Lynchburg

I really find Lynchburg kind of intriguing. It’s a shame it carries all that Jerry Falwell/Liberty University baggage that makes me (and I imagine much of America) reluctant to visit. It has very much a small-scale Pittsburgh vibe, from the topography to the impossibly large Victorian mansions in Rivermont. It’s apparent there was a lot of money there a hundred years or so back. There’s some great architecture, and the view from the park on the other side of the river is really nice.

I think a lot of people expect Virginia to be very southern and pastoral and bucolic, and there is certainly that aspect of it, but most of urban Virginia — not just the western cities of Roanoke and Lynchburg but also places like Richmond, Hampton, and Newport News — feels considerably more Rust Belt than Sun Belt.

Maybe a full weekend soon. Given two days in Lynchburg, I should finally be able to find at least one decent place to eat there, right?

Crash

I woke up in a cold sweat around 3:00 this morning.

I dreamed that the Man Who Would Be President™ did something spectacularly stupid that resulted in a stock market crash (I think the Dow plunged by about 4000 points), and that I was the last person in America to hear about it because I was taking a Twitter break.

I am not at all amused that I now have dreams of this sort.

Love isn’t…

I’d think this was pretty cool, but:

I’m no longer in my 40s.
I no longer live in Winston-Salem.
I’m so very not looking for love.

That said, it ties in with something I was thinking about this morning. I could never love anyone who:

Makes a line of cars wait while he backs his monster SUV into a small space in the parking garage.
Shoots video using his phone in the vertical (portrait) mode.
Could ever justify supporting the Trump regime for any reason whatsoever.
Does not understand when to use “your” rather than “you’re” or vice versa.
Owns no books.
Thinks he has the right to listen to the Eagles (or Nickelback, or Twenty One Pilots) in my presence.

I think this will be enough bullet lists for one Wednesday.

Videolog: Dirty Boots

Sonic Youth
Dirty Boots (1990)

I have officially decided that this song and this video are pretty close to the perfect representation of almost everything I liked about the 1990s.

And I would have killed for that boy…

Five things about Albuquerque

In no particular order:

It was the subject of a song my dad used to sing to me as a joke when I was little. I have never been able to identify the actual song. I imagine it was from a TV show sketch or something.
It’s the place where Bugs Bunny should’ve made that left turn.
It is the home town of Ethel Mertz (a/k/a “Ethel Mae Potter. We never forgot her.”)
It’s the only place I’ve ever been pulled over by a police officer who subsequently apologized to me for doing so.
I have to go there the first week in April for a conference. For the record, I will not be taking the itinerary below.