Tulip City Dispatch

 

Going back almost a month to my Country Music article , as well as the Nashville series I wrote last year , I've been mulling over a lot of things lately.  Specifically, I've been trying to figure out a way to write 2,000 words about how I don't get Hank Williams...but even with that thesis statement, I can't elaborate for more than a paragraph or two. Sure, he's highly influential...but he's exactly of his time .  His overall tone and sound are exactly what you'd expect from a 1940s country artist.  He's memorialized and venerated due to his short career, that's all cool and good, but I don't understand the reverence and sanctity that are held around his name.  Again, that's all on me.  I lack the context of being involved in mainstream country in a pre-Hank world, and simply cannot appreciate the changes that he and his popularity brought to mainstream country. The closest analog that I have context for is the paradigm-shifting song, Crui...

Not pertinent to anything, but I don't have any other proper outlets to write this. I've been making a conscious effort to listen to my entire record collection lately - rough estimate, I own somewhere around 100 to 120 records, most of which were purchased over the years at thrift shops for $20 or less (my favorite era was the 2010-2020 era when records were as cheap as 3 or 4 for $1).  I've got them arranged alphabetically by artist, then title (or simply title in case of a compilation/anthology or soundtrack), and marked with a sticky note in the corner to show which ones have been played:  I'll remove the little sticky note flag when I play one.  As vinyl has had a recent resurgence, I have maybe a dozen new purchases from merch tables at my Year Of Concerts , or online from various podcasts about music . I started buying records right around 2013 or 2014, searching thrift shops for specific titles which I'd cut into guitar pickguards, as seen in this Etsy pos...

 Our Brewing Company (76 E 8th St, Holland, MI 49423), opened in 2012, has been a staple of the Holland beer scene since they opened with a bang, running out of beer during their grand opening celebrations, and having to shut down for 2 weeks to build up stock again.  They're a personal favorite of mine - I've had a mug club membership there for 10 years now.  The atmosphere is great, and they're not afraid to experiment with different, cool, and obscure beer styles! In 2019, they started experimenting with distilling.  Everything was brewed, distilled, aged, and packaged in house for their bourbons, so everything was done under their control - no MGP stuff here (unlike Coppercraft Distillery, north of downtown Holland).  Their first release of this batch was aged for 3 years, in 2022.  Each subsequent offering was released at 1 year intervals:  4 year in 2023, 5 year in 2024, 6 year in 2025, and 7 year in 2026.  I've been fortunate (through my mu...

 By now, we've all seen the video of a McDonald's CEO timidly taking a bite of their Big Arch burger before telling us that "we're all going to love the product," in what appears to be a hostage video perpetrated by Linda At The Front Desk .  All publicity, they say, is good publicity, and what was originally a botched promo video did indeed inspire me to buy not one, but two, Big Arch combos from McDonald's.  I don't normally eat at McDonald's, since the ones around Holland seem to be more expensive than other local areas, plus if I'm grabbing junk food on Saturday, I'll often err towards Burger King or some sort of sub sandwich like Jimmy John's. The Big Arch "start[s] with the two juicy quarter-pound 100% beef patties, layered with three slices of melty white cheddar cheese. It’s then topped with both crispy and slivered onions, zesty pickles and crisp lettuce, but what truly sets it apart is the new BIG ARCH Sauce—tangy, creamy...

 The whole thing started in October - we hit the data cap for our XFinity plan in 2 or 3 days. I didn't know we had a data cap on our XFinity plan, so I was befuddled. Problem is, you can't just call XFinity, you must escalate your ticket up their chain of command: Start with their AI chatbot, escalate to a human typing on the other end of the chatroom, get transferred to an AI phone operator, escalate that to any number of human phone operators. Somewhere in that initial escalation, they discovered that we weren't on an actual plan from them, and the services we had weren't even offered by them anymore - our account had slipped through the cracks. Their "solution" to the massive data leak was to give sell us the premium tier service with no data cap...which didn't actually solve anything, it just passed the buck down the road. By October 6 or 7, we had blown through another terrabyte of data, so I reached out to Customer Service agai...