2023 is over
Good riddance, like I say every year
We did it. We made it to the end of the year.
I haven’t had an opportunity to really reflect on this year much. The whole thing was a bit of a blur for me. Focusing on media consumption and production specifically, since that’s the focus of this newsletter, I watched 405 movies (I’ll probably sneak a few in for the last few days of the year). I tried to get “back into” music. I was producing Mammonburg for the first half of the year, some of my favorite episodes of that show before we went on a hiatus at the beginning of the summer. I restarted Fruitless in August, and I started writing this Substack again. I produced my first video essay, and have learned a bunch of lessons from that process that I plan to apply to future videos. I didn’t read much this year, but I also tried to fix that by launching the Fruitless Bookclub with Chris Barker and then, later, Jake the Lawyer.
In politics, the two main things this year, for me anyway, are Donald Trump’s indictments and the war/genocide in Gaza. Both of which contribute to my sense that I have no idea what the future holds. I’ve felt that way since 2020. Well, since 2016 actually. Things feel doomed right now, but the future hasn’t happened yet, and I have no idea what it’ll bring. It could be good. Maybe the genocide in Gaza will stop. Maybe fascism in America will abruptly halt. I don’t write this to indulge in fantasies, but to say that the blank slate of the future means that better things are possible. Right now, I don’t see how it could happen. But I do have to believe it can.
At the end of seemingly every year, I have an attitude of “good riddance.” Fuck this year; the next one will be better. It’s usually never the case that the next year is better. But I think there’s a catharsis to perceiving the abitrary transition of the numeric year as a clean slate. Goodbye to the year, let’s try again. So in the spirit of saying goodbye to 2023, let’s review this year in media (for me).
From me
Let’s start with some new podcasts from me. I released an episode of The Good Apples on Tuesday. It was originally supposed to be released Monday, but Monday was Christmas and I forgot to edit it beforehand. Sorry about that. You can listen to the episode here.
The Fruitless Christmas/New Year’s special should be out in the next few days, so subscribe to Fruitless if you haven’t already. It’s a discussion about Children of Men with Chris Barker and Alien (who gets annoyed by me always adding “Aka Stewie Griffin DJ”). It was a blast. Two of my favorite people to talk to about politics, history, and philosophy joining me to talk about one of my favorite movies about politics, history, and philosophy.
Now that we covered the new, let’s look back at the year.
Mammonburg officially went on hiatus in July, although we stopped releasing regularly in June. Before the hiatus, however, we released a few of my favorite episodes.
In February, we released an episode discussing a huge exposé released by Machaira Action about Corey Mahler, a Lutheran Nazi who had grown infamous on Twitter, and had been slowly building power in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The denomination was forced to, in response to the exposé, denounce racism and Nazism in their church and Corey Mahler was kicked out of his church. We went through the entire saga, and, again, it’s one of my favorite episodes of the show we did. If you want to go back and listen to it, it’s here.
In March, Josh Boerman of The Worst of All Possible Worlds came on Mammonburg to talk about the history of Focus on the Family. This was another favorite episode of Mammonburg for me, and it also marked the beginning of some collaboration between TWOAPW and me. In April, I got to go on their show, and then in the second half of the year, I had Josh and Brian on different episodes of Fruitless. A.J. is coming next year. They were one of my favorite podcasts before I reached out to them, and it’s been really cool getting to work with them a handful of times this year.
Other episodes of note from Mammonburg, were some of my favorite news episodes: one reading a baffling article about sex from The Gospel Coalition, one about Trump’s indictment, and one where we walked through the Republican candidates for the coming election.
After Mammonburg went on hiatus, Chris Barker and I launched the Fruitless bookclub at the end of August. This was also the return of Fruitless overall, with two big episodes in September: one with Josh Boerman I mentioned above, and another with Tad Delay, a philosopher and author I highly respect, discussing evangelicalism and climate change. You can find that here.
That same month, Josh Christianson, Jackal, Kelli, and I also launched The Good Apples, a podcast about Law & Order: SVU. This has also been a fun project. If you haven’t checked out that show yet, you can find it here.
And, of course, I released my first video essay: a history of zombie films and the political contexts surrounding them that you can find here. It’s one of the projects I’m most proud of from this year.
Lastly, I started writing this Substack again. And even if the quality has certainly been hit or miss, I’m proud of myself for keeping up the habit of writing every Friday. Hopefully this will help me long term and the quality of my writing will improve with time.
Film
I think it would be needlessly exhausting to try to walk through all the films I watched this year, so what I’m going to do is filter the year on Letterboxd for everything I watched this year that I gave 5 stars. Some of these are rewatches. Let’s see what kind of image this paints:
January 12: The Stuff (1985)
February 7: Opera (1987)
February 23: They Live (1988)
February 25: Suspiria (1977)
March 1: The Beyond (1981)
March 10: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
March 11: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
March 12: Dawn of the Dead (1978)
March 12: Savageland (2015)
March 13: TÁR (2022)
March 16: Talk Radio (1988)
March 31: Stalker (1979)
April 2: Man Bites Dog (1992) - this was the second viewing this year, when I watched it in January, I didn’t give it a rating.
April 27: Dogville (2003)
May 7: The Evil Dead (1981)
May 16: Taxi Driver (1976)
June 1: The Dirties (2013)
June 3: Magic Spot (2022)
June 4: Rome, Open City (1945)
June 10: The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
June 11: Pickpocket (1959)
June 25: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
July 2: L’Argent (1983)
July 5: The Wise Kids (2011)
July 5: Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015)
July 6: Germany Year Zero (1948)
July 23: Pulse (2001)
July 27: Cure (1997)
July 29: Train to Busan (2016)
August 5: Athena (2022)
August 13: Evil Dead II (1987)
August 19: Antichrist (2009)
September 12: Day of the Dead (1985)
September 16: Videodrome (1983)
September 19: Cememtary Man (1994)
September 23: Heard She Got Married (2021)
October 29: The Exorcist (1973)
November 15: Psycho (1960)
December 3: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
December 8: Le Bonheur (1965)
December 10: Force Majeure (2014)
December 21: Children of Men (2006)
Music
For the last few years, probably since 2021 or so, I’ve been listening to less and less music. In part because I was no longer playing in bands or writing any music. It was strange, though, because music used to be my main, obsessive artform. My obsession has, in the last few years, mostly become film. Around the end of 2022, I started panicking, thinking that I was losing an aspect of myself by not listening to much music anymore, and I made a conscious effort this year to listen to more. If you read my Spotify wrapped newsletter a few weeks back, you’ll know that this mostly resulted in me listening to a lot of Los Campesinos!
Over the last month or so, I’ve been slowly getting back into hardcore and more aggressive music. Knocked Loose, Drug Church, Turnstile, and End It are the big ones for me right now, especially. It feels good to be regularly watching videos of live music again and getting music stuck in my head. I think I’m mostly back to being engaged with music again.
This last year, I also really fell back in love with Talking Heads and David Byrne. He has been, for a long time, one of my favorite musicians, and it feels good to return to his music.
I also want to mention Home is Where, the emo band that has kept my love for DIY emo alive. The Whaler is a fantastic record, and their song everyday feels like 9/11 has become a reoccurring reference for me when discussing world events in recent months.
Overall, this has been a pretty shitty year personally and politically, but it was a good year for my creativity. I’m proud of the podcasts I’ve produced and the video I produced. I’ve watched films and listened to songs that have helped me reflect on things in my life and in the world right now, giving words and images to emotions and thoughts I’ve struggled to articulate.
What does 2024 hold? I have no idea. But I can least anticipate discovering new and old art which will challenge me and encourage me. I hope you’ve gotten something out of this newsletter if you’re one of the few people who reads it, and I look forward to writing more next year.