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Succession Season 3, episode 4

I am just going to be talking about a few scenes in this episode. This is just a rough draft.

Gregory goes to see Logan and he greets Logan with a hearty good morning. Logan offers him something to drink and Gregory has this confused look on his face and asks Logan if he means an alcoholic drink. Gregory asks for a rum and coke, but he is at first joking around, but Logan takes him seriously and asks Kerry, his assistant, to bring him a rum and coke. Gregory says that Kerry doesn’t have to do that, but Logan says “What Greg wants, Greg must have.” Greg is very nervous throughout his discussion with Logan because Logan is an intimidating man, and Gregory is in hot water because Kendall went against the Roy family and talked about a lot of corrupt practices that the company did for many years. Gregory still works for Logan, so Logan has Gregory sign a non-disclosure agreement, but Gregory wants to know what is in it for him. Logan tells him that is not how things work with him, and so he makes Gregory sign the agreement. The scene where Greg wonders if Logan means to offer him alcohol reminded me of the scene in Mean Girls, where Cady Heron goes to Regina George’s house for the first time, and Regina’s mom, who is a permissive parent who lets her daughter do whatever she wants, brings them drinks. Cady asks Regina’s mom if there is alcohol in the drinks, and Regina’s mom tells her “Oh, honey, no! What kind of mother do you think I am?” But she tells Cady that if she wants alcohol, she has it in the house and Cady is welcome to it, but Cady politely declines. Greg reminds me of Cady before she became a Mean Girl because he is polite and awkward. They both remind me of me when I was growing up because I am awkward and introverted, and I remember people would always joke that I was too polite.

There is another scene where Tom approaches Greg in Greg’s office about how he, Tom, might go to jail. Greg is excited because he might be transferring to another department, the Parks division. Tom is not happy for Greg because all he can think about is his lawyer telling him, Tom, that he might go to jail after he testified for Congress about the Cruise documents. Tom tries to beat up on Greg and starts hitting him and telling Greg to fight him, but Greg tells him to stop hitting him and that he doesn’t want to fight. Tom and Greg have a very toxic relationship. I wouldn’t even call it a friendship because Greg just tries to do whatever Tom says because Tom intimidates him. I really do love the acting between these two characters. Somehow Greg’s office got cleaned up pretty quickly. At the beginning, Tom offers Greg the office and it is very unkempt and messy and there is stuff everywhere, and there is no room for Greg to have a space to work. But by the time Tom comes back, he sees that Greg has a desk and space to work, and there is a basket of large croissants and other pastries on the desk. Honestly, those pastries looked delicious. I am vegan but I would have loved to enjoy a pastry or two with Greg and Tom at the moment.

There is another scene where Logan gets heat exhaustion. He, Josh and Kendall are talking about the shareholder deal with Josh, who is a major investor (I was really pumped to see Adrien Brody playing Josh’s character because I loved his work in Cadillac Records, The Pianist and The Grand Budapest Hotel), but Logan has health problems and can’t walk that far, and Josh is taking them on the hike way too far. Logan refuses help when Kendall offers to call a doctor, but then he starts vomiting on the side of the road and then has a heart attack, prompting Josh and Kendall to get him to a doctor immediately. Kendall asks Josh about the deal, but Josh thinks Kendall should focus on taking care of his dad. Roman tells Kendall that Josh pulled out of the deal because Logan’s heart attack scared him.

TV Show Synopsis: Succession, Season 3, Episode 3: The Disruption

I just finished up episode 3 of the third season of the HBO show Succession. Honestly, this show is giving me goosebumps. The acting is really good, and things are really starting to heat up.

Honestly, one part of the show I like is that Shiv Roy is always so well dressed. She just always has the coolest outfits. When she goes to a conference in the evening, she is dressed in a beautiful long dark blue dress and her hair is styled in this beautiful way. She just looks so elegant. Kendall is having a ball releasing all this corrupt stuff about his dad. In one scene, he is in a limousine with Naomi Pierce, Greg and some other people and they are reading tweets that people have written about what Kendall did, and they play a game of “good tweet/ bad tweet” where they judge whether the tweet was good or bad. Logan, however, doesn’t want to deal with Kendall himself. He wants everyone on his team to make sure that he doesn’t come back to Waystar Royco headquarters because of all the stuff he said about Logan and the allegations he leaked about the company’s history of sexual abuse and corrupt practices. It’s interesting how Tom used to come off as this confident person just because he was the head of the news network at Waystar Royco, but the more time he spends around Logan, the more intimidated and scared he becomes. He is in a lot of hot water, and so he gets more and more stressed in his interactions with Greg. Earlier he had a lot of fun poking at Greg and bullying him, but now he sees that Logan is intimidating and he becomes fearful. Tom approaches Greg in his office, and puts two Tic-Tacs on his desk and says in a deadpan way that since they are in deep water, they have to take these cyanide pills. Greg takes him seriously, but Tom tells him he is kidding and that they are just Tic-Tacs. Tom still treats Greg like his subordinate though even though Logan intimidates him. Tom gives Greg another office, but it is a super cluttered storage room with no space to really work. Greg is reasonably upset and thinks it’s punishment, but Tom lets him know he is under a lot of pressure right now because everyone is freaking out about Kendall leaking the cruise allegations and they are trying to figure out how to stop him. Tom tells Greg to come for drinks so they can sort this out. Earlier they had to testify in Washington, D.C. about the Cruises allegations, and this really was not a great experience for Tom or Greg. Tom told Greg in season 1 to shred the Cruises documents, which detailed all of the allegations against Waystar Royco of abuse and other corrupt practices, and Greg did so. I was so stressed for him because I knew there would be consequences if he shredded those papers. I know Greg said he saved copies of those documents, but he still shredded a lot of them and still had to testify in Congress. It really shows how Tom and Greg have a very toxic relationship with one another.

There is a brief moment where Nate, who was Shiv’s ex-boyfriend, approaches her and they exchange some salty insults towards one another. In an older episode, Shiv quit Gil’s campaign even though at the beginning she was on board with Nate and Gil for taking down her dad, and this soured her relationship with Nate. Nate and Shiv had to stop seeing each other anyway because Tom was upset that Shiv still had feelings for Nate even though she and Tom were engaged, and so Tom approaches Nate and tells him to back off of his wife. Kendall approaches Shiv and Shiv tells him that he made a huge mistake releasing those Cruise allegations, and that Logan is really worried that Kendall will mess up the shareholder vote by releasing more about the allegations in his interviews. Earlier, Kendall asked his siblings if they would support his decision to take down his dad and release all this corrupt stuff he did, but they were worried about getting their inheritance cut off so they backed out of supporting Kendall. Kendall thinks they are cowards and goes off and plans to take down Logan and Waystar by himself, with his own team to back him up. Shiv thinks that Kendall is doing all this out of ego, but Kendall thinks she is just being full of it because she is now the president of domestic operations at Waystar Royco.

Meanwhile Roman is in an interview with someone, and they are asking personal questions about his childhood. Roman, however, is not comfortable with the interview and leaves the interviewer. Shiv meets with Logan in private, and he tells her that he needs to trust her because he cannot trust Gerri. He admits that he didn’t know about what happened in the Cruises division, and that he doesn’t read his emails. He also thinks that he is above the law. Kendall, Greg, Naomi and others are at a party and Greg tries to get Kendall to buy his watch, but Kendall refuses. On the big screen TV at the party, everyone watches this comedic commentator named Sophie Iwobi (I just found out that Ziwe plays Sophie), who is sort of like a Samantha Bee-type commentator. She roasts Kendall’s privilege and his whiteness, and everyone laughs because they know it is satire.

Shiv comes home and finds Tom petting their dog and drinking. He is worried that he might go to jail because things are really going downhill after the Cruises allegations, and Tom says he should speak to Logan about it and propose himself as the beating post. This scene really showed me how scared Tom is of losing his reputation and how scared he is of Logan Roy’s power. I thought the scene where he has to play that humiliating Boar on the Floor game was bad, but that was just the beginning. Tom finally sees Logan for the corrupt and manipulative person he is. Kendall wakes up and checks his phone for more commentary from people about him, and he is starting to soak up all the attention that people are paying to him. He probably feels good considering his dad kicked him off the team on that episode where they are on a yacht. Kendall sees Michelle-Anne Vanderhoven, the senior White House aide, on ATN news talking about the allegations against Waystar, and he calls Jess and Greg to tell them to prepare his office at the Waystar Royco building because he is going back to the office. Logan confronts Michelle about what is going on, and tells her that this whole thing has become a witch-hunt and that prosecutors are after him. Logan doesn’t want anything to do with this, but he can’t just get away from this without consequences. Shiv and Roman read some of the responses and questions fielded from employees at Waystar, and many of them have to do with the toxic environment at the company. They suddenly receive word that Kendall has arrived at Waystar and is going to enter the building, and Logan yells at everyone to keep him out of the building and prevent him from going in. Karolina and Hugo, who are PR assistants to Logan, go down to the entrance and try to block Kendall from entering. Kendall finds that his keycard is no longer working, but he determines to go through the entrance anyway. Kendall makes his way upstairs and Tom approaches him. Tom is extremely nervous that Kendall is here, and they have an awkward conversation, but I could tell Tom was really nervous because he knows Logan won’t be happy knowing Kendall got into the building. Kendall whispers to Tom that he has an opportunity to join Kendall in destroying his dad’s reputation, but Tom is too nervous to side with Kendall because then he will lose his reputation and social standing. Kendall then goes into his office and finds that he is locked out of his computer, and he starts to wonder what is going on. Then he feels the room is cold and finds that someone has hacked his A/C. A security guard appears in the room and intimidates Kendall, telling him “I know you.” Shiv then gets up in front of several people to address how Waystar is responding to the sexual abuse allegations that Kendall (she refers to him as a “senior executive” rather than his real name), but before she can finish her speech, someone blasts the song “Rape Me” by Nirvana, drowning out her speech (I wasn’t sure who did it, but I realized it was Kendall who ordered someone to blast the song.) Everyone is just really confused. Shiv decides to draft a letter attacking Kendall and wants Connor and Roman to join her in getting the letter published, but they don’t think it is a good idea because it has a lot of private stuff about his life that he wouldn’t want anyone to know about. Shiv gets angry and publishes the letter herself. Kendall goes on Sophie’s show and he is really excited to meet the writing team, and he tells them to come at him with all the insults and jokes about him because he thinks he can handle it. However, he finds out that the letter Shiv wrote about him and his personal life has gone online (I didn’t know what it was at first. I thought that they were going to release the dick pic that he took for Naomi Pierce, but then I saw he was reading a lot of text on his phone, so I realized it was probably something else that he didn’t want to be released.) He tells the producer that he doesn’t want them to bring up that letter when he appears on the show and says he may have to sit the interview out, but the producer tells him they go on in fifteen minutes so they can’t change anything. He feels embarrassed and pained, and he walks down the hall as ominous piano music plays, and he goes into the back room and curls up alone and refuses to go on the show during Sophie’s segment about him. Gerri informs Logan that the Department of Justice is coming to Waystar to issue a search warrant in light of the allegations, and Logan agrees to cooperate. Tom is having a nice dinner with everyone, but Hugo interrupts to tell him about the search warrant, so Tom has to inform everyone it is happening.

I am anticipating what is going to happen in the next episode. Honestly, I cannot stop watching this show. It is full of juicy drama. I think this episode really showed me how fed-up Kendall is with his dad at this point. He sees how his dad is treating people poorly and how he manipulates Kendall and all the other kids, and Kendall is just done. Greg was closely following Tom these past two seasons, but then when Kendall had Greg accompany him to interviews and work with Jess to be his advocates, Tom got jealous and upset with Greg. I wonder how or if Logan is going to cooperate with the FBI investigation, because earlier he was telling Shiv that he was above the law and could handle what was about to come next for him, but I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. I still think it’s interesting to see this change in Tom’s character, though. For the last two seasons I saw him pick on Greg, and then he has Greg be his assistant. But then he is intimidated by Logan, to the point where he volunteers to be the one to go to jail for wrongdoing, but Logan says that won’t be necessary. I think Tom saw especially how bad Logan was not just in Hungary but also after Kendall, Shiv, and Roman hold a panel discussion and Shiv jokes about removing their dad from power (“an old-fashioned dinosaur cull”) and Logan hits Roman for joking about his dad being an “old dinosaur.” Tom sees this and realizes how much of a bully Logan is to people. It must have been a humiliating experience for Kendall, though, to have Shiv release that personal information about his addiction and relationships. In an earlier episode, the two of them hugged and Kendall thought he could trust Shiv with stuff about his addiction and recovery, but she lost trust in him after he went against the company and released the allegations. I think having that letter put up on the Internet for everyone to read about was a painful experience for Kendall because that was really personal stuff, and even Roman and Connor thought it was a messed-up idea for Shiv to write that letter attacking Kendall. I really love Jeremy Strong’s role as Kendall. He brought a lot of energy to this role, and so much depth. I haven’t seen many of his previous works, but he really acted the hell out of his role as Kendall. It’s like he just went full throttle with his character at this point in the season, and I’m soaking up every minute of it.

Lambert’s

During road trips to Chicago, we would often go to a few places: The Flying Fish in Little Rock, Arkansas; Cracker Barrel (anywhere we went through the South had a Cracker Barrel, so we were pretty fortunate in that sense); or McDonalds. During one road trip to Chicago (I think it was during my winter break), we decided to go outside our comfort zone and try a restaurant called Lambert’s, which was located in Missouri. We didn’t know much about it, other than that they were called “Home of the Throwed Rolls.” We were pretty intrigued by the title, not just by the intentional grammar choice but because as a kid I was picturing a scene where a bunch of waiters and waitresses were throwing rolls at people in a sort of Sylvester Stallone action type movie. Would I get hit in the eye? The groin? The nose? How would I dodge these rolls once the waiters and waitresses started throwing them? And would this go down as a food fight, the kind I saw in movies like Max Keeble’s Big Move? I am exaggerating, but from what I can remember they were serious about throwing the rolls. And even more serious about the portion sizes.

We walked into the restaurant and blues music played on the stereo. It was a bustling day, and there were quite a few people. Even though we didn’t eat red meat or poultry, we ate fish, so we ordered four plates of fried catfish. They would charge us extra if we shared a plate. I didn’t know what was in store for us when we set foot in the restaurant, but let me tell you, it was neither Cracker Barrel nor The Flying Fish. It was a completely new experience.

Waiters came around with tin cans of a sticky syrup called sorghum. Up until I stepped foot in this restaurant, the only sweeteners I had consumed were honey and cane sugar.

“Sooorrrrghum on your rolls!” a young mustachioed waiter hollered as he came around with sorghum. Fluffy hot rolls flew at us, and we caught them with serious baseball sportsmanship.

“Macaroni and tomatoes!”

I nodded, and the waitress heaped my plate with macaroni and tomatoes. I ate. Mmmm, I said, as I dug into the buttery pasta. My stomach shelf was at about 40 percent. I ate a bread roll with sorghum. It was an interesting taste. I chewed the roll and swallowed, and it worked its way through my throat like warm glue. Oh, gosh, my stomach groaned. You are at sixty five percent, kid. Slow down.

“Fried okra!” As a kid who grew up in the South, I couldn’t say no to some fried okra. It was just too good. I savored each bite. My stomach was yelling a little louder. You are at seventy-five percent! Don’t give me any more food to digest!

But I couldn’t. I also didn’t want to hurt the waiters’ feelings by saying “no, thank you.” Our plates of fried catfish came around, and by the time they got to our table, our stomachs were smaller than our eyes. I wanted to take a break, but the food just kept coming around. My stomach was screaming, STOPPPP!!! IT IS WAY TOO MUCH FOOD! You are at 110 percent!!! I weakly eyed my catfish, and my stomach nearly lurched. I grabbed my fork and cut through a sliver of the fried fish filet and took a bite. Delicious. I took more forkfuls and almost made it through half of the catfish. My family was almost done with theirs and they were getting pretty full, too. We groaned from the pain of eating more than your stomach allows you to.

“Macaroni and tomatoes?” A woman came around with a bowl of macaroni and tomatoes. She had a Santa hat on, and a cheery disposition.

I waved my hand in defeat. I might as well have waved my white napkin and called a truce between me, my stomach, and all that delicious Southern goodness.

“No thank you, ma’am.”

She gave a concerned look.

“Are you allergic to the food?”

I shook my head.

“No, ma’am, I am just full.”

She moved on to the next table.

We paid the bill and thanked the people at the restaurant. We slowly got up and used the restroom and then waddled our way to the car, sleepy and full. I don’t know how Mom and Dad are going to drive back, I thought. We ate so much food.

We got in the car, and the first thing my sister jokingly said was, “Wow. Let’s go get some ice cream!”

We all gave her dagger eyes. I couldn’t drink alcohol because I was underage, but it wasn’t until I ate in that restaurant that I learned you can be intoxicated just from eating a lot of good Southern food until your stomach is begging for mercy.

The Road Trip

We drove past the cornfields.

Rows and rows of cornfields

The road stretched and yawned before us

As The Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water”

Played on the staticky radio

We passed a large body of water

Shimmering in the summer sun

As the heat licked my forehead

And sweat dripped down my leather back

The can of cream soda sizzles as Jenna

Clicks back the tab

And knocks it back

She lets out a long belch

And we scream in laughter.

We pass 18-wheelers

Minivans

Sedans

Each car tells a story

Carries a human with emotional baggage.

We stop at a motel for the evening

And then start back up the next morning.

Writing prompt

Daily writing prompt
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
View all responses

This was a good question because as my friends have gotten older and passed away, I reflect on the purpose of life and what happens after death. I definitely have gained a much deeper appreciation for life, and I have learned that from a lot of my friends who were older than me to live a fulfilling life and appreciate each day. It is easy for me to be jaded and cynical and to also think, “Forget it, I’m young, I have time.” But I think having that jaded and cynical perspective is no longer serving me well. It never served me well, but when I am in that place of “Forget life, I don’t care anymore about anything,” it’s easy to think that suffering is all there is to life when there is so much more. I think that is why I love religion and spirituality because it gives me something to look forward to everyday. I love waking up and chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo because it reminds me that my purpose in life is so profound, and it reminds me that I am deeply interconnected with everyone around me. As a solitary person, I tend to close myself off from others and get really consumed by my own shit and think I am the only one dealing with depression, anxiety, low self-worth, and other problems, but when I open up to someone, they might say, Wow, I am having the same problem! I thought I was the only one. I remember when we lost a lot of people during the pandemic, and it really forced me to face this deep anxiety I had about illness and dying, and also got me thinking about how we deal with the process of grief and healing from grief. I also volunteered at many memorial services for members of the Buddhist community I am part of, and each time I did it reminded me of the reality of life and death. It made me go back and reflect on what I am really living on this planet Earth for and what my purpose is. I think as I have continued to practice Buddhism, my perspective on life has changed. In 2016 I was miserable and thought my life was over and that I had no purpose. I had really bad depression and felt I was just going to stay in that place forever. Fast forward to 2024, and while I still struggle with my mental health, I am much better at finding ways to take better care of myself and I have gained so much more self-worth. Of course, self-confidence isn’t something I developed overnight. It took a lot of work, but I am happy that I went through this battle with my self-confidence because I had to get stronger and more resilient. Like in 2021, I fell in love with someone and my whole life revolved around him, and it pained me that this person was in a relationship already. But I was so madly in love that I wasn’t willing to face that reality. I think Buddhism and good friends and hobbies pretty much saved my life during this crucial period of recovering from heartbreak because I realized that I didn’t need to be with that person to feel loved or respected. I needed to love myself. I needed to be my own best partner. I am sure I will find someone someday but right now I really love being my own boyfriend/ girlfriend/ nonbinary partner. And I love myself so much more now.

Of course, I make mistakes and have slip ups and today, during lunch with my parents, I broke down and called myself a “terrible daughter” in front of them, and I could see the pain on their faces when I said that, and I immediately recognized that I was hating myself again like I had done so many times, and I realized at that moment, Hold up! That isn’t true. For so many years, I called myself worthless, stupid, ugly and trash, but over time I have learned that going deep in that abyss of self-hatred was hurting me and hurting the people around me, and so over time I have continued chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and I have been able to develop so much love for myself and also for others. I have learned over time that failures and mistakes are important for my growth, and it is still a lesson I am learning to accept, speaking as a recovering perfectionist. And I have learned from practicing Buddhism to create value from even the tough moments. It was really tough not getting into the professional orchestra I wanted, but it was tougher to remember how self-destructive and mean I was to myself during that time I was preparing for the audition. I often cry when I think of how mean I was to myself and to others, like, Where was the compassionate kid who loved nature and books and experienced awe and curiosity? What happened to that little girl? She was there all along, but I had to go through my own shit to find that little girl again, and she is still growing and learning about the world, but she will always be a part of me, even when I take my last breath.

My Thoughts on the Grammys

So it’s 10 pm here and technically the Grammys finish at 10:30 but I am very tired, so I am going to write up some quick thoughts on the Grammy Music Awards.

Honestly, it was a beautiful ceremony. Trevor Noah, who hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central, was the host at the Grammys. He was a really great host tonight; I remember when he hosted the Grammys some time ago, and he was a really good host that time, too. I really loved Fantasia’s tribute to Tina Turner; she performed “Proud Mary,” and she did the Tina dancing and glittery outfit and heels and everything. And Fantasia can BELT a song, man. I haven’t listened to much of her music, but now I really want to see her in The Color Purple. Oprah also gave a really moving introduction to Fantasia’s performance of “Proud Mary,” and she talked about her friendship with Tina. She said that Tina always told Oprah that she should dress up even if she wasn’t going out anywhere, and that really encouraged me because Tina had this incredible confidence and that really taught me the importance of loving yourself and developing confidence in yourself. I remember watching a documentary called TINA, and in the documentary, she talks about her Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and how it helped her transform her life in so many ways. I always get so encouraged when I tell people about the practice, and they go, “Oh, yeah, Tina Turner chanted in that movie!” and I remember they are talking about What’s Love Got to Do With It? with Angela Bassett. The movie is still on my watch list and I feel bad saying I haven’t watched it yet even after all these years. I really loved her autobiography, I, Tina, though. I now just have so much appreciation for Tina inspiring so many people.

Miley Cyrus did a performance of “Flowers” and she also channeled that Tina Turner energy. She had a fringe dress and blown out hair, and at the end of her performance she did some dance moves like Tina Turner. They have segments where they introduce each artist, and the artist talks about their work and the inspirations, and Miley said she was inspired by artists like Tina Turner and Dolly Parton, and she wanted to channel their energy into her music. Speaking of legends, Stevie Wonder performed a very moving tribute to Tony Bennett, who passed away last year. He sang “For Once in My Life.” To be honest, I grew up with the Stevie Wonder version, and I didn’t grow up listening to Tony Bennett much, but I remember one day, I was like, I want to explore more of these legends like Barbara Streisand and Tony Bennett and Tina Turner, so I listened to an album Tony had produced with Lady Gaga where he collaborates with her (the album is called Cheek to Cheek.) When I listened to Cheek to Cheek, it was so beautiful and the collaboration between Tony and Lady Gaga’s voices was stunning. It must have been a huge treat to work with Tony Bennett. The In Memoriam part was very moving. I really loved Annie Lennox’s tribute to Sinead O’ Connor. Annie just has such a powerful voice and she put so much soul into her performance.

The Joy of Listening to Music (some ramblings)

I have always loved music. Since I was young, I remember listening to Celine Dion and many other artists in the car. Somehow Celine’s voice took me to another world, and I loved her vocal range. Some of my favorite songs were “Because You Loved Me,” “The Power of Love” and “Love Can Move Mountains.” I remember going on my way to school, listening in the car to her singing on the radio station. The soaring choir at the beginning of “Love Can Move Mountains” always gives me goosebumps because it is so powerful, and the song just has a beautiful and uplifting rhythm. It is hard to describe music in articulate words because there are so many feelings when I listen to music that I struggle to express. My music tastes have expanded over the years, and I remember when I was around eighth of ninth grade, I found a playlist station on Yahoo Music called “Coffeehouse Music,” and there were some notable songs I listened to on that station. One of them was Sia’s “Soon We’ll Be Found,” and it had a beautiful music video. It was my first time hearing Sia’s music, and after that I fell in love with her music and listened to her album Some People Have Real Problems. Another song on the Coffeehouse station came up, and it was Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” I really loved the music video that went with the song, too. Honestly, I miss Amy Winehouse. The day I found out that she passed away, I was heartbroken, and I can’t remember how many weeks I cried but it was painful. In middle and high school, Amy Winehouse was one of those artists whose music I really loved. In seventh grade, I struggled a lot with self-esteem and fitting in, so music was always a sort of refuge for me. I remember being young and when I was starting out with a bad Internet addiction, in particular to YouTube, I watched music videos from this artist named K.T. Tunstall. I listened to her album Eye of the Telescope, and absolutely loved it. I really loved her song “Other Side of the World” because it was so beautiful, and I love her voice. Somehow her music made me think of coffee shops and reading books. When I was in my freshman year of high school, I did a science experiment where I had people listen to music while they played cards and they had to memorize the cards, and I wanted to see if playing music helped with memorizing things. I am fuzzy about the particular details of the experiment, but I just remember it was just so much fun for me because I got to go to the library and check out all these CDs (I must have brought home at least twenty-five.) The ones I remember most was Snoop Dogg’s album Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Boss and The Very Best of Aretha Franklin- The ’60s. One of the songs I really loved on the Aretha Franklin album was “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” I was listening to it today and I love it, especially the parts with the piano. Her voice is so powerful, and I love the piano parts, too. I love the rhythm and feel of the music. There is just something so powerful about Aretha Franklin’s music that I really love.

One of the songs from Snoop Dogg’s album that I held onto was “Beautiful,” by him and Pharrell. There is a very cool rhythm to it, and I didn’t listen to much hip-hop before that, other than what was played at middle school social events, but then I started listening to hip-hop more after listening to Snoop Dogg’s album. The summer before my ninth-grade year, I didn’t go to summer school and instead decided to watch MTV, eat waffles and knit scarves and hats. I loved watching MTV because they had a lot of great artists on the channel, and I loved the music videos.

I started to get more into hip-hop around college, because I took an African-American Studies class on Black culture, and one of the units in the class was on music. We listened to music from the 1960s to the present, and we listened to and analyzed songs such as Erykah Badu’s “Green Eyes” and “Orange Moon,” and “We Don’t Need It” by Lil’ Kim feat. Junior M.A.F.I.A. I remember when we listened to “We Don’t Need It,” everyone exchanged glances in the classroom and everyone’s eyes got big, like, Wait, they said what? (the song is very sexually explicit) I remember for my final project in the class I did research on the banjo in African-American music traditions, and I looked up information about Black country musicians. I told my professor that I was inspired to do this research after we had the music unit in the course, and because I saw the movie Last Holiday and there is a part where Queen Latifah’s character, Georgia, is calling her sister and her sister tells her that she is going to follow her dreams and become a country music singer. Georgia tells her “there is no such thing as a Black country music singer,” and at the time I thought it was funny, but then I remembered Black country musicians do exist, notably Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish. To be honest, I only listened to a few hits by Hootie and the Blowfish and I didn’t know that Darius Rucker is African-American. But then I started listening to more of his solo music and I really loved it. He has a song I ended up listening to a lot while studying in the library called “Alright” and it really cheered me up whenever I listened to it. It was like my music comfort food. I also discovered a band called the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and they perform a lot of bluegrass music. That sophomore year of college was seriously a year of musical exploration for me. I took a couple of music courses that year and both of them were on the same day in the morning, the first at 8 am and the second at 10 am. The first class was a classical music course on music history from the pre-Classical period to modern music. It mostly covered classical music and the professor had us listen to classical music from different time periods. My favorite period of classical music, to be honest, will always be the Romantic-era music. I love Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Brahms, and one of the pieces I worked on during that year was a cello sonata by Johannes Brahms. I went to a summer camp one time in high school and I heard an undergraduate student play the Cello Sonata in E Minor by Brahms for a master class, and it immediately hooked me. It was such a beautiful piece and I love E minor because it’s such a stormy and powerful key. We had to check out CDs from the performing arts library and listen to them, and then we had to write papers analyzing the style, the tone and the other different elements of the piece.

I am going to be honest, I love music, but I have only taken a couple of music theory classes, so to get into the nitty-gritty of the music would take me some practice. In my senior year of high school, I took a class called AP (Advanced Placement) music theory. And I bombed the AP exam. I remember having to ask a lot of questions in class and it was quite challenging, and then years later during 2020 when I was in quarantine, I took an online course on music fundamentals. And I bombed that one, too. I remember after failing music theory in high school, I was scared to take a course in music fundamentals. In general, I have a really irrational fear of failure. But I think a class in music theory would have done me some good. I really loved the African Popular Music class I took (it was the 10 am class) because I hadn’t listened to a lot of music by artists from Africa, other than Angelique Kidjo. But we listened to Fela Kuti, E.T. Mensah, and many other artists. For the final project, I collaborated with a classmate, and we researched the music of this artist named K’Naan, who is a Somali-Canadian artist. During the summer I was watching MTV there was a music video by K’Naan called “Strugglin'” and I loved the flow and rhythm of the song. Doing research on K’Naan and listening to his music gave me a deeper appreciation for hip-hop, because it helped me understand that hip-hop can be used to create social change and raise awareness about issues such as global warming, civil war and poverty. I decided to go back and listen to K’Naan’s album Troubadour, and he has a song called “Fire in Freetown” that I really love. A couple of students did a presentation for the class on the music of Die Antwoord, a rap rave group from South Africa. It was a pretty intense music listening experience, and it took some getting used to when I listened to the songs. There was a music video for a song called “Evil Boy,” and I ended up closing my eyes during the video because the presenters warned us it was explicit, and I am pretty sensitive about what content I take in. But I guess that is part of the music experience, in retrospect. You might like different songs and others not so much, but it all exposes you to new styles of music and new ways of listening to music. When I was in the classical music course, we listened to 20th century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez and it was a new music experience for me because I was so used to classical music having this linear structure where I could predict the time signatures, the rhythms and the style of the music, but there were a lot of experimental elements in the 20th century music and it was very new to my ears. I really loved the final project for the course because I ended up writing about Dmitri Shostakovich, who was a composer from the Soviet Union, and how he navigated being a composer during the era of Joseph Stalin, when music faced heavy government censorship. I listened to his String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, and it was very powerful.

In college I really loved listening to the music I grew up with, so that included Phil Collins and a lot of Weird Al. I remember very vividly one evening I was studying in the music library, and I was super homesick and stressed with finals. I broke down in tears, but I was listening to Genesis’ ‘Land of Confusion” and somehow listening to the song made me feel better. I really loved Genesis as a kid; they have a song called “In Too Deep” and it is a sad song but so beautiful. In the summer of 2013, I took a class at a local college and fell in love with a young man who was tall, had beautiful brown eyes and had gone to school in Uganda for three years. There was something so attractive about him and during the time we worked together as students we developed a nice platonic emotional bond, and I filled my journal with fantasies about us getting married and having beautiful children together. Of course, fantasies are just that: fantasies. When I ran into him a few months after the course, I found out he was dating someone else. I was both happy to meet his girlfriend and also heartbroken inside because I had waited for so many months for him to reply to my email (I didn’t have Facebook at the time, but he did) and just kept entertaining these ideas of us getting together and having children together. I often listened to the song “Follow You Follow Me” by Genesis whenever I thought about him. It is such a warm and tender song, and I remember I was still thinking about my crush on the guy, and one fall day during my sophomore year the song “Follow You Follow Me” came on the speaker in the CVS pharmacy store, and I found myself falling in love all over again in the middle of CVS while grabbing batteries/ toothpaste/ whatever the hell I was buying that day. I think I had listened to that song during my time in the college class, whenever I had a private moment in my room and was listening to music. I still love this song, even if I have long gotten over my crush on this young man.

TV Show Review: Succession (continued)

I haven’t finished watching the show Succession yet, but it is really good so far. I am currently on the second season. I was watching the Golden Globes and saw it had received a lot of awards and nominations, and so I became curious about the show. I was seeing it advertised on commercials for HBO, and so I finally decided to watch it a couple of weeks ago. And to be honest, I am hooked. The acting is so good. I also enjoy satire, so I really love this show. I was kind of nervous to begin watching it because I have a lot of anxiety around vomit scenes in movies and TV, and so I read some trigger warnings for the show and saw there was a vomit scene at the beginning of the first episode. However, because I had read about it beforehand, I knew when it was coming so I was able to close my eyes. And I am glad that my impending fear of this scene didn’t prevent me from watching the full show, because I would have missed out. I also really love the music in the show. I have heard Nicholas Britell’s music in movies, namely Moonlight and Vice, and especially the score for Moonlight was absolutely brilliant. I love the opening theme music for the show. It has these strings and the piano and I also love the percussive beats. It gives the show its theme, which is power, and a very Wall-Street New York City sort of mood (the show does take place in New York City).

I really love the acting in this show. I haven’t seen many of Brian Cox’s previous works, but he really acted the heck out of his role as Logan Roy. Even though the show is a drama, it incorporates elements of humor. And the dialogue is really witty. Greg Hirsch and Tom Wambsgans have an interesting dynamic. Tom is from the Midwest, but he marries into the Roy family and becomes wealthy. Greg, however, is always asking his mom for money and doesn’t have his own place to live. He also has a job being a mascot at a Waystar theme park (Waystar is the media conglomerate that the Roy family owns) but he does marijuana before his gig and then vomits, getting him fired from the park (if anyone is squeamish about vomit scenes, it is around the part where Greg is walking through the theme park in his mascot costume. I closed my eyes around that part.) His mom has him reach out to Logan, who is his great-uncle, and so he visits the Roy family. He is an outsider at first because even though his mom belongs to the Roy family, he sticks out like a sore thumb because he comes to the father’s birthday celebration wearing a baggy jacket and worn shoes and he has a very friendly personality. Tom gangs up on him and makes fun of him for being the new kid to join the party, and he continues to bully Greg. There was one scene in particular where he approaches Greg in the break room in the office building, and finds Greg stuffing cookies in a dog poop bag, and he insults him for wearing the wrong shoes and using a dog poop bag to put his snacks in. Greg is intimidated by Tom but in season 2 I really saw how Tom bottled up so many of his insecurities and that he was also dealing with a lot of his own personal stuff and needed someone to take it out on. There is a scene where Tom is having dinner with Shiv, Roman and Tabitha, and Tom talks about his work in the ATN news department and how he is digitizing its algorithm, and they all are happy for him, but Roman then pokes fun at Tom’s humble roots as a Midwesterner who grew up in the corn fields and how funny his suits look. Shiv also joins in on the fun, but Tom tells her to fuck off because he is really hurt that everyone is making fun of him. Tom wanted to show that he had moved up from being an average person and wanted to show people that he was an upper class person with status.

There is another scene that always sticks out for me, and it’s when Greg and Tom are talking in the office, and Greg says that he got his first paycheck and Tom congratulates him and says they should go out to eat. Greg is super happy, and he suggests that they go to California Pizza Kitchen. Tom snorts and giggles and tells him that California Pizza Kitchen isn’t great food, and Greg tries to reason that they make his favorite dish, cajun chicken linguine, and Tom makes fun of Greg for having what he calls an “undereducated palate,” and he tells Greg that he will take him out and teach him how to be rich. To be honest, my first reaction to Tom dissing California Pizza Kitchen was “WTF?!?” And as I was drafting this blog post and scribbling my thoughts on the first season, I wrote a long paragraph about how I would have loved to go with Greg to eat at California Pizza Kitchen. To be honest, I am lactose intolerant and vegan, so the last time I went to California Pizza Kitchen in 2019 I got a pizza that didn’t have cheese (it was pretty good, not going to lie, and the crust was slammin’. Also, I actually was in California eating at California Pizza Kitchen so it was pretty special and made me feel like a little kid again, which I loved. It was a dream come true.) As an ovo-lacto pescetarian kid, California Pizza Kitchen was my jam, and we went a lot when I was younger. The split pea soup was my favorite, as was the cheese pizza and the ice cream sundae for dessert (oh, and don’t forget the Shirley Temple!) So when Greg suggested California Pizza Kitchen, I was pretty pumped, and I kind of deflated when Tom dissed California Pizza Kitchen. Tom ends up taking Greg out to this fancy restaurant where they eat roast songbirds. Greg is really hesitant to eat the songbirds, but Tom has him put his napkin over his face as they eat. Early on, Greg’s grandpa, Ewan, takes Greg to get noodle soup at a restaurant downtown, and Ewan loads his son up on soup, so by the time Greg gets to the fancy restaurant with Tom, he is full and he tells Tom that his grandpa took him out to dinner already. There is another scene where Tom calls Greg and tells him he has an assignment for him to do over the Thanksgiving break, but Greg is driving in the car with Ewan. Greg tells Tom he is driving with his grandpa so he can’t come into the office to complete the assignment for Tom (Ewan lives in Canada, so Greg has to drive from Canada to New York for the Roy family Thanksgiving) and Tom insults Ewan over speakerphone. Ewan gives Greg a side-eye like “What did he just say to me?!?” and Greg is fumbling over his words, and Tom is telling him to hurry up. Ewan is not as enthused as Greg is to see the Roy family, and there is one scene that evening where Logan is showing off these veteran medals he collects, and Ewan points out that unlike him, Roy never served in the war. Ewan calls out the Roy family for being dishonest and corrupt people. Honestly, I gave the same side-eye that Ewan gave to Greg when Tom said, “Fuck your grandpa, Greg!” Like “Sir, you do not cuss out James Cromwell!” (James Cromwell is the actor who plays Ewan. I knew of him from the movie Babe: Pig in the City. Also, I just found out it’s James Cromwell’s birthday today.)

Greg is really inexperienced, and he wants to be part of the higher ups, but he hasn’t gotten there yet, and he still has to earn Logan Roy’s respect to get to the top. The Roy kids also pick on Greg and ignore him. When they are eating at the restaurant, Ewan warns Greg that he needs to steer clear of this family because they are a bunch of vipers who will eat him alive. However, Greg continues to get involved with the Roy family and curry favor with Logan so he can get out of working in the amusement parks division at Waystar Royco. But when he goes to Hungary with the family for one of Logan’s business deals, he almost gets in trouble because early in the episode he spoke with this biographer named Michelle Pantsil, who was planning to write a biography about the Roy family. Greg is nervous and tells her that he doesn’t want to disclose any information, but Michelle tells him he should have told her when he signed an agreement to meet with her that he wanted to remain an anonymous source. On the plane to Hungary, Logan is scouting out the person who spoke to Pantsil, and Tom is even scared of Logan at this point. During dinner, where everyone is eating the roast boars they hunted and killed, Logan forces everyone to play a cruel game called Boar on the Floor, where he has Greg, Tom and Karl fight each other for sausages and calls them “piggies.” He does this so that someone in the room will confess that they spoke to the biographer. I feel really bad, to be honest, that I initially thought the scene was funny, because when I read an article about the actors’ experiences with this scene, it was humiliating and stressful for all the actors to go through this Boar on the Floor scene. There have been times when I have laughed at someone for going through some problem, and then I go through my own experiences of humiliation and shame and realize, Wow, feeling these things isn’t fun for anyone. I really love reading Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown because she unpacks a lot of these emotional experiences that humans can feel at any time, and it really has expanded my view on emotions beyond just sad, happy, mad, and glad. There is a part in the book where she talks about experiences we have when we fall short, and one of these experiences is the feeling of humiliation, which is defined as “the intensely painful feeling that we’ve been unjustly degraded, ridiculed, or put down and that our identity has been demeaned or devalued.” (Atlas of the Heart, page 147) Reading this entry on humiliation helped me understand why the Boar on the Floor game was so terrible for everyone, and why many viewers found the scene unsettling. The day after Logan forces them to play that game, Tom goes to breakfast and says good morning to some of the people at breakfast, as if he is hoping to leave that experience in the past, but people chuckle when he comes in and the room is really silent because everyone is thinking about how horrible that game was. One of the people there that night, Syd, says good morning to Tom and offers him some breakfast sausage but he quietly declines. Greg is sitting by himself, processing the humiliation he felt after having an old man throw sausages at him and call him a “piggie,” but Tom joins him for breakfast because he, too, is feeling humiliated after what he had to go through. Greg thanks him for not telling Logan about him meeting with Pantsil, and Tom quietly rubs his arm in a quiet gesture of sweetness. Of course, he doesn’t suddenly become nice to Greg after that and he continues to be mean to him, but it was that one scene that showed me that both of them went through that painful experience of humiliation, so now that Tom knew how it felt to be made fun of, he could understand how Greg felt.

TV Show Review: Succession season 1 (some thoughts, part 1)

Written a couple of weeks ago when I first started watching the show. I don’t remember when that was but it was probably the week of January 15th.

So I decided to watch the show Succession after hearing a lot of buzz about it. I wasn’t super hip to the show when it first came out, but I saw it advertised all the time. When I watched the Golden Globe Awards this past Sunday I saw it kept getting all these nominations and awards, and I was like, Wow, this show must be really, really good. And as stressful as these first few episodes have been, it is quite good.

To be honest, I was really nervous to watch the show at first because I was reading the parent’s guide on IMDB and they mentioned that there is a scene where a character vomits. I have emetophobia, so I am pretty sensitive to vomiting scenes in movies. But I read on some other sites that have trigger warnings, such as Does the Dog Die and a tumblr dedicated to emetophobia warnings in movies and TV shows, about the scene, and after a while, even though my heart was racing and I was getting pretty nervous about watching the scene, I thought, It is literally just one scene. I don’t want that to make me not watch the show. And thankfully, I knew that the minute Greg goes to the theme park I could close my eyes and not have to watch the scene, which didn’t last super long.

The first episode, titled “Celebration” opens up with an elderly man waking up and walking through the house. He urinates and has to get the assistance of the lady who is helping him. The show opens with an incredible theme song by Nicholas Britell. It conveyed a lot of the power and prestige that runs throughout the show, and I love how he uses the strings and piano. I really love Nicholas Britell’s music. I remember he composed the music for the movies Moonlight and Vice, both movies I really enjoyed watching. Seeing the footage of the Roy family was also really intriguing, just seeing them grow up in this wealthy lifestyle. I was also excited to see that actor Will Ferrell was one of the producers on the show.

There were a few scenes from the Celebration episode that stuck with me. One is when Greg meets the Roy family for the first time when he goes to Logan’s birthday celebration, and everyone pretty much ignores him. He is the only one not wearing a fancy suit; he is wearing baggy clothes and he stands out. Greg has a really unlucky gig at an amusement park when a bunch of kids jump all over him and he vomits. When he gets fired he has to contact his great-uncle Roy (Greg’s mom is connected to the Roy family) for a job, and when he arrives it’s like the family treats him with a cold distance. There is also another scene where Conner, who is the firstborn of Logan Roy, gets Logan a sourdough starter but Logan calls it “gunk” and dismisses it, which frustrates Conner because he just wanted to get his dad something to make him happy. There is another scene where someone gives Logan a really nice watch as a gift but then when they are playing ball in the park as a family, Logan gives the watch to a family that is nearby. I also saw how Roman’s character was, because Roman promises this kid in the park that he will give him one million dollars if he hits a home run, and when the kid doesn’t win the game, Roman acts cruel and tears up the one million dollar check he was going to make out to him, prompting his sister, Shiv, to knock it off. Throughout the show, Roman comes off as overconfident and thinks that when he becomes the Chief Operating Officer of Waystar Royco he is going to get this prestige but he is unaware that it is going to be much more than a job to him. He also does something wild. He goes into one of the offices, unzips his pants and starts jerking off against the window. He cleans up his mess, but it kind of showed me how this power and influence can go to people’s heads.

What books do I want to read?

Bloganuary writing prompt
What books do you want to read?
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Right now I am trying to finish a couple of books, one being Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and the other being Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. I haven’t made much progress but I am determined to finish them. I haven’t finished Bleak House by Charles Dickens but I may need to start over because I don’t really remember the plot very well. There are also some books by an author named Daisaku Ikeda where he has dialogues with different global figures, so I want to get around to reading those as well. There are still a lot of books I want to explore and read that have been sitting on my shelf unread. I have mostly been watching a lot of movies and TV shows, so my book reading has been taking a back seat. I have mostly been doing a lot of Buddhist study, so I have been reading The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin a lot each day (it’s a book of letters that a Buddhist reformer named Nichiren Daishonin wrote to his followers during the 1200s.) I also want to read Emma because I checked out the film from the library but I love reading the book before seeing the movie, but I might just watch the movie even if I haven’t read the book yet because it’s due back to the library soon.