Good morning. Hello. How are you? #354
Beachcomber, Pettbots, CBD, Seth Meyers, Mulan, and men actually not hitting on people.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? Doing okay? Holding in there? Experiencing a “surge” in your home town? I don’t think we’re experiencing a surge here but it’s a little hard to tell from North Carolina’s less-than-super-useful COVID dashboard. I am doing okay. It’s gonna be sunny, which is nice. I’m in the middle of a three-day very busy run, but I got through the first day of it without any emotional breakdowns, so, you know, chalk that up as a win.
Programming note: I really am going to do this Q&A post. Probably later this week after I get through this busy patch at work. It’s amazing how much more work it is to do one of those editions vs. this normal edition, so I need to wait till I have a little more time. But keep those questions coming!
Programmig note 2: I forgot to add a link to yesterday’s playlist, so if you’re receiving these just for the playlists, I apologize, and here is the link.
The Beachcomber is closing down, it’s actually already been torn down, even. Pretty irreversible act of closing down. Don’t think the Save Our Stages act can save that one. I have so many fond memories of that ridiculous Wellfleet venue. It was a rite of passage for Boston bands to make the trek out there in the summer, and I would accompany friends bands over several summers. Plus you could go drink on the beach after the show, it really was remarkable. RIP.
I was reading my woke operatic sci fi series last night and my god I want cute little pettable robots — they call them petbots — so bad. How do these not exist? We had the Sony Aibo and I guess they have a newer version of it, and we had crappy brokedown toy ones in the past, but, like… we need these at mass scale asap. I want a little, purring, cute, furry, alien cat in my lap keeping me warm and letting me pet it. I mean honestly I think the Aibo was like $3,000 which isn’t even that bad, if it had fur and normal human beings could actually obtain one instead of whatever bullshit Japanese lottery they were doing. Bring. Us. Petbots. This is one place where the future is really letting us down. There was also that therapeutic huggable lump of a petbot that was featured on Master of None. I did a bunch of research into that. They were $9k and you had to, like, be approved to get one for some reason. Really says a lot about America that it’s impossible to obtain a cuddly robot pet but totally easy to buy a gun.
The ParoSeal sure does look sweet though.
Hrm this might be my calling instead of recycling.
I’ve been watching this video diary by the Precious Plastic people. Basically their grant from the Dutch government ended, so they needed a new HQ, so they elected to buy this large plot of land in Portugal in the middle of nowhere for not a lot of money. Their plan is to “experiment with a more sustainable form of living,” and they’ve done a bunch of what they call “infrastructure” work. They fabricated a workshop and a kitchen (with shower) out of two shipping containers. They did this as one of their last acts in their old workshop (or maybe in an associate’s French workshop, it was a little unclear) and now they’re having them shipped to their land. And the containers got to Portugal okay but their land — which, to my eyes, does not look remote at all — is basically unaccessible. The public road is too rutted and broken for a semi truck to deliver their shipping containers. And they’ve been waiting two months for the government to fix the road. It’s unclear to me why these can-do people who are some of the most proficient machinists I have ever seen can’t just go grade the road themselves. Another problem is that they don’t have a mailing address for the land. As an Alaskan who has friends who really do live in the middle of nowhere, it’s unfathomable to me that this piece of land — from which you can see plenty of other farm houses and is within walking distance of a small town — doesn’t have an address. Like. Portugal’s been around for thousands of years? I know this is true because I just played Portugal in Civilization VI and that makes me an expert. But they don’t have an address. So they can’t get electricity. Or things shipped to them. And they can’t get their shipping containers. So the main Precious Plastic guy is just living in an old military van on this giant expanse of land all through the winter. It is absolutely remarkable how upbeat he remains. I would completely lose it at the dysfunctional bureaucracy. I mean I consider myself a government guy but I’m still an American. I would have had a blade on the front of that badass military van three months ago and would have graded and packed that road at the first melting.
Volkswagen is apparently changing their name to Voltswagen in the US as part of their pursuit of electric vehicles and taking on Tesla. This is not an April Fools joke. It was leaked early, but insiders have confirmed it. This has met with widespread condemnation around the internet as another classic boneheaded branding move up there with the infamous Pepsi brand redesign. I suspect this was just ever going to be an ad campaign, and not a real name change, but either way, I say bring it on. The Volkswagen name has been tainted for 70 years and it may as well be consigned to the dustbin of history. Yes there’s some brand equity there but there’s also massive negative brand equity, both recent and Nazi and in any case, electric cars are better than non-electric cars. Screw it. Go for it. I would even consider buying one. Especially if they brought back the B 5.5 Passat body. I loved that thing.
Is CBD still a thing? We watched Seth Meyer’s 2019 comedy special Lobby Baby last night, and he cracked a CBD joke and wow I forgot about how that’s all anyone could talk about for a while there. Have we all sort of given up and put all our chips on full legalization now, or did CBD make it through the trough of doubt or whatever its called and break on through to the other side of boring dominance. Seth’s special was pretty funny. I forgot that comedy specials can make you cheer up. If you willingly submit to them and decide you want to laugh, even at their kind-of dumb jokes, and you don’t pick up your phone and start reading twitter but keep at it and give in, it can really cheer you up, even if it’s only a so-so comedy special. This one was better than so-so, to. It was like a B.
Then out of the blue I decided to hit play on the 2020 version of Mulan. I had been doing that stupid thing I do where I meticulously check every streaming service’s app and see if there’s anything new I want to watch and there wasn’t and I was telling Emma about how apparently Pixar employees are disillusioned that Soul and Luca didn’t even rank important enough by Pixar for them to charge for them in Disney+ like they did Mulan. And then we were wondering if they were still charging for Mulan, found it in the app, saw they weren’t, and I just hit the play button, even though neither one of us had any desire ever to see the new Mulan. Plus the whole fiming in Xinjiang with the assistance of the selfsame government who’s keeping millions of people in internment camps. Plus I was going to bed in an hour. So, you know, we didn’t finish it. Just watched some. I don’t know who that movie is for. It’s not a kids movie, it’s not really an action movie. I guess it’s sort of intended to be in the Crouching Tiger genre, and its cinematography is bold and innovative but also the whole thing feels… plastic. I don’t know, maybe it gets better.
Okay regarding Mark Kozelek and other idiot men, here is my sage wisdom. I will probably get shit for this, but here it is — Men: Just don’t hit on anyone ever. That’s it. It’s (mostly) that easy. I was at a bar once and a drunken dude ex-friend of mine (I’m sure no one can guess who) was making out with some girl at the bar then came over and told me about how into him that girl is. Then he left and the girl came and sat with us and went on about how annoying it was that he was always making out with her and trying to make out with her and my other friend was like “well why do you do it” and she was like “well it’s not that big of a deal, I’m a little drunk, and it’s just easier.” And I knew in that very moment many women had thought that of me in my life and it was absolutely mortifying and that is maybe a best case scenario much of the time when hitting on a lady in a bar. And it all just came flooding into me, this clarity of vision: Don’t hit on anyone ever. It’s the simplest way. Does this mean you might miss out on having some great relationship with someone shy? Perhaps. But life will go on and in exchange you will have avoided annoying dozens of women. It’s a decent trade. Most men would be absolutely shocked at how the world changes when they did this. They secretly know, deep down, that of the last 10 hookups, maybe one of them would have happened, the other nine definitely not, that other one, maybe. Not hitting on people radically reduces your stress, your proclivity for offending people, for getting into trouble. All you have to deal with then is the rare time someone unequivocally clearly hits on you. It’s a lot simpler.
I have told this theory to many, many people and almost no one agrees with me, and that’s probably what’s going to happen here. And of course I came up with this theory only a year or two before getting married, so, you know, that’s convenient, but I stand by it. It’s the best way. Consider giving it a shot.
Also, fellow male friends approaching fifty: consider, just consider, the possibility of your libido declining being a good thing. Just… consider it.
Okay, let’s do a mix. Gonna do a post rock one today. I added this into the mix as a genre of playlists I wanted to do because I realized that, you know, distinct genre from shoegaze and psych, and I was in a nostalgic k-hole about Mogwai’s Fear Satan and how much I missed seeing them live. It is not a particularly innovative or obscure post rock play list. My friend Annie could (and has) done a much better job. But if you’re in a mood from sweeping, dramatic, cinematic music with lots of guitars and just a smattering of synthesizers, this is the one for you.
OK, let’s get this day’s show on the road. I had a computer crash this morning so running a bit behind, and I gotta go get Janey in 10 minutes. She was very good yesterday, I have to say. Not a single fit in the morning at breakfast, not a single fit in the evening at bedtime. I had a 10AM Zoom call and she was sitting in the background of it and I don’t think the other participants even noticed her till Janet came in at 10:30 to pick her up. Very impressive.
OKAY. Into the fray. Busy day two. I can do it. You can too!
Until tomorrow.
SO MUCH HERE. 1. i had no idea about the beachcomber and almost can't believe it. every time i've ever been there, it was PACKED. 2. i recently got a sample of a "CBD acid-mantle repair" moisturizer that costs $75 for like 1.7 ounces, so i think it's still a thing! 3. there is a very long and *scathing* takedown of the live-action mulan by a chinese woman that we watched recently. i'll try to find it. 4. i fully support dudes not hitting on anyone ever and instead just considering talking to women as if—and i know this is hard for many to imagine—they're ACTUAL PEOPLE first.