That can cut two ways. Sometimes a perfectly executed, tight piece of work just doesn’t feel alive. Rundown any top sales chart and you’ll eventually hit “perfectly executed, but boring.” To prove this isn’t an old man opinion, I’ll dig all the way back to the 90s.

I’ve made an active effort to not talk too much shit on here, but I will give myself a personal waiver to discuss the number 16 song of 1995, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” by Bryan Adams.

The song is impeccably produced with a textbook arrangement that ebbs and flows in the right places, with everything cleanly played and vocals that are right on the money. It also fucking sucks. Sappy lyrics, guitars that say “excuse me, do you mind if I play here?” and a general aesthetic that feels like an upscale Spanish restaurant run by Mormons. Weak.

The easy counter example here would the the number 4 song of 1995, Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose”. In the macro view, they have a lot in common: both are about love and had single releases that were tie-ins for major feature films, the Adams song with Don Juan DeMarco and the Seal song with Batman Forever. But there’s no fun here, because of course the Seal song is better. In the video he sings in front of the Batsignal and the song has that little pause-to-keyboard break that rules. It’s no contest.

So we’re going to dig a little deeper today and find the second meaning of “Sometimes the best stuff kind of sucks.” Something that has enough going against it that it has no choice but to be glorious.

Have you heard the ending theme to Baywatch Nights?

Sung by star David Hasselhoff, it’s essentially a vanity project nesting doll. A soap star (Hasselhoff) hit it big on prime time 80s tv as the driver of a talking car (Knight Rider) and used that success to make a vanity album that eventually lead to him singing down the Berlin Wall. He was in another prime time NBC show that was cancelled after one season, but he got a deal made to bring the show back in syndication and in the process it became one of the biggest shows in the world (Baywatch). From that success, Hasselhoff set up a spin-off where he traded in his tiny red shorts for tight jeans and a cool Adidas jacket as he went from lifeguard to private eye (Baywatch Nights).

Hasselhoff’s Humphrey Bogart obsession and Baywatch Nights’ eventual shift into supernatural territory are beyond the scope of this piece, but think of the journey it took to get this beautiful piece of work, a journey you can somehow hear in every note. The breathless pre-chorus, the round at the end, it’s all so beautiful. And I do not mean for this to come off as ironic appreciation, I truly think it rules.

Now the song his Baywatch son sang about how he’s not going to have sex, that I appreciate ironically.

This is an extreme example, but stuff like the ending theme to Baywatch Nights is why I’m not really interested in the creative possibilities of AI. I believe it will have a place, serve a purpose and possibly make the grunt work easier, but the thing I truly love about art—and yes, I just called the end theme from Baywatch Nights “art”—is that it’s made by people. People with weird ideas and scores to settle and things they wish they were but probably aren’t. Honestly, at the rate it’s moving, AI can probably get you 90% of the way to a new Baywatch Nights theme, but it’s that last 10% that makes all the difference. We can only stomach so much algorithmic slop until we crave that batshit human touch.

Setting Off the Exercise Sensor

The potential for smart watches hasn’t quite been reached, probably because there’s more money in getting you to look at the screen of your phone. It’s great that I can see my blood sugar reading from my continuous glucose monitor at a glance, but it would be even greater if I could do it without having my phone in range. Hell, at this point I’d settle for being able to dismiss and silence the high glucose alert without having to unlock my phone.

But there is one feature of the smartwatch that truly brings me joy. Unfortunately, it’s a rare occurrence and as technology improves it may disappear altogether. I never feel more accomplished than when I poop so hard the watch asks me if I’m doing a workout.

Yes, I am, thank you for asking.

Things I Like

I think Venture Bros is the most beautiful show ever made.

It’s beautiful because there’s a sadness at the heart of it, the way there’s a sadness at the heart of life. Nothing seems to go right, but it always goes on. The characters are constantly dealing with the consequences of their actions and the actions of the people they love, even if it seems like the people they love don’t always love them back. It is a show about life that also happens to have a villain with invisible appendages named Phantom Limb.

The new Venture Bros movie, Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart is a fitting end for the series, as it’s not quite what any of us wanted—a full final season—but Jackson Publick and southeastern Connecticut’s favorite son Doc Hammer took the cards they were dealt and came up with something beautiful. If you’ve never seen the series, start from the beginning and work your way up. If you have seen the series, watch it again anyway. That’s what I’m doing.

I don’t know if that broken bridge was the inciting event that delayed our flight 6 hours and made us board the plane no less than three times, but sometimes it’s nice to think of what could have been if the cards fell correctly.

Luckily, I had most of my stuff strapped to my back, so I had plenty of entertainment options, though I’d woken up a bit too early to be able to read with any hope of retention. So the delay mostly came down to playing video games in a place I don’t normally play video games and lightly eavesdropping on the conversations around me. Some college kids going home for a bit, a grandmother making a trip to see family, one very loud gentleman who wasn’t quite sure how weather worked…

Let’s talk about him for a bit.

Anyone who’s worked with the public at any point knows this guy. He’s 100% sure that you’re keeping something from him and are intentionally trying to antagonize him when in truth it’s easier to just give these people what they want so they go away. But his coping mechanism to deal with the reality of a delay was to have very stern faced conversations with the crew about how they shouldn’t lie to him. It seemed his brain was having issues connecting the sunny skies of Virginia to the potential tornados of New York and he was insistent on working this problem out in a verbal manner, so that everyone at the gate would remember “that fucking guy who wouldn’t shut up about the weather”.

Of course, we are in an era where the tools for amateur meteorology are one tap away, but he seemed content to work with the maps in his mind, thank you very much. I’m fascinated by this, because we rarely get to observe from a safe distance the problem of what happens when a mind has to face a truth that was previously hidden from it.

I think people misestimate what is in their control. I say “misestimate” because I don’t think they over or under estimate what they can control, they’re just not sure on all the details (and for the record, I include myself here). For example, on that flight, we all chose our airline and our arrivals and departures. Our choice of airline–Breeze, for the record–limited the destinations and days we could go, but for a reduced price, we gave up a little control. We could have paid more to take another airline at another time to another place, but we didn’t. We were in control of our decision to buy a ticket for this plane.

But we don’t get to decide when the captain feels it’s okay to fly and the weather is not a democratically decided event. If Johnny Yellsalot thinks he should risk the tornado warnings, that’s fine, but it’s not his decision. The concept of truth has proven to be very elastic over the last few years, but he seemed to genuinely think that he could debate the weather.

And that’s why we’re fucked.

How much has the weather impacted the average person? Maybe it cancelled a picnic or a baseball game or something. Has it stopped them from going outside because the air was unhealthy or it’s too hot to be alive? If not yet, it will soon.

I feel like so much of modern life is built on ignoring natural forces. I tapped a screen a few times, handed over a pile of money that was never actually in my hand, and somehow that gave me the ability to fly, with little to no knowledge of headwinds or tailwinds or wind in general. But that act of giving the money makes it feel like I know something because now I’ve seen a small piece of the story of those planes in the sky. But I don’t know shit and I can’t control the weather, no matter how miserable I am sitting in the slightly too hot Richmond airport with the WiFi that barely works while I’m trying to see a doppler radar signal 380 miles away as if the act of me looking at it will somehow push the storm out east.

But staring at that map is easier than staring into the gaping maw of the truth: it’s a hostile, uncertain world and our entire society is precariously balanced on the edge. However, sometimes, when the circumstances are right, we can fly.

You Can Stop Squeezing

Sorry if that got out of hand up there, it’s been a rough week.

As I said before, I didn’t necessarily want to be on vacation, and though I’ve learned over the years that it’s a mistake to have fun at a place you don’t want to be–someone will use that against you to make you go again–I had a little fun anyway. Wasn’t free though.

We went to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, were I got the 7 day pass because I though my body could handle just a little park each day. Unfortunately, it was so hot and muggy that even standing in line for their not-as-good-as-their-sister-park rider accessibility program almost took me out. After standing in line for 10 minutes to get a wristband and a sheet of paper that would let me go to the front of the line and get instructions on what time to come back to the front of the line, we picked up 3 refillable drink cups and two slices of watermelon. The total on that was $78.

They’ve gone cashless at Busch Gardens, which I think they do to make the transactions feel frictionless, but it just makes it so there’s an app on my phone that will show me how hard they’ve been squeezing my grapes.

I thought I got them because I upgraded my pass so I didn’t have to pay for parking, but it turns out you can just blow through the toll both and no one even bats an eye. I might even feel bad about that if I didn’t pay $16 for a chef salad at some point. The food at their German themed Festhaus is very good, but at $124 for three people, it was the most expensive meal of our vacation. I probably would have made out had I purchased a dining pass instead, but every dollar you spend with an amusement corporation is essentially a bet on whether or not you’re about to get screwed. All told, three of us spent five to six hours in the park over two days, rode roughly 6 rides and paid just under $600 for the privilege. That $600 is park expenses only. My Realdeal Actual Value Estimate—the price I think I should have paid—would be roughly $300.

Things I Like

I’m on record as disliking the outdoors–particularly the beach–and being extremely price sensitive to things that are not computers, instruments, collectibles or trash food, but we rented jet skis for an hour and it ruled. I felt just like my hero, Mitch Buchannon of Baywatch, even down the Ray Ban Outdoorsman glasses I bought for the trip. I even got to come to the rescue of a busty blonde when her son accidentally dumped her off the back of the jet ski (full disclosure: she paid for my rental and also I’ve been with her for over a decade).

I’m probably not buying one anytime soon, but I would ride one again.

But I’m also not getting the maximum value out of this hotel room, because the Samsung tv is stuck on Motion Smoothing. “Vacation” to me means unlimited time to work on my little projects, watch movies and catch up on all the video games I bought and haven’t got around to yet. I brought a 5 terabyte hard drive full of lovingly ripped films which all look like absolute shit on this Samsung television. I tried to get it out of hospitality mode, but since I don’t have the actual remote for the tv, that was useless. I also tried to call the front desk to see if anyone could help me, but trying to explain the pains of motion smoothing to someone who doesn’t care about it feels similar to explaining that we could all lift this building 3 inches off the ground if we just concentrate on it. I think I would have gotten a better reception had I marched down there and taken a dump on the counter. At the very least, the would have known what it was.

Still, my handheld pc works though it is bittersweet to play it next to a 55 inch television and a pile of useless adapters. I’m not a man who easily admits defeat, but here I am, defeated.

At least I got to try Hardee’s for the first time.

A Brief Note on Accessibility

The Busch Gardens/Water Country USA Disability Accessibility Program has worked out quite well for me. I swear I wrote about this before, but a cursory search of the archives didn’t turn up anything and I’m on vacation, so I’m not looking any harder than that.

I was in their system from a previous time at the park, so I didn’t even need to break out the doctor’s notes or anything. At Water Country, the gave me a bunch of one time passes for certain rides so I didn’t have to wait in line, though the passes don’t really help with the truly awe-inspiring amount of stairs I had to climb to get to the rides. Still, I got to go on pretty much  everything in a reasonable amount of time. I may get maximum value out of that 7 day pass yet!

Things I Like

Every July 4th, I alternating between watching two films that take place on the date: Jaws and The Return of the Living Dead. This year was a Jaws year.

You don’t need me to tell you Jaws is good. It’s one of the best movies ever made. But to switch things up this year, we watched it projected. I bought an LG projector for $200 on eBay back in 2020 when it started to look more and more like my white ass would never see the inside of a movie theater again. As much as I love the look of a 4K OLED television, there’s a special kind of magic to the way that projected light hits the eye, even when it’s just projected on a bedroom wall.

I came very close to packing that projector and bringing it on vacation. That seemed overboard at the time, but now as I type this in the ambient glow of a Samsung television that mocks me with it’s motion interpolation, I know I must always follow my heart.

I’m still not entirely sure why she did this, but it was a tremendous day for me. It had been a couple of years since I invoked her “you don’t have to go on vacations after you turn 16” clause, which was probably heartbreaking for a woman that loved to drive really far to sleep outside. But while I can acknowledge the sadness now, I cannot feel remorse because I hate camping that much.

But she did not hold it against me. Or maybe she knew the fireworks would piss off her (now ex-) fiancee, which had become something of a pastime for us. Perhaps the bag would have stayed in New Hampshire it if she knew just how much it would piss him off.

Upon receiving the bounty, I called some friends up and told them to get ready for the show. It would take place in the standard venue: a patch of dirt in the middle of my mother’s backyard. Or so I thought.

Her ex felt that the trees were too close to the firing zone even though a.) they weren’t and b.) it had recently rained. Still, it was his house and he recently helped transport some illegal fireworks over state lines for me, so this was a rare time I was in no mood to argue. Following his instructions, I moved the show to the middle of the yard. Since the ground here wasn’t as flat as my usual area, I supported the small box shaped package with 4 bricks we had laying around. Then I lit it and ran.

The fuse hissed and then went silent. Moments later, the first shot went up, a brilliant purple ball that flew about 25 feet in the air before expiring like a small, beautiful supernova. The next shot was a beautiful red comet that flew directly at me. I dodged and it slapped into the side of the house. The next shot went into the neighbor’s yard.

It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

The force of the first shot had knocked the box free of the bricks and onto it’s side, where every successive shot spun the thing around so you never knew where the next round was going. There was nothing we could do but keep dodging until it was done. Well, I guess we could have ran into the house, but I was crying with laughter and not thinking straight.

When the thing finally burned itself out, my mom’s ex announced that the rest of the show was canceled because I “want to act like an adult but you’re not responsible enough”, even though at least 4 other people heard him give the instructions that got his camper lightly grazed by a small green ball of sparks. I’d probably be madder about that if getting yelled at by someone for following their instructions wasn’t a tremendous preparation for the world of work.

He instructed my mom to get rid of the fireworks, which meant she put them in the basement and told me where they were when she went on her next vacation, telling me to definitely not light them off while they were gone *wink*. I definitely did not throw the remnants of a fireworks show into the family fire pit and spend an hour trying to put out a fire that changed colors every time I sprayed it with water.

One of Two Times I Mowed a Lawn

I lived in apartments for most of my life, so I haven’t done a lot of lawn mowing in my day, which is good because I hate it and I’m bad at it.

But when my mom and that same ex took a trip to Florida and left me in charge of the house, the only instructions I received were “don’t leave a mess in the sink” and “mow the lawn”. I should not have to tell you that I waited until the literal last minute to do both of those things.

Mom’s ex’s son was big into lawnmower racing, so we had a bunch of lawnmowers laying around the yard in various states of disrepair. With about an hour to go before we had to pick up mom and her ex from the airport, my buddy and I decided to give lawnmower racing a go ourselves.

Apparently we didn’t do a good job, because I was banned from yard work after that, though I assure you all the grass was shorter than it was when we started. Her ex was so mad he couldn’t even yell at me directly. I felt bad that mom had to get a lecture about the proper latticework pattern we were supposed to cut the lawn in, but in our defense, we had wasted a bunch of time playing Animal Crossing for the GameCube and did not think–or care–that the blades on one of the mowers might be higher than the blades on the other mower.

Things I Like

July is the month of my absolute favorite holiday: the anniversary of the theatrical release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

It was not the first R-rated movie I ever saw–we had HBO when I was younger and I was a child raised by the tv–but it is the first R-rated movie I saw in theaters. I swear I saw it early as part of some sneak preview screening, but I can find no evidence of this anywhere on the internet. And I believe I only saw it 2 or 3 times in theaters, because unlike the 8 or so times I saw Batman, a parent or guardian had to actual stay in the theater with me, not just drop me off and then swing back in 2 hours. Still, every moment was seared into my tiny little brain the moment I saw it.

Even at a young age, I was a cranky little bastard, so my dad came up with the idea of my stepmother taking me to see it the first time, perhaps in hopes that I would stop suggesting that if she wanted tacos for dinner maybe she should take a trip to Mexico. It worked for a spell. My instinct for self preservation was high enough that I knew I had to play nice if I wanted further access to movies I was probably too young to see. Really backfired on me about a year later when we took a family trip to see Under Siege and we all spent an awkward few minutes looking at Erika Eleniak’s boobs as a family.

Still worth it to see that T2 spillway chase on the big screen.