Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1050
Oh god its early, road trip planning, more dumb OpenAI stuff, Hipgnosis and Barbarian nostalgia, Mike Birbiglia, one day at a time, butter hacks
Good morning. Hello. I mean. Do I wake up at 6:10 AM most mornings? Yes, sure, yes I do. Did I get to sleep till 6:40 this morning? Yes I did. So I guess that is nice. But the thing iss…. I was supposed to get to sleep till 7:30. But Jane woke up, and rather than play by herself till 7:30 and then come find me and wake me up, she reeaally needed to find her Turkey hat, and she was so excited to help daddy make stuffing and corn bread today that she decided the right thing to do was to wake me up an hour early. Which would have been okay had I not decided last night that I was going to get to sleep in and stay up a bit later. She was so excited about helping with thanksgiving last night that she stayed up murmuring to herself in her bed until ten ish. Girl didn’t get much more sleep than I did.
Anyway she is in the other room banging away on a xylophone and I am listening to Mogwai’s Mr Beast and the two go together pretty well, I have to say.
Yesterday when I was listening to Side A of this record, Emma came in and said “why do I recognize this song” and I said “because we went to six shows on this tour” and wow we used to have a different life also how come Mogwai haven’t come to Cat’s Cradle since I moved here it has been too long.
Emma and I started concretely planning our Boston trip for the holidays and there is a vast uncertainty around Christmas eve, as we will have Jane and Nick and Meghan will have their kid and traditionally everyone goes to a bar on Christmas eve but that will probably not work with the kids and and and. Has anyone started planning anything yet? Let us know if you have.
Thank you for your help with someone to help with a thermostat. I emailed one, no answer yet. Will email the second one Monday if no word. And thank you for all the comments yesterday about touch screens — sounds like most cars have buttons that move around, that is a shame. To be clear, the buttons I stuck on my touch screen are on there by suction. They could move to a different spot if, like, the layout changed, but not if the buttons moved.
So Sam Altman is back at OpenAI this morning and it is so dumb and so lame and I don’t even know what to say and thank god I write a daily newsletter praising the mundane in life and I don’t have to come up with insightful, clever things about this whole thing. But I don’t especially feel great about the board caving. I feel like money and fast AI and general irresponsibility won. That is a bummer.
Anyway here is a Threads screenshot capturing some of how I feel about the matter:
But whatever, maaaaan. I guess they won’t kill us until after climate change does so we may as well not worry about it.
My god do you know how many people sang the AA anthem “One Day at a Time” in the 80’s. It is bonkers. Lotta singers in AA I guess.
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Now we are back from breakfast which was super fun right up until the point where Jane threw a giant fit because her breakfast taco had eggs sticking out of it, and wanted the one which she had previously rejected which I had, with an utter lack of “I should have seen this coming” already eaten. Took about thirty minutes to work through this. Man, the despair of a six year old who can’t have the breakfast taco she wants. It really is something. That took a lot out of me.
It is now 7:48 AM.
Last night I watched Circling the Square: The Hipgnosis Story, a documentary about the famed record cover design shop. It was directed by Anton Corbijn. I’ve always been fascinated by Hipgnosis, sort of the precursor to 23 Envelope and Peter Saville (who appeared as an interview subject because of course. Anton Corbijn). There were peripheral interviews they should have done that they did not, and that kind of made me sad. Storm’s ex wife or son would have been interesting. The stunt man on the cover of Wish You Were Here would have been interesting. But this was not an investigatory documentary, it was a love letter, a valentine to the productive relationship between Storm and Poe, with a side of Peter Christopherson thrown in. I wish there was more of Peter, but that’s for another film.
I am sad it did not include anything around the creation of the Pink Floyd A Momentary Lapse of Reason cover because that was pretty great.
The whole thing made me deeply nostalgic for Barbarian, and how I used to think that Barbarian and its ilk (Erik Natzke, Heavy, Hi Res, etc) were the new design rock stars in the vein of Hipgnosis and 23 Envelope and Peter Saville/Factory and whatnot, but unfortunately for us the internet a) became way less cool whereas rock and roll somehow managed to stay cool, and b) the internet moves at a totally different speed. The Anton Corbijn of our day (Vincent Moon, maybe? Checks out. Met him at SoHo House once) will not be doing stylized black and white interviews of Benjamin and Robert and Keith and I with stills of Subservient Chicken or the Beer Cannon projected into the background. No one remembers, no one cares, the internet is too fast maan. Plus our stuff wasn’t printed onto album covers so people don’t keep it on their shelves.
(Beer Cannon’s still on Youtube, btw. One million views. Seventeen years ago.)
(Also Poe and Storm didn’t talk for 12 years after they broke up, so I am doing better than them in maintaining my relationships with my ex partners, and the bank never came and seized our company so at least there’s that.)
I don’t usually get nostalgic for Barbarian too often, except the people of course, they were awesome, but, you know. The holidays make me a little misty-eyed, not gonna lie. It was a great company, a great time.
Oh yeah and here’s a Barbarian Nostalgia site I made about ten years ago, really is a hoot.
Then Emma and I watched the new Mike Birbiglia and man I worry about that guy. He does not seem… happy? No, he seems happy ish but he does not seem well. I’m glad by the end he says he is taking care of himself and I sure hope so. That’s a lot of “pre-existing conditions” for one guy. I feel like every special he’s gonna come out with another ailment. The whole thing just drives home for me the absolute terror of aging, which I am not super into I would prefer not to age thank you very much. I prefer not to age even if I am the only thing that doesn’t age and I am floating in space, alone, at the end of the universe. Though I suppose that would not happen though because even though I am not aging it does not necessarily mean that I could not die, so presumably when the earth finally blew up I would die along with it. Though ideally I would not age and be immortal, that would be super cool. Please do not endeavor to dissuade me on this matter.
Did the Pool billing and expenses last night with partner Ricardo and we did it more quickly than we have ever done it before, yay us. Building swimming pools is a hell of a thing, man. I thought design and creative contractors were idiosynchratic and quirky. Let me tell you about excavators and tile copers. Those people are weirdos. It’s great.
OH and I saw one of those life hack videos and apparently you can take a glass of water, put it in the microwave, boil the water, dump the water out and put the hot glass over the butter and it will soften it and clearly I need to work this into my overly-rushed, school morning routine.
OK let’s get on with this day we have so much to do. Jane made a list for us. Let’s go make cornbread.
OK got a covers playlist for you here, ending, appropriately, with a cover of “One Day at a Time.” I committed a slight breach of ettiquitte here by putting two covers from the same EP, but they are by different artists, so I think it’s okay. This “West End Girls” cover by Sleaford Mods is proving very divisive amongst my friends. Perhaps time will tell. Perhaps we’ll only be able to know for sure if we dance to it together at Man Ray. While hugging.
Hey guys. Have a great Thanksgiving. Hug your loved ones. Drop a line, say hi. Miss you.
The Pet Shop Boys remix of the Sleaford Mods cover (track two on this digital EP) is much better than the 'original' Sleaford Mods cover!
I can confirm that the hot glass over stick of butter trick works. I don't have a microwave but hot tap water has been effective for me :) I hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving <3