I know what you’re thinking: Tony doesn’t talk enough. I hear what you’re saying and am working to rectify that as soon as possible. More on that later.
Last year, my friend and podcast partner Stephanie Fowler finished and published “Chasing Alice,” which chronicled the life and violent death of her high school English teacher and how the community came to terms with its aftermath.
Between the apocalypse, Stephanie’s work on her book, and my work on my own book, the So What’s Your Story? podcast took a year-long hiatus. I’m happy to say that hiatus is over. You can follow the podcast anyplace you listen to audio.
If you’re not familiar with the show, each week Stephanie and I speak with writers about writing. We cover everything from the creative process to publishing and marketing to get a sense of how indie writers turn their ideas into books.
Much Talk, So Crypto
I wrote not too long ago about cryptocurrencies and cults. Specifically, I wrote about how Steven Mineo, in the weeks before his death, advised cult leader Sherry Shriner about investing in Dogecoin, and off-off brand crypto. You don’t need to understand cryptocurrencies to get the story, they’re kind of beside the point. I certainly know very little about them.
As a matter of fact, when I first wrote about the incident I called it “dog coin” as Steven had done. Part of my freelancing is editing for a financial blog and over the last year or so I’ve come to understand more about cryptocurrencies, but not much. Like a kid who took a lot of Spanish in high school, I can understand some of the conversation, but I can’t participate in any meaningful way.
Still, in celebration of the advance on my book, I sunk $100 into Dogecoin. This is ghoulishly consistent with my decision to buy an orgone pendant similar to one worn by another of Sherry Shriner’s victims, and my purchase of and mild obsession with Les Yeux sans visage, which inspired the last song Steven ever heard.
Dogecoin is up more than 600% against all sense and reason. What’s fun about it is that I have no intention of cashing it out. I wanted to spend $100 ironically, I never intended having to worry whether to sell it.
I was waiting for it to go to zero. Now I’m waiting to see how high it gets so I can be mad about not selling it at whatever turns out to be its highest price.
Berlin and the Old People
On this week’s Day Drinking on Delmarva Todd DeHart and I talked about the increasingly tense relationship between what the town of Berlin, Md. claims it wants to be and what it acts like it wants to be in the context of noise complaints about a punk band. It’s a kooky story given that it isn’t 1986.
I wrote about it here, but as always, you can listen to and follow the show here.
A Bagel Manifesto
Last but not least, as I mentioned I’ll be adding an audio component to this newsletter. I’ve been promising/threatening to put together my bagel manifesto for some time, and this is the first step. I’ll have an explanatory episode out next week, but the shortest version is that I am trying to come to grips with losing the culture war.
As the culture shifts, you can get mad about it or you can learn from it. Or, I guess, you can do a bit of both. For example, our culture has decided that bagels aren’t worth caring about, so garbage bagels are the standard. I’m still mad about that, as I’ll explain next week, but I’ll just have to learn to live with it.
As a 50-year-old white guy watching culture shift without his permission, it’s important to parse the difference between things that make me mad because I’m old and cranky (most things), and things that make me mad because a worthwhile part of the culture is slipping away.