Thoughts of the Week: One Battle After Another, David Byrne, Mipso, and the 2025 Boston Red Sox

I normally try to keep these weekly posts to a single topic (and sometimes I don't even have one topic to talk about), but I just had so much happen this past week. In deciding which to write about, I thought it would be best to just do shorter, rapid-fire thoughts on everything.

One Battle After Another: I do not particularly enjoy being a contrarian, so instead of relishing in the fact that I'm not really a Paul Thomas Anderson guy, I usually have to just throw up my hands and say, "Sorry, not for me!" Sure, all of his movies are well-made and aggressive in scope and full of great performances, but if I were Charli xcx (a sentence I've never typed before), I wouldn't call anything "PTA Summer." It should be noted, however, that the two movies of his that I love, Boogie Nights and now One Battle After Another, are probably not coincidentally two of the three entries I've seen in a movie theater - beautiful 70mm for Boogie Nights and a loud-as-shit Dolby screening of OBAA.

This movie rips. I love every performance (yeah yeah Leo, yeah yeah Sean Penn - we do not talk about Regina Hall enough), it's painfully timely, it's equally funny and frightening, and the "Dirty Work" needle drop is one of my favorite moments in 2025 cinema. Also, Jim Downey saying “semen demon” is for a select few of us.

David Byrne's Who Is The Sky? Tour: Taylor and I were supposed to see David Byrne perform his American Utopia show on Broadway a few years ago (more to come on that project later - all I'll say for now is that you should pick up the upcoming Criterion disc if you want to read something very special that I've written/am writing), but COVID was on the up-and-up again and our performance was cancelled. (Funny enough, we decided to go see PTA's Licorice Pizza in 70mm at the Angelika with that extra time.) We feared we had missed our one and only chance to see him.

I jumped over pre-sale tickets for his Who Is The Sky? tour stop in D.C., and he did not disappoint. Not only were we surrounded by other big fans of both Byrne and Talking Heads (three separate people asked if it was our first Byrne show, I guess our age gives us away, and we told the COVID story to all three), but the show was pretty darn similar to American Utopia! Dressed in matching jumpsuits and paired with a versatile and mobile band, he played all the hits and then some. It was an absolutely perfect show, one I'm so happy to have finally seen and one I'll never forget. It was not quite a perfect evening, however. I won't put anything in writing and perjure myself, but ask me about my parking fiasco sometime... 

Mipso's Farewell For Now Tour: Later in the week, I went to the Lincoln Theatre to see one of the final (for now) performances from folk and bluegrass band Mipso. An old childhood friend of mine was opening for them, and it was the perfect excuse to see both groups. I probably should have seen Mipso at least once over the last decade, and diving into their discography for concert prep, I wish I had. I was one of the very few people not openly weeping as the band discussed their "indefinite hiatus," which shows how important their music has been for so many people.

I'm glad I at least got to see them once, as they put on a fantastic show. They opened with my favorite of their tunes, "Louise," before running through their catalog. The acoustic set featured Woody Guthrie's "All You Fascists Bound to Lose", which blew the roof off the D.C. venue. The requests portion featured "Carolina Calling," a rarely played song from their first album, and it was nicely echoed with the encore tune "Carolina Rolling By." Believe me when I say many, many tears swam down cheeks. Mine, I will admit, welled up in my eyes. It was a beautiful night.

The 2025 Boston Red Sox: Let's be honest with ourselves, our postseason chances were dashed the second Roman Anthony went down with his injury. But, somehow someway, it didn't even bother me. We made progress this year! We were better than mediocre, we had a real ace pitching every fifth day, and the position player future, Anthony very much included, is bright. Did I want to lose to the Yankees in the Wild Card round? Of course not. But we played October baseball for the first time in years and I have every reason to think we should only be more competitive next year. Well, if Bregman stays and Aroldis doesn't decline and Crochet doesn't need...