What’s Up

Hi, everyone. As I'm sure yours are, my heart -- feeble and sclerotic though it may be -- is with the people of Ukraine, who are bearing the brunt of a humanitarian assault by a megalomaniacal lunatic. My sympathies are also with the Russian people, coming from personal experience living briefly under the regime of our own megalomaniacal lunatic. The fact that megalomaniacal lunatics keep ending up with access to nuclear missile codes seems to indicate a flaw in the human condition -- perhaps the flaw in the human condition, as distilled by Kurt Vonnegut: "everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

Speculating on the motivation of autocrats, my smart friend Eric theorized that Vladimir Putin is "ruthless in pursuit of self-enrichment, for which control is necessary." I countered by speculating that what dictators like Putin really want is love and approval (of countrymen, one's parents, chicks, whatever).

What’s Up

It’s not just holiday season, it’s holiday card season. The most conscientious and photogenic among you have done your part to prop up the U.S. Postal Service, sending along your festive greetings – adorned with pictures of yourselves (and your pets) in cozy sweaters or perhaps from your most recent vacation.

Sometimes these cards even include printed newsletter-type updates on each of the family members, outlining the year’s highs and lows and where-are-they-nows. I admire this and wish dearly that our family could do it, too. This is the sort of thing that normally falls under my list of household responsibilities, because I usually have very specific ideas and standards for what kinds of communications go out under the Hammersla name.

What's up.

The summer is over, and I have no problem with that.

Sure, summer was great back in the day when it meant no homework, no early mornings, movie matinees and daytime baseball. But all that pretty much evaporated once I graduated from college and July 14 was pretty much the same as October 26 or Feburary 7, except more humid.

What’s up.

What’s up.

Whoops.

Sorry to send this again, but I was informed that I forgot the all-important link in "This Week's List" below. That has been remedied. Sorry.

Hello, again.

Hello, again.

So, it's been a minute. The last time I dropped a message in a bottle was Christmas Eve, 2020, which makes this the first missive of 2021. Happy new year! It feels like we've come a long way in the last three months -- which really feels more like seven months, two weeks and four days.^

^That bit reminds me of this classic scene from The Jerk, which I love so much I insisted on using it as a reading at my wedding, which then was at least partially responsible for causing some of my more conservative in-laws to walk out of the ceremony. I once met Steve Martin (thanks, Jeremy!) and I probably should have seized that opportunity to tell him that story, but instead I just awkwardly shook his hand and stood there silently like a schmuck.

Hello

The Big Idea

Dear Friends,

My home state of Virginia is hosting one of the 15 nominated contests on Super Tuesday this year. As I write this, I am in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on business travel and on primary day I will be in transit during voting hours. So I filled out my absentee ballot last week, before a few high-profile dropouts shook up the Democratic race.

Dear Friends,

Music seems to be the theme of the week, this week.

Music has played an outsized role in my life, despite the fact that I am not a very good musician. Even in my halcyon choir days, I was barely able to read music with the competence of a dog reading Chaucer. My attempts to learn even the most rudimentary of instruments -- ukulele, harmonica, kazoo -- have all been met with demoralized despair.

Dear Friends,

still holds the record as the movie that I saw the most times in the theater (5). Given the cost of movie tickets and the availability of Netflix, it is hard to imagine that record ever being beaten, unless my daughter insists on seeing over and over and over.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I have taken the liberty of switching my newsletter service – and your subscriptions – to Buttondown, which has a more advanced feature set than TinyLetter. Sorry for the extra hassle, or if this goes into your SPAM filter.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. I will try to make it worth your while. It is already worth my while to avoid logging in to Facebook, which I consider a festering boil on the face of the internet, which itself is kind of an inflamed rash on the face of the planet, which is to say that the Earth really ought to see a doctor.

I realize this change in my promotional/distribution strategy reduces my audience to a mere fraction of what it was on that website, but at least I can be sure that the people on this mailing list are actually interested in what I'm typing.

And if this becomes insufferable, you have options: you can delete or unsubscribe. Don't sprain your fingers hitting that button too hard.