The Amazing (?) Five

One of the podcasts I listen to is “How to Be Amazing” with Michael Ian Black. If you aren’t familiar with him, he’s an actor and comedian you’d like recognize. The podcast is a series of long-form interviews, each usually about an hour, with people from all walks of life who have distinguished themselves in some way: scientists, athletes, actors, musicians, authors, philosophers, philanthropists, and so on. The one thing they all have in common is that they’ve reached a high enough level of distinction in their field to be considered “amazing.”

At the end of the conversation, the guests are asked to offer some recommendations, called “The Amazing Five.” Every guest is asked the same five questions. For today’s post, I’ll be answering those questions myself. It’s up to you to decide whether or not there is anything amazing about my answers.

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Name a film or television show you’d recommend.

I’m going with the TV show “Ed,” which was on NBC back in the early 00s, and ironically, had Michael Ian Black as a cast member, playing the ridiculous small-town bowling alley employee Phil Stubbs. The leads of the show are Tom Cavanaugh, who I guess is on “The Flash” now, and Julie Bowen, who plays the mom on “Modern Family.” Ed is a normal guy who was an attorney in a high-powered New York firm. When he lost his job and found his wife cheating on him the same afternoon, he abandoned city life and went back to his hometown of Stuckeyville, Ohio, to start over. He winds up buying the town bowling alley, opens his own law practice in the pro shop, and begins pursuing his high school crush.  The best comparison I can make for this show is to call it an alternative universe “Gilmore Girls,” if the girls were replaced with a group of friends and a parallel group of high school counterparts. It’s set in a small town populated with quirky characters. The leads in the show talk fast and throw rapid-fire pop culture references around. It’s a warm and comfortable place to visit for an hour at a time. It’s on whatever channel UP TV is in the middle of the afternoon. They just started replaying season 1 last week, and hopefully they’ll keep it going in a consistent time slot long enough for my DVR to get all of the episodes recorded. 

Name some music you would recommend.

I’m going to go with my favorite album so far of 2017: “Near to the Wild Heart of Life,” by Japandroids. They’re a Canadian duo on their 3rd or 4th album. Their earlier work was all fast and loud guitar work, which was great, but this album came out a bit more polished with a different level of focus on the songwriting that really paid off. It's been in heavy rotation for me since it came out back in January.

What book would you recommend?

One book that has stuck with me since I read it last summer was “The Serpent King,” a YA debut novel by Jeff Zentner. I had read all kinds of buzz about it on Twitter before caving in an buying it. I don’t usually read young adult; mostly I stick with middle grade (since that’s what I write) or just any other variety of fiction or non-fiction titles with adult characters. This one completely owned me, though. I don’t even want to say much of what it’s about so anyone who might take this recommendation seriously can just discover it all on their own. I will say that it had some of the best writing I’ve encountered in a long time, and, outside of one plot point that I think could have been handled differently, everything about it was beautifully perfect. It's been winning all kinds of awards in the past few months, and deservedly so. I can’t recommend it enough.

What food would you recommend?

Smoked salmon from Seattle, Washington is incredible. It falls apart in your mouth instead of being the kind of fish jerky we find here in the middle of the country, and has a flavor that’s so amazing you have to take another bite to believe the one you just took actually tasted that way.

Anything else at all you would recommend? 

I guess to circle back to where this post started, I would recommend that anyone who hasn’t looked into podcasts yet do a little exploring and find one or two to try. My favorite would be a good place to start — “Stuff You Should Know.” It features two writers/researchers, Josh and Chuck, who begin with a topic, learn what they can about it, then have a conversation about what they learned. I’m sure I’ve written about it on the blog before, and with good reason. They discuss everything from pop culture to historical mysteries, politics, Legos, sociology, and quantum mechanics. Half the fun is learning so many different things from each episode. The guys also have great chemistry and frequently wander off the subject to follow any number of amusing tangents. If you’re thinking of checking out a podcast, I’d start with this one.

And there’s my Five!