Imagine I have a Personal Digital Assistant and dive on into it, reader
Plus: kids were messed up before covid. And stories about Tetris and the Nordic music.
If you get something out of this newsletter or the Depresh Mode podcast, I would appreciate your financial support. Go here, pick a level that works for you, then select DEPRESH MODE from the list of shows. And thank you.
Let me share my calendar with you but you don’t have to show up to the appointments
I’ll have to check with the boss to make sure it’s okay but I am the boss, even though I often forget that.
This past week:
Monday - worked quietly by myself
Tuesday - interviewed S.E. Cupp for Depresh Mode. S.E. is a well-known cable news person who was once known for being a conservative. She hasn’t changed many of her viewpoints but “conservative” in America means something pretty different than it used to. She had a bit of a panic attack last summer which spiraled into a weeks-long loss of function. Can’t say what was behind it exactly but the tipping point was an upsetting video she saw on social media when she was out running errands.
She says her new strategy (after good medical care, therapy, and meds) is to have a REASON to go on social media. Maybe it’s go get news updates on something, maybe it’s to look for jokes, maybe it’s to kill time, but if you have intentionality, then you’re not just filling your head with anything that anyone cares to spray out there.
Later in the day, taped with Jarrett Hill and Tre’Vell Anderson from the Max Fun show FANTI. This is for a Depresh Mode special episode in our annual Max Fun Drive, which begins April 25th. The conversation was one of the strangest, funniest, and deadpannest I’ve ever had. Topics covered: glasses, rice, sugar. Can’t wait for you to hear this episode. It might be five hours long.
Wednesday - worked quietly by myself, went to therapy.
Here’s one of the images that came up in a Google image search for “therapy”:
That is nothing like my therapy but god damn I wish it was.
Thursday - interviewed John Darnielle, my friend who plays wonderful music in the Mountain Goats and writes wonderful books, the latest being Devil House.
This is for Depresh Mode. It’s unfair that someone can be good at music AND books. Quit hogging all the talent. John is one of my favorite artists in the world today and somehow he has become my friend. Which is so strange! But also not! I feel like I’ve been in conversation with him for many years so when I met him a few years ago, contributing to that conversation seemed kind of normal. We talked about Satan, drugs, anxiety, and Belgium
Then I had a nice meeting with my smart producers. Gabe has been providing foster care for a dog and that dog has found his forever home. So yay.
Taped with Janet Varney for that DepMo special episode. Areas covered: Wyoming, Dairy Queen, smells.
Tomorrow - taping with Dylan Marron for the same special episode. This coming Monday, my DepMo episode with Dylan comes out. Dylan is the author of Conversations with People Who Hate Me and the creator/host of the podcast of the same name. He calls up people who have left horrible comments about him online and sees if they want to do a friendly interview. Some say yes! I ask him why he does that.
What a week!
I shouted “COVID, dumbass!” at my computer but I was too hasty
I did that shouting because the headline in this New York Times article said, “There’s a Mental-Health Crisis Among American Children. Why?”
So I clicked on it and then it said “The pandemic is not the only reason”. Must have heard me yelling. Well fine.
It would be easy to blame the pandemic for changes in mental health that have been observed since March 2020. But in December, when the surgeon general noted a “mental-health crisis” among young people, he made clear that rising numbers of children and young adults were struggling with anxiety and depression before Covid-19. Between 2013 and 2019, A.D.H.D. and anxiety were the most common mental disorders among those 3 to 17 years old, with each condition affecting roughly one in 11 children, according to the C.D.C. More than one in five 12- to 17-year-olds experienced a major depressive episode. Yet in 2019, fewer than 15 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 17 received some kind of mental-health treatment. “Pre-Covid we had a mental-health crisis,” says John T. Walkup, chairman of the psychiatry and behavioral-health department at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “The biggest misconception is that Covid makes people mentally ill. From my point of view, Covid unmasked people who have underlying vulnerabilities.”
What if the person sleeping next to you is secretly a video game master?
In my case, I doubt it, seeing as how Jill never plays video games. She tried Animal Crossing once for five minutes. But this story from 2007 has been making the rounds again.
"It's funny," I told Flewin. "We have an old Nintendo Game Boy floating around the house, and Tetris is the only game we own. My wife will sometimes dig it out to play on airplanes and long car rides. She's weirdly good at it. She can get 500 or 600 lines, no problem."
What Flewin said next I will never forget.
"Oh, my!"
After I hung up the phone, I went to the bedroom and woke my wife, Lori.
"Honey," I said. "You're not going to believe this, but I just got off the phone with a guy who's in charge of video game world records, and he said the world record for Game Boy Tetris is 327 lines, and he wants us to go to New Hampshire this spring so you can try to break the world record live in front of the judges at the world's largest classic video game tournament.
So they go. And there are unexpected twists! And vindication!
Music of my ancestral homeland
I am 100% Norwegian. First generation. Child of immigrants. So Norwegian, in fact, that my older sister moved back there after college. She’s still there!
And sometimes when I’ve had a long day, I listen to the songs of that great country and watch a video that seems to appeal more to me than it does to anyone I’ve shown it to.
Please welcome, Hurra Torpedo.
Ah that’s better. Busy week.