Good morning. Hello. How are you? #449
Pills, Blahs, Genesis P-Orridge, Rick Rubin, McCartney, bullying, Gardening, Hollywood starlets, recycling electronics, drawing Curve, inspirational post-its, JIT logistics, defending Matrix sequels
Good morning! Hello. How are you? Ready for this Monday? I am so fucking psyched it’s Monday, I can’t even tell you. In a couple hours I have a meeting about SaaS income and sales tax law in the state of Texas and I am so fucking AMPED about it. It is exactly what I want to be doing Monday morning, I cannot wait. It’s going to rule.
Yeah I can’t say I am doing awesome at the moment. I had some real bad neck pain from the ole fused neck this weekend, and last night I took one of my muscle relaxers and three advil and it made me all loopy and very sleepy and I kind of wanted to faint whenever I stood up. It did take care of the neck pain, though. It wasn’t narcotic, exactly. These muscle relaxers are weak. The doctor prescribed them for three times a day, which is lunacy. I take them symptomatically. The other weird thing about them is they say something very odd on the label: “take with food, or not with food, but whichever you choose, you have to always do that.” I take them with food because the second time I ever took one was on the flight back from Fairbanks and I had the craziest dreams and I did not like it one bit nosiree. They have generally been fine since then, I’ve taken em maybe five times. And they do definitely help with the neck which is just fantastic because my neck is horrible and gives me large amounts of pain and misery. I will probably use them again. But it was unpleasant. I downed a sugar free red bull at 7PM or so in an effort to not lose consciousness. It worked. But I still had no trouble at all falling asleep.
Just sorta feels like it’s hard to look forward to much of anything right now. Oh, I guess I can look forward to November when Jane can get vaccinated, hopefully. But it’s not just COVID and Jane, it’s, like. I don’t know. Throwing money at the problem works — I still get a little big of happiness when a record arrives or something, but that doesn’t seem super healthy. Although these two pristine piece of vinyl of the first two Ultra Vivid Scene albums that showed up last week, wow. I love those records. But yeah, at one point this weekend, I was sort of spiralling and i asked myself “what is fun. What is different. What is reality outside of this house.” I don’t even know anymore. We have some friends who did that normal thing of go to the beach for a week and Emma and I were like “would that be fun? Would it be different to sleep in a different bed? Look at different trees? What is the point?” And I can’t even tell. Which means I should probably do it. Can I bring my house with me?
My daughter is awesome though. Except when she throws ninety-minute tantrums for no reason. That part is not awesome.
I’m reading Genesis P-Orridge’s autobiography now. It felt a good counterbalance to McCartney 321, which I am also watching. In 1998, Genesis was severely burned in a fire at Rick Rubin’s recording studio, when he was hanging out with Love and Rockets. Rick Rubin is the interviewer in this wonderful new Hulu interview documentary about Paul McCartney, which is very well done and clever. Rick Rubin is a good interviewer. He’s not starstruck and he lays back and lets the subject ramble. The Caro approach. I guess I am in a music documentary mood now.
Genesis was brutally, mercilessly bullied at his prestigious, top-10-in-the-UK high school. It’s just horrifying and harrowing to read about it. Reminds me of my own bullying — huh, that’s interesting. Is it the same noun for having been the bully and having been bullied? Bullying? Well, to clarify, I was the bullied. It was unpleasant. I still wonder about those dudes. One of them tried to friend me on Facebook a few years back. I was like “nope.” What was he thinking? I wonder if he even remembers. I wonder if he just wanted to be friends the whole time. I remember one time Carrie and I were walking down Airport way and this one bully just followed us, the whole way, relentlessly mocking us. For miles, down the street. All alone, no one but us to witness his mockery. We did our best to ignore him most of the way but at one point Carrie just turned around and she was like “what are you doing? What is the purpose of this? Is this really what you want to do with your life?” It was just.. so weird that a human being would choose to do that with their time. Her inquiries yielded nothing, he just kept at it. It is weird, now that I think about it, that I can’t remember how or why he stopped. I suspect we got to University Center and he figured it would be weird to be, like, following us around the Pay and Save just screaming insults.
Another thing that’s interesting about Genesis’ autobiography is how much time he spends writing about his childhood – about a fifth of the book. I didn’t think I would particularly care about his childhood. In a lot of ways it’s just a normal English middle class childhood. But it turns out that’s what makes it so interesting. Genesis is such a monumantal, singular, unique human being. It’s nearly impossible to imagine him coming from a boring English middle class home. Yet he did. And that paradoxically makes him somewhat more amazing. It’s always a bit of a letdown for me when I read some autobiography of an artist I admire and they’re like “my mom was a concert pianist and my dad was Shostakovich’s fluffer” or something. Well, sure. Of course. But tell me about those who clawed out of it on their own. Who saw the light on their own. Who found the arts through a teacher or Top of the Pops. They’re the amazing ones.
Anyway. This weekend. Did some gardening. Put a lot of little victorian wire cages on containers. Put netting over one of the Birdie’s beds. Harvested a shit ton of peppers. Raged at a squirrel managing to get a tomato out from under the netting – though far fewer than before. Planted some cucumbers, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower for the fall, following the diktats of the authoritarian Farmer’s Almanac. I think my main problem with the downstairs garden, really, is the use of small containers. Things need to be in the ground. I kind of knew this was a possibility — I have to continually remind myself that this was a year of experimentation. But one thing that has been hugely successful was my in-ground tomato test. We had a neighbor, she was so great, and she moved away to become a farmer. She moved like 10 miles away because the soil in our neighborhood was not that good for farming, she said. But my tomatoes are doing majestically. I mean, the squirrels are eating most of the actual tomatoes, but the plants are doing just great in the ground. So next year — all-in on in-ground.
Here’s this week’s gardening video. My garden is not well at the moment. But we will turn it around, we will turn it around.
It was my mom’s birthday this weekend. We chatted on the phone. She turned seventy-five. She is in good health. I am deeply thankful for this, and for my sister, and aunt, and other aunt, and all her friends who treated her well this weekend and took her out to dinner. Happy birthday, mom. I don’t think mom reads these but that’s okay Ima gonna wish her a happy birthday anyway.
I also had a thought that mine and Emma’s relationship could be defined by the two Scottish hits “Happy When it Rains,” by the Jesus and Mary Chain and Garbage. I mean, I know Shirley Manson was from Edinburgh and the Chain from Glasgow (okay, East Kilbride don’t @ me). But I used to judge Shirley Manson harshly about the re-use of the title. I have changed my stance on this, though, important news flash. Now I think there’s something poetic about it, and it’s a description of my marriage: she’s a “Only Happy When it Rains” girl and I’m a “Happy when it Rains” guy. Anyway, “Happy when it Rains” came on when I was doing some work in the garage and, damn. Darklands, man. That album. Gets me every time.
I read coincidentally read two interview news features with former Hollywood starlets — a new one in the LA Times with Mena Suvari, because she has an autobiography out that I am strangely compelled to read, and an older one with Leelee Sobeiski, because Vice Magazine tweeted out a link to it and I did not notice that it was a two-year old article. Though from the sound of it I don’t think much has changed in Leelee’s life since then. It was a total coincidence that both of these links came my way, but the similarities between the two, their grief at the hands of men and Hollywood, it was all pretty depressing. They both seem like they’re doing okay now, though, which is good. Very happy for Leelee. I am a big fan of dropouts. More people should drop out of the limelight. Anyway I saw her in person once, at the North American premiere of the Merchant Ivory film A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, which was a pretty good film, if I recall, but is nowhere to be found on the internet for purchase or download. That is a shame. Anyway, she looked amazing. Here she is with Kris Kristofferson and Merchant and Ivory.
Tmax 3200 black and white. God I miss that shit.
Spent a shocking chunk of the weekend wiping hard drives. Emma had, oh, I don’t know, six hard drives? Seven? That she gave me to recycle into the world, so I copied everything off of them — there wasn’t much, she is a good archivist, my wife — and zero’d them, photographed them, and listed them on Ebay. Kinda shocking how robust the used hard drive market is on eBay. All but one have sold and I just listed that one yesterday. One thing that is annoying is Apple’s Disc Utility program will not let you format to PC format and zero at the same time. You have to reformat to FAT 32, then reformat again and zero it out.
I like doing this work, though. I like not throwing electronics out. I like selling them to people who want them. It makes me happy to avoid putting any of these toxic metals into our landfills. It makes me happy there are people out there who are using all this old gear and desperately need a 750gb 2.5” HGST internal hard drive. I used to love using old equipment but you know what? That shit breaks all the time. You’d think I could, like, combine this with my sort of empty feeling of looking for fun and unilaterally decide that repairing old equipment is fun but I tried that and, as it turns out, I do not find repairing old equipment fun I find it really annoying.
Another thing that happened this weekend is that my desktop on my computer yesterday was a drawing I did in 1992 or so. It is a drawing of seeing Curve at Axis. Well, not the band, just the lights. Something about it struck me, when I was watching them play, I was in a trance from the flashing lights, all the lights facing the audience. It was imprinted on my mind and I went home and drew it. I wish I had done that more often, I kind of cherish this weird drawing:
OH. I did manage to get get my blood drawn, too, if you were wondering. I pulled that off. The nurse who took it was no-nonsense, bordering on cold. Barely spoke. All business. She wandered off to put my blood vial in some bag or something and I noticed that she had all these inspirational, hand-written Post-its all over her computer. She had, like, the curlicue writing of a seventh grader. You would not have expected that from her business-like exterior. They said things like “don’t let anyone take away your peace, they did not give it to you in the first place” and “whenever you get emotional, remember to let go and say ‘jesus take the wheel.’” I mean, there were, like, fifteen of these, stuck all around her monitor and around her pictures of her family.
Everyone out there is having a hard time, just trying to get by.
After the doctor I went to Bojangles because I felt like a breakfast biscuit sandwich and I wanted to buy my wife some plain biscuits and mac and cheese because she likes such things. They were out of large cups, and mac and cheese bowls, and a food item — I can’t remember which, but there was a sign up for it. And earlier in the morning I’d read an article about Taco Bell acknowledging that its stores are being hit with a nationwide shortage of ingredients. I wonder just-in-time logistics are permanently broken. I wonder if the pandemic just broke the whole thing: thirty years of consultant and stock analyst obsession down the drain. I would be a terrible CEO because if I were a Bojangles CEO I would be, like, “find a warehouse somewhere and fill it with three years of mac and cheese containers.” The stock analysts would not like this one bit. Steve Jobs’ return to power was built not on the back of the iMac but just-in-time inventory, with Tim Cook as the man to lead it. This is why the pencil nerd got the CEOship. And look where that just-in-time inventory got them: shortages, and a massive China liability.
Everyone out there is having a hard time, just trying to get by. Even Tim Cook.
The other thing I did this weekend is, god help me, re-watched The Matrix sequels and, god help me, they were pretty good! Like Emma said “Expectations are a hell of a thing.” I wanted them to be so much better when I first saw them. But they are good! It’s weird, the bullet-time, kung fu fight scenes have aged and just look completely uninteresting now, but the machines invasion of Zion, while too long of an action sequence, is just amazing. Amazing. In my head, these films are on the level of the Star Wars prequels in badness, but it is untrue they are so much better. The acting is uniformly excellent. People give Keanu Reeves shit but Hugo Weaving? He is fantastic. Amazing. Just a phenomenal performance. Ian Bliss is phenomenal. Bernard White is very good.
Don’t hate me. I didn’t expect this either.
The Dune trailer looks awesome, though, doesn’t it? I am looking forward to that. Because I have nothing else to look forward to. This is not true. This is the depression talking. I have plenty to look forward to. I know that. This is not a fact-based mood, or if it is it is only one half of the facts.
Zevia went public. Good for them. I am a Zevia booster. I bought some stock.
Okay. We’re petering out here, let’s do mix. Here’s some cats first:
Today’s mix is just a mix. Mostly new stuff, newish, from the weeklong effort of cleaning out the “to investigate” playlist. It was very productive. I like these mixes, all vaguely knew, unknown, uncertain, not stale with the same songs. Holly Macve is just amazing I’m obsessed with her new album. Oh and there’s a new A Place to Bury Strangers song. That reminds me I learned last night that Vince Clarke of Erasure remixed them once I gotta go find that.
OK, let’s go wake this kid up, do breakfast, and have a scintillating meeting about Texan SaaS Sales Tax laws. This is the problem with being a responsible grownup in tech I bother to go learn the laws and follow them instead of just not worrying about it until you raise your Series C and someone actually cares enough to look over your shoulder, and then they just sort of smile and nod and fix it for you. I’ve been thinking a lot about an old Barbarian exec who went and became COO at a hot startup only to eventually quit because the whole thing was complete hot garbage from a regulatory and compliance point of view, they didn’t know what they were doing and they didn’t care. The Barbarian exec quit. That company is going public now. I hope their stock vested.
MONDAYS!
i know exactly how you feel about needing something to look forward to. in fact, i just had that conversation last night with richard. the thing is that i do have some things lined up—the freezepop shows, a trip to iceland over MLK weekend—but i just don't trust that delta will leave them alone. plus, the couple of times i've done "normal stuff" (a brewery show, an outdoor party with people i haven't seen in a long time), they've been anticlimactic in some ways, which has tamped down my enjoyment: the former, by the anxiety around how many people were in the room, the latter by the terrible realization that i just don't enjoy small talk as much as i used to. it's got me kind of down.