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.