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Greatest Hits, 2020: My 15 favorite essays from my least favorite year.
Ah, so this is dystopia. As I annually do, I’ve curated a list of my favorite pieces from the year that was, each with a small snippet of director’s commentary.
In last year’s edition, I remember saying: “I initially wanted to cut this list to a Top-10, but, sadly, dystopia has been very good for business and has given me a lot to talk about.” Well, in 2020, we reached a level of hell that depressed me past the point of wanting to say much at all.
I wrote significantly less this year than I did in either 2018 or…
On optimism.
We die. I don’t suppose I need to tell you that. We’re gifted an indefinite amount of time as living, growing, sentient beings. Then, one day … poof. Either gracefully or willingly, unwittingly or unwillingly. Gone. Memories wiped. Legacies to be determined.
In between, we’re expressions of varying degrees of injustice, unfairness and inhumanity. We make choices — some kind, some deft, some incorrigibly stupid. From those choices, results spit out in a random assortment of quality and quantity. Those figures compound over time. Inequities soften, harden or widen. Disaster looms lest we avert it. …
An essay about oysters, mostly.
Last night, I was a guest on a call with a Texas State Representative and her staff to talk about energy, messaging, climate change, and policy. They looked to me to break the ice.
So I asked the team — and they’re all so young and smart and god almighty when I was their age I was blowing lines and getting blackout drunk behind the bar after hours at a Bennigan’s in Buffalo, whew, the youths are so evolved — what meal they’ve missed eating the most during the pandemic. You know … the ones you can’t make at home.
…
The Great Texan Gridpocalypse, as I lived it.
I know for a lot of you, snow’s probably not novel. It’s winter after all. Hell, growing up in Buffalo I saw my own fair share of it.
I saw a lot of single-digit temperatures in my day, too. I remember on a particular day in Utica — where I lived for a spell in high school — we reached negative 27 Fahrenheit. That’s mighty cold. I moved to Texas in part to escape weather like that.
So while I, like you, thought “well, a couple nights of lows in the single digits and some snow … get some groceries…
“10 Questions with Kyle Brandt” is a backward-looking, forward-thinking, deliriously entertaining podcast mashup of game show and in-depth celebrity interview. It’s also a statement of purpose.
“Alex Trebek. Great? … Or G.O.A.T.?” asks Kyle Brandt to Aaron Rodgers live on Good Morning Football, the NFL Network morning show Brandt’s co-hosted since August 2016.
Rodgers, former Celebrity Jeopardy Champion and current Green Bay Packers’ NFL MVP shoots back, seemingly without blinking: “G.O.A.T.”
The pair reunited late in 2020 on the inaugural season of Brandt’s podcast, 10 Questions with Kyle Brandt, where they took an even deeper dive into Rodgers’ Jeopardy fandom and wunderkind 2015 appearance as a contestant. It’s clear both men shared a long-running, deep reverence for the recently departed Canadian-American quiz show host.
It’s hard…
A simple, useful matrix for making better decisions, understanding risk, and spending your life on what really matters.
I have an unfinished essay in my drafts folder called, appropriately: “Quitting is Underrated.” It’s been there since 2017. You can bet your ass I’m never completing it. In fact, hold up just a sec while I delete it … because this is that essay’s ultimate form.
Today, we’re going to talk about giving up. Every day, we’re inundated with tales of people in film or on the news who gave it their all, never gave in, kept showing up and persevered in the face of unimaginable rejection. …
January 2021.
You know me. Always doom-and-gloom. Always Mister “But Wait, It Gets Worse.” Been that way for a decade, and for the balance of my career here in public.
For reference, here’s what I first wrote four years ago today:
The neo-feudalist economy caused by unchecked, unregulated capitalism that turned at best a winking nod to social welfare, more often a blind eye, and at worst a joyous ax, has facilitated a nationalist, authoritarian rise in pitch, and an abrupt shift right in federal ideology. Donald Trump is both the drooping wilted leaf of this societal rot, and the root.
Trump…
Live simply, love deeply.
If you really want to be satisfied with your life, you should really lower your expectations of it. The world’s dark. Dream through the darkness, yet be prepared to wake.
Then, become an expert at going through the motions. At doing what’s needed to keep the lights on. At committing to things and following through on them with vigor. At cultivating a compassionate and chiseled moral compass without compromise.
If you really want to be at ease, you need to take good care of you. …
When it comes to walking the US back from the brink, you cannot punish enough people, severely enough. And that’s only the beginning.
I’ma be honest with you: We’re probably fucked. All of us. I mean, maybe not you and I specifically, but as a society? The bread’s become toast and you know what they say when bread becomes toast. So a lot of what I’m about to say, really, is just a thought exercise that will vanish into the ether.
How much more evidence do you need? An armed coup attempt at the US Capitol, a pandemic leaving 360,000 dead, an economic depression that feels endless in its own carnage, a president who essentially abdicated his duties, and a massive network of…
