Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1339
Jane's debacle, Ida is touring, noble pedestrian domesticity band-aid and greenhouse reorgs, learning makes Jane hyper.
Morning! Monday! Rain! I packed Jane’s cute yellow raincoat in her backpack my god that raincoat is so cute. Today in the Lightning Sketch app she drew a hat, then a heart around it, then wrote “I <3 Hats” in the hat. Makes sense. Who doesn’t love hats.
Another presidential assassination attempt ho hum, weird I can’t, like, get worked up over it at all. Saw the news and thought “I don’t care, this is interfering with my Youtube tutorials on building stair stringers.” Also you can pay to go to space and walk in space now that is kind of cool but also ho hum. The future is exactly as weird as I thought it would be as a kid but it’s also pretty… dumb? Boring? I mean we live in it, it’s our every day life. So by that very nature, it isn’t that remarkable. Getting old is weird. It really takes something special to get you worked up and excited these days. I feel like even if one of these weirdos actually succeeded in killing that dude, it would mainly feel like that day when you are sick and then suddenly you’re getting better and you’re not sick. And then the next day would feel exactly like the next day after being sick: you were so sick, you may have even prayed to get better, you could never even imagine anything other than being sick. And then it’s over and… you can’t barely remember it. The past is the past.
Listening to a woman named Cassandra Jenkins. Album is My light, My Destroyer. Second listen. Have no recollection of the first listen. Starred one track the first listen, have already starred two more. Must not have been paying attention the first time. It’s a great record.
We have 26 hours, 42 minutes left in the great “To Investigate” playlist clear-out of 2H 2024. I made so much “progress” because I took all the NEW stuff I have added to the “To Investigate” playlist since supposedly clearing it out, and removed it and shunted it over to a temporary holding playlist, because I kept adding more and more to investigate, and it felt like I wasn’t making any progress on this thing. But now! Playlist was over 70 hours long when I started this process. We are making progress! Might even finish this week (I will not finish this week).
But the big thing in music news this weekend is, of course, Perry Ferrel trying to punch Dave Navarro in the middle of the Boston Jane’s Addiction set, and the tour imploding. Perry is chalking it up to sound mix problems on the stage, uh huh, yeah. He was kinda mess here in Raleigh, as I said. I didn’t want to, you know, accuse the dude of being fucked up, but he sure seemed fucked up. Then the New York show happened and everyone there was like “that dude is fucked up and can’t sing.” And then Boston. And now the tour is over.
Think for a minute about Love and Rockets, who now have to cancel a tour where a very large number of the people were there to see them. About all the guitar techs and sound people and crew who are out of jobs. And, as Emma pointed out, Eric Avery, who left a really great gig in a very stable, drama free band that tours steadily. He left one of the most solid gigs in music to go back and deal with this shit. I feel bad for all of these people. I feel bad for my friends Aug and Miranda and everyone else who had tickets for the next night in Bridgeport.
(I will also say I feel very jealous of all my Boston friends who got to see this debacle in person but that is just unhealthy Rick talking we try not to listen to him, kinda like Eminem and Slim Shady, you know. Also I listened to that new Eminem album this weekend, it was good! I feel like if any new artist put that album out it would get a lot more attention. Eminem has kinda achieved this cancel-proof teflon kinda like Trump ew I am sorry I made that comparison lets move on).
One last music-related news item, thanks to Bradley in Boston: Ida is touring again. it is mind-blowing. I had no idea they would ever tour again. Bradley posted a few videos from it on the Youtube and my god it was… it was so amazing. Like a flashback to another time, except all the members of Ida have aged as much as I have in that time, of course, but they are still there, as if they never stopped doing it. And they sound amazing and… oh man. I just, I just.. I have been thinking about Ida a lot lately but it never occurred to me I’d ever get to see them again. Really took it for granted when they toured so often. And by “took for granted” I mean went and saw them every single time and thought they were amazing.
You might not think there is a lot of commonality between Ida and Jane’s addiction, but actually. The guy in Ida, Dan Littleton, was in, prior to Ida, a punk band from Annapolis, MD called The Hated. Very very different from Ida, but hugely influential in their own right. BUT the point is: this weekend “Words Come Back” by the Hated came on shuffle as I was thinking about what punk singer possesses the dynamic range to handle Perry’s parts should Jane’s Addiction decide to continue on the tour without him (I vote yes, ten thousand times yes, the band is so good right now) and I present for consideration: Dan Littleton.
Fun part of office cleaning last week: empty and rinse 20+ bottles of expired Soylent!
Anyway, great weekend, A+, no complaints, I got so many chores done. Chores at home, chores at chore house, just a boatload of chores man I love doing chores I am sorry Sean if this paragraph is triggering. Not everyone likes chores.
First and foremost I have to regale you with my latest innovation in noble pedestrian domesticity: band-aid organization. Now, you my night be an American suburban (MA friends: Somerville, Cambrige, and beyond are suburban don’t kid yourself) hoarder, trapped in Capitalism’s brutal trick that buying large quantities of things is cheaper than small quantities. But I am. I am also trapped in the capitalistic delusion that there is always a better product. There is always a correct product for the job. As such, I have acquired quite an extensive collection of adhesive bandages. Furthermore, my taste therein has evolved through the years. I used to like the flexible fabric ones, then I moved on to the Nexcare waterproof ones. Great to wear for a bunch of days, but man, your skin gets so moist, the wound never gets to dry out.
But I digress. The point of all this is that, after a while, you have so many Band-aids, like every other goddamn thing in modern suburban America. But unlike every other thing, when you need a Band-aid, you need it right now. Because you are freakin’ bleeding. And while my Band-aids were sort of organized before this, they were not conducive to speed of retrieval in an emergency. Don’t get me wrong, I would have held my head high leaving a Band-aid organizing contest last week. But now? Now I would win the top prize. Behold:
Cut a knuckle just before heading out to the goth club? Easy to find the right Band-aid. Cut the tip of your pinky just before heading to an Easter egg hung? I gotchoo.
You will also notice, of course, that barely any of them are actually Band-aid brand Band-aids. I am also wondering the proper capitalization of a proper noun that has descended into every day use. Do we still capitalize?
Anyway, when you have gotten something so monumental done with your weekend by Saturday morning 10 AM, you’re sitting pretty on the top of weekend mountain. But did I rest on my laurels? Nay, dear reader, I did not.
On top of all the really great computer chores and bills and blueprint printing and hanging out with my awesome daughter, the other big chore I got done this weekend was greenhouse organization and fall planting.
I finally got the pull-out trash can and compost bin attached underneath the gardening bench. I cleaned the whole greenhouse, organized, vacuumed, pressure washed. Twice lately I have had occasion to show people the greenhouse for the first time, and while the structure is lovely and the plants were doing nicely, the place was a mess and it was kinda embarrassing. I had never completely finished getting it organized from when we “finished’ the thing in March and I dove right into the spring gardening season.
But now! Not is clean and it is done and boy I love it so much. Took two whole days! Had to repair the sink, had to repair the awesome potting bin where all the dirt goes through the screen when you are potting on the screen. Oh and I used that screen a bunch, it is so awesome. Great innovation in gardening, let me tell you.
Also check out that plexiglass shield dividing the gardening bench from the planter next to it that was spraying drip irrigation water all over the bench every single day. Fixed! Fixed!
(I know, I could use individual emitters in my drip, or drip tube with single drips every 6-9” or something, but I like the spray tubes for my row crops like lettuce what can I say).
Also finally got my fall peppers and cucumbers and bok choy and beets and spinach and extra shallots in the ground and planted my outdoor tomatoes. It is all probably a bit too late but most of it is going into the greenhouse so we are hoping for some pretty quality season extension in there.
Anyway the thing is gorgeous now and it makes me very happy. And there is plenty of room to haul in the fruit trees (seen outside on the left in the photo below) when winter comes.
Jane and I did a Daddy Bedtime on Saturday. No Daddy School, because she is obsessed with these data visualization rankings-over-time videos from channels like “Data is Beautiful” and other rip-off channels (though it is occurring to me that how do I know that “Data is Beautiful” is the original and the others are rip-offs? Just because it’s the one *I* found first doesn’t mean it was the original, oh shit, mind blown, I suddenly understand these Youtube rip off channels a bit more, because it can work, you can completely hijack someone’s Youtube audience!). I thought this might be more relaxing for her compared to Daddy school because she still has this giant problem where she’s way too manic and hyper at sleep time on daddy bedtimes. Anyway, it did not work, she was still a crazed lunatic.
But Emma pointed out that she was not just relaxing, watching the animations. Because as the data went by — be it countries, or musicians, or video games or whatever — she would ask me about them and I would teach her about them. So she was still, in effect, learning.
And so that is our new theory. Learning makes her pumped. This is awesome, of course, But also… kinda sad?? There’s really no other time for Daddy School other than bedtime. We are both sad.
At McDonald’s yesterday, Jane was eating her pancakes and “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band came on and Jane just sang along to it like she had heard it a thousand times. I have noticed her doing this a few other times: excellent memory for songs she’s not heard a ton.
Maybe Daddy School at McDonald’s then.
Moody and Quiet playlist for you today. All new stuff. Well, this year. From the re-listen. Good stuff, good stuff. Chill out, doooood. I just finished that Southernmountan’s Hard Bargain album and it was… kind of amazing? Had country, had new wave, had a song that sounded like Steely Dan. Really all over the map but everything was very well done. Know nothing about them. Must learn more.
All right! Let’s do this week thing. No problem. I mean, five days is a ridiculous workweek length, it should be three, maybe four, but we can do it. We can do it. Honest.