2020 was a dreadful year for the country but a prolific and productive one for me as a writer. I’ve posted a personal best 534 times thus far at First Draft; a figure inflated by two new music features and 25 chapters of my hitherto unpublished novel.
The first winnowing was difficult, but I reduced the number to 125 entries. Nobody wants to read a Top 125 list, so I continued cutting. It got harder and harder as I went on. It made me feel like the chap on the cover of In The Court Of The Crimson King. In the immortal words of Tim Finn, what can a poor boy do?
I decided to cut the baby in half by separating the Saturday Odd & Sods posts from the rest. I cut that list down to 5, then added my 5 favorite 13th Ward Rambler columns from my other home on the internet, Bayou Brief.
The Best Of Saturday Odds & Sods:
1/11/2020: Life Is A Minestrone
4/18/2020: Gethsemane
8/22/2020: We Can Work It Out
9/5/2020: Turn It On Again
10/3/2020: For What It’s Worth
The Best Of The 13th Ward Rambler:
2/7/2020: Painted From Memory: Coach Jay, Pistol Pete, and Me
7/15/2020: Mask Wars
9/14/2020: Stuck On Stupid
9/29/2020: 2020 Fatigue
11/10/2020: Nice Guys Don’t Always Finish Last
That sleight of hand left me with a top 40 list of the rest. Here it is.
The Weekday Adrastos Top 40:
1/6/2020: The First Casualty
1/31/2020: If Life Were A Capra Movie
2/7/2020: Willard, I Hardly Knew Ye
2/12/2020: Still There’ll Be More
2/13/2020: Peter Gabriel & Me
3/9/2020: The Shadow Of Incompetence
3/16/2020: Let’s See Inaction
3/22/2020: We’re All Milo Minderbinder Now
4/2/2020: Together Alone
4/15/2020: I, Captain Bligh
4/24/2020: Only The Stupid Or Cynical
4/29/2020: Stephen Miller’s Song
5/15/2020: Conspiracy Of Cretins
5/20/2020: The Age Of Overkill
5/27/2020: American Carnage, 2020
6/3/2020: Bill Barr: Waddling His Way To Infamy
6/12/2020: Bad Company
6/25/2020: Nuance Is Dead
7/6/2020: North By Northwest, Trump Style
7/20/2020: John Lewis, R.I.P.
7/22/2020: Everybody Knows
7/24/2020: Yoho Ho & A Bottle Of Dumb
8/3/2020: Paul Drake, R.I.P.
8/17/2020: Rebirthing Birtherism
9/2/2020: Midsommar In America
9/4/2020: My Uncle Was A ‘Loser’
9/18/2020: Abolish The Electoral College
9/23/2020: Malaka Of The Week: Van Morrison
10/1/2020: A Coney Island Of The Mind
10/5/2020: The GOP Dominoes Keep Tumbling
10/7/2020: Joe Biden Has Donald Trump’s Number
10/21/2020: George Wallace Called Him Mousey Tongue
11/5/2020: The COVID Factor
11/11/2020: Coup Chatter Clickbait
11/13/2020: Malakas Of The Week: John Lydon & Mike Love
11/16/2020: All Over But The Pouting
12/9/2020: Texas Twisted
12/14/2020: Sycophancy, Not Sedition
12/21/2020: I’m Dreaming Of A Slow News Day
12/24/2020: All About Christmas Eve Pardons
That’s it for the final 2020 edition of Saturday Odds & Sods. We close with a reminder that help is on the way.
