Grab Bag #1

Today’s newsletter will be a head-spinning zigzag through time. We’ll start by putting one foot in 1979 and the other in 1991. Now you can properly enjoy this incredible mashup.

While you’re at it, go watch the original video for Check the Rhime.

Next, let’s head to 1985 when Spenser: For Hire was just debuting. Before the opening credits of the episode “Choices,” Spenser is in his Mustang chasing a white van which a cop on his radio calls “the kidnappers from Brookline.” The cars race back and forth in front of a stoop that an old woman is sweeping. Leaning in the doorway is this dapper gentleman.

Why? Why, in 1985, is a little newsie child holding up a brick wall in Boston? Anyway, I loved him, I hated him, and I rewatched the scene twice to figure him out. And get this picture. The third time the kidnappers and Spenser pass him, he cheers. End scene. The episode itself was really weird. Patricia Clarkson plays a Christian gun freak who shoots random people for shits and giggles (like Travis Bickle). Angela Bassett plays the daughter of one of her victims.

You are probably wondering why? yourself. Why are you watching Spenser, Andrea? Answer: It was an assignment for a writing class I am taking.

Alright, next up, and I don’t even know what year this would be, but apparently, there’s a marketing demographic that is men who miss a breakfast of coffee and cigarettes but are now into self-care.

Now for some normal recommendations. I just finished reading The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America by Saket Soni, and wow, I cannot recommend this strongly enough. I appreciate that the subtitle is off-putting both in its length and in the suggestion that this book has a depressing topic. Sure, forced labor is not an easy topic to make interesting, but Soni spins a great tale, almost novelistic in quality, about the men who were trafficked from India to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina. We are back in 2005. We meet their families, learn about their dreams for a better life, and follow them on a cross-country MARCH from Louisiana to Washington, DC, where they undertake a hunger strike to bring attention to their plight. It reads like a crime thriller, which, technically, it is. The friend who recommended it to me suggested the audiobook. Either way, it’s totally engrossing.

The other book I just read is The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras, which was originally published in 1943 but only published in English in 2022. I’m still processing this book. A young woman prompts her brother to kill their uncle and observes their household as it changes in the aftermath. Her brother’s friend, who is her lover, sends her to the beach for a vacation, where she unravels in her loneliness and self-reflection. Eventually, she returns home. More stuff happens but I don’t want to give it away, because frankly, not THAT much stuff happens. Mostly, she just ruminates. If that’s your bag, you might like this book.

Next up on the bedside table is Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib, which is very full circle for this post. I love Abdurraqib’s writing and I love A Tribe, so I think I am going to love this book. I’ll let you know.