Chad Comello

  • The Indecisive GPS

    Sometimes when we’re driving, our 4 year old will provide turn-by-turn directions in a robotic voice as they do in Bluey as the “sat nav” (i.e. GPS). Which is always funny because he doesn’t understand directions. But it was especially funny the last time he did it because his directions were not only wrong but hilariously indifferent.

    Go in a straight line, he droned, then go whichever way you want. It’s up to you, whatever makes sense.

    It went on like this for a bit. My wife and I were trying not to laugh, but it felt like an SNL skit waiting to happen.

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  • Recent Views

    More photography here and on my Instagram.

    Tiles and toes:

    Always the bright spot on rainy walks:

    The puddle jumper approaches:

    Sunset reflections:

    Sunday morning clips and coffee:

    The backyard bubbles are back:

    Some dramatic lighting at a local library:

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  • 2023 in review

    See previous year in review posts.

    My view from the end of all things 2023:

    Here’s what this year looked like for me:

    • The overwhelming and overarching fact of my life this year was welcoming a second child in May. We’ve been living in the wake of that event ever since, for better (cuteness, brother silliness) or worse (his reflux and terrible sleep).
    • On the professional front:
      • In January my job got reduced to half time with a day’s notice, so…
      • I had to pick up a second, full-time job to stay afloat. Worked not-great hours between both jobs for about two months, until…
      • My original job went back to full time. However…
      • After that experience I started looking hard for different job, and…
      • Finally got one, which I started in June and am very happy at.
    • Enjoyed hangout times with friends and family
    • Saw a shooting star at one of said hangout times
    • Saw the Okee Dokee Brothers at Ravinia, and were first in line to get a vinyl signed and picture with the Bros
    • Lots of fun stuff with the 4 year old, including:
      • Raised butterflies
      • Played Super Mario
      • Pondered bathtime
      • Spotted bugs
      • Fostered curiosity
      • Took him mini golfing for the first time
      • Many visits to the children’s museum and local pools
      • Went to a carnival and did a spinny ride for the first time
      • Took him to his first minor league baseball game and on the way out one of the parking attendants gave him a foul ball that had been hit out of the stadium
    • Lots of fun stuff with Cinema Sugar:
    • Celebrated 17 years blogging, which included:
    • Did Halloween trick-or-treating in the snow with a fussy infant in tow but still managed to have a good time
    • Got an electronic adjustable desk for my home office so I can work standing up or sitting down
    • Read 15 books and watched 102 new movies
    • Watched some good TV (Quarterback and Emergency NYC on Netflix) and great TV (The Bear)
    • Added more quality discs to my collection, including the Back to the Future trilogy on Blu-ray, a Babylon SteelBook, and Criterion Blu-rays of Malcolm X, Summer Hours, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Sound of Metal
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  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Typewriters in films.

    A cool localized night sky calendar.

    A collection of eggnog cartons.

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  • Barbenheimer: screenwriting edition

    Well, not exactly, but Christopher Nolan’s recent appearance on the Scriptnotes podcast was excellent and inspired me to check out Greta Gerwig’s 2020 appearance for Little Women too. Both have really thoughtful things to say about the craft of writing and how it relates to moviemaking.

    Here’s Gerwig on the ache of absence in Little Women:

    I realized that once they’re all in their separate lives—like once Amy is in Europe, once Meg is married, once Beth is living at home but sick, and Jo is in New York trying to sell stories—they are never all together again. The thing that we think of as Little Women has already passed. And I think that ache and that absence of the togetherness and that absence of the sisterhood as being the way that we contextualize these cozy scenes brought out something in me that felt was inherent in the text.

    And:

    And then beyond that this relationship of Louisa to the text and me to the text, I think that what artists do is you write it down because you can’t save anyone’s life. I think that’s part of what the impulse is. I can’t save your life, but I can write it down. And I can’t get that moment back, but I can write it down.

    This idea is reflected in the exchange near the end of the movie:

    JO: Who will be interested in a story of domestic struggles and joys? It doesn’t have any real importance.

    AMY: Maybe we don’t see those things as important because people don’t write about them.

    JO: No, writing doesn’t confer importance, it reflects it.

    AMY: Perhaps writing will make them more important.

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  • A yellow typewriter off to greener pastures

    I’m winnowing down my typewriter collection a bit in a bid to maximize our minimal storage space and send my lesser used models off to greener typing pastures.

    One of those deaccessioned machines is this 1962 Kmart Brother 100, whom my wife affectionately nicknamed Leonard:

    This was one of the early acquisitions in my initial collecting frenzy inspired by reading The Typewriter Revolution in December 2015. I got it from an antique shop for $20 and sold it for a pretty profit.

    The buyer said his twin 7 year olds had asked for a typewriter for Christmas, which warmed my heart because it’s the perfect starter machine for budding typists and is going to what sounds like a loving home. It’s in mint condition and types like a charm, so it’ll be ready for whatever those kids have coming its way.

    Farewell, Leonard. May your typings be as tight and bright as your compact yellow form!

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  • Tags, I’m it

    Along with moving my photo documentary project, I’ve been doing some more pruning and weeding and landscaping work ‘round this here digital garden of mine:

    • Picked a new theme for a visual refresh—another one from Anders Noren’s excellent collection of free WordPress themes
    • Revamped the archive page to allow for easier browsing of the most common tags and themes I’ve written about since 2006, along with some fun miscellaneous series and projects of yore
    • Added a link on that page for jumping to a random post, just for fun (try it)
    • Converted the ~20 post categories into tags to simplify things for me on the backend and better organize posts
    • Cleaned up the list of tags, some of which were either redundant or unused after 17 years of blogging (there’s still 1,719 of them, with books in the lead at 252 posts)
    • Updated some posts that were missing relevant tags

    It’s been very satisfying to make all these changes, if only for my pedantic urge for a clean and consistent website experience—for me and its visitors.

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  • A new home for ‘The Wedding Singer at NCC’

    Back in early 2011 I produced a photo documentary of the student-directed stage musical production of The Wedding Singer at North Central College, where I’d graduated the year before.

    I set up shop on Tumblr and documented the behind-the-scenes process over the 10-week period. It was fun to watch the show come together from the first rehearsal to the final bow, and I ended up with a nice audiovisual project for my portfolio.

    But when I saw the news that Tumblr was being left out to pasture, I wanted to find a new home for this project. So I created a fresh WordPress blog, transferred the posts and photos from Tumblr, cleaned them up a bit, and voilà:

    nccweddingsinger.wordpress.com

    It was fun to relive this journey as I set up its new digital home. I’m really proud of the shots I was able to get and the journalistic storytelling as a whole, which included cast/crew interviews alongside the day-to-day dispatches.

    Read it for yourself. I set up the posts chronologically, so you can start at the homepage and go from there.

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  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Finalists for the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

    Government comic books.

    Words that deserve wider use.

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  • Podcasts of the moment

    It’s been over two years since my last podcast lineup check-in, and as usual some things have changed while some things remain.

    Changes: Many of the shows in my last update have either stopped publishing or lost my interest, and I’ve stepped away from the political ones. I’m also thrilled I was finally able to ditch Spotify once Armchair Expert went back to being non-exclusive, so I’m back in Apple Podcasts full time (along with Google Podcasts when listening on desktop).

    The Same: I still listen at 1.5x speed. And I still greatly enjoy the parasocial pleasures and intellectual stimulation of podcast listening, even if it does severely reduce my audiobook reading.

    My Current Lineup

    Regular Listens

    • Armchair Expert
    • The Big Picture
    • Filmspotting
    • Judge John Hodgman
    • Office Ladies
    • Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
    • The Town with Matthew Belloni

    Depends on the Subject/Guest

    • The Rewatchables
    • Pivot
    • Unspooled
    • Pod Meets World
    • The Letterboxd Show
    • SmartLess
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  • Cut the intro

    Robin Rendle preaching the truth:

    Here’s one way to improve the thing you’re writing: cut the intro.

    Writing about the symbiosis between trees and mushrooms? Don’t start talking about how humanity has depended on trees since the blah blah blah. Just jump right in! Talking about new features in your app? Don’t start with the fluffy stuff about how excited you are to announce yada yada ya – just tell me what improved.

    Boom! The text is lighter, faster, less wasteful.

    I get why folks feel the need to add a fluffy intro though. There’s real pressure to make a big deal out of whatever it is and turn everything we write into a thundering manifesto because we have to set up all this context and history, right? Well – no! We absolutely do not and often when we do our writing will mostly suffer for it.

    Couldn’t agree more. And no disclaimers!

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  • Write thank-you notes to your favorite authors

    Literally: find a favorite (not dead) author’s website and use their contact form to send them a message with specifics about why you like them.

    I’ve done this several times. The nice thing is they’re usually very accessible and responsive, maybe because they tend not to get the same kind of public praise as actors, musicians, and other more glamorous artists.

    Of course this does depend on the author’s level of fame. My favorites tend to be nonfiction writers with an approachable-enough profile to still be accessible by civilians, so if your favorite author is a Cormac McCarthy type then you’re SOL.

    You can do this over social media, but a mere “Love your work!” doesn’t have the same effect as a more detailed note, which both proves you’re actually a fan and gives them the fuel to keep going and making more stuff you enjoy.

    Anyway, try it sometime.

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  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    A cool collection of manuals.

    Hank Williams sings “Straight Outta Compton” with some help from AI.

    Regular holes vs. black holes.

    The museum of internet artifacts.

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  • No more encores

    Just getting this on the record: concert encores are dumb and bad.

    They’re a terrible collective fiction that need to die.

    Audiences should stop cheering for them and artists should stop planning for them.

    Just play all the songs you want to play, then end the show and get gone.

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  • Recent Views

    More photography here and on my Instagram.

    When you go into an elevator and look up to see this face of doom:

    The skyward view outside my workplace:

    Caught this partially melted ice cube on a countertop:

    Why save your Halloween costume for a few hours on one day when you can wear it all the time around town and look like a superhero:

    View from a bridge at a mini golf outing:

    Autumn is upon us:

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  • Media of the moment

    An ongoing series

    The Arcadian Wild. Heard about this folk/bluegrass trio recently and got immediately obsessed with “Big Sky, MT”.

    Scream. Somehow I’d never seen this, though I was familiar enough with it based on its cultural ubiquity. Kinda wish the conclusion was a little tighter so it could be a perfect 90 minutes, but campy fun overall.

    White Savior. This 3-part docuseries on Max is a rich text for those of us who grew up in a conservative Christian milieu and went on international missions/service trips.

    The Witch. I like this Robert Eggers lite-horror joint for the same reason I liked Darren Aronofsky’s Noah: it takes its Old Testament inspiration and sensibility seriously, fully committing to a weird and very metal religiosity that too often gets sanded down for popular palatability.

    Oppenheimer. “Men talking in rooms” is a common theme in a lot of the history books I’ve read, but I didn’t expect it to also work as a big-screen epic from Christopher Nolan. I’ll take it!

    The Wager by David Grann. This new book from the Killers of the Flower Moon author makes me very glad I’m not an 18th-century sailor.

    Emergency NYC. Stumbled upon this fascinating Netflix docuseries that follows surgeons, ER staff, flight nurses, and other emergency responders as they treat patients and balance their work with their personal lives.

    Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. A great coming of age story, family dramedy, exploration of religion, female-centric story, and year-in-the-life movie all in one.

    You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. Surprisingly funny and a nice pairing with Are You There, God?

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  • How you spend your days

    Rachel Ringenberg on homeschooling and raising children:

    This brings me to wonder how I reflect on the person who in 2019 homeschooled a 2nd grader and a kindergartener, and had a three year old, and a baby. Was that easier? It was definitely not easier; but time was different to her. More expansive when it needed to be, and nearly glacially slow. If the little kids got sick that cancelled almost all of her plans immediately. How everyone slept the night before determined more than seemed fair about the day ahead. It was easier for her to smooth things over when things didn’t go anywhere near how she had planned; now four pairs of eyes watch me reproachfully. She didn’t try to serve a ‘good dinner’ most nights—carrots and pasta and a bit of chicken stirfry perfectly sufficing day in and day out. She read more novels to balance out the joyful jabber, mostly because she could on a kindle, while sitting and holding the baby…

    Anyway, the point is it’s all wonderful, and changing all the time. “How you spend your days is how you spend your life” could not be more inaccurate when it comes to raising children!

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  • 17 years

    Today marks the 17th anniversary of my very first blog post.

    Thanks to everyone who has read and shared my scribbles in that time. I’m very proud of the body of work I’ve made and hope you’ll continue following along.

    Wanna browse the archives? Check out my film and books pages, along with the various topics and passion projects I’ve touched on over the years.

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