Soooo…as part of my 2024 New Years Resolutions,* one was to share my media diet every quarter, instead of once at the end of the year. That is to hopefully put more work into it and share the more obscure articles I read that I want to recommend. Also! For the first time, I’m including some of Morgan’s rankings when we watched something together.

So far in 2024, I’ve gone down two rabbit-hole subjects. The first, which I can recommend to everyone, is the Big Dig Podcast, which I followed up by reading Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. This was a rabbit-hole into U.S. infrastructure that I never even thought about but once I scratched the surface, found infinitely interesting. Shile I enjoyed parts of the Power Broker (especially the first 300 pages and the last 300 pages) I recommend the Big Dig podcast more.

The second and more recent subject is into Army investigations and cover-ups. Specifically, how the Army handled the My Lai Massacre and then 30 years later, the Pat Tillman fratricide. Having handled my fair share of Army investigations, I have strong feelings about both of these stories, but at the end of the day, while I can understand why Pat Tillman’s command took the actions it did, I will never ever forgive what LT William Calley and CPT Ernest Medina did. It was cold-blooded murder full stop, and the fact that politics became so involved is a testament to the 19th century French ambassador Georges Clemenceau’s aphorism that ‘military justice is to justice what military music is to music.’

Finally! I am going back to the Michelin Star System this year. * Star is among best of the year.  ** Stars is easily best of the year. *** Stars mean best of the decade/an all-timer. 

*My other New Year’s Resolutions were:

(1) the “Disney trash rule” where if I see litter on the ground within picking-up distance, I must pick it up (so far, a rousing success! Highly recommend!)

(2) No cell phone in the bed. This one I’ve mostly kept by keeping the charger outside the bedroom, but it is so difficult that I still myself scrolling on my phone in bed before “putting up” the phone for the night. Still, my phone viewing is down an hour a day since I’ve adopted this resolution.

Movies/TV Series

American Gladiators Documentary; Netflix (B) We get it. The American Gladiators did a lot of steroids and drugs. Still, the combo of steroids and drugs does lead to good stories.Morgan (C-) “It was stupid. Way too in-depth. Who cares that much?”

*Auntie Mame (A-): I wish they would revise this on Broadway! It has mid-Atlantic accents and martinis galore! What more is there to ask for. Morgan really liked this one too.

Sicario (A): I am a Denis Villeneuve fanboy and this is my second favorite of his movies behind Arrival. That said, I told Morgan we were watching it because we might move to El Paso and it features a lot of El Paso, and ooooh boy, the wrong reason to try to sell someone on this movie is ‘hey! You might get to live in one of these towns where they murder people by the dozens!’

Dune 2 (B-) Man, I was excited for this movie but what a disappointment. It suffered from Temple of Doom syndrome i.e. taking this expansive amazing fictional world and just focusing on one place too long. I’ve tried reading the book and I did like the first one a lot but I’ve come to the realization that was because of all the world building. Here, the worlds are already built.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Part 1 (C ) Like the Fast & Furious movies, this is a franchise that no matter how many I see, I don’t get it (bedsides the original one)

Stand-Up

Adam Cayton Holland: Wallpaper (B)

**Tom Papa: What a Day (A+)

Tom Papa: Live from NYC (B)

Todd Barry: Domestic Shorthair (B-)

Kyle Kinane: Trampoline in a Ditch (B+)

Kyle Kinane: Shocks and Struts (A)

Kyle Kinane: Dirt Nap (B -)

Jim Jeffries: High n’ Dry (A -)

Billy Wayne Davis: Testify (B+)

Dave Attell: Hot Cross Buns (B)

Books

Russians Among Us: Gordon Corera (A) this is the show “The Americans” brought to life. Will give you an even deeper hatred of the betrayal of Aldrich Ames and Richard Hanssen than you already had (if that’s possible).

*Four Hours in My Lai: Kevin Sims (A+) & Where Men Win Glory: Jon Krakauer (B+) As mentioned above, these two books both have to do with Army investigations and cover-ups. Amongst the two, the greater crime and the much greater cover-up was My Lai, and I cannot recommend this book enough to attorneys who ever have to deal with high-profile trials or with clients (such as generals) who are subject to political pressure.

The Shadow Catcher, Hipolito Acosta. (A) This book was given to me by one of my paralegals and the author is his uncle and former undercover border patrol agent. I was expecting a bureaucratic tome but in fact, it reads like a spy novel and the undercover stories Acosta has are riveting. At 250 pages, this is an excellent non-fiction beach book or airplane read.

The Speechwriter: Barton Swaim (B+) This is a behind-the-scenes not flattering look at former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford (of “hiking the Appalachian trail” infamy). The two best things going for it are it’s gossipy and can be read in its entirety by the pool or on a plane. The worst thing going though is that the governor turns out to have no redeemable qualities whatsoever.

The Power Broker: Robert Caro (A+): Oooh boy. This is a tough one. As mentioned above, I really enjoyed the first and last 300 pages. Those are the parts about Robert Moses’ climb to power (Step one: know rules better than any legislator and write your job titles into those rules. Step two: cultivate as many people in the press as possible. Step three: When the legislators try to kick you out, use the media in step 2 to keep the legislators at bay), and then the last 300 pages of his fall to power (Step one and final step: don’t mess with a Rockefeller who is the richest man in the world at the time and just gave you the land for the United Nations building). While Moses gets a bad rap from this book, I found myself rooting for him a lot in the first part. At the end of the day, he pretty much created out of whole cloth, the entire state park system across the U.S. and urban parks. Yet, as time went on and Moses gained more power, his flaws of not being able to handle criticism and stretching himself thin exacerbated themselves until he became a parody of the things the younger him despised.

Articles

The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers (A+) A book review of a book I’ve ordered but yet to read since it was released two days ago. More than anything else this year, this is probably the most important thing to read. No particular reason why or anything…

*Ghosts in the Glacier (NYT Magazine)(A+): While this not written by Jon Krakauer, this reads like the best Krakauer non-fiction — mountains in exotic locales, death, mystery.

To Stop a Shooter (The Atlantic) (A+), While not alleviating the Uvalde response, this puts into perspective how we as a society end up blaming the first responders instead of the shooters themselves often for crimes and how often times, those first responders have inadequate training.

The Magic of Bird Brains (New Yorker) (A), This article surmises that instead of being near domesticating smart birds like crows, they long ago actually domesticated humans into providing for them and keeping them alive. Interesting way to look at the world.

Podcast

Do We Get to Win this Time (Spotify): (B+) A six part podcast about Vietnam told through the movies that show Vietnam. It’s informative about how Hollywood’s view of the war evolved, but for the war itself, I still recommend About Face

**The Big Dig (A+) A nine-part podcast about American infrastructure shouldn’t be this good, yet it is. Cannot recommend enough for those who those especially who think they know about the project.