Grimace Devouring His Son

Sam Mohler // Instagram

Do You Believe?

Marina Martinez

I recently finished rewatching Ted Lasso, a show about a Kansas football coach (who somehow ends up as a Premier League football coach) dealing with culture shock and mental health but also helping an emotionally stunted sports team (and others) become the best versions of themselves, which is saying a lot for English people.The first two seasons were great! And then something happened and we won't talk about it and a fourth season is somehow forthcoming. That's not the important part.

In Ted Lasso, there's an infamous sign hanging in the team's locker room that simply says 'Believe'. It's a simple but powerful reminder - believe in yourself, your team, and the possibility that things will get better. It's a highly relatable and popular thing to base a story on, even moreso for a show that revolves around the people in it as much as the sport they love. Things may suck, your team may repeatedly lose and be relegated to a lower league, you may never learn what the offside rule in football actually is, but you have to keep faith and believe that everything will happen as it should. Because, like, it will. That's just an inevitability. Everything in life will happen the way it was always going to, whether you were present and aware of it or not. Despite the fact that time is linear and no amount of belief can in fact alter the outcome of anything, we as a species are pretty adamant about the power of our belief.

Long story short, I've been thinking about faith a lot lately.

Religion and spirituality have been a fundamental part of our species since the inception of civilization and society tens of thousands of years ago. Every culture throughout history has told stories to explain the world around them and make sense of things that don't have any immediately obvious explanation - we call these older stories mythology and the newer ones religions, but they are all unfounded, human-made stories that people have carried with them to guide them through the pain and uncertainty that comes with being alive.

And let me make something clear really quick before you start rolling your eyes - I very much dislike those obnoxious people that say 'well it's obvious that no God or gods exist, that's all made up, nothing besides science exists, and I'm smarter and braver than everyone else for knowing this'. Literally shut up! We all believe what we want, and if you believe you're smarter and superior to other people because of your beliefs that's cute but unfortunately you couldn't be more wrong. Nobody's beliefs or faith system should in any way belittle or harm others, and if yours does maybe take a minute to think about why you think like that. I'm sorry if I'm the first one to tell you this, friend, but we're all just scared animals on a big rock hurtling through the universe, and if you're NOT terrified by your own insignificance and mortality then it may be time to do some introspection and have a quick existential crisis.

And honestly, who's to say deities and magic aren't real!!! People found dinosaur bones and obviously did not know about evolution so they MUST be dragons! Sometimes lightning happens but before the discovery of electricity that was just the sky gods demonstrating their wrath upon the world! Look up a map of the frequency of lightning strikes within the continental United States and how eerily similar it is to a map of the Bible Belt, people literally have the fear of God struck into them! Magic is just science we haven't been able to explain yet, and so far nobody has been able to prove or disprove the notion that there may be other beings beyond our planet so beyond our power that we'd think them gods! You can't prove anything. Get out of my kitchen or come back with a warrant.

I'm allowed to talk about religion, I was raised Catholic. This might be obvious, based on the everything about me. I was very active in our parish until one day (after I'd been Confirmed and everything) I was finally allowed to use school as an excuse to stop singing in the choir at the teen mass every Sunday at 6pm. I know the choir was probably sooooo upset to lose me, but alas, I 'forgot' to turn in my hymnal and skedaddled and since then I've only been inside churches for weddings and funerals. Even though I'm definitely not a practicing Catholic anymore, my years in the church left me with something (besides a love of stained glass and The Sound of Music). After having grown up knowing God was real and in charge of anything and then doing some thinking and realizing that maybe was not the case and the Catholic Church (and especially our main priest, Father Joe, who was just fired by the Pope last year) was maybe not the best spiritual leader, I just got left with…a void. An absence of faith.

Even if you don't believe in a higher power or a god or magic or whatever, we all have to believe in SOMETHING. Even if you believe in the fact that you'll keep on living until you die, that's something. Granted, that's a pretty weak belief, so I hope you find something more substantial, but if you can't find something, you just sort of exist. You wake up, hopefully eat, hopefully do something to make money so you can continue to eat in the future, hopefully do something you enjoy, and hopefully sleep so you can wake up the next day. But there's a difference between existing and living, unfortunately, and I think a lot of us are doing the former.

Apologies, but I need to get really vulnerable here for a minute:

I used to believe in Catholicism, and then I had a crisis of faith (and sexuality and gender all at the same time, yeehaw) which was then followed by a mental breakdown (semi-related) and didn't have anything to latch onto and keep me going for a solid year. And yeah, that really, really sucked. I couldn't find the drive to do anything. I was skipping classes, meals, shifts at work. My high school friends had moved on and I hadn't made any new ones. I went to an emergency therapy appointment and was asked where I saw myself in five years and had to lie because I honestly could not picture a future for myself. What was the point?

I remember my lowest day exactly. October 11, 2013. I hadn't texted my dad for his birthday, I knew I had just flunked my Latin midterm, I hadn't eaten in a couple days, and I was sitting on a bench in front of the UT tower just crying in public because I didn't even care if people were watching anymore. I was going to have to drop out of school and move back home and be a failure with no friends and have nobody who cared in my life. And objectively I knew things could be a lot worse but that doesn't matter when several mental illnesses are all presenting at once, you know? And then some guy - I assume another student - came and sat next to me and asked if he could give me a hug. I hadn't talked to anyone in days so I just remember numbly nodding, and then this stranger gave me a hug and just held me so tightly and I cried into his shoulder for a solid few minutes and he just…let me. He rubbed my back as I made a scene in a very public space and he just comforted this random snotty undergrad. And then he told me that things might seem bad now but they would get better, I just had to trust him. By that point my eyes were so puffy I couldn't really see him and GOD I wish I remember what he looked like but I just nodded again and thanked him and he gave me one last hug and the most sincere smile I'd ever witnessed and then walked off. I never saw him again and there's a 50% chance he was an actual angel.

I've never told anybody that story before and I don't think I'll be able to repeat it if asked, but I needed to tell you here, now, in order to make my point here: I believe in kindness. Some random 20-something (or some random immortal being) saw somebody hurting and took a few minutes to comfort them and completely altered the trajectory of their life for the better. And not that I was a bitch before any of that transpired, but since then I have made a concentrated effort to ALWAYS be there for people, because I know they might not have anybody else and I never want anyone to feel like they're alone if I can help it. The kind stranger wasn't an isolated incident - I grew up volunteering with my mom at the soup kitchen and the food pantry and one time she pulled over on the highway to give an unhoused person her umbrella and our Taco Bell order and $20 and I KNOW that those people were changed, even if just for a little bit, by somebody helping them when they needed it.

Life is hard, y'all. None of us asked to be alive and then we just have to deal with it and trying to go through it alone without any help makes it so, so much worse. But I'll tell you my secret: life is just a little bit easier when you believe in things. It doesn't have to be God or gods or any religion. I believe in kindness, and that even the worst people have the capacity to be good (even if it's just buried deep, deep down). I also believe that my tarot cards are (usually) right, and that my mom will somehow ALWAYS call me right after I get an injury and then declare she's psychic and I won't be able to argue otherwise because at this point I honestly think she is. I believe that everyone has a right to do whatever they want with their life, so long as it doesn't negatively impact anyone else. I believe animation is an art form and shouldn't just be 'for kids'. I believe I don't deserve any of my friends, so I'm grateful to have them in my life for however long they'd like to stay. I believe buttered toast and a cup of chamomile with honey is the most comforting (and affordable) meal. I believe that everyone who is wronged will somehow, someday receive justice and peace. I believe in hundreds of other things, some incredibly important and most inconsequential. And every one of these beliefs makes me smile and helps me get through every day, no matter if they're true or not.

I know the state of the world is…bad, at the moment. Things are getting worse, bad people keep winning, good and innocent people keep suffering, and nothing is fair. It's really hard to believe in anything. But I promise, it doesn't hurt to try. Things will get better. You just have to trust me. As corny as it sounds, you just have to believe.

Death Is Not Compulsory, but He Is Expected: Mort by Sir Terry Pratchett

Wendy Fernandez

The fourth Discworld novel begins the Death arc, a series of five books centered around the classically hooded figure and his family. Death - who has appeared in each of the previous books so far - is exactly what you would expect: a dazzling, blue-eyed skeleton wielding an hourglass and scythe. The hourglasses, affectionately called Lifetimers, measure the lifespans of all living beings on the Disc, and alert Death who to visit during the Duty. He rides his biblically pale horse Binky across the Disc reaping the souls of the dearly departed. Although He's not required to attend each death, He appears on special occasions including the deaths of witches and wizards.

Death, as we all know, is the bookmark at the end of life - no one escapes Him (unless you exist in a temporal black hole as an employee of Death Himself, but we'll come back to this later).

It's no wonder that Pratchett chose Death as a subject; before his death in 2015, Pratchett was not only a vocal supporter of euthanasia, but a willing participant. Three years after his Alzheimer's diagnosis in 2008, he began making arrangements for an assisted death at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. He told the Atlantic:

When I am no longer able to write my books, I am not sure that I will want to go on living. I want to enjoy life for as long as I can squeeze the juice out of it -- and then, I'd like to die. But I don't quite know how, and I'm not quite sure when.

There is undoubtedly comfort in a good death (which is also the name of a nonprofit you can support here). In The Art of Discworld, Pratchett relates:

Sometimes I get nice letters from people who know they're due to meet him (Death) soon, and hope I've got him right. Those are the kind of letters that cause me to stare at the wall for some time.

So, pun intended, undertaking writing about Death was no small feat for Pratchett.

The book begins with Death hiring Mort as an apprentice - the coincidence is noted - and introducing him to Ysabell, Death's adopted human daughter. Together they reside in an extra-dimensional realm called Death's Domain.

Existing in an extra-dimensional space allows Death to continuously break the fourth wall. For starters, He speaks in small caps with no parenthesis, a grammatical choice other characters can apparently hear. Mort adopts this voice as he slowly takes over the position of Death but retains the ability to turn it off at will.

But perhaps the most significant instance of fourth wall breaking is the in-story acknowledgement of plot structure from the denizens of Death's Domain. Death hired Mort as an apprentice because He had grown weary of the Duty, and He knows apprentices marry their master's daughters and take over the business - He wanted a son-in-law. Ysabell constantly references fairytales and saves Mort with true love's kiss. Near the end of the story, Mort has an entire conversation with his inner self for the joke of self-awareness, his inner self does not make a sequel appearance. Constant exposition through footnotes in addition to these instances keep the reader aware of the story and support Death existing outside of known reality.

Outside of character, Pratchett explicitly writes "once upon time" (86) and later that "Mort had changed a lot in the last few chapters" (115). He goes even further than this to not only paint a picture of the scene at hand, but to literally direct it as if it were a script.

THERE IS? said Death.

(That was a cinematic trick adapted for print. He was actually in his study, talking to Mort. But it was quite effective, wasn't it? It's probably called a fast dissolve or a crosscut/zoom. Or something. An industry where a senior technician is called a Best Boy might call it anything.)

And a just-for-fun mention: "THAT'S THE NICEST THING - The door slammed on the rest of the sentence."

Through constant reminder that the plot is a device of the novel in its purest form, Pratchett makes certain the reader knows Death is bound to tell the story but not participate.

This idea, in turn, creates the conflict at the center of Mort. Death has grown attached to humanity and fatigued of his job. When Death needs a break, Mort takes over the Duty and returns to the Disc to reap the souls of the departed - all except for the Princess Keli of Sto Lat who he decides to spare. This, as you can imagine, has terrible consequences.

The event horizon, for example, starts to engulf all existence and separate people's minds from their bodies in an attempt to right reality, in fact, Princess Keli's people stop recognizing her entirely since the universe has already decided her dead, and she has to employ the wizard Cutwell to remind citizens that she exists:

In the city of Sto Lat, Princess Keli still ruled, with a certain amount of difficulty and with the full-time aid of the Royal Recogniser... In the lands outside, though... the traditional reality still held sway and she was quite definitely dead, the duke was king and the world was proceeding sedately according to plan, whatever that was.

Pratchett using event horizons as a plot device is not surprising considering how much science and theory he employs in Discworld. We've seen the science behind how light and mass moves through the Disc, and how the Disc moves through space, but a new personal favorite is how Pratchett blends science with religion. The best example of this is through the first mention of Cori Celsti - a ten mile high spire of cold fire where the (900 known) gods live surrounded by mountains where the Listeners live. The Listeners are the oldest religious sect on the Disc who are trying to hear what exactly the Creator said when He created the universe; the gods are divided on whether this is an actual religion. If this is sounding familiar, it's because Pratchett wrote the Cosmic Microwave Background (the CMBR) into his novels. He writes:

Clearly, nothing the Creator makes could ever be destroyed, which means the echoes of those first syllables must still be around somewhere, bouncing and rebounding off all matter in the cosmos but still audible to a really good listener.

This is no different than what our current Roundworld astrophysicists are doing to examine the origins of our universe, and possibly see the Big Bang itself. The CMBR allows us to see redshift and some of the oldest stars in the known universe, the origins of life, the universe, and everything (this reference hopefully landed). Through his time performing the Duty, Mort also learns the importance of humans having something to believe in, and weirdly, we learn about a wizard predestination. Though wizard predestination may not be considered religious, it is considered funny.

Wizards popped up a significant amount in Mort - we actually learned about the origins of the Unseen University and had some world building for the next Discworld novel. Pratchett explains that wizards are celibate (though we won't learn why until the next book), when Mort talks to his inner self he says:

Wizards aren't supposed to - to go out with girls. They're celebrate…

Celebrate?

They're not supposed to youknow…

What, never any youknow at all? said the internal voice, and it sounded as if it was grinning.

It's supposed to be bad for the magic, thought Mort bitterly.

Funny place to keep magic.

Procreation isn't the only way wizards get into trouble with Death. Death's elderly manservant, Albert, is revealed to be Alberto Malich, the founder of the UU who feared the monsters waiting for him in the afterlife (wizard predestination strikes again) and performed a reversed version of the Rite of AshkEnte in the hope of keeping Death away from him. The spell backfired and sent him to Death's side, where he remained in order to put off his demise. Wizards perform the RIte once more at the end of Mort which summons Death as well as the part of Death that had taken over Mort, and this "cures" him of the Duty.

Mort challenges Death to a duel for the souls of Cutwell and the Princess, and though he loses, Death allows them all to live and asks the gods for an altered reality where everyone can live happily ever after. The time Death spent on the Disc hanging out with cats and drinking Scumble until He got not drunk gave Him a soft spot for humanity - ironically humanity is what made Mort a terrifying Reaper. He gives Mort and Ysabell the original reality in a pearl for their wedding gift, and Princess Keli grants them the titles of Duke and Duchess of Sto Helit.

In translations of Mort to languages with gendered nouns, Death's gender changes. For example, despite the feminine noun "la morte" indicating Death should be a woman, the French translator, Patrick Couton, justified the fact that Death is a man by a pun in a footnote: "La Mort est un mâle, car c'est un mal nécessaire" (Death is male because death itself is a necessary evil.) There are dozens of extra jokes and footnotes unique to the languages the novel is translated in, and hundreds of references for multilingual fans to catch.

There are plenty of other references sprinkled throughout the story as well. We visit the Unseen University and see Granny Weatherwax, the Librarian, and Rincewind once again. Happy to report that Rincewind re-enrolled in the University now that the Octavo spell has left his head. There are a couple of references to Gandalf because, "That's the sort of thing you wizard fellows are supposed to be good at," and he references a Pygmy, a reference to his first novel The Carpet People published in 1971. Pratchett is referenced in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics, a work also known for its sympathetic portrayal of Death. Here are the lines side by side:

WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.

― Death in Mort, 1987

When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.

― Death in The Sandman Vol. 3: Dream County, 1991

The pair wrote Good Omens together in 1990, and this isn't the first nod to each other's works we see from either of them.

Though it's not a reference, Mort has an undeniable link to Esk in Equal Rites. They both came from almost nothing, and through literal literacy, were able to transform their lives and go on grand world shaping adventures. Rincewind, too, was shaped by reading a book that in turn shaped the Disc. As an advocate for literacy through scholarships at the University of South Australia and through personal philanthropy aimed at children, the theme of magical literacy develops into a beautiful arc across his early Discworld novels.

This was by far the most cohesive and well written Discworld book of the series (chronologically). It seems that Pratchett grabbed hold of plot structure and rode it bareback through the Disc's sky like the god Helios himself - though Helios is not one of the 900 confirmed gods in Cori Celesti. We won't revisit Death as a protagonist for quite some time, but His appearances in future novels will be filled with new insight and meaning contextualizing the growing Discworld cast into a wonderful ensemble.

After all, THERE IS NO JUSTICE, there is just Death.

I Must Not Be Catered To: Adventures in Broadcasting

Matt Spradling

This is something I've tried to write several times over the years but never quite had the words to express, and I still don't, but it's annoying me again, so here we are.

When I fell in love with Liverpool in 2013, it wasn't because I was seeking a smooth ride (I signed up specifically to suffer) and it wasn't because it was comfortably accessible to me (1. most matches weren't on TV and 2. I didn't have a TV). It was a wide and varied combination of things, many of them arbitrary, but perhaps the biggest reason was the ethos of the city itself. There wasn't quite any analog for it that I'd experienced growing up with American sports, the way a club's culture can be so central to a city and engrained in its history and so explicit in its political ideals and standing these things in opposition to the rest of the country.

That was the initial impetus. What set the hook was the community, by which I primarily mean actual Liverpudlians in the city itself – not Americans like me on social media (although reddit was an invaluable resource in those days), but the actual people that actually live there, the people who the club truly belongs to and lives in symbiosis with, the people who speak its language and have lived its history. In particular, a then-new podcast and now-wider-media outlet The Anfield Wrap, helmed in part by one of my favorite writers, Neil Atkinson, provided an incredible window into hearing about what these magical people in this magical place discussed after and between matches, how they spoke, what they cared about, the joys and the miseries they felt, the way they contributed to the narrative of a season as it unfolded.

Sport in general bears exactly as much importance as we invest it with. When we pour our time and passion and attention and stories into it, that is what we get in return, and like a pooled investment, the more the merrier. It has never been and never can be a private endeavor. It is about the supporters, and their particular experiences and joys and sorrows, because without supporters it would truly be a system of putting arbitrary balls in arbitrary places and moving around some money, and indeed much, much less money and quality. Tree falling in a forest and all that. It is about the lived experience of all involved much more than the trophies in the cabinet.

The reason Liverpool supporters are still just a little blue-balled after nine amazing years winning literally everything under Jurgen Klopp is that we never QUITE got the one true moment of communal catharsis, decisively winning the Premier League together, at home in Anfield, with supporters present. We got amazing moments, including a miraculous Champions League run. And we did win the Premier League, but in a sick twist of fate, it happened right after the pandemic began and the celebration occurred in a surreally empty stadium. We came incredibly close several times, but never got that ultimate let-off, that one true day of days. It didn't happen in front of the people that have gone to those seats every other weekend their entire lives, and it was lesser for it.

So supporters are good. Wider communities are good. Inclusion is good. It is good to have a thriving international contingent of supporters. Money from merchandise and TV rights are helpful. Having local community wherever in the world you may be is helpful. I remember learning early on that having something to say about at least one footballer from each country meant you had a break-glass topic of discussion with any international Uber driver. I learned that if you wore your team's shirt on a night out you'd inevitably find yourself bear-hugging total strangers for that reason alone and feeling love for it. Everybody wants to be a part of something. It's good.

But like satellites orbiting, the whole operation and culture only thrives the way it does because of what's going on at the center. When I was waking up at 6AM my first year in college and watching matches alone on my couch, those were good memories for me, but that was only possible because of what really mattered: what the day felt like as players nervously prepared to come down the tunnel, the various ways the crowd sounded in excitement, nervousness, defiance, the tradition of singing the anthem (not the national anthem mind you), the tradition of being in that place that had been the place for generations, essentially a Mecca but with slightly shorter lines to get in. That was the epicenter and that is what everyone like myself was in it for.

Now perhaps this is where my autistic hangup about being perceived and having an effect on the world comes into play, but it still feels like a categorically true statement to say that altering that center to instead prioritize the satellites is a very fucking stupid idea for all involved.

Over the years, more and more matches began to be shown on US channels, and eventually some deals were struck while ushering in the nightmare era of anti-consumer streaming wherein you could live the dream of watching ALL matches on TV for the cost of over $100/month across three or four different streaming platforms. (Seriously: cable or Hulu Live for half the Premier League, Peacock for the other half of the Premier League, Paramount+ for the Champions and Europa Leagues, and ESPN+ for domestic cup games. I can't wait to see what Disney inevitably does with it.) Along with this – I don't remember when or where or how gradually – as the networks started to smell more and more American money in the water, they decided it would be a good idea to pander to us. Hard.

Fast forward to circa 2018 and beyond and tuning in ten minutes before a match no longer means being in the tunnel with the players listening to the crowd bay, or listening to the anthem, seeing the faces of the people, or soaking up the way the day looks and feels, being gripped by excitement or nerves depending on which twist or turn the season had come to. It instead means watching a panel of hosts up until the moment of kickoff vapidly try to hype you up about seeing a small crowd of American supporters in Charlotte or some random city of the week standing out in a parking lot cheering at the game (themselves) on a little jumbotron. Look how you're feeling!

Staying tuned after the match no longer means soaking in the hopefully celebratory but sometimes downtrodden energy in the stadium, watching the players and coaches find solace with one another while appreciating the view, watching the manager say thank you and throwing fist pumps at the Kop and knowing you're witnessing something special. It instead means cutting after about 30 seconds back to the same tepid dumb crowd of Americans loudly wooing at a camera like college tailgaters or a slideshow of tweeted pictures of your dumb neighbors putting their babies and dogs in team gear, while the same aforementioned hosts continue trying to hype you up about how excited you must be and how cool it is to be American. Owning like 7 of the biggest 10 sports wasn't enough, you're entitled to make this one about you too. Look how you're feeling! Nevermind that the only place you want to see your feelings reflected are, you know, the actual event and people involved.

It's taking something grounded (I can't even use the word authentic because even that has become a marketing buzzword) and turning it into a parodic theme park. It perhaps has similarities to back in the day when facebook first shifted from the thing everyone prefers (posts appearing sorted in unwavering order of age) to the thing nobody prefers (lizard-people tech algorithms trying to figure out what you like to see and inscrutably re-ording things for you while inserting increasingly more ads and promoted content). Where before there was an objective, centered sense of space and time, there is instead a sense of bewilderment, the trees shifting around you as you go so that you never know where in the context of things you are and there is only the infinite scroll, no longer peeking at what's going on in the wider world and instead being submerged into a machine that is trying to feed you something you have little control over and colonizing your brain chemistry in the process. This is perverse and blasphemous, but not in a fun way. 

It essentially feels like taking the primary non-American sport and trying to make it as much like American football as possible. Let me tell you, it's possible to like both, but I don't think "I wish it was more American" is a common wish for Premier League fans. I don't believe most supporters, even the ones getting to see themselves on TV, actually have any desire for that, and if they do, we have absolutely nothing in common, which isn't really the sentiment you want to be feeling about your supposed wider community.

There have even been repeated attempts to get actual Premier League games played in the US. This I simply refuse to believe is something anyone who has ever actually cared about the sport and its culture has ever thought would be a remotely plausible or acceptable idea. Most big clubs already come over to the US most summers for a tour playing non-competitive pre-season matches. This is understandable and not without fun benefits, but it does have to be said that even THAT is more travel and play than is healthy for top-level players who are already being stretched (stretchered) well beyond safe limits in terms of ever-expanding numbers of games crammed into seasons and international tournaments during most off-seasons. Meanwhile organizations like FIFA and UEFA continue to expand their formats and pitch even more additional competitions. There is more of the sport going on than anyone wants, than anyone can handle, and the continued inflation harms the quality of play due to player exhaustion, injuries, and lack of time to prepare for specific matches.

(The week before writing this, the frontrunner to win this year's Ballon d'Or – a sort of universal MVP award – suggested players are close to going on strike over this. The day after writing this he did his ACL.)

We as supporters are watching this thing we love, this culture, get abused and sold out and strip-mined and being made to feel like it's for our benefit. Who in their right mind feels fine about that?

Obviously the answer to all of this is money. That is just how social media and broadcasting works. What's always rankled me is the presumed underlying principle that this masturbatory American coverage is somehow better at garnering views than the way that is clearly objectively better. Either that is not true and broadcasters are just being delusional and everybody loses, or it is true, which makes me very sad (as well as a bitter old purist). We don't even know whether the problem is them or ourselves, and I guess that brings up vaguer questions about how much corporations should be made responsible for protecting and preserving things vs recklessly opening the floodgates to our base desires and raking rewards out of the fallout. I am not sure what the solution is. Perhaps we should condone more online bullying. Is there a type of bullying specifically focused on corporations? Is that just boycotting and piracy? Is this that globalization thing everyone's been talking about? It is like we are intentionally doing it as badly as possible in some sort of accelerationist Randian fever dream.

Anyway, pirating sports has become MUCH easier than back in my day. Literally just google "[sport of choice, e.g. soccer] streams," click the top result, click your desired game, and start trying the listed stream options for ones that don't buffer. All you need is an ad blocker. I mean, even with ads I'm sure it still works, it's just annoying. There you have it. Be free my little pirates. I don't think I'll be back. Tell the Peacock hosts they seem like lovely people but I'd like to burn their infrastructure to the ground.

LEGO Themes in Review, Pt. 3: Misc.

Matt Spradling, Chris Spradling

Pirates (1989-97)

I'd originally planned for Pirates to be a broader installment along with Space and Castle, but there's not enough there quantity-wise. I guess that makes sense – a bunch of ships that are essentially the same but with different colored sails probably have diminishing returns, and beyond that are mostly little set pieces of bridge-and-rock-with-pirate-guy. Then again, that's basically what the Castle Factions era 1 was doing with endless forts with different colored shields. Were pirates as big and central a fantasy genre pre-Pirates of the Caribbean?

Speaking of Factions, Pirates did come in a few different varieties. The core basic-ass pirates ran from 1989 to around 1997 in total; Imperial Soldiers ran concurrently from 89 to 91 and included a neat smaller schooner and a couple island forts; from 92 to 96 these evolved into Imperial Guards which were the same but slightly beefier, and then the third Pokemon evolution was reached in 96 with the Imperial Armada flagship; and finally 94 saw the Islanders series featuring cannibal island tribes, which is a little awkward, but I suppose brought in some much needed variety.

Design: I will certainly give props to a toy series that pits pirates against a colonial faction who are officially the good guys but are certainly not going to be the team any kid is rooting for. I'd say that 1989 was early enough that coming out with a big new piece one could call "⅓ of body of ship" was pretty rare, but it was a great idea because these look a hell of a lot like cool pirate ships despite being made out of blocks which are, by and large, cubic. Less intuitive to design than a castle at any rate. Good job team. 9/10.

Atmosphere: The ocean art is wonderful, but instead I have to talk about the fact that there was a series of official LEGO Pirates audio dramas created in 1990. Unfortunately they're in German. 10/10

Variety: Another castle conundrum. Is it really just a couple ships and a couple islands? Yes. Is that all you need in this case? I suppose, yes. 7/10

Playability: Brother I used to sail these here open seas for hours. That's what happens when Pirates of the Caribbean comes out when you're nine. 10/10

Figures of Note: Parma Sean LaFeet, Gonzo Goldbar, Female Islander

Aquazone (1995-98)

Design: Immaculate. Shiny. Wet. What two better aquatic factions could you have than "bright yellow and dark blue and seems to like science" and "orange laser sharks in the vein of like a West Side Story gang," and also there are magnets and octopi. 10/10

Atmosphere: Top-tier. I think like-spaceships-but-actually-submarines is a criminally underserved genre in all mediums. I know because I went looking for books with this vibe after I binged The Adventure Zone: Ethersea while I had covid and it mostly failed to deliver on this premise. Who doesn't like chilling underwater? Plus you can take them in the bath if you have no dignity. 10/10

Variety: ¯ \_(ツ)_/¯

Playability: I guess I can't say for certain because the only one of these I ever had was the $2 one, but I can imagine real good, and my imagination imagines that underwater works the same way as space when it's just you swooshing things around in your room. 10/10

Figure of Note: Jock Clouseau

Time Twisters (1996-97)

I have no memory of this but I just have to point out how incredibly gay Tony Twister and Professor Millennium are.

I read an article last month about the history of LEGO as a company, and it mentioned that they almost went bankrupt in the 90s, until their Star Wars deal saved them. At the time, I couldn't imagine a company like LEGO ever floundering, but then today I was reminded of Time Cruisers.

What happened here? Did they realize they'd hit a critical mass of specialized painted and prefab pieces that made pretty single-purpose sets but were nearly impossible to use in any novel way, and they were trying to beckon the children back to imaginative free-play building? Did they order too many bricks for their last 6 product lines and some poor patsy got tasked with making them sellable? Did ketamine finally come into vogue in Denmark?

Anyway, if you're half a castle, half a pirate ship, and a bit of a police car short of your ultimate Lego setup and you can't find any fed-up moms ebaying their kids' bucket of random legos, Time Cruisers is a great way to get your idea across the finish line. It's also a great time to reconsider the kind of ideas you have.

Design: Design. Really? We're using that word? 0/10

Atmosphere: Real quote: "The Time Cruisers power their time machines with special hats." I don't know if they're trying to relate to 5-year-olds with inexplicable nostalgia, or match the energy of the emerging "lol random t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m XD" crowd, but they're failing both so badly I'm doubling down on my Danish Ketamine theory. 0/10

Variety: …… sigh …….

Playability: Look. I'll give them this. These playsets defy coherence so staunchly that playing with them actually is kind of transportative. Spinning the wheels of the castle-that's-also-a-train and trying to understand why doing so causes the adjacent satellite dish to rotate is something akin to an age-regression therapy, where you're forced to reason about a machine with all the contextless wonder of a toddler. But like… not really in a good way? 3/10

Closing Thoughts: If there were a Robin Williams movie where he plays an absent and emotionally closed-off Lawyer Dad who gets some wake-up call about needing to reconnect with his kid and he bumbles into it the only way he can think of by taking a job as a creative at a toy company and there's a montage of him learning and growing as he makes progressively less awful bids at relating to children, the first scene of that montage would be where he comes up with Time Cruisers.

Every time I look it gets more insane. I think the Mystic Mountain Time Lab is perhaps the most truly baffling. Why is there a man with a sword in the sky sitting on open flames? Why is there a monkey with a laser gatling gun? Who in 1996 was spending $65 on some mismatched walls on a flat water base piece? This probably shared shelves with Aquazone. There's also a guy sitting on fire in the Twisted Time Train art. What kink is that.

Adventurers (1998-2003)

Design: Perhaps my favorite theme LEGO has done that isn't built on one of the central pillars of spaceship, pirate ship, or castle(ship). Clearly informed by Indiana Jones, but somehow much better off for the generic store-brand originality. I wonder if they would've just done Indy if this had come after breaking the existing-IPs seal with Star Wars. Well, Indy didn't have dinosaurs. 10/10

Atmosphere: Egypt? Jungle? DINO ISLAND? All perfect bangers. (Orient Expedition ended things on a questionable note.) 9/10

Variety and Playability are perhaps one and the same here: boats, cars, planes, guns, tombs, temples, dinosaurs – there's a certain inherent action to it all. I'll admit, much of it is a little less grand in the cold light of 31 than it was as a child, but hey, that can pretty much be said for all of these. And if the memories are the only thing we carry with us day to day, then perhaps the pure imagined nostalgia value is a valid component. Perhaps even the most important, one could argue (not me – I deal in cold, hard plastic).

Figures of Note: Johnny Thunder, Lord Sam Sinister, Slyboots, Baron von Barron, Harry Cane, Rudo Villano

Extreme Team (1998-99)

Design: Ultimately disappointing. A variety of experimental vehicles all with a consistent color code and logo? Sign me up. But no, there's one or two of those and then a bunch of boring stuff. The four matching-but-different-colored-uniforms squadmates is always good though, and the also-color-coded tricycle-motorcycles were pretty sweet. 6/10

Atmosphere: For some reason the crisp blue skies and mountain air foregrounded with daft vehicles is evocative of the vapid, hopeful spirit of pre-9/11 America. 5/10

Variety: Sort of the whole point of the series and still unsatisfying. Feels like it ended with a whimper (literal wooden raft). 2/10

Playability: Fine, but lots of wasted potential. Why does this jet have big wheels on it? Why does this helicopter look like a chair with a propeller on it? Why does this drag racer have a big sail on it? I guess you could argue it's at least unique, but still all sort of disquieting. 3/10

Rock Raiders (1999)

Design: Makes construction futuristic by including the occasional neon green piece. 7/10

Atmosphere: This series might not make sense initially but shows LEGO had developed a very solid understanding of their audience by this point. This bit of description is precisely the kind of insane lore one would cook up in a fevered afternoon: "Rock Monsters are subterranean beings made entirely of rock with glowing red eyes. They feast on the energy crystals used to power Rock Raiders vehicles and are not aggressive unless their crystals are stolen. They are the most common enemy. The best way to kill them is with a Laser Beam. Rock Monsters are theorized by Docs to be remnants of an ancient civilization; when the Rock Raiders first saw them, they assumed that they were statues built by that civilization, but after seeing their activity, Docs came to believe that they may have devolved from an advanced civilization." 9/10

Variety: Essentially different ways to move a rock around, but I guess kids have loved construction vehicles since the dawn of time. The base is cool, though not on par with a castle. 5/10

Playability: I think I was always wary of being tricked into working as a child, so a play mining operation may not have scratched the deepest itch. Plus, the inevitable combat element was clunky - isn't this cave the home of the aforementioned rock monsters? They seem cool and reasonable, I might actually be on their side. Killing them with a big drill felt less like war and more like a canned safari hunt. Still, they somehow basically still included spaceships. 6/10

Arctic (2000)

Design: While this series claims the illustrious and beloved Ice Planet 2002 as its heritage, it ended up as an offshoot of the City theme with… well, the same stuff as the rest of City, but in orange and the lil guys wear parkas. Truly the Gladiator 2 of lego themes. 2/10

Atmosphere: Look. In 1993 we dreamed almost a whole decade into the future and came back with a stark and forbidding Ice Planet that demanded the toughest and neonest of Lil Guys to go explore it and risk their very sanity. In 2000 we dreamed 0 years into the future and thought hey what kinda cars do you think they use on the snow up north. To celebrate the dawn of the millennium they invented Canada. 0/2000.

Variety: Yowza. I think I included this series in the list because I mistakenly remembered it having SOME cool stuff, but there's painfully little there, huh? A passable snowmobile for $1.99 is a pretty good get, and the base has a polar bear figure. That's really about all that can be said for it unless you have a passion for snow plows, which I imagine is a doomed gambit because Texan children won't know wtf they are and northern children will be sick at the sight of them.

Playability: Was the polar bear the villain? Fair enough I guess, but if the crux of this series was "surviving when it's cold and maybe science," it really is Ice Planet 2002 but worse in every way. Along with Knights' Kingdom this is really shredding some nostalgic illusions I had about a supposedly golden year for LEGO. Though to be fair LEGO Star Wars was really entering its heyday around this point and that kind of took priority.

BIONICLE (2001)

They should have been scary. Bewildering at the very least. Alien, uncanny, like a soon-forgotten dream of mashed up LEGOs and action figures. But I was 8 and wasn't in the habit of questioning things, so instead a dank corner of my brain became permanently allocated to whatever all this was.

No sets, no vehicles, no villains, just dudes in jars.

I remember a vague sense that BIONICLE had way more actual lore than most LEGO stuff did, and yet I never actually dug into it, or at least didn't remember it. And there was some sort of moody flash game that felt a little like Myst?

Kind of like Pokemon (Yellow > Gold), I had intense love for the initial run and then completely checked out for later generations, and would sometimes see glimpses of what was being done years later and feeling very weirded out by it. Is that when I became an if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it guy? This philosophy has not served me well in the tech startup world.

Side note: why did I always gravitate towards beige LEGOs early on? Was that my choice or thrust upon me by the universe? My first sets were the yellow rally car (as beige as LEGOs used to get), Luke's landspeeder (beige), little Adventurers jeep (beige), and so of course my BIONICLE was Pohatu, the (beige) dude in jar amidst all the other brightly colored dudes in jars. He didn't even have a weapon, he just kicked rocks, and I loved him.

10/10

Soccer (1998-2002 but mostly 2006)

This is, no shit, a major part of how I came to love soccer (the actual sport) and simultaneously an early major sign of autism that whooshed right over everyone's head. No need to get into it I suppose; who is still reading, it's the end of LEGOs like post-Cold War was the end of history.

As "playable" as all LEGOs were, the whole endeavor still ultimately boiled down to a kid mashing blocks together with varying layers of intervening imagination. The sports LEGOs on the other hand (though I have no idea how well the basketball and hockey rigs worked) were, like, ACTUALLY functional and playable.

Suffice it to say that this baby is as fun when you're 12 and carefree as it is when you're 25 and drunk at your parents' house for Christmas with nothing else to do, and what more can you ask for?

Matt's Weekly Lunch-Break Crisis

Matt Spradling

How much openness is enough?

Sometimes it feels like you can split people into a couple common categories (or slightly more realistically, on the ends of a spectrum): people who seem to have their opinions established and know what they know and are ready to take those stances unquestioningly to war, and people who seem to constantly be rewriting their beliefs and absorbing and trying to learn. Negative labels for these polarities might be, say, debatelords and pushovers. More positive might be confidence vs…credulity? Open and Closed, I guess, is the simplest.

I've always been sort of in awe of closed personalities, like that dude at our coffee shop of yore that constantly made Alex very upset with his insane music takes (e.g. "One time he said that sgt pepper was a bad album and when I argued with him he said It's so annoying arguing with musicians because they think they know more about music just because they play"). These are people that have not only never admitted they are wrong in their life, but transcend right and wrong altogether and will argue over any arbitrary position. It seems to me like, in order to react so staunchly and immediately to differing opinions, you'd have to be constantly wary, walls up, ready to go. It's a full-time endeavor. The state of mind doesn't sleep.

That is not to say they are all that extreme or insufferable. I also know some extremely good and pleasant people that just happen to have reached a point where they like what they like and there is seemingly no room for anything new.

Meanwhile my credulous ass can't help but automatically assume that if someone is asserting something then it is real and correct and the way the world is and my brain scrambles to try to shift my reality to make it line up with this new heliocentric paradigm, and it's not until I've spun my wheels trying to make this work to no avail that I start to question whether I actually believe what they've said and whether they may not actually be an authority of a higher power than I. Perhaps this comes from being the youngest sibling to an older sibling gifted at making things sound impressive. Maybe it's autism, maybe it's Maybelline.

This may not be how it works at all but it's often felt like these exist on a timeline, like it is normal and youthful to be open and impressionable, and then at some point you find yourself as an adult with closed borders, as if you make the decision to close up shop one day/decade. It's sort of like in deck building games where you start off drawing cards for the round and you have the opportunity to mulligan your draws or even start completely over at the expense of hand size, but at a certain point you have to decide, ok, these are my cards and it's time to play with them. Obviously life is not a card game or I would have way more magic powers than I do, but we're trafficking in feelings here. When I was younger I always felt like I was waiting to become something, and yet simultaneously I always understood that the present is all there is and you live it or lose it, both opposite extremes coexisting, reality strung somewhere in the average between them like an improvised pool volleyball net.

Does that happen? Is there a point when closed people become closed? If they're staking their life that one album is better than another, well, they had to be open to trying those albums for the first time at some point, unless they were born already stanning one. There's an In Utero joke there somewhere. Is there a point where it pays to start just playing your cards? Does remaining fully open make you less effective at, I don't know, enjoying your darlings, or advocacy or career choices? Obviously this will all remain a bit of a vague mess as long as I'm lumping things like music in with, say, politics, but I don't plan on fixing that.

It can be too much. I remember being like 19 and feeling like I was pretty much immune to being shocked or disturbed by things and I didn't care what gruesome things I saw online, and felt like, in a weird way, I owed it to the world to be a witness to its nightmares. A decade later and the cumulative effect of that sucks. You can be scrolling through reels before bed and Instagram randomly decides it ought to show you a fatal car accident. So many news stories are just about awful but mundane things that happened for no reason. (I don't mean like stories about current events happening in war. Those are purposeful and important and political support affects them. I mean stuff like "Ohio 5-Year-Old Dies In Hot Car ¯ \_(ツ)_/¯ " or whatever.) Like, who the fuck is that meant for and who enjoys constantly seeing massive downers we can't do anything about over breakfast? The more you're exposed to stuff the more your imagination picks it up and reminds you about it happening all over the place all the time every day and it's not a fun state to exist in if you, you know, aren't a fan of animals suffering to death, say.

Another angle: exposure is prerequisite to ethical consumption. When I became vegetarian in high school, it wasn't a choice at first; I learned about and saw what goes on in factory farms (and advocate all you want for supporting family farms but the big companies are where we get 99% of our stuff, at least at the time, but that's a different topic) and it made me unable to eat meat for like a week, like physically, not just in terms of sensibility. Once that initial shock was wearing off, it occurred to me that, if I were to go back to doing the thing that I was unable to do due to the simple fact of being exposed to its reality, that would be dishonest of me, that would be willfully ignorant, ignoring a reality that I knew was out there, just for the sake of my own comfort. It follows that, really, if I were to return to eating meat I should have to first expose myself to that reality again, and make an informed choice, but I don't want to revisit that, so I don't eat it. And, flipping it, because I don't partake in that system, I don't feel the need to make myself suffer by exposing myself to its reality all the time. There would be no point, just making myself sick. So, witnessing suffering is important when it is an issue people need to learn about and make informed decisions about, a la school shootings or the Middle-East, that is what journalism is about; but, it is maddening to be made to witness suffering that does not fall into that category, seemingly just for the sake of it (or clicks).

How did I get here from music?

It feels like a symptom of the tribe getting too big. Not only is there too much going on to absorb like a sponge, but we naturally want to do something with it, to have an effect on our world and some sort of influence in our community, but when that sphere becomes, say, 350 million Americans, about three of whom we regularly see face to face, we are no longer able to participate in a way that feels meaningful, and I think that's one reason (of many) that some people snap and go insane; they're just trying to move the ball a yard, but it's actually a boulder, and heaving on it isn't doing anything, so they break out the C4.

Growing interconnectedness is good (and inevitable) but requires increasingly good organization and communication. It's a good thing the internet and TV aren't actively being used to sow discord and push us further apart. Not to mention AI coming in on the horizon to kersplode the last vestiges of trust we can have in news. Not only do I think we're justified in trying to scale our exposure back a little bit, it might be necessary to stay sane. It won't be like it was before, though. That's some garden of Eden shit. If paradise was Saturday morning cartoons pre-Bush administration.

There are very important things to keep up with, but destroying yourself during the other 23 hours of the day isn't going to do those things any good. We are not important enough to be martyrs. Is that the point of this? Lunch is over and I must go clock in for another shift at the sitting-down factory.

.

Admissible Hypnosis

Matt Spradling

Hey real quick: did you know police used to regularly employ hypnosis as a means of gathering evidence from witnesses?

I was digging through different types of state government licenses that exist for something in my job which shall not be named and one caught my eye, because that one was "Licensed Investigative Hypnotist," which I think would catch anyone's eye.

This is basically the practice of lulling a witness into a hypnotic state to enhance their power of recall, and was used thousands of times by the state troopers/investigators of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Do you want to take a guess at what year the first law was passed banning hypnosis as a means of admissible testimony in the state of Texas?

(Hint: it rhymes with pwenty-qwenty phree)

Do you want to guess whether the practice has sent people to death row?

(Hint: yes)

Not only were details and appearances recalled during hypnosis used to convict people, they have also been ignored when the witness subsequently changed their mind about the details they recalled and pointed the finger at suspects who looked completely different than what they'd described while undergoing hypnosis. So it was sort of a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose procedure in terms of benefiting criminal prosecution.

I'm not saying it was necessarily being used maliciously, but it is true that the wider psychological community generally regards the practice as being, say, "bunk," or "unreliable," or "horseshit," and its long years of use reflect a certain lack of adherence to experts. It's true you shouldn't attribute to malice what can instead be explained by ignorance, but it's also true that past a certain point ignorance becomes malicious if it is sustained willfully.

Anyway here's a picture I made of Alakazam being a police

An Official List of Lyrics That Should Be Charged With Murdering My Feelings

Loh Hunt

From the 2021 vault when I was really hitting the feelings after a tough time. Classic.

Hey.

Now is the time when I tell you that I do not pay attention to most song lyrics. There are two groups of music listeners- those who value music for the lyrics and those who value the melodies. I fall into the latter category. Recently I've been trying to be a more distinguished gentleman, so I really try to listen to what artists are actually saying with their words. Sometimes this is very good. You learn good life lessons like: "Fuck Bitches. Get Money." Other times this is very sad because you hurt your feelings.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will absolutely destroy my soul and make me question my existence.

Anyways… Here's a list of really good hurtful song lyrics that punctured my lil steel toed heart.

To say I didn't love you would take all that I have; I forgot at the time what was to lose; Now it's three warm bottles of cheap Spanish wine; To get through my first midnight without you.

-Cheap Spanish Wine, Dalton Domino

It's going to take 4 bottles of wine to get through the emotional damage done by this song. If you want a good cry after a breakup that should have happened- this is the tune for you.

I wish that I could speak to you like there is nothing wrong; Wish I could go back to before I; Wrote this song and tell you I loved you; And you would smile and you'd say "Me too"; But something's changed; It's not the same and I know it was all my fault

-Comedown, Joesef

Have you ever messed something up really badly with someone you cared a lot about? I imagine this is how that feels. Allegedly. There's also a hauntingly beautiful French influence to this song that makes it even more sad.

On the day you left I could tell by your text; That you were gonna ruin my life

-Bug Eyes, Mt. Joy

What kind of psycho opens a song with those two lines?

How low can you go?; Can you go down low? All the way to the floor?

-Cha Cha Slide, DJ Casper

Really fucked up of someone to directly ask you how low your lowest point is.

And I've been learning how to lose a thing; I never laid a hand on all along; Well good lord Lorrie, I love you; Could it go more wrong

-Good Lord Lorrie, Turnpike Troubadours

Turnpike is very very good at disguising their sad girl song lyrics with happy harmonica beats. It's truly an art form.

Wanna talk about forever like it's a real thing

-What a Woman Wants to Hear, Anderson East

I don't think this one was intended to be sad, but that somehow makes it even more sad. It's hard when you can't trust that the plans you envision together will come true.

I don't think you're ready for this jelly; I don't think you're ready for this jelly; I don't think you're ready for this

-Bootylicious, Destiny's Child

Thanks a lot for rubbing it in that we are in an Uncrustables shortage. Not a day goes by where I do not think about those little jelly treats.

Hey.

It's 2024 Loh. Happy to report the Uncrustables shortage is no more! They even made a new flavor. I have yet to try Raspberry Uncrusties yet, but I have high hopes. Anyways, here are some more lyrics that minced up my heart since I wrote the blurbs above.

Know it's for the better

-Waiting Room, Phoebe Bridgers

Phoebe has a way of making you sad when you have nothing to be sad about. This song seems to disappear off Spotify and then somehow reappear on my playlists at random points during the year like a bad ex who won't leave your Insta DMs alone. This song repeats "Know it's for the better" over and over for a heartbreaking 3 minutes and 24 seconds. There's debate online if she alternates between "Know it's for the better" and "No, it's for the better" as she sings. Either way it's an attempt at convincing yourself of something your heart isn't quite ready to hear.

And if love was contagious I might be immune to it Pain is Cold Water

-Live from Fenway Park, Noah Kahan

The live version of this gives a special oompf to the sad factor. The first time I heard that line I dropped the water glass I was holding.

I hope you threw a brick right into that stained glass; I hope you're with someone who isn't scared to ask; I hope that you're not losing sleep about what's next; Or about your soul and what He might do with it

-The Great Divide [Unreleased], Noah Kahan

This song is really fucking hard to get through if you've ever struggled with the church and have ever had a full blown crisis wondering if you can return to Christianity after deconstructing. Allegedly.

'Cause I'll be an old woman with somebody else by my side; But I will always be in love with how you loved me; When we were twenty-five

-Twenty Five, Lake Street Dive

They really put that one in writing and recorded it and released it. They really did that. The concept of "the one who got away" is a difficult thing to think about. I think about the "somebody else by my side" and my heart hurts from that somebody. The person they love the most sits next to them loving someone else's memory. Yikes.

Wastin' away again in Margaritaville; Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt; Some people claim that there's a woman to blame; But I know it's my own damn fault

-Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffet

RIP Jimmy. RIP the shaker of salt. RIP to my heart when I think about a man stumbling around a shitty all-inclusive resort searching for something he knows he'll never find. Not only is he searching for the impossible, he's also trying to make himself forget about a love his actions caused him to lose. P.S. There is a version by Tobacco City that makes this song SAD.

TL;DR I have absolutely fire playlists that will boost anyone's mood. HMU on Spotify.

Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

Matt Spradling

This began as an Office Chart entry, but why not. Tomorrow's Modern Boxes by Thom Yorke turns 10 this month, which is wild. It came during my college days, in the fall, just sort of dropping out of the sky one morning like a quirky little bleepy bloopy, nonsensically titled meteor, and I love it for that.

Before The Smile came along recently, it was Thom's best project outside of Radiohead, and probably also the most overlooked. It stands out from everything else he's ever done as being his true foray into electronic music, unlike the beautiful hybrid amalgamations of your Kid As and Erasers, building on synthetic beats from the ground up and pulling you in with repetition and gradual progression rather than more traditional song hooks and structures. What's there is subtler but no less groovy and becomes infectious over time.

On top of being his least typical work sonically, it is also lyrically unique, and I would argue perhaps the most open and vulnerable he's been before or since. Radiohead lyrics typically range from abstract to absurd to horrific to confused. In Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, the words are often still obscured (it is frequently difficult to identify words sung, heightened by the lack of official accompanying lyrics, although the lyrics currently on Spotify seem to be 100% accurate and have helped clarify many things for me, so perhaps they got ahold of them one way or another), but once you shine a light on them, they are blunt, honest, even remorseful, more often alighting on personal, internal monologues.

Consider Truth Ray:

Tender love's caught an easy ray
And now I've lost everything
In the dust in your eyes and in your hair
A rose colored evil ray

Tender love's caught an easy ray
It won't let go, won't let go
Don't let go, don't let go
Have you no mercy, no mercy?

What that now awakens me
And all of this is on my head
Oh my God, oh my God
All my life, thin, thin, thin

Plead atop of heavy synths churning like something giant underground, these lyrics begin as haunted and at the mercy of fate before collapsing down into personal resignation. That final verse is not typical Thom writing and feels extremely exposed.

Also see The Mother Lode:

and now the clown jumps off the ladder
a shallow pool but it doesn't matter?
the way it goes the way it goes
he's falling thru barriers and hedgerows
a hollow man a hollow hand puppet
where's the applause when you need it???!!

[Precise written grammar is ignored which is how you know the lyrics are direct from Thom]

i'm a clown you don't wanna know me
the knife behind the curtain
my truth is ordinary
–
you can't see your way out of this one
it makes a joke but nobody listens
at least he does not know it
the last of all his courage

This track sounds more upbeat and comical, but still grappling with an inward collapse, the tightly repeating beat carrying you along for six minutes like a ride you can't get off of.

That's not to say the album is not without its bangers; frontloaded with energy, it begins with A Brain In A Bottle, my favorite sonically, cracking things open with a dark sort of dance. It also has an excellent, trippy video featuring Thom at his best, which is to say his most crazed, dirty wizard self.

This is followed by Guess Again!, a shadowy, paranoid track reminiscent of Paradise Circus by Massive Attack and Hope Sandoval.

It's also just remarkably solid. If there's one area it starts to slip, it's towards the end when There Is No Ice doesn't really do enough to justify its runtime and then Pink Section further dampens the energy despite being an interesting little ambient piece on its own and leading beautifully into the closer. Other than that, there's always more to appreciate than I remember going into it, and I wish it was longer (including lone b-side YouWouldn'tLikeMeWhenI'mAngry would have improved things by every metric).

People often say that A Moon Shaped Pool is Radiohead's breakup album, but I don't think that's true; I think it's more generally about mourning and loss, when it's about anything, and that this is what a Thom Yorke breakup album looks like. So much of it is bleak, wandering, stressing over intimate relationship dynamics, breaking in two, getting through the bad times. All members of Radiohead are intensely private, and I don't think it pays to speculate about their personal lives, but around this time it was announced that Thom and his decades-long partner had "amicably separated," so god knows what Thom was working through at the time.

As usual, artist-in-residence Stanley Donwood and Thom combined to create artwork that matches and enhances the album, in this case a barren, charcoal landscape full of craters, evocative of either an alien moon or a battered no-man's-land, and this is where it feels like the listener is floating along while listening, flickering and contorting like the unexplained green laser shape.

This has always felt personally fitting to me because, dating back to high school at least, I've always considered September to be the worst month – not only has it tended to be full of unexpected mishaps and devoid of windfalls, it's just generally bleak. It was the worst parts of starting school without the meager upside of things being ostensibly new and exciting in August. It's the worst of summer and fall combined, a full extension of August's heat into a period that feels like it should be nicer because the months end in "-ber" now, stretching my resilience to the weather beyond my breaking point. Each year I enter it with resignation and limp out of it a hollow shell wishing to hibernate until the week before Halloween. I guess Green Day was right about this too.

It's nice to have an album that so accurately accompanies this bloodless march, through the bad times, waiting to grow tall again. And the thing is, despite the harrowing subject matter, it feels so loving, which is odd. There's always a bit of warmth in the cold, and at no point do things turn angry or accusatory. From beginning to end the album retains a certain amount of compassion and hope as it searches and searches for a safe haven. It is my September balm of choice.

Office Chart

When You Believe - Michelle Pfeiffer, Sally Dworsky

The Prince of Egypt is one of the best movies ever made. They assembled religious scholars from all over the world to agree that it was good and accurate and you don't have to be religious at all to feel things about it. I have a vivid memory of my family going to Sister Debra and Sister Bernadette's house (they were probably a couple, huh) and eating Texas shaped pasta and watching this and all of us cried. But anyway, belief is powerful, but coupled with action it can make you unstoppable.  -Marina

Screamland - Father John Misty

I can't explain why this song is good but god does it punch me in the throat, especially in combination with its video, an iphone-shot road trip through the night, finding the perfect combination of all things as the blown-out noise of the second chorus hits. It just makes me think about America. We are living in the future and it is exactly the one we have been creating for ourselves.  -Matt

Oh! Sweet Nuthin' - The Velvet Underground

I've been listening to this a lot lately, and I think it's fixing me. It's either helping or making things worse, TBD.   -Marina

Image - Magdalena Bay

Tell me why I have watched this video (and its followup Death & Romance) 30 times in the last two weeks. Is it just pretty? Am I into psychedelic stuff now? At any rate I'm new to Magdalena Bay but I would describe the sound as like if Grimes, instead of taking the wrong drugs and being a moron, did the right drugs and started hanging out with Daft Punk. This is a special album and it has unlocked a strange wave of creativity and some sort of new mystery emotion lying dormant deep within me like Unknown in the caves of OG Pokemon which I am only just now remembering for the first time in like 20 years do you see what I mean what is happening am I high  -Matt

Season of the Witch - Donovan

I've almost definitely put a cover of this song in here before, but who cares, it's a good song. Also it's been Halloween for like a month now so if you're not already in the Zone get there quick or you won't pass the inspection!  -Marina

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