Monday Check-IN(1/27/25)

What’s happening, folks?

Yes, it is indeed another Monday morning. Another work week has begun and we’re standing slack-jawed wondering what the hell happened to the weekend. This has been an ongoing trend for the as long as I can remember. At least as far back as the early 80s when I truly started to appreciate a nice sleep in on a Saturday morning. That is until the good cartoons started playing, at which time I’d be up with some toast and hot cocoa watching the animated versions of Pole Position, Pac-man, and the Spiderman/Incredible Hulk Hour.

The Friday night of 9-year old me hasn’t really changed too much from the Friday night of 51-year old me. Fridays as a kid was usually pizza and a movie. Either my parents would make a homemade pizza, or we’d go to Pizza Hut on Detroit Street and get a nice Priazzo(for the time that they made them), or a Taco Pizza. My parents would down a couple pitchers of beer, while I jacked up my nervous system with a Mountain Dew. I don’t know if there were drinking and driving laws yet in the early 80s. If there were, my dad was “Breaking the law, breaking the law” nearly every Friday night. Thankfully a couple of pitchers of Michelob didn’t have the ABV punch that more modern beers do, or who knows if I’d even be alive to type this out.

But hey, it worked out. We’re all still alive to tell the tales of the wild early 1980s.

Fridays nowadays are me going home after work and cleaning the house. Once the house has been cleaned I’ll indulge in a couple ice cold IPAs and watch a movie(something I own or something streaming as opposed to a rented Betamax from Video World back in the day.) Dinner is either a homemade pizza or some kind of Mexican food(tacos, burritos, taco pizza.) Fridays and Saturdays have a very specific meal vibe. Pizzas and tacos usually fit the bill, though I wouldn’t be opposed to a nice Italian sub.

I think a lot of this comes from undiagnosed OCD, maybe? I’m very set in my ways when it comes to things. I don’t want soup or spaghetti or meatloaf on a weekend night. It just doesn’t feel right. Friday night pizza takes me back to being a kid and that feeling of freedom knowing I was on weekend time. No school bus to pick me up at 6:40 in the morning, no homework(hopefully), and the freedom to just hang out in my bedroom on a Friday night listening to cassettes or playing with Star Wars, GI Joe, or Transformer toys. And having no plans was better than having them. The days and nights were wide open. I liked treating the weekend like a jazz band improvising on stage for 2 to 3 hours. Follow the muse wherever she takes you. When there was a set schedule it kind of muted the vibe.

The biggest plan that I wanted was knowing what friend was coming over to spend the night, or what friend I was spending the night with. Regardless of the spot, we knew it was going to be pizzas, caffeinated drink of some sort, and inappropriate horror films to freak out over.

I still feel the same way that I felt when I was 9-years old on a Friday afternoon as I do now, which is a palpable excitement in my gut. Getting away from the responsibility of work and living in my little bubble for 48 hours. And I also feel the same way about Monday mornings as I did when I was 9. That dark, cold ride on the bus to school; like being trucked into the coal mines for a long day of claustrophobia and black lung. Except now the ride is a mere 12 minutes to work, with barely any time to get my brain rewired for another 5 days of slogging for my billion dollar Overlord employer. But I guess it’s a Catch-22; I can’t have the freedom of the weekend and the amenities that come with it without the slogging for the “man”.

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I filled my weekend with good beer, good movies, and lots and lots of music. I spun records like Jeremiah Chiu’s 2022 masterpiece In Electric Time, Elephant9 & Terje Rydpal’s Catching Fire, Joel Ross’ nublues, and watched a great indie horror flick on Shudder called Last Straw. Also rewatched Abigail with my son. My wife and I were catching up with the show The Agency, and I began rewatching Better Call Saul for the third time. It gets better with each rewatch and I’m already in season 2. Might be my favorite television series ever. Surpasses Breaking Bad for sure.

I also worked on more new music. This new project is really coming together and I’m really excited to see where it goes.

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I guess I’m just trying to savor my free time whenever I can. And I’m trying to stave off the existential dread that comes with worrying about where this place I call home is going with all the incredibly scary rhetoric we hear everyday now. Someone made a comment about how the fans of the new(old) schlep in charge of the nation are still incredibly mad despite “their guy” winning. I wonder that myself. Despite getting what they wanted they’re still raging like petulant children that asked for hot dog, and when presented with said hot dog they drop it on the floor and say “NO!!”

Okay, so what do they want? Winning the election wasn’t enough. Now they’re going to go all scorched earth because there’s still 75 million people that didn’t agree with them. So like their orange God they want people that disagree and make it known to be punished. Last time I checked that’s now how democracy works. There’s always been strife when it comes to politics, but this time around this doesn’t even feel like politics. It’s more like the Hunger Games, or Squid Game. Or The Running Man. It’s entertainment sprinkled with a healthy does of hate and vitriol. I’ve said from the beginning that Trump voters(at least the ones from 2020 and 2024) voted as if they were picking a favorite WWF wrestler. They vote for the heel every time, and we all know Trump is the biggest heel we’ve seen yet.

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But we’re back at Monday. Another week of work and little play. Come on Friday, I’m ready for my Priazzo now.