Watching The Planets

We broke our unplanned summer hermithood this week, not just once, but twice. Thursday night we took part in what was billed as the World’s Largest Sound Bath and City-Wide Meditation — an hour of lying on yoga mats and blankets in the grass at Columbus Commons with a thousand other people, as we were bathed in waves of sound coming from a array of instruments. Some folks referred to this as an “ocean of harmony.”

Sound baths are purported to have some therapeutic effects, helping with stress, fatigue, and depression. I’d never heard of a sound bath prior to Thursday. After experiencing one, I am not fully sold on their curative powers. That said, was it peaceful to lie under a blanket, the sky overhead all big and black pierced only by the occasional star and aircraft running light, while ambient music was blasted at me? Absolutely. And perhaps that’s enough.

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On Friday night, we went to another symphony, this one of the more traditional variety: Gustav Holst’s THE PLANETS, performed by the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

So many people — including me — think “classical music” and picture these dry, fusty chamber pieces made by long-dead white dudes wearing powdered wigs. You know, music that’s really great to fall asleep to. Well, Holst was a white dude and he has been dead for nearly a century, but, to the best of my knowledge, he never wore a powdered wig, and THE PLANETS has a frisson running through it that is anything but sleep-inducing. You listen to it and understand where generations of sci-fi film composers must have drawn some inspiration.

“Mars, The Bringer of War” is a banger, thunderous and ferocious, and is easy to love. It’s my favorite suite, but “Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity” is a very close second. “Jupiter” feels less like an army is on its way to crush you, see you driven, etc., and more like you’re an adventurer off on some kind of star tr — uh, expedition.

My introduction to THE PLANETS was, of all things, an early episode of THE VENTURE BROS. Henchmen 21 and 24 sing “Mars, The Bringer of War” while they prepare to resume their henching jobs. It’s a funny scene and I was quite taken with “Mars,” so I downloaded a copy of THE PLANETS and gave it a listen. I’ve wanted to see it performed live ever since. I’m happy to report back to Past Josh: it was as cool as we’d always hoped it would be.

A visual tour of the Solar System, created by NASA, played above the orchestra, that followed the music as Holtz took us from planet to planet. It was unexpected but really cool. Photo by Jess.

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My Friend, Stephen

In 2018, back in the Before Time, when dinosaurs, not COVID, ruled the earth, and I still worked in an office full-time, I was introduced to this peculiar old white dude who had a strong “Bahstahn” accent and who bore an uncanny resemblance — in appearance, attitude, and temperament — to Mike Ehrmantraut from BREAKING BAD. His name was Stephen, and he was brought on to lead a department adjacent to mine. After a couple of interactions, a few things about Stephen quickly became apparent to me: he was wickedly funny, loved to challenge people to think differently, did not suffer fools or tolerate bullies, and was fiercely protective of his people. Over time, it would be my privilege to become one of “Stephen’s people.”

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Stephen Flannery died a little over a month ago, unexpectedly and under circumstances that have made his death even harder than it already would have been otherwise — but which are not mine to share. Five weeks later, and it still feels surreal.

We had a “celebration of life” for Stephen at work last week — a term and event Stephen would have professed to loathe, even though on the inside he would secretly be flattered and happy. Over a hundred people from multiple states attended in person and another 150 called in on Teams — all of them showing up to share their favorite stories about a man who had left the organization six months previous. Nearly everyone that was there cherished Stephen in some fashion. I say “nearly” because I do not doubt that at least a few folks secretly showed up just to make sure Stephen was, in fact, dead. This makes sense when you understand how someone once described Stephen as the best friend you could ever hope for or the worst enemy you could be confronted with. I remember how delighted Stephen was when he related that story to me. Because that was Stephen — a man for whom there was very little middle ground.

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Within six months of meeting Stephen, the area in which I worked experienced sudden upheaval. I made it another six months before it became untenable for me to remain there. That’s when Stephen offered me the opportunity to come work for him in an entirely different part of the organization, one which I knew fuck-all about. I pointed this out and he told me he wasn’t hiring me for my subject matter expertise, he was hiring me because I was a good leader. It was the best career move I ever made.

Over the next five years, I got to know Stephen better as he progressed from colleague to mentor, to one of the best leaders — and people — for whom I’ve ever worked. Somewhere along the way, we also became friends.

As I noted earlier, Stephen left the organization in January of this year. This should have been a major bummer, but our small team was strong and Stephen’s successor appeared to be (and was) a good fit. There was also the hint that Stephen would one day ask me to come work for him once again. It was an unexpected but happy surprise when Stephen and I actually talked more after his departure. We still had weekly 1:1s, but the frequency of our texts increased to multiple times a day: sharing Words With Friends scores, sending profanely funny TikToks back and forth, sharing recommendations and commentary on books and movies, plus the normal everyday life shit. He would randomly send me books he thought I would like, including the Folio Society editions of JURASSIC PARK and THE LOST WORLD mentioned in this post. (I sent him a very nice thank you note and told him not to do it again.) Stephen was a major encourager of my writing, even offering a few months ago to put me up in his house for my own personal writing retreat. I never had the chance to take him up on it.

I’ll close out this ramble by sharing a message Stephen sent me a couple of months back, that I have scribbled down on a post-it note inside my desk.

I never tire of your writing. Check. I so look forward to your writing. Paternally proud. Fraternally envious. Keep inspiring.

Stephen was a lion of a man; a mentor, a devil, and my friend. I miss him.

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Paint the Town Pink

Few things bring me greater joy in this life than a reason to dress up in a thematically appropriate outfit. Give me a themed event, the more offbeat or outré, the better, and I will hurl myself at it with reckless sartorial abandon. Doesn’t matter what the theme is, really: post-apocalypse, Jersey Shore, film noir, CRYBABY, Adventurers Society, Tarantinoverse, James Bond/spy, une fête en blanc, space luau, Dolly-Parton-banned-books… the list goes on. And that’s not including Halloween.

So when something like BARBIE comes around, bringing with it the opportunity to dress up and paint the town pink with a few comrades…? Well, let’s just say I show up.

We saw BARBIE at The Neon in Dayton, of course. The magnificent Barbie Box is a creation of local Dayton shop The Stoney Cottage and was conveniently located outside The Neon. This Barbie Box was cooler and more fun than any studio-provided cardboard display could ever dream of being.

After the movie: drinks, dinner, and more drinks at Salar, followed by an impromptu arm-wrestling match and an ill-advised footrace down the middle of Fifth Street (which I’m pretty sure I saw someone filming).

But what about the movie itself? Could it possibly have lived up to all the hype?

Honestly? It’s a work of art.

This isn’t me being hyperbolic or ironic. Writer-director Greta Gerwig took a three-score-old fashion doll and somehow turned it into an intelligent, self-aware, feminist, patriarchy-critiquing, and subversive film that also is both slyly and overtly hilarious, and in general a frankly bonkers piece of cinema. If that ain’t art, I’m not sure what is.

That a big corporation like Mattel, which owns the right to Barbie, allowed Gerwig to make this film, which also lampoons Mattel in the film – Will Ferrell playing Mattel’s CEO is exactly what one would expect out of Will Ferrell — is nothing short of incredible. I wish more corporations would let artists take similar risks with their IP. Sure, there would no doubt be some whiffs, but the hits could be so big. At the very least, we would get interesting films out of it.

I would be shocked if BARBIE didn’t walk away with at least one Oscar nomination for acting – looking at you, Ryan Gosling, for somehow bringing pathos to Ken — and another for Best Screenplay. It’s the perfect populist vehicle to inject some energy into awards season.

By no means is BARBIE not without its flaws. There are a few times where the film calls itself out in a way that, while funny and self-effacing, also feels a bit like the filmmakers are doing it before someone else does. The end of the third act also gets a little too weirdly meta in a way that didn’t fully work for me. Thankfully, the film almost immediately makes up for this in the denouement, with Margot Robbie delivering the final line of dialogue that is both extremely funny and the perfect note on which to end things.

So yes, BARBIE is not a perfect film — but what work of art is?

What BARBIE is, though, is a delightful way to spend two hours in a movie theater, surrounded by your pals and a bunch of other weirdos dressed in pink.

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Jenny Lewis in the Land of Cleve

We spent a few days up in Cleveland this week to catch the Jenny Lewis show at the House of Blues and see friends. Got a posh Airbnb from which we could work during the day on Thursday and Friday, then went to see Jenny Lewis on Thursday night followed by a cookout on Friday night.

It was during the early days of the pandemic when I became a diehard Jenny Lewis fan. Her albums THE VOYAGER and ON THE LINE got me through many a day spent driving to and from vet appointments and waiting in my car in vet clinic parking lots and not thinking about dogs dying inside vet clinics. I’m not sure why I connected so hard with her music, then, but I did, and I am grateful for it.

So it’s no small thing when I say that finally seeing Lewis perform live was a sublime experience – one every bit as good as I knew it would be.

Hold tight now – crappy iPhone show photos incoming:

Jenny Lewis and the band playing on stage.
Jenny Lewis on stage singing, in profile, pointing into the distance.

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READING: TRUE GRIT, Charles Portis

LAST WATCHED: One of my low-key goals is to watch every film and TV adaptation of John le Carré’s novels. Last night’s viewing was THE RUSSIA HOUSE, a spy film set in Russia during Glasnost, with Sir Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer playing the leads. It was good, if a bit uneven at times, though it was fun seeing Connery in a spy film playing a very non-James-Bond-like character.

LISTENING: Outside of Jenny Lewis, “I Hope Your Husband Dies” by Amigo the Devil has been stuck in my head.

KIRBY: Not caring that drinking this stuff might stunt his growth (it’s a joke, there’s no coffee in that mug (it’s actually vodka) (also a joke)).

Kirby with his snoot buried into a Luke's Cafe coffee mug, trying to lap up the last vestiges of milk.

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Summer Break Ya Neck

I’ve been thinking about summer vacation this week, and how it’s so conceptually at odds with how we think about work in this country. I mean, when you’re a kid, having summers off from school isn’t regarded as some kind of radical notion — it’s just the way things are. It’s normal. But as soon as you exit the education-industrial complex, the societal expectation is that you are going to work at least 40 hours a week for the next 50 to 60 years of your life, with a couple of weeks off a year. And that’s if you’re lucky. Too many people have to work two jobs just to pay the bills and survive, working weekends, overtime, second shifts, third shifts, split shifts. As an adult, the notion of taking leave from one’s responsibilities for two to three months in the middle of the year — ostensibly to rest, to relax — is antithetical to capitalist ideology. Offer such a proposal out loud with any degree of real ingenuousness, and most people will look at you like you’re a goddamn crank, or — gasp — a socialist.

What a person does for work monopolizes so much space in our self-identity that it overshadows almost everything else about us. Think about it: when you meet someone for the first time, odds are one of the first get-to-know-you questions they will ask is: “So, what do you do?” You’ll instantly know what they mean, because that’s how we’ve been conditioned to think, and you’ll respond with something like: “I manage a team of developers at The Rabbit Company.” Your answer won’t be: “Well, I’m a gardener, and I spend most of my weekends in my backyard tending to the 15 types of produce I grow. Oh, I also pay my bills by working as a middle manager at a company that peddles vibrators. But I loathe that place and Ted, my colossal anus of a boss, so instead I prefer instead to talk about how well my cucumbers and tomatoes are doing this year.” Because if you say that to a stranger, they are not going to think, Wow, this guy’s radical candor is so refreshing. Let’s be friends! Instead, they will smile and nod, and describe you later to their loved ones using adjectives like “weird” and “off-putting.”

It’s an extreme example, yeah, but I bet you’d never think to describe yourself as a gardener — your passion, hobby, etc. — first, and a manager of whatever — the thing you do to stay alive — second.

We give so much of our time and energy to our jobs, wrapping our identity and self-worth around what we do, what we produce. It’s dumb and sad, and so many of us do it, even if we don’t want to and try not to, because… that’s the capitalist society in which we live.

I’m not suggesting that one can’t or shouldn’t strive to find a job they like. If you’re going to spend at least one-third of your life at Job, ideally you should find one you like, or at least don’t hate. I really like my job, a circumstance that I never take for granted. It’s okay to like your job. And, in the very unlikely event you think you love your job — that’s okay, too. So long as you always keep this one immutable fact in mind: A corporation doesn’t care about you. You are a means to an end for it. You and a corporation are not “fambly.” The moment the cost of employing you becomes less than the perceived value of what you produce, the sand in the hourglass that is your current employment starts trickling down. 

So consider this affirmation. Repeat it to yourself every day: You are not your job. You are so much more than “what you do.” And never, ever forget (to paraphrase the labor writer Sarah Jaffe):

Work will never love you back. 

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Columbus Pride was yesterday. It was nice to march with our friends in the ECLA and show our support. The turnout was amazing. Watchers along the parade route were six or seven people deep the whole way. I espied only one small group of sad bigots that were protesting. The hate emanating from their shitty PA was subsumed by the cheering and happy noise of the crowd.

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On Friday, I went to my first Creative Mornings Columbus event. The guest speaker was Karen Hewitt, who gave a talk on the topic of “Reverie.” It was a really fun and fascinating talk. Karen’s ideas on the difference between dreaming and dream execution, and how each requires different tools, resonated with me quite a bit.

All of this shit — thoughts on summer break, Karen’s take on creativity, plus the normal rotgut my brain generates — has been swirling in my head of late, so I’ve decided that, beginning tomorrow, josh bales [dot] net is going on summer vacation for the next month. (Yeah, it’s not two to three months, but a shorter break feels right, so I’m going with my gut.) For the next four weeks, my hope is to redirect the creative energy I typically put in here to other writing projects. My goals are to clean up and try to publish the essay I alluded to last week, and to finish a short story that has been languishing in my brain for a while.

See y’all on July 23rd.

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Even with no eyes, you can always tell when Kirby is staring at you.

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You Can’t Outrun ‘Em

I started writing something this week that was supposed to be small but unexpectedly morphed into a longer essay. It needs time to marinate before I do a proper edit, so it’ll probably go up next week.

In the meantime, how about some links?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is an unprecedented, marvelous (har har) achievement — one that’s engulfed Hollywood and is choking the film industry.

Even if the Marvel movies aren’t your bag, this is a fascinating history of how the MCU came to be.

Sometime during the last couple of years, I realized that I no longer needed to see every piece of intellectual property Marvel puts out. As much as I enjoyed A VERY HAWKEYE CHRISTMAS and THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY CHRISTMAS SPECIAL, WAKANDA FOREVER and THOR FOUR were not good, had bloated runtimes, and committed the worst cinema sin of them all: being boring. Will I watch LOKI season 2 and GOTG VOL. 3 whenever they show up on Disney+? Yes. But the next AVENGERS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, et al.? Not likely.

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So a whistleblower from inside the right genre of government agency, the super-secretive National Reconnaissance Office — a long-time employee who absolutely radiates “credible source” energy — turns over classified information to Congress about how the U.S. government has in its possession “recovered intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin,” and there’s hardly a blip about it in the media. Fucking wild.

Grusch said the recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Analysis has determined that the objects retrieved are “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” he said.

“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”

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Ceramic weapons, hand-painted to look like the dishes in your grandma’s cabinet.

The morning star in particular would look handsome in my kitchen.

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Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

The latest Trump indictment. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

  • Trump knowingly took boxes of classified documents from the White House.
  • Trump stored those boxes of classified documents, some of which were so full that papers were spilling out of them, in an unsecured bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.
  • During an interview for an upcoming book, Trump shared a classified plan of attack on Iran.
  • Trump allowed himself to be recorded during that interview and said that he knew this plan of attack on Iran was classified and that as POTUS he could have declassified it, but as a former POTUS he could in fact not declassify it: “See as president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
  • Trump repeatedly lied and obstructed, over and over again, about having the classified documents in his possession to the government agencies tasked with collecting said classified documents, for a period of about a year and a half.

The full indictment makes for a fascinating and infuriating read. It’s one thing to read a summary in a news article, but reading the transcript of a conversation where he casually and openly admits his guilt is another. I can only imagine how it will land for the jurors to hear the actual audio of his distinctive voice.

If after this you still think Donald Trump should be the next president, then you are not the patriotic American you probably think you are.

Watching:

Each month, the Drexel screens a series of films based on a certain theme or a director’s oeuvre. Last month, it was the films of David Lynch. This month, the theme is “Seduction Cinema”: erotic thrillers from the 80s and 90s, full of low-life protagonists and the most fatale of femme fatales. So… right up my alley. BODY HEAT played last week. Tomorrow is BASIC INSTINCT. My hope is to see all four films.

BODY HEAT is a nearly perfect film, expertly written and directed, but its greatest virtue is the talent in front of the camera. I mean – just look at this cast! Kathleen Turner is the star of this show, and she smolders so much on screen that it’s a wonder the film reel never caught fire. Even the supporting cast is fabulous. Mickey Rourke, baby-faced and radiating charisma during his few brief scenes. A dancing Ted Danson. And Richard Crenna, clearly having a blast as Turner’s character’s bastard of a husband. So good!

Listening:                   

To Jenny Lewis’s new album, JOY’ALL, which dropped Friday. I haven’t given it a full listen yet, but the few songs I have listened to are, unsurprisingly, catchy as hell. “Psychos” in particular has been stuck in my head.

And Kirby:

We had an unexpected visitor last weekend. While I was outside with Kirby, this adorable “little” puppy wandered into our yard, somehow managing to squeeze her sizable melon in between the bars of the wrought iron fence.

She wasn’t wearing a collar, so we didn’t know her name or where she was from. We assumed she was local, so we posted in our neighborhood’s Facebook group and on Nextdoor, then waited. She was very sweet and well-behaved and stayed with us for several hours, where she drank a lot of water and napped on the floor in the library. We eventually reunited her with her humans, who informed us that the wee lassie’s name is Shorty.

How did Kirby handle having a guest dog in the house? Benign indifference is how I would describe his attitude. He was fine with her. A little curious. It probably helped that Shorty didn’t try to come between him and his mom. If she had, I’m not quite sure how our old-man little mama’s boy would’ve handled it.

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Out of Office, But

I am gifting josh bales [dot] net and myself a bye week today — look! I used a sports term — but I did want to briefly pop in because today my parents are celebrating a special milestone: their 46th wedding anniversary.

Happy Anniversary, Mark and Lori. Thanks for always trying to model the best example of a successful marriage, even when y’all are pissed at each other. Here’s to another 46 years.

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Previously, on josh bales [dot] net…

How is it that the first day back to work following a long weekend is so much harder than a regular Monday? I spent my first working hour slurping coffee, responding to easy emails, and trying and failing to learn a new-to-me Excel trick. Then my first meetings of the day involved a bunch of us sitting around, staring morosely at each other. Today felt like a hangover; not one of the body but of the soul.

Which begs the question: what then is the spiritual equivalent to Pedialyte?

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Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

Fan-BLEEPING-tastic: Merriam-Webster on “expletive infixations.”

Finally finished BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY. You can clearly tell that it is Book One of a trilogy because you get to the end of the final chapter and the narrative just… stops. I’ll probably read the next book, but this is for sure not my favorite style of trilogy.

Watching:

Finished season 2 of EUPHORIA and the first season of THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME. EUPHORIA is so good, but this season damn near broke me emotionally. Fezco and Lexi became my two favorite characters this season. Lexi’s play? Fucking bananas in the best way possible. But how things went down for Fezco and Ashtray almost made me cry, and reader — I am not a crier by nature.

I really wanted to like THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME, but the show made it so hard. The cast was okay but they had terrible material to work with. The mystery wasn’t very interesting, and its unwinding was poorly executed, the pacing was wildly uneven, and Garner and Angourie Rice, who played Garner’s character’s stepdaughter, had the chemistry of two potatoes sitting in a bin at Kroger. Jess and my sister both liked the show and the book upon which it is based, so it’s possible I am just the sole inhabitant of Asshole Island here. Victor Garber has a fun role in one episode, and it was nice to see Sydney and Jack Bristow reunited for a few minutes.

More than anything, THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME made me want to rewatch PEPPERMINT, the film in which Garner essentially plays The Punisher and absolutely murders everyone who was remotely involved in the death of her family. Maybe that’s what was missing from THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME: Jennifer Garner PEPPERMINTing her way through the mystery of why her husband disappeared.

Wanting:

A writing retreat. A week someplace quiet, just me, no distractions, where I can really kick off this novel that’s been simmering now for a while. Ideally, somewhere where I can go for walks. Comfortable patio or porch.A grocery store, maybe a couple of restaurants within a 15-minute drive. The woods would be okay, but it couldn’t be too isolated. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT ruined me on being alone at night in the woods. For that, I would need to be armed with a short-barrelled shotgun and a bat’leth.

Listening:                   

3 Hours of Relaxing Super Nintendo Music.

And Kirby:

He’s feeling better, but still having some issues. Hoping we will have them figured out soon.

The white dot is a piece of rice affixed adorably upon his snoot.

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We Don’t Have Much Time, So We Need to Make This Quick

What would you say to your 17-year-old self?

That is the question with which stacy-marie ishmael closed out the most recent edition of her newsletter, the very excellent The Main Event. For the context driving the question, you will need to read the newsletter. Which you should do anyways; it’s really quite good.

I read this edition of The Main Event as I typically do, early on Monday morning, while slurping coffee and desperately trying to activate for the day. It apparently caught me in a reflective mood, because I did something I almost never do: I wrote back. stacy-marie sent me a very kind note in return, which I’m not going to share, but I will share what I sent to her, in an expanded version.

This missive to my past self started off pretty sincere, but it didn’t feel right. Then I thought about what I honestly knew about 17-year-old Josh, and took a slightly different tack. It went a little off the rails, but eventually made it back to sincere-ish. This time, though, it felt authentic. Here you go.

Look, kid, I don’t know how long I have, so we need to make this quick. Yeah, I’m future you. Hola. I know you believe me because this is the sort of shit you spend a distressing amount of time thinking about. But in case you have any lingering doubts: remember that time [a highly embarrassing memory we will take to our grave and is thus redacted]. Right, yes, this is a real Back to the Future moment. No, you don’t need to recite your favorite BACK TO THE FUTURE 2 quotes to — no, I just said — look motherfucker, we don’t have much time, so I’m begging you: please, shut the fuck up.

First things first: here are the winning Powerball numbers for the next five years. High-dollar prize winners only. After you win, you tear this list up and you never, ever play again. You hear me? You don’t want to risk drawing the attention of the wrong people by winning big twice. What do I mean by…? Well, if I’m able to do this — talking to my younger self — then presumably other people can and have also. Since you don’t regularly read about some asshole from Iowa winning ten Powerballs in a row, it follows then that there is a secret watchdog organization whose sole reason for existing is to watch for these types of anomalous patterns and snuff them out. Better to play it safe. Which means: Don’t. Get. Greedy. Now, once you have your winnings, you’re going to start making some modest, relatively speaking, investments. Here’s a roadmap to follow. Again, the goal is to fly under the radar. You play this smart and do it right, before long you’ll be living someplace warm by the ocean, with all the time in the world to write, and maybe the means to do a little good in the world. You don’t care about that last one right now, but down the line, you will.

Now, that mercenary but necessary bit of business out of the way, if there was time, I’d also tell my 17-year-old self

If you fuck this up — and let’s be real, you have a wobbly moral compass, so-so impulse control, and an unfortunate predilection for thinking you’re the smartest person in the room — so there’s every likelihood you will fuck it up — it’ll be okay. You — we — have a good life. You’ll find your people, even if it takes til you’re almost 30 for it to happen. You’re going to become comfortable in your skin in a way you never believed possible, like your skin is a perfectly tailored suit. You’ll paint your toenails lavender and ocean blue and people will compliment you on it. You’ll call out strangers for not washing their hands after using the bathroom (yeah, we still get icked by lack of basic hygiene and sanitation). Your hair will start going gray in your thirties, but at 41 it will still be thick and luxurious. You’re also going to bleach it soon and go platinum blonde. (You haven’t started watching Buffy yet, but go to Lycos or Altavista or whatever and search for “Spike on Buffy.”) You won’t have kids (right? no clue how we managed to pull that one off) but you’ll become a dog person at the age of 38 (who knew?) and they will become one of the best parts of your life. You’ll blunder your way into a career that isn’t writing; one that not only pays well but that you also enjoy. (Spoiler alert: You’re gonna spend a lot of time in the Excel mines, moving numbers around on spreadsheets.) Speaking of writing: you’ll publish your first short story — in a reputable publication, no less! — and get paid quite a bit of money for it, and strangers will send you nice messages about it. This one’s a bummer, but the scourge of depression will discover you like it’s Christopher Columbus, and for a while, things won’t be easy. Most of the time, though, it will be manageable and better days will be ahead. I won’t tell you to be patient, because that is not a quality either of us possesses in much quantity, but fuck it: try to be patient. Enjoy being young. Take risks. Make mistakes, and try to learn but, ideally, not die from them. Take no shit. Stay curious. Keep writing. Please don’t fuck up this lotto thing.

Now it’s my turn to ask: What would you say to your 17-year-old self?

The 17-year-old in question.

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Since this one is already running long, we’re going to end here today. The normal reading/watching/Kirbying stuff will come out in its own shiny post later this week.

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Day Jobs (And the People At Them Who Keep Us Sane)

I don’t often talk about my day job here. It’s not that my employer is some big secret; a quick google search will tell you. I’m not ashamed of or hate my day job. I enjoy what I do, and I like to think the arrangement between me and my employer has been mutually beneficial over the years. Nor is it that I feel like I need to hide the things I write about here. If I did, I would certainly not be posting under my own name everywhere on god’s gay internet. I cuss and am just as much a charming(?) scoundrel during the hours of 0730-1630 as I am online and in my “real” life. (The primary difference between Work Josh and the other Joshes is that Work Josh has learned to cultivate a veneer of professionalism that the others don’t always need, or choose, to wear.)

The real reason I don’t discuss my day job here is boring but also, I think, understandable: I talk and think about work enough while I am at work, as well as outside of working hours because I have friends and family who also have the same employer, and when we get together work is a common topic of conversation, that the idea of logging onto josh bales [dot] net and talking about work even more typically makes me want to self-defenestrate.

Typically.

Setting aside that entirely too-long intro, I have been reminded lately about how wonderful the people I work with are and wanted to write about them a bit.

A few weeks ago, my immediate team came together for an onsite in Dayton. A few hours of work followed by a, uh, boisterous happy hour at a local cantina. It was sunny and warm, the cantina’s doors were rolled up, letting in a breeze, and the margaritas and tacos and margaritas flowed. The team doesn’t get together like this often. Everyone is remote, some of us live in different cities and states. We talk every day, but sitting at a table together, laughing at some wildly inappropriate comment someone just made, is rare. Such a convergence happens once, maybe twice a year. While I absolutely do not miss going into an office every day, I do miss that type of in-person camaraderie, especially with this crew. I like to joke that we may be a bunch of a-holes, but we’re decent a-holes because everyone is kind and a good human. They’re also some of the sharpest, hardest-working, and most delightful people with whom I’ve ever worked. I am hashtag blessed to work with them.

Then, a few days later, a slightly different configuration of us got together to take part in Dayton’s Walk to End MS, in honor of Norma, our comrade who passed away last October. Norma was one of the kindest, toughest people I’ve ever known. She had a wonderfully whimsical sense of humor and the deadest of deadpan deliveries. In a different timeline, she could have been a very effective standup comic.

Not all of us who were at the Walk are on the same team anymore, but we were all close with Norma. Catching up with those whom I don’t see as often was fun, as was getting lunch with everyone afterward. Norma had an easy way of bringing people together, and I’m grateful but not surprised that she was able to use that ability one more time.

After the Walk was over, we took a group photo by the bathrooms. A detail that Norma, I think, would have appreciated.

OF COURSE Kirby came with us.

‡

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

Bluesky is a newish social media service trying to replace Twitter. I’ve been on Bluesky for about a month and I really, really like it so far. The vibe is weird and goofy and fun and chill. Bluesky is still in beta and is invite-only for now, but if you’re legitimately interested in checking it out, hit me up. The benevolent devs have gifted me with one golden ticket invite code. You can also join the waitlist.

Warren Ellis with solid advice on breaking up with your phone and then hiring it to be your concierge. The significant hurdle for most people – myself included – is that even if we quit Facebook, Instagram, et al., most of our friends and family would still be using those services and we would lose a significant connection – maybe our only one – to those folks.

I’ve got like 8% to go on BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY. So close.

Watching:

EVIL DEAD RISE. I really wanted to like this. The change in setting was interesting – a rundown apartment building in Los Angeles – but I didn’t find myself invested in the characters, so when they start dying off, my attitude was “it be like that sometimes.” RISE did make some interesting additions to the Evil Dead lore, but it wasn’t enough to make the overall film more interesting. I’d love to see another Evil Dead film set in a different time period and culture, like what the PREDATOR folks did with the excellent PREY. Hey, it worked for ARMY OF DARKNESS.

SCREAM VI. Now this was good. I’ve seen all the SCREAM films, the original is a classic, but as a series, they’ve never been beloved to me or anything like they are to some people. So it’s been a pleasant surprise to me just how much fun last year’s SCREAM V and now VI are. The newer characters are well-drawn, the legacy characters have interesting things to do, and the filmmakers have found a number of ways to subvert expectations in ways that aren’t dumb or contrived.

Wanting:

Shockingly, nothing this week.

Listening:                   

“Anytime,” by Eve 6 (aka the band behind the “heart in a blender” song). On their Patreon, Max from Eve 6 writes:

Way back in the year 2001 we had a song called Anytime come out on the soundtrack to a very serious and important art film called Out Cold starring zach galifianakis. The song hasn’t ever been available on streaming platforms. We’ve been getting requests for YEARS to release it but we couldn’t because we didn’t own the master recording……………………… until now!

I’ve never heard the original so I can comment on it, but this version of “Anytime” fucks hard, as the kids say. Punchy, and a bit of an earworm. It’s only available on the Eve 6 Patreon (at least, for now), so you’ll need to be a patron to listen to it, which, quite frankly, you should be anyway. Max is a fab writer and also really funny. He’s been a beacon of shitposting hope the last few years on Twitter.

And Kirby:

He’s feeling a bit under the weather right now, a side effect – we think – from an antibiotic he’s on. But he did enjoy sitting in the sun for a bit yesterday.

Photo by Roberto, our trusted Kirbysitter.

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