Radioiodine Ablation Blues - Part 1

In the immortal words of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, "Isolation/ Isolation/ Isolation." A week ago I had convinced myself it wouldn't be so bad! Hey! I'll get to catch up on all those video games! I'll have time to work on creative projects! Sure it'll be lonely and I'll miss my wife and child, but it's better than being in the hospital! Three days after taking the magical radioactive iodine pills, I feel like shit. I can't tell if it's the treatment, which didn't mention anything about feeling like a gross slug with no appetite for the first few days. I can't tell if it's my body chemistry reacting violently to my severely hypothyroid husk finally getting that sweet, sweet taste of the thyroid horomone delivery vehicle Synthroid. I can't tell if it's my allergies going haywire living in a room that hasn't been dusted and properly cleaned since I was last living in it ten years ago (for reference, I dug some stuff out of some boxes in this room last week and was feeling like crap and hacking up gunk for the next three days). I blame myself for that. It's a chickens coming home to roost scenario. Regardless, here is how I've been spending my days:

The Isolation Chamber. Feeling like Desmond from Lost in his hatch.

My two favorite posters. 

My most prized movie posters from my years working at AMC Studio 30.

• Wake up at 6:30 AM because my body clock is set for a one-year-old girlchild sitting up in bed going "hi, hi, hi" or "daDA, daDa, daDa" at that godforsaken hour. I groan and lay there realizing I have to get up and pee so as to facilitate the radioactive iodine leaving my worthless body and crawling out of bed feels like a victory. Refilling the two medical-grade sippy cups in the bathroom sink feels like an honest to god triumph. 

This is basically the worst.

• Go back to bed until Jenny and Rosie Facetime me at 9:30. Rosie greets me with "daDa!" and the conversation is spent with Rosie in control of the phone which is hilarious, sweet, full of frequent pauses, and new things Rosie is doing that I'm not there to see first hand. It's nice that technology makes it possible to at least be somewhat connected to my family, but mostly these conversations just make me want to be home. Fuck the solitude, fuck the "being able to work on creative pursuits." I want to groggily make breakfast for my daughter and complain about having to get up before 7:00 am and I want to watch my kid stomp around her playroom and try to keep her from choking on stuff and from falling off the things she now insists on climbing on top of.

Seriously, it sucks not being able to snug this baby

• Go back to bed or get up. Friday and Saturday I went back to sleep because of the general exhaustion. Friday was my last day of the low-iodine diet and no Synthroid. I don't think it's possible to appreciate your little thyroid gland until you have it cut out from your body and can see what happens when you're not replacing the hormones it emits. The thyroid is responsible for your metabolism, which plays your energy levels like a puppet on a string, and regulates stuff like your body temperature. Even with the modest AC running, I've been freezing cold. The longer you go without it, the more your body sinks into a hypothyroid state, the more exhausted and lethargic you feel. Friday was spent in bed, drifting in and out of restless sleep, and not wanting to eat anything.Saturday I was able to start pumping my body full of thyroid hormone but I still spent the whole day in bed sleeping and watching TV. 

SIGH

• Not even good TV, mind you. I have a whole backlog of shows I planned on burning through. I'm watching A.) Live Sports and B.) Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. The former is acceptable, as I'm a red-blooded American man and my parents have an excellent cable package. The latter is bizarre and telling of just how shitty I've been feeling. On Friday I was so excited to be able to eat all those foods I've been craving the last two weeks, and I settled for watching that frosted-tipped clown Guy Fieri going around eating ridiculously tasty-looking food. "All I wanna do is watch that idiot eat french fries, and it's glorious." The worst thing about that show isn't Guy's stupid one-liners (of which there are so, so many, most of which are actually really entertaining if you come at them the right way), but the lack of enthusiasm he presents when he finally gets to dig in to a fancy-ass grilled cheese sandwich. "Mmm, good job. The truffle oil is a nice touch. You're killin' it boss," he says with all the excitement of a talking toy having its string pulled. LOOK AT THAT GODDAMN GRILLED CHEESE GUY! THAT TEXAS TOAST IS LIKE AN INCH THICK! THERE IS GRUYERE ON THAT SHIT! DIP IT IN THE TOMATO BISQUE YOU FOOL! LET ME LIVE! I think he's just burnt out. One of the episodes was from 2007 and he was way more excited about these greasy-spoon classics. He's graduated from grody truck stops to places I want to look-up next time I go to Chicago or St. Louis, but he's probably eaten so much of this awesomely rich food the dream has become a nightmare. Either way, I watched maybe two-and-a-half hours of that show on Friday.

My mom is a great cook but looking at this makes me wanna hurl

• And then had absolutely no appetite on Saturday. For lunch I thought about eating leftover grilled chicken and green beans and almost threw up. All I do is drink water and eat Jolly Ranchers. Do you love Jolly Ranchers? Yeah, try eating two an hour for three days. On Friday I fell off. I couldn't do it anymore. One of my teeth became intensely sensitive from all the Jolly Ranchers. It hurt to brush them. Now most of my teeth are super sensitive and I hate everything. There is literally a ziploc bag full of these sitting a foot away from me and looking at the bag is making me nauseous. So are the matzo crackers, unsalted almonds, and unsalted tortilla chips sitting within my sight-line.

Disgusting. I hate these forever now.

The Devil's Candy

• Yesterday I got to eat real food for the first time in two weeks. I should clarify that the food I was eating on my low-iodine diet is "real food" in the sense that the meals were simple, healthy, and delicious. The sort of food a normal human being should be eating on a regular basis. But I would drive by Schlotsky's and be like "Damn Schlotsky's sounds good right now," which is literally something nobody has ever said ever. Jenny would talk to me and I'd imagine her head turning into a BBQ sandwich. I was dreaming about Joes KC's Z-Man. On Saturday, I got one for dinner and I could barely appreciate it. The hunger had gone. I still ate it, but it was a workmanlike affair. That afternoon I enjoyed orange chicken from Panda Express, another deep craving from my low-iodine days, because I am disgusting and nothing satisfies like mall Chinese food. This morning I feel a bit better, but I'm still not hungry. I wanted all these pornographic food-eating experiences and now I'm eating because I know I have to. Dad brought me a sausage, egg and cheese english muffin sandwich from Starbucks and hey, that was pretty good, but I'm still not hungry.

Look at this feast! I'll have at it again before my isolation is done,
that's for damn sure. Although I will say, it was takeout, the sandwich was cold,
and I'mma make the moms take me after my full body scan so I can
experience this in its natural habitat.

The star anise flavor in the eggroll was gross,
but the rest was incredible.

• Although Indian food sounds really good. And maybe because I've been watching the NBA Playoffs. Have you heard of this Steph Curry guy? He's pretty good! And he makes me seriously consider pulling the cancer card and making my dad go out and get me some Chicken Tikka Masala from Korma Sutra. I don't think my parents have ever had Indian food, and I don't think they're gonna start now. 

• But let's talk about the Golden State Warriors, man. I don't watch the NBA, but this team is super fun. It's great to see a juggernaut full of young dudes just tearing it up doing insane shit. They're playing the New Orleans Anthony Davises, so it's entertaining on both sides of the ball. See how my judgment has been impaired! Has the radiation settled in my brain?! Triple D and NBA? What have I become!

• I've also been watching a lot of soccer, because it's on. The FA Cup Semifinals were on yesterday and today and I watched both of those matches with a surprising amount of attention. Mostly because I was curled up in bed and didn't have the energy to get distracted by my phone, but still! It led to a lot of navel gazing about American attention spans not being able to deal with the hypnotic, seemingly boring pace of a soccer game. I thought that might be changing after World Cup Fever swept the land, but nobody cares about the MLS unless they live in KC or Portland or Seattle or one of these other poor cities with a lack of professional sporting options. Naturally I've been watching the Royals, which is as close as I've been to normal. It's like hitting the reset button on my brain. I spent an hour managing my Fantasy Baseball team this morning, and I'm writing this long diary entry, so I'm hoping this is a sign of things to come. That maybe I'll write that concept album about Radioiodine Ablation Blues that I was planning on writing, or maybe I'll do a covers album choosing songs from the band posters in my room.

Oh yeah, some hockey too because why not.

• I wonder what it would feel like for Anthony Davis to slap me in the face. His arms are so long, one of them starts in a different time zone and you have an hour to kill before his hand actually hits your face and knocks your eyeballs out of your head. Sometimes it looks like he's gonna accidentally dunk the top of the backboard.

• They keep cutting to Steph Curry's family in the stands. They are the most attractive family I have ever seen. 

I mean, just straight up beautiful people.

• There are THREE Radiohead posters in this room. They're small advertisements for Kid A and Hail to the Thief. It's confusing because I never really loved Radiohead the way I loved Fat Wreck Chords punk rock, This Kid A one is really cool though. Should I record this covers album (I brought my four-track and guitar and recording gear for some reason), at least it would be fun to figure out how to tackle a track from The Streets A Grand Don't Come for Free. I have four more days to kill, so anything could happen! Odds are I'll sleep until I have to go back to work on Friday, however. 

Still Cool

• There is literally a wall of books I have no desire to read. Hoping the lethargy subsides and I can dig in to some of these books. This is the minor league farm system of my book collection. The good ones are all back home in boxes. The ones on these shelves are the ones I'm invariably going to take back to Half Price Books whenever it comes time to get my collection in order. 

Most likely all casualties when it comes time to cull. The hazards of working
at a used bookstore for 5 years.

• I finally played some video games last night! I'm nearing Dragon Age: Inquisitions endgame and I can't wait for this game to be over. I only discovered that you can skip through all the chatting with the X button halfway through! THIS WOULD HAVE SAVED SO MUCH TIME. There's just too much damn lore. And I know some people eat that shit up, but I just wanna battle demons, and even that got pretty boring after a while. But even after an hour of that, I stopped, put on sports, and went to sleep. 

• I thought being radioactive might be interesting. You have this idea like, "Oh my pee will be neon!" or "Oh I'll glow when the lights go out!" but no, it's just like normal except you feel like shit (and even then, I can't verify that the general shitty-feeling-ness is linked). The danger is that nothing is different. But if I like, chewed on one of Rosie's toys and she chewed on that toy, she could ingest that radiation and it would start eating away at her thyroid. That's the scariest shit in the world. I hate that I even have to go upstairs to shower. I can tend to spit when I talk, so talking to my parents on my way up and down, I think, what if a fleck of spit gets on her food tray and she eats off the tray and then my baby can't grow because I fucked up her thyroid! I'm gonna drop $60 on a new Xbox One controller because what if she finds her way to it and the sweat from my palms has irradiated the thing? It's crazy having to be so mindful of one's bodily fluids. Something I clearly wasn't as a high schooler, evidenced on the fact that my basement bathroom is absolutely disgusting. I love my wife for a lot of reasons, and one of those reasons is that she challenges me to be a cleaner, less disgusting man. 

Naturally, my name is misspelled on the lead container holding my
cancer treatment. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Bottoms Up!

• Fortunately, after today 95% of the excess radioactive iodine will have been excreted from my body and I'll only have to worry about the beta and gamma rays emanating from my neck (where most of the work is being done on the offending thyroid cells, although I'll find out of it's anywhere else during my full body scan on Thursday). 
• Just realized I've been watching the replay of Game 1 of the Warriors/Pelicans from yesterday. This is how out of it I am. 

And there you go. Don't get thyroid cancer, although I don't know if there's anything you can do to prevent it. I think about that a lot. Was there anything I could have done? Was there a radioactive event in Kansas that was covered up by the government that they'll only declassify 50 years from now? I really don't know. The nuclear medicine guys seemed super confident I'd only need one treatment and that it works 80% of the time. There's a 30% chance of recurrence later in life, at which point I guess I just get another treatment. 

Bathroom mural illustrating my maudlin teenage years. No light at the end of the tunnel,
just terror! Naturally!

My collection of autographed baseballs! 

I think this is a very telling insignia of my upbringing.

There are rules for bathroom usage with this treatment. 

At least I have a porch!

This hole was either made by hurling a baseball at the wall or

practicing my golf skills. No lie. I forget. Probably baseball. The salty

pencilling looks like the work of my brother or some other brute.

The Mountain Goats - Beat the Champ

The Mountain Goats - Beat the Champ 

Merge, 2015

Acquired: Merge Records Mail Order, New, 2015

Price: $30

The day after I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, John Darnielle announced the new Mountain Goats record. I took it as a silver lining and immediately ordered the deluxe edition, no questions asked. I remember something about the color of the vinyl: one gold, the color of the championship belt. One green, the color of the money made. Holding the records now and having spent significant time with this beautiful record, it's bittersweet. There's the glory mixed with the fact that pro wrestling is a job done by hired professionals to sell it as reality.

What JD does so well here is drive home the fact that while the outcomes may be scripted, wrestling isn't fake. It's an industry populated by real people making the most of their chosen profession. These are tales from a time when heels might still get the shit beat out of them in the parking lot. Years before the nod and the wink of the WWE and wrestling's acceptance as a sort of people's theater.

I'm sure every review of Beat the Champ has featured the writer's own personal history with professional wrestling, because I'm sure most of us have one. If you were a child, there was no doubt a phase where you and your brother practice frog spashes and suplexes on oversized stuffed animals (and each other) on your parents bed when they were at work. We made gimmicks modeled after our heroes: Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Undertaker, Edge, and all three faces of Mick Foley who might as well have represented the Holy Trinity in those days: Mankind, Dude Love, and Cactus Jack. The father, the son, and the hardcore holy ghost. The gods of the Attitude Era. We fiercely despised Ted Turner's WCW and tuned in diligently every week to Monday Night Raw even though our tuning in didn't influence the ratings of the Monday Night Wars. This will all sound like white noise to those who suffered through more highbrow childhoods reading books while being raised by parents who took them to museums on weekends, but for me, there were a solid three years where I lived and died by wrestling.

I'm writing this from my childhood bedroom in the basement of my parents house where I am staying in isolation due to the radioactive iodine therapy that will allegedly wipe out the rest of the thyroid cells in my body. There's a notebook buried down here that contains the complete kayfabe history and lineage of the matches, feuds, and title changes amongst the giant tub of WWF wrestling figures now sitting in the laundry room. I printed images of belts off the internet and superglued them to pieces of felt affixed with tiny pieces of velcro. I hand painted the Jakks Pacific figures when their gimmicks changed. I was SERIOUS about this shit. At 12 years old, I thoughtfully booked my own federation in the Hrabe Basement Territory. I told stories, crafted drama, and had insane matches. I made my dad take me to the hardware store to buy chicken wire so I could build a Hell in a Cell (complete with a trap door in the roof to recreate Mankind getting choke slammed through the damn cage and onto the mat below). I cut the hell out of myself building it and every time I played with it, but every major “Pay Per View” in my lineage had to have a hell in the cell match. My Luna action figure featured “real” hair, which ended up getting singed off in a no holds barred no disqualification match for the women's title. Other wrestlers were blown up with firecrackers. Thrown off the deck. Nearly cooked alive in a “Grill Match.” It was an insane fantasy playground, and it's the main reason I fell in love with storytelling. It's why I love books and movies and why I write. It facilitated a creative awakening and though I no longer follow “sports entertainment,” as it is called these days, I take offense anytime someone throws shade on wrestling.

John Darnielle understands this, and it's why these amazing character studies are some of his best work in a body that has consisted of solidly great work consistently since 1999. There are a lot of ballads to pair up with a lot of heartbreak, and the quietest moments—as on the showstopping “Unmasked” or the heart wrenching closer “Hair Match”--leave you breathless. Then there are the big, rollicking tributes to Chavo Guerrero Sr and Bull Ramos that really capture the larger-than-life legacies of these regular dudes who meant so much to so many people. Especially Darnielle, who in “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” notes in regard to his abusive stepfather: “You let me down but Chavo never once did/ You called him names to try to get beneath my skin/ Now your ashes are scattered on the wind.” Fuckin' A.

Some of the songs get violent, like the surprisingly joyous “Foreign Object” which is about stabbing someone in the eye with the titular object, and the brief, fist pumping “Choked Out” where the subject absolutely glamorizes his hardcore style and issues no-bullshit statements like “Everybody's got their limits/Nobody's found mine.” And then like the genius he is, Darnielle twists that line on the next track (and the album's finest song) “Heel Turn 2.” “You found my breaking point, congratulations” proclaims the beloved babyface actively turning the crowds cheers in to hissing boos. It's full of quiet desperation, sadness, and bittersweet satisfaction. Beat the Champ is maybe the most goddamn bittersweet album I've ever heard, based on the fact that I've used that word like four times and that word runs through my head every time I play the album.

I only had a chance to listen the record on vinyl once before going into isolation, but it was a wonderful experience. I was running around the house, baby in arms, trying to get everything ready for my extended leave from the household (read: getting my gaming consoles packaged up for transport). Thyroid cancer is a highly beatable cancer and Beat the Champ has helped my attitude tremendously these last few months. Whenever I started feeling uneasy about facing mortality, I just put on “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” or “The Ballad of Bull Ramos” or “Werewolf Gimmick” and said fuck cancer. When the doctor brought out the radioactive iodine in a lead container this afternoon, I thought of it like a folding chair or a foreign object. It might not make it a fair fight, but when you get ambushed all bets are off. I felt like Ric Flair talking trash when I muttered, “Cancer, kiss my ass” before I threw back the radioactive iodine pills, no doubt embarrassing myself in front of the doctors but feeling goddamn great about having so much power put in my hands after months of feeling powerless. Beat the Champ isn't Tallahassee or The Sunset Tree and some of the melodies feel cribbed from All Eternals Deck and Transcendental Youth, but it's probably the best songwriting you're going to find anywhere in 2015 and I love this album more than words can adequately express because it was the album I needed.

"The Legend of Chavo Guerrero"

"Heel Turn 2"


"Unmasked!"

Gut Feeling: Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp

Waxahatchee – Ivy Tripp

Merge, 2014

Katie Crutchfield wasted no time capitalizing on the breakout success of her sophomore effort as Waxahatchee—2013’s excellent Cerulean Salt. That album was full of concentrated ramshackle indie-pop. Perfect hooks locked in sub-three-minute shells that begged relistening the way a junkie begs you to let you have just this next one free because they’ll get you the money in three days, they promise. It was one of those albums where I AGONIZED over which track would make my year end list, because half the songs on that album were show-stopping standouts and the other half were these subtle, soulful gems that helped Crutchfield crowbar the album under your skin.

Coming off an album that was effectively vulnerability personified, leadoff track “Breathless” sounds like a flexing muscle. A beefy drone of feedback carries through the track’s four minutes, which is practically an epic by Crutchfield’s standards. It’s a slow burner, relying on the underlying feedback tones to drag you into what is effectively everything the follow up to a breakout success should be: confident, assured, and willing to jump off the cliff.

Listening to Ivy Tripp in the car, I could practically taste a 90s Merge Records vibe. I couldn’t remember who put it out, but when I arrived at my destination and had a chance to check it made perfect sense. Merge is like a time capsule, preserving bygone traditions of indie rock. Ivy Tripp is a fair bit more put together than its predecessor, and though it’s maybe three tracks too long I still found myself putting it on when I didn’t know what else to put on.

Gut Feeling: Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell

Asthmatic Kitty, 2015

I know the whole “50 States Project” was a “joke,” but Sufjan Stevens had me fooled. If you asked me ten years ago what his 2015 release would be like, I’d have guessed he’d be releasing “Maine Squeeze” or “Utah-t Me How to Love” or “Get Down on the Dance Flor-ida,” not reverting to the blindingly gorgeous and hushed banjo-heavy folk of his 2004 album Seven Swans. It’s more surprising still considering his last full-length—2010’s The Age of Adz—was an experimental, electronic drenched epic that sounded like Stevens totally tearing down everything he’d built himself up to be. And I suppose that’s what happened. Carrie & Lowell is a return to the sound that made his name, but it’s also his most powerful piece of work. Inspired by the death of his mother, the songs are at times painfully raw and intensely personal. Ok, it’s all intensely personal. There’s no room to breathe, and that’s part of Carrie & Lowell’s power. The songwriting is of a strength that dispels the notion Stevens’ peaked on Illinois’ finest moments and illustrates that his best work may be yet to come. As great and heartwrenching as the songwriting is, the music here is truly outstanding. Sure it’s quiet and beautiful like Seven Swans, but it’s run through a filter of ten years of dabbling in minimalism, electronics, and hip-hop. It truly feels like the sum of years of hard work. It takes a delicate touch to pull off an album this intense, and for all of Stevens’ scope and grandeur on previous projects, this one feels like a legitimate masterpiece.

Listen to Carrie & Lowell in its entirety at NPR. Ideally in a quiet place, alone, after nightfall for maximum effect.

"No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross"

"Eugene"

Gut Feeling: Jeff Rosenstock - We Cool?

Jeff Rosenstock – We Cool?

Quote Unquote/Sideonedummy, 2015

I swear, once a week I sit and quietly reflect upon all the music I love that I’m not listening to. I’d never heard of Bomb the Music Industry! until I took a flyer on frontman Jeff Rosenstock’s latest solo record after seeing his name pop up on Facebook. After an exhausting decade of trying to keep up with everything, my new year’s resolution was to quit reading music reviews in an effort to put a stop to the little voice inside my head that plays when I listen to music (“It only got a 5.4 on Pitchfork, hmm”). I’m a much happier person. And it makes way more sense getting clued in by people I actually like and trust. So there you go. Jeff Rosenstock’s name pops up in my Facebook feed and I A.) Know I need to get all of those Bomb the Music Industry! albums B.) Found another dude who totally nails that poppy bedroom punk sound that is maybe my favorite sound and C.) all of a sudden have a valid album of the year contender.

We Cool? is a messy and urgent examination of that late 20s/early 30s unhappiness (“Nothing makes me happy/ I’m like a shitty child”) and general ennui. A sort of “Well OK what now.” It’s not exactly uncharted territory, but Rosenstock has so much fun with the subject matter and the songs it makes for a fun journey down this well trod path. A poppier Andrew Jackson Jihad was an immediate touchstone and wouldn’t you know it, they’re cohorts (and tour mates, who just played Lawrence last night and were I still a member of that unattached late 20s/early 30s crowd I would have been there hell/highwater style). The epic power pop of early Weezer are also present, but its honestly more akin to Weezer acolytes Ozma who had a sweeter, synthier vibe. Either way, We Cool? is insanely catchy and infinitely relistenable and it’s sneakily become my go-to record for 2015. Bad day? Put on “Hall of Fame” in the car and make everything better. Feeling pissed off at everything? That drunken Ben Folds-y piano and chant-a-long chorus on “Nausea” does the trick.

I’m thinking We Cool? is exactly what I was looking for and I’m glad I stumbled across it (and Rosenstock’s own Quote Unquote records which offers free downloads of the labels albums and asks only for donations). When you go through the motions of modern music and hype and label spin on a regular basis, finding a pocket of that pure, amazing, unaffected DIY spirit is like finding a woman you want to spend the rest of your life with. So pure and good and right. For someone (like myself) particularly susceptible to that aforementioned spin, hype, and bias, this music feels like home. 

Get it here.

"Nausea"

John Vanderslice - Time Travel is Lonely

John Vanderslice – Time Travel is Lonely

Barsuk, 2001 (2009 Reissue)

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2015

Price: $10

Jenny got me $40 in Love Garden gift certificates for my birthday and for me, the gift isn’t the records I get, but getting to spend two blissful, allergy attack laden (the mix of dust and adorable cats brings out the worst of my allergies but so worth it) hours flipping through vinyl. Since leaving Half Price Books, I’ve quit buying records. I was beyond thrilled to go in and buy whatever the hell I wanted and make the most of my $40. First off, I found a few safe picks that I would grab in case Jenny and Rosie got done early with their thrifting. After that, I buried myself in the alt-rock vinyl and when I looked up, I’d snagged a few must haves. One was this reissue of Time Travel is Lonely, a huge album from my high school years. Transitioning from listening to nothing but punk rock to a world that was changed by Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was the greatest musical time of my life. Everything was new and exciting and I approached it all without prejudice. I’d discovered JV through the Mountain Goats and fell in love with his gorgeously photographed tour diaries. I saw him play at the Bottleneck on the Cellar Door tour. He played for pretty much no one and the young openers, the then relative unknowns Okkervil River, played for an even smaller chunk of the crowd. In addition to Time Travel is Lonely’s title track, I particularly latched onto his sonic interpretation of Robert Lowell’s “The Old Flame” (here “My Old Flame”). The consummate producer and engineer, JV’s albums are fun just to hear the man delight in crafting sonic landscapes.

My Favorite Films of 2014

The trouble with living in the Midwest is that by year’s end I haven’t had a chance to see everything  I wanted to see from the year prior. Films trickle inward from the coasts, and even then their presentation is often dubious. For instance, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice was a prime example of why I wait to put together my list and I missed it because I think it was only open for about a week. My 19 year old self would have been there opening night, but my 29 year old with three or four different hoops to jump through in order to see a movie, it takes a real above and beyond effort to see everything I want to see. An effort I frankly just don’t have anymore. I see the films eventually. I put them on hold at the library or they pop up on Netflix, but they don’t make the list! What a shame!

The year end list is important to me for some reason. I love putting it together the week of the Oscars. It’s a ritual, undertaken merely to exercise the film loving muscle in my body that I’ve been honing since I was 16 or 17 and saw Mulholland Drive. Checked out from the library. From there I became obsessed. I spent whole summers holed up in my basement bedroom watching stacks of films. Submitting to an entire history of a medium. I had strict rule: Watch, at the very least, a film a day. I usually squeezed in two or three a day in addition to working 16 hours a week at AMC where I squeezed in movies after shifts, 11AM matinees on days off, and saw some films in a piecemeal fashion during ushering shifts. It is that good and pure obsession that I am trying to pay homage to. 

15. Neighbors

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Obligatory new dad pick. The plot’s a little goofy, but the characters—new parents desperately trying to salvage the cool people they once were—are great and full of heart. That’s actually par for the course for Stoller, whose The Five-Year Engagement and Forgetting Sarah Marshall get to be silly, raunchy, and moving all at once. It’s a delicate craft. Sure the gags are great, but the scene where Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s characters are trying to have sex and their baby keeps turning around in her bouncy chair to stare at them and the characters having to abandon the act via the weirdness was one of the truest things I saw all year.

14. The One I Love

Directed by Christopher McDowell

Caveat emptor: Watching this film with your significant other is going to lead to a heavy conversation about your relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything, because watching this film unfold is a treat (as are the performances of Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss), but if you’re on shaky ground with the special man or woman in your life this incisive look at marriage might tip you one way or the other.

13. Jodorowsky’s Dune

Directed by Frank Pavich

I finally put myself up to watching The Holy Mountain this year. How I made it through film school without seeing Jodorowsky’s infamous masterpiece is beyond me. Rosie had gone to bed early and I had a couple hours to kill, pulled the trigger, and sat rapt soaking in one of the weirdest artistic statements I’ve ever experienced. It’s a brilliant and evocative piece of art that belongs in a museum. I also read Dune this year, primarily because this documentary had come out and I wanted to imagine the novels setting with a Jodorowskian palate. It was magnificent. David Lynch’s adaptation is dogshit, and really, it’s not his fault. It was the 80s and he tried. The studio interfered, but some of those effects are inexcusable and it’s all so cheesy and incomprehensible you wish they’d just abandoned it all together. Jodorowsky’s Dune plays like salt in the wound. Look upon that gorgeous and fucked up concept art and weep. Oh, what could have been! Fortunately, the film isn’t merely a glimpse of a great film we the people were deprived of, but a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a madman.

12. 22 Jump Street

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

21 Jump Street looked funny enough, but only when looking up The Lego Movie did I put together the pieces that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were the masterminds behind the tragically short-lived MTV cartoon Clone High. A show I watched religiously the ½ season it was on. A show that cemented the groundwork of what would become my adult sense of humor. Which is to say, a well-timed dolphin squeak will basically have me hyperventilating on the floor. These guys, Jesus Christ. I can’t even. We watched 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street back to back and I was sore the next day. From the clever usage of professional man meat Channing Tatum to the constant tongue-and-cheek lampoonery of sequels to that goddamn “Suns Out, Guns Out” tank top, 22 Jump Street is not only the year’s funniest film, but one of the funniest films I have ever seen. If Lord and Miller don’t already have the keys to the comedy kingdom (which, based on the success and overall wonderfulness of The Lego Movie, they probably do) this needs to be arranged.

11. Birdman: or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

This one was sort of a perfect storm of “Things that are right up my alley.” Here’s a list within the list of why I loved Birdman: One, I love all of Iñárritu’s films. Two, I love Raymond Carver. Three, I love me a good behind-the-scenes showbiz movie. Four, the acting is amazing (though I’d say despite all of the praise Michael Keaton is getting he is upstaged by Edward Norton and Emma Stone). Five, it’s a technical marvel that plays with the form of cinema in a unique and, most importantly, fun way. Six, it’s incredibly heady but also incredibly funny which makes for a deep richness. Seven, did I mention Emma Stone is amazing? She delivers a monologue midway through the film that is such a showstopper the director should have cued the film to burn on screen before correcting it. Eight, it was an experience that left me rapt in my oversized chair in the squeaky, overpriced cinema suites chairs at AMC and it’s so rare to go to the movies these days and have an actual Experience it’s worth noting here.

10. Guardians of the Galaxy

Directed by James Gunn

James Gunn may be known for peddling filth as a part of the Troma Entertainment cadre, but the way he has you both weeping and IDing with Star Lord in the first five minutes of the movie is nothing short of masterful. From there, Chris Pratt and a terrific supporting cast deliver what is easily the best, most entertaining and most emotionally satisfying Marvel movie yet.

9. Only Lovers Left Alive

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Without a doubt, Only Lovers Left Alive was the coolest film of 2014. It was the sort of cool that only Jim Jarmusch can deliver as probably the coolest director in the business. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are electric as a pair of vampires living out their eternal days (or nights, I suppose) in a languid way typically associated people living in opium dens. Jarmusch cleverly sets the scene in the dying city of Detroit against the town’s rock and roll history and it’s just a marvelous film to let wash over you with its gorgeous visuals and incredible score.

8. Frank

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

I think a lot of why I loved this movie is tied to when I watched it. I’d just had surgery, I was zonked out on hydrocodone and feeling incredibly strange. I instinctually picked Frank to watch off the Netflix queue and something about the combination of all those things made it a movie that has really stuck with me. It’s a beautiful and brutal depantsing of the kind of social media fueld hype machine that makes music so insufferable these days. Domhnall Gleeson is excellent as the obnoxious, talentless, tweeting weasel that infiltrates Frank’s band and the scorn he draws from the rest of the group is a source of great humor. Michael Fassbender wears a big paper mache head for most of the film but that doesn’t make his turn as a brilliant, mentally ill musician any less stirring. It’s a poignant look at the Daniel Johnstons of the world and the suffering that leads to that great, weird, outsider art we all love so much.  

7. Calvary

Directed by John Michael McDonagh

The films of John Michael Mcdonagh’s more famous brother Martin (2008’s In Bruges and 2012’s Seven Psychopaths) always make my year end list, so I’m not surprised that talent flows freely in the family McDonagh. Anchored by Brendan Gleeson’s tremendous performance of a good priest in a small seaside town spending a week getting his affairs in order before he is to be murdered on a beach to atone for the sins of the Catholic Church. It sounds bleak, and while there is certainly a storm cloud hanging over this film, there is a fair bit of humor and heart to balance out this magnificent character drama. 

6. Snowpiercer

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

Sometimes it’s the weird ones that really stick with you, and boy oh boy, is Snowpiercer a weird one. It’s also probably the most fun I had watching a movie last year. It also features Tilda Swinton’s best performance in a year where A.) Tilda Swinton was in almost every single movie and B.) Tilda Swinton straight-up killed it in every single movie she was in (See Also: Only Lovers Left Alive, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Zero Theorem being her other three films this year, each one featuring a totally different side of this phenomenal woman). In Snowpiercer, she’s the one keeping a ragtag group of peasant people (led by Chris Evans, in fine form here) from fighting their way through the titular train’s class system to the engine room where they plan to take control of humanity’s last salvation in the frozen and environmentally devastated remains of Earth. God bless this new wave of Korean directors bringing their insane, inventive flourishes to English language cinema.

5. Interstellar

Directed by Christopher Nolan

I’ll be honest, that this film’s central heartbeat centers around a father-daughter relationship rather than a father-son relationship is what made Interstellar so deeply resonant with me. It would have still been a fine modern space exploration epic if they’d gone the father-son route as scripted. I’m biased, with my own baby girl and all, but it’s more heartbreaking that way and I was weepy numerous times during the film’s span. It’s master stylist Christopher Nolan’s most emotionally devasting work to date in addition to being his most technologically marvelous. It’s a wondrous film to behold, and while it’s a bit all over the place prone to switch genres or throw wild metaphysical stuff your way at the drop of a hat, the not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-gonna-happen-next was a big reason I was so thoroughly entertained and moved.

4. Ida

Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski

A beautiful, transcendent, amazingly photographed film about uncovering uncovering the horrors of one of humanity’s darkest hours. Holocaust films come and go, but the  hushed and heartbreaking journey of young nun-in-training Anna discovering her Jewish heritage (and her birth name and the fate of her family) on the cusp of taking her vows tells a side of the atrocity that we haven’t really seen before. Frames of this film are burned into my brain, courtesy of the striking black-and-white cinematography of Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, always leaving the subjects low in the frame and leaving a great deal of negative space to symbolize any number of things. The weight of history, the room to ascend to grace and acceptance, a setting where the world is threatening to completely overtake its characters. It’s austere and incredible work, punctuated by any number of times the camera comes to rest on Agata Trzebuchowska’s eyes that cut right through the celluloid and into your soul. Maybe I’m biased, having spent film school writing papers about the quietly devastating films of Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, and Seijun Suzuki, but on the strength of Ida I think Pawel Pawlikowski has earned a seat amongst those greats and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

3. The Battered Bastards of Baseball

Directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Ken Burns’ 10+ hour long Baseball series. It’s a very informative series on the whole history of the game. It’s also stuffy and full of blowhards like George Will who will talk your ear off about the purity of the Great Game of Ball. The Battered Bastards of Baseball is a magnificent counterpoint to the Burns series, in that the legends it touts are dudes you have never heard of. Dudes with outlandish facial hair and unsavory lifestyles. It’s a look at baseball outside the establishment, and this chronicle of the short-lived Portland Mavericks cuts to the heart of what baseball really is: A childrens’ game played by grown-ass men for the sheer fun of it all.

2. Whiplash

Directed by Damien Chazelle

How Damien Chazelle didn’t garner a nod for Best Director escapes me, because there was no film better helmed in 2014 than Whiplash. The tension Chazelle builds in this student-becomes-the-master piece is so tight and so thick it’s almost unbearable to watch at times. When the whole thing crescendos with the undisputable best scene of the last year, it’s electric. Whiplash is bound to be a lasting parable of the price of greatness.

1. Boyhood

Directed by Richard Linklater

While it sure is nice to see a salt of the earth guy like Richard Linklater garnering so much praise for his most recent effort, it’s nicer that 2014 produced a film everyone could agree on. Not only did Linklater quash any notion that the film (shot over 12 years) would be a gimmick, but said “gimmick” only ended up making for a transcendent filmgoing experience unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The closest thing I can think of is Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series or Linklater’s own Before…, but where those films pick up a number of years after the last, watching Ellar Coltrane grow up in the span of three hours is magical. 

Elliott Smith - "Needle in the Hay" 7"

Elliott Smith  - “Needle in the Hay” 7”

Kill Rock Stars, 1995

Acquired: Kill Rock Stars Mailorder, New, 2003

Price: $4

I spent many hours of my teenage years analyzing “Needle in the Hay.” Like many kids my age, I discovered Elliott Smith via the wrist-cutting sequence of The Royal Tenenbaums. Because of that, and through mishearing something Wes Anderson said on the audio commentary, I thought Elliott Smith had killed himself. I found out he was still alive! And two weeks later (and two weeks after I’d acquired this 7”) he killed himself. I remember coming home from school to that. Sitting at the family computer in the living room and letting punknews.org break the heartbreaking news. That memory is firmly attached this this 7”. As is riding the KU campus bus heartbroken. And thinking lines like “Man, I’m glad I’m not addicted to heroin” but also being able to find the deep, dark humor in a line like “You oughta be proud that I’m getting good marks.” Smith is his generation’s Nick Drake (who also has a song on The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack, committed suicide, and wrote the same sort of sad, soulful songs that get inside of you and never come out) and a national treasure bound to be discovered and rediscovered for decades, centuries, millennia.

Gut Feeling: Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear

Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear

Sub Pop, 2015

Josh Tillman’s first album as Father John Misty—2012’s Fear Fun—was a beautiful and weird examination of ego and personal mythology set in a Hollywood of drugs and debauchery delivered with pure swagger. It was my favorite record that year, and its followup, I Love You, Honeybear, is poised to be my favorite record of 2015. I know it’s early, but goddamn, Misty gone an done it again!

I Love You, Honeybear is a disarmingly romantic record. Compared to the wall-to-wall weirdness and self-indulgence of Fear Fun, it’s a joy hearing a record of songs about how much Tillman loves his wife. There’s no simpering sentiments or any of that mushy stuff, but there are plenty of moments that hit you right in the heart. Right down to the guts. It’s a record about not just finding someone to watch the world burn with, but also finding someone who makes you understand that love is a transformative process two people undergo, and openly willing to make that transformation.

It’s a photorealistic portrait of true love. There are still a lot of drugs and weird sex involved, but this time around, Misty has someone to share in the experience. On “Chateau Lobby (in C for Two Virgins)” Tillman belts out “First time you let me stay the night despite your own rules/ You took off early to go cheat your way through film school/ You left a note in your perfect script/ Stay as long as you want/ And I haven’t left your bed since” before a mariachi band punctuates the sentiment with big, brassy horns.

Sweetness, sexiness, and swagger blur into one big, unnamable emotion just like the album’s two central characters. The emotions are so large and earnest, I’ll probably shed an actual tear of Josh and Emma Tillman ever divorce. Honestly, all I want from music is honesty and when honesty is spilled out so openly as it is on Honeybear, I tend to obsess. Or maybe I’m just happy that someone finally made a record for my sect: Married Dudes Who Deeply Love Their Wives. I’ve always been an enormous fan of break up albums, but goddamn is it refreshing to hear such an artful examination of getting together and staying that way. 

"Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)" - Wait for that punctuating mariachi solo and tell me you're not sold!

So Last Monday I Was Diagnosed With Thyroid Cancer

So last Monday I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Jenny says my face turned white as a sheet when my Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor broke the news, but I don't know how she saw anything because she was in tears. Rosie was there, too, oblivious to the gravity of it all. It was a surreal fifteen minutes. Deep down, as the doctor explained that fortunately, thyroid cancer is very treatable, I couldn't help but mentally pat myself on the back because I fucking called this shit.

In early November I started worrying about a lump on my neck. Not huge, just a weird, hard little lump an inch away from my Adam's Apple that moved when I swallowed. I thought it had been there for a year, maybe more, but now I don't even know. The entire history of the lump is lost to the world. But for some reason or another, I started panicking and googling "Neck Lump" on a regular basis. One night I felt my blood run cold after using the internet to diagnose the lump as an enlarged thyroid nodule (because no one has ever been wrong about their own internet diagnosis). I got into bed that night and whispered to Jenny, "I think I have thyroid cancer." She said, in so many words, shut up, you don't have cancer, go to sleep.

That's the appropriate response. I'm a massive hypochondriac and chronic worrier. In my early 20s I effectively willed my right testicle to have an inflammation called epididymitis and spent months thinking I had AIDS, testicular cancer, or some other horrific STD. As soon as the blood tests came back clean, the pain went away and everything went back to normal. Bullet dodged.

Not so much this time around. The day after coming up with this shocking internet diagnosis, I went to the doctor. "Your thyroid is down here," she said, indicating that no, it wasn't an enlarged thyroid nodule. It was definitely weird, but probably nothing to worry about. I went in for an ultrasound two days before Thanksgiving and, while they did notice a couple of small nodules on my thyroid, they weren't large enough to cause concern. They deduced that the lump was a lymph node within normal parameters and probably nothing to worry about.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief! And yet, the following Monday I got a call from the doctor saying the lump warranted further evaluation and I was being referred to an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist. A couple weeks later I was sitting down across from a very chill and capable doctor who reassured me that it was probably nothing, although the fact that it moved meant it probably wasn't a lymph node since lymph nodes don't move. He ordered a CT scan. With the exception of the lump, the CT scan came back normal. "You're the interesting patient," he said. "You're a mystery." "I don't want to be a mystery," I said. He almost let me walk. To go on with my life, monitor the lump, and see if it got any bigger. He didn't feel right about the lump's mobility, so he ordered a biopsy to see if, once and for all, we could figure out what the fuck this thing was.

The biopsy was one of the worst experiences of my life. It wasn't painful, per se, but definitely worse than the root canal I had a couple years back thanks to the weird pressure of the needle interacting with the lump and the emotional terror of not knowing if I was going to feel a sharp stab of pain in an unanesthesized zone. I soldiered through it and a shut my mind off for Christmas. After the holiday, I went back in to the ENT who, once again, couldn't figure out what the hell it was. He said the pathology report didn't show any indication of the lump being malignant, but wanted to take the lump out in the name of thoroughness.

A week later I was at the ambulatory surgery center at Olathe Medical Center chewing my nails in the waiting room. I should note that, since these procedures spanned two years, I was guaranteed to be on the hook for $6,000 in medical bills because the American Healthcare System gotta get paid. The surgery was a rousing success. They were able to remove the lump no problem and I go to go home, take painkillers, and watch movies for the next couple of days before going back to work. Everything was healing up nicely and I felt like I'd had some black, toxic weight lifted. The lump that had caused me so much stress over the last few months was gone, and after the post-op followup where he would tell me it was a benign lump as expected, I would get on with my life.

But he told me it was thyroid cancer. My brain frosted over as he explained everything. The lump had a malignancy stemming from those little thyroid nodules from the ultrasound. "They're so small, I wouldn't have even biopsied them," he said. He then went on to detail the treatment, which Jenny had him write down because jesus christ, when someone tells you you have cancer you're going to be useless for a little while. He assured me that they had a very successful treatment plan in place for thyroid cancer. They would schedule me for surgery the following week to remove the offending gland. A few months after that, I would take a pill of radioactive iodine and hole up in isolation at the hospital for a few days because my body would literally be emitting radiation. The radioiodine targets any thyroid cells left in my body (he referred to it as a "broad leaf killer") without damaging anything else and, assuming they get it all, that's that. After that I follow up every few months until I get sick of coming in to have them tell me everything's fine.

Currently, everything is not fine. The last week has been spent both not trying to think about it and go about my life business as usual, the other half has been trying to cope with the idea of not seeing my daughter grow up. That's all I care about. They say children make you cope with your own mortality, and that's true. When Rosie was born Jenny and I became her secret service. Any parent who wouldn't take a bullet for their kid should probably have their kids taken away. That's just what you do. Your life exists as a supporting role to the child. The only reason I give a shit about my own life anymore is because I know I need to be there for Rosie, and the thought of not being there for her, of seeing her grow, of watching her make breakthroughs and mistakes is the realest horror I've ever known.

Surgery is tomorrow at 8:30 AM and while I'm not so scared of the surgery, I'm scared of what they'll find. The trend of going to the doctor a dozen times and getting inconclusive and ultimately, bad news has my dread sensors tingling. A week after the surgery I'll go in for a post op and get the pathology reports from my dear, departed thyroid and I'm bracing for the worst because that is my natural way of thinking. The biggest thing I've learned from this experience is that the universe in no way gives a single shit about any of us. It is cruel and it is chaos, and there is something beautiful about that. That's the only way I was able to get to acceptance.

Acceptance came quickly. It was an unseasonably warm day and we took Rosie for a stroll on the Indian Creek Trail after the appointment where Jenny and I tried to make sense of this. Was it all the dental X-Rays I've had over the years or just shit luck? Bad genes? It didn't matter, because it was happening and the only thing to be done was whatever the doctor ordered (both Jenny and I scoffed loudly when he said, while he didn't approve, if we wanted to try a homeopathic approach that was our choice).

There's that thing they say about how atheists will change their tune when they're staring down the reaper, but if anything my tune has even more clearly tuned in on the idea that there is no God. I've become more spiritual over the years and wouldn't technically classify myself as an atheist because I'm open to there being something transcendental and completely incomprehensible waiting for us after we die, but all Gods seem preposterous now more than ever. Though I ironically adopt a fatalistic worldview with a karma-based moral code, I understand that shit is just totally fucking random. Any meaning in life is the meaning we create. It's in the relationships we forge in defiance of nature's will. The fact that I can even write this blog post is a natural miracle.

Humans evolved, and evolved imperfectly in a way that one's organs and glands can turn into ticking time bombs at a moment's notice. I look at pictures of myself from the last few years and wonder when the cancer was present, or if it had always been there. Something uncontrollable and eventual that was to be met with anger, confusion, and despair but ultimately, something that could only be accepted. And that's where I've been this past week, but I'm still scared as shit because this shit is scary. Still, to paraphrase one of America's greatest poets, the waiting is the hardest part. That's where the despair breeds. In the Schrodinger's Cancer that is either an easy enough fix or something much worse.

It helps that I have an adorable, perfect daughter to keep me positive. I have to be positive for her, and watching her learn how to drink water on her own and learn how to stand on her own have been little reminders of why I fight. I don't know how you fight cancer, that's something they like to show you in movies but it seems preposterous that one person could be more of a fighter than the next. Regardless, I feel like a fucking gladiator or some shit, ready to deal with whatever poking, prodding, scanning, and radioactivity they can throw at me. Because I have to. Because Rosie needs a dad and Jenny needs a husband and besides, we haven't even finished having all of our kids. It's just amazing how much the stupid bullshit you're used to stressing out about fucks right off when you find out that your body is actively trying to kill you like a self-contained kamikaze pilot.

Jenny is making me healthful juices and we're going whole ham on organic foods and I'm getting rid of all the plastics, and I feel like a more positive person. More grateful to be alive. More grateful for Rosie's little toothy smiles and screeches. More at peace with my infinitesimally small place in the universe with the knowledge that terrible shit happens, but also that, to quote MPLS rapper POS, "worse things have happened to better people."I stop feeling sorry for myself when I see those bald six-year-olds on the commercials for children's hospitals and pediatric cancer research. At the present, I've had 29 years to be a fuck up, to fall in love, to sire an heir, and to devote way to many hours of my life to video games and way, way, way too many hours of my life to music. Over the next few months I plan on turning this tale into a graphic novel as a coping mechanism, and I can't wait to chronicle the radioactive iodine therapy because as far as I know, no one has ever written about that in a literary fashion and a title like "Radioactive Dad" is too good not to use. It's been embarassing to tell people about this, I don't know why. Calling my mom to tell her was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It's so much easier to dump it here in a blog post. The whole, sordid tale of how sometimes, even though they say you should never, ever diagnose yourself via the interent, you can scare yourself enough to take action and get weird shit checked out. Check your lumps, people. It's worth a $30 copay to find out whether or not your body is plotting against you.

Naturally, I wouldn't be a proper music junkie if I hadn't already started cobbling together a mix for this terrible journey. But I've got one I've been playing on repeat like a call to arms: