(An Incomplete List Of) Things I Like

Not all blog posts have to be researched, 10k word ones like my last one. Most of them will be dumb things I wanna just put out there. Enjoy this list of things I like, in no particular order. It is non-exhaustive, probably out of date by the time you read this, and only really exists to lower the quality of the blogs here so that I feel less pressure every time I upload one.

Music

December [again] (featuring Mark Hoppus) — Neck Deep

Slow, sad songs that you can cry to? Cool, great, very nice.

Fast, sad songs that you can belt to?? Now we're talking.

According to my last.fm profile, this is my second most listened to song of all time, but I think it's my favourite song of all time. I've never really gotten my heart broken, but man does screaming this song make me feel like I have. I saw Neck Deep in concert, and they played this song, and I think I cried my heart out during the bridge. Maybe for most people it's just a normal sounding pop-punk song, but it means a lot to me.

And — it didn't help me get over a breakup or get me through a really rough time in my life — or anything like that. I think one of the biggest myths of life is that something has to have some huge impact on you in order to be meaningful to you. If we only did that, we'd have far less things in our life that have meaning, and I like having meaningful things in my life! I think that sometimes we just assign meaning to things in our life for arbitrary reasons, and it makes life a lot more fun to go through. So, yeah — I can't really explain why, but this is the song that has the most meaning to me, because it's the song that has the most meaning to me, and it's my favorite song because it's my favorite song.

Afterglow — All Time Low

This song has a lot of meaning to me for reasons I can explain.

To explain this, I have to talk about the summer of 2019.

I had just graduated high school, I knew what university I was going to go to, and I had an entire summer to spend with my four best friends. We had our driver's licenses, all the free time in the world, and we were determined to make the summer a memorable one. I remember thinking to myself at the beginning of the summer:

Curb your expectations. It's not gonna live up to everything you guys are planning it to be.

Well, it didn't live up to my expectations.

It blew them out of the water.

Far too much happened that summer to put here, but a few moments that stand out:

• driving hours through the night at 1am to get to a girl's house because josh had been talking to her on snapchat all summer, and we didn't technically know where she lived but we knew a general direction and so we just started driving, and oh my god we found her house. she owns one of my hoodies now.
• planning an all-day trip to wonderland only to get tired by 2pm and spending the next six hours at the subway across from wonderland because haeven's mom was "fifteen minutes away!" for hours. wonderland was fun, but it was subway that truly became home that day (probably because of the stockholm syndrome). to this day, whenever i smell the iconic subway smell of fresh bread and stale lettuce i think of then.
• developing a cult-like obsession with kevin bacon, indoctrinating other people into the cult, printing hoodies with kevin bacon on them, writing and recording songs about kevin bacon that i still listen to regularly, watching a high school footloose play because dammit that was the closest thing we could get to experiencing the real thing.
• the beach trip where all we listened to on the way up was the victorious soundtrack — a criminally underrated album. why were we listening to the soundtrack? because we spent the summer binging the show. why did we spend the summer binging the show? because it's the greatest comedy of all time.

I could say a lot more, but I'll stop there. That summer — and those people — were special to me in ways that my bad writing can't do justice. On the outside, I'm sure it just reads like we were dumb kids doing dumb things with no responsibilty — and we were — but at the time, those experiences were the most important thing in the world to me.

It was the perfect summer.

And there was a moment in late August, where I began to realize that the summer would come to an end soon. I was driving down the highway, struggling with that idea and worried about what would happen when it was all over, and then this song came on.

And everything felt okay.

To me, this song is the epitome of "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened". It's not a party song. It's an after the party song.

You don't put it on to start the night, or when you're dancing at the club, or in the pool with your friends.

You put it on when you're driving home alone, windows down, late August wind blowing through your hair that's still damp because the campfire didn't dry you off as much as you thought it would, going 140 on an empty highway, still laughing about a stupid joke Hannah made earlier, thinking about the amazing summer you had with your favourite people, scared that you'll lose them, nervous about entering university in a few weeks, and realizing that —

hey. it's almost over. that's alright. you had a really really good time. life's gonna change soon, but that's ok. just stay in the moment for a while.

superstars — Christian French and lowkey — NIKI

I like both of these songs for the same reason.

I like cities. Especially cities at night. Especially cities at night with someone special.

These songs remind me of that feeling. Walking home past neon city lights winding down, slightly tipsy but not enough to where I can't think straight, lost in conversation with someone special.

If my life were a movie, these songs would be the soundtracks for those moments.

Anything with Cool Drums and Catchy Hooks

Travis Barker is probably my favourite musician of all time. All Time Low is probably my favourite band of all time. And if it wasn't obvious from the first two picks on this list, Pop Punk is my favourite genre of all time. The lyrics are dumb, the singers are bad, but the music is catchy and oh man are the drums sick.

There are definitely more songs that've meant things to me out there, but again — non-exhaustive list.

Podcasts

Reply All

Honestly, I wrote this whole blog post just to have an excuse to talk about Reply All.

Reply All is my favourite podcast of all time and it's not close. Generally, I listen to podcasts for two reasons:

1. The information is interesting and I learn something new while listening
2. The hosts have good chemistry and the podcast makes me laugh

Reply All does both! Honestly, it's a hard podcast to really describe just because they do so much, but if you're interested, here are some of my favorite episodes:

• The Case of The Missing Hit: I think this is the best podcast episode of all time. PJ Vogt hunts down a seemingly vanished song that only one man remembers. The pacing, twists, and overall atmosphere of this episode kept me more enthralled than most movies.

• The Snapchat Thief: The reason I am now extremely paranoid about all my information being stolen at any time. Turns out, it's not hard to steal literally anything from anyone, and the internet was a mistake.

• Is Facebook Spying on You?: This episode answered a question I've always had. The answer? It's actually more complicated than you might think.

As an aside, the podcast kind of went through a staffing change/slight implosion around episode 173, and since then has been struggling a bit to find it's footing. If you start listening, I'd recommend you start listening before, and up to, that episode.

99% Invisible

Everything is designed.

Everything.

The floors in grocery stores are designed to have you shop a certain way. Fountains in parks are designed to keep it from being too quiet (turns out people don't like that). When you sit on a plane, and you feel annoyance at the person in front of you for reclining their seat, that's because ownership of the space between you and the person in front of you has been designed to be ambiguous.

This podcast is about the design of things that we wouldn't usually think about as designed. It's very good, and I recommend you check it out.

Science Vs

This podcast is a breath of fresh air in the smog of misinformation that everyone (including me) seems to be ingesting constantly nowadays. There's one specific episode that I really wanna plug:

Joe Rogan: The Malone Interview

I've never understood the appeal of Joe Rogan, and I'm gonna be honest with you (sorry to some of my friends who might read this), some of the opinions of my friends who do listen to him make me want to just avoid anything involving him altogether. If you're like me, and you don't really know much about Rogan, but you've noticed in the corner of your eye that he's slowly become a mouthpiece for some unsavory characters, this is a good podcast to check out. It's a pretty satisfying breakdown of an interview he's had with someone spreading COVID misinformation, the tools they use to spread misinformation, and how to spot people like him spreading similar misinformation.

TV Shows

Fair warning — I almost exclusively watch sitcoms, so don't expect anything too high brow here.

Parks and Recreation

A lot of people think of Parks and Recreation as a slightly worse spinoff of The Office. It's a fair comparison — Parks and Rec came on the air right as the Office was winding down, they're both mockumentaries filmed very similarly, and they even share some of the same actors.

But to me, Parks and Rec captures something that The Office doesn't. While The Office was often quite cynical and pessimistic, Parks and Rec is consistently optimistic and sunny. The show strikes this perfect balance of breezy lighthearted humour with serious moments that let you fall in love with the main characters, the reoccuring characters all shine in the limited screentime that they have, and the small town of Pawnee really feels like an ordinary town that just happens to be the most special place on earth*. The characters do go through hardships, but they don't let it break them down, and they come out of it stronger. The show is unapologetically positive, and it does it well.

I've rewatched the entire series probably upwards of 10 times, and it never fails to put me in a good mood. I've always been far more partial to cities than small towns, but if I were ever to live in a small town, I would want to live in Pawnee.

*could write a whole other blog post about this, but i've always loved the idea of finding meaning in ordinary things. sometimes in life i lose track of that idea, and finding it again always leads to an improvement in my day-to-day

Community

The first time I watched Community, I was 13 years old, and I thought the main character, Jeff Winger, was the coolest. I tried (embarrassingly hard) to talk the way he talked, act the way he acted, and give off the same "I don't care about things" attitude that he did.

Years later, I would realize that Jeff Winger (at least at the start of the show) is a complete dick, and the entire point of the show is that he becomes less of a dick as his friends slowly break down the cynical shell that he's wrapped himself in.

But uh, that point kind of flew over 13 year old Ethan's head at the time, so if you knew me as a teenager and you were wondering why I was such an douche, there's your answer.

Community sets its ambitions very high, and to it's credit, tends to hit more than it misses. There are musical episodes that are very clearly taking shots at Glee, paintball episodes that range from classic western spoofs to a Star Wars homage, episodes done in full cartoon animation, and even multiple timelines.

On the surface, all this could've come off as gimmicky and cheap, but the beautiful thing about the show is that it doesn't use these tricks as a crutch. It doesn't matter if the main characters are driving a KFC themed space shuttle, fighting against an evil spanish-teacher-turned-tyrant bent on taking over their college, or bouncing on magic trampolines — the driving force of the show is the connections formed between the main characters. The genres and mediums that Community chooses to tell stories with aren't consistent, but the heart of the show — the idea that you can choose a group of people to become your family — is.

Community and Parks and Rec are my top two favourite shows of all time, here are some other ones I like.

Anything Michael Schur Has Done

Parks and Rec, The Office, Brooklyn Nine Nine, the Good Place, Master of None — all a great time.

The Boys/Invincible

Putting these two under the same category because they're both on Amazon Prime, both subversions of the typical "superhero genre" that we're all very familiar with by now, and both very good. Although fair warning, The Boys gets very very dark and very very gross.

Victorious

I'm not kidding when I say that me and my friends watched this religiously in my senior year. It's not exactly high art, but it is probably the most quotable tv show of all time.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Sometimes this show can be a little problematic, but overall it has some of the funniest moments and reoccuring segments of any show out there. Plus, at this point it's one of the longest running sitcoms of all time.

Arrested Development

But only the first three seasons.

Other Stuff I Like

Longboarding Though the City

It's just... the best way to get around. You go fast. The longboard is easy to carry into places. You don't have to pay for gas. You can actually experience the city. It's a beautiful beautiful thing.

Not Just Bikes

The greatest youtube channel of all time. If you take one thing from this blog, it's that you should go watch Not Just Bikes on youtube. Here's one of my favorite videos by him. It'll change the way you look at the world.

Kayaking

It's just the best form of exercise. Get your biceps and back swole AND enjoy what are probably very scenic views AND it's just so so peaceful.

You.

I do wonder if anyone ever reads these blogs. I know people read the 100k internship one, mostly because I'm pretty well known at school and when people ask me career questions I always direct them to that blog. But these other, more personal ones? I'm not sure. I don't have Google Analytics enabled on my website, so I only really know when someone reads these if they reach out afterward and tell me that they read it.

But most people don't. I know this, because when I read other people's blogs, I also don't reach out and tell them how much I enjoyed their blogs — even though there are blogs out there that I've read that have fundamentally changed the way that I think about myself, work, relationships, and life in general.

In a way, sometimes it seems almost voyeuristic to read someone's blog — like you stumbled upon someone's diary. Some would argue that's the entire appeal of reading someone's blog: it gives you a deeply personal insight into someone that you might not really know otherwise. Because of this, reaching out and telling someone that you've read their blog can almost seem wrong? Like you're admitting to reading their diary.

But I think the thing that I've been thinking about recently is: as voyeuristic as it may seem to read someone's blog, at the end of the day, they still chose to write and publish their words. They want you to read them. More specifically, they want you to read their blog, and then (hopefully) think of them as cool, or smart, or that they live a life that's envy-worthy. So, maybe we shouldn't feel awkward about reaching out after reading someone's blog! I think almost always, the blog author would appreciate it.

But there's an interesting consequence of this: the person reading this, despite now knowing some of my favourite things, doesn't really know me. You know the version of myself — Blog Ethan — that I choose to display on this blog. Maybe Blog Ethan's a little more self-assured, a little more forward thinking, a little more put together. Even if I tried very hard to portray myself as accurately as possible (which I think I do?), it'd be impossible get everything right. I think anyone would always want to write about themselves positively, even if it was a subconscious thing.

And there's a cynical way to view it, but I choose to view it in a positive light — together, you and I have created a new person. Me, by writing about him, and you, by taking my writing and extrapolating on the information that I've given you to create a whole new person. Blog Ethan exists in your head, because you're reading this.

And Blog Ethan thinks you're pretty cool. And he wants me to thank you for reading.

I won't though. Blog Ethan doesn't control me.