Well…..here we are again. It has been a little over four months since our last pot and an overdue apology is in order. However, life has been…….interesting, to put it mildly.
Life updates:
1. My rheumatologist has confirmed that the auto-immune disease is indeed GPA-Wegners, an aggressive and rare and very serious form of vascilitis that will likely kill me. It appears to have moved to my kidneys and now my joints. I have full blown arthritis and life is just plain difficult.
2. My darling wife is pregnant with twins. We already know one will be a boy. We will find out the other gender in a few weeks. Joy cannot begin to describe this time and this season. But it has been a very, very difficult pregnancy and has not been without its share of issues.
3. Working in college admissions, marketing and special events has taken up so much of my free blogging time.
4. My older sister has stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And that has taken away much of my spirit and happiness for blogging.
5. Also finding that most of my free time is being spent on church activities and being with my church family. The older I get the more my faith helps makes sense of my every day.
Still love music and movies and still want to blog about them, but life has been hard to say the least. Would appreciate prayers, support, love and light you can send our way. Cheers, friends!
This probably won’t come as a surprise to those that read this but this writer absolutely detests Netflix. The company that started in 1999 with direct-to-your-doorstep DVDs is a far cry from the behemoth it is today. And while there are signs of a slump, the streaming site is a megalith unto itself. Read more…
Worst album cover ever. Best album of 2022 candidate. That about sums it up when it comes to Dawes’ latest release The Misadventures of Doomscroller. But since this is a site of opinions, we’ll do our best to offer one as well. Read more…
Despite the ever-burgeoning popularity of narrative-based TV series and the endless streaming platforms that broadcast them, this analog writer refuses to fall for most of them. There’s something about a limited episode mini-series or a a two-hour movie that seems infinitely more rewarding than the 16+ hours or more time investment it takes to stay on top of series-based shows. Read more…
As America continues its march towards unprecedented polarity there is no denying the rise of hate crimes in the last decade. One such target of said hate crimes is Muslim Americans. In her absorbing new documentary An Act of Worship Pakistani-American director Nausheen Dadabhoy sheds light on a handful of Muslim Americans and their efforts to stem the tides of hate. A follow up project to her 2017 short of the same name An Act of Worship is an absolute must-see. Read more…
Arguably the best thing about having a music blog is having unknown strangers send you an album that absolutely floors you. Such is the case with British singer-songwriter Scott Lloyd and his sophomore album Waterlands. At its core it’s coffeehouse folk with a solid backing band. But damn if we don’t love the heck out of it. Read more…
Well I really hate having to write these updates but here goes nothing.
It’s mid-May and my health situation is quite meh. As some of you might know last Februrary I was diagnosed with GPA, a form of vasculitis. After getting some mixed signals from my Orlando-based rheumatology team I decided to wait on treatment and perhaps pursue it a later date. Then April of this year happened! Read more…
For reasons I can never explain my cranial jukebox has been playing “Battered Apartments” by Luke Wesley non-stop this week. For those who have not heard, it is a gorgoeus song about the demise of a romance that is as affecting and poignant as anything I have ever heard. When it was first released in summer of 2010 it absolutely wrecked and floored me. “Battered Apartments” was the closing track of Wesley’s debut, which remains one of my favorite albums of the last 15 years. That of course reminded me that I reviewed his sophomore album Who Are We Kidding? for AbsolutePunk.net. That site is now defunct (reimagined as Chorus.FM) and Wesley has yet to release any folow-ups since. In an effort to right that ship, here’s the review. Read more…
How does one accurately describe American singer/songwriter Josh Ostrander who performs under the moniker Mondo Cozmo? Profane? Shapeshifting? Brash? Self-absorbed? What about effective, absorbing and utterly engaging. There’s a dichotomy at work with Mondo Cozmo that keeps one wanting more every time. Just listen, you’ll see. Read more…
