Good morning there, fair and weary traveler, how farest thou, etc. etc. Have you ever been to a renn faire? I don’t think I have. I have been to a Renaissance fair grounds (god, that was an experience), but never to an operating faire. In hindsight I think maybe I’ve made a horrible mistake. I should have gone to a renn faire. If I ever find myself in the situation of those two dudes in the back of the car with Tyler Durden and (spoilers) Tyler Durden, asking me what I wish I’d done, I’ll say “go to a renn faire, sir.” And Tyler will stop the car and say “WTF” and I will have saved everyone from serious bodily injury.
Okay… lesseee… yawn. Stretch. Turn on the music (New Long Face, by Dry Cleaning, getting its second listen). Check the email. Oh fun yet another Factory Records book. Methinks I have enough, thanks. Oh my god my For Those I Love vinyl shipped. I am amazed. That record was, like, $115 on Discogs, and sold out everywhere but I found one random record shop who still had it in stock but I figured it was just a mistake and once I ordered they were going to say “nope,” just like every time I try and buy a PS5 (I came so close yesterday but no dice). Well, that is exciting. What a fantastic record.
Got a Red Right Hand email from Nick Cave. Used to be such a thrill opening an email from Nick Cave, now I just approach it with dread that he will further tarnish his image by saying yet another stupid thing about cancel culture. But I stay because he recently solved a 20-30-plus year-old mystery of mine, the origin of the phrase “not drowning, waving,” and/or the inverse, “not waving, drowning.” I’ve seen variants of it throughout my life and could tell they were all referencing something but never knew what and, like I have said before, Google is terrible at this sort of thing. Anyway, it comes from the poet Stevie Smith, and I must confess I kinda like her poetry now, even though, I remind you, poetry is bullshit.
Google alerts… not too much exciting. Looks like SpaceX is building a giant tower at their Texas facility without EPA review, having lied about it not actually being a “Tower.” Gotta admire the chutzpah of that one. “This giant tower? That looks like a tower? No that’s just a…. research facility! Yeah, that’s it.” My business career almost certainly suffers from a surfeit of honesty.
Lotta Loki chatter on Tumblr. I still have a google alert on “Tumblr” from when I worked there. It usually yields some fun results. Today, Loki. I watched it last night. It was very good but it was not the plot or outcome I personally wanted, so of course, the thousands of people who worked on that incredibly hard can go screw, because what I wanted matters.
Looks like that’s about it for anything interesting in Google alerts today.
Speaking of TV I had a thought yesterday that right now is the low point of COVID TV. We all thought it was last year but its worse now, innit? All those shows we watched, none of them have a second season yet, we’re waiting so long for second seasons its just so painful. I have forgotten completely about some of these shows. Are they even going to have second seasons? I don’t know I’m not Rex I can’t keep up with these things but my Amazon app recommended Upload to me yesterday and I was like “wow, even Amazon can’t remember that I already watched Season 1 of that.” I can’t remember what happened. I remember I liked it. It was clever. It ended on a cliffhanger. Presumably more is coming.
TV shows I am awaiting another season for that all feel like they will be forever: The Witcher, Ted Lasso, Upload, Forever, The Orville, After Life, Westworld, Succession, Cheer, The Great, What We Do in the Shadows, Warrior Nun, Great British Baking Show, The Boys, Lovecraft Country, The Mandalorian, The Crown, The Queen’s Gambit (hahaha but wouldn’t a season two of her drunk and old be just great), Doctor Who, Little Birds, The Expanse, Star Trek Discovery, Picard, Umbrella Academy, Resident Alien, The Nevers, Sweet Tooth.
I suppose the idea was that by now we would all be out in the world and doing stuff by now and not be in the mood for more TV. And I guess some people are out in the world now. Emma and I talked about it a bit yesterday. On the one hand it seems like the world is totally going back to normal and we’re still panicking. On the other hand a friend (admittedly in South Africa) just told me about three kids he knew getting it, and another guy on twitter talked about how he got it while vaccinated, and in Misssissippi, 7 kids got hospitalized from the Delta variant and the percentage of hospitalizations that are from vaccinated people have grown from 7% to 12% because of the Delta variant. Etc. Etc. It’s basically impossible to act rationally and I am going crazy. Hospitalizations are up in my state, in my county. I haven’t looked at NY or Boston, though. Maybe it’s totally fine who knows. Hrm. I guess for how much New York has opened up, a 32% increase in daily case loads with virtually no deaths is not terrible.
I just wish they could fucking make this vax for kids. “October or November” feels verrry far away.
It’s ridiculous how much I’ve been flip flopping in my own head about this. And my wife is not letting me just ‘pretend everything is all right’ and not worry about it. Nor is the existence of Jane. Head in sand is not an option.
Anyway.
I really want to go to New York.
Netflix is planning to make video games. That’ll be fun, right? Apparently the idea is that the games just show up right in your Netflix, in a new category like “Documentaries” or “Teary dramas about special needs pets.” This sounds kind of cool I love it when big companies blow billions — literally billions — on unproven and highly dubious business propositions. I’m all in.
Unfortunately, someone is going to need to work something out with Apple since it is totally illegal to do this in the app store! Becuse in Apple’s eyes a game and a video are two totally different things! And while you can have a “marketplace” of videos (i.e. Netflix, Peacock, HBO+, every streaming channel out there), you cannot have a “marketplace” of games! This is one of the exact things Epic is suing Apple about and everyone says (okay not everyone) they’re going to probably lose!
So, like… what’s the plan, Netflix? You gonna take a second go tilting at the windmill? Alone? You sure you don’t want to, like, help Epic right now? You gonna guilt-trip Apple by launching games everywhere but on iOS devices? Because I am so here for that kind of brinkmanship.
God I love a good slow-motion train-wreck in tech. Bring it.
Bloomberg.com won’t work in Safari anymore for me, unless I open up an incognito window. Obviously it has something to do with a corrupt cookie or something, but I can’t fix it. I have emptied my cache, cleared all website data from Bloomberg.com in Safari, and still they won’t load. It is VERY FRUSTRATING. I need my daily centrist capitalist propaganda.
That CNN article yesterday about how Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley bravely saved democracy all by his lonesome while not bothering to, like, tell the public the whole time is super cool and super terrifying and super depressing. The whole thing is just… god. Basically it provides a perfect blueprint for the next despotic asshole, who presumably will be more in the mold of Patrick Bateman and won’t be simultaneously unhinged. Now they know exactly what to do and they know how well it could work. And there are, like, a hundred politicians in America trying to replicate it right now. The fact that it got this far, consequence free, is just devastating. Hindsight will find this moment as grave a threat to America as there ever was.
God. Depressing. Ugh. Will not think about. I am still a delicate flower coming out of a depressive phase no need to dive back in. I am reading an amazing, fantastic book about Concrete, I just love it so much (thank you, Felix). It really goes all the way back. First stone age. Did you know humans just puttered around, not really technically advancing, for, like, a hundred thousand years? A hundred thousand years of just hanging out in caves, not doing much. A larger part of me than normal finds it absurdly appealing right now.
Also reminded me of this album I have owned forever, Sinople Twilight in Catul Hayuk. Some collaboration between Coil and Current 93 and some others, iirc. Looks like it’s on Bandcamp. Might need to re-listen to that today for the first time this decade. Hrm looks like its been reissued. New cover. I like the old one better:
Never knew what Catal Hüyük was until last night. I Also, seems to be spelled Çatalhöyük now.
I would read a comprehensive history of the beginning of archaeology as a science. That sounds interesting.
Thank you for all your helpful words about day care and preschool and early dropoff and late pickup and whatnot. We will keep sitting around thinking about it, now armed with new information, and probably not get around to it any time soon. Feeling pretty stuck in a childcare rut at the moment. Maybe that’s the solution. Maybe we should adopt some sort of other tiny living animal and make her take care of it.
Oh my god I just eBay’d Paro Seals and apparently they are perfectly, easily obtainable now. Well, if you ignore the cost. Remember those things? From Master of None? I want one of those so bad.
And when is Sony going to make Aibo’s accessibly affortable and buyable? I want a pet robot dog. PET ROBOTS. That’s obviously the solution to my child-rearing malaise why didn’t anyone tell me.
One last helpful tip for the day. If ever you see the word “woke” in the literature you happen to be perusing, just swap out the words “trying to be a better person” and then read it again. Woke = trying to be a better person. FTFY.
Okay, well this is clearly going nowhere today. Yesterday was such a good run I guess you can’t replicate that kinda lightning every day. Unless you’re a Mythbuster and you’re using that giant room that makes lightning. Then you can go back. Or at least send your build team there. Emma is very sad that none of you are giant Mythbusters fans, by the way. You all may be aware of how profound of an influence The X-Files had on Emma, but Mythbusters had as huge of an influence, from science thinking to fashion. But don’t worry I got all the behind-the-scenes answers I was looking for, thank you Kari Byron and you’re excellent autobiography Crash Test Girl.
Let’s do a mex. Whoops I mean mix. Man, if I were a younger, more energetic man, I would run with that pun and very quickly whip up a Mex Mix for you. Alas. I’m not the man I used to be. Of course, I’ve been saying that for twenty years. Oh wait I think back then I was saying the opposite. Rockets lyrics get a little hazy after this long. Blue Green is still a great song, though.
Today we’re gonna do a mix from the critically acclaimed series “W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe.” I’m very happy about this series. I remember the first time I had the thought, going up an elevator in the W Hotel in Chicago with Doug and Emma when we were there for Lollapalooza thinking “this is all pretty cool but they really need better music in the lobby kinda like we need better retirement homes not involving golf.” That was probably fifteen years ago and while I haven’t made a new, competing hotel chain, at least I’ve done something about it, and who knows? Maybe someday one of you guys will be working on a new hotel chain and you’ll think “you know, it would be pretty cool if we got Rick to do the music for the lobby.” I’m throwing my hat in the ring. Don’t forget about me when the time comes.
This mix has a bunch of new stuff and Autumn Sweater. Thank you, Mea, for reminding me of that beautiful, perfect album. You guys will be seeing a lot of it on playlists for a while. I have so many memories wrapped around that album, that song, those days, those years, carry the light years, forward the dark ones, let’s go back, you can never go back, but I guess you can shop there, etc.
Oh god now I am listening to my old band this is no way to start a day.
IDK how much you've missed out by never *going* to a renaissance faire. Everything is overpriced, and if you've seen one joust, that's really all you need. But *working* at one on the other hand is definitely something. I worked at the one in Larkspur, Colorado when I was 17. I hawked beverages. It would have been nice if they'd made the prices all, like, even numbers since we had to do the math in our heads (no cash registers and couldn't write anything down, of course.) I was either short or over every day. Anyway, a lot of the people who worked that faire also traveled with it and were SCA people. The SCA was HUGE in CO in the 90s. They did a big multi day party every year, kind of a mountainy middle ages themed Burning Man. Anyway, nights after work were a blast. Lots of hallucinogens and alcohol and debauchery.