I spent the weekend climbing at Devil’s Lake. It got me thinking about all the media I’m consuming, and the clothes I’m wearing.

What I’m Listening To

I’ve never been a huge Conan O’Brien fan. I think most of his comedy is at the expense of the people around him, which always leaves me feeling awkward. I also think he takes up too space in rooms that could be funnier if he took a step back, a breath, and allowed more “yes, and.”

That said, his podcast, “Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend” found its way into my rotation a couple of years ago and since then has been reliable road trip entertainment.

When I bumped up my playback speed to 2.2x last week, I found myself going through podcasts faster than episodes could drop. So I filled the extra time with a few episodes from Conan and found myself enthralled again.

I’ll probably be a consistent listener for a couple of weeks now.

What I’m Reading

The most surprising thing I remember in the last month happened early one Monday morning a couple of weeks ago. I had started a new book a few days earlier, At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill. He’s an Irish author and wrote in an almost Irish dialect so that it took a bit of slow reading to get into the swing of his writing and fully immerse in the story. It reminded me of the same way the reader has to work hard to understand the made-up words of A Clockwork Orange before getting into that story.

This Monday morning a couple weeks back, I woke up earlier than normal and hadn’t quite finished my first cup of coffee. There’s a space between brewing coffee and finishing that first cup where, day to day, I’m either fully clear and aware of what I’m reading or I’m simply experiencing the story without too much clarity. The latter case on this occasion.

In my foggy state, it took me maybe a page and a half before I realized Mr. O’Neill had launched into the raunchiest sex scene literature has ever graced me with. But when I say I was not the least bit prepared, I mean that the Irish accent with which Mr. O’Neill writes isn’t at all conducive to graceful sex.

And yet, it’s a gripping book that I’m not quite finished with yet.

What I’m Watching

I just finished rewatching “Bojack Horseman.”

I didn’t want it to end, again, because in shows like this the protagonist dies, moves away, grows up, or finds peace. But that’s never been BoJack. That’s not what the show is.

Will Schoder nailed it in his essay. BoJack just lives. No sitcom rules, no clear narrative structure, the form is loose and the emotions real. If he died, the show would lose its meaning. If everything worked out, the show wouldn’t be real.

When I first watched the final season, when it came out in 2019, half of me wanted a hard goodbye to the flawed character. Half wanted him to get better. And we got neither of those things. The parts of me that wanted closure of any kind were the same parts that faded during Covid a few months after the series finale came out in January 2020.

Three years later, I finished my second watch and when the finale started, arguably with episode nine “Intermediate Scene Study w/ BoJack Horseman,” I found myself ready to accept that BoJack would leave my life again, that “there are some people that help you become the person that you end up being, and you can be grateful for them even if they were never meant to be in your life forever.”

What I’m Wearing

All honesty, I’m still in shorts most days. Though I’ve been wearing sweaters more and wearing jeans when we go out for drinks down the block. But the days are in that stage of fall where you can go with or without a sweater and still end up smelling like sweat cooling from cotton saturation.

That all, of course, assumes that I’m at home. At Devil’s Lake this weekend I slept in my Carhartt onesie pajamas and woke up chilly. I wore a puffy jacket until noon.