Pleasantly Surprised

 

Sometimes, I don’t really mind being proven wrong …

Super Bowl 59

 

So I’m being guilted into watching Super Bowl 59.

 

I’ve watched about a dozen games this season. The times when the Giants and Jets have played in prime time and when they’ve come down here to get beaten up by Texas teams. I’ve watched about two games each round of the playoffs, and every single team I rooted for lost. My ideal Super Bowl would’ve been the Bills / Lions. One team hasn’t been there in three decades and when it did, lost four games in a row. The other team hasn’t been in a championship since a decade before I’ve been born.

 

Instead, we’ll be subject yet again to more of Taylor Swift, that dope Kelce she’s dating, and the refs throwing flags every time the defense gets somewhat in the vicinity of Mahomes. There’ll be a plethora of stupid ads to endure. There’ll be virtue signaling, I’m sure, even if tampered from the extremes and excesses of the prior four years. And all in the service of making Roger Goodell and the owners more and more $$$.

 

Why would I subject myself to this?

 

Last year we watched the original Star Wars, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I know I did. The girls care nothing of football, but are keen to the idea of the type of family viewing night we hold regularly. That and eating TGI Friday foods. So it was a win-win for everyone. At least I like to think so.

 

However, this year I’ve floated Raiders of the Lost Ark or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, to deaf or uninterested ears. Indeed, the Mrs. actually wants to watch the game. She feels she’s “missing out” if she, uh, misses out on the game. Try as I might, I can’t seem to persuade her otherwise. Best case scenario I can see, so far, is us watching something Patch is into (we’re currently in the midst of a recent Hell’s Kitchen season), with periodic breaks for score checks. I dunno.

 

Or maybe I’ll spend Sunday night out in my reading chair in the living room, on some Civil War battlefield or cracking the mysterious world of the quantum with Wheeler and Feynman. Or maybe over the weekend something else will light my fire and I’ll deep dive into esoterica through the long hours of the evening. We’ll see.

 

My prediction: Chiefs (of course) 41, Eagles 38. It will come down to the last two minutes, a penalty against Philadelphia, and Mahomes connecting to that oaf in the end zone.

 

Pulitzer Prize-winning photo seen and shared by millions online

3,100 Grams

 

One of my resolutions for 2025 was to reduce my sugar intake.

 

Why?

 

Well, for a whole host of reasons – the black clouds of potential diabetes, dental decay, weight gain, poor sleep, lack of energy, etc. But the biggest scare for me is something I heard at random about six months ago:

 

“Cancer feeds on sugar.”

 

Then, over the fall and winter, I heard it two more times on two unrelated occasions. I took this for a sign, as I’ve had a sweet tooth for … well … decades, to be honest.

 

So I figured at my age, entering the final third of my life, I should do something about this. Before it does something to me.

 

Last year I quit soda. Specifically, my two demons of choice, Diet Coke and Diet Dr Pepper. I’d consume about ten cans a week. Ever look at the ingredients? That’s a lot of aspartame, potassium benzoate, and caffeine I’d been ingesting. Right now I’m thirteen months free of that monkey.

 

But I gradually replaced my Diet Coke / Diet Dr Pepper drinks of choice with two others: Sparkling Ice and Pure Leaf Iced Tea. Sparkling Ice initially was satisfying, but something felt off with it. Yep, there’s that preservative potassium benzoate, which some but not all studies link to adverse health effects, including cancer. More importantly, the drink is sweetened with sucralose. Even more importantly, I would get headaches from drinking it (one or two 17 oz. bottles a day). So I stopped consuming them over the summer.

 

Man, though, did I get addicted to that Pure Life lemon flavored iced tea. And would you know it? One bottle contains 38 grams of sugar – added sugar, at that. 38 grams!  The American Heart Association recommends 36 grams of sugar – that’s 9 teaspoons – a day, max, for a man. And I was drinking about ten of these a week. So that’s an average of around 50 grams of added sugar a day, 40% more than what the AHA recommends.

 

And that’s not all. I eat a lot of cookies and ice cream, too. It’s comfort food, rewarding, stress-relieving, endorphin-releasing. It’s the same for you, also. Every day I’d have at minimum a handful of cookies or a generous scoop of ice cream. A trip to CVS for milk required the purchase of a heath bar. That candy bar alone has 68 grams of sugar. Yikes.

 

Now, there’s no way I can measure all that side sugar. So let’s make a good faith assumption. Based on my regular daily intake of 50 grams of sugar for the iced tea, lets conservatively double it to account for all these ice cream / cookie / candy bar snacks. That’s 100 grams of sugar a day. Some days I did worse, some days better. But an average of 100 grams daily seems a reasonable estimate.

 

On January 1 I quit the iced tea. Also, no sugary snacks. I also minimized or eliminated condiments and sauces which contain sugar, though not to a rigorous, spartan extent. Just eliminating those 100 grams of sugar a day, though, means that I DID NOT INGEST 3,100 grams of sugar this month.

 

3,100 grams is 3.1 kilograms. 1 kilogram is 2.2 pounds. Ergo, I did not eat 6.8 pounds of sugar this month!

 

Some things that weigh about 6.8 pounds –

   - A small to medium cat

   - A gallon of milk

   - A standard bag of All-Purpose Flour

   - A bag of potatoes

   - 20 bananas

   - A new-born baby (!)

 

Picture that amount in pure, white sugar. That did not go into my body this month. That’s less food and fuel for any nascent cancer cells within my aging carcass. That’s less food for plaque on my teeth. That’s less work my pancreas has to do to secrete insulin into my bloodstream.

 

Because I didn’t go cold turkey, I didn’t have any headaches. I only had one bad night of sleep this month, and that was due to unrelated circumstances. My energy level seems a little better, maybe 10 percent better (?), but that’s something I hope will improve as the sugar semi-fast continues on in 2025.

May I recommend it to you? There’s really no downside to it …

2025 Reading Plan

 

 

Over the holidays we had a pipe break in the wall between the master bedroom and the storage space beneath the stairs going up to the second floor of our home.

 

This decided my Reading Plan for 2025.

 

I originally thought I’d read my way through the Great Books collection I inherited a two decades ago. I tried Herodotus, and failed. I tried Plutarch, and failed. I started getting worried. I pulled out Augustine, Cervantes, even Boswell, and was repelled by each in turn like similar poles of a magnet.

 

What was going on?

 

I’ve learned over the years that a book comes to you when the time is right. Kinda like that saying that the teacher appears when the student is ready. Books are teachers, of that I have no doubt, and I guess I’m not ready for the intellectual rigor and focus required to get though these Great Books. Or rather, I have other pressing duties and obligations first to fulfill before I sit down before a roaring fire and journey with Herodotus through the ancient world, or tilt at windmills with Don Quixote.

 

So what does all this have to do with a burst pipe?

 

Well, we had to remove some boxes from the storage room so the plumber could get in, cut out part of the wall, and do his plumbing magic to the fractured pipe (it actually was a slow leak, more like a drip that must’ve been dripping for several weeks). Two of the boxes contained books packed during our move from New Jersey nearly four years ago. A lot of those books were from my On Deck piles. Most, if not all, I haven’t read. Those books, predominantly history and physics/math fiction and nonfiction, had instantly become my 2025 Reading Plan.

 

I’m starting off with two Civil War books that the Mrs. had bought me for my birthday back in 2020. There are also some WW2 doorstops, four WW2 novels, and a book on the Crusades. Since I like to juggle two books at a time, I’m also working my way through a book on particle physics. There are two others I found on quantum mechanics, and – wow! – a Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy omnibus! All four books of the Hitchhiker trilogy in one hardcover! I read these books in the summer of 1989 with a buddy, and what a fun read that was. Truly. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy could be the funniest book(s) I ever read.

 

I decided to be laid back after a somewhat rigid 2024 of reading (such as Tom Clancy books in story chronological order, or Dean Koontz books in the order I read them as a kid). Now, once I finish a book, history or science, I’ll see what one jumps in my hand next. Could be a switch to fiction. Dunno. Whatever I’m ready for, well, that will be what I read next. But I do want to get to the Hitchhikers books in the spring, when it starts getting a little warmer out.

 

I did order three paperbacks on, of all things, the history of Buddhism, thanks to some deep dives into meditation and mindfulness I’ve done recently. They were, however, erroneously delivered to my daughter’s mailbox at college. So when she comes back home next, in two or three weeks, I’ll toss those books onto the “Storage Room Box” pile and get to them, too, before spring.

 

Happy laid-back reading, all!

 

N.B. For those who think I always have my nose in a book, I read about an hour a day. I do not watch TV regularly, save for some hockey games here and there, a weekly movie with Patch and a weekly SF movie over the weekend while the ladies are out, and maybe a show here and there with the Mrs. So I basically read during the time most of my family and friends are watching TV.

 

A Complete Unkown

 

My oldest daughter, Little One, now age 20, has been a Bob Dylan fan for quite a while. She has a hippie streak, music-wise, liking a lot of 60s and 70s folksy stuff, such as the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, and such. She ranges to more popular stuff of that era, such as the Beatles, the Kinks, early Rolling Stones, and Neil Young. And, as a disclaimer, she plugged into current era stuff too, of which I’m blissfully ignorant.

 

Anyway, she’s been wanting to see the Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown since she first heard of it sometime last year. Unfortunately, none of her friends are into it. I bought her a Dylan biography for her birthday back in September (the “definitive” one, naturally), and got her a Dylan 2025 wall calendar for Christmas. So I was the one who had to step up to the plate – wanted to, actually, for her – and took her to the local cineplex to see it.

 

What did I think? Especially now, since it’s been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound. Whew. It’s almost like Dylan was transgender. I can honestly say the flick should definitely win in one category, and maybe three others.

 

Caveat: I am not a Bob Dylan fan. I’ve heard the half-dozen radio-friendly songs over the years, and I’ve listened to two albums at Little One’s behest (his debut 1962 album and 1966’s Blonde on Blonde). I have never been impressed and just don’t understand it. I may respect it (and honestly I’m not really sure if I do or not), but I can only shake my head.

 

With that in mind, I didn’t like the movie. I didn’t hate it, either. I kinda enjoyed it, as a piece of archaeology of a forgotten era. The movie roughly covers the years 1962-65, when Dylan makes his first impression among the New York folk circuit to when he wreaked havoc by “going electric” and betrayed the faith at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. From that perspective, I found it informative. Hagiographic, yes, almost to a fault. I had to chuckle inwardly every time a character on screen attained glowing nirvana on his or her first listen to Bob’s warbly voice and plucking and strumming.

 

Timothy Chalamet earned the Best Actor nomination. He becomes Bob Dylan, is Bob Dylan, and I remembered Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Jim Morrison way back in the 1991 Doors movie. His singing and guitar playing is admirable and quite the carbon copy. He portrays Dylan as kind of a jerk, which I guess is his real personality, as Little One told me Dylan had script approval. He treats everyone as a pawn in his holy quest to attain whatever it is he is trying to attain. Pure artistry, I guess. But he pretty much comes across as a narcissistic user of folks (last word used intentionally).

 

The other two Oscar categories it may win would be Best Costume Design and Best Sound. Watching the flick you feel transported to the 60s. Everyone is year-appropriate-grubby. And the sound is pretty damn good, I must admit, everything from Dylan’s solo singing and guitar playing in a cabin to him on stage with his “electric” band.

 

The only performance I feel deserves the Academy Award win is Best Supporting Actor. Edward Norton becomes Pete Seeger. Watching Chalamet as Dylan, I knew I was watching an extremely talented mime. But with Norton it was a complete disappearance into a role. Now, I don’t know Pete Seeger other than as a footnote in the history of contemporary American music, and I seem to recall mainstream America regarded him as a proto-Communist back in the day. But Norton becomes Seeger so completely that I didn’t even realize it was him (Norton) until halfway through the movie. He almost steals the show. Despite my antipathy to the historical character, I enjoyed him immensely every time he was onscreen (and I am aware he was portrayed in the most saintly, humanizing way possible).

 

Funny anecdote: On the way home I mentioned to Little One my enjoyment of Norton’s Pete Seeger character, with this disclaimer: “I am not a violent man. But if I was locked in a room with Pete Seeger and his banjo, I’d end up beating him to death with that damn banjo after four hours, tops.”

 

I’d give the movie a B-minus for the average man, and a solid A for Dylan fans. It kept my attention for two hours and fifteen minutes, but I would not watch it again. It was a one-time labor of love to my daughter, who’ll gladly watch any crazy science fiction movie I’m into anytime and anywhere.

 

There’s one small scene I think about often. 21-year-old Dylan is quietly walking through a park, eating an apple, going through his mail. There’s a letter from the record company. He opens it, and inside is a check written out to BOB DYLAN for $10,000. (About $100,000 in today’s money). He acknowledges it silently and without emotion and tucks it in his pocket. And that’s that. Even if it never happened, can you imagine how freeing it must be to be totally divorced from the concept of money, of earning it, of paying bills, paying down debt, of buying stuff, of security against tomorrow’s trials? I can’t, and that’s a peace of mind I would give almost anything to have.

The Trump Doctrine

 

I was driving home from work last week via a stop at CVS when I heard the news reporting Marco Rubio’s statement before Congress during his Secretary of State confirmation hearings. Now, I haven’t been following the news lately (a conscious decision for 2025), but I did listen and catch snippets of his speech and stayed for the commentary. Needless to say, I liked what I heard. Immensely.

 

The Trump Doctrine.

 

I purposefully remain blissfully ignorant, as I have more important matters to concern myself about, matters under my direct control as opposed to matters 1,500 miles away in Washington DC. So take this as a “man on the street”-style interview. A reporter comes up to me, plays me Rubio’s opening statement, and asks what I think.

 

I agreed with his position regarding the current position of the United States. He posits that since the fall of the Soviet Union / Berlin Wall in 1989/1991, America has bought completely into the globalist view of government. That is, we are all citizens of the world first, and citizens of nations second. We are the world, we are the children, etc. From this follows increasingly open borders to allow for mass movements of populations over into and out of traditional national boundaries. Also trade should freely flow over broders, a position advocated by Republicans over the years.

 

The Trump Doctrine is a shift in government priority to America and Americans first. As in citizens of the United States of America. Immigration is fine as long as the need is there and we are importing the best, brightest, and most productive for our country (and even this should be sharply curtailed). But immigration has to be legal and follow a process. Illegal immigration should not be tolerant. Not every illegal immigrant is a violent criminal, but many are, to the detriment of the innocent who encounter them. Presumably legal immigration will screen out active criminals.

And, no, the crisis at our southern border is not of the same type and kind of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. This was a position advocated to me by a liberal family member.

 

We should stop the overfunding of Ukraine. The way this man on the street sees it, we are sending billions and billions of dollars to the second most corrupt country to fight off its invasion by the most corrupt country. Where is the accounting for this money? Where is it going to? Is it being used for what it is earmarked for?  As of September 2024 the US government has allocated $183 billion to Ukraine. The population of the US is around 340 million. 154 million tax returns were filed. My simple Windows Calculator tells me that each taxpayer has paid $1,188 to Ukraine. That’s about three trips to the grocery store in Biden’s economy.

 

I think it’s a good idea to re-evaluate all our financial promises and obligations to other countries. Israel. NATO. The European union. Japan and Korea. To my man-on-the-street mind, cynical and street-wise, I see these billions of dollars lining corrupt politicians pockets, on their side and ours. Stop and re-evaluate.

 

As far as the open trade position goes, I have no opinion. I am not an economist. That dismal science has always eluded me. So I have to trust to others to make those decisions. To be honest, I didn’t see much of a difference in the parties, until Bidenomics hit (and I remember my family suffering under Carter policies when I was a boy). I use common sense, and Democrat-advocated policies don’t make sense. They don’t add up. But who knows with this economic alchemy. I just want limited government and want them to get their hands off my wallet. End the Fed! (Just kidding … somewhat.)

 

So I am all for America and Americans First. The doctrine of the second Trump administration. The cynical man on the street in me doubts if this will fully be done, thinks that a lot of this is lip service, but he also thinks there’s a better chance of this happening than under a … shudder … Harris administration.

 

And there ya have it, Hopper’s two cents on the guiding principle of the next four years. (And it’s actually worth less than that.)

Office Fatigue

 

So for the first time in 58 months – something like 1,700 days – for the first time in nearly five years I worked “in office” for three days in a row.

I believe it was around the third week of March of 2020, during the Wu Flu thing, we received orders to work from home. As a payroll manager, this was something I could do after my company provided me with a laptop and a scanner.

After a couple of weeks we were allowed to come in on a two-day-a-week schedule. I can’t remember when this exactly happened but I believe it was around the end of April. We had to mask up unless we were in our offices / cubicles by ourselves. This charade played out for the remainder of my time in New Jersey.

When I arrived in Texas in July of 2021 I obtained a corporate job which was completely remote. I did all my interviewing via Teams and they shipped out a laptop to me a day before my start. In late January of 2022 we went to a two-day-a-week schedule, and they were generous in giving us remote time (for example, if a holiday fell on that Monday, we could spend the rest of the week working from home). Our department’s schedule was staggered, and my normal days in were Tuesday and Wednesday.

This continued for two years.

Now, at the start of 2025, we received the command to come in three days a week. This week was the first week for this (last week was shortened due to the Snowmaggedon), and man did it take a lot out of me. I wake up earlier than most farmers – it’s pitch black out and freezing (for Texas, but still, it’s been around 32 degrees every morning down here). The entire house is slumbering as I’m showering. I have to warm up the car for 10 minutes. And since I’m a night owl, the constant early waking has taken its toll, and I’ve been dragging buttock all week long.

Now, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, and I don’t mean to sound like a wimp. For 32 years I worked Monday through Friday, sometimes Saturdays, sometimes Sundays (with H&R Block) and sometimes late into the evening (again with H&R Block and regularly with the dealerships). I did it, and I reserve scorn for those techie company employees who fight their overlords against coming in a full week. 

But … man … did this remote job spoil me. I can do this job from Antarctica if I had to, as long as I had an internet connection. For me it boils down to another day of fighting traffic (north Dallas seems to have as many cars – and traffic lights – as Manhattan) – drivers riding my bumper, drivers zipping in and out of lanes, the cost of additional gas and tolls, and, most importantly, additional time I’m not paid for. All because I’m needed to sit at a cubicle in an office because “we work best when we collaborate face to face.”

Yesterday before heading out for the day one of my pals at work came up to me and said, in mock seriousness, “We did it. We did it.” And I had to laugh, knowing these same thoughts had been going through his head as well …

Snowmaggedon 2025

 

Well, an apocalyptic event happened down here in Texas yesterday: Snow.

We’ve been down here for 3½ years, and normally we receive but a dusting of snow once or twice a winter. The temps plummet below freezing for a week or two every January and we’re forced to let the faucets drip to avoid burst pipes. Our first winter saw a mini-freeze where icy rain coated the streets for two or three days and schools were closed and everyone worked from home. Other than that, we really don’t have harsh winters down here, for obvious reasons. The severe weather comes in the form of 90 days of summer heat over 100 degrees (the record for my experience has been 108 degrees) and harsh hail storms every couple of months.

Rumors of snow circulated Monday night. In the grocery store with Patch I overheard a couple catastrophizing about 9 inches of the white stuff. I inwardly laughed. Back in NJ we’d get one or two of those sized storms a winter and drive to work the next day. But at my job Tuesday word spread we’d be remote on Thursday and Friday. By Wednesday it was official. And yesterday morning, Snowmaggedon 2025 began.

 The view outside my front door at 8:15 am.

 

1 pm.

 

2:48 pm.

 

Around 3 o’clock the snow stopped falling at around 3 inches accumulation. After a brief reprieve it started up again, this time as sleet. Icy rain. Much more dangerous to these southerners. The sleet continued throughout the evening and overnight and as I write this at 11 am on Friday, it is still going.

Since we hardly ever get snow down here, the towns do not stock up on salt or invest in snowplows. They do have some, a fraction of what we had up in Jersey, but that’s reserved for the tollways. The side streets are on their own. I expect to be “snowed in” until late Saturday afternoon. Today’s high will be 37, but Saturday will go up to 46. It’s supposed to be sunny, too. Most’ll melt by dinner time. I expect to be driving to pick up some takeout Saturday night, and attend mass with the family Sunday morning.

And Texans will speak of Snowmaggedon 2025 in hushed tones for years to come …

 

The current view from my north Dallas home office window.

Geddy Lee and Rush

 

For Christmas, my wife bought me this book:

 

 

It’s My Effin’ Life by Geddy Lee, the bassist and vocalist for the Canadian progressive rock band Rush. The band was a trio of three virtuosi musicians (including Alex Lifeson on guitar and Neal Peart on drums) active since 1974, though it first formed in the late ’60s when Geddy and Alex were high school classmates. They’ve released 19 studio albums and a whole bunch of live albums and have sold 42 million of them worldwide. In 2013 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They played their last concert on August 1, 2015, after Peart announced his retirement. In January of 2020 the legendary drummer died of glioblastoma at age 67.

 

As I’ve written about numerous times in these here electronic pages, I’ve been a lifelong fan of Rush. I still remember the first time I heard them: Spring of 1982, the song “Tom Sawyer” piped into my ear drums through my brother’s Walkman. To say I was instantaneously transfixed would be an understatement. Somehow I got the cassette tape of Moving Pictures, which contained “Tom Sawyer,” and I listened to that all summer. I bought a songbook of the album a little bit later, but that defeated my inexperienced fingers at the time. Soon more Rush purchases followed, classic Rush, their earlier 70s masterpieces. “Subdivisions” dominated the FM radio play at this time.

 

43 years later I am still a fan, though to be honest it’s been a while since I’ve listened to them. Once every few months I’d ask Alexa to shuffle Rush songs as I did the dishes. I think I mentioned Lee’s autobiography to my wife when it came out around a year ago, then it slipped my mind. So I was pleasantly surprised when I unwrapped it at Christmas. I set aside my current reading and delved into it. I am almost 200 pages deep (the autobiography clocks in at 507 pages) and to supplement my reading I am doing something like I did when I read the Mozart biography back in May: I am (re)immersing myself in Rush’s music.

 

I am listening to their albums in chronological order. On deck for today is 1978’s Hemispheres, one of the first “albums” I bought on CD around 1989 and listened to about a thousand times before 1990. I’ve re-listened to seven so far: Rush, Fly By Night, Caress of Steel, 2112, All The World’s a Stage (live), A Farewell to Kings, and Exit … Stage Left (live). Some I’ve listened to while walking around the ponds near my house, some while nestled in my reading nook, some at work with the headphones on cranking out spreadsheets. I have seventeen more studio albums and one more live album to get thought, so this will take me to the end of the month.

 

Combining My Effin’ Life with these re-listens has been a hugely pleasant experience. A lot of nostalgia’s been flowing through my mind: voracious listening as a kid, trying to figure out songs on guitar, me and my band mates playing tons of their stuff at rehearsals (particularly Cygnus X-1), even the one time I saw them live in April of 1990. I am now trying to convert my wife and children into Rush fans. Not gonna happen for the little ones (though Patch likes “Xanadu”), but the Mrs. seems open, at least for their music. Rush fans are something like 90 percent male, and it has something to do with the science fiction and philosophic lyrics combined with the progressive rock (unusual time signatures and weird chord progressions) and mostly with Geddy’s, er, unique singing voice. I have but one Rush t-shirt, but this may have to be corrected, and I think the Mrs. will help out more with this end of the Rush experience.

 

Anyway, that’s one of the many things I’ve been up to lately. Perhaps when I finish I’ll write up a post of Rush trivia for any fan who may blunder upon this blog. I dunno. After 1982’s Signals album Rush’s overall sound changed to one more heavily dominated by synthesizers, and as this was when I started playing in bands, I was more interested in guitar-driven music and am not familiar with their mid- and late-80s work. So I am looking forward to listening to that with a new ear, and hopefully finding something to enjoy that I didn’t thirty years ago. I did have a t-shirt I purchased at the concert for 1989’s Presto tour, but I decidedly did not like the album. 1991’s Roll the Bones I bought on CD, and though that was a more return-to-earlier-form kinda thing, only gave it a few listens. Not up to those 70s masterpieces. Same with their final five albums, all borrowed from the library here and there. With a newfound and nostalgic re-appreciation of the band, I am hoping to uncover a lot of hidden gems, and hoping that one turns out to be 2025’s Song of the Year here at the Hopper.

 

An ancient 2011 post by me on Rush, here.