Posts

Book Club

My mom is in a book club. I realize that this is true for many people's moms, at least for many people I have known over the years. And not just for moms. Apparently 5-7% of adults are active members of a book club at any given moment; 15-20% of adults have been in a book club at some point in their lives, and as many as 33% of active readers are in book clubs. But yeah, women are vastly more likely to be in book clubs (roughly 10% are currently in one).  I don't get book clubs. Why would you take a perfectly enjoyable, relaxing, self-paced, almost free, wholesome, and private activity like reading, something that is so much fun that it is my preferred way to spend my vacations, no matter the exotic location, company, or availability of pools, beaches, and drinks with little umbrellas, and turn it into a resented, competitive obligation? There are lots of clichés about why book clubs are popular. Top of these is wine, snacks, and gossip, for which book clubs provide a great...
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Freeways and highways in California

So I was writing about the California accent and expressions and when you do that it's almost impossible not to talk about freeways. Like, people who make fun of Californians seem to always start with  yeah, like, you take the 10 to the 5 and then up the 110. But that gets to be a big topic. So I decided to break it out, because it's kind of quirky. Numbered highways are kind of weird in California. There are interstates, legacy U.S. numbered highways, and state highways. Oh, and expressways.  Of these, only interstates are always freeways. Although these are called interstates, only six of the ones in California actually go across the state line (out of 25).  "Interstate"  280  never gets closer than 200 miles from Nevada, or 330 miles from Oregon. Yes, I know there is an explanation for that (apparently the 3-digit ones are local capillaries of the two-digit ones). Although, just to be argumentative about that,  280  never inter...
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California accent, expressions, and common knowledge

First of all, let me warn you. This is a bit of a long-read. Kind of like reading a dictionary or a Frommer's Guide or a cookbook is a long-read. In other words, this may be a little OCD, but maybe you'll get some chuckles or recognition from it, or learn something, or otherwise find something to disagree vehemently with. By the way, this really scratches an itch for a natural list-maker (although it's never done, of course).  So you've seen the SNL skit about The Californians . Yet every Californian will argue that we don't have an accent ( Those people you make fun of? That's funny but normal people don't talk like that ). So I decided to dig into it a bit, mostly by watching a bunch of YouTube videos and lots of reddit discussions and a bit of personal experience, observation, and input from my friends (most of whom said Sorry, that was too long, that was work ). The core question is: What characterizes a California accent and/or dialect? A lot of the SN...
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Golden Geese

So I've been good and have been biting my tongue, not joining in the feeding frenzy over the band Geese for a whole week.  Actually, for a while longer than that. But I can't resist anymore.  I'm reasonably plugged in to new music (as you might have figured out by the fact that this is not my first rant about such things) and it was hard to miss Geese so yeah, I've been listening to them and trying them out for quite a while. It took a while but they grew on me (it was not love at first sight, it was also not eww-skip). You can detect some DNA from The Strokes, White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and so on. There's a bit of a Black Country New Road vibe, which I loved when Isaac Wood was still the lead singer, bless his heart. But it's pretty original, and it is most definitely real music, not AI-generated or assembly-line-produced drivel, which is becoming something in itself. But I also have this kind-of snobby affectation that I like to know about bands before ev...
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Top songs everyone has to hear at least once

I am a regular list maker, including song- and playlists. Want to create a false sense of productivity? Feel anxious? Bored? Stuck? Stressed? Make a list. You'll feel better. I started making mix tapes as soon as I had access to my first cassette player with a record button. I make an  annual playlist  of mostly new music, which I share much more widely than it needs to be, not just to music-loving friends, but sort of in lieu of holiday cards. I also have a  Classic Hits mix  that started as a playlist for a birthday party and now has 590 songs on it, good enough for a 41-hour party. And many more.  I have by now accepted that my list-making has a limited audience. A couple of my cousins and a few friends actually like and listen to my annual playlist (thank you). A few other musically obsessed friends appreciate the enormous effort I put into them and actually listen and give feedback: " We have pretty different tastes." "Interesting to see how our m...
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Velvet Sundown

So a few months ago, a new band released some music on Spotify (and elsewhere) and gave people something new to get upset about. The band, Velvet Sundown , "is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence."  In other words, the band does not exist, and the music is AI-generated. The music is not horrible, it's insipid 70s-inspired folk rock and is somewhat pleasing to the ear. In June 2025 they rapidly gained over a million streams on Spotify, and four months later they still have 250,000 monthly listeners.  And the world exploded. First it was "wow a mysterious new band, but they're kind of weird" but it quickly turned into a consensus that this was the beginning of the apocalypse. Everyone from the New York Post to Rolling Stone to the Washington Post to the BBC to the Guardian to NPR weighed in. Reddit and X blew up. It attracted a hoaxer who falsely...
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The Todds

Michele and I were having a good time people-watching while waiting for a concert to start at the Greek in Berkeley last Saturday, and we were testing various hypotheses. One of the standard items is what kind of crowd it is, usually starting with how old and how diverse the crowd is. You would think that there would not be great variance in this, us being "upper middle aged" (for some versions of middle and upper) and therefore expected to attend "see them before they die" nostalgia-acts, but we have eclectic tastes so there really is. In the last three weeks, we've probably seen a 3x range in average age at shows, from college to middle-boomer. We were having a debate about Why Most Men Look Like Shit (there, I capitalized it, that makes it true). My expertise is largely based on watching Queer Eye, where season after season the leads try to fix someone in a week. Wardrobe and grooming are a big part of it. Standard question on the show: "Why are you wear...
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