Responsibly Wild Blog

 Every few years there’s a film I’m scared to watch because the air around it just feels to heavy. These films come with a weight that will pull you emotionally to your knees and force you to take stock. These films last time I know for sure a film did that for me was The Florida Project (but also maybe Pig and my first viewing of Everything Everywhere, All at Once). I have referred to that film far too many times as an empathy test or empathy heroin. Only a sociopath or psychopath could watch that film and be untouched by it. Train Dreams has brought me back to that heavy place. I’ve tried to stay away from marketing, discussions, and materials about this film after I heard a brief mention on a podcast about its tone. That was right after it premiered at Sundance in January 2025. Since its release on Netflix I knew to wait until I could watch it uninterrupted. It’s been over a month and tonight was finally the night.  I don’t want to review the film or recount the plot, but t...

  Once again, we spent some New Years time in my favorite city in the world, Chicago. We had a good time. In fact, we had a great time. Truth be told, we had too good a time. We've been home for a day and I can not shake how our Chicago trip was this year. So rather than wallow in the reality of returning to our normal lives in suburban Iowa, I figure why not write down what was great about our time in the Windy City before it leaves my body and I forget why it is and was so good. I'll start with the lowest point. Wednesday, December 31 - Drive into a Party Last minute on Wednesday, we decided to leave a day early for our trip and 5 hours later we rolled in our Oak Brook hotel in prime New Years partying time. We stayed in Oak Brook as it was close to our planned Christmas lights event at Brookfield Zoo and almost always we're cooked after those dark, cold outings. The bummer with staying in a hotel on New Years Eve is it is a roll of the dice as the environment and the lob...

Modern storytelling has a massive problem. At this point we are more than 100 years into motion pictures and a couple decades away from that mark in television. In the venn diagram of those two mediums is a second plane; there have been three, maybe four generations of audiences who have consumed this artform and its cliches, and we know where too many plot, character, and narrative tracks are leading. I’m flipping tired of it. Netflix recently released a British set spy show called Black Doves. It’s getting a rather heavy push online and apparently people are digging it. I thought I was part of that crowd until halfway into episode four. Turns out, Black Doves is just another spycraft show where spies can get do anything in full daylight, survive any trap, and ultimately discover the world is a web of counter spies and somehow shadowy figures that pull the strings. I thought this bird had its feathers plucked bare 15 years ago, but apparently no. If you can snag a top shelf talent, ha...

  I love music . I love listening to it, writing it, playing it, performing it, noodling around on any instrument I can make sound interesting, and pretty much any other means of experiencing it. The problem with performing it is finding a group of friends or peers with similar tastes and available time to rehearse. At the moment, my problem is the latter. Full transparency, I wasn't literally kicked out of a band. Last September, I jammed with some old friends with the intent of making it a regular thing. Problem is I don't have time to make weekly band rehearsal a regular thing. I have two young kids and my intention is to be as active in their lives as their mother. So, while feeling guilty for the last 9 months that I never returned to jam, the day finally came where my absence was rightfully filled. Maybe I should have quit but the allure of being in a band is the healthiest drug I can imagine. Waffle Mouse (one of the many names the guys are considering, but haven't ...

As I type this two drastically different things are happening; I'm in California for a film festival and my mother, Linda Boberg, is lying in a Des Moines hospice bed. In fact she started hospice care the day I flew out here. As you can imagine, I'm experiencing quite the emotional tug of war. When you have a kid you commonly examine where they get certain traits. I've always been able to parse that I get my emotional, empathetic tendencies from my mother and my pragmatic, compartmentalizing skills from my Dad (another raging tug of war at the moment). This list could go on forever, but one thing I've never fully understood is where my creative drive came from. Now with the writing on the wall, it's obvious my mom flipped the creativity switch. It wasn't until my Mom self-published a novel at 65 years old that I understood how creative she is. In the last three years she's self published half a dozen books and written many more. Her first bout of cancer in 2...

  I am a positive person. I take people at their word, don't require anyone to earn my respect, and hope for the best. Living in the covid era has been an exhausting trial for many people, but I've always tried to ride the wave of no matter the situation, turbulence is to be expected and can be weathered. When our washing machine was overloaded and flooded our laundry room, I didn't freak out and get angry, I just started cleaning up. When our daughter was born and I had to juggle the new fog of parenting, I just put one hand in front of the other to change diapers, walk my daughter to sleep, and try to relish the fact that today's lows are tomorrows funny memories. Today, when I opened the fridge with a little too much gusto and a take home container of ranch went flying and exploded on the near by carpet I just ran, got some paper towels, and hopped too. Keeping cool and positive is state I try to maintain, even when life throws a deadly virus into your orbit. Skippin...

  Currently there is no bigger thing in our house than a fun little cartoon out of Australia called "Bluey." Emmalyn (my nearly four-year-old) loves it. Marieta and I laugh and cry at it frequently. Even Elliana (our five-month-old) loves the music and steals a glance every now and then. Beyond being a lot of fun, it is incredibly heartfelt and emotionally spot on. Currently all 50+, seven-minute episodes are available on Disney Plus and needless to say we have watched them all, multiple times. Marieta identified immediately how much the show's ethos lines up with our style of playful and attachment parenting. Bluey is the six-year-old playfully curious first born kiddo, Bingo is the four-year-old Bluey doppelgänger with a very big heart, Chilli is the too-smart-for–her–own–good, cautious, free spirit Mom and finally, the father dog "Bandit" is very much a variation of me; fun-loving, down for all kinds of silly games and adventures, and maybe cutting a corner h...

  People are desperate to get out and live their lives. How do I know? The Boberg Family Youtube channel , which I use to share family vacation and holiday videos and random fun things, is seeing some serious traffic. I'm not talking new Taylor Swift music traffic, more like modest, viral niche video traffic. This is a screenshot of our subscriber count jump as of April 15 and the view count is currently at 445k. I've produced a TON of content before. Professionally I've produced these numbers, but those were generally crafted for an audience. The Crazy Mouse at the Iowa State Fair video that is generating all this imaginary internet cache is a single shot, where I laugh and scream like an eight-year-old boy. So silly and surprising. From the comments I can divine that people are loving my silly yelling and laughing. That is fine with me, I can take a joke and deserve to be joked about. It seems the views come from earnest love for rollercoasters and people looking for a g...

It's late on a mid-October 2015 night and I am struggling with whether I should buy a $1,200 last-minute ticket to California to be with my family for my mother's emergency brain surgery. A week prior everyone was together in my house for an adventurous weekend climbing a wind turbine and celebrating my grandmother's 90th birthday, now we are on the eve of my mom going under the gamma knife for emergency brain surgery. Turns out she has a size-able tumor growing on the surface of her brain.   It's a bit of miracle that the tumor was discovered in the first place as my mom's routine cancer screenings didn't usually include brain scans; however, she had been complaining of blurry vision and balance issues, plus she had become quite irritable having been pushed to take FMLA from work to deal with what she thought was post-cancer "brain fog." Thankfully her doctor had the good sense to add it all up and include her brain in her next cancer scan. Sure enou...

I distinctly remember Tuesday, February 23, 1999. I was still living in Iowa and immediately after school let out I road with a friend to Best Buy so he could pick up Eminem's freshly released second album. Always down for a hang, I road along as there was one album I had read about and wanted to see if it was in stores. That album was Jimmy Eat World's Clarity . On the ride home I didn't bother asking to put in my purchase as my friend was not a rock fan. So for the next hour or so of cruising we blasted Slim Shady at painful volumes. For those uninitiated, this was the "Hi! My name is (ticka ticka) Slim Shady" album. I was indifferent to rap so it got a little long and tiresome by roughly the third time through the album. When I finally listened to Clarity it underwhelmed. Nothing on the album is lyrically hook centered on kinetically riff focused like later Jimmy Eat World releases. For a 16 year-old ska and pop punk super fan, Clarity go...

Like everyone I love lists; however it feels like I no longer have the time to sit down and give every sub-genre of life and culture it's due. So here are the top 10 things I experienced this year. 10. Disneyland with Emmalyn As it turns out, I have been to Disneyland once a decade since my visit in 1993 (and for some reason always within a few days off Christmas.) This decade's visit came this year with my family, Marieta, and Emmalyn along for the ride. It was really fun, especially riding the Dumbo ride, Emmalyn's first rollercoaster, watching the parade with Emmalyn on my shoulders, and the end of night fireworks. 9. Seeing "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" at Story City Theater Quentin Tarantino's ninth film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is easily the most rewatchable film of the year, a cinematic feast for the eyes, ears, and mind, and each viewing offers something new. My favorite part about seeing it was my second screening occ...

If you've been playing along, then you know last month I played a show. It was my first time "fronting" a band in 15 years. The set wasn't great and the crowd wasn't there for us, but man was it fun. Writing, performing, and recording music is one of those rushes that can't quite be found anywhere else. I suspect performing in a play on stage comes close, but that doesn't isn't always backed by a kickass drum beat. So since that show I've an old itch has been begging to be scratched... Through my years as an active singer/songwriter I never, not once, recorded in an actual studio. Closest I came was High Jinx recording bass and drums in a church. Second closest was Eight Miles Out and The Evil Geniuses each recording in a friend's basement, Justin Meyer, who was messing around with starting a studio. He did good work, but the studio experience wasn't there. Last time I was in an actual studio was 2012 when I snapped some pic...

It has been a long time since I played in a band. A few years ago I jammed with a group for a few months, gigged with them, and got out at the right time for me. But in that situation I felt more like a session guitarist than a full fledged band member. This past weekend I played in a band... A tribute band. Photo courtesy of Bethany Jensen Behold, " All on Black ." A one night only tribute band to maybe my all time favorite punk band, Alkaline Trio. Finally figured out the 1st time I saw @Alkaline_Trio ; Jan 17, '99 Val Air Ballroom. Damn snowy night, ~50 people there, A3 blew me away. Approached them after the set, they seemed spent, & had zero merch. Went home and mail ordered Goddamnit from @asianmanrecords that night. pic.twitter.com/HVHSyaUidn — Patrick Boberg (@PatBoBomb) October 31, 2019 I'm a serial analogist, metaphorist, and similator, and a common comparison I like to make is of girlfriends (or I guess romantic relationships if you ar...