Tuesday Update - January 22nd, 2024
Regarding a book, a CD sale, and Smackdown Trivia
Last week went by very quickly. It’s been a particularly full set of days that I’ve lived, too, and that’s presented a list of only a few new touchstones to give my thoughts on, none of which I feel particularly strongly about one way or another.
For instance, the photo above was taken from a classroom at Wescoe Hall on the campus of the University of Kansas. I was there because I am taking a class this spring! It’s a creative non-fiction writing class, focusing on the narrative essay. I have many hopes for this class: I want to leave it with a better sense of a personal writing style and process in this era of my life, I want to use the workshop format to improve my critiquing skills, as that is a significant part of my career, and I hope that I get something out of the books that I am to read for the class as well. Before the semester started, I took the initiative of reading one of the books assigned for the class: Anna Badkhen’s Bright Unbearable Reality, about which I was fairly lukewarm. At her best, she’s able to identify the sinew between the modern-day and the vast, vast history of the human experience (my favorite essay in the collection connected her experience studying the early human history in Ethiopia while also dealing with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic) and then, too often for my liking, it felt like she would want to write an essay about the history of some aspect of the human experience (i.e. trumpets, boats, etc.) and then struggle to synthesize those sinews into a modern-day context. The former were more enjoyable to read, but the latter were interesting from the perspective of a person reading with an eye for the craft of writing essays.
There were other things. I watched a particularly well-made documentary about WAC Football by the YouTube channel EMPIRE whose work I thoroughly enjoy. I watched some of Season 1 of The Life and Times of Tim, having bought a copy of that season on eBay, though I have no new critiques to give compared to what I said a few weeks ago. That’s about what I’ve had in regards to the traditional fodder for the Tuesday Update.
I attended a used CD and LP sale at my local public library, which was far more popular event than one would think a used CD and LP sale in January 2024 would bring. I have never once in my life, being 28 years of age, born in 1995, and never in possession of disposable income before there was at the very least an iTunes Store. I’ve never once had the feeling of being elbow-to-elbow, shoulder-to-shoulder, chin-to-shoulder in at least one awkward circumstance, with other people in the pursuit of Compact Discs. CDs were declared a dying medium by the time I bought my first (which I think was a copy of a Now That’s What I Call Music from early 2005), but they were alive and kicking in Lawrence, Kansas on Friday evening. I entered into something of a fight-or-flight state there, picking up CDs that I didn’t know that I really wanted, but nonetheless left with.
From the top-left, progressing line-by-line as you would read a paragraph, we have: Basement Jaxx’s “Kish Kash,” which does not contain the one single of theirs from that era that I like, Death Grips’ “The Money Store,” which I haven’t listened to in a very very long time but I remember liking, The Junior Varsity’s “Wide-Eyed”, which I bought purely off of the band’s name given that I like other bands with sports names (i.e. Americ anFootball, Modern Baseball, etc.).
On row two, we have Gary Numan’s “White Noise”, which is a 2-CD live album which finishes with the one song of his that I know I like at least as the backing track to the Sugababes cover of Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me”, the rare song with a breakthrough cover that I enjoy equally to the original for different reasons, Hawthorne Heights’ “The Silence in Black and White”, a band whose heyday is far enough behind that most people will have hopefully forgotten that they’re supposed to ridicule me for liking their particular brand of emo melodrama, and Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Cracked Rearview” was the epitome of a panic buy, but my roommate and I had a time singing along to it in the car on the ride home good enough to justify the price of purchase.
On row three, from Saturday, we have a German compliation of ambient techno tracks, a compilation of 50+ Commercial Jingles from the 50s to the 70s, which I listened to with friends on Saturday night, leaving us amazed at how many different beer and cigarette brands with once-apparently-iconic jingles, and Outkast’s “Southernplayalisticcadillacmuzik”, which I will one day listen to all the way through.
Sadly, I saw a copy of The Sunday’s “Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic”, of which I already own a copy, unclaimed even when I came back near the end of the sale on Saturday to buy those last three CDs. I should’ve just purchased a copy of it to leave in someone’s house or car as a humanitarian effort. I will leave a link to the video for Can’t Be Sure as a half-measure.
I did not go into that sale searching for anything in particular other than my standard-issue white whale (Chapterhouse’s “Whirlpool”, which I’m not 100% certain even received a US release), and I left with a bunch of interesting stuff as well as Cracked Rearview! This is what I love about CDs! I’m about to spend the next week playing these in my car on the way back and forth to work on the days I commute, or playing them in the living room as I read or write. I’m going to hear some new music, I’m going to like some of it, I’m going to probably dislike some of it, and I probably never would have sought out any of those CDs if it hadn’t been for that trip to the used CD sale.
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HOT TRACK OF THE WEEK:
What I'm linking today is footage from a 1993 show at Lawrence's Liberty Hall. I can’t find a way to embed it into the article, so I apologize, but you’ll have to visit the page for it — One of the acts in the video is Lawrence punk band Danger Bob, whose songwriter and vocalist, Andy Morton, unfortunately passed away last week. I knew Andy first as the host of Smackdown Trivia, a weekly pub trivia game that I’ve participated in since I was a Junior in college in late 2015. Smackdown has defined my Sunday evenings throughout the time that I’ve spent in Lawrence. Even when I moved away, I’d find myself missing those evenings with friends at the Bottleneck downtown or at Conroy’s on Sixth. Whenever Mike and I would see one another in San Diego, Phoenix, or somewhere between, our conversation would inevitably turn to “Damn, but I do miss going to Smackdown.” Once I (and Mike) moved back to Lawrence in 2022, we found our way back to it, and it had again become a staple of my Sundays in Lawrence.
Andy hosted Smackdown with a mix of sardonic humor and sincere wit that I’ve always admired. I find it indicative of the quality of host he was, in retrospect, that our team came out and played that game on a weekly basis over about a five year span and, up until last summer, only had a single win. Chick Fil-A’s Closed was to the Washington Generals of Smackdown Trivia for years, and yet, we had so much fun each Sunday that we never questioned whether we’d come back the next week, and when Mike and I showed up for a game for the first time in four years in early 2022, he welcomed us back with the same open, equal-opportunity sarcastic tenor that first kept us going out there regardless of our chances at winning.
On Sunday night, the Bottleneck hosted a final tribute game of Smackdown, hosted by longtime friends of his. I was so struck by the size of the crowd in attendance, the infectious laughter, and above all the joy that his years of effort had brought to people of Lawrence. I consider myself very fortunate to have had the chance to meet him.
In remembrance, I always ask myself these questions:
What did I learn about life in the time that I knew them?
What can I do to pass those lessons forward?
I don’t know precisely what it will look like, but I know that I will strive to bring the inviting, jocular, intelligent, initiative-taking nature that I’ve admired so much about him into my own endeavors.