The Goodness Vol. 4

October 23, 2018

My daughters and I set up a small autumnal holiday display in front of our house. In addition to a hay bale, four $6 chrysanthemums, and a couple spooky decorations; we carefully arranged a group of freshly-purchased pumpkins of various sizes to round out the festive scene. We really nailed it. About ten minutes after project completion, I peeked out the front window and spied a very fat squirrel sitting contently in the middle of our lawn while chomping away at one of our tiny pumpkins. He or she (it’s impossible to tell) was brazenly holding the prize with two hands like a human would hold a beachball-sized apple — if they existed — and he was going to town. I was loving the whole scene but my kids were not so enthused. I said “we are feeding needy squirrels” and being the animal loving kids they are, they nodded and said okay. Five minutes later, the girls slyly sprung into action and all of the pumpkins were relocated inside our house.

Hope you enjoyed “Pumpkin Chat!” Now onto… (drum intro from Helmet’s “I Know”)… The Goodness Vol. 4!

View From This Side

Behold this treasure trove of found vintage Kodachrome slides curated by Martin Snelling. I got a little misty viewing these sweet slices of life from a bygone era. Who are the people in the photo below? We’ll probably never know but the simple joy they are experiencing is palpable and reminds me of my grandma and other older relatives from my youth who showed me so much love.

Visit: Flickr and Website

Hiking Project

It’s Fall (yes, I still capitalize the names of seasons. Show them some respect!) and it’s a perfect time to get away from all screens big and small and hit the trails. “But Jeff, where are the trails?” Good question. Just jump on the resource-rich Hiking Project website, plug in your zip code, and you’ll be treated to a listing of trails in your area, replete with maps, length, ascent/descent, level of difficulty and a lot more useful hiking info. Whether you are a hiker, walker, runner, mountain biker, birder, dog walker or someone who just wants to discover a dead body (kidding!), a hike will do you good.

Seriously, getting offline and immersing yourself in nature is good for your mental health and will help you shed a few pounds if you do it often enough. There’s also another hiking site with lots of trail info but you need to create an account and download the app. I am too busy to do this.

If you are in the Philly area, make sure you visit the mighty Wissahickon, an oasis of scenic trails and sylvan majesty.

Kusama: Infinity

“Now the top-selling female artist in the world, Yayoi Kusama overcame impossible odds to bring her radical artistic vision to the world stage. For decades, her work pushed boundaries that often alienated her from both her peers and those in power in the art world. Kusama was an underdog with everything stacked against her: the trauma of growing up in Japan during World War II, life in a dysfunctional family that discouraged her creative ambitions, sexism and racism in the art establishment, mental illness in a culture where that was particularly shameful and even continuing to pursue and be devoted to her art full time on the cusp of her 90s.”

This looks amazing!

Somm

“Four wine stewards prepare to take the Master Sommelier Exam, one of the world’s most-difficult tests, presided over by the notoriously secretive Court of Master Sommeliers.”

Warning, you probably won’t embrace the wine bros featured in this documentary at first because they are a bit much and the wine world is crazy snobby, but as the documentary moves along and you see how much they have invested in passing the test, you’ll probably cave and root them on. I did.

I call attention to this tasty 2012 recommendation (available on Netflix) now because it is really well done and sommeliers are in the news for cheating… allegedly. Yup, 23 newly-appointed “Master Sommeliers” have had their certification revoked after a big old wine-sippin’ scandal. Check out the story on the New Yorker or listen to it on NPR if you are too lazy or too wine drunk to read it.

There is also a follow-up/companion doc that is worth a viewing…

Thank You for Coming to Hattiesburg: One Comedian’s Tour of Not-Quite-the-Biggest Cities in the World

by Todd Barry

“Follow me on my journey of small clubs, and the occasional big amphitheater. Watch me make a promoter clean the dressing room toilet in Connecticut, see me stare at beached turtles in Maui, and see how I react when Lars from Metallica shows up to see me at a rec center in Northern California.”

The hardest I laughed in the last ten years was watching Todd Barry do his crowd work show in Philly. Reading about Todd spending his days in small cities searching for good coffee brought me an equal amount of happiness. Plus, Todd solves a decades-old murder while butting heads with a local sheriff.

New Dough Rising

Let’s flour up our hands and make some sourdough bread with Patrick Ryan owner of Firehouse Bakery!

and since we have all the ingredients and pots and pans out, let’s make some mother-lovin’ pizza dough!!!!!

Set the Boy Free: The Autobiography

by Johnny Marr

Looking for an inspirational rags-to-riches tale of a English schoolboy fighting his way out of a hardscrabble existence armed only with his rock and roll dreams and an old guitar? Well this is not it. Johnny had a fairly comfortable and supportive childhood. Still, Set The Boy Free is a solid and surprisingly pleasant memoir by a truly innovative guitarist and musician who kept making great music even after the fall of The Smiths.

Three tidbits of interest:

  1. He played in Modest Mouse for a couple years.
  2. He’s been good friends with Billy Duffy, guitarist for The Cult, since he was 12.
  3. He ran the 2010 New York Marathon in a time of 3:54:18. Respect!

Bonus: Here’s a classic post-Smiths jam, a pitch perfect collaboration with Bernard Sumner and guest vocalist Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys…

News You Can Use

Laurent Durieux

Illustrator and Graphic Artist

Read “The Retro-Futuristic World of Laurent Durieux’s Gorgeous Movie Posters” and maybe spruce up the walls of your TV room/home theater/woman cave with some of his fabulous film posters.

“Nightswimming”

R.E.M. on Later… with Jools Holland (2003)

“Nobody”

Mitski from “Be The Cowboy” (2018)

Free Band Names

I’ve been posting free band names for like almost 20 years. Why? I… (cries into throw pillow) don’t know. Here are some available gems:

  • Fried Green Tornado
  • Ghostface Chinchilla
  • Cop Bar
  • Vacation Mustache
  • Senior Discount
  • Near Mrs.
  • The Young Fresh Fossils
  • Laura Ingalls Wildest
  • Speed Reading Dynamics
  • Von Jon Bovi
  • Counting Cows
  • Christopher CrossFit & The Kettlebells
  • The F Street Band
  • Dinosaur Sr
  • Olivia Gluten John
  • Super Tall Grandmas
  • worst friends forever
  • Nephew Swap

So many more >

RiffTrax: Miami Connection

This movie is both impossibly bad and thoroughly enjoyable because the commentary from the RiffTrax guys is muy divertido. Lots of RiffTrax movies, like this classic, are available on Amazon Video. Check out full catalog here.

Stephen Egerton of the Descendents

Punk legend and coffee superfan talks about his passion for shredding.

O.P.P.

Wimps from “Garbage People” (2018)

Good Tweets

More Goodness…

See ya!

Jeff Lyons

Author: Jeff Lyons

I am the proprietor of this dumb site and Philly Trail Runners. I also co-host Junk Miles with Chip & Jeff. You can follow my daily nonsense on Twitter and Bluesky .