Knick Knacks (September 2023)
Things I've Saved Just For You
Knick Knacks is a monthly newsletter where I recommend things to my audience that are outside the bounds of movies and television shows. Recommendations typically include videos, music, social media accounts, podcasts, YouTube channels, and books. If you’re interested, you can subscribe to this Substack to get it delivered to your inbox.
Greetings, everyone!
It’s the 29th already.
It’s finally the fall, technically, and it’s the beginning of my favorite time of the year. It’s not the holidays (except Thanksgiving), or the sports (don’t care), it’s the weather. It finally stops being so damn hot all the time and instead it’s mildly hot at worst and nice & cool at best. My power bill gets a breather in the fall, I can open my windows, I can enjoy the outdoors and wear better-looking clothes since nothing I own for the warm months is stylish.
More than that, though, lately, I’ve come to enjoy the fall and winter months as a slower-paced time for me, creatively, in a good way. I don’t mean that I’ll be creating fewer things in the fall and winter, certainly I won’t be. But I’ll be putting less of an expectation on myself to be writing about, reading about, or podcasting about The Latest Thing. I try to make my essays relevant to current events if I can. I try to make the subjects of my podcast relevant if I can. I like to read books that are related to current events if I can.
I enjoy doing these things, but it does feel like work sometimes, in a way that becomes burdensome every now and again. I am not the type to quit when things become difficult, but I am the type to scale back when I need to. As you’ll see below, I’ve been reading about people who take an academically seasonal approach to some of the things in their lives and I was inspired. So I recently decided that for me, the fall and winter months/quarters will be my easygoing periods, my seasons of ease. My task during these months is to remember to enjoy what it is I’m watching, reading, writing, or doing. I hope you can do the same with your hobbies.
As is the purpose of this newsletter, I’ve compiled a few things that I’ve been enjoying lately, things that weren’t covered in my film and television podcast, and I’m recommending that you give them a look, because they’re great.
Listen
“Strike Force Five” (Podcast)
For those who haven’t heard, the 5 biggest names in late night television (Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver) have started a podcast.
It began as a Zoom between the 5 men, the name apparently originating from the name of their text chain between each other, as a way to have regular meetings during the WGA Strike, which, yes, is still going on, and will be until absurdly greedy studios pay creatives fairly, goddammit. (Great news, it has ended, provisionally, as of this publishing.)
They decided that launching a temporary podcast was a good idea because not only do they have plenty of time on their hands since their shows are off the air, but any money the podcast makes can be distributed to their striking and out-of-work staff. I thought this was an idea worth supporting, and a way that anybody could support the writers.
This show is…okay. The hosts are obviously friends, which is nice to listen to. And they’re all likable, which is also nice to hear. It’s also quite obvious that they rely heavily on their writers, which they acknowledge during each episode. Still, it’s interesting for me to listen to a little bit of talk about each of their experiences as television hosts, their stories about entitled guests, each of their first episodes, and more showbiz stories that you won’t get anywhere else. It gets better as episodes go along, but the standout by a landslide is Episode 5, titled “Strike Force Wives”, in which Fallon has polled each of their wives to answer questions about their husbands. You may think that’s cliche, but the humor stems from the hosts’ giddiness that Fallon executed this idea so badly, it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious.
So if you’re a fan of any of the late night shows, you’ll enjoy this as entertainment. As someone who is not a fan of late night TV, but someone who desperately wants to help the writers, I’m giving my ears to this show so that the show can charge large rates for ads, thereby increasing the amount of money that will be funneled to the writers and crew of these shows who are currently out of work. It’s work, but I’ll listen to it until the strike is over.
(If the strike officially stays ended, I’ll be happy to reduce my podcast listening by offloading this show, don’t get me wrong).
Watch
The Cosmonaut Variety Hour (YouTube)
This is another YouTube channel that is appointment viewing for me. I don’t even know how I came to it, but it’s just this dude named Marcus and I find his takes on movies remarkably reasonable.
Marcus will often release “Quickies” reviewing new releases, usually around 10 minutes in length. He also produces longer videos on specific topics, like the above video about whether or not he’s a contrarian, or a really great video about the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and also the terrible Hobbit prequel trilogy), or this one about the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I don’t always agree with him. In fact, I’m not sure our tastes align very often, but I respect his opinions because he explains himself well and gives a coherent argument to back up his beliefs on certain movies. I absolutely recommend his channel, it’s insightful, well-researched, and most importantly, laugh-out-loud hilarious every time.
Read
Why you should divide your life into semesters, even when you’re not in school - Allie Volpe (Article)
I read articles like this sometimes because I’m a schedule nerd who’s always interested to read about someone else’s routine, hoping that I’ll pick up on some hack that I haven’t yet considered for my own haywire stack of responsibilities. This article makes the argument that we would do well to treat our lives according to the academic calendar, using the semesters as the scaffolding to order our tasks.
For example, perhaps during the fall semester, I focus completely on my writing and book reading, temporarily putting other pursuits on hold such as my podcast, watching movies, watching YouTube, and scrolling Instagram. I treat this task like a course and I do that from August until December, pausing for the holiday break before returning for the spring semester. During the spring, having devoted fall to my reading and writing, I could then focus my “studies” on fitness, making sure my energy is directed towards a healthy diet, getting plenty of sleep, abstaining from alcohol, lifting weights, and running multiple days every week.
As with any life advice, you need to do what works for you, but the doing requires you to try things first. I’m not sure I want to spend the fall NOT exercising at all or the spring NOT writing. But it’s a system built for people who have a hard time making the time for long-percolating tasks that they know will take them a hot minute to accomplish or make serious progress towards.
I recommend the article, as it goes into much greater detail about the science behind this approach, the importance of setting goals, and the reason this system works for some people.
The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End - Neil Howe
This book is essentially about how history repeats itself, but not only that, history appears to repeat itself in distinct cycles. Over roughly 80 - 100 years (a long human life span, called a “saeculum:), there first is a High (First Turning), followed by an Awakening (Second Turning), then an Unraveling (Third Turning), and finally concluding with a Crisis (Fourth Turning) before transitioning into the next saeculum’s First Turning High and so on.
According to this theory, known as the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, co-developed by the author, Neil Howe, and according to their research, we are currently, in 2023, in the middle of the Fourth Turning, the Crisis. Looking around at the world, it’s not hard to agree. Politics, global economics, social discourse, violence, racism, inequality, financial markets, and public health are pretty fucked. It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse. Unfortunately, they will (enjoy my essay exploring this topic on October 15th). At least, according to this book, we have a few more years to go of “worse” before the wave finishes cresting and we emerge from our current Crisis stage and into a pretty fuckin’ sweet High stage, with community-mindedness and social cohesion reminiscent of the post World War 2 era in America. Until then, much of what happens depends on our Millennial generation, and our actions determine how we resolve our current Crisis and how it comes to an end.
Wanna help those Millennials out? Start by not blaming us for everything that’s wrong with the world, because not only is it not our fault, but the data shows that it’s Xers and Boomers who have set into motion, or failed to solve, the issues that currently vex us. Thanks so much.
Hopefully, between now and the end of this Crisis (estimated to be sometime in the next 10 years), we can avoid as many serious mistakes and irreversible damage as possible so that when we arrive at the High, we aren’t haunted by our choices that were made in order to arrive there. We’re going to have to make sacrifices, for sure, but hopefully we can be more socially conscious and community-focused, you know, working together. Wouldn’t that be something?
It’s just a theory, but a damn interesting one. Check it out for yourself if any of that interests you. It interested me a great deal, and it’s a great gateway into history for non-history types such as myself. Agreeing with it or not, one thing is for sure: No matter the issue, we’ve basically been there before and the only way we move forward is by avoiding the mistakes of the past.
(Hint: it’s never worked out too well for those who fought amongst themselves.)
As always. my podcast, The HooperCast Movie Hour, is where we talk about film, television, filmmaking, storytelling, and also life. I think you’ll enjoy it.
As for my other essays, you can find it all right here, along with previous Knick Knacks newsletters. This month, I tried my best to advocate for authentic action, prioritizing the issues we care about, and being more selective about what we allow to bother us.
Thanks so much for reading and I’ll see you next month!