You know you’re a loser when you realize you’ve been binge watching eight hours of Richard Norton Smith interviews on C-SPAN. Well, technically it’s American History TV, just like watching writers on C-SPAN is technically BookTV, but come on, it’s C-SPAN. I mean who’s kidding who. It’s a nice break from watching hockey shows, anyway. At some point I realized I’d been listening to a Hermeto Paschoal album while watching American History TV—OK, C-SPAN—and halfway through “Sereiarei” Hermeto’s got this whole cacophony of geese and pigs and cows and goats and chickens playing with the band and Richard Norton Smith is talking about Millard Fillmore and it was zen as fuck.

The retired life.