30 Things I Love Right Now: Spring Break / Two Thousand Twenty Two

(1) Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. Which is to say: (2) “Scotland” (3) Probably actual Scotland too / Never been wanna go (4) Fiddles (5) Adamsville (6) Family (7) All sides (8) Seeing the glass half full (9) Especially when everywhere it’s so half-empty (10) Realizing this: elitism is a distortion. It’s wrong. It’s not for me. (11) How my dad was very smart and that bubbled up, but how he really only ever wanted to be a goldbrick, and how his favorite job ever was weighing freight cars in Buffalo, NY, because it gave him lots of time to just chill out and not worry about much (12) How my mean-ass grandpa, who I never met and who made my poor pa feel bad for being a sensitive type who could draw (he wanted to draw and to paint and never really did), was an electrician who busted his ass and died somewhat too early of COPD and heart disease that was a result of working in a steel mill where the environmental toxins were innumerable and yet-and-still he made a life for his family as best he could and that was (and was not) good enough (13) how that’s always the way it is for all of us: it is (and is not) good enough (14) Tyler Childers’s record called Purgatory [Catholic girl pray for me, yer my only hope fer heaven] (15) A house in Adamsville, AL, with a creek out back (16) Coach K (17) JJ Redick’s podcast (18) David Spade (19) Adam Sandler (20) Chris Farley (21) Chris Rock (22) Norm McDonald (23) Stand-up, generally. And of course: (24) Comics (25) Jerry Seinfeld too (26) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (still) (27) Garlic-stuffed green olives (28) Ramen, slurping it (especially) (29) The good folks at subTerrain, who published my story, which is called “Seconds Before the Meteor Hits” — which is to say (30) Canadiens.