Chad Comello

Month: December 2021

  • 2021 in review

    See previous year in review posts.

    My view from the end of all things 2021:

    With the day off from work, I spent the morning traipsing around our snowy yard with Little Man. He introduced me to his snowman (above), we threw snowballs at trees, and rolled down the small hill in our backyard. Lots more snow is on the way, apparently, so we’ll be out there shoveling again soon to welcome the new year.

    I don’t have an overarching thesis of my 2021. In most ways it was just like last year: COVID, living with a rambunctious and hilarious toddler, and doing the little things of living every day. Sometimes that’s all you can and should do: shovel snow when you have to, and roll down a hill when you can.

    A few highlights:

  • Revolver Soul

    My Better The Beatles series rolls on with the ultimate selection of the best from Rubber Soul and Revolver. I ended up with a clean eight from each, combined here into Revolver Soul:

    1. Good Day Sunshine
    2. Taxman
    3. Drive My Car
    4. Eleanor Rigby
    5. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
    6. Yellow Submarine
    7. Michelle
    8. You Won’t See Me
    9. Here, There And Everywhere
    10. I’m Only Sleeping
    11. Nowhere Man
    12. Girl
    13. I’m Looking Through You
    14. In My Life
    15. For No One
    16. And Your Bird Can Sing ​​

    That’s right, the song one listicle ranked as the very worst Beatles song (not going to link to it because it’s ipso facto garbage due to that ranking) is now at the head of the line, despite “Taxman” being one of the best first tracks ever.

    The departed from Rubber Soul: “The Word”, “Think For Yourself”, “If I Needed Someone”, “What Goes On”, “Wait”, and “Run For Your Life”. Not sad about these.

    The departed from Revolver: “Love You To”, “She Said She Said”, “I Want To Tell You”, “Doctor Robert”, “Got To Get You Into My Life”, and “Tomorrow Never Knows”. Sorry to get rid of both Harrison joints, but I’m just not into the sitar.

    You’re welcome.

  • Favorite Films of 2002

    I’m creating my annual movie lists retroactively. See all of them.

    Looking at the full list of 2002 releases brought up lots of random memories:

    • going to Changing Lanes and Signs in the theater with my dad
    • seeing the original teaser trailer for Spider-Man on TV in fall 2001 that featured the World Trade Center towers
    • watching The Hours in a high school English class twice as an exercise in close-reading a film
    • rewatching The Hot Chick enough times with my sisters to have the “boys are cheats and liars” chant memorized

    Ah, to be young again. This year also saw me transition from middle school to high school. My friend Tim and I were deep into making stop-motion and live-action short films using the LEGO Studios Steven Spielberg MovieMaker Set camera and software. Titles included Doctor Dreadful, The Penington Estate, and Dino Dan—all esteemed Oscar-worthy pictures.

    One day I’ll excavate the DVDs full of these heavily pixelated treasures. Until then, on to the list…

    1. Minority Report

    This was one film, in addition to the LOTR trilogy, that really hooked me into the power and possibilities of film.

    2. Catch Me If You Can

    Only five years after Titanic made Leonardo DiCaprio a global sensation, this and Gangs of New York (released the same week) confirmed him as a sensational actor as well.

    3. Signs

    Man, the jump-scares of the aliens on the roof and in the Brazilian street got me real good in the theater. Though The Sixth Sense is great and Unbreakable is his best, this is peak Shyamalan.

    4. In America

    I’m glad I saw this later on, in college, when I was able to appreciate just how marvelous it is.

    5. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

    Even the least of the LOTR trilogy has excellent moments, namely “Forth Eorlingas!” and “by rights we shouldn’t even be here”.

    6. My Big Fat Greek Wedding

    Thanks to the late Michael Constantine, aka Gus, for several iconic catchphrases from this movie that I still deploy occasionally, including “put some Windex on it” and “so there you go”.

    7. The Ring

    This movie is sort of Patient Zero for my dualistic relationship with horror films: I don’t like willingly subjecting myself to horrific content that will disturb my mind and sleep, but I also greatly appreciate supremely crafted suspense films.

    8. The Count of Monte Cristo

    I’ll admit to not having rewatched this in a while, but my enduring impression is that it is, as Roger Ebert wrote, “the kind of adventure picture the studios churned out in the Golden Age—so traditional it almost feels new.” I also had a crush on Dagmara Domińczyk as Mercédès.

    9. Jackass: The Movie

    This and subsequent Jackass movies are in my Mount Rushmore of making me cry-laugh.

    10. The Bourne Identity

    Sure, it inspired too many mediocre shaky-cam knockoffs, but there ain’t nothin’ like Matt Damon and Clive Owen facing off in the countryside.

    Honorable mentions:

    • Gangs of New York
    • Punch-Drunk Love
    • Road to Perdition
    • Panic Room
    • We Were Soldiers
    • Spider-Man

  • The long and winding genius of the Pauls (McCartney and Simon)

    While trolling for something to read on Hoopla, I came upon Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. It’s only available as an audiobook (or “audio biography”), and wisely so since so much of it depends on hearing Simon play his songs amidst his conversations with Gladwell. In that way it’s more like a limited podcast series than a book.

    Whatever you call it, Gladwell’s intention was to interrogate the phenomenon of creative genius, and pinpoint how and why it applied to Simon, whose long and wide-ranging musical career set him in contrast to other contemporary artists who may have had higher peaks (The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan) but didn’t produce at the same level of quality over decades as Simon has.

    As Gladwell writes:​

    We tend to be much more caught in the peaks of an artist’s career. But why? The true definition of creative genius—to my mind, at least—is someone who is capable of creating something sublime and then, when that moment passes, capable of reconfiguring their imagination and returning to the table with something wholly different and equally sublime.​

    Whether Simon meets this criteria is debatable, though Gladwell makes a good case for it.

    The other Paul

    Regardless, the book found me at a propitious time since I just finished watching and listening to the other famous ’60s singer-songwriter Paul in the documentary The Beatles: Get Back. The film captures McCartney in his first sublime period, which coincided with the transition between The Beatles and his solo work.

    His career as a whole is eerily similar to Simon’s: incredible creative and commercial success within a popular group throughout the 1960s, followed by an acrimonious breakup in 1970 and then decades of steady solo output of variable quality.

    (Conan O’Brien even had a bit involving Lorne Michaels called “Which Paul is he talking about?” since Lorne is friends with both.)

    Per Gladwell’s formulation, both men created something sublime within a relatively condensed cultural moment, then reconfigured their output after that moment passed. Whether those later albums were “wholly different and equally sublime” depends on where you look.

    If it’s a choice between The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, I choose the Fab Four all the way. (My cheeky Better The Beatles series notwithstanding.)

    But solo-wise, I think Simon’s exceptional ‘70s work combined with the highlights of Graceland (1986), The Rhythm of the Saints (1992), and So Beautiful or So What (2011) give him the edge over McCartney, whose early solo work was definitely the best of all the ex-Beatles (though not perfect), but didn’t approach the sublime until Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005) and Memory Almost Full (2007).

    Seeing Paul McCartney at Wrigley Field just over 10 years ago remains an all-time life highlight. (By seeing I mean standing outside Wrigley listening and singing along and barely catching a glimpse of him on the Jumbotron. But still.) I regret not being able to see Paul Simon live, as I imagine it would have been just as good but delightfully different. Which, perhaps, is what Gladwell would consider it too.

  • Typewriters are better than Bitcoin

    Last week I visited a Salvation Army I’d never tried before for some quick typewriter hunting. Between two late-period electric Smith Coronas I spotted a silver fiberglass case that screamed Olympia. And sure enough, I popped it open and beheld this 1959 SM3 (photo taken post-cleanup):

    The combo of gray body and brown keys was not my favorite. And despite the carriage being unlocked and the general appearance of working order, I just couldn’t get the typebars to strike. I try to make sure typewriters I buy at least type decently before I commit, especially since this was going to be a refurbish-and-resell.

    But it was $20, and since I couldn’t do an autopsy right there on the shelves between the kitchen appliances and stereos, I decided it was worth the risk knowing I’d make a profit regardless.

    I brought it to the checkout. Then, because either the cashier misread the tag or there was a sale I didn’t know about, she rang it up as $10.

    Merry Christmas to me, I thought. I could barely hide my smile as I left.

    Mr. 2 Years Old was eager to help me clean and fix it, and was especially keen on using the compressed air can to blow out an impressive amount of gunk.

    The typing issue, I eventually discovered, was due to the margin release bar blocking the typebars from striking even when it wasn’t activated. I’m guessing it’s due to the mechanism slowly loosening over the years? Regardless, giving it a little bump set the typebars free and made it sellable.

    And I did sell it yesterday via Facebook Marketplace for $100, making me a 900% return. Typewriters—better than Bitcoin!

  • Literacy as a religious act

    From the remarkable book How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill:

    “Like the Jews before them, the Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act. In a land where literacy had previously been unknown, in a world where the old literate civilizations were sinking fast beneath successive waves of barbarism, the white Gospel page, shining in all the little oratories of Ireland, acted as a pledge: the lonely darkness had been turned into light, and the lonely virtue of courage, sustained through all the centuries, had been transformed into hope.”

  • Let It Abbey Road

    I’m two-thirds of the way through The Beatles: Get Back, the 8-hour documentary on Disney+. It inspired me to add another installment of my Better The Beatles series, wherein I trim the fat from their discography to create super albums of only their best stuff. (Previously: Sgt. Pepper’s Magical Mystery Tour, The (Single) White Album, and Ram McCartney.)

    Since both Abbey Road and Let It Be contain songs created during the same period, here’s my track listing for a hypothetical Let It AbBey Road:

    1. Get Back
    2. Come Together
    3. Two Of Us
    4. Something
    5. Dig A Pony
    6. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
    7. Oh! Darling
    8. I’ve Got A Feeling
    9. Octopus’s Garden
    10. Let It Be
    11. Here Comes The Sun
    12. Because
    13. For You Blue
    14. You Never Give Me Your Money
    15. Polythene Pam
    16. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
    17. Golden Slumbers
    18. Carry That Weight
    19. The End

    The omissions from Abbey Road weren’t terribly tough: “Sun King”, “Mean Mr. Mustard”, and “Her Majesty” are slights, and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is too long. 

    Similarly, it was pretty easy to remove “One After 909”, “I Me Mine”, “Dig It”, and “Maggie Mae” from Let It Be because they aren’t good. “Across The Universe” and “The Long And Winding Road” are good, I guess, but also tonal outliers from the rest.

    You’re welcome.

  • Tales from a two year old

    The following is a short story my almost-3 year old told me while we sat in bed resting between wrestling bouts. I dictated it into my phone as he told it to preserve for posterity:

    The gasoline pulled up to the ghost in the starry nighttime sky. The ghost pulled up to a very big bumbly ghost skeleton. The wizard came to the ghost and said something different to the skeleton. It pulled up to a very big nose who said, “hello!” The door pulled up to a very big light and the light said something very funny. The light did a very silly thing with his friend. And all his friends laughed at his silly dance. The window pulled up to a very very very very big book and said something different, said “hello!” The sweatshirt pulled up to a very big shelf, and do you know what the shelf said? It said, “how are you doing today, book?” The papa pillow pulled up to the TV and said, “call head!” By Michael Moore. The end.

    A few notes:

    • For the second half he was basically looking around the room for objects to include, a la Brick in Anchorman
    • He has never heard of the documentarian Michael Moore, so it’s clearly some other Michael Moore
    • Clearly things “pulling up to” other things is from a book or show or something he’s seen recently but I don’t know what

    After reading the story back to him the next day, he dropped another on me:

    The hook came up to the long long snail. It traveled to the great big monster and said “Poo!” The big bumblebee went to the little bumblebee, and you know what it said? “I want some birdseed! I want some birdseed!” The vent traveled to a very big tissue. The cabinet came to the very big clock and said “I wish there was some very big seed for me.” Then the light came to the very big frame and said “I want a sweater to put on!” Wapa wapa and a zaymoo, the end.

    Enough said.

  • Gangsters for children

    Magazine mashups from Entertainment Weekly, November 2019. More here.