September 3, 2026. 40.07297, -75.06945. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Yet another night featuring a sudden realization that I have not taken a photo and that I did not even go anywhere noteworthy anyway and now I'm a few steps from bedtime and I am forced to take the daily photo around the perimeter of my home, again, for the fortieth or fiftieth time. I stepped outside on the deck first to take a picture, but there was a horse girl there with her horse, and I was deathly afraid of being mistaken for a creeper taking a picture of a young girl in the night (I am a creeper but not for these listed reasons), so I stepped back inside and waited for them to disappear back into the barn before I again entered the night and took a picture of the street on which I live now and might forever. Our home is in the Northeast, where the streets are gridlike but they are not north-south, not squares but more like diamonds, at an angle, forty-five degrees. But then so our house is on a curve, right there at the middle point of the curve where an intersection might be if the streets crossed instead of turned into each other, which means that our home, despite the angled grid on which it sits, faces true north, and it also means that we can look out the side window and see straight up the street, to the end, or where it curves again, but straight down it means we're looking at the woods at the end of it, which means that it looks like the street goes on into infinity. A nice, pleasant sight at night, when you just need a photo to complete the daily ritual.
What a pair we make, huh? Both trying to hide who we are, both unable to do so. Your blog loves you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough. But you also watch 500 movies you've never seen before when you should withdraw... and that is knightly, too.
A Knight's Tale
2001
Brian Helgeland
Thanks to all those who contributed their thoughts regarding A Knight's Tale!
~~~~~~~~~~~
Sean G.
Ok this was not expected. I had soooo much fun with A Knight's Tale from start to finish. It was funny, thrilling, and romantic. Every character had emotional weight, and I think the music choices work. The camerawork and editing were dynamic, and the pace never felt slow.
An instant rewatchable movie forever. Also, why isn't Mark Addy in everything?
4.25 pukes out of 5
~~~~~~~~~~~
Sunny
They just don't make 'em like this anymore. Without thinking too hard about it, I think this is my second Heath Ledger movie. I remember this coming out back in the '00s, but wouldn't really have the opportunity or much of the drive.
Somewhere around the second act, I realized what's working so well here is an adherence to classic structure in the script and main gang assembly: charismatic leader and merry fellows. To see it executed feels almost trite, yet, familiar and comforting. The action/humor/romance mix isn't perfect, but definitely good enough to carry the pacing for two hours and change. While the script was perfectly routine, the acting was better than it needed to be.
For a construction that's otherwise so uncontroversial and playing a big hand with Ledger, the choice to do the half-modern soundtrack is bizarre. Somewhere after the first Queen song and halfway into "Low Rider," I wondered if JMK was fuming at home or on the train. At some point both the filmmakers and the audience realize nothing's going to be quite right or "accurate" to medieval times, and that's just fine.
3.5/5
~~~~~~~~~~
Gary
People remember Heath Ledger for playing the Joker. Rightfully so. But Heath Ledger will always be William to me.
A Knight's Tale is a movie about a lot of things. Most movies can't do that formula right. It's a comedy. It's a romance. It's a coming of age movie. It's a story of friendship, togetherness, and overcoming anything life throws at you.
Set in medieval times (more on that later), the story of three friends, which quickly becomes four, trying to merely survive the harshness of being a squire. The knight they serve dies in the very beginning of the movie, and it sets the tone for young William to do the impossible. Go from squire to Knight.
In actuality though, they really just want to win these jousting matches to have enough coins to get drunk and eat.
Here is where Medieval Times comes in. I never realized the primal urge I have to watch jousting matches. It must be in my blood somewhere. Something buried in my DNA from ancestors past. But there is just something about a gigantic goblet of beer and eating a turkey leg that really gets me in the zone. Unfortunately, Medieval Times only serves chicken. And while delicious, it's not quite exactly the same. But if you never been, and you enjoyed this movie even slightly, you absolutely have to go.
Okay. Back to the movie. I was twelve when the came out. And I could recite the entire movie word-for-word at some point. The cast is truly perfect. I don't know how else to say that. I'm horrible with names, so I'm not even going to try and pretend I know them.
The soundtrack is OFF THE CHARTS. Absolutely every song is a banger. The settings, while subtle, are so well done.
I mean even freaking Geoffrey Chaucer is in the movie. If that's not enough to get you in, you get to see his butt briefly if that's your thing.
I truly could talk about this movie for hours for just how perfect it is. But who knows? Maybe it's just that twelve-year-old Gary, coming into his own, wanting to change his own stars. And needing this absurdly great movie to inspire and delight.
But I can promise you this. You'll take something from A Knight's Tale. Because it has absolutely everything to offer.
GRADE: 5 all the way!
~~~~~~~~~
Joe
I love the idea of being able to choose who we are, and I think this idea was enough to propel A Knight's Tale from pretty good to very good. At first, I was ready to quip that most of the identity politics that happen throughout the story—a common man falsifies papers, he's revealed through the duplicitous villain's action because of that villain's cowardice, the Prince of England makes up some shit about ancient bloodlines and knights him anyway—are based on lies, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe that's the whole point. There can't be any lies when the power to be who we want to be exists within us. No one else can tell us who we are, so no one else can tell us that we're lying about who we are.
"You're a knight in your heart, but not on paper." I love the idea of being a "knight in your heart," because the very definition of "knight" is so open to interpretation. Count Adhemar is a knight, but he's a piece of shit who spends half the movie roaming the countryside with his army, raping and pillaging. William Thatcher is not a knight, but he personifies all the values that a knight is supposed to have: loyalty, bravery, empathy. There were noblemen who claimed that William was not a knight, and they were right but only technically (and then, thanks to the prince, not even technically). But this is A Knight's Tale, and so we are forced to consider the fact that William was who he wanted to be, and so that's who he was, and is.
The running bit about "changing your stars" was genuinely effecting for this reason. I believe that message, both that you can be anyone you want to be, and that no one else has the moral authority to tell you you're not. I am distracted now with thoughts of men and women like William who are attempting to change their stars by coming to America, and being told by hard-hearted men in masks that they do not belong here, and that they either need to leave or be blindfolded and thrown in a cage and separated from their family. Who's to say who is a citizen of this country? Who's to say that anyone should be denied the identity that someone else assigns them? I know that wasn't really the point of this 2001 comedy-drama, but it's what I'm thinking about afterward.
Other than the emotional theme of identity and all that, I'd say that it was a pretty lighthearted affair that we watched. Now, I know what you're expecting here, knowing me and knowing how much I hate Queen, so I'll give you what you want first: I fucking haaaaaate Queen's music, and I got a real fucking bad feeling when the peasants started stomping and clapping along to "We Will Rock You." But my concerns were allayed when I realized that this wasn't going to be completely soundtracked by music that I despise. And the anachronistic music's placement was interesting enough that I'm almost willing to forgive bookending the movie with Queen.
Because I just really appreciated how that lack of historical accuracy—or should I say, a blatant disregard for historical accuracy, based on the music alone—puts you at ease. It tells you, right from the beginning, that this isn't going to be one of those movies where the focus is on the setting. More serious films set in this era of European history would try really hard to make sure all the set pieces matched with what historians agree it really looked like and felt like, and then there would be quibbling about, well, this and that costume isn't completely accurate, the dance moves aren't necessarily agreed upon as having happened, the style of speech is too curtailed toward modern audiences for it to be accurate, and all that is fucking boooooooooooring. Way more fun to just have Heath Ledger out there grooving to David fucking Bowie.
I think this all gives you permission to take seriously or not seriously anything you want. Chaucer is here, and he's got a gambling addiction, but it's more haha he's naked funny. The rabbity woman from Breaking Bad's later seasons is here, and I assume she is a character with thoughts and feelings, but we get to just shrug and say haha woman blacksmith and sort of leave it at that. The whole romance angle with Jocelyn is not really something that ever landed for me, but that's okay, because, ya know, who's to say what love actually is? If we're saying that a knight is someone who wants to be a knight, then why can't we say that love is when two attractive people want to be in love? If that's what the movie is saying, perhaps because the plot and/or the core audience of pre-9/11 female teenagers requires it, then who am I to say otherwise? They are singing Queen. We don't need to take it too seriously.
Which is nice, up to a point. That point is that there is a core truth here, one about seizing one's own identity and crafting it as you see fit, which feels important to me. It feels like a movie of A Knight's Tale's ilk might not typically be fit to make. But this movie can be whatever it wants to be, just like we can. And I want to be the type of person who enjoys a film like this, who revels in the lighthearted joy of men smashing sticks into one another on horseback, and who manages to pull something profound from such a film anyway.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
~~~~~~~~~
GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 4.06 pukes out of 5
My lords, my ladies, and everybody else here not sitting on a cushion: I'll see you in the comments.
(NEXT TIME: In about 199 years and 364 days, Sean E. takes us through Bicentennial Man.)
September 2, 2026. 40.07308, -75.06953. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Occasionally, say at family parties, with specific people who will not be named here, I'll hear an argument like "my kid isn't going to college, he's gonna just learn how to do a trade," which is fine if that's how it shakes out, but ultimately that argument feels like a masked anti-education argument sprouting from a couple layers of conservative propaganda, like the powers that be talk shit on college and tell you to send your kid to welding school but where do you think they are sending their own grandkids, ya know, but ANYWAYS.
I never had the makings of a tradie. I will say, though, that the one thing that I've always been envious of when it comes to plumbers, electricians, etc., is the ability to make your own schedule. If I was fixing your toilet for pay, I'd force you to let me in at 5 AM. I'd wrap up my day around 2 PM, and use the ensuing afternoon free time wisely. Whoever's picking up this compost bucket usually gets there close to 4 AM. For a morning person, that's the fucking dream. As a white-collar college grad, I think about this every time I'm stuck on the train home at 4:48 PM, another afternoon wasted at the office.
Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die:
The Yardbirds finally unleashed their first studio LP in August 1966, by which time the band featured the incendiary guitar soloing of Jeff Beck (who replaced Eric Clapton). The album was much delayed by heavy touring of Europe and the U.S. (where the Yardbirds became a primary inspiration to the myriad garage and psychedelic bands springing up), and was eventually written and recorded in just one week at Advision Studios in London.
Roger the Engineer mixes up supercharged blues, prototype psychedelia, feedback, and Gregorian monk chants to great effect. Anticipating the heavy blues-rock of Cream and Led Zeppelin, the searing "Lost Woman," "the Nazz Are Blue," and "Rack My Mind" reflect the way the band built fiery workouts from traditional blues riffs and licks (Snooky Pryor's "Someone to Love Me," Elmore James's "Dust My Broom," and Slim Harpo's "Baby Scratch My Back," respectively), in the process showcasing Beck's astonishing talent (he makes a sustained one-note solo exciting on "The Nazz Are Blue"). Hit single "Over, Under, Sideways, Down" is based around the bassline to "Rock Around the Clock," yet manages to sound positively futuristic with the addition of Beck's winding guitar, the stop-start structure of the song, and the rabble-rousing calls of "Hey!"
Reissues include "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," a storming rave-up featuring the dream-team of Beck and Jimmy Page, and its B-side "Psycho Daisies."
Joe:
I love listening to any "proto-" version of a genre. The prefix, at least as I use it here on the blog, means that this music sounds like a genre that wasn't officially formed until after that particular artist made those particular sounds. It's another way of saying what 1001 Albums said above: "Anticipating the..." It means that the artists were ahead of the game. I like it from an anthropological perspective. It's not that I like the Yardbirds more than Led Zeppelin, but I do think that the Yardbirds are more interesting than Led Zeppelin. And that's mostly why we're here, exploring the Blind Spots. I don't need to find an album that I love (though that happens sometimes too). I just need something to pique my interest in the story of music.
This isn't the first time we checked in with the Yardbirds, a band famous for the guitarists involved who would become much more famous afterward. With Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds, we heard a lot of Eric Clapton. Roger the Engineer is mostly Jeff Beck. The blurb above mentions Jimmy Page, because he's an important part of this band's story too, but he's not on this album in its proper form. So I'm not claiming that Led Zeppelin ported the sound directly from this album. It's more like that they are just part of the same scene, and the Yardbirds were the genesis of the off-shoot of that scene. Does this mean that they are coming from garage rock and added blues back in? Or the other way around? I think an interesting theory to think about would be that Clapton come from blues first and Beck comes from garage rock first, and the juxtaposition of that is what made the Yardbirds so revelatory. And then maybe Jimmy Page felt that when he joined up and took it to the next gig, etc.
The balance is close to perfect on Roger the Engineer. Something like "He's Always There" hits the psych-adjacent garage rock tones that you hear all over Nuggets. Occasionally, it veers to far into the psych territory, like in "Hot House of Omagararshid," with its bubbly sounds, and the Gregorian chant nonsense in "Turn into Earth." But that evens out with something like "Over, Under, Sideways, Down," which is probably the song you're gonna recognize if you listen to this album. And for good reason, it's a badass tune. And "What Do You Want" feels like an electrified, hippie-fied Muddy Waters song.
None of this is revelatory if you're listening in a vacuum. It's all the kind of stuff you've heard before. But that's why we place it in its proper spot in history. It becomes revelatory when you understand how music exploded from this point. The Yardbirds were a detonator. Not the detonator, but one of them, and an interesting one, one worth checking out. I know that you can find shit that sounds like this in a lot of other places. I think the reason I'm drawn to the Yardbirds specifically is because of the Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin piece. Zep is a band very near and dear to my heart, so it's a lot easier to understand how the Yardbirds could be the "proto-" version of that band because of how important they are to me. If I was enamored with Cream, I'd be saying the same thing. If you're gonna show me a band that greatly inspired, I dunno, fucking Deep Purple or something, then I'd be far less interested.
I think that's okay, to know where you came from, so you can know where something else came from too. It's all subjective anyhow.
September 1, 2026. 40.07747, -75.08101. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
It's that feeling you get when you hear nothing, silence, but you can just tell that it was recently not like this, that there were sounds and that those sounds were loud. Noise has a way of seeping into its surroundings, causing the fibers to get all wobbly and shaky, like you feel an echo but you don't hear it, like you feel the dying of a pulse. I walk home in silence, but I know for a fact what was here just hours ago—the incredible din of hundreds of children, wild from a summer's worth of pent-up energy, exploding onto the blacktop after their first hours chained in the classroom. But it's silent right now, I can feel it.
I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, what with watching 500 movies you've never seen before and all, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING BLOG!
The Thing
1982
John Carpenter
I love the idea of a movie being named The Thing. It's the least descriptive title a film could possibly have, and I think that's a good thing. You go in surprised. I've made it clear that I make a point of not knowing what a movie is about before I watch it if possible, but the title of this movie made it even more possible than usual. Though I will admit that the "directed by John Carpenter" made it possible to guess the tone of the movie, after seeing Escape from New York. It was a safe assumption that it was going to be a slightly campy, slightly outdated, but overall pretty fun sci-fi-ish thriller(-ish).
That assumption was on target. We don't have to compare The Thing and Escape from New York every step of the way, but at least one important contrast in my mind is that Escape from New York was a movie that asked for a lot of world-building, and it sort of faltered in that regard, whereas The Thing was completely contained in one setting. Were it not for the special effects, this could be a play, and you fucking know I love me a movie-that-could-be-a-play. And sure, those special effects were pretty dated, especially the bloody dog heads and whatnot (an adult version of Harry Potter's Fluffy), but I like to think about our perception of those types of things as cyclical. It's out-of-date ten years later, but 40 years later, it seems beautiful in its out-of-date-ness. It's just fun, and it's not distracting, especially if you're fully buying into the idea of this being a sci-fi film made in the early 1980s.
I was relieved, once the monster was introduced, that this wasn't going to be one of those movies in which the monster hides from the characters and they slowly have to figure out that this monster even exists. I hate those types of movies because it usually requires the characters to be stupid for plot-related reasons. Nope, in The Thing, within the first 25 minutes or so, every character in the film is faced with monster. They are gathered in a room and witness its full horror. It puts everyone on even footing, characters and audience alike.
What this means for us is that we are allowed to figure out the mystery at the same pace as the characters. I assume the most famous scene is the blood test scene, where a crazed Kurt Russell is trying to figure out which of his comrades is actually a monster and which are not. An incredible tension in this scene, including a jump scare that is actually earned. If we knew who the monster was disguised as, but the characters did not, then that would create an imbalance that I usually can't get past. Here, though, I was just as surprised as Russell's character when it was revealed who was who. It makes for an incredibly fun movie-going experience. Just excellent storytelling.
I wonder if there's anything to gleam from this film otherwise, like in terms of theme or whatever. I think naturally one might be inclined to say that the theme is "trust." What happens when a group of people, who have built a sense of trust among themselves over time, suddenly find themselves in a position when they cannot trust each other? You might say that The Thing accurately portrays what we feel in our day-to-day right now, how it feels difficult to trust each other, how it feels like anyone could be a secret MAGA in disguise. This all might be stretching The Thing past what is feasible for such a film. It's probably just a fun little claustrophobic thriller with an interesting premise, no theme required. But what if?
At the end of the day, I usually don't ask for more. I just ask to have fun. If there was more, I wouldn't complain, but I am extremely satisfied with a tight, fun movie like this. The Thing was fun. Who knew? Not me. Because it's called The Thing. No fucking clue what that could've been.
GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: Whoops, didn't think I'd be sneaking another movie in before A Knight's Tale. That one is DEFINITELY next now.
August 31, 2026. 40.08098, -75.0684. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
My mom always says "it's meant to be." I've known her to say that for at least the past 37 years, and I still don't know if she means it in a religious way or like a quasi-mystical way or if it's just word filler, like when she says "long story short" in the middle of every long story. I don't believe in things like fate; I believe that the world is random. I use my belief as a defense mechanism, like when something bad happens, and due to my belief system I know there's no one to blame, so the sadness and hate sort of evaporate. But when the opposite happens, like something good, or fortunate, then, well, yeah... I guess there is a temptation to view such a thing romantically. Even though I know it's not true, even though I know it's random chance and we're all just groping around blindfolded in a fucked-up chaotic universe, still, even still, I sometimes hear a voice in my head saying: it's meant to be.
A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.
"Settle Up with Your Downfall"
Sincere Engineer
from Probable Claws
2026
Fuuuuuuuuck, I figured it out. The answer to a mystery that's been bugging me for years. And it ain't pretty.
Okay so the main mystery requires us to break the fourth wall briefly. No strangers to that around here, but still, I figured I'd warn ya anyway. Especially since when I start talking about the blog in a meta sense, I fear that it gets boring, because I assume that no one actually gives a shit about inside baseball bullshit on the blog. Consider yourself warned.
We operate on Blogger. The URL says "blogspot," but that's due to a grandfather clause. From what I recall (and I didn't do any supplemental research to back these hazy memories up), PoYB originated on a blogging platform called "Blogspot," and then at some point, Google LLC Or Whatever The Fuck bought it out, and pushed it under the umbrella of their own blogging platform, called "Blogger." But they didn't change the URL. So you type in "blogspot," but when I go to the interface where I do all the editing and publishing, that's blogger.com.
All that to say that this website that I am typing these words on right now is owned by Google. Been that way for a long time. I am still here due to inertia, and due to the overwhelming horror of even thinking about trying to move over ten thousand blog posts over to a different platform. Plus, it's free. This is the understanding, and ultimately, the first-level mystery here. Why is it free? Why have I been allowed to operate this dumb blog free of charge, free of ads, for almost twenty years? What's the catch? There's always a fucking catch.
When we talk about "what is free on the internet," then what we're really doing is asking who is the customer, and what is the product. You can think about Facebook as a well-known example. Facebook has never charged a membership fee, as far as I'm aware. Though you might get swindled out of money through spam ads and deceit, it's never been Facebook itself asking you to pay money for its services. It's free to use. So what does that mean? That's means that you are the product. In this case, it means that all your personal information is documented and sold as many times as possible, mostly to advertisers but to other even more nefarious entities as well I'm sure. You can think about it like you would a cow on a farm. Why is it that cows are given a free place to stay, free food to eat, free medical care when necessary? It's not because the farmer gives a shit about the cow, it's because the farmer is keeping his product safe, before it is sent to be slaughtered.
So if we're operating for free here on Blogger, then the question remains: in what ways are we the product? Why have we been allowed to languish here in relative obscurity (relative to other websites around the internet) for free, doing as we please in this space? In what ways are we the cows, awaiting slaughter? I don't think it's as simple as the Facebook scenario. I don't think it's as easy to pull our personal information from these words. I've done what I could to prevent people's identifying details from entering the algorithm, and I myself have typed a LOT of personal details about myself, but I'm just one guy, and it would take a lot of effort for to pull the necessary info from my shitty prose for very little payoff (i.e. selling the personal info of ONE GUY doesn't feel worth it to me, from the perspective of someone who sells personal info to advertisers).
I think I have the answer, but let's first talk about a different mystery that's been floating around these parts for the past few years. This mystery has bothered me for a long time, and it's necessary to talk about here in today's post, since it occurred to me the other day, suddenly, out of the blue, that the mysteries have the same exact answer. So put a pin in the first one for a few paragraphs, and let's discuss the second one.
I've mentioned offhandedly a few times over the years that, on the aforementioned Blogger interface where I act as editor-in-chief, there is a tab for "Stats." Here, you can see how many "hits" the blog has, over the last eighteen years, broken down in yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily chunks if you need them, as well as specific visitor counts for individual blog posts. So I can see what blog post has the most traffic, and I can track traffic over the past however long, to see if more or less people are visiting the blog during certain times of the week or certain times in this blog's lifespan.
It's traditionally been sort of a useless tool to me, since the readership of PoYB is not that large. Less than 100 people in my own life are even aware of this website's existence, and way fewer than that are even semi-regular readers. I'm not discounting the idea that there are people I don't know who are semi-regular readers, friends of friends and friends of friends of friends and whatnot. But if they exist, they do not exist in large numbers. They can't. This isn't that type of website. It's just a hobby. At the upper end of reasonable estimations, we could reasonably say that maybe 20 people are visiting PoYB a day, and even at five clicks per person, that's like 100 visits per day. Maybe sometimes people are clicking around and we get a few hundred clicks. That's reasonable. That's logical. And that's not really worth clicking the Stats tab over. Traffic isn't the point! I'm not creating content here! We're just typing for shits and giggles! Who gives a shit!
But I'll idly click the Stats option every once in a while anyway, and sometimes I'll notice strange spikes. There might be a day when we have like 3000 hits. Why? This is what I've been thinking about for literally years now. It happens often enough that I notice it, and it bothers me. It'll happen for like four days in a row, and then it will stop for days or weeks, before happening again. It's pretty obvious that the numbers are inflated for reasons outside of people literally visiting the blog to read what's written on it. It doesn't make logical sense for a Tuesday to have 200 clicks and a Wednesday to have 2500 clicks, especially when the post on Tuesday is a blog post about the fourth-most popular Fleetwood Mac album and the post on Wednesday is some hack creative writing blabber about a forgotten American sitcome called 'Til Death.
For a while, I had visions of, I dunno, a skeleton crew in the Blogger cubicles getting a notification that there is still one blog on their servers that is being updated daily, and those clicks coming from that staff, either out of curiosity or out of professional duty. Something like that. I wasn't sure whether I should be worried or not. I sincerely don't know what the entity of "Blogger" even looks like. Are there even workers assigned to that department? Or is it just an empty shell that can run on its own?
The suspicion has ratcheted up significantly over the past couple weeks. The Stats tab has gone off the chain. As of this writing, we've had about two straight weeks of approximately 25,000 hits per day. 2500 was illogical, but 25,000 is just laughably false. C'mon. There's no reason for it. The blogging itself is still steady, but no one is reinventing the wheel here. We're not "viral," because there's nothing that could go viral even if that was the goal, which it's not. And if you'll recall, individual blog posts get tallies too, so it would be one thing if we got 25,000 hits and a Bruce Springsteen retrospective said "24K" next to it, but it doesn't. At the end of the day, something like that usually says "8." Not eight thousand, but eight.
It doesn't make sense... until it does. Folks, I figured it out. These two mysteries are the same. They have the same answer. Why we are allowed to play around on Blogger for free and why there has been an increase in traffic, they are both related, inexplicably intertwined. The truth hit me like a ton of fucking bricks the other day. It's all so fucking obvious. Why haven't I thought of this before?
Google is using Puke on Your Birthday to train its AI.
Think about it. It all makes sense. The training tool is visiting PoYB to take the words written here for its own purposes, and that's what's bumping up the traffic. And Google is heavily (and disastrously) invested in improving their AI, which can read through pieces that humans have written in order to improve, and so why not use this resource, Puke on Your Birthday, where actual humans have written tens of millions of words, millions of real-life sentences typed by human hands? I can't even use the word "steal" here, because we're on a website owned by Google! For free! We are the product!
What if that's the reason Blogger still exists? It's the only reasonable explanation. There is literally no other reason that such a useless dumb bullshit website could hold any value. Our words are here, and the company that owns the words is using their robot to suck up everything we have created. And there's nothing we can do about it! This is the world that we have built. We have typed and typed and typed and all this time we have been sitting in the goo pods from The Matrix, living a lie while our brain power is sucked into the machine.
There's not really an upside to any of this. I have taken great pride in this body of work over the years, and it makes me feel like a chump that there's some underlying nefarious purpose to it. I also cringe at the idea of some AI bot taking on my writing voice, at the very least because that means that my voice is no longer unique. Worst of all, it feels like our fate here on this website is now irrevocably tied to the fate of AI, which as we all know is a bubble, and I fear that when that bubble pops, we'll pop right along with it.
What other option is there, though? I get a six-gig file sent to me every month, containing within it a full copy of the blog. I've always considered that an emergency option, moving away from Blogger onto some other platform. It's probably not as easy as it sounds, either. I'm sure if I ported everything over to Wordpress, there would be some jacked-up error with the formatting that would require me to manually fix 10,000 blog posts, and I'm not looking to choose to do that anytime soon. And as we discussed at some point earlier, I'm slowing down on the blogging but I'm not in any position to stop. Too much of my emotional wellness and overall sanity is tied to the act of typing in this space. I don't know what I would do if I was forced to stop. That feels like an exaggeration, but it's unfortunately true.
I could also just... give up caring. Accept the fact that this is the world that we live in. That the bad guys won, and that they have branded us all cattle, and that there's nothing we can do to prevent the slaughter that is headed our way. Might as well enjoy the free room and board while we wait.
August 30, 2026. 40.11946, -75.12311. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
I don't know what the etiquette is. I don't have the experience. Do you ask about the sickness, or do you not ask about it? Is that all you talk about, or do you ignore it? Try to split the difference? I tried to split the difference. It was fortunate that my paternal aunt was there when I got there. She has the experience. She knew what to talk about. I learned from her. There's small talk, to start, then there's a delicate balance of asking about what's happening in here and what's happening out there. What I'm missing while I'm not here, what you're missing while you're not there, trying to bridge that gap. Or something. I don't know. I don't know how to help, or if I can, or if my presence is helpful or if it's detrimental or what. But I'm here, when I can be.
Well, this is it. The final week I'll be bothering anyone with extra emails about Record Club. I mean, you'll still be bothered, assuming that emails on Sunday and Thursday mornings are bothersome. But not anything other than that. Unless you're in Film Club. Or unless I decide to send something about a special project. Actually, that reminds me, that Donny Most thing (see bottom of this post) is gonna be coming up before you know it, I have to get on that. Maybe I'll announce the details next week. For now: enjoy Record Club's Album of the Summer, and let us know what you think!
CATEOGRY OF VOTING: "Final Album of the Summer" — I know it was a small sample size on the poll, but I'm still shocked at how handedly the Strokes defeated their opponents. The second-place album has half the votes that Reality Awaits did. I read something recently that posited that 2020's The New Abnormal was basically the only album that matters to Gen Z Strokes fans, which is a fascinating reframing of my understanding of the Strokes. Maybe they are more popular now than they were in the early aughts? Maybe I know nothing about the world?
LOSING ALBUMS:Confessions II by Madonna; I Must Be Dreaming by Alabama Shakes; Lost Weekend by Phoebe Bridgers; Loveland by Suki Waterhouse; petal by Ariana Grande; THRASHER by Brandon Flowers.
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ALBUM DETAILS
GENRE: Indie rock, post-punk revival, neo-psychedelia, new wave
PRONOUNS: all five members prefer to use he/him/his pronouns
ABOUT: The Strokes formed in New York City in 1998. They consist of Julian Casablancas (vocals), Nick Valensi (guitar), Albert Hammond Jr. (guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass), and Fabrizio Moretti (drums). Is This It, released at the turn of the century, was influential in that it started the garage rock revival of that time, and centered the NYC-based rock scene of the aughts (as captured in Meet Me in the Bathroom). The band has maintained a relatively high critical reputation, but with dwindling commercial success since their debut. However, their COVID-era release was successful with a new generation of Strokes fans. Casablancas and Hammond Jr. both have robust solo careers (Casablancas with the Voidz). They are politically minded, with Casablancas especially being very upfront about his views.
DISCOGRAPHY: This is their seventh and most recent album. The aforementioned Is This It was their debut in 2001, followed by Room on Fire in 2003. The most recent before Reality Awaits was The New Abnormal in 2020.
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ADDITIONAL INFO
READING SOME SHIT: Steven Hyden talks about the history of the Strokes and their critical reception over time
WATCHING SOME SHIT: the whole show on their most recent tour
RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: The video for this album's "Going Shopping" is an homage to the video for Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al," Paul Simon formerly of Simon & Garfunkel from just last week.
Arctic Monkeys were influenced by the Strokes, and the first line on their Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is "I just wanted to be one of the Strokes / Now look at the mess you made me make." The Killers apparently threw out everything they were working on (besides "Mr. Brightside") when they first heard Is This It. We Are Scientists have also talked about being influenced by the Strokes.
Casablancas featured on Charli XCX's brat and it's completely different but also still brat. The Strokes also brought her out to perform with them at a festival this summer. Casablancas dropped three Velvet Underground covers for the hit HBO show—you guessed it!—Vinyl.
Rick Rubin produced this album, and he's produced so many albums by so many different artists, including many RC artists. These are the RC albums that he's produced that I saw as I scrolled through the very long list: Give Up the Ghost by Brandi Carlile. Whoops, I thought there would be more. Rick Rubin, for what it's worth, seems like a creep, though I don't have evidence to back that up.
The Strokes have a song called "Ode to the Mets," and Geese threw out the first pitch at a game earlier in the season.
Albert Hammond Jr.'s dad, Albert Hammond, has a retroactive writing credit on Radiohead's "Creep," which is pretty funny.
Fabrizio Moretti once dated Kristen Wiig, an obscure actress whose only notable role was Ghostbusters.
MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: "Last Nite" was named as the 37th-best song of the '00s. "Under Cover of Darkness" was named as the 27th-best song of the '10s. I reviewed The New Abnormal (back when I thought it was gauche to feature big-tent indie rock releases in Record Club, but we've moved past that), and that review is making me think I need to heavily revisit that thing in preparation for the review of Reality Awaits. Laura chose a song from that album for YSC Day 23. So, so many little passing references to the Strokes scattered throughout this blog, especially the Record Club reviews. They were an influential band on our generation, clearly!
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RECORD CLUB ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
This week's discography dive album: PINK by CHAI
This week's follow-up album:Luck... or Something by Hilary Duff; Monica by Jack Harlow; Weight of the World by Footballhead; ARIRANG by BTS; possibly more
This week's keeping up album (probably): n/a this week
Listen with us! Keep your favorite Record Club artists in the rotation!
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COUNTDOWN:
69 Weeks Until Week 420
We are tracking and counting down every week from here on out till Record Club Week 420. We started this countdown 69 weeks out. During Record Club Week 420, we will be covering Donny Most by the esteemed Happy Days virgin Donny Most. The goal for Week 420 of Record Club is that it will feature 69 reviews from 69 different people.
August 29, 2026. 39.95242, -75.16998. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
It starts so good, maybe even to the point where we are "catching" good behavior and being vocal about it, like "we're proud of you guys for behaving yourselves." This is at a fancy restaurant, no ironic quotes required. It's brunch, it's outside, it casual fancy, pressure is low but the pressure is still there, feeling a little like we're toeing the line on the social contract by bringing the kids to such a place. Mostly young-ish women wearing the same exact yoga outfit (I'm not exaggerating, maybe they all go to a studio that makes you wear the same thing?) surrounding us, definitely the only family, one couple with two huge dogs, but let's be clear, the dogs were WAY more well behaved than these kids. Still decently behaved, but it's a gradually heightening of tension of acting out, not noticeable at first, some bubbles in the glass of water, some SHHHs exchanged, a near miss of a spill, until finally it's the check and the two older kids are wrapping cloth napkins around each other's heads and the youngest runs around the table and trips and falls and starts crying and we rush out of there as quick as we can.
We survived. I love what we have built over the past twelve years. We eventually be able to go out to eat without losing our fucking minds.
The Record Club Alumni Association meets every week to discuss the larger body of work that our RC alumni have put together, outside of the specific albums that were covered in the main section of our club. You can follow along with everything that the RCAA has covered so far HERE.
(Deeper Dive)
Tori Amos
Little Earthquakes — RC Week 187 — 3 pukes out of 5
From the Choirgirl Hotel
1998
The plan was to get really into Tori Amos this week, but it just never materialized. I think that I'm a little more cognizant of the value of this music this time around (whereas I was completely nonplussed during that week of RC), but I'm still not there completely. I just can't get past the nagging thought that Tori Amos occasionally sounds like a half-baked Kate Bush. Not that I love Kate Bush's music either, but at least her weirdness feels like it has substance. Tori Amos is excellent at setting the mood, but almost nothing sticks with me. There are moments, like the fascinating instrumentation choices in "Cruel" (DJ scratching? xylophone rhythm?), when I see the genius peeking through. But "Cruel" doesn't give me anything to hold onto either. I'm not humming "Cruel" later in the day. It's like the art piece at a museum that feels like an outlier when you see it, and you forget about it as soon as you don't see it. It frustrates the hell out of me, because I love weirdo art-pop, and I love outliers, and I want to love this so much. But I'm stuck in the same spot that I was last time: this is fine, it's okay, I probably won't return to it too often after this.
Sometimes I'll be listening to a YouTube playlist version of an album that is new to me, and a song will come on that is so preposterously cheesy and out of place and plastic-sounding that I have to check, and sure enough, yup, it's a fucking ad. I felt the pull to check for ads multiples times while listening to Fate Morgana: Dawn, only to remember each time that I was listening to the album on Bandcamp. The album is just that corny. Market-tested for your approval! Do you like bossa nova with your consumer-capitalism indie rock? Well then, make sure you check out "In Your Arms"! It's quirky in a cute way! Oh god, I have to stop, because the sarcasm is misinterpreted as sincerity. The question is, is St. Lucia being sarcastic too? Or are we gonna have to take the Chase Visa commercial music seriously? Okay, fine, I'll cop to taking one song seriously, if only because St. Lucia clearly did: "Going to Space." There's enough meat on the bones of this eight-minute chameleon that I'll tip my hat. Only once, though!!!
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
Fate Morgana: Dusk
December 5, 2025
The hope is that I get all caught up on these RC alumni albums eventually and I don't have to worry about listening to these double-albums-released-separately back-to-back anymore, because when it's an artist like St. Lucia, it becomes way too much. After listening to Dawn and writing the blurbed review, I immediately clicked on Dusk, and listened to a song called "Oh Daddy," which... yikes. Too much! Musak for the YouTube generation! Filler for the filler-filled I <3 Radio music vibers! No! "People Change" sounds like the type of music that the 1975 have already given their ironic take on, and it's too weird that St. Lucia doesn't really seem to understand what irony even is. I have quips about all these songs, just like that. But I think the biggest missed opportunity is creating some thematic juxtaposition between the two sibling albums. Dawn and Dusk just sound like two collections of songs. I guess Dusk has more upbeat songs? Or do I just want it to be that way? Anyways, I'm tired of this shit. Give me the next one.
The "they're back!" narrative is almost always played out, but it is especially played out with Weezer. With The Gold Album, they are not "back." They are the same as they've always been. Yes, that includes Pinkerton, don't let your rose-colored nostalgia glasses fool you. And DON'T let the self-referential humility of something like "C.E.O." fool you either. Just because you acknowledge that the new song sounds like the old song doesn't mean the new song can't be a tired retread of that old song and worthless because of it. Look, I went through this once. I was suckered into it over a decade ago. Everything Will Be Alright in the End was a Weezer album about Weezer, about how they were "back," about how they still had it. I have rose-colored nostalgia glasses for that one. I was vulnerable once, but there's no reason you have to be vulnerable here and now. Listen to "Don't Make It Weird" if you need a wake-up call. These lyrics are fucking ass. And if you think that they are "back" because the lyrics elsewhere are claiming that they are back, well, just you fucking remember what happened last time they said this: a couple years later, "Africa" happened, and they leaned into it. Weezer are not back. They never will be.
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5
(Random RCAA News)
Mac Miller's The Divine Feminine is getting a tenth-anniversary deluxe reissue. No sign of Mac Miller showing up in RCAA, but never say never.
Turnstile's NEVER ENOUGH is getting a remix version, and it features Dan Deacon, Slayyyter, Hayley Williams (of Paramore), Julien Baker (of boygenius), and Panda Bear (of Animal Collective).
I was like "I wonder if I'll be able to find a third news item for this space" and then like five minutes later Dolly Parton passed away. R.I.P. She lived a good life, and now she's up in heaven, waiting patiently for her good pal Kid Rock to join her.
August 28, 2026. 40.07307, -75.06927. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Heard a sound like a yell, muffled because the windows and doors were closed, but it was out there, so I went out to investigate.
Everything was silent as I stepped onto the top step of our stoop. Nothing moved.
Except me. I slinked around the corner, down the driveway, soaking in the solitude and silence.
I have a friend who used to drink on this roof. So she told me, years later, after I bought the house next to the building she used to drink on top of. The roof seems pretty steep, something only a sixteen-year-old would deign to sit on for more than a few minutes, let alone get fucked up on.
I haven't heard from that friend in a while. I hope she's staying away from roofs.
I started walking back to my front door, and when I reached the top step again, I heard the scream. Clearly this time. I whipped around.
Three young kids on bikes, down the driveway, into the dark night, screaming about who knows what.
Probably just screaming because they felt alive, as one often does at that age. Alive, with a propensity to ride bikes at night and sit on roofs.
I appreciated the opportunity to take this album and these musicians seriously for one week. I thought it was a worthy endeavor. But you know what I appreciate now even more? How fucking terrible Paul Simon's haircuts were in the '60s. Holy shit! It's funny, because my longstanding thought was "That Art Garfunkel, what a fucking jabroni, look at his hair!" And now I'm ending this week thinking that there's no way anyone had a worse haircut than Paul Simon. I'm not even thinking about Garfunkel anymore!
So, uh, what else are we thinking about? How was the music? How were the reviews? Anything get your motor running? If not, it's all good. Summer is over, let's get this weekend going.
We've spent the week hanging around in the Finger Lakes area. Nice stuff—rolling fields, calm water, big blue skies. And lots of driving to get from one thing to another. All that driving has given plenty of opportunity to listen to Simon & Garfunkel (and the Strokes, for another day), which has been extremely apropos. The soft folk voices, the slowed-down tempos, the Americana lyrics feel right at home.
Kelsey pointed out that these anti-war pro-civil rights songs probably blew heads and burned down houses 70 years ago. Today, it reads a lot like same-y and a little corny, the wheel of time and culture flattening the freshness this probably had. "Sound of Silence" obviously still kills, and "Mountain" and "Brother" I mostly enjoyed on the way through. Driving back from Seneca one day, we had the sudden, chilling thought: "Might Joe be right about S&G?" Maybe we just like the later stuff more.
I know the songs on this album well, although I don't think I've listened to it as a whole very often. I grew up in a family of folk music lovers—everyone could at least manage basic guitar chords and a folk strum, and family parties always included singing. Simon & Garfunkel were always a big hit.
The obvious standout on this album is "The Sound of Silence." It's striking to hear lyrics written in 1964 about people's inability to connect on a deeper level just stuck instead in surface-level interactions. I wonder how much different it feels from that time, and how much more superficial our interactions have become in the 60 odd years. I feel like it's become more superficial in just my lifetime, but maybe that is a skewed perspective. It's easy to idealize a different time. And yet there's something strange about the contrast: we live in an era where people share intimate details of their lives with total strangers, and still our day-to-day interactions can feel hollow. Building real community is so hard.
That's what the song captures for me, that isolation underneath all that noise.
In my own life, I'm often the one who does the maintenance in friendships, the one who reaches out first. I find myself wondering how much that effort is even noticed or appreciated. I wonder if I stopped doing it, how many people would start making more effort, or if they would just let the relationship slide.
Lately I've been thinking about whether I chose the right life, in like the Sylvia Plath fig-tree sort of way, where every branch not taken represents a version of yourself you'll never get to live out. The paths I did choose have cost me other things, and a built-in sense of community is one of them. I didn't move far from where I grew up (though I didn't want to stay there either), and even so, it's been hard to find that sense of belonging here. People from Philly tend to already have their circles, old friend groups built on decades of shared history. I rarely fall in with them, and even when I do, it can feel isolating; there's a kind of hyper-local shorthand made up of high school memories, sports teams, other things that happened twenty years ago that I'm simply not part of. Most of the people I have connected with here moved as adults, like me.
And I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with it. It's just something that I notice. Maybe that's the real appeal of a song like this, it kind of offers you company in the noticing? And there's something to be said for that. I don't know, maybe we need to find other people who hear the same silence we do.
It very much makes sense that this was unsuccessful and Paul Simon moved to England. Whatever happened there that he brought back with him that lead to The Graduate soundtrack was a freaking miracle.
I'm so mad. Whatever. "Bridge over Troubled Water" is great. I'll always have Graceland. In the words of Ralph Mouth: sit on it, Joe.
Simon & Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. was not my plan for this evening. I've got a good book to finish, goddamnit. I'm writing this review purely because my husband hated it so much. So when I put the album on, I was STUNNED by his hatred. My love for this album purely comes from my father's love for this album. I know for a fact he still has the actual record. This album is true nostalgia for me. Is it weird that they sing so much about the Lord in "You Can Tell the World"? Maybe, but I did the musical Godspell, so I'm not going to pooh-pooh this.
Their harmonies are so soothing and weird to me. "Bleecker Street" is a lullaby, and it's the sound I think of most when I hear Simon & Garfunkel.
Let's not pretend "Sound of Silence" isn't the most beautifully tragic song of all time. Sure, The Graduate of it all is important, but it's much more for me. My dad had been drafted (kicking and screaming) to the Army during the Vietnam war. This song was a reminder of his loneliness and fear—although he has never phrased it in that way. He was an un-athletic South Philly kid off to bootcamp in the South, and Simon & Garfunkel sang that into meaning for him.
"Peggy-O" is silly lyrically, but again we have that classic vocal and guitar sound that for me is legendary.
On a giant aside, the other day my kids were fighting about some stupid songs they wanted to hear, and I yelled "SIRI PLAY 'THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'' BY BOB DYLAN ON SPOTIFY”... the children were silent as Bob warbled on. I digress, except to say kids can drive you to '60s rebellion music. This S&G version doesn't have the same spark as Dylan's, but it's still so good.
"Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.," and a lot of this album, feels transcendent. Am I at the Renn Faire or is it 1965?
My husband is wrong. This album is great, and weird, and folk, and harmonic, and all over the place, but still grounded in their sound. Are there better Simon & Garfunkel albums, yes, but I will still give this one a thumbs up.
I didn't think I would ever dislike S&G. In fact, I thought they could not fail. They are the Beatles duo in my eyes. Even the worst songs I thought were still good. And this album proved me very, very wrong.
Sidenote. At 3:00 AM on a Wednesday, there are only a few things I would be doing. Mainly, being woken up by our one-year-old. Ten years ago, I would have assumed it was the devil waking me up. Ten years before that, I was still up playing video games. Finally, ten years before that, I was trying so hard to go to bed, tossing and turning, worrying about going back to school after the summer.
Why am I telling you all this? Raised in a Catholic-in-name-only house, church on Sundays because my nan would guilt us into going, I never once listened to a religious-y type genre. Or at least not when it was blatantly obvious.
And then I listened to this and thought, "Are S&G super religious? What the fuck were they doing up at 3:00 on a Wednesday? Why are these songs total dog water?"
Life lessons learned. Not all great things can stay great forever. Maybe in ten years I'll be up feverishly writing a music review. Maybe I'll be worried about my kids starting their next school year. Hell, I might even start dementia a little early and think the devil is waking me up.
But I can tell you this for free. I'll never be listening to this album, or S&G for that matter, the same ever again.
It's tough judging a debut album when you already know how much more an artist is capable of, but as far as I'm concerned, the rest of the tracks here could be banging pots and pans as long as we get "The Sound of Silence." Nestled among a few dated hymns and covers is one of the greatest songs of all time, and that's automatic hall of fame consideration for me.
I've listened to this album a few times now (most recently on Wednesday morning at 5 AM, so close!), and my perception has evolved a lot. It first struck me as a little frivolous with clap-along church songs, like their parents sat them down and only let them choose family-friendly tracks so grandma could listen. But the privilege of living in the future stops me from criticizing too harshly.
This is our first taste of legends in the making. I'm extremely biased here, but S&G are very much my shit. They're medieval troubadours who fell through a wormhole into the post-beatnik era. Give me black turtlenecks and hand-painted protest signs and smoky Greenwich village poetry readings and I'm so very sold. They were introduced to me by my mom who never got to see me become an adult, and I can't explain the attachment fully, but listening to them feels like getting to meet her as an adolescent.
"Take my arms so I might reach you."
Sorry, getting a little maudlin for Record Club, but if you're in the mood to be moved—not wallow, necessarily, but indulge in a little spiritual melancholy—these are your guys. Poetry, seraphic harmonies, lyricism! This is certainly not my favorite Simon & Garfunkel album, but it's fascinating to see how they started and how they evolved, and I can very much appreciate it for that.
I got a chance to see Paul Simon's farewell concert in 2018 in his hometown of Corona, Queens. He finished his last song as I squeezed my way to the front, and he thanked the crowd saying, "It means more to me than you'll ever know." I cried, hardly able to believe I was lucky enough to be in attendance for this final, historic moment.
Anyway, that son of a bitch has continued touring ever since.
They found a homemade incendiary device at the Grateful Dead symphony show in San Francisco, a misplaced outburst of aggression toward a generation who is guilty of the same thing every other generation will be guilty of: the inability to let go. A fool blames the symptom, a scientist recognizes the disease. No one except you made you use your ears and eyes in the way you do. No one except you is responsible for seeing a strange garden and calling it a patch of weeds. Shame on you for treating life like a quarterly earnings call and not the only experience you'll ever get. Why do you live this way when you don't have to?
