Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1153
Swiss Army surplus gas mask bags, RIP Graeme Naysmith, Ivo stalking, Santa Fe demonym, Daddy School, carpenter ants, Prof X aspirations being fulfilled, plastic eating enzymes newco, Ringo's highs
Good morning, friends. Happy Friday. Well, for me. Spiritual Friday. Tomorrow is a recharge day at work. Still doing one a month. They are one of the most beloved things at work. A+ can’t recommend strongly enough. Going on the Rick Recommends list. Gonna spend it driving to Petersberg to see a man about an amp.
Was getting Jane out the door today (went great) and I noticed Emma’s current purse, a Swiss Army surplus gas mask bag. And I got into a nostalgic K Hole about Commander Salamander, a “waver” store in Washington DC in the 80’s (and the 90’s and.. actually I don’t know when or if it closed) and how I used to do mail order from there when I was a kid living in Fairbanks, Alaska. And this Awesome New Order concert poster I have from their first show in Berlin is a thing I bought from them in 1988 or so. And another thing I bought from them was my first Swiss Army surplus gas mask bag. Then when I was living in New York and Apple was kind enough to make a small 12” laptop (RIP), I really needed a murse or a bag or something but I couldn’t stomach being one of those guys who took a backpack to work and also I had to go out after work and drink, of course. And I remembered that old Swiss Army surplus gas mas bag and looked it up and lo and behold, you could still obtain them, and I bought another one. Then a couple years later, it was my wedding and I bought a bunch of them to give my groomsmen their gifts in, and I picked up an extra one for myself, and that extra one is now Emma’s purse, and I just love that these things have been in my life for almost 40 years and my wife uses it as a purse and it is a lovely through line in life and it makes me happy.
RIP Graeme Naysmith, guitarist for the Pale Saints. Only got to see them live once, but he was fantastic and it was a spiritual show and I had a Pale Saints shirt for years and Gibby was so jealous and kept offering to buy it and I don’t have it anymore and I literally wonder if maybe I drunkenly sold it off my back to Gibby in the bathroom of Start! or something. Man that was a great shirt. Man Graeme Naysmith was a great guitarist, and by all accounts a great guy. And also 4AD got the reclusive Ivo out of hiding in New Mexico to give up a blurb about him, that should tell you about Grayeme’s awesomeness.
I wonder what Ivo does with all his time in New Mexico. Actually I have some idea because I was briefly involved with Meow Wolf and I was out in Santa Fe and at this investors dinner with a lot of rich Santa Fe-ians (man I do not know that demonym to I want to?) and I literally got out a picture of Ivo on my phone and showed it to every single rich arty Santa Fe-ite at the dinner and a couple of them said they recognized him from some arts meeting or maybe a restaurant or something. Also Mark Kozelek sang about going and visiting him on a tour recently and that was… I mean, Mark is cancelled and his albums are mostly a tedious string of boring life update non-sequiturs (ahem, Rick) but every once in a while you get a real gem like that. At least Mark does.
Oh man I have so much to tell you today and I am not going to get through it all if I spent all my time going on about Ivo. I am listening to the new Six Organs of Admittance, it is called Time is Glass and I am on track 4 and it is awesome. More cinematic and brooding than past 6OA releases. At least this track. Was I 2% disappointed when it arrived in the mail in a Touch and Go Records mailer that it was not the new Shellac? Okay, maybe. But it is making up for that right now.
Speaking of music, I hit send yesterday before doing a Media of the Day, which was unfortunate, because it was a dedication. But we will rectify that today. Sorry, Anne.
I have a few updates from you from readers:
Kelly in Seattle says:
I went into a weird Adam Duritz internet hole while I was bored and pregnant. He dated like every hot women ever and I was like how did he do that with dreads they are so gross. But they were fake. I don’t remember if they were like sewn in or a wig.
She helpfully sent this link as documentation and my god that site is amazing I could spend hours. Bald Outing. Wow.
This is huge, I had no idea. I told this to my wife and she looked at me like: duh.
Suzy in LA says that the Counting Crows cover of the Psychadelic Furs is pretty good. I checked it out. She’s right. Apparently it’s from the OC Soundtrack? Or something.
A story about Billy Ruane, the sadly-passed Boston rock scene impresario who is the subject of our also-sadly-passed friend Mike Gill’s upcoming documentary from an unnamed reader and old friend in the midwest:
Billy Ruane. Omg.
He was not wearing pants. And he was inebriated. And he grabbed the mic from XX at the final performance of YY and berated us for breaking up. For about 30 minutes. We decided to “accompany” him like a Dick Cavett/Merv Griffin house band. Which first perplexed Billy then he decided he liked it and wanted to direct us. Someone shot video of it but I don’t think it’s in the film.
Sounds very Billy, the sort of friend you weren’t friends with per se but if you were both the only two people who wanted to keep drinking, or the only two people to appreciate the majesty of an unappreciated local band, well, then, you were best friends.
Speaking of Billy and Mike, it is decided, I am going to Boston for the premiere. One night only. It will be a great and very sad time.
The results are in and Gen X resoundingly called them “stuffed animals.” There is no geographical variation, Gen Xers from New England to Florida to Alaska called them “stuffed animals.” We seem to all realize that’s a terrible term now and our parents were weird for giving it to us. Most have started calling them the current term-du-jour, “stuffies,” but several can’t stomach that word and use “plushies.” I really don’t like “stuffies” much more than “stuffed animals” and tried to use “plushes” for a while, but my daughter has overridden this. Perhaps this same cycle will happen in another generation when “plushy” wins out, and Gen -Z or whatever Jane is will mock their parents for ever letting them call them “stuffies,” which by that point will be slang for another presidential impeachment, which will happen weekly then.
Speaking of Generations last night was daddy bedtime again tonight because we were both exhausted taking care of Jane all day, who promised promised that she would let us work if she stayed home sick and then, quelle surprise, insisted on attention all day. So we did Daddy School again and this time we started on history. It was a good transition from the class on animals the night before, so we started by talking about mutation and evolution and generations and natural selection. From there we talked about the dawn of humanity, prehistory, and early history. It is super hard to incorporate my Graeber/Wengrow and not teach things as a sequence from hunter-gather to agriculture, and to not get fixated on mitochondrial eve but rather talk about the blending of several subspecies to create humanity as we know it. And talk about the rise of towns but not tie them necessarily to agriculture. We got through Catul Hayuk and the Sumerians (linked? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and Indus River Valley and Cahokia and those Russian hunting camps Graeber and Wengrow talked about and we ended with Babylon and Hammurabi and the Code of Hammurabi but then had to stop for a moment and really impress upon her that none of these were the first but the first we know about. Also we spent a ridiculous amount of time on the distinction between Hammurabi’s Code and earlier Sumerian law, and Hammurabi’s focus on property rights and more than just punishment. She weirdly found that part very interesting. And how to spell Hammurabi. Brown Bear (fifth generation) found Evolution the most interesting, so did Jane. Caticorn found hunting and gathering most interesting, which I suppose makes sense for a cat.
( I just want you to know I spent ten minutes finding that “fifth generation” link and I really wish I was better about linking back to past allusions for the sake of new readers, but it is so hard. Will continue to ponder on a solution for this problem. I also took the time to link to Ivo and Graber/Wengrow I really should try and be less oblique it’s the least I can do)
Every time she makes me do Daddy School I assume she’s going to get bored and wander off and I don’t know why I go so fast or sweepingly I am not bragging here saying she’s grasping everything, she definitely isn’t. But I think I just want the blurry, rough draft in her head to be roughly accurate? Like I don’t want someone to mention Adam and Eve or something and have it be the first time she’s thought about the first people.
Also it makes the time go by quicker and boy does it make you feel like a great parent.
We got her report card and get a load of this oblique, open-to-interpretation comment from her (really astonishingly nice) teacher:
This quarter, Jane has made progress socially with her friends. She is learning patience and understanding that not everyone can get a turn with everything. Fantastic, Jane!! Recently, she has become more relaxed in her behavior, which needs correcting like in the beginning of the year. She is ready to start spelling her Kindergarten sight words. Fabulous, Jane!!
Freakin love it. Given that, as is not abnormal, I had to deal with an hour-long tantrum yesterday, I am certainly not shocked that she has some challenges at school. Do we think that she gets mad when she doesn’t get a turn? Or a friend? Because those are very different! I will assume the worst, cuz, Gen X. “More relaxed” which “needs correcting” is a real great mystery though. And “ready to start spelling her kindergarten sight words?” Come the fuck on. Girl guessed on the spelling of “evolution” last night and nailed it first time.
Yesterday the ant man came because there is an infestation of ants at Chore House on the driveway. Dude saw a carpenter ant so big he felt compelled to take a picture of it. Not good. Also carpenter ants, when your yard is made out of wood mulch, and your garage is filled with wood, is not great! He traced the ants back to their anthole and it was… under the strawberry bed. Great. I do not want to move my strawberry bed it is finally kicking ass after like three years of trying. Actually shit that reminds me I gotta cover it before the squirrels get em. Will do that today. Anyway, he dug a bit under the bed and spread poison outside the bed, around it, but not in it because food. He couldn’t use the liquid, though, because it’s gonna rain today, except it’s not, whatever. He’ll be back monday.
I’m super bummed I did not ask him to airdrop me that picture of the monster ant, though.
Jane and I took the trails over to Chore House to let him in and as we were walking, we passed the Neurodivergent Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapists out in the woods by the old abandoned cook stove with a whole group of kids and they waved and we waved and man, I am 100% okay if I am ever in a wheelchair now because I will feel even more like Professor Charles Xavier I love it so much it makes me so happy I hope they never leave.
There should be an OSX key command for “focus on current app” so you don’t have to option-tab to it because it is a variable number of tabs to the current app, depending on how many other apps… oh. Right. It wouldn’t work, because it’s not the current app anymore. Boy that was dumb. Okay, then, I need a programmable key command that changes the focus to a specific app like Safari. This probably exists, huh? Will investigate.
Here is the launch of a new company focused on productizing the enzymes they have discovered/invented that eat plastic, nothing but plastic, and turn it into useful stuff. I’ve been following this tech for a while but this is, as far as I know, the first company to spawn from it. They are called Breaking. I am very excited. They are in Boston. If I had a single ounce of skill that they could use, I would move back there and work for them so fast you don’t even know. Am I deeply disappointed in them for using a Floridian web dev firm instead of a Boston-based one for their site? Yes, yes I am. Also what web dev firm puts their name on a website with a link back to theirs in 2024. Ten bucks says the same PE firm is involved in all of this. But still! Breaking! Enzymes that eat plastic! SO EXCITING. I mean will it be another ten years, like the way we’re all still waiting for graphene? Maybe, probably. But I am into it.
H/T (does that sound for “Hat tip?”) to Ben Young for posting this to the Why is this Interesting Contributors Slack so I could learn about it yesterday. I try not to steal too much content from WITI for GMHHAY but man, it is a great group of people.
Finally, I ask you: did your parents tell you that the line “I get high with a little help from my friends” by the Beatles was about being “high on life?” Did we believe that? Did they say it a lot or did the absurdity of the claim stick with me even after being only made once? I called my wife sexy in front of my daughter yesterday and Emma was like “I don’t want my daughter to think of me as sexy” not in an angry way just sort of as a topic of discussion and my opinion was that she wouldn’t notice or remember if I only did it the one time, but then this morning I thought about this “high with a little help from my friends” line while I was listening to the brilliant song “Get with You and Get High” by A Giant Dog, and I think maybe my parents only made that farcical claim to me once yet here I am, almost 52, still pondering over it, so yeah, man, it is super stressful when you realize a single passing comment could stick with your kid forever.
I do not like that one bit nope nope someone stick a computer needle in my brain and remove that knowledge please.
All right, today we have a special mix for Anne out west, who is spending a lot of time in the warehouse packing orders and needs something upbeat. She says she likes my mixes, but that right now she needs something she can jam to at work and that it’s been a while since I’ve done a club mix, and she is correct. And I looked and I had one about half done, so I finished it up for her on Tuesday and then forgot to post it yesterday. But then since then I re-listened to the last MGMT album and decided this one song is a real jam and even though it doesn’t start clubby, I bet it would rule as a take-a-break-then-rave song at a club. So I stuck it on the end.
Anne if you get all the way though to the MGMT song and you’re still packin’, you’ve done a good solid bout of work. Be proud.
Talk to you guys tomorrow. Big day tomorrow! Petersville! Walmart! Jane is going to the zoo!