2022 Recap/Jan. 23, 2023 Weekly Roundup (+ Margo Price) (Patreon)

Might as well do this now. 2022 was a strange year for me, marked by some heinous events and losses and some major triumphs. On the whole it was a net gain -- I'm in a better place emotionally than I was a year ago. But looking at 2022 my overall takeaway is "how the fuck?"

2022 RECAP

I didn't explore much contemporary media, but here's some stuff that stood out:

Movies

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

The Northman

Glass Onion

The Bob's Burgers Movie

Books

Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor (Kim Kelly)

Maybe We'll Make It (Margo Price)

Manhunt (Gretchen Felker-Martin)

January Fifteenth (Rachel Swirsky)

On Bloody Sunday: A New History of the Day and Its Aftermath -- By the People Who Were There (Julieann Campbell)

(A shameful lack of Black & Brown authors here, for which I apologize.)

Weekly Roundup (Jan. 23)

My winter break drew me to North Carolina, Connecticut, and then to Massachusetts for a week with my partner Sage. Yesterday I rounded off my travels by spending the day in New York City with my parents Elizabeth and Penn and the delightful Lexi Turner. It was a good time. Dreadfully needed before I came back to Long Island.

I listened to Margo Price's new album Strays on the LIRR train yesterday. It's a strong collection of songs, with Price's usual strength for rebellious bitterness and country wisdom. Yet it's less mercurial than having a psychedelic banger of a lead single as "Been to the Mountain" would indicate. Strays is lugubrious and trad in a way that That's How Rumors Get Started wasn't. It's a well-made album with a number of strong tracks ("Lydia" is rightly acclaimed), but it's less flexible than I expected from Price in 2023.

Reading has been largely disaster-oriented lately. Piers Paul Read's Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors is a classic work of survival non-fiction, documenting the 1972 crash of Uruguayan rugby players in the Andes and their horrific two months of surviving by any means necessary, including eating their dead. It's as compelling and ghastly as it sounds.

Oh! Lothlórien is coming along quite nicely. I'll have that to y'all this week.

And now, the headlines:

Keep an eye on anti-trans legislation this year.

Rolling Stone has some good coverage of Rian Johnson's upcoming murder show Poker Face, a series which I might review for $2+ backers.

NPR has uncovered some execution tapes in my home state of Virginia. Obvious content warnings apply.