Oh, how far we've come
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown. Here's what I'm thinking about this holiday.
I’m alone at my apartment this Christmas — writing now at 12:39am on Dec. 25, 2024.
My mom is a hundred miles away and I won’t see her on this day the first time in the 27 years I’ve been alive.
While there aren’t any presents under a tree, this year I’m surrounded by an online community of like minded people (you) who have given so much.
Detroit one million is going to pass 1,000 subscribers next week! This is only the start.
Since we started this month, we’ve been first to report that City Council President Mary Sheffield attended a Trump-themed holiday party, House Republicans would protest the final week of lame duck, MI Black Caucus would endorse Curtis Hertel for MDP Chair and that Detroit schools will soon pay students for perfect attendance.
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People ask why Detroit one million is styled with lowercase letters instead of “Detroit One Million.” My answer is because the former looks better. I appreciate you all for trusting me.
Here’s what I’m thinking about today…
You all
Annie Sullivan, Samuel Nelson, Zachary Brown, Lisa Sauvé and Drew VanDrese were among Detroit one million’s first founding members. Thank you for your investment in local journalism.
I’m hosting a monthly call/in-person meet up starting next year with founding memebers and paid subscribers. I’ll email founding members soon to determine availability.
Thanks, guys! You are helping make my dream of writing everyday for money come true.
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” by Vince Guaraldi Trio
Not much to say about this you don’t already know. Guaraldi’s trio is absolutely wonderful. The full album is perfect, but somehow Pitchfork gave it an 8.3.
It’s probably the only album Urban Outfitters sells on vinyl that I actually need.
Beyoncé
I told a friend I didn’t want to go to the Spongebob movie today because I have to watch the Beyoncé concert, which is actually the halftime show of the Ravens/Texans game that kicks off at 4:30pm.
It’s not that I’m a Beyoncé fan, it’s more that I’m baffled at a pop culture environment that allowed Netflix to pitch the NFL a Beyoncé halftime show during their Christmas Day doubleheader. Beyoncé’s promo of the performance featured a buffering icon, a dig at Netflix’s botched live feed of the last month’s fake Mike Tyson fight.
Honestly, shame on Jay Z (in charge of NFL entertainment) and the league for competing with NBA’s Christmas games, which I will also be thinking about today.
Playboi Carti
It’s been four year's since Playboi Carti dropped his decade-defining rap album “Whole Lotta Red” and now every Christmas his teenage fans expect him to release new music.
The album is kinda like Die Hard in that it’s not a Christmas album, but it is to some people. Thankfully, I was not born in 2004 and still have memories listening to proper Christmas music (see above).
NBA OG’s
ESPN is sending everyone in their feelings after teasing this five-minute preview of a filmed conversation between LeBron, Steph and KD.
“Those four striaght years, Cleveland vs. Golden State, it was literally like East Coast vs. West Coast… It was like a rap beef,” James said.
James, Curry and Durant appeared in a combined 555 playoff games, 23 conference finals, 20 NBA Finals, celebrating 10 championship, according to Monte Poole in his explanation of why Steph vs. LeBron on Christmas Day is more than a game.
Will basketball survive once these three men retire? Whichever group of 20-year-olds decides to be the next generation of basketball stars will never be as famous as them.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Tiny Desk
Carpenter’s hit songs have just enough folksy twang to place her in the pop-country space Taylor Swift used to occupy before she became an NPC.
“Heartbreak is one thing, my ego’s another/ I beg you don’t embarrass me motherfucker,” from “Please, Please, Please” are lyrics I literally scoffed at the first time I heard them. Eight months later, the lines are my second favorite part of the song (only to the part where she claps twice).
And yea, she looks amazing. Merry Christmas, Ms. Carpenter.
Christmas Eve at Sanford United Methodist Church
My mom and grandma used to spend my elementary school-era Christmas Eve at the Sanford United Methodist Church in Midland County.
I have memories of people I didn’t know telling me they remember when I was just this big. Looking back, listening to holiday songs on the radio on our way to Sanford to greet the community where my grandma and her late-husband had become relevant characters, wasn’t all that bad.
I was the only Black person inside that church until I stopped going in middle school and the United Methodist Church assigned Sanford’s church with a Black pastor.
I could only imagine his experience there.
I looked up “Sanford United Methodist Church” into Google and realized I can watch the entire 2024 Christmas Eve service on Youtube from 137 miles away, which feels more odd than the church’s Black pastor.
The Black pastor retired. I found his name upon another Google search: Rev. Anthony N. Cutting, who was born in Barbados and raised in Trinidad.
I don’t think I ever met Cutting. If I did, I don’t remember. I wish I had.
Paul Bowles reading his 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky in the opening of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “fullmoon”
“Because we don't know when we will die
We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well
Yet everything happens only a certain number of times
And a very small number, really
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood
Some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive your life without it?
Perhaps four or five times more
Perhaps not even that
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty, and yet it all seems limitless”
Friends
Merry Christmas, Sam! Hope it’s a good one for you. Love that Ryuchi album to pieces.