Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1337
RIP Jeff Sullivan, 9/11 in NYC once again, Eru Iluvatar is a jerk, 12 hours of sleep, the last remaining shakers as a management parable,
Good morning, hello, fine people. Greetings from LGA, now rated travelers’ most favorite airport, boy do I have a hilarious headline for a newspaper in a sci fi movie shot in the 80’s but taking place in the 2020s for you. LGA, a nice airport. Har har. Sure is a lot of walking, though. I am sad I never finished my book on Laguardia. It was so good. But it needed to come out before the new LGA, because I never had the capacity to do the reconstruction justice. I wish there was some way I could reposition it. History of LGA, volume 1, with an implied volume 2 that never comes out. That would be funny. Anyway, ideas welcome. Did you know LGA’s runway is landfill filled with thousands of automobiles that were abandoned on the streets of New York when the great depression hits? I have a photo of Anaïs Nin deplaning in front of the Marine Air Terminal, man talk about an intersection of interests.
Two sad topics for today’s edition:
My old friend Jeff Sullivan passed suddenly of a heart attack. Jeff and I have only been internet friends for a lot of years now, but we have stayed in touch, due to our shared love of music. He was a phenomenal playlist maker. Back in the day, we hung out all the time in the real world and he was just an absolute gentleman. I will miss him, but many of my friends in Boston will miss him even more: especially Jen, Suzy and Mandy. My heart goes out to them.
I learned about Jeff’s passing via text while I was sitting on the tarmac at RDU getting ready to go to LGA. I had hooked my phone into the seatback in front of me, so I could see it if a message came up but I did not have to hold it. And when the message came up (thank you for telling me, Abby), I gasped and did a little sob, enough that it concerned the woman next to me, who (despite her will, I assume) read the message on the screen and then very kindly offered me her condolences. It was a trip. It was human. It was… people can still be nice.
And once again, I found myself in NYC on 9/11. Once again I saw the lights shine into the sky from where the towers were. I don’t think I have missed many 9/11s in New York in the last 23 years, even the last ten since I moved away. It is almost always a coincidence. I have flown by those glowing pillars in the night more than once landing or taking off into New York, imagining the fear of those passengers, the horror below. I’m not going to lie, the memories of that day fade a little more every year, I barely remember anymore the names or faces of my coworkers who died on one of those planes. I am not happy about this but also I think it is maybe for the best. The world is filled with tragedies, larger, crazier ones happen every year. I am still bitter that we basically “fell for it” and spent trillions of dollars on wars no one wanted, instead of health care and food for us and them. 9/11 worked, we walked right into that trap. It bled us not just in people, but in resources, just like Bin Laden wanted and I do not think we spend enough time learning from that lesson. Mostly I don’t like talking about it or thinking about it. But here I am in NYC again. Enough said.
I am sitting at a Simulacrum of Bubbys at LGA. It is nicer and way more expensive than the original Bubby’s, which was just two blocks from my old Barbarian Tribeca office. It lacks all of the original’s character. The silverware is plastic, the toast is cold, the meal costs $30 or so. I have on more than one occasion been a jerk and tweeted out about the insane meal prices at LGA. Every time, the LGA social media manager answers me and says something vague and apologetic but nothing ever happens. Honestly it feels like the rest of the world has caught up to LGA. $30 for a single meal is not that unusual anymore. Good job, rest-of-world.
I arrived at LGA about 5 hours early because a) I had a giant suitcase, where else was I gonna go, and b) I was hoping for an earlier flight. No luck on the flight. But they did take my giant suitcase off my hands, so I am going to spend the next four hours roaming the airport, looking at all of its nooks and crannies, and listening to music. I let my Delta Sky Lounge membership lapse because those places suck now: they are engaged in an unending war of attrition of increasing membership and capacity, and upgrading the facilities to contain all the new members. The facilities are indeed getting nicer and nicer, but they are always behind the curve on keeping up with the ever-growing clientele. I can’t handle the crowds.
Also it is unseemly seeing so many grown-ass adults freak out over free food and drink, it’s got all the dignity of a SXSW party on 6th street. It is getting to the point, especially here at this newly-gorgeous LGA, that the true luxury is paying for the food and drink in the main concourse. At least there is space and I don’t have to see people get hammered on free mimosas. People do not get crunked on endless bloody marys at new-faux-Bubby’s. Not when they’re $20 each.
I did not go out last night in the big city. I was still ruined from the night before. I did not check myself before I wrecked myself. I am sorry, Ice Cube. (I feel like it is real weird that Ice Cube and NWA were one of the largest moral panics of the 80s and cops hated them and now he plays Cops on TV all the time. My team and I were stripped our my 1989 Academic Decathlon state championship because we listened to NWA in our hotel room). Thusly, after a quick outing with my coworkers, I slept for 11 hours last night, it was awesome.
Read a bit about the downfall of Numenor and theforging of the rings and, you know, Sauron was kind of a dummy. Like he convinces the Numenorians to rebel against their gods and, whoops, just completely gets himself killed when the gods get annoyed and destroy Numenor, because what else were they gonna do, you explicitly set out to annoy gods and you’re surprised they got annoyed? Also the Valar are lazy and are assholes, or they just view Middle Earth as their SimEarth game and don’t give a fuck about their creations. Even though one of them married an elf? Freakin weirdos, man. I mean, they did step up in the War of Wrath but not till everyone in all of Middle Earth was miserable and then they just checked out again. And what is up with Ero Iluvatar? Absentee father if you ask me. That dude sucks.
Paper Straws everywhere in NY. So progressive compared to NC. Ooo la la.
Did what I set out to accomplish in New York, my suitcase is filled with shit to take home from the office, I have pulled out the Timehop stuff to take it to their new owners, gotten everything arrayed and splayed to give away. People have been coming in taking things. I have two dithering office removal companies half-heartedly fighthing for the contract. The office furniture market in NYC is glutted, no one wants this tuff. There is a Cynthia Dall Sponge Bob doll, new in box, worth like $100 I can’t get anyone to take and eBay. In my world, Cynthia Dall is an underground musician, but what do I know.
I am excited to go home. Got some pool shit to do and gardening.
Here is the bathroom at Spring Lounge. You will be pleased to learn it is unchanged. I do like to check in on it with some regularity.
Liz Onstad sent me a major NY Times Magazine article about the last two remaining Shakers, in Sabbathday Lake, ME. I am obsessed with the last two living Shakers, as longtime readers of GMHHAY are aware. At first I slept on reading the article, because all the articles about Brother Arnold and Sister June are samey and don’t really tell you anything. But this one! Reporter embedded with the shakers on and off for two years. This is some serious in-depth reporting. I am impressed. Most of the new stuff was around the corps of volunteers that support Sabbathday Lake and Brother Arnold. I have always wondered about them. And this article did great about that, explaining their activities, organization, even the mental state of them. Their leader, the head of the seculasr non-profit dedicated to preserving Sabbathday Lake, is particularly compelling and his journey to the mission of his life, all while not being a Shaker himself — he considered it but Brother Arnold gently dissuaded him because he did not believe — is just great. The waggy gossip in me is a little sad we did not get more info about the former third shaker who left the community and married another reporter (this one from the Globe) about ten years ago, but I suppose that is just… frippery. Not core to the mission. I also found very compelling Brother Arnold’s rock-solid belief that, eventually, more Shakers are going to arrive. He tells a parable of when the first to Shakers built the first Shaker community, they built it to accommodate hundreds, even though they were but two. They believed. And eventually, more Shakers arrived.
Brother Arnold lives his life in the serene belief he will not be the last Shaker. Michael the non-profit director and the “extended family” of secular friends of the Shakers: they have the harder, and sadder, job of preserving Sabbathday Lake for the future even if there are no more shakers. They seem to compliment each other well. I feel like there’s some sort of management parable here: like I should have a co-CEO who is a doomsday planner. You will be surprised, I assume, to learn I am a wildly optimistic CEO, I rarely think things are going badly, even when we were on the brink last year (we are no longer on the brink. We are doing great. This season I kinda think I might be good at this job!) Anyway, a team: An optimist and a pessimist, leading together, building for the future. I like it.
Did a Facetime call with my wife and daughter last night and after a couple cute kisses over the phone, Jane decided it would be much cuter to continually headbutt me over the phone. And you know what? It was pretty cute, I gotta say.
Post Rock compilation for you cuz it’s all I have near completion. I have not, you will be unsurprised to learn, made a big dent in clearing out the “To Investigate” playlist this week. And if you peek at the timing on this one, you can see I rushed to complete it for you. But man, that Low cover by Planning for Burial, it is great. Very obsessed with this Den Der Hale band, have been for a while now. Don’t know much about them. And super happy with the ongoing archival Alan Vega albums it is super interesting to get more Alan Vega music in death than when he was alive. Whomever is curating his archives should go work for Prince. Or Muslimgauze.
All right this one is a little short again, but we will be back to our normally scheduled routine by tomorrow. I have some very exciting noble pedestrian domesticity shit to share with you this coming week. Good stuff, as utterly devoid of consequences and stakes as a thing can be. I will give you a two-word sneak preview: Band-aid organization.