Category: Pop Culture

Music, Pop Culture, TV

My Pop Culture Digest – September 2020

Chrys Buckley

Music

For music, along with sprinkling in a whole host of other albums, the ones I’m listening to over and over are largely unchanged from last month. folklore, Gaslighter, Such Pretty Forks in the Road and Petals for Armor are my mainstays.

Taylor Swift

Earlier this month, Taylor performed “betty” for the Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony. This was the song that got to me most on my first listen to folklore and has stayed one of my favorites off the album ever since, so of course I tuned in. I don’t have cable, but, there are ways around that.

Her performance was pitch-perfect, from the music to her voice to the outfit to the guitar. Here it is:

Since this was on TV and all, she had to change “Would you tell me to go fuck myself?” to “Would you tell me to go straight to hell?” and it most definitely doesn’t have the same punch as the original line. God I hope we get live concerts again before too long because I want to scream this line, the real line, along with Taylor and tens of thousands of fans. I miss live music.

I hope one day, I can play this song on guitar. I reeeeeeeally want folklore guitar and piano books!

Continue reading “My Pop Culture Digest – September 2020” →

Pop Culture, TV

Better Call Saul Episode 104 “Hero” Recap

Chrys Buckley

Summary

Teaser

bcs104As these teasers like to do, we once again take a little trip to another point in time. This time, the time is Jimmy’s old days in Cicero, IL. Or I should I say “Slippin’ Jimmy’s” old days? For the first time, we see a con start to finish from Jimmy’s younger years.

It starts with Jimmy a guy walking about at night, talking about picking up girls, and howling like werewolves. Which like shouldn’t actually be tried as a pickup line (howl?) because I think most responses would like, umm what? and a blank stare and then a retreat. But anyway, they’re walking and talking, and then they come across a wallet. And it’s full of cash. A thousand bucks or so. Looking at the ID in the wallet they see it belongs to a guy who they see passed out in the alley.

Jimmy tries to awaken the passed out guy who grunts, flips them the finger and mumbles some beautiful drunken nonsense poetry about how he’s going to fuck them up, go into McDonald’s and get them fired (what) and it just sounds like the babbling of one very drunk dude. He quickly passes out again.

Jimmy sees his watch and takes it off the passed out man and pockets it himself. His howling friend wants to see it and reluctantly Jimmy shows it, a Rolex. Jimmy pretends not to know what that is but the howler wants the watch, saying it’s worth way more than the money. He gives Jimmy the wallet full of cash, plus $580 of his own money and Jimmy gives him the watch. The howler thinks he has won the night.

Continue reading “Better Call Saul Episode 104 “Hero” Recap” →

Music, Pop Culture

The Twenty-First Anniversary of Euphoria Morning

Chrys Buckley

EMTwenty-one years ago today, the twenty-first of September, Chris Cornell’s first solo album Euphoria Morning came out.

Somehow, I sorta knew it even then, in the early days of getting to know the songs, that this album would change my life. It felt epic in a way that you think, at eighteen, albums might not feel epic anymore.

In many posts, especially in recent goals posts, I’ve talked about a book project I’m working on called Moonchild. It takes its name from a song of the same title, track 8, and takes place the year Euphoria Morning came out.

Euphoria Morning has had far-reaching impacts far beyond just that year, though that’s when everything was set in motion. So many things, and people, in my life wouldn’t be the same without EM.

I always thought I’d dedicate Moonchild, if and when I ever get it published, to Chris Cornell. I thought that for years, and since I started working on this book project in 2003, for most of those years I never imagined that he wouldn’t be alive anymore and that the dedication would be to a dead man.

I still think of Euphoria Morning as the album that had the most profound, and the most tangible, impact on my life. Today, on it’s anniversary, I will listen. It’s been different listening to Chris Cornell after his death. Sometimes that’s all I can think about and sometimes it’s like it never happened.

The original title was Euphoria Mourning, and I think that fits too.

And here’s “Moonchild” the song:

The whole album is worth a listen, in full, because as cliche as it is to say this about Chris, no one sings like him anymore.

If you had to only pick a couple to listen to, I’d personally pick, along with “Moonchild” of course, “Sweet Euphoria,” “When I’m Down,” “Follow My Way,” “Disappearing One,” “Steel Rain,” and you know what, just listen to the whole damn thing.

Oh, and you must, and I mean must, listen to “Sunshower” which isn’t on the album but did come out around the same time on the Great Expectations Soundtrack. And Seasons, which was much earlier, on the Singles Soundtrack.

Happy Euphoria Morning release anniversary day!

-Chrys

Notes:

Music, Pop Culture, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Three: Recovering a Sense of Power

Chrys Buckley

MPjournal early fallIn today’s column, I’ll look at all of the essays, exercises and tasks of Week Three in The Artist’s Way, except for Synchronicity, a fairly long section, which will be the focus of next week’s post. That’s a whole beast of a topic to tackle.

In thinking about this week and all its topics, including Synchronicity, it strikes me that this one line in the Detective Work, an Exercise section could be the topic sentence for the whole chapter. It reads:

“Many blocked people are actually very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and gifts.”

She goes on to say that:

“Made to feel guilty for their talents, they often hide their own light under a bushel for fear of hurting others. Instead, they hurt themselves.”

To my mind, all the little essays in this chapter illuminate more about these lines, and get at how we lose our power through shamings and criticisms, how we give away our power by ignoring the messages from our difficult friend Anger, and how to start to take it back with detective work, synchronicity, and finally, growth.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Three: Recovering a Sense of Power” →

Podcasts, Pop Culture

Spotlight On: In the Dark Podcast Season Two and the Case of Curtis Flowers

Chrys Buckley

itdThe timing here is uncanny. In the Dark was always going to be my Spotlight post for this month, but a few days ago, major news came out about the case, which I’ll link to at the end.

In the Dark is a podcast put out by APM Reports. The first season of the podcast focused on the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling in Minnesota, one of the first missing children cases to get national attention. While they were reporting, though it was decades later, some major news came out about the case, which informed the podcast. In Season One, they discuss the case, the handling of it, and its implications on a national level. It was really well done, and the host, Madeleine Baron, has a way of reporting and interviewing that’s disarming and unassuming and supremely listenable.

Season One was good. But Season Two is in a category all its own. Madeleine and her reporting team moved to Mississippi for a year to fully investigate and report on the case of Curtis Flowers.

Continue reading “Spotlight On: In the Dark Podcast Season Two and the Case of Curtis Flowers” →

Pop Culture, TV

Better Call Saul 103 “Nacho” Recap

Chrys Buckley

bcs103In a way, this feels like the first true Better Call Saul episode, since the first two had Tuco, such a memorable Breaking Bad character. In “Nacho” we’re fully entrenched in the BCS world.

Also, every time I sit down to watch this show to write a recap, I’m like, oh damn, this show is so freaking good. Sometimes, thinking about it ahead of time, it can feel like one more thing to schedule in but once I’m watching, I’m so absorbed. I really, really, really like BCS.

Summary

Teaser

We start with a flashback to Chuck and Jimmy when they’re younger, though I couldn’t help thinking that Chuck’s younger makeup wasn’t so convincing. Jimmy’s been arrested for a “Chicago Sunroof” and is in danger of getting on the sex offender list because of it. In this teaser, it’s not revealed what a Chicago Sunroof is, but as a little tease of what’s to come if anyone’s watching for the first time, give it a couple episodes, and Jimmy will reveal it. Oh how he will.

At this point, Jimmy lives in Cicero, is in Cook County Jail, and Chuck had to come from Albuquerque to meet with him. They reveal that Jimmy hasn’t spoken to the family in five years, and that when he got arrested he called his mom, who has a soft spot for him and got Chuck to go see him. At first Chuck is not having any of it, but when Jimmy promises to do better and be better, he reconsiders.

Continue reading “Better Call Saul 103 “Nacho” Recap” →

Music, Pop Culture, Writing

My Pop Culture Digest – August 2020

Chrys Buckley

folklore coverIt’s going to be light this month. It’s been a month of a lot of personal emotional turmoil and change, and somehow in that, I haven’t consumed as much pop culture as usual.

The only TV I watched was some Veronica Mars early this month with my good friend, and I haven’t watched any since he moved last week, and some Better Call Saul for recaps for the site.

I tried to watch the Bachelor GOAT episode for Ali’s season because it was one of my favorites (Kasey has to be one of the most memorable characters of all time on that show) but those GOAT episodes are just TOO LONG and I gave up and listened to podcasts about it instead.

Speaking of podcasts, oh podcasts, this month, I think due to sheer emotional exhaustion that’s been going on for months, I just couldn’t with much other than replaying old episodes of Bachelor-related podcasts from old seasons back in the day.

Most of my pop culture consumption this month was in the arenas of music and books. Some are repeats, and some are new.

Continue reading “My Pop Culture Digest – August 2020” →

Music, Pop Culture, TV, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In August 23, 2020

Chrys Buckley

Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

goals5

  • journal about Moonchild (writing project) at least once – oops, I completely forgot. I usually journal about it on Sunday mornings and today I just got up and went to my regular Moonchild work.
  • collect all relevant old notebooks from storage and bring them up into my apartment – still on here, gotta do it – DONE today!
  • work on Moonchild all seven days – and to get more specific with what I’m working on with this book project, my goal convert all reeeeeally old Moonchild files that are locked in old ClarisWorks and AppleWorks files (.cwk) into files I can read and search – DONE – there were two files that were too corrupted to be salvaged, but all the rest are salvaged, converted, and saved.
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • journal about blog at least once – DONE.
  • bank two Better Call Saul recaps for this site – DONE – recaps for “Uno” and “Mijo” are written and scheduled.

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – did six, will do one extra this coming week
  • get up through song 90 of book one of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book – instead of a new lesson this week, it’ll be a lot of practice integrating from the last several lessons – DONE.
  • seven keyboard practice sessions – DONE.
  • get up through page 55 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – yes, this is the same page as last week; it’s a loaded page – and get through the G major/minor scale building and exercises – DONE.

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 153 nights (five months) in a row – DONE, except my math last week was bad, 147 + 7 = I’m up to 154.
  • read through page 477 in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which I’m reading for the NOAH (National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation)’s PWA Book Club – DONE. I’m LOVING this book, sad I’ll soon be done with the whole thing!
  • write Morning Pages every day – six out of seven.

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In August 23, 2020” →

Pop Culture

Spotlight On: Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

Chrys Buckley

liesLies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen was the first nonfiction, non memoir book I ever read of my own free will, in 2003 when I was twenty-two. It was the book that showed me I could enjoy reading a nonfiction book based on facts and research (as opposed to fiction and as opposed to nonfiction that’s story-based), especially when it wasn’t assigned. Many more books of this variety came after, but this book was my first.

Summary

Lies My Teacher Told Me explores the misinformation in American History textbooks by looking at it from several different angles. The most prominent of these is James W. Loewen’s thorough survey of twelve textbooks used in American History high school classes across the country and exploring where they fall short–omissions, some outright lies, reliance on secondary (and tertiary, etc.) sources instead of available primary sources–and how they leave us disconnected from our history. He also goes into the process for textbook approval for school systems, and how censorship can often play a role there.

Continue reading “Spotlight On: Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen” →

Music, Podcasts, Pop Culture, Science, TV, Writing

I Can’t Sleep With or Without You (My iPhone)

Chrys Buckley
MXM82_AV2
The closest pic I could find to my own beloved phone and case

Sung to the tune of the U2 song “With or Without You.”

In some of my recent goals posts, I’ve mentioned a goal to sleep without my phone. This has been an ongoing struggle for me ever since I got an iPhone (and I was just telling a friend that I got one the day they became available to Verizon people), and in different iterations even before then. I thought it would make sense to give some background on this habit that I’ve struggled to break.

Because the thing is, I know all the things. I know that you’re supposed to get off electronics before going to bed. I know taking the phone into the bed with me, scrolling endlessly, listening to podcasts, having the blue light in my face (and I hold the phone much closer to my face than the average person, thanks legal blindness) is all bad. I know when I fall asleep with the phone, my sleep is worse. I don’t sleep as deeply. I wake up more often to pee or just to wake up, most likely because I’m still in the lighter stages of sleep. I probably miss out on a lot of deep sleep and all the goodies that it provides. I even read somewhere, years ago, that screens in bed has been linked to weight gain.

Continue reading “I Can’t Sleep With or Without You (My iPhone)” →