Wow, remember when I was all jazzed on actually blogging a bit? I do. It was last December apparently. I gave an update on my birthday, and the holidays, and my trips. Well, a year has passed. I’ve had another birthday, there were more holidays, and I went to a couple places. Updates, while easy, are kind of boring to write, no? I’ll post one when I find some down time. In a few weeks I'll be posting my annual Best Albums of 2018 list, so this post I'll try and keep music to a minimum. But, here’s a couple things I’ve been into lately to hold you over.
Happy Face Podcast
From the team over at Stuff You Should Know podcast, this quickly became my favorite new podcast of the year.
As a lot of friends know, I was a podcast junkie. I’m in my car for the better part of two hours a day, and always on the go come weekends. I listen to a lot. So much so that I actually got burnt out on podcasts in general. I went on a bit of a cleanse. I unsubscribed to most, and only downloaded a select few weekly. And, of course, added a very select few this year to give a listen to. Enter Happy Face.
For Melissa Moore, 1995 was a nightmare. That’s the year the teenager learned her father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was a serial killer.
Yeah… The podcast goes on, with interviews with and from the perspective of the Happy Face killers daughter herself, as she looks into her dads crimes and deals with her past and upbringing.
Mars Insight
There’s not much that’ll get your inner child excited like space. I mean, I typically don’t really care about it, or think about it. I hear things, and breeze on by. But, then I think about them. I see an image from the probe on the martian surface and “We sent a new machine to Mars. Awesome. Who cares?” quickly turns into “wait… this is basically the only object on a foreign surface 33.9 million miles away from us” and I geek out like I’m eight.
Humans are wild beings. Watching the NASA team sit by patiently, waiting on satellite relays to tell them if all of their jobs were successful or not — talk about nerve wracking! Thinking what goes into something like this, it’s incredible. There’s probably an entire team that just worked on the fastener that secures the supersonic parachute to the lander itself. No wonder a couple engineers broke out into the SF Niners touchdown dance to celebrate.
Boygenius
I can’t do this post with no music. And, nothing has hit more this year than the self-titled debut EP from the supergroup that is boygenius. Anyone that knows me knows how obsessed I was/am with Phoebe Bridgers. Add in Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and you have the best musical group of women since ever.
These three women, their voices, their songwriting… Where do I begin? Phoebe alone put on one of my absolute favorite live shows. Getting the privilege to see the three of them this last week, I was floored. It was a religious experience. The power felt throughout the room during Me & My Dog was unlike anything I’ve witnessed before.
Please, do yourselves a favor, if you listen to any music I recommend to you—make it this album. These three women are special. On their own, they’re shaping a musical scene like none we’ve seen before. As a group, they are crafting a story that is begging to be heard.
Spotify | Apple Music | Amazon
Thanks for checking in again. I’ll be back much sooner than last time (A year? Really?). I’ve got more holidays approaching, and some year end lists I’m already working on. See ya soon!
JD