Vol. 1, Issue No. 7: A smattering of thoughts (and a couple of notions, too)
Ever heard of a shower thought? Well, here's literally every shower thought I had this week.
My roommates and I watch MLB Central every morning. That’s MLB Network’s morning show, for you casuals out there. Robert Flores, one of the show’s hosts, might go as far as calling you a “ham and egger.” I would never do that. “Casual” feels much more diplomatic.
Anyway: it has become our apartment’s morning tradition, hand-in-hand with brewing coffee and making the bed (well, I make mine). It started out as background noise and something I joked about being a contractual stipulation for my roommates (who both work at MLB Network). But we’ve taken a liking to beginning our morning with a hearty bowl of yesterday’s action in baseball, never mind it being totally biased and impressed upon by the league itself. Those are my words, in case the MLB’s brass is reading. Please don’t fire my friends.
One morning (Sept. 30, I do my research), a segment called “That’s A Scam” got us cackling at an hour that was far too early for a cackle. Its design is simple: it tasks the show’s trio — Flores, Lauren Shehadi, and Mark “De-Ro” DeRosa — with airing various grievances, one by one. I’m being told that once upon a time, these grievances were baseball-related. No longer.
Shehadi’s scams: Any toy that requires batteries, but doesn’t include them, as well as the insane plastic packaging that requires a chainsaw to open; and street cleaning. I agree.
Flores’ scams: Complicated passwords, and the must-reply emails you receive in order to confirm that it is, in fact, you trying to login to your company computer; and street meters. Lots of street content on Sept. 30’s edition of MLB Central.
De-Ro’s scams: Paper straws in plastic cups; tapas restaurants; whatever electronic apparatus MLB Network employees have to use to get into the building, which is apparently infuriating; and traffic.
We’ve never laughed harder as a group.
Now, I don’t exactly feel like airing my grievances today. But in the spirit of “That’s a Scam,” what I will do is air, as the title reads, a smattering of thoughts I’ve had over the past few days. You’re familiar with the term “shower thought,” I’m sure. If not: they’re often incredibly deep thoughts that are meant, if not guaranteed to stop you in your tracks — or, to send your jaw plummeting to the floor as you stand beneath the showerhead and continue being pelted by water droplets. It’s a concept that has its own subreddit. People clamor for this stuff.
Well, I can’t pretend that I often have thoughts about existentialism or the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. But I do think a lot whilst in the shower. And this week, I decided to jot down the thoughts I found most interesting as they occurred to me. The pad of paper and pen were soaked by this morning, but I’d say it was worth it.
In case I make this a recurring thing, I’ll officially dub this the first edition of “That’s A Thought (Or Perhaps A Notion).” Thanks for the inspo, MLB Central. Without further ado, and in no particular order…
The NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team is, quite honestly, one of the sillier things I’ve witnessed take over a public’s attention in quite some time. And yet I can’t help but take issue with its glaring omissions and some serious voting malfeasance. Simply put, it’s absurd that Damian Lillard is a member of this list ahead of players like Vince Carter, Bernard King, Tracy McGrady, Walt Bellamy, Klay Thompson, and especially Dwight Howard. His omission is causing the loudest uproar this morning. I mean, what are we doing here? I don’t necessarily buy into these sorts of lists anyway, but if we’re going to make them every 12 minutes, I say we make sure to get them exactly right. It’s a crock that recency bias so evidently played into some of these choices. But yeah, congrats to Russell Westbrook, I guess.
I absolutely love making lists. (Which is ironic, given the above gripe.) I’ve been making so many lists lately that I've started to lose track of the notepads. I have a weekly to-do list that is scribbled on and out and over all week long; I take it with me everywhere I go. I have an ongoing list of the films and shows I’ve watched this year. That’s on a legal pad somewhere in my desk drawer. I’m keeping weekly power rankings and notes on this season of Survivor. That’s in the living room. And don’t even get me started on my notes app.
The notes app is truly one of Apple’s better ideas. It is, in essence, the greatest argument in favor of the “cloud.” Forget pictures of your dog and that One Republic album you downloaded in full because you liked two of the songs and never listened to the rest. That note that reads “kombucha” — nothing else — was important for some reason. You need it at the ready on every device until the world disintegrates into nothingness, I promise you. (Funny thing: I wrote this in my notes app, and transferred it directly into this document. How ‘bout that?)
When did I start listening to something every time I shower? I genuinely cannot remember a time when I didn’t bring some sort of device into the bathroom with me in order for it to play either music or a podcast while I bathe. It’s silly, given that this is repeatedly the dampest room in the house, and perhaps my most valuable electronic shouldn’t be in here as steam billows and coats the glass mirror. I’m also sure it’s not great for the phone, which has more pores than I think its appearance lets on.
An addendum to my previous thought: not only is it not good for the phone, but it’s not good for me. Why must an electronic come with me wherever I go? If I’m to eliminate one place, wouldn’t the bathroom make the most sense? Most of the things you’re doing in the bathroom, you should probably avoid touching your phone while doing anyway. Hang on, I don’t like this song, let me skip it before I finish wiping.
Is Sally Rooney a great writer because she’s a great writer, or because she’s so good at detailing fictional characters’ feelings that mimick our own? I just finished her newest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, and I swear, every time I finish a book of work of Rooney’s, I feel both a bit more seen and a bit more insecure. She knows all about desire, loneliness, lust, frustration — emotional or political or physical or sexual — and every other emotion I believe a human being has ever had, and I’m starting to wonder whether she’s truly brilliant, or if it’s partly that, and partly that I’m so transfixed by her ability to understand every single person who has ever taken a breath without possibly knowing 99.9% of them.
I need a new therapist.
There’s not a single show better at depicting friendship more accurately than New Girl. But I can’t get my mind off of this one thing: no one ever fights in that show. And even the “fights” can’t really be categorized as fights; they’re tiffs, and even that might be too harsh. I get it, no one wants to watch a sitcom and hear arguing; that’s what they DVR medical dramas for. But I guess I wish there was some room for lingering tension, no? I’m talking about the kind that’s not sexual.
I should probably stop buying books, right? My shelf is becoming too small for them all, in large part because I had too many to begin with, but also because I keep purchasing them. I don’t know, I can’t help that I prefer to own and forever have access to a book I once had to buy at some moment long ago. But libraries are nice, and they cost much less (like, $0). Something to think about. Not now, though, I’m going to Barnes & Noble soon.
Fine, I’ll offer you one grievance: when people say “Barnes and Nobles.” Can you read? (That feels like a fitting query, given that it’s a bookstore, for god’s sake.) It drives me crazy. It reminds me of this time my friend Nick and I watched the movie We’re the Millers — that travesty starring Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis. You know it; the “NO RAGRETS” tattoo meme came from it. Well, Nick always called it “We are the Millers.” And I’m sure if you asked him today, he’d defend himself the same way he did back then: “It’s the same thing.” Lemme tell ya something: IT’S SIMPLY NOT. SCAM.
Coffee, too. I have to stop buying coffee at places that charge upwards of $6 for a drip coffee with skim milk. I have a Keurig. What’s the point of asking Starbucks to use their fancy, gurgling machines to pump out an iced latte when what I can brew with 12 ounces of water, a plastic pod, and the push of a button compares just fine? And is so much cheaper, too? It doesn’t make much sense, and yet here I am, blindly participating in capitalism.
I can’t believe that we are in the third season of NBA basketball where masks are somehow involved. Assistant coaches and trainers are still wearing them on the sidelines; the chairs on team’s benches have been pushed back together, to the point where Kyle Lowry’s bum can properly take up three seats again, and the players sit maskless. But coaches still don them, smartly, but shockingly. It’s just jarring, I guess. The NBA bubble feels like it was six months ago. But it has been 588 days since March 13, 2020. That’s how long this has gone on, and yet no one seems all that worked up about stopping it; the problem is, so many people think it’s over already. I walked into a coffee shop yesterday — whoops — and found that I was the only person wearing a mask. There was plexiglass between me and the unmasked cashier, and behind her, four other unmasked employees. Every table inside was occupied by an unmasked tenant. I could see the full face of everyone in line before and behind me. I wish I could view this all as a good sign, that we’re moving in the right direction, returning to normalcy. But in actuality, I think we’re all just fatigued, and we’re mere months away from one of two things happening: 1) we get a serious wake-up call in the form of another wave brought on by the winter and a lack of outdoor activity options, or 2) we allow our fatigue to masquerade as safety, or confidence that the strangers around us have done their part in ending this once and for all.
I need more shampoo.
Consumption Corner
I (somehow) find time to read a lot, watch a lot, and listen to a lot throughout my weeks here on the internet. Consumption Corner is where I’ll recommend some of the things I appreciated the most. They may be old, or they may be new, but from shows to films to books, I figure the least I can do is lend some insight into the things that make me the cultured young man that I am.
The Reading List:
How Chicago Became the NBA's Most Intriguing Team by Chris Herring (Sports Illustrated)
The Many Decades of Bond by Carolyn Wells (Longreads)
The Internal Reckoning of Javier “Chicharito” Hernández by Mirin Fader (The Ringer)
Inside the Quest to Prolong Athletic Mortality by Chris Ballard (Sports Illustrated)
Dear Evan Hansen review – bad timing damages the power of a complex hit by Ella Kemp (We Love Cinema)
The Limits Of Dave Chappelle And Kyrie Irving’s Free-Thinking by Jason England (Defector)
What I’m listening to on repeat:
What I absolutely devoured:
If you’re a fan of horror, or terror, or mystery, or a hybrid of all three and you have yet to watch Midnight Mass on Netflix, I’m not sure what’s stopping you. Mike Flanagan — of The Haunting of ___________ series and Doctor Strange fame — is a genius of the genre, and I’d say that this is by far his best work. He’s incredibly attuned to the idea of a small community’s ardent response to religion and a powerful voice pushing it into their every waking thought. As Father Paul, Hamish Linklater is of Emmy-winning caliber; it’s a transfixing, shockingly paralyzing performance that I would say is among the best I’ve seen in anything this year. This series, about curses being misidentified as miracles, is a miracle in and of itself.
And finally… what else I’ve written lately:
CelticsBlog Staff Season Predictions (CelticsBlog)
Los Angeles could be on its way to being Terance Mann’s world, with everyone else just living in it (Clips Nation)
What remains of the artist formerly known as Serge Iblocka? (Clips Nation)
The Knicks Wall Roundtable: 2021-22 Knicks Season Predictions (The Knicks Wall)
Big on Consistency: Previewing the 2021-22 Knicks Frontcourt (The Knicks Wall)
A goodbye tweet:
So long, for now. Thanks for everything, all. Until next week.