Good morning. Hello. How are you? #392
Walmart, Burt Reynolds, delivery drivers, The Hold Steady, work fire drills, writing, spousal communication, the NRA, depressing politics, Elf on a Shelf, Joe McGuirk.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? What is it? Tuesday? Wednesday? Wednesday, right? Yeah. Cuz I just went to the recycling center and Walmart. Hey there, happy Wednesday. How you holding up? Doing okay? I hope so, I hope so.
Went to the Walmart this morning. Barely needed anything, and of course they didn’t have two of the four things I needed. Just going through the motions, really. They had plenty of Apple Pie and Key Lime Kit Kats but I am off that stuff now because I am pandemic bloating and while I’m not *quite* ready to muster up the enthusiasm for a soul-crushing diet, I’m in triage mode and maybe shouldn’t keep consuming massive quantities of Kit Kats. Okay, not massive quantities. We’ll go with a steady diet of Kit Kats. Not good. Walmart did have a 4K Blu Ray of Smokey and the Bandit, though, and I was very excited about that, because it was one of my favorite movies growing up, and just before Burt Reynolds passed i got to sit next to him, just him and me, behind the screen at a movie theater watching footage from Smokey and the Bandit, sitting next to 81 year-old Burt Reynolds as he looked up on the screen at sexiest-man-alive 42 year-old Burt Reynolds. I was two feet away. I could see the emotions in his eyes. It was one of the craziest events in my life. So I’m very happy to have this 4K Blu Ray. I won’t even sell it on eBay after I rip it.
They also had some pretty solid vinyl this week. I got the picture disc of Lana Del Rey’s new(ish) album Chemtrails over the Country Club for, like, $22, which is insane because I ordered that stinkin picture disc — or at least a similar one because this one is a Walmart exclusive — from Europe, before the album came out, and it still hasn’t arrived. Figure I’ll just sell whichever goes for more on Discogs. These Walmart editions do pretty well on Discogs. Lotta record nerds can’t make it to a Walmart. Also picked up an Amy Winehouse reissue, since I do not own it on vinyl.
Not a bad haul for being in the store for 20 minutes.
Got most of the groceries delivered yesterday. Because I hate going to Harris Teeter. Because that place is terrible. It’s like that coffee shop in Fairbanks, Alaska: Bad man, good coffee, we called it. Harris Teeter is bad store, good produce. I love my delivery driver, though. I wonder if delivery drivers don’t secretly find something useful and nice about the pandemic? I mean. Like they never wait for you at the door anymore. Jackie texted that she was on her way and she said that if my garage door was open, like it usually was, she would just leave the groceries in the garage. When she got here, I was out on my porch cutting basil. I shouted hi at her. She was only like 20 feet away, she totally heard me. But she didn’t acknowledge me, just kept unloading. I went through the house and came out into the garage just as she was finishing up, headed back to her car (which is an awesome bright yellow 1st Gen Xterra that we’ve had conversations about) and she totally heard me but just got in her car and drove off. And I realized this is the norm for delivery drivers these days: dump your shit, text and go. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love it. I suspect they love it more too. We should totally keep this convention after the pandemic. But some asshole in some corporate somewhere is gonna tell them they have to start talking to us, aren’t they? You know they are.
Corporate, man. Assholes.
Today is a Hold Steady day. I woke up with “We Can Get Together” in my head, thinking about the band Heavenly. So I’m listening to Heaven is Whenever right now. I was thinking about how if I ever wanted to describe my teenage and young adult years to Jane, I could do worse than play her early Hold Steady. This album is probably the cutoff. Later-period Hold Steady lyrics don’t really resonate with me as much. Craig Finn solo ones do, but I think that makes sense. His Hold Steady lyric are more… they are more in the Dylan/Waits mould: they are stories about Americana, about Americans at the margins. And I don’t really live at the margins anymore. I think it’s been a good few years since I’ve made new friends with a homeless person or a drug addict or ex con or teenage runaway. This, of course, is probably right and proper, or at least not terrible, and I know rationally It’s probably a good thing my life has a lot more stability in it, but, man, that’s hard to keep in mind when you’re listening to “Our Whole Lives” or “The Sweet Part of the City.” And I’ve not even delved, yet, into the older albums. God. I might have to listen to Boys and Girls in America today. Uh oh.
Yes, deep down I am one of those guys who goes to a Hold Steady show and shakes his fist and looks like he might cry the whole time. I am sorry. I know it’s a cliche.
I am also super embarrassed I just skipped the Christmas shows at Brooklyn Bowl in 2019. I mean, not because I was in North Carolina, no. I made it to New York, I just… didn’t go. Drank at a bar with a friend, like three blocks away. Insane. What was I thinking.
I had a ton of work yesterday. Okay that’s not true but I had a good amount of unexpected work, which is always more stressful. Fire drills. New deliverables suddenly needed. One of them was a long-ish document that I was going to have to write, and I started to get all stressed. I was like “oh man, I have meetings the rest of today, and then a bunch of meetings tomorrow, plus I’ll be tired from getting up early from groceries, so then we’re looking at Thursday, and that’s already getting kinda late and I already have a few meetings, when am I going to do this Thursday? And then we’re closed Friday so now we’re looking at Monday, crap.” And it was really stressing me out. But then I realized I had thirty minutes right now before my next meeting, and… fuck it. I just went for it. And thirty minutes, 1,500 words later, I had a pretty solid draft. It’s not done, but at least there’s something to work with now.
So then after that, I had that post-writing, post-zone euphoria that I love so much, even though you are slightly delirious and euphoric and distracted. And not long after it was dinner time, and I was trying to explain to Emma my day — the stress of the unexpected fire drills, the victory of getting the document done. And it’s very hard to explain that euphoria, how your mind is still racing, but there’s not a lot you need to do about it. And it’s easy, if you’re not careful, in that zone to slip into being aloof or cranky or, conversely, too chatterboxy to your spouse, who’s just trying to be polite and ask you about your day, maaaaan. But I think I struck a very good balance, and Emma and I had a very nice dinner conversation and that is the kind of victory you can take pride in during a pandemic a pandemic.
I thought about fixing that hanging preposition (…the kind of victory in which you can take pride during a pandemic), but fuck that. I’m blue collar. I’m listening to the Hold Steady.
I am very, very excited about the Bankruptcy Court in Texas refusing to let the NRA declare bankruptcy to avoid its prosecution for being a “fraudulent organizaation” by Latetia James in New York. Very excited. I was so excited about it, I decided to watch Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow last night just so I could revel in the joy of watching them discuss this latest step in the fall of the NRA. I was rewarded with some solid liberal catnip for my time, at the cost of being reminded that a giant chunk of our population is actively working toward fascism, which is never super great to be reminded about, though I suppose we need to be reminded about it. Today we get reminded about it from noted liberal snowflake Liz Cheney, who voted with Trump 94% of the time, but that was not good enough, because she idiotically thought the truth mattered (or, probably more accurately, that some semblance of the truth still mattered, because a whole lot of prior lies do not seem to have unduly ruffled her feathers).
Rachel had a great story about how the RNC did a political briefing for Republican congressional members and left out, even when directly asked, that trump was fifteen points underwater (his negative approval being 15 points higher than his positive) in key congressional districts. This is the craziest thing about this whole thing: Trump is not super popular! He’s beloved by, like, 20-30% of the population! Which is terrifying, but not that many people! But they don’t care, fuck it, let’s just sacrifice our lives, our legacy, our reputation, our country.
It’s so rage inducing that this whole thing is not over. It’s not over by any stretch of the imagination. This shit is going to go on for years. I had hoped that Trump, to my daughter, would be like Nixon to me. Yeah, I was alive when Nixon was president, but I don’t remember any of it. I was 2 when he resigned. He was a historical oddity to me growing up. But he’s not going to be like Nixon, he’s going to be like Reagan, this demon that overshadowed my entire childhood. That set the country back a hundred years. A war criminal that you were supposed to pretend was a hero. And look! The year is 2021, and people are still uncomfortable talking about Reagan’s endless list of crimes. There’s a non-zero chance that the year will be 2040 and this country will be so fucked up that we still won’t feel safe talking about how evil Donald Trump was.
God. This is the price I paid to bask in the glory of the NRA’s defeat. Having to think about Liz Cheney in a positive light, having to listen to Mitch McConnell say with a straight face that Democrats are trying to steal elections. Having to think about how Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act and how the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act will almost certainly get overturned by the Supreme Court even if it passes, even if John Roberts supports it, because of Amy Covid Bash and the rapist.
My mom left her address book here. She kept texting me asking about it and I kept saying no, no I hadn’t seen it. Then my sister texted about it yesterday, and clarified that my mom’s address book was… an Elf on the Shelf address book. Oh I thought. Yes, I found that Elf on the Shelf book. I thought it was Surveillance State, Orwellian propaganda that my mother was sneaking into my house to indoctrinate my daughter. I didn’t realize that my grown mother was using an Elf on the Shelf book as… an address book. So. Yeah. Sorry mom for thinking these awful things about you. I know you are a good liberal. A good liberal American white woman in her 70’s, uncorrupted by Fox News and I will be thankful for it forever. Your address book is on its way home. Priority mail.
If that got you riled up, and you feel like doing something today, I learned yesterday from Luke O’Neil’s Hell World that one of the greatest bartenders ever, Joe McGuirk is running for Cambridge City Council. Joe was my local bartender for years and he was so, so good. Not only did he introduce me to so many of my favorite beverages, he was attentive, kind, and a good friend to us all. I miss him sorely. You can donate to his campaign here.
Okay, well, that was a nice, good rant today. Thanks for that. I didn’t take or download any pictures yesterday, so I’m not gonna sprinkle this one with photos. Oh, wait, I have to, don’t I, because Substack is going to make me choose an image to represent this post. And if I don’t put one in here, they’ll make me use the Spotify playlist image, and those are ugly. Crap. Okay, well. Here’s a still from Smokey and the Bandit.
Man. Look at that stache.
(Okay, I cheated, I went back and added some images).
Today’s mix is just a mix. I just reworked it to add “A Slight Discomfort” to the end of it, to which I was listening while I was writing the NRA portion of today’s edition. I have since moved on to Almost Killed Me. Unpopular opinion: Heaven is Whenever is the best Hold Steady album. Ooo this also has my favorite Metric song, a problematic Grinderman song, that Fightmilk (no L) song I was raving about the other day, an amazing new First Aid Kit Leonard Cohen cover, and we close it out with a bunch of my favorite “oldies.” Oh and a fatastic new Iceage song. Man. That new Iceage album is really, really good.
Whew. That was a catharic one. Thanks for being here. Miss you. Hope I see you soon. That’d be nice. We’ll get a beer and discuss, well. A friend said it best yesterday:
I wish we had late-night-over-a-beer type conversations right now. I’m wrestling with some things I think you’d have great perspective on. Particularly around the bigger “why” and “how” of work when you realize you don’t have to do it the way everyone else does.
Wouldn’t that be great? Let’s all do that. This year.
My first cat was 100% named after Smokey from Smokey and the Bandit <3 I am overwhelmed with jealousy / in utter awe of your Burt experience. Also I am older now than he was in that movie and my brian just can't really process that.
oh, ALSO, i'm in charge of my mother's plants again this week and I think this time I am drowning them. I feel like plants are just harder in Florida? We're in 9b and I feel like any rules I thought I knew about gardening don't apply here. SIGH. I'm going to stop watering them and check them again on Saturday.
i have so many questions about your mom's address book: it's a regular children's picture book that she's retrofitted by putting important addressed all over the pages? is it an alphabet book? how is it organized?
FUCK ronald reagan. hated him at 9 years old for giving me nuclear nightmares (and not answering my letter about staying out of the falkland war) and hate him now for putting america on the road to ruin. i hope all his jellybeans in hell are actual beans and that he has constant excrutiating gas as a result. (i don't actually believe in hell, but sometimes i fantasize about it to make me feel better.)
finally, i wish i could write with the same abandon as you—it's such a struggle for me. like, i *know* that the hardest part is getting going, and so you should just get something down and sort it out later, but i always feel like i have to organize and marinate and reorganize IN MY HEAD and get a decent first draft. it's not the best attitude for someone whose actual job title is "writer." i am slow AF. anyway: congrats on that achievement!
and yes: vote for joe, a working man looking out for working people in an expensive town!