about. Hence, this blog post, I guess.
As often is the case, I'll hear an interesting idea when listening to a podcast and envision myself as the sort of industrious person that can pull off said idea. Screen play plots, thematic improv shows, a party where we recreate my favorite live album (the difficult to locate Hey, Everything's Fine by Limbeck)—all have been contemplated, none have been executed.
When my child was born, I felt very much that one chapter of my life was ending and another was beginning. That proved very true, and many of my creative ventures fell by the wayside, while I (willingly and lovingly) absorbed myself in all that is my daughter.
Still, I needed a creative outlet more rewarding than changing the lyrics to nursery rhymes to trick my daughter to sit down in the tub.
While listening to The Watch podcast, hosts Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discussed director Steven Soderbergh's chronicling of his consumption habits. He published the list on his blog (the Soderblogh) and called it "Seen, Read 2018." Pretty much, that's his only blog post since 2016, an annual list of what he has watched, read, or listened to.
I came across this concept around when my daughter was born in spring 2018, and thought, "Well, I can watch things and write them down." So, I did. I bought the pictured composition book and dutifully jotted down my media habits while home on paternity leave and over the course of 2018-19.
Initially, I included music, sporting events, and concerts, but those became obsolete pretty quick. So I nixed them. Still, I wrote down every movie, TV show, and book that I read to completion. At the end of the first year (June 2019), I tallied them all up, and even made top 10 lists. I wasn't writing that much at the time, and while I toyed with posting them somewhere, I never got around to it. But I kept watching and continued to keep track.
Now, with Year Two completed, and me quarantined for the foreseeable future, I figured I should analyze myself a bit. Thanks to Puke on Your Birthday, I'll present my Best Of lists in several categories in posts over the next month or so.
There's no rule as to what's included, other than I saw it during a calendar year (from June 1, 2019 until May 31, 2020). I divided my lists into Movies, Books, Short TV Shows, and Long TV Shows. The television breakdown exists only because that's how I mentally treat shows—short and long. There will be top 10 lists for each category, except for books, as I only read 14 books during the time.
For prosperity, below are my lists for 2018-19. Thank you for indulging me in this whim.
2018-19
Top 10 Long TV Shows (out of 24 shows)
1. Succession, Season 1, HBO
2. Game of Thrones, Season 8, HBO
3. Killing Eve, Season 1, BBC America
4. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 2, Amazon Prime
5. Dark, Season 1, Netflix
6. Counterpart, Season 1, Cinemax
7. Lodge 49, Season 1, AMC
8. Better Call Saul, Season 4, AMC
9. True Detective, Season 3, HBO
10. Little Drummer Girl, Season 1, AMC
Top 10 Short TV Shows (out of 16 shows)
1. The Good Place, Season 3, NBC
2. Atlanta, Season 2, FXX
3. Big Mouth, Season 2, Netflix
4. GLOW, Season 2, Netflix
5. Barry, Season 1, HBO
6. BoJack Horseman, Season 2, Netflix
7. American Vandal, Season 2, Netflix
8. Insecure, Season 3, HBO
9. Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, (I guess Season 2?), Netflix
T10. Everything Sucks!, Season 1, Netflix / One Day at a Time, Season 2, Netflix
Top 10 Movies (out of 45 films)
1. Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960, BBC America
2. Coco, Lee Unkrich, 2017, Netflix
3. Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder, 1944, TCM
4. Crazy Rich Asians, John M. Chu, 2018, HBO
5. The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018, Xfinity OnDemand
6. A Monster Calls, J.A. Bayona, 2016, Cinemax
7. Roma, Alfonso Cuarón, 2018, Netflix
8. A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper, 2018, AMC-Plymouth Meeting
9. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jake Kasdan, 2017, Starz
A. When it was first created, Facebook encouraged you to "update your status" whenever you felt the urge to. It was pretty simple—there was a prompt that said "[Your name] is _____" and you just filled in the blank. Not that anyone actually gave a shit what your "status" was, but people filled it out every day. I mostly did, especially in 2008, when I guess I thought it was cool to make my status the title of a song, as if that earned me any kind of cred. It didn't. It was stupid and pointless and annoying.
B. Also, this confirms that my music tastes really haven't changed that much in the past twelve years, which is sad and pathetic in its own special way.
C. I already deleted Facebook, but I wrote this in advance. So this completely inane blog post is the last thing I will ever do on Facebook. Fitting that it ends not with a bang, but with a fart noise. (Also, haha, yes, I perhaps wrote too much about deleting Facebook, I am an egomaniac.)
Top Five Songs Posted About in a Joe K*** Facebook Status Updated in 2008
5.
There's something so pure (and vaguely tropical) about VW's self-titled debut. A lot of these songs were developed as the band played through college, but "Cape Cod" is the most collegial sounding, like you could totally picture the band playing this song cross-legged in some dorm room somewhere.
4.
Great song, dumb status. I find it hard to believe that teenage Joe hadn't figured out yet that he was immortal. As another great closing track, maaaaybe this Modest Mouse song could apply more to, like, the end of senior year? Definitely not the end of freshman year, christ.
3.
I didn't take a math course this semester, so there's proof that I was just posting this shit to try to seem cool. It did not work. Classic song, though.
2.
Despite the corniness of the lyrics, I love the interplay between Laura Jane Grace and Tegan Quin on this epic track. Was my status a subconscious cry for help, though? The song features the lyric "We don't really love each other / what happens when the summer's over," and I was about to enter a summer with a new girlfriend. Obviously it didn't work out. There's no other evidence that I was aware of its shelf life other than this one status, so maybe I'm just reading into things too much. Maybe it was just a good song. Maybe, yet again, I was just posturing.
1.
Alright, I take it all back. This song is cool, so I must be cool, right? Right?!
Now let me tell you about the worst:
I had to include this one, because I don't even like this song or this band (Times New Viking). Why would I make it my status? Was I just trying to be edgy? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Let Facebook burn in hell for encouraging me to do this shit.
