Left to my own devices

We're counting down my 100 favorite songs of the 2010-19 decade, ten at a time. You know the drill by now....

In exactly one week, voters in the state of Iowa will caucus to decide who they think should be the next presidential nominee. It'll be a snooze fest on the Republican side, but quite the opposite for the Democrats. It will the serve as the beginning of a long primary season and, by virtue of its seemingly immovable place on the schedule, Iowa has what some consider to be out-sized importance for the dozen (technically) active candidates on the Democratic side. I am of mixed-feelings regarding next Monday. On the one hand, it's time we had real data. Not polls, not political ads, not stump speeches, not hyper-sensitive supporters engaging in online arguments and defenses -- real data. The only way we have that in this situation is for people to vote. On the other hand, results will barely be in when the mighty media wurlitzer will crank into gear, telling us how things really went down. That is the down side to concrete results of an ongoing electoral process -- narra

     H aving been a big Leonardo DiCaprio fan since the mid-1990s, I was disappointed when he wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his role in Titanic . Thus, in early 1998, began what was to become an annual tradition -- The Matt Awards. Perhaps one of the most egotistical things on God's green earth, every year I proceed to select the best in movie making, as a sort of consolation for the fact that very rarely do the Academy Awards align with my own yearly favorites. I used to do both nominations and then, a few weeks, pick the winners. After awhile I just went straight to the winners circle. This year, however, I feel like there were so many good movies from 2019 that I wanted to at least acknowledge their filmmakers with nominations. In a couple of weeks (before the Oscars ceremony), I will make announce the winners. No doubt you will all be on tenterhooks waiting for who will go home with coveted Matt Prize. Here, then, are the nominees:

Alright, it's been a few weeks. The holidays, and adjusting to the new year sort of put things off-track with the countdown, but let's get back to it and finish this! Up next in our list of Matt's 100 favorite songs of the (last) decade, we crack the Top 50. Let's see what we find...

There's a meme folks have been sharing on social media recently and, frankly, it rankles me on a particular level. It's one of those pro-church messages that couches itself in some sort of welcoming religious love, however, built within it is an insult. And I probably don't have to tell you wherein the insult lies. Here, then, is the wording of the meme, verbatim: "If you are having sex before are married, go to church anyways! If you are a drug addict trying to beat addiction, go to church anyways! If you are confused about whether you are straight or gay, go to church anyways! If you have an addiction to anything, go to church anyways! Churches are hospitals for the broken. Even people saved aren't perfect. It doesn't make you a hypocrite to go to church and do bad things, it makes you a hypocrite when you do them and claim that you aren't. Do you know how to break addition?!? By having people pray for you and pray with you!!! No need to be asham

Last weekend, Ashley & I drove by a new construction open house. I say, "drove by" in that we didn't actually stop and go in. There were three primary reasons for this. One, it was a two-story dwelling, and we're primarily looking for something that's one level. Next, the house is situated by a golf course, and if the news is any indication, golf courses are having a difficult time of it, so that introduces an element of built-in instability to the home purchase. Finally, there's a bit of mixed zoning going on in the developing neighborhood. Across the street from the house (and its fellow single-family residences) is a rather utilitarian-looking apartment complex. 

We had some good times together, he and I. It was the nineties, when the world was young(er). I had come out of the closet only a couple of years previously, and had started going to the local gay bar/dance club about a-year-and-a-half after that. I was gradually becoming more comfortable in my own skin. Dad, and my beloved maternal grandmother, Gummy, were yet to become sick and die from cancer. I was going to the local community college. Life was, if not great, good.

The last decade or so in pop culture has really been a nostalgia treat for folks around my age. Our sentimentality for intellectual properties such as Batman, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Transformers,The Conners, Will & Grace, etc. has been indulged to the nth degree. That's a positive, I suppose, though there is a downside: what will the youth of today have to look back on 20-30 years from now for their own nostalgia? The mining of past content to satiate the appetites of people longing to look back really does create a vacuum.