A Few of My Favorite Things

That have little to do with the themes of this newsletter

While I’ve been “thinking in public” at this blog and others since 2011, it sometimes strikes me that readers are getting a rather limited view of who I am and what I like. Sure, you’ll have a good sense of my theological (and, sometimes, political) convictions, my curiosities and passions as a historian, and how I approach higher education. All of which is important to me… but only a small slice of my interests.

Every once in a while I’ll write about a favorite musician or non-academic writer, or include a pop culture link near the end of my Saturday links wraps. But in the ongoing spirit of providing distractions from the incessant pull of a dire news cycle, I thought I’d dedicate a post to sharing a few of my favorite things having nothing to do with the stated themes of The Pietist Schoolman. I’ll open up the comments section to everyone today, in case you want to suggest your own favorite distractions.

PBS Passport

We started making monthly contributions to our local public TV station long before we realized that it included access to Passport, which lets members stream all sorts of new and old content through the PBS app and website. I’ll occasionally dip into the back catalog of Ken Burns or the partial library of American Experience, which currently includes a selection of documentaries going back as far as the 1991 The Presidents entry on LBJ. But more often we use Passport to watch historical dramas, from the religio-political twists and turns of Wolf Hall to the frothier Miss Fisher Mysteries (an Australian series about a Jazz Age detective).

Reruns of Gilmore Girls

Back at the turn of the century, when I was first watching this series about mothers and daughters, I simply enjoyed how actors like Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop, and especially Lauren Graham brought to life the the whip-smart writing of Amy Sherman-Palladino. I certainly didn’t imagine that a quarter-century later something called a “streaming service” would deliver Gilmore Girls episodes to my TV (or phone!) on demand. Or, more importantly, that one of my favorite shows would become something that I could share with my own daughter.

The last half-hour of CBS Saturday Morning

The first 90 minutes of this weekend production from CBS News are fine, especially when it features profiles of authors. But I’m especially interested in what happens after 7:30.

First, The Dish is the program’s weekly profile of chefs from around the country and world. While I love a good cooking program like America’s Test Kitchen or New Scandinavian Cooking, these segments are less about technique and ingredients than the people who prepare interesting dishes in unique restaurants. More often than not, their biographies are as compelling as their cuisine, especially when The Dish features immigrants whose restaurants let them reconnect with their heritage.

Then every episode of CBS Saturday Morning ends with a couple of musical performances by a featured band or singer-songwriter. Most often, Saturday Sessions showcase artists working in the broad genre known as Americana, which branches across bluegrass, blues, country, folk, gospel, and rock. Sometimes the guests are already familiar to me — e.g., Twin Cities brother act The Cactus Blossoms shared their retro harmonies earlier this month and the critically acclaimed Waxahatchee were there in October — but Saturday Sessions also introduce me to musicians that I don’t know at all or have only heard in passing — like the most recent guest, Amythyst Kiah.

Josh Turner’s Guitar Channel on YouTube

I like to think that I’m a decent guitar player with eclectic musical tastes, but I’m dazzled by Joshua Lee Turner, a young musician who has been sharing performances at YouTube since 2007 (when he was 15 years old). Sometimes he’ll act like a digital age one-man band, as when he layers multiple guitars, vocals, and drums into a shimmering version of The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses.” But I also enjoy his collaborations with like-minded YouTube players, like when he, Reina del Cid, and Toni Lindgren covered Big Thief’s “Shark Smile” while sitting on a beach as the sun set.¹

Jet Lag: The Game

Speaking of YouTube… one benefit of parenting teenagers is that they discover content that is completely off my Gen X radar. Last year my geography-loving son suggested that we watch something called Jet Lag: The Game, produced by a popular online content creator named Sam Denby and two of his writers, Adam Chase and Ben Doyle.

Like a lo-fi version of The Amazing Race, each season of Jet Lag has Adam, Ben, and Sam compete against each other in a variety of games whose boards are cities, countries, continents, or (in the least satisfying season) the entire world. Sometimes they bring in another YouTuber and form teams of two, as when they played Capture the Flag in Japan or criss-crossed Australia earlier this year. But our favorite seasons have been games of Tag or Hide and Seek in western Europe, with each of the three Jet Lag-gers taking turns as the runner while the other two chase him — mostly on train, subway, bus, and foot. Filmed entirely with iPhones, Jet Lag is consistently fun, often funny, and surprisingly non-touristy, since so much of it ends up taking place in towns and neighborhoods that are rarely frequented by American visitors.

1980s/1990s Radio Dramas

YouTube is doubly great because it hosts audio, not just video, content. During COVID I revived an older interest of mine and started using it to listen to comedies and dramas from the Golden Age of Radio. But while I can still enjoy Fred Allen, Jack Benny, and The Shadow, I don’t think the Thirties and Forties have exclusive claim to the Golden Age mantle. In fact, I’ve learned that there was some inventive radio production going on deep into the age of television…

For example, those of you are waiting for the next season of Andor to make up for some of the less successful recent additions to the Star Wars universe may want to check out the versions of the original three movies produced by National Public Radio in 1981, 1983, and 1996, respectively. (The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite, on the radio as on the silver screen.) Only a few members of the original cast reprised their roles (Mark Hamill, most notably), but the radio dramas are engrossing. What’s lost in visual effects is gained in storytelling, since the writers added background scenes and supplementary dialogue based on earlier drafts of the film scripts.²

Then my favorite series from this second Golden Age of Radio comes from the other side of the Atlantic. There had been several entertaining radio versions of the Sherlock Holmes stories, including the one that paired Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce on their off days from making Holmes movies for Fox and Universal and a limited-run series in the mid-1950s featuring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. But for my money, the best Holmes and Watson on the radio were Clive Merrison and Michael Williams³, who recorded almost every original Holmes story for BBC Radio 4 between 1989 and 1998. While faithful to Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels and short stories, Bert Coules and other writers often played with narrative sequence and added scenes to flesh out characters. Particularly poignant are “The Empty House,” which starts with Watson grieving the deaths of Holmes and his first wife, and “His Last Bow,” where the aging doctor is missing his retired friend and dreading the start of World War I.

Strat-O-Matic Baseball

Not all of my pleasures are delivered on a screen or through ear buds! Readers from the old days at WordPress may recall that I spend my baseball off-seasons playing a card-and-dice game called Strat-O-Matic. Founded in 1961, “Strat” takes actual historical statistics to let you replay seasons or simulate new combinations of players. From 2016 to 2020, my young son and I managed to play the equivalent of an entire season using Strat’s collections of Hall of Famers.

He’s moved on to video games these days. But as a way to force myself to spend at least part of my sabbatical relaxing, I’ve been simulating a new season that pits eight of the greatest teams of the Sixties against each other. I’m afraid my 1965 Twins were mastered yet again recently by the 1963 version of Sandy Koufax, who won a 1-0 no-hitter after Mudcat Grant lost his perfect game in the 8th inning. But a third of the way through the season, the Twins are still leading the AL division in my mini-league, thanks to a 1961 Yankees team whose power hitting can’t make up for its mediocre pitching.

1. Now playing as Elle & Toni, their acoustic cover of the Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face” is another YouTube musical highlight.

2. And John Williams’ music is still there. Speaking of, the new Music by John Williams documentary on Disney+ is terrific. It’s genuinely exciting to watch footage of him conducting the London Symphony Orchestra the first time they record the famous fanfare that opens the movies.

3. Williams’ wife, Judi Dench, made a cameo as Mrs. Hudson during the two-part 1998 production of The Hound of the Baskervilles.