The Waiting - 2022 Wrap-up

Looking back over this past year, things seem a little unreal, like they happened to someone else. My wife and I both turned 40: my near-vision started to blur a little, I cut a lot of my hair off and found it was, as I suspected, thinning. I continue to forget things people say to me seconds after they say them. Nothing seems real. I'm not interested. I've been waiting for something, but I don't know what it is. Maybe for things to go back to the way they were in 2019. Maybe something else entirely. I've spent a lot of days in the forest searching for something. Jokes about death seem somehow less funny, but at the same time less serious. Even writing this, I wonder how deeply I feel any of the preceding. Everything sort of scratches the surface. I yell at strangers in traffic, but I'm not really mad. I yell at my kids for doing dumb things, but I guess I sort of get it. I curse all the time. But casually. I say all of this, not as a way of complaining, but maybe as a way of accepting my gradual slide into decrepitude. Speaking of which, here's some famous people that died this year: 

Sidney Poitier

Bob Saget

Meatloaf

Louie Anderson

Mark Lanagan

William Hurt

Taylor Hawkins

Gilbert Gottfried

Naomi Judd

Ray Liotta

James CaanOrrin Hatch

Madeleine Albright

C W McCall

Vangelis

Sonny Barger

Trevor Strnad

Shinzo Abe

Ivana Trump

Olivia Newton-John

Anne Heche

Mikhail Gorbachev

Barbara Ehrenreich

Queen Elizabeth II

Kenneth Starr

Jean-Luc Goddard

Coolio

Loretta Lynn

Angela Lansbury

Julie Cruise

Robbie Coltrane

Jerry Lee Lewis

Aaron Carter

Kevin Conroy

Gallagher

Christine McVie

Kirstie Alley

Angelo Badalamenti

Pelé

Barbara Walters

Pope Benedict XVI

Jeremiah Green

Twenty years ago, a ton of cool albums came out, and I bought many of these fresh off the presses. This is pretty unusual for me now, as I'm still seeking out and discovering music that is simultaneously new to me, and also decades old. Here are a few albums that I listened to a lot from 2002:

The Notwist - Neon Golden

Bolt Thrower - Honour, Valour, Pride

Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

Damien Rice - O

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Clinic - Walking with Thee

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Source Tags & Codes

The Streets - Original Pirate Material

Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends

Paul Westerberg - Stereo

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Doves - The Last Broadcast

Tom Waits - Alice

Tom Waits - Blood Money

The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts

Jerry Cantrell - Degradation Trip

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Bright Eyes - Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights

Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head

Breaking Benjamin - Saturate

Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf

Beck - Sea Change

Lacuna Coil - Comalies

Jets to Brazil - Perfecting Loneliness

Opeth - Deliverance

The smallest sublist on this list includes albums I acquired in the last year:

Wipers - Is This Real?
Wipers - Youth of America

Wipers - Over the Edge

Catherine Wheel - Ferment

The Verve - A Storm in Heaven

Silversun Pickups - Swoon

The books I read this past year are as follows:

Orhan Pamuk - Snow
Laura Ingalls Wilder - Little Town on the Prarie
Vincent Bugliosi - Helter Skelter
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
William T Vollman - Europe Central
Will Eisner - A Contract with God
Will Eisner - A Life Force
Will Eisner - Dropsie Avenue
Lev Grossman - The Magicians
Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers
Lev Grossman - The Magician King
Stephan Dubner & Steven Levitt - Freakonomics
Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential
Stan Sakai - Usagi Yojimbo 1: The Ronin
Joe Abercrombie - Red Country
Tevis Miller - Gun-play in Killer Canyon
Craig Thompson - Goodbye, Chunky Rice
Lev Grossman - The Magician's Land
Pete Beatty - Cuyahoga

Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book Pt 1 illus. P Craig Russell
Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book Pt 2 illus. P Craig Russell
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Michael & Debi Pearl - To Train Up a Child
Neil Gaiman - Fortunately, the Milk
trans Simon Armitage - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Michael Morpurgo - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Mary Roach - Gulp
Italo Calvino - Italian Folk Tales
Patrick Rothfuss - The Slow Regard of Silent Things
Isaac Asimov - Foundation
Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States
Isaac Azimov - I, Robot
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
Cory Doctorow - Radicalized
JRR Tolkien - The Fellowship of the Ring

Roald Dahl - James and the Giant Peach

Saul Bellow - Herzog

Richard and Wendy Pini - The Complete Elfquest Vol 1

Garth Ennis - The Boys Omnibus Vol 1

Garth Ennis - The Boys Omnibus Vol 2

Frank Herbert - Dune

I worked toward a new goal with my board game collection this year: play every game I own a minimum of ten times, or list it for sale or trade. It not only cut back on the size of the collection, but also on games I was willing to buy. If I wasn't curious enough to commit to the ten plays, I probably took it off the list of games I wanted. Here's the ones that made the cut (though a few of the following have already been sold): 

Chicago Express

Jambo

Coloretto

Dixit

Puns of Anarchy

Kingsburg

Flick 'Em Up

Pit

Anomia

Jungle Speed

Cosmic Frog

Brew Crafters

Sheriff of Nottingham