2.27.25
During my visit home a couple of weeks ago, my dad gave me the chance to look through his old record collection and take whatever I wanted to add to my own. He hasn't listened to them in years—his turntable has lived in a box in the garage for probably 30 years or so, and the most recent album I could find was Bruce Springsteen's 1984 megahit Born in the USA.

Originally I was just going to cherry pick the stuff I knew I would listen to—a few Beatles albums, some Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkle, etc.—but they weren't in a place where it was easy to look through them and make sure I got everything I would want. Plus there were a bunch of albums on the fringe of my interest—Neil Diamond, ABBA, etc.—and in the end I just decided to pack up the whole lot (about 130 records I think) so I could catalogue them all and take my time deciding which ones to add to my collection.

I've looked up a few of the ones that are definite keepers—the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, the Beatles' Abbey Road, Simon and Garfunkle's The Graduate soundtrack, and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours—and while they are all presses from the orginal year of release, none of them is in pristine condition and none of them are presses that are worth a lot even if they were in perfect condition.

But many of these records are from when my mom and dad (who divorced when I was very young) were in college and the years right after that when they got married and I was born, and it's been an interesting exercise to think about who might have purchased what, and how some of their joint purchases ended up with my dad instead of my mom (since my mom is definitely the one who cares about music more).

There's still a ton to go through and catalogue, and although I probably won't incorporate more than 25 or 30 albums into my own collection, I do like the idea of having a full list of everything my dad owned before I sell of the remainders for pennies on the dollar to a local shop or just drop them off at Goodwill.

2.26.25
I just finished watching the first two seasons of Only Murders in the Building, the Hulu series featuring Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez as neighbors in the same NYC building who discover their shared love of true crime podcasts after evacuating their building due to a fire alarm going off. After discovering that a murder occurred during that evacuation, they start their own true crime podcast to solve it.

I absolutely love this show and can give no good reason why I waited so long to give it a try. I love Steve Martin, it got glowing reviews from the critics, and a few friends also recommended it to me, so I figure it's just my contrarian nature that has sometimes led me to ignore other things l ended up really liking just because there were so many people telling me I should like it.

Compared to the more serious series I've been streaming recently, this one is such a breath of fresh air. There are a lot of secondary characters to keep track of, but the focus is always on the core three, and I can't get enough of Steve Martin and Martin Short sarcastically but lovingly carping at each other (I would absolutely watch a Beavis and Butthead or MST3K-style show where it's just the two of them commenting on other media while also taking digs at one another). It hits like a smarter, more acerbic version of the mainstream CBS detective drama Elsbeth (which I secretly love even though I know it's not really that great a show).

They've released four seasons so far, and a fifth one is just ramping up production and will hopefully be released later this year. I'm hoping this show will be one that I can rewatch, because solving the mystery isn't really the point—it's spending time with these characters, and so far I can't get enough of that.

2.25.25
Robyn Hitchcock played his first two shows in Georgia since 2022 over the weekend, and although I had tickets to both concerts, I only ended up going to one of them. The first show was on Friday night at the 40 Watt Club in Athens (I saw him play there once before, back in 2018 when Elf Power served as his backing band), but after a long week at work, I just didn't have the energy to do the drive out there and back, especially knowing I would see him the next night.

On Saturday night, he was playing a venue I'd never heard of before, the Red Clay Music Foundry up in downtown Duluth, which seems to be a music school and rehearsal space in addition to a 260 seat performance venue. I logged on the second tickets went on sale, so our seats were the center seats in the front row. Before the show we chatted with Hitchcock's wife, singer Emma Swift, at the merch booth, and she gave us a free tote bag featuring their one-eyed cat Tubby after we told her about our minor obsession with him. She's always so lovely to talk to, and it's also really cool that she usually joins him on stage for a few songs when he performs.

We sat next to a couple who live pretty close to us in Atlanta and who had gone to see the show in Athens the night before. Hitchcock typically builds his setlist from requests, which you can submit on social media or by talking to Emma before the show, but I didn't come prepared this time (I did the last time I saw him back in 2022—I mentioned to Emma that I'd never heard him perform one of my favorite songs, "Raymond and the Wires", and he ended up playing it early in the setlist that night). If I had given it some thought, I would have asked him to perform "De Chirico Street", which as the inspiration for the name of our cat Jasper (one of the kitties we unfortunately lost in the fire).

It was a great show, as always, and I'm already looking forward to his next visit, which we hopefully won't have to wait another two years for.

2.20.25
Our trip to Wilmington went pretty well—there was really no traffic on the way there or back, and we got there on Saturday in time to go to my nephew Harris' birthday party that evening. It was the quiet, chill weekend that I had hoped for—we saw my sister and her family every day, but we didn't try to do any big excursions, instead indulging in lower cost, lower overhead activities like homemade waffles for breakfast, lunch at the best hotdog spot in the world, Saltworks, and dinner at Flaming Amy's a local burrito place.

On Sunday afternoon, I went with my dad and stepmother to church (everyone else opted out) for a special service commemorating the life of Absalom Jones, the first Black man to be ordained as a priest by the Episcopal Church. It featured a sermon from a preacher from all-Black Episcopal congregations in our diocese, whose jazz band also provided the backing music for the hymns. It was a nice little service, and a good way to revisit my childhood church, whose services I haven't attended in many years.

I also packed up the very last of my belongings from the house and did things like get up to watch the sun rise over the water, since this might be the last time we're able to visit this house before my parents sell it. Their new house is nearly complete and ready to move into, but my stepmother keeps pushing back in the move date, and it seems likely that they won't move until at least May or June at this point. So we may be able to visit one more time, but if not, then this was about as good a way to say goodbye to the house where my parents have lived for the last 40+ years as I could have asked for.

2.19.25
For Valentine's Day, Julie and I ended up spending a couple of hours at the High Museum, spending much of that time at the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit that we saw last summer in Chicago before it made its way to Atlanta (I was pleased to see that Chicago allowed a few pieces from its permanent collection to go with the traveling version of the exhibition, including Black Cross, one of my absolute favorite O'Keeffe pieces).

After the art museum, we went to lunch at Botiwalla in Ponce City Market before picking out some toys for my nephews at the boutique toy shop there. We almost never do a big dinner out on Valentine's, and this year we did a nice bit of counter-programming by going to see the newly-released third Paddington movie with Will and having popcorn and snacks at the theater for dinner. It was a really nice day overall, meaningful and low-key.

2.13.25
Because Will has next Monday and Tuesday off, we've decided to go up to North Carolina on Saturday for a long weekend to visit my parents. We didn't end up going to see them over Christmas this year, and this also might be our last time to visit while they're still in the same house that they've lived in for the past 40+ years, and the only house from my childhood that I still have any access to.

It will also be the first time in a while that we'll be visiting them without a huge crowd. One of my sisters and her family live nearby, so we always see them, but because they are constantly doing major renovations to their house, there have been a couple of times when they've also been living in the house, making it much more crowded and complicated than is ideal for me.

And when we went for a visit last summer, where we picked a date when my sister wouldn't be living there and no one else had any plans to visit, my brother from Ohio and my sister from Georgia also decided to come, which meant that not only did we not really get to spend any quality time with my parents, but we ended up having to stay in a hotel because there just wasn't enough room in the house (my brother has four kids).

It was good to see everyone last summer—it was the first time all four siblings were in the same place at the same time since 2019—but we're really looking forward to a nice quiet weekend where I can catch up with my parents without too much chaos and I can get a chance to say goodbye to the house.

2.12.25
I'm a big fan of Joaquin Phoenix, and I loved his take on the Joker origin story in the Todd Phillips movie that came out in 2019. It was an intense watch, but I liked that was distinct from other Joker stories, and was more about the experience of trying to move through the world with severe mental illness than it was about becoming a cartoon-y antihero.

I was not all that excited when a sequel was announced that co-starred Lady Gaga (whose music and stage persona don't appeal to me at all), and was even more wary once the reviews came out lambasting it as a dull, weird musical that seemed more interested in spending lots of money as a way of flipping off the Hollywood power structure than in telling a good story. So I didn't end up seeing it in the theater.

When it came to a streaming service that I subscribe to, I decided to give it a try, and although a lot of the criticisms are valid—there were way too many musical numbers, and they were mostly either wasting time or serving as exposition that could have been shared much more compactly with traditional dialogue—I did find that the film had a very nice redemption arc for Arthur Fleck's character, one that seemed to go mostly unremarked-upon by the critics.

Even in the first film, we could see Arthur's notoriety growing into a fanbase that could be converted into a legion of minions, and we see him tantalized and tempted by seizing that power. This thread continues through the second movie, with more and more people aligning themselves with the chaos and rebellion of the Joker persona, culminating with his followers setting off a car bomb outside the courthouse and rescuing Arthur after he is found guilty of murder.

But on the last day of that trial, prior to the bombing, Arthur realizes that the wanton violence of the Joker is not who he really is, and he renounces his alter ego and takes responsibility for his violent acts, even though those were committed in the bewildering haze of mental illness. This turn from violence allows the audience to see Arthur with empathy once again, but that's not how Gotham's Joker followers see him—his girlfriend Harley Quinzel (played by Lady Gaga) rejects him after he turns away from the Joker persona, and he is brutally murdered in prison by a true psychopath who then presumably puts on the mantle of the Joker to become the comic book character we've come to know.

This ending allowed this movie to fit into some version of the DC universe without needing to compromise Arther Fleck and his story, and even though his life ends in the same kind of pain and misery that he experienced for much of his existence, he was allowed to reclaim himself before his death, making him a tragic but ultimately redeemed figure, someone we can pity and care about and even admire. I don't know that I'll ever watch either of Phillips' Joker movies again—the barrage of extended musical numbers would be especially hard to sit through a second time—but I can appreciate how he and Phoenix told this character's story, and how they ultimately gave him the chance to become someone who doesn't belong to anyone else's expectations.

2.11.25
It was Julie's birthday yesterday, and we celebrated with a trip to Kura, a revolving sushi restaurant that is a family favorite. Afterwards we went to a Japanese toy store in the same shopping complex where we each picked out a blind box, and finally a trip to Andy's frozen custard, whose seasonal Biscoff butter cookie-based special is one of Julie's favorite treats.

Because her birthday and Valentine's Day are so close together, we usually keep one of those pretty low key, and this year it was her birthday. We still haven't made a final decision about Valentine's, but we'll likely do an evening out at the Botanical Gardens (which we did last year and enjoyed), the Georgia Aquarium, or the High Museum of Art (which is in its last week of hosting the same Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit that we saw in Chicago over the summer).

2.6.25
Will and I have both been sick for the past few days, with similar-but-not-the-same illnesses that are not the flu or Covid. I've either had different phases of this or two different illnesses that have lingered for the past week or so, and while I've still been able to attend to my work tasks because I work remotely most of the time anyway, I haven't had the energy for much else but sleep outside of work hours.

Between the late start to this semester, the school trip to Thailand, recovering from the jetlag from that trip, and now being sick, Will hasn't had a full week of school since mid-December. And while there's a chance he could have a full week next week, the following week he has two days off for Presidents Day followed by another school day trip.

2.5.25
Cixin Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy is one of my favorite hard sci-fi series ever, and last year Netflix made an 8-episode show based on the first novel in the series, The Three Body Problem. As I usually do, I waited until the series had fully aired before I started watching it, and I just finished the last episode over the weekend.

I haven't read the book in a few years, but it rings true to my memories of it, and I think they did a reasonably good job of paring down the complexity of the story to make it digestible for an audience not familiar with the books without sacrificing the key elements of the story. Seasons 2 and 3 have already been greenlit, and while I don't know if the intention is to tell the stories of all three books in the trilogy with those seasons or to tell a more focused, truncated version of the core story, I'm excited to see more stories from this universe based on how well the first season was done.

It was made by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners and writers responsible for the HBO's Game of Thrones, and as you would expect, the production values and casting are great. It's pretty clear that these guys' strength is adapting other people's work for television. The first season roughly correlates to the events in book one, so they've still got lots of great material to draw on for the next two seasons, but even with their skill and experience, those stories will be a lot harder to condense for television than the first book was.

2.4.25
I just finished reading The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives by Adam Smyth, and I can say, if you treasure books as physical objects, this is one you'll definitely want to pick up. The book is exactly what the title says it is: a history of the book told with mini-biographies of people who were important to various improvements in the process of making a printed text, or people who reimagined what a book could be and expanded our definition of these objects.

A lot of it focuses on technical improvements, like making better ink and paper, creating new typefaces and fonts, and printing techniques, and along the way they tell the story not just of the printers and bookmakers who were primarily responsible for those improvements, but also of the printing industry and the concept of the book itself. But there are also chapters on people who reimagined what the book could be, from a family in a closed community that expanded printed texts by inserting illustrations and other tangential material, to high-end presses that made bespoke versions of classic texts, to the creation of the zine culture that is still going strong today.

My favorite story is of the Doves Press, which was a collaboration between T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker that produced very limited edition boutique versions of classic texts like Paradise Lost, various Shakespeare Plays, and the English Bible. They created their own font for these books called the Doves Type, which Cobden-Sanderson jealously guarded and never wanted to see used for mass-market mechanically-produced books, while Walker thought it was such a great typeface that it should be used in larger contexts. When their partnership dissolved, they resolved this dispute by having Cobden-Sanderson control the font (including keeping the actually type pieces used in the press) until his death, at which point it would pass to Walker to do with as he pleased.

But Cobden-Sanderson still wasn't happy with that outcome, so he wrote an addendum to his will bequeathing the type to the Thames, and in order to make sure this happened, he began making secret midnight trips to a bridge over his beloved river and slowly depositing small quantities of the type pieces until he had eventually dumped them all into the river, where they were lost, seemingly forever.

In an appropriately implausible coda to the story, however, a typeface designer worked with the Port Authority of London in 2014 to search the riverbed around the Hammersmith Bridge where Cobden-Sanderson disposed of the type and recovered about 150 of the original pieces of the Doves Type, and used these as a reference to create a digital version of Cobden-Sanderson's prized font nearly 100 years after Cobden-Sanderson thought he had destroyed it forever.

This book is full of weird stories like this along with plenty of technical details about how books are constructed, and it's a must-read for anyone who loves books and the unique connections these physical objects have to the stories, ideas, and knowledge contained within them.