WILT Week 5

The Mountain, New Last Name, and The Amber Spyglass

Hey friends! It’s been an eventful few weeks for me (Oscar Blair). Don’t believe me? Well, I’m gonna make your lack of belief in my statement seem utterly ridiculous. All your friends are gonna make fun of you for not believing me. Picture three of your friends; I want you to visualise them. Make sure they're really close ones. They should be the kind of friends that you do NOT want to make fun of you. Well, guess what? Even those ones are gonna make fun of you for not believing my weeks have been eventful.

Anyway, I’ve mostly just been chilling 🤷.

Albums

I listened to two albums for this post. But I’m not gonna talk about them yet because I’m actually gonna give a recap of what I’ve been up to in my life. I just thought it could be funny to cut right to the albums after all that buildup. Heheh. You can’t take me anywhere! I’m just so gosh-darn silly.

I went to Switzerland with my family and also some extended family. It was wonderful to see some of my top-tier cousins and aunt and uncle (other cousins and aunts and uncles reading this, please ignore). We really gotta normalise a gender-neutral version of aunt/uncle, that sentence would’ve flowed way better with one. I just googled it and it looks like pibling, auncle, and entle are the popular proposals. Let’s take this next week to really nail one down and start using it seriously.

We took, and you might think I’m exaggerating when I say this, ONE MILLION TRAINS to get Swissed up. And I, in classic Oscar fashion, didn’t really sleep on the night before, so the twelve-hour travel day was interesting for sure. But it was so fun because we got to pick up Betty and Olive on the journey there, and those guys are top-tier siblings (other siblings reading this, please ignore). And then we saw ONE MILLION MOUNTAINS and stayed in amazing hotels, and swam in the most blue-rasberry colored water in the world, and went on a hike where we were hanging off of a cliff. I had a really good bit where I kept saying, “Man, I wish I was scared! I really feel like I’m supposed to be scared right now, but it’s just not happening.”

(Me, trying to be scared)

(Me, and my buddy)

Also, don’t tell anyone, but I saw this lizard.

Not too long after I got back from Switzerland, I flew out to Dublin for my top-tier girlfriend, Lucy’s birthday! (Other girlfriends reading this, please ignore). It was so amazing to see her because I hadn’t for just over two months, and as anyone who knows her would tell you, that is far too long to go without seeing her.

Here’s a pic of us just moments before our friend Zoe attacked us.

Here’s the awful moment when she lost all control :(

The festivities were amazing! We did flower arranging, and gifts, and played on a Wii, and oh my goodness it is way too easy to typo Wii into WWII, and we did blind karaoke and played werewolf, and had cake :) The next day we went to Spoons and Copper’s, and I got to meet some of her friends I hadn’t met before, and everyone was so lovely! The next day was my last one in Dublin before I went back. Lucy took me to Bray, and we got some chicken sandwiches and chips. We said goodbye :( And I played SETI (a very nice board game) in at my friend Ripley’s house. It was a wonderful trip. Would do again.

There were two albums I listened to, and I have thoughts.

The Mountain — Gorillaz

This album was recommended to me by my friend Seán King. I don’t know how to explain how cool this guy is you guys. I would be chilling at Fighting Words during my internship there, and then I would find out Seán was in that day, and the quantity of joy would skyrocket. So you can imagine my surprise when I listened to the album and it was garbage.

Okay, it wasn’t garbage. Some of it was quite nice, actually; it just wasn’t for me.

The Happy Dictator and The Hardest Thing were my favourites, but they’re not gonna be entering my rotation.

Look, clearly a lot of work went into the album. Each song is made with a lot of care, there’s a sense of ambitiousness and cohesiveness across the album, and it’s really trying to say something. I’m sure if I listened to it 15 more times, I would think it’s the greatest thing ever. But I’m not gonna listen to it again, probably because it doesn’t get my head nodding or get me feeling really deeply about anything.

I like a couple Gorillaz songs. On Melancholy Hill, Kids with Guns, and El Mañana have been in my rotation for years. I haven’t listened to any of their newer stuff until this, so maybe if I had been following them for all these years I’d be more into it. But alas, I am not.

New Last Name — Courting

I’m convinced my friend Vinnie recommended this album to subtly try to influence me into liking saxophone. Well, it’s NOT GONNA HAPPEN. Look, Vinnie plays sax. He has no choice but to like this album. He’s invested too many hours and euros into a trash instrument, and the sunk cost fallacy has convinced him that it’s good. But I know a scam when I see one, and I am not falling for it.

The album is actually nice. I wish the songs were all 1 minute long, because that’s about how long I wanted to listen to them. They have good energy and sound good overall, but they also sound like they think angst and saxophone make songs interesting enough to listen to for six minutes. Flex was my fav.

But for real, if they released 2-minute edits of some of these songs, I would add them to my rotation.

Books

I finished The Amber Spyglass and have only just started The Guest by Emma Cline. Books are great.

The Amber Spyglass — Philip Pullman

This was the end of the trilogy. I liked it a lot. I wanted it to blow my mind, and it didn’t. Book 2 was probably my favourite. I just found it harder to lock into this one. I didn’t care about the world of the dead, and I wasn’t sold on the romance. But I love all the stuff he does with theology and coming of age. The last sentence is a banger, and I still really feel for Lyra, but I miss the simplicity of the first book.

I thought it was cool when she lost her ability to read the alethiometer, and then had it explained to her that she would have to spend a lifetime to be able to use it again, but she would understand it even better. There are still cool moments like that that feel like they’re striking at a deep truth.

2 Dogs and a Turtle

1. Compass

2. Knife

3. Spyglass

In case you are unfamiliar, 2DaaT is a game invented by my wonderful sister Betty where 1 person provides 3 names. 2 are dog names, 1 is a turtle name. You have to figure out which are which.

Here’s the inta poll from last week:

Torpha is indeed the turtle! I post the polls on my Instagram (oscarsgblair) if you’re interested in participating in the poll.

Goodbye!

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