February Blog-a-Thon Fails Spectacularly

“There are still lofty dreams, meager desires, and still sillyness.”

— Kira/Watt, “Situations at Hand”, The Minutemen, 1985.

So, yeah, sorry. At the beginning of this month, I told you’d I’d be posting some kind of entertaining thing here every day during February. Within five days though, I had abandoned the idea, without even telling you.

You just can’t depend on me.

I’ve been in a reflective frame of mind, a bit more so than usual, for a while now. I’ve been thinking about the past, present, and future, and the points where they all converge. I’m not certain, though, which of my thoughts on this convergence I feel like sharing in this forum.

To be honest, as someone who has had some kind of “blog” happening for more than 20 years, I don’t always see the point of continuing to maimtain this online presence. Maybe I’ve become too self-conscious, but the line between having something interesting to say and being insufferably narcissistic feels dangerously easy to cross these days.

On the other hand, just dropping out completely doesn’t feel like much of an option either. For now, I think the solution to this self-imposed dilemma is go with a weekly check-in. That’s what this entry is all about.

This is my weekly check-in.

Hot Spots! Storied Plots!

I gave the first of my three scheduled 2024 tours at Laurel Hill Cemetery last Saturday, February 10. It was one of LHC’s general interest “Hot Spots & Storied Plots” tours, my own version of a Laurel Hill’s Greatest Hits tour. I had a fun, enthusiastic group joining me for the tour. This always helps.

I have been giving tours at Laurel Hill since 2013. One thing that I have recently noticed is that, while I have written a bit about LHC and its “permanent residents”, I have rarely written in any detail about how a particular tour has gone. It’s almost as if each tour happens for me and the people who attend, we all hopefully go away having enjoyed the experience, and then the tour itself just disappears into the ether, just like the people I’ve spoken about on the tour. And that might just be fine.

One thing I will say about cemetery tours — to continue the music/greatest hits analogy — is that, like a kickass concert, a great cemetery tour ought to feature a solid “set list”. When I think about this, I am reminded of what Sammy Davis Jr. once noted during an onstage monologue on one of his amazing live albums: if you have a stellar opening and an excellent closing, the middle will take care of itself.

Sammy is right. What is true of the stage in a fabulous Vegas showroom is just as true for a historic cemetery tour. The guide needs to grab their tour group’s interest right away. If they can do that, they’ll be able to sustain the group’s interest throughout the tour.

I’ve got more thoughts on cemetery setlists — because, of course I do — which I’ll share he once I’ve thought them out a bit more.

Books! Books! Books! 

This was a big book week for me. I re-read a book, read another book, and completed yet another one. Three books in one week! I haven’t done this in years. I start books but my follow-through hasn’t been great. Here’s what I read this week:

• Born Standing Up — Steve Martin. This was my re-read. I read it when it was published in 2007, and have had my hardback ever since. I loved it, and found myself dipping back into it this week, so much so that I took the complete plunge and read it from cover-to-cover. Born Standing Up has held up well, I think in part because Martin took the assignment — writing a memoir in which he focuses on the development on the aesthetic behind his original standup comedy — seriously. It’s not a humorless book, but Martin is not joking around either. His insights into what made his standup so funny are fascinating.

• Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) — Jeff Tweedy. I’ve had a paperback of Tweedy’s 2018 memoir on my shelf for several years now, but had not cracked it open until this week. Hot on the heels of Born Standing Up, I felt like diving into what I hoped would be an insightful but punchy life story and that’s what Tweedy delivers. He moves seamlessly from his childhood into his experiences in influential Americana band Uncle Tupelo and on to his subsequent adventures in Wilco, and beyond.

• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy — Jenny Odell. This bestseller was published in 2019, though I think I picked it up the following year. Theoretically, it was supposed to be lockdown reading but I didn’t get far into it in 2020. However, my current ambivalence about social media led me back to How to Do Nothing, so I restated it in January. While the book is just over 200 pages long, it is so dense with ideas that it was becoming a bit of a slog. I was 20 pages away from finishing it up so once my peeks into the lives of Martin and Tweedy were complete, I returned to finish How to Do Nothing. As I said, it’s a bit of heavy book, but if you’re looking for ways to recalibrate your relationship with social media, you’ll find great ideas to ponder here.

Time to Spare! Update

If you have been keeping up here over the last year, you’ll know I’ve occasionally talked about creating a podcast called Time to Spare!, in which I go bowling with one other person, then have a one-to-one conversation in alley snack bar. That conversation becomes the podcast.

I had to put Time to Spare! on the shelf for a while, but I’m still serious about it. I even have two great theme songs, courtesy of Mike Fisher and Sean Fisher. So, if you think you’d like to go bowling with me sometime, let me know. Maybe we can arrange to have some time to spare together.

That’ll be it for me. I’ll catch you, hopefully, next Sunday. Until then, I wish you the best Feb. 19 - 24, 2024 ever!