Re-thinking Expectation

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Other writing:

• Pizza stone review at Serious Eats

• Why I love ramekins at Serious Eats

Beware the Change Up

When Andre 3000 announced a new album of flute and flute-like ambient instrumentals, his main statement was that he tried to make a rap album but this is what happened instead. And while most people have been pretty open-minded about it, Outkast was huge among a special set of College Guys back in the day and I’m fairly sure most of them were pissed. For that type of College Guy, Outkast represented something that was cool, modern, serious and fun at the same time, and the soundtrack of the best days of their lives because let’s face it you don’t really see a lot of big College Guys loving life as 42-year-old suburban sales reps.

The expectation for Andre 3000 to get back to rap is a yearning of that set to dissuade the oncoming slow march of death. Hearing him play the flute and flute-like instruments is a great reminder that we all have One Big Day in our future, and it’s getting closer. Or maybe that person doesn’t even exist. Maybe that’s just my own malformed expectation.

Expectation is a strange and horrid feeling. I love Michael Mann movies and I’m thrilled that Ferrari is coming to theaters soon. But if I let my expectations get the best of me, I’m going to be crushed if the movie is only so-so. If you’re addicted to the wider media landscape the way I am, however, it’s impossible to not ride the high of expectation. If we’re all waiting for eventual death, why not get excited about smaller events that are set to happen during our lifetime?

It can also run the other way: I watched Highlander II: The Quickening today and I expected it would have been a sequel to the original Highlander movie about immortal guys swinging swords. It… was not. It was about space aliens and an ozone layer repair shield and somehow sorted that all into a RoboCop pastiche. It was thrilling because my expectations were subverted. If I hadn’t had any expectations for Highlander II: The Quickening, I wouldn’t have had such a rollicking good time this afternoon.

When I restated this newsletter, I expected that I would be better about sticking to the schedule. Then I wrote one of my more thoughtful missives about The Great British Bake Off and I expected it would do really well. It saw some uptick in views, but it didn’t match my expectations for generating buzz the way I was hoping. Then I missed two weeks of newsletters. Whoops.

I’d like to say that I plan to do better in the future, but at the same time, I know that’s probably a lie. I like creating art and I like consuming art, and sometimes those two things interfere with each other. In the last few years, I’ve been trying to run a fiction sprint. It left me with two novel manuscripts in a 24-month period, but neither really makes much sense and they both need heroic rewrites and I’m tired. So I’m taking a short break. I’m going to play some video games and tinker with some short humor and watch some movies and read some books. I had expectations that my esteem as a writer would grow and that it would become easier to write more and pitch more and submit more and I’d be able to say that by the age of 40, I’d turned into the sort of writer I always knew I could be.

But those expectations are self-defeating. I should work less on trying to meet my expectations and work harder on trying to subvert those expectations. Maybe I won’t ever be a published novelist, but if I try hard enough, I just might be able to recreate myself as an immortal outcast alien from the planet Zeist on a mission to destroy the ozone-blocking shield that I set up decades earlier in the first place.

Or maybe I just give myself some time to settle back into life and stop trying to force success. Maybe it’s flute album time.

Read

• A Visit From The Goon Squad

Okay, I have to admit I didn’t love this book. I know a lot of people do, but fundamentally it had some sticky points that didn’t really click for me in narrative structure and subject matter. But I’m still thinking about it, and I think that’s more important than whether I liked it. I’m a big proponent of reading works that challenge you, and that challenge can sometimes be, “I wish there was more description of setting and people and less internal monologue,” or “I don’t really think that captured the way an aging poser punk would have run a record label.” Overall, though, it’s an intriguing narrative pieced together through short stories from varying perspective and a triumph of construction.

Watch

• Ronin available on Max

Boy oh boy. David Mamet dialogue is a trip, but in metered doses, it really hits. Ronin is a triumphant heist movie about the smartest guy in the room being hyper-competent, and Mamet’s punch-up on this screenplay is gloriously directed by John Frankenheimer in a tense, clippy pace. It’s hard not to see it as a bit of a Heat re-tread, seeing as how it features Robert Deniro being one of the best operators in the world and always being one step ahead of the game, but Ronin has its own twists and charms and incredible action sequences. If you wanna pop something on that’s gripping and won’t spoon-feed you the plot like a modern crappy action movie, Ronin is right up your alley.

Listen

• Born In The U.S.A. on vinyl

I’ll probably write about this one in the future, but there’s a good reason why you should listen to an album on the medium it was originally recorded and mastered for. Born In The U.S.A. sounds like absolute dogshit on any digital platform, and while it was the first CD released in the US, it was clearly designed to be played on big speakers as a vinyl record on a turntable. All the tinny and screeching synth sounds are warmer and more subtle on vinyl, and the bass really fills in the gaps in ways it can’t on CD or streaming.

Consume

• Treats

Doesn’t matter which ones. I tried to cut out sweets from my diet to lose some weight and overall be healthier but c’mon who are we kidding you gotta have some sweets some times. Cakes, cookies, pies, chocolate bars—you name it. I had a chocolate chip cookie cup filled with peanut butter mousse the other day. Absolutely ripped.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.