This pandemic ain’t going nowhere, so it looks like a long winter of watching TV. Here’s a few things I’ve enjoyed over the last six months. American Barbecue Showdown (Netflix, 8 episodes) This is a standard reality TV show- there are challenges and eliminations and the rest of the fixings. But I enjoyed this show…
Dog Whistle: a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others. Every year, I like to pay attention to lawn signs. My local elections don’t get a lot of press coverage. It’s not like anyone’s polling Newington and handicapping the races. So, as I…
My girlfriend makes fun of me because I always stop at crosswalks, press the button and wait. I tell her I do that because I see people run red lights in Hartford almost every day. This morning was no exception. I took a walk to the ATM, and on the way back I watched a…
The warehouse I work in does natural, organic, and specialty food. That means there’s a lot of ethnic/imported foods, a lot of kosher foods, and a lot of brands that I wasn’t familiar with before working there. One that I ran across the other day is called Autocrat Coffee. I did an actual double take…
I haven’t gotten a haircut in eight or nine months. I know haircuts have been allowed since the summer, but it strikes me as a high risk/low reward activity. I have to say, I’m loving it. It doesn’t look good. I’m well aware of that. Aside from being too old for long hair, I’ve been…
This was an interesting week. But I guess to tell it right, I have to start with last week. We had a COVID-scare. My brother was showing symptoms and went to get tested. He had been in contact with my parents. Socially distant contact, but still contact. My parents were supposed to be my childcare…
I didn’t think I could be surprised anymore. The past four years have been that bizarre. But when news broke that the FBI arrested a group of terrorists who were planning on kidnapping Governor Gretchen Whitmer and overthrowing the government of Michigan, I have to admit, I was surprised. Though I’m having some trouble figuring…
I’m not, by nature, a person concerned with the short-term. If I lie awake worrying, there’s a better chance that I’m worrying about the eventual heat-death of the universe than what might happen at work tomorrow. An hour, a day, a year are nothing. I can stand on my head that long. Give me the…
When Tom Petty died, I talked about how rare it was for me to be into a musician or band that was popular when they were popular. Van Halen was one of those bands for me. I mostly think of the 80s as a low point for music, but Van Halen was one of the…
I’m tired of people saying there’s no such thing as magic. That’s one of my least favorite features of the modern world. We have science now, so no more magic. There’s Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” When people say that, they usually mean that whatever we are…
