Hayden Panettiere and The Eternal Kirby Reed

I’m not big on Remember the Titans, I watched the pilot of Heroes live, but didn’t return to it, and never got into Nashville. So, my real introduction to and lasting impression of Hayden Panettiere was the mostly forgotten box office disappointment “Scream 4.”

Panettiere plays Kirby Reed, the charming, attractive best friend of Emma Roberts’ lead character Jill. Kirby is effortlessly cool despite being a big-time horror geek. She’s confident but lacks any of the negative stereotypical high school mean girl traits. She shows incredibly courage in a tense life-or-death situation, and her style is essentially an early 2010s time capsule.

Kirby should be an iconic horror character, but she isn’t. You can mostly chalk this up to the fact that people largely did not come out to see the fourth installment in Wes Craven’s legendary slasher series. It remains the only one of the seven films to gross less than $100 million internationally. In fact, it made less than half as much as the least popular of the other six films at the domestic box office.

Scream 4 is essentially on an island. While the first three films were released in just under four years and the most recent three followed an almost identical schedule, this one was the only one to come out between 2000 and 2022. And it was released exactly in the middle – 2011.

It also served as a bridge connecting my childhood and adult Scream fandom. The original is my favorite movie. I first saw it as a four-year-old in summer 1997 when my dad rented it for me and my younger brother at Blockbuster. I remember renting the sequel at some point in the next few years. But I became obsessed with the original trilogy in 2006, watching each of them nearly a dozen times in the span of a few months.

That mania cooled off for a while, especially during high school. In fact, I was so pre-occupied with my social life that I don’t remember any excitement or anticipation leading up to the premiere of the first new Scream film in over a decade. But I remember just about everything about the day I saw it for the first time.

It was April 14, 2011, a Thursday. It was the last school day before Easter Break. I was a month away from graduating high school and about three days away from leaving for one of the most memorable weeks of my life in Mexico. I was somehow on both my school’s track and tennis teams that spring, and I had practice for both after school. It was also my new girlfriend’s birthday and the day of Game 1 of the Buffalo Sabres playoff series against the Philadelphia Flyers after a remarkable late season run.

But as was usually the case at that age, I never wanted to stop moving. So, after a full school day, tennis practice, a track workout, a shower, a “birthday dinner” at a local pizza place, and taking in the Sabres game, I accepted a friend’s invite to see the midnight premiere of Scream 4 at the Walden Galleria Mall just outside Buffalo.

About a dozen of us drove over in a van together. It was my first time at the theatre since the recent renovation and my first experience in the new mechanical reclining seats. I joked that I was ready to fall asleep before the movie even started.

When the film started rolling, it wasn’t initially Kirby that stood out to me. I loved the goofy, doomed cop duo played by Anthony Anderson and Adam Brody. The murder of a secondary character named Olivia stood out as especially gruesome. Emma Roberts’ turn as a Ghostface and her, uh, revenge on a cheating boyfriend was incredibly compelling. But, more than anything, I felt reconnected with the series. I may not have been alone in that sentiment in 2011, but there weren’t more than a few of us.

I rewatched it about once a year after that and started to invest in Kirby as a character. Despite getting quite a bit of screen time, she feels almost underutilized. The movie tries and mostly fails to add some contemporary 2011 rules and twists to the classic Scream format. Even Jill’s post-Kardashian desire to be famous without talent felt almost immediately dated when the ubiquity of social media allowed young people to achieve that goal without all the murders.

With Kirby, however, it felt like there was an opportunity for a different, 2011 kind of final girl. A natural leader who’s not too self-serious. A girl who can be promiscuous without just becoming mindless fodder for the killer. A girl who knows and loves horror movies but isn’t painfully socially awkward. A girl who’s brave enough to run out into the darkness to save some poor dork tied to a chair. A girl who can actually answer questions about movies she’s seen “20 god damn times.”

This character depth had as much to do with Panettiere’s performance as the writing. She’s able to move so effortlessly from charming to seductive to funny to terrified to carefree best friend.

Wes Craven may have had the same thought. Despite Kirby being double-crossed and stabbed in the gut by the aforementioned hapless dork the final time she’s shown in the film, Craven insisted she was alive and could appear in a sequel. Unfortunately, Craven died a few years later and that sequel was shelved.

Directing duo “Radio Silence” honored Craven’s canon by including an Easter egg in the fifth installment proving Kirby was alive. They went a step further in the sixth movie by bringing her back as a character. This now 30-year-old Kirby Reed was a wise and hardened FBI agent. In a rare move for the series, the script treats her brush with death as a serious trauma that she’ll never fully get over rather than just physical scars mixed with sardonic humor.

It makes sense for the film, of course. Kirby must have had some tough years following the events of Scream 4. Still, in all likelihood, those struggles pale in comparison to what Panettiere dealt with in her own life in that time. She did continue to find career success, starring in “Nashville” for six years. But she mostly stopped working for a while as her personal life unraveled. She suffered from severe post-partum depression after giving birth in 2014. This led to an addiction, which led to her agreeing to give up custody of her child to her ex-husband. She started dating another man, whom she subsequently accused of domestic violence. Earlier this year she released a memoir where she revealed some incredibly disturbing stories about being a teenaged girl in Hollywood and revealed that she’d been hiding her bisexuality as long as she could remember.

From the outside, it was easy to see this tell-all as the first step in reclaiming some sort of stable personal life, fulfilling career, and repaired relationship with her daughter. Instead, it’s a depressing reminder that there’s no narrative arc to life. You live and you die and most of what happens in-between is forgotten. There’s no Wes Craven type figure to insist you’re actually still alive and that your story will continue.

I do have some faith, however, that anyone who’s achieved some level of artistic success is remembered through their work even decades after they’re gone. Maybe Heroes or Nashville will have some sort of second life in the years to come. It seems inevitable that people will keep enjoying “Remember the Titans” so long as people enjoy football and Disney movies in this country.

And maybe there’s a distant future out there where some aspiring teen horror fanatic is trying to work their way through the classics. Maybe they’ll fall in love with the original Scream and get curious about some of the sequels. They’ll notice there’s one that has little to do with the rest of the series. It has 11 years of distance between itself and the sequels on either side of it. Perhaps they’ll decide to give it a try. And maybe through all the gore, the antics, the attempts to integrate the old cast into a new group of characters, and everything else, they’ll be struck by Kirby Reed. They’ll fall in love with the character because Craven and Panettiere have made her so cool, so enviable, so singular. They’ll gasp when she’s stabbed and yearn for the Craven-led Scream 5 that never was.

And for just a moment, Hayden Panettiere will live again.

Belief, Disbelief, and The 2025-26 Buffalo Sabres

The 2025-26 Buffalo Sabes season has been over for weeks, but I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around it. 50 wins. A division title. A playoff series win. The 10-game win streak. One of the greatest half-season stretches in the century-plus-long history of the league. And, of course, the heartbreaking Game 7 overtime loss. I’m not sure any of it has sunk in properly.

Not even six months ago, this was a dead franchise. They were 11-14-4, well on their way to a 15^th-straight playoff miss. They hadn’t won a playoff series since the Bush Administration. Everything they did was a fiasco. I should know, I’ve co-hosted a podcast about these idiots for seven years now. More to the point, I’ve been a fan since the eventful spring of 1999, and the “Drought” has taken up more than half that time.

So, when they went from bottom feeders to unbeatable seemingly overnight, I felt I almost had to relearn how to believe in this team. Suddenly, it became reasonable to talk about the conference finals, Stanley Cup, and even a mid-June parade. And the more they steamrolled opponent after opponent, slamming the door shut in the final minutes, the more real those possibilities became.

I thought back on the various false dawns over the years – the 22-23 team, the 10-game win streak in 2018, the Eichel/Reinhart rookie year. But those were so short-lived. The spring 2011 Pegula honeymoon era was strangled in the crib by Ville Leino and the Flyers. The 2009-10 team was better than we remember, but the six-game first round loss to Boston left such a bad taste as to taint everything that came before. The President’s Trophy winning team of 2006-07 still holds the all-time franchise win record, but the expectation was the Cup and they fell short.

So, the obvious comparison point became 2005-06. That team also started the season in the midst of the longest drought in franchise history (three years plus a lockout season lol). They stumbled early on but came together with separate stretches of 15-1-1 and 15-1-2. They outclassed a longstanding rival in six games in the first round and eventually suffered an agonizing Game 7 defeat.

I still cherish that team and that run, much like just about every millennial Sabres fan. But for me, those moments – beating the Kings 10-1, the win streaks, the Umberger hit, Game 1 in Ottawa, the various OT goals, Pominville’s “Scary Good” series clincher – were emotionally load-bearing. I had moved to a new town and a new school in the middle of the season, which was also the middle of seventh grade. Quite a time in life to start over at a new school in a new neighborhood! Suffice it to say I wasn’t thrilled.

There’s so much from that period in my life that I still think about, but two things stand out more than anything now: belief and disbelief. More specifically: my emerging belief at the time that the Sabres would be the 2006 Stanley Cup champions and my bone-deep conviction that I would never be able to make friends at my new school or maybe ever again. I’ve been wrong before and I’ll be wrong again.

I was disabused of both of those notions, starting with a painful few hours in late spring and continuing over the following months, years, and even decades. And while my life has taken me so many places between seventh grade and the age of 33, the Sabres spent most of that time standing perfectly still. They were generally between the worst and eighth-worst team in the league, never threatening to truly contend. Conversations about them went nowhere.

Then they started moving again. First, it was three wins out west just ahead of Kevyn Adams getting canned. A non-descript 5-3 win over the Flyers followed. They beat the Islanders in a shootout two nights later and I jokingly texted a friend that they were going to the Cup. Another win over New Jersey the following night made it six in a row.

I was at the Wellington Pub on Hertel Ave in Buffalo on Dec. 23 when Bowen Byram’s OT goal gave the Sabres their seventh-straight victory. I pumped my fist in celebration, surprising everyone else at the table since no one was watching the game. It’s incredible how fast that dynamic changed. Just four days later, I was at a post-Christmas house party where a dozen or more people crowded around a TV to watch them close out a 4-1 win over Boston. By New Year’s Eve, everyone was buzzing as they dominated the alleged Cup contending Dallas Stars for their 10^th win in a row.

The months that followed provided me with some of the best sports moments of my life. Just as the Bills were eliminated in predictably infuriating fashion, the Sabres swooped in to take our attention off the messy Brandon Beane offseason. I watched the raucous and violent 8-7 win over Tampa on a Sunday night at a bar after my friends convinced me to ignore my blistering hangover and come out to hang with them. Immediately after the final whistle blew, the bar blasted “Better Days” followed by “Kickstart My Heart.” The belief was spreading uncontrollably across the region.

I was at that same bar (Moor Room on Hertel) for Game1 against Boston on another Sunday night a few weeks later. The group was eclectic and started to thin out just a bit as the Sabres mostly failed to get anything going through 52 minutes. I don’t need to remind you how quickly that changed. The energy went from bored and bummed to nervous to euphoric as Mattias Samuelson followed up two Tage Thompson goals with an absolute rocket from the top of the circle. Despite it being Sunday night, I did shots with strangers and then headed out to the Elmwood Village until after 2 a.m.

I can’t say every game brought that level of celebration, but they were all memorable in their own way. I got interviewed about my 15-year-old Nathan Gerbe jersey by a local TV news reporter at Colter Bay ahead of Game 2. I ignored the NFL draft in favor of watching an impressive Game 3 comeback with a group of 10 guys at my friend’s house while his two toddler-aged children slept upstairs. My podcast partner Brendan and I hosted a watch party for the Game 4 beatdown at Mr. Goodbar. I’ll never forget walking out into a beautiful Sunday on Elmwood Avenue to see people celebrating up and down the block. Right around this time, my belief in the Sabres evolved into unshakeable confidence. They were the better team. They could do this. They had to do this.

When they clinched their first playoff series win in 19 years, I was at a hotel on Long Island. I celebrated with my 81-year-old great aunt, who actually stayed at the hotel bar later than I did.

The Montreal series was a bit more of a roller coaster. An impressive Game 1 win gave way to consecutive blowout losses. They won a gutsy Game 2 before things got away from them in Game 5. When the Sabres trailed 2-1 and 3-2 against the Canadiens, I heard multiple people use the phrase “found money” to describe the position we were in as fans in that series. I couldn’t help but disagree with that sentiment as I fell to my knees in Mr. Goodbar after Alex Newhook’s series-clinching OT goal in Game 7. I suppose it was more like if you found money, put it in your pocket, and then someone popped out of the shadows to hit you with a lead pipe, rob you of said money, and then spit on you as you writhed around in pain.

Still, a few weeks later, that gut punch loss is not my lasting memory of the 2026 Buffalo Sabres. It’s not the win streak or Game 1 against Boston or the 8-7 win over Tampa or either of the wins I was in attendance for this season. At this moment, my favorite memory of the 2025-26 Buffalo Sabres is Game 6 in Montreal.

I didn’t watch the game at a bar, but rather an Airbnb that overlooked Canandaigua Lake. There were 17 fellas packed into a fairly small house to celebrate my bachelor party. It was the third day of the trip, and we’d only recently gotten back from a six-hour party bus/brewery tour. There were so many of us that we had to split up between the upstairs and downstairs living rooms.

Given how the Sabres had played over the previous four games, I knew it was possible that the season could end right then and there, but I was calm. Rasmus Dahlin opened scoring before I even found my bearings, but Montreal scored three goals in quick succession to bring everyone back down to Earth. It took until Jason Zucker scored on the power play near the end of the period for me to notice that the downstairs TV was slightly ahead of ours. We could hear them tepidly celebrating just before we saw the goal, but no one was really in the right headspace to fix the issue.

So, each time of the six times the Sabres scored over the final two periods, I knew it was coming. By the time, Konsta Helenius was putting the Sabres ahead 5-3 late in the second, I started to think the downstairs crew was messing with us. “There’s no way they scored here? Again? Already?”

And that thought popped into my head over and over as the Sabres cruised to an 8-3 win. The only possible reaction was disbelief at every level. I couldn’t believe the Sabres were scoring again. Zooming out a bit, I couldn’t believe they were stepping up like this in a do-or-die playoff game.  Hell, I couldn’t believe the Sabres were in the playoffs at all. More than anything, the 2006 version of me couldn’t believe I was taking it all in with so many friends that I truly love. I couldn’t believe this playoff run involved so many hugs and high fives and shared nervous looks and deep breaths and celebratory shots and good times with people who matter to me.

But I do believe that there’s more of that to come in the near future.  

Best Stuff I watched in 2025

Overall a very good year, a much better tv year than last year and a couple of films that surpass the best of last year. I broke my wrist so my write-ups for the films especially will be shorter than most years since I’ll be writing them on my phone. I’ll also do my annual plug for my Letterboxd where you can get a comprehensive rundown of all the films I watched this year old and new. 

TV Shows:

10. Eastern Gate

This Polish spy show absolutely rocked. Taking place in the Suwałki Gap near the Lithuanian/Polish border, this is an incredibly cool show that does an incredible job of showcasing the tensions across Eastern Europe right before the outbreak of the war in the Ukraine.

9. Severance

I caught up on both seasons of Severance this year, before watching I was mildly skeptical for no reason really. Now having caught up it turns out people were right and the show is very good. I think the 1^st season is better than the 2^nd which at times feels a bit adrift, and isn’t as focused on my favorite character (innie Irving) but I really can’t argue with the absolutely electric finale and I look forward to watching season 3 in a few years.

8. Slow Horses

The most reliable spy show in the business. The Gary Oldman led Apple show continues to be consistently excellent. I don’t really have much to add to it this season beyond the fact that Oldman gives one of the year’s great monologues, and I have so much comfort knowing we will get another excellent season next year.

7. Adolescence

An absolutely devasting British drama about an awful crime. What you think is going to be a classical British mystery about a dead child turns into a much sadder story about social media, bullying, toxic masculinity as it delves deep into these topics without ever speaking down to the audience.

6. The Chair Company

Tim Robinson made a conspiracy show about a company that sells chairs and however weird you think it’s going to be it ends up being much weirder. This show is hilarious which isn’t surprising given Robinson’s history but the dramatic elements of it end up working incredibly well no matter how insane they are. This is really strengthened by Robinson casting some of the strangest people/faces I have seen on a tv show since Twin Peaks: The Return.

5. Pluribus

Vince Gilligan consistently makes the best-looking show on television and Pluribus is no exception. This time instead of showing off the crime-ridden Albuquerque of Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, he’s giving us a massive globe spanning sci-fi drama centered around an incredible performance from Rhea Seehorn. While some have criticized the slowness of the show, I couldn’t disagree more as I love how deep we can dig into this world and the specificities of it.

4. The Lowdown

A show that feels perfectly aligned to my interests. A shaggy dog detective story where Ethan Hawke plays a “truthstorian” in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hawke is incredible here in a performance that feels very close to the soul of who he is. This show is often sad, is often hilarious but more than anything else feels like it has a very real sense of place and purpose. It truly loves Tulsa and exploring all of its weirdness. Also the episode with Dinklage may be the single best episode of television this year.

3. The Pitt

HBO decided to try to bring back old school tv with this show that is a blend of an old school hospital drama like ER with the real time clock factor of 24. It worked wonderfully as the show is able to bring together an incredible blend of characters and absolutely electric hospital cases. The real time format is so perfectly suited for a hospital show that it’s almost shocking it hasn’t been done before. Very excited for it to come back in a few weeks!

2. The Rehearsal

Nathan Fielder is a mad man who consistently pushes television to its limits. There was nothing on television this year (or maybe ever) quite like The Rehearsal, with its seamless ability to blend what is real and what is made for tv without every totally showing the audience the entire story. I feel like I’d sound insane trying to explain some of what happens on the show so all I will say is thank you to Nathan Fielder for the Miracle over the Mojave.  

1. Andor

A very special tv show. Star Wars has always meant a ton to me (some would say too much) and I had felt pretty run down by the experience of watching the movies and shows. Andor is a miracle though, it’s a show that is everything I’ve ever dreamed a Star Wars project could be and so much more. It tells the story of how “the rebellion” was built, with its various factions, with it’s heartbreak, the moral decay, and so much more. I’m having a hard time putting into words everything the show means to me but it’s truly special. It was so great, it reduced my investment in any future Star Wars products because no matter how bad things get, I’ll always have this (along with the OT obviously) to return to.

Movies:

Honorable Mentions: It Was Just An Accident, Wake Up Dead Man, Blue Moon, Highest 2 Lowest, 28 Years Later

10. Bugonia

I feel like I needed to put either this or Eddington On here to represent how we as a society have lost our collective minds. Went with this one because it features two of my favorites giving dynamite leading performances and because I just thought it was a bit more fun to watch.

9. Roofman

The type of people often say they don’t make anymore but guess what they made one. Simultaneously a small family drama and a procedural crime thriller but more than anything it’s a chance for a strong supporting cast and a few movie stars, Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, to show off their gifts.

8. The Naked Gun

Felt important to put this on my list because it proves that society is still capable of producing extremely silly sub-90 minute comedies with multiple jokes every minute! A fitting continuation of one of the great film franchises.

7. Train Dreams

A beautiful if incredibly sad film. Kind of tragic that the film will likely get a much larger audience since it’s on Netflix but it felt like maybe the film most enhanced for me by seeing it theatrically.

6. The Secret Agent

With this title, it’s easy to expect a classic spy film, but this isn’t that. It’s a fascinating look at life in Northern Brazil in the late 70s, somehow both very relaxing and very tense. Will definitely be trying to watch this again.

5. Black Bag

Steven Soderbergh made an awesome 90 minute spy thriller, of course I loved it.

4. Sinners

It feels like Ryan Coogler is inventing a new type of blockbuster while simultaneously making a very classic genre movie. Awesome dueling MBJ performances along with a stacked supporting cast. Shout out to Hailee Steinfeld and Josh Allen.

3. No Other Choice

A hilarious black comedy where one of my favorite directors, Park Chan Wook, is having so much fun moving the camera. I think it’s easy to think of this as simply a critique of modern capitalism but it has much more on its mind than just that.

2. One Battle After Another

A fully monumental work. A loose adaption of Thomas Pynchon’s masterpiece Vineland, PTA captures the sprit of the book, while changing most of the details. A truly bracing first 40ish minutes gives way to this loose tale of an aging revolutionary trying to find his daughter. Penn in this gives simultaneously one of the most terrifying and scary performances of the year. Wonderful film.

1. Marty Supreme

For the last few months I was very certain OBAA was going to be my number 1 film of the year, but seeing Marty changed my mind. Just a supremely entertaining and propulsive film. A film that you couldn’t guess what happens next, not because it was unpredictable (though it sometimes was) but because there was too much going on in any given moment to think about it. Chalamet has truly emerged as a full fledged movie star with the performance of the year.

Stay Hungry My Friends

Take Back Your Free Time, Take Back Your Sanity

I feel the biggest dividing line between my “real” adult life and the life I had before I graduated college in 2015 is time. Really, the difference is how much I think about time and how much I worry about the free time I don’t have. I know I’m far from alone in this. In fact, my (many) friends who have had kids in the past few years are probably either laughing at me or straining to remember what free time is.

The obligations of an adult life – a full-time job, kids, maintaining a house, weddings, etc. – seem to grow year over year, seriously cutting into time that could be used to exercise, read, go to the movies, play video games, travel, stay informed about local and national news, watch sports, hang out with friends, or even catch up on that show about gay hockey players everyone’s talking about.

Again, I know I’m not breaking any new ground here. Being an adult means being busy. You get into your 30s and you accept that a few things are going to fall by the wayside. Fairly often, I’ll listen to someone tell me about a book, TV show, band, or podcast they like, knowing full-well that I’ll probably never have the time.  

I’m not going to pretend that this is some new problem unique to millennials and Gen Z either. In fact, I often wonder what my life would’ve been like if I’d been born a decade earlier. In that case, I’d have graduated college in 2005. It certainly would’ve been a better time to enter the workforce as a journalism/mass communication major, but I’d also be missing out on a few conveniences that were available to me when I joined the adult world in the mid-2010s.

The 2005, elder millennial version of me wouldn’t have a smart phone. Maybe I’d have an iPod capable of holding up to 1,000 songs, but I couldn’t just listen to whatever I wanted whenever I wanted like I can now. I wouldn’t be able to just look anything up anywhere imaginable on a whim. I’d have to actually learn how to navigate the world without a free GPS in my pocket. I probably wouldn’t have enough money for TiVo, so I’d have to watch TV shows when they were actually on or else wait for months to rent the entire season on DVD. There would be no pulling up St. Bonaventure basketball games on my phone at the bar to catch the final few minutes (and not just because they were 2-26 that year). Obviously, I’d be without Uber, Doordash, and every other similar service. One of the few things this guy and I have in common would be worrying about our ever-decreasing free time.

I imagine using some form of inter-dimensional travel to find that version of me and pitch him on the technology that emerged over the next two decades. I’d tell him that he could ditch his landline, his desktop computer, his iPod, his Garmin (if he had one). Hell, even the TV if he’s really feeling minimalist.

I’d explain to this aughts-era Taylor that soon he’d be able to buy something that served all these functions and so many more. You see, I’d tell him, it’s like if all those products worked instantaneously and almost flawlessly in one machine small enough to bring everywhere and affordable enough that nearly everyone has one. I’d tell him about how we can get Wi-Fi just about anywhere. Calls almost never get dropped. These devices don’t last much longer than they used to, but they’re some of the few products that are actually cheaper now than they were 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, social media will allow you to connect with just about anyone you can imagine from any point in your life. You can record crystal clear video, upload it immediately, and people around the globe will be able to access it right at that moment. You can tap a screen a few times and someone will come pick you up and drive you wherever you want. You can tap a screen in a different way to get someone to deliver McDonalds to your house at 2 a.m. You can watch almost any TV show or any film ever made basically whenever you want. They will stop and start at your whim. All news will be available to you in seconds. Everything is so much easier to use. Hell, headphones don’t even have wires anymore!  

And I tell this 2005 version of me that this could be his future. As much as I’d like to imagine this recent journalism grad, shaped by late 90s cynicism, would be smart enough to ask a few follow-up questions, I know better. He’d take the deal right away. Of course he would.

I decided this while watching the 1981 film “My Dinner with Andre” earlier this year. Roughly 95% of the film takes place at a dinner between the titular Andre and Wallace Shawn’s “Wally.” In the midst of an hour-plus conversation, the two have a disagreement about modern comforts. Andre describes his disdain for electric blankets, arguing that frictionlessly eliminating the experience of being cold has the effect of isolating people from others and making them less connected to their fellow man. Wally agrees with him, but scoffs at the idea of giving up his electric blanket. After all, he lives in New York – a brutally cold and inhospitable city in the winter. He needs all the comfort he can get.

I know Andre’s right deep down, but I find it nearly impossible to disagree with Wally. 45 years later, it’s clear who won the argument. People across the globe have chosen comfort and convenience again and again without a second thought. But nobody told me or Wallace Shawn or anyone else where this was all headed. I guess it’s possible no one knew.

Almost everything about our lives is simpler and more convenient than it was in 1981, 2005, or even 2015. Our existence is becoming frictionless, especially in America. And yet, we’re more depressed than we ever have been. Anxiety levels are through the roof. American adults are far less likely to report feeling “happy” or “satisfied” than they were in recent decades.

Meanwhile, illiteracy is on the rise across the spectrum. College professors at elite schools are sounding the alarm about students being overwhelmed by simple reading assignments. And ChatGPT has made it so writing a 10-page paper is as easy as ordering a midnight Quesarito to your dorm.

The “social” aspect of social media is functionally dead. Facebook is a poisoned wasteland dotted with AI slop and dishonest memes aimed at scaring and enraging senior citizens. For all the talk of Twitter being overrun with Nazis and racists (true), it’s now mostly a place where you’ll find braindead engagement bait, Onlyfans ads, and cultural commentary ranging from tedious to mind-numbingly stupid.

Of course, there are more videos than ever on Twitter because the entire online experience in 2025 is defined by video. You may have, like me, steered clear of TikTok as it exploded in popularity earlier this decade. But chances are TikTok found you. Even if you were able to escape the proliferation of these videos being posted on other social media sites, it’s impossible to ignore that social media has essentially been remade in TikTok’s image. Instagram mostly functions as a TikTok knockoff, Facebook is littered with reposted videos from months prior. Even YouTube has added “shorts.” As if, the act of watching a YouTube video was some overwhelming task.

Since we’re all in the same boat here, you don’t need me to tell you the vast majority of these videos are low-quality, dull, pointless, lazy, and stunningly unoriginal. Have you ever noticed that men often eat meals faster than their female partners? Well, 75,000 attention-starved TikTok couples were nice enough to let us all know in the form of identical, charming, 30-second videos. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see a fan react to his football team’s highlights the following day as if he were watching it live? Well, good news, there are literally thousands of guys inexplicably doing exactly that.

You may have noticed I haven’t even mentioned Twitch yet. When I found out a decade or so ago that watching other people play video games had become a popular form of entertainment, I was confused and annoyed. Imagine my surprise when I learned some of the most popular streamers don’t even play games, but rather just kinda hang out with the camera on for hours on end. In the words of our 30^th President, “I don’t understand this world anymore.”

So, yes, smart phones (and other related technology) did make things easier for us. They made connecting with people around the world, accessing information, and so many other tasks seamless. But instead of gaining more free time, we were robbed of it. The average American adult spends more than eight hours per day looking at screens for non-work purposes. It’s almost as if we gave ourselves a second full-time job. Only this job is unpaid and mostly serves to make us angrier, more anxious and depressed, undeniably dumber, and more paranoid.

The proof is indisputable: American teenagers hang out with peers at about half the rate they did 20 years ago. Businesses that thrive on foot traffic are in terminal decline. Young people are far less likely to date, go to bars, or attend parties than they were in the past. Meanwhile, American adults across the age spectrum are socializing less, maintaining fewer friendships, and spending more time alone. People attend fewer movies, plays, and musical productions. Obviously, this country doesn’t do much reading anymore either.

In short: we chose convenience and we got depression, anxiety, loneliness, and even anger. We’re using our precious free time to drive ourselves insane sifting through AI slop, watching rage-bait videos, and arguing in bad faith with equally miserable strangers.

And I should know! I’m not yelling all of this down to you from some soap box. I’m in the muck with everyone else. I watch entirely too many Instagram Reels, get angry reading the comment section of local news stories posted on Facebook, and still pop over to Twitter from time-to-time like I’m visiting an old house that burned down. This piece has taken an hour or so longer to write than it should’ve because I keep looking at my stupid phone for no discernible reason.

 What’s starting to get to me is I’m doing these things when I could be doing literally anything else. I should be reading more of everything from fiction to non-fiction to sports writing to cultural criticism. I should be writing more. It certainly wouldn’t hurt me to get to the gym once or twice more per week. Might be a good idea to spend some time coming up with some new ideas for the weekly Sabres pod, especially with the team actually winning lately. I always enjoy going on walks, even in these unbearable winter months. I’ve seen about 60 new films this year, but I’m really behind on TV. Plus, I’ve been meaning to buy a weedwhacker. I guess that’s a good goal for the spring.  

Doing a little bit more of each of these things and a little bit less staring at my phone would be a good resolution for 2026. I’m sure almost everyone reading this could say something similar. We should all be taking back control of our free time, rather than mindlessly and passively receiving slop, lies, nonsense, and recycled garbage filtered through an algorithm designed by oligarchs who want to monopolize every potential second of your attention.

We all have such limited free time in this life. Don’t waste it on double-digit IQ streamers, increasingly simple-minded viral trends, and arguments with people on the other side of the planet. Trust me, I need this reminder as much as anyone.

Here’s to taking back our free time in 2026!

Rebirth: A Week in the Hertel Corridor

It’s early on a Sunday morning, but it feels almost like a Monday. I’m a little hungover, and I’ve got this anxious feeling I usually only get the morning after a rare Sunday Funday.

While I’m looking up at the ceiling, I try to find the root of my anxiety. I don’t have to go to work today, but I’ve agreed to go to an 11:30 a.m. movie with a friend and we made tentative plans to get breakfast before. That should be an exciting proposition, but it doesn’t feel like one at the moment. My head is pounding, and my mouth feels like I ate an entire bowl of sand.

I walk downstairs and grab two bottles of water from the fridge. One is empty within 90 seconds. I place the other on the coffee table and plop down on the couch. The good news is that it’s only 6:45 a.m. and I have a few more hours to sleep. Still, I lament the nature of hangovers—a punishment for having fun with your friends. In this case that fun involved a diaper party, two subsequent bars, and a comedy show. I shouldn’t have to mainline Ibuprofen and kitchen sink tap water every time I hang out with my friends.

That’s no way to live.

I wake up around 10 a.m. To my surprise, my friend hasn’t said anything about breakfast. I text him that we should just meet at the theatre, and he agrees. About 90 minutes later, I arrive. The mild early spring temperature inspires me to wait outside for my friend.

I deduce by the number of people walking by me into North Park Theatre on North Buffalo’s Hertel Avenue that it’s going to be a good crowd. We’re all here to see David Lynch’s 2006 film “Inland Empire.” It’ll be the fourth Lynch film I’ve seen at the theater since he died earlier this year.

My friend, who arrived a few minutes after me, has been with me for each of the past two films. He’s something of a Lynch expert, so I’ve enjoyed getting his perspective on the films. But he’s never seen Inland Empire, so we’re both in the dark here. We walk out of the building three hours later without much having changed in that regard. The second act took a turn that confused us both. We promise to read some theories, think things over, and get back to each other with some ideas.

As I walk to my nearby home with my new specialty poster, I think about how happy I am with the decision to see all of these Lynch films in the past month or so. I tried to watch Twin Peaks in college and didn’t quite get it. I think I do now. I’m more open to the idea that I shouldn’t understand a film completely on the first viewing. Some people want their art to be spoon fed to them.

That’s no way to live.

It’s Monday now and I’ve been hunched over a computer in my home office all day. Around 7 p.m., I decide I’d rather go for a walk than to the gym today. I stroll down my driveway and turn left down Taunton Place. I walk past dozens of homes at a brisk pace, listening to a podcast. I get all the way to Starin Ave and then turn right. I do the same when I get to Hertel.

It’s not the first time that I noticed that Hertel is kind of depressing on a Monday night. It’s not quite the dead of winter, but it’s late, cold, and dark enough that very few people are out. It feels like half the businesses on the street are closed on Mondays. And the half that are open are nearly empty at this time of night.

I walk by Burning Buffalo and marvel at how close it was to my first North Buffalo apartment, across the street above Lloyd Taco Factory. There are about four people inside the bar right now, and it seems like last call has already been announced.

It never would’ve happened this early back in 2017. That October, another friend and I went there a few times a week for the MLB playoffs. We befriended a bartender who actually lived upstairs. I remember one Wednesday night, when the Yankees clinched the American League Division Series against Cleveland, the bar stayed open until at least 1 a.m.

It didn’t feel out of the ordinary back then. But in a post-COVID country where the emerging generation of adults doesn’t seem to enjoy drinking or socializing or really doing anything in person, even a formerly late-night city like Buffalo is mostly silent by this time on a Monday. And worse, it increasingly feels to me that people are generally OK with that.

That’s no way to live.

It’s around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday and I’ve only just remembered that I’ve agreed to go to Dash’s Market to get rolls for the meatball subs we’ll be having for dinner. Although there’s a time crunch, I also need to get my steps in as I don’t have time to go to the gym yet again. I power walk down Lovering Ave toward Hertel and immediately regret my decision to wear Chuck Taylor’s. My shins are on fire, so I try to focus on the podcast I’m listening to.

With it being a bit earlier in the day and later in the week, Hertel is certainly more alive today. More people out walking and chatting, dogs, people getting dinner, etc. But the sun starts to go down on my way back and the people begin to disappear. As I approach my old block, I start to think about the past again.

I notice that the old Sterling Tavern or whatever the hell it was called was boarded up. I thought about how many fun nights I spent there with friends even after ownership changed. But I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been there in the past four years or so. Everyone I know in the neighborhood is thrilled that there’s a new bar moving into the space.

I also notice that Lloyd doesn’t appear to be too busy. When I lived upstairs, I could hear the music playing in my living room and the ambient sound of conversation even on Tuesday nights. I don’t think it’s in any danger of closing; in fact, they recently opened a third location. But it’s certainly not the hangout spot it was five years ago. Maybe nowhere is.

I keep up the brisk pace as I get closer to home. I still have some work to do. My flexible schedule doesn’t always feel that way. Sometimes it seems I’m working almost all my waking hours from Monday to Thursday. All that so I can have a few hours off Friday afternoon.

That’s no way to live.

Wednesday brings a cold spell. There’s a common way to describe this phenomenon in Western New York—false spring. In reality this is just what “real” spring has always been like around here: rainy with inconsistent temperatures. It’s never consistently warm until June most years. And yet I never really remember this.

It’s a long day between work, recording my podcast, and doing dishes. Around 9 p.m., I’m finally free to go for another walk. I choose the route I took Monday, which is about just about 2.75 miles. With my peacoat and leather gloves, I feel like I’m dressing for December. I notice basically nothing as I make my way down Taunton and focus almost entirely on the podcast I have on.

I turn right on Starin again and walk by the Orthodox Synagogue. The parking lot is a bit busier than it usually is at this time of night. I wonder briefly how people get to service on Saturdays without the use of cars. Maybe they walk. Having lived in an apartment in this section of the neighborhood for 4.5 years after moving out of the Lloyd spot during COVID, I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before.

As I reach Hertel, my mind turns to something I thought about writing years ago. Back in 2019 or so, I still worked in an office. When I’d get home, I’d have to walk by the Lloyd patio, which was absolutely packed on every nice day from May through September. Things would slow down a bit as the temperatures dipped in October. By November, it was a relative ghost town. The patio was closed, and the (much smaller) crowd of people was inside. The street was quiet. The fun was over, and winter was basically here.

That year, the Buffalo Sabres started inexplicably hot for the second season in a row. Stupidly, I, and many other people, got excited. But by mid-November, they were collapsing. I remember walking out of the nearby Terrie’s Workout Center and seeing on the TV in Sterling that they were already down 1-0 just minutes into a game. Taking that in while walking by the empty patios amid a chilly, dark night inspired the title of a potential written piece: “Hertel in November.” It’d explore the similarities in watching the life be choked out of the neighborhood and the hockey team simultaneously.

I never got around to writing it. Maybe I was too busy with my day job at the time, which required quite a bit of writing. I was already doing my Sabres podcast at the time—two episodes per week in person back then! But I was also spending a good amount of my time out with friends. From my vantage point right here on this chilly Wednesday night, I can see six bars where I’ve spent thousands of hours over the past nine years.

I walk by Mes Que, once Buffalo’s premier soccer bar, and it’s hard not to be nostalgic. I spent more time, money, and emotional energy in that place between 2017 and 2021 than basically anywhere in the world. There are more memories than I could possibly catalog—mornings, afternoons, and late nights spent with lifelong friends, friends I met in the neighborhood, world-class bartenders, soccer fan acquaintances, my fiancée and her friends. It’s never very busy when I stroll by on my weeknight walks these days, but I’m happy to see it’s still open at nearly 10 p.m. tonight.  

I remind myself not to dwell too much on the past. After all, I still have a lot of fun out on Hertel. Moor Room opened just as we were putting COVID in the rearview and I’ve been there on a near weekly basis since. Constantly thinking about the best times of my 20s with rose-colored glasses is unfair to the present—a time I’ll almost certainly pine for in years to come.

That’s no way to live.

I have a bit of pep in my step this Thursday morning. I don’t venture out on too many Thursday nights now that I’m in my 30s but tonight is an exception. It’s the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament and my friends and I are headed out to watch the Sweet 16 games after work.

Before that, though, we have a going away happy hour for our mutual former co-worker at a bar in Williamsville. I’m excited to see some of my old colleagues, but so many people have left that company that I’m not sure who will even be there.

I’m pleasantly surprised by how many familiar faces I see when I arrive. I’m enjoying myself, but after a while I almost feel like I’m in a dream. Like one of those dreams where you’re back at school despite having graduated a decade earlier. In this case, it’s more like being at your old job despite having left more than four years ago. Still, it’s nice to see everyone.

When the happy hour ends, we head to a nearby brewery for the games. I can’t say that I pay that close of attention. I get a bit too caught up in our conversation, but that’s fine. It won’t be like this someday. It’s already not like it used to be.

We head out relatively early. I get home before 10 p.m. and notice my smart watch says I’ve walked fewer than 3,000 steps today. Time for another walk. I take a similar route to the previous few days. When I get to the main section of Hertel, I’m pleasantly surprised to see a good amount of people still out. Mostly all of the bars I pass by are still open. The crowds aren’t too crazy, and there’s basically no one outside except the smokers. It’s not quite spring and it’s not quite the weekend, but we’re getting close on both counts.

As I approach my driveway, I remember that I can watch the second half of the late games and then sleep in a bit if I want. I only have about four hours of work to do tomorrow. It’ll be a nice, stress-free start to the weekend.

It’s not such a bad way to live.

Friday’s workday is about as smooth as I predicted the night before. I get up at about 10 a.m. to get the work done, take a shower, and go to the gym. I’ve barely had time to think about what I’m going to do that night when my fiancée asks if I want to get some pizza and beers with our friends. I’m delighted to say yes. As we drive through the neighborhood on our way out, I see a fairly vibrant scene out on Hertel. “There will be twice as many people out when it’s warmer next month,” I tell myself.

It’s exactly the kind of Friday I love to have at this age. I get to try a new restaurant, go to a new bar and see a local funk band, drink a moderate amount, get home around midnight, and wake up Saturday without a hangover.

It’s a nice way to live.

Waking up Saturday, I feel good enough to go the gym. After I scroll on my phone for 20 minutes or so, that is. While I’m on the elliptical, I see a vibrant community out the window. Two women in an intense conversation, a couple walking with a baby, a guy bravely wearing shorts in pretty mild weather. An hour or so later, I’m one of those people walking down Hertel. I try to get lunch at a nearby restaurant, but it’s closed. I wonder if it’s permanent. I keep walking until I get to Romeo and Juliet’s. After ordering a panini and a drink, I wait near the door and read all the positive Buffalo News reviews framed on the wall. I see that the oldest one is from 1999 and wonder how many businesses on Hertel have been around that long. It can’t be many.

As I finish my panini in the comfort of my living room while watching the Yankees game, I get another unexpected invite: to Other Half Brewing with my brother, sister-in-law, and baby nephew for an afternoon hang. It’s a pleasant few hours. At one point, I get to hold my nephew, who’s not quite three months old. He gets a little fussy so I stand out and bounce him around a bit, since I’m told he likes that. I turn him so he’s facing outside. I tell him about what he’s seeing, which seems to calm him down. We walk by a fire alarm, which I explain to him. I tell him not to pull it. He obliges.

We’re a little late getting back to Hertel. I’m supposed to be meeting friends at Public House around 6 p.m. for the Elite 8 NCAA games. I’ve been texting people all week about it and have really been looking forward to it. As I approach the bar, I think about how strange it is that this is my nearest watering hole again. When my fiancée, then girlfriend, moved to Lovering back in early 2016, this was the closest bar to her apartment. I spent a handful of memorable nights there in those days. But that was nearly a decade ago now.

I walk in, and one of my friends is already at the bar waiting for me. About six or seven guys walk in after that. The bar is far from full. There’s only one bartender and we share a name. The guys on the other side of the bar are filling out a mad lib. I feel like I haven’t seen one of those since fifth grade.

The first game is Florida-Texas Tech. For bracket purposes, I should be cheering for the Gators. But I’m just looking for a fun and memorable game after a tournament of dull and forgettable slop. I just want to feel something as a neutral fan—sports haven’t provided much of that to me recently.

This one is back-and-forth. Florida leads at half, but Texas Tech erases that deficit and builds a double-digit lead of their own at one point. The final TV timeout has passed, and the Red Raiders are up nine. It seems like a foregone conclusion that they’re going to win. We talk about Florida star Walter Clayton Jr., who has been good, but not great, thus far. As if on cue, he makes a tough layup, but Texas Tech gets one at the other end to bring the lead back to nine. There are just about three minutes remaining now. Clayton misses a three-point attempt, as the game threatens us with a dull finish.

But then something interesting happens. Florida gets the rebound, Clayton kicks it back out to teammate Thomas Haugh, who hits a three-pointer. Texas Tech misses a foul shot and Haugh hits another triple. Clayton again gets the assist. It’s a three-point game. Florida fouls and Texas Tech gets another free throw. They miss again. Clayton hits a trey of his own, and we’re suddenly tied. Texas Tech calls timeout.

As a group, we decide we’re going to watch the next game at Moor Room. Some of our friends are already there, and there should be a better crowd. The whole night is still in front of us.

Texas Tech comes out of the timeout with a huge lay-up. But it doesn’t matter. Clayton hits another massive three-pointer to give the Gators their first lead in what feels like 3 hours. I leap out of my seat. The bracket is the furthest thing from my mind. I’m blown away by the comeback and delighted that a sporting event I’m neutral on can still make me feel this way. As I close my tab, a friend jokes that I want to get a shot for me and him. And I’m in a good enough mood to actually do it.

Florida wraps things up with some stops and free throws in the final minute or so. We all file out to head to the next bar. A few fellas are driving over, but I don’t ask for a ride. I’m happy to do the three-quarters-of-a-mile or so walk. It’s nice out, it’s Saturday, I’m with my friends, the night isn’t over yet.

This is the only way to live.

The Last Minute – My First Draft Novel Story

I’ve never been great at planning ahead. As a kid, most of my schoolwork was done at the last minute. I completed every project the night before it was due. I only studied for exams the day or two prior. In college, I pulled all-nighters to read entire novels and write the corresponding papers on them. As much as I’d like to tell you I grew out of this at some point in my last decade or so spent in the workforce, I don’t like to lie during the holidays.

The upside is a tight deadline can be a tremendous motivator. I learn that lesson again every year when I write my annual end-of-year blog post for this site, which is essentially defunct the other 363 or so days out of the year. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten it done before Dec. 31. Certainly not before Dec. 30.

The annoying thing is I almost always have a topic in mind by the middle of fall. I map it out in my mind and carefully decide what to include. And then Christmas shopping, drinking with friends, and family parties get in the way until there’s 36 or fewer hours left in the year.

This year was worse, though. After a dozen years of coming up with the *something* to write about – a topic that sums up how I’m feeling at the end of the year – I had nothing. This really should not have been the case. I got engaged in the early part of the year and am in the process of closing on a new house as 2024 fades out. Somehow, I couldn’t come up with anything I wanted to share on either of those topics. Maybe next year.

But this year, I want to tell you a story that starts even before I started writing these end-of-year posts and continues today. Back in Feb. 2011, I was a senior in high school in the midst of a week off for mid-winter break. My grandpa had just died a few weeks back and my brother and I had stayed with our grandma in South Buffalo for a few days during the break. This allowed us to be around if she needed anything during the day. But it also allowed us to hang out at night with our South Buffalo friends.

It was Saturday night – the last real night of break – and we were riding around the neighborhood aimlessly with our cousin Quinn and two friends, one of whom had the car. Eventually we drove by our high school, Bishop Timon/St. Jude.

As we traveled down Columbus Ave. toward Abbott Road, we all saw something incredibly strange. There was an old man staring straight out the side door. He didn’t react to us at all. As I recall, he had a mop in his hand and bucket at his feet. He was wearing a Bishop Timon shirt.

This may not sound strange at first, except for some key details. First, as I said, it was a Saturday night. And there were no events held at the school that day, as far as we knew. The lights were all off and there were no cars in the parking lot. Plus, Timon was a small school that had only one janitor – a much younger man who we all knew well.

There was likely a rational explanation, but it wasn’t easy to come by. Maybe he was there to do a deep clean of the school during break. Perhaps, but why at that time? Why would he still be cleaning eight days after students had left for break?

We never came up with any real explanation, but went on with our night and, eventually, our lives. I went to college the next year and got into journalism. I worked for multiple newspapers after graduation but started to get jaded about the future of the field and bored of sports.

I thought about writing a book, but I had no idea where to start. Somewhere around 2017 (I think), I started to look back on that man we saw. Maybe he was a ghost – the spirit of a past janitor. Maybe it was worse than that – something was keeping him bound to the grounds of the school forever.

The story began to expand in my head from there. But it was not a story about a tortured janitor, but rather the story of two high school boys in the early 2010s. These boys, who have the problems and anxieties that are common at that age, are just trying to have a little harmless fun one night when they begin to learn some terrible things about their school.

The story has changed quite a bit over the years, partially because I’ve taken so long to write it, and I imagine it will continue to change during the editing process. At first, I tried to plan out the story in my head, letting it come to me in bits and pieces. I even picked something up when I saw “The Book of Mormon” at Shea’s Buffalo in 2019.

As a new decade dawned in 2020, I resolved to finally start writing. When the COVID pandemic hit in March, I certainly had more time on my hands. But I didn’t use it to start writing. In fact, it wasn’t until early 2021 that I even started seriously considering getting to work. I was working from home as a contact tracer, which left me with more free time than I knew what to do with.

I decided I had to read a good amount more fiction before I could truly get started. Even though I spent years writing thousands of words of published work per week and reading thousands more, I certainly did not delve into fiction enough. I read a few books over the next month or so, including Drew Magary’s “The Hike”, which helped me more than I anticipated.

I also tore through Stephen King’s “On Writing”, a recommendation from my uncle. King advised his readers to just start writing their story, instead of planning out it fully beforehand. He compared writing a novel to pulling a tree stump out of the ground. The stump in this metaphor is your idea. The roots are your story. You can’t see them, though, until you start pulling (writing). At least that’s how I remembered it.

The book ended with an excerpt from a recently released (back when On Writing came out in 2000) short story: 1408. I’d seen the film adaptation with John Cusack years prior and loved it. In fact, it was one of my (many) inspirations when crafting my story. I took it as a sign.

I started writing my novel in the first half of 2021. I initially struggled with the urge to re-read and edit nearly everything I’d written within a day or so of writing it. In May of that year, reclusive and legendary Golden-Era Simpsons writer John Schwartzwelder gave his first interview in years. In it, he answered a question about his writing process. He told the reporter that since writing was hard in comparison to rewriting and editing, he simply wrote very fast and then got to the comparatively simple editing process. Another sign.

I wrote on and off for the rest of the year – never as often as I would’ve liked. But I prioritized seeing people and doing things again after spending so much time in front of a computer during the pandemic. In late Feb. 2022, I got laid off from my contact tracing job as New York State began the process of eliminating the service. Being unemployed for 10 weeks wasn’t great, but it did give me a chance to write more than I ever had before. I surpassed 50,000 words, wrote a few chapters I really enjoyed, and started to see the finish line.

In May of that year, I got a new job. Unlike during the 16 months I spent either contract tracing or unemployed, I actually worked most of the day. I remembered why it had taken me so long to start writing in the first place.

Over the next 18 months, I wrote relatively little, but the end of the story was still within sight. But in December of last year, my decade-old laptop finally died for good. I was advised to not even bother fixing it and to just get a new one. And, again, I procrastinated. I waited all the way until May of this year to buy one. I got some of the files from the hard drive of the old computer transferred to my new one. But one was missing.

Before you start feeling bad for me or, more appropriately, cursing my stupidity, I did obviously save backups. It just took me months to find the time to actually look for them. Over the past year, I started to feel distant from the story, almost disconnected. Maybe it was because I hadn’t written in so long or maybe I just couldn’t put myself in the shoes of a high school senior anymore. Stephen King did say this might happen.

At the beginning of the year, I made an offer to some of my closest friends. I told them that, if they wanted, I’d write them a short story as a birthday present. The only parameters were that the story would take place when they were in high school, and they would be the protagonist.

Nine of my friends took me up on the offer. Remaining on brand, I did not finish a single one of them early, despite having months to plan. Most of the time, I barely had a topic in mind before I got writing. I pulled all-nighters like I was in college again. It was so much more work than I anticipated. But the response I got from them was worth it all. I was back in the right headspace.

About six weeks ago, I finally searched for my backup files and was relieved to see that *most* of what I had written was still there. The only (minor) problem was there were a few thousand words missing. That was annoying, but crisis averted.

I thought about finishing it by the end of October and announcing it to my friends and family on Halloween. But I didn’t even open the backup files by then. I then thought about just finishing it by the end of the year and writing my annual blog post on it. So, I did! Eventually!

Between yesterday (Dec. 30) and today, I wrote more than 6,000 words to close out the first draft of my novel the way I intended. Nothing like some self-induced last-minute pressure.

And now, I suppose, the real work begins. Editing, finding a way to get it published, taking a cool author photo. All equally important steps to take in 2025.

If you’re reading this and you’re familiar with the literary or publishing world at all, please reach out. I’ll take any advice I can get. And if you’re reading this because you’re wondering when you’ll be able to read this novel, I promise it won’t take me 14 more years to finish this thing off.

Have a wonderful 2025 and Go Bills!

Best Stuff I watched in 2024

This is a funny exercise because I looked at last year’s TV and film lists, and on the TV front I mentioned I thought it was a down year but a few long-running series were ending that really held down the fort and now I’m putting together this year’s lists and somehow it feels like an especially down year for tv without those shows and a bit of a down year for movies as well. Television is sorely missing some of the top shows from last year which either had a down season (The Bear) or ended (Succession). I’d also add that I underrated The Curse last year, Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone’s insane show whose finale (which aired in 2024) was probably the best thing I saw on television this year, but overall I still consider that a 2023 show.

On the film front, I think similar to television the down year was driven a fair amount by the writers and actors strikes in 2023 so I’m hoping 2025 will be better for both. That said, I did have a hard time getting the list down to 10 movies as I thought there were a solid number of very good movies made this year, just not a ton of elite ones. Notably a few I left off like (A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, The Order, and Civil War among others) along with Megalopolis a movie I really wanted to talk myself into putting onto here but that I couldn’t quite justify. I’ll do my annual plug for my Letterboxd where you can get a comprehensive rundown of all the films I watched this year old and new. Moving onto the lists…  

TV Shows:

10. Black Doves

Basically, worked as a Shane Black-esque Christmas-themed action show. A fun combination of action, humor, and a little bit of heart. The only nitpick really is that in a film this combination works beautifully for 90-120 minutes but over a full season your brain spends a little too much time thinking about if anyone of what you watched made any sense.

9. What We Do in the Shadows

It may go down as one of the last great comedies of its era. 6 seasons in the show above all else remained focused on just how funny the concept of vampires living among us in Staten Island was. The show would gesture at larger themes at times but would mostly stay focused on just how funny that central premise was and for that, I will always appreciate it.

8. Bad Monkey

One of the most fun week-to-week TV-watching experiences I had this year. Just Vince Vaughn leaning into everything that makes him great as he plays a down-on-his-luck detective in the Florida Keys. I don’t think the show fully stuck the landing for me with its finale but it was just incredibly fun to watch Vaughn cook for a season.

7. Say Nothing

A few episodes into this season I thought it would definitely be my show of the year. The episodes centered in the 70s are as thrilling and invigorating as television gets. However, as the show jumps through time it loses some of that energy but beyond the energy it loses some of its complexity. This show about The Troubles weirdly chooses to sideline the complexity of one of the conflict’s central figures in Gerry Adams as such loses a bit of a tether on what made the early episodes great. Still a show well worth watching.  

6. The Penguin

The basic premise of the show is trying to do a gritty almost Sopranos-esque crime drama set in the world of Batman. Shockingly that premise mostly works! I mean it’s nowhere near as good as The Sopranos, but what is? However, it’s quite good, Farrell and Milioti provide the show with the right combination of pathos and scene-chewing entertainment to make the show very fun to watch.

5. Everyone is in LA

John Mulaney had a talk show on Netflix this year and it was a completely chaotic mess and I loved it. He had insane combinations of guests, that didn’t really make sense together but were entertaining. Richard Kind was the most unlikely TV sidekick and yet he worked to perfection. Just a very funny show from my favorite comedian and I’m excited to see it return.  

4. Survivor

Survivor this year produced two seasons that were probably the two best of the “new era” while being completely different which showcased why I still enjoy the show so much 47 seasons in. Season 46 was extremely boring in the pre-merge before leading to a post-merge where a cast that seemed to hate each other played the game horribly and kept getting themselves voted out. Now Season 47 by comparison was pretty consistently solid throughout its entire run and had a bunch of solid Survivor players who consistently were making smart moves peaking with “Operation Italy” (led by a Buffalonian). So truly the dichotomy of what I like about the show split into two seasons.

3. Curb Your Enthusiasm

LD pulled it off. He once claimed he would never give Curb a traditional finale since the reaction to the Seinfeld finale, which he still defended, was so negative. However, how did he change his mind on this? By what feels out of spite, ending Curb exactly how he ended Seinfeld, but this time he was going to make the audience like it. Guess what? He was right, he spent an entire season telling everyone that’s what he was going to do. Then the finale came along and he did it, and most miraculously of all it worked! Maybe I’m overrating this season as a whole because of that, but in a weak year for TV I’m very happy to reward the entire body of work of one of the greatest comedies to ever grace our screens.

2. Slow Horses

I caught up on Slow Horses this year on Apple and I think it might be the most consistently entertaining show on television. Oldman is incredible as Jackson Lamb an absolutely disgusting seemingly washed-up leader of the losers division of MI-5. The show year after year (and unlike most modern television it produces at least one season every year), is as reliably entertaining as TV gets. It’s both extremely funny and a well-structured spy show with a fun case every season. Honestly, this may have been my least favorite of the different seasons but it’s starting from such a high bar it’s still just about the best TV has to offer.

1. Shogun

A television epic. Telling a story in feudal Japan, Shogun more than any other show I watched this year felt like the best of television can still be. The show pulled off a really difficult balance, a show that was about colonialism without being heavy-handedly so. It made Feudal Japan seem incredibly strange but also a place where by the end of the season you felt you understood. It did so by giving us a collection of instantly iconic characters that were smart, sexy, funny, and totally unique.

Movies:

10. Challengers

One of the year’s most purely entertaining films. It works both purely as a sports movie and yet also as a quasi-erotic thriller. As someone whose favorite sporting event to attend is the US Open (tennis), the fact that the film starts with the two main guys just playing at the Junior US Open and then hanging out at the Open put me in a great mood. It’s truly a really good sports movie though, both by showcasing tennis in a way I’ve never seen it portrayed before, and the story it is telling about athletes at different points in their career and how they react to adversity is incredibly compelling. I feel like most of the audience was there for the erotic-thriller aspects (and those are there and those are great) but I was shocked at how true it felt to the world of tennis.

9. Nickel Boys

The film uses a filmmaking tactic that I won’t fully describe but just say it took a good 30 minutes for me to adjust to it. Only once you finally come to terms with the film’s approach do you begin to understand just how sad the story the film is telling is and man is the story one worth telling. I won’t spoil more than just saying it’s one of the year’s most brutal films.

8. Oh, Canada

This is a film that I probably wouldn’t recommend to everyone but if you are someone who has an attachment to Paul Schrader and his films (like I do) then I think it’s a must-watch. This is a story about a beloved (documentary) filmmaker who feels the need to set the record straight on this life and feels the need to clarify that many of his past brave artistic choices are a cover story for a trail of pain he left behind. The fascinating element of this is that the film makes clear that the story he’s telling about himself isn’t necessarily any truer than the outside perception of him. But his preference is to be remembered as a scoundrel, not a hero. Richard Gere plays all of this pain to absolute perfection.

7. I Saw the TV Glow

I initially heard about this film as a Trans allegory without much other details. After watching it, while that element of the film is clearly present, there is so much the film has going for it that makes it worth recommending. Especially if like me you are a fan of the filmmaker David Lynch and the show Twin Peaks with a particular inspiration coming from Twin Peaks: The Return. The film has multiple sequences that feel directly inspired by The Return and many of the story’s themes are about looking back at our past obsessions which would for me include many TV shows such as the original Twin Peaks. A wholly unique and beautifully told sad story.  

6. Evil Does Not Exist

Probably the film this year that left me feeling the most existential dread leaving the theater. Hamaguchi’s follow-up to Drive My Car for most of its runtime seems like a small and slow story. However, it keeps you engrossed with beautiful cinematography throughout and when the ending arrives man does it pack a brutal punch that I’m still trying to fully make sense of.

5. Juror #2

Courtroom dramas are one of the great cinematic art forms and sadly they have seem to have fallen by the wayside. Here 94-year-old Clint Eastwood takes arguably the greatest and most iconic in 12 Angry Men and gives it a fascinating twist. The film more than anything is a morality play that places us at the heart of the contradictions of the US justice system. I’ve talked to some people who wish the film maintained more of a sense of mystery in its premise but I think in some ways the lack of mystery is what makes the ending it goes for work so well. Sadly not given a full theatrical run but I’d truly recommend seeking this one out.

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Prequels are hard. If we already bought into the premise of the original film, a prequel laying out the motivations of characters we already believed in is asking for trouble, this is especially true when making a prequel to a masterpiece such as Mad Max: Fury Road. However, George Miller overcame those obstacles to create a fantastic film that stands on its own. The film isn’t the nonstop thrill ride of Fury Road but is instead a bit more contemplative (though still delivers the most draw-dropping action scenes of the year), showing us Furiosa constantly watching the world around her and learning. Anya Taylor-Joy’s iconic eyes leave her perfectly suited to this role as she watches the world around her decay. Chris Hemsworth’s turn as Dementus is the best villain of the year as he introduces something new to the world of Mad Max, a villain who while “demented” has these odd moments of humanity and an obsession with legacy that makes him feel utterly unique.

3. Anora

One of the more surprising films of 2024 for me. I only knew the basic Pretty Woman style premise coming in and walking out I was kind of blown away by both the film’s frenetic energy and just how funny it was. In Act 2 it makes quite a turn that feels like a Safdie Brothers movie crossed with an old-school slapstick comedy that had me laughing hysterically. Finally, I’ll add that Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov give two of the performances of the year here.

2. Dune: Part Two

Denis pulled it off! Dune is one of the strangest and most beloved science fiction books of all time and throughout two films, Denis Villeneuve captures so much of what makes the book beloved and so many of its bizarre eccentricities. This is the story of dynasties, weird drugs, destiny, and a Messianic figure who doesn’t even know if he can trust himself. Villeneuve captures all of that while making slight adaption changes that arguably make the story even more resonant for modern audiences. Finally, I’ll add that Timothy Chalamet had an incredible year that made me ready to follow Lisan al Gaib forever.

1. Hit-Man

Maybe a surprise #1 for some people, but to me it was the film this year that I had the most memorable emotional reaction to leaving the theater. Now as a Netflix film, I’m wondering if the fact that the vast majority of people didn’t see it in a theater is at least a partial explanation of the divide. Leaving the theater I was kind of shocked and elated that the film actually went there, it’s a movie that takes a bit over-the-top premise that for much of its run feels almost like a rom-com. However, it becomes something much stranger as it asks the audience to consider a tough idea, what if the most self-actualized and broadly appealing version of yourself was the “worst” version of yourself that gave into your most base impulses. A fascinating idea that Glen Powell executes to perfection and perfectly completed by the fantastic Adria Arjona. Finally, Powell and Arjona share a scene that relies on an iPhone Notes App that is probably the scene of the year for me.

Stay Hungry My Friends.

Best Stuff I watched in 2023

Overall felt like a very divided year. Thought it was a pretty down year for TV overall with a few really strong exceptions, but sadly a few of those exceptions were on their last season. On the other hand, I thought it was a pretty fantastic movie year, with a few truly excellent films and then there were probably another 10 movies or so I gave at least some consideration to making the back half of my list (you can see on my full list on my Letterboxd page).

TV Shows:

10. Party Down

One of the great canceled comedies returned I won’t say it returned in peak form but the form was quite strong. A couple of really fun episodes, and Ken Marino returning as Ron Donald was worth the price of admission as he’s still staggeringly funny in the role.

9. Mrs. Davis

I’m generally a fan of Lindelof’s shows so it’s no surprise I liked this one. A show that maybe had too much going on between the AI plot, the religious plot, etc… but overall, I liked its messiness and thought Gilpin was excellent.

8. Survivor

We got the two best Survivor seasons of the “new era” this year. Season 44 had the most dynamic new cast member in years in Carolyn, who was funny, weird, emotional, and surprisingly good at Survivor. Season 45 expanded to 90-minute episodes and the show feels like it began to return much closer to its roots as a result. While there were still too many twists and advantages in the game the expanded episode length allowed the editors to showcase the players’ interpersonal relationships and tribe life way more than they have in recent seasons as the game dynamics take up more airtime.

7. The Curse

I’m not sure if I would feel comfortable recommending this show to anyone… and yet I’m fully engrossed. Watching 5 minutes of this show feels like it takes 5 hours, but I’m pretty sure I’m underrating it and maybe it should be the show of the year. Every single decision Nathan Fielder, Emma Stone, and Benny Safdie make here feels maximally driven to make the viewers as uncomfortable as possible.

6. Full Circle

A great crime thriller mini-series from Soderbergh. Just a really electric roller coaster ride with a lot of weird twists and turns along the way. A great NYC show, including corners of the city that you rarely get to see on the screen.

5. Barry

One of the most ambitious shows of the last few years. Hader’s work as a filmmaker is really what made this show stand out as it took some absolutely wild swings. I’m still not entirely sure what I think of the ending but it’s a show I will greatly miss.

4. The Bear

A very experimental 2^nd season but one where I believe most of the experiments paid off so that when we got to the finale the emotions all felt completely right. Giving different characters standalone episodes paid off tremendously, especially with Richie’s journey in “Forks”. The flashback episode stacked with incredible guest stars, perfectly layers in depth to these characters’ journeys. My one complaint about most of the season was that I was worried it was becoming a bit “too nice” and then in the finale, it perfectly flips the script by turning what should be this moment of triumph into a moment of emotional despair. Excellent show.

3. The Righteous Gemstones          

The funniest show on television and it’s not especially close. I honestly don’t have a ton to add except I hope Danny McBride and co keep making hilarious television for years to come and I’ve said the phrase “Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers” many many times this year.

2. How to With John Wilson

A very odd show that I loved dearly. This show really was John Wilson digging into the weirdest parts of the world we live in (especially living in NYC) and showcasing them in a way that they likely never would be. It could be provocative, it could be disturbing, and it could often be very funny. It was also a secretly personal and confessional show although John himself was rarely in front of the camera. I’m glad John got to show us his little movies for a few years there.

1. Succession

For a show fully consumed by the idea of legacy, Succession secured theirs with an incredible final season. The interesting thing about the final season of Succession was that while it had shocking moments, I don’t think looking back anyone could really say they were surprised how the events played out as a whole. Here that is so satisfying though because it showed that the writers and audiences were fully aligned in their understanding of the characters. A tremendously sad, funny, and complex show that had maybe the best cast on television. Conheads for life.

Movies:

10. Blackberry

Of all the “brand” movies of 2023, I think this is my favorite, and it’s mostly because of Glenn Howerton who plays Jim Balsillie with all the maniacal energy he brings to Dennis Reynolds. The moment when he yells at Gary Bettman might be the single hardest I’ve laughed at any movie this year. Really sharply written rise/fall story here with just the right amount of cynicism.  

9. The Holdovers

This feels like a coming-of-age/holiday classic already. A story that at its core is about a group of very lonely characters coming together during a time of year that is at once the most vibrant and family-oriented but what can often be the most isolating. Carried by 3 wonderful performances that layer each of the central characters so well.

8. Godzilla Minus One

7. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

6. John Wick: Chapter 4

Combining the write-ups of what I feel are the 3 best traditional action blockbusters of the year. All these movies are premised on delivering spectacle and all 3 deliver in completely different ways. Godzilla tells a grounded story of people living their lives in post-WW2 Japan but just happens to include an extremely well-realized terrifying monster wreaking havoc. My personal favorite sequence of the movie is when it just fully rips off Jaws but with Godzilla instead of the shark.

The Mission: Impossible movies are probably my favorite movie series at this point. All the movies are at a minimum good, and I even enjoy how the series has changed from basically an auteur experimental playground to the McQ/Cruise collaboration where they find increasingly insane ways to danger Cruise’s life. This probably isn’t my favorite Mission but I do love it, it’s got multiple amazing set pieces (the car chase in Rome is my favorite), introduces Atwell who has great comedic chemistry with Cruise, and brings back the absolute legend Henry Czerny as Kittridge.

If Mission: Impossible isn’t the best movie series right now it might really be John Wick. Chapter 4 is the full realization of the series’ potential, as the film keeps delivering increasingly insane and inventive action scenes (including the coolest gun I’ve seen in any movie). I’m not sure if this is the end of the series but if this is it then it went out fully realized.

5. Asteroid City

A structurally strange movie that when you are watching it has a framing device that feels out of place and distracting for most of its run time but then has a scene toward the end (including a surprise cameo) that fully unlocks the entire movie and has me convinced it’s one of Wes Anderson’s best.

4. The Killer

David Fincher is back on his bullshit, taking a semi-trashy premise and making it with such skill that you can’t help but be fully absorbed. Fassbender seems like both the coolest person alive in this and kind of a total loser, it’s amazing. Just immaculately shot and a fascinating commentary on what it means to live in the present (something many current auteurs avoid). A great companion piece to this film is Fincher’s good friend Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, which has Fassbender in a supporting role, and is fascinating to see their differing approaches to similar material.  

3. Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese might be the most important artist currently working/living and he again delivers one of the year’s best and most provocative films. A horrifying depiction of the worst of humanity, watching the Osage people be absolutely brutalized for the simple crime of having something that could be taken. The cast is astonishing here, Gladstone’s resilience, Leo’s stupidity, the terror of De Niro but the MVP of the film is Robbie Robertson’s score, which is both so propulsive and so haunting all at once. Here I’ll link to Scorsese’s tribute to maybe his best friend and most important collaborator Robbie Roberston which is one of the most moving portraits of a friendship I’ve ever read, and after reading it I’d highly recommend watching this video, (warning reading the tribute and watching the video in succession may make you cry).

2. Ferrari

Hard for me to be fully objective about this one, Michael Mann has become maybe my favorite filmmaker over the past few years and this was the first time I got to see one of his films in a theater since that happened, and not only that but I was able to see it a few months ago at a screening at the New York Film Festival. That all being said I think this is a major work of his, Driver and Cruz are so overwhelmingly great here as these broken people, one who is trying as hard as he can to push forward and ignore all the suffering he has in his and another who can only wallow in the past and in all she has lost. Both are broken and codependent on each other while they desperately want anything else. This also features the most visceral racing scenes I’ve seen in a film, including one scene that I’m still in shock just thinking about.

1. Oppenheimer

In the end, I think Christopher Nolan’s epic is the film of the year. This movie overwhelms the senses in every way, with a scope so vast, and every moment is all engrossing. Christopher Nolan’s structural time gambits work to perfection here as you feel the entire weight of history collapsing into these few key moments. Having known very little about Oppenheimer’s life going into the movie (outside of his work at Los Alamos) I was surprised how much of the film dealt with the charged political dynamics of before and after the bomb dropped and especially left politics of the time and that those scenes were as dynamic and engaging as basically any part of the film. Just an insanely loaded cast and everyone delivers, but I do want to shout out Matt Damon who I think is underappreciated and delivers a great performance that easily flies under the radar. Finally, I’ll say the Trinity Test is one of the most jaw-dropping things I’ve seen in a theater, with the only possible exception being the sequence later in the film when Oppenheimer is speaking to a crowd after the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and starts visualizing the costs of his actions.

Leaving the Door Open

I can trace my lack of faith in a higher power to a heartbreaking Buffalo Bills loss. That sounds like some incredible hack joke writing, but it’s the truth. In fact, we just passed the 20^th anniversary of this game.

If you’re a diehard fan trying to rack your brain to decide which game I’m referring to, don’t bother. For starters, you probably won’t remember it. And anyway, I’m gonna tell you about it.

The year was 2003, I was 10 years old. The Drew Bledsoe Bills came flying out of the gate with a 31-0 beatdown of Tom Brady and the Patriots in week one. But, by mid-December they were 6-7 and desperately clinging to slim playoff hopes. They were on the road against a more talented Tennessee Titans team. Late superstar QB Steve McNair was out, and capable backup Billy Volek was in. Eddie George had a quintessential Eddie George performance (23 carries for 67 yards).

With the Titans leading 28-20 late in the fourth quarter, Bledsoe found tight end Mark Campbell for a crucial touchdown. On the ensuing two-point conversion attempt, Bledsoe spotted receiver Bobby Shaw streaking toward the right pylon. He caught it…then he hit the ground. The ball popped up and he couldn’t corral it. Game over. Bills lost 28-26, falling to 6-8 and out of playoff contention. Two weeks later they’d finish the season 6-10.

All throughout the final minute of that game – which, of course, represented about five minutes of real time and felt like an hour – I was praying. I prayed that the Bills would tie the game. Because if they tied the game, maybe they could win in overtime. And if they could win in overtime, maybe they could beat the Dolphins and a Patriots team that hadn’t lost since September in the following two weeks. And if they did that (and got some help in the form of other AFC contenders losing), they’d make the playoffs. And maybe, if they made the playoffs, they’d win the Super Bowl.

But that obviously didn’t happen. And because it didn’t – because this Bills team that threw 11 touchdown passes all season and was held without an offensive touchdown five different times didn’t convert a two-point conversion near the end of a doomed campaign – I started down a path away from an all-loving and all-powerful Christian God toward a less comforting, more uncertain, unaffiliated agnosticism.

As a 30-year-old man, I wish I could tell you I handle such losses with more grace and dignity two decades later. But even a non-believer like me knows lying is immoral.

…

I should say up front that I know I shouldn’t allow myself to get so upset about sports. After all, I know I don’t have any impact on what happens out on the field. I can’t control whether or not my teams play well, what moves the GMs make, what the coaches do, or even the calls the officials make. After more than a quarter-century of obsessively following my teams, I’m often left to wonder what exactly I can control, aside from where I watch the game.

With losing and heartbreak comes the search for consolation and silver linings. I’m not the first adult to realize the value of being an obsessive lunatic about sports is in the community it allows you to form. The tailgates before Bills games, the friends I’ve made watching soccer at Mes Que and Banshee, the group chats dedicated to talking Bonaventure basketball, everything I’ve gotten out of hosting a weekly Sabres podcast – these are what makes sports worth obsessing over.

Of course, this isn’t much of a comfort when things start to go haywire for one of my teams. I stop being a rational 30-year-old man with a full-time job and become that kid praying desperately for Drew Bledsoe to play like anyone but himself. This behavior – acting insane about sports – has been with me longer than just about any of my personality traits. It’s less of an emotional reaction to something I don’t like and more of an unplanned and unwelcome visit to a version of me I’d rather not exist. And when I go to that place, memories from all my previous visits play out in front of me like a montage of futility.

…

It’s November 2001, I’m eight years old. The Yankees are playing in game 7 of the World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, but I’m too young to stay up late enough to watch. Instead, I toss and turn all night, amid stress dreams and nightmares about the Yankees losing. I wake up in the morning to find out the reality is even worse. I sob uncontrollably before getting ready for school.

It’s October 2003, I’m 10 years old. The Yankees have just lost game six of the World Series to the Florida Marlins. I watch at Halloween party my parents are hosting. I get up and walk toward the back room. My cousin gets up and ask if the game is over. I punch him in the face and then kick him when he falls on the couch. I’m grounded.

It’s June 2006, I’m 13 years old. The Buffalo Sabres are unexpectedly a game away from a Stanley Cup Final appearance. Despite five major injuries, they’re leading going into the third period. They give up three goals and lose. I still can’t look at a Carolina Hurricanes logo without my heart sinking.

It’s September 2009, I’m 16 years old. The Buffalo Bills are somehow beating the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football. Leodis McKelvin brutally fumbles a kickoff, allowing the Patriots to take a late lead. I throw the remote at a chair so hard, it bounces back and hits the TV. I run down the stairs at my parents’ house, straight out the front door. I pick up rocks from the landscape and throw them at the woods adjacent to the house. I scream wildly and then sit down on the porch and start crying.

It’s November 2012, I’m 19 years old. The Buffalo Bills are only down six to those same god damn Patriots. I’m watching alone in my dorm room. With less than one minute left, the Bills have the ball. I can hear my floormates yelling down the hall. Knowing their TV is ahead of mine, I stand up in anticipation. Ryan Fitzpatrick throws a game-ending interception. I punch my towel rack clean off the wall.

It’s September 2019, I’m 26 years old. The Tottenham Hotspur are playing their hated rival Arsenal. When Arsenal scores what seems to be the winning goal, I walk straight out of the bar without a word to my friends or girlfriend. I only turn around when I get a text informing me the goal has been disallowed.

It’s January 2022, I’m 29 years old. It’s the 13 seconds game – you know what happens. Instead of going to bed to be ready for work in the morning, I finish my 12 pack and watch sad YouTube videos until 3 a.m.

It’s March 2022, I’m still 29 years old. Recently unemployed and unsure what to do with my life, I go to DC with my friends to watch St. Bonaventure in the Atlantic 10 Tournament. A disappointing season ends with them missing two game-deciding free throws. I storm out of the arena and am on the street within 20 seconds of the final buzzer sounding.  

…

None of this makes me particularly special. Caring too much about sports might be the most normal thing about me. Every brutal loss on a big stage is followed quickly by viral videos of fans flipping out, breaking their TVs, telling Greg Roman they have a gun. I’ve never filmed myself performatively throwing away a Dak Prescott jersey, so I’m at least not at that level.

Despite all the self-flagellation in this blog, I don’t want to become the opposite kind of fan either. I get a little sad when I hear someone older than me say they don’t care anymore. I don’t want to lose the good parts of this whole deal either – tackling my friend onto a couch after Taron Johnson’s pick-six against the Ravens, tackling a different friend onto a different couch after a DJ LeMahieu home run in the 2019 ALCS, storming the court as a senior in college when Bonaventure hit a buzzer beater against a ranked VCU team, jumping up and down at a Mexican restaurant when Tennessee hit a walk-off field goal against Alabama, taking my shirt off amid a snow storm after a thrilling Bills win over the Dolphins, running out of Mes Que and down Hertel Avenue when Spurs pulled a miracle in the 2019 Champions League semi-final.

I worry that I’ll only get these moments if I accept all the bad stuff too. That going to bed with my jaw clenched in anger a dozen times a year is a non-negotiable part of the deal.

When the Texas Rangers won the first World Series in their six-decade history this year, I saw a video of a man who had been a loyal fan for his entire life. He must’ve been about 65 years old. His son filmed the last pitch of the game and then panned over to his dad. The balding, grey-haired fella didn’t even get up from his recliner. He just started silently crying.  

I don’t want that to be me. I know it beats being six feet under while your loved ones visit you and tell your gravestone all about the big win. But I want to watch my team win a Super Bowl, hoist the Stanley Cup, make the Sweet 16, win the EPL (lol) while I’m young. While I can still jump up and down and run around the neighborhood like a lunatic. Before I’m so old I can only weep.

…

I’m starting to think that as a sports fan, the misery easily outpaces the euphoria, and that boredom beats both 10 times over. And when I’m in the depths of post-game despair, I often wonder if watching one of my teams win it all could ever really be worth all this pain.

That thought crossed my mind after the Bills bizarre, brutal collapse against Minnesota last year. I walked out of the stadium in disbelief, unsure of how the Bills had blown a game that seemed so in the bag. It was the kind of loss that lingered when I woke up for work the next morning. Since I was having trouble focusing, I put my headphones in and decided to do the dishes. I picked a random playlist and, eventually, “I Shall Believe” by Sheryl Crow came on.

I started to think of the last scene of “The Haunting of Bly Manor”, where that song plays. To quickly summarize, the story of the show is told decades later by a woman at a wedding. You find out the woman was the gardener at the titular manor. The B plot to all the spooky goings on was that she had fallen in love with the au pair who also worked at the manor.

The climax of the finale involves the au pair, Dani, sacrificing herself to save the children she was hired to care for. She didn’t die, but without going too much into detail, she made a sort of agreement that allowed a malicious spirit to inhabit her body. She and the gardener, Jamie, start a life together, same-sex lovers in a time long before that was accepted at a societal level. Eventually, Dani feels the ghost taking control of her and, in an effort to prevent this, returns to the manor and drowns herself.

The song picks up in the final 3-4 minutes of the shows, when you realize exactly who’s telling the story. You see Jamie’s evening routine, filling her hotel bath and sink with water and leaving the door slightly ajar, hoping that Dani’s ghost would find its way in.

Sports fandom can sometimes feel like leaving the door open night after night, hoping against hope that the improbable will happen. Caring so much that it feels like it’s going to kill you and then continuing to care for reasons you can’t really articulate.

I thought about all of this while doing the dishes and started the song over when I realized I wasn’t really paying attention. About a minute in, I was struck by this section:

“And I do believe
That not everything is gonna be the way
You think it ought to be
It seems like every time I try to make it right
It all comes down on me
Please say honestly
You won’t give up on me
And I shall believe”

I started to think about Josh Allen and almost teared up. How embarrassing. I sighed and decided that I still did care about the team. That I wasn’t gonna check out or give up or even try to emotionally distance myself even in the slightest of ways. That I was always going to be the kid who appealed to a higher power to intervene on behalf of the 6-8 Bills. I thought of it as an active decision I was making, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I was justifying the way I was already going to feel. And maybe I only feel that way because of some hereditary curse or biological defect. All that was clear was that the Bills and all my other teams will have permission to hurt me, make me yell at the TV, and sulk for hours after a loss for the foreseeable future. Probably for the rest of my life.

As we head into 2024, I know almost exactly what I’m in for as a sports fan, because that experience hasn’t really changed much over the past quarter-century. And I know I’m far from alone in all this. Maybe you didn’t give up on the idea of eternal life in the kingdom of heaven because you couldn’t accept 2003 wasn’t the Bills’ year, but you have a story that makes you seem almost as ridiculous.

I can’t say whether this will be the year for the Bills or any of my other teams. But I can say that if it isn’t, I’m probably not gonna act real cool about it.

Hey, why break with tradition now?

Best Stuff I watched in 2022

Honestly putting together these lists has made me feel pretty good. I knew there were 6 shows guaranteed to be in my Top 10 and had trouble cutting the long list down to just 10. A bit of a bounce back year for movies as well, a few excellent blockbusters, some really smaller personal films I wish did better, and my movies 11-20 (you can see on my full list on my Letterboxd page) are all pretty good and I least considered putting them in my top 10.

TV Shows:

10. House of the Dragon

I considered a few different shows for this spot (for the record they were The Boys, The Dropout, The Bear, and Stranger Things) but in the end I went with the show whose highest points won me over more than most. I found the multiple time jumps and recastings confusing at times but there were many times the show felt like it would reach close to the highs of Game of Thrones. I would say most of those came when Paddy Considine’s decaying King Viserys was onscreen.

9. Winning Time

Not a perfect show but one every single week I looked forward to watching and one where I was basically consistently entertained. The Showtime Lakers are one of the great historical teams of all time and this show really captures the absolute joy of watching them play basketball but watching them exist off the court. Some of the liberties it takes with the stories annoy me, especially changing box scores for games I can look up, but man when it turns some of the greatest icons in sports history, Magic, Kareem, Pat Riley, etc… into compelling tv characters, I’m willing to forgive a lot.

8. Barry

Bill Hader remains one of my favorites and Barry continues to be an amazing showcase for him as a performer, writer and director. Just a really cool show, it continues to get darker and take risks/reinvent itself and I’m really looking forward to what they try next.

7. The White Lotus

Maybe the most deranged show on television. Mike White has an incredible ability to write characters that are extremely annoying but you want to keep watching anyway. These shows rarely have traditionally sympathetic characters and yet you are somehow invested in their stories. This is an incredible combination of the writing and performances, with to my mind the standout performances in the 2^nd season being Meghann Fahy and Aubrey Plaza.

6. Atlanta

A strange year for Atlanta, one of the greatest shows of the past decade has ended and it seemed to go away without as much ceremony as you would hope/expect. Most of this probably stems from an extremely experimental 3^rd season where half the episodes were almost Twilight Zone-esque stories that had nothing to do with the main cast. Generally, I greatly enjoyed those episodes but thought there were some diminishing returns by the end. When the main cast came together though, magic consistently happened. Then by the time came back for the 4^th season, which aired in the same year, people didn’t have enough time to get excited about the final season of a show that had just aired, but excited they should have been. The 4^th season was Atlanta operating like the unique treasure it was. Weird stories with the best cast on TV, a standalone episode about the fictional origins of The Goofy Movie, and a finale that for most of its runtime could have been any random episode of Atlanta.

5. We Own This City

Basically, a spiritual successor to The Wire, which is extremely high standards but it lives up to it. Simon creates shows that educate you, make you angry, but most importantly keep you entertained and engaged like no other. This show also features an absolutely legendary performance by Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins, an absolutely horrifying, hilarious, human and captivating man.

4. Andor

As someone who grew up absolutely loving Star Wars, I felt pretty close to sick of it. The Disney era has been a huge disappointment, with a couple of fun movies, one solid show in the Mandalorian and besides that a wreck of disappointment especially in the last few years. The way this year started with Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan, which felt like cheap fan fiction that only existed to satisfy the needs of Disney+, I was just about ready to give up. I then began watching Andor and couldn’t believe it, Star Wars could actually still be great, and great in a way that it had never been great before. Andor is a spy story, it is a prison break story, it’s a heist story and it’s the story of the making of a revolution in the world of Star Wars and it’s all brilliant. Tony Gilroy doesn’t come to Star Wars from the perspective of a fan and as a result rekindled my fandom like no one else could have.

3. The Righteous Gemstones

The funniest show on television. Danny McBride’s shows will likely always find a way in my top 10 lists when they air and Gemstones has a chance to become my favorite. The entire cast is excellent, with Patterson as Judy and Goggins as Uncle Baby Billy being my personal favorites, but I loved how the world of the show grew bigger this season and its ambition grew as well with some incredible set pieces.  

2. Better Cal Saul

Another brilliant show from the crew down in Albuquerque and another landing stuck. BCS as a premise sounded insane and seemed destined to never live up to Breaking Bad. Somehow though the show that not only lived up to Breaking Bad but in some ways surpassed it. There were many reasons they ended up pulling it off were but the primary two were Odenkirk showed himself to be an actor beyond anyone’s imagination and the show built a character in Kim Wexler, played brilliantly by Rhea Seehorn, that served as the emotional backbone. The final season was a one that dove into the show’s origins, some of the themes of the opening season, a deeper dive into the opening flashforward that began every season and finally by going back into the place it all started with some scenes with Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. It’s ending served as a capstone for the entire project and is one of the greatest accomplishment in TV history.

1. The Rehearsal

The most daring show on television and quite possibly the boldest one I’ve ever seen. Nathan Fielder takes some of the elements of Nathan For You and pushes it to extreme levels. By the time you get to the end of the show you are worried about what the broader implications of what Fielder has done here but when you start to question that it forces you to question much more, whether reality television is at all acceptable and whether child acting is too dangerous. While doing all this the show never stops being insanely funny.

Movies:

10. Confess, Fletch

Just a delightful way to spend 90 mins. Jon Hamm is excellent here as Fletch, a quasi PI/journalist, wrapped up in a murder/theft. He is effortlessly charming and funny and gets to drink with John Slattery again, I hope we can sign up for one every other year (the insane release strategy makes that unlikely). 

9. Kimi

Potentially the only good movie that will ever be made about living during the peak of COVID-19. It does this by being a play on Rear Window and the other voyeuristic thrillers that inspired it, utilizing the isolation of COVID to its fullest extent. Probably not a surprise that Soderbergh the director of Contagion, a movie that predicts the ramifications of a global pandemic, is the one that nails telling a different type of story during this time.

8. TÁR

Cate Blanchett as composer Lydia Tár is the performance of the year. Just a full inhabiting of another human being that feels so alive. A fascinating portrait of today’s culture and the way a “great artist” both abuses their powers and the mechanisms that exist to punish them. The last stretch of the movie may go on a bit too long but it ends with an absolutely fantastic joke.

7. AmbuLAnce

Michael Bay decided to make a stripped-down character driven movie and the result is a heist movie with a 90-minute chase sequence and to me that is beautiful. Some of the most exciting sequences in any action movie I’ve seen in years, Bay seems to really understand how to use drones in an exciting way. By Bay standards a pretty compelling and grounded story with relatable characters along with a delightfully unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal performance.

6. Nope

Jordan Peele is one of the last filmmakers who seems to be allowed to make original movies on a giant scale. Nope is my favorite of his films yet, a riff on Spielberg that is entirely about the present but feels in its most exciting moments like I’m watching Jaws or at least something close.

5. Decision to Leave

An incredibly shot and engrossing noir. My personal introduction to Park Chan-wook was the extremely underrated and under-watched AMC miniseries Little Drummer Girl and this increased my fandom and desire to seek out his previous films tremendously. Tang Wei is absolutely captivating. Many filmmakers struggle to make smartphones into compelling entertainment, but this film understands both how they are practically used in our lives while also making it cinematically compelling.

4. Avatar: The Way of Water

James Cameron is once again the king of the world (that world might be the planet Pandora). Cameron’s long-awaited sequel seems him taking the story to Big Jim’s favorite place, the ocean, and what results is an overwhelming experience. Once the film arrives in the water the film reaches a new level and is so visually breathtaking you can not believe what you are seeing isn’t real. The story is anchored in cliches, in the same way many of Cameron’s works are, but few people better understand to utilize these cliches and archetypes to tell a great captivating story. My favorite character coming out of this movie is Payakan, the Tulkun (aka whale).

3. The Fabelmans

Spielberg tells his own story, and yet does so in a way that I still feel we will never fully know the truth. Here we might get the closest to it, and still it’s hard to know whether this is how he remembers, how he wishes he remembered it, or some combination there within. Some really great performances by Dano and Williams as his parents, who anchor the film and really the backbone of the story of their separation. At one point the film turns into what seems like a broad high-school bullying drama and I was worried momentarily it would lose me however it takes a few really surprising turns here anchored by Chloe East momentarily stealing the movie as “Sam’s” girlfriend. Also, the ending is maybe the happiest I’ve been leaving a movie all year.

2. The Banshees of Inisherin

An achingly funny and achingly bleak film. A story about loneliness, friendship, and the fucked-up nature of Ireland. It features multiple of the best performances of the year in the main quartet of Farrell, Gleeson, Condon, and Keoghan all delivering dimensions to characters that in the wrong hands might come off as one-note.

1. Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise has long been my favorite movie star and this right here is a performance and a film that showcases exactly why. The long-delayed sequel to an extremely weird and almost plotless 80s sensation arrived and blew away everyone’s reasonable expectations. Why did it do this because Cruise willed it into being. He waited to make the movie until he was confident the film actually had a story that could work, he made sure what we saw on the screen were in his words, “real Gs and real speed”, he forced the studio to wait until it could be released in theaters for the world to see because that’s where this film deserved to be seen. I may be overrating this movie but when I walked out of seeing it, it felt like Tom Cruise had saved movies and was showing us a way forward and man that felt important. I hope we take that path.