Wrap This

There is no more ripe time for contemplation than a new year, followed closely by returning from an international trip, and considering I’ve just completed both, it seems an ideal time to consider my path forward. I might start with shortening my sentences.

I woke up on January 1st feeling only marginally still charred from jetlag and with an energized sense of purpose. Today I was going to start… everything. Write this, organize that, clean over there — just a general intention to scour every corner of my brain for any possible thought/idea/inspiration and then map it all out into an easy-to-follow grid that will push me forward throughout 2026. 

By the time I ate breakfast and finished my morning puzzles (NYT Games waits for no one), my intentions had wafted off like a fart in the wind. I wrote a couple things down, mind you, but bafflingly made the decision that where I really needed to spend my afternoon was at the movies, drinking an Old Fashioned and watching Anaconda (2025 version) starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black. Spoiler alert: It’s bad. The cherry on top is that it’s the first movie I logged on Letterboxd for 2026, so I’ll be reminded of this decision again in December when my stats come up. Yay.

I haven’t written in a while because I had a birthday and hey, I went to London! That was fun. Here’s a picture of us having high tea at the Royal Theatre Drury Lane. Don’t we look posh?

We also saw Oh, Mary!, which I highly recommend and is very very dirty. Those two things are not related.

Since I’m still trying to recover yesterday’s resolve, I thought one last look back at 2025 would be fun. 

I only gave 2 new-release movies 5 stars last year and I bet you can guess what they are: One Battle After Another and Sinners. All the industry gossip is pointing to OBAA taking most of the Oscars home, but I bet Michael B. will beat out Leo D in the end for Best Actor. He played 2 parts for chrissake! 

I was a little more generous when it came to books, giving 5 stars to Betty (Appalachian memoir), Hamnet (good movie too), Rabbit Run (Breaking: John Updike was a good writer), The First Day of Spring (murderous child), Earth to Moon (Frank Zappa’s daughter), and Long Island Compromise (rich people problems). 

And the company responsible for spawning Wrapped knockoffs from everyone but your dentist (don’t worry - he’s doing one next year) informed me that I listened to 97,000 minutes of mostly ‘Freak Folk’ in 2025. But my fifth most popular artist was Beethoven so now who’s classy mothafuckaaaaas? 

For a long time now, I've felt perpetually on the cusp of something. That one day real soon I'm going to have the thought that is going to push me off into greatness, to the creative mind that I'm really meant to be. I think that surge of resolve I felt yesterday was me realizing that I'm free to act on whatever I'm inspired by; that what I've really been waiting for is myself.

Happy New Year, my friends.