When Google Shrugs Its Shoulders
Finding the answers (endings) to most of our “who, what, when, where, why” questions is generally as easy as typing the question into Google. But what happens when that’s a dead end?
Everyone likes a good whodunnit. I’m here to say that a good whosungit is just as good. To prove it, here are three podcast stories about people who went to great lengths to search for something after Google left them on read.
This American Life: Do You Hear What I Hear? (14 minutes)
Dick is a process man. He’s 81 and has a personality where he sticks to a problem until it’s solved. As his wife says, “There is nothing in his life that is inconsequential. Everything matters.” This is the story of what happens when a man like that becomes obsessed with finding some specific, oddly enjoyable hold music that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere but the phone line of his doctors’ offices.
Reply All: #158 The Case of the Missing Hit (50 minutes)
Remember when millennials lost their collective minds because the book they read as kids is spelled “Berenstain” Bears and not “Berenstein”? Now, imagine how much more unnerving it would be to search for a radio hit from the 90s that’s stuck in your head only to find 0 results on Google and no one you know has ever heard it. If that were the case, it only makes sense to try and recreate the song so an app like SoundHound might recognize it, right? That’s not even the half of it.
Heavyweight - Episode 3: Tara (36 minutes)
This isn’t actually a whosungit, but it’s a similar idea. In the 80s, Jonathan Goldstein was in an experimental film appreciation class where he watched a film called Anger. It was just angry people talking about why they were angry. The film featured ranting punks and even a murderer, but the person he still thinks about from the film is a little girl. She sat silently while her intersexed mom weeped tears of anger and frustration about their hard life. All these years later, Jonathan just wants to know how that little girl’s life turned out. But first he has to figure out who even made the film, because, as has been the pattern here, Google was no help at all.
All Buttoned Up
I like my stories like I like strangers’ pants: buttoned up. No matter how good a storyline is, the ending is crucial. I want the payoff. I want the stakes to have been worth it. I want the closure.
But in real life, our raw, unedited life stories are ongoing. Life doesn’t stop—except when it does. While death is difficult, it can also be poetic and meaningful. Conan O’Brien recently had an enlightening conversation about this while talking to an obituary writer on his podcast.
I’m fascinated by obituaries. I always go right to the obituaries in the paper. And I never quite knew what fascinated me so much about obituaries. And I was asking my dad, who’s a smart guy, and my dad said it’s because the story’s complete. He said everything else you read is “Okay this happened, but we don’t know how that will change tomorrow.” But when you’re reading an obituary, the story has an end. And it’s very profound, and there’s something kinda beautiful about them.
Five Obits Worth Your Time
If you have never explored the best that obituaries have to offer, you are missing out on one of the best forms of storytelling. Reading through the stories below gave me an energy I can’t quite explain. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. (Don’t be surprised of something like “obit of the week” shows up occasionally in future newsletters.) If you don’t have time to click and read the full obits right now, I have included a few noteworthy excerpts.
The purity of Pink’s soul really shines through a list of life suggestions based on the kinds of things she did.
Make the car dance by lightly tapping the brakes to the beat of songs on the radio.
If a possum takes up residence in your shed, grab a barbecue brush to coax him out. If he doesn't leave, brush him for twenty minutes and let him stay.
Take magazines you've already read to your doctors' office for others to enjoy. Do not tear off the mailing label, "Because if someone wants to contact me, that would be nice."
The depth of Joe’s hoarder tendencies, immaturity, and ability to not give a damn is on full display in this blunt but humorous obituary.
Joe embarrassed her daily with his mouth and choice of clothing.
Joe was a frequent shopper at the Essex Dump and he left his family with a house full of crap, 300 pounds of birdseed and dead houseplants that they have no idea what to do with.
Joe despised formality and stuffiness and would really be ticked off if you showed up in a suit. Dress comfortably. The family encourages you to don the most inappropriate T-Shirt that you are comfortable being seen in public with as Joe often did.
As far as I can tell, Jim wrote this himself. He left no paragraph without a heaping spoonful of sarcasm and wit. Seems like a great hang.
He had two basic philosophies regarding work “careers are for the unimaginative,” and “surround yourself with great people and stay the hell out of their way.”
His regrets were few but include eating a rotisserie hot dog from a convenience store in the summer of 2002, not training his faithful dog Rita to detect cancer, and that no video evidence exists of his prowess on the soccer field or in the bedroom.
This is another self-written obituary. He starts off as you would expect any obit to start, but then he changes gears to divulge some hilarious confessions before finally offering a deeply honest and tragic regret.
Now that I have gone to my reward, I have confessions and things I should now say. . . . I really am NOT a PhD. What happened was that the day I went to pay off my college student loan at the U of U, the girl working there put my receipt into the wrong stack, and two weeks later, a PhD diploma came in the mail. I didn't even graduate.
To Disneyland - you can now throw away that "Banned for Life" file you have on me.
No excerpts here. You just need to read it for yourself. Best one of the bunch.
Sentence of the Week
This week we’re getting a little meta because the sentence of the week is a sentence about appreciating sentences.
“Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.”
—Bohumil Hrabal
Thanks for reading.
Braden