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The Suburban AbyssEpisode 40: Epilogue / Goodbye Dirt MallWe'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.
2024-06-2615 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 39: Across the Great Divide(s) b/w Glory DaysAre 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.
2023-12-1425 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 38: Bring Us the Head of Craig Brubeck, Who Stole Our Rocco’s Super Bowl Sheet PizzasEvery family history has a few good “dumb shit” 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 shit 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, shit got dumb.
2023-05-0412 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 37: The 12 (NA) Beers of ChristmasHoliday 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 changi...
2023-01-2518 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 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 TrippersErica 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.
2022-11-2314 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 35: Mark Lanegan, Daydream RelieverLong 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?
2022-08-2822 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 34: Boise (Slight Return) RevisitedReturning 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.
2022-07-1510 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 33: The New Belle and Sebastian Album Makes Me Feel OldListening 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.
2022-06-1513 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 32: COVID, a Conference and Our Old Friend the Common ColdMy 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.
2022-05-2109 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 31: The Subjective Greatness of ’America’s Greatest Hits’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.
2022-04-2011 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 30: Kerouac In the Lamplight of the Living RoomI 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.
2022-03-1212 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 29: Take This WaltzIt’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.
Have you noticed a shift in your dream world? Apparently, it’s a thing. 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...
2022-02-2510 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 28: Bright Lights, Dark WintersAndrew 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.
2022-01-2313 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 27: Season of the DitchEven 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.
2022-01-0708 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 26: Running To Stand Still b/w Reconciling BonoAll is quiet on New Year’s Day.
Except for Bono, of course.
2022-01-0109 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 25: Kicking Around on a Piece of Ground in Your HometownOn Dec. 10, 2020, exactly four months from the date my family and I left Boise for our new life in Ohio, my father landed in the hospital.
One of the main reasons for moving closer to our parents was making up for lost time before we started spending time in hospitals, yet here we were, only four months into it – and 15 days before Christmas – doing just that.
2021-12-2308 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 24: Thanksgiving Sucks, and So Does the Planes, Trains and Automobiles SoundtrackEvery day I express my gratitude to the cosmos in my own silent way, but when we get to the end of Thanksgiving day, I’m just glad it’s over.
The saving grace of Thanksgiving, the warm quilt of redemption, is my annual viewing of John Hughes’ 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles.' The movie will never make one of those all-time-films lists, but it’s fair to call it a holiday classic, and the warmth I feel watching the movie reminds me of the warmth I felt growing up in a mostly-functional Midwestern family and the warmth I...
2021-11-2511 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 23: Gordon Lightfoot and the Golden Autumn World Just Outside My GraspAt this time last year, as we spent the fall unpacking boxes and putting our lives back in place, I envisioned a much different day-to-day in our new environs. I thought I would sit outside more. Take more walks. Chop more wood. Modern life has pulled us away from the natural world. That notion is nothing new, but even here in my roving home office in the leafy green nowhere, with the ability to move at will, to step outside, put my feet to the earth and smell the pine-scented air around me, most days I stay put in...
2021-11-0505 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 22: Teenage Angst Has Paid Off WellMy friends and I first heard about the Nirvana show on the radio, and we could not believe our ears – not only was Nirvana coming, but Nirvana was coming to Akron, not Cleveland. It was unheard of. The biggest band in our universe was playing 10 minutes away, and on Halloween no less. We were never this close to the action; we had to be there or we absolutely would die.
2021-10-3117 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 21: Inscription Friendships and Farewell TransmissionsIt’s been a year since we moved from Boise to Northeast Ohio, and my friendships, be them near or far or old or young, are in various states of order and disorder. Whenever someone moves, all the staying-in-touch talk comes on fast and strong. Some of the talk comes from a place of genuine intent, some out of polite, yet otherwise empty social obligation. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which, and 12 months after our move, I’m standing firm with some friends, in a long wave goodbye with others, or stuck somewhere in between on shaky...
2021-09-0417 minThe Suburban AbyssDesperation Fanzine: "The Wall of Rejection"As summer 2021 comes to an end, we pause from the episodic format of The Suburban Abyss for a reading of an essay on a long-ago return home and the poetic and not-so-poetic embrace of the emerging fall, originally published in the out-of-print "lost" debut issue of Desperation Fanzine, a prequel of sorts to The Suburban Abyss.
2021-08-2809 minThe Suburban AbyssSummer Rerun: The Moving Saga - Complete RecordingsInstead of skipping this week entirely, I decided to string together all eight parts of the Moving Saga, as it’s come to be known, that kicked off the start of The Suburban Abyss blog and podcast. If you’re new here, this eight-part story details how our family decided to move from Boise back to my native Northeast Ohio during the peak of the summer Covid surge in 2020. If you already know the story, this is an easy way to revisit it from start to finish. Thank you for listening.
2021-08-191h 25The Suburban AbyssEpisode 20: What a Lawn Strange Trip It's BeenWe’ve officially been in Ohio a year now, and I’ve already spent more time mowing the lawn than I did in 15 years living in Boise.
That’s not an exaggeration. In Boise, it took 20 minutes to mow our tiny lot’s dusty lawn. Here on nearly an acre of land in Hudson, it takes two hours to complete. The sensible and/or wealthy ones in town own riding mowers or farm out the job to professional landscapers, but my bullish blue-collar roots won’t allow either, and besides, I want the exercise. Lastly, but most importantl...
2021-08-1410 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 19: The Basement Smells Like Uncle (Again)In November 2005, I moved to Boise with a duffle bag of clothes, a Sony Discman and a Case Logic CD binder, and the first place I slept was the couch in my brother’s basement. It was meant to be a stopgap, a temporary measure to save money while my wife, Erica, stayed back in New Hampshire until our house sold. We figured it would only be a month or so. It ended up being four and some change, but for my own comfort and sanity, I bolted from the basement long before Erica landed in Boise on April 1, 2006....
2021-08-0614 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 18: Travis and John O Fight for Sting's Non-Sexual AffectionThe Suburban Abyss returns from its summer break with my first-ever guests, record collectors/lifelong music fans Travis Dryden and John O’Neil, who spent an hour with me in Boise discussing the highs and lows of Sting’s recorded output with the Police and as a solo artist.
2021-07-301h 17The Suburban AbyssEpisode 17: Radiohead and the Sounds of SummerI had started thinking about the album on a run after the humidity against my skin and the pre-storm static in the air transported me back to the summer of ’97, and revisiting "OK Computer" that afternoon ultimately led me back to "Kid A," because it always gets back to "Kid A." "Kid A" exists at the opposite end of the Radiohead spectrum, far away from the artful guitar squall of "OK Computer," and even though its temperature is cooler – icy, even – it’s still a summer album to me.
2021-07-0813 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 16: Boise (Slight Return)I didn’t know what to expect when I landed in Boise on a hot and sunny Thursday afternoon. Shortly after arriving, having reconnected with my brother and a work world I had only seen through Zoom since August, I took a short walk through downtown, my head in a daze of post-flight fatigue and sensory overload. Whenever she flies, Erica talks about waiting for her soul to catch up with her, and this walk was my attempt to slow down and allow mine to find its way back to me. As I strolled by old haunts and new st...
2021-07-0110 minThe Suburban AbyssDesperation Fanzine: Sugar MountainIn honor of the 50th anniversary of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ on June 22, this week’s transmission diverts from the episodic format of The Suburban Abyss for a reading of an essay on Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain,” originally published in the out-of-print "lost" debut issue of Desperation Fanzine.
2021-06-2505 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 15: Diarrhea Falafel and Other Costco DelightsShopping at Costco is something like a hero’s quest with multiple narrative conflicts: man against man, man against society and, most importantly, man against self. In every direction, Costco leads you into temptation – vats of sugar and fat, tubs of chemical dipping goop, sensible slacks that share a brand name with the giant jar of minced garlic – and everything is priced to deliver you straight to the doorstep of your evil consumerist impulses.
2021-06-1009 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 14: Candice, Kelly, Teenage Fanclub and Tales of Eighth Grade ConfessionsOther than 'Nevermind,' Teenage Fanclub's 'Bandwagonesque' was there in my 14-year-old consciousness more than any other album, and more than any other album up to that point in my life, 'Bandwagonesque' made me think about girls, and in much deeper ways than anything I had heard on pop radio.
2021-06-0318 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 13: I Listened to Nothing but Classic Rock Radio for Two Days and I Think I Broke My BrainI spent two days toggling back and forth between Northeast Ohio’s twin titans of FM classic rock: 97.5 WONE and 98.5 WNCX. I listened while working. I listened while driving. I listened while cooking. I listened morning, noon and night, from the time I got up until the time I went to bed, and by the end of my immersion, my ears, my mind, my entire being was comprehensively fried.
2021-05-2612 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 12: Coupon Cutters of the World UniteLiving in a digital world, there are certain conventions of 20th century American life I’ve eagerly preserved – collecting records, subscribing to a newspaper – and cutting coupons is among them.
2021-05-1910 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 11: 'Naked in the Rain' b/w 'Almost Cut My Foot'Every band exists somewhere between myth and reality. There’s a spectrum of falsities and truths, and I imagine the Red Hot Chili Peppers of "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" lived somewhere in between, and that the truth, if we knew it, would mostly be boring. Music can inspire, it can help us face the world with a sock on our cock and scream “THIS IS ME!,” but it’s risky business searching for an ideal for living within a pop song.
2021-05-1210 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 10: Horses, Imaginary New England Farms and the Man on the Marquee MoonIn new spaces, records have a way of taking on new lives, of opening themselves up to new interpretations and renewed appreciation. And that was the case earlier this spring when, as I found myself missing everything we left behind in Boise, I started drip-feeding Television’s "Marquee Moon" and Patti Smith’s "Horses."
Clearly Smith and Verlaine did not have the static comfort of suburbia in mind when they wrote these songs, but the way I gravitated toward "Marquee Moon," in particular, makes sense considering it feels like we’re living on the moon.
2021-05-0512 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 9: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 8The gripping conclusion of “The Moving Saga” is here!
In August 2020, we crossed a nation in turmoil in a rented minivan.
Our move to Ohio was not a vacation, and we did not try to trick ourselves into thinking it was. There was no side trip to Yellowstone. No stop at Rushmore for a selfie. Nothing of the sort. The swimsuits we packed never left our suitcases.
Leaving the bad scene in Boise behind on Aug. 10, we wondered what awaited us on the non-holiday road as we entered the bowels of Middle America.
2021-04-2821 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 8: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 7In July 2020, we bought a house over FaceTime.
We did not, as the Phrase of the Year goes, have that on our 2020 bingo card. The house was 2,000 miles away in a town we had rarely visited, on a road we weren’t sure how to pronounce, in a neighborhood we didn’t know. But by July of 2020, when the world’s idea of “normal” had already been redefined, making the biggest investment of our lives through a small, handheld video screen seemed like perfectly rational and sensible behavior.
2021-04-2110 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 7: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 6Given how blazing hot the Boise real estate market was – even in the middle of a raging pandemic – we had expected the house to sell fast, and “fast” in the Boise market had come to mean as little as one day, and often following a bidding war.
Our expectations were heightened even more following 13 showings in the first nine hours our house was on the market. But when we heard from our realtor, it was not with news of any mind-blowing offers – or any offers at all. Instead, she shared the initial feedback she was hearing from buyers’ agents, and it wasn’t pro...
2021-04-1410 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 6: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 5June 2020 brought a series of wind sprints in the middle of our moving marathon. Up to that point, every step we took – be it taping up another box or booking another home repair – was made with a summer move in mind, but with no guarantee it would actually happen. But when Erica got the green light for permanent remote work, the exhibition run turned into a real race, and we kicked into high gear.
2021-04-0711 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 5: A Tale of Two Seasons – Baseball and the MTV Buzz BinSome say hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. I’m not sure I agree with that, but that’s only because for nearly a decade of my life, hitting a round ball with a round bat came easily to me. Until it didn’t. Stepping into the batter’s box that spring felt like stepping into quicksand. I couldn’t find my footing, and it literally felt like I was sinking. I swung above the ball, I swung below the ball, and most of the time when I swung, I felt like I was going to fall. M...
2021-03-3119 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 4: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 4The shutdown on the 25th was inevitable, but when the moment arrived and I got home and shut the door for the first time after the governor had ordered me to stay there, it still felt strange – an eerie tonal shift that turned a work-a-day Wednesday into something not quite like terror but definitely terrible. In response, I made a pot of chili, got drunk and went to bed without setting the alarm. The groggy new morning greeted us with a terrifying question: Now what?
We found ourselves face-to-face with a house stuffed with stuff, a decade-old to...
2021-03-2411 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 3: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt.3I never really liked our house in Boise. Especially when the Great Recession wrecked havoc on our lives and our home value.
Waiting it out in a house that seemed to get smaller by the day, we grunted our way through career changes and a stubborn economy that ended up booming in Boise, giving us a big chip to cash in a decade later.
2021-03-1710 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 2: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 2“What about Hudson?”
“Hudson, Ohio?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
Shortly after setting our sights (sort of) on Pittsburgh, Erica comes out of deep, deep left field with the suggestion of moving to Hudson, Ohio, two towns over from where I grew up and home to overpriced gourmet cupcakes and well-to-do sweater boys named Sasha and Hunter and Chase.
2021-03-1006 minThe Suburban AbyssEpisode 1: We Moved Across the Country During the Pandemic. Here’s How (and Why) Pt. 1"It started with Pittsburgh."
The debut episode of The Suburban Abyss takes us back to Boise, Idaho, January 2020 – post-holiday/pre-COVID – and the innocuous Parade magazine listicle that planted the seeds for our move back East.
2021-03-0307 min