The Suburban Abyss

26/06/2024

Episode 40 of The Suburban Abyss is live!

This marks the last episode (at least for a while), as I’m taking an extended break – not from writing but at least from podcasting. It’s been more than six months since I published Episode 39, which speaks to my bandwidth of late, and the time felt right. Also, with the past few episodes, I felt like I was writing toward some sort of conclusion, or at least the closing of a chapter, so here we are.

Huge thank you to my supporters — financial, cosmic and otherwise — for your kudos and encouragement over the past few years, especially to my vocal talent/proofreaders Erica and Magnolia. I love you both so much. It’s still weird we’re here.

If this is your first time entering The Suburban Abyss, welcome to the end! The water is fine, and the sewer down the street sometimes smells funny.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

We've come to the final(?) episode of The Suburban Abyss, a tying up of loose ends of sorts, featuring a long walk through the Streetsboro Flea Market, a short walk through our neighborhood in the leafy green nowhere and one big question I had not considered since moving back to Ohio nearly four years ago.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2024/06/episode-40-epilogue-goodbye-dirt-mall/

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Editor’s note: The accompanying photo is social commentary, provided for context and dark humor, and should not be misinterpreted as a political endorsement.

14/12/2023

Episode 39 of The Suburban Abyss is live!

It truly has felt like an abyss this year – at least in the writing sense – as this is the first new episode in seven months and only the third of 2023. It’s also the second to last episode of The Suburban Abyss – at least in this iteration – and it features a lengthy piece of writing I’ve been nibbling at since the spring, covering middle age, mortality, self-identity and the Cuyahoga Falls High School Class of ’96 micro-reunion that spurred it all. Cue “Glory Days” and pull up a barstool.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Are you the same person you used to be?

The question was posed in the October 2022 New Yorker article “Becoming You,” and it’s an easy one, perhaps an inevitable one, for a middle-aged person to ask while staring into the real or proverbial mirror. Especially after moving back to your place of birth after two decades away.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2023/12/episode-39-across-the-great-divides-b-w-glory-days/

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04/05/2023

Who doesn’t like to read about the Super Bowl in May? But really, Episode 38 of The Suburban Abyss is about pizza, family, the push-and-pull of group decision making and some pizza-thieving bastard named Craig Brubeck. There's even a Venn diagram!

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Every family history has a few good “dumb s**t” stories, when something happens that’s so dumb it crosses the threshold of stupidity into the absurd, and once it’s over the only thing left to do is laugh about it and file it away as another dumb s**t story to be told and retold in the years to come. And when it came time for Travis and me to pick up our Rocco's Super Bowl sheet pizzas near the end of Dad's 75th birthday weekend, s**t got dumb.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2023/05/episode-38-bring-us-the-head-of-craig-brubeck-who-stole-our-roccos-super-bowl-sheet-pizzas/

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02/05/2023

RIP Gordon Lightfoot, the soundtrack to the autumn of my mind.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2021/11/episode-23-gordon-lightfoot-and-the-golden-autumn-world-just-outside-my-grasp/

thesuburbanabyss · Episode 23: Gordon Lightfoot and the Golden Autumn World Just Outside My Grasp The fall never fails to slip away from me. Like pulling water from a stream with bare hands, the autumn only slides between my fingers. The season comes on fast and bids farewell before I’ve quenched...

25/01/2023

Episode 37 of The Suburban Abyss is live as we mark one month removed from Christmas 2022. Time keeps on tickin’ tickin’…

Like many people, I typically accelerate my drinking during the holidays, but this past season, I did the opposite: I went stone cold sober from November 1 through December 23.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Holiday drinking is an international sport, a holly-jolly right for all. The Christmas lights go up and everyone gets lit, ho ho ho and a bottle of rum. I’ve suited up and worked my elbow every season since my freshman year of college, but for the first time in 26 years, I took myself out of the game until Christmas Eve following the last underwhelming sip of red wine on Halloween night.

Spending the season sober was a calculated decision, one I had been considering for months – for years, really – as I found my relationship with alcohol changing.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2023/01/episode-37-the-12-na-beers-of-christmas/

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23/11/2022

The Suburban Abyss rides again, with a thumb on the rewind button back to summer and outdoor concerts for Episode 36.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Erica and I did not set out to make 2022 a big concert year, especially a year of big concerts, but that's what happened after scoring tickets to Nine Inch Nails' homecoming show and a shared bottle of wine led to an impulse trip to Long Island to see Phish while our kid was away at band camp.

We are not tourists of our own pasts, but it's hard to ignore the nostalgic tinge to these two concert experiences or the aging Gen X vibes – different yet similar – that dominated both.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/11/episode-36-got-a-blank-space-where-my-head-like-a-hole-should-be-a-portrait-of-generation-x-as-middle-aged-summer-concert-series-nostalgia-trippers/

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28/08/2022

Episode 35 of The Suburban Abyss is live, and we’re back on the baseball diamond.

A companion of sorts to Episode 5 (A Tale of Two Seasons), No. 35 concerns Mark Lanegan, the complicated relationship between music and sports, Code of Conduct People and a chafed left ni**le. All that for your paywall-free, late-summer Sunday pleasure!

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Long before music, baseball was Mark Lanegan’s first love. Growing up in Ellensburg, Washington, Lanegan did what most 20th century American boys did: he played pickup games until it was too dark to see the ball.

For certain music fans, it’s difficult to reconcile the counterculture lineage of an artist like Lanegan with said artist’s passion for popular sports. Billy Joel throwing out the first pitch at Shea Stadium? Sure, whatever, who the hell cares? But Mark Lanegan, the dark prince of grunge, a high school hurler with professional aspirations?

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/08/episode-35-mark-lanegan-daydream-reliever/

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15/07/2022

Episode 34 of The Suburban Abyss is live!

It’s a sequel to Episode 16, and hopefully closer to “Back to the Future II” than “Major League II” as far as that goes.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Returning to Boise last summer for the first time since moving away in 2020 was particularly disorienting – seeing a place I once called home through the odd-fitting lens of a quasi-visitor – and a year into this new rhythm in my work life, the Hudson me and the Boise me feel like different people, and I haven’t figured out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/07/episode-34-boise-slight-return-revisited/

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15/06/2022

Episode 33 of The Suburban Abyss is live!

As I approach 45, I’m still very much alive (I didn’t have a stroke at the age of 24), but I’ve been staring at my age more than I ever have, and the new Belle and Sebastian album isn’t helping.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Listening to "A Bit of Previous," I get the sense the core members of Belle and Sebastian, now in their late-40s and early-50s, are at a similar juncture in their lives – perhaps, like me, asking themselves where the hell the last 20 years went – as the prevailing theme on the album is aging, and in the hands of Belle and Sebastian, it sounds incredibly dull.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/06/episode-33-the-new-belle-and-sebastian-album-makes-me-feel-old/

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21/05/2022

Episode 32 of The Suburban Abyss is live! This Shiner boot, photographed at Dino’s in East Nashville, represents the ass-kicking I took from the common cold last week.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

My initial response was to sit up in my hotel bed and guzzle water, hoping a little hydration would work the razor blades out of my throat. No luck. Soon enough, my nose started running. Then the sneezing. And coughing. Here we go. Clearly this was not from talking loudly in crowded rooms and noisy bars, nor a temporary reaction to a new environment, but something worse – hopefully not THAT something.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/05/episode-32-covid-a-conference-and-our-old-friend-the-common-cold/

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20/04/2022

Episode 31 of The Suburban Abyss is live! Take a 12-minute ride on the “Ventura Highway” of your mind in celebration of Record Store Day and ’70s soft rock.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek and Gerry Beckley were punching bags from the start, dismissed as watered-down ripoffs of Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stllls, Nash & Young and associated Laurel Canyon luminaries, and while America did ride certain stylistic coattails to ’70s radio success, "History: America’s Greatest Hits" – which is being reissued on vinyl for Record Store Day April 23 – is one of my favorite best-ofs in our library, an album I’ve loved since high school and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/04/episode-31-the-subjective-greatness-of-americas-greatest-hits/

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12/03/2022

Happy Birthday to Jack Kerouac, who would have been 100 today. Episode 30 is dedicated to the original Dharma Bum.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

I recently reread "On the Road" and "The Dharma Bums" to see what was there for me in my 40s, partly inspired by a comment my friend Marcus made last summer: how Kerouac’s writing, as a guidebook for life, is great when you’re between the ages of 18 and 22, but not so much after that. I didn’t dust off my Kerouac to counter Marcus and prove him wrong, but I didn’t want him to be right either.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/03/episode-30-kerouac-in-the-lamplight-of-the-living-room/

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25/02/2022

Have you been dreaming more during the pandemic? And have your dreams been really strange? Because it’s a thing.

Episode 29, which travels the subconscious of The Suburban Abyss, is live.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

It’s safe to say I’ll never be described as “unrelentingly social” in real life, but right now I’m taking every waltz in my dreams. The pandemic is barely there, but people are everywhere, often in bizarre combinations of friends, family members and minor characters from different chapters of my life, and we’re all having a great time.

There’s mounting evidence that suggests the pandemic has rewired our brains – maybe permanently – and it’s affecting our subconscious, too. People are dreaming more, and our dreams are noticeably weirder.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/02/episode-29-take-this-waltz/

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10/02/2022

I might have reached “peak suburbia.” Or completed a circle I started as a teenager. Or something. Episode 29 is in zygote stage. It has nothing to do with Led Zeppelin, but nonetheless, it’s been a long time since I rock and rolled, and it’s kind of about that. Looking forward to .

23/01/2022

Episode 28 of The Suburban Abyss is dedicated to Andrew. Happy Birthday, and viva Collinwood!

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Andrew introduced me to Interpol sometime near the end of 2002, a few months after we took over my brother’s rental home on Collinwood Avenue in Akron’s North Hill neighborhood. I don’t remember the exact date "Turn on the Bright Lights" entered the house, but listening to it now, it’s synonymous with the uncompromising glare of winter on Collinwood. The combination of little money, low job prospects and a lack of direction created a crippling, quiet intensity within me, a pent-up urgency on the constant verge of implosion. And the house was cold. So f**king cold.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/01/episode-28-bright-lights-dark-winters/

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07/01/2022

Episode 27 of The Suburban Abyss is live, and a day earlier than scheduled! We’re setting new standards for post-holiday motivation or something. Thank you for reading, listening, tipping and sponsoring. Your support is my prescription lamp.

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

Synopsis:

Even when you’re happy, winter is like a boat without an oar that drifts you farther away from joy, and during the long first season back in the Lake Erie snowbelt, I lost sight of the simple pleasures that brighten the dark days.

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/01/episode-27-season-of-the-ditch/

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06/01/2022

"The chiseled Millennials on the back of my box of keto-friendly cereal are living their best lives, smiling under the sun as they jog in the sand toward the ocean, surfboards under their arms, while I sit here wondering how much longer I can last before taking a mid-morning nap.”

Episode 27 of The Suburban Abyss, “Season of the Ditch,” drops Saturday. Tune in via your podcast platform of choice or thesuburbanabyss.com.

01/01/2022

All is quiet on New Year’s Day.

Except for Bono, of course.

Episode 26 of The Suburban Abyss is live. Happy New Year to all of you, and thank you sincerely for your support throughout Year 1 of this endeavor. More to come in 2022…

Read/listen at thesuburbanabyss.com (direct link below), or find the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Podbean, etc).

https://thesuburbanabyss.com/2022/01/episode-26-running-to-stand-still-b-w-reconciling-bono/

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