Jivin'

Because I have two children and my wife is a teacher, the summer months have always disrupted my usual routine to a certain extent — and because I am nothing if not an extreme creature of habit, I'm often at least a little discombobulated between late June and late August. Turns out this discombobulation is even more pronounced when I'm not working full-time!

This has not been a bad summer by any stretch. In fact, unemployment has been a bit of a blessing, at least in terms of being able to spend time and do stuff with my kids; I typically have to miss out when my wife takes them to the beach or whatever, but my suddenly wide open schedule has freed me up to take part in the family list of bucket list activities. I am, however, way out of my established routine, and as a result, I've been having a hard time maintaining a consistent level of daily productivity in all corners of my creativity bingo card.

This is probably more information than you need — the comment section around here has been pretty empty lately, so I assume a lot of you are out of your routines as well — but I'm putting it here for posterity anyway. Work continues on the three book projects; I'm lining up interviews for the two non-fiction ones, and I'm about 10,500 words into the new novel. But my listening lately has been extremely unstructured, which makes it hard to figure out what to write about on days that aren't already occupied by regular features.

Well, whatever. As Wise Friend of Jefitoblog George Howard often reminds me, everything is temporary. This current moment will pass, and the next one will bring its own challenges. For now, I will do my best to take deep breaths, relax my shoulders, and keep an eye out for post-worthy topics.

When I have been actively listening lately, I've been spending most of my time exploring South African music. Like many people of my generation, I gained my first exposure to this world of sound courtesy of Paul Simon's Graceland; since memorizing the grooves of that album, I've been periodically drawn back to township jive in cycles, and I'm deep in one of those now. I make no claim to knowing the first fucking thing about this music; I only know that listening to it makes me feel good, and lately I've been trusting the algorithm to cough up stuff that'll keep that high going. Here's a playlist of some recent favorites. It's destined to grow.

Watching: Because I watched and enjoyed the first five seasons of Cobra Kai, I am spiritually obligated to watch Season 6 in spite of two things: One, Netflix is doing that irritating thing they do with their most popular shows, specifically breaking seasons up into multiple parts; two, a lot of what I've watched so far is some of the dumbest shit I've ever seen, and I say this as someone who writes a weekly General Hospital column.

This season of Cobra Kai, which will conclude the series, has been broken up into three five-episode chunks, the second of which is set to premiere in fucking late November. (The third will drop at some point in 2025.) It arrives nearly two years after Season 5, which is a problem in terms of the actors playing the high school students in the cast; they're all in their 20s now, and they definitely look it. The larger issue, at least in my opinion, is that the narrative stakes have been inflated to the point that they're actively at odds with the tongue-in-cheek cheesiness that has always been the show's main asset; as a result, actors like Martin Kove — who is great at what he does, but does not have the most elastic range — are being asked to do things that they should not be asked to do.

I don't want to say anything more because I don't want to spoil the show for anyone who cares about it but hasn't watched this season yet. In its defense, I will admit that I thought Episode 5 was the best of this bunch, despite the fact that the final moments left me hooting and cackling. Anyway, now I'm on to Apple's Time Bandits, which seems aggressively fine after one episode.

Reading: I'm about three quarters of the way through Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season, which is very funny and extremely entertaining overall and makes me want to read a bunch of his other books. They will have to wait, however, because next on my list is Chris Nashawaty's The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982, which has aimed itself, missile-like, at the pleasure center of my brain by promising to delve into the stories behind E.T., Tron, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior. I have not seen all of the movies on that list, but I have seen most of them, and in general, I am all about anything that goes long on any given summer in the 1980s.

Elsewhere: You know what I'm going to say, but I'll say it anyway: My new novel is now available for the Kindle as well as paperback! I'm told that non-Amazon shops will have it soon. If you've read it and (hopefully) enjoyed it, please leave a review!