The Bachelor has been the only reality show I’ve watched consistently over the last 15 years (I had to stop myself and do the math…). I found the show funny and intriguing and ridiculous. I roped other people into watching the show with me because watching alone felt silly. Who was going to laugh at my witty jokes and cutting observations if I was in an empty room?!
Read More
Golf in Time of Corona - The last couple weeks, the weather has slowly warmed up in Boston to unseasonable temperatures; it started to feel like we might have escaped the winter unscathed. The pessimistic among us always punctuated the conversation with a statement like, “We’ll probably get some massive storm in March or, god forbid, April!” Unfortunately, I think this years version of winter is disguised as a pandemic. After perusing the aisles yesterday in search of some canned goods and other non-perishables, Tiff said it felt like the entire country (even the world?) is preparing for a huge blizzard (There’s a joke hiding in here about spot savers and shoveling, but I just can’t formulate it…)
I cancelled a trip to Las Vegas next week. Golf and March Madness were the siren songs for my friend Phil and I. We had spent a few years threatening to plan a trip somewhere to play golf and hang out (he lives in San Francisco). In order to tune up my game, I went to an indoor golf facility to hit golf balls for an hour. The repetition of hitting balls is therapeutic, just like clicking off miles during a run. There’s a rhythm to it, there’s constant feedback spinning in and out of your head. Both are beautifully individual but also a form preparation for something bigger like a tournament or a road race.
As this coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the world and cancels everything in sight, I hope everyone finds some way to release some stress while staying safe and healthy. It’s the only thing that will keep us sane.
I Am Not Okay With This - This Netflix show is a fun watch. It follows a teenage girl who is slowly realizing she has some sort of super power. It’s set in what looks like a Pittsburgh suburb (Penguins t-shirt, rust belt vibe, etc…). The end of the first episode was jarring, not for any cliff-hanger or plot twist, but because it didn’t feel finished. Why? The episode it was around 20 minutes long and I was settled in for a 45 minute pilot. The producers of Stranger Things are behind this one too, and captures the same vintage aesthetics, but it’s set in modern day.
The Bachelor Finale - It’s too late, it’s over, you’ve missed the boat. If you were there for the last two episodes, I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did. I don’t think we’ll ever see a performance like the one Peter’s mother gave in the last 20 minutes. It was like Walter Payton, Hall of Fame in such a short amount of time. To add salt to the wound, Peter and Madi announced on Friday morning they were breaking up.
Parasite: I finally got around to seeing the Best Picture of the year, and it was, unsurprisingly, incredible. I thought I had a bit of an understanding of the plot from the trailer, but I didn’t. It had the feeling of a folktale told in modern day. Yes, there is some violence, if you’re not into that kind of thing, but it comes in a very small dose. If you still have a chance to see it in the theater do it (if it’s still open and you’re willing to go outside…). The subtitles weren’t a distraction, but they were tiny in the version I watched and sometimes blended in with the background.
You’ll probably be cooped up for the next week (or more?). This is something you should watch.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again - This is travel writing at it’s most hilarious and wonderful. David Foster Wallace is exceptional. I had never read this essay/story about his first cruise experience. Harper’s Ferry asked him to write a review, and he also put together this recap of the trip. It’s laugh out loud funny in many parts and incisively perceptive in so many others. He writes the truth and tells you things you knew but couldn’t dredge up into words.
A Lockdown Diary: A simple, well-written illustration of life in Italy right now. - NYTimes.com
Get a Grip Podcast - The name of the pod could make you think it’s talking about the coronavirus, but it’s not. This pod is co-hosted by Shane Bacon, a golf commentator, and Max Homa, a PGA TOUR winning. They’re really great to listen to each week. Max offers some great insight into the life of a pro athlete earning a paycheck week in and week out. He’s honest and self-deprecating while Bacon asks good questions and they banter well back and forth.
HAIM’s “Now I’m In It” - I love HAIM and have been listening to them a bunch the past couple weeks. I find myself starting with this song every time.
Pastrami Reuben Hash - Imagine a hot skillet with chunks of pastrami, onions, peppers, Swiss cheese, TWO poached eggs, with a side of rye bread in front of you… that’s what Monument has concocted. On Sunday, I went down and found a spot at the bar to watch the Manchester United v. Manchester City soccer game. This meal was my companion for most of the second half. It was incredibly delicious and I didn’t have an appetite for the rest of the day. The pastrami was cooked perfectly, big chunks of it just falling apart and mixing in with the rest of the ingredients. Pair it with a Downeast cider and a Manchester United win; you can’t go wrong.
Frozen Waffles - I’m training for the Big Sur Marathon in April right now. It’s up in the air if it will even happen. Good times! One of the challenges hidden challenges when you start running marathons is fueling up before a long run. Running 20 miles takes hours; if you don’t eat properly before the run, you’re screwed, and you’re probably screwed a long way from home. I typically like oatmeal or an english muffin. I’ll add peanut butter and a banana to both of them. Recently, I rediscovered my inner-fat-kid infatuation with the frozen waffle. Two of these puppies an hour before a run with some peanut butter and maple syrup is perfect. I also find them delicious when I’m not going for a run (with butter and honey…). English muffins and oatmeal have been ruined for me because of the connotation they have with running and pain and misery. I’ve been eating the Wegmans brand and the 365 brand from Whole Foods. I haven’t tried any of the flavored ones… yet.
Florida Man by Cigar City Brewing - A really good Double IPA that I came across at Blackmoor on Saturday. The name and description were enough to pique my interest. Here’s the blurb about the beer from the website: “A modern Double IPA with a tropical expression from the blend of American hops including Pacific Jade, Galaxy, Azacca, Lemon Drop and Simcoe is balanced by delicate peach esters from a unique Double IPA yeast and a dash of Canadian honey malt.” - CigarCityBrewing
NYTimes Writing Prompts: This week I randomly picked some writing prompts from the NYTimes list of thousands… This is something I’ll be doing more regularly.
Here are the first three;
Have You Ever Been Told You Couldn’t Do Something Because of Your Gender?
What Do You Remember Best About Being 12?
What Food Would You Like To Judge In a Taste-Off?
The Random Division - The season is over! We have our Mondays back! What a ride it’s been. Tiff and I do our best to process and wrap-up Peter’s disastrous season that ended with him being verbally cooked by his mother on live national TV.
iTunes: We’d love if you subscribed, wrote a review, gave us five stars, and told your friends!
Follow us on IG: TheRandomDivisionPod
The Imperfect Game: Both and I try to spend $120 million on a starting line-up for our imaginary soccer club; however, we’re only allowed to pick players from the ten teams we have researched over the past few months. It was much more challenging than we thought it would be and compromises had to be made.
iTunes. - We’d love if you subscribed, wrote a review, gave us five stars, and told your friends!
Sometimes the best activity takes up an entire day or weekend. This week, it was a ten minute chunk of time on Wednesday. I had a bit of time to kill before a meeting in Concord. I was feeling a bit sleepy so I grabbed a coffee and headed for the Concord Bookshop, which is one of my favorites around. There’s not much better than wandering a bookstore: the smell, the quiet, the crack of a book as you skim through a couple pages. The Concord Bookshop has creaky wooden floors that betray your every move to the employees, and the old-town vibe that gives me the sense that I went back in time.
Bookstores also remind me of my old man, who would drag us into them when he had time to kill. Walden books in the mall might have been kept open a couple extra years because of my dad. He always had a pile of books at his bedside, but they seemed to be a in a constant rotation, never gathering too much dust. I was not a big reader growing up. At least in the classical book-reading sense, but every Christmas, my dad would give us each one book and he’d be sure to write “Merry Christmas, Dad.” He’d include the year. My mom’s house and my bookshelves in Boston are littered with books, and many of them have those little notes from my dad in them. It’s a tradition we’ve carried on since he died, we all buy books for each other for Christmas.
The Circle: This Netflix show gives me the heebie-jeebies, but I can’t stop watching it. The premise is that eight strangers are put in a house, kind of like the Real World; however, they don’t ever see or speak to each other. Each person is sequestered in their own apartments and interact with each other using “The Circle.” Every episode the contestants play games, group chat, solo chat, and manipulate and rank each other. The top two people are made influences and have a “meeting” to decide who to “block.” You’re blocked and you’re out for good, replaced by a new person. The most interesting part of the dynamic between these people is that some of them have created personas and are catfishing the group. For example, one guy is pretending to be his girlfriend, so any pictures that he posts are of her and if there’s ever a “girls chat” he is invited because everyone thinks he’s Rebecca.
Midnight in Chernobyl: This book will get a deeper write-up in my Book Club section, but I just finished it this week. My sister gave it to me for Christmas because I loved the HBO series. The book is incredibly well researched (the last 20% is notes, acknowledgments, and sources) and dives deep into the mechanisms that allowed for such a disaster to happen and then get covered up. The Soviets were good at it.
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President: I don’t think this is a novel idea, but this article’s writer created a brand new account on Facebook and took a deep dive into the world of Donald Trump… even the smartest people can start to doubt things when they’re inundated with slated or misinformation. TheAtlantic.com
Lord Huron: I love this band and put them on this week while I was working. I’m just gonna leave one of my favorite songs by this band right here… give them a listen…
Accused: This podcast is in its third season. We listened to the first season a while ago. It covered an unsolved murder in Oxford, Ohio. We didn’t listen to the second season, but the third season has been a great listen, albeit, really scary. A man disappeared in Ohio and they believe his body was found in a uranium plant completely burned beyond recognition. They have no idea what happened, and this podcast tries to figure it out while also dipping into the world of water contamination, nuclear energy, and cover-ups. It’s well produced and on the heels of reading “Midnight in Chernobyl” I am haunted by the nuclear power wave and the risks it entails.
Here’s the trailer for Season 3;
Everything at Casa Verde : Casa Verde in Jamaica Plain was a new joint for me this week. I visited my friend Pat, who is on paternity leave, and we grabbed lunch there. They make an insanely delicious cacahaute salsa, which is a peanut salsa/dip. I had never had anything like it before.
I also ate two tacos: carnitas and rock shrimp which left me full because they didn’t skimp on the filling. Pat had a fried chicken torta which didn’t make me jealous, but it made me want to come back.
Chicken Wings: I don’t make chicken wings all that often, but I make a point to cook some up during the Super Bowl. The last couple years I have followed (roughly) a recipe from SeriousEats, which also has an amazing cookbook called “The Food Lab.” The best technique I have learned is the double fry. I used the oven this year to fry them the first time, then I let them cool for an hour before pan frying them. I tossed half of them in a hot sauce and the other half in a Korean BBQ sauce.
Hodad by Fiddlehead: This beer was introduced to us by the bartender at our local spot Monument Tavern in Charlestown. It’s a delicious American Porter. I had a couple during the Super Bowl. It’s probably a two beer max type of beer. It’s very rich, and if you like coconut and chocolate, give this one a whirl.
Mookie Betts: It was a bad week for the Boston Red Sox. They traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers for what feels like 50 cents on the dollar. They are receiving a player in return, Alex Verdugo, who was caught up in a sexual abuse story a couple years ago and seemingly got pushed under the rug.
All this happened because the Sox were not terribly responsible with their money the last few years and “can’t afford” Mookie (they can…). Here’s a quick and dirty look at some of the bad contracts the Red Sox are on the hook for: Farewell Mookie Betts and Hello Bloated Salaries
Random Division: The Bachelor had five hours of shows this week. There isn’t a show that makes me more tired than this one. Tiff and I went ahead and recorded two podcasts. They are both only on Spotify right now because I messed up our iTunes feed and it isn’t back up and running yet.