Chad Comello

  • That poor little tree

    Ken Priebe on why A Charlie Brown Christmas works so well:

    There are so many reasons why this perennial special from 1965 shouldn’t work. It’s weird, sloppy, has no real plot, its storyline meanders all over the place, and it feels like it was edited with a chainsaw. …

    And yet, this is exactly why it works, and why it endures. Because Christmas is weird. It’s sloppy. It has no real plot. Its storyline meanders all over the place. It leaves us feeling like our lives have been edited by a chainsaw and we’re on an animation cel that’s not even lined up to match our background. …

    And why is everyone so mean-spirited in this special? How does that reflect the spirit of Christmas? Because it reflects what the season reveals about us. We’re “supposed to be happy, but we’re not.” We’re all rude little bastards who yell at each other, eat like pigs and only care about ourselves. …

    It endures because we are part of the story. We are all that poor little tree that just needs a little love.

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  • Favorite Books of 2024

    It would be more accurate to title this post merely “Books I Read in 2024” because man oh man did I slack on reading this year. Long gone is my 80+ per year pace (pre-kids, crucially), replaced by not even hitting double digits. There are various reasons for this, but suffice it to say I hope to significantly raise that number in 2025.

    Here’s what I did read and enjoy in 2024:

    • BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity by Ruth Whippman
    • A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next by Tom Standage
    • Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
    • Creating Back to the Future The Musical by Michael Klastorin
    • Fear Not!: A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies by Josh Larsen
    • The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson
    • Long Island by Colm Tóibín
    • The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen
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  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Uncovering the mystery of the forbidden photos of Nazi-occupied Paris.

    The chilling sound of the Aztec death whistle. [Trigger warning: it’s creepy AF!]

    One dad’s collection of hundreds of VHS tapes with beautifully hand-drawn labels.

    Looney Tunes but just the backgrounds.

    A nice interactive history of Notre-Dame cathedral in honor of its post-fire restoration.

    French archaeologists discovered a message-in-a-bottle from 1825.

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  • 2024 in review

    See previous year in review posts.

    My view from the end of all things 2024:

    A red-tailed hawk plopped itself on our backyard power line this morning, making for a colorful breakfast companion on an otherwise gloomy New Year’s Eve. May we all seek to achieve its steady serenity in 2025.

    A few highlights from the year:

    • This blog turned 18 and I wrote some posts on:
    • Did fun stuff as a family:
      • Went to our local zoo, arboretum, and forest preserves
      • Watched the solar eclipse
      • Spent Independence Day at the family’s beach cottage in Michigan
      • Did a staycation overnight in downtown Chicago for a friend’s wedding, exploring the River North neighborhood and trekking to The Bean
      • Stayed at Timber Ridge Lodge in Lake Geneva for the weekend with my family
      • Went trick-or-treating in Wild Kratts style: the boys were Chris and Martin, my wife was Aviva, and I was Zach
    • Did fun stuff with the 5 year old:
      • Classes for soccer, gymnastics, track & field, and fishing
      • Went to a minor league baseball game
      • Spotted a coyote on a suburban street on our way home from the park
      • Went to a mini golf birthday party
    • Did a bunch of stuff for Cinema Sugar, including:
    • Noted some choice quotes from the 5 year old, including:
      • “This bonfire is like a waving hand. I could stare at it every day forever.”
      • “It smells like days I remember.”
      • [to his baby brother] “Don’t distract me, this is one yummy taco.”
      • [about the toilet he just flushed] “It was as dirty as a mud puddle but now it’s as clean as a diamond.”
    • Acquired Criterion Blu-rays of Double Indemnity, Badlands, Days of Heaven, and Paper Moon
    • Read 9 books and watched 87 movies
    • Watched probably the least amount of TV in my life, sticking with just three excellent limited series (Masters of the Air, OJ: Made in America, and Midnight Mass) and one mediocre season (The Bear season 3)
    • Held a garage sale and made $52
    • Hosted my cousin’s daughter from New Zealand
    • Got my first new winter boots in a long time
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  • Gotta catch ‘em all, I guess?

    Somehow the 5 year old has gotten really into Pokémon. He’s never seen the show nor the cards nor the video game, so it must have been from a friend or kid at the playground.

    Though I was at the prime age of 12 when it exploded globally and was all the rage among my peers, I never got into it myself. As such, I’ve been rather bewildered now as an adult reading the different character guides and books that are full of names and powers and regions and whoseewhatsees that just wouldn’t appeal to me otherwise. But I’m trying to be a curious elder and follow his interests along with him, knowing full well he (probably) won’t be into Pokémon forever.

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  • My sons’ media of the moment

    A spinoff of an ongoing series

    Yotos and Tonies. All day every day. Seriously great screen-free stories, learning, and music for the 5 year old, and something to hold and play with for the 18 month old. Great holiday gifts too for the parents/kids in your life.

    Card games. The 5 year old has gotten big into Uno and enjoyed learning others like Old Maid and Slapjack. It’s been fun to watch his strategy evolve to the point where I don’t even have to consider letting him win since he wins plenty on his own.

    Board games. While at the library a while back with the 5 year old, on a lark we sat down at their public chess board and I started teaching him the basics. He was hooked, so we got our own teaching set for home. Strategic thinking for chess has taken longer to develop but he’ll get there.

    Books. The 18 month old’s current favorites: The Shape of Me and Other Stuff by Dr. Seuss, Find the Duck by Stephen Cartwright, Moimoi—Look At Me! by Jun Ichihara, and more. The 5 year old’s current favorites: the InvestiGators comics series, Pokémon character books, and a variety of library picture books.

    The Wild Kratts theme song. Obviously we still watch the show itself often, since it’s usually the 5 year old’s pick for his limited screentime. But for some reason the 18 month old really loves the theme song, so when he gets upset while in the car (which is often), we’ll play a YouTube video that plays the song over and over again. Shoutout to whomever made that video!

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  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    How the Pulp Fiction poster became a dorm room staple.

    The first Zoom meeting happened in 1916.

    Humanity’s first interstellar transmission turns 50.

    Find the net elevation—i.e. the height difference between their birth and death place—of dead people.

    Memento Movi is a cinematic progress bar for your life.

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  • A giddy mass of waltzing things

    A quote about the earth from Orbital by Samantha Harvey:

    It’s not peripheral and it’s not the centre; it’s not everything and it’s not nothing, but it seems much more than something. It’s made of rock but appears from here as gleam and ether, a nimble planet that moves three ways—in rotation on its axis, at a tilt on its axis, and around the sun. This planet that’s been relegated out of the centre and into the sidelines—the thing that goes around rather than is gone around, except for by its knobble of moon. This thing that harbours we humans who polish the ever-larger lenses of our telescopes that tell us how ever-smaller we are. And we stand there gaping. And in time we come to see that not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s of a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre, just a giddy mass of waltzing things, and that perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever-evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness, a bashing away of mankind’s ego by the instruments of scientific enquiry until it is, that ego, a shattered edifice that lets light through.

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  • Top 50 Movies of the 21st Century

    I’m very proud to share this list of Cinema Sugar’s Top 50 Movies of the 21st Century, something the team has worked on for months in anticipation of celebrating our favorite films from the last quarter century.

    Please take a look (and share with other movie lovers!) for my short thoughts on Palm Springs, Lord of the Rings, Arrival, WALL-E, and a bunch of other movies dear to my heart.

    We also picked our favorites in different subcategories. Here are mine…

    Favorite film scores:

    • Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore
    • The Social Network, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
    • The Village, James Newton Howard
    • Interstellar, Hans Zimmer
    • Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla

    Favorite theatergoing experiences:

    • Seeing Toy Story 3 with college friends right after graduation
    • Dressing up with high school friends to see Ocean’s Twelve
    • Seeing Her with my then-girlfriend (now wife) and discussing it afterward
    • Going blindly into—and getting blindsided by—The LEGO Movie
    • Getting sucked into the whirlwind of The Florida Project

    Favorite performances:

    • Brooklynn Prince, The Florida Project
    • Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
    • Brendan Gleeson, Calvary
    • David Oyelowo, Selma
    • Florence Pugh, Little Women
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  • Writes and thinks

    Excerpts (though you should read the whole thing) from Paul Graham’s dissection of writes and write-nots:

    The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it’s fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.

    And yet writing pervades many jobs, and the more prestigious the job, the more writing it tends to require.

    These two powerful opposing forces, the pervasive expectation of writing and the irreducible difficulty of doing it, create enormous pressure. 

    Not anymore. AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school and at work.

    Is that so bad? Isn’t it common for skills to disappear when technology makes them obsolete? There aren’t many blacksmiths left, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

    Yes, it’s bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.

    So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.

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  • Oh and guess what

    Our 5 year old likes to say that a lot when he gets on a roll telling us about something he’s excited about. It could be science facts or recounting a fun outing or his latest playground escapades. He’ll sprinkle it in throughout the story, which shows he’s both excited to share and keen on building some suspense into the telling.

    Oh and guess what? It’s so endearing.

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  • On the ballot

    Election Day is upon us. My wife and I already voted, and I’m very grateful to live in a state that supports pro-democracy initiatives like early voting, vote by mail, and automatic voter registration. Illinois has its issues, to be sure, but it’s a leader in this regard—along with book ban bans, Midwest abortion access, and other important things for freedom-loving Americans.

    We had three non-binding yet nevertheless noteworthy “advisory questions” on the ballot regarding:

    • civil penalties for any candidate who interferes with election workers (gee, I wonder who inspired that)
    • 3% additional tax on millionaires for property tax relief
    • mandating insurance coverage for unlimited reproductive treatments, including IVF

    Triple yes right there. The last one is especially close to our hearts, having done reproductive treatments for both of our sons that were incredibly costly and not covered by insurance. During that process, I even wrote a letter to our insurance company asking them to cover it and laying out the reasons why it matters to so many people. I held no illusions about anyone with power actually reading it, but I wrote it nevertheless. I hope this advisory question ends up in a Yes landslide that will compel our state legislature to take action for the benefit of all would-be parents in the future.

    As for the biggest question on the ballot… I mean, I’ve been extremely clear about my thoughts on Donald Trump and his party over the last decade, and nothing has changed in the last four years. I’m thrilled to vote against him for the third time and fill in the oval for Harris/Walz. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow and in the coming days, but I’m hoping we’ll all be feeling Blue very soon.

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  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Reimagined ‘80s logos of popular brands.

    Restoring a 1,200-year-old psalter discovered in an Irish bog.

    How did you find accurate information before the internet? Librarians, of course.

    Where did our 2004 photos go?

    An interview with Saturday Night Live’s early ‘90s graphic designer of sketch titles, parodies, and props.

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  • Recent Views

    More photography here.

    Partly cloudy in the Windy City:

    Feeling reflective at our park:

    Fishing class with the five year old:

    First time downtown with the lads:

    Enjoying the hotel room balcony at Timber Ridge Lodge:

    Burgundy boy blending in with the fallen leaves:

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  • Media of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Midnight Mass. Loved this Netflix limited series for the same reason I love Darren Aronofsky’s Noah: it takes literally all the Bible’s very goth elements (“drink my blood”, the terror of angels, etc.) and transposes it into a deeply human modern story.

    Didi. This coming-of-age story set in 2008 featuring a teenager only a few years younger than I was at the time, so you know the use of AIM and Motion City Soundtrack songs were a bullseye for me.

    Nosferatu. Been knocking off a lot of classic horror blindspots and this 1922 F.W. Murnau silent version definitely qualifies. One favorite intertitle: “The Death Ship has a new captain.” 🤘

    Challengers. Just your typical sports movie featuring a throuple of sweaty, smirking scumbags swirling into a sadomasochistic, psychosexual spiral.

    Fear Not!: A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies by Josh Larsen. Strongly respect Josh’s perspective as a critic and Filmspotting host, so amidst my recent foray into horror movies I thought this short book was a helpful primer on the redemptive aspects of the genre.

    The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. Appreciated some historical bits in this but also skimmed over a bunch. Will it inspire me to get back into paper journaling? TBD.

    Night of the Living Dead. Some wild swings between “this looks like a terrible student film” and “holy schnikes”. I knew nothing of it besides being considered the godfather of zombie movies, so all the social commentary and 1968 of it all really hit.

    The Thing. My first John Carpenter movie and it was, uh, rather horrifying.

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  • My favorite picture books

    I’ve encountered a lot of board books and picture books in my nearly six years of parenting. Many of them are bad, with either poor writing or an off-putting illustration style or both. But several of them hit that sweet spot of beautiful design and quality storytelling. Here are some of those:

    • Counting with Barefoot Critters by Teagan White
    • Jazz for Lunch by Jarrett Dapier
    • How Beautiful by Antonella Capetti
    • The trilogy of Creepy Carrots, Creepy Pair of Underwear, and Creepy Crayon by Aaron Reynolds
    • Up the Mountain Path by Marianne Dubuc
    • The Book with No Pictures by BJ Novak
    • The Rock From The Sky by Jon Klassen
    • This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers
    • Spider in the Well by Jess Hannigan
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  • In praise of Disney’s pop punk phase

    I almost couldn’t believe this when I saw it: Disney put out an album of pop punk covers of Disney songs called A Whole New Sound, which includes:

    • Simple Plan playing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”
    • Yellowcard playing “A Whole New World”
    • New Found Glory playing “Part Of Your World”

    I would just like to shoutout whichever 40-year-old at Disney got the greenlight for this. As Boomers retire and we Millennials take over positions of power, I hope we keep doing stuff like this. Suggestions for the follow-up album:

    • Midtown playing “I’ll Make A Man Out of You”
    • The Starting Line playing “How Far I’ll Go”
    • Sherwood playing “Oo-De-Lally”
    • The Rocket Summer playing “Almost There”

    Please and thank you. 🤘

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  • 18 years

    Ye Olde Blog turns 18 years old today. Forgive me, but as a writer of a certain age I cannot help but think of the “18 years, 18 years” line from Kanye’s “Gold Digger”—a song that debuted just a year before this blog.

    Unlike in the song, though, there’s no question of provenance here. From the Blogspot I started in my freshman dorm room all the way to the WordPress-powered custom domain of today, my online writing life has abided through CMS migrations and many life changes to officially reach voting age. (Who would it vote for this year? Definitely not one of the candidates.)

    During my blog cleanup late last year, it was fun to see how my early posts in fall 2006 tackled philosophy and movies and poetry and other random thoughts, just as I’ve done in the nearly two decades since. Because I don’t make any money from this endeavor, the core ethos has always been to write about whatever I’m interested in, whenever I want, and that’s held true. No matter where you’ve joined me on that journey, I appreciate your time and attention.

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