Après Spree
Laissez les (nouveaux) bons temps rouler
You don’t need to go far (or look particularly hard) to run into the notion that our holidays are out of control. If you have a full dance card for the season, it’s a lot to get through, and you’re lucky if you find yourself in the company of people who are doing something other than relentlessly exchanging gifts.1 There’s client parties, the gatherings with friends and then finally the family shifts (with overtime). Mid-century music issues loudly from the money changer’s hall and the homes of close friends alike. Spirits abound even where spirit might be in short supply. The five horsemen of the holiday hangover show up: wassail and hot buttered rum and eggnog and gluhwein and punch.
For all the excesses of the holiday/Yule season, it’s all still pleasurable enough (after all, I can’t really get on here and complain about having too many Christmas parties).
January is a different matter. January is always somehow much worse than the preceding holiday period and is a proper target for a jeremiad. The month is lionized (and co-opted and subsequently misused) as some kind of new beginning for everyone (and an opportunity to sell you all the things that will finally make you a smarter, more beautiful, more desirable you). No sooner are you done with peoples’ round ups, top tens and gift guides then you are served with an unending list of new things you should now be doing (sales to shop, habits to drop or adopt, and all of it right now because it’s January and it would be too hard and too late to start in February, or any other month for that matter, and did we mention our promotional code is for a limited time?)
I don’t believe in Dry January (or Sobruary, Sober October, or any other month with a cute rhyming name that’s shilling for temperance), but the first two weeks of the new year are a great time to practice stillness, to saying “no” to plans and trying to (slightly) reset your inner compass. I also don’t believe in resolutions (my household always prefers themes for the year—a kind of framework/guiding notion that can be a fun thumb on the scale for how you approach opportunities and activities). If you’ve ever been in a gym in January and seen all the well-meaning but doomed-to-fail people (or if you’ve been one of those people), you can probably appreciate this sentiment. Wouldn’t we all be happier as we are? You can and will grow (and probably even improve a little), but wisdom is in knowing what things to let alone.
2024 Acts of Resolve
For New Years Eve this year, the grilling team I belong to (an offshoot of the Dad Book Club) finally roasted a whole pig. This is something we had talked aspirationally about for years. Having finally done it, we are now free to focus on new feats and amusements (and to roast additional pigs whenever we so choose). In that spirit, I wanted to jot down a few things I’d like to finally get around to doing this year. My own version of the whole hog barbecue. Acts of resolve, but not resolutions (and also not an attempt to become a new kind of person, but rather to be more myself/get deeper into the things I am already doing).
Bicycle matters. I’d like to drop my son off at his school on bicycle at least once (I say once here as I’d like to leave myself room to absolutely hate it and never do it again). It doesn’t matter what your drop-off fit is if you’ve arrived on bicycle. It’s also time to do to the Eroica again (although I’m not seeing a California date on their website yet—only event for the Americas is Cuba as of now).
Sailing an inner water race (something like the Santa Barbara to King Harbor race) and finally buying the gear for it (sailing safety harness, etc.). In addition to fielding a larger sailing team on a slightly larger boat this summer (36 foot up from 25, and a crew of 8 up from 4), I want to finally tackle a multi-day race. It’s a great way to log sea miles and start locking myself into the Transpac delusion.
It’s a complete fantasy, but maybe 2024 is the year I finally crack the uniform. How can I have a capsule wardrobe, but still no satisfactory uniform? I’ve been locked in on jacket layer (a Teba or safari jacket), Todd Snyder 5 pocket pants and then knit wear (sweater when weather allows, otherwise a polo shirt [Lacoste Paris polo, Luca Avitabile, etc.]), but there’s substantial room for improvement. It’s all all a little vague, but I want Oxford Cloth Button Downs back in there somehow, more slacks or trousers instead of the 5 pockets, and I also want the freedom to wear suits a little more regularly. So TBD all around (so not a uniform, but maybe just an expansion of what’s working Monday-Friday).
A second installment of the Sublime Prosaic roundtable/speaker series. Spending an evening talking to B. Wong about his writing and staging of plays back in September was easily my favorite thing I did in 2023 (a slightly more detailed write up and reflections on this magical evening with friends is still forthcoming). I’m taking submissions for topics for the second speaker event, but I’m currently looking at either a roundtable of DJs (good and bad alike) or a panel on buying art/the art market.
Brandon Wong and I discuss his New American Plays (and he provides some stock picks for the audience), September, 2023. Finally hang up my Loyal Order of the Drooling Bastards plaque at the Tonga Hut in North Hollywood. Now this is some overdue business. In 2019, I ran a short but successful stint as “the man who had run out of dreams.” One of the things I did with my surplus free time and capital was drink my way through the 78 drink menu at one of Los Angeles’ oldest (and most remote) tiki bars. I earned the right to hang my plaque on this wall with the other initiates 5 years ago, so I should probably close out this business properly.
A return to Splash House as a geriatric attendee. Splash House is the festival I love to hate. A mix of excellent and terrible DJs (and equally good/bad festival goers). The concept, a multi-pool day to night party in Palm Springs, is great. The execution is usually horrible (festival logistics like heat safety, bathrooms and a pleasant guest experience are a secondary concern to the loose confederacy of promoters, hotels, vendors and other affiliated pirates who put this thing on every year). It swings wildly from a great time to bad vibes throughout the course of the 3 day festival, so maybe it’s like gambling that way and that’s what keeps me wanting to go back. There are usually also three dates to choose from—I’d love to come back this summer and just sit in a cabana like some of the other older attendees I’ve seen in years prior (it’s sort of like a speedo, caftan and gold chain vibe, think Quentin and his Palazzo crew from White Lotus season 2). I’d like to just take in the scene and the music with dramatically lowered expectations and nothing to prove.
It’s time to start working on my membership for The Adventurer’s Club of Los Angeles. Good things take time.
The Unread
Finally, I have a bit of a book backlog developing early in the year, so I’m hoping to move through some of these titles:
Every Man for Himself and God Against All by Werner Herzog - this showed up in the mail rather mysteriously (if you sent this to me please reach out), but I’ll definitely read it. Herzog is a singular talent and one of our best.
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner, a bit of a classic about water management in the American West. I put the book down when it rained more than ever last year, but it’s time to finish it up (for when the drought inevitably returns and we all start pondering our property values and wildfires again).
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, Oh God. I want to like this book, and I like parts of it (especially the very cool cover/binding). I don’t know where I’m at on Rick Rubin (I think I’m mostly not into the whole thing, which is why this has sat unfinished). I admire the ambition of the book and all of the time and deliberation that went into it, but I’m finding it sort of a breezy affair and nothing really sticks. The purchase was performative I admit, so maybe reading it to the end will be equally so. It will then sit on my display shelf (and the coffee tables of many, many boutique hotel lobbies and ateliers) for years to come.
Unscripted by James B Stewart, Rachel Abrams, a book about Sumner Redstone and all of the people in his life that fought over his attention and money. As a rule, I don’t discuss work on here, so I’ll just say I'm halfway through this one and I’m amazed at what an absolute dipshit/creep this guy was. Somehow these guys are always worse than even your wildest guesses. It’s like Succession, but make it absolutely stupid. You could never adapt this to television or any other filmed medium because it has the aesthetic appeal of a soiled casino carpet.
Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson, I started this one and was fascinated by it, but then a new baby and other life happenings intervened. An exhaustively researched account of World War I from the perspective of the (defeated) Central Powers. Probably for July and beyond so that my reading loosely tracks the unfolding events (with war breaking out at the end of summer).
The Believer | Book by David Coggins, I’ve done some fly fishing and (as I ultimately had to concede with surfing), I’ve decided I basically hate it (I like being out on the water and the company, but by the end of my day with a guide, I am finding ways to not catch any more fish).2 That said, Coggins is one of the people who inspired me to start writing (whether that’s a credit or a demerit for him remains to be seen I suppose) and I love his writing style. So I’ll gladly buy and read his second installment about fly fishing, which is out in April.
The Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan, an official selection from the Dad Book Club, and something I’m incredibly late in finishing (I think this has been on my nightstand for almost a year now). A good write up on how Central Asia and other non-Western localities do more to explain our world than the Euro-Centric histories we’re often served. I finished Creation by Gore Vidal last year and it’s a good, non-fiction companion piece to that novel. Long live Bactria.
When I watch people open presents (and sometimes even when receiving them), I’ve developed a compulsive habit of picturing the new items in a landfill or photo-degrading on a beach 150 years from now. I am aware this diminishes how much fun I can be at certain kinds of parties.
This old Mitch Hedberg joke stays on my mind whenever I’m done taking a picture with the fish I’ve caught and I’m dumping it back in the river.
Not into the whole dry January thing myself. Sorry I missed the whole roasted pig. Last time I had one of those was at least 20 years ago at a wedding on the Mendocino coast and my friend Vincent who has a farm to table restaurant on Whidbey Island decided to do one for his wedding. All I remember is that it was all too much and I read a really bad poem as the best man. Something by a Greek guy.