20+ Things that were Rad in 2018
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A two-centimeter lump of cancer certainly threw the second half of the year for a loop (and will likely dominate the first half of 2019), but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t also a lot of cool stuff in 2018.
Here are some of my favorite things from the second-to-last year of the 2010s.
Books!
Educated. Fundamentalist Mormons. Stockpiles of guns and ammunition. Essential oils. Girls that don’t take showers or wash their hands after they go to the bathroom. What doesn’t this memoir have?
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. In a world of nuance and lots of gray, Eleanor sees everything in absolute black and white. But then — dot, dot, dot. One of the best fictions I’ve read in a long time.
Music!
The Interrupters. Ska made a comeback. With their excellent third record, the Interrupters found their way onto the radio. The radio! In 2018! What is the world coming to?!
I saw them play live three times in 2017. They skipped Salt Lake in 2018. In 2019, I’m checking them out with my favorite concert buddy: Paige! Masked Intruder is opening. I’m trying not to set my expectations too high, but I anticipate this being the best show ever.
Other stuff I liked:
- Say Hi – Caterpillar Centipede
- Cloud Nothings – Last Building Burning
- MXPX – Self-Titled
- Death Cab for Cutie – Thank You for Today
- Ogikubo Station – We Can Pretend Like
- Eminem – Kamikaze
- Justin Courtney Pierre – In the Drink
- Tokyo Police Club – TPC
Movies!
Crazy Rich Asians. It was funny, sweet, endearing. But the real reason it made the list is because Traci and I saw it in the movie theater. Other than kids’ movies, we don’t often make it to the movie theater. In fact, if our math is correct, the last grownup movie we saw together in a theater was The Bourne Ultimatum. In 2007. (It wasn’t until 2014-ish that we finally admitted to ourselves that we actually don’t really like movies that much.)
Another reason our trip to Crazy Rich Asians was noteworthy: We saw it after Traci’s chemo port was inserted, but before she started treatment. On the way home from the movie, she casually mentioned, “I WANT TO RIP THIS PORT OUT OF MY CHEST!”
Good times.
Podcasts!
What makes yardwork better? Podcasts! In addition to tried and true favorites like This American Life and Radiolab, I spent a lot of time with Reply All.
Here are a few of the episodes I loved:
- Long Distance Parts 1 & 2 — The hosts chase a phone scammer all the way to shady-business web in India.
- All My Pets — What happens when a high school shut-in fills her room with dozens of exotic pets and starts a YouTube channel and gets millions of fans? She goes nuts
- Autumn — This one’s a tearjerker about a young woman who uses The Sims to recreate her grandma after she dies.
I also got pleasantly sucked into the church planting episodes of the The Startup and loved the 30 for 30 episodes about Jose Canseco’s ‘roid rage and Ricky Henderson’s less-than-triumphant return to baseball.
The band!
After 13 years as a band — and a bunch of unsuccessful attempts at recording our first album — we decided to go ahead and release our second album instead.
Start a Band may not be the best record ever made (but then again, I guess it could be), but I’m proud we finished it. GRMLN is my favorite song of the bunch.
We sold and streamed enough copies on the record to bring home nearly $30 dollars in cold hard cash! (P.S. it costs $40/year just to have it on Spotify. D’oh!)
Feel free to give it a listen or download a copy ($5 on Bandcamp, $10 on iTunes).
Documentaries!
Tom DeLonge is my least favorite member of Blink-182 by a mile. (My favorite Blink record may be +44, the one they did without him.) So when Rhett sent me the link to this documentary about DeLonge, I was like, Uh, I dunno.
But I turned it on one night while I washing dishes and then I couldn’t turn it off. It was incredibly good — and it actually made me like DeLonge a lot more. Not enough that I need him to come back to Blink (Matt Skiba’s not really a good fit, but the last DeLonge Blink record was the worst in their catalog), but enough that I’d recommend this documentary to anyone who likes music.
Food!
My favorite restaurants are Red Robin and Chuck-a-Rama. So I guess that makes me a foodie.
This was the 10th and final year of throwing myself a birthday party at the Chuck.
Turkey. Stuffing. French fries. Rolls. All on the same plate. White, starchy carbohydrates, you’ve been good to me.
Art!
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M.C. Escher. In 2003, Traci went to the M.C. Escher museum in the Netherlands. In 2018, the museum came to us! The BYU exhibit was amazing.
High school!
A lot can happen in 20 years. College and kids. Marriage and divorce. Drug addiction, depression, suicide, cancer. Reading through our classmates’ stories was pretty heavy.
As Traci and I scrolled through the Facebook updates, we couldn’t help but think how lucky we’ve been.
A few weeks after the reunion, Traci found out that pesky lump was going to be a problem.
We’re still lucky. Traci’s got four more chemo treatments ahead of her, followed by a month or so of radiation, then a few more treatments and such to get things all wrapped up.
2018 was the year she got sick. 2019 is the year she’ll get better
Here’s to the New Year!