and I need a good read. I have thumbed through the Netflix menu enough lately. I have suffered the idiocy of Big Brother enough. I am still a month away from a new season of Grey’s Anatomy. The only thing worth watching on TV worth a darn is season three of Halt and Catch Fire, which I eat up like they’re Snacky Smores and feel so fortunate to be able to stream on SlingTV, a streaming service which is really coming into its own these days.

This having spent the last two months binge-watching Mad Men on the Netflix. So you know how you feel when you finish one of those. Spent. Rudderless. Existentially fraught. Like someone just burned the full fuse. It is a beat-up feeling.

The problem being that even mediocre literature in television is few and far between. An art piece like Mad Men or Breaking Bad or even Louie doesn’t often show its brassy face. The demand that television encounters, the vacuous black hole it orbits, so immense that they will throw anything in there to fill it.

I have a constant need to feed my brain, and I keep looking to television to do that, and that’s foolish because it can’t. The more sustainable brain diet is books, ya see, is what I getting at.

Besides, I done set up a new reading nook.

So I need a good read, and as fortune has it, tomorrow I will be near 123 East Ave. See, my Mom is in town for the weekend. I want to show her my previous life, so we’ll trek downtown first probably. And me, I need a new book. My brain itches.

Mom seemed to dig the new place. We sat on the deck and drank beer, she a Rolling Rock, me a Founder’s Session IPA. Then we drove to the farm and DOD put a trout on the grill and I did fried green tomatoes with remoulade. It was a fine repast and a good preparation for adventures tomorrow.