The End of the Line, 2025 Music Edition
I’m writing this up a week or so ahead of when it runs — the holidays are the holidays, so I don’t want to wait until the last moment and then miss my chance, you know? — but, as things stand right now and probably will through the end of the year, these are the last songs on my 2025 playlist. (Earlier installments can be found here, here, here, and here.)
I actually intended to end with the “Final Form”/”Stay Away From Me” pairing, because I liked the idea of the last song on the playlist being called “Stay Away From Me,” but then I found some more songs that stuck in my head and, anyway, plans are there to be changed. So, here are the final 20 songs from the playlist, which you can find here if you still have Spotify; otherwise, most of December was spent listening to Christmas songs or Suede’s “Elephant Man,” for reasons that escape me.
Still Around The Morning After
To this day, I can remember my first December 26th in the United States. It wasn’t just the day after spending Christmas Day at home for the first time since moving, it was also the first time I fully realized what it meant that Americans don’t do Boxing Day… a realization I came to by the fact that I found myself on a bus to work at 7am that morning, appalled and incensed at the injustice that Americans were somehow expected to just go straight back to work the day after Christmas.
As someone who’d spent more than a quarter century in the UK to that point, I understood that Christmas isn’t a one-day thing. Even for those who don’t buy into the idea — like I do — that Christmas is really all about the build up to December 25th and the season as a whole as opposed to the presents and the food and all of that, there’s a general understanding that Christmas is at least a three day event: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. You need a day after the one with the family and the presents and the food to recover; it’s entrely necessary, and suddenly, it didn’t exist anymore.
That day at work, I was sullen and sulky, there under unspoken protest. I remember so clearly that I wanted to silently go on strike because it felt inherently unfair that I was there in the first place, as if something had been taken from me by simply having to work, and feeling all too conscious of the fact that I could have taken the day off if only I’d thought to plan ahead. I was mad in the kind of scattershot, indiscriminate manner that means that I was actually mad at myself but unable to accept that, but looking back, a lot of me still thinks, sure, but in the defense of past me, why the fuck are offices open on the day after Christmas?
I’ve learned my lesson since then, and if you’re reading this when it goes live, I’m very purposefully not working. I hope your Christmas was/is a good one, if you celebrate, and if you don’t, I hope everyone has at least left you alone enough with the holiday cheer that you don’t resent it the way I resented working those many years ago.
You Already Missed The Spring
Also known as Blofeld
“Hey, man!” yelled the dude standing outside the various restaurants on Mississippi Avenue. “Hey, man!”
Look, I’m not one to randomly start conversations with strangers yelling at me on streets as I try to walk past, especially when I’m visibly listening to music on my phone. (For reference, it was “Night Vision” by Super Furry Animals.) It’s not that this guy looked like he was about to start a fight or cause trouble or anything; if anything, he looked like The Dude from The Big Lebowski if he’s started working out a little bit and was trying to take care of himself more these days, but had also gotten really into buying his entire wardrobe from the local military supply store. Still, he was yelling to get my attention and for some reason, I figured that I should probably see what’s up before things got out of hand.
I took my earphones out, and the dude happily — gleefully! — announced, “If it wasn’t for your beard, you’d look like the twin of Telly Savalas, man.”
I’ll be honest; I had no idea how to take this. On the one hand, I didn’t think I look anything like Telly Savalas, for any number of reasons, not least of which the fact that I rarely think of the man who was once Kojak because, really, who does these days? On the other, Telly Savalas was a sex symbol back in the day, so perhaps the comparison was a good thing and a sign that I should pick up a lollipop habit as quickly as possible, just in case it helps my appeal. (On a third hand, Telly Savalas was a sex symbol in the 1970s. That was a decade when plenty of not-entirely-attractive people were considered sex symbols for some inexplicable reason. Did I really want to be likened to a man beloved by a decade with questionable taste?)
I laughed, nervously, and replied, “I’ll take that as a compliment” as I hurried away, hoping that would be the end of the discussion, feeling other people watching the two of us. “Who loves ya, baby!” yelled the man as I walked away, seeming affirming that it was, in fact, meant to be a comparison that worked in my favor. A woman smiled at me in sympathy as she walked past me: “I think you look great,” she said.
It was an unusual start to the afternoon, at least.
So, Be Good For Goodness’ Sake
Reading about the business of Christmas TV movies the other day, the thought occurred to me: I watch enough of these to probably be able to pitch some, right? I know the formula: a title that refers to a Christmas song everyone knows, some actors you’ve seen in other things, and a plot that won’t surprise or threaten anyone but entertain just enough to make those 90-120 minutes go down as easily as the egg nog everyone is likely drinking as they watch. So, with literally zero minutes forethought, I came up with the following:
I’m Tellin’ You Why: Opposites attract at Christmas when two leading social media content makers — what we used to call “influencers” before that term went out of fashion, which was round around when people started using the term “slop” freely — find themselves fighting to be the face of their hometown’s holiday parade! Are holiday parades a real thing? Would social media people care about them? Who cares?!? Let’s have whoever played Archie Andrews in Riverdale as the male lead, some kind of Joe Rogan with a heart, and Nancy from Stranger Things as the female lead doing some PG-13 twist on the Call Her Daddy kind of podcast thing.
I’ll Be Home for Christmas: There almost certainly has to be multiple movies with this title already, right? Well, this can be another one, but it’s just a rip-off of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles that works in some gags about self-driving cars and Ubers because the gig economy is a cheap punchline, am I right? Nicola Coughlan can take on the Steve Martin role and she’s paired with Aidy Bryant in place of John Candy, and the whole thing can be a slow motion version of America Ferrera’s monologue at the end of Barbie about how difficult it is to live up to multiple warring expectations at once, but with all the edges softened and a finale that lets everyone have a happy ending, because let’s not upset people too much at the holidays, everyone. Let’s get these viewing figures up.
With Your Nose So Bright, Won’t You Guide My Slay Tonight?: A drag-themed retelling of the Rudolph story that’s also a cautionary tale about cocaine addiction, and — okay, maybe this one is a bit of a stretch. I’m sorry. (I will rethink this if someone offers an option, however.)
Netflix, call me.
You’ll Need A Ruler ‘Cause I’m Out of Line
Can You Take Me Back Where You Came From, Can You Take Me Back?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really use my Apple Notes app for anything other than random thoughts that aren’t particularly important but feel like passing fancies in the moment that I might want to remember. I’ve got multiple notes for everything from my room number when I check into hotels — I’m always worried I’ll forget, but I never have; I also rarely remember to delete said notes until months after whatever trip I was one — to contact details for work people that I’ve never actually used. (I still have people’s numbers on there from when I went to the UK two years ago, in case I couldn’t check into my hotel or get my show pass afterwards.) It’s not the home for anything that would be considered especially necessary.
Amongst those unnecessary things: random sentences that are either observations, or prompts for things that I might one day want to write about here. I started doing it on a trip earlier this year, because something was looping around in my head and I thought, I’ll just put it here and it can get out and I can get on with work and then moved on with my life. (I did, in fact, write it up for here later that night.) The thing is, in many (most) cases, I end up writing things that I don’t remember the context for later, or that aren’t as interesting as I first think when I return to them. For example, currently in notes and pulled at random:
“Everyone wears black”
“The archaeology of my digestive system”
“Sense memory: eating donuts with a fork in the Bee’s Knees”
“Technology changing the shape of the minds eye, landscape of feature films becoming vertical of phones”
The one about the changing shape of the mind’s eye, there’s still something in that, to be unpicked and considered, I feel… But for now, let’s pretend we all know what these meant at the time, and that I wrote about them appropriately. The notes can stand as some nod to unfinished thoughts, like a Beatles Anthology for something far less important.
The Worst Holiday Tradition of All
“It’s normally around this time of year you get sick. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet already.”
As much as I wanted to disagree with the observation, I had to agree that I was actually feeling a little bit under the weather. It was a realization I had probably subconsciously made a couple of days earlier, but searched for multiple get out clauses from. I’d been feeling not-quite-right for a few days, but tried to explain it away with any number of potential explanations that didn’t really hold any water: I’d slept poorly the night before or I’d been paying too much attention to one particular thing at work and couldn’t quite concentrate on anything else as a result or whatever. I knew the truth, but I simply didn’t want to actually admit that’s what was actually happening.
I was denying it in part because, bluntly, I do always tend to get sick at this time of the year and I’m bored with that tradition. It’s not that I get sick sick as much as I get very run down because work always gets crazy in December — it’s the most wonderful time of the year to try and get everything off your plate before the holidays, after all — and the weather here in Portland likes to yo-yo in terms of temperature and wetness, which creates the perfect conditions for a headcold, at least in my case. It’s something that I can try to avoid, but it catches up with me nonetheless. Take this year, for example.
Denying it, however, doesn’t do any good; I just end up feeling worse, because I don’t do anything to feel better and so I just exhaust myself further. That’s what happened this year, until I had to finally ‘fess up to myself and admit that, all things considered, I needed to just lie on the couch for awhile and watch some shitty television and try to switch my brain off. Which, in my defense, is what I try to do with my time off anyway. It’s just that, this time, I can pretend that I’m doing it for medicinal purposes. Perhaps there’s one good thing about getting sick, after all.
