As I write, it’s the week before Thanksgiving and there’s still three fortnights to go until we take down the 2023 Unicorn Yoga wall calendar (real thing) and put up the 2024 Dogs Pooping in Beautiful Places wall calendar (also real) here at Chronogram headquarters. But this will be my last missive to y’all in MMXXIII, so I thought it would be good to tie up some loose ends and provide an update or five before we go blithely charging into the new year like a repatriated panda fresh off a Boeing 777. (So long Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and Xiao Qi Ji, you gorgeous black-and-white fur balls. I’m sure the bamboo tastes better in your homeland.)
This is the final issue of our 30th anniversary year, and I promise we won’t bother you—at least for a decade—with retrospective takes, rummages through the archives, and chest thumpings about how proud we are to still be here in a continually disrupted media environment littered with the corpses of former competitors.
That final sentiment is summed up in a note I received from a subscriber, who wrote to me upon receiving the November issue containing our 30th anniversary supplement: “Warmest and most heartfelt congratulations on 30 years. Most people won’t understand that this is an almost impossible achievement for print media these days. Your intuition, inventiveness, vision, and intellect, together with your trusted ecosystem of writers, subscribers, advertisers, copy editors, interns…I could go on, have gotten you here—to today. I am so fucking proud of you and this achievement.” To be clear, it’s not from my mother, she died in 2018. And besides, Mom wouldn’t have been so effusive—she thought I should have gone to law school.
Without further digression, here’s the year-end wrap-up
What Indeed Is Going On
In June, I wrote about a project I was engaged with at the time, listening to the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” as determined by the editors of Rolling Stone. At that time, I had only reached #307, Sam Cooke’s greatest-hits compilation Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964, and I predicted that I would be finished by Labor Day if I kept pace and didn’t give up. Well, I didn’t give up, but I didn’t keep pace either—I finished in late October. Overall, the rankings were a mixed bag, but as I noted at the time, ranking art is as silly as hats on snakes, but we love it nonetheless.
For those curious about the top 10 but not curious enough to visit the Rolling Stone site, here’s the top 10 in descending order: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill; Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan; Purple Rain by Prince and the Revolution; Rumours by Fleetwood Mac; Nevermind by Nirvana; Abbey Road by the Beatles; Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder; Blue by Joni Mitchell; Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys; and number one: What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye.
My prediction that either Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band would take the number one spot was a bust, and Sgt. Pepper’s didn’t even crack the top 20, sandwiched between Carole King’s Tapestry (#25) and The Velvet Underground and Nico (#23). Here’s all I’ll say about the top 10: Joni Mitchell’s Blue is perfectly placed at #3. And now, having listened to the greatest music of all time, I am back to listening to the crap music that I will always love.
Toothal Recall
In the August issue, I wrote about my complicated relationship with my teeth. How I’ve suffered a variety of tooth-related misfortune and that my dental hygiene habits are, well, subpar, at least from my dentist’s perspective. Here’s what I wrote: “My dentist loves my teeth. She loves my teeth way more than I do. I imagine that she thinks of my teeth the same way Suzanne Vega thought about Luka: She knows my teeth are being neglected, but there’s very little she can do. She can’t call Cuspid Protective Services on me. She gives me deep, searching looks and asks me how often I Waterpik, and I’m obliged to lie to her for both of our sakes.”
I didn’t bring her name into it as I don’t think my dentist reads my column and I didn’t want to make it any more awkward—”Someone mentioned to me that you compared our relationship to a song about child abuse, is that right?”—when I’m laid out on my back and she has her hands in my mouth. And as far as I know, she’s still blissfully unaware of what I wrote to this very day.
Imagine my surprise when we received the following message on our office voicemail: “Yes. Hello. My name is John. My telephone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. A couple of issues ago your editorial director Brian Mahoney wrote an article concerning his dental history in Chronogram. He mentioned that he had a longstanding dentist that he was satisfied with but didn’t mention her name. My longtime dentist retired last fall, so I’ve been looking for a new dentist. I was wondering if he could possibly share the name of his current dentist with me. So again, my name is John, and my telephone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. Thank you.”
Now I’ve received a wide variety of reactions to my work—vitriol, praise, horror, love, indifference, mostly indifference—but it’s never prompted a request for a recommendation of services. This leads me to believe that there’s a new vein of content to mine for columns in the new year: Unpacking My Relationships with Service Providers. In January, I’ll play back my customer service call with the sweet and helpful Sonos rep in Manila (hi Carmelita!) who walked me through setting up my stereo. For February, I could relive the trauma of getting a free estimate on attic insulation and being stalked for two years after not following through on the purchase of said insulation. In March, I can recount the tale of sure-handed Dr. Ghavami (no longer practicing) and my unexpected anal surgery. It’s certainly a deep well—this type of content I mean.
As for dentist-seeking John: I called him back and gave him the name of my dentist but made him promise to keep my name out of it.
Crop Killer
In October, I wrote about the girls—Lady Rossmore, Edwina, and Hildegard—the marijuana plants we had grown on our back deck and that we were about to harvest. Well, we harvested them all right, but they were afflicted with bud rot, or botrytis, which, according to the website of Quest Climate, makers of “powerful and effective commercial dehumidifiers for the cannabis industry, is “a common fungus many cannabis growers face at some point, especially those who are unfamiliar with controlling humidity and air circulation.” This feels like a bit of a dig on the part of Quest Climate. I know how to control humidity in my basement, but I am not familiar with how to stop the rain from raining outside, which it did for much of September as we neared the harvest. We managed to save a small portion of Hildegard, though sadly Lady Rossmore and Edwina were beyond help. It will be a ever-so-slightly green Christmas after all.
This article appears in December 2023.
