SCRAPS!

The last time I attended a Sparks game was the final home game of the season. Aside from the context of the game itself, there was something of a defeated feeling attached to the experience. Basically, I had spent most of the past two weeks clocking the WNBA season standings as if it was the stock market, hoping by some measure that certain teams would drop off just enough that Los Angeles would pull through. I even remember besmirching the name of The Fever at one point – which turned out to be a bit of a judgment error on my part. Even if I still remain an overall skeptic, Indiana’s post-season run came shockingly close to changing the course of Finals history. If their A-Team had been healthy, they would’ve stopped a dynasty from being cemented and giving A’ja Wilson her second year of being MVP without making it to the end of the line. Long story short, The Sparks just couldn’t cover the spread enough to make the playoffs. It was a very slim margin, and one that came down to the pe...

Sometime midsummer last year, I found myself becoming engrossed in the history of Saturday Night Live . While I missed the SNL50 coverage, there were still highlight reels popping up on Facebook giving me brief snippets of what the later cast members had been up to. I remember being especially charmed by Jane Wickline, though there were enough laughs at other points to make them a welcome addition to my scrolling. I grew enough affection that, with over a month to ponder how serious I was about such a commitment, I decided to do something I hadn’t ever done before. I would watch a full season of the comedy institution. I’m not a purist by any measure. There isn’t a “golden era” so much as the perfect embodiment of American sketch comedy. Some hits. Some flops. Coming up with 90 minutes of material on a weekly basis is a challenge I could never achieve, so I’ve always admired the comedians on that level. If the highlights weren’t enough to win me over, I had begun seeing other cast memb...

A question I’ve had over the years could only be answered through impossible means. To be clear, I graduated high school in 2008, meaning I came of age around the time the widely discussed “Golden Age of Television” was underway. That isn’t to say there weren’t great shows before and after this time capsule of a period, but there was now a decent argument to be made that the medium not only rivaled its film counterpart, but in many ways pushed past it by challenging what could happen within the confines of a serialized structure, even to the point of something like Lovecraft Country jumping from genre to genre by the hour. To summarize, this was a period of great discovery, and it’s impossible to think back on a more innocent time before people like Noah Hawley turned Legion into a superhero acid trip, or Bojack Horseman explored the dark recesses of humanity through a talking horse. Even shows like You’re the Worst pushed boundaries on what a sympathetic protagonist could look lik...

At long last, I have emerged from the hermetic lifestyle to give a quick update on where life has taken me. I apologize for not updating more, but a lot of attention has been on projects other than writing. Given that we are also coming off of Easter, there was planning around that and trying to find ways to make that day worthwhile. March Madness was on. Unfortunately, for the second year in a row, the women’s division has been diluted enough that one finals team far exceeds the skill level of the other. It makes for boring basketball, and while I predicted that UCLA would take the trophy, it kind of felt like watching paint dry for 20 minutes of gameplay. Other than that, my Easter ended up being a fairly eventful day. We did egg hunting in the backyard, where the only downside was that it was muggy, so I wasn’t in the mood for doing the real spelunking work. I wanted an easy five minutes of in and out. Alas, it makes my family happy, so I can’t be mad about that. We also have acquir...

Surprise! I have officially returned within a week of my last post. While this was intended to be a more “active” website, I’ve found myself feeling very sluggish this March. Not in the sense that I have given up on my profession, but I am being more meticulous with projects. To jump over to The Memory Tourist is to see two articles that, while I’m proud of, aren’t a substantial representation of where I’m at mentally right now. In theory, I should have a more ballooned amount to brag about, but part of my current writing journey is doing what I want to do when I want to. Maybe I need motivation to get back to a regular schedule, thus feel more fulfilled, but that isn’t to say I’ve avoided doing things behind the scenes. To continue on my train from last week, I have some writing projects that are in various states of completion. The prominent focus was my short story collection, still untitled, which has 20 selected works chosen for a potential release. I have read and edited them in ...

At long last, I return. As most people looking at this website and The Memory Tourist will notice, I have not been much in a writing mood. This isn’t because of any scheduling issues, but more that the passion is just not there. After having a substantial February, I decided to pull back a little bit and focus on more long-term projects. What this means is that efforts that usually were put towards keeping up appearances had to be sacrificed for a little bit. That isn’t to say that I don’t want to write something on there between now and the end of the month, but I recognize the plight of having such a long period of solitude. With that said, it feels good to work on a schedule that is ultimately your own. I don’t have the pressure I placed on myself even in 2020, where I needed to have something out everyday and keep on top of things that ranged from exposing new sides of myself with material that was forced or even unnecessary. I’m still not sure I’m a great music critic, but wheneve...