Phthursday Musings: Spreading Phthursday Cheer

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve started in on some musings about human beings thinking that they’re not like other human beings, and about how I feel about flying (as in, on a big old jet airliner), and about Bluesky, and I haven’t liked any of it. None of it, I say!

But, I feel bad for not having published one of these in a few weeks. I mean, you all aren’t getting your money’s worth. That’s so rude of me!

So I’m winging this one a little bit, which, hey, probably a good thing.

I’ve mentioned in the past how I listen to the PosCast, a podcast featuring Joe Posnanski (baseball writer, among other things) and Michael Schur (television showrunner). Their primary topic is baseball, but it can go a lot of silly directions. One thing I like about it is how very friendly it all is.

Every year they have an annual holiday draft. Ten or so people are on the podcast, they all get three picks, and the theme is something holiday related. In past years the theme has been “holiday movies” or “holiday songs” or “holiday food”. The participants are friends / cronies / associates of the hosts. The annual holiday draft is absurd and really is quite delightful, though I suspect if you listened to it this year without having listened in the past, you’d be horribly confused.

The theme of this year’s draft was “holiday cheer”. It was left open-ended as to what that might possibly mean, but I think the best way to understand it is, if you could name three things about the holidays which especially bring you cheer, what would they be?

I might give three different answers if you asked me tomorrow, but I think my three choices are:

Snow Globes. Not that they’re not cheer inducing anyway, but for me it goes like this: When I was just old enough to start buying gifts for the rest of my family, one year I got my grandmother a little plastic snow globe. And she put it on display along her other Christmas decorations. And so the following year I got her another one. And then again. One year I didn’t get her one and she got mad, so the next year I got her another one. We’re talking a lot of like $3 snow globes from craft stores. One year when I actually had money I got her a nicer one, and then another nicer one. And I think it all kind of stopped there. She put them all out on display every year. And then, and I’m not sure how exactly it worked out like this, after she was gone, I got all of the snow globes. Over time some of them leaked, some of them somehow broke on the inside… and then this year the first nice one I got her, when we got decorations out, it had leaked, and the wind-up music thing had rusted. But I still have some of the very old cheap ones. And I’m not sure any other objects bring me more holiday cheer, and in turn, all other snow globes do as well.

Potato Pancakes and Applesauce. Years ago when I worked in downtown Chicago, I wound up at Christkindlmarket. I don’t know which year, I don’t know I knew to go. In concept Christkindlmarket is a German Christmas market with food and beer and mulled wine and lots of weird things for sale including glass ornaments but look, I’ve never been to Germany, and for all I know a Christmas market there is just a bunch of barrels full of snow globes. Well, I can’t really explain it, but I love Christkindlmarket, the silliness of being there and all, and what I love most of all is going to one of the food stands and getting an order of potato pancakes and applesauce and eating it outside in the cold. I could make potato pancakes at home, but why would I want to do that, if I could instead eat them out in the cold, surrounded by strangers? And, yes, it’s got to be applesauce.

A Charlie Brown Christmas. Vince Guaraldi’s music, Charlie Brown saying GOOD GRIEF!, everything turning out alright. It never gets old.

I think in writing this I may have uncovered a little about why this season feels more blah than usual. I didn’t actually get all the snow globes out and it was a real bummer having to throw the broken one out. (And I really did need to throw it out, the seal was bad, it was rusted… it didn’t make sense pretending otherwise.) I’m probably not getting to Christkindlmarket this year. And we haven’t watched A Charlie Brown Christmas yet.

Is the problem that I’m going through the motions and not embracing cheer, or is the problem that in not encountering cheer, I just find myself going through the motions? I think perhaps I need to be a little more intentional about the holidays than I have been. But honestly… I think as much as anything else, what I’m really missing is snow. But a little snow has stuck tonight! And this spurred me to putting some of the real old snow globes up. Most of their water is gone, they don’t shake well, but hey, they’re still here!

I try to listen to a lot of music, but I don’t seem to be very good anymore at regularly listening to new music.

So, of course, the new album this year I’ve listened to most is from a band which has been around since 1986, led by a timeless 71 year old Englishman.

I will at long last get the opportunity to see The Bevis Frond in March when they tour America for the first time in over two decades. (A Bevis is a soft-textured fern, it’s pronounced with a short-e so it rhymes with crevice instead of what I’m sure you were thinking.) I’ll have a lot more to say about The Bevis Frond and their fascinating front man Nick Saloman then. For now, I’d just encourage you all to listen, if you’re interested in strong songwriting and a guy who can still throw down psychedelic chords.

While writing tonight I’ve unexpectedly been watching the NCAA volleyball national semifinals. Louisville defeated Pitt in the first match, and the second match is between Penn State and Nebraska.

The upsurge of interest in women’s sports is not isolated to one sport, and within any given sport it’s not isolated to one woman. Ratings keep climbing for soccer, softball, volleyball, and of course basketball, which really had a breakthrough couple of years.

Weirdly, I have not watched any basketball so far this season. I find myself very separated from any coherent narrative in men’s college basketball or the NBA. I’m not saying there’s no narrative, rather, I’m not feeling it.

Many years ago when I read almost everything published on si.com (Sports Illustrated online), one of my favorite writers was Stewart Mandel, who I thought had a gift for writing about college football in what I called a “continuous narrative”. There was a long stretch of time where I would read more about college football than I would watch it. I found the narrative more interesting than the competition.

Today, I find that there’s a more interesting narrative to women’s sports, even if I don’t quite follow the rhythms of the games as well as I might. I think the WNBA is at a fascinating point. I think women’s soccer is at a key inflection point. I’m very intrigued by what they’re going to try to do now with professional women’s softball. And watching some of the absolute best volleyball players in the world right now… this is a sport with a strange but engaging flow and one which I could see falling deeply into. For lack of a better way to put it, this is elite sport without a lot of the attendant bullshit I’m used to with elite sport.

Is this how others feel about women’s sports today? And also how others feel about most men’s sports? I’ve long loved men’s college basketball but I feel like you watch a game now and half of every team is different every year and there’s too many threes being jacked up and it only gets to be truly engaging when March rolls around. College football today just seems toxic, and has seemed toxic to me for over a decade. I kind of wish I could just flip a switch and declare that all of the University of Illinois teams are now my favorites, or that I’m going to be a full blown Missouri Valley junkie, but I don’t really want to do that on my own, and my kid claims to not even know what a college is!

So, readers, I throw out this challenge: What’s the best story in sports right now that most of us are not following? Is it that women’s college basketball is still where the action is at? Is it that softball is about to truly break? Handball? Cross-country skiing? And what about having a team to follow? Is somebody’s niece a superstar?

As much as anything I think I just want to find joy in something new, without it requiring a massive commitment, and having it be something I can talk to new people about. But I don’t want to have to move to Nebraska for all that!

I am notoriously difficult to give gifts to. This year I thought I would try to make things easier on people. I wrote up a little list, and most of the list was… socks.

I think I am okay with this.

I am not sure if I am okay with being okay with this.

I’ll get back to you all on that.