The Armchair Squid turns sixteen years old today. It's time to hand out some hardware. The Squiddy goes to...
Biggest Surprise: Casablanca
Morocco wasn't even the point of our late-February/early-March trip. Royal Air Maroc had the best airfares for getting to Andalusia. Why not extend what was already a long layover in Casablanca? We could add another country - indeed, another continent - to our life lists. Is Casablanca even that exciting a city? According to the guidebooks and the websites, not really. But if we're going to go at all, let's not spend half the time trying to get somewhere else. Let's make the most of where the plane lands.
Well, wouldn't you know it. Casablanca knocked our socks off. No, it's not a tourist trap and that was perfectly fine after our more conventional adventures in Spain. It's just a city where people go about their daily lives - people who let us walk in their midst for a while, mostly ignoring us, to be honest. My friends, it was grand. That's what real traveling is - not gawking but simply being. Fly on the wall rather than sightseer. No long lines. No tour guides. Just life.
I'd live there for years given the chance. It's been a long time since I've felt that way about a place.
Biggest Disappointment: Trump's Second Term
Is disappointment even the right word? Donald Trump's narcissistic lust for tyranny is not exactly a secret. And yet, my country voted him back into the Presidency. I guess that is my disappointment. I'm still amazed and deeply discouraged that so many people aren't horrified by him. They want this. All of the bigotry, misogyny, contempt, incompetence, recklessness, dishonesty, crassness, arrogance, pettiness, the near-daily betrayals - they aren't dealbreakers. Folks, that says a lot more about us than it does about him.
And the feeble response of the Democrats in Congress has been appalling.
I fear for the present and the future. Even if we can turn this around, the mess to clean up will be huge. Plenty of the damage can never be entirely undone.
And that is what they want.
We're living in interesting times. It can be difficult to know what to say to people. The Right is so... programmed. They all watch the same news shows, visit the same websites, watch the same TikTok videos, stick to the same talking points as if they are gospel. Even imagine they are gospel. Even when they're in clear defiance of gospel.
I'm veering off point.
If you're looking to make solid progressive arguments, Reni Eddo-Lodge's book is a great reference. More importantly, it's an essential read for white people to better understand the racially-framed experiences of people of color. Systemic racism is real whether you believe in it or not. So is privilege. The question is what you do with truth once it's presented to you.
Thanks to my ex-pat time in Japan, I still have several British friends. A few of them believe racial injustice is an American problem and not a British one. I really want them to read this book.
You should, too.
Best Comics Find: Love and Rockets by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez
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| via Wikipedia |
I've been aggressively exploring the comic book medium for over a decade now and practically the instant my curiosity took me beyond Marvel and DC, I started hearing about Love and Rockets. First launched in the early '80s, L&R is considered by many to be the most important and influential indy comic in the American industry. I'd never read it until this summer. Now I'm hooked.
Why is L&R so good? The characters are so real you can practically smell them. You experience their love, their pain, their shame, their thrills, their lusts, their losses because you are sitting next to them on the couch, feeling awkward as Maggie and Hopey start making out right in front of you, forgetting you're there. It's the same reason Scorcese films are amazing. These aren't strangers. They're the young squatters in the house next door with sketchy friends stopping by all the time. They occasionally ask you to buy beer for them because they're not old enough yet. They're the rowdy group of young men talking too loudly in the street late at night outside your front door. Or it's even closer. You're in the street with them, annoyed by the stuffy old geezer who keeps telling you to shut up and go home.
This intimacy is achieved so elegantly you don't notice until after you've been absorbed. Every storytelling experience should be like this, yet it rarely is. Without question, L&R is a masterpiece.
Athlete of the Year: Ichiro Suzuki
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| via Wikipedia |
The Armchair Squid began life as a sports blog but I rarely return to the subject anymore. Of the athletes I did mention over the past twelve months, no one had a better year than Ichiro Suzuki.
In late July, Ichiro became the first Japanese-born player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Ichiro was simultaneously the greatest contact hitter, the greatest leadoff man, the greatest outfield arm and the most internationally beloved player of his generation. Just one unbelievable stat of many: for ten consecutive seasons, Ichiro had at least 206 hits. Ty Cobb can't claim that, nor Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Rod Carew nor any of the other great contact hitters. In fact, no one else has even come close. Pete Rose also had ten seasons with 200+ but never more than three in a row. Sports fans are forever talking about "records that will never be broken," then Alex Ovechkin surpasses Gretzky's once-unassailable career goals total. I feel 100% safe saying that Ichiro's ten consecutive years with 206 hits or more is untouchable.
During his career, there was discussion of whether Ichiro could truly be considered one of the all-time greats, having spent so much of his early career in Japan. In the end, the Major League numbers alone were plenty: 3,089 hits, .311 lifetime batting average, 509 stolen bases, 10 All-Star Games, 10 Gold Gloves. The years in Japan only pad the already sterling resume. Without a doubt, he was one of the greatest athletes in American sports for nearly two decades.
Best Family Adventure: The Alhambra
The Alhambra in Granada, Spain was the main target for our aforementioned February/March trip. The Alhambra, a UNESCO heritage site considered by many to be the most beautiful man-made structure in the world, has been at or near the top of my travel wish list for as long as I have known it existed, over 30 years. With such high expectations, a let down is practically inevitable. Even while we were there, I worried I wasn't doing enough to appreciate what I was seeing.
I needn't have worried. The Alhambra is an experience that invades your soul. Now, just a few months later, it feels like a dream. Were we really there? I remember our last day in Granada, already wistful over the fact that we had to leave. Already thinking of how to make the most of the next visit, knowing full well it might never happen because life is like that.
So, yeah. I read all of that and it sure looks like I had a great year.
Apart from Trump.
Fuck Trump!
And another thing…
ReplyDeleteI don’t understand this talking point that keeps getting trotted out: In the next presidential election (and there will be one, as regularly scheduled), the winner will do exactly what every other one has ever done. They called Washington a tyrant. The second president was the first-ever one-term president. They called Lincoln a tyrant.
…Long story short, this is a system designed to fluctuate between office holders. We let FDR be elected four times. Four times! He’s the only one who was elected three, let alone four times. Then we codified that they can only win twice. A two-party system means each one is forever trying to keep the other one in check. Both parties tend to script the narrative that the sky is falling when the other one wins. And yet the system remains in place each election cycle. The time to actually panic is when the system is actually disrupted. Until then the sky is part of partisan rhetoric.
You may now move about the cabin.