brendan halpin

Here’s how I’m voting on the five ballot questions and why. I hope you’ll find it useful!

I have some national policy priorities that are pretty far outside the mainstream:

I love a mystery show, and I especially love a mystery show about rich people being terrible. And it seems like American producers are finally learning from British mystery shows and casting good actors in every role. And yet, ultimately, I didn’t love it.

I’ve now had my ebike for a few months, during which time I’ve been using it for my daily commute, errands, and occasional longer trips. (you can still get the same model for 800 bucks with a 400 dollar crazy bucks coupon if you live within driving range of an Ocean State Job Lots location!) (I have no financial connection here—just trying to alert folks to a bargain) Some thoughts:

Not too many famous people come from Cincinnati.

Sarah Jessica Parker, Oscar Robertson, Bootsy Collins, Jerry Springer… and Pete Rose.

When I was a kid in Cincinnati in the 70’s, Sarah Jessica Parker was also a kid, Oscar Robertson had recently retired, Bootsy was funky but not really someone that was on a kid’s radar, Jerry Springer was a city councilor, and Pete Rose was (white) Cincinnati’s favorite son.

Content warning: fanboy gushing

I saw X at the late, unlamented Landsowne Street Club Axis on the Hey Zeus! tour in 1993. This was the era when Billy Zoom wasn’t with the band, and it was extremely mid, as the kids say. I was like, well, I guess I can check the box that I got to see X. Too bad I never saw them at their best.

Well, last night, thirty years later, I did get to see them at their best.

Sent this out to my mailing list a few years ago. I’m going to see X on their farewell tour tonight, so I thought it was appropriate to re-post:

Got vaxxed for the ol’ vid the other day, which meant a couple of days of watching horror movies in bed. I made a kind of thematic double feature sort of unintentionally and of course have some thoughts!

As you may or may not know, the City of Boston is entering into a partnership with a bunch of very wealthy people to renovate and expand White Stadium in Franklin Park in order to bring an NWSL team here.

There are many reasons to oppose this move. I’m always suspicious of “public-private partnerships,” because these are usually just a way for the people on the private end of the equation to direct taxpayer money into their pockets. And sports stadiums are a notoriously terrible deal for municipalities. Also—there’s no parking, so the team proposes to run shuttle buses, and basically my neighborhood will be inaccessible by car for probably four hours every time there’s a home game. Oh yeah, and they’ll be taking some parkland for, like, a beer garden or something.

Despite all these valid reasons to oppose the project, I actually support it. In order to explain, I’m going to have to tell you about a paving project.

I’ve written before about how I love noir and horror for the same reason: they both tell uncomfortable truths about the world. For horror, it’s that awful things can happen inexplicably and out of nowhere (See the original Halloween. No, I mean, really—see it if you haven’t already! I could go on, and I will in a future post.) And the truth of noir is that most institutions are corrupt and that an utterly venal lust for money, power and sex underlies just about everything. Also that everyone has secrets.

So I’ve recently watched 2 noir series and read 2 noir books and here come my reviews!