Getting Organizized

Setting up sections to create a little order

A bit of news that, in reality, doesn’t change anything.

I’m going to try to provide a little bit more order within my newsletter (which I’m still thinking of a name for the entire project, but it might just be “Tom’s Newsletter” or something to that effect). Thus, I’m going to dip back into using the “sections” feature of Substack.

One section, which is where the bulk of things go and will go, covers music and movies and books and television shows and culture in general. The name for that section comes from (not surprisingly) one of my favorite books/films, High Fidelity.

The protagonist, Rob, is described as the following:

So the section that covers all those things that are to be appreciated will be called The Professional Appreciator. I’ve always thought it was a good label and how I like to approach things.

But I’ve also been feeling the slight itch to write a bit more about sports again. I don’t know what it is, but I had that inkling. But I thought it didn’t quite fit alongside my talking about five of my favorite songs by a given band (which reminds me, I will be getting back to my U2 countdown soon! As well as something coming up on The Replacements…). I’ve tried to have different newsletters, maybe having one on a different platform. But ultimately I decided to heed the suggestion of fellow writer/inspiration Kevin Alexander:

BTW, you should follow Kevin on the various social media platforms and subscribe to his excellent On Repeat Records Substack:

So I decided to put this sports-centric section within my entire newsletter, and I’ve decided to call it Players and Prose. It’s inspired in part by the great Washington D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose. Also, there’s a lineage of proper literary types who also enjoy and write and think about sports (John Updike, John McPhee, Frederick Exley, Roger Angell, David Halberstam, Nick Hornby just to name a few) and I like to pretend I somehow can fit in that lineage. Thus, a title that’s referencing both writing and sports (or an aspect of it) was very fitting.

What does this mean for you? Nothing really, it just gives you more options! If you want to read about my favorite songs from 1995 or what I thought of the latest Oscar contender, but don’t want to hear what I think teams should do at the NBA trade deadline? Then you just want the Professional Appreciator. If you want to hear what I think about the upcoming Super Bowl, but don’t really care about a review of the Wilco concert I went to, then Players and Prose is for you. If you like it all, then you can just stay where you are!

If I think of other sections, I’ll add those in. But for right now, I think all the bases are covered with a books/music/films/tv section and a sports section. And if there are things I should be writing about (in either section of this newsletter), you can let me know.