Inputs - March 22

As usual, keeping these short as they are all reviewed on the books page.

Rethinking Fandom by Craig Calcaterra is a really interesting look at sports fandom in the the year 2022, what it means, and how some of the old tropes regarding fandom don't apply anymore.

Warriors Don't Cry is the first person account of integrating Central High School in Little Rock, by Melba Pattillo Beals, who was one of the Little Rock 9 living in hell just trying to assert their rights as humans.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi is a fun sci-fi story set during this pandemic, on a parallel earth where Godzilla scale monsters roam freely. We attended a reading by Scalzi and got to meet him, which was cool. He is just as pleasant in real life as you'd expect.

Some interesting online words included:

How WordPress and Tumbler are Keeping the Internet Weird is a very interesting interview with Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, the company that owns Wordpress.com, Tumbler, and more other stuff than you probably realize. It's the antidote to Facebook.

What It’s Like to Get Worse at Something is a look at the challenges of learning new things or maintaining our skill levels in hobbies as we age. I read this the week after returning from my first ever ski trip, so it was quite timely.

Retirement the Margaritaville Way is a surprisingly uplifting look at the Margaritaville retirement communities popping up around the south. It turns out you can waste away (your retirement years) in Margaritaville.

Lee Bains Would Like It If You Sang Along to This Next One was my introduction to this artist. Never heard of the guy and I read a couple of thousand words about him. Don't skip the video. The first single from is upcoming album is fabulous.

The iPhone get in the way of Life is 12 years old, and sadly even more relevant today.

Watching

I watched way too much college basketball in March. I'm a Boilermaker. It did not end well.

We finished The Book of Boba Fett. Meh. The best episodes were the ones that felt like the start of the next Mandalorian season.

Netflix vs. the World is a documentary that delivers exactly what you expect from the title. I didn't realize just how close we came to all having Blockbuster Online accounts today instead of Netflix. Netflix was on life support when Blockbuster hired the guy from 7-11 to be the new CEO, and he dumped online in favor of refocusing on the stores.

That worked out well.

Only Murders in the Building is a fabulously funny mystery starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez as real life crime podcasters soling a murder in their posh NYC building.

We also started Deadwood, which we are greatly enjoying.

Listening

I continued to mostly avoid Pandora. I've had A Little Calamity by Ghost Hounds on repeat play a lot this month. It's a blues rock album with a lot of country influence running through it. It's really a fabulous record, good enough that it crossed the "I should buy this one" line.

Note - I did discover Ghost Hounds online. I'm just saying if you buy the album the artist might make a couple of bucks. If you stream it 20 times they might make 10 cents.

I also made a pass through Butch Walker's catalog this month. Letters continues to be my favorite Butch record. But really, all of them are fabulous. It's been a few years since he gave us any new music. A new record and tour would be a nice surprise for this summer.

Did you watch, read, or listen to anything interesting recently?