I’ve decided that I want to start using this thing as a dumping ground of all the stuff I’m currently into every so often as a way of cataloging my ever-shifting obsessions. 

I suppose I should separate this into various sections, for clarity’s sake. And so, I’ll start with: 

Music 

At the moment, I’m on a quest to assemble every single rock song that I enjoy into a single playlist. As you can imagine, I’ve been busy. The playlist just passed the fifteen hour mark, but more importantly, I’ve been revisiting a lot of really cool albums in the process. 

Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness by the Smashing Pumpkins is an album that I’d heard all of five times in full before a couple weeks ago. I’ve since tripled that number. It seems there would be too many elements at work here to fully come together, but that pushing and pulling at the conventions of mid-90s alternative is what left this album in the public consciousness so long after similar stuff has all but faded away. 

(suggested tracks - Galapogos, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans)

The Execution Of All Things by Rilo Kiley has been one of my favorite albums for some years now, but I’ve recently found it reentering my life like an old friend. Rilo Kiley is one of the bands that I always have trouble recommending because I’m not altogether sure what sort of music they make or who sounds much like them. This album is their best because it rises and falls with Jenny Lewis, one of the finest voices in music, I know that. It is at once joyous and deeply morose. I can’t imagine a time before these songs were lodged in my memory. 

(suggested tracks - My Slumbering Heart, A Better Son/Daughter, With Arms Outstretched)

Brick Body Kids Still Daydream by Open Mike Eagle is an album rich enough in allusion and subtext that I will most likely dedicate a chapter to it in my eventual book of essays. (I’m working on it!) Mike is many things--a comic lover, a rapper, a poet, a Chicagoan. He made a concept album that functions as a love letter to the Robert Taylor Homes public housing project. You’ll be won over by his personality very quickly and you’ll never run out of fun new things to unearth about this monument to a place many would not mourn. 

(suggested tracks - Happy Wasteland Day, (How Could Anybody) Feel at Home, My Auntie’s Building) 

Podcasts

The Infinite Now is a podcast by Richard Penner, under the alias Timescanner. It’s a multimedia project that skews heavily toward sci-fi. I could attempt to sell you, but I could never word it better than the man himself - “The Infinite Now celebrates wonder. The Infinite Now explores the past and the future. The Infinite Now tells stories at every scale, from quantum foam to human frailties to the love lives of dark matter galaxies.” My favorite episode is only a little over five minutes long, so it’s perfect for introductions and very much pulls you into this strange world right away. 

(suggested episode - Time Loop Awareness Day, rated T) 

That’s all for now, but I’ll be back another day to share some more random stuff from my life. Thanks for reading!