From sea lions to FDR, here are some really dumb best-of-2021 awards
All the stuff that was stuff this year
UPDATE 12/30/21: I’ve decided to make both my books (Ophelia, Alive and Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem) permanently available for free to everyone who signs up for my Substack. Click the link below to start reading both immediately:
It’s the end of the year. That time when we step back, take stock of our lives, and (for some reason) put together lists of whatever we thought were the best movies, or albums, or whatever. (Was Licorice Pizza better or worse than The Green Knight? You may not care, but you can bet the A.V. Club is going to tell you.) I’m guessing you don’t particularly care what the best movies I watched this year were, so here are ten dumb awards for everything else that happened to me this year.
Book that was apparently the most worth grinding my life to a halt over
Here’s the thing about books: a lot of them suck. (Some Instagram book lover is clutching her pearls right now.) Don’t get me wrong, reading is good and everyone should do it (especially the books I wrote), but that doesn’t mean every book is worth your time. And even the best books aren’t for everyone.
Anyway, because all that is true, but I also think reading is valuable, I’ve got a complicated list of rules I follow for reading books (I’m not the only one, right?). I’m guessing you don’t want to hear all of them, but one of them is I’ll only give a book twelve weeks of my time. If it hasn’t grabbed me by then, I assume it won’t grab me ever.
Sometimes, though, I get to the eleven-week mark and a book finally grabs me — and then I have to make the choice to (1) rush through it, (2) give up on it, or (3) break the rules and tear a hole in the fabric of reality.
The extreme case of this turned out to be H.W. Brands’s Pullitzer-nominated 2000 biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Traitor to His Class. The book is fascinating — once it finally gets to FDR’s political career. Before that, it’s kind of a drag. One way or another, though, I realized in early February that I had to read 700 pages in a single week if I wanted to finish the thing, and I was like, “Whatever, I don’t have much else going on” — so I did nothing but eat, sleep, and read for a solid week. Was it worth it? I dunno, prolly.
Best band name I discovered
Listening to Spotify in February, I stumbled across the existence of an emo band called “Michael Cera Palin.” Tell me that name isn’t a masterpiece of a mashup of regrettable 2000s-era nonsense. Just let the misplaced nostalgia wash over you.
Is their music great? Meh, it’s fine. Their best cut is probably a cover of Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy.”
Most outrageous, egregious injustice
Some of you probably didn’t even notice this, but the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. happened this past March. Nintendo released quite a few things to celebrate, but the best of them was a battle royale game they put out for free called Super Mario Bros. 35. Similar to Tetris 99, SMB35 pit 35 players against each other in a playthrough of the original platformer where the enemies they defeated popped up on opponents’ screens and coins could be traded for random powerups. This game might have been the most frantic, addictive fun I’ve had in years.
Then, as soon as March was over, they just killed it. Just shut the whole thing down. SMB35 is gone-gone; you can’t even play its offline modes anymore.
I’m sure they’ll re-release it in ten years and charge everyone sixty bucks for it, because they’re Nintendo. And, also because they’re Nintendo, we’ll pay it.
Best meme I personally made
I dunno, probably this one:
I feel pretty good about that one.
Best ear of corn I stole
K, this one’s a bit of a cheat, because I only stole one ear of corn, but was it a good ear of corn? You bet it was.
Back in August, when I landed an offer from a literary agent (wrote about that a bit here, if you want to read it), I was in full-on freakout mode for several days. It was just … a lot of feelings, all at once. I didn’t sleep for several days.
The night before I had to interview her (or was she interviewing me?), my original plan was to take a bunch of ZzzQuil and sleep as late as I could, but I was up at three in the morning regardless. I figured I should get some exercise while I was up, so I went for a run in the dark woods next-door to my house. When I was done with that, I went for a walk around the neighborhood, watched the sun rise, sang a bunch of obnoxious showtunes, and eventually found my way to a cornfield. I was (obviously) in do-something-crazy mode, so I stole an ear and ate it raw, like the bad-boy Midwesterner I am. (Ladies, please form an orderly queue.)
Largest sturgeon I personally saw
My wife is not a vacation person at all, and neither am I, really, but her employer likes to force its employees to take vacations, and after being trapped in COVID quarantine for a-year-and-change, we figured we could use one. So, in October, we took the kids to beautiful Cascade Locks, Oregon, where we witnessed majestic whales and breathtaking waterfalls, but let’s talk about an ugly fish instead.
Cascade Locks is home to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery, a surprisingly pleasant place filled with winding paths, Bigfoot statues, and octogenarian fish. The star player — the Shamu of Bonneville, if you will — is Herman the Sturgeon, who weighs in at 500 pounds, 11 feet long, and 83 years old. He doesn’t do tricks, but he’s probably at least 200 pounds heavier than you’ll ever be, so show some respect.
Charismatic megafauna I was most surprised to learn is just sort of everywhere
While in Oregon, we visited the coast, which it turns out is absolutely lousy with California sea lions.
Usually, when I think of large animals children would be excited to see, I imagine them as rare and shy — when my daughter and I go walking in the woods, for example, we’re always thrilled to catch even a glimpse of a deer butt. It turns out that is not the case with sea lions. They just sort of dogpile on the docks and bork at tourists all day, sunning themselves and slowly destroying expensive infrastructure.
Most dock workers regard them as pests. They’re like giant, aquatic rats with megaphones.
Most unexpected compliment I received from an old lady while shopping for a secondhand hoodie
What the heck is a “Goodwill Boutique?” I assume it means “We charge a lot of money for clothing that will make you look homeless,” so it makes sense that there’s at least one of them in Oregon. In any case, I eventually found myself there because I was about to go to sea and had forgotten my jacket in my hotel room three hours away. While I was browsing, one of the attendants told me she was “super jealous” of my hair. Is it a compliment when an older woman says that to a younger man? I dunno, but I’ll take it.
Oh, and that hoodie I found (a black Nike lacrosse number)? Totally wearing it right now. So, thanks, Goodwill.
Award I won that I am least certain is an actual award
I don’t know if this is a terrible secret or a “no duh” sort of thing, but the whole awards industry is a bit of a sham. If you, as an author, think people aren’t paying enough attention to your work, you pay some money to enter your book for an award, so you can call it an “award-winning book” instead of just a “book.” There’s not necessarily anything nefarious about that, but the problem is that when there’s a demand, the market rises to fill it — and, with millions of wannabe authors out there, there’s a huge demand for book awards. (And, since awards are just pretend, there’s nothing to constrain the supply.)
I’m sure most of these awards groups only use the entry fees to cover their expenses and only grant awards to books they genuinely think have merit, but a lot of them are like the Grammys: there are so many dozens of categories that you almost have to try not to win. One of those is the American Book Fest “Best Book” Awards, whose name sounds suspiciously similar to the much-more-prestigious American Book Awards, and who, from what I can tell, is not associated with any actual “fest” (although maybe that’s a COVID thing?). Still, I sent them my book and paid my entry fee, and they named it a “finalist” in two categories: “Religion: General” and “Humor/Comedy/Satire.” So, one way or another, they clearly have great taste.
Anyway, many unironic thanks to the American Book Fest. The rest of you should buy my multi-award-winning books!
Dumbest Daylight Saving Time–related incident I was involved in
Whenever the Daylight Saving time change rolls around in March and/or November, they trot out the usual op-eds about how it’s bad, actually — it doesn’t save energy, but it does increase traffic accidents by messing with people’s sleep schedules and frying everyone’s brains. And while I wouldn’t shed a tear if they ended the twice-annual time changes, I’ve always been like, “iT dOeSn’T bOtHeR mE!!!” Well, no more. Three days after the time change, I managed to crash my own car while attempting to drive my daughters to school.
We had just gotten in the car and I was ready to go, but my youngest was screaming that her seatbelt wasn’t working, so I got out of the car to help, forgetting that I had already put it in reverse. The car slid backwards down the driveway, and I was dragged along by the open driver’s door, which clipped into the garage door track, wrecking both doors in the process. No one was hurt, but we were all pretty shaken.
I have no idea how much of that was the fault of DST, but DST makes a great scapegoat, so I’m going with that explanation. Also, my chihuahua mix (who was in the vehicle at the time) hasn’t stopped shaking since. Not that he would have otherwise, but still.
Stuff I’ve been enjoying lately
A couple months ago, I recommended Martine Leavitt’s YA novel Calvin; I enjoyed that one enough that I decided to read more from Leavitt’s oeuvre.
Tom Finder hasn’t really grabbed me as much as Calvin did, but it’s appealing in a lot of the same ways: it tells the story of a desperate, lonely kid on the edge of death in a way that’s surprisingly sweet. The main character (who is a finder named Tom, not a finder of Toms) is a teen boy who wakes up with total amnesia and has to make his way on the streets of Calgary while looking (so far in vain) for his parents.
I had to push myself through the first half of this one, but as I’ve gotten to know the characters, I’ve grown a lot warmer to it. I’m looking forward to finishing it over the holidays.
Buy my books
My “free books” promotion is over, but you can still find both my books on Amazon. Here’s the one about the Bible and the one about mass murder.